Synapse

by Steven James

  I wasn’t exactly sure what to say to that. “Okay.”

  My attention shifted to a young boy, maybe five or six years old, who was outside the chapel with the people who’d arrived for the other viewing Rector Arch had mentioned. The child left the side of a woman who’d been holding his hand and wandered down the scrubby grass toward the river. The woman, who I guessed was his mother, was deep in a conversation with the lady next to her and didn’t notice that her son was no longer beside her.

  “Reverend Hathaway,” Agent Vernon began, but I’ve never been one for titles so I stopped him. “Please, just call me Kestrel.” I was still watching the boy.

  “Alright, Kestrel. I read your blogs.”

  I eyed him then. “My blogs.”

  “The postings. From when you were younger.”

  “My parents had just died.”

  “Had just been killed,” he specified empathetically. “I read the files. I’m terribly sorry about what happened to them. I can understand the reason you expressed those views.”

  “What do you want from me, Agent Vernon?”

  “We’re just looking for justice here. Are you still in touch with the people who posted your blog entries?”

  “No.” It was true that we weren’t in touch, but there were channels of communication that still existed, ones I hadn’t tapped into in years, but also ones I didn’t really want to bring up at the moment. I said, “Do you think I’m a Purist? Is that why you’re here?”

  “Are you?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I’m not a Purist.”

  He studied my face. “Okay.”

  I waited. “What? That’s it? You believe me?”

  “I’m pretty good at reading people. Again, let me reiterate, I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just searching for the people behind this. If you think of anything else, or of any way I might be able to contact the ones who put those blog posts onto the Feeds, will you reach out to me?” He held up his forefinger and, as he gave me a data transfer with his contact information, I caught sight of the boy again.

  He’d walked out onto the pier, and now I was no longer focused on Agent Vernon or his investigation. The child was alone and that pier wasn’t something I would trust anyone to be standing on. “Wait!” I called to him. “Come back!”

  I wasn’t close enough to stop him and I knew I wouldn’t be fast enough to keep him from venturing farther out, but Jordan would have the speed to get there in time.

  I faced him. “Go and help him.”

  “Help him?”

  “The boy on the pier. Get him back to land.”

  Jordan moved with swift resolve, sprinting across the dried grass, but the child was quicker than I’d imagined and Jordan made it to the pier just as the boy reached the far end of it.

  Seeing what was happening, Agent Vernon took off for the pier as well.

  The boy turned and looked at Jordan and then at me as I hastened toward the two of them.

  “Come back with my friend!” I shouted to him, and he reached out his hand as though he might do as I’d asked, but he didn’t move toward Jordan.

  If only he had.

  Maybe he was startled, maybe he saw Agent Vernon rushing toward him and got scared, or maybe he was simply careless, but for whatever reason, he took a step backward rather than forward, lost his footing, and tumbled off the pier, plummeting into the rapidly churning, dun-colored water.

  13

  The boy’s mother must have finally seen what was happening because I heard her scream behind me, “Joey! No!”

  But it was too late.

  Her boy was gone.

  Jordan dashed forward and, without any hesitation, leapt off the pier into the frigid river. I didn’t have a great vantage point, but I was close enough to see him disappear immediately beneath the water’s surface.

  From what I knew about Artificials, although their skin was water-resistant, they weren’t designed to be fully submerged and I had no idea how this would affect him.

  But right now I wasn’t really worried about that.

  I was more concerned about the boy.

  I made it to the end of the pier and joined Agent Vernon in scanning the water for any sign of Jordan or the child.

  Only currents, swift and deadly.

  Neither of them reappeared.

  The woman came pounding across the pier toward us. “Joey!” she cried, her voice breaking and desperate.

  Nothing.

  Just that dark water rushing past the support pylons.

  But then—

  All at once, splashing out of the river, Jordan lifted the boy toward the pier and Agent Vernon bent down and hefted him to safety. From the awkward position the agent was in, it would have required incredible strength to hoist the child up like that.

  Joey was sputtering and crying, but at least he was breathing. The NCB agent passed him to his mother, who studied him up and down as if she were looking for something else that might be wrong with him, beyond the fact that he had just very nearly drowned.

  She brushed the wet hair away from his forehead as he reached out for her. Then, she took hold of him, and he threw his arms around her neck and held on as she softly repeated his name over and over again, “Joey, oh Joey . . .”

  My attention shifted to the water again.

  And to Jordan, who was now trying to climb onto the pier.

  He grabbed a board, but it was rotten and crumbled as he gripped it, sending him toppling backward into the river.

  Agent Vernon and I waited, but Jordan didn’t resurface.

  Seconds ticked by, and at last the agent whipped off his tie and said, “Screw it.”

  Without another word he jumped in.

  I had no clue what kind of debris might be waiting at the bottom of the river or how deep it was or what deadly undercurrents might be lurking down there, and time stretched thin as I waited for either of them to come up again.

  “Jordan!” I yelled, to no avail. “Agent Vernon!”

