by SD Tanner
The barriers of his being collapsed, and suddenly he could see through thousands of eyes, order their limbs, and make them move and do what he wanted. He was a creature with potentially millions of parts, and his mind was able to direct them all as unconsciously as he controlled his own body.
“I am the brain that rules the parts.”
He thought he’d spoken, but it didn’t sound like the words he’d once used. Instead, a high-pitched squeal emerged from not just him, but all the other bodies he owned. The noise exploded into the silent desert like a high-pitched wail cutting through static.
With his mind in a million parts, he could see cities burning and humans dying. He was taking control of the planet, and his millions of bodies were doing exactly what he wanted. They were tearing the world apart just as he expected them to.
“We are dominant.”
Again his voice was echoed as a high-pitched wail by the thousands of bodies around him. He was the brain and he would dominate the land. It was his sole purpose for existence, and the wailing creatures around him formed part of his body. Under his direction, they would kill anything that threatened him. As the brain he needed to be kept safe, and the diggers began to frantically rip deeper into the earth. Large mounds of sand were forming around the hole they were creating. The spitters were dampening the dry earth, and it began to form into hard lumps. He needed a nest, somewhere he would be safe from any species that threatened his domination.
While his many arms and legs did what he wanted, the last remnants of his human mind collapsed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Eyes without a face (Ark)
“Where the hell are they going?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re walking into the desert. Why would they be doing that? What’s out there?”
He was sitting in the underground command center near Johnsondale in the Sequoia National Forest, observing their movement through one of the satellites. Lexie had powered down and he couldn’t see through her anymore. She’d told him she was running short of power packs, and would use local viewing only, which meant he couldn’t access her visor. With nothing much to do, he’d taken to monitoring the images from the satellites sweeping across the land and cities, trying to understand what was happening.
He’d joined CaliTech a year earlier to provide design advice for the militarization of their technology. Having lost his legs in a combat incident the year before he’d joined them, he was grateful to find a job that used his skills and allowed him to continue his ongoing rehabilitation. The Army paid for his medical expenses, but the top up of private health cover allowed him to receive additional treatments, without waiting in what seemed like an endless queue of wounded troops. With the severity of his injuries, almost the only parts of him he could use to work were his brains and his eyes, and with his military training, he made an excellent shadow navigator.
The visor technology had fascinated him and it still did. It was able to detect anything within the electromagnetic spectrum, including infrared, gamma rays, microwaves, ultraviolet, radio and magnetic signals. The sensors could detect movement, see through walls, and using RF imaging they could analyze fluids. It was impressive tech, all shrunk to fit inside a visor and capture data that could be interpreted by the Navigator, and then relayed via satellites to the shadow navs. From what he’d understood, the hydraulics and armor had only been added so the visor could be used in combat. CaliTech wanted to become the one stop shop to supply personal kit for every boot on the ground. Given there were hundreds of thousands of combat troops in the U.S. alone, it would add up to a substantial contract that would run for decades.
When it came to using the visor, Lexie was their most capable Navigator, and he’d actively pursued her to become her shadow nav. Following her every move, he was able to direct her through a series of combat trials to fully test the functionality of the tech. Given she had no military training, he’d struggled to keep her moving through the ever changing pace of a simulated war zone. She often hesitated or panicked, and would stop in the middle of a simulation. He’d learned there was one other part of him that CaliTech needed, and that was his ability to yell. Sitting in their underground bunker, surrounded by large screens, controls, keyboards and microphones, he was often heard swearing like the trooper he really was. With practice, he’d learned when to soothe and when to shout at Lexie, and used both tactics liberally.
For all his frustration with her, he missed her when she wasn’t online. The Navigators referred to it as being ‘on the grid’. The grid was actually a shared comms platform where they could all talk to one another informally. Through the right devices and with security clearance, anyone could add themselves to the grid and join the conversation. Today the grid was filled with more questions than answers as people tried to understand what was going on. The phones lines, both land and mobile, were grinding to a halt, and the television network had been off the air for over a day.
Attached to the comms room was another area with a bathroom, several bunks, and a small kitchenette. He and the other two shadow navs lived underground for up to a month at a time, until they were rotated onto a week’s leave. The last instructions they’d received were to stay where they were, and that the building was in lockdown. The lunatic Chief Executive was paranoid, and he’d designed the enormous four-story building to shutter down in the case of an emergency. That meant the windows were now blocked and the heavy security gates would be closed.
CaliTech was hidden deep inside the national park and surrounded by several tall walls. It was two miles in diameter and inside the heavily protected perimeter were a collection of buildings. The main building housed the production site, Executive offices, and Command Center where he was sitting. The Research and Development labs were in a large building next to it with a small hospital facility. On the other side of the main building was an enormous hangar used to train the Navigators. Directly opposite the main building were the living quarters for the shift workers and it also contained the cafeteria and gymnasium. The site also had several decent sized warehouses filled with various supplies and gear.
