by Nick Thacker
“You — you kicked me in the — shin,” Ben said, gasping for air. “Who — who does that?”
The men responded physically, and Ben felt himself losing control of his own body. Alarm klaxons were sounding in his mind, over the sound of his own screams, and still the men attacked.
Valére’s expression wasn’t changing. He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t completely disengaged. He almost seemed hesitant, as if killing Ben was not on his agenda for the day.
They hit him, again and again, and Ben closed his eyes. He just wanted it to be over. Flashes of the others — Julie, Reggie, Joshua — all came to him, but none of the images changed his emotional state. He was completely done.
Finally it stopped. Ben was panting, his eyes swollen shut, and there was blood dripping freely down onto his shirt and ski pants. Sweat had loosened the ropes around his arms and hands, but not nearly enough for him to escape. Even if it had been enough, he was too weak to move. His arms, bent backwards for the past hour, had caused his shoulders to be strained to the point of nearly dislocating, and he felt the irony in that the pain would only increase as his body fully warmed up from being outside.
He heard a voice, but it sounded like it was underwater. It was his name, but he still could barely recognize it.
“…Ben. Are you still with me?” the man said. He spoke a few words in French to one of the guards, and then turned back to Ben. “Hello, Mr. Bennett?”
Ben forced one eye open. It took all the remaining strength he had.
“I am leaving, Ben. I feel you will be glad to hear that, but I wanted you to know, before I go: you are wrong. You have always been wrong, Ben.”
Ben breathed in, forcing the life-giving breath down into his lungs. It wasn’t easy anymore, the involuntary functions of the human body. He had to think about everything, it seemed. He wondered if it would require his oversight to keep his blood pumping.
“You are wrong, Ben. I am not going to explain all of this to you. I am not going to kill you. You will die here, but that will be your own fault. Life is not a comic book, Ben, and you are not a hero.”
They waited there, Valére and Ben, for an entire minute, both men struggling with life. Valere’s sickness was evident to Ben now, just as his own pain and suffering was evident to Valére. The other men might as well have not been in the room. It was Ben and Valére and no one else.
He thought of Julie, hoping for one last conversation with her. He needed to talk to her, just once more, and having an imaginary conversation in his mind would do no good. He felt his strength — what was left of it — draining, knowing that his body had given up. There was nothing else but his mind, nothing more to give the world.
His single open eye found Valére — a blurry shell of a man — and he focused on it as much as he was able. He stared, waiting. Waiting for it to end. He wasn’t going to go out with his eyes closed, if he could help it. He stared at the man who had done all of this, who had caused all of this pain and grief and suffering, for so many people, and he knew Valére was right. He would die here, and he would die not understanding all of it.
But wasn’t going to die without knowing one thing.
“Why?”
Valére tilted his head slightly, still looking down at Ben.
“Why… are you here?”
Valére sighed, then spoke again to the men beside him. They turned and left the room. His expression grew concerned again, and Ben felt something grow cold inside of him, even before Valére spoke. He recognized the feeling, and it immediately replaced everything else.
Fear.
“Ben, it is really very simple.” He coughed three more times, then wiped blood from his cheek with the side of his wrist. “I came here to die.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-seven
Level 8 was a wasteland, the cold storage and maintenance level reeking of war and destruction. A smoky haze filled her vision, and through it she could see a few small fires still smoldering. Julie saw the expanse of the level from her perch on the rope, hovering just inside the elevator shaft. She peered out between the diamond-shaped metal grate of the elevator door, grasping it with a hand to steady herself as she swung slightly on the rope.
Thanks to Colson’s dramatic attack on the security guard, the soldier was now blocking the elevator car one level above, giving the ropes they had tied onto the support beam room to pass beneath. Had the car continued its descent and severed their ropes, they very well might have had a much quicker trip down the elevator shaft.
It was a serendipitous accident, but they needed whatever they could get in that arena.
“Let’s keep moving,” Joshua whispered next to her. “Whatever happened here is over.”
I’ll say, she thought. She nodded and continued down the line. The rope hurt in her hands, and she knew she only had a minute or so of rappelling remaining before she would need to stop and let go. She looked down, finding only darkness.
“We’re stopping at 9, right?” Colson asked.
“Is that the server farm?”
“Yes,” Colson answered. “And the most likely spot for any data your benefactor wants to get his hands on.”
“Our ‘benefactor’ pretty much gave us a death sentence sending us down here. I’m just as curious as everyone else, or I’d be climbing this rope, not going deeper into this hellhole.”
Julie agreed, but didn’t say anything.
“Besides,” Joshua said, “I’ve got my own questions I want answered.”
“Your father?” Julie asked, before she could stop herself.
Joshua looked at her, but thanks to either the dim lighting in the shaft or Joshua’s typically stoic demeanor, his expression revealed nothing.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Some questions about that.”
