Apex

by Ramez Naam

  The young woman standing above him, with the long honey-blonde ponytail, the George Mason University sweatshirt, the blue nitrile gloves – turning towards him, then away, towards him, then away.

  “Wha?” he said.

  She turned towards him again, and smiled. “Well,” she said brightly. “You’re with us again.”

  He tried to clear the fog from his brain.

  “I’m at St Mark’s?”

  “Yep. Lucky to be here too.”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  She smiled wider. “Closest thing you’ve got. Fourth year med student. I’m Melanie.”

  Rangan lifted his head and looked down at himself. He was stripped to the waist. There was a fresh bandage at his side. His ribs were wrapped. The IV entered at his elbow. The pain was a whole hell of a lot better than it had been.

  “How…” How bad is it he wanted to ask.

  “You’re going to be OK. The burns are mostly first degree. One broken rib, left side. I injected a bone growth accelerator, but it’s still going to be weeks before you’re a hundred percent.”

  Rangan looked up, and noticed that long hair again, those green eyes, the way she ticked things off on her fingers as she talked. “Thanks.”

  “…And,” Melanie was saying. “You’ve got a souvenir.”

  She turned away from him, then turned back with a tiny plastic bag, a small black something inside it. Rangan reached up, took it with his free hand, held it up between his face and the light.

  “A bullet,” he said.

  She nodded. “It was moving slow by the time it hit you. And it missed everything major. A few inches over and things could have been pretty bad. You got lucky. Really lucky.”

  Rangan stared at it. “I can’t believe that cop just shot me. Fucking asshole.”

  Melanie’s face clouded over at that. Her smile disappeared. Her lips compressed into a thin line.

  “That cop,” she said, carefully, enunciating each word, “was evacuated to Charlottesville with second and third degree burns over half his body. He’s in a lot worse shape than you.”

  Rangan stared at her. “He shot me. What if the kids had been in the van?”

  Melanie shook her head. “He thought he was doing his job.”

  “That makes it OK?”

  Melanie sighed, and lowered herself onto a stool next to the cot Rangan was lying on. “Look. The call that went out. You were described as a terrorist. They said you’d escaped DHS custody. That you were armed and extremely dangerous. Approach with extreme caution. Apprehend or stop at all costs. This is a small town, Rangan. They don’t get calls like that. Especially not when they’re already stretched thin, trying to keep people safe during a hurricane. Owen thought he was saving lives.”

  Rangan stared at her. “Owen? You know him?”

  Melanie stared back. “I grew up here. My mom’s a cop. I know all the cops in this county.”

  Rangan looked down. Let loose by that bastard Holtzman. Rescued by a church pastor who thought the hurricane was a gift from God. Stitched back together by a friend of the cop who’d shot him.

  I don’t have any fucking clue about anything anymore, he realized.

  He looked back up at Melanie, found her looking down at her hands. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I hope your friend comes out OK. I guess I’ve just uhh… had a bad few months with authority.”

  Melanie looked up, and smiled sadly at him. “I know. I’ve watched some of the video. I’m sorry for what you went through.”

  Her eyes held his for long seconds. Then she stood.

  “I’ve got to go. I’m only here because they shut down Georgetown, but since I’m here I’m helping the EMTs patch people up after Zoe. There’re more people who need me.”

  Rangan nodded at that. “It was nice to meet you, Melanie.”

  She nodded, packing up things, collecting them in a medical bag.

  “It was nice to meet you too, Rangan.” She paused for just a moment, then walked away.

  At the door, her hand on the knob, she turned, “Owen’s gonna make it, by the way. He’ll need some new skin grown, but he’ll recover.” She met his eyes. “I’m glad you got those kids out.”

  Then she smiled. “Speaking of which, I think you’ve got some friends who’ve been waiting to say ‘hi’.”

  She opened the door and thoughts hit him, a barrage of thoughts, enthusiastic, friendly, eager, and chaotic, rushing in to greet him.

  The boys crowded around his cot, Bobby and Pedro and Tim and Jason and Tyrone, and all of them. Their minds were buzzing with joy and excited, bombarding him with images and ideas and questions and information faster than he could follow.

  …we’re going to CUBA…

  …CUBA CUBA CUBA…

  …lots of other kids with NEXUS…

  …and this new APP can show you MAPS and PICTURES in your HEAD…

  …hurricanes come from HOT OCEANS…

  …and you can talk like …

  …ALFONSO’S BACK…

  That shocked him. And there he was, in the back, Alfonso, the boy the ERD had tortured until he’d relented and purged Nexus from his own brain.

  “Alfonso,” Rangan said. He reached out, with his hand, with his thoughts, gesturing to the boy, pulling him forward, until Alfonso came up to the front of the little crowd, sat on the stool where Melanie had sat, and held Rangan’s hand.

  “How?” Rangan asked. Had his brain somehow recovered?

  …gave him more Nexus…

  …made him REAL again…

  “Everyone’s real!”

  It came out more sharply than he intended. And the boys fell silent.

  He caught himself. These were just boys. Boys taken away from their parents.

