Han stared at her, a bemused smile on his face. ‘D’ya think?’
‘You’re Cecil Anderson’s daughter,’ Myles echoed. ‘That guy was a legend.’
‘He also was trying to shut his work down,’ Arianna said, ‘before he was murdered. Icon, you said that Tarquin St John was involved in all of this somehow?’
‘The Prime Minister?’ Han asked.
‘St John is pushing for a power handover to the holosaps,’ Icon said. ‘We think that Kieran Beck is arranging so–called terrorist attacks on Re–Volution to generate what sympathy he can among the population, and preventing a cure for The Falling from entering the city would be one way of achieving that and getting his bill through parliament past any opposition. It would help the people hate the terrorists more than the holosaps, convince parliament that there is no other option in the face of extinction and also blind them to any true threat.’
‘Which is what?’ Han pressed. ‘What is the threat?’
Icon sighed and looked down into his mug as he replied.
‘We believe that genocide is the government’s true aim, the final eradication of Homo sapiens in favour of Homo immortalis; the holosaps.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Han uttered. ‘St John’s a human, he’d be digging his own grave or at least that of his family. Nobody can afford to upload several generations, and he’s married with three kids.’
Icon smiled grimly. ‘That’s when people do deals behind closed doors,’ he said. ‘Imagine, a world left only to the fortunate and elite few. No more mouths to feed, no more crops to tend, no more hospitals to maintain or diseases to be feared. The new humanity could live in peace surrounded by nature on a pristine world where nobody would ever grow old or be injured again.’
‘Or be born,’ Han said. ‘It really would be the end of what it is to be human. We’d all be like recordings or something, alive but not living.’
‘There will be no we about it,’ Icon pointed out. ‘The human race would be reduced to a few thousand holosaps, the handful of people able to upload and save themselves.’
‘How would they do it?’ Han asked.
Arianna gasped as she was hit with a sudden revelation.
‘That’s why they’re hunting Icon’s group so intently,’ she realised. ‘They want to remove any human immunity from the world, because when they’re ready they’re going to let The Falling into the cities.’
Han frowned at her. ‘Just like that? If they opened Westminster Bridge nothing but dogs and rats would cross it, and the people would shoot them on sight.’
Arianna shook her head as she tried to figure it out. ‘They must have some kind of plan and a breach in the city defences would be perfect. Everybody expects it to happen at some point.’
‘What if they’re breeding infected animals, or even people?’ Myles suggested. Everybody stopped talking and looked at him. Myles seemed intimidated by their looks. ‘Well, it’s possible isn’t it?’
‘And they would only have to be carriers, like us,’ Icon agreed. ‘Once they’ve come into close enough contact with uninfected people, or in the case of animals perhaps been caught and eaten by the poorer citizens, the infection would pass on if the meat wasn’t cooked properly or fluids were exchanged.’
Han nodded. ‘A dense population, crammed in. It could be over in a matter of weeks and the holosaps would have the perfect opportunity to confirm their way of life as the only safe way for humanity to continue. They would take control and boom, everybody else dies.’
‘And anybody found to be immune would die in the chaos, either thinking that they were doomed when the infection took hold or shot by the government if they survived too long.’
‘Hence the corruption in the police force,’ Icon said. ‘They must have people making sure there are no loose ends.’
Han did not miss the implication. ‘We’re not enforcers for St John or anybody else,’ he insisted. ‘Hell, we’re just trying to keep up.’
‘What can we do about it all?’ Arianna asked. ‘The only person likely to have answers is Alexei Volkov, and he’s out of reach.’
‘He is the key to all of this,’ Icon agreed.
‘But he’s a holosap now, and out here there’s no way that I can talk to him. Besides, what if he’s behind it all? What if he tried to have me killed?’
Han shook his head.
‘The man burned to death on his own bed,’ he pointed out. ‘Alexei Volkov was not the kind of man capable of doing that to himself. Somebody killed him of that much I’m sure, what I don’t know is why?’
Arianna turned to Icon.
