The Harmony Paradox

by Matthew S. Cox

  A third virtual window opened at the top right of her vision, showing a close-up of the house. Two thermal signatures appeared inside in red/orange. Around each figure, a nimbus of blue-grey revealed detail of non-heat radiating objects picked up by the ultrasound probe. While it provided enough resolution to perceive objects as small as paperclips, everything had the same silicon-blue color.

  On the second floor, a child-sized figure sat at a desk with a Senshelmet on. Downstairs, in the living room area, an adult male reclined on a sofa, probably watching a vid. Nina split her attention between the virtual displays and the forest in front of her until she reached a point where the house came into view. She crouched low and took up a position behind a tree.

  Pale wintergreen moss mottled the trunk, reminding her of cookie frosting. The MTOF screen reported the outside temperature at forty-one degrees. A bit cold for May, but the house did sit at a high elevation. She stared at the lack of fog on her breath, one thing the designers who’d made her body didn’t bother simulating.

  Nina settled in for a long wait. It worked out though. Joey also got stuck working late, and Elizaveta seemed thrilled to spend a night sleeping at ‘Grandma’s big house.’ Evidently, she and Kelly had cooked up a story about a ghost living there.

  Her smile at the thought of the girls roaming the hallways she grew up in faded to a scowl at Preema dumping on Joey in retaliation for her request. If the woman didn’t outrank her, she’d have gone down to give her a piece of her mind. Majors didn’t often react well to first lieutenants getting in their faces.

  Noah fidgeted. He took the helmet off and wandered around his room, sat on his bed, wandered more, sat at the desk. Two minutes later, he got up again, grabbed a stuffed animal from the closet, and sat clinging to it.

  She put a hand over her mouth and held her breath, heart heavy. That poor kid is terrified. As much as she wanted to let him know he wouldn’t have to wait much longer, that could tip off Michel and turn deadly.

  The boy sat on the floor holding the stuffed animal for eighteen minutes before the man got up and walked to the stairs. He leaned forward, shouted, “Noah,” which the Whispercraft picked up, and went to the kitchen.

  Noah scrambled to toss the stuffed animal back where he got it, seeming afraid of getting caught with it. He pushed the closet door shut and wiped at his face before sticking his head out into the hallway. His shout of “a minute” also came over the channel.

  The boy went into the bathroom and stood in front of the sink. He leaned forward examining his face in the mirror. Downstairs, Michel appeared to be working a food reassembler. Hmm. Wonder if he wants to take care of the kid or if he’s only doing it to keep up appearances.

  Noah made his way down to the dining room. Michel entered from the kitchen carrying plates, and the pair sat, the boy swinging his feet back and forth the whole time they ate. Body language indicated a minimum of conversation occurred. Anything spoken had to be muttered as the whispercraft didn’t pick it up. The electronics officer bitched about the thickness of the walls, evidently fighting to listen in on a conversation too faint for the sensors to pick up.

  She stared at the child’s thermal outline, noting his skin temperature seemed a touch too warm. His heart is racing.

  「This thing’s so sensitive,」 said the electronics officer, 「I once picked up an operator’s stomach growling. I think she farted too. I got such a bad case of the giggles I had a Captain and two Senior Operatives screaming at me to clear the channel.」

  「Charming,」 said Nina.

  「Hey, lieutenant,」 asked the male sniper operator, 「do dolls fart?」

  「Fuck’s sake Yates,」 said the female pilot. 「Really?」

  「Male dolls can,」 said Nina with a hint of a smile they couldn’t see. 「I’m still a woman. I’ve got a flower scented air freshener installed back there.」

  「Bet changin’ that refill’s uncomfortable,」 said the female sniper.

  Nina entertained a momentary feeling of gratitude that her legs wouldn’t get tired crouching in the same position for hours. 「You have no idea.」

  Noah looked over at Michel. A few seconds later, he shrugged.

  Michel cut something on his plate while nodding.

  Eventually, the boy collected the dirty dishes and returned to the kitchen. Michel walked to the downstairs study and sat a desk. Nina patched into the keylogger system ghost she’d installed, and got another virtual holo-panel with his desktop. He read over vid mails from LRI people, none of whom she’d suspected of being spies. Purchase orders, requests for personnel changes, hire/fire notices, some complaints from Facilities about an air handler that they thought really (with twenty-two l’s) needed replacing, and a request to approve Dominque Ramirez’s twentieth-year work anniversary party.

