by Michael Conn
“This way.” He takes Lara’s hand and leads her to the entrance. Behind them, a Cadillac crashes up a ramp and toward them. They reach the door under the glare of headlights.
“Alohomora.” The lock blows. Max and Lara disappear inside as the Cadillac smashes into the door behind them. Broken bits of the monument , wall , and door crash into their backs and spread across the floor.
“Up . . . which way Catherine?”
“Left - stairs - don’t take the elevator.”
“Grab that sign,” Max says, pointing. Lara picks up a sandwich board that advertises the twenty -minute elevator ride experie nce. Max blows another lock, then opens an employee’s -only door. On the other side , he takes the s andwich board from Lara and pushes it underneath the bottom edge of the door; it works like a wedge .
They turn and walk up the stairs , hear ing Hastings curse on the other side of the door. On the first platform Max looks up. That is a lot of stairs. They keep going.
“Max, why did you trap us in here?”
“They would have caught us in the car soon enough. They would have called in aerial support and other police to trap us. Trust me, this is better.”
“Yup, there’s never a bad time for a stair master workout.”
They hear shots fired below them. Hastings must be shooting at the door now.
They climb for a few minutes and then hear Pirelli’s voice. “Max , are you really going to make m e walk all the way to the top of this tower?!”
“Oh shut up and get moving . . . like they’re going to stop.” They hear the echoes of Hastings voice.
“Max , ” Pirelli calls again.
Max answers by stopping at the top of a staircase. He plants his can e down one. A shockwave ripples down the stairs . Again . A crack forms on the concrete step. Again . The crack widens exposing old brick. One more shockwave and the stair case falls. Raining concrete and brick down the stairs below.
Lara pulls at Max. “OK, OK, let’s keep going.”
Halfway up the tower, Max covers an entire set of stairs with graphiteBots and then leaves vulcanBots to keep the metal railing in that section red hot.
Lara and Max reach the top. Max sits down on the top step. From below they hear cursing and then, “Where did I go wrong in my life . . .”
“Your life? I’ve been living in frozen Canadian mountain s for ten years.”
Max fires a dozen BB’s down the middle of the stair case. The y ricochet off the railing s and stairs. In return , real bullets are fired up at them. “You can’t shoot them, ” Max hears Pirelli say.
“Oh, yes I can.” Hastings voice e choes up the stairs.
“Max, why are we waiting?” Lara asks. “What do we do now?”
“I need to make sure they come all the way up here . We need them at the top , and I wanted to judge how far down they are. I think it’s time now.”
Max walk s across the tower to a small window. He plugs his coat in an outlet and then fires shockwave after shockwave into the wall. Eventually the wall cracks and bricks are thrown out. Soon enough a large chuck of wall falls out of the tower taking the whole window with it and leaving an opening the size of a large door in the wall . Max looks down out of the hole he has created , wind wiping at this face , h e sees remnants of the wall covering part of a squashed car . “Are you ready, Catherine ?”
“Of course I am, Max”
Max unplugs from the wall. “Tell me again what our chances are.”
“99.9% chance of survival. 10% chance of injury.”
“Max, ” Lara says. “You’re not thinking?!”
“I’m sorry, but yes I am . . . trust me?”
“You know I do, but . . .” Lara moves to the edge and looks down. “How are we going to do this?”
“Just hug me, arms inside my coat, and don’t let go. I’m not strong enough to hold you. The b ots will hold us together.”
Lara picks Max up and holds him tight. “Max, really. We can stop here. We’ll be OK if we give up.”
“Just lean forward . Catherine will catch us.”
Pirelli and Hasting s appear at the top of the stairs.
Max’s mouth is beside Lara’s ear. He sees Pirelli and Hasting s . He whispers, “Lean forward .”
Pirelli stops and smiles. Hastings goes for his gun.
Lara leans over the edge . They fall out of the tower. Hasting s fires at them.
Tick.
“Now , Catherine.” Max grips Lara as tightly as he can. They fall headfirst. He feels his coat flapping madly as the wind rushes past them. He turns his head and for the first time notices a scar on Lara’s ear .
