Ashes

by Russ Linton

Drake's targeting reticles flash, both sides, to the rear, every possible target including the engine block of the SUV. She's got one now, framing her defenseless form, nothing but her tablet to stop an incoming round. Titan, the armed driver, my father’s betrayer, I could bury them. Her...

  I release my own cleansing breath bullshit and stomp away. We're almost to the bunker before I realize where I've gone, and she manages to catch up. Smoothing her jacket and releasing a small sigh, she stands quietly beside me.

  "Polybius needed to be here—"

  "Bullshit. He won't talk me into helping you and Uncle Sam."

  "—for his capabilities. I needed to be sure this contact wasn't monitored. There is much more going on than you realize."

  "I don't give a shit about your drama, lady."

  "When I mentioned Hound earlier, you seemed intrigued."

  "You an Augment? An empath or something?"

  She appears appropriately confused. "No, why?"

  "How can you get a read on somebody encased in several layers of mylar and carbon fiber? No facial expressions, no body language."

  Her brow knits as she considers the question. "You read machines, I read people. Layer yourself with all the armor and tech you like,” she gestures toward the SUV where Polybius watches out the window, “you’re still human.”

  Am I? Each mission the separation between man and killing machine grows thinner. Back in the day Polybius did his best to shelter others, like when he approached Dad with evidence the government was using Augments to off one another. Could be the more cybernetics we attached, the less he cared. Dammit, I just need to be done with this.

  "Hound," I say. "Tell me where he is."

  She nods and flips her tablet toward me. I try to read the screen but the glare, the direct sun, washes out any information leaving a glossy mirror. Bug eyes stare back, and the effect is disconcerting. My second skin, a dead guy who once hunted my Dad. I shake it off and extend a hand. When the port emerges from my palm, I check her reaction, and she doesn't protest.

  "Any older, and I wouldn't be able to do this. You need an upgrade," I say as the data stream begins to decode and display in the HUD.

  "This tablet's a personal expense. Not part of the government networks. I trust you'll scrub any data you might glean."

  This offer goes beyond an attempt to just curry favor.

  Valerie's got access to some serious intelligence. Raw reports clutter her once protected inbox. Glowing references to the Black Beetle are few and far between, but she does regularly admit her asset's performance is "adequate". She's got a better opinion of a couple other Augments she has in the field.

  A mission briefing pops up, dated nearly a year ago, not long after I was activated. Two operatives were dispatched to Afghanistan via a slow boat and a Marco Polo-esque trek. Probably the only route what with U.S. forces scrambling to consolidate back home on the continental borders. Whoever these guys are they'd have to be straight up ethereal or blindingly patriotic.

  Right. Hound. Danger. One of each.

  But I've hacked enough top secret documents and mission briefings to know something isn't quite right. She hasn't bothered with the classification portion marking. All the official lingo, the agency source claims, the bold headers are right where they should be, but she's followed that general format out of force of habit. There isn't anything official about this.

  I glance at Cantor through the shifting documents. "You're off the books."

  She nods. I keep reading.

  Last check-in, Hound and Danger were nearing their target—an Army Ranger outpost left behind. Right about the time the valley was to be evacuated, forces there came under siege. From an Augment.

  Vulkan springs to mind. With the thought, my pulse cranks and my mouth feels dry. Unblinking, I skim faster, searching for his name and come up empty. I slow down, take the report in word for word.

  This report ties in with the heavily redacted one I discovered about the fleet which landed in Hawaii after departing the Pacific Theater. Official records tried to hide the loss. None of this fits with the rosy picture of rebuilding and recapturing the American Dream which FreedomNet is trying to sell.

  We aren't executing a strategic withdrawal, we're on the run.

  The attacker had been a female Augment, which is rare enough stateside but not so much for the former Soviets. Her designation, however, is unknown. I've practically got Eric's list memorized alongside every bit of intel the government has been willing and unwilling to share with Nanomech. Yet these action reports don't match any power I've ever heard of. Earth moving combined with...killer trees? Rockslides? Whole bases swallowed by the valley?

  Maybe a couple Augments working together could explain it. No, the list is too short. Fat Man could handle part of that power set, but he's long dead. Tree growth? Manipulation? We've never had an Augment master gardener.

  A grainy photo pops up obviously taken from a helicopter or reconnaissance drone. A girl, a young girl, stands on a column of stone with her arms splayed. Forest consumes an entire base in the foreground. Trees reach and bend like the clawed fingers of some colossal giant.

  "What the fuck." I mutter.

  Cantor gives a tight nod. "There are rogue Augments, new Augments operating in theater. This isn't the only one. The Middle East. Africa."

  I release the tablet, and she takes it from my slack fingers. I'm hyperaware since Cantor mentioned getting a read through the armor. I feel the suit take on my puzzled slump, the slight downward pitch of my head as I stare into the sand searching for a buried truth.

  "If this is happening, I need to know why the Department of Defense isn't tasking Black Beetle overseas. There's been enough downtime lately to warrant it."

  "Two reasons. They're too spooked to deploy their only defense and the other is your employer."

  "Xamse?"

  "Yes, he isn't keen on letting you out of his zone of control, or so he says."

  That makes sense. Without a reliable worldwide connection, I'd hit dead spots, and he'd lose his little remote toy. Of course, he could have other reasons.

  "So take this to Xamse. Maybe then he'll see the wisdom in going global with the Black Beetle. Hell, he probably wants to do that. Then I can finish this. I can finally find—"

  I catch myself before the name slips out. Not sure if the I'm-not-an-empath here can pull words right out of my brain, but I'd rather not let her in on my little obsession.

  "I can't tell him," she says. "I can't tell anyone. You said it, I'm not operating in my capacity as an agent of the CIA. Department of Defense has no idea. All of this has to stay off the radar, and I don't trust your employer. I need you to help me figure out who is making these new Augments."

  "You trust me," I say, stabbing my chest with a dull clang. "To help you?"

  "I trusted your father, Spencer. I know the kind of son he would raise."

  Flattery, maybe, hard to even say what exactly that is. I don't even have a snappy comeback. She's waiting for my answer though.

  I'm suddenly exhausted. Emotionally, physically, I feel drained, and only the joints in the suit are propping me up. I don't want to give her time to analyze me or to ask anything else. Conspiracies, traitors, and lies. Screw all that. I got what I came for. I'll decide how the rest of this goes.

  A subtle twitch and I'm airborne, leaving a cloud of dust to settle on the Proving Grounds. Enough wind, enough time, those buildings will be buried. If I'm the one to end it, so be it. But nobody is going to stop me from finding Vulkan now. Not Cantor, not the CIA, not Xamse. Not even Polybius or Hound. Nobody.

  "Drake," I say. "Delete the audio and visual recordings from the past thirty minutes.

  "Affirmative."

  CHAPTER 32

  AS SOON AS I LEAVE the range of the jamming frequency, the armor is put under a complete systems override. Ayana must have scripted it to happen or else she was hovering over the controls intent on catching me the second the connection was restored.
I'll have to wait to find out because she's not responding to hails.

  I try to relax for the flight. Plenty of thoughts keep me occupied. Ensnared in another grand conspiracy, there isn't an easy way to sort out who's in control or who's on what side—or if there even are sides. Could Xamse be behind these new Augments? Absolutely. But then there's Eric and his girlfriend. Chroma has always wanted a family of her own and distributing Augment tech like open source is right in line with the Collective philosophy.

  Yet, none of this matters. Vulkan is what matters.

  Anxiety doesn't kick in until the campus rooftop comes into view. A cloudy sky spits enough drizzle that the courtyard and gardens where employees hang out are empty. Xamse stands beside Ayana atop the landing platform, back from his little business trip. She’s holding an umbrella over his head and making sure to keep her other hand free. He’s got the tablet, fiddling with the controls. My controls.

  Ayana’s only wielding an umbrella, so that's a plus. Her brutal sneer and a free hand tapping her holster seem to indicate this isn't by choice. They clear the platform, and after a gentle touchdown Xamse gives a casual flick and opens the armor. Seals hiss and interlocking plates perform their little dance.

  Exposed, the light rain feels bearable, but I’m not in a hurry for a shower. I stay in the partial protection of the armor until Xamse beckons. Worse than a full-on shower, the misty rain quickly envelops me. He’s chosen a mild case of waterboarding to start the interrogation.

  "You appear nervous," he says, a glance at the tablet. "I would wonder why."

  I do my best to collect my thoughts. Obviously, Xamse knows where the armor last disappeared. Cantor never meant the meeting to be a secret, but the jamming kept the details from being broadcast. She probably had instructions on what to tell Xamse if I’d waited long enough. My guess, it went something like I'd been tricked into another hard sales pitch for relocating to the Proving Grounds.

  "I had an interesting talk," I say.

  "Oh?" he slips his hands behind his back and waits patiently. Accusations aren't his thing, he's more than happy for me to implicate myself.

  "Our client, Cantor, she wanted to give me a tour of the Proving Grounds. Fresh baked cookies and everything."

  He feigns surprise and gives Ayana a quick check. She adds a menacing demand: "And that was all?"

  "Yep. I told her I was happy enough in my basement prison that I didn't need a desert timeshare." I glance up into the rain. “Any chance we can do this inside?”

  Xamse doesn't react. He examines every square inch of my face, my body language. One errant twitch and I get the feeling he'll let his attack dog off the leash.

  "That is good to know, friend."

  With careful, deliberate motions he removes Ayana’s gun from the holster. He paces closer with his gleeful umbrella flunky in tow. Hopeful malice lights her eyes. Instinctively, I back away before I think to check behind me. The edge looms. There’s the roof access door, but they’ve thought ahead and placed themselves in the path.

  He’s threatened once before to toss me from this very roof. It didn’t happen then. It won’t happen now. I stand my ground, rain soaking through my clothes. Cold sets in and I uselessly rub my arms.

  Xamse looks up. "We are friends, are we not?"

  "I'm pretty sure yes is the right answer." Mouth dry despite the humidity, I choke on the last word.

  He smiles. "The humor," he says. "Always with the humor. But one thing I don't find humorous."

  "What's that?"

  "The missing video. I go to look and what do I find?" He holds up the tablet and gestures to a black screen with the gun barrel. Stray droplets of water have pearled the surface. "A convenient technical failure."

  "They were jamming the signals," I say, shrugging. "Probably had some way to interfere with the camera systems. Narrowband light overload, who knows? She carries around ways to mask audio recordings. Right?" I add, looking directly at Ayana. She knows this from my short elevator ride with Cantor which prompted our client's loss of visiting privileges.

  Xamse joins forces with my stare down of the frustrated security chief. When he does, the fury building up behind Ayana's eyes reaches a boiling point. Her jaw, clamped shut and twitching, releases with a snap.

  "Twice now he's spoken with our trained espionage client in situations outside of our observation and control. Whatever was said is immaterial. We should take care of this problem on principle. Be done with him," she spits, her ruined face pulled into a tortured mask, half frozen, half twisted with rage. “You can’t possibly believe anything he says!”

  The tablet and the gun behind his back, Xamse considers her objections in silence. Persistent rain drums on the umbrella like light static

  Sad part is, she's right. Marching me off the roof is exactly what I would expect my little mini-tyrant friend to do. He doesn't allow loose ends. At the same time, he’s used to playing these sorts of games.

  "Xamse, look." I move closer, sharing the umbrella’s cover an ulterior motive along with assuring him we are indeed BFFs. Ayana shifts enough that I’m denied any protection. "I get the whole competition for your favor thing." I jab a thumb at Ayana. "But this lady's been trying to find any excuse to kill me since the day we met. I'm not sure she's offering you an unbiased opinion."

  If he's concerned I'd make a move for the gun before he can take aim and fire, he doesn't show it. This might just work. I do my best to project his same air of confidence.

  "All things equal, she is right my friend," he says. "I should kill you, to be certain." Should. That's a good word. Non-committal. Optional. The sly, sated look which follows isn’t comforting. "Let us give you the benefit of doubt. Both of you shall work together to recover the missing video. If found, it will either prove your guilt or provide us valuable intelligence about our common enemy, no?"

  My soggy mind starts sifting through the subroutines, the interconnected hardware, the necessary steps to make that possible. Housed in the main control unit, the internal drives are heavily protected to prevent any incidental damage or tampering.

  "That's a teardown situation," I say, scrubbing water from my eyes. "Re-assembly, diagnostics, we could be out of action for a couple days."

  Xamse gives a playful frown. "Let us hope there is no action to respond to, then."

  "Fine, I'll get started first thing in the morning.” I need to buy time, so I can think this through. “A little non-bullet assisted sleep would be nice."

  "You've got four hours," Ayana says. Xamse agrees. Argue for more time, and I might as well tell them I’m stalling.

  I nod, and they head for the landing pad, taking up a position in front of the armor. Thoughts about the system capabilities are still clogging my brain. If there's one weakness to the prototype, it's in the software. This wasn't a ground-up build as far as that's concerned. Copied mostly from Wormfood, the MANTIS operating system has plenty of legacy subroutines, including how it handles newer hard drives.

  Rain has turned my clothes into a clingy skin. Implications of what comes next have me rooted to the spot. Ayana snatches the tablet from Xamse and gives it a satisfying stab. The platform lowers, and I’m soon alone with my thoughts.

  Old drives, data marked for deletion is just shuffled out of the way to be overwritten. A top of the line solid state drive like on the prototype? The ones and zeroes are typically gone the moment you hit delete, tagged by the operating system's TRIM command to be overwritten at first opportunity.

  That’s right. The specialized MANTIS operating system doesn't have a TRIM command. The video feed is recoverable. And if I know how to recover the files, chances are Ayana and Xamse know too.

  I’m screwed.

  I eye the roof access door. “Damnit.”

  Screwed and I’ve left my security badge on my nightstand. I trudge toward the door and retrieve my multitool, wondering if a four-story drop wouldn’t be preferable.

  THE BOTTLE OF PILLS is close to empty. I return it
to the bedside table. I'm certain in four hours Ayana will drag me out of here, against my will. Pretending to be groggy or actually being in a drug-induced coma won't buy any time. And spending quality time with her requires being alert. I'll need every brain cell I have to think my way out of this one.

  It's possible to delete the files for good with a few keystrokes. That is if Ayana ever takes her eyes off me, which isn't likely. Xamse's remote controls must not have full command line access, or he could have done all this from the tablet. Smart, I suppose. In the event the external controls were ever hacked, the attacker wouldn't be able to remotely reconfigure core functions.

  Sneaking into the lab early to delete the files would require defeating the campus security systems. I could attempt a remote hack from my terminal here, out through FreedomNet and in through the back door. Camera loops and disabled logs could buy time. Doing all that in four hours is possible. Dismantling the suit, removing the heavily protected control unit, patching it to the workstation, reassembling, then covering my tracks before the already alerted Ayana figures it out.

  Damn, just thinking about this is exhausting. I need a plan. But for the first time in I'm not sure how long, my eyes feel heavy. This shouldn't be a surprise. I've been crisscrossing the country for weeks now, chasing Augments, being pumped with surge after surge of adrenaline.

  I mean to sit on the bed but flop instead. I turn on the soundtrack of the beach screen saver and let the warble of unfamiliar birds and whisper of the waves fill the space. For me, this creepy shit will surely prevent sleep. All I have to do is imagine I'm lying on a metal framed bed stuffed away in a tree house decorated with offerings to its spider queen.

  The whisper of waves becomes a surge.

  Charlotte’s twisted little paradise. Created from our shared affinity for the Swiss Family Robinson to house the ghost of my mother. Used to psychically interrogate me through a complete dissection of my childhood. The place where my Mom finished off an Augment. I wonder if I have the same look in my eye she had?