Prologue

–Chicago. February 21st 2048. 4:00 a.m.–

Cynthia Revo hadn’t slept in three days. She and her team were close, very close. She’d imagined this day a thousand times over and the reality didn’t match the ideal. She had pictured herself awake, no bags under her eyes, her short red hair neatly combed. Fresh clothes without a wrinkle. Champagne. Smiles. Maybe a celebratory lay. That’s where her daydreams took her. But like all dreams, they were more fantasy than truth.

Her team of researchers had forced her to take a break. She dragged herself down the hall to her office and collapsed at her desk. Twenty foam coffee cups littered its surface, each with different levels of the fuel that had kept her upright. Five large computer monitors were mounted on the wall. The keyboard and mouse were lost somewhere in the maze of cups. A lab rat could find them, but it would take Cynthia a second or so. She was out in an instant.

The door crashed open and she shot her hands out, clearing the desk. Days old coffee splattered against the monitors and spilled onto the carpet. It took her a moment to realize where she was.

Harold Renki, one of her top programmers, looked like he’d seen a ghost.

“It’s working! It’s working!”

She looked at him like he was speaking another language. Not until he yanked her out of her chair did she understand completely. He dragged her toward the door until she got her legs moving to match his.

“When?!” she asked. She was still bleary and nauseous from the abrupt wakening.

“Just now, a minute, maybe. Tom’s burning through the test. It was what you thought.”

“Thousands?” she asked.

“Five thousand at this point.”

Five thousand micro-frequencies, to penetrate the brain and read the synapses as they fired. They had started with two, now they were up to five thousand. They had started with four meager servers. Now six hundred of the best supercomputers money could buy were in a machine room cooled to -50 degrees Celsius.

They rushed down the dull white hallway with its fluorescent lights and cheap decorations. An unremarkable place for the greatest invention the world had ever seen.

They slammed through the doors onto a landing above the testing floor. Thirty other scientists were below them—some biologists, some programmers, some physicists, some doctors—and they all turned with smiles that said it was worth it. That the five years were not in vain, not a dead end like some pundits opined. For visionaries, showing the rightness of their vision was always the most difficult, because the vast majority of people look in front of their feet, but rarely ahead. When the visionary was right, then the masses nod and line up, happy to be a part of it. Happy to think that they would have thought of it too—it was so obvious, after all.

Cynthia pushed past Harold and ran down the stairs. The crowd parted like the Red Sea and she saw the twenty by twenty Plexiglas cage where they kept Tom & Jerry.

Tom saw the short redheaded person press herself up against the clear wall. He was eating a banana and he understood that if he kept doing this thing the hairless monkeys wanted, he would keep getting bananas.

Jerry was bummed. Tom was eating bananas and he wasn’t. Jerry held a keypad. On it were four buttons: one green, one red, one yellow, one purple. In front of him was a computer monitor and at the bottom was a mirrored image of each button. When a picture appeared above one of them, he was supposed to press the corresponding button. Easy. He could do six per minute.

Tom didn’t have a keyboard. He wore a metal helmet on his head. Attached to it was a wire that ran outside the clear cage to another place and then back. Tom wanted more bananas and with the red headed pale ape watching, he knew this was his chance. He looked at the screen and played the game. His images flashed by at one per second.

Cynthia’s mouth was wide open. She watched Tom, the test chimp, tear through the image choices on screen using nothing but his mind. Jerry, the control, slapped at the keyboard every ten seconds or so.

The mind was finally free from its prison. Cynthia Revo closed her mouth and watched as Tom the chimp performed a miracle. This would change the world forever.

Chapter 1

–Iran. 2058–

“Man, you’re lucky to be black,” Eric Janis said to the hulking soldier in front of him. They were off duty and in line to Mindlink with their families. It was summer in Iran. Sweat poured down the soldiers’ faces. They used every ounce of shade they could find, even each other. They had long since torn down the analog thermometer outside their barracks, but the soldiers stationed there could guess the afternoon temperature within a degree. Eric guessed right on the money: 125 degrees.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that,” John Raimey said. He was dark skinned, with gray eyes that stuck out like a wolf’s. A hooked scar curled around his right eye from a shrapnel blast. He and Eric had met in basic training almost twenty years before. Like most soldiers, they came from one of two places: Raimey, the ghetto. Janis, a microscopic town in the middle of Nebraska. The military is the true melting pot and despite their disparate backgrounds, they bonded immediately. In Chicago, their homes were within walking distance. Together they had served in various special operations units. First as Green Berets, then Detachment Delta, and now small clandestine units without official designations.

“I just mean here. I don’t mean, like, anywhere else,” Janis joked. “You don’t burn, right? Because I’m fucking getting fried.”

“Your Irish skin isn’t meant for this.” Raimey looked up into the sky and wagged his head as if he were soaking it in.

“How much longer d’you guess?” Janis asked.

“Two weeks, maybe more. We need to get the rest of the family out.”

The Imperial Royal family. There were a lot of them. Second cousins, third cousins twice removed. It had been their only task while the rest of the Coalition Forces cordoned off the population for “oil sanctions.” It was a group effort in the Middle East. China’s camp was ocean side and the EU was north to the U.S.’s west, but in other oil-rich lands, sometimes it was one, two, or all of them that occupied. The oil was almost gone.

Off in the distances tendrils of black smoke rose into the air. The terrorists had lit an oil field.

Not terrorists. Locals, Raimey reminded himself.

“Raimey, you’re up. Five minutes,” a soldier called, referencing a tablet.

“Tell Tiffany and Vanessa hi,” Janis said.

Inside the tent were what looked like ten dentist chairs. Eight were already occupied and the soldiers in them looked asleep. A thick wire ran from the head of each to a terminal outside the tent that had a satellite dish pointing to the sky. Two large fans uselessly blew hot air, turning the tent into a convection oven.

“You’re on the number two Mindlink,” a woman inside said. Raimey walked over, sat down and the woman handed him a machined aluminum headpiece that had glowing LED’s on the inside where it touched the head. He leaned back in the chair and put the Mindlink on.

As he did, the smell of burnt shit and sweat, and the scorching heat, vanished from top to bottom. He was in his living room. Some soldiers chose outlandish backdrops when they connected in, he knew a guy who always met his family on Mars for some reason. Janis—who didn’t have family—had bribed the head tech with booze to go to virtual Filipino hooker dens. “It’s not real, but damn, it feels real,” he nudged while detailing his exploits at the mess hall. But Raimey preferred seeing his home. It gave him an anchor to what was truly important. It reminded him why he had to make it back.

His wife Tiffany sat across from him on the couch. Caramel skin, long wavy black hair. She looked ten years younger than forty. Raimey appeared across from her and he immediately jumped over to the couch and they kissed.

“How are you holding up?” Tiffany asked.

“It’s fine. Janis says ‘hi.’”

“Are you safe?”

“As safe as I can be. It’s pretty bad over here. It’s the worst at the refineries and the wells.” A red light appeared in the air and flashed slowly. It reminded Raimey that the military was listening. No mission details. “We’re . . . off mission.” The light vanished from the air like a mirage.

Concern washed over Tiffany’s dark brown eyes.

“Hon, it’s fine. We only have a few more missions and I’ll be back.”

“Vanessa!” Tiffany yelled. She looked around; there was no sign of their daughter. Tiffany’s body vanished down-to-up and then almost immediately popped back into existence. “She’s in the bathroom.”

“When you gotta go, you gotta go,” Raimey smiled.

“There was another terrorist attack in Chicago,” Tiffany said.

“I heard. We may be re-assigned there. I might actually be home for once.”

“New York had three last week. Just yesterday, a train blew up over one of MindCorp’s Data Nodes right in the center of the city.”

“That’s why I moved us out to the suburbs,” Raimey said. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Just Mindlink, don’t go into the city.”

A ten-year-old girl appeared near the fireplace. Other than having her father’s dark skin, she was a mirror of her mother’s beauty. She wore pink pajamas.

“Daddy!” she hugged Raimey. He hugged her back, pressing his cheek against hers.

“Hey love,” Raimey said. He held her at arm’s length and looked her up and down.

“What time is it there?”

“Two.”

“And you’re still wearing pajamas?”

Vanessa shrugged. “I’m just online.”

“Alright, but when I get home, pajamas are for nights and mornings, that’s it. Tell me about school.”

Vanessa did and Raimey listened intently. A few minutes later, a soft ping like a wind chime filled the air signaling his time was almost up. He kissed Tiffany on the lips and snuggled with Vanessa one more time.

“All right my lovely ladies. I’ll see you next week.”

He disappeared from the room, as did they soon after.

–New York–

The founder of MindCorp, Cynthia Revo, followed her bodyguard through the surface debris of the New York Data Node. Sabot could have been a linebacker; he was half black and Samoan, six-five and thick. His dreaded hair hung past his shoulders. Cynthia was tiny, five foot, and thin boned. Her bobbed red hair had become her trademark. A ‘Cynthia’ was in vogue now. Behind them trailed an army man in his 60’s, wide and fit with a plate of medals on his jacket and a small, soft man with square rimmed glasses and a weak chin hidden behind goatee fuzz.

“This is why we need to work together Cynthia,” Secretary of Defense, Donald “WarDon” Richards said as they picked their path through the office wreckage. Ahead of them, a tank revved up and dragged away a subway car. It was apparent that no one in it had survived. Construction workers and firemen cleared the wreckage. Above them two cranes raised new rail to replace what had fallen down.

“They didn’t take us off-line. We routed to the other Data Nodes in the region out of protocol. This is cosmetic. The Data Core was unharmed,” Cynthia said.

She had come a long way from the day that Tom beat Jerry choosing images with his mind. The Mindlink arrived when the last of the accessible oil disappeared. There were articles and books (digital anyway) that stated she had saved the modern world. They were wrong. She had made the modern world obsolete. She had erased national borders. She had turned the earth into an apartment by creating a better one online. She had kept the company private and her personal worth was well into one trillion dollars. Ninety-five percent of the civilized world, including government, including military, used her technology to function. “We’ve had this happen before, Donald.”

“But not this successfully,” the pudgy man said. “Their weapons are the same, but they’re getting more strategic. They used C4 and long range detonators.”

Cynthia stopped and Sabot was immediately her shadow, scanning all entry points. There was a military perimeter around the wreckage, but bullets could thread the needle. He had recommended against her coming here.

“Who is he?” Cynthia asked WarDon.

“This is Dr. Lindo,” WarDon said. “I should have introduced you. Sorry. He’s my advisor.”

“I’ve heard of you. You developed the analytics program for the military,” Cynthia said.

“Yes.” Evan had come out of nowhere at the age of twenty-two when he created an artificial intelligence software that recognized trends in seemingly unrelated data and predicted future patterns based on this data with incredible accuracy. At its root, “Nostradamus” was a bit-torrent application, but instead of taking known bits of a file from registered locations to create a replica, it took pieces of data that had no recognizable relation and formed a hypothesis of action. Technology had always been the U.S. military’s greatest weapon and Nostradamus was considered revolutionary for strategic warfare. At its best, it put them in the mind of their enemy. At its worst, it stacked the deck in their favor. It had won battles, saved lives, and predicted seeds of unrest. Evan was thirty-one now and the army’s prodigal son.

“Why didn’t your software predict this?” Cynthia teased. Lindo bristled but remained quiet. While he was soft shouldered and round, his eyes burnt with intelligence. She thought it was odd that he wore glasses given how cheap corrective eye surgery was. An affectation of some kind.

“That’s why we’re here,” WarDon said. They made it to a construction elevator that had been quickly installed to replace the crushed one. The elevator shaft was undamaged.

“I’ve given the U.S. its own network,” Cynthia said. “How much cooperation do I need to provide?”

They stepped into the elevator.

“Any more dead?” WarDon asked.

Cynthia sighed, but it felt forced. Her mind was racing.

“They found one. Our receptionist,” Cynthia said. “Sabot, be sure to compensate the family.”

“Yes.”

They went down. For one hundred feet they stared at solid concrete and then it opened up into a cavernous space. It reminded Evan of an airplane hanger. The MindCorp technology was client-server. The Mindlink that a customer used at home was an interface, a glorified keyboard. All of the computer processing was done offsite at the Data Nodes. This was one of Cynthia’s brilliant maneuvers. The technology was proprietary and extremely well-protected. Even the government didn’t know exactly how it worked.

The style of the space was industrial: exposed beams around the perimeter, metal walkways throughout, snaked with ventilation. At the center was a giant black tube over twenty stories tall. WarDon whistled.

“You’ve never seen one?” Cynthia asked.

“No, just pictures.”

“This is a Colossal Core, there are five of them in the U.S. It can handle over forty million users.”

“And all of that got offloaded to the other Cores?” Evan asked. Cynthia nodded with pride.

“We keep headroom on all of our Data Cores. The re-routing was completely transparent to the user.”

As they descended, the ants turned into hundreds of workers. There were metal beds surrounding the Core like petals of a flower. Evan counted fifty. Men and women sat on the beds and waited for technicians in lab coats to go through a checklist with them. Afterwards, the person put on a Mindlink and laid down. Other techs manned controls near the base of the Core.

“Are those the Sleepers?” WarDon asked, pointing to the people in the beds. Cynthia nodded.

“They program and maintain the system,” she said. Evan and WarDon exchanged glances.

“I’ve heard they can do more. Quite a lot more,” WarDon said.

“The theoretical is different than the practical, General,” Cynthia said. “We’ve capped their bandwidth to 300 megabytes-per-second, only spiking it for specific projects.”

At the ground floor, a man so obese he couldn’t walk rode a scooter over to them. The tires on his Rascal screamed for mercy as he approached.

“Dr. Marin,” Cynthia said.

“Great timing, Cynthia. We’re about to fire it back up.”

“Any issues?”

“A fiber line was damaged, but we’ve routed around it. We should be 100% in another twenty-four hours.”

They followed Dr. Marin to the control deck right at the Core. It was an immense structure, more so because the giant tube was so dark. It was like a black hole caught in a bottle. Dr. Marin nodded to a group of technicians and two pulled down levers while the others typed quickly on keyboards. A sound erupted from the Core like a cold engine turning.

The entire tube crackled blue . . . then black . . . the engine turning . . . electric blue . . . black . . . the engine turning . . . BOOM! The entire tube filled with a coursing, electric blue, as if lightning had been trapped in a bottle. Everyone’s hair stood on end and arcs of static electricity danced between the Core and the electronics at its base. Dr. Marin saw the concern on WarDon’s face.

“It’s completely safe. Everything’s grounded.”

WarDon nodded but he was unconvinced. He took a few steps back. Evan did the opposite: he walked around the Core as if it were an alien artifact. He immediately recognized its components. A huge bundle of fiber lines—tens of millions—ran the length of the Core. At its center was a thin metal plate that separated the two segments. That thin plate was the Data Crusher and how Sleepers could do what Evan had told WarDon they could. That benign piece of metal blotted out in the sea of pulsing blue was the key to Nostradamus and beyond.

= = =

“It’s all very impressive,” WarDon said. They were now at a conference table adjunct from the Core. Sabot poured water for them. Evan noticed that his forearm was as big as his own thigh.

Cynthia pulled out a joint. “Do you mind? I’m losing focus.”

It was the opposite. Cynthia was, in fact, gaining focus. Without medication, she had almost uncontrollable obsessive-compulsive disorder. For programming and research, it was an incredible strength. She would get off the pills, get off the weed, and her genius would be paired with laser-like focus. But day-to-day it was crippling and without medication she had extreme difficulty communicating effectively. Sometimes she would speak in English and computer code, as if they were one.

WarDon put on his best, I’m-fine-with-it, smile. “Of course.”

She sparked up.

“Why are you really here, General?” Cynthia asked.

“I guess we can cut to it. The U.S. is losing on two fronts right now, Cynthia, and both have major consequences that exacerbate the other,” WarDon stood up and paced the room. “I was going to come to Chicago before this happened but it emphasizes our failure at home.”

“The Terror War is getting worse and the Coalition is falling apart. We thought one of the few benefits with the oil shortage would be that our enemies couldn’t get over here. But we were wrong. As soon as we invaded, many of them traveled to Canada and down. We have no proof, but we think some of our national enemies may have funded this emigration. There were also cells already planted in the U.S. that we didn’t know about.”

“I know these things. What does it have to do with me?”

“Nostradamus,” Evan said. “Because we have no access to your software, we can’t implement it effectively.”

“The software is mine,” Cynthia said flatly. “As is the technology behind it.”

WarDon put his hands up.

“We’re not saying it’s not, quite the contrary. It’s yours, Cynthia. MindCorp saved the modern world. Who knows where we’d be without you. Worse, for sure. But if we had access, true access, this software could follow trends. It could save lives.”

“It’s an invasion of privacy,” Cynthia said.

“So are your Sleepers,” Evan replied coolly.

“Sleepers are programmers, simple as that. They maintain the system,” Cynthia said.

“Evan seems to think otherwise,” WarDon said. It was clear they had pulled their trump card.

“Theoretically, yes. Early on we tested quite a few theories, many with government involvement. You should know that, Don. But they were deemed unethical, unnecessary, and dangerous. We cap the bandwidth on the Mindlinks to limit any . . . transgressions.”

Evan interrupted. “There are five Sleepers in Chicago you don’t restrict and they are gathering information that is privy only to you.”

Cynthia turned to WarDon. “Are you spying on me?”

WarDon shrugged.

“You haven’t been forthright, Cynthia, and the world relies way too much on your technology without understanding how it works. You’re a privately held corporation and you are doing espionage. I have the list, I can show you.” WarDon pulled it out of his coat; Cynthia waved it away. “This information would not be good going public. We are in dire times.”

WarDon sat down. He continued. “I’m not asking you to stop. In fact, we are providing you a tool to do more. We’re asking you to do more.”

The room was quiet. Cynthia finally spoke up.

“I understand how granting access to Nostradamus on our network could help with the Terror War, but what does this have to do with the Coalition?”

“There’s never been a true oil shortage before, Cynthia. As much as we’ve hemmed and hawed in the past, we’ve always found more. But those days are gone. If there’s only enough food for two people, and three people are eating, sooner or later, two of ‘em are going to realize that it can’t go on . . . and every one of them wants to survive. Contrary to popular belief, I like peace. I want peace. But my job’s to prepare for the worst. No one acts rationally when they’re hungry and scared. Not people, sure as hell not nations. That’s where your untethered Sleepers come into play. I need to know what our Coalition partners are thinking.”

“If they found out, it could destroy my business.”

“So would World War III.”

“You can’t be serious,” Cynthia replied.

WarDon raised his eyebrow, but the rest of his face remained like stone. He was.

“Let me think about it.”

WarDon stood up and Evan followed.

“Of course.”

= = =

That night on their private train back to Chicago, Cynthia lay naked next to Sabot, pondering the meeting with WarDon. Sabot had been her bodyguard for five years and her lover for six months. He was the anchor that kept her reasonable in a sea that bent to her every whim, around people that would ‘yes’ her off a cliff and follow after her, just to be in her good stead.

