“You can’t go back to the city. I have a plane being prepped so we can leave the country.”
Cynthia shook her head. “We can’t go. Not yet. Evan’s marooned. We still control the infrastructure. If we don’t act now, he’ll figure out how to get the network back online, and then we’ll be on his terms. Now’s our chance.”
“This is the start of every shitty horror movie, you know. But I can go,” Sabot said. “Only the three of us know this place.”
Cynthia’s displeasure was painted on her face.
“Mosley will be here,” Sabot reassured her, but even to his own ears it was a weak endorsement.
Through the smeared windowpanes, they watched as Mosley chased a flopping fish around the dock.
“How reassuring,” Cynthia replied.
“He’s family.”
“Sabot, I know you meant well by hiring him, but he’s a knucklehead. It’s probably the dumbest thing you’ve done since I’ve known you.”
Sabot didn’t argue the point. “I brought a Mindlink SC.”
The Mindlink SC was self-contained—a derivative of the implant used for Tank Majors. At that, Cynthia smiled. “See? That’s the Sabot I know. You’re back to even.” She hugged him.
“Are you going to tell the world?”
“No. There’s nothing that can replace what exists, and if they knew what was happening, they would be too scared to go online. Trust is essential for prosperity, and they would never be able to trust our only mechanism for progress again. We’re well beyond the carrying capacity of our species to regress now. Civilization would crumble. Millions, maybe billions, would die of famine and war. Win or lose, the public can never know.”
Sabot thought about it. She was right. Without cyberspace, how would the world march on? There was no stopgap. There was no backtrack. Cyberspace was the only soil to bear fruit. The world would perish without it.
“I’ll get the Mindlink. You do your thing, and then I’ll head into the city.” He paused. “You know I love you, right?”
“Why do you always say that?”
“Can it ever be said enough?”
Cynthia kissed him. “No.”
They looked out to the quiet lake. “It would have been nice living out here,” Sabot said.
“I wish I had it in me,” Cynthia replied. Her eyes lost focus. The woman was replaced by the brilliant mind. “I’m afraid to die, Sabot. I don’t think there is anything after. I think we’re just luck. You and I recognizing each other as separate entities and conversing and relating . . . it’s a gift no two rocks will ever share, and it’s remarkable, but it’s also scares me to death. That’s why we’ll never be in a quiet home, side by side, rocking in chairs, talking about the weather. Mortality drives me. I fear death more than I appreciate life. It’s no way to live, and it’s the only way I ever have.”
“Well, maybe after this.”
“Maybe.” But they both knew the truth. The fire that drove her needed no bellows, it could never be extinguished, and without an outlet to disperse it, it would burn away her very essence, leaving only a shell, a woman of regret, who would wonder what she could have been to the bitter end. For her, there was no solace in peace or tranquility. Progress was her sanctuary, and without it, she would rather die.
Sabot retrieved the self-contained Mindlink so Cynthia could compose her message to the founders, and then he went to the garage. He had equipped it with a solar-powered generator that trickle-charged the equipment in long-term storage.
He pulled the cover off an electric motorcycle. It was sleek, with the drag coefficient of a raindrop. Sabot inspected the belt drive that ran from the electric engine to the rear wheel. The frame was a light metal alloy—plastic was too expensive. The tires had been the same price as the bike.
Back in the day, when you could go to a pump and just pour out the black gold, he’d had a bike. He was a big guy even before he became a Tank Minor, and he’d had one of the last runs of Harley Davidsons. A big, air-cooled beast that howled when he fed it O2 and fuel with his right hand.
The bike in front of him weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, could reach one hundred and sixty miles per hour in eight seconds, and had a range of three hundred miles. Airfoils were built into it to gain weight the faster it went for stability, and its electric engine was the size of a grapefruit. It was an engineering marvel only a handful of people around the world could afford. But to Sabot, it was a poor replacement for the stuttering, barking hog he’d had thirty years ago. The Harley had a soul. This was just transport.