  Noah ran back upstairs to his room and flopped on the floor. He picked up a senshelmet, and rolled it back and forth for a minute or two before putting it on.

  Despite the bone-grinding boredom of it, Nina continued watching Michel read emails. After an excruciating forty minutes, he opened a GlobeNet OWI, or ‘outside world interface,’ what people without head jacks used. He went to a merchant site that sold sex toys, went to the dildo section, selected an average-looking one, but cancelled the purchase. He backtracked to the main menu and went into the ‘creams and sprays’ page, where he tapped on a tub of ‘black currant love lube.’ That, too, he backed out of before finalizing the sale. He returned to the main menu a second time and into the ‘bondage bonanza’ category. From there, he selected the last item, a set of fuzzy handcuffs.

  Rather than get a product listing, the website screen melted into a point as though a tiny singularity had manifested behind his screen and devoured the hologram. A page full of Cyrillic text appeared, a chatroom from the look of it.

  「Ops, are you getting this?」

  「Copy that, lieutenant.」

  Three individuals other than Michel had logged into the chat space, which used only text. While she noted the rudimentary usernames of ‘Dog,’ ‘Cat,’ and ‘Rabbit,’ she had no way yet to map them to an individual. The spies discussed the status of ‘Hyena,’ all proving they’d become aware he’d been taken by the government. Hyena must be Anders. Cat seemed particularly worried about the three who’d been sent after the operator who’d exposed him and never came back. Some debate ensued as to whether their sudden cessation of biomonitor status meant they’d been killed or taken somewhere that blocked signals.

  Michel advised them not to worry, typing ‹Adjusted schedule is working better› and ‹Tomorrow will be a big day›. Rabbit asked if there would be cake at the office party, prompting Michel to say something about a mule and his mother. The other three responded with ‹haha.›

  Big day… what is happening tomorrow? Is that a large shipment of Harmony or are they doing something else? She clenched her hand into a fist. Damn. Glad I followed up on that alien abduction call.

  Michel logged out of his terminal and sauntered to the living room, where he resumed watching the holo bar. An hour or so later, Noah entered the bathroom again and hovered over the toilet in a posture suggesting he expected to vomit. Nina’s throat tightened. Did he poison the boy?

  「Whisper 7, can you get any vitals on the juvenile inside?」

  「Uhh, elevated heart rate, perspiration. Think his hands are shaking too. I’d say he’s nervous. Doesn’t look like anything alarming’s going on,」 said the electronics guy.

  「Keep an eye on him, please. Let me know if his status changes.」 She closed her eyes, fighting her growing urge to boot in the door and comfort him.

  「Copy, lieutenant.」

  Noah appeared to leave the bathroom without throwing up, and returned to his video game. Nina perched on one knee watching them for the next two hours and change. At 10 p.m., Michel stood and went upstairs to the boy’s room. He leaned in the door, waving his hand about while talking. The boy pulled his helmet off and scurried into the attached b
athroom. Michel went back down to the living room. Noah hopped in the autoshower, which obscured his heat outline into a column of glowing orange.

  He exited the shower tube fifteen minutes later, his thermal outline brighter from the hot water. Red footprints trailed after him on the tile floor as he walked to his room and pulled on pajamas before crawling into bed. The Comforgel pad warmed up to a dull reddish brick.

  Michel leaned back on the sofa and picked up a NetMini. Ops intercepted the call, but he merely spent the next forty minutes talking dirty to a woman they couldn’t link back to anything related to LRI. She worked as a waitress at an expensive restaurant, one sector south from LRI’s office.

  The conversation drifted in and out of sexual, and ended with his suggesting they have dinner tomorrow night. She accepted without hesitation and sounded both thrilled and surprised he’d called her back.

  Michel tossed the NetMini onto the sofa cushion, stood, and walked to the stairs. He ascended noticeably slower than before, which set Nina on edge. Maybe he’s tired, but it damn sure looks like he’s trying to be quiet. With each step higher, her nerves tingled more. His body language seemed wrong, even for a man trying to sneak out for a quick hook-up while his son slept.

