Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “You’re saying this happened here.”

  “Yes. 48 hours ago, using an old technology originally developed to replicate a human consciousness in a neural network, August Marcenn distributed his mind across every member of the Nightwatch. And he didn’t do it slowly and carefully. He did it as quickly as he could figure out how, like a hacker injecting malicious code in less than a second and then getting out of the system before anyone sees him.”

  “That’s insane. But assuming any of it is true, it would have driven those men completely mad.”

  She gave me a funny look. “Do they seem sane to you? Is that your impression, after travelling all the way to the top and back? They seem like rational men?”

  I thought about the bodies, the blood-splattered uniforms, the poison gas grenades…

  “No. They don’t seem rational at all. My best guess was some sort of death cult. Or maybe an unknown contagion.”

  “That wasn’t a bad guess,” said Jones. “It’s similar to a contagion. It spreads like one.”

  “But how?”

  “Through their dataspikes. Using optical data transmission, Marcenn was able to essentially send a cognitive virus to everyone he locked eyes with. The infected then passed it on to others, who passed it on to others. Just like a highly contagious pathogen, it spread exponentially after first contact. The Nightwatch were all converted literally overnight.”

  I thought back to the skyway, where a Nightwatch officer had struggled with me—doing everything he could to look me in the eyes. I didn’t know why, but every instinct in my body had fought against returning his gaze.

  I felt like I could vomit, but that didn’t mean I was ready to accept this story. At least not yet. “So, why are they killing everyone? Why did they turn off the power in the first place? None of this really explains anything.”

  “Why are they killing everyone?” Andrea shrugged. “It could have been nothing more than a passing thought Marcenn had every now and then. These people are so ungrateful, I hate them all, I wish they would just die.”

  “A passing thought.”

  “That’s right. When he was still himself. And then maybe he got the idea that he could run things more efficiently, keep order in the Tower better, if he had total command and control over the Nightwatch. He gets access to this technology somehow and it gives him an idea.”

  “If that’s what he was thinking, he was a megalomaniac even before this happened.”

  “Sure. But he’s much worse than a megalomaniac now,” she said.

  “August Marcenn is dead. He isn’t anything.”

  “You’re still hanging on to that? He isn’t dead. Okay, yes, he’s gone. The August Marcenn who used to exist is gone forever. Using the tech so quickly and carelessly broke his mind. But he’s still out there, imprinted on the neural pathways of every surviving member of the Nightwatch.”

  “But the Defectors… no. The Defectors turned.”

  She nodded. “All it would have taken was for one to be infected, probably when they caught him alone and outnumbered. They sent him back to the others, and the contagion spread behind their lines. It would have looked like they were sick at first, running the highest fever anyone’s ever seen. But the infection is smart enough to disguise itself. An infected person will stay out of sight until the fever passes, which doesn’t take more than a few minutes. Then he goes out to infect others.”

  “So, the only real difference between the Defectors and the Loyalists was that the Defectors hadn’t been infected yet?”

  Jones had started pacing. “That seems likely, yes. I’m not aware of any way to resist infection. If you have a dataspike, and you accept optical data transfer from an infected host by holding eye contact with them, you’ll be infected too.”

  Franklin Emmet. I had accepted data transfer from Franklin Emmet. If he had been infected, I would be among the Nightwatch even now, murdering civilians for all I was worth. Could I even be sure I would know if I’d been infected? Could he?

  “Let’s go back for a second. They’re killing everyone. You said it could have started as a passing thought?”

  “It’s just a guess,” said Andrea. “But like I said, he lost his mind. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say they all lost their minds. He wiped them crudely, without any kind of transition period. Their brains just received commands to rewire all their neural pathways to more closely resemble his. To oversimplify something too complicated to explain… it broke them. So what we’re thinking, although it’s still just a guess and probably always will be, is that this passing dark thought he had got out of control and blew up into a sick obsession.”

  “To kill everyone in Tower 7?”

  “Yes.”

  Looking back on it all, I don’t really know why I fought so hard. I didn’t want to accept it, to believe that August Marcenn was still alive… even if you couldn’t exactly say he was still August Marcenn. I thought I was done, that I’d accomplished everything they’d sent me here to accomplish. I thought I’d avenged Gabriel.

  Andrea was still staring at me, still gauging my reactions. She seemed to decide I was ready for more, even though I’m not sure I actually was. If it was up to me, I would have gone home and taken about three months off. There comes a time when you’ve done enough.

  Or does there? Andrea Capanelli didn’t seem to think so.

  She braced her hands on her knees and laid it all out for me. “The long and the short of it is this: August Marcenn is now a hivemind, one consciousness spread out across thousands of bodies.”

  I kept shaking my head, trying to push the idea away from me. She looked sympathetic at first, and started to say, “Tycho,” but then pulled back the hand she had been about to extend. Her expression hardened, and she gave me a look like a combat sergeant might have. “Mr. Barrett, I need you to face the facts here.”

  That made me mad. “The facts? What does any of this have to do with facts? You’re talking about possession. You don’t need an Arbiter, you need an exorcist.”