They continued downward, the last ten feet or so growing increasingly more and more difficult as their weariness and fatigue fought against their best efforts. The final feet to the next level’s door came far too slowly for Julie, but she held on.
“Everyone okay?” Joshua asked.
Colson and Julie muttered their responses, and Joshua began to kick the locking mechanism that held the door in place. The device was like a small padlock, but one attached to the door. It appeared to be a safety feature alone, rather than one intended for security as well, and it took him only three attempts before the lock broke and fell away, the metal grate now free.
He slid it open, and Julie was the first to touch down on the new level. She wiped her sore palms on her pant legs, then brought her gun around and lifted it. Julie helped Colson the remainder of the way down and out of the elevator shaft while Joshua slid the door closed again and attached the busted lock to the outside of it. It wasn’t secure, but it would at least hold the door closed for the time being.
“Seems empty to me,” she whispered.
“If it’s not, they definitely know we’re here,” Joshua replied. “And that means they’re waiting to ambush us.”
“Then let’s get out of the way,” she said, moving to the left, toward a huge array of computer racks. It looked similar to the racks stretching from floor to ceiling on the level below, where they had found Jonathan Colson, but these racks, she knew, were filled with actual computers, not human beings.
She shuddered as she remembered it, hoping they wouldn’t have to trek down there again. As she pictured the drawers, each filled with a body, she had a startling thought.
“I have something I want to find out, too,” she said aloud.
“What’s that?” Joshua asked.
“It’s… it’s something I’m surprised I didn’t consider earlier. But with everything going on, I didn’t stop to think about it.”
“Let’s figure out how to get into this computer first,” Joshua said. “Colson, is there going to be an access point? Like what you described to Bennett?”
Colson nodded. He looked goofy holding a weapon, but he at least knew which end to hold. “There should be,” he said. �
�It will most likely be a sort of computer kiosk, with a monitor and keyboard as well.”
“Well that makes things easy,” Joshua said, the sarcasm not lost on Julie.
Apparently the sarcasm was lost on Colson. “Actually, it won’t be easy,” he said. “The computer will have additional security measures in place that I’m not sure I can override. Plus, we have to find the dang thing. In this room, it could be —“
“Shh, keep it down,” Joshua said, holding up a hand. “I hear voices.”
Julie squinted listening. After a moment, she too heard the voices echoing off the walls and down the rows of computer servers. It sounded like two or three men, speaking French.
“Anyone understand any of it?” Joshua asked.
“I speak a little French, and I think that’s what it is,” Colson said, “but I can’t hear it well enough.”
“Okay, well we’ll get closer. Maybe they’ll lead us to the access terminal.”
They traveled along the exterior of the room, the deja vu of nearly identical maneuvering on the level directly below them washing over her. Trying to keep up with, yet stay out of sight from, security guards, all while navigating a maze of racks.
It was eery how similar everything was up here, and while merely a coincidence, Julie couldn’t help but feel like she was on to something. It’s uncanny. And it’s certainly related, she knew. The racks downstairs, and the servers up here. She tried to investigate as they walked around the perimeter, examining from afar the rows of blinking lights. She followed the outline of the cabling sprouting from the ends of each shelving unit, neatly collected and bound together with zip ties, bundled together for delivery —
“The cables are going into the floor,” she muttered, barely audible.
“What was that?” Joshua whispered, still walking in front of her. The men’s voices had stopped, but they could now hear typing, seemingly from right around the corner.
“I think we’re on them,” Joshua said. “Right up ahead.”
“I said the cables are going into the floor,” she repeated.
“And?”
“And if you remember from the level just below us, those were going into the ceiling.”
Joshua crouched down, Julie and Colson following suit. He turned around to face her. “You’re implying that they’re connected?”
“I’m implying that they’re one and the same. Joshua, Colson, I think the bodies down there are powering the computers up here.”
“That’s impossible,” Colson said. “These machines are powered by traditional —“
“No, Colson, that’s not what I’m saying. I mean they’re controlling the computers. They’re feeding them. It’s a farm, one that provides parallel computing using biological structures, likely even on the quantum level.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Colson said. “I was in one of those boxes, and… and —“
“And you were about to be hooked up to a supercomputer. Your brain was going to become part of the hive mind they’re using to…”
She stopped. To what?
This was the end of her line of reasoning. She had no answers anymore, but she was sure she was right about the body farm downstairs. Somehow the scientists here — the company — had created a way to keep the bodies in stasis, providing their needs for fuel and waste disposal, all to use their most valuable asset that came included in every model of human ever born.
The human brain.
And this was not one or two brains working together, but hundreds. Possibly over a thousand, all interconnected and feeding data and processing power upstairs, to the matching number of computer systems.
A wave of emotions consumed her, and she nearly fell over. My God, she thought.
The power they would be capable of, the sheer audacity of the mission, and the absolute fascination she had in understanding how it all fit together was too much.
