by David Yoon
The doom doom doom behind him paused. Something squeaked, then shattered. Then Cal Peers’s footsteps resumed.
Max dared a glance: Cal Peers now held something in his hands.
A bat.
A broom.
An ax.
No, thought Max. How had he missed that? His field of vision finally opened up to reveal a three-ring binder filled with mummified papers. Max threw it.
The binder exploded on impact, split easily by the blade of Cal Peers.
Maybe there’s another ax farther up, thought Max. Maybe there’s a working gun. Maybe there’s a jetpack and I can fly away like Astro Boy.
Max read Astro Boy for the first time by a Christmas tree when he was little.
He realized his entire life was beginning to flash by in his mind. This was bad.
“Stop,” he said to his mind.
“First you,” said Cal Peers, climbing and climbing. “Then Pilot, then your garbage parents, your garbage friends, everyone.”
Max ran. He found a thermos, threw it. He found a folding chair on a landing.
Cal Peers batted the chair away, and it flapped to the ground far below like a shot bird.
doom doom doom
Max looked up and found a curved rectangle of light outlined above. He ran to it, this time making sure to scan with crazed eyes at everything, anything along the way—what he should’ve been doing all along.
And finally, he found it.
A small orange case with the clear pictogram of an emergency flare, captioned in Cyrillic. Yes. He unclipped it from the wall and kept going.
He reached the rectangle of light in record time—Cal Peers was at least ten seconds behind—and shoved the hatch open on shrieking hinges.
He emerged into pure light and cold. He stomped the hatch shut. The latch crumbled in his hands, but no matter. He walked as close to the opposite edge of the rooftop as he dared—it was so small, this rooftop—knelt, scrambled to load the flare gun, and aimed.
He could hear it: doom doom doom doom
The hatch bounced, then was silent. It bounced again.
Max freshened his grip.
The hatch burst open to reveal a triumphant ax-head shining in the sun.
Max knew how to do this. Look down the barrel with one eye, line it up—
Cal Peers stood tall on the rooftop now. A nice big target.
Max squeezed.
The flare ignited within the barrel for a disturbingly long instant before propelling itself out in a smoky line that ended at Cal Peers’s armpit.
Cal Peers did not cry out. He danced. He hit himself over and over, for his shirt was on fire, and now his flesh, and for a moment Max thought how ironic it was that they were surrounded by a natural fire extinguisher—snow—but could not use any of it.
Max glanced at the ax on the ground. Cal Peers immediately clocked his intent and stepped on the handle: Mine. He tried to raise his arm, but winced. He seemed to accept this situation, like a cyborg would. Left leg at 60 percent capability; left arm at 10 percent; dominant arm still fully functional.
Cal Peers, as hurt as he was, knelt to get the ax. He looked like he had dipped his hand into a lake of hellfire. He clawed red streaks onto his pants to wipe them clean, prepared a one-handed backswing, and approached with renewed anger.
Goddammit.
There was no escape from that stupid ax except off the roof and far down, and Max did not know how deep the snow went. Perhaps it went for centuries.
He fumbled the second and final flare in. But the barrel was all wrong.
“You child,” said Cal Peers. “You imbecile.”
The cartridge was backwards, goddammit. Fucking backwards.
“You think you are so good,” said Cal Peers, enjoying watching Max struggle with the gun. “There is no good. There is no evil.”
Max pounded the cartridge in. Yes.
“There is only me versus you,” said Cal Peers.
“Now there’s just me, fucker,” said Max.
Max aimed, fired, and went momentarily deaf.
The flare had not propelled itself. It had exploded with a sharp pok that repeated again and again across the mountains.
How old were these flares? Thirty years old? Forty? Max wanted to cry.
Max was indeed crying. His face was covered in wet.
All of this and for what, was all he could think.
Max wiped his face and found blood, not tears. His hand—oh God, his hand—was still there, sweet beautiful hand, but he could not move it. It felt numb, like when you hit a line drive with an aluminum bat, but a thousandfold. He raised his arm reflexively, expecting to be hacked in half by Cal Peers.
But Cal Peers was admiring the scenery.
Specifically, Cal Peers was admiring the millions of tons of snow now rushing at them, unlocked by the sound of the exploding flare.
There were no more cartridges for the gun. Max stood and prepared to fight.
Fight with what?
When Max was a kid, he hit his first fastball line drive with an aluminum bat and marveled at the numbness in his hands while everyone screamed at him to run—
The rooftop jolted. Snow must have hit the base of the tower. Max regained his balance and dropped as low to the ground as he could.
Which—of course, idiot—Cal Peers took as an opportunity to charge anew. He raised the ax once again. Max crouched but stayed low, for now the tower was really bobbling. No—the tower was leaning.
Maybe the tower would go down, and they would both die. Wouldn’t that be funny?
“We can’t be here,” said Max to no one. He found a curved pipe, hooked a foot into it, and waited.
Cal Peers spat in response. He took four good sprinting strides, but the fifth was no good. A wave of ice had sent a seismic spasm up the tower. Cal Peers fell to his side and knocked his lungs flat. And with the tower now at an almost rooftop angle, the tall man slid like a baseball player going for home.