  「Whisper, something doesn’t feel right. Get a bead, but do not fire without my go.」

  「Copy, lieutenant.」

  Michel’s heat outline went into the master bedroom and to the closet, from which he removed a suit jacket.

  Shit. He’s going out. 「Looks like he’s going out. If I don’t get to him before he makes it to his car, put one through the battery.」 Nina got up and dashed across a short field of damp grass before hiding against the wall at the corner of the house.

  「Copy, lieutenant,」 said the female pilot.

  Michel drifted down the corridor to Noah’s room and again leaned in the door. Nina crept along the wall, heading for the front of the manor, her attention darting back and forth between the tiny virtual window and the real world in front of her. Keeping most of her attention on glowing blue-on-blue ultrasonics populated by two orange figures made the night around her darker. The attached garage sat at the north end of the front of the house, which faced west. I can probably get to the garage before him.

  Michel hovered in the doorway for six seconds before stepping into the room; the boy hadn’t reacted, likely asleep.

  Nina started to pick up her pace, but faltered when Michel’s figure drew a pistol from under his left arm.

  「Whisper…」

  Michel raised his arm, aiming at Noah’s head

  「Go! Go! Go! Terminate!」 yelled Nina.

  A sharp crack of breaking wood rang out overhead. She sprinted around the front of the house. Michel’s heat outline deformed like a melting blob and oozed backward away from the bed. Noah sat up and rapidly scooted away from the edge; Whisper 7’s sensors picked up a child’s scream, as did her ears.

  Nina raised an arm, not even slowing as she smashed down the front door and zigzagged to the stairs. “Noah!” She took the steps three per stride, left handprints in the wall at the top where she caught herself and pushed off, and cracked the frame of his bedroom door when she stopped against it.

  Michel, or what remained of him, lay in a twisted heap above a pile of gore like a blown-out egg. Suction had compressed the skin over his skeleton, revealing every bone. His eyeballs stuck to the wall on the opposite side of the bed like burst tomatoes; trails of blood ran down his cheeks from the sockets. A metallic ozone-like smell hung in the air, laced with the sickly fragrance of cooked meat. The railgun slug appeared to have entered the top of his skull and exited his crotch, liquefying everything inside his torso and sucking it out in its wake, leaving bones and skin behind.

  A hole the size of her pinky finger in the ceiling let in a narrow shaft of moonlight; she figured the slug probably stopped in the earth well below the concrete slab floor of the basement.

  Inches from Michel’s fingers lay a small, black pistol on the rug, with an attached suppressor.

  Noah curled up against the headboard, staring at the lump-in-a-suit. He shifted his gaze to Nina, blinked, and screamed again.

  She rushed to him and picked him up. Aside from a spatter of Michel’s blood on his face, he didn’t appear injured. “Don’t look at him, Noah. Don’t look. It’s over now. No one is going to hurt you.”

  Noah trembled. “Was the alien wearing my dad’s skin?”

  “No, sweetie… that wasn’t your father. He was a spy from the Corporates.” She rubbed a hand up and down his back while carrying him away from the scene. At the door, she paused, staring at the deflated Michel, standing so Noah peered over her shoulder out of the room. Shit. He knew… Maybe he just knew the kid was on to him. He didn’t hesitate using his terminal.

  「Ops, we have a problem. Get a message to Hardin, ASAP. We’re going to need to move on the rest of the assets first thing in the morning. Send a feeler over to Division 1. I need someone to find Ava Stirling and bring her here now.」

  「Copy, lieutenant.」

  “Don’t leave,” whispered Noah.

  Nina carried him downstairs. “I’m not going to leave for a while. We’re going to find your mother and bring her home, okay? I need to talk to her about what’s happened.”

  He leaned back, nodded, and managed a weak smile. “Maybe she’ll stop going out all the time ’cause he’s gone. She didn’t want to be near him.”

  “Yeah.” Nina smiled. “I’ll make sure she knows you love her and need her right now more than anything.”

