The Last Sword Maker

by Brian Nelson

  She pulled her head out of her hands and looked up at the fluorescent lights, thinking about Curtiss. He had been so furious, so suddenly, but was there also fear in his voice? A fear that she might discover the truth?

  Fuck him! she thought. I’m going to find them.

  But how? The longer she thought about it, the more she realized that all roads led back to Curtiss. He had the answers; she just had to find a way to get him to talk. But maybe she didn’t need him to talk to her, as long as he talked to someone. As long as she could listen in. She nodded to herself, liking the idea. She had resources, after all, including access to the most cutting-edge technology in the world. Maybe it was time to see what it could do for her.

  I want them back. And you, Jim Curtiss, are going to help me.

  * * *

  Five days later, Jane walked into the gym, looking for Curtiss. She was nervous as hell, but she had to act cool. It was critically important that she not accidentally touch anyone—anyone except Curtiss.

  She spotted him in a back corner, on the bench press. He was benching two plates with ease, and she had to admit that for his age he was pretty damn strong.

  “Admiral, can I have a word?”

  He sat up from the bench, his face shiny with sweat.

  “What is it, Hunter?”

  “Sir, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for my behavior the other day. I know the importance of security, and I shouldn’t have pushed you. And my comment about Syria—that was out of line. I know you saved a lot of lives. My father even said so.” She offered her hand.

  He regarded the hand skeptically, then relented. “All right, Hunter. Apology accepted.”

  Jane smiled at him warmly, charmingly, and squeezed his hand tightly with both hands.

  Curtiss couldn’t help but smile back.

  Jane continued beaming while secretly suppressing the urge to punch the prick in the face.

  “Hunter?” Curtiss said, looking down at their interlocked hands.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Can I have my hand back?”

  “Oh,” she said, and laughed like an embarrassed schoolgirl. It was a laugh so contradictory to her character that it took all her willpower to make it sound authentic. “Sorry about that.” She let go of his hand. “I’ll let you get back to your workout.”

  He gave her a sideways smile. “Okay,” he said. What a strange one.

  “Have a nice day,” she said, and left the gym.

  Four hours later, she checked the nanosite count in Curtiss’s body. Four hundred billion and growing. In another few hours, they would begin to reorganize into the microscopic devices she needed: a microcontroller, a microphone, a radio transmitter, and a diagnostic system. She picked up a pill and took it with a tall glass of water. It would clear the nanosites from her system.

  Two hours later, she began to receive the first signals. Now she could track him, monitor his vital signs, and listen in on everything he said.

  She was taking a huge risk. To put surveillance on a high-ranking military officer was espionage, plain and simple. Certain jail time if she was caught.

  She didn’t care.

  I’m getting them back.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Other Side

  March 29, 2026

  Tangshan Military Laboratory, China

  Eric knew what they were capable of: the enhanced interrogation, the torture, the drugs, the psychological games. But nothing prepared him for what they did.

  They did nothing.

  The cell was bare. A white bed. A white toilet. No one came to see him. No interrogation. Not a single question. He saw no one. Food appeared under the door. He ate it. The tray was taken away. Days passed. He got sick, had diarrhea. Pills appeared with the food. He took them. He got better.

  It was insufferably quiet. He heard nothing. His senses became hyperaware, searching for information, until the sound of his heart was constant in his ears. There was no window, no sunlight, nothing to mark the passage of time. Had they forgotten about him? Had they decided he had nothing to offer them? Would they soon come and dispose of him?

  Day after day he waited. No one came. No sound. No change. He felt his sanity slipping away. Why were they doing this? Then he realized, they knew exactly what they were doing.

  He tried to fight it. He paced back and forth. He did push-ups and sit-ups and jumping jacks. He upended the bed against the wall and did pull-ups from the metal frame, then punched the mattress. He had to keep his mind busy. He replayed movies in his head, scene by scene. When he could remember no more movies, he remembered books, then textbooks. Then he tried to remember the definition of every word he knew. He defined “it” and “is” and “that.”

