by M. H. Mead
“Hey!”
“I just need—” A touch of the control surface and the distant scenery jumped into close view. He oriented on the building and then the sidewalk. Magnify and enhance. There was a little pixilation of the image at this distance, but he recognized the loose stance, the casual tilt of the head—an uncomfortable imitation of his own.
No. He couldn’t be here. Not Nikhil. He slid the specs off his face and looked again. Now that he knew what he was seeing, it was so clear. The hair, the face, he even recognized Nikhil’s suit.
Andre turned his back to the fourths, standing between them and Elway. “I need the names that go with those badges.”
“Are you crazy? Why do you think we’re here?”
“I know why we’re here. I need those names now, Elway.”
Elway grabbed the datashades and pushed them onto his nose. “You start breaking into secure databases, and you’ve got no case. The judge will throw out the evidence because you didn’t—Damn it! They’re already in.”
“What?” Andre almost stumbled as his feet tried to go in two directions at once, one foot racing forward to arrest his nephew, one foot stuck to the sidewalk.
“I didn’t think real world.” Elway’s gloved hands sketched invisible lines in the air. “The Overdrive AI uses triple redundant awareness so it can check and re-check any decision. Three versions in constant contact, except when one needs maintenance. One of this set is reading like it’s down for a diagnostic. They can feed it their signals all day. It’s going to crash as soon as it goes back online.”
“So stop it from going back online.”
“I can’t! At least not from here. Everything is short-range to prevent exactly this.” Elway’s fingers moved like a parody of sign language. “I don’t have boosters any more than they do.”
Andre glanced at the highway in the canyon below. There was no sound of engines, but the whistling whisper of hundreds of cars blazing by stirred the air in a vast slipstream. “Elway?”
“All I can do is jam it. If I feed it enough conflicting data, it will boot them right out and the other two AI’s will still function. I need to get closer to the processing sensor.” He raced toward the building. “Buy me some time.”
“Elway, wait!” Andre cut his eyes to the group of fourths, who hadn’t yet noticed them. “If you’re feeding false signals to the sensors, won’t you cause the crash they want?”
“The system will slow down, but it won’t stop. I’m going around back. Get ready to nail them.” Elway darted forward, then turned into the first alley.
Andre reached under his jacket to loosen the Guardian in its holster. The thought that he might point it at his own nephew was somehow surreal, barely imaginable. He straightened his tie and slicked his hair down in front. He hoped he would look like just another fourth joining the stop. Maybe Nikhil wouldn’t recognize him until he got close. Nikhil couldn’t know what his friends were doing. Somehow, some way, this had to be a mistake.
Andre’s walk had turned into a rigid march and he forced himself to slow, to aim for the careless grace of fourths. When he got to the alley, he looked for Elway, but the tech had disappeared behind the building. Andre inhaled deeply and let out a deliberate breath. There was still time. This hadn’t completely turned to shit yet. He could cull Nikhil from the herd, talk to him, warn him off. Elway would stop the crash. He could arrest Topher Price-Powell at his leisure, maybe even get one of the backup units to do it.
A warning click in his ear, then Sofia’s voice. “Sergeant LaCroix? Still holding position. Waiting for your go order.”
Andre ducked into the alley and spoke in a harsh whisper. “Hold. Hold your position until further notice. Copy?”
“Are you all right?”
“Hold your position, Sergeant Gao. Copy, please.”
“Holding,” Sofia said. “Do you want us to—”
“No. Don’t move.” He cut the call and moved out of the alley. Sofia was a good officer, well trained. She would wait for a go order, but she wouldn’t wait forever. And Elway could only do so much. If Andre was going to take any action at all, he had to take it now.
He poked his head out of the alley. The fourths stood with their backs to him. He had to move before they turned. He stepped onto the service drive.
And saw the car.
A late-model Octave crept along in the same direction he was, traveling perhaps only forty KPH in a sixty zone. Its signal was on for a left turn onto the highway and Andre did a double take because he didn’t see any passengers in the car. He squinted into the sun and saw the single driver in silhouette. No time to look harder, as the driver’s window slid down and the driver turned toward the fourths. A hand snaked out.
