by Wesley Cross
A few minutes later, the MH-65 Dolphin search-and-rescue helicopter with Orion’s corporate logo picked them up from the parking lot of the facility and headed for Manhattan. Another ten minutes later, Connelly was walking across the roof of the Orion Tower as two medics carried away his wounded teammate on a stretcher.
He walked through the double doors and took the private stairwell to the observation desk to find Hunt and Schlager huddling over a computer monitor.
“What the hell happened?” Hunt asked, turning the screen off. “Do you know who it was?”
“They didn’t introduce themselves.” Connelly walked by the two men to the bar, poured himself a glass of cold water, and downed it in one long gulp. “But I can make a pretty good guess. Perez and Freeman were hit in the car. Brian got shot too, but he got lucky. Only a flesh wound.”
“This is getting out of control,” Schlager said.
“No.” Connelly put the glass down on the table, walked across the floor, and sat down in a chair. “It has been out of control for a long time. We need to take care of this once and for all.”
“I don’t know about this,” Hunt said. “We’ve talked—”
“How the hell is this any different from what we do almost daily? I just pulverized three dudes with an air-burst grenade. Why can’t we do the same thing to Engel himself? It’ll save people’s lives. On both sides, actually.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why the hell not?” Connelly leaned forward. “I came to you, Jason, because I thought we could do better than observe and report like I did back at the ISCD.”
“Even if we were to go for it—and that’s a big if—it’s not going to be so easy. For one, he’s not just some guy running around in the park at five in the morning, who you can easily approach. He’s got better protection than the president. Choppers, snipers, advanced teams every time he has to go somewhere. You know that better than anyone.”
“Give me the resources,” Connelly said, “and I’ll make it happen.”
“And then what? Then Victor Ye, or somebody else waiting in the wind, will take over and we’ll be back to square one.”
“Maybe, or,” Connelly pointed a finger at Hunt, “they’ll get scared that despite all that security somebody can come in one day and chop their head off. So maybe, just maybe, they would turn down the opportunity to play the game altogether.”
“I’ll tell you what.” Hunt walked closer and looked Connelly in the eye. “If it was anybody else, I wouldn’t even listen. And I’m not saying you’ve got the green light. All I’m saying is this—take two weeks. Come up with a solid plan and then let’s talk. Show me how we can do it without starting a major war, and we can decide then.”
“Fine.” Connelly stood up and started walking toward the door. “I’ll give you the plan. But it’s too late to worry about starting the war.”
3
Alexander Engel woke up as the convoy of six SUVs took the exit off NY-27E and merged onto a local road heading toward Gibson Beach. He’d much rather have taken a helicopter than spend over two hours in the back of a car, but two choppers had been shot over the island in the past few months and his new security chief insisted on taking cars everywhere they went. Besides, his father never agreed to build a helipad next to his property, claiming the noise would drive him crazy.
He rolled down the window as they drove through the gate. The air smelled of sea, and Engel squinted as the wind threw a few snowflakes in his face. The house, a simple two-story brick colonial that looked out of place inside of a zip code filled with ultra-expensive mega mansions, sat on a large lot facing the ocean. It would have fit in more on Shore Road in the Bay Ridge part of Brooklyn or Astoria Boulevard in Queens. A guesthouse closer to the entrance of the gate, and the massive twelve-car garage, were the only obvious indicators of the owner’s wealth.
“Hi, Mary. How is he?” Engel asked as he emerged from the belly of the SUV to shake hands with a gray-haired woman with a coat around her shoulders thrown over a nurse’s scrubs.
“He’s lucid,” she replied. “Amazingly so, like in the good old days. But I don’t know for how long. He’s been in and out for the last two days.”
“I see.”
“To be frank…” She paused, looking for the right words.
“You don’t think he’ll last?”
“No.” She squeezed his arm. “I think he has only a few hours left. I’m sorry.”
He nodded, waved to the bodyguards to stay behind, and walked across the yard toward the front door of the house. The gravel covered in thin ice crunched under the soles of his shoes, making them slide ever so slightly. Forcing him to take smaller steps.
The well-oiled heavy oak door opened without a sound, and Engel stepped into the warm, large foyer. The air was stale and a pine-scented air freshener did a poor job covering the harsh tones of strong chemicals. It didn’t smell like the home he remembered. More like a hospital.
“He’s upstairs, as usual,” the woman said, taking off her coat and stepping aside. “I’ll leave you two alone, but call me if you need me. Can I take your coat?”
“Thank you.” He waved her off. “I’m good.”
He took off his coat and, holding it in his hands, took the stairs to the second floor.
The master bedroom converted into a makeshift hospital room was at the very end of the building, facing the water. The lights were off, but the curtains were open, letting the gray light in. A large monitor next to the bed silently zigzagged, charting the patient’s pulse.
“Dad?”
“Hey, kiddo.” Simon Engel glanced in his direction as he shifted on the pillows and then returned his gaze to the waves. “I was thinking about the summer I took you fishing for the first time.”
“I remember.” He dropped the coat on a nurse’s bed and pulled a chair next to his father. “We spent the entire day by the shore and only caught a small flounder that broke off the line and got away, but you told everybody that I pulled a two- foot-long bass and let it go.”