  Jones perked up. If there was an exorcist in this conversation, he was it. “I can’t do it, Mr. Barrett. Their brains are already too badly damaged. Even if I could write an exploit to reprogram their brains again, I wouldn’t have the information I needed to put them back the way they were. At this point, death is a mercy for them.”

  “Death is a mercy?”

  “That’s right. The only way to kill August Marcenn, the only way to stop this madness, is to kill every remaining member of the Nightwatch.”

  17

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath, still trying to get my head around it. “These things you’re telling me, they do match some of what I’ve seen in this Tower.”

  “Go on,” said Andrea. She was trying to lead me to it, or to let me lead myself to it.

  “The Nightwatch Loyalists never talk. Well, they didn’t at first anyway. They were hunting Gabe and me, but they didn’t shout to each other or even talk to their commanding officers. They were totally silent, but they seemed to be able to coordinate their actions. It was creepy.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen that.”

  “Is it ESP or something?”

  “Probably not.” She shrugged. “But who really knows? If I had to guess, I’d say they’re just always doing what August Marcenn would do in the same situation. They sync up perfectly, because the same mind is making all the decisions. What else have you seen?”

  “When I shot August Marcenn, his guards started chasing me. And then they talked. They’ve been talking to me ever since, every time I run into them.”

  From the look on her face, this was something she hadn’t seen before. Jones stopped pacing and gave me his full attention.

  “Don’t keep us hanging, Barrett,” said Andrea. “What did they say to you?”

  “You haven’t killed me, any more than a teacup can hold the ocean. Or something like that.”

  She seemed more than a little flabbergasted. “That didn’t clue you in
before?”

  “I didn’t want to think about it. It got to me. Anytime they opened their mouths to talk, I would just kill them all.”

  Jones grinned. “Note to self: try not to say anything that pisses off Tycho Barrett.”

  “Too late,” I replied.

  Andrea laughed. “He’s got you there, Jones. You like to poke at people. Looks like Tycho here is the poke-back type.”

  “More like the shoot everyone and sort it out later type. I’m going back in the kitchen, before I accidentally say the wrong thing and set off a shitstorm.”

  He wandered out, although I doubted it had much to do with any fear of offending me.

  Andrea was dismissive. “Don’t worry about Jones. Jones is nobody.”

  He overheard, of course. “Hey!”

  “No offense, Andrew, I love you like a brother. Now where were we, Mr. Barrett? Oh yeah. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. You know what I’m saying is true. And the way I look at it, that’s good news and bad news for you.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Well, the bad news is that you haven’t entirely killed August Marcenn. You only killed part of him. The good news is that you get to kill him again and again.”

  I laughed a little. “That’s one way to look at it. Look, I’m still not saying I believe this story. It’s a crazy yarn, something you’d hear from an old retired soldier in his cups one night. But I’ll admit that it could be true. It doesn’t matter either way, that’s not the important part.”

  “So, what’s the important part, Tycho? I mean, to you.”

  “We need to stop the killing. Now that the lights are back on and no one is going to run out of oxygen anytime soon, we need to restore order in Tower 7.”

  “To do that,” she pointed out, “we’re going to have to fight the Nightwatch.”

  “Then we’re agreed. We’ll go fight the Nightwatch—you, because you believe they’re all controlled by the mind of August Marcenn. Me, because I can’t really be sure that isn’t true. And more importantly, because they’re trying to kill everyone on this level, and they need to be stopped.”

  “Agreed. But let’s see if we can’t improve our situation first. Jones!”

  “I can’t help you, sorry. I’m nobody.”

  “You aren’t nobody anymore, I need you. Now get in here.”

  He came back to the living room with a hangdog expression, although I didn’t believe he had ever been upset about what she said in the first place. “Yes?”

  “Barrett here thinks we need to intervene in the fighting and restore order in Tower 7. What do you think?”

  “I’m not all that interested in restoring order, frankly. My career depends on a certain amount of disorder. But I do think we should kill everyone in the Nightwatch.”

  She grinned. “Do you think having an android army of our own would help with that task?”

  He scratched his head. “I suppose it would. Androids are good at killing people, and they could kill them just as easily for us as for August Marcenn. Only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s beyond my paygrade. It’s over my head. To sum up, I can’t do it.”

  I found this hard to believe. After all, this was the man who had just hacked Marcenn’s dataspike right in front of me. If he couldn’t do it, then it must be impossible to do. Right?

  Andrea smiled quite charmingly. “I don’t like it when you tell me you can’t do things, Jones.”

  “And I don’t like it when you use that sweetie-pie tone of voice on me. Makes me think you’re about to break out the interrogation gear.”

  The sweet smile didn’t falter.

  Jones gulped. “Okay, then. But let me explain. Yes, I can rescind existing tasks. That’s why the androids aren’t killing anyone anymore. But the android control system won’t accept new tasks.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t know anything about this sort of thing, Andrea. You’ve had a few training classes, probably the same sort of stuff they gave this guy. Uh, sorry Tycho. Didn’t mean it to come out like that. But my point is this. You’re a combat generalist. You aren’t qualified to understand why it’s harder to push new tasks on the androids than it is to rescind existing ones. You’re just going to have to take my word for it that it is harder. A hell of a lot harder.”

