The Last Sword Maker

by Brian Nelson

  “No,” Brown blurted out, perhaps too suddenly. Then, more calmly, “No, I’ll handle it. It might be nothing.” There was a pause. “Just let me ask one final question, Dr. Lawrence, and then I’ll leave you alone. Hypothetically speaking, of course, suppose that a man had a gun pointed at you and you wanted to kill him instantly. And also suppose that by some magic, you were able to do anything you wanted to him. Pretend that you could reach inside his body like a surgeon. How would you kill him?”

  “I’d cut out his—” There was a sudden pause as the doctor realized what his answer meant.

  “Thank you, Doctor. Your assistance has been illuminating.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Freedom

  May 16, 2026

  Tangshan Military Laboratory, China

  Eric sat in his cell. At least two days had passed since Olex’s death, but he couldn’t be completely sure. He was in solitary again. Alone. Starving for information. Fighting to control his own mind.

  He spent long hours staring at the door, both hoping and terrified that it would open. If they came for him, it was either because they needed him to fix something or … or they were going to kill him. And even if it was only the former, he’d be that much closer to being of no more use to them.

  Feeling that death was so near, he tried to make his peace, but he couldn’t. He was just too young. He had done too few of the things he had wanted to do. More than that, he was struck by the horrible feeling that he had done the wrong things and that he had left too much unfinished. He had not made amends with his mother and sister after his father’s death. And he had spent too much time working instead of enjoying life.

  But he had lived, hadn’t he? He had lived a childhood in which he had been loved. There had been idyllic days in Bloomington: summers swimming in the quarry, Fourth of July fireworks, Halloween parades and corn mazes. Christmases in the snow. Friends and teammates. Girlfriends and homecoming and backseats.

  The longer he lay there and thought, the more he realized that he had lived—at least, more than some. Perhaps he could accept that his life was over. The biggest regret was Jane. The tragedy of finding love and then not seeing it through. What might have been? He knew that it was too much to expect, but still he dreamed of her. He needed it. To imagine a full life with her, to see her belly grow with a child. To bring children into this crazy world so they could cherish them together. That was what he wanted now. Not to be a famous scientist, not to be revered and respected. Not anymore.

  As he lay thinking of his past, trying to calm his mind, he unlocked an old memory. He remembered sitting in his dad’s lap while he read the paper. He remembered the sound of his father’s breathing, the steady rise and fall of his chest, the occasional rustle of the paper. It was such a simple thing, yet it had given Eric the deepest feeling of safety, as if nothing in the world could hurt him.

  Just thinking about it now calmed him. But more importantly, it made him realize that for too long he had let the memories of his father’s suicide overshadow all the good that he had done. When someone close to you took their own life, that final act had a way of poisoning all the other memories of that person, making you doubt everything else they had done. But that wasn’t fair. His father had been much more than a suicide. And Eric realized he had to reclaim the father he had known before.

  As the hours wore on, he tried to prepare himself for what was coming. What would happen if the Chinese replicated and the virus got out? Would he die here, or did Ryan have a plan? Maybe he had to be ready—ready to run and fight. Could he do that?

  He remembered, one day at the firing range, talking to Corporal Davis about combat. He had been surprised to find out that the baby-faced marine was actually twenty-four and had been in a dozen firefights in Syria. Eric had asked him how he controlled his fear. “Well, at the beginning I didn’t,” Davis said. “I shit my pants. Major blowout, man. By the time we got back to base camp, it had run into my boots. The second time was better: I only wet myself. You get used to it, I guess, but just a little. The corps trains you to put something above yourself, namely the other men in your platoon. You have to be brave not for yourself, but for them. If you can find something greater to live for, then you’ll rise to the occasion.”

  * * *

  Eric was sleeping when light suddenly flooded the room. He sat up with a start, his heart thumping in his chest. The door swung open, and in came Chu. The mousy scientist was smiling broadly. He opened his arms as if he would embrace Eric, then pointed at him and began to clap his hands, as if applauding a maestro.