Except he slid straight off the edge.
The ax drummed the rooftop and caught its neck in a pipe vent with a king.
Max looked up at a small sound.
“Help,” wheezed Cal Peers. He gripped a thin rooftop antenna using his good arm. The antenna uprooted a bit with every attempt to pull himself up.
Max stared at this man, pleading openly. Max knew where this would go.
“Please help,” said Cal Peers.
“Things You Can Do when you’re holding on for dear life,” murmured Max.
“What?” said Cal Peers, perplexed. The antenna came free in his hand.
Cal Peers vanished.
Thirty seconds later, the snow stopped thundering. It had completed its journey miles down the mountainside.
All was silent again, but for the steady tic tic tic of the straining tower.
Max pictured Cal Peers trapped under megatons of ice. Undiscovered for centuries of centuries. Maybe one day, far in the future, unlucky explorers would find his frost-blackened body and unwittingly wake the dormant virus of evil contained within, releasing it unto the world.
But for now, Max assured himself, the world was safe.
His evil was gone.
3.7
Max slid the mask over his face again.
Mister Black Halo.
The mask hurt. He wondered how bad his face looked. But he had no time to care about that right now. Inside, the cameras were still live. The world was no doubt still watching. They had no idea of all that had happened outside the complex.
Max had soldier-crawled his way across the leaning rooftop. He retrieved the ax from the metal vent. He tiptoed down the stairs inside the tower, as if he were nudging the entire structure by fractions of degrees with each step.
Finally he had reached the bottom of the tower, exite
d, and gingerly crossed the catwalk gone all twisted like a ribbon.
The ax was heavy.
No, Max was weak. He felt everything drained out of him. He dragged the ax behind him—a not unpleasant ceramic sound—and entered the main building.
“Pilot,” said Max.
“Max,” came Pilot’s voice from below, as if he were greeting an old friend.
“I’m not playing,” said Max. “There’s gonna be serious consequences if—if—”
If what?
If Pilot did not take back the lives he had ended?
If Pilot ended more, beyond Max’s reach?
“If what, Max?” said Pilot with a strange laugh.
Max turned and strode down the hall with purpose, the ax scratching a hairline into the shiny floor behind him.
“Tell me, Max,” laughed Pilot. “What is that sound?”
Max walked and walked. He did not pick up the ax. He did not run. He did not want to see if the universe had some freak fatal trip-and-fall up its sleeve.
Iceland, thought Max.
Norway.
Greenland, Las Vegas, Bangkok.
He passed the sleeping quarters, pressed the mahogany panel with the brass clock, and entered the control room. There sat Pilot’s strange laptop, looking like a blast shield fragment from an alien ship crash.
Compromise Status.
Charge State.
The timecodes, ratcheting down.
This was the thing. It had to be. He unplugged the laptop from its elaborate monitor moorings, disconnecting it from the array of cameras throughout the complex. The world now watched through one lens and one lens only: the tiny camera eye at the top of the laptop screen. Max did not dare close the lid, for fear of locking himself out.
He jogged back down to the arena.
He passed the body of Brayden Turnipseed, splayed now with limbs stiffening like roots searching for purchase. The boy had a fine mind, if a little chaotic and in need of direction. But to one degree or another, everyone’s mind was chaotic. Everyone’s mind was in need of direction.
Snuffing out a mind was like hiding a forest from the sun, forever keeping you from discovering what lived within.
Goddammit, Brayden, your young mind did not deserve this.
He had the absurd urge to cover him with a tarp as a meager show of respect in this godforsaken arena on this godforsaken mountaintop. How absolutely wretched.
But Max had no time even for that.
At the center of the arena was a dais, and upon that dais sat Pilot Markham. A thin line of blood ran from his nose where Shane had punched him.
Max knelt before the laptop and got to work without a word. He nudged the cursor around. He struggled to navigate the interface.
“Max,” said Pilot.
Max just shook his head. Unbelievable, that this man would want to talk to him.
“I deeply regret what I did to Brayden,” said Pilot.
Max clenched his fist hard for a second. He wanted to tell Pilot to shut up forever. He wanted to tell him to just die and cease existing. But he still needed Pilot. He hated that he still needed him.
“He was an immediate threat,” said Pilot. “And I did what I had to do to maintain the agenda.”
If only Max could shut him up forever and work in peace.
Max stood up, swung, and drove the heavy ax blade into Pilot’s chest with a woody crack.
Max blinked awake. He had done no such thing, of course.
There Pilot sat with that stupid look on his face that begged: Can we still be friends?
“Brayden was not a bad person,” said Pilot. “What I did was not a judgment of his character.”
“Just,” shouted Max, before forcing himself to calm, “tell me how to disable the wristbands.”
Max glanced up to see Pilot looking hurt, and for an idiotic second Max felt bad. A leftover reflex between friends. Max had to remind himself that this person—this thing strapped to the chair—only bore a familiar face on the surface. Everything beneath was dark crimson and foreign.
