The priest coughs again, and strikes his chest, as if to dislodge whatever prompted the contraction.
“Everything okay back there?” inquires Oni in a matronly tone.
“Peachy,” wheezes the priest. He coughs again, this time dribbling blood all over the floor.
Teetering on the bench, Paul furrows his brow at the sight. He ashes the cannaberette on his pant leg. “Hey, I’m sorry…” Paul silently inquires as to the gravity of the wound.
“Guess I tore the micromesh in all the excitement.” Satisfied with his fib, Edmund throws his shoulders back into a kingly pose. “The both of us’ll patch up at the compound. All we need is in the clinic.”
Assurances given should not be taken on faith alone. The same look of pity that’d blemished Paul’s complexion in Camp Mud, once again creeps across his visage.
“So, Father,” rasps Paul. “I don’t imagine all this was in the job description.”
Edmund frees the magazine from his gun, and begins thumbing-in new cartridges. He shakes his head.
“Not worried about sin or whatever?” Paul punctuates his question with a cough, inquisitively-toned.
Edmund laughs. “Guilt’s a dessert, not an aperitif.”
Smirking at the priest’s scant, humorous response, Paul leans back.
Father Ed pulls another SIK bottle out of his pocket, and taps three pills into his crimson palm. He extends the offering out to Paul. “Take these and rest awhile. Shouldn’t have smoked that garbage. We need you stable and ready-to-go.”
Paul scrapes the tabs out of Edmund’s hand and swallows them in one fluid motion.
Edmund also jostles Paul’s revolver out of his jacket. “Thought you might want this back.”
“Thanks, Father. Chances are I’ll need it.”
GUNFIRE CRACKLES outside the van. Several dimples appear in the chassis beside Paul. Edmund, unperturbed, gets up and readies the countermeasures.
“What the hell is that?” yells Paul, now warming-up to the notion of surviving this gong show.
“Relax, son. You’re going to need your strength.”
Paul nods like a child who’s been chastised for his own good.
“Release the countermeasures!” orders Gibson, from the front, pulling the throttle as far back as it’ll go.
Paul topples over, along with the cooler, as the HovTrans pitches back into the jump. Edmund pounds the chaff out a tube penetrating the van’s side. The countermeasures divert the first pack of heat-seeking missiles, which, misdirected, still manage to shake the van.
“Who’s shooting at us?” bellows Paul.
“RIM anti-aircraft cannons and missile launchers. The real issue is whether or not we can jump the wall.”
Another boom sounds, this time closer, with shrapnel raking the sides. Edmund falls back.
“Eddie!” cries Oni, turning in her chair.
“I’m okay,” he mumbles, getting up to plug more countermeasures into the tube.
The cooler slides forward. Gibson’s taking the ship down.
Paul tumbles to the front of the van, banging right into the dash. He half-consciously grabs Oni’s ankle, and looks up her tightly-laced boot to her smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“I didn’t humor any doubt. After all…” She buckles up, bracing for turbulence. Her smile shepherds her cheeks up, wrinkling her eyes. “Heracles paved the way...”
Paul reciprocates with a smirk, and strains an appreciative nod, bloodying his shirt even more. He tries to get up. “Didn’t turn out well for him, if I recall correctly.”
“It was never about him,” says Oni.
Gibson adjusts the van’s nose, returning equilibrium to the cockpit.
“What about us? Where are we with the plan, if we’re down Katajima’s deck?”
“Huh?” she grunts, distracted by the van’s chromatic HUD. “Booker and I have come up with a few ideas of how to get into the Citadel. But first, we’re going to need to get you a PILOT. Thankfully you’ve an insert already.”
Gibson pushes Paul’s shoulder out of the way of the maglev button. “Pardon the reach.”
The ship’s stabilizers kick on, keeping the van from catching on any debris or magnetic disturbance ahead. The stabilizers pulse, going wah-wah-wah-wah, with the occasional hiccup in the bass-heavy cycle.
Oni, face marred by concern, grips Gibson’s headrest and looks down at Paul. “You’re fine saving them for a world you won’t be a part of?”