  The cold water swirled by, oblivious to my cries.

  No sign of either of them.

  “Agent Vernon!” I hollered again, louder, as if it would help, as if he’d be able to hear me from where he was and my desperate cry would do anything to save him.

  As I watched for them, I realized I was holding my own breath, vainly willing them to come back up.

  But they did not.

  Unable to keep my air in any longer, I gasped for a breath, and, unsure what else to do, uttered a frantic prayer that they would be alright and, either coincidentally or as a remarkably prompt answer to my flailing request, Agent Vernon emerged from the water, maybe ten meters downstream, carrying Jordan slung over his strong shoulders.

  They were closer to shore than I was, and by the time I’d crossed the pier and returned to the lawn, the agent had made his way past the rocky shoreline to dry land.

  I hurried toward them.

  Shivering from being in the water, Agent Vernon carefully lowered Jordan to the ground, bent over him, and then hesitated, presumably unsure what to do.

  Jordan lay motionless with his eyes wide open, staring unblinkingly at the relentless sunlight beating down on us.

  “I know they don’t breathe like we do,” the agent said urgently, “but they draw in air to cool their processors, right?”

  “I think so. We need to get that water out of him.”

  “Right.” Agent Vernon straddled Jordan and used both hands to press in against his stomach. “Well, this is a first.”

  When he was doing the compressions, it reminded me of the doctor pressing in on my daughter’s chest when he tried to save her, and it was too hard for me to watch him working on Jordan.

  I looked away.

  The boy’s mother approached us, her son still in her arms. “It’s your fault!” she shouted at me.

  “What?”

  “Your Artificial! He frightened Joey. He scared him.
That’s why he stepped backward!”

  “Jordan was just trying to help,” I countered. “He didn’t—”

  But she didn’t wait for me to finish and just bustled her boy toward the building, where a crowd was beginning to form.

  I gave my attention back to the agent and his attempts to awaken Jordan.

  Water spewed from Jordan’s mouth each time Agent Vernon pressed on his stomach.

  But my Artificial did not revive.

  * * *

  His thoughts flicker.

  And jump.

  Water to the boy to the man to the shore.

  A bristle of sunlight. Sharp and distant.

  And fear—no—terror.

  Being underwater.

  Being helpless.

  And then—

  Now—

  * * *

  Jordan coughed up a mouthful of river water and Agent Vernon leaned back.

  Sitting up, Jordan wiped his hand across his mouth.

  “Are you alright?” I asked urgently.

  “I’m not maaaade fooor that.” His slurring words made him sound drunk.

  “Will you be okay?”

  “I’m not underrrr designed to go waaaater,” he articulated with great effort, but he didn’t seem to notice his convoluted word order.

  Agent Vernon stood. “You better get him looked at.”

  “The production center,” I said. “I need to take him in.”

  Jordan nodded. “I belieeeeve would that be besssst.” More slurring. “They can damage any fiiiix I have sustained.”

  Agent Vernon helped him to his feet, but when Jordan tried to walk, he stumbled, and if the agent hadn’t been there to support him, he would have fallen face-first to the ground.

  “I’ll ride with you two,” Agent Vernon offered.

  “We should be okay,” I said.

  But he shook his head. “Your Artificial can’t even stand on his own right now and you’ve been through more than enough. You don’t need him collapsing beside you or pulling you to the ground along with him if he falls over. I’ll help you transport him over there to get looked at.”

  At first I wondered if maybe he was offering to ride along just so he could ask me more questions during the drive, but the more he insisted, the more I believed he just wanted what was best for Jordan, and for me.

  14

  Agent Nick Vernon found it a bit awkward to be riding in Kestrel’s car with her and her Artificial.

  With his clothes as wet as they were, he asked if she could turn up the heat, which she gladly did.

  But the water pooling on the floor wasn’t what made him feel the most uncomfortable.

  Ever since his wife had left him three years ago, he’d been cautious about getting close—in any way—to a woman. Friendships, even simple interactions, were sometimes too much.

  When Dakota divorced him, it hadn’t been because he spent too much time at his job or had a drinking problem or had slipped up and had an affair with a coworker. No, none of the old clichés. It wasn’t even because she’d met someone else. No, Dakota had simply notified him one day that she would be happier alone.

  And maybe that’s what hurt the most.

  He often thought that it might’ve been easier if she’d left him for someone. But as it was, she just told him bluntly that she didn’t love him anymore and that she’d decided to move on. She said the words without anger or malice, telling him almost offhandedly that she was done with him. And that was the end of their eleven-year marriage. Just like that.

  Although he hadn’t set out to keep tabs on her, since she also worked at the National Counterterrorism Bureau, over time he’d heard from coworkers that she hadn’t moved in with anyone or married again, and that she seemed happy. She’d left the Bureau a year ago. The last he heard, she was doing security consulting for transnational organizations.

  Though she might have found happiness, it had eluded him.

