“Clear,” said Valentin through clenched teeth.
“Good. As to the terrorist groups who are having a field day, their compliance date will be one month from the date the last of them is verifiably contacted with this information. We aren’t monsters. We want to be fair. We expect you to contact those forces you can. Give them a chance. Then, if they don’t comply, we’ll contact all of them to make sure they truly understand the situation.”
The back-clad figure knelt in the foreground, tilting her head to one side. “I understand how hard this is for you—taking orders from a complete stranger who looks like a damned cartoon character.”
“Hey!” the minotaur objected.
She silenced him with a glance. “As hard as this is, defying us will be many times harder. If you defy us, your countries will all be rendered leaderless. I cannot overemphasize that your lives hang in the balance. Your lives . . .” She smiled. “. . . and your financial resources. Your personal financial resources. Our first act, if you fail to meet our expectations, is to take every penny you have—wherever you have squirreled it away—and redistribute it to the bank accounts worldwide with the least amount of money in them.”
“Go, Sara!” the minotaur crowed, doing a grotesque bovine jig. Ellis actually blinked, to make sure this surreal image was actually happening.
It was.
The minotaur was dancing, and shouting, “Hit ’em where they live!”
“Down, boy,” she said, still smiling, and rose. “Your clock starts tomorrow morning, nine a.m. eastern time. I like to sleep in.” She made a cutting gesture at the minotaur and sauntered offscreen to the strains of the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and the amused laughter of the minotaur, who whipped his morning star over his head and then flung it toward the watchers. It flew from the screen into the real world, drawing a gasp from everyone watching.
Everyone in the Situation Room jerked back, the media tech actually throwing herself from her chair. The spiked ball whipped back into the screen with a metallic clank and the display went dark. A moment later, the faces of the world leaders appeared there again.
Margaret Ellis knew that the horror and confusion on their faces mirrored her own.
“So, you think she’s just going to do nothing?” Ted Freitag couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.
Senator Bluth shook his head. “Oh, she’s doing something. She’s capitulating. She’s betraying our country. Typical. This is why women shouldn’t lead national governments.”
Chauvinist, Ted thought. Aloud, he asked, “You mean the male leaders voted for more pragmatic options?”
“Valentin recommended nuking these damned terrorists.”
“Oh, that’s pragmatic as hell. Blow up a chunk of Pennsylvania. That ought to go down well with some congressional constituency.”
Bluth stared out at Ted from his laptop display. “You mean to tell me you don’t see the silver lining in this? The silver lining that totally escapes Margaret Ellis?”
“I’ve looked at the video from the meeting. I’ve read the written report. I see no silver lining, here, Senator. These Zetas think they’re God, and might as well be, from everything I’ve seen come through my office. The world leaders at least need to give a damn fine appearance of compliance, wouldn’t you say?”
The senator pulled a face. “That’s your analysis? Freitag, I’m surprised at you—and a little disappointed.”
Ted didn’t really care what the senator thought, but he hadn’t gotten to where he was by voicing such opinions. So he just sat there, stone-faced, while Bluth kept talking.
“This is a golden opportunity to get rid of some serious global headaches. I mean think of it—if Al Sabbah or some other terror group fails to comply, the Zetas take them down. Poof. Some major antagonists gone.”
“You think?”
“I think. And I also think that by leaping to comply with the demands of these superhumans—I can’t believe I just said that—Ellis betrays her weakness; she believes the United States is just like any other nation and must bend as other nations bend. We’re not like other nations. We don’t bend. We don’t compromise. We don’t obey orders from anyone else. That’s what makes us America. We don’t adapt, Ted. We make the other guys adapt.”
Ted bit the inside of his lip to quash a smirk. “That your presidential campaign speech, Senator? I mean, Ellis is nearing the end of her first term, election’s looming . . .”
“Part of my personal silver lining,” the senator said. “Margaret Ellis doesn’t see this as an opportunity to crush a few enemies and look presidential. I do.”
