Then his com-link buzzed.
“Don't do it.” The voice ran flat.
Taylor's finger pressure wavered. “Target is in my sights.”
“He is not the target,” Alfred Krueger replied. “You know that.”
“Yes.” Taylor forced the word through a clenched jaw.
“Does Savakis have the information?”
“He...he does.”
“Good.” A long pause. Then, the voice filtered back in. “Normally, this transgression would call for your retirement. But, considering the circumstances, you've facilitated an optimal scenario.”
Taylor tried to clear his mind. He had started sending the packages in a moment of doubt. He felt better sending them. The memory of life, real life, pumped through him each time he put a package in the mail. That boy was the only proof that he had lived. The life of one boy, and the death of thousands. Zachary Taylor's legacy. He wasn't sure when Krueger had discovered the packages. They were the only transgressions Taylor had ever committed against the man who had pulled him from confusion.
“Taylor.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Now that Savakis has the information, you will stop sending the money.”
Taylor didn't breathe. Rage cycled up and, with equal ferocity, discipline slammed down. He allowed Savakis to slip from his sights. He turned back to the little house that could have been his—in another life. The boy and his mother talked in the living room, their affection obvious, even through the rifle's sight.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
He pulled the gun off target and began breaking it down. Once that was accomplished, he clambered down from the chapel's turret, walked through the pews and out into the night. He passed the plastic sealed monument to Leif Eriksson that stood before the church, a gift from the United States centuries ago, and faded into the night. He would never see his son again.
Zachary Taylor did not look back.
26
BURNING MAN, BLACK ROCK DESERT, NEVADA
Junked airplane fuselages lay stacked one on the other like pickup sticks. Rusted, paint chipped, dull gray, the haphazard mass of them pocked Burning Man, a hulking heap rising into the dust-brown air.
Dave Madda called it home.
Sarah had stopped cold on first seeing the edifice. Madda held her forearm, balancing on rickety legs.
“Come on,” he croaked.
“Jesus, Dave.”
Madda squinted up at the mass, as if noticing it for the first time. “You don't like it? Designed it myself.”
“I'd say it's the perfect lair for a mad recluse.”
Madda chuckled at that. “I thought so too. Gotta keep up my image.”
Then he led her inside. The soft cast on her leg bore her weight. The opiate embedded in the cast's shell provided her an airy distance. Getting closer, Sarah saw the joints and solders, the hatches and passageways that linked the fuselages together. A sense of order fell on her as she gazed up at it. Under all the chaos, a symmetry reigned.
“You see it, don't you?” Madda asked.
“I'm not sure what I see, Dave.”
“You see order underlying the form.”
“Maybe.”
“Each cylinder rests on its neighbors, like dominoes mid-fall. The whole thing wraps a central support—like the keystone in an arch.”
“Where is it—the center, I mean?”
Madda wheeled on Sarah. “Why do you want to know?” His words skittered over twitchy paranoia. “You want to break it down, don't you? You do—I know it—you want to break me down.”
“Dave, come on,” she said, trying to calm him. “I don't want to hurt you. Of course I don't. We're friends.”
“Friends. Right,” Madda said with slow precision, as if trying to solidify the memory. “It's the air. The space. Too much of it. Let's get back inside. Then I'll be better.”
With that, Madda led Sarah into his inner sanctum.
.....
Laing hung in space, slender icicles dripping from the tips of his crampons. A biting wind turned him on the axis of his rope, knocking him against the rock face. Ice rose up one arm and melted into his jacket. He struggled to see through a veil of frost. Below him, a gray cliff fell into nothing. Above, rock melded seamlessly into sky.
The primal, unrelenting fear of the dream swept over Ryan. No fighting it. He opened his mouth, desperate for air, cracking through the black, brittle skin of a frostbitten face. He flailed at the cliff with frozen limbs, unable to find purchase. His arms and legs felt like brittle husks. Ascent was impossible. He could only hang.
The dream did not blow apart. It did not shatter in the face of his will to wake up. Instead it lingered, lead heavy. Only grudgingly did it give way to reality.
From his vertical nightmare, Ryan sank back into the blurred fade of desert rushing past. In the space of waking, he hunted for some resonance—something he could cling to as real. The world moved too quickly for him to grasp. Now—with the pathogen raging in him, with the drones silent—he felt alone for the first time in years. The relief he'd expected did not come. He felt dismembered. And tired—like he'd never been before. Tired of fighting in a way he didn't think possible. Maybe it was age—his slow fade.
Laing pushed away the bleakness. He sat up, force-locking himself into reality. He kicked out of auto drive, taking control of the car. An e-mag, it ran on the current flowing under the major highways, a smooth, fast ride. He exited the interstate, and warning lights buzzed. He was about to go off-grid.
Lanes dwindled from ten, to six, to four, and finally trailed into a rutted two-laner. The current died, cutting off the e-mag's drive power. It slowed, bleeding momentum until it came to a rolling stop amid a flat stretch pocked with the detritus of modernity.
Ahead lay Burning Man.
27
BURNING MAN, BLACK ROCK DESERT, NEVADA
“No!” Sarah cried, adamant, shaking her head. “That can't happen.”
Madda had escorted her into his central workstation. The fuselage was filled with next-gen hardware. High tech gadgetry rose from the clutter like new life. Giant vid screens ran the fuselage's length, colors molding and fusing in an algorithmic dance.
“Sarah, there's just too much. I can't separate the virus's genome from the gene work done to facilitate augment integration. It's all mixed up in your DNA. You really want freedom? Ditch the augments.”
Sarah just shook her head. She couldn't let it go. This was her. The augments encrusting her, armoring her—without them she'd stand bare to the world. And that she could not accept. Not again.
“Can't happen. There's too much going on out there. I need my skills.”
Madda pulled from his flow-port, swiveling to give her a watery stare. Sarah shuddered. The man before her was so different—so fragile. His madness gripped her.
Madda looked away in embarrassment. “They're not your skills, Sarah. They're skills you bought—augmented perception, jacked fight/flight, armored body shell—all for sale on the open market.”
Sarah tried not to let her desperation show. “So—amp me higher. Jack me up a little more and maybe I'll be able to expel the pathogen.”
Madda responded with moist laughter. He swiveled back on his chair, spinning around in the dank confines. Sarah sat under a sensory array he had cobbled together from a sea of tech. Lensed sensors stared down at her, rotating slowly. She held still under the mechanical gaze, her anxiety rising.
Dave drew close, his rank breath making Sarah gag. A skeletal hand ran the length of her leg. It wasn't sexual—just cold analysis of data points. Sarah had shed her clothing, and now lay before him in a ratty bathrobe. It was open, allowing the mech eyes to do their work. Madda's hand slithered over her, then thrust inside, pulling the hawkeye from her flesh in a clean jerk.
“Jacking you up won't do a thing.” He held the hawkeye before him, examining it even as its perception of him fed Sarah.
“There's too much going on,” Sarah r
eplied.
The laugh again. “You can't expect me to buy that,” he said with derisive condescension. “Look around you. I put myself here. I built this. Do you think it's any different than what you've done to yourself?”
“Dave—”
Madda cut her off. “It's not.” He waved his arms over his head, his skin loose over shriveled triceps. “I've got my shell. You've got yours. Difference is, I stayed in mine. You took yours out into the wide world. And guess what—it cracked. Now you can ditch it, or let the ocean flow right in.”
Sarah looked into his eyes for a long beat. Then she pulled herself off the table. With a smooth flick, she snagged the hawkeye from the air. One side of her robe flapped open as she holstered the device.
“It was good seeing you, Dave.”
“You're not really going to go?” Madda said, incredulous. “You're someone else's fucking toy! A killing machine on remote control. How many more will die because of you?”
The words hammered at Sarah. She refused them access. She couldn't let her tech go. She'd find someone else. She'd go recluse. Anything.
“Good-bye, Madda.”
“Wait,” he said, grabbing her arm as she hobbled past him. His head bowed in acquiescence. “Okay. Okay, there is one option. But it's a long shot—untested, probably lethal. I . . .” He tried to restrain his emotions. “It's not an option I want you to take.”
Sarah nodded, sitting back on the examining table.
“You're crazier than me, Sarah. That's saying something.”
At that, Sarah smiled. Madda's sallow face broke into a grin of its own.
So much had happened since they'd destroyed Echelon. “Look at us,” Sarah said. “We're not cut out for the world we created.”
Madda stared at her for a long second. In that look, Sarah caught a glimpse of the man Dave had once been. And something else. Something deeper.
Madda turned away, dousing his embarrassment in cynicism. “Well, that probably won't be an issue for you much longer. Not with what I'm shooting into you.”
He swiveled back to his flow-port. On the vid-screen, a massive image of a ship rocketing through black space came up.
“Ummm, I'm thinking that's overkill,” Sarah said.
Madda continued typing, running through stacks of inventory. Finally, he found what he was looking for.
“That's the Urizen Explorer. It annihilates antimatter for propulsion. What that porker uses to push through space, I'm going to put into you.”
.....
Where else would Sarah go? There was no quarter for her—not anywhere official. If she was alive, Laing felt sure she'd seek out Madda. He only hoped the man was capable of helping her. Protecting her.
Laing walked to the barrier—just another neo-Burner, ready to sacrifice for the promise of release. He did not offer a name and no one asked. The cold sweat of fever blanketed him. He felt so weak without the drones. The red-laced desperation in his eyes was familiar to the gate-keepers. They understood weakness. They stripped him of his meager worldly possessions and let him through.
Laing walked into the sprawling city of Burning Man. Before him, the massive effigy flamed hot red. He studied the people around him, living in bizarre domiciles rising into the fading desert light. They moved with a cool, dazed contentment—people who had given up the need to struggle. Something in Ryan revolted at the sight. He put his head down and trudged on.
Close to the sprawl's center stood a spindling crystalline form made of airplane fuselages. Laing saw Madda's hand in the architecture. He'd be there. And Sarah.
Laing approached and palmed the hatch, feeling like he was stepping under a scorpion's tail. It refused him, setting off slow-burn counter-measures. They weren't fucking around here. Laing stood firm, even as sonic blasts, just out of human range, set his teeth on edge. He calmed himself, drawing what remained of the drone amp. Immediately, he felt the pathogen take him. Each moment the drones didn't fight it, he got weaker. Falling to his knees, Ryan pushed into the coding, cracking the security system. Madda might be a great hacker, but no one lived with code like Ryan. He slapped his hand to the hatch. This time it opened.
Laing released the drones and staggered to his feet. The halls ran narrow and skewed. Lit soft, each fuselage melted into the next. Laing pushed forward, stumbling over technological detritus left to its slow decay. Bots twitched around him, Laing's movement triggering remnant coding.
The windows had all been blackened. This was no fortress; it was a crypt. Soon, Ryan lost his bearings. He climbed and descended at random, trusting instinct to lead him.
A woman's scream broke the tomb-still air.
28
BURNING MAN, BLACK ROCK DESERT, NEVADA
—Sarah. Sarah, I'm here. Ryan pushed his thoughts into her, forcing the drones to action.
For years, Laing lived with Sarah in his mind. Every moment of every day, a core-deep link. He had grown used to the intrusion, grown to need it, even to love it. But Sarah had severed that connection, ripping their link free. Its loss had nearly destroyed him.
—Sarah. Please.
No response. Now, staring down at Sarah's prone form, he felt like an interloper, barging in where he didn't belong. To force the link felt like this—it felt like rape.
Laing pulled back from his focus and turned to Madda. The man stood canted, his stance matching his psyche in a twisted symmetry.
“She knew the risks,” Madda said. “Wouldn't let me pull her tech.”
Laing's cold eyes burned into Madda. In that gaze, Madda's fear bloomed—a quick-twitch tick flickering through him. “But maybe she was right,” he said. “Yeah—I mean those augments run deep into her biological systems. She's so meshed in, I'm not sure I could have clean-pulled the woman from the add-ons.”
Laing turned back to Sarah. “She's not responding to our link.”
“Could take some time. Restarting your connection isn't like goggling in. I don't know what kind of code your drones have been spinning over the last years. And then interfacing your shit with her new shit is, well—it's a gamble.”
“And radiating her wasn't?” Laing spat back.
Madda looked away. He purposefully ignored the antiproton gun lying beside Sarah's pale form. “Listen, I didn't want any part of this. I didn't want to make these decisions. Not again. Not anymore. But she pushed!” Madda took a breath, easing out the hyperventilation gripping him.
“Radiating her—as you call it—was the only option,” Dave continued. “The retrovirus she's carrying is totally slick. It's spliced into her own DNA at a bunch of different points. I couldn't be sure that I found 'em all.”
“So you nuked her.”
“Jesus, Ryan.” Madda broke into an extended twitch session, as if his body refused to operate under the stresses that now bore down on him. “To find all the code would have taken time—too much time for Sarah. So I destroyed the trigger.”
“You operated on her?”
“Well, I didn't cut her or anything. No knife work. I used this.” Madda whirled, tapping the screen of his flow-port. The antiproton gun came to life. It buzzed and whirred, panning across the room on smooth actuators. “With this sucker, I blew the trigger that initiated virus shed. Her on-switch.”
“Madda, if you're telling me—”
“No, no. It's not an explosion like you'd think. This sucker fires antiprotons. You know, like antimatter?”
Laing's blank glare pushed Madda deeper into the tech. He seemed glad to lose himself in the explanation. “They don't like each other. A matter/antimatter collision is serious. Any interaction and you're talking—boom! Just a microgram of antimatter will send a spaceship to Mars in less than four months.”
“You're not making me feel better.”
“This gun—it accelerates antiprotons to very specific speeds.” The servos hummed, the gun's long barrel turning on Laing. “Here, I'll show you.” Madda smacked the trigger button before Ryan could stop him.
Laing advanced on Madda. “You crazy—”
“No. No!” Madda stammered, backing away. “If it's going fast enough, the antiprotons punch right through you. Won't leave a scratch.”
Laing stopped himself, hunting for a wound. He found nothing.
“By honing the speed, you control where the matter-antimatter collision takes place. Allows precision surgery.”
“So you blasted the remote that kicked her cells into making the pathogen?”
“Right. Far as I can tell, I succeeded. She's permanently deactivated. The retrovirus is still part of her genome, but the trigger that makes her into a walking weapon is gone. Total success.”
“So why does she look like a lobotomized rat?”
“Well, the trigger wasn't just a frickin' transmitter sitting in her frickin' head. It was a bioengineered masterpiece, wrapped around her brain stem.” Madda held up the gun. “This sucker may be precision, but that doesn't change the fact that I annihilated matter in her head. There's going to be fallout from that. Some serious scrambling.”
“How much?”
“The fuck should I know? Stop asking me questions and link back in. Find her. And find her fast.”
Ryan read a desperation in Dave's voice that he hadn't expected. Was there something between him and Sarah? Ryan pushed the thought away, realizing he'd been stalling, grilling Madda to cover his trepidation.
He lifted Sarah's hand, taking it in his own. It was fish cold. He gripped her, hating what he was about to do—and longing for it in a way that terrified him. He picked up a rusted piece of metal from the sea of junk filling the room.
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