He pulled Mosley from the dock and took him to the garage. Sabot had a large duffel bag over his shoulder. It contained weapons. He kept the memory card that Cynthia gave him in a zippered jacket pocket.
“You know where the guns are?” Sabot asked Mosley.
Mosley licked his lips with excitement. “Yeah. I saw them.” He rubbed his hands together.
“Don’t touch them,” Sabot said.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“God forbid something happens, you surrender, got it? Don’t be hero—they will fuck you up. And they will kill or imprison Cynthia.”
“I could hold them off,” Mosley said with ghetto bravado.
With one arm, Sabot grabbed Mosley by his shirt and picked him up before he could put the period on his sentence.
“They’re like me, Mosley. Or worse. They can break you like a twig. There’s nothing a normal human can do against them. Got it?”
He put Mosley back down. Mosley rubbed his shoulders. Sabot tried to help, and Mosley brushed his hands away.
“I’ve put a lot on the line for you,” Sabot said. “You’re a good kid and I’m asking too much. I know it’s not fair. But you have to absolutely understand that what’s going on is life and death. Don’t go outside during the day. Don’t walk off the premises. Only have lights on away from the windows. Got it?”
Mosley stared at the ground. “I’m trying to do good.”
Sabot put a hand on Mosley’s shoulder. “Look at me.” Mosley did. “I know you are. I’m trusting you with the woman I love. I’m going to be gone twenty-four hours, max. You cool?”
“Yeah, of course, Sabot.”
“Sorry about the shoulder.”
“Nah, I get it. You’re a strong motherfucker,” Mosley said.
“I got your back, Mosley. You’re my sister’s son.”
“I got your back, too.”
Sabot swung a leg over the electric super-scooter and whirred off toward Chicago.
= = =
Vanessa didn’t recognize the ghoul in front of her when she opened the door. And when she did, she screamed in shock. “Mike!”
He didn’t come in. “We need to go.” He was missing his left arm. A shiny metal bulb that stuck out of his shoulder was framed with pulsing string. Most of the sheathing on his body was shredded. His left ear was gone, a deep cut ran the length of his face, and one of his eyes was cracked. A clear oil dripped out of him.
“What happened?”
“Now’s not the time. You’re in danger.”
“We need to get you to the Derik Building, they—”
“VANESSA!”
She had never heard Mike yell. She didn’t know it was even possible.
“Now,” he said. She didn’t say another word. She didn’t even lock her door.
= = =
Dr. Joseph Ewing hobbled out of his chair when he heard the knock. He put on his glasses and checked the time: 8:22 p.m. He wasn’t expecting any visitors. The knock increased in intensity until the hinges on the door rattled. He moved toward it slowly, as if he were approaching a cornered dog. He cleared his throat. “I have a gun.” He didn’t.
“Please help us,” a young woman said. She sounded distressed. Dr. Ewing debated, then unlocked the three deadbolts. He opened the door to the first bionic he’d ever designed, who was leaning against a woman he vaguely remembered.
“Mike, what are you doing here
?” Dr. Ewing registered the wounds and helped Glass to the couch. “What happened?”
“I was thrown out of a skyscraper,” Glass said. His three thousand confirmed jumps had paid off when Chao chucked him clear of MindCorp HQ. As the ground rushed toward him, Glass had angled his body back toward the building, and five stories from the ground he’d slammed into it, smashing through a window. His arm caught, and he almost made it, but it sheared off from the stress and he tumbled to the ground.
Glass started to shake. Dr. Ewing went into the bathroom and came back with some towels. He handed one to Vanessa. “Press it against the wounds,” he said. Vanessa did, and the doctor vanished into another room, rifling around for supplies. He came back a minute later with duct tape, a gallon of water, and a canister of salt. He swapped out Vanessa’s oil-soaked towel for another one.
“The spasms are going away,” Vanessa said.
Dr. Ewing nodded. “He’s having an impedance seizure. Too many breaches in the sheathing, and the oil will mix between the tissues. It increases the bionic’s ability to pass current logarithmically, and it shorts the body. You’re dehydrating him, which helps.”
“I need you to fix me,” Glass said.
“Fix you?” Dr. Ewing looked around. His condo was filled with books. On the coffee table was a bowl of wax fruit. “I don’t have the tools for that. You’re a hundred-million-dollar machine, Mike. Why’d you come here? Am I going to die?”
“I have no quarrel with you.”
“That’s not my question. You know what I’m asking. Did you put my life in peril by coming here? There are doctors and technicians a few miles away that could fix you without duct tape.” Dr. Ewing looked Vanessa up and down.
“I’m Va—”
“I know who you are,” Dr. Ewing said. He had seemed feeble at the outset, but that was now replaced with anger and fear. Glass started to convulse, the ohm load wracking his torso. “Answer the question!”
“Help him!” Vanessa said.
Dr. Ewing turned on her like a viper. “Quiet!” he hissed. Back to Glass. “Is she important to Evan?”
“Yes.”
“Are you taking her to him?”
“No.”
“Is he why you’re this way?”
With great effort, Glass pulled his pistol from its holster. His chest and torso bucked like a bull, but his arm was steady, at least enough. It wavered in the direction of the doctor. “He can’t have her. Fix me.”
“You’ll die if I don’t.”
“You will too.”
Glass and Dr. Ewing stared at each other for what seemed like minutes. “How important is she to him?” he finally asked.
“Very.”
“Why?”
“He’s built a weapon that’s like the King Sleeper, only more powerful. He needs her for it . . . I don’t know. This just happened. He wants to take over the world.”
“God.” Dr. Ewing turned to Vanessa. “Take off your clothes.”
“What? No way!” she said.
“Do it,” Glass replied. He understood.
“Mike, what’s going on?”
“Evan keeps track of his things,” the doctor replied. “You probably have a tracking device implanted in your skin.”
Glass buckled and stretched in palsy as he watched from the couch. His entire body had deteriorated; he could barely lift the gun. His fingers trembled, and Dr. Ewing cast eyes in his direction. He had made no attempt to fix him. Glass knew this was intentional. At the moment, Ewing had the leverage: he could escape, whereas Glass, unrepaired, would continue to degrade until his battery failed.
Dr. Ewing treated Vanessa like a patient. She disrobed, and Dr. Ewing quickly found a bug in her left buttocks. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but a subject doesn’t notice it in the fat,” Dr. Ewing said. “I’m going to excise it.”
He used a numbing agent and expertly cut in. The bug looked like a watch battery. He glanced at it over the glasses perched on his nose. “GPS.”
“Those are out,” Glass said.
“Then luck’s on your side.” He reached into his medical bag and accidentally dropped the bug. “Shit,” he hissed. He rummaged through the bottom, then pulled it out and crushed it. To Vanessa, he said, “You can put your clothes back on.”
While she dressed, he dumped half of the salt in the water and shook it. He ripped off several strips of duct tape and stuck them on the edge of the table. “This is temporary,” he said. “I’m just keeping your body from completely failing.”
“It’ll have to do.”
An hour later, Dr. Ewing had done what he could do. Glass sat up slowly.
“When I say this is jury-rigged, I mean it. You cannot do anything but walk,” Dr. Ewing said. He stood up, hoping it would cause his two visitors to do the same. “If Evan’s looking for you, your best bet is to get far away from here.”
He turned back. Glass had raised his gun again.
“Mike, come on! Quit pointing that thing at me. I’m not going to do anything.”
“I’m sorry, Doc, but I still need you.”
“For what?”
“If we go to the Derik building, I can be fixed.”
= = =
Juhavee was distraught. Tears ran down his face as he watched the fire consume the power plant. In its wavering light, they could see the bodies of men and women scattered out front. They reminded John of starfish.
“What are we going to do?” Juhavee asked.
Kill them, Tiffany said, but only Raimey could hear.
“Kill them,” Raimey repeated.
Now’s the time. They are unsettled. They think they’ve won.
“We leave now.”
“Shouldn’t we check for survivors?”
Raimey snapped his eyes from the fire down to the little man. “There aren’t any.” He went over to Razal. The spotter was dead, crushed and nearly unrecognizable. Raimey clawed out a grave and buried him. He leaned a beam as a marker. “I’ll come back,” he promised his friend.
He went back to Juhavee. “I’ll clear the area. Leave in thirty minutes and move slowly. If you stack up on me, it’ll only make my job more difficult.”
Raimey set out. The Mort Vivant controlled the north end of the city where the Matadi Bridge spanned the Congo River. The buildings told him of his progress. Intact structures gradually degraded to rubble. The bridge was a control point, and it had seen waves of war long before the Mort Vivant.
Stray dogs, glommed into packs, scurried from building to building, entering the gap-toothed fronts of the homes that remained. Raimey knew what they ate. Dusty clothes glued to the earth by petrified blood were everywhere. Feral eyes watched him from second-story windows, warning, This is ours now. And maybe it was. Only the main road was maintained, the rubble pushed to the side like snow.
Easier on the trucks, Raimey thought.
He saw the suspension bridge. It was longer and wider than he had imagined. Halfway across the Congo River, it disappeared into the mist. The bridge had taken damage: support cabling as thick as his arm hung into the river like guts. Underneath, the river was wide and brown, churning and angry. He couldn’t see the opposite shore.
Before today, Raimey had only fought a Tank Major twice in his service. One was Janis, his friend, who had gone insane and destroyed a U.S. military base. By the time Raimey had found him, he had been mangled, ill, and without hydraulshocks. It was a mercy killing that haunted John to this day. The other was a Chinese version and John had barely survived the encounter. And that one didn’t have the hydraulshock technology.
Stafford, however, was both healthy and battle-ready. And he was around here somewhere, waiting. Raimey used a building as a blind and turned off his stabilizers. The drive chains circling his waist rolled to a stop. He closed his eyes and listened. It was too easy to be a lumbering menace: a God complex came with the territory when a single punch could level a building. And Raimey had fallen prey to hubris just an hour before. Now, he h
ad to think.
Raimey guessed that a direct hydraulshock attack could crack his armor. And even if it didn’t, it might cause him to black out, and then he’d be at their mercy, unable to defend himself. The most common tactic for killing a downed Tank Major was immolation.
His thoughts were noise. He shut them down and refocused. He heard the faint chanting of the morning prayer from the mosque in the south. He heard the river. The bridge twanged. From the bunkhouse, someone sneezed, and then another person murmured, maybe a “Bless you.” And in the distance he heard the rhythmic, crumbling sound of metal against rock. As it got closer, the electric whine of motors. A Tank Major was approaching.
The sound stopped, and from the direction of the bunkhouses there was banter. “Anything?” It was Stafford. John gritted his teeth at the voice. A murmur from the bunkhouse. Then Stafford again: “Stay alert. He’s coming.”
More heavy footsteps. Another Tank Major.
“What’s your deal? Are you staying?”
A heavy Russian accent. “Packard is sending some of us north. There are more of these. You?”
“Heading back. The U.S. is gonna be a shit show. I can’t wait. I hate this fucking place. It’s hot, hilly, it stinks,” there was the sound of metal slapping metal, “and it’s full of flies.”
The faint chants from the mosque were replaced with the rumble of engines. Juhavee’s tanks were approaching the bridge from the south. Raimey shook his head—how long had it been?
“Right on time,” Stafford said. Raimey heard Stafford and the Russian powering up and the men in the bunkhouses barking orders, getting ready.
Raimey turned on his stabilizers and stepped out of the shadows. Stafford had disappeared, but the other Tank Major was running away to flank the caravan. Raimey charged after him. As he came to the bridge, he veered toward the bunkhouses and reared back.
WHA-WHAM!
The hydraulshock evaporated the first bunkhouse into shotgun pellets. The second bunkhouse was riddled with flying steel and concrete, and crashed to the ground.
BA-BAM! echoed back from down the road, and a ball of fire erupted into the sky. A hydraulshock.
The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition Page 47