For all the inconsistency and irrationality Paul’s mind is prone to, the answer is there, surprisingly clear and sincere, enthroned above worry and any last-minute second guessing. “Yes. They’ll be better off…and so will I. Let’s do this.”
Chapter 27: HERE COMES THE SUN
PAUL CAN’T SLEEP, despite his best efforts. Not with the morphine. Not even after a combo-pack of high-test Walruses and SIK tabs.
Oni put him in an apartment off the locker room with computer access, across from Father Ed’s quarters, where stray light from the Blue Zone couldn’t find him. His thoughts don’t need light to grill him over the details. All he can do is think, and all he can think about is the plan.
Momentarily satisfied he’s memorized every turn or shortcut on the map—every obstacle and every nuance—he starts running over it again silently on his sweaty cot. The plan’s not complicated, but given the hazards and stakes involved, Paul wants to complicate it as much as possible in order to suss out any invisible variables.
“WORSE-CASE scenario, we ride outside one of the pods and rope-claw over where the Hyperloop passes the Citadel,” Gibson suggested.
“And what?” chided Oni, icing the fresh lacuna and stitches at the back of Paul’s head. “Cut through four metres of blast-protected steel and glass without raising any alarms?”
“I still think,” Paul interrupted, leaning forward, “that Winchester might just let us in…”
“Paul,” said Oni, “Keep it together. We have no time for your ‘darkness’.”
“I’m serious,” Paul pledged. “His entire empire’s about to implode if the Anomaly continues on the way it’s been going. He’s got to know by now he’s out of options.”
Oni threw her gloved-hands on her hips, and looked to Gibson for a silent, second opinion.
“And,” Paul continued, “If they haven’t made a move already, the military’s going to get involved. The Anomaly has proven itself to be power-hungry and malicious, and has shown no sign that it’ll stop at the CLOUD. Katajima is proof of that. You think for one second that the USAF is going to risk their drones turning on them? That they'll risk Armageddon over some noospheric dream?”
Oni made her disagreement physically obvious. “Hi Mr. Winchester, remember me? I’m the former employee who blew up your lab. O-K? And here’s the guy who tried to blow up your reputation. O-K? We’re here to help.”
“He hired me. Thousands of applicants, and he hired me. Personally. He knows I’m capable. He knows I can do it.”
“You don’t think I could?” asked Oni.
The competitive inquiry caught Paul off guard. “What? I didn’t say that. You—”
Oni nodded, but was unable to shake loose her scowl.
“Sure you could. But I invented both the CLOUD and the Empty Thought.”
Gibson threw up his hands. “W’chester doesn’t know how desperate he is, otherwise he’d have rained everybody out already...which means he’s got bad Intel. For all we know the Anomaly is messing with his mind too.”
Paul and Oni nodded in agreement.
“He’s half-andy, at this point, anyway,” Paul remarked. “The Anomaly could take him over without having to route through his PILOT.”
“He doesn’t have a PILOT,” Oni explained, hastily. “A good drug dealer doesn’t do his own drugs.”
“Maybe,” said Booker. “Either way, the guy’s not of sound mind, and is most definitely not letting you into his cypulchre without a little wild west. Thankfully you
two’ve a handsome black ticket into the Citadel.”
Paul looked cock-eyed at Gibson, who feigned an air of self-importance.
“Booker,” objected Oni.
“No, it’s not what you think,” Gibson reassured. “I’m M.I.A., remember? When you found me, I was en route to the Citadel to be reprocessed and dealt with. Which means they’d let my unconscious meat suit in to have it pressed and folded. Overdue process.”
Oni nodded, having joined Gibson on the same page a chapter ahead of Paul. “We still have the G-suits from the crash. Might have to update them a bit…”
“Pardon?” interjected Paul.
“So,” Oni carried on, despite Paul’s confusion. “Eddie and I transplant your PILOT to Paul, get him ready to jack-in, and then sneak him on the air bus to the Citadel.”