  But eventually, his brain started to scream. It needed information. Without it, he would lose his mind. It was inevitable, because without information, his brain was a runaway train, racing from one distorted hypothetical to another, packing a year’s worth of terror and anxiety into a few minutes. He pulled at his hair; he screamed; he pounded on the door. He actually hoped they would come and beat him. It would have been a mercy. That way, at least, he could see a human face, know the world still existed, know that there was a reason for it all.

  But no one came. The lights never dimmed. He was sure he was staying awake for days, but then, he had no way to know.

  He realized for the first time just how weak he was. All those movies he had seen, all the torture scenes where the hero defies his captors day after day. What bullshit. They hadn’t even touched him, and he would gladly do anything for them—anything to stop his own mind from killing him.

  And his mind was killing him. It was starved and sick, rotting inside his skull. He began to doubt the most basic things about his life.

  You’re not a scientist, the other voice said. You weren’t kidnapped. You’re in an insane asylum, and guess what—you’ve been here for years. Ryan and Bill and Jack are all make-believe. There is no girl named Jane. And even if there were, she wouldn’t love you. Don’t be stupid.

  They had taken every physical object that proved who he really was: his wallet and phone, his clothes, even the shirt. So he became obsessed with the scars on his knee, the burns on his leg from the fire, and the wound in his shoulder. He would spend long hours touching and examining them, trying to fortify himself with the knowledge that he wasn’t insane.

  But every day, he grew weaker and it was harder to fight. He knew it. They knew it. They were watching him. Waiting. He was sure. And with every moment they waited, they were sending a message. “We are many. You are one. We can do this as long as we need to, but you cannot.”

  Finally, he broke. He wept miserably, laughed hysterically. Then he began to call out to them. “I’ll help you.” It started out as a pathetic whisper; then he said it a little louder. “I’ll help you.” It was liberating, in a way. He said it louder and louder. “I’ll help you. I swear I’ll help you. Just let me out. Please.” Then he wept some more.

  Nothing happened.

  At least two days passed. That was when he realized they weren’t coming. He had offered them exactly what they wanted, yet they didn’t care. It meant there was only one way to end this. Now he understood his father in a new light. He understood the mercy that death could bring.

  But they had left him nothing—no straps, no sharp edges, no cords or wires. He spotted a screw in the bed frame. If he could just get it out, he could slit his wrists. The idea comforted him. Yes, he would really do it. But the screw wouldn’t budge. He twisted until his fingertips bled, but nothing. Then he wept again, realizing there was no escape.

  They waited another day.

  Then another.

  And another.

  * * *

  The door swung open. Eric was so grateful, he found himself whimpering.

  A smal
l, thin man in a white lab coat appeared. He had a mousy nose, and lips that stayed pulled back from his teeth. He was smiling happily, almost gleefully. Clasping and unclasping his hands in anticipation.

  “Dr. Hill! I’m Dr. Chu. I am so very happy to finally meet you. I’m so sorry that it took us so long. I kept asking General Meng to release you earlier, but he insisted we follow procedures. He said you wouldn’t cooperate if we didn’t wait. But now it’s over. Are you ready to help?”

  All Eric could do was nod.

  “Excellent! I knew you would.”

  “The date,” Eric mumbled.

  “Pardon?”

  “What is the date?”

  “Oh, it’s March twenty-ninth.”

  “What year?”

  “What year?” The little man laughed. “Why, it’s 2026, of course.”

  It seemed impossible. Only five weeks had passed. He felt as though he had aged at least three years. And in a way, he was sure he had.

  “I’m sure it was hard, but it’s over now. Come, I want to show you the labs. I have so many questions for you.”