‘Why did you target me, when you saw the news reports?’ she demanded.
Icon sighed, staring into the middle distance as he spoke.
‘When I was sixteen I joined the army, served with an infantry regiment as a boy soldier. I later earned a commission, serving as an officer. Just before the city was quarantined, I was ordered to act as a guard and escort to a man in the city employed by the government to work on a top secret project to create the first holosap. His name was Cecil Anderson.’
Arianna managed to keep her features devoid of emotion. ‘Go on.’
‘On the night of the quarantine, Professor Anderson arrived at the laboratory in a state of distress, adamant that he should destroy “Adam”, his initial creation. He was in the process of doing so when the laboratory was attacked. I was injured, my corporal killed. The people who attacked us murdered Professor Anderson and threw me out of the city to die. That was how I ended up out here.’
‘Who were they?’ Arianna asked.
‘As far as I can tell, they worked for Kieran Beck. He may even have been the man responsible for your father’s murder, but it is so long ago now and they all wore masks. It’s hard to remember.’
Arianna shivered. ‘What happened to my father?’ she asked.
‘His body was thrown in the Thames,’ Icon said, ‘as was mine. I managed to swim to the opposite shore. Trying to return to the city would have been suicide because they were shooting anybody trying to gain access by that time. Going the other way, dangerous as it was, was my only option.’
‘What‘s that got to do with me, here and now?’ she asked.
‘Because before your father died he sent something via electronic mail. I saw him do it, right after he destroyed Adam. It was only later that I realised what it was he had created.’ Icon looked up at Arianna. ‘A kill–switch.’
‘Kill–switch?’ Han asked. ‘For what?’
‘For all holosaps,’ Icon said. ‘It’s what he used to destroy Adam. Professor Anderson hid the kill switch, and he died rather than reveal to Kieran Beck where it had been sent. My guess is that Beck and his people want to get hold of the kill switch and prevent it from ever being used before they upload themselves. Alexei and Arianna are the only possible links they can pursue.’
‘What was your real name?’ she asked. ‘Who did my father know you as?’
Icon’s face seemed haunted and it was a few moments before he spoke again. ‘Lieutenant Connelly,’ he said finally. ‘Ian Connelly.’
‘Icon,’ Han said, ‘probably a shortened version of your name on your uniform during military training.’
Icon nodded. Arianna touched his forearm as she spoke. ‘What do you intend to do about all of this?’
Icon replied softly.
‘You have to go into the city and talk to Alexei, find out more about what happened to this kill–switch. He and Professor Anderson were collaborators and friends, he may know something.’
‘Alexei was trying to talk to me before the apartment was attacked,’ she replied. ‘But if I try to contact him now I’ll be spotted immediately. They must be monitoring him. I can’t get back into London now,’ Arianna said finally. ‘I’d be shot on sight.’
Icon’s reply came to her as though from a distance.
‘I didn’t say anything about going back to London,’ he said. ‘I meant that you need to upload and fin
d him that way. You need to die, Arianna.’
***
31
New Orleans,
Louisiana
The glow of dawn illuminated the decrepit city skyline, the sun a hazy disc veiled by wreaths of mist not yet boiled off by its heat. Marcus squatted alongside Kerry beside the skeletal, rusting hulk of an old Pontiac as they surveyed the route ahead.
The US 90 crossed the broad swathe of the Mississippi and descended toward the low city skyline and what had once been the central business district to their right. A scattering of high–rise office buildings were now cloaked in foliage, a few of their remaining windows reflecting the rising sun’s hazy glow.
The silence unnerved Marcus as he scanned the city for movement. There was little wind, just a hot breath that seemed to swell off the swirling water far below to hum across the surface of the bridge. Abandoned cars littered the way ahead, their deflated tyres locked in the grip of vines and weeds, soft grasses swaying in the faint breeze.
‘So quiet,’ he murmured.
‘Yeah,’ Kerry whispered in reply, affected by the sombre scene. ‘Like the city’s haunted or something.’