“No, I think you’re right. I think President Ellis sees this as a global crisis to be averted or managed. Or a problem to be solved. Women, huh? Can’t look at anything realistically.” He didn’t even bother to throttle down the sarcasm. Bluth was a self-serving jackass, but he was a self-serving jackass who needed Ted Freitag’s insider view of the intel that poured into the Pentagon day after day. He was also a jackass who paid very well. The great thing about men with the amount of hubris Bluth had is that they rarely heard anything they didn’t want to hear anyway, so Ted was pretty sure his sarcasm was lost on the politician. “So, what’s the game plan, Senator?”
Bluth rocked back in his chair, pondering possibilities. “I’ll make a game—and public—effort to convince Ellis that she needs to stand firm in the face of these ‘terrorists,’ then I’ll propose some alternatives to just rolling over and playing dead.”
“Such as . . .”
Bluth smiled. “Such as fielding a special black ops team to go in and take these people out. It’s time,” he added, “to get the band back together.”
“Deep Shield?”
“Deep Shield. You’ve had some luck tracking the remnants down—”
Ted raised his hand. “Marginal. I’ve located fifty people—all of whom were assigned to Forward Kinetics. You’re going to need more than that to stage a coup. Or . . . a clever drone strike.” Ted let that last comment sink in for a moment. “Ya know I could have been—”
Bluth reddened. “I’m sure you are familiar with the phrase ‘need to know.’”
Ted knew he’d be stonewalled on that front. Still, Bluth had to understand the length of Ted’s reach. Ted knew all about the ill-conceived failure of a drone strike the senator had cooked up. He most certainly was not trying to intimidate Bluth. He simply wanted to enhance his value. A set of eyes and ears positioned as Ted’s were was worth a lot and that value could be progressively increased.
Bluth made eye contact, something he rarely did. “I’m not staging a coup. Ellis will be out of office in less than a year. That’s just a fact—she is going to lose this election spectacularly. Let’s face it: she and her party have run things into the ground. I just want to make sure the people know that I am the best alternative to rebuild. Reassembling Deep Shield will be part of that. I also suspect that rolling over and exposing our soft underbelly doesn’t sit well with a great many military leaders. And with a bit of guided outside support—there are some countries that are particularly good on misinformation campaigns and cyberattacks that won’t be tracked back to me—we can take advantage of their desire to act. I intend to use your fifty to raise up five thousand. Maybe more.”
“Ah. Well, that means that if you become president, you’ll have your own private little army. Careful there, Senator. Power corrupts. Or didn’t you learn that lesson from your buddy Howard?”
Bluth’s selective hearing kicked in to blot out Ted’s admonishments. “I’m a third-term senator, Ted. I have a lot of friends on the Hill, probably more than Ellis.” Ted understood this was as much a warning to himself as it was to Ellis.
Bluth continued. “The last thing Ellis wants to do this close to an election is lock horns with the Senate. The public will smell blood if even an ounce of dissent is hinted at. The American people will want a leader and a party that can actually handle things and unite our great governm
ent against a common foe. She’ll be a symbol of disharmony and a president with far too many secrets.”
“And you’ll ride in on a white horse this November. You’ll dump Deep Shield in her lap, dutifully informing the nation that these Zetas were created by our government on her watch. I get it. The thing is—why tell me this?”
“Because I have a little side project for you, Ted. But not here; we’ll talk later. I can rely on you, can’t I, Ted?” The question may as well have been I won’t have to kill you, will I, Ted?
“Yes, sir, Senator.”
Bluth smirked and dismissed him with his signature wave of the hand, leaving Ted to wonder if the extra money, no matter how considerable, he earned working for a Machiavellian bastard was worth the ulcer.
Chapter 10
Inside Joey Blossom
Chuck rested his forehead against the cool glass of the window and stared out across the desert landscape, which was still shrouded in the shadow and flame of early morning. He had risen and showered and gotten a cup of coffee from the seemingly bottomless pot in the gleaming, modern kitchen. Now, gazing at the peaceful scene he knew was hiding high-tech surveillance gadgets and armed guards, he had a most unwelcome realization: he did not want to go to work. They had scheduled another session with Alexis and Giles and he was dreading it deeply.