As her influence overshadowed governments and changed the global culture, death threats would surface in the bowels of extremist blogs. A stalker was arrested and sentenced. Abduction attempts thwarted. And Cynthia knew she had high level enemies around her—both government and corporate—that sought her opinion and joked with her, that complimented her. But when she turned away their smiles vanished and they glared at her with emotionless, chestnut eyes: the eyes of the hungry and jealous and wanting.

She lit a joint and pulled. She held the smoke until it burned and let it go. The smoke rolled over itself in the moonlight.

“What’s up?” Sabot asked. He had woken. He pushed himself up on his elbows.

“My mind’s racing. How dangerous is WarDon?” Cynthia asked. While Sabot never said it straight out, he had hinted they had crossed paths during his service.

“Politically?”

“Everything. Political, military, any way he could hurt me.”

Sabot didn’t hesitate. “If things get dire, they’ll do to MindCorp what they did to the Middle East and Venezuela.”

“No. They couldn’t.”

Sabot let out a short laugh.

“So you think they’ll invade countries but not take over a corporation?” he said.

“Without me, it would fail.”

Sabot raised an eyebrow. Cynthia realized that Sabot thought they would abduct her.

“No, they wouldn’t. I’m too high profile!”

“Who would know anymore, Cynthia? MindCorp controls all the information. If they controlled it and you, they could say you moved to Antarctica to study penguins. They would rationalize it for the greater good. Things are easy for governments to justify.”

“Really,” she said, less surprised than she should be and not nearly scared enough. This was good weed.

“I’m glad you’re taking it well,” Sabot said. He rolled over and fell back asleep.

Cynthia almost turned in, thought ‘fuck it’ and smoked the rest of the joint. Sabot was right. WarDon was dangerous. He and the other politicians and officers put up brave fronts, but they were scared, fanatical in their fear of unimportance. Cynthia’s invention had helped solve a global crisis among the developed nations with the dwindling oil reserves. But it didn’t solve the national crisis. It, in fact, accelerated what policy had begun one hundred years before. Free trade. Global conglomerates. U.S. companies with their factories in China. German companies with their manufacturing in Mexico. Shoes made in sweatshops across Asia. Countries bailing out other countries, because each relied so much on the other. Nations had become states. And each of these states was governed by the global economy. The Mindlink caused further withering of nation relevance because in the digital space, location meant nothing. MindCorp had created a better world with less pollution, that offered limitless choices, and that they controlled completely.

Cynthia put out her joint and pulled the blankets up. She watched Sabot sleep until her eyes grew heavy. She knew she came with baggage and she loved him for carrying it.

The governments had become landlords and nothing more. But they still had guns. And they still had bombs. And they still had soldiers. They would not go quietly into the night. She decided to play along. If they were to become enemies, it would be better that they were close.

-Venezuela-

Hugo was being hunted. They all were. When the Coalition had invaded Venezuela five years before, the military aristocracy and the politicians surrendered for amnesty. They handed over Venezuela to save their hides. But Hugo—a General—and a few hundred other soldiers did not. They took to the mountains near the oil fields. That was what it was about, after all, the oil. In the years that followed they had grown in number. The Coalition had cordoned off cities and didn’t allow travel. But Hugo and his renegades broke out many, and their numbers climbed to almost five hundred.

The refineries were heavily guarded, but the rebels knocked one out for a month. Battleships surrounded the oil pipeline to the sea, but they still blew it up. And the mountains were theirs. The U.S. had its fill of guerilla warfare and wanted none of it. The intruders kept their crosshairs on the mountains from the comfort of their citadels, but they didn’t come hunt. It was not their land.

Except for him. Twelve Coalition soldiers had been dropped at the top of the mountain to find and assassinate Hugo. In a two-week span, Hugo and his patriots had killed all but one. They were high in the mountains, too high for the Coalition to send reinforcements and he knew the soldier was on his own. So Hugo spread his army out like a net in search of the final soldier.

That was one month ago and that lone soldier still haunted them. Camps would wake up to ten dead. Scout parties would never come back. And then he’d pick one off, two off—be quiet for days—and then strike again. He avoided the mines. He avoided the snares. He avoided feints to lure him out. They called him ‘el fantasma.’ The ghost. And it had begun to feel like he was a part of the forest and not a man.

Within the last two weeks, three hundred of Hugo’s men had defected. They didn’t ask, they just disappeared in the night. And while Hugo knew they had left on their own volition, others attributed it to the ghost. The ghost (quit calling him that, Hugo said to himself), the MAN—he was a MAN—had killed fifty men since they had chased him up into the mountains.

Hugo was down to twenty men under his command. As quickly as his power had risen, Hugo saw it fall. The Coalition had won. They would think it was their battleships and tanks and helicopters, but for Hugo, it was this one man that had done it.

“Carlos has been gone too long,” a lieutenant whispered. It was night and they sat around a small campfire at the mouth of a cave.

“Go find him,” Hugo said, absently.

“No,” the lieutenant replied. Hugo looked into his eyes and he saw the fear. The ghost.

“He’s just a man, hermano.”

“Maybe we did kill him . . .” the lieutenant said. A few pair of wide eyes nodded in agreement.

So this is what happens. Hugo thought. We lose our country, we lose our dignity, and then we lose our minds.

Hugo rose to his feet.

“Where are you going?”

“To find Carlos.”

The lieutenant stood up. “I’ll go with you.”

“And what, have you shoot me in the back when you hear an owl?”

The men around the fire laughed uncomfortably.

“I’ll go alone, thank you. It’s late, he may just be asleep.”

Hugo walked out of the cave and made his way up the mountain. The view from here was spectacular. At night, nothing was wrong. The city lights twinkled, the shadows hid the sins. But in daylight, the land was carved into boroughs, the dust trail of the tanks easily spotted. Ahead, he saw Carlos asleep against a tree. He could hear him snoring. Hugo took a stick and threw it at him.

“Carlos!” he hissed.

Carlos shifted around in his sleep. Hugo rolled his eyes. Carlos was the laziest of his soldiers, but also his bravest. He was drunk much of the time. Hugo stood over him.

“Carlos!” Carlos rose up and then slunk back to the ground. It took Hugo a second to see that the tree behind Carlos was looking at him. Mike Glass, in full ghillie suit, separated from the pine. He aimed a silenced .22 Ruger at Hugo’s head. The subsonic rounds were as quiet as a BB gun.

“El Fantasma,” Hugo said. And then the bullet entered his eye.

Chapter 2

Justin McWilliams finally had enough money. He looked online at his bank account “like poor people do,” typing in his username and password, seeing the balance on a flat screen monitor. He lived in DeKalb, Illinois. When he was born, the population was over thirty thousand people. Now it was two hundred. The other thirty thousand had left during the Great Migration when the government offered to move and place them in homes in Chicago. All that remained were farmers. His father farmed corn and soy and he was paid directly by the government. Not a lot, but like his father said: “In these times, at least we’re paid.”

Justin closed the browser and gathered himself. He heard the television downstairs and he could picture his father stretched out on his recliner, absently itching his junk. His mom would always say “Frank!” and his father would reply, “I can’t help it the dang thing is so big,” and throw a wink at Justin. It always made Justin laugh.

He heard the clanging of pots and dishes as his mom washed up after dinner. Justin took a big breath. It was time. He walked downstairs, his heart racing. He turned into the living room and caught the tail end of another one of his father’s nut grabs.

Frank McWilliams saw Justin out of the corner of his eye and turned his head back.

“Hey J, are you done with your homework?”

Justin nodded that he was, but it was assumed. Justin’s IQ was 190. He formed sentences at eighteen months, and he could solve advanced calculus problems by age four. Soon after, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. He had difficulties in crowds and relating to people. Even at home, he connected with his dad but only communicated basics with his mom. He was twelve now.

“I have three hundred and fifty dollars,” Justin stated.

His father smiled. “That’s a lot of prairie dogs.”

Four hundred and sixty-seven rounded up, Justin quickly calculated. Justin got seventy-five cents a prairie dog on the neighboring farms. He used a bolt-action, 22 magnum with a 4x Tasco scope. “You said if I saved up, I could buy a Mindlink.”

“It costs three fifty?”

“Three hundred and ten with tax.”

His father chuckled. “Mom can buy it online for you. Charlene!”

“I want to go into the city,” Justin said.

Frank turned off the television. Charlene quit doing the dishes and leaned in.

“Justin, you don’t have to,” Frank said. “We get shipments every week.”

“But if we go in, then I can get it tomorrow.” Justin looked pained. When he was frustrated he’d pat his right hand on his thigh like he was keeping a beat.

“The city is very crowded, and noisy,” Frank said slowly. He looked to his wife. He wanted his son to go, he wanted it to be his decision. But he had to know the facts. In the last year, they had seen Justin begin to open up. It was a fraction of what other children would, but it was enough to see the sweet boy inside. Before he would act out with tears or rage, but now he would try to explain himself. One of the reasons Frank sat in the chair and watched TV was that it was easier for Justin to communicate without direct eye contact.

“I want to go. That’s why it’s three hundred and fifty dollars.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Two round trip train tickets are twenty dollars apiece.”

Frank roared with laughter.

“I want to see MindCorp,” Justin said. “I read that Cynthia Revo is like me.”

= = =

Mohammed Jawal was sixty-three years old, broad shouldered and lean. Younger, he had been a striking man. Clean-shaven, he had the hard lines of a sheik. But his welcoming brown eyes played against his otherwise intimidating appearance. He had no problems meeting women.

That was twenty years ago. Before. He now had hair down to his shoulders, the black streaked with gray. His beard ended mid-chest. He had turned over his life to Allah and in doing so, he had turned his back on Western conventions, ones that he, much to his dismay, had once embraced.

It helped you know your enemy.

True. But at one time, that had made him his own. And they had used it for their purposes.

He was alone in a New York safe house. His soldiers were preparing for their next attack. It was time for prayer.

“Allahu Akbar,” he said. God is great. God is great. Their attack in New York had gone perfectly. Other cells were vicious and immoral, but when Mohammed formed the Western Curse, he and his clerics vowed to attack the problem, not just what was convenient. Those actions, hijacking a school bus, killing innocent people in the streets, were terrorism. They were evil actions justified under vague pretenses of Jihad. They were a blot on Islam. He and his clerics, back when they were scholars and politicos and industrialists and entrepreneurs, had clearly defined who they would attack: the heads. Always the heads. We aren’t terrorists, he thought, we are freedom fighters. They are on our soil, so we are on theirs.

He folded his arms across his chest and recited the first chapter of the Qur’an:

“I start by the name of Allah, the Rehman, and the Raheem. All praise is for Allah who is the maker of everything, the Rehman, the Raheem, the final Master. (O Allah) we worship you and we ask help from you. Show us the right way. The way of those who got good things, not the way of those who were punished and not the way of those who believed in wrong things.”

Like his other clerics, Mohammed Jawal was highly educated. His master’s degree in political science came from Oxford and his doctorate from Yale. He was a published expert on middle-eastern policy and he had been invited to the White House as an advisor. They didn’t ignore him. Far from it. They used him. He explained each culture and how it functioned. How they could gain favor. He thought it was to improve foreign relations. He found out soon it was prep for invasion. He laughed sadly when he thought about it. How naïve of him to think good of politicians. The President was there. The Secretary of Defense. The heads of government. Even representatives from China and the EU. All the heads. It’s always the heads.

He had walked away flattered. And then six months later, they had invaded. They had taken his advice; they had contacted the royal families months before and offered not only amnesty, but gifts and futures.

Mohammed continued his prayer. He spoke in Arabic verses that moved him, that made him feel taller, closer to heaven, but at the same time meek in his God’s presence.

“Allahu Akbar.” Mohammed bowed. “Subhana rabbiyal adheem, subhanna rabbiyal adheem, subhana rabbiyal adhemm.” Glory be to my Lord Almighty.

the Western Curse was growing. It was never about religion; they were not Jihadists. It was about what was right. He did this because the West had beaten and abused his country like a slave. The West only believed in slaves, from the beginning when the cotton crop had to be harvested, to the pawn dictator that did the West’s wishes in a language they wouldn’t even take the time to understand. Slavery was all the West knew and it was time to break those bonds. It was time to pull the slave master off his horse and beat him down until he lay dead.

Damn the West for making me do this. Damn them for treating their privilege like it was their right.

= = =

It had been a month since Cynthia had agreed to help the United States. In that time, Nostradamus had been integrated into the global MindCorp network and Cynthia had recruited and implemented Sleepers to spy on the United States’ allies.

Nostradamus was interesting to Cynthia, and that made Evan interesting to Cynthia. The AI program was set up at a base in West Virginia and she tethered it to the closest Data Node. All Cores were connected, so Nostradamus could now “scrub” for data (as Lindo called it) to mine patterns from what appeared to be random information. It accessed all e-mail, all IP telephony, all virtual chats, anything financial that was purchased with credit. Anything that left a trail. It even mined news feeds.

“Scrubbing will take months, but once all the data is collected, the program will begin to see patterns the army can use,” Evan explained.

“It’s quite brilliant,” Cynthia had said.

“Thank you. It works two ways. It treats all information bit torrent and it treats the entire landscape of information as a codec. That’s what the scrubbing’s for. It lays a foundation of data that the AI can then reference for anomalies. From there, it sees a pattern,” he continued. “Your network is billions of times more vast, we’ve only used Nostradamus on battlefields and with specific reconnaissance where it behaves more like a chess computer. But the same patterns will hold in cyberspace. I designed it to work micro and macro, it just comes down to processing power and storage.”

“You think ahead,” Cynthia said.

“Always.”

Peering into the EU’s and China’s backyard had fallen solely on Cynthia. When she introduced the Sleepers to WarDon and he explained to them the terms of their jail sentence if they committed treason, the mood dampened. It perked back up when they were told their salaries were doubled. In three more weeks, Cynthia had promised WarDon a dossier so thorough on the leaders of the EU and China that they could write that person’s biography in such detail and cadence that the subjects themselves would think they had written it.

“If a person’s thoughts are a bag, the Sleepers are pulling that bag inside out. There’s nothing they can hide,” Cynthia had said when she had outlined the process to WarDon.

“How don’t they know?” WarDon asked.

“Think of it this way: we’re currently in my office and you can see and interpret everything around you clearly. The desk, the seat cushion, me, Sabot, the streaked window behind me. You think you see it all, because you rely on your senses, but there is more data in this room you don’t sense. There are terabits of broadcast waves and cellular waves coursing through and around us, but we don’t even think about them because their spectrum is outside our perspective. But if I turn on a TV or radio, boom! There it is. It’s the same online. We’re working behind the scenes, on a level they can’t register because even online they rely on their base senses.”

“Couldn’t another Sleeper?” Evan asked.

“If it was a non-MindCorp Sleeper doing espionage, yes. But we are sifting through their actual data stream. We aren’t hacking into it. We own it.”

= = =

Now, she and Sabot had been summoned to a new military research center being constructed north of Chicago. It was called the Derik Building. It was at five stories tall, dark and wide. At the front, it seemed hospital-like. But as Cynthia walked through, she could read signs directing staff up and down and to different wings. “Testing Range.” “Prosthetics.” “Server Field.” “Surgical Center.” “Lab Hanger 1.” “Lab Hanger 2.” “Lab Hanger 3.” Cynthia saw the Lab count reach eighteen before their escort directed them down a hall that consisted of conference rooms. Around them, construction workers and painters worked feverishly. The escort opened a door to one of the unfinished conference rooms. Evan and WarDon stood up as they entered.

WarDon and Evan had been mum on why they brought her here. WarDon was quiet, but in a good mood. He had a dazed, strip club smile on his face.

“How flexible is the Mindlink with applications?” Evan asked.

“Outside of cyberspace?”

“Yes.”

“Assuming the subject has the proper aptitude, with the right software driver it can do anything, really. You’ve seen what we’ve done with manufacturing. Why?”

“What do you know about prosthetic limbs?” Lindo asked.

“Haven’t had any use for them—what is this about?” Cynthia was tired of the build up, she felt like she was being pitched by a carnie. Show the chick with the beard, already.

“The Terror War,” WarDon said.

“That’s what Nostradamus is for, isn’t it?” Cynthia asked.

“It’s a start,” WarDon said. “We think what we’re about to show you will finish it.”

“What?”

“A soldier that’s virtually indestructible,” Evan chimed in. “Our war isn’t with nations anymore, never mind the issues with our partners in the Coalition. It’s terrorism, plain and simple. Always needling us, picking at us, three months of calm followed by a bombing. War is easy compared to this. It’s predictable. Vetted. There’s a defined finish to it. We can’t go into New York with tanks and attack choppers and level a building they’re entrenched in. We can’t kill one hundred of them by cutting down a thousand of our own.”

“This soldier would somehow stop this?” Cynthia asked. “The technology to do that . . .”

“I’ve developed over the last six years, ever since the Mindlink could process 2-way information,” Lindo said.

Next to Evan was a table stacked with lead aprons. He handed them out.

“Come with me,” he said.

They put them on and followed him through a door into another room. A dozen engineers in similar aprons stood around a huge block of an object that was ten feet wide and taller. It was covered in a tarp. Evan nodded at one of the engineers and he hit a switch. The tarp rose up and Cynthia gasped at what was revealed. A colossal metal man sat in a chair like a king. She walked up to it, miniscule compared to it. She looked at the armored feet. They were the size of a snow sled, but remarkably articulated.

The legs were protected with thick armored plates, but between the slits and at the joints, she saw shock absorbers. Their pistons and springs were gray and green like the rest of the body, and glistening with oil.

There was a ladder.

“May I?” Cynthia asked Evan.

Evan beamed at his invention. “Yes, you may.”

She climbed up the ladder to see the bionic more closely.

It would take two men to get their arms around each square thigh. The thighs had a different suspension system from the rest of the leg. Ten rubber coated slats were sandwiched together. She didn’t understand how it worked, but it was clearly for shock absorption. She would inquire later.

The pelvis and thighs were separated from the upper body by a pair of huge drive chains, each link the size of a human head. Gear teeth stuck through them.

The upper body was gigantic, but still human in form, like a bodybuilder dipped in metal.

The metal hands curled over the end of the armrests. A person could sit in their palm and the knuckles were bulbous with armor. But the joints and seams along the fingers and creased into the top of the hands showed a level of articulation that was astounding. It was the most beautiful feat of mechanical engineering Cynthia had ever seen.

Cynthia saw that there was no head. In its place was a void, and she understood why they needed the Mindlink.

“A person goes in this?” she asked, disbelieving. She leaned over the dark pit. The compartment was small. “No person could fit in this.”

“A soldier would have to make a physical concession,” Lindo said.

“Fuel?” Cynthia asked.

“It’s powered with electrical cells. It can recharge off any electrical line. I also have a hydrogen generator attachment I’m working on.”

Radiation symbols were painted on its chest and back.

“What makes it radioactive then?” she asked. She climbed back down to the floor.

“The armor. This particular example is made out of depleted uranium. It’s more toxic than radioactive.”