“The wristbands have an out-of-range function,” said Pilot. “They either detonate or disable, depending on the user setting. Akiko and Shane are set to safe, I promise you.”
Max closed his eyes. “Just show me.”
“Max, I promise you. Go to Phantom Reality, Groups, All Groups, Settings, Out-of-Range Settings. But you will need—”
“I’ll need a password, I know.”
Max was confronted with a password window, and typed it in:
noellephant
“Oh,” said Pilot.
He found the list of users. Akiko and Shane were indeed set to disable. So was Max.
The others were not.
Max tried to change the three remaining CEOs from detonate to disable, but could not. Almost idly, Max touched the crown of one wristband and startled to see it spring open. The other one came free just as easily.
“I would never hurt my friends,” said Pilot.
Max squeezed his temples as hard as he could. Keep moving.
“Tell me how to stop the hack,” said Max.
Pilot wiggled his fingers before regripping them, as if taunting Max. He smiled.
“I am not going to hack anyone.”
“Bullshit. Is it a flood attack? Some kind of zero-day thing? Is it a power grid reboot loop?”
Max turned the laptop. Its little webcam was still broadcasting. He gave the world a clear view of Pilot, framed askew at a Dutch angle.
“What was that shit on your laptop?” said Max. “Those data centers.”
“Data exchanges, not data centers,” said Pilot, peeved. “But that is beside the point. I just—I just—”
Max raised the ax. “I’m about to swing this right into your face, man.”
And without warning, Pilot burst into tears. It made Max stop. He lowered the ax.
“I would like to confess my crimes,” said Pilot.
Max adjusted his grip. “You mean besides the three dead people right here?”
“They need to know the reason before everything goes dark,” said Pilot. “They need to know why. Please.”
“Whatever—everything goes dark, it’ll all just come back online in a few days, because hacks don’t last. I don’t know if you want attention or what, but you’re not getting it.”
Pilot smiled. Max raged right at his face with the ax drawn and ready.
“You killed three people, asshole. Your daughter is dead. None of this is going to bring her back. Certainly not some hack.”
Pilot laughed. “The funny thing is we are in violent agreement.”
“Fuck you.”
“Hacks do not last. That is why I want to destroy.”
Max blinked.
“Destroy forever,” said Pilot.
Max could only blink and blink. Words fled his mind. In their place was a dark shape revealing itself, and Max could only stare with terrified awe.
“When you are someone like me,” said Pilot, “you can get any kind of friend you want. Not real friends, of course. What with their ludicrous ideologies. But anyway. They are better than any dumb hack.”
“What are you talking about?” said Max.
Pilot spoke into the camera. “I am talking about a hundred tons of explosives placed for me all around the world by special friends. Hello, special friends. I am the one who hired you.”
When Max was a kid, people had predicted mayhem for the year 2000. The Y2K bug, it had been called. Computers, unable to handle the double-zero year integer, would throw the world into chaos: planes falling from the sky, banking systems freezing, surgery rooms going dark in midincision. And in the end, of course, nothing of the sort happened.
But this was not that.
This was real
.
“Bullshit,” said Max. “You can’t blow up the internet. It’s physically impossible.”
Pilot darkened. “Everyone says that! The hubris of that statement! That a man-made thing is somehow exempt from the laws of physics! As if we were gods!”
Pilot spat at the laptop camera. “The internet is not a clean little puffy cloud high above the icky-sticky mucky-muck of the physical world. It has a backbone, of cables and wires and chips and air-conditioned buildings surrounded by razor fences and cameras and guards. It is physical. It will be broken. Forever.”
Max took a deep breath. He had to stay level. Pilot, he realized now, was a psychopath; but every psychopath has his logic.
“You can’t do this,” said Max. “It’s going to fuck shit up so bad.”
Pilot looked confused. “But you yourself said people would not change unless we had an A-bomb. I am giving you your A-bomb.”
“I didn’t mean it literally.” Max was shouting.
“So you said one thing but meant another? I thought you had integrity. That is what I always liked about you.”
Max blinked. “When I said break something in order to fix it I didn’t mean break the internet. Whole systems depend on it. Markets and hospitals and fucking power grids—Pilot, you can’t do this.”
Pilot looked hurt.
“All I wanted was to fix what we have,” said Max. “Not like what you’re doing.”
“But I thought you would love this,” said Pilot.
The wrongness of this statement sent Max off balance. I thought you would love this. What had Max been to Pilot this whole time? A mirror? Some sort of moral proxy? It scared Max to his core to realize that when people saw one another, they all saw different things. They saw what they wanted to see, or what they wished to be, or what they wished to destroy, or this or that or the other and blablabla forever in infinite shattered permutations.
But no one ever could see things as they were for real.
So maybe that meant there was no such thing as for real.
And that was what scared Max, down to his very core.
Max looked at the tiny numbers under his taped thumbnail. He made a fist and squeezed it hard for a long moment.
I thought you would love this.
He navigated to the window with the list of data exchanges and their various countdowns and tried clicking one.