“Gun!” Andre shouted. He drew his own weapon and sprinted forward. “Stop! Police!”
The driver jerked the wheel, startled, and Andre caught a glimpse of a face—just enough to register it as male. Then a tongue of flame lashed out the window and he heard the pop of the bullet.
Andre fired blindly at the Octave, hitting nothing. The fire spat twice more as the Octave accelerated away. Andre took an extra second to aim carefully and was rewarded with a milky spider web appearing across the car’s back window. The car fishtailed around the corner and was gone.
Andre ran to where Nikhil crouched behind a trash barrel, apparently unhurt, but breathing too rapidly, his eyes wide. His friends had scattered.
Andre stood and turned in a circle, searching for Topher. Where could he have gone? There! Running down the cross street, away from the highway. Andre raised his weapon again and prepared to shout a warning when there was a sound from below him like the end of the world.
He looked down at the highway and stared as a gleaming river of automobiles crashed through guardrails with a shriek of tearing steel and the protesting grumble of buckling crumple zones. The din rose as the cascade of cars struck and pinwheeled in a grinding, splintering mass. Showers of sparks and brief flares the color of lightning illuminated the human ragdoll forms that spun free or were buried beneath the next cars running into them.
“Oh, shit.” Couldn’t Elway stop this? They were supposed to stop this. This was never supposed to happen. Andre triggered the panic switch on his implants and shouted for help on every channel.
“Uncle Andre?”
Andre hauled Nikhil to his feet, spun him around and shoved him in the direction of the crowd gathering on the service drive, scores of passersby who’d stepped spellbound from their cars. “Get out of here!” he roared at his nephew. He had re-holstered his gun without realizing and as Nikhil stumbled toward him in a daze, Andre seized him with both hands and practically threw him. “Don’t talk to me, don’t contact me. You are dead to me.”
Nikhil stepped forward. “But I never—”
Andre’s fist connected with Nikhil’s face. Not hard, but hard enough. He rubbed the top of his fingers as Nikhil whimpered and shied back. “I mean it, Nikhil. There isn’t even a name for the shitstorm we are in. Every second we’re seen together makes it worse. Go.”
Nikhil stumbled away, and Andre turned his back, looking over the embankment at the mess happening on the highway below. The flow of cars had ceased at last but the chain-reaction crashes continued.
He knew he’d be visiting this scene again in his dreams—the screaming shapes, the booming clatter of car on car and the stark scent of hot metal and fresh death.
TALIC WAS IN MOTION when he heard the first crash. He’d already stashed his weapon and had started to give chase when the sickening crunch of metal hitting metal made him stop and look. A kiddie-hauler side-swiped a sedan, sending both cars into the median. The chain reaction was swift and horrible. The vehicles behind couldn’t stop in time to avoid head-on collisions, and the ones to either side never swerved away from the wreckage. He watched, open-mouthed. Steer, damn it! Cars had manual overrides for a reason. He watched a hot pink Octave clip the corner of a truck, fish-tailing and spinning into tr
affic, only to be hit broadside. What the hell was wrong with everyone?
Talic ducked around a cell pole and continued running. His face felt tight, as if all the nerves of his head had contracted at once. He pumped his arms and increased his speed. They would not get away with this. Not if he could help it. He hoped, when he caught up to Andre LaCroix, that he could maintain enough self-control not to kill him on the spot. Whose fucking side was that shit-kicker on, anyway? He never thought he’d live to see the day when a cop got between a bullet and a terrorist.
Behind him, the screech of brakes. Finally, somebody was stopping. Ahead of the crashes, nothing but eerily quiet blacktop. He headed in that direction, planning to cross six empty lanes.
He’d just stepped in front of the first car when an ominous hiss made him shy away. He ducked and rolled moments before the car in front of him exploded, its hydrogen tank bursting, sending metal shrapnel in all directions. He listened for the sounds of more explosions, but all he heard were sirens. A wave of heat rolled toward him, carrying the smell of melting plastic and charred meat.