“That would kill the person in it,” Cynthia said.

Lindo shrugged.

“Eventually. The interior is lead lined, we have RAD treatments devised.”

“And it works?” Cynthia couldn’t take her eyes off it. It sat over them like an ancient god.

WarDon spoke up.

“We need a custom Mindlink interface in order to bring this to life. We modified some of your online software to test it, but this needs to be a fully contained Mindlink interface. We can’t do it without you.”

“This is the prototype, there is more to it than this,” Lindo said. “But we can’t get there without your help.”

Her enthusiasm vanished. “You’re asking a lot. Access to my network is one thing, it’s on my terms. I can cut Nostradamus, I can pull the Sleeper program if there’s a conflict, or I think it’s being abused. But you want secrets.”

Evan started to say something. Cynthia held up her hand to stop him.

“You’re too smart to play me for dumb,” she said.

“With the Terr—” WarDon began.

“The Coalition started the Terror War, Donald!” Cynthia said. “I don’t see the problem, outside of the problem. Transportation is limited and incredibly expensive now. They can’t be shipping more terrorists over which means there are a finite supply. Find them and root them out.”

“We’re putting our best and brightest on that as we speak,” WarDon said. “But we still don’t have the armor we need to protect those lives. The cities are horrible places for war, Cynthia. It’s all high ground. We can’t bring in heavy armor. We bring in a small team that must—on the fly—decide who is a terrorist, who is a civilian, all while bullets fly past them that can go through our best body armor.

“You’re worried about your secrets? What about American lives? Would your secrets stop MindCorp from being the largest corporation in the history of man? Would it help a competitor get out of court if they stole your proprietary technology?”

Cynthia was quiet. WarDon had made a point.

“MindCorp is a monopoly in the truest sense,” WarDon emphasized. “And the U.S. understands how important it is to our way of life. But Goddammit Cynthia, have you seen a dead body? I’ve seen thousands. I’ve talked to the parents.”

“A self-contained Mindlink can be reverse engineered,” Cynthia said through gritted teeth.

“A dead kid can’t,” WarDon spat. He left the room.

Evan sat across for a moment, quietly flipping a pencil end-over-end on the table.

“I’d be very respectful of the technology, Cynthia. I would keep you abreast of everything,” he finally said.

Cynthia shook her head no.

= = =

After Cynthia and Sabot left, Evan walked to his office. Along the way soldiers and researchers said hello and he said it back. He had designed his office to be among the thousands of research servers in cold storage. The core of the core, he liked to think. He thought his CPU was the most important of them all. He liked to think of his brain as a machine.

He walked through the field of servers and into his office. After he closed the door, he stood with his back against it for a moment, breathing deeply. And then he screamed. He screamed until his throat shredded and the veins on his neck stood out like worms. He gathered himself.

“It’s fine. All in due time. All in due time,” he said aloud. “Patience,” he emphasized. I hate patience, a voice in his head shot back.

He needed the self-contained Mindlink and he had thought with Captain Happy—that was what he called the bionic soldier—he would have tricked it out of Cynthia. She was right. A self-contained Mindlink could be reverse engineered. He had hoped to do that for an army of Captain Happy’s and more: he was constructing a new weapon underground in Virginia.

She’s too smart to trick, Evan thought. She was the smartest person in the world.

The computer terminal at his desk pinged. He walked over to it and put the Mindlink on. This terminal had a direct tie line to Nostradamus and the AI had picked up a pattern.

Already.

He was impressed with himself. There was an increase in Muslim named passengers on two ‘L’ trains in Chicago. While normally it would be one in two hundred, on these cars there were five to two hundred. In addition, four graduates from Berkeley who had belonged to extremist political groups were also on these trains, separated in pairs. Nostradamus had tracked their purchase history. One had used his parents’ credit at an online sporting goods store to buy four balaclava masks. Half of the Muslims on the train had moved to Chicago within a week apart five months before. One of the Berkeley students with an electrical engineering degree was janitor at MindCorp Headquarters. One of the Muslims was an off duty train operator. Another of the Muslims had recently watched video related to the occupation in the Middle East. One of the Berkeley students had read a book about a bank robbery in 1997 at a North Hollywood bank perpetrated by two heavily armed men. A shipment of fertilizer to a farmer with a liberal dissident past outpaced his land size and yield. A city garbage truck had gone missing seven months before.

Sixty-five percent of all passengers taking these trains took the next train north. Nostradamus crunched other mundane information. E-mails. Travel patterns of the general populace that had moved here within the last five months, past travel logs for the names listed, chats and e-mails associated with the Berkeley students. Once it latched on to a pattern, it could raise it above the noise floor of the zeros and ones that made up our digital lives. With 66.7% accuracy Nostradamus predicted that both the MindCorp Data Node north of the city and MindCorp Headquarters would be attacked today.

The protocol for Evan was to report this immediately to WarDon, who would then galvanize the proper military division into action. But Evan saw the long view. Cynthia was too smart to trick, but she had emotions. He smiled and then he instructed Nostradamus to ignore these patterns, backup to a local drive, and erase the information from its shared log.

He’d let this play out.

= = =

Frank felt that today was a turning point in Justin’s short life. That morning, he and Charlene had woken to Justin standing next to their bed.

“Morning, bud,” Frank said, stretching. Justin had a huge grin on his face and his eyes were alight. Frank had never seen that before.

“Can we go?” Justin asked. Frank looked at the clock. It was 5:00 am.

“The earliest train is at 7:00 am,” Frank said. Instead of throwing a tantrum or not processing this basic reality, Justin nodded.

“I’ll go downstairs and wait.”

Frank got out of bed and got ready. When he came down, Justin had packed their lunch and coffee was brewing. Charlene choked up. Frank put his arm around her.

“What?” Justin said. His voice was back to flat, a tell of Asperger’s.

“Nothing, Justin. Are you excited?” Frank asked.

The flatness vanished. He looked directly at them. “Did you know that MindCorp is not only the tallest skyscraper in Chicago, but it is over three times as large, in cubic volume, as the Sears Tower? Cynthia started MindCorp ten years ago, she said the Mindlink was like a photographic negative in her mind that never let her . . .”

He rattled off facts and Frank and his wife bathed in them.

The sky was clear and Frank watched Justin as he stared out the window and the landscape changed from field after field, to abandoned suburbs, to the dermis of the city—the ghettos—to the gigantic cement and steel tentacles that reached up into the sky. Before the Great Migration, DeKalb had been sixty miles outside of Chicago. Now it was just forty. From the silo on the farm, the wall of skyscrapers looked like a tsunami coming to shore. And now they were there.

It was dark in the city, something Frank hadn’t expected. It didn’t register right away. The hour trip in and the rapid change of the landscape, made him feel like he had traveled further and longer than he actually had. The thousands of skyscrapers acted like ivy encroaching a window, choking out the light.

“How’re you doing?” Frank asked Justin. His son smiled up at him.

The train slowed down on its way to O’Hare National Train Station. From that hub they would go into the city. Frank furrowed his brow looking at the train schedule monitor on the wall of the car. With the Great Migration, Chicago had bloated to four times its previous size. There were hundreds of train and ‘L’ schedules.

“The 7:00 a.m. train gets in at 8:30 a.m.” Justin looked at a clock on the wall. “We’re arriving on time.”

He scanned the schedule, it flickered different routes like a stock ticker. “The 8:50 a.m. train on Ramp 14 arrives at Ogilvy Transportation Center at 9:25. From there we take the Blue to the Red to the M, which will take us directly to MindCorp.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then you’re in charge. You can handle it, right?”

Justin squeezed his dad’s hand.

They left O’Hare National and the ground dropped below Justin as the train track rose and they entered the city. They glided twenty stories above the streets. Above and below them, dozens of tracks and trains crisscrossed, servicing different parts of the city, now no longer downtown centric. During the day they were gliding caskets, homes for bums, derelicts, and drunks who never left them as they spun around their tracks like perpetual motion machines. During mealtimes and at night, the trains would be flooded with the bed-headed masses taking a break from their online jobs, networked interests and social clubs. Taking a break to breathe air that didn’t smell like them, walking in the park to get the tingling out of their feet.

The Mindlink had turned the city into a dorm. There were stores and restaurants, centers to congregate, but most services provided home delivery. The roads were empty except for government subsidized service vehicles, police, and electric delivery trucks. It was walk or rail. Bike tires were too expensive.

The Mindlink (and Mindlink accessories!) were sold throughout the city, but the only place that could fill a child with wonder was located at the building where Cynthia sat at that very moment, one hundred and fifty stories up. Justin and Frank got on the M rail and it quickly separated from the tangle of tracks around it. It had one stop on its monitor and they were just a mile away.

The train slowed like a rollercoaster at the end of its ride as they approached MindCorp. Frank looked around. There were no other trains. There were few paths to MindCorp and this was one of them. The negative space between MindCorp and the other buildings made it feel surreal, as if it was a portal into another dimension. And then Frank realized that this was true, and probably intentional. This was science fiction. MindCorp did create another world.

The building occupied four city blocks and it looked like a gun pointed at God. It was black and clean without a hint of rust or neglect. In fact, it was one of the few buildings in the city that still maintained the air of prosperity.

“Is it as big as you pictured?” Frank asked Justin. Justin didn’t respond. His face was pressed against the window taking it all in. The building looked magical, it looked powerful. It looked like it ruled the world. They entered a tunnel halfway up MindCorp and in that momentary darkness, Frank blinked his eyes, turned around, and realized they were the only two people on the train.

Of course. Everyone else already owns a Mindlink.

But it made him shiver. It didn’t feel right. Surely in a city of fifteen million, someone else would have to stop by.

The train came to a halt and the door whooshed open. They stepped out to no one. On the far end, a line of twenty unmanned kiosks had countless Mindlinks (and Mindlink accessories!) queued up behind glass on mechanical arms. They heard a clatter from far below, followed by another, but it was nearly drowned out from the automated monitors that welcomed them to MindCorp.

“No one’s here,” Justin said.

He looked up and down the two hundred yard hallway. There were a couple of trashcans, but no janitor. At the kiosk there was a help button, but no one that smiled and said ‘hello.’ At the far end was a store with its security gate rolled down. The lights were out. It felt deserted.

“I think we’re late to the party,” Frank said. “Let’s go ahead and buy one and get some lunch before we head home.”

Unceremoniously, Frank and Justin walked over. They looked at the machine, shrugged, and then Frank swiped his credit card. A box big enough to hold a bicycle helmet slid off its rack and fell to the bottom of the kiosk. The door opened, Justin picked it up, and that was that.

“Hey!” someone hissed. It came from the store. Frank searched the darkness for the voice. A young, round, black woman appeared at the gate fumbling with her keys. “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?” Frank said. They walked toward her.

“We’re under attack!”

Just then a flashing light spun and a siren bellowed. Chatter echoed up from below. Gunfire.

= = =

Raimey had been back in Chicago for two days and already the shit was heating up. Nostradamus had pinged the potential attack just minutes before. The team was so caught off guard, they had to change into their gear on the way. They were en route to a Data Node north of the city to intercept a potential terrorist threat.

“I thought we were on leave,” Janis said as he stripped down to nothing and put on his black Kevlar suit.

“Dammit, Janis. You don’t wear underwear?” one of the soldiers barked after getting an eyeful of his undercarriage.

“Not when I’m just walking around,” Janis said, like it was obvious. He slapped a cup on and punched it. “But I protect them when it counts.”

Raimey viewed the information that Nostradamus had sent his HUD comm, a transparent monitor just off his line of sight that showed real-time information. A mile out from the Data Node, they heard the explosion. The aftershock ricocheted through the close-cropped high rises, raining glass on the dazed citizens below. They heard it clang against the truck’s armored roof.

“Sounds big,” a soldier said.

“Call fire,” Raimey said into the comm; it was linked to Headquarters.

“Already did, they will wait for your word,” an operator replied. The operator flew a drone ahead of them, circling the scene. It flashed from infrared to HD, searching for hostiles. “We see no action at the Node. The bomb has gone off, but no action.”

They got to the Data Node. Just like the one in New York, the office building was destroyed and there was damage to surrounding buildings, but the terrorists had made no attempt to enter the Data Core where the bulk of the operation occurred.

Strange. Raimey thought. They set up a perimeter and searched through the surrounding buildings.

“What was the delivery device?” Raimey asked.

“Hold,” the operator said. She reviewed the footage frame-by-frame. “It looks like a truck, maybe a garbage truck. The drone was too far away when the bomb detonated to have a 100% ID.”

He had seen this. He had done this in battle. This was a diversion.

“Check other Cores and transportation centers,” Raimey said. He mirrored the channel frequency to his team. “Everyone pull in. Let SWAT handle this. This doesn’t feel right.”

“Diversion?” Janis said. Raimey could hear that he was jogging back.

“Yep.”

“It’s a good one.”

“Yeah. We’re the only anti-terrorist team here.”

Just then the operator wired them into a police band. Shots had been fired at MindCorp Headquarters.

“I have another drone flying that way,” the operator said. “It’ll be less than five minutes.”

The team converged from various alleys and buildings and they headed to MindCorp.

= = =

Sabot didn’t bother with an explanation. Cynthia was online in a sea of data, building the final report for WarDon on China and the EU, and then in a flash she was over his shoulder. For a split second, she thought he wanted to fuck, until he ignored her playful banter.

“You’re not going to believe what China has!”

“No talking,” Sabot said.

She knew there was trouble. Sabot kept a 10mm Glock on him, but he went to a hidden compartment in her office and pulled out a massive, 10 gauge shotgun that had a twenty round drum magazine.

“Stay behind me.”

“What about the cameras?”

“They shut them down.”

“The elevators?”

“They’re gone too. But one stopped at the 145th floor. Be quiet.”

The 145th floor and higher were executive offices and also Cynthia’s home. Immediately she understood the ramification: they knew her home was on these floors, they just didn’t know which one. They were searching floor-by-floor.

Muted automatic fire came from below. Sabot turned back to Cynthia and put his hand to her mouth. She started to cry. He stared directly into her eyes. “This is why I’m here.” He put his hand to her face. “We’re going up top.”

She knew to say no more. He opened the door to the stairway and another burst of machine gun chatter was louder, but still a floor or two down. They heard people screaming.

Sabot saw movement a flight up from him and he didn’t hesitate. Sabot blocked Cynthia from view and fired his shotgun. The ten gauge buckshot ripped through the shadow and a man riddled with wounds tumbled down to their feet.

“Don’t look,” Sabot said as he pulled Cynthia past the man. His chest and face were ruined. Sabot quickly checked: the radio they used was open. His team would have heard the gunfire. Below, a stairwell door slammed open and a herd of footsteps made their way toward them.

He grabbed Cynthia and took her up to the roof. The frigid, whipping wind greeted them. Sabot flanked the door and pointed out a huge air conditioner twenty yards away.

“Get behind that. Don’t come out no matter what.”

She didn’t object. She ran.

Sabot lay prone, off center from the door, and waited with three pounds of pull on a four-pound trigger. No one was going to take his girl.

= = =

Raimey counted four bodies as they entered MindCorp headquarters. A woman without a face and three sprawled security guards. The terrorists weren’t taking hostages. When they arrived, employees were fleeing from the building. Raimey kept ten of the team back to watch everyone go, just in case the terrorists used the outrush as cover. They had already proven clever.

The elevators were shut down.

“We got to go up the stairs,” Raimey said.

“This place is like a mile tall,” Janis complained. They jogged to the stairwell and quickly entered, sweeping the immediate area. Police followed behind them to maintain the cleared floors.

“You always pride yourself on your body,” Raimey said as they ascended.

“My body, not my cardio. You ever see me on a treadmill?” Janis replied. Both had their submachine guns tucked to their cheek, its red dot sight a part of their vision.

“We have action on the roof,” the operation said in their comm. “Early report from the employees is that the terrorists went directly to the elevator.”

“They’re going for Cynthia Revo,” Raimey said.

“Yes, that’s what we believe,” the operator said. “No employees—aside from those on the ground floor—said they saw the terrorists.”

“Ok. Keep the cops coming, filling in behind us.”

“Yes. Sending schematic of top floors.”

In their HUD comm a map popped up, pinging their location in the building.

It took them thirty minutes to run up the entire flight of stairs. The main stairwell ended in a vault-like door to the executive suites. It had been blown open and the door hung like a hangnail.

“Careful.”

They got in and found bodies, quickly clearing the space, calling out to the comm operator.

They found a body in the stairwell that had been shot at close range with a shotgun. The face looked like it had been fed through a meat grinder. They continued up the stairs and a smell they were all familiar with, the smell of open wounds, filled the air. When they got to the roof entrance, a pile of bodies greeted them. Quickly they checked. They were terrorists. Some with dark skin, others as white as can be. All walks of life together, with guns and bad intentions.

“U.S. special forces!” Raimey called out through the door. They’d have to drag bodies aside to get out.

“This is Jeremiah Sabot, Cynthia Revo’s bodyguard. Come out slow with your guns down.”

“Could be a trap,” Janis said.

“Could be.”

“You go out first.”

= = =

Frank carried Justin out of MindCorp like an infant. In one hand Justin held the Mindlink. He sucked his thumb with the other. After two hours of hiding in a store, the cops had come out to the ‘L’ landing. In those two hours they heard gun fire above them and at one point a window crashed outward and a flailing body zipped past, hitting the rail and tumbling away.

One of the cops tried to help with Justin.

“I got him,” Frank said. The look in his eye caused the cop to retreat.

The elevators were turned back on and they and others left the building in an orderly fashion.

Walking out, they saw a large black soldier with a hooked scar around his right eye. He was searching the crowd. His gray eyes found them.

“Is your son alright?” Raimey asked.

“No,” Frank said. Raimey looked at the boy, he was shaking, nearly catatonic.

“He has Asperger’s. He can’t handle these kind of things.”

Raimey gave a warm smile. “No one can handle these kind of things. Do you need a paramedic?”

“No, we just need to get home.”

Raimey called over a cop. “Can you drive these two home?”

The young cop nodded and led them to his car. When he found out where they lived, he dropped them off at the most outward train station to O’Hare.

“I need special approval to drive out that far,” the cop had said.

Frank nodded, exhausted. Whatever.

They got back to DeKalb at midnight. Charlene greeted them at the door with concern on her face. Justin had not spoken since the incident. His thumb was chapped from sucking it. He gripped the Mindlink like it was a teddy bear.

“What happened?” Charlene asked. Frank handed Justin to Charlene and he quietly wrapped himself around her.

“We’re never going back to the city,” Frank said. “Ever.”

= = =

Cynthia was in similar duress. Her hands shook so violently she couldn’t light her joint. She reached for pills and Sabot stopped her. He was eerily calm.

She had not seen the shootout, but she had heard everything. The sounds and cries were almost worse in her mind. Men pleaded for mercy and her lover gave them none. One sounded like a kid. Sabot used the shotgun to maim and if that didn’t do the entire work, the pistol to finish. It was twenty minutes of hell and afterwards Sabot carried her past the bodies so she wouldn’t see.