  He smiled. “I’m sorry.” He looked around at the boys, sent out love, his joy at seeing them, how much he’d missed them.

  Then he gripped Alfonso tighter.

  “Alfonso was real when he didn’t have Nexus. He just couldn’t talk to you. He was still a person. He was just more lonely.”

  He tried to show them, the bits he’d seen out of Bobby’s eyes, out of Tim’s, of Alfonso crying huddled in the corner, of how that meant Alfonso was sad, just like they were sad sometimes.

  He felt Alfonso’s memories seep into the room, felt the experience from Alfonso’s point of view, felt the boys make the connection, just a bit, just a tiny bit. It’d have to do.

  Then Pedro broke the moment.

  …Did you really have a POLICE CHASE and did they shoot at you and did you BLOW UP a van and ESCAPE LIKE A NINJA like in the NINJA MOVIES…

  And then all the boys were pressing on him, excited, curious, and so much like he’d been as a boy.

  Show us being a ninja!

  Show us blowing up the van!

  Show us the police chase!

  Their eyes were full of adoration, their minds full of Rangan as some sort of heroic movie version of himself. And somehow, Rangan found himself swept up in their infectious enthusiasm, telling them a story, showing them snippets of the terrifying drive through the storm, of the police car flashing out of the rain, of the terrible spin and tumble of the van, of crawling into the mud and lighting the flare…

  And then he realized that he was the adult here.

  “Now you have to remember to never play with fire without a grownup! OK! Promise me!”

  Did you blow up the BAD COP!

  He winced at that. And then, thinking of Melanie’s words, Rangan heard his own voice explaining, patiently, that police were people too, real people, even if they didn’t have Nexus in their heads, and sometimes they were just confused, or someone had lied to them, or tricked them into doing something bad.

  The boys went quiet, absorbing this. And for a while he thought he’d lost them all.

  Then Bobby sent to them all, Like how they tricked us into thinking Alfonso wasn’t a real person anymore?

  Rangan nodded slowly.

  “Maybe,�
�� he said. “Maybe something like that, yeah.”

  And then he reached out with his mind, and pulled them all into a hug larger than his arms could ever have encircled.

  Abigail waddled down into the cellar some hours later, with Levi behind her, holding his wife’s hand, making sure she didn’t fall.

  “Service is over,” Levi announced, smiling, crouching by Rangan’s cot. “Everyone’s gone home. Those that made it out in the first place.”

  “And tomorrow,” Abigail said, with a small clap of her hands, “It’s time for you boys to move on, towards your new home!”

  CUBA!

  CUBA!

  Bobby grabbed Rangan’s hand. “We’re going to Cuba!”

  Levi’s smile wavered just a little bit. “Well yes you are,” he said. “But the way we have for you boys to get there won’t work for Rangan. So you’re going to have to say goodbye for just a little while.”

  A wave of disappointment rushed through them all.

  13

  Threat Vectors

  Sunday 2040.11.04

  Pryce experienced the National Security Council meeting as one threat after another, each worse than the last. No threat board ever looked green. She’d learned that early on. But they seldom looked like this.

  “…placed a highest priority request for the extradition of Kaden Lane,” the Secretary of State was saying, from one of the giant screens. “Still a very high risk India could pull out of Copenhagen. If they do, it’ll be a complete disaster. They could pull a dozen unaligned countries with them.”

  “Our intelligence suggests a Chinese attack on the Burmese island Lane’s flight originated from,” the CIA director said from another screen. “They may have been trying to capture Lane for themselves.”

  Admiral McWilliams, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, cut in. “We have direct imagery of Indian forces landing on Apyar Kyun, not Chinese.”

  “We should consider an op…” CIA started.

  “No,” Pryce said. “The President’s been clear. India, Copenhagen, and Lane are all in State’s bag now. Next topic.”

  She was inside Air Force one, in the cavernous Situation Room set behind the President’s suite in the upper deck of the giant double-decker craft. John Stockton was welcome at these meetings, but he was down below, talking to the press that traveled with him, making statements, doing damage control.

  He was welcome to that job, Pryce thought.

  Hers was keeping the free world safe.

  CIA spoke again. “China. We have more confirmation that it’s a coup. Bo Jintao, Minister of State Security, seems to be in charge now. A hardliner. Progressive Politburo members are effectively under house arrest…”

  Fleet deployments. Diplomatic response. Human rights violations. Impact on trade agreements. Containment plans. There was always more to discuss than there was time.

  And it was seldom as bad as this.

  “Next,” Pryce said after thirty minutes, acknowledging General Gordon Reid.

  The NSA Director nodded. His craggy face looked almost… uncomfortable. Something Pryce wasn’t used to seeing on the career Air Force cryptographer.

  “In the matter of Director Barnes’s suicide, we’ve found evidence that his home’s security system was indeed penetrated by a hostile attacker.”

  Pryce felt a small jolt of surprise.

  Was I wrong? She wondered. Was the President right? Was Barnes murdered? His confession a fabrication?

  “Can you track down who the intruder was?” she asked.

  Reid spoke again. “Dr Pryce, our forensics team found telltales of an attack developed by China’s Advanced Electronic Brigade, launched by an attacker from within China.”