He stood, his heart pounding. Where was LaCroix? Too many cars, too many people. He stood in the empty road, looking back at dead cars ten or fifteen deep. Not just dead cars. Dead people. Citizens, just trying to get to work and live their day.
He’d failed them.
He was an officer of the law, sworn to serve and protect. He hadn’t served his city and he sure as hell hadn’t protected it. Why had he hesitated? One shot and this could have been all over. One fucking shot, one dead terrorist, one happy mayor. Or at least, city manager. Madison always implied that she was doing Mayor Smith’s bidding, but he never knew for sure. It didn’t matter. When you were doing the right thing, it didn’t matter who gave the orders.
He turned away from the sickening sight, bent at the waist, and closed his eyes, swallowing back a throat full of bile. Too late. He was too late.
Something bumped into the back of his legs. He turned to see a woman on hands and knees. She must have crawled from one of the cars. She was young, maybe twenty, one of those plump girls who made themselves perfect blond hairstyles to compensate for their weight. Blood streamed over her ear from a gash at her temple, dripping into her hair, ruining it. He squatted down in front of her and took her by the shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re going to be fine. I’m a police officer. Let me help you.”
“My—” She coughed, swallowed, tried again. She pointed at the nearest wreck. “My friends. They’re hurt.”
“A lot of people are hurt. Ambulances are coming.”
“I don’t—” She sat down hard on the pavement and began to cry. “I don’t think Marie is going to make it. She looked so bad, and she wasn’t moving and she wasn’t breathing and oh, God.”
“Hey, hey, now.” Talic sat down beside her. He patted his pockets, hoping for a stray tissue, but all he had was his datapad. Like that would staunch any wounds. Next to them, two cars were consummating a marriage, one practically inside the other. Through the windows, he could see bloodied, lifeless forms slumped in awkward positions. “What’s your name?” he asked the woman.
“Janae.”
“You’ve got a cut on your head, Janae. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I don’t think so.” She breathed in sharply, sat rigid for a second, then turned and puked her breakfast onto the pavement.
Talic scooted backward and got to his feet, breathing through his mouth to avoid the acrid stench and waited until she was done. “Janae, can you can walk with me?”
She pulled her sleeve over her wrist and pressed it to her head wound. “My friends, I . . .”
“It’s really important that you walk with me.” He stood, blocking her view of the wreckage. “Come on, I’ll take you to the perimeter and we’ll get you some medical attention for your head. I’ll send somebody back for your friends.”
He got Janae up and moving in the right direction. Ahead, fire trucks and paramedics nosed their vehicles as far into the wreckage as they could. He would hand Janae off to them, then help with triage on others.
Another explosion, this one far behind them. Talic turned and had an irrational moment of gladness when he saw it wasn’t Janae’s car.
“It just stopped working,” she whispered. “One second my car was driving and the next it wasn’t. No siren, no lights. Where were my warning lights? By the time I realized I had to steer my car . . .”
Talic kept walking.
“Why is this happening?”
Talic put his arm on her back, nudging her forward. “It shouldn’t be.” Damn it, it shouldn’t. Goddamn terrorists. He couldn’t think of a single thing worse for the city than to attack the Overdrive system. If people couldn’t get around, they couldn’t live here. Cities needed to move.
They were closer to the perimeter of the crash zone now, and more people milled around minor damage. He steered Janae past a Lexus which had hit a BMW which had hit an Octave. Luxury cars built elsewhere and imported here because Detroiters could afford it.
Did these people even realize how tenuously they were holding their prosperity? Everyone felt secure—in the city, in the suburbs—but anything could tip the balance. Freeze up transportation and it would hit restaurants, refuelers, tourism, spiraling up the line until it hit manufacturing and construction. Even a goddamn plumber wouldn’t have a job. The next thing they knew, they’d be right back to the turn of the century, when the entire city felt like God took a crap on it.
They rounded a fire truck and Talic flagged down a paramedic. “Where’s triage?”
The paramedic pointed to an area roped off with yellow tape. Talic brought Janae under the tape and introduced her to an EMT. “She vomited a few minutes ago,” he said. “It’s probably a concussion.”
“Got it.” The EMT sat Janae down and held a towel to her head. Talic wanted nothing more than to stay by her side, give her a blanket and ice and a comforting shoulder. But that path lead only to death. The army had taught him a great deal, and this above all: do not let care for your soldiers get in the way of the mission. He couldn’t help Janae. Compassion would not come before duty.
She grabbed his hand as he turned away. “You’ll help my friends?”
Talic pulled his head forward in one quick nod. “I’ll help your friends.” He squeezed her hand before releasing it. “I’ll help everyone.”
Word had got around and now the injured streamed toward the triage point, some on their own power, some helped by others, many with phones at their ears or datapads in their hands, heedless of social disapproval in a time of crisis. Talic moved upstream past them, jostling his way through the mass. He did not see their faces or their injuries. They weren’t individuals anymore. They were a crowd, a multitude. They were his city. And he had a job to do.
Talic doubled back to where he’d parked his car near the highway berm. He retrieved a line-of-sight flasher from inside it. Across the highway, again. Two more cars and a van had exploded. He ignored the wreckage.
When he reached the spot he’d last seen LaCroix, Talic hooked the line-of-sight flasher to his datapad. He expected at most one or two security cameras, but the flasher spotted three cameras that might have gotten footage of the incident. The first was halfway up a cell pole, pointing at the telecom’s valuable equipment rather than the road. The second was at a private charging station, near enough to the highway to cover that as well, but too far to get any resolution.
The third was gold. A standard-issue roadcam, it was the work of half a minute to stick a data cube in it and download its entire day’s worth of video. Disabling the roadcam was even quicker.
Talic patted the cube in his pocket. Maybe he should have destroyed all evidence instead of keeping a copy. It was a risk, letting it live. But if it were to live at all, better it lived with him.
“LACROIX . . . LACROIX!”
Andre could hear them shouting, but the voices seemed muted, like something he’d hear underwater. T
he sounds of landing and circling helicopters, the moans of the injured and dying, the murmurs and cries from the growing swell of barely-restrained onlookers roared into his ears.
The orange rescue vest he’d snapped up billowed against him in the backwash from an overhead pass by a copter, but he didn’t flinch away. He moved to the next car. It was a purple Lexus, brand new, with nobody inside it. All the occupants must have moved to safer ground. The next car had a single body in the passenger seat, a young male nestled among the air bags and netting as if he were in a sleeping bag. But he wasn’t sleeping.
Andre fumbled with the GPS unit, found the button he was looking for, and pushed it, marking the victim as dead.
The next was alive—a woman, her features masked in blood, but her mouth still opening and closing. He keyed in and marked her for medics. He knew some first aid, but the words of the watch commander had been loud and clear to all non-med personnel. “You’re more useful as a spotter. Get everyone marked and positioned. The faster that’s done, the more live ones we can save. Mark each one alive or dead and move on.”
The next one was bad. A little girl, nine, maybe ten years old and Andre wasn’t sure about her. He knelt and reached to touch her neck and she twitched, her eyes opened and focused, looked at him. “H-hurts . . .” she whispered.
With a shaking hand he aimed the spotter and keyed her in. Priority. With a tongue that felt like sandpaper and a throat full of broken glass, he whispered back, “I know, honey. Someone’s coming.” He moved on, feeling like a monster. He told himself that trauma victims edited these times of horror from their memories. He needed that to be true.
He followed the directions on his spotter, guided in a gradual curve up the hill on his assigned track, grateful for his task. Hating it. Living. Living. Dead. Living. Living.
His path took him at last to the crest of the hill and he made the mistake of looking back down the slope.
The landscape below was a wound into hell.
A few small brushfires had started from torn batteries, but even though they’d been quickly extinguished, the acrid smoke blown back and forth by the downwash of the copters was ripe with new death and a sulfurous chemical reek. The red-orange figures picking through the litter of torn humanity were only missing pitchforks.