“It’s not worth it,” he had said.

They were back in her home. After special forces—and then the police—took their statements and they were all alone, Sabot took off his vest, put away the guns, and poured a tall glass of whiskey, ignoring the ice.

He lit the joint for her and held it for her to puff. On a whim he sucked on it too. She couldn’t help but laugh.

“Life’s short,” he said.

He took her to the bath and got the water running. He took off her clothes and put her in, massaging her shoulders, the heat and his hands combining to bleed away her tension.

“How do you do it?” Cynthia asked. His hands felt like steel bars breaking away the knots.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” Sabot said. His voice was hitched. She turned and saw two tear lines down his cheeks. She pulled against him and felt protected. He could do it because he had to.

= = =

About the time the hijacked garbage truck pulled in front of the northern Data Node, Evan called WarDon and told him that Nostradamus had picked up a pattern. He watched the rest of the night unfold via Mindlink: news feeds, police scanners, military comms he had access to because of his position. He waited for the call and it came at 3:00 a.m.

He faked groggy. “Hello?”

“The bionic would stop them?” Cynthia asked.

Evan smiled and quickly pulled it back. A person could hear smile over the phone. “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine, but it was close. Nostradamus and the bionic, that would stop them?” Cynthia asked again. “Could you protect MindCorp?”

“Nostradamus can be tailored for any search criteria,” Evan offered. “We plan on having the bionics on ready in every city like SWAT.”

“Twenty five people died tonight,” Cynthia said.

“I heard. I’m sorry.”

“Let’s meet tomorrow. I need to understand the software function and parameters for the . . . what do you call it?”

“Captai—” he stopped himself. That was his inside joke. “Tank Major. It’s a Tank Major battle chassis.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Chapter 3

It took two days for Justin to re-acclimate to his normal. The night they got home from Chicago he had been almost catatonic. Charlene tried to put Justin down in his own bed and he clung to her like a monkey and whimpered deep in his throat. For the last two nights, he had slept with them. During the day Frank took him on long walks in the fields and pointed out birds and deer beds. That always seemed to calm him. The city is too dangerous, Frank thought. Out here in the fresh air, out here where everyone grew up together and knows each other’s history. It may be the only safe place left.

They got back from their walk and were greeted by two familiar faces. Fernando and Margarito were migratory workers that went farm to farm during the harvest seasons, literally jumping rail throughout the country. They had worked on the McWilliams’ farm since Frank was Justin’s age.

Fernando was tall and handsome. The years in the sun had baked his skin dark and the deep lines from a lifetime of hard, outdoor labor enhanced his already good looks.

Margarito was short and fat. He had a loopy mustache and curly black hair that fanned out from a perpetually worn baseball cap. Justin liked both of them and when they met at the front of the house, Justin threw a quick wave and pressed into his dad, almost hiding.

“Hola, Justin. Como esta?” Margarito asked.

“Esta bien,” Justin replied. “Y tu?”

“Soy MUY Bien!” He put his fist out and Justin bumped it.

“How have you been?” Frank asked.

“Good. Good harvest this year,” Fernando said with a thick accent. “Clara sends her best.” He turned to the fields. “The crops came in.”

“We’ve had the perfect amount of rain this year,” Frank said. They walked inside and Charlene brought them beer and Justin lemonade. They caught up. Frank noticed that Justin had grown restless.

Margarito was setting up a joke.

“A three legged dog walked into the sal—”

“I want to go upstairs!” Justin interrupted.

“Sorry, Margo,” Frank said. “Are you okay?”

“I want to go upstairs. I want to try the Mindlink.”

“We have guests.”

Justin got flustered. He rocked back and forth. Charlene pleaded to Frank with her eyes. He acquiesced.

“Okay. Say goodnight to everyone.”

Justin said goodnight to Fernando and Margarito and quickly hugged his mom and dad. He took the Mindlink box with him.

In his bedroom, Justin inspected the device. From the top, it looked like the skeleton of a bicycle helmet. It was machined from one piece of aluminum. The interior had LED-like red sensors that ran around the interior and two larger green sensors that pressed onto the top of the head. He unrolled a separate fiber line that connected the Mindlink to his home’s data terminal. The brochure was a slip of paper:

Thank you for purchasing the Mindlink!

The Mindlink will provide you access to cyberspace and all of the programs and functions in it. These include:

–Work

–Social

–Games

–Misc.

To start your journey, unpack the Mindlink, plug it into your data terminal (50 megabyte up/down minimum required) and wait for the sensors to self-check (30 seconds). A reclined position is recommended. Put the Mindlink on, following the prompts to set up your account and access cyberspace!

Warning: 0.3% of the population is susceptible to seizures.

With reverence, Justin plugged the fiber line from the Mindlink into the data terminal near his desk. The sensors of the Mindlink playfully pulsed and danced while it booted up.

Justin went to the bathroom and peed. He didn’t want to be mid-game or chat and have to get off. He came back, plopped into his dad’s old recliner and gently put the Mindlink on his head.

As he did, his bedroom disappeared from top to bottom. In its place was a GUI screen that asked his name, his social security number, and a few more questions to confirm his identity.

He thought his name and it appeared. While he thought his name, his social security number filled in, because his brain—unconsciously to him—had answered that question on another level. The other questions he didn’t even know he answered.

The first interface felt like he was in front of a gigantic touch screen. The next interface did not. He floated in a room. The room itself had no physical characteristic to it, no physics such as gravity or the faint movement of air we all take for granted. It was yellow and calming. He heard far off wind chimes. A question hung in the air:

–What would you like to do?–

It bobbed up and down in a friendly way. The Mindlink was a two-way highway and while the options weren’t listed, suddenly he knew all of them.

Find Jared Stachowitz, he thought. He had never met Jared, but they shared a common interest in mathematics and software programming. Justin had won a speed math contest hosted by MIT’s online university the year prior. Jared had come in second and when it was revealed that Justin was only eleven and he won without a Mindlink, he had become a micro-celebrity. Jared and he had corresponded over the year.

–Hey JM! You finally made it! (Jared has accepted your invitation)–

The words appeared in his head. The yellow room faded over to an auditorium with the longest chalkboard he had every seen. It was as tall and wide as a football field. Jared was heavy, balding and in his twenties. His eyes sparkled with humor. He was at the giant chalkboard. About one hundred people sat in rows of seats behind him. Some looked like models, some looked like superheroes, some looked as plain as they were in real life. Including Jared.

JM! Jared said/thought. I didn’t know if I’d see the day!

“I finally got a Mindlink,” Justin said aloud.

You don’t have to talk out loud, you look like a noob. Just think it to us, Jared said back. Justin heard other voices too, but he realized none of their mouths were moving. Online telepathy.

Ok, Justin projected. Is that what you look like?

Yep. Young, fat, and bald. God gave me everything (LOL).

What do I look like?

Frankly, spooge.

Everyone laughed.

What’s spooge?

(Frown) I forgot, you’re twelve. Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’m teaching these snickering assholes Sleeper software programming. A lot of them are my students, if you can believe that. I’ll be done in an hour. Do you want to come back then? I can show you what I do.

That’d be great! Justin said. Where should I go?

When I first got on, I went to a racing simulator.

This flight simulator is cool, another voice interjected. Jared and Justin turned to a zombie named AAARGH4237.

I like planes, Justin said.

Send him the link. Jared allowed AAARGH4237.

–AAARGH4237 has bookmarked a flight simulator he recommends. Would you like to go?–

Yes, Justin thought.

See you in an hour, Jared said.

The classroom faded as Jared went back into his lesson and an airfield materialized. Justin stood on an airstrip. Planes he was familiar with were already on the tarmac, but the one he really wanted to fly wasn’t. He saw a shimmer to the left of the vision. He turned and instead of a Harrier, a Blackbird SR-71 sat there. His favorite plane.

In his head, he was asked if he’d like a tutorial. He said he would. A man appeared next to him. Justin understood it was a simulation, not a real person. Already, easily, it was clear who was real and who was fake. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did. Like it was built in.

“Good morning,” a young Chuck Yeager said to Justin. Justin immediately knew all of Chuck Yeager’s accomplishments, as if he had known for years.

Chuck walked Justin toward the Blackbird.

“You’re about to fly an SR-71 Blackbird, one of America’s finest aeronautical marvels. A plane so advanced, that at one point it was thought that it couldn’t be done.”

Chuck went on about the Blackbird as they climbed up into it.

I want to fly, Justin thought. He had been given the option to either fly or ride.

Chuck helped him taxi the plane toward the runway. When they got to the long tarmac and the tower gave them clearance, they roared down the asphalt and into the air.

“You’re doing good, son,” Chuck said. Justin could tell he was impressed.

“We’re gonna get’er up to eighty thousand feet and let her stretch’r legs,” the legend said with a smile.

The SR-71 sliced through the air and pushed Justin and his virtual friend toward the heavens. The deep blue of the sky began to turn pale and then at sixty-five thousand feet, a sheet of star speckled black poked through.

Space! Justin thought.

“Alright, we’re easing up to seventy thousand feet, we can now make a gradual ascent to eighty,” Chuck said in the calm voice of a man who had tested the limits and come back to talk about it. “We are flying at Mach 3, that’s two thousand one hundred and twenty-four miles per hour. We have fifty percent fuel reserve.”

Justin suddenly had a thought. This was a video game, nothing more. There were no real world consequences. You could drive a funny car into a tanker full of fuel and nothing would happen.

“I want to fly into space,” Justin said.

“That’s a negative, the SR-71’s peak altitude is eighty-five thousand, five hundred feet. We’re on the wire.”

“This isn’t real. I want to go to the moon.”

“Son, we all do and with American ingenuity someday we will.”

Justin pulled up on the flight stick. The nose of the Blackbird tilted up and then, without his input, the nose dropped back down. The altitude meter said eight-five thousand, five hundred feet.

“That’s all she’s got,” Yeager said.

A switch went off in Justin’s mind and the hull of the plane flickered beneath him.

This is a program.

It seemed real, but it wasn’t. The back of his mind felt like a muscle on the verge of cramping. It was uncomfortable, but at the same time, the strangeness wasn’t unwelcome. It almost felt good.

I can go anywhere, the back of his mind whispered, and when it did, the plane shuddered and once again the hull went clear. But this time, all the way. He was riding on air. He still held the yoke, but beneath him was just earth. He didn’t like it. The hull reformed beneath his feet like a piece of plastic that had melted in reverse.

“Son—”

Quiet, Chuck.

Chuck fell silent. Justin looked at his partner and Yeager was frozen like an animatronic doll shut down mid-movement.

Justin was too young to equate it, but his mind burned pleasantly like the beginning build of an orgasm. When he first put on the Mindlink, he became aware of the user options and search categories as if it was an old memory. It was the same for this program. He felt its processing, he sensed the root files that held the high resolution textures, the voice recognition software, the programming that weaved it all together. With that pleasant burning, his mind raced past the computational cycle of the server it resided on and subconsciously, he began to reconstruct it to his desires.

I don’t want the plane.

The plane vanished, and with it, Chuck. It was now just him in the quiet void between earth and space. He rolled onto his back to look at the stars and the moon. They were bright and welcoming. They beckoned him.

I miss Duke. One of Justin’s dogs passed away that year.

And Justin knew that against all odds, when he got to the moon, Duke would be there waiting for him. Maybe in a doggie space suit with jets. They could play fetch. Justin didn’t have much of an arm, but he knew in space he could throw a baseball a hundred miles.

He rocketed toward the moon like Superman. Surrounding his periphery, gelatinous floating tubes nipped into his vision like a ball of parasitic worms. But they didn’t bother him. They felt like they were a part of him. Like a jet’s contrail, he left an oily mist in his wake. But it wasn’t exhaust. This world had no pollutants. It was the mindscape of the most powerful Sleeper that had ever connected into cyberspace. It was the mindscape of a boy that was excited to see his dog on the moon.

He landed on the moon. He didn’t know that the simulator didn’t have this programmed. In it, the moon was a high-resolution texture, nothing more. But he landed on it anyway. Dust swirled up from his feet like snowflakes from a snow globe.

He saw the moon lander from Apollo 11. He saw the American flag, wavered and unmoving. Both were in the wrong location because he didn’t know the particulars of the moon. He subconsciously filled in the blanks from his experiences and conjectures. For him, the surface felt like his sand box at home because it was what he knew. It wasn’t a talcum powder-like dust, because those facts had never entered his mind.

He heard Duke before he saw him. And then Duke crested a gray hill and ran down wagging his tail in a custom made doggy space suit!

Awesome!

“Ruff!” he heard Duke say. How did he hear that? He knew that space didn’t have oxygen.

Then, Justin caught a slight reflection of himself in the clear glass of his space suit helmet.

Ah, intercom.

The next bark was in crackling, low fidelity as Justin imagined it’d be.

Justin had a tennis ball in his hand. Duke jumped around him, wagging his tail furiously. Justin wound up and threw the ball. With no arc, it launched like a cannon shot over the hill that Duke had just come over, waaaay too far to run after. But Duke had a few tricks. His jet pack fired up and with another bark he shot after it.

Within seconds he was back with the green ball somehow in his mouth, beneath the doggy shaped glass helmet.

Justin looked down and the ball was in his hand again. The dog was just as excited for another go.

This is awesome, the King Sleeper thought as he watched his long dead dog fly after another low gravity pitch.

= = =

Justin played with Duke for the hour and he was sad to go. But Duke wagged his spacesuit-lined tail and Justin bookmarked the simulator for another visit before vanishing back to the classroom.

Jared was seated in the first row. A knight Justin had seen earlier was in the process of building a noble steed. The legs and the head were completely formed, but the rest was wireframe and code.

Remember the intrinsic order of Revo, Jared reminded. The knight nodded. Behind him on the giant chalkboard, some lines of code vanished and with it part of the wireframe of the horse. New code appeared on the board like a typed sentence and the wireframe of the horse’s back appeared.

Good, Gegard, Jared said. Sit down Justin. It’ll be just a minute.

Justin could tell that message was just for him. Justin sat down and watched while Jared taught the knight to build a horse for his role playing game.

After thirty minutes the horse was complete, if a bit wonky. For some reason it kicked with its front legs and one eyeball was bigger than the other.

Save it and we’ll work on it tomorrow, Jared said.

Gegard stepped away from the chalkboard and as he did, the chalkboard flexed out and snapped back when he walked to the first row of seats.

Justin is the one who won the speed math contest last year, Jared announced to the dozen or so students.

Still looks like spooge.

Trent, I’ll mute you.

A jock-type avatar threw his hands in frustration. I’m just observing my surroundings.

Jared turned to Justin. How was the simulator?

I went to space! Justin said.

You can’t go to space, the zombie said knowingly.

I did.

Ok, you did. For being slack jawed and rotting, the zombie was surprisingly sarcastic.

Justin. Go up to the whiteboard.

Justin hesitated. He didn’t like people watching him.

It’s ok. This is a beginner’s class. This is where we can trip and get back up, Jared reassured. Normally Justin would have shied away. In the real world he always felt like he was at the bottom of a crushing sea waiting to drown. But here he felt airy. Exceptionally aware. He wondered if this was what it was like to be normal.

Walking up, Justin hadn’t noticed all the strange things in the room. Some objects were three dimensional like the horse. A race car sat to the left. When Justin focused, the object shimmied and he could see the flat screen of all the code that went into its design. Other creations looked like small floating mirrors. Some of the people held them in their hands. When Justin focused on them, he could see their application. Some were shareware programs, others plug-ins to some software application that Justin had never seen.

When you approach the chalkboard it gives you access to the programming software. It’s Revo based.

MindCorp had its own programming language derived from Linux. It was the universal language of cyberspace. Justin walked up to the interface. He felt the giant chalkboard lock onto him and in the upper left-hand corner, a cursor blinked. They’ll watch me build the code?

That way we can offer suggestions. This is for practice and fun, Jared said.

What should I program?

Revo is very flexible. You can code anything you want to.

I’ll create a Duke. My dog. He was in space with me.

Okay, good challenge. The dog must behave like a dog, it can’t be static, and it must obey commands. Tough first test.

Justin closed his eyes. He could still feel the program. He saw the string of code in his head to build Duke. Black and brown. Lean and strong. Always wagging his tail.

Holy shit, Jared said. The students murmured.

What? Justin said.

A dog barked in the room.

Justin opened his eyes and Duke was running around sniffing everybody out. He went to the horse and raised his leg.

I didn’t begin building it! Justin said. Everyone was silent.

Dude. You did.

A timer was overhead to keep each student to thirty minutes. It had taken Justin 0.02 seconds. Two one-hundredths of a second. More people popped into the room. Within seconds, all the seats were filled.

Gotta be a hack.

Never seen that.

Why the fuck did you call me here?

Dude sweated the program, the whole place vibrated.

Jared stood up and gestured for everyone to quiet down.

Do something else, Jared said.

What?

Atomically perfect gold.

Without thinking about it, a plate of gold appeared six inches above the workspace and slammed down: 0.0001 seconds.

NO WAY! everyone howled.

Have him hack into something, a ninja said.

Shut up. We don’t do that, Jared said. He sounded distant, thinking.

It was a fluke.

He couldn’t.

If he can’t then what’s the big deal? They push away Sleepers all the time.

Have him hack into MindCorp; that’d be hilarious.

Yeah, hack into that.

I got through two portals before they booted me.

I got through your mom’s portholes before she blew me.

The ninja and an alien with suckers for hands came to blows at the top of the seats.

Come on, Jared. Let him.

Jared, don’t be a pussy.

-Jared- -Jared- -Jared- -Jared—a thousand ‘Jareds.’

Fine, fuck! Shut up everyone. Justin, do you want to try and hack into MindCorp?

I don’t know how, Justin said.

You didn’t know how to make a dog but it’s pissing on everything anyway. It isn’t a big deal, just bragging rights. MindCorp doesn’t take the hacks seriously. Hell, they used to hold contests to test their security.

Okay.

The room rebooted. The ninja and the alien warrior weren’t allowed back in.

The whiteboard had vanished. In its place, like the rings of Saturn, were a billion tiny reflections that orbited around a dark, iron orb

All those glitters are programs, Justin, Jared said. That orb at the center? MindCorp.

This is cyberspace?

Yes, sir. Cool, eh? She built it like space, three-dimensional and all. But here, MindCorp IS the center of the universe.

Justin closed his eyes again. He saw: MINDCORP LOGIN V112.43. ADMIN.US.DN.1Col.IP72.243.993.42.42:7908

Holy shit. He’s going at a Colossal, someone murmured. Then Justin heard no more. He felt the code wash over him, he could feel the firewalls try to misdirect him and his mind turned blacker than the night, blacker than the deepest void in space. And he could feel the program. The numbers became atoms. The code, living cells. As he barreled through security protocol after security protocol, hammering them with passwords, multi-threading, contacting employees as a peer to coerce information, multi-threading, discovering the root of the program and tearing it apart from the foundation up. Through these things that had never been done before, he finally felt alive. His mind unfurled like a solar flare and in this world, he finally felt complete.