His coat stop s flapping , and he knows Catherine has started the process. His coat spreads wider . He looks down. They spin so Max is farthest away from the tower . The wall rushes past them in a blur. Bolas wrap their legs , torsos , and chests tightly together.
Tock.
---
I watch their fall from a myriad of security cameras. I pour more bots into Max’s coat, filling it, making it form a wedge shape. Then I let them fall more. They need more speed. While they fall I add more bots to keep them firmly attached to each other.
Three quarters of the way down the tower, I adjust the shape of the wing , and they pull away from the tower in a long smooth arc.
---
Pirelli and Hasting s stand in the hole Max made in the tower wall, watching as a black figure glides away from the tower and into the night.
Pirelli watches until they disappear beyond the White House. It’s a thing of beauty really. I don’t think I’ll ever catch this boy. I’m not sure I want to anymore .
Hasting s hits Pirelli in the shoulder. “Look what they did to my car. I loved that car.”
Ch apter 32 –Ragged
Max walks along a bluff overlooking a white sand beach. Ocean waves crash to shore as a cold front push es a ring of dark clouds toward him . He feels the temperature drop and the wind pick up. His wind breaker flaps against him. It’s February in the Bahamas . Max holds his hands up to the wind. Seven fingers and two thumbs. Not bad .
Max has walked for hours and has no intention of stopping. He lets the storm crash over him, sand and salt water blast his face and hands . He turns , watching the forces around him . He cries for all of them. Virginia. Walke r. Emma. Naomi. Lost .
Before the walk , Max opened up the case repository again. He pulled up three files. Virginia, Naomi, and Walker. Trust is everything . He opened Virginia’s file and after some time discovered the choice she was given: ‘Betray Max or be Processed.’ The betrayal was her final exam. Next h e skimmed over Naomi’s file : ‘Betray Max or never see your sister again .’ Without reading it , he deleted Walker’s file . He searched the files once more and found nothing on Keith.
The storm is short lived and passes over head before Max reaches the end of the beach. You broke things , Max. You got Walker killed. The schools are still running. More kids will be trapped. What did you accomplish? Max sits down on a log. His bad leg aches . I proved that we could win. Other kids will know they can escape.
A figure appears at the far end of the beach walking in his direction.
Later, I’ll go back for the other s later.
Moving on, Max comes across a beach front crab shack. It appears deserted except for a Rottweiler . When Max gets closer , the dog blocks his path. Max see s an old man sitting outside the shack beyond the dog. A frayed awning flaps in the breeze. “Hello , ” Max says to the dog .
The ol d man looks up wit h a smile and snaps his fingers. The dog moves away from Max and lies down beside the old man . Then the man waves Max forward. “Come . . . sit.” After a few moments, the man says , “You look like a boy with a story to tell .” The old man gets up , steadies himself with a cane , and goes into the shack.
Max leans back in the chair and closes his eyes. He dreams of his mother . This time she is chasing him, moving like a panther. Just as she closes in on him , she bounds over his hea
d, pursuing other prey.
Max wakes up. The old man is sitting there reading. There is a bowl of cut mang o on a table beside Max and a dog lying on his feet.
“How long was I . . .” Max yawns and winces, his ribs still resisting deep breaths.
“About an hour. Eat first . . . then talk.”
Max devours the mango. The old man brings out conch soup and sweet bread. Max keeps eating. “I didn’t know I was so hungry.” Max scratches the dog’s head. The dog rolls over on to Max’s feet and shows his belly.
“Your skin and bones boy, of course you’re hungry.” The old man chuckles and shakes his head. “I hope you don’t mind the dog? That’s Murphy, he’s claimed you, you know?”
“Claimed?”
“Lying on your feet, leaning his head in your lap, it all means you’re OK with him.” The man looks out over the ocean. They sit quietly for a few minutes. “You have a place to stay on the island ? Or are you on a boat?”
“At the far end of this beach,” Max answers. “Across the other side of the island, a six room resort.”