The scene was one that Marcus imagined had once been the staple of film makers, back in the good old days when money had been power and capitalism had dominated the ever growing ranks of mankind. The tower blocks were like giant angular trees draped in foliage, while the lower lying ranks of offices, houses and apartment blocks were lost in a mass of vines and trees. Here, perhaps more than anywhere but the tropics, nature was reclaiming her land with ferocious speed. Marcus glanced at the bridge around them, at the huge rusting bolts and cracked concrete.
‘We should get down there,’ he said, ‘in case the bridge falls.’
Kerry nodded but did not say anything further. Marcus waited as she watched the city for a few moments longer and then moved quickly but carefully forward, staying alongside the concrete barriers as she jogged with her back hunched.
‘We’ll get down into the city and out of sight,’ she whispered back to him finally. ‘Can’t risk them seeing us up here. Then we’ll head for the airport. It’s a few miles miles across the city.’
Marcus jogged alongside her as they descended. ‘And then what?’
‘I don’t know: we’re making this up as we go, right? But we need to access the regional communications hub’s computers and send off my blood–screen data to everybody on the planet with access to a computer.’
Marcus frowned. ‘Even if we make it we’ll never get back out of there in one piece.’
Kerry did not reply as they jogged down onto the entrance ramp to the bridge, peering at the airport way off in the distance to their left. Marcus saw nothing but a jumble of leafy buildings lining a freeway beneath them littered with rusting cars. A big sign to his left read in fading script: “Always glad you came!”
They followed the US 90 until it reached the airline freeway running east–west below them and then followed the on–ramp until it reached the ground. Kerry seemed to relax as they dropped off the elevated road.
‘They can’t see us from miles away,’ Marcus said.
‘You can’t know that,’ Kerry replied. ‘Besides, you never heard of binoculars?’
‘They probably think that we’re dead already.’
‘They won’t think that until they find our rotting bodies,’ Kerry snapped back. ‘There’s nothing alive out here, Marcus. We’re the only things moving other than clouds. If we’re spotted, we’re done for.’
Marcus looked at Kerry. Her skin was an unhealthy palour, pale and sheened with a light sweat despite the cooler air of morning. A thick wad of hastily applied medical dressing was taped to her neck where she had been bitten, the lower edges crimson and black.
‘How are you feeling?’
Kerry did not look at him, but her voice was uneven as she replied.
‘Hot and tired with the fever but it’s been twelve hours and I’m still standing.’
Marcus nodded but did not reply. He recalled the stories of how people had always gone into a sort of shock about twelve hours after contracting The Falling, which was partly why the disease had acquired its name: people collapsed. Some had claimed with grim humour that the illness had be so named because bits kept falling off people, like some kind of leprosy plague. That humour had vanished within a few weeks of the first major outbreaks here on the Gulf of Mexico and through the Florida panhandle.
Nobody joked about it anymore.
Marcus touched his own, lighter wound. The skin was sore to the touch, swollen, but not bleeding where Kerry had only just broken the surface. It was the kind of thing that Marcus could have well done without, but he too was now surprised at the lack of explosive necrosis. The disease typically attacked flesh far faster than even the most dangerous spider venom, but right now he realised that his own body was mounting an immune response just as quickly as the disease was making its attack. Soon, the fevers would begin as his body went to war on the invading sickness.
‘How long do you think, before we know?’ he asked.
‘Know what?’
‘You know damned well what I mean.’
Kerry sighed as they walked. ‘Another twelve hours,’ she said. ‘Less, if my own wound starts to heal. I should be unconscious by now.’
Marcus nodded. ‘Let’s not get too excited just yet, okay? We’re on a suicide mission that might not help anyone.’
‘It’ll help the survivors see through the government’s lies if nothing else,’ she snapped back at him. ‘Nobody’s ever going to get through this if they keep killing anybody who discovers a potential cure.’
Marcus stared at his feet as they walked. ‘So we’re probably not planning an escape method.’