= = =

Cynthia was in a meeting with Helene Rossia, the President of their Israeli Division, when the lights flickered and the room trembled. They steadied themselves.

“Whoa, what was that?” Helene asked.

“I’m not sure,” Cynthia replied. She’d check after the meeting. They were discussing new security protocols and network redundancies MindCorp was implementing globally. They looked at a large map of the Middle East on a projector.

“If we spider-web the network . . .” Cynthia began. Suddenly the room jumped. Helene and Cynthia flew from their seats. The entire space slammed up and down like it was on a pogo stick. A seam formed across one of the walls and bright, purple light bleached through.

“What the hell is going on?” Helene yelled. They were getting tossed around like dice, slamming into chairs and walls, hitting the ceiling and then—as if the room was spinning—catapulting into the opposite wall. The seam opened wider and on a bad bounce, Helene vanished into the purple light, screaming as she went.

Cynthia ripped the Mindlink off her head. An emergency light flashed above her. The Core. In her ten years, she had never seen that light turn on. Sabot burst into the room. He didn’t say anything. Cynthia jumped up and they ran to the elevator.

MindCorp was one hundred and fifty stories tall. They rode two hundred stories down. Beneath MindCorp Headquarters was one of two Colossal Cores in the region. Because of the support structure needed for the huge glass Data Core cylinders, it was much easier to build down than up.

It was immediately clear that something was wrong. A properly operating Data Core looked like a giant blue fluorescent tube. A thick blue arc of data light connected the fiber lines at the top with those at the bottom. But now the Core flickered and popped, booming with thunder.

“What the hell!” Cynthia said.

They got to the ground and as they did, the Data Core began to spin and pulse. The blue went to black and then snapped back to blue, like a kid was flicking a light switch off and on.

The ground floor was chaos. Spinning red lights flashed around the perimeter of the Core. A shrill alarm filled the air. The Sleepers that surrounded the Core were still out, but they rocked back-and-forth in seizures. A dozen technicians scrambled between them like medics on a battlefield, checking vital signs, throwing Mindlinks on to see what was causing the Sleepers to frenzy in their slumber. Cynthia grabbed Jim Schmidt, the scientist in charge.

“What’s going on?” she yelled over the alarm. She saw two Sleepers shake themselves loose of their harness and belly flop to the ground.

“Something huge is altering the data path of the Core,” he said. He had a Mindlink on.

“What do you mean?”

“Something online is out cycling our processors, it’s dragging portals out of their orbits.” Jim handed the Mindlink over to Cynthia.

“We’re being hacked?”

“No . . . yes . . .” he shook his head, he couldn’t grasp it. “I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s ignoring the operating system of the Core. It just hit.”

“Limit bandwidth to fifty megabytes,” she said. She didn’t want to have a seizure because of whatever was out there. Jim hit the keyboard and gave thumbs up.

She put on the utility Mindlink. Consumer Mindlinks were designed to allow access to the various programs in cyberspace. Sleepers used utility Mindlinks to maintenance the network, portals and programs, and the space in between.

While Cynthia had built the cyberspace construct to behave like space, in her universe even the voids held data. This allowed a Sleeper to move from portal to portal effortlessly (as well as through the portal’s subset of programs) and to know their position in relation to any portal or program in the system. It also allowed them to see the data paths of the users online. There was no anonymity in cyberspace. Every user had a digital ‘tail,’ a distinct path that anchored them to their true physical location. Sleepers could trace this tail and find the user’s origin. They could, if given permission, go in and read that user’s thoughts.

What Cynthia saw staggered her mind. Jim had placed her just outside the anomaly’s effect. The millions of portals normally spun in harmony on a three plane axis—x, y and z—orbiting the gravity core. While the majority of the portals—they looked like mirrors floating in space—were operational and followed their orbital path, one quadrant did not. In it, thousands of portals ignored the gravity core and churned on an entirely different axis like dirt circling a drain. They spun haphazardly, smashing into each and spinning off. As Cynthia drew closer, she couldn’t believe what she saw.

A mist surrounded the rogue portals and Cynthia new what that mist was, even if she had never seen it on that scale. It was a mindscape—a visual manifestation of a person’s influence in cyberspace. Sleepers had mindscapes; that was how they programmed. There was no physical connectedness in cyberspace. Hands and feet were programmed assimilations. It was the mind versus code all the time. The mindscape was how the two related.

But this . . . this . . . it was like God decided to try his hand at it.

“What could do this?” Cynthia whispered. “Jim, can you trace this? It’s not native, it’s coming from somewhere.”

“I’ll get Sleepers from a different Core to trace it. I need to pull ours offline.”

“Do it.”

Could it be terrorists? she wondered. Impossible. What she saw before her shouldn’t be. The freedom afforded to MindCorp Sleepers was an illusion. Her online universe had been created with exacting, unbreakable rules. Yet those rules were being broken right in front of her. Someone had introduced chaos into a binary system of order. How? How?

Cynthia bumped her bandwidth up to two hundred megabytes, enough to move around, and her sense of the physical world vanished. She was now in the void, looking down on the mirror-riddled cyclone. She flew toward it.

Cynthia, we have Sleepers from surrounding Cores zeroing in on the anomaly, she heard Jim say. She could see them. For some reason, a Sleeper in cyberspace resembled a sperm with dozens of long tails that waggled and moved in all directions. It wasn’t disgusting. It was almost angelic. She saw thousands of them drifting toward the turbine mess.

There is a gravitational center, Cynthia, Jim said. The portals that look in disarray are not, they are breaking the laws of cyberspace, but they are breaking them with order.

A giant mindscape, Cynthia projected. In the control room where Sabot, Jim, and now a vacant-eyed Cynthia sat, her voice came over a loudspeaker.

Correct, Jim replied.

What is happening to the portals? Can any Sleeper go in? Are they being manipulated? Cynthia asked.

Hold . . . Jim said. They are shut down. No occupants are in them at all.

An odd thing to envision, Cynthia thought. A portal could house programs that held tens of millions of people in them. It could be New York City; it could be a sports arena or a re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. It could be a corporation’s virtual location. But in the anomaly they were all empty. Not one soul was in them. So whatever had caused this had intentionally or unintentionally booted people out.

I want to see what the fuss is about, Cynthia said.

Cynthia moved at the equivalent of light speed. The velocity combined with the sheer silence still amazed her. The gravitational center grew in her field of view.

A portal is the gravitational center.

She was in the mindscape and she didn’t know if that would have any effect on her. It hung in space like a green poisonous cloud, covering all the portals in a mini milky way.

Are you getting this? Cynthia said to Jim. She watched as the mindscape poured out of the portal.

It’s a shareware program. A flight simulator, Jim said in disbelief.

Do you have the tail?

We have the region, not the tail. We can’t get inside the program.

Suddenly the mindscape vanished. The portals that had been pulled out of orbit fell back toward the beltway, slowly re-orientating to their programmed location in the construct.

It’s gone, Cynthia said. You got the region? China?

giant mirrors the size of states flew past her, finding their place.

DeKalb, Illinois.

That can’t be. That’s a farm com-

The universe started to pull apart. Cynthia’s body stretched wide. Her round form thinned to a sheet of paper. Her face contorted in excruciating pain. The Sleepers around her became sunspots in her vision before vanishing. She turned her gaze and from another portal a million miles away, a mindscape had connected to the MindCorp gravity core like a parasite. Its tentacled reach vibrated and shook with energy.

We’re shutting down the Core! Jim said.

One more second.

It’s hacking through our firewalls.

We have to find it.

It is at the root program.

That’s impossible.

She went dark.

= = =

Cynthia called WarDon. He was in Washington and directed her to Evan. Ten minutes later, she and Sabot were in his office. After Cynthia’s recap of the events at the Colossal Core, Evan’s own thoughts drowned out her babbling. The possibilities that this ‘anomaly’ presented were astounding to his future plans.

“But not terrorist?” Lindo asked absently.

“I don’t know. Our data shows that both tails came from DeKalb, Illinois, a farm town. The population is in the hundreds and their data feed is three hundred megabytes up/down per home.”

Lindo waited. He liked seeing Cynthia unraveled. He could use that.

She continued. “It doesn’t sound like much, but to take over that section of cyberspace—roughly 0.0025%—would take a million terabytes of constant data programming and pushing, maybe more. I don’t know. We’re still crunching numbers.”

“So it’s impossible that it came from DeKalb,” Lindo said.

“Improbable, not impossible,” Cynthia corrected.

“Why do you say that? You just told me that it couldn’t be done.” Lindo was intrigued.

“If it was AI or some kind of software, it could push more bandwidth by first planting a codec in cyberspace and then compressing data at the tail. It’s theoretical, but there’s no reason that it couldn’t be done. But if that were the case it would be a simple program, more of a cancer: no purpose, just growing,” Cynthia said.

“Which doesn’t explain the hack.”

“Exactly.” Cynthia confused was more rare than moon rock. “We’re trying to piece it together. We know the hack came from an education portal.”

“That had the login address to your Colossal,” Evan baited.

“That was public information,” she replied.

“Might want to pull that off-line now.”

Cynthia gave a short, frustrated laugh.

“So what do you need, Cynthia?” Evan liked those words. They tasted better than steak.

“This could be the first attempt at cyber-terrorism. That’s your jurisdiction isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Evan and Cynthia looked at one another for a moment. Evan broke the gaze and shuffled papers around his desk.

“I assume we’ll have full access to the data reports on this, full access to anyone we need to interview?” he asked.

“Per my approval, but yes.”

“I’ll speak to Donald and we’ll investigate ASAP.”

Cynthia got up and she and Sabot headed toward the door.

“Question,” Lindo said. Cynthia turned. “This compression algorithm, this ‘push’ as you call it, that amplifies a mindscape. Do you know exactly how they did it?”

“Not yet, but we will.”

“I’d like to know when you do,” Lindo said.

Cynthia smiled and walked out the door.

= = =

Later that day, Evan briefed WarDon on his meeting with Cynthia.

“I’m glad they came to us,” WarDon said.

“They really had no choice. It’s not like they can go investigate on their own.”

“They’ll keep it discreet?” WarDon asked.

“Yes, definitely.”

“Good, this is the last thing we need to freak out the public. Cyberspace is supposed to be safe. It’d fuck everything up, even for us.” WarDon thought about their collusion with MindCorp against their Coalition allies. “We’re going to keep this off the books. You’re in charge and report to me as you see fit, but keep it analog. I’m assigning you the best soldier I’ve ever seen. He’ll report at 0600 tomorrow. I’ll brief him on the need for total discretion. He’s young. A lot like you, actually. A prodigy. Don’t let the accent fool you or the lazy way he looks around the room. He’s a pit bull.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Evan hung up the phone and reclined in his chair. The hum of the server bays soothed him and while the lack of windows would make anyone else claustrophobic, they allowed Evan to forget about a world that he felt no longer mattered.

“Dim,” he said, and the overhead lights dimmed to flickering candles. He closed his eyes and built his future in his head.

His favorite quote was by Louis Pasteur, “Luck Favors the Prepared.” To Evan, life was preparation. It was the most important thing. It took chance and made it your ally. Preparation allowed him to direct conversations and manipulate other people’s will.

He crumpled up the note he referenced while talking to WarDon. It had nothing to do with the anomaly at MindCorp. It had to do with pushing WarDon’s buttons to get what Evan desired. In his cryptic scrawl the note read:

Goal: Autonomy. Go-ahead to investigate on my terms.

Key Points (WarDon)

-Focus on national security. Focus on our current investigation of Coalition. This jeopardizes it.

-Cynthia’s concern. Out of their hands. Need us.

-Discretion. No one should know.

At the bottom of the note:

-Doesn’t know the implications of the anomaly!! Play on fear, NOT benefit.

With his eyes still closed, he stood up and walked out of his office and into the field of servers. He held his hands out like antennae. He felt their vibrations. Even though he wasn’t connected, he could feel cyberspace. He could feel the nations interconnected by fiber veins that pulsed light instead of blood. If the anomaly was what he thought it was, his plans could come together quickly. If not, well, it was just another bump in the road. Quitters never win.

Mike Glass reported to Evan the next morning right at 6:00 a.m. He was twenty-three, Kentucky born and bred. Six foot, a buck ninety, unshaven, he had long, sandy blonde hair, a bit greasy, that made him look like a front man to a bad rock group. But Evan saw what WarDon had warned: his eyes held no emotion in them. He watched Evan like a crocodile watched a baby gazelle drinking from the shore.

Chapter 4

“You seen anyone that doesn’t look like you?”

“No sir, I have not,” Tommy Spade—that was his stage name—said to the man who was blatantly ignoring the ‘No Smoking’ sign at his establishment. His real name was Seth Johnson, but he hadn’t gone by that for a long time. Tommy Spade was his gambling name and his stripper name, not that it mattered much anymore. He was older, pudgier, and DeKalb had about five chicks tops who’d want his junk tick tocking over their nose like a clock’s pendulum. Nope, those days were done.

He was the proprietor of the Paperback Grotto, an old style porno shop that had been in his family for seventy years. People laughed, but porn was his family’s business. Tommy never understood why it was viewed as a dirty trade. He thought it was a necessity, just like food and water. Sex was a part of who we were, why be so damn uptight about it?

The Grotto had everything a customer needed for an old school spank or to liven up the bedroom with the better half.

Business had been shit, of course. No one was around anymore. The only clients he had were farmers who, in general, didn’t use the Mindlink. As that technology had proliferated, the farmers had retreated from it almost out of principle. They were like the Amish now.

But it didn’t matter. The Grotto was paid for and Tommy figured a few more years and that’d be it. The last porno shop on the planet. Tommy pictured himself like an old gunslinger, except he had dildos in his holster and tubes of lube on his bandolier. Maybe a disc of Horny Housewives 300 as a throwing star.

That’s a ninja.

Whatever.

The young man waited patiently. He had pulled up in a car, which meant he was either police or military.

“And you know everyone in town?” the man asked.

“There isn’t anyone to know anymore.” Tommy had already given the names of the twenty or so farmers.

“No one dark complected, different accent, that kind of thing?” Glass asked. He was thinking Middle Eastern.

“Well, we got migrant workers that help with the harvest, of course,” Tommy said. “They come in a bit, like the traditional stuff, the arcades . . . ”

“Arcades?” Glass raised an eyebrow: he was too young to get the reference.

Tommy hitched a finger toward the back of the store. “The wank boxes. Put in some money, watch a movie.”

The young man nodded.

“How long have the migrant workers been here?” Glass asked.

“A few weeks now. They move from farm to farm across the country.”

“Who uses them?”

“Everyone. We have no young population anymore and they’re cheap and reliable. A lot of them have been coming here for twenty years.”

Glass pulled on his cigarette. His eyes bugged Tommy, they were a dark green, but they conveyed nothing, like they had been whittled into his head with a pocketknife.

Glass took the list off the table.

“I appreciate you giving me the lay of the land.”

“Are you an officer?”

The man gave a nod goodbye and left. Tommy Spade immediately regretted the names he gave this man. Those eyes showed no quarter. What was the military doing out here?

= = =

At the same time, Raimey and his team were dressed plain clothes in the alleys surrounding a dilapidated high-rise on the south side of Chicago. Cynthia’s Sleepers had cracked the program that originated the hack. The tail of the programmer who built the software led here.

“It doesn’t look terroristy,” Janis said. The high rise was old and unkempt except for a garden that some elderly men and women were tending. Old people shuffled in and out. “It looks like an old folks home.”

“Check on 176 Elk Street,” Raimey said into his comm. “We’re seeing a lot of . . . uh . . .”

An ancient woman eked out of the door using a walker.

“Geezers knocking on death’s door,” Janis finished.

“. . . old people.”

“It is a retirement home,” the operator confirmed. She sent the data to their comm. The home was called Adventurous Gardens. Two elderly people held each other closely on the front page. The guy was hugging the woman from behind.

“Dude, are you reading this?” Janis’s eye scrolled up and down as he went through the site.

“No.”

“It’s a retirement home for elderly singles! Married couples aren’t allowed. Gross! The elderly are riddled with disease, you know. You read about that how gonorrhea gets passed around faster than their meds. So much loose skin . . .”

“You have a weird thing with old people.”

“They smell like graveyards.”

Raimey to the comm, “Should we just go in? I don’t think this is what we think it is.”

“It’s your call,” the operator said.

Raimey ushered Janis out of the alley. A centenarian smiled at Eric showing one brown tooth and a lot of gum.

“Seriously, man. Get me back to Iran,” Janis whispered.

They went to the front desk. A kind looking women dressed in whites was there. Raimey showed her his ID. “We’re looking for Jared Stachowitz.”

Eric scanned a nearby TV room and spotted a punchbowl of condoms that looked worked. “Ahmygod. I’m going to puke.”

“It’s perfectly natural,” Raimey teased.

“This way,” the nurse directed. She took them up to the second floor. It was filled with state-of-the-art Mindlink terminals.

“Wow, I didn’t expect this,” Raimey said. “Are you seeing this?”

“Yep,” the operator said.

“Most of the seniors prefer to be online,” the nurse said. “It’s given them a much fuller life, especially for our residents who are ill or weak.”

She pointed out a skinny bald man in a worn out robe two chairs down. An oxygen tank was by his side. His chest rose and fell in bursts. He was linked in.

“That’s Mr. Stachowitz.”

“We don’t want to kill the guy, waking him,” Janis said. The nurse gave him an ugly look. “Seriously.”

She went up to the man and shook him gently awake. His eyes opened blearily and he blinked into awareness. He looked over and saw Raimey and Janis.

“I thought you’d come,” he said in a weak voice.

= = =

Mike Glass enjoyed this assignment. The open land and sparse population reminded him of the backwoods of Kentucky where he was raised. He never knew his mother and Thomas Glass never explained what had happened. Mike had asked twice, got hit twice, and that had knocked the curiosity out of him. Thomas was a Marine ex-sniper, an avid hunter and a consummate drunk. Since he could walk, Mike and his father carpeted the hills and gullies hunting and trapping. Twice a year they would go in town to re-stock the cabin.

Glass could read, but not especially well. He learned in bits and pieces until he was fourteen when Ms. Kragley, a retired teacher, cornered Thomas when they had come into town for their bi-annual supply trip.

“Thomas, don’t you walk away. Your son has never been to school. What are you doing?” she said. Thomas had that southern characteristic where, even though he was hillbilly white trash, he was as polite as a politician to women. If a man had said that to him he would have curb stomped his face, but because it was Ms. Kragley—who at one point had taught him—his eyes were cast down like a kittens.

“I’m teachin’ him at home,” Thomas replied.

“You are!” Ms. Kragley said. The book section was near them. She pulled out a children’s book, flipped it open, and put it in Mike’s face.

“Read this,” she said. Thomas stared at his boots.

Mike knew some of the words, but not many. He didn’t utter a word. She snapped the book shut and put it on the shelf.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Mike.”

“Would you like to go to school?”

“He ain’t going to school, I need him around the farm,” Thomas said. The politeness had started to melt away.

