by Nick Thacker
The woman turned around inside the Exo suit and simply got out. She threw the back hatch open and stepped out, then descended the small ladder and landed on her feet. The woman stood there for a few seconds, swaying, but then found her strength and began running.
Julie saw her target destination. There was a single small door near the center of the long wall, painted to match the stone surrounding it. Only the handle and a faint outline of the frame made it visible, but the woman was heading directly toward it.
Except she never made it.
Julie watched in horror as the woman simply froze in mid step. She slowed to a halt, as if she’d just ran into a vat of rapidly setting concrete. Her feet stopped working, and her hands and arms simply melted back to her sides and then came to a stop.
What’s happening? The woman had left her Exosuit and began to run, and then when she’d gotten far enough away she’d once again come under the spell of Garza’s drug.
Ben was still kneeling behind his own suit, controlling the tiny device.
Was that it? Julie wondered. Is he somehow controlling her?
No — that didn’t make sense. It had to be simpler. Ben was next to his suit, and he was able to move freely. The woman had been able to move as well, as long as she was near her suit.
It was a proximity thing, Julie realized. Ben had somehow figured out how to nullify the sound Garza was piping into the room and into their suits, and he’d been able to do the same for the woman. When the woman had left the area around her own suit, she had left the circle of protection.
Julie’s mind raced. She knew she couldn’t get closer to Ben on her own — that would be a direct violation of her commands — but she saw a coupled Exos near the woman’s suit, each looking in opposite directions, perhaps searching for a new target.
I’ll be your target, she thought. She didn’t have to do much — her Exo seemed to accept the new coordinates as soon as she touched the controls, and she turned and pointed them toward the center of the room.
Ben saw her coming. He waved, just a quick flip of his wrist, but it was enough for Julie to know he saw her. He knows I’m coming, she thought. But he’s trying to stay hidden.
That meant he would be taking a huge risk coming to her — he would not only reveal himself to Garza, who was almost without a doubt still watching on from up above somewhere, but Ben would also risk leaving the safety of his suit’s perimeter.
She shifted left, moving closer to Ben’s fallen Exo. It was a move that ensured she’d be protected from view by some crates, but it was also a smart strategic move to be out of direct fire from all sides, so the Exo allowed it. It took half a minute to get there, as they had to dodge the fallen suits and wreckage from the battle, as well as step over or through damaged crates, but she made it. She was ten feet away from Ben when he started running over.
“Move closer!” he yelled. She did.
She was now about eight feet away, and the effect was instantaneous.
64
Garza
Garza waited patiently as the destruction continued. He added a few comments using the microphone in the booth, commending Julie on her performance. He could only see two of the CSO team members from his perch in the booth, but he knew the others would be on the recording, which he planned to preview and help edit before sending it to the buyer.
Victoria appeared in the doorway a minute later.
“Ah, Victoria,” he said. “Please, enter.”
She walked in. Her eyes barely moved, but he knew she noticed Father Canisius in the corner of the room. She walked to the center of the room, staring straight ahead at Garza.
“Please Victoria, turn and greet our guest.”
She turned to her left. “Hello,” she said. Her voice was soft, meek.
“Father Canisius,” Garza continued. “I told you I have not been entirely truthful with you. I understand your trip to Peru has been rather frustrating. You are confused about your reason for being here?”
“I… was. And then I decided that the Church was interested in purchasing technology, only that technology was being sold by a known arms dealer. Legal or not, it would cast a disparaging glow on the Church’s character. By having someone of my stature within the organization attend the proceedings, it would prove to both sides the validity. And yet no one watching on in the international community would accuse someone like me of knowing anything about technology.”
Canisius attempted a shy smile, but it disappeared almost as soon as it reached his cheeks.
“That is… an astute observation, Father. And yet it is woefully wrong.”
Canisius’ eyes fell.
“There is, in fact, a deal that is being finalized. And there is, in fact, going to be an exchange of money — a lot of money — and assets, between your church and my company. However, that money will not be for the purchase of the machines you see here. Not just the machines.”
Canisius frowned. “And what, then, will we be purchasing?”
Garza sipped his coffee, then waved a hand around, motioning toward Victoria. “This.”
“Th — this woman?”
Garza smiled again. “The drug that is inside this woman.” He turned and faced Victoria. “Please, Victoria. Take my coffee and set it on the desk.”
Immediately Victoria complied.
“Thank you. As you can see, she does exactly what she is told.”
Canisius didn’t look convinced. Behind Garza explosions from the Exos’ cannons and turret fire peppered the air, reaching his ears through the bulletproof glass.
“Father Canisius, I know that proving something like this is a bit difficult to do, but I also assume you are not the sort of man who would be interested in testing the willingness of this woman to comply to a request — any request — you may have?”
He didn’t move. Garza nodded at him and continued. “In that case, look again into the demonstration floor. You will see that each of the suits has an operator inside it, both working the controls and acting as the suit’s central nervous system.”
