Sabot turned to the room.
“Crackheads. Say it too.”
They all murmured the same. One of them punctuated it with a sneeze. Sabot turned back to Genesis.
“Do you want a ride?”
Genesis looked around at his hollow-eyed company. “Why the hell not?”
It was a quiet ride as Sabot dropped Mosley’s friends off at their homes. He didn’t lecture, but the silence was stern. At one point, Genesis made a joke, and the eyes that shot at him from the rearview mirror shut him up quick.
Mosley rode shotgun and watched his uncle drive. He hadn’t seen him in at least two years. Maybe Christmas, he thought. It seemed long ago. Sabot had looked different then. He was the same size, but less rigid-looking. His mom had told him how he was a bionic now.
Genesis and Dougie were last. Like the others, Sabot told them to be safe. Genesis slid out behind Dougie.
“Hey,” Sabot said. Genesis turned.
“The people you hang with will either make you better or make you worse,” Sabot said. Genesis gave a short nod and thanked him for the car ride.
It was just the two of them now, Mosley and his uncle. Mosley ran his hands along the armrest of the door and looked at the ceiling light.
“You like this car?” Sabot asked. The electric motor pushed Mosley into the seat as they quietly whisked away.
“Yeah.”
“How drunk are you?”
Mosley gave it some thought. “Not too bad.”
The vehicle slowed to a halt. Mosley’s eyes widened and he smiled at his uncle. “Are you serious?”
Sabot opened the door, and when he relieved the seat of his five hundred pounds, the suspension groaned. “There’s no one on the road. Certainly no cops are going to pull us over. Get in.”
They switched sides.
Mosley fondled the steering wheel like he was touching a breast: gentle, unsure, and amazed.
“How’d you find me?” he asked.
Sabot gave him a sarcastic smile. “I’ve sought harder targets than you, my drunken friend. Your mom called. She was worried. She knew where you started, and I just connected the dots.” Sabot paused. “Are you okay?”
Mosley’s jaw quivered, betraying his true emotions. “Prison was tough, Jeremiah. It was real tough. Mom called me a loser . . . and she’s right. I’m a fucking loser. My friends are losers.”
Sabot put an iron hand on his shoulder. “Angela told me what she said, and she feels horrible about it. You guys’ll talk. You’re not a loser, Mosley. You made a mistake and you paid for it. What’s done is done. All that matters is here on out. Your mom asked if I could help.”
“That doesn’t sound like her,” Mosley sniveled, staring at his knees, still embarrassed to cry in front of his uncle.
“I think she may have hit her head,” Sabot deadpanned.
Mosley laughed, wiping his eyes.
“We’ll figure it out.” Sabot nodded at the controls. “Okay, this thing is only a one-speed because of the electric engine . . . ”
= = =
A million stars looked down on Mosley. Across the lake, lanterns from a few of the residents flickered like flames.
He decided to call his mom. They hadn’t spoken in a long time. Sabot had tried to explain why she’d acted the way she did, how after their older brother was murdered, she’d turtled up, unable to feel joy. But to Mosley, that was just a rationalization—it couldn’t cure the years of scorn. She had always kept Mosley at arm’s distance, and judgment had been her constant tone.
But he was almost twenty-two now. For too long he had blamed his mom for his troubles. He thought about what Cynthia said, how people are fine with failing as long as they can blame someone else. All these years he had blamed his mom. It was time to let go.
He called her. They spoke for nearly an hour, and it was a cathartic exchange between a mother and son who had drifted apart. Human nature is queer that way. Pride and fear lead us to ruin and regret, when only love and honesty can see us through. Mosley opened himself up to his mom; he told her how much she had hurt him in the past, and how tonight he forgave her. And instead of daggers, she thanked him. All these years she had been too ashamed to ask for forgiveness, too afraid he would say “no” and cast her away forever.