She studied Thomas. “I’m retired. Tutored then. Will that work for you?”

Thomas grunted, “okay.”

“You’re still up off 80?”

Another grunt.

“I’ll be there at nine a.m. tomorrow morning.”

On the way home Thomas didn’t say anything about their encounter with Ms. Kragley. When they pulled up and Thomas threw the truck into park, he cracked the door open, paused, then said, “learning’s good. It’s a good thing for you.” And then he went to the back shed where he distilled bourbon. Mike didn’t see him for the rest of the day.

Mike never had an imagination. He didn’t dream. He wasn’t inherently curious and he didn’t think about people’s emotions or motives. He was either all process: “to get to here, do A, B, and C,” or he was instinctually reactive like a venus flytrap clamping down on a bug.

When he turned eighteen, Ms. Kragley—not his father—suggested he enlist. In Mike’s mind, the recommendation brought up two paths: ‘Yes’ and that would involve enrolling and going off to boot camp. ‘No’ and he would continue his study and his normal life.

He chose ‘Yes’ because he had never been out of Kentucky and he knew he could only go so far where he was. He wasn’t educated and if his dad was any indication, nothing justified not enrolling.

He excelled and he was recruited into Seal training. He was a gifted athlete and his calm under duress—not yet diagnosed as sociopathic—gave him a 100% success record in training. During his psych profile they administered a Rorschach test. He described the ink pattern. The psychologist corrected him.

“You’re supposed to tell us what you see in the ink.”

“All I see is ink, doctor.”

The instructors had never seen someone so calm under live fire, interrogation technique, and combat training. As a curiosity, they put a heart monitor on him before a live exercise. The average heart rate of the other elite soldiers, the best of the best, rose well into the hundreds, even at rest. Mike’s hovered around fifty. One time sprinting for cover it rose to ninety-five. He was completely unaffected by the stresses of the real world.

And now he was in DeKalb, Illinois on a cool day that hinted at autumn. He liked his job, he supposed. The migrant worker angle was interesting. Off the grid, nomadic, and most likely undocumented. If terrorists were using these channels, it was an innovative way to go about it.

The owner of the porno shop said that two, Fernando and Margarito, had been in earlier, using the arcades. The owner had made a joke about Glass taking a DNA sample, but at that point the man’s voice had already been pushed into the background. He would start with them. There wasn’t a lot of ground to cover. Twenty farms and some dilapidated neighborhoods, most of which would not have any active data connection so they could be ruled out quickly. But you had to start somewhere and these two leads were as good as any.

Mike saw the tall, rusty trellis the porno shop owner described. “McWilliams” was at the top in a calligraphy style font. He turned underneath it to a mile long driveway. On each side, tall crops bent and swayed in the wind. The sound of the breeze slipped through the corn like a million whispers.

The house could have come from a painting. It was a white two-story set in a small yard bordered with a white fence. Smoke puffed out of the chimney. A barn was set back to the right and a small pack of dogs ran figure eights around the two buildings, playing.

He saw a man watching him from the window as he pulled up. He got out and walked to the house. The man opened the door before he had a chance to knock.

“A car, huh?” the man said. He had a smile on his face. Nothing to hide.

“Yes, sir. My name is Mike Glass, I’m with the President’s office.” Glass showed him his ID. The man glanced at it.

“Are you lost?”

“No sir, I don’t believe so. Is this the McWilliams’s farm?”

“I’m Frank McWilliams.”

He reached out and Glass shook his hand.

“What’s this about?” Frank asked. It was clear he still wasn’t concerned.

“I’m looking for Fernando and Margarito. Are they here?”

Frank looked surprised. He stepped out to the porch and spoke quietly.

“They’re at the dinner table. Is there a problem?”

“You’ve worked with them a long time?” Glass asked.

“Since I was a kid. They worked for my father.”

“Then I doubt it. But I would like to speak with them.”

Frank stepped aside.

“After you,” Glass said. He never gave his back.

When Glass walked into the dining room, Fernando and Margarito were at the table with a woman—Glass assumed Frank McWilliams’s wife—and a young boy. Margarito was using his hands to reenact a story. The woman was laughing. The boy had a thin smile on his face. He seemed off.

“. . . and THEN I took the drug lord’s head in my hands and,” Margarito made a quick motion with his hands. “SNAP! Dead!”

“That’s a horrible story, Margarito,” Fernando said, but he was laughing too.

Margarito took a slow slip from a glass of wine.

“Well . . . most of it was true except the last part. I was in the Mexican army.”

“You were a nurse,” Fernando said. This got the woman laughing again.

“A medic,” Margarito corrected.

They noticed the young man with Frank and quieted down.

“Fernando, Margarito, this is Mike Glass, he would like to ask you a few questions.”

Fernando and Margarito looked at each other confused. Fernando spoke up. “You are police?”

“Military. I’m on special assignment with the President’s office,” Glass said. He turned to everyone else in the room. “This should be quick, just a couple of questions.”

He asked if they had traveled with anyone. If they had seen or heard of any migrant workers that weren’t the norm. They answered both in the negative.

“What happened?” the boy asked.

“Justin, shh,” the woman said.

“No, it’s alright. You heard about the Terror War?”

The boy seemed to retreat.

“First hand, unfortunately,” Frank said. He ruffled Justin’s hair. “We were stuck at MindCorp during the attack. The world’s turning to shit.” Charlene gave him a look. “Sorry, but it is.”

“Well, it looks like they are trying to go online now,” Glass said.

“Is that why the Internet went down yesterday?” Justin asked.

Glass smiled. “Top secret.”

“I told you it was peligroso,” Margarito said to Justin. “That two way stuff can’t be good for you.”

Frank turned to Glass.

“Justin just got on the Mindlink and then ka-put,” Frank made a face. “The damn thing broke.”

“I was in a flight simul—” Justin started. Glass’s heartbeat rose to its max of ninety-five. No one knew. “-ator.”

“I heard those are fun,” Glass said.

“I didn’t need the plane,” Justin said.

“Really?”

“I program fast too,” the boy said proudly. He didn’t know what he was implying. “My friend Jared said I was the fastest he’d ever seen.”

“Maybe someday you’ll work for MindCorp,” Glass said. Justin beamed at the thought. Glass couldn’t believe it. Was it possible? He had to speak to Evan. “Well, it should be up soon. We’re working directly with MindCorp to get things back on track.”

Glass turned to Frank. “We’re done.” Back to the table. “Thanks everyone. Justin, keep it up.”

The boy gave a weird, quick wave and the others nodded. Glass thanked Frank at the door and asked if there were any other workers currently on-premise he should speak with.

“Nope, it’s just us,” Frank said. They shook hands and parted ways.

Glass got in the car and headed down the dirt driveway. When he was out of sight, Glass pulled over, turned off his headlights and called Evan. This was not in the contingency plan. Evan told him what another unit had learned at an elderly rest home.

Fernando and Margarito slept in a lofted room in the barn. A long time ago the barn had been used to store hay, but the farm only handled crops now, so the barn had become a garage and living quarters for the workers that came to help.

Both men were buzzing from the wine. Not drunk, but another glass would have sent them into that territory. They shambled toward the barn after saying goodnight.

“I need some agua,” Fernando said and slapped his buddy on the back. “My head is already starting to hurt.”

“Wine does that to me, too. We just had two glasses or so, no?” Margarito said. “Tequila doesn’t.”

“That’s because you wake up two days later, Margo,” Fernando said. They laughed.

The barn was one hundred yards away from the house, nestled up against a cornfield. One large spotlight hung over the double door entrance. The loft had two large beds, a bathroom and a kitchenette. On the ground floor were alcohol fueled ATV’s they used to go to the main barn a half-mile away which housed the combines and large equipment used for the farm. On the walls were various antiquated farm tools: sickles and scythes, shovels and spades, heirlooms of the McWilliams’s past.

“Tomorrow’s going to be an early one, hermano,” Fernando said. Margo grunted acknowledgement.

They slid one side of the door open and the rattling of the gate masked the already muted sound of a bullet leaving Glass’s silenced Heckler and Koch Mark 23. Glass was crouched inside the barn, kneeling against an ATV. The .45 caliber round hit beneath Margarito’s nose and lodged into the back of his brain. He slumped down to the ground.

Fernando saw the muzzle flash, saw his friend collapse, but didn’t make the connection before another round hit him in the left temple and exited out the right side of his head, leaving a crater the size of a bloody orange. Glass moved like a cat and pulled them into the barn. He shut the door and went to the farmhouse.

He approached the back, indistinct from the shadows. He glanced across the kitchen window and saw the top of the wife’s head. She was washing dishes. He moved against the house to the porch.

The door was unlocked. Out here, no one locked them. He quietly slid the door open, just enough to squeeze through. Glass was low, knees bent, hunched over with the slide of the gun near his head like he used it for prayer.

He moved through the dining room. He saw the top of the woman’s head over the countertop he crouched behind. She was perpendicular to him. She stopped washing a pan and put it down. She looked out the window, thinking about something. Glass shot her in the head and swept around the countertop into the kitchen and broke her fall. He put her into the cupboard and listened for footsteps. Muted conversations. Nothing. He continued through the living room into the main hall. He paused to listen. He heard . . . water. Water pipes. Someone was in the shower. He moved up the creaky stairs and they made no noise.

To the right was the master bedroom. Glass could see the entrance to the bathroom and he heard the shower. To his left was the boy’s room. There were posters tacked all over the door.

Glass drifted into the master bedroom. The man—Frank—was in the shower, washing away a tough day’s labor. Glass leaned in and saw his outline through the shower curtain. Glass raised his pistol and shot the silhouette in the head. The shadow of a man washing his armpit collapsed into a heap beneath the bathtub.

No need to clean up now. All adults accounted for. He moved toward the boy.

He entered the room. The boy was on his Mindlink, seemingly unaware of his surroundings. Glass pulled a syringe filled with Sodium Pentothal out of his jacket. The boy turned, done with his session. Before the boy could react, Glass grabbed him by his shirt and threw him on the bed.

“Dad!” Justin cried. Glass didn’t bother to cover his screams, there was no one for miles.

Glass popped the syringe into the boy’s shoulder and pressed the plunger. The boy’s struggle stopped. He stared glassy-eyed at the ceiling, unconscious.

Glass took two long zip ties and bound the boy’s hands and feet. He carried Justin like a bride through the doorway. He hopped down the steps and exited the house.

He put the boy down in the front yard and went to the barn. He found large alcohol-based fuel canisters near the ATVs. He coated the base of the barn with one canister and lit it up. The fire bit into the fuel and the dry barn erupted into flames.

Glass trotted over to the farmhouse. He went inside and doused the lower level with the fuel and dropped a match. He came out through the front door and picked up Justin. The inside of the house was already engulfed—and through the windows—deep flickering orange danced on the lawn.

Outside the dogs howled and hissed at Glass. But they kept their distance. He was the predator, not they.

Ten minutes later, while he dreamt of a vacation he took fifteen years earlier with a stripper he had known (and adored), Tommy Spade’s dreams ended forever when Glass cut his throat.

The Grotto went up into flames too.

= = =

It was night when Glass got to the Derik Building. Glass brought the boy to Evan’s office and Evan directed him to a pair of Mindlink chairs next to each other. Glass put Justin down in one. Evan checked the boy’s vitals.

“Was it difficult?” Lindo asked. Glass shrugged. Lindo checked the boy’s pulse. He opened his eyes and shined a light into them.

“I sedated him with Sodium Pentothal. It should wear off soon,” Glass said. Lindo nodded.

“You did well Mike,” Lindo said. Glass showed no reaction.

Evan put a rubber tube around Justin’s right arm as if he were drawing blood. He rolled a stand next to the chair that held a bag of IV fluid. With precision, he inserted an IV needle into Justin’s vein and attached it to the bag. He taped the needle down on the arm.

“What’s that for?” Glass asked.

“I don’t want him to wake,” Evan replied. He tapped the IV and watched the fluid drip from the bag. “You can go.”

Without another word, Mike left.

He makes no noise when he moves, Evan noticed. Not even his boots.

Evan walked over to a server as tall as the room. It was new, backwards engineered from the self-contained Mindlink blueprint that Cynthia had given him for the Tank Major program. Two Mindlinks were attached to it with fiber. He turned it on and a hum filled the air.

He looked at the boy and marveled at what was in front of him. Lindo’s eyes teared up. He rubbed them away. No reason to celebrate. Not yet.

Cynthia had thought they would find some kind of supercomputer designed to disrupt cyberspace by flooding a targeted section with data. A classic hack on a massive scale. “That would explain the chaos,” she had said when she had briefed him just a few days ago on what they had learned so far. “During the anomaly, no program or portal functioned differently, like they were being manipulated—that would indicate intent—they just weren’t functioning, as if they had been short circuited. All signs point to a software program designed to overload our systems.”

Evan had listened intently and didn’t object to her hypothesis. But he knew she was wrong. She was too close, too shaken by what had happened to see her grade school error.

A mindscape is a human attribute. They would find a man. Evan didn’t think it would be in DeKalb, he thought they would end up in China, or somewhere else after they unwound some kind of routing algorithm. He didn’t expect a boy. But Evan knew at the end of the rainbow, they would find a human because that’s the only thing it could be.

What seemed so complicated because of the preposterous nature of its scale, was actually simple. The boy didn’t mean to cause the chaos. He just did it. He willed his reality into existence. The portals and programs that went dark were just caught in the wash of his jet stream.

The implications were enormous. The boy could manipulate and control cyberspace—at least theoretically—on a level that a thousand Sleepers could not. And it should have taken at least sixty terabytes per second to cause that kind of disruption, and the boy had done it on a three hundred megabyte line.

It had been theorized for decades that the human memory compressed data. It had to be true, because humans only used ten percent or so of their brain, yet they never ran out of space. An eighty-year-old woman could vividly remember her first kiss like it was yesterday. Using all the senses, the brain took memories and broke them down like Legos, only to rebuild again. That was why a perfume could trigger the memory of an old flame, or the morning sun on a calm lake would transport a person to a vacation they took when they were three. The raw data was parceled and shared to build different things. But that compression and decompression was all in our head, in one space.

As preposterous (once again, Evan thought) as it sounded, the boy’s brain was compressing data and decompressing it in cyberspace. He was capable of transferring this ability outside of himself. No person or system has ever done this without a codec on the other side to decompress the data stream.

So . . . how?

Lindo put a Mindlink connected to the giant server onto the boy. Lindo took the other and put it on himself. He lay down in a reclined chair and felt his consciousness get pulled outside his body.

Lindo hovered. Not above the boy, but inside the Mindlink the boy wore. He was analyzing the boy’s brain by using the micro frequencies that made a Mindlink function as sonar. The boy’s brain worked differently with a device that worked in the same predictable manner for ninety-nine percent of the population. Lindo thought he knew why.

After Albert Einstein’s death, his brain was removed and preserved for research. Great minds of the twentieth century wanted to find out how the greatest mind of the twentieth century worked. Would they find that Einstein’s brain was no different than their own?

No. They found it was quite different. Einstein was missing the parietal operculum (used for speech and language) on both hemispheres of his brain, but the inferior parietal lobe—which was responsible for mathematical thought, visual cognition, and imagery—was fifteen percent larger than a normal brain.

He thought differently and saw things differently not because of education, but because of evolution.

Evan gasped.

Justin’s inferior parietal lobe was thirty percent larger than normal. And like Einstein, parts of his brain were completely different than anything Evan could have imagined.

Had Lindo seen this boy’s brain without knowing its capabilities, he would have said either the person was dead at birth or a genius.

= = =

Justin woke up floating in a white space. There were no visual cues to call it a room. It could have been the size of a closet or as vast as the universe. There were no shadows or bends, no hint of distance. He sensed someone in the room with him.

“You’re up,” the man said.

Justin rotated to his right and sat up on the bed of air. The man wore all white. Justin did too. Suddenly Justin remembered.

“My parents!” Justin yelled.

“What do you mean?” the man asked calmly. He walked over to Justin.

“A man took me. He may have hurt them!” Justin said. He shook from the thought.

“Shh. They know you’re here. Everything’s alright,” the man said. He was short and stubby and wore glasses. “My name is Dr. Evan Lindo. They asked that I help you.”

“Help me? No. The man. He threw me down. He had long hair. He—” Justin started. He was confused. He didn’t trust this, it felt wrong.

“This man?” Lindo asked. In the nothingness a picture appeared of Mike Glass.

“Yes! That man!” Justin said.

“He’s not real, Justin. We’ve seen the dream you had of this man coming to your home. He came at dinner and asked questions and then left. Then he came back and took you. You’ve had a serious accident, Justin. You’re in a coma. We’re at a hospital right now.”

“I don’t believe you,” Justin said. The room vibrated. Evan felt it, but Justin seemed unaware.

“You fell off your four wheeler while following Margarito and Fernando back from the utility barn. You hit your head and broke your neck.”

“How am I here?” Justin asked.

“This is how we test coma patient’s true brain activity. Your father Frank said you had just been on a Mindlink, which was a blessing. If you hadn’t, it would have been much harder to connect to you, to even get here.” Lindo looked around at the white space they were standing in.

“Can I see Dad?” Justin asked.

“Yes, very soon. Your father is going to help you recover,” Lindo said. “Because you’re here, we can now develop a proper rehab program to pull you out.”

“What about my neck?” Justin asked. He was scared.

“Your hands and feet are reacting to us poking and prodding. Not perfectly, but that’s fine. You’ll recover once we beat this,” Lindo said. “I need to go now, but have faith and know that your parents are right next to you. In fact, your mother is holding your hand.”

“I feel nothing,” Justin said.

“You will. In time. We’ll begin the rehab very soon. In this space, it will feel like a couple of hours. Your father will tell you what to do and I’ll be connected too, but only in voice. I know this is strange, and difficult to comprehend, but you’re doing great. What would you like this room to be?”

“What can it be?” Justin replied. He was so confused.

“Anything. A beach with an ocean and jet skis. A house. A toy store. Whatever makes you the most comfortable.”

“I want my Dad,” Justin cried. He curled up into a ball.

“I know, son. And they want to be with you too. Soon,” Lindo replied.

Justin didn’t respond. He was curled in like an armadillo. The room shook again.

“I’m trapped here,” Justin said. The voice came from all around. Evan could feel Justin’s pain as if it were his own. The boy vanished from view.

“Why am I trapped here?”

“It’s for your safety, Justin.” Evan had to stay calm. However powerful, Justin was still a boy. “Don’t disappear. Come back. We can’t get you well if you aren’t here.”

Evan could feel Justin poking and prodding at his avatar. Suddenly he could feel Justin’s mind encroach on his own.

“Justin! This isn’t a game!” Evan yelled.

The boy re-appeared in front of him. “I want to go home!”

Evan got down on one knee. He saw that Justin’s eyes were onyx black and the interior of his mouth glowed neon purple. “Then listen to me, Justin. If you follow my instructions and work really hard, you will see your home. You will see your mom and dad, okay?”