The grounds around the cluster of buildings were used to simulate battle conditions, and there were various locations the Navigators used for combat testing. To help trial the technology, there were a range of typical combat vehicles and several helicopters on the grounds. They even had an armory with a wide range of weapons and artillery to test how well the tech stood up under real battle conditions. When he’d first arrived, he was surprised they were allowed to have so much weaponry outside of a military base, but it seemed that CaliTech had friends in very high places in Washington.
All of the technology was built by hand in an enormous production site on the ground floor of the main building. No one would ever tell him just how much kit the Chief Executive had built in anticipation of the multi-billion-dollar order from the US military, but he suspected the man had a lot of it stored in the warehouses. Rumor had it he’d undertaken a form of up-market crowdfunding, and raised billions from wealthy patrons all over the world. A lot of the money was supposedly from the Middle East, and he wondered if they knew they were funding the future army that could ultimately defeat them. He didn’t have much faith in the technology as it was currently being proposed. The idea of blinding soldiers, and making them so dependent on a power source and satellites struck him as naïve at best, and was more likely outright stupid.
“Why are there so many people in the one place?”
That was the question he’d just asked, and he replied dourly, “I dunno. I just asked you that question.”
The man sitting at the half circle next to him surrounded by his own screens was called Dom, but privately he’d nicknamed him Dim. The guy seemed to suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome, and although he was an outstanding shadow nav, he was pretty stupid in every other way.
“Why do they read so weird?”
He didn’t have an answer to that question either. When he
switched to infrared they weren’t showing on his screen at all, which implied they weren’t radiating any heat. It had to be a fault with their software and it wasn’t interpreting their bodies correctly. They’d tracked the large group of people from Albuquerque to where they’d all stopped in the middle of the desert near Pueblo Pintado. He desperately wanted to zoom in and get a closer image of what was going on, but they didn’t have enough control over the satellites to do that. They didn’t usually use the satellites for their visuals, instead they relied on the data from their Navigator’s visor, and all he could see through the satellite image was a grainy picture of a large number of people in the desert.
Amber rolled her chair across the small room until she was positioned behind him. Leaning on his shoulder, she asked, “So, what do we do now? We’ve been stuck down here for over twenty-four hours, and no one’s telling us anything. Maybe we should head upstairs and find out what’s going on.”
“I think we know as much as anyone does right now. The cities have come under attack and the troops have been recalled to sort it out.”
“I’m worried about Frank and the kids. I thought the lockdown would be finished by now.”
Amber was married and had a couple of young children. CaliTech paid them all incredibly well, and she was now the primary income earner for her family. She was able to work their odd schedule by leaving her husband to take care of their home and the children. The shadow navs had to be online anytime the Navigators were. With ten Navigators of various types testing the gear, their small team worked around the clock to support them. They only had three shadow navs, and they worked in shifts to provide twenty-four-hour support, but it didn’t really work that way. The shadow navs were like an extension of the field-based Navigator, and they either bonded with them or they didn’t. He worked almost exclusively with Lexie, and the other shadow navs each had their favorites.
“You can’t go out there on your own. There’s something going very wrong,” he replied with genuine concern. “Maybe we can get one of the navs to escort you home.”
“Who’s up there?” She asked, referring to the Navigators that were inside the main building.
“I think Tank is around.”
Tank wasn’t the guy’s real name, but no one ever called him by any other. The ‘tanks’, as they were nicknamed, were their latest attempt to satisfy the Army’s concern about blinding their soldiers to use the visors. It was reasonable concern, but not replacing their eyes with orbs meant they had a lot less advanced vision through their visors. The techs had focused on improving the armor to such an extent it was less vulnerable to even a .50-cal weapon. In addition to the thickened armor, the tanks also carried heavy-duty guns that wrapped across their shoulders and fitted to their arms. They fired .50-cal bullets, and could launch grenades from their shoulder packs. The rest of their armor housed large power packs to compensate for the demands of their heavier gear and stronger hydraulics. The tanks weren’t nimble and they lumbered with a steady gait. The intention was to use the lighter Navigators with advanced vision to recon the enemy, and the tanks were designed to hammer their way through enemy lines.
“Do you think they’ll fire me if I leave?”
He understood her concern. CaliTech were a humorless group of Executives hell-bent on building the most powerful defense company on earth, and meeting with the faceless suits was always a trial. Instead of asking for a meeting, they would tell them they needed to ‘reach out’ to them. If anyone dared to suggest their family needed them, it was met with a puzzled expression as if ‘family’ was a foreign word. They bandied around terms like ‘innovation’ and told people to ‘find creative solutions’, but any suggestions that didn’t align to their rigid objectives were politely listened to and then ignored. CaliTech was fond of referring to themselves as ‘the family’, when in reality they were a dictatorial, unyielding and inhumane machine dedicated to achieving their endgame.