Giles was promising, but Alexis—who up until now had been convinced of her own superiority—was both challenged and challenging. Chuck reflected that the lifelong possession of a special ability or talent was seductive; it encouraged the talented to identify too strongly with their own ability, to define themselves by it. Alexis, in her mind, he suspected, saw her immersion-born capacities as who she was. Discovering that those capacities were incomplete or deficient in some way was clearly a rude awakening. All the more so when it also seemed that other, lesser beings could develop abilities every bit as special.
“Hey, you okay?”
Chuck turned his head just enough to see Lanfen watching him from the broad, open doorway to the kitchen.
“Yeah. I just . . . I’m just not really looking forward to—you know.” He gestured at the floor, beneath which lay the iceberg vastness of the Center.
“If it’s any consolation,” she said, “I don’t think Alexis is too keen on having another public demonstration of her basic human frailties, either. Not that she’d admit to having any.”
“She’d see that denial as strength, I’ve no doubt.” Chuck straightened from the window, shaking his head. “It’s funny what we come to see as weaknesses. Just the very recognition that we have them, for example. That scares the socks off some people.”
“Yes. And it sets them up for a fall.”
“Fight or flight,” Chuck murmured. “It’s a catch twenty-two.” He grimaced. “Listen to me—I’m speaking in aphorisms. I guess the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.”
Lanfen came farther into the room. A cup of tea in one hand, she extended the other to Chuck. “Come on, Doc. There’s no putting it off. Who knows—maybe today’s the day that Alexis has a breakthrough.”
“We can hope.”
But it was Giles who was the one to have a breakthrough. He was able to send Roboticus II on a wonky, wobbly tour of the lab floor and move a mouse pointer across a screen. This caused the young Benefactor to beam and made even Alexis smile—if you could call the brief lifting of the corners of her mouth a smile. She was eager to try again, herself, and submitted to having the neural net placed on her head without commentary.
That was where things went swiftly south. Alexis’s use of her programmed abilities was reflexive. She could no more not use them than she could open her eyes and not see. After a ten-minute, white-knuckle struggle with Roboticus, she lost her temper and tore the neural net from her head.
“This is impossible!” she said and turned to fix Lorstad with icy regard. “I don’t need this, Kristian. If you wish to continue this travesty, by all means do. I frankly have no intention of abandoning the Learning. I’m surprised you would. It was a gift from our families. Why would you toss it aside?”
“For the simple reason,” said Lorstad, “that it is a weakness—a point of vulnerability.”
Chuck was stunned by the admission. He certainly had come to see immersion therapy that way, but he was shocked to hear Lorstad put it into words.
“What if we were to be cut off from the immersion tanks?” their host went on. “What if our facilities were destroyed or inaccessible? What should we do then?”
“A weakness? This was a gift,” Alexis repeated, rising, her skin flushing deeply red. “This was what our forebears intended us to be.”
Lorstad moved to stand toe-to-toe with her. “No, Alexis. They intended us to evolve. The method isn’t the gift—the result is. And right now, we are not evolving. None of us. You and I have been immersing since we were small children, as our parents did before us. Yet if we stop, the gift is taken away. It is not written into our DNA. Our powers are no more a reflection of our reality than a parrot’s mimicry is a reflection of its native intelligence or comprehension of the words it speaks. The lab work we had done on Lanfen and Minerva confirms it: they are evolving; their brains are rewiring, changing—expanding. They are growing new mental muscles—new connections. We are using a crutch.”
Stunned, Chuck sank into the nearest chair. How long had Lorstad been sitting on that last bit of information? Chuck had seen hints of neurological changes during their tenure at Forward Kinetics, but they’d never confirmed their depth or scope. He wondered if Lorstad would allow him access to the data.
To say that Alexis wasn’t as interested in the physiological ramifications would have been a gross understatement. Her pale eyes blazed. “Parrots? You liken us to parrots? Then what are these?” Her gesture took in Giles and the members of Chuck’s team. “Do you honestly believe them to be our superiors?”
“No. Not superior. But is it so hard to believe them our equals, Alexis?”