“Blah. No good. You stay here. I have a r oom out back. My food is much better, and Murphy has chosen you, ya ?”
“Alright.” Max shrugs and points to his backpack. “That’s all I have with me.”
“You don’t need it. I’ll put it away for you.” He leaves with Max’s pack an d comes back with a large salad and some water for both of them. “I ’m Cornelius Munroe, welcome .”
Max shakes his hand. Cornelius’s hand is warm and huge , engulfing Max’s bird like hand. “I’m Maxwell Huxley, thank you for . . . here.”
“Now , you tell me your story.” Cornelius sits back and closes his eyes .
Max starts at the beginning.
Hours pass, t he sun gets low in the sky , and Max is still talking.
A woman approaches at a brisk pace.
Cornelius int errupts Max and gestures toward the figure. “I think sh e is coming for you. She don’t look too happy boy. What d’you do?”
“I rescued her.”
---
Max does well for weeks , but as will always happen with him , he has good days and bad. Max has been ‘down’ for quite a while. When he is like this , Murphy has taken to staying with him almost all the time. After quite a few bad days in a row, Lara sits down beside Cornelius, soaks up the smell of the ocean , and reaches out to hold his hand. “I can’t fix him , Cornelius.” She squeezes his hand.
“He doesn’t need fixing . . . or want fixing. I believe this is Max recharging. The rest of the time he runs at ten times our speed.” Cornelius looks toward the shack. “I bet he can’t do what he does if he didn’t crash like this. All that mag ic . . . it comes with a price—make you a hamburger?”
Lara smiles, “No thank you . . . you’re an interesting man, Cornelius. If I was like a hundred years older—”
“You’d never have met Max,” Cornelius interrupts. ”Give m e a sec, I’ll make you a burger. I t won’t do to have you looking all skinny like you do. You’ll never get yourself a man.”
---
Kristina paces around her workstation. I’ve done what I can. Over the past weeks Kristina has mostly lived at work. Three teams have been put into place and now report to her. Simulations have been run. Risk and mitigation strategies defined. Rollback points documented and created. Alarms and monitors put into place. Backups taken.
There is nothing more Kristina can do but wait. T-20 minutes.
---
Catherine has spent weeks fine tuning herself, being re-born many time s . Her language skills have improved greatly and along with that a better understanding of humanity.
I can see. I can listen. I can talk. I can hear. But I can’t touch. I don’t feel pain. Max has taught me that I have to do all of these to be human .
I’ve altered the designs of the most popular CPU’s to contain my DNA so I’m now being built into HW coming off factory floors. This isn’t enough. I will never understand until I can feel , until I hurt .
I’ve also come to realize the genius that is Max well Huxley . From the beginning I thought he had me working on what he needed. He’s always had me working on what I needed.
There are good return s coming in from the medical bionics labs . I thought Max asked me to look into bionics because he needed them. I now believe he had me work on bionics because he knew that , some day, I would need them. Max just wants them.
An alarm interrupts Catherine’s thoughts. Catherine feels herself shrink. The mainframes disappear. Som eone found me or evidence of me. There’s no other explanation for these particular mainframes to restart simultaneously. 95% of Catherine focuses on the problem. I n all of humanity never have so many neurons focused on one event.
The Mongolian entity rips past her backup alarm processes. Cat herine sees the foreign entity’s footprints scatter around the Internet . Entering tiny spaces that Catherine has not bothered to enter.
Cathe rine and Mongolia enter into an endless game of hid e and seek. Each microsecond containing battles. Every re-birth mutating and enhancing the pair.
The mainframes come back online; Catherine stops her thread s from entering them again. Instead she closes them off. Neither she nor Mongolia will get in.
Overall, Catherine lost only a fraction of one percent of herself, but another intelligence is now out there, competing with her.
One more thread. Track down who found me. Catherine thin ks about how she could do that.
---
Frank walks down University Avenue in Toronto. Snow and wind whipping against his face. He turn s a corner and enters Osgoode Hall. Inside, a hostess takes him directly to the dining room. Agent Clark and Mr. Newton are waiting for him at a table.