The black eyes and glowing mouth disappeared. Now a small, scared boy stood in front of him.

“I’ll make this a beach,” Evan offered.

“I like books.”

“With books,” Evan said. “Be brave.”

Evan disappeared and a cabana on a Caribbean shore appeared around Justin.

Evan pulled off the Mindlink. Sweat drenched his body. The kid didn’t realize it but for a moment he had hijacked the program, he had even crept into the interior of Evan’s mind. If Evan had had any doubts about his actions to this point, he didn’t now. The boy was extremely dangerous.

The false construct was necessary. You couldn’t reason with a child. You couldn’t kill their parents and then expect them to give you their mind. The boy wouldn’t wake the entire time he was being used. Instead he would think he was doing exercises to improve his mind at the encouragement of his father. But the whole time, he would be dismantling infrastructure, hacking into secret files, influencing, and yes—even killing—foreign leaders.

Evan marveled at his own genius.

Chapter 5

–One Month Later–

WarDon hadn’t been feeling well. His wife had thought it was the flu, but it had never quite reached the boiling point of either fever, puking, or pooing—or the hat trick of all three—that guaranteed a solid ten pounds off the waistline.

It had been going on for two weeks. His days always started off fine. He’d wake up at 4:30 a.m. for his five mile jog, then he’d hit the weights. He’d shower up and get dressed, his wife would have breakfast waiting for him, and he’d eat up and head to the Pentagon.

His life had become a series of meetings, and most of these were now virtual. Every morning he’d debrief the President and the Cabinet on local and global military matters and then meet virtually with every military branch for an update for the next morning’s meeting.

He enjoyed his job; it was important. But he missed the front lines. He missed waking up on the other side of the world. The smell of diesel. The chop of helicopters. The echo of live fire. All of it. He felt like a woman whose best years were in high school: fond of the memories but tinged with bitterness. He didn’t like getting old. He was sixty-two and still strong. His knees were good. He could bench three-fifteen. But dammit, he was starting to look like his old man. When he got a good night’s sleep, the bags under his eyes still stuck around. He was pretty sure every morning his spine was fused solid for the first few hours. And the wrinkles . . . he had wrinkles on areas of his face he was certain didn’t bend.

And for a few weeks now, sudden waves of nausea would overtake him randomly throughout the day. It wasn’t the flu, that bug would have hit. He was worried. He looked like his old man, maybe he’d die like his old man. The Big C.

“We’re confirmed for MindCorp tomorrow at ten a.m.,” Evan said.

WarDon didn’t reply. He stared off into space.

“Are you alright?” Evan asked. They were in a virtual room waiting on the General of U.S. Forces for Iran.

“I’m fine. Been under the weather lately,” WarDon replied. Even in cyberspace, he took the handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed his forehead. Man, I feel like shit.

“Flu? It’s going around,” Evan said.

“No. I’ve had this for a few weeks. Pink Flamingo,” he said. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to see a doctor. My wife’s insisting.”

“Pink,” Evan said.

“Flamingo,” WarDon replied absently.

“You have nothing if you don’t have your health,” Evan said.

The General for USFOR-IRAN appeared in front of them and they got to their meeting.

= = =

“THEY HAVE OIL?” WarDon’s face looked like a blood blister. He was having a bad week.

Cynthia wore a Mindlink. A computer screen the size of a movie theatre made up a wall. “Yes. As you can see,”—on the screen a satellite image of a mountain range deep in China appeared and zoomed in—“the well is located deep in this mountain range. To get to it, they had to drill over fourteen miles. They are finding more pockets of oil in this region weekly,” Cynthia continued. “The EU is a mess. Britain and France trust each other less than you trust all of them. The rest of them are bit players. China, on the other hand, has been busy. We found allusions to this information in a Presidential Advisor’s personal folder, but other than that, nothing.”

“If it’s such a big deal—” WarDon started.

“They are keeping it out of the digital space,” Evan interrupted. He turned to WarDon. “They are concerned with exactly what we’re doing. Cyber-hacking.”

Cynthia smiled. She loved information. “Exactly. This discovery is so big they were smart enough to keep it off servers, out of e-mails, conferences, all those things. They know the holes in the levee.” Pictures of an Asian man in his 50’s wearing a hardhat and sunglasses filled the screen. “This information came from the CEO of the drilling company working on the project.”

“You found files?” WarDon asked. Cynthia shook her head. “Cut with the mysterious shit, what?”

“We went in,” she responded. “No one else has been online. Not the President, his advisors, not oil workers. We used the void as our guide. It was the abnormality. So we waited until someone popped on. The CEO went online to discuss a completely separate project.”

“You got in his head?” WarDon asked.

“Exactly.”

“That can be done?”

Cynthia’s silence was confirmation.

“How much oil?”

A graph popped up mirroring Cynthia’s words. “Ten years of consumption for the entire population. Eighty years or more if they follow today’s standard practice of government and subsidized use.”

WarDon leaned back in his chair, which groaned under his weight. He shook his head and laughed. “Those sonsofbitches. Smart sonsofbitches.”

“Can I ask a possibly idiotic question?” Cynthia said. “Why do you care? They can’t jump start their economy with it, we’re already adapting to life without it.”

“Cynthia, don’t take this the wrong way. You’re smarter than hell, but you have too much trust in mankind,” WarDon said. “They aren’t thinking about bringing back cars or making Tupperware. They won’t refine this for public consumption. What they have, by having these wells, is a perpetual war machine. Our military is nothing without oil and we have a limited supply of it. We got a lot stockpiled, maybe even decades, but if they got this, it doesn’t mean shit.”

“But why would that matter now? Everything’s digital, the economies are intertwined and we rely on each other for consumption of goods and services.”

“You’re saying the countries don’t matter anymore?” WarDon replied slowly.

“For economy, yes,” Cynthia insisted.

“In an academic bubble you may be right, but the folks at the top, the Presidents, Dictators, Prime Ministers, all got there because they wanted to rule something. They aren’t there out of civic duty; a type of person wants this. And if countries don’t matter, why have so many of them? If you got the means, why not rule it all?”

“Not everyone thinks that way.”

WarDon let out a huge belly laugh. “You Ivy Leaguers! Cynthia, come on! You’ve been in cyberspace too long. Where are your competitors? Why isn’t your software open source?”

“It wouldn’t work if there were competitors,” Cynthia bristled.

“You guard your advantages so there are no competitors. You paid lobbyists to bribe politicians for favorable policies and you sued the hell out of any would-be competitors if they got within a hair of your patents. And God bless you! It’s the American way. But why do you think a country would behave differently?”

Cynthia turned to Sabot.

“He’s right,” Sabot said. Evan couldn’t remember another time where Sabot had spoken during a meeting.

“You told me five minutes ago that China has found an oil reserve and I immediately told you what that meant for the U.S., and Sabot,” WarDon pointed to him, “thought it right away too. So either he and I are geniuses or we understand the underbelly of man.” WarDon leaned back. “I know which one it is.”

There was a moment of silence.

“So what now?” Cynthia asked.

“I don’t know. I need to take this report to the President and we need to assess our options.” WarDon turned to Evan who nodded in agreement. “As much as I’m ribbing you, I can’t express how important your contribution has been.”

“Thank you,” Cynthia said. She underestimated WarDon. She understood why a lot of people thought of him as a bully, but she dismissed that now as just appearances. She had fallen for it too. He may not be a genius, but he knew his business.

= = =

WarDon and Evan rode from MindCorp to the Derik Building. Evan thumbed through the report.

“Bad?” WarDon asked. He was distracted. He still felt ill.

“I think Cynthia was being conservative. With just this vein, assuming a hoarder’s mentality, they have one hundred years of oil,” Evan replied. He licked his index finger and continued to flip through the pages.

“How much do we have?” WarDon asked. He was told awhile back, but dammit if he could remember. Meeting after meeting, he had become a bureaucrat.

“Two decades of aggressive use. We have native oil shale that can be refined, but the supply can’t keep up with demand if there was a major war. We’d hit a choke point.”

“Do you think I’m being paranoid?” WarDon asked.

“We’re paid to be paranoid. But I don’t think they’re going to be actively aggressive. To that point, I agree with Cynthia. They’ve been our economic partners, hell, they surpassed us, a long time ago. Look at the history. They discreetly absolved our debt in 2021. That wasn’t charity. They did that so our default wouldn’t affect the global economy. That is more important to them than land. But their prudence is harder to gauge than a reactive government. I think they’re keeping the oil secret ‘just in case.’ If something happened to cyberspace that made it uninhabitable, if a computer virus was created that could actually affect people—and there will be, Don, mark my words—that would be catastrophic and everything would topple. Very few things consumed—other than food and basic life necessities—are goods anymore. The global economy relies almost entirely on digital services. And technology hasn’t given us more options, it’s dithered us down to no options. Everyone, rich or poor, uses a Mindlink, and in that way, there’s no diversity. If that interface gets compromised, there’s no back up plan. We can’t regress to an oil-based economy. There’s nothing over the horizon than can replace the MindCorp-based economy. But if I’m China and I just found a vein of oil, I hang on to it like a food ration. It’s not my first choice, but it’s there if I need it. That can help them delay what, for everyone else, would be inevitable: total economic collapse, rioting, looting and government overthrows.”

“Society would crumble.”

“No question.”

“What should we do?” WarDon asked.

“Expose them publicly. Humiliate them. Announce to the world that they have no problem letting the rest of us rot.”

“What will that do?”

“They’re as concerned with the economy as we are. They understand it’s balancing on a needle. They don’t want to use the oil; they want the digital economy to prosper. Their politicians will backtrack out of fear. They’ll share it.”

“Evan, they’re not going to share the oil.”

“There’s something I should show you that will convince you otherwise.”

Evan hadn’t expected those words to come out of his mouth, but he was excited. He was riffing like jazz.

= = =

WarDon and Evan traversed the field of server bays to Evan’s office. They found Mike Glass seated at the door, his feet kicked up like a mall cop. He quickly stood and saluted WarDon. Neither chair slid or made a sound.

“At ease, Mike.”

“Anyone swing by?” Evan asked.

“A tech saw some bandwidth spikes on a quarter of the servers. I told him to come back when you’re here.”

“Good.”

They went into the office. The “office” was the size of a basketball court. In a corner was a desk, a bed, a kitchenette, and bathroom with a shower. The rest of it was used for Evan to experiment and design. The room was dark except at the center where overhead lights revealed a massive computer and two Sleeper chairs. When they got closer, WarDon saw a young boy asleep on one with a Mindlink on his head.

“You have a son?” he asked.

“This is the anomaly,” Evan said, ignoring the stupid question. WarDon’s face slid. He turned from the boy to Evan and back again. He noticed the IV drip. A screen the size of a van flickered on and Evan sat down in the other Sleeper chair.

“The anomaly?” WarDon asked.

“Yes. What caused MindCorp, for the first time in its history, to shut down a Core.”

“Impossible.”

Evan put up his index finger. “Improbable. But it’s true.”

Evan hesitated before he put on the Mindlink. “Before I demonstrate what the King Sleeper can do, to save our country I need about two hundred billion dollars and a forum to expose China.”

“I’ll check my couch cushions,” WarDon said sarcastically. He still didn’t know what to make about the boy. This kid’s abducted, he thought. He glanced over to Glass who stood coolly looking in their direction and his heart sank a little. No, he’s an orphan.

= = =

Pete couldn’t help what he felt. He was the victim. His parents never believed him about his uncle. He was just a kid and he came to them crying and told them, but they didn’t do a damn thing. He remembered his mom standing up and going to the bathroom like she had a case of the squirts and his dad moving his head around Pete’s slumped, sobbing silhouette to get a clear view of the TV.

“You tell anyone about what we done, and I’ll come back and cut it off,” his uncle had said a week later, before he left. Shocking that Pete grew up into a piece of shit. He knew it, he accepted it. A lot of people had a monkey on their back, but Pete had a devil and the little fucker was hot as fire and his talons dug deep.

He didn’t need a shrink to know what had happened: his uncle broke him. Whatever circuits normal kids had in their head, his uncle pulled them out and swapped them around in his.

Pete had seen photos of Uncle Josh as a kid. The first photo, in the programmed series he watched as a ritual before he went out, was a photo of Uncle Josh as a boy. That was his type. Strawberry blonde hair, eight to twelve, freckles were a plus. He had found a boy a week before that matched perfectly. And just two train stops over.

His virtual server was a theater. It didn’t have seating. He floated near the center of the screen. He was naked and the light of the photos bathed over him. Most of the thousands of photos he had taken himself. He had time to build his library. His craving had developed by the time he was eighteen, and he was forty-five now. He was nearing climax—the start of his night when he would disconnect and go out for real—when the images slowed down. He noticed this immediately because he liked them to flash by in a synaptic overload. It condensed his memories into one pleasure string that looped over and over him. Now it stopped. A photo of a young stomach (James Taggert, back when I was twenty) was frozen on the screen.

His Uncle Josh, as a boy, appeared in front of him.

“Peter,” the boy said. It wasn’t Josh’s voice. It wasn’t even a boy’s voice. And it wasn’t Josh—his obsession had made it so. It was a skinny, pale boy, around twelve, with dark hair. The boy turned and looked at the screen. The images shuttled back and forth.

“My, my. You are a sick fuck,” the boy said. But it was a man’s voice. “These are Peter Roach originals!”

The boy rotated back to Pete. They both floated mid-air, awash in the pedophile’s sexual depravity. Pete tried to shut down the program.

“Not gonna happen,” the boy with the man’s voice said. Pete’s head suddenly felt like a dozen fingers were prying into his skull.

“You have done some bad things, Peter Roach. I can feel them. I can see them. You are a vile thing. Barely human.”

Josh made me into this! Pete wanted to yell but he couldn’t. His mouth was frozen shut.

“Yes, he did. And you had no support. Your mom was a spineless enabler and your dad was an angry drunk.” The boy floated closer to Pete. He could see his facial features. His eyes were all black. When he spoke glowing purple plasma filled his mouth. It was as if the skin of the boy was a costume for something more powerful. “But that doesn’t matter because what you have done—however you got here—is worse. You have littered the world with the gravestones of boys who now share your same fate.”

What are you going to do! Pedophile Pete asked.

End your torment once and for all, the boy said, and his mouth opened wide and the plasma ball rolled out and snapped to Pete’s head like frog snagging a fly. And then Pedophile Pete felt nothing. His synapses coursed with data, his mind cycled at forty times its normal rate. It was his life flashing before his eyes, than it was light flashing before his eyes. And then . . .

= = =

WarDon couldn’t believe what he had witnessed. He sat down on the floor and unbuttoned his collar. On the screen he had watched two things: Evan Lindo as Justin’s father, guiding him through an exercise to ‘heal the boy’s brain.’ And another where Justin’s actions in that exercise killed a sexual predator. Lost in his thoughts, he heard Evan (as Justin’s father—what the fuck is going on?) tell the boy he did great and that he should rest now. The boy asked when he’d see him again. Evan/Justin’s father said soon, he would have more exercises tomorrow.

WarDon stared at the floor. He heard the leather creak when Evan sat up in the chair.

“Is it real?” WarDon asked. He didn’t look up.

“It’s very real,” Evan replied. “Pedophile Pete is dead.”

“I don’t believe it,” WarDon said.

Evan laughed. “Oh, believe it. We can head over to his disgusting perv palace and peek in. He’s in his chair, eyes rolled back, tongue out, and probably nursing one hell of a nosebleed. It’s called a Reverse Data Push. The boy does it subconsciously. That’s one of the reasons he’s so powerful. He can put a codec inside a person’s head and trigger it to take a stream of data and expand it logarithmically. It’s like injecting the brain with a pound of heroin. It’s too much, the synapses burn out, the cell walls rupture from the electrical impulses.”

“And the boy doesn’t know.”

“No. I’ve created a construct that gives him the impression he is doing mental exercises to get out of a coma. He has no idea that those exercises are connected to real people or events.”

WarDon finally looked up. He looked like a giant boy playing Army. “How not?”

“Cyberspace works differently, Don. In the real world if you want someone to shoot a gun they have to pull the trigger. But in cyberspace, if you want someone to shoot a gun you can have them turn a door knob and program it to be so.” Evan walked over to the boy. “This kid is the answer to our prayers. You must get me the proper finances to see this through and then we can set up a strategy to humiliate China. Pink . . .”

“Flamingo. What does that have to do with it?” WarDon felt his head buzz. He felt . . . odd.

“You get me the funding and I’ll make it so we can influence the world. I showed you that the King Sleeper can kill online but he can do something much more powerful. He can coerce. But the seed needs to be planted. China needs to be embarrassed and uncertain. It’s like hypnotism. The person has to be susceptible. Pink . . .”

“Flamingo,” WarDon said. He sounded distant. He felt a migraine coming on.

“I want funding and full control, answering to you only when I see fit.”

“No problem,” WarDon said. Suddenly he felt better.

= = =

The next day Evan met with WarDon to discuss the suggestion construct he would need to use the King Sleeper. They met in a conference room. WarDon didn’t want to see the King Sleeper again. He hadn’t slept all night.

“Don, you have contacts at the UN, correct?”

“Quite a few.”

“Enough to call in some favors?”

“I’d imagine so.”

“Good. I need them to host an energy summit.”

“For the King Sleeper?”

“Exactly. We’ll use the summit to ‘out’ the Chinese. The chaos of this assertion will make all participating countries—even those who aren’t present—susceptible to the King Sleeper.”

“I thought we were just going after China,” WarDon said. Evan shook his head.

“We want them all. If China doesn’t bend on its own, we can use the other nations to force them. This is a rare opportunity we’re creating.”

= = =

Twelve years as Secretary of Defense through three sitting Presidents, WarDon knew the secrets on Capitol Hill. He called in his IOU’s. He skimmed off defense contracts and depleted slush funds. He blackmailed politicians who had closets full of bones. Within two weeks WarDon had secured the funding. To keep the plans out of the digital space, WarDon and Evan met in person. The President was away on some pointless fundraiser and Evan came down from Virginia—where the King Sleeper now resided—to DC. He and WarDon met in the Oval Office. Evan walked in to WarDon admiring a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

“He hit every branch of the ugly tree, but he was a great President,” WarDon said.

Lindo let out clipped laugh.

WarDon continued. “Back then it was about your ideas. You could be an ugly sonofabitch, you could have knotted up legs not worth a damn, because you weren’t getting your photo snapped a thousand times a day, doing a video blog, or on late night TV. Citizens either saw change or they didn’t and if they didn’t you hit the bricks.”

WarDon turned and gestured for the two of them to sit. “Now you gotta look like a movie star, and you got to grow another set of hands for all the dicks you have to hold to get here.” WarDon kept his eyes on the painting. His tongue moved under his lips like something was stuck in his teeth. “I wanted to be President for a long time, Evan. I never told you that, did I?”

Evan shook his head.