  Noah grinned. “Thanks for stopping him from killing me. I just knew he was gonna do something bad to me tonight. He was nice to me all day. Too nice.”

  She sighed, thankful to have decided to grab Michel when she had. Too damned close. 「Ops. I need a site team out here. NewsNet blackout.」 So much for getting any intelligence out of him. The brief suspicion that Michel had been aware of her presence, and threatened Noah to force her termination order rather than be caught came and went. No… Michel was clearing out.

  「Copy, lieutenant.」

  Noah rested his chin on her shoulder. For the first time that night, he seemed calm.

  ndignation rose within Masaru. Foreigners had invaded Kurotai’s prefecture, provided weapons to the lawless savages responsible for killing Shuji and stranding him in a wretched ruin instead of the comfort of his home. All his life, he’d been extraneous. The second son, the middle child. His older brother Ichiro shouldered the true expectations of their father, to inherit and run the company. Natsumi, his much-younger sister, had no worries or responsibilities. Masaru only needed to avoid bringing shame upon Kurotai.

  He smiled at the thought of Natsumi’s laughter. She adored him, as Ichiro tended to be too serious for the tolerance of a nine-year-old. Because of these people, she had likely spent the past two days frantic with worry. How dare they impinge upon his life; how dare they threaten Japan.

  Masaru clenched the rifle in his grip, keeping it trained on the end of the stairway, and waited. He kept trying to link his headware to his NetMini, glowering at the ‹No Signal› message.

  “Ready?” whispered Noriko.

  “Yes.”

  Rapid shots went off behind him, each answered by a metallic clank. Men’s shouting eked past the loud rapport of her rifle, and after the fifth shot, a meaty thud rocked the air with a small explosion.

  The ‹No Signal› text disappeared.

  Voices called out in Russian and German, while one man screamed a few short phrases in a language Masaru didn’t recognize, but they carried the tone of loud cursing. Noriko fired again, a single shot here and there. Pings and whizzes echoed below, and a few loud snaps came from where she crouched, accompanied by spurts of dust from the walls.

  Masaru logged in to the GlobeNet and placed a vid call to Kenji Omura, chief of security for Kurotai. The dour-faced man with traces of silver over both ears answered in two seconds, appearing in a virtual floating hol
o-panel. His initial displeased expression faded to a mixture of respect and surprise.

  「Kurotai-sama, I am greatly pleased to see that you are alive and unhurt.」

  A shadow moved in the hall. Masaru tensed on the rifle. 「Thank you, Omura-san. I require support as fast as you can send them here. Foreigners have invaded the Miyakonojo ruins. The car was shot down. Maeda-san is dead, as are the others.」

  When a figure in light armor came sneaking around the corner up the stairs, Masaru squeezed the trigger, loosing a burst. The first two rounds hit the man in the chest, the third caught him above the upper lip, almost going up his nose. Blood sprayed on the wall behind him, and he slumped lifeless in place.

  Kenji bowed his head as a gesture of respect to the dead. 「I will send a team immediately. Kurotai-sama, please inform me of what we should expect.」

  “33 Scheisse! Es gibt zwei von diesen!” yelled a man behind the corpse.

  “Ow, shit,” muttered Noriko. She let out a snarl and fired four times fast.

  Down on the first floor, a man wailed.

  “You hit?” Masaru glanced back at her for only a second, spotting nothing obviously wrong. 「Between twelve and twenty men. Light armor, assault rifles, anti-aircraft rockets. They have armed the local rabble, so be wary of attack from anywhere in the ruins.」

  “Just a scratch,” said Noriko.

  The faint metallic sound of a hand-grenade pin rattling caused Masaru to activate his speedware. Within a second of the world sinking into slow motion, an armored glove came around the corner in front of him with a small black canister, from which a small metal flange flew.

  Masaru fired; his bullet struck the grenade, mangling the metal housing and throwing a spray of grey-white powder to the rear. The igniter went off with a brief flare, but the disintegrating explosive compound didn’t detonate. He shifted aim inches to the left, and put another round into the wrist of the offending hand. The spiraling projectile burrowed into the man’s arm, causing an outward swelling of the joint. A hole expanded in the wrist to a width of two inches before collapsing back on itself behind a limp, flopping hand.