  He helped Eric stand and guided him out the door. They were in a vast, silent penitentiary. Everything was new and shiny and cold. They passed cell after cell—were they all full?—then they pushed through a heavy armored door. On the other side was an elevator. Eric walked in a daze, unsure whether this was real or a hallucination. His mind was so fragile, still not believing. In the elevator, the buttons ran down instead of up. They were on level forty-nine. Chu hit level forty-two. The elevator went up. What did it mean?

  “It’s a very exciting time,” Chu continued. “We are getting closer and closer every day. Ryan has been wonderful at debugging our code, and his knowledge of artificial intelligence is simply without peer. We would never have gotten this far without him.”

  The elevator doors opened, and Eric’s eyes widened at what he saw. In front of him was the biggest expanse of open laboratory space he had ever seen. Fifty yards wide and extending as far as he could see—at least a mile long, if not more. There were thousands and thousands of scientists and technicians, all in blue or white lab coats, all working as if on some enormous assembly line.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Chu said. “They found this cavern when they were digging the shaft for the main lab.” Eric looked closer at the ceiling. It had been smoothed and polished, but there was no mistaking it. It was solid rock. Now he understood the buttons on the elevator. He had been living forty-nine stories underground.

  “As I was saying,” Chu continued, “Ryan has been tremendously helpful, but he can get us only so far. Now we need you, Dr. Hill. Our roadblock is mutation. The third generation of nanosites is being born with so many problems, they don’t even respond to our interface.”

  For the next twenty hours, Dr. Chu grilled him on his assembler designs, on his error-checking programs, and on his personal relationships with Bill, Jack, Olex, and Ryan. Eric told him everything. Yes, he hesitated, and even dared to lie once, but Chu caught it immediately. The mousy little man stopped suddenly and put down his stylus. “Dr. Hill, I thought we were doing so well.” He shook his head. Tsk, tsk. “And I assured General Meng that you were ready to cooperate.” Another shake of the head. Eric felt weak with fear. Don’t send me back, please. Don’t put me back in that cell. Chu’s finger stabbed at his generic iSheet. Then, to Eric’s amazement, he showed Eric his own personal logs from the NRL. “By July, you had abandoned the multiple parent/child hypothesis. Why would you tell me it is the best route to take?”

  “Okay,” Eric said, realizing it was futile. “Okay.”

  What could he do? Chu knew that they had reached replication. He also knew that as the architect, Eric was privy to most of the designs. He told Chu the truth, and this time the little man was satisfied. “You’ll find that being truthful is always the best path to take.”

  After the twenty hours, Eric was exhausted and prayed that Chu would let him rest. But he still had more questions.

  “General Meng is very interested in what happened on January nineteenth. At 10:04 that night, you met with Admiral Curtiss, Jack Behrmann, and—via conference call—Bill Eastman. Why?”

  He was shocked at how much they knew. It seemed they were unstoppable. “I … well, I saw something. A murder. I thought it had been done using replicators.”

  This did not seem to faze Chu in the least. “Go on.”

  Eric told him the story.

  “I see. And do you still believe this man was using replicators?”

  “I … I don’t know. At the moment, I thought so, but it doesn’t make any sense, and no one believed me.”

  “Well, perhaps you will find this interesting.” He handed Eric a letter addressed to Admiral Curtiss.

  Dear Admiral Curtiss:

  Pursuant to your orders, we have liaised with the Criminal Investigations Division of the FBI concerning the robbery at SynChem Industries, 304 6th Street SE, on the evening of February 19, 2026. Our task was to find evidence of assemblers or replicators of the type used at NRL … After a thorough investigation of the crime scene, including close examination of Robert J. Williams’ Sig Sauer P238 pistol and the broken surveillance camera, we have found no evidence of replicators or assemblers. The medical examiner’s report corroborates that this was a natural death caused by a brain hemorrhage.

  We remain at your service for any additional work in this case; however, we believe that no further investigation is warranted.

  Sincerely,

  CMD Miles Pollock

  Eric gave a slow nod and handed the sheet back to Chu. It was just one more piece of information that showed he was a fool. They all had been right to doubt him. Even Jane. He was such an idiot.