Swiveling his electric chair and dislodging her from his shoulder, he eyed her decisively. “Just go. If they ask why you left, I’ll tell them I told you to leave. But be careful, there’s something going very wrong here, and I don’t think it’s safe out there.”
Amber gave him a grateful look. “I’ll see if I can find Tank.”
“Stay on the grid and give me some on the ground feedback. And wear one of the Tank visors…and make sure Tank’s armed…”
“He’s not allowed to leave the grounds armed,” Dom declared accusingly.
From everything he’d seen, he suspected absolutely everyone was now armed, and those that weren’t were most likely dead. “Dom, you need to keep up. It looks like every city is under attack, and I haven’t seen an adequate military response. Commercial planes have been grounded, and there’s not enough jets in the air to indicate a controlled or complete defense. It looks like a war zone out there.”
“Do you think it’s that bad?” Amber asked worriedly.
All their Navigators other than Lexie were either missing or grounded in the main building, but he’d seen enough through the satellites to know the cities were burning. More than a few large groups of people had left the cities, and were heading for open areas in the surrounding country. What worried him most was how quickly some of them seemed to be moving. Normal people only walked at a certain pace and took breaks, but from what he’d seen these groups didn’t stop. Every major city had hundreds of thousands of people moving at a steady clip to a clear area outside of the city, and he didn’t know why. If he still had his legs, he would gear up and take a look for himself, but he wasn’t exactly mobile anymore. When he’d first arrived at CaliTech he’d asked if they could build him a set of hydraulic limbs. They’d told him that would involve designing robotics and that wasn’t what they did. Nonetheless, one of the engineers had viewed his request as a challenge, and he was quietly optimistic they might be able to do something for him. For the moment, he needed to wait for Lexie to land and make her way to their site. Once she returned, they could regroup and send her and the other Navigators to recon the region around them. Using the Navigators as his arms and legs, he could gain the visibility he needed to learn what was really going on.
Turning to face Amber, he replied, “I don’t know how bad it is, but better to be safe than sorry. I’ll talk to Tank and make sure he’s ready to roll.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Lost in the city (Bill)
It had been a while since he’d done what he thought of as real soldiering. He was what was known as a ‘lifer’ in the army, and starting as a Second Lieutenant, he’d worked his way up to his current position as a Colonel. Having been deployed to Desert Storm, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, he hadn’t covered himself in medals, but he’d been a calm and effective leader. He considered himself a steady and even-tempered man, not prone to emotional outbursts, but approachable enough to win the trust of the men and women who followed him. His current assignment was as the Army liaison for emergency planning, which was how he’d found himself inside the bunker. According to the plan, he was supposed to maintain contact with the troops above ground, and keep the heads of government posts informed about their situation, capabilities and deployments.
The plan had sounded good on paper, but like so many do, this one had proven to be a bust in practice. He hadn’t been able to stay in contact with the military contacts above ground. Even when he’d tried the standard lines to the bases, anyone he managed to speak to hadn’t had a clue what was going on. From the little he’d been able to gather, the command structure had collapsed when many of their officers had turned into killers. Just as one murderous officer was replaced, the next one would start out sane and then go crazy. Eventually there were so many conflicting orders from different Commanding Officers, no one knew what they were supposed to be doing.
The bunker wasn’t doing well either. In theory, all the services to support and defend the city were represented inside the bunker, and they could monitor and direct the work of the teams above grou
nd. He supposed government workers didn’t transform into heroes overnight, and they’d approached the problem by running a never-ending series of non-productive meetings. It wasn’t like the movies, where everyone was always shown to be competent and completely focused on the immediate crisis. In the real world, people worried about their families, and many were unable to adapt fast enough to the emerging situation. With the continual breakdown in communications, they lacked accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date information. Without information they couldn’t make decisions, and without communication, they couldn’t tell anyone what to do even if they made any.
Hearing Jo on the conference line had filled him with hope. At least someone was at their post and keeping their shit wired tight. He wasn’t sure he agreed with her assessment that they’d been invaded, but sending civilians out of the city and to the air force base was a reasonable way to proceed. Losing the police force, and having no sight of the National Guard and Army, had left her with few options to protect the civilians. She either had to tell them to stay inside with their doors locked, or get the hell out of the city. Neither option was a good one, but given people could turn into killers without warning, staying in their homes wasn’t going to save them. At least the base was armed, and they could put up a good fight against anyone who turned into a killer.
He’d already left the bunker and found himself on a road that, according to his map, would lead him across the city and towards the base. If he went left, he could find himself a vehicle and drive to the base. If he went right, it would lead him across the city where he could easily locate the precinct where he’d told Jo to wait. If he went to the base, he might be able to find a squad, and either lead or send them to the hospital. If he went to the precinct, he could find Jo and they could go to the hospital together. He wasn’t usually an indecisive man, but he was torn between taking command at the base, and finding Jo and saving the kids at the hospital.