  In the intervening years, he’d dated sporadically but never seriously.

  So, in time, he had become a cliché—the law enforcement officer who buries himself in his work to the detriment of his personal relationships. After all, you have to do something to pass the days of your life, to numb the ache in your heart, and if a lover won’t do it, maybe a big enough distraction would at least make the loneliness bearable.

  Maybe.

  But so far, despite all the success he’d achieved in his job, loneliness had become the default setting for his heart.

  And now, he sat soaking wet in the car of a woman he hardly knew, a woman whom, despite how good he might have been at reading people, he hadn’t been able to discern with complete certainty wasn’t somehow involved in yesterday’s terror attack.

  * * *

  Jordan’s condition deteriorated on the way to the production plant.

  He began speaking incoherently, talking about seeing his mother again and asking about my parents, my last name, if the CoRA was real, and other things that I couldn’t even understand, and by the time we made it to the freeway, he wasn’t saying anything at all, and his left arm was twitching uncontrollably.

  Yesterday at the hospital, Benjiro Taka had given me his contact information, so now I called him to see what we should do with Jordan, how best to help him.

  The Terabyne rep asked me a series of questions about Jordan’s status and ended by inquiring if he could walk on his own.

  “No,” I said. “And he’s getting worse by the minute.”

  “Bring him around back, to Loading Bay D. It’ll be easier for us to get a look at him there than if you come in the front. I’m on my way back from the hospital, but I’ll send an associate of mine to be there waiting for you when you arrive.”

  I called Trevor to tell him what’d happened and learned that he and Agent Carlisle had gone to the federal building.

  “Do you want me to come over there?” Trevor asked me concernedly.

  “No. There’s nothing for you to do here. I just wanted you to know what happened.”

  “I’ll put a call through to the plant manager to make sure the best technicians they have take a look at Jordan.”

  “Thank you, Trevor.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll reach out to you later about dinner,” I said in closing, “once I know more about Jordan.”

  At the facility’s entrance, Agent Vernon pulled out his NCB badge to get us through security, but the guard said that Mr. Taka had already cleared us, and then waved us on.

  We merged onto the looping road that led to the back of the plant, and as we did, we passed the meditation pool where I’d helped Ethan yesterday.

  The more I thought about what’d happened here, the more a tangle of grief constricted around my heart like thick, veiny tentacles that refused to let me go.

  People died in this place and I’d been right among them—and even the man I’d thought I’d saved hadn’t made it.

  Now, although the area was cordoned off with caution tape, there were half a dozen people sorting through and categorizing the debris and the remains of the Artificials who’d been destroyed when that portion of the building collapsed. They wore NCB wind jackets.

  “Is that your team?” I asked Agent Vernon.

  “Yes. We’ll see what they come up with.”

  At Loading Bay D, he picked Jordan up and carried him to the door. After directing my car to find a parking spot, I joined them inside.

  A young technician was waiting for us. She introduced herself as Sienna Gaiman, and was clearly a Plusser, with her artificial pupils narrowing and recalibrating repeatedly as she studied Jordan.

  “What happened to him?” she asked me.

  “He jumped into a river.”

  She shook her head. “That doesn’t sound right. Why would he do that?”

  “It was to save a boy who’d fallen in,” Agent Vernon explained.

  “Still . . .” She looked confused. “Well. Let’s see what we can find out.”


  Jordan moved his mouth like he was trying to speak, but no sounds came out and it made me think of yesterday’s nightmare of the burned man outside my window, mouthing inaudible words as he smacked the glass with a charred hand, trying to get in.

  Sienna directed Agent Vernon where to place Jordan on a waiting gurney.

  Feeling more and more concerned, I asked her to tell me honestly if he would be alright.

  “Obviously, our Artificials aren’t designed for that type of experience,” she said somewhat critically, as if I were responsible for Jordan’s decision to jump into the water. “If they’re immersed too long they will experience a CaTE.”

  “But he didn’t,” I noted. “I mean, he came back, so he’ll be okay, right?”

  “We’ll have to see.” But she was slow in replying. “How long was he submerged?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Thirty seconds? A minute?”

  “Unfortunately, that’s more than enough time for irrevocable damage to occur.”

  “Maybe it was less,” I said, backpedaling, as if that might make the damage less severe. “I wasn’t exactly timing things.”

  “In any case, we should have some answers for you in the morning. Unless we . . . Well, we’ll know more after running our diagnostics. Why don’t you call in around noon and we’ll see what we can tell you?”

  “Alright.”

  With a flick of her finger, she passed her contact info to my slate.

  “I should tell you,” she said, “I spoke with your brother. I can get you a new model—if you wish.”

  “A new model?”

  “A new Artificial. If this one can’t be saved.”

  “But he can be, right?”

  “I mean . . . I believe so . . . If that’s what you’d like.”

  I thought back to the moment when Jordan, without a second thought, and certainly knowing he wasn’t made for such a thing, leapt into the river to save that boy. “It’s what I would like.”