“Yes, I did.” Simon snorted with laughter that instantly progressed into a bout of severe coughing.
“Should I call the nurse?”
“God damn it,” Simon said, catching his breath and wiping his mouth with a towel. “I cannot stand being weak.”
“I could never understand why you did it.”
“What?”
“Lied about me catching the fish.”
“I don’t know.” The man relaxed on the pillows and turned to face him. “It’s stupid, but I didn’t want you to feel disappointed.”
“Didn’t want me to feel disappointed? Or didn’t want to be embarrassed, when you had to tell others we didn’t get any fish that day?”
Simon smiled and turned away, back to the sea. “I taught you well.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, kiddo.” Simon stretched his hand and took Engel’s in his. “There’s not much time left for us to be upset with each other. We are who we are. The advantage of dying is that you don’t have to pretend anymore. It’s refreshing. I know I haven’t always been the greatest father in the world.”
“I wasn’t the easiest son.”
“Trust me, I know.” Simon glanced at him and looked away again. “I know about the drugs you used to push me off the board.”
Engel recoiled in shock as if his father had slapped him, but Simon held on to his hand.
“The irony is,” the old man continued, “the drugs you had that weasel give me might have extended my life by a few years, so I don’t hold any grudges.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Eh. Water under the bridge. But that’s not what I wanted to discuss with you in my final hours. I know you and I had different visions of what’s coming. I always thought your methods were too severe.”
“You made it clear a few times.”
“But now,” Simon continued, “I’ve realized they were not radical enough.”
&nb
sp; “Oh?”
“The world as we know it is ending, kiddo. You’ve been preaching it for years, ad nauseam. On and on you went. About the new war. About the new order. But now it seems to me you didn’t listen to your own lectures.”
“How so?”
“You used to say that growth became decadence and how decadence gave way to rot.”
“That’s true. The world’s rotting.”
“No. It’s rotted all out already, kiddo.” Simon fixed his eyes on Engel’s face. He propped himself on one elbow and spoke with fire Engel hadn’t seen in a long time. “It’s done. There’s nothing left. There’s no time left for half measures. Stomp out enemies with an iron fist, raze cities if you have to.”
“You’re being dramatic, Dad.” He let go of his father’s hand. “The war is almost here, but as much as I like a good fight, I don’t think the situation warrants razing cities to the ground.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong, my boy. At some point you have to stop maneuvering your tanks into positions and start firing. That’s how it works. If you don’t drown your enemies in blood, they’ll do that to you and soon.”
“I don’t know.” Engel looked through the window. The wind had picked up and the waves crashing ashore were growing in size. “I’ve thought about it, of course, but I’m not sure I’m ready to take it that far. I don’t know if I want to be—”
“What?”
“A tyrant.”
“You don’t want to be a tyrant? Alexander the Great, Catherine, Peter the Great—do you think they were kind, gentle-hearted people? No. They were despots who bent the wills of millions because they saw a bigger picture. But now we call them great, not because they were nice, but because they had the foresight and were willing to do what was necessary. If you want to get things done, you need to get your hands dirty.”
“Stalin was a despot, and nobody calls him—”
“Stalin was an asshole.”
They laughed together, but Simon’s laughter turned into a cackle fast and he stopped, trying to prevent another bout of coughing.
“You know I’ve lost the election, right?”
“Of course I do.” The old man rolled his eyes. “I watch the news. But you can still fix this. It’s not too late.”
The wind howled outside and battered the windows before dying out again.
“A lot of people look at me as if I’m some kind of villain,” Engel said. “But all I’m trying to do is to preserve what we’ve got. Maintain the order. I’m not doing this for charity, but when the dust settles, people will see that all this was necessary, right? Someone’s got to do it.”
“Sometimes,” Simon’s hand found Alexander’s again and squeezed it in a powerful grip, “sometimes to be a hero, first you need to become a villain.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Engel let go of his father’s hand and stood up.
“Good-bye, kiddo,” Simon said. “Give them hell.”
“I will.” He leaned in and planted a soft kiss on the old man’s forehead. Then he picked up his coat and walked out of the room without looking back.
“Leaving already?” the nurse called out to him as he walked down the stairs and headed for the door.
“Yes.” He paused and gave her a wave. “He doesn’t like long farewells.”
“Neither do you.” She smiled softly. “Like father, like son.”
“Mary?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to know your job with us is safe, after…” he hesitated, “after he passes.”
“You didn’t have to say that.”
He nodded and pulled on the door, letting the cold air wash over him. The snow was falling harder now with large, heavy snowflakes settling down on the front yard. Engel closed the door behind him and stood on the porch for a few seconds, watching the snow fall. The wipers on one of the SUVs moved back and forth, startling him out of the trance. He pulled his collar up and went down the steps and toward his car.
His father was right, of course. The time of half measures was over. The war wasn’t coming anymore. It was already here.