  “It is done,” he said. Then he squeezed both fists tight in front of his face and threw his head back. “We did it!” he shouted.

  “It has been almost two days. Everyone is so very happy! I wanted to come down and thank you personally for your hard work and honesty.” Chu took Eric’s hand and began pumping it excitedly. “You have helped my country on the road back to greatness. Thank you!”

  Two days! Eric thought. That meant the countdown had already started. They were replicating geometrically now. Very soon they would reach their critical mass. And then …

  “Come, come!” Chu said. “I will show you. And perhaps you can help us with a slight problem we are having with our diagnostic system. Ryan said you might know how to fix it.”

  Five minutes later, the elevators opened onto the main lab. Again, he saw the thousands of scientists in their blue and white lab coats, diligently working. Eric instantly felt a change in the place. The air was lighter now that they had reached replication. They stepped onto a moving sidewalk. For ten minutes, they walked, going deeper and deeper into the huge cathedral of science and past one enormous mural after another.

  Never before had Eric been taken so far into the huge cavern. Finally, Chu stepped off the sidewalk. “Here we are,” he said.

  Eric marveled at what he saw: on one side of the Great Lab protruded an enormous sphere of polished steel. It must have been at least three hundred feet in diameter—so big that only part of the curved surface was visible while the rest extended far above the ceiling and far below the floor. Fascinated, Eric walked up to it and peered into a small circular window. The huge sphere appeared to be empty. But he knew that it wasn’t. It was full of the first generation of Chinese self-replicating assemblers.

  Chu directed him along the far edge of the sphere, and there he saw Ryan, the twins, and a young girl. Perhaps it was because she was the first child he had seen since his captivity began, but Eric was immediately struck by her. She was beautiful, maybe ten or eleven, with long raven hair and warm black eyes. Eric realized this must be Hui Ying’s daughter. The girl’s mother and Ryan were busy working at a control terminal while the girl played with her aunt, laughing and giggling as they made rhymes.

  “Keep quiet, you two,” Hui Ying admonished. “I can’t concentrate.” Then she caught sight of Eric and stood up. “Eric, this is my daughter, Mei,” she said formally. There was a gravity in her voice, and Eric had a sense that she wanted to say more. Then she glanced at Chu and remembered herself. “As you can see, her aunt never stops spoiling her.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Hui Lili said. “Or is that ‘Chilty as garged’? I’m not sure, I must have humped my bed.” The girl giggled.

  Ryan’s eyes met Eric’s. Ryan tried to smile, but his expression betrayed fear. Eric felt his pulse quicken. The twins were playing the part well, but not Ryan. Something was about to happen.

  “I heard you were having trouble,” Eric said.

  Hui Ying nodded. “The readings don’t make any sense. One minute, it says there are ten to the seventh power; then the next minute it will say ten to the forty-second power.”

  “Could it just be the tank’s diagnostics?”

  “That’s the most likely culprit, but the nanosites seem to be consuming massive amounts of feed carbon, which points to higher-than-e
xpected replication.”

  “Can I take a look?” he asked.

  Hui stood aside, and Eric took her place at the terminal. He typed and clicked for a few minutes, trying to appear busy, asking questions that would appease Chu.

  Then Hui Lili, the talker, came up behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders. Eric jumped at her touch. God, he was nervous. “Relax,” she said with a laugh, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.” Eric sighed and closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, letting her massage his shoulders. He wasn’t alone in this, he reminded himself.

  “Let me see the feeder system screen again,” she asked him. Eric pulled it up, and she leaned in closer, her hair brushing against his cheek. “There!” she said. “I think it’s an error with the feeders. The nanosites aren’t really consuming as much as it says.”

  “How can we verify that?” Ryan asked.

  “We check the feeder tanks manually,” Hui Ying replied. “They are right down the hall. Who wants to go?”

  “I’ll do it,” Hui Lili said happily. She looked to Chu for approval.