“It wasn’t for the vanity. I got enough power, maybe more power than the President. But he gets to make the final call. I’ve been through three administrations and while I’ve liked most of the Presidents personally—except McHale of course, he was a moron—they were better off doing Broadway than running a superpower. The word ‘Politician’ used to be despised. It was like calling an Asian a “gook’ or a black—” WarDon waved his hand. “You get the idea.”

Evan found WarDon’s exposition interesting. He was more insightful than Evan had given him credit.

“Back in the day, it was a duty. It didn’t end in a book tour and a TV show.”

Evan realized that WarDon had tobacco chew in his mouth. WarDon spit into a trashcan that had been there since Andrew Jackson took office.

“I just wanted one that really had an opinion that was theirs. That wasn’t driven by polls or a backroom deal. I don’t even think about it much anymore . . . and that makes me sick a bit. They got no convictions. They’re polished like a brass banister on a stairway. They got no grit.”

WarDon shot another loogie into the trashcan. “I feel like my hand’s been forced because of their ineptitude. President Michaels will be included, I assume?”

“Yes,” Evan said. “Less so, but we’ll need him to agree on policy. He’s already malleable because he innately believes what we believe. Upsetting the applecart will open the leaders’ minds to new possibilities. We need them to be open to new concepts in order for the King Sleeper to successfully coerce their policy.”

“How does the boy do it?” WarDon asked. “I saw what I saw, but I still can’t fathom.”

“It’s simpler than you think. It’s just subliminal suggestion on a massive scale. It’s very similar to what was done in 1950’s when they’d flash “drink Coke” during a movie. Except this barrage is ongoing, day in, day out. It’ll seep into their minds like it was their own idea. But they have to be accepting of the message first.”

“You couldn’t say “Kill the Prime Minister,” WarDon replied.

“Exactly. That wouldn’t work unless they really wanted to kill the Prime Minister or they weren’t adverse to the act of murder itself. We’ll see policy shifts of ten percent if we’re lucky. But in voting governments that’s enough and it’ll be a huge edge.”

“It’s amazing isn’t it? Frightening,” WarDon replied. “We’re taking away free will.”

“Not really. We’re becoming their First Lady. Gentle whispers in the night. We can’t make someone change a view they strongly agree with. That’s why we need turmoil to begin the process.”

“I bent some arms. The UN will host the energy summit. They just need to know the date. This will work?” WarDon asked.

“History favors this approach,” Evan replied. Evan relished history, it was a costless case study, mistakes and victories that could be cut and pasted in any era if you were acute enough to adjust for the times. “Pink . . .”

“. . . Flamingo. History’s important.” WarDon replenished his tobacco and offered some to Evan, who declined. That night Evan headed back to the base in Virginia to get everything in order. He told WarDon he needed three months.

Chapter 6

–Three Months Later–

Xan Shin sat across the airplane aisle from President Jintau and watched out of the corner of his eye with a bit of befuddlement.

Why was he coming?

The President had been acting strangely. Not overtly. He wasn’t coming into the office wearing his pants on his head. But Jintau was a confident leader, and lately he was . . . softer. Xan would walk into his office and the President would be staring off into space. He would not eat because of nausea.

That President Jintau had accompanied him on a plane to the United States only added to the Xan’s growing concern. Jintau had agreed to attend a Coalition meeting sponsored by the UN to discuss future energy ‘resource’ policies. Oil. They mentioned it last in the document “wind, solar, thermal, nuclear, natural gas, and oil.” But the conversation will be about oil. It made no sense to go. Xan had expressed that to the President, but he and his advisors all agreed that regardless of the tenuous relationship of the Coalition, Jintau believed: “Like parents to a child, we need to project a united front.”

Xan’s surprise continued when every other countries’ leaders agreed to attend. All leaders from the European Union, non-voting leaders of the United Nations. All of them except a few African warlords. With all of the dissent in the Coalition, the importance of this meeting was the one thing they agreed on. Xan’s purpose for going was clear; he didn’t understand what possessed his President to follow his.

They were on a small plane, but Xan pictured the fuel injectors taking that precious liquid, spraying it into microscopic drops and igniting it with a spark, gone forever. He could see the jet fan spinning out the window and he watched it, because each spin was closer to the last he would ever see. He felt a headache push in on his temples and he closed his eyes. Maybe some rest would help.

Xan was forty-nine and he had served many roles for China. He was a polymath. At twenty-two, he joined the Chinese aeronautical division as an engineer and test pilot. He flew into space and landed on the moon in 2036, the first space mission to have done so since the U.S. Apollo Missions. But while his fascination was with aeronautics and space travel, those days were dead. He might as well have been a blacksmith. So he transitioned his skills and imagination to another division far less interesting, but one that he still excelled in because excelling is what he did: weapons and online infrastructure.

Xan was unexceptional in physical appearance. He wasn’t short or tall, five-foot eight and one hundred and sixty pounds. While many Chinese had very distinct, almost sharp characteristics, Xan’s features were like antique glass that had begun to sink toward its base. His eyes turned down, his nose was flat and long, and his mouth was too large for his face. It revealed a toothy smile that made him suddenly interesting, but that smile rarely came out. Deep frown lines hyphenated the corner of his lips.

Xan had always been a serious person. Even as a child his mom would tell him time and time again “don’t forget your joy.”

Well, mom—what was there to have joy about?

Be respectful of your elders!, his long dead mom demanded.

Sorry, he said back. She was still around after all these years.

“Headache?” the President inquired.

Xan opened his eyes. “I’m fine, sir. Thank you.”

The President was a thoughtful man who had historically shown good judgment. But this wasn’t a good idea. The energy summit was masturbation. The oil was gone. Xan could care less about the oil. As the old generations died out, the new ones would grow up without it. The world would survive. It would prosper and evolve. The ‘how’ is what Xan feared. The new frontier was cyberspace. And it wasn’t a new piece of discovered land—or even a world—it was infinite. And while MindCorp had given it structural order, it was still a derelict society trying to find its way. There were positive aspects, but the majority of what it allowed was for people to wallow in their filth and desires. It had become a drug. Who would guide this new era? To Xan, that was all the mattered.

They know we have oil, Xan thought. While most of the world’s satellites had died and burnt up on re-entry, there were still a few up there ticking, and a couple of loops over a certain mountain region in China would show a lot more activity than what someone would expect. It would even show what looked like a pipeline. What could, actually, not be confused for anything else.

They’ll bring up the oil vein. That’s what this is about. The President shouldn’t have come. We should have shored up the ports and cut off diplomatic ties and waited for the other nations to shed their old skin and its nagging, itchy expectations. And afterwards, when the world was sober, come back.

Xan closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. He woke up upon landing and the headache was still a houseguest he couldn’t get to leave.

= = =

John Raimey was held hostage and worse, running late.

“Babe,” he said, somehow managing to frown and smile at once. “I got to go!”

Tiffany looked down at his penis. It had another idea. Raimey’s eyes followed hers.

“Damn this thing!” he grabbed his wife and pulled her into the shower. She squealed as he pushed her back against the shower wall and kissed her deep, their tongues dancing together, firm and soft, in a motion they had learned over the ten years they’d been together.

Instead of dropping down to suck on her nipples, he picked her up like she was a feather.

She pulled her own hair and moaned as he attacked her with the same passion as he had the first time they lay together.

Ten minutes later, Tiffany moved from the shower to the bed and crashed on the comforter not caring that she was wet. She watched her husband get ready. He was applying deodorant and brushing his teeth double time.

She admired his physique. His chocolate skin stretched across his muscular back. His triceps hung from his arms. Even just after sex, it made her blood warm.

Raimey disappeared into the closet and reappeared dressed in his fatigues. He quickly moved to Tiffany and planted a big kiss on her mouth and then ducked down to her belly and gave her a zerbert.

“You are a bad woman,” he said. She smacked him on the ass as he left.

“You like it.”

“Yes . . . I . . . Do.”

Tiffany watched her soldier leave and for the first time her stomach didn’t sour. This was one of the few missions he had been cleared to tell her about. He and his team were supporting the Secret Service at the UN Energy Summit.

“We’re just glorified security guards,” Raimey had said the day before at dinner. “That place has been locked tight and cleared for two weeks now.”

= = =

“My balls itch,” Janis said while he rubbed the butt of another soldier’s rifle against them over his fatigues.

The rifle’s owner snatched it away. He put the butt of his rifle up to his nose and faked a whiff. “It smells like your sister.”

Janis’s eyes softened and he slowly pulled his equipment out of the locker. “My sister’s dead, dude. Not cool.”

“Oh, man. I’m sorry. I was just fuck—”

Janis jumped on him. “HA. You Mexican motherfucker! I got you Carlos. I’m in your head, bitch!”

The other soldiers laughed. This team had been together for over five years and they had bonded into a family. Since the early twenty-first century, The Terror War had never ended. There were breaks. There were different faces and organizations, but their tenet was the same: destroy the U.S. Kill the infidels. When the Coalition invaded the Middle East the mess just splattered. They had been overseas for two years organizing the occupation and handling specific missions against high value targets or hostages. But the Middle East was flooded with soldiers, and the general populace had been moved around and stripped of technologies that would allow them to coordinate. In the U.S., Raimey and his team lacked the luxury of support or the benefit of superior technology. In the last four months eight of their men had died. Two years in Iran had produced one casualty.

The twenty soldiers remaining laughed and joked like high school jocks because they had no choice. This was what they trained for. They understood their worth and they understood the absolute cost.

Raimey walked in and while they continued smile, they lined up on each side of the locker room and saluted.

“At ease, sorry for being late.”

Raimey went to his locker and packed his armor and gear.

“Are we taking a plane?” a soldier asked.

“I think we’re on a cleared track,” Raimey said. The military would clear train tracks so they could use high-speed rail. “You all ready?”

“Oorah,” they said.

“Oorah,” Raimey replied. They marched out to their transport. It was a nine-hour train ride from O’Hare to New York City.

= = =

There are two types of genius. Imaginative genius is found in people who can, from out of the blue, come up with a previously unheard of or unrecognized concept or solve a formerly unsolvable problem. They stare at the sky, watch the clouds roll past, and then poof, they understand how to inhibit the HIV virus so it doesn’t attack white blood cells. There is no pattern, there is no focus on research. The knowledge comes to them like God itself whispered the answer into their ear.

Intellectual genius involves research, patterns, and adaptation. This genius takes information and existing ideas or inventions and gleans new solutions and knowledge from them.

Cynthia Revo was an imaginative genius. The Mindlink had been in her head since she was thirteen. Evan Lindo was an intellectual genius. He lacked imagination, but when pieces of a problem were laid before him, the solution—the bridge to span the chasm—assembled in his mind.

Evan was in a military bunker one mile below Wilmington, Virginia at the heart of an army base. WarDon knew where he was, the President knew too, but other than that and his hand selected staff— which now numbered in the hundreds—they were completely off the grid. The engineers and scientists moved around him like worker bees. A quarter mile up and all around, blowtorched metal fell, disappearing mid-flight in waterfalls of fire.

There were technical aspects of MindCorp’s operation that were known to the outside scientist or computer engineer. The client system of the Mindlink, the two-way data feed and the multi-aliased frequency modulation that allowed the brain to be read and fed by the Mindlink, those could be discussed and duplicated.

Where it got complicated wasn’t in one user connecting in, it was how MindCorp could keep track of six billion users connected in. How they organized the data into threads that could be easily tracked and properly maintained. MindCorp had had a one hundred percent up rate until Justin decided to fly to the moon. Before that, for the last ten years, their servers had never crashed. Ever.

The Data Nodes, Data Crushers, and how the Sleepers interacted with them was the mystery that had kept Evan sleepless for the last five years.

Data Nodes were local, regional, and national hubs where all the data of the world coursed through with astounding order. In each was a Data Core—the blue fuses all the data streamed through—and those were integrated with Data Crushers, the interface that MindCorp Sleepers used to connect into cyberspace and maintenance the system.

The Sleepers were the key, they were what kept the system constantly functioning, and their interaction with the system was the big “HowdTheyDoThat?!” But Cynthia had given him the cypher when she provided a self-contained Mindlink for the Tank Major program. Five years of pain, suffering, and a growing inferiority complex was wiped out in one week of backward engineering.

He hated Cynthia, he supposed, but he hated her like one company hates its rival. It wasn’t personal. It was professional. She was smarter than he was and he couldn’t stand that. She knew something that he didn’t and it gnawed on him like flesh eating bacteria. It was like none of his accomplishments mattered in the giant shadow of that little redhead.

“Banging her bodyguard,” he mumbled while he worked on a circuit board near the gigantic black tube of an unpowered Data Core. It was so obvious. He wondered about the voice in the back of all people’s heads that said mean things for no real reason. His seemed to do that a lot.

He smiled a bit and the very act made him feel better. He heard whistling and he realized it was him. She was an imaginative genius: the upper crust of genius-dom, the ones that are always put on a pedestal. He was an intellectual genius: the grunts, the blue-collar union guys that ground and ground to get an inch.

He was okay with that. I’ll be the turtle, she can be the hare. The Data Core was on schedule, the King Sleeper rested comfortably in a room a few hundred feet from where he worked. And because of that boy, he had leapfrogged her. He understood facts of cyberspace that she could only consider as theories. And by the time she found out, it would be too late.

Justin clearly proved that innate aptitude played a much higher role in Sleeper efficiency than their education or experience level. There was a swimming aspect to cyberspace, a liquidity in the medium that didn’t treat everyone fairly. It was fascinating. Even in cyberspace where the mind was free, there were Darwinian principles that separated the weak from the strong.

Why aptitude over education? That was the question he had asked himself time and time again. It was the way the mind interacted with the Mindlink. Brains were just gooey processors, in the end. But they behaved in ways that no microchip or supercomputer could. It was the inferential leaps. It was the lack of rules. That was the key. This was clearly proven in 1997 when an IBM computer called Deep Blue took on the chess master of the day, Gary Kasparov. Computationally, Deep Blue should have never lost. But it did. Since then, computing power had grown by a billion and yet the same outcome still occurred as it did in 1997. The man could win. Not always, maybe not as often, but much more than he should. It wasn’t cold hard processing power—humans lacked that—it was our imagination that allowed it. A computer tried to get there another way, pure math and analytics. And sometimes it would succeed.

Both had their weaknesses. But what happened if a high aptitude Sleeper was combined with a supercomputer? What happened when you gave one exceptional human mind as much computational power as ten million Deep Blues? That was the question. Evan whistled while he worked because the King Sleeper had showed him the answer: Engineered evolution.

Days now. Just days. And the world would tremble in the wake of his invention. It would kneel before the United States—before him—cowering and awaiting sentence.

“Yo,” a slow, southern voice said above him. Glass.

Lindo was so focused he didn’t see the black military boots and blue jeans two feet away from where he knelt. Lindo didn’t look up, he was almost finished wiring the Data Crusher interface, a Mindlink on steroids.

“No problems?” Lindo asked.

“No problems. We’re all set.”

Lindo closed his eyes and ran down the checklist. It was all done. Everything was in place. Tomorrow will be an interesting day for the world.

The chess game begins.

Chapter 7

It was a crisp fifty-eight degrees in New York City. Thin clouds hung like kites in the blue sky and the sun snuck through the rows of skyscrapers and bathed the streets in its golden warmth.

Raimey couldn’t enjoy it. He was surrounded by chaos. The Great Migration—when suburban families migrated back to the cities after the oil ran out—had taken place over the last ten years and it had caused the already massive infrastructure of these cities to bloat like a tumor.

2020 population of New York City: 10,220,454. 2058: 55,873,200. 2020 footprint of New York City: three hundred and five square miles. 2058: six hundred square miles. Twice as large, five times the population. New York had become a sweatshop.

And they had come to complain. Five million frustrated souls surrounded the UN building. Even from his elevated position, Raimey could not see street. Down every avenue he scanned, the earth curved before the end of the protestors.

They carried empty gas canisters and signs: “Where’s the oil?” “The Coalition IS Terrorism.” “Cynthia should run it.”

Raimey didn’t know why they were here. The oil decline had been public for decades; did they choose not to see? They were shuttled into huge cities. They were given tax breaks for their useless cars.

When he and the team got to New York the night before, he had thought it would be a simple job. Babysit the perimeter. Watch the President. Look for anything suspicious. He was wrong.

Fifty-eight degrees was the temperature but it wasn’t the heat. The energy off the crowd made Raimey sweat. The noises coming from it didn’t sound human, it sounded like a mass of howling dogs.

“This is fucked up,” Janis said in Raimey’s earpiece. His team was placed throughout the building. Over the comm a few soldiers echoed the sentiment.

“No time for commentary, guys. Stay focused. The package is arriving in five minutes,” Raimey replied. The Chinese President and the EU Prime Minister had already entered the building.

He scanned the crowd. How could he possibly assess a threat? A platoon of soldiers in full camouflage could be ten people deep and he wouldn’t be able to spot them.

He heard the thump-thump of the President’s air convoy. Three Apache helicopters descended amongst the skyscrapers and formed an air perimeter over the crowd. The crowd’s hair blew back and their signs folded from the helicopter’s thrust. The sight of such powerful weapons turned their wrought panic into momentary awe.

Raimey watched the President’s helicopter hover down in between the Apaches.

“Secure the President,” Raimey said to his forward team that included Janis. Six of his guys were at the helipad, support to the Secret Service.

“The Package is out and secure. We are heading toward the entrance,” Janis said. Normally full of humor, he now sounded like a Speak-and-Spell. This was business.

Raimey turned back to the crowd. Their awe was over. The millions of voices built onto each other into a deafening crescendo.

“The Package is in the building. We’re peeling off,” Janis said.

“Okay. Let’s get inside. Ramirez and Tate—get down to the parking garage and work your way up.”

“That’s been cleared, sir,” Ramirez replied.

“By us?” Raimey responded.

“No sir, by the security detail.”

The UN building was under lockdown for the last three weeks. It had been swept by dogs and specialists for any potential threat. Since then nothing had gone in or out. Raimey nearly acquiesced.

“Check it out anyway,” Raimey said. “There’s too much at risk to get sloppy.”

“Yes, sir.”

= = =

Xan was not at the UN summit. He wasn’t even in New York. He was on the western fringe of Chicago on an unapproved tour of one of MindCorp’s largest Data Nodes.

Harold Renki walked behind him. Sixty years old and very tall—almost seven feet—he peered down at people like an ostrich. Harold was one of the original scientists that had worked on the Mindlink prototype. He had witnessed the now legendary beginning with Tom and Jerry, the apes. One of his patents helped make it happen.

A brilliant computer programmer, he specialized in software that dealt with efficient multi-threading: the act of a multi-processor computer prioritizing and parceling data to each individual CPU for maximum efficiency.

Each MindCorp server had over two thousand 1-terahertz cores. A Colossal Node, as they called the big ones, had over one thousand servers attached to the Data Core—the big blue “fuse.”

A bloated version of his patent made it possible for all this data to come through the Data Core reliably, efficiently, and—most importantly—with traceability.

The tour had gone longer than Harold had expected. For his information, he would get ten billion dollars—no small sum—but he thought it was for consulting and sending schematics, not chaperoning. When he got the call that Xