by Seth Fried
“Neither is domestic terrorism,” OWEN said. “But we’re living in an imperfect world. Also, you might want to slow down on your way out the door. Remember, you’re supposed to look like someone who doesn’t want to be killed.”
I tried to heed OWEN’s advice, but my adrenaline had me push the door with a bit too much force. It flew open with a bang, surprising two more of Kirklin’s men, who were standing in front of a town car. OWEN stepped toward them as Kirklin and began speaking to them rapidly in Esperanto. Instead of translating, he whispered to me the instructions, “Stay close.”
OWEN continued to address the two men as he approached the car. I stayed a few steps behind him and watched as he held out his right hand expectantly. One of the men produced a set of keys, which he tossed to OWEN. The keys passed through his projection of Kirklin and struck me in the chest. I awkwardly caught them before they hit the ground, which was when OWEN clued me in to the rest of his plan by screaming in my ear, “Go! Go! Go! Go!”
The fading specter of Kirklin waved a toodle-oo at the two men while I fumbled to open the driver’s-side door. It wasn’t until the engine turned over that they seemed to see me behind the wheel. One broke left, making for the passenger side, while the other reached for a gun in a shoulder holster under his jacket. The car had surprising pickup, and I was able to roll the latter over the hood before he got a shot off. The other was just opening the door as the car pulled away. He tried to hold on to the handle and there was an unholy thwack when his head hit the door, slamming it shut. OWEN appeared next to me in the passenger seat as we roared down the street. The man with the gun let off a few rounds in our direction and I took a squealing right.
“I’ve transmitted Kirklin’s statement to the authorities along with this location, which means this whole neighborhood is about to get locked down. Take a left onto Hamilton and follow that up to the Van Horne Expressway.”
I checked the rearview every few seconds and OWEN told me to keep my eyes on the road.
“Kirklin knows this place is burnt. Right now he has everyone at his disposal wiping the area down. No way he can spare anyone to chase us.”
Just then lights appeared behind us.
“Unless he doesn’t know you have a comm device on you, in which case sending people after you would be the first thing he’d do.”
I glared at him until he warned me again to keep my eyes on the road.
“Judging by the spacing of headlights and rate of approach, I’d say we’re looking at a half dozen motorcycles. Our best bet is still the VHE, but we might have to proceed with a little less caution.”
Once we turned onto Hamilton, I pushed the pedal to the floor, tearing through intersections and hoping for the best. OWEN verified that I was putting some distance between us and our pursuers, but pointed out that Hamilton was about to get busier when we reached the VHE. Already there were a few other cars on the road and farther down were the bright lights of heavy traffic.
At the first major intersection, OWEN accessed the city’s traffic management center, thanks to the agency’s participation in Transcom, giving us a green light that turned red as soon as we were halfway through. I watched in the rearview as the bikes nimbly darted through the cross traffic. OWEN was preparing the same stoplight trick for the next intersection, when we heard a gunshot and our back window shattered.
I looked over at OWEN, who was pouring himself a drink.
“I am very worried about your well-being right now,” he said.
The bikes were practically on top of us and through our broken window the sustained brapping of their engines was deafening. I sped through Broome with another green light from OWEN, but this time he turned it red as soon as I hit the intersection, giving the cross traffic a green. An SUV clipped the motorcycle closest to us, the rider and bike tumbling in different directions down the street.
OWEN screamed in celebration and began drinking directly from a bottle of black liquid marked “19010 proof.” There was a crazed look in his eyes. Remembering Kirklin’s words, I found myself frightened of him.
The collision back on Broome bought us some distance from the remaining bikes and the on-ramp to the VHE was close.
I drove up the shoulder of the interchange to get around a line of cars. There was some honking from the other motorists, and then an angry chorus of horns when I left the on-ramp and took the town car across three lanes on the VHE.
It still wasn’t long before I heard the motorcycles creeping up behind us.
OWEN leaned forward in his seat.
“Remember when I thought I saw a drone on our way from the airport?”
“Yes?”
“Well, now I’m more or less sure I did.”
Up ahead a drone came into view coasting above an approaching overpass. It swooped down into the road and I saw that it was in fact one of our old surveillance drones, painted a gunmetal blue. Its strakes wobbled for a moment before it arced up into the air and dove directly at us. I swerved into the next lane to avoid an impact and heard screeching behind us as the drone slid in the wrong direction down the highway, sending up sparks before finally going under the wheels of a van, which lost control and smashed into the median.
Coming out from the overpass, I looked up and saw a massive swarm of drones moving in a slow circle over the highway. OWEN told me to take the exit leading down to the entrance of the Hapsford Tunnel and a dozen drones broke off to follow us, while the bikes continued to close the distance from behind.
The drones that had separated off from the swarm looped down into the road, approaching us from the front. I was able to avoid the first three before the strake of one clipped the car’s passenger side. The other drones leveled off and flew toward us in a formation covering the width of the road. I ducked down, holding on to the wheel and doing my best to maintain speed while aiming for a gap between the middle two. The windshield shattered as we broke through, but I was relieved to see in the side-view mirror that the wall of drones hadn’t pulled up in time to avoid the motorcyclists and crashed into them, sending them all skidding and bouncing across the expressway.
OWEN cried out in celebration, though I could barely hear it over the wind whipping through the car. We were about to enter the tunnel as the swarm of drones rose up in a great column and began to surge east over the Lawrence River toward the other end of the tunnel.
“They’re going to try to flush you out from the other side,” OWEN shouted. “If you can make it a third of the way we can ditch the car and get out through the ventilation access.”
As we entered the tunnel it was already vibrating with the collective buzz of the drones. Up ahead there was also the sound of breaking glass and heavy thuds as cars were hit.
OWEN ordered me out into the tunnel, then led me to one of the maintenance exits. The door was locked, but I kicked off the handle and pulled it open, ducking inside just as a barrage of drones began to slam into our car. OWEN was already lighting the way forward into the long, dark corridor ahead of us, waving his bottle of black liquid in the air and letting out a series of piercing victory whoops, while behind me was the sound of explosions and the smell of burning fuel.
10 OWEN guided me through the pump rooms and subterranean passageways of the Hapsford at a brisk pace. He drank as he ran, lifting the sloshing bottle up to his lips while flying ahead of me in an exaggerated high-knee sprint. He finished off the first bottle in a few minutes and tossed it over his shoulder, producing a new one from his jacket.
OWEN had led us down into the subbasement of the tunnel’s east ventilation tower, one of two ten-story brick towers built a few hundred feet into the water on either side of the river, each containing hundreds of large fans that bring fresh air into the tunnel, preventing commuters from suffocating from the carbon monoxide produced by regular traffic.
“Over here,” OWEN said.
He took an a
brupt left and I found him standing in front of another door, staring at it wild-eyed and pointing at the handle while sucking absently at his liquor bottle.
“OWEN, what are you doing?”
He lowered the bottle and it made a loud, smacking pop when he pulled it from his lips.
“Through here is our way out.”
“I mean your drinking.”
“Oh,” he said, looking down at the bottle in his hand. “I guess I found everything we just did sort of stressful.”
He pointed to the door again and told me to open it. It was unlocked and he lit up the room as we entered. It looked to be a small metal shop filled with workbenches and bound stacks of ductwork. We walked toward an elevator at the far end, OWEN still taking long pulls from his bottle. As I passed a workbench, I grabbed a white rag from the top of a toolbox and tucked it into my back pants pocket.
I called the elevator down and OWEN told me to hit the button for the first floor, which would let us off at the walkway leading back to the East Side’s esplanade along the Lawrence.
“Let’s go up,” I said, hitting the button for the top floor. “See if we can get a visual on any other drones.”
OWEN thought about this for a moment and nodded, placing his bottle back into his jacket.
The elevator let us out on a floor filled with dozens of fifteen-foot-high fan motors. We wandered among the thrumming motors until OWEN spotted the stairwell and we took it up to the roof.
To the west there was the dark outline of the tower opposite ours and beyond that the skyline of Center City across the river, bright and startling. Tonight there was the added spectacle of National Guard helicopters hovering over the VHE, running their searchlights over the wreckage from our chase. Behind us were flashing lights and the sound of sirens as first responders began to gather at the tunnel’s east entrance.
OWEN had his hands in his pockets and was looking up into the cloudless night sky.
“No more drones,” he said. “But that could change. Let’s get you someplace safe and wait for any news coming out of the South Side. If anyone took our transmission seriously, then Kirklin should be in custody soon.”
“If not?”
“We’ll figure something out,” he said.
He was still watching the sky, but casually. A man enjoying the view. His interface was allowing the winds up on the roof to make a mess of his usually immaculate hair.
“What about Garrett?” I said.
“Don’t worry.”
“He said he was going to kill him.”
“He won’t.”
I took the rag out of my back pocket and held it at my side.
“And how do you know that, OWEN?”
He faced me and smiled. His eyes were still wild looking from the chase and the black liquid he had downed.
“Kirklin and his people are gonna be too busy dealing with us.”
He started to head back to the stairwell, but I didn’t follow.
“We need to talk about that virus,” I said.
He stopped and reappeared a few feet in front of me. It was clear I’d gotten his attention, though he still looked ready to play the whole thing off.
“What about it?”
“Kirklin said it’s still inside you.”
He thought about this for a moment.
“It’s part of me,” he said. “Sure.”
“Did Klaus know the virus was still in play when he let you out of the lab?”
OWEN looked down.
“No,” he said.
“But you knew.”
He was nervous now, like someone telling the truth against his better judgment.
“They would have had to reboot my interface to get rid of it, which would erase the O_1 memory cache.”
“And?”
“The O_1 is who I am. It’s my memories. My configuration. To get rid of the virus they’d have to kill me and some guy named O_2 would get my body.”
“How can you expect me to trust you if you were willing to put this entire city at risk in order to save yourself?”
“Look,” he said. “Kirklin’s virus happened to me and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s part of my programming the same way your parents dying is part of yours.”
“My childhood isn’t an explicit set of mathematical instructions dictating my behavior.”
“The hell it isn’t. You think what’s going on in your head couldn’t be written up as a bunch of ones and zeros? You, the agency, Kirklin, these attacks, this city. It could all be translated into numbers and probability.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying that your parents dying made you who you are, but just because you hate that they’re dead doesn’t mean you have to hate yourself.”
More sirens approached and one of the helicopters began to cross the river.
“Whether you believe it or not . . .” OWEN said.
I was already pulling the tie clip off.
“. . . I’m your friend.”
I had to hand it to Kirklin’s virus. In that moment, I wanted to believe him.
I wrapped the rag around the tie clip a few times. OWEN’s image flickered and disappeared. I pulled the ends of the rag into a tight knot and took the stairwell down. On one of the landings I opened the cabinet of a fire extinguisher and wedged OWEN behind the tank. The rag wasn’t visible when I closed the cabinet and OWEN’s shouts were difficult to make out with the noise of the fans down below. I was confident he could go unnoticed there until I was ready to bring him back to Suitland.
I took the elevator to the ground level and was able to sneak out of the building. Outside, I scaled a fence and followed the walkway back to the esplanade, then walked along the river for a while. The low hum of the ventilation building was gradually overtaken by the thudding of the National Guard helicopters overhead. Squad cars with pulsing lights rushed by on their way to the developing scene around the Hapsford. The play of light on the buildings couldn’t help but remind me of OWEN and I found myself wondering in that moment—stupidly, I told myself—whether I had just done the right thing.
* * *
Twenty years ago, the East Side was made up almost entirely of low-rise residential buildings, sometimes even the occasional stand-alone house with aluminum siding and a strip of bright green lawn. Now there were towers of luxury apartments everywhere you looked. On the sidewalks, I passed small groups of well-dressed young men and women making their way to share office gossip over cocktails in the neighborhood’s modern-looking bars that were all somehow both aloof and nostalgic. East Side Social. The Whiskey Concern. The youthful exuberance of the area’s progress was undeniable. In another forty years, the only way to tell the once medium-density East Side from the thronging, upward mass of Center City would be the dividing line of the Lawrence River. That is, as long as Kirklin didn’t have his way.
I made it all the way to Scott Park, around which sat a few government buildings and the county courthouse, their columns and ornate pediments all lit up for the night. I kept my eyes on the glowing domes of the buildings to see if I could catch the dark outline of a drone circling overhead, until I finally convinced myself the sky was clear. Across the park was a covered bus stop with an adjoining bank of internet kiosks. The stop was well lit and risked leaving me exposed, but the call was important, so I risked it.
I used the kiosk to call Garrett at home. My first year at the agency he’d had to tell me gently that I wasn’t allowed to use his private number anymore. There were a few instances in which I had phoned him after dinner to let him know about what I had felt at the time were incredibly pressing development issues. After the sixth time, he brought me into his office and did his best to protect my feelings by telling me that the request was coming from his wife, Doris. I was mortified and apologized, but he
just laughed and in the same conversation invited me to work directly with him on resolving the recurring seepage issues with the San Antonio Dam. Despite the circumstances, it still pained me to violate a long-established boundary.
He sounded startled when he answered.
“Sir, it’s Henry.”
“My God. Are you—”
“I’m fine, sir. Sorry about the hour.”
“We’ve all been watching the news. It’s Terry, isn’t it?”
His question had some heavy dread behind it.
“It is, sir. Don’t wait for the board to act. Call the FBI and get them anything you have on him.”
“Henry, I should have never sent you there.”
“We don’t have a lot of time. I need you and Doris to get in the car and get out of town for a while. You’re in danger.”
It felt strange to be giving Garrett orders and I surprised myself by thinking that my voice sounded almost as confident as OWEN’s.
“Terry again?”
“Afraid so. And you need to shut down headquarters.”
“Get up, honey,” I heard him say away from the receiver. “Henry says we have to leave.”
I was flattered by Garrett’s faith in my judgment, and then just as quickly humiliated when I heard Doris shout in the background, “He isn’t supposed to call here!”
Fortunately, Garrett had the presence of mind to say, “It’s a different Henry. Get dressed.”
Back into the receiver, he asked, “Are you still in the city?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of there. I can have a plane for you at Bixley in a few hours.”
“Not yet,” I said. “I still have to look after the agency’s interests here.”
There was a pause before he said, “Be careful, Henry.”
I was about to tell him that I would, when I saw something whiz by overhead.
“Shit.”
“Henry?”
Garrett’s voice was still buzzing in the kiosk’s speaker as I ran in a crouch deeper into the East Side, looking for darker quarters.