Canisius did.
“How do you think we convinced each of those operators to enter their suit?”
Again, Canisius watched on.
“Finding able operators is the easy part. Finding willing operators is another story entirely. In my quest to find some solution to the problem of soldier insubordination, I stumbled upon a chemical extracted from a plant native to this country. It grows in abundance here, and only here.
“From that chemical, I created a compound that does exactly what you are seeing in Victoria, and what you are seeing in these men and women on the demonstration floor.”
“You created a mind-control drug?”
“In a sense, yes,” Garza said. “And that is the technology my buyer is interested in.”
“What could the Church possibly want with a mind-control drug?” Canisius asked.
“Choose your words wisely, Father, or you may start to sound ironic.” Garza sniffed. “Anyway, to be honest with you — the church doesn’t want the drug. In fact, the only thing they are interested in is giving me money.”
“Giving you — what for?”
“Because if they have a reason to spend money in the region, they have plausible deniability when it comes to cleaning up the mess they made a few months ago. Just beyond this mountain, in the Chachapoyas Valley.”
Of course. Archie had mentioned this, and Father Canisius knew it made the most sense. The Church needed to cover up their dealings here, to make it impossible to trace the events of a few months ago back to them.
“If they give me money, they’ve opened a believable chain of transactions that can ultimately end with their getting off the hook. And they can turn around and sell my tech to the real buyer, both earning them more money and getting my tech to the people who wanted it most all along.”
“And… who is the buyer?”
“Father, don’t be naive.”
Canisius looked su
rprised, then defeated. “The United States.”
“Of course,” Garza said. “They have been hounding me all along for it. Hell, even after setting up this deal and promising updates, someone from the Army set up a sting operation to check on my progress. While it took hardly any time or effort to quash the infiltration, it greatly annoyed me. I am, after all, a businessman. And I don’t take kindly to veiled threats of usurpation.”
Canisius shook his head, ignoring the carnage taking place right on the other side of the glass. “But, I still don’t understand. Why am I here? If this is simply a deal you intend to make with the United States, why allow the Church to be a middleman at all? Why force them to send someone like me out here to play a pawn in your game?”
Garza leaned his head back, eyeing Canisius like a crow might eye a worm. “And finally, Father, we get to the real topic at hand. Finally asking the real questions.”
He paced across the room, then turned and came back to stand next to Victoria, whom he examined as she stared straight ahead, unmoving.
“Father Canisius, it has been many years, but I am still surprised you don’t recognize us.”
65
Julie
The sound suddenly lowered to a nearly inaudible level. She could almost feel the single note still reverberating out of her Exo’s speakers, but it was faint.
Better, the sound was no longer strong enough to activate the chemical in her brain.
She felt her whole body shift back to life, a sort of “melting” feeling, and she shook her head and blinked a few times. She suddenly felt her legs turning to mush, but she locked her knees and waited until the Exo came to a halt. She could still control it, but it felt more like they were two separate beings now — her reactions were just a bit muddled, her control of the machine just a little slower.
She didn’t wait around. She turned around in the suit and unlatched the rear door, then jumped out of the Exo and landed five feet down onto the ground.
Ben was there. She hugged him, but he brushed her off.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Huh? Oh, sorry — not enough time.”
Time.
She’d completely forgotten. As if this mess with the walking tanks wasn’t enough, Sturdivant was going to do something devastating to the entire base, in… what was it? Twenty-five or thirty minutes? She didn’t know — Reggie was wearing Jeffers’ watch.
But if they didn’t release Reggie and Mrs. E from the grip of the scopolamine compound, it wouldn’t matter how much time was left. They’d be dead either way.
She watched Ben work. He was using the butt of his rifle, banging the back of the Exo suit as hard as he could.
“What is it?” Julie asked. “How you were able to get out?”
“I got lucky,” Ben said, once again smacking the rifle against the shoulder section of the machine. “But it’s inside this thing. Here, help me.”
Ben hit the corner of a rectangular sheet of metal, and the side of it dented inward, giving her a small handhold. She walked over and helped Ben by pulling the rectangular sheet of metal, wrenching it sideways as it broke from its top rivets, then coming off completely.
“It’s a weak spot on the armor,” Ben said,” meant to allow easy access to some of the internals.” He paused, climbed the ladder of Julie’s Exo and leaned over to the new hole in the suit. He reached in, moving his arm up and toward the inside of the Exo’s shoulder. “It’s a little amplifier. It’s got a reverse phase polarity switch. Used to have one on my car amp, but I never knew what it did.”
He pulled the device out, which was still hooked up to a few cables — one for power, and two for the two speakers, Julie figured.
“See?” Ben said, flipping the switch.
The high-pitched sound immediately went away. Julie looked up at Ben. “Apparently it’s for turning off mind-control chemicals when you’re fighting giant exoskeleton battle mechs.”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Apparently so. Who would’ve thought they’d need those in Corollas?”
