Empyre

by Josh Conviser

  “A similar device was once screwed into my own eye.”

  The yacht crested an ocean swell, knocking at the trio's balance. Sarah used the moment to drive her fingers into Krueger's eye socket. Despite the pain and the terror running through her, jacked reactions did their work. She managed a slice with her fingernail before Taylor pulled her away.

  Krueger spun back, stung by the rush of pain. He drew a hand to his eye and it came away bloody. Krueger looked up, composure evaporating. He slapped Sarah across the jaw, a fleshy pop punctuating the moment. Her cheek retained the bloody imprint of his strike.

  “Laing stole my life's work!” he railed. “You couldn't understand.”

  “So this is revenge? All this? Destroying EMPYRE, setting me up, drawing Ryan into the open to—what, kill him?”

  “Oh, it's revenge. And it's more, Sarah—so much more. EMPYRE had the right idea. But they thought too small. The used me as a bullet, when I, in fact, should be the one wielding the gun.”

  “So you'll become EMPYRE—using terror and chaos to fuel your own ends.”

  “Is that so wrong? You saw the power of it—you pulled data on most of the recent jobs. You know just how powerful terror can be.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I'm going to finish what you started, Sarah. You and Ryan. You brought Echelon down. You pushed the world into a new era. But you couldn't handle the ramifications. Evolution is messy. It's struggle. It's death. It's violence. And out of it, we grow.”

  “So all of this is for the greater good?”

  “Can you deny it? You were part of EMPYRE, Sarah.”

  Sarah looked down, the weight of the spike pulling at her eye. “Something I'll be happy to forget.”

  Krueger laughed. “Small-minded. You. Laing. EMPYRE.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No matter how you push, you're just a small fish in a big pond. You might become a gun—but just one of many.”

  “Depends on the size of the gun. Echelon wiped me for a reason. What did I have in my head that was so very dangerous?”

  Krueger leaned back against the railing, ocean running under him in whitewash. “I think I know, Sarah. I see pieces of it in dreams. And Laing will get it for me.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, he will. I'm not going to disrupt your link. You'll be able to burrow into his head and give him running detail on your slow fade. It will tear him apart.”

  Krueger nodded to Taylor. He pushed Sarah into the ship and down to a cabin devoid of furniture. Its dull black seemed to eat the light from the hall. Taylor shoved her in. She wheeled on him, defiant.

  “I see it. You're thinking you can suffer through the loss in silence.” Krueger slid close to Sarah, just out of arm's reach. “But you won't. It's not about strength. It's more primal than that. You'll link to him. And he'll return what's mine.”

  With that, Krueger stepped back and Taylor slammed the hatch shut. It vacuum-locked with a pneumatic hiss, leaving Sarah in total darkness.

  Krueger was right. She didn't last long.

  In the darkness, she stumbled, then squatted down on her haunches, trying to remain calm. She pulled the hawkeye from its holster and lofted it. She could just make out its muffled impacts with the cabin's insulated walls. It saw nothing.

  The hawkeye plunked to the floor. Sarah splayed out, scratching for it. She fumbled over it and holstered the thing.

  Then, with measured deliberation, she studied the spike plugged into her mind. Loss welled in her—the smooth trickle of water over rock. Sarah forced herself into memory, pushing deep into her past, even as the images faded. Waves of regret engulfed her.

  She couldn't know what parts of her life were being chewed through. Couldn't know what she had forgotten. She only had a widening sense of solitude. It grew in her, squatting in the space her memories left behind.

  In black isolation, she fought against a need to link to Ryan. He had to stay away from her. Whatever Krueger wanted, he could never get. But the pain threatened to overwhelm her—as if she were grieving her own slow death.

  If only I had been stronger, she thought. If only I had gone under—just one more time. The comfortable mantra revolved through her mind.

  No. The word reverberated through her. Not like this. She would not end like this, locked into the binge-purge cycle she had succumbed to for so long. One more time would have done nothing. All her tech, all her augments, and she was still Sarah Peters. Nothing changed that.

  Now, she turned from the cycle and did what she had feared for so long. She turned in and looked at herself, under all the tech, beneath the shell of armor she had constructed. The reality stung. The shape of her degradation. How could love have done this to her? How could it have weakened her so?

  As she stared into her fading picture show, rage surged up in her. For Ryan. For the man who had put her here.

  —Goddamn you, Ryan. She couldn't help herself.

  —Sarah. Are you okay?

  —No. I'm not. I've got a fucking needle in my eye sucking my life away.

  —I will get you out of there.

  —Ryan, just stay away. Krueger's got your number.

  —I'll get him what he wants.

  —Oh, please. We both know where that will lead.

  —I don't care.

  —You know what—don't bother. I'm sick of being the lure. I'm sick of being fucking sick. I'm sick of you, Laing.

  —Sarah . . .

  She cut right through him.

  —There are some things—some people—I'd rather forget.

  38

  Sarah's hate sliced through Laing. He tried to tell himself it was frustration, or desperation. But the justification wouldn't hold. Something in her was better off not knowing him. Laing coughed, the staccato hacks pulling him from his ruminations. Recovering slowly, he gazed out the skim jet's window to the Pacific Ocean flashing below him.

  Through the trip, Laing had fallen into Sarah's slow loss. He found it difficult to engage in the world around him with her thoughts flowing through his head.

  “Regret's comin' off you in buckets,” Frank said, relaxing into the soft leather of his seat. “Have a beer. We got full bar on this thing.”

  Laing pulled back from his musings, focusing on Savakis. His boxy frame looked out of place within the jet's elegance. He bulged from the seat, his bulk discordant with its elegant lines.

  “I should have stayed away,” Ryan said.

  “Oh, come on. There's no resisting my charm. Oh—you meant Sarah?”

  Laing looked through him, unable to connect with the humor.

  “Christ!” Frank said, bucking back in the chair. “You got angst, man.”

  “Sarah's losing her mind. Krueger's after something so bad that Turing spiked him. And I'm right at the center.”

  “It's not angst. You got doubt.”

  “So far, I've been played.”

  “Like a bigmouth bass. We both have.”

  “So a little doubt's in order.” Laing paused, hating to admit weakness. But at that moment, the gut-wrench so gripped him that he couldn't continue without expelling it. “I don't think I can do this. Not anymore.”

  “The fuck you can't!” Frank shot back. “You got the game. Own it, or it will own you.”

  Laing laughed, sliding deep into his seat. He envied Frank's black-white world. Ryan closed his eyes, letting Frank drop away. After a time, even Sarah's thoughts faded. And just as sleep crept in, he felt it. That place in him where Christopher Turing wasn't dead—where the past years hadn't happened and he had peace.

  They clocked the kilometers, tracking over rough ocean. Nearing land, the skim jet banked into the sky, churning air to reach altitude. Laing looked down on the city of Los Angeles, a place he had once called home. He couldn't find a piece of himself that cared.

  The jet lanced west, into the desert. Madda had been reluctant when Laing contacted him. At least until Ryan related Sarah's present position.

 
; After that, there had been a long pause, soft static snowing the line. “Better come get me,” he had said.

  Now, they approached Burning Man. High overhead, Laing could make out the effigy's unending blaze. Buildings spread from it, amoeba-like, into the desert. The jet went into slow descent. As it did, people began to emerge from the buildings, breaking into the heat-dried air. At ten meters, the jet shut down its engines and went to electromags, coming in on a pillow of magnetic resistance.

  Landing, Frank and Laing hit the stairs. Even as the heat enveloped them, both sensed a rising panic running through the Burners.

  “Keep us hot,” Frank said to the pilot.

  He received a deep chirp from the cockpit. None of the CIA jets used human pilots. Mechy piloting gear didn't require security clearance.

  They descended and were quickly surrounded by a mass of Burners. The hot stink of body odor rose from the group. Glazed eyes followed their moves, not hostile, but certainly not comforting.

  “The great unwashed,” Frank said to Laing under his breath.

  “Smells that way,” Laing said, drawing a soft chuckle from Frank. “Come on.”

  They pushed through the crowd and entered Madda's fuselage labyrinth. Trampling through hall after hall, they heard sounds and movement ahead.

  Reaching Madda's inner sanctum, they found six Burners hovering over a twitchy Madda. Hands placed on him, they appeared deep in meditation—all save Dave, who shot up as Frank and Laing entered.

  “Hi, there!” His voice was high-pitched and nerve-raw. Madda snaked his way through the pile of hands.

  “What's this? A final lovefest?” Frank asked.

  “Ahh, funny. No, they were just—”

  “We're helping our friend,” one of the men said as he rose. His face was grooved, hard lined like desert rock. A matted gray beard hung from his chin.

  “I'm sure,” Laing said.

  The old man turned from Laing and Frank, pushing them from his consciousness. His eyes burned into Madda, forcing his presence on the frail man.

  “It's not time for you, David. Leaving here would be a mistake.”

  “A mistake,” Madda repeated, eyes wavering, unable to hold on the old man's. “Maybe you're right, Allan.” He turned uneasily to Laing, eyes teary with fear and confusion.

  “Madda, we don't have time for this,” Ryan said.

  “There's time, here. Always time to help our friends.”

  “Fuck me,” Frank said to himself, then flipped on Ryan. “We need this fruit loop? Really?”

  “Yes,” Ryan replied.

  Frank grunted and wheeled on Allan. He slammed the old man into the curved wall and held him there for a long moment. The man didn't fight back.

  “Listen, Allan,” Frank spat.

  One of the Burners, a thick man in ragged pants and no shirt, stepped forward. Frank dropped him with a boxer's uppercut to the jaw, dirty and effective.

  “Allan Simon,” the man replied, his smooth tone unchanged by the shift in his circumstances.

  “Listen, Allan Simon, I can see why you want this twitch bucket sticking around. I get it. He's your meal ticket.”

  “It's not like that,” Madda stammered.

  Neither Allan nor Frank paid any attention to Madda. Frank pushed closer to the old man. “It's exactly like that, isn't it? You been sapping this guy for a good long while. Well, gravy train's comin' to the station. You'll have to manage this shit pile without him.”

  The man's face radiated contentment, never slipping. He raised a hand to Frank's neck, fingers flexing down with light pressure, a move of assurance. Frank slammed him again, but the man's nirvana calm didn't budge.

  “That's not our way, friend. Through the journey of his life, David has come to himself in a dark wood.”

  As he spoke the lines, Madda began to recite with him, the mantra resonating through the tight room. The other Burners picked it up.

  In unison: “How hard to tell the nature of that forest—savage, dense, harsh, the very thought of it renews the fear.”

  Madda's voice trailed off, stuttering to a close, even as Frank's began. Savakis didn't know the words, but mumbled with the tone, his resolve slackening.

  “How we came there, we cannot tell. We were full of sleep when we for-sook the one true way.”

  The words rang familiar to Laing, memory stilling him. He'd read them in an ancient poem about Hell and Heaven.

  Madda shook out, reviving even as Frank fell. A Burner stepped forward to place his hands back on Dave. Dave, seeing the move, struggled to a workbench and grabbed a syringe. He tried for Laing, who watched the scene in dull confusion, clouded by his own fog of sickness.

  The Burner that Frank had punched grabbed Madda's leg, toppling him. The man pulled at Dave's pant leg, revealing skin and slapping his hand to it. Laing began to realize what was happening as Dave's eyes slid back to placid. But just before nirvana closed in on Dave, he raised the syringe and slammed it into Ryan's boot. It pierced flesh, punching into the small bones, and releasing its contents.

  The mantra rose back. “Let us wake, rise through the fire and find the path again.”

  Ryan fell. Madda's injection coursed through him. He felt its pulsing rush through his body. A ringing grew in his ears, like the reverb of fast-cooling metal. He coughed, dredging something green and horrible from his lungs. It lay before him, festering on the dirty floor.

  And something in him flipped. Renewed. A charge he hadn't felt since . . .The drones pushed into his mind, resurging to max capacity.

  Madda engineered a cure for the virus! With the realization, the tingle of augmented awareness flushed Ryan.

  Laing felt hands on him, and the pulsing mantra.

  The hands!

  A cold rush seeped into him from the contact, the slow-push psyche-delic holding his mind for an instant, bending him to the Burners' will. He shook through it, drones attacking the drug with vigor. Killing it.

  Laing rose. He jammed a shoulder up and through the lock Allan had on Frank, breaking the contact. Frank stumbled back. Laing lifted Madda from the floor and away from the Burners' hands. Now he could see what they were holding: subderm drug packs with compression shot injectors. They continued to paw each other, feeding the nirvanic bliss.

  Seeing he had lost, the old man broke into an enraged yell. He flew at Ryan, slamming into him, clawing him, biting him with all the force he could muster. Laing felt the man's teeth sink into the meat of his neck. He allowed it to happen. Then he held the man to him, letting drone-soaked blood flow into the man's mouth, choking him.

  With the drone connection, he felt the man's rage, and the fear creeping over his bliss. Laing recalled a line from that old poem. He forced the words into the man's mind.

  —Through me, into the city of woe; through me, a message of pain; through me, the passage for lost souls. Abandon all hope, you who enter here.

  Laing pushed in on the old man, who had stilled with the onslaught. His legs fell from Ryan's hips. He pulled away, mouth dripping gray. He watched the bite on Laing's neck fade to soft pink flesh, then looked up at Laing in confused terror.

  Ryan pulled Frank and Madda out of the room. Several of the Burners pushed to follow.

  The old man stilled them.

  “Lll . . .” he couldn't seem to find the word. “Let them go.”

  39

  Back in the skim jet, Ryan slumped into his seat. Whatever Madda had given him continued its course, stilling the retrovirus. Laing drank as much water as he could stomach. He hadn't eaten in days. But with each moment, he felt better. Stronger.

  Opposite him, Frank and Madda continued to bicker.

  “You knew they were drugging you?” Frank rubbed at his head, still working to clear the cobwebs.

  “Well, yeah.” Madda couldn't seem to find his balance. He wobbled with the turbulence.

  “And you just let them do it? For a smart guy—”

  “Listen—Frank, is it? I'm in no mood right now
. You want my help? Shut up and listen.” Madda twitched with the effort, putting a hand over his eye to shield his view out of the skim jet.

  “Madda, will this wear off?” Ryan asked.

  “No. I found enough of the retrovirus's genome that I could engineer my own splice virus to corrupt its code. You're pathogen free. Back to fighting form.”

  “What'd I tell ya? It's gonna work out.” Frank grinned at Laing.

  Ryan smiled back. Then, he pushed close to Madda. “We need to talk about Krueger.”

  “No.”

  “Madda—”

  “We need to talk about Christopher Turing.”

  The name stung Ryan. He pushed through. “Madda, what was in Krueger's head?”

  “Like you said—that's something between Turing and Krueger.”

  “You don't know?”

  “Well, I know what Krueger was into. He'd been tracked for a long time before you retrieved him. Turing was obsessed with the guy from a long way back, but I'm not sure why. I mean, Krueger was an academic from an old family. Sure, that family developed weapons, and Krueger designed his share of biologicals, but it was nothing Echelon couldn't handle. Then there was Memphis.”

  “And I hauled him in.”

  “But not for that. I mean, we could have just turned him over. Turing spiked him for something else.”

  Madda held silent. Finally, Frank lost patience. “What?!”

  “I really don't know,” Dave replied. “He had big-time skills working biological coding. Smart. Very, very smart. Scary smart. There's the average bear, then there's—”

  “Madda.” Laing caught him before Dave spiraled out.

  “Right, sorry. He got deep in, man. Had some scary knack with biological patterns. His work at the Center for Advanced Studies dealt with computational equivalence.”

  Madda got blank stares from his companions. “Right,” he continued. “That's the idea that simple rules, applied over many iterations, can lead to vast complexity. So, if you can capture those rules, you can extrapolate larger patterns. Means Krueger was trying to uncover the core patterns upon which life is based.”