“I… I need to stop,” she whispered.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Joshua said. “We’re here. They’re just around the corner, typing on some computer. It’s got to be the access machine, right?”
Colson nodded. “Without a doubt.” Then, after a moment of thought, he added, “It’s what Ben was supposed to access.
The thought of Ben adding itself to the plethora of jumbled thoughts and emotions floating around in her head nearly pushed Julie to the edge. She shook her head. “No, he would have… he must have…”
“Joshua grabbed her shoulder, steadying her. “It’s okay, Julie. We’re here now. We can finish it.”
She knew what he was trying to tell her. We can finish the mission. Ben’s mission. And we can grieve for him when we’re done.
She suddenly didn’t feel the ambition and drive she had been feeling earlier. The thought of Ben being gone was still there, but this time it was coupled with a feeling of absolute helplessness. A feeling of uselessness.
Joshua was prepared for this reaction in her, it seemed, and he tightened his grip on her shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Stay with us. We need you.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek and nodded, noticing that both Joshua and Colson were staring at her.
“You got this, Juliette,” Colson said. “You got this.”
She nodded again, a bit of fledgling strength finally lodging itself in her psyche, and she stood up. “Fine,” she said. “I need to know for sure anyway. Let’s get this over with.”
Joshua looked like he was about to smile, but he held it in and stood with her. “Here’s the plan. We —“
Julie started firing before Joshua had even finished the sentence. There were three men, all standing with their back to her, and they seemed engrossed in what they were doing on the computer. The tears stung her eyes, and the blurriness they caused didn’t help her aim, but she was close enough to them that after the first few shots, the bullets began to hit their mark.
The first man, the guard on the left, went down. She began on the second, aiming for the one of the right, when she heard Joshua firing as well. The shots were loud, only reverberating more through the halls of computer equipment and hard walls, but she ignored the pounding on her eardrums.
The man on the right fell as well, but when she slid her gun over to start on the guard standing in the center, the one working at the computer console, she saw that he had already spun around and was preparing to fire his own weapon.
And she was standing directly in his line of sight. She knew he wasn’t going to miss, but she couldn’t say the same for her own aim. He was moving in slow motion, but she could see his finger compressing, the bullet only milliseconds from leaving the barrel and slamming into her.
His nostrils flared, his jaw tight. His eyes bore into her with the same fire she knew she would feel when his bullet hit its mark in her chest. She tried to react, tried to pull her own trigger, but her fingers were locked in place, the knuckles on each hand unwilling to budge. Everything inside her froze, and her eyes stared forward as the man pulled the trigger the final minuscule distance.
The gun’s barrel exploded, and still she stood, silently watching. The man moved, jumped even, and she was confused. His gun, a small subcompact, flew sideways, and the bullet that had been fired flew up and away from her head. A near miss.
Joshua was there, running, next to her and then gone, and he was firing his gun. Three, four, then five shots rang out in the space, and this time her ears couldn’t handle the pressure. They seemed to just shut off, suddenly leaving her underwater, like listening to the world around her through thick headphones.
Colson was yelling something, at her or someone else, but the words were muffled and covered by the gunshots. Joshua hit the man, the five bullets he had sent into him apparently not enough, and Joshua and the guard flew into the metal rack that housed the computer station, then down to the floor.
The guard was dead before he hit the ground, but Joshua stared down from his position on top of the man for a full three seconds, waiting for
him to move.
Finally the world sped up to normal time, and she felt the rush of everything around her and inside of her cracking and spilling out. She was finished. She had been stretched past her breaking point, broken, then stretched again, and she was ready to lie down and wait for the end of it all.
Instead, Joshua was talking to her. She couldn’t hear at first, but her ears finally cleared and his words reached her.
“…Need your help with the computer. Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Next time wait for me to explain the plan.”
She nodded again. “What was the plan?”
He smiled. “Start shooting, and don’t stop until they’re all dead.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-eight
“Hold your fire!” Reggie yelled. “Take out as many of those bastards as you can.”
They didn’t have enough ammunition to even make a dent, but the Chinese still hadn’t landed any shots into their soft targets. Most of the tables were chewed through from rounds, but they were alive, for the moment.
“They’re not shooting at us,” Kyle said.
“Right. They’re going to keep shooting at us until —“ Reggie stopped mid-sentence as he repeated the statement in his mind. “What?”
“They’re not shooting at us, I said.”
“Well then what the hell are they —“
The ominous buzz grew to a cacophonous roar as Reggie realized what was happening. He hadn’t really noticed the sound consciously until now — until there were so many drones in the room they couldn’t be ignored.
“The drones!” Mrs. E yelled. “That is how they will purge. The drones are attacking the Chinese.”
Reggie felt a new wave of energy come over him as he understood. “This is our last shot,” he said. “We need to get around the side of the room, toward the stairs. If we can make it — “
A drone shot over his head, inches away from scraping his scalp. He jumped, then raised his weapon and fired.