  * * *

  On any other day, Chu would have let her go by herself, but he remembered Meng’s warning: that today of all days, they needed to be on their guard. The vice president was coming to inspect the lab. Chu was not to take any chances. He honestly didn’t think there was a need for caution. They had replicated, after all. But he called for one of the guards anyway, more out of fear of Meng’s reprimands than any concerns he himself had.

  Before going, Hui went to her niece and squatted down so they were eye to eye. “I’ll be right back, little one, but I want a quick hug before I go.” She embraced the child, and Chu saw a sudden tightening of the woman’s face. After a long beat, she let go, holding the girl at arm’s length. “We are going to make dinner together tonight, right?”

  The girl beamed. “Yeah, and you’re going to teach me how to make your special noodles.”

  “You bet,” Hui Lili said. She stood, her hand trailing a moment, caressing the girl’s cheek; then she turned and headed down the corridor. The armed guard fell in behind her.

  Chu watched her go. A suspicion was growing in the back of his mind. Something about the general’s warning combined with what he had just seen. But then his phone rang, and the cloudy idea that was beginning to take form evaporated. He answered the phone and stepped away from the others.

  * * *

  Capitalizing on Chu’s distance, Hui Ying brought her daughter close to Eric. “Do you have it?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Mei-Mei, whatever happens, I want you to stay close to Eric. He is going to protect you. Isn’t that right, Eric.”

  Eric looked at Hui Ying, and the intensity in her eyes struck him like a fist. It was the fierce, piercing look of a mother who fears for her child.

  “That’s right,” Eric said, giving the girl a reassuring smile.

  “Mom says you can do magic. Is that true?”

  “Only when I have to,” he said.

  * * *

  The feeder tanks were stored in a room behind the murals: this one a fifty-foot image of Mao lecturing to a group of workers. It was a moving scene: Mao, Red Book in hand, was at the left of the frame, the only one standing, his aura accentuated by a warm evening light, while young men in green caps with red stars sat around him on the floor, looking up reverently at the great teacher.

  Corporal Wang Yong was walking patrol on the catwalk opposite the mural when he saw one of the twins and Private Qiang enter the door where the diagnostic equipment was kept. He wondered why the soldier was with her. Had she done something wrong? That didn’t really make sense. Everyone knew that the twins were among the top scientists in the lab and were considered the most trustworthy. Perhaps they were trying to get some privacy, he thought with a smile. He and a few of the other soldiers had discovered that it was one of the few places where the surveillance cameras didn’t work. His curiosity piqued, he was thinking of going to look in on them, when he heard an odd sound, like a muffled gunshot. He was just about to call it in when the earth heaved. An incredible explosion sent huge cinder-block chunks of Mao and his audience hurtling toward him. The blocks exploded against the wall around him, one cutting through the catwalk as if through paper. Wang was pitched over the side. He saw the tile floor rushing toward him; then he saw no more.

  * * *

  Fifty meters away, Eric felt the ground lurch under his feet, as if a wrathful underworld deity had been awoken. The four of them—Ryan, Hui Ying, Mei, and Eric—teetered for a moment, reaching vainly for support. Then the hot pressure wave knocked them all to the floor. Eric went weak with fear, the memory of the library blast flooding his mind.

  Black smoke came billowing out of the wall, consuming light like a living thing, spreading darkness. Accompanying it was a rumble-rumble-rumble sound that grew stronger and stronger, reaching deeper and deeper notes. The fire was eating lab equipment, doors, desks, people. Then came a groan of the deepest bass, the groan of steel and metal under tremendous weight, bending and buckling. The huge metal sphere was coming off its supports.

  Around them, a catastrophe was unfolding, a wild confusion of desperate humanity. The noise of thousands of voices screaming and shouting was made even more nerve-racking by the persistence of the fire alarms. A moment later, it began raining.

  Eric was not thinking—complex thoughts were not possible in this chaos. He realized he was crawling away from the darkness, toward a hazy light. Then Ryan grabbed him and helped him stand.

  “Stay close!” Ryan was shouting in his ear, but Eric could barely hear him. “We can’t get separated.” Eric looked up and saw three people run past him through the smoke. They were on fire.

  He felt Ryan take one hand; then he felt someone else holding his other hand. It was a small hand. That woke him up, and he felt a primal instinct asserting itself. Protect. He pulled her closer. Focus! he screamed at himself. A reason to live, something bigger than himself.

  People were stampeding for the exits, and they fell in with the panicked multitude. It was the only way. He turned and looked over his shoulder to check the proximity of danger. There he saw an astonishing sight. From the edge of the billowing black, like a demon from hell, Hui Lili emerged. Her face was black with soot, and her eyes were covered by insect-like goggles. In her mouth was a small respirator. Her clothes were ripped, and she had a nasty red gash on her leg. Yet she walked with an intense conviction, oblivious of the maelstrom around her. Somehow, she was not on fire like the others, but steam was rolling off her as if she had doused herself in some sort of heavy water. She had a satchel slung over one shoulder, and in her other hand was a pistol. She approached the remaining security guard, who was stumbling about, coughing. She held the pistol up to his temple and fired.

  Then she caught sight of Eric and her niece.

  “Zǒu Kāi!” she shouted. Get out!

  Then she turned from them and waded toward the pitching, groaning containment chamber.

  * * *

  General Meng was with his assistant, Captain Xi, at the south entrance to the Great Lab when they were blown backward. The catwalk they had been standing on heaved and undulated like an angry snake, flinging out rivets and pieces of metal tread. Captain Xi was pitched over the side and caught the railing only at the last second. Meng grabbed his arm and hauled him in. Once the man was safe, Meng took in the scene. Four hundred meters down the Great Lab, he saw the black smoke boiling forth. He knew immediately that it was too big an explosion to be an accident. Even if the high-pressure feeder tanks had blown, it would not create an explosion of such magnitude. This was sabotage. But who? The Americans? Chu had pulled them out of confinement to fix the tank diagnostics. But they could not do such a thing alone. They would have needed help. But
from whom?

  The twins?

  This morning, he had seen Hui Ying and her daughter. The little brat had pranced up to him in her school uniform and said, “Good morning, General Meng.”

  “Good morning, Mei-Mei. Why aren’t you at school on level seven?”

  “They don’t want me.”

  He had frowned. “They don’t want you?”

  That was when Hui Ying had come up behind the girl.

  “I’m sorry, General, she had an allergic reaction to some food she ate last night, but the nurse doesn’t believe me. She thinks Mei-Mei might have a virus, so she won’t allow her around the other children. I’ll do my best to keep her in my office.”

  He had given an annoyed sigh. “Yes, you do that. This is a high-security area. Children should not be on this level. It’s only because Chu needs you that I’ll allow it, and only today.”

  “Yes, General.”

  Now he realized it must have been a trick, a way to keep the girl close while they … while they did what? He dared to think it: Made their escape with the Americans!

  Meng felt his world shift. For the past two days, he had been quietly elated. He had two reasons to be content. First, of course, was that they had reached replication. It was a great victory, and this very afternoon the vice president and his entourage were coming to celebrate. A tour and a banquet.

  The second reason was the birth of his daughter. It had seemed a wonderful omen. Just at the moment that his country was creating new life, a new life had come into his home. And Meng could not help but think of this as not just a birth, but a rebirth—a beautiful girl to take the place of Lien. It was the final closure of his earlier life. He had left Tibet a ghost, destroyed—no longer a father, no longer a husband, just a soldier full of rage. Slowly he had fought his way back, kept insanity at bay while he went about replacing the things he had lost. A wife and then a son. And he had had his revenge, too, annihilating the Tibetan resistance. And now the final act: a new child. The final symbol that Tibet had not destroyed him. With this life, he had an opportunity to be the man he had been before Tibet. A man who was not so driven by pain and loss, a man who could sit and raise a child.