= = =
Evan waited. He was in a room without doors, the blinds closed, just him and his idiot savants. So far things had not gone according to plan. Glass had miraculously survived a one-hundred-and-fifty-story fall, and the critically damaged, one-armed bionic had gotten to Vanessa first. She was nowhere to be found.
But when Mosley called Angela Sabot, a flag appeared in his vision, like a fighter pilot’s missile lock. Evan immediately set up a trace and then called the Twins.
Fates can change.
= = =
Sabot reached a small node on the outskirts of the city. He pulled into a nearby alley and the bike whirled to a stop. He had a sixty-five percent charge left—not bad. He’d averaged eighty miles per hour into the city.
Nodes were scattered like freckles throughout all the megacities. Their redundancy guaranteed system uptime of one hundred percent. The smaller ones were occasionally used to offload immediate tasks in case of a Colossal Node failure. It was rare, but it happened. But most of the time, the small nodes acted as access points for Sleepers.
This was one of the small ones; it didn’t even have an office. When the metal door slid open, he entered a hallway with an elevator at the far end. As he walked the corridor, he saw the cameras following him. He got into the elevator and hit “B”.
As in the other nodes, the glass side of the elevator opened out on to the Data Core as soon as it dropped below the ground floor. It was visibly apparent that the Core was shut down. There was a bit of activity at the base, a few of the employees readying themselves for Sabot’s arrival. He sometimes forgot that he was considered important.
Like a first lady, he thought, and shook his head. Not very manly.
As he emerged from the elevator, he saw a striking woman approach. In another time, she could have been a model. Her black hair looked like oil and flowed past her shoulders; her skin was a deep olive, and she had piercing slate eyes. Sabot caught a glint of a nose stud. Like the others, she wore a lab coat, but even its formless function couldn’t hide her curves. It was clear that her body was as beautiful as her face.
“Mr. Sabot, what a pleasant surprise to see you here. I’m Dr. Kelley. I run this office.”
“Call me Jeremiah. Or just Sabot.” They shook hands.
“To what do we owe the honor?”
Sabot became aware of their audience. A dozen other techs and programmers hovered nearby, looking like they wanted an autograph. The tale of Sabot singlehandedly killing the Western Curse terrorists that had attacked MindCorp a decade before . . . it had become the stuff of legend.
“Hi,” Sabot said.
“Hi,” they said back in unison.
He waited for them to disband, but they milled around like groupies. Finally, Sabot turned back to Dr. Kelley. “I need to speak with you alone,” he said. “Is there any place with privacy?”
“Yes, of course. Come with me.”
The admirers drifted back to their stations, some still whispering with excitement. Sabot overheard one telling her friend that she thought he’d be taller.
Dr. Kelley led the way, and Sabot did everything in his power to not look at her legs. He succeeded ninety-five percent of the time.
She had an office. It was crammed with servers, blinking and chirping, and their cooling fans hissed at one another. Dr. Kelley offered Sabot a seat.
“I can’t. I’d break it,” he said. She nodded and sat down behind the desk.
“How bad is the outage?” she asked. “We’re not getting anything through the Core.”
“Do you know what’s going on?” Sabot asked.
“Not since the news cut out. Some of the people”—she gestured outside—“especially the
Sleepers, say that we’re heading toward civil war. Crazy talk . . .” She bit her thumb. Sabot tried to ignore how sexy it was.
“It’s true, though,” he said.
“A corporation can’t fight the government.”
Sabot pulled the memory card from his jacket. “Dr. Kelley. We are a government. Our GWP is more than half of the continents combined. We created a universe that we not only we control, but that every modern country relies on.”
“But we’re employees, Jeremiah. I’m not going to fight.” She gestured again to the folks outside. “They’re not going to fight.”
“Would you fight if one man was threatening to destroy all government and take over the world?”
“That’s impossible.”
“I wish it was, but I’m afraid it’s very real. It’s what we’re fighting right now.” He held up the card. “This is from Cynthia. She needs it uploaded.”
“Everything’s down.”
He handed her the card. “I’m sure she’s thought of that.”