“They are in no way our equals,” she practically spit. “Their powers must certainly be inferior, if a novice Learned can acquire them.” She waved dismissively at Giles. “Perhaps this boy is resistant to immersion.”
Lorstad hesitated, glanced at Chuck, and then said, “I took the precaution of terminating Giles’s immersion sessions. He has not immersed for four days.”
Chuck felt Alexis’s reaction as a sharp tug at his heart. She stared at Lorstad in chill disbelief. “What? How dare you deny this boy his birthright? And for what—so that he can play with profane toys?”
She swung around, her arm outstretched, and made a slapping gesture at Roboticus. The robot flew into the air, tumbling wheels over crown toward the far end of the lab. Joey Blossom was standing in its path. It caught the Sho-Pai squarely in the ribs, lifted him from his feet, and flung him the length of the room.
The place erupted in a chaotic roil of sound and motion. Chuck’s body seemed to move before his mind had formed an awareness that it was doing so. He ran the length of the room, fell to his knees beside Joey, and thrust the bot aside. The right side of Joey’s rib cage looked like a half-deflated beach ball. There must be multiple broken ribs. Chuck was hit with a stark fear that one of them could have punctured the young man’s lungs.
Riding a strong desire to undo the damage, Chuck lay a gentle hand on Joey’s chest, calling to mind the virtual anatomies he’d been working with in the computer sims. In the moment he made physical contact, reality fell away. There was a bright flash of light, followed by the feeling of being sucked down a dark, twisting corridor.
Alice down the rabbit hole, Chuck thought.
In a heartbeat—the coincidence not lost on him, considering where his hands were—he was inside one of his simulations, surrounded by the digital representation of a human body. But there was something wrong with this body, obviously. On the right side, three of the ribs were broken and one pressed perilously against the right lung such that the tiniest movement of the body might pun
cture it.
Chuck became aware on some level he couldn’t explain that someone else had laid hands on . . . on what? Where was he?
Didn’t matter. He had to keep them from moving the body. How? All he could manage was a mental cry of warning: Don’tdon’tdon’tdon’t! DON’T MOVE HIM! He imagined a charge of electricity surrounding him, pushing outward. The threat seemed to diminish—the other touches went away—and Chuck dove back into this new state of awareness. The ribs needed to be restored to their normal position and form, but that could only happen if he could exert pressure equally against every square inch of the underside of each rib . . . which he could do, of course. He just had manipulated his sims in that way. He imagined a pad of air sliding beneath the broken ribs and expanding, flowing into every irregularity in the broken bones. He imagined a lighter, but no less even, pressure against the outer surface.
As he guided the ribs back into position, he considered the question of healing. In time, the bone would grow back and mend the breaks. He didn’t have time. He’d practiced stimulating tissue growth in his simulations. Now he set his mind to stimulating it in real flesh and bone.
As he worked, he monitored the body’s vital signs—heartbeat, respiration, brain function. Irregular, but present—and there was a head injury. Bleeding.
Chuck was now completely in his element. Riding a surge of confidence, he inhabited Joey Blossom completely. It was both like and unlike the simulations he’d run time and again, but he knew what to do. He worked at the speed of thought, relieving pressure in the sagittal sinus, pinching off bleeders, rerouting blood flow, stimulating tissue regrowth and bone remodeling.
In a moment of epiphany, he realized he could adjust the inconstant brain waves by syncing them with his own. The heady exhilaration of that made him want to laugh like a child on a roller coaster. He stifled the desire, steadied his own brain wave emissions, and set his patient’s to a meditative theta.
When he had completed his work, Chuck paused to assess, and experienced the most incredible sensation: he was in a cathedral with vaulted ceilings that opened to the night sky. He smelled sagebrush, heard the night birds. Was that what Joey was experiencing? Was it a dream? A memory? Chuck didn’t have time to explore. He centered himself, feeling for the merely physical rush of air in and out, sensing the steady thrum of blood pumping through veins and arteries, the odd electrical thrill of synapses firing. He stayed with it until he knew that Joey’s system was stable. There was nothing left to do.
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