4
The elevator stopped, and Helen Chen stepped out into a small locker room. She removed all her clothes, leaving only her underwear on, put on anti-static shoes, and went through the air lock into the decontamination unit. The door hissed as it closed behind her, and Chen continued to the middle of the room. There she stood on a large white X painted on the floor. She planted her feet two feet apart, stretched her arms out, and held her breath. A second later, a red warning light came on and a jet of powerful air swatted at her from all directions.
After it stopped, she proceeded through the second air lock into the clean room. There she donned a white bio suit and a large fishbowl helmet that clicked into her neck connector.
Once she was ready, she went through yet another air lock and entered a large, brightly lit room. Two figures wearing similar bio suits were already inside. One was working on a computer terminal in the corner. Another was checking the readings off the variety of displays on a side of a long white table in the middle of the room. Inside the transparent protective casing that covered the entire table like a dome was a nude female body resting on a smooth white surface.
“Hey, Helen.” One of the bio suits by the table turned as she came closer. Steven Poznyak waved at her. “You’re right on time. Max is practically done.”
“Hey, boys.” She waved back. “How’s it looking?”
“Well,” Poznyak stepped aside, inviting her to look at the monitors, “truth be told, we don’t know. Until we start the process, there’s no proper way of telling if the organs have been damaged during the vitrification process beyond our ability to repair them. We had some tricks up our sleeves when we performed the cryopreservation, and electron micrographs look good. At least so far.”
“But?”
“But there could be damage that we cannot see and depending where it is, that might be the difference between a successful revival and, well, permanent death. I’ve seen some unsuccessful trials on mice and boy, they did not look pretty. But that’s where you guys come in. Do you think you can handle it?”
“There are a lot of unknowns,” Schlager chimed in as he joined them at the table. “Nobody’s ever tried to control that many nanobots that will perform various tasks at the same time. Hence my suggestion.”
Chen glanced at the body and suppressed a shiver. No matter how many times she’d been inside of the lab, the frozen body that may or may not come to life again gave her the creeps.
“I don’t know if Jason will look kindly on this idea,” Poznyak said quietly, almost as if to himself.
“What idea?” Chen looked back and forth at the two men.
“It makes sense,” Poznyak said. “At least, on paper.”
“Spit it out.”
“Max wants to test it on a small part of the body.”
“Like what?”
“A toe.”
“Okay.” She looked at the sarcophagus. “That sounds like a reasonable idea. Why do you think Jason won’t be happy about it?”
“Because we can’t try it on a toe, while it’s still attached to the rest of the body,” Poznyak said.
“Oh.”
“Yes. We could probably use a high-powered laser to ensure as clean of a cut as possible without damaging neighboring tissues. But depending on how the trial goes, we might not be able to reattach it back to the body. In fact, even if it goes well, we might not be able to reattach it later.”
“Can we try it on something less? Like take a small slice off the tip? Just some skin?”
“We could do that. But that might not produce enough meaningful data. Skin, despite the multiple layers and overall complexity, is relatively uniform for our purposes. Things get complicated when you start throwing other things into the mix—bone, marrow, tendons, muscle tissue, and so on. And it gets even more complicated, of course, when you start working on the int
ernal organs. And then there’s the brain.”
“But maybe she’s right,” Schlager chimed in. “Why don’t we try it first on a small scale to see if it works in principle? Chopping off Jason’s wife’s toe seems like a move I’d like to postpone as much as possible.”
“Yes.” Poznyak chuckled. “I see your point. Once we get to the real thing, though, the toe is going to be the least of our problems.”
“Can we try the process on someone else?” Chen asked. “I know we have a few animal test subjects.”
“In theory, yes. And we already have, but that data is of limited use. When Jason showed up on my doorstep with this problem, I had to improvise. I’m afraid there’s no proper way to recreate the conditions of Rachel’s procedure precisely enough.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Chen said, looking at the body. “Don’t do anything yet. Give me a couple of days. I want to try something. Can you send me the micrographs?”
“Sure. What do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know yet.” She gave him a tight smile. “Just a hunch.”
She checked the mainframe with Schlager and then retraced her steps to the elevator. The corporate car picked her up from the parking lot and headed for Orion Tower in Manhattan. Since the completion of the skyscraper, all essential personnel—Chen included—were given living quarters within the tower. Considering that the cold war with Engel and company was turning hot so often these days, Jason Hunt insisted that this was the best way to provide for everybody’s security.
Chen didn’t object. The apartment in Astoria that she had been calling home for a few years was too dangerous to go back to. But danger wasn’t the only thing that kept her away from the place. More than anything else, it was the memories of people who were no longer in Chen’s life. While she couldn’t bring her friends back from the dead, at least she could stay away from the place that conjured up their images too often.
Ten minutes later, the armored SUV roared across the Manhattan Bridge and turned onto Chrystie Street. They blew through a red light and another five minutes later, they entered the underground garage of Orion Tower. Chen thanked the driver and took the elevator to the twenty-seventh floor, where she had a modestly sized two-bedroom apartment. She was spending most of her time in Schlager’s sprawling suite after they had moved in together, but insisted on keeping this apartment for herself. A place to work in peace when she needed to stay up into the wee hours of the night without bothering anyone’s sleep.