‘Of course we will!’ Kerry hissed as she stopped on the freeway and whirled to face him. ‘I don’t want to die, okay? I want to live too. But right now there are more important things on my mind than our survival. Most people out there think that The Falling was some kind of judgement on mankind, on scientists who failed to find a cure. They blame us for not saving their families, their loved ones. People loved science when it got things right, which is most of the time, but when it gets something wrong suddenly we’re all evil manipulators of Mother Nature, out to destroy humanity with genetic engineering or holographic immortality or nuclear disasters. I’m sick of hearing it, okay?’
Marcus stared at her, the silence deafening after her outburst. ‘You’re doing this for posterity?’
‘I’m doing it for people who have never even heard my name,’ Kerry insisted, ‘just like countless others before me. That’s what scientists do. People used to remember movie stars, pop divas and other pointless celebrities, but few of them could name the person who discovered radioactivity or how to vaccinate against diseases, scientists whose work has saved millions of lives.’
A light wind gusted across the lonely freeway and thrummed through the hollow interiors of the rusting cars littering the asphalt. Marcus heard a distant hum that conflicted with the wind, an unnatural harmony that made the hairs on his heck rise up.
‘You hear that?’
Kerry lifted her chin, cocked her head to one side in what to Marcus was a remarkably attractive manner, her hair curled back over one tiny ear, her neck slim despite the swelling beneath the medical dressing.
‘Chopper,’ she said as she grabbed his arm. ‘Run!’
Marcus followed her at a dash as they sprinted for the cover of an overhead bypass. The distant humming sound became louder as they ran into the shadows beneath the overpass, the helicopter’s blades echoing back and forth around them as they climbed up into the darkest recesses and huddled there amid the weeds.
Marcus squinted out at the bright sky, trying to see the helicopter as it thundered its way toward them. The noise of the blades and the engine soared and he retreated back as it seemed as though the helicopter was going to land right beside the overpass.
‘They’ve foun
d us!’ he shouted above the din.
Kerry remained motionless as the helicopter thundered overhead, right over where they were squatting, and flew on toward the east. The deafening engine noise faded as quickly as it had come and Kerry ducked down to watch with Marcus as it flew away.
‘That was close,’ he said.
Kerry continued to watch the helicopter as it flew away, and as the engine racket receded into silence so they heard the noises from the overpass above them. They sounded like a giant metal ball bouncing and rolling down a hill, the grind and scratch of steel on asphalt. Marcus looked at Kerry, who remained silent as they listened to the strange movements above them fade away. Whatever was making the noise was moving down the overpass toward the freeway where they crouched.
‘You think that they saw us?’ Marcus whispered to Kerry.
The noise stopped instantly.
Marcus sat in silence and thought that he could hear his heart beating against the wall of his chest. Kerry turned and grabbed a fist–sized chunk of crumbling asphalt from where it lay beside her. Before Marcus could protest, Kerry hurled the asphalt in a high arc toward the far side of the freeway.
The chunk of asphalt spun through the air and hit the freeway. It shattered into dozens of smaller pieces as it bounced through the swaying grasses.
A deafening burst of automatic fire shattered the silence as bullets tore into the ruptured surface of the freeway below. Kerry grabbed Marcus’s arm and yanked him out from under the overpass as the gunfire abruptly ceased and the strange metallic scratching began again.
Marcus followed her up the embankment alongside the freeway, crouching tight against the concrete wall of the overpass as they listened to the scratching, rolling sound nearby as it descended on the opposite side of the overpass. As the sound reached the freeway, they turned and leaped up onto the overpass.
Kerry led Marcus silently across the road to the far side, and they crouched to peer down onto the freeway below.
There, a three foot diameter metallic sphere rolled slowly through the grass toward the shattered chunk of asphalt. Metal feet crunched as they flicked out from the ball’s surface one after the other and dug into the road behind it, propelling the sphere forward. As Marcus watched, a small compartment opened on the sphere’s surface and the black eye of a camera lens appeared and shot an image of the damaged asphalt.
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