  Finally, Chu took Eric back to his cell. Eric froze at the door. He couldn’t will himself to go in; his legs just wouldn’t do it. “Just for a little while,” Chu assured him. “You’ll stay here until General Meng is confident you are doing all that you can. Then we’ll see about an apartment for you.” Eric felt sudden tears welling up, but he brushed them away with his sleeve and went inside.

  They let him sleep for six hours; then Chu got him up again. The little man worked him another twenty hours; then it was back to his cell. Locked in. And that became his routine: twenty hours up, six hours down. Just enough sleep to keep him from getting too weak. At least the food was good. They gave him whatever he asked for. And when he slept, they would turn out the lights. A doctor came and gave him a physical, then came to check on him once a week.

  After another week, he decided to take a chance:

  “When am I going to get an apartment?” he asked Chu. “I’m cooperating.”

  “I’m sorry. For now you will remain in your cell. General Meng’s orders.”

  Eric shook his head. “You need to give me something, a token of goodwill. I want a desk, a chair, and a reading lamp. I want my old clothes, too, and some other clothes like them.”

  Chu nodded. It seemed a reasonable request. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The next day, Eric returned to his cell to find the desk, chair, and lamp. A pile of clothes was stacked on his bed. Khaki pants, T-shirts, boxers, Oxfords, socks, shoes. He rummaged through them quickly. He found the pants he had been wearing when he was kidnapped. The underwear. The socks. He became frantic. Where was it? Then he saw it, and a wave of relief washed over him. He wasn’t sure how he would use it, but at least he had it.

  * * *

  Most of the time, they kept him quarantined in a small private workspace, away from the Great Lab. Day after day, he worked. It was an existence both strange and familiar. There was familiarity in the work, but it was strange because he was the other. No, not just the other—the enemy. Pure and simple. He felt it wherever he went. They didn’t like him. His very presence seemed to bother them. Some glared. Some looked away in o
pen disdain, as if their eyes had mistakenly fallen on something vile and wretched. Others treated him as if he were a machine, an instrument provided for the sole purpose of helping them reach replication faster.

  He didn’t understand why they seemed to hate him so, until one day when they let him back into the Great Lab to work on some specialized equipment there.

  Seeing the enormous space once again dazzled him. It was so vast! Moving sidewalks, as wide as roads, ferried people and supplies down the length of the room. And along one wall ran a catwalk suspended high above the floor, with soldiers carrying rifles pacing back and forth. On the walls were huge murals four stories high, depicting famous moments from the revolution, and happy scenes of workers and their families. Between the murals were equally huge iSheets.

  He had been working for only an hour when all of a sudden, the iSheets came to life. Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing, and turned to watch. It was a bizarre and disturbing pause, eerily robotic.

  A video started. Patriotic music. The Chinese flag flying in a stiff breeze. Images of Chinese men, women, and children looking proudly skyward, to the future. Then images of bullet trains, skyscrapers, the Three Gorges Dam, fighter aircraft and bombers. Then huge parades of soldiers marching down crowded streets. Then more soldiers in action shots: rappelling from helicopters, sharpshooting targets that exploded on impact, swarming a moving tank and destroying it. Then portraits of China’s leaders—Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Sun Yat-sen.

  Then the music turned ominous. Dark clouds against a blue sky. A map of China surrounded by small US flags. Okinawa, Taiwan, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Australia—all locations with US military bases.

  A voice began to speak. It was in Chinese, so Eric didn’t understand it, but he could tell well enough what the man was saying, warning of the dangers of US imperialism. More images: black and white footage of the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. The rape of Nanking. Men used for bayonet practice by the Japanese. Chinese mothers and little girls weeping. Corpses lining the streets, picked at by dogs so gaunt you could count their ribs. Then a quick transition to full-color images from the US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Bombs exploding in city streets. Civilians running scared from billowing plumes of black smoke. A Middle Eastern man running with a child, its arms and legs limp and dangling.