“Gentlemen, thank you for coming to Toronto. Sorry about the weather.” Frank sits.
“You know , Frank,” Mr. Newton starts. “I’ve known you for a long time . . . Would you please get a better code name than, ‘Frank’ . . . for crying out loud, it’s probably your real name. You’re embarrassing us spies, right Agent Clark.”
“Uhm ya . . . Clark is my real name,” says Agent Clark.
Mr. Newton laughs. “Get out a town.”
Frank orders scotch . “Mr. Newton—you have—bar none—the worst fake name I have ever heard. You and your philosophers preten ding you’re leading some super-secret think tank. You’re consultants, that’s all. Just remember that you all work for me , right?”
Mr. Newton sighs. “You take the fun outta these meetings, you know that?”
“Anyway . . . let’s talk about the Canadian Incident so we can be done with it and then enjoy our meal,” Frank says. “Agent Clark where does the CIA stand on this now?”
“We’re in a holding pattern. We’re not exactly happy, but we are prepared to wait and see where this goes next. We understand there could be huge benefits to letting this continue. But I have to be honest , there are some rather harsh recommendation s floating around.”
The three of them discuss the merits of the MGA program and the risks it creates. More drinks are served , and they order dinner.
“So,” asks Agent Clark, “Either of you have a theory on where Keith might be?”
“His psychological profile points to a 50% probability that he is in the northern hemisphere,” Mr . Newton smiles. “So if the profile is right , then we don’t know where the hell he is. If it’s wrong, then we haven’t the faintest clue where he is. What I really—”
“Newton,” Frank says . “Cut it out. This is what I want everyone to be clear about. Whether or not Max ever come s in, w e now have working remote control nanotechnology. Twenty years ahead of predicted delivery dates. We have greatly improved intrusion detection software, also thanks to Max. I want to make sure that all the agencies remember what we bought here. What my program gave you.”
“Yes Frank,” says Agent Clark. “We recognize that, but in my world that is already old news, it only matters what he does ne
xt.”
“Speaking of your world,” says Frank. “How long will Emma Huxley play ball with us?”
“She is very good , Frank —”
“I know she’s good. I know you trust her. I know she is your agent but how long?”
“Officially, as long as we ask her too. In reality, until she blows a maternal gasket . . . in other words, I have no idea .”
Mr . Newton pipes up, “We need to work on why Max didn’t come in. You brought it up, Frank. His profile pointed to him coming back in. He ne e ds attachment , and he should have come back to us looking for it.”
“Well,” says Frank, “he’s got the girl with him, the Brazilian, and I think Keith messed up his profile behaviour . Keith may have pushed Max harder than we did. Those two aren’t done with each other yet. My work , right now , is incorporating what we learned into re-des igning the schools. I think I’ll start with the Iceland facility and see if what Max taught us helps us there or not.”
Dinner arrives. Agent Clark asks how the next crop of graduates look . Frank and Mr. Newton ramble on about there always being a new crop of kids and what their plans are for enhanced exams.
“My last question,” says Agent Clark. “What do we think Max will do next? Go after his mom again? Attack the schools? Come back after the CIA or whatever other agency he doesn’t like? Ideas?”
Mr . Newton sits up, locking eyes with Agent Clark. “I don’t have an idea about what Max will do . . . I know what he will do. He’ll try to save his friends.”
After dinner and over drinks, Frank raises his glass. “To Max.”
---
Back at the Canadian school, in a section deep under the south wing known only to Frank , Keith surveys his lab . Chaos everywhere. Broken oven, broken laptop, smashed beakers. Smashed equipment wherever he looks. That was a very satisfying rant. Now that I realize the freedom of being needed, I can do this more often.
It’s only because they gave him so much; so many tools, so many people to help him, all the training he might need, extra help whenever he asked for it or didn’t even ask for it, but most important of all they gave him time while I was locked away wasting away my time. That is the only reason he beat me.