Dr. Kelley put on a Mindlink and inserted the card into a drive. Her eyes grew distant. A moment later: “My God.”
“What?”
“It’s a MIME profile. She’s reprogramming the local systems.”
Twenty minutes later, outside the office, was the boom-boom chatter of the Data Core firing up. “She’s hopscotching the nodes, reprogramming the MIMEs throughout the network.”
“As her?”
“And you. They’re paired.”
= = =
An hour later, Sabot’s foot was bouncing on the floor. He’d never been very good at sitting still, and right now he was antsy to get back. At last Dr. Kelley took off the Mindlink. “She’s telling all of us to leave,” she said. “It’s done.”
“Thank you.” Sabot grabbed his things.
“What’s going to happen now?” Dr. Kelley asked.
“You’re going to tell everyone to go home.” He paused. “Tell them to stock up on food and water.”
“What if the government doesn’t back down?”
“It’s not the government. It’s one man.”
“How can this happen?”
Sabot turned from the door. “It was inevitable. We’ve become too connected for our own good. Go home. Stay off the streets.”
= = =
Mosley walked back into the house. Cynthia was in the kitchen making a sandwich.
“Couldn’t sleep. Would you like one? They’re sardines.” She wrinkled her face. “Life on the run.”
He sat down at the counter. “Sure. Can’t say I’ve ever had those little fishies.”
“You’re not missing much, but . . . ” She opened the cupboard near her: it was full of canned meats. “It’s what’s for dinner.”
They ate quietly, but the air between them was free of tension. It was a comfortable silence.
“When is Sabot coming back?” Mosley asked. Cynthia checked the clock in her head. It was always, amazingly, within a minute of a real one.
“Two hours or so if everything goes smoothly.” She bit into her sandwich. She wasn’t hungry—in fact, her stomach burned with acid—but the calories would help. Stack up too many annoyances and distractions, even simple things like nourishment, and mistakes get made.
“Did Sabot tell you about my mom?” Mosley asked.
Cynthia nodded. “He’s talked about their relationship, how it went south after Rashad died. I met her once, years ago.”
Mosley smiled. “I wish I could have met Rashad. On his birthday, Mom would always cry and tell me stories about him.”
“Sabot looked up to him, too.”
“My mom didn’t like you very much,” Mosley said.
“I remember. She wasn’t a great actress,” Cynthia said. “Was it because I’m white?”
“Nah. ’Cause your rich. White never helps, but she always thought the rich were fucking over poor people.”
“They do,” Cynthia said. “But the poor sabotage themselves more. We can save that discussion for another night.”
She took his plate and went to the sink. Mosley marveled at how the smartest and wealthiest person in the world had just made him dinner and was now washing his plate. For some reason, he thought of Jesus—about how he’d washed the feet of his disciples. Mosley felt bad for having brought the rich thing up. Why had he?
“She’s cool now. Mom,” Mosley said. Cynthia’s back was turned to him. “We just spoke, and it was good.”
The water stopped.
“What do you mean, you just spoke with her?” Cynthia asked. She was a statue.
“Our talk. I called her. I felt bad about the way things have been going. You never know—”
“On a cell phone?”
“Yes, it was on m—”
“When did the call start?”
“An hour ago? I don’t know.”
Cynthia quickly turned off the lights in the kitchen. “We have to go. Now,” she whispered.
“Wh—” he started in a normal voice, but she cupped a hand over his mouth. Her little hands were strong.
“They track cells,” she whispered. “It’s triangulated. They’ll know where we are.”
Mosley shook his head slowly, like what he was hearing was impossible. But it was clear that, to Cynthia, it was one-hundred-percent certain.
“Did Sabot tell you where the airport is?” she asked. Mosley’s head was spinning with a tornado of thoughts.
“Yes—yeah.”
“Okay. We need to go. You have the keys?”
Mosley nodded.
“Check,” she said. He pulled them out of his pocket. She took them.