Julie smiled, then frowned. “How much time?”
“Probably getting close to twenty-five minutes left,” Ben said. “Which doesn’t give us much time at all.”
“But we have a plan,” Julie said. “Right?”
“Sort of.”
“Is it ‘run around and try to reverse the polarity of all the Exos between us and Reggie and Mrs. E?”
“Sort of.”
“Do tell.”
“Well, it’s that, but I wasn’t just thinking about Reggie and Mrs. E.”
Julie cocked an eyebrow.
“Way I see it, there are a lot of innocent people in here — not just the four of us — and we might need some help getting out of the base. They might be able to give us a hand.”
Julie looked up. There was a tower of crates that had somehow survived the battle protecting them from Garza’s view. She had seen the observation deck — a bulletproof glass-encased box hovering halfway up the wall on the opposite side of the room — and she assumed that would be where Garza was.
There were no other cameras in the room, so as long as they worked to stay out of sight from the observation deck, Garza wouldn’t be able to see them.
She hoped.
“Okay, sounds good,” she said. “Want to tell me what you did, so we can split up?”
Ben showed her. “It’s literally as simple as flipping a switch. But what it does is reverse the polarity of the exact same sound through the speakers, which is how it really works — it essentially cancels out the sound from the overhead speakers.”
“Like noise-cancelling headphones,” Julie said. “That’s exactly what they do — they produce a sound that’s exactly the same as the incoming noise floor, then they reverse the polarity and send that new signal into the headphones as well, cancelling each other out, and voila. No noise.”
Ben stared at her.
“What?” she asked. “I was a computer geek before I met you.”
“You’re still a geek, Jules. Anyway, as I figured out earlier, it’s proximity based. The volume can only go up so high, so we’ll have to crank each Exo’s amp and then get to the next one. Hopefully we can leapfrog around, eight or ten feet or so at a time, eventually getting everyone out.”
“The culmination of all these reverse-polarity sounds should eventually reach equilibrium with the volume coming from the overhead speakers,” Julie said. “Meaning we won’t have to do all of them. Just enough to create a loud enough reverse signal.”
“Like I said, geek.”
She smiled. “Let’s roll — I really don’t want to find out what it is Sturdivant’s got planned for this place.”
“I don’t want to find out either, geek.”
He leaned in and kissed her, and then pulled away. As she was turning to leave, he called over his shoulder.
“Oh, and if you get yourself killed I’ll kill you.”
“Noted.”
66
Edmund
Father Edmund Canisius stared blankly at the younger woman standing next to the man — the leader of this group called Ravenshadow. He was unable to process what it was the man wanted from him. Why he had called him here, ordered him to be a part of this… massacre.
Down below in what the man had called the “demonstration floor,” a handful of mechanized robots slung bullets at one another, firing upon one another with a hellish fury that made his blood run cold. Never in his life had he been privy to anything remotely like this, and the sheer violence of it all was causing him to stumble over his words.
“I… uh — no, I apologize, I… do not think I know you.”
He looked from the man, to the woman, to the demonstration floor. A robot — an “Exo,” the man had called it — shot another one from the opposite side of the room, catching it in the back. A faint splatter of blood flew forward out the front side of the Exo, and Canisius knew immediately what had happened.
“Another on
e failed, Garza,” one of the seated men said, not even glancing up from his display. He tapped something on the display screen and swiped it to the left. “Looks like Soldier 231,” the man continued. “Fatal wound just below the cranial cavity. Shot fired from…”
Garza. Canisius listened to the conversation between the leader — Garza, apparently — and his soldiers.
He paused.
“What is it?” Garza asked, turning his attention to the man at the workstation. “A problem?”
“Well, I — I’m not sure, sir. The shot seemed to have come from Soldier 192.”
“And?”
“And Soldier 192 is across the room. And they’re wearing a first-gen Exo, sir. Both of them.”
Garza frowned and Canisius tried to read his expression. Is this bad news? Good? Has something changed?
And, who is this Garza person, and why does he think I should know him?
“Was it accidental friendly fire?”
“Unlikely, sir,” another technician said. This man was also swiping on his screen, pulling his fingers apart to enlarge a video image. The technician played the video again, first full-speed, then in reverse at half-speed. Canisius couldn’t see exactly what was onscreen, but he knew it was a replay of the kill that had just been made.
The man continued. “All of the second-gen suits are still active, and they are all near the west wall, except for suit 4, which is lying dead on the southern wall.”
“And the shot came from a first-gen and hit a first-gen, and it was on purpose?”
“Yes, sir. It appears so.”
Garza sniffed again, then chewed his lip. “Find out why. Do we have cameras on the south wall?”
“Not the entire wall, sir. That’s the dead spot directly underneath us.”
“Fine. Get cameras on the second-gen suits and the remainder of the CSO team. I want to know what they’re doing, and why one of the first-gens hit its comrade.”