“O-K,” Paul rejoiced sarcastically, both eager over the prospect of an actual plan, but also completely lost—the Walruses having impeded his ability to process much.
“Here’s where it gets a little messy,” said Gibson, ostensibly exasperated. “Oni and I did ourselves a little research while you were PIT-side. The system that oversees and manages all of the memices tethered to the CLOUD…”
“The MOS,” interrupted Oni. “Memex Overwatch System.”
“Right. The MOS is on the eightieth storey. At first we thought we’d have to remotely commandeer you a memex and then manually locate it in the honeycomb in order to download the Empty Thought. Not the case. All we’ve gotta do is hack into the MOS station, locate your memex in the system, and transfer the Empty Thought program to you. Don’t have to find anything; we can do it direct from the station.”
“The fragmented Empty Thought,” Paul corrected Gibson.
“You eggs figure that one out. Know that the MOS is guarded by three or four of those s.o.b. Outland mechs, maybe more, depending on the time of day and who’s in the central server bank.”
Oni levelled-out an adhesive pad against Paul’s implant scar, and tapped him on the shoulder indicating she’d finished. He pulled forward and rejoined: “So we go in packing.”
“Granted. Trick’s W’chester lives and works on the top floor. One-hundred-and-thirty-first storey. That’s where the storm machine’s going to be.”
“So what’s that mean for us?” Paul asked, feeling his darkness branch into his chest.
“What it means,” replied Oni, “is that you can’t go it alone. We only have one shot to rain everybody out—a very narrow window.”
“Winchester,” Paul interrupted.
“Right. The second we drop everyone from the CLOUD, the Anomaly is going to know right away. It’ll chase their minds so long as they’re synched, and they have to be synched even if they’re not online. This has to be a lightning-fast execution.”
“What is to stop it from leaving before I deliver the goods?”
“Hubris,” said Gibson. “And you.”
Paul jabbed Oni, laughing to himself. “Remember when it was as simple as killing innocent apes?”
Oni ignored his wise-crack. “The only way we’re going to protect everyone’s memices from the Anomaly is by hitting it with the Empty Thought immediately. The slightest pause—a second’s hesitation—could jeopardize everybody.”
Booker offered a glib summary: “Yah, yah, yaddah. Get the Empty Thought onto Paul’s memex before he’s on his way to the storm machine. When the CLOUD’s clear, Paul, you synch up. One of three things will happen…might happen,” he checked himself. “One: this thing assimilates you and, in so doing, kills itself via the Empty Thought. Two: you get in, manage to open the Empty Thought, and then get out before it vacuums up all of your data. Or three: you die, and the CLOUD immediately assimilates and decrypts all of your data for the archives.”
“Let’s lean on option two…How’re we going to get you on the MAT transport if I’m sporting your PILOT?”
“Gibson’s not going,” Oni fired back. “He’ll be laid out after the operation for some time. His PILOT—the one you’re taking—has become a crutch for his nervous system. No point in sending a vegetable…so I’m going with you.”
“Can’t he use his PILOT?”
“No, because his implant is corrupted. They burned him before sending him on that Spirit Train to the Citadel.”
Paul wanted to protest, but knew well enough not to. After all, Oni made a better hacker than she did a neurologist, and she was a damn fine neurologist. “Alright. So how do you want to do it?”
Oni sat down on the crate that’d up until that point been scraping her calves. “I thought, at first, I’d turn myself in concealing an EMP grenade coupled with a jammer. It’d get past their initial scans…They’d take me to the Outland Security office on the twentieth floor. I’d trigger the EMP. The blast would kill anyone in the vicinity who had an implant. Wouldn’t affect the servers, because the radius is so small and the interior walls are lined with lead. Once out of their manacles, I’d take a weapon off one of the de-cerebrates, and fight my way up.”
Gibson rolled his eyes and laughed. “Oh girl, you’ve got an imagination.”
Paul, too, looked at her like she was speaking another language.
“But then I thought, I should probably just use the PILOT insert I bought off of Sector B’s chief mortician with the money we got hawking Katajima’s Titan.”