  Everyone started talking at once.

  Pryce sliced her hand through the air. “Quiet!”

  They all fell silent.

  “China?” Pryce asked the NSA Director. “Are you sure?”

  Reid looked at her. “As you know, one hundred percent doesn’t exist in this business. But the telltale matches an attack AEB’s used twice before, and while the attacker took steps to hide their tracks, we successfully traced it back to the PRC.”

  Pryce leaned back and exhaled softly. China. Her eyes drifted to the Situation Room’s digital threat board, with the Chinese coup listed prominently, the hardliners back in power. Could they be doing this to distract the US? To keep the President from responding to what was happening there? But the risk! The provocation!

  It made no sense. Rationally, the risk/payoff ratio was absurd.

  Everyone else was staring at her, waiting.

  “Dr Pryce,” Reid said, “I need to add something here. The Chinese don’t know that we know about this attack technology, or have a way to detect it or trace it.”

  Pryce’s eyes snapped back to Reid’s, the wheels in her mind spinning.

  “I appreciate,” the NSA Director went on, “that this is a very important moment for the President, politically…”

  And now Pryce understood the unease she was reading from him.

  “…but if we reveal to the American people that we were able to detect a subversion of Barnes’s home security system, even if we don’t mention China, then we’ll be tipping our hand to them, and giving away an intelligence advantage that we have.”

  Pryce held Reid’s eyes. “The President will have to make that decision.”

  “Can I count on you,” the NSA Director asked, “to counsel the President in the direction of maximizing US national security?”

  “I don’t think he’ll need that counsel from me, General,” Pryce told him.

  Then she turned to the others. “Reactions?”

  It was another twenty minutes before she came to the last item on her agenda.

  “Finally,” she said. “The President has tasked me with investigating the allegation that the PLF was created as a black op inside the Jameson Administration.”

  She looked around, saw the different expressions, some blank, some openly dubious.

  “He’s given me complete authority to dig wherever I need. Now, this may turn out to be a complete fabrication. Or it may be true. But if you know anything about this, you have twenty-four hours to let me know. In that time, whatever I learn, I’ll do my best to see that wherever it came from, you’re given due credit for that when the butcher’s bill comes due.”

  She kept looking around, making eye contact with each of them as she spoke, nodding conversationally. She was, in fact, on thin ice. Stockton hadn’t rescinded her authority to dig on this topic. But it was clear he’d made up his own mind with Barnes’s death.

  So she was going to use that investigative authority now in case he took it away from her later.

  “Beyond twenty-four hours from now, if I learn that any of you have been holding out on me, I will nail you mercilessly to the wall.”

  She let her eyes slide around them once more, marked who looked away, who met her eyes with hostility, who with humor.

  “Am I absolutely clear?”

  She was just outside the situation room, in the long hallway that ran the length of the upper deck of Air Force one, when a glint through one of the giant windows caught her eye. It was a brand new F-38, flanking them, its chameleonware skin detuned to let all the world see it – just one of the small squadron of human-piloted and autonomous fighter craft that now protected Air Force One wherever it went. It was something Pryce still wasn’t used to, something that had only come into effect four months ago, with the attempt on the President’s life.

  She shook her head. Air Force One was as safe a place as any on earth. Even without the squadron flying air support, the double decker plane had its own anti-missile defenses, its own small fleet of mini-drones it could launch, its own stealth capabilities, and other surprises up its sleeve that few knew about.

  The screen of her slate flashed. Pryce looked down, found the kind of message she’d half expected. Anonymous, of course.

  [Ivory Tower bitches like you sho
uld keep their noses out of wet work. Or they might find those noses cut off.]

  Pryce chuckled at that. Another threatened Cro-Magnon, resorting to hurling archaic gendered insults to soothe his battered ego.

  She subvocalized to Kaori.

  [Pryce: You get that?]

  [Kaori: Got it. Starting the trace now.]

  She doubted anyone with something truly important to hide would be so stupid as to draw attention like that. Still, you explored all leads, however unlikely. That’s how you made your luck.

  Pryce looked back out at the F-38, glinting in the sun, armed with the latest high-tech weaponry, ready to shoot down any bogies that came in range.

  She snorted and shook her head.

  Pointless. Unless they were in a full blown shooting war with China, any successful attack on Air Force One wouldn’t come from the outside.

  It would come from within. From one of their own.

  14

  HR Gambit

  Sunday 2040.11.04

  “…Our treaty obligations compel us to honor this request,” Aggarwal said.

  Kade closed his eyes.

  “Unless,” Aggarwal continued, “you give us your full and absolute cooperation in our plans for Nexus.”

  Kade opened his eyes.

  “I won’t help you spy, or coerce, or use Nexus as a weapon,” he told the man.

  Aggarwal frowned and opened his mouth to speak.

  The woman next to him cut in smoothly.

  “Mr Lane,” she said. Her accent was crisp, British. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Lakshmi Dabir.”

  She moved forward as she spoke, lowering herself slowly into one of the chairs across the table from Kade, her dark eyes on his. She didn’t offer her hand.