The ground vibrated. It could have been their imagination, but then an old windowsill twanged like an out-of-tune guitar string.
“Out the back,” Cynthia hissed. She dropped onto her stomach and Mosley followed her lead; together they scurried along the floor like jailbreakers avoiding a sweeping spotlight. The narc windowsill continued to twang rhythmically, and Mosley felt the floor vibrate against his body.
“What the fuck is out there?” Mosley whispered.
They heard two men murmur.
Cynthia looked at Mosley, and she looked scared. He had never before seen her scared.
“Giants.”
= = =
Chao walked around the front of the large lake estate and Kove circled to the other side.
“Don’t harm Cynthia—not even a bit,” Evan had told them before they left.
“What about Sabot?” Chao had asked. He was primed to use his new form. Taking over MindCorp had been disappointing. It was just a bunch of cowering nerds in lab coats. He wanted to hydraulshock, he wanted to crush something. His cock may have been dead and gone, but when he thought about what he could do, he felt its ghostly presence salute the sky.
“If you can, keep him alive; I can use him as leverage. But Cynthia’s the primary. And be careful: Sabot’s smarter than he looks, and he’s mean.”
Kove and Chao had smirked in response, and rolled their giant, three-hundred-pound fists like prizefighters. They were mean, too.
The two giants met on the opposite side of the house, at the stairway that led to the dock.
The house is dark, Chao projected using their digital telepathy. He leaned in toward the sunroom windows, using one hand like a visor out of habit.
They might have jetted already. Maybe they realized about the cell, Kove said, walking back the other way.
I saw a garage, Chao said. He thumped over to it.
You should have given us night vision, Evan.
I need you to be able to daytime work, and it’s an either/or, he replied. I can modify the helmet later.
Chao and Kove met at the garage. An owl hooted nearby. Chao reached down and popped his finger through the bottom of the door. With a flick of his wrist, the garage door tore from the track. Chao absently threw it behind him.
Car’s still here, Chao said.
Then so are they.
For good measure, Chao dragged the car from the garage and butterflied his arms through it. The bulletproof armor torqued, the glass shattered, the chassis warped into a twisted napkin. Finally, he got to break something.
You go around to the other side, he said. Kove nodded. They were going in.
= = =
The house shook when the garage door was ripped off its track. Cynthia and Mosley flinched at the sound. Moments later they pressed themselves into the floor when they heard the screaming sound of metal being mangled into scrap. Probably the car.
They were at the center of the house, hidden from all windows. What if there are Minors? Cynthia wondered. No, can’t be—they would have come in. So it’s just the giants.
An amplified voice pierced the air. “Cynthia Revo. If you are in the house, come out or we will be forced to come in. We have orders not to harm you.”
“Could we outrun them?” Mosley whispered. Cynthia shook her head. Even the slow ones were faster than any human. And they never tired.
Her eyes widened. The water. Two-plus tons of metal, unless it was in the shape of a hull, made a great anchor. Bionics couldn’t swim.
“How far to the dock?” she asked. Mosley was about to answer when one of the walls of the house crashed in like a car had plowed through it.
“Cynthia. We’re serious,” the voice bellowed.
She shook Mosley by the shoulder. “How far?”
“Uh, fifty steps?” He wasn’t sure. When he had gone down to the water, he hadn’t been thinking that this particular information would be a matter of life and death.
“The basement has a door to the outside,” Cynthia said, thinking out loud. But no, that’s how the giants would get in—they weighed too much for the wood floors. They would let themselves fall through, then use the concrete subfloor as support as they broke a path through the house, searching, with their shoulders and heads above the main level.
Right on cue, the sound of splintering wood sounded from behind them, at the front of the house. One of the giants must have attempted to step inside, his foot breaking through the floor like it was thin ice. There was no crash though; he must have caught himself and stepped back.
“What are we going to do?” Mosley asked. He couldn’t believe that four hours before, he had thought he could fend them off with a gun.
The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition Page 49