Oni’s audience sighed with relief in unison.
“Was going to save that coin for my rainy-day fund.”
“Well, I suppose you won’t need it with the sun on the way,” Paul said, smiling and genuinely hopeful.
Gibson threw a holo-deck on the ground between the three of them. It clicked, beeped, and then fired a massive three-dimensional vivisection of the Citadel in full colour, with cut-away walls revealing the floor plans. “A security detail will go to meet the handlers at the MAT-processing dock.” Gibson pointed at the gaping hole, midway up the tower. “Their job is to secure the shipment and then monitor the pod transfer from the Spirit Train’s cargo hold to the tracks.”
Oni interrupted: “Androids will probably be the ones tasked with the heavy lifting, so we’re looking at minimal collateral damage and exposure.”
“Right,” continued Gibson. “Once the meat pods are hooked onto the track, the security team will do one last scan. Unless there’s a problem, the pods will be slung over to the reprocessing centre. Key is to get off long before that happens, otherwise you two will be ripped open like dresses on prom night”
Oni and Paul winced at the grisly imagery.
“You still have that EMP grenade?” asked Gibson.
Oni nodded.
“You can use that to take out the security guards, jam the train of pods, and hopefully black out the security cameras long enough for the both of you to get to the freight-elevator.”
“Won’t that take out our comms? My PILOT?” Paul asked, keen on taking every opportunity to poke holes in the plan.
“Shit!” Gibson barked. He scratched his head, staring intensely but empty-eyed at Oni. “No, wait. One of the raiders had a bubble field on him. It’ll be with the bodies in the morgue.”
“And it’ll work?”
“It’s a personal trophy system that can deal with electro-magnetic disturbance and high-calibre rounds. It’s designed to protect just one person, which just means the two of you will have to get cozy for a moment.”
“After the grenade goes off, what about the elevator?”
“Huh?” mumbled Gibson.
“Will we need IDs to interface with it?” Paul asked, threading his finger through holographic corridors, nooks, and crannies.
“Well,” said Gibson placing his foot on the crate next to Oni, “I know for a fact we don’t have any, and you’ll have scrambled all the badges on the security detail with the EMP. You’re going to have to manually gain access to the shaft—pry it open or something—and then climb to your respective destinations.”
“So, I’m going to climb one-hundred-and how many storey
s?” Paul asked, rubbing the scar tissue on his forearms.
“Well, you’re starting on the ninetieth storey, so forty-one, or thereabouts…I know you’re hurting, man, but anything that’d make it easier would ultimately make it harder.”
“How so?”
“Jetpack. Great idea, right? Wrong. Once the after-burn hits a certain temperature, the Citadel will treat it as an attack and put itself on lockdown. In all likelihood, the building will pulse the elevator shaft and fry you in the process.”
“What about the rope-claw you were talking about?”
Gibson closed his eyes and stood silent for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, that can work.” He nodded emphatically, ostensibly pleased with the idea. “Remind me to hook you up. You’re going to have to make sure you don’t trigger it in a tight space, though. Don’t want to turn yourself into a necklace, do you?”
Paul stood up to interface with the holo-deck. He transferred the map to his Monocle so he could set way-points and identify potential strategic advantages. With his back turned to Gibson and Oni, he started to mutter. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
Oni spliced Paul’s thought, saying, “I’ll get to the MOS long before you get to Winchester. That should give me enough time to reassign Katajima’s insert and Booker’s PILOT to a new memex, and get you the Empty Thought. Hey Booky, will I have signal inside?”
“Outgoing comms will be jammed or intercepted, so I can’t help you...” said Gibson.
“No, what I’m asking is: will I be able to hail Paul?”
Gibson thought for a minute, and replied: “Internal comms? Yeah, definitely.”
“So I can let him know when the Empty Thought has loaded?”
“Probably.”
Oni’s eyes widened.
“What do you want? An infallible ‘yes’?” Gibson jabbed.
Paul still felt uncomfortable even thinking about synching to the CLOUD. “How would I access it?”
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