  “Could Young do it?” she asked.

  He looked mildly pained. “Could Young do it? Story of my life.” He turned to me. “I’m not so much a cyber warfare expert. Compared to you I am, but that’s not my specialization in our team at all. I’m an infiltration specialist. My hacking skills, such as they are, are mostly just to facilitate that. You know, fake ID and so on.”

  I don’t know why he felt the need to explain all that to me. Maybe he just felt a little self-conscious about admitting anyone could do things he couldn’t. Hackers can be like that.

  He turned back to Andrea. “Young could do it. But he’s out in the field, trying to pull some exploit of his own. He wouldn’t explain it to me. He never does.”

  “Did he say anything about you not being qualified to understand what he was doing?”

  “He might have,” said Jones, frowning. Something about the expression told me it was real. It didn’t look as practiced as his other interactions.

  As amusing as it was to see Jones get taken down a notch or two, I wanted to get out there and get fighting again. “What would Young need to give the androids new commands?”

  “He’d need the dataspike.” Jones frowned. “I guess you win, Barrett. I’ll go get it for you.”

  “Get the dataspike to Young,” said Andrea. “Tell him to get the androids fighting on our side ASAP. We’ll catch up in a bit. Here, look in my eyes for a second. I’ll get you synced with us, that way we won’t lose each other.”

  She tried to look in my eyes, and I almost panicked. Knowing what I knew, I didn’t want to look anyone in the eyes ever again.

  “Come on, Tycho, it’ll be okay. If I was infected, I would have killed you already. Right?”

  I looked into her pale green eyes, although I can’t say I liked it. The data that popped up in front of me was like a personnel file—a folder of personal profiles for every member of her team, with a link showing me where they were on my schematic.

  I wondered why I hadn’t run into them before but looking at their distribution across the level it made a lot of sense. They were concentrated on this side of the central hub, whereas I had spent most of my time on the opposite side. They were tremendously outnumbered, and mostly just trying to hold their own. Wherever they had based themselves, there were still a lot of civilians alive—but they’d been fighting on the defensive. It was time to change that.

  Jones handed me Marcenn’s dataspike. “It’s all yours, Barrett.”

  I stashed it away. “I’m headed out. I’ll catch up with you once I get this to Young.”

  “Take Jones with you,” she said. “And I won’t be far. You’ll see. We’re going on the offensive as soon as I get back out there. By the time the androids turn on them, they’ll already be crumbling.”

  Jones went into the little bedroom, which had several mattresses laid out on the floor. “If I’m going out there, I’ll need to get suited up first.”

  Andrea caught my eye. “I’m glad to have met you, Barrett. You’re a solid guy. If you run into any trouble out there, I’ll come in hot.”

  “Same here. I’ve got your back.”

  From the look on her face, the idea that she needed anyone to get her back was something she would have described as “cute.” She threw me a condescending smile, then pushed one of the apartment windows open.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m jumping out the window. It’s a lot quicker than going down the boobytrapped stairs.”

  I should have guessed. Come to think of it, I did guess. That’s why I had entered through the roof, after all. “But what are you doing out there?”
<
br />   She turned back to me, perplexed. “I’m killing people. A lot of people. You mean, strategically? We’re regaining control of this level for good. Are you satisfied now?”

  “I guess. There are just so many things I don’t understand.”

  “You understand it perfectly, you just don’t want to admit it’s true. And don’t think I don’t get it. I don’t much like to admit it’s true either. But right now, we have work to do. Did anyone ever tell you that you think too much?”

  “Yeah. Gabriel.”

  “Your partner? Well, I think you should listen to the dead guy. Come find me later.”

  With those words, she crawled through the open window and dropped out of sight. I ran up to the window, just in time to see her rise from the ground and activate her thermoptic camouflage. Just like that, she seemed to fade from sight. I still knew where she was, because we were synced through our dataspikes. But when I looked, I couldn’t see her—all I could see was a shimmer like water. There for a second, and then gone… and then a few feet away, a movement like heat ripples that hinted at her presence.

  “You almost ready, Jones?”

  “I’m here. Feeling eager to get shot at?”

  “Always.”

  He stepped out of the bedroom wearing a suit of armor much like mine. Those thermoptic camo suits must be crazily expensive, if not even Section 9 got one for everyone.

  “Don’t you wish you could turn invisible like her?”

  “What, you mean the suit? I’m an infiltration specialist; she only has to wear that suit because she isn’t. Now follow me and do your best not to get me killed.”

  He seemed to have forgotten the fact that I had killed August Marcenn and he hadn’t—although, according to them, I hadn’t exactly killed anyone. He turned and walked out the front door.

  “No jumping out the window?” I asked.

  Jones waved a hand. “Please. The day I can’t avoid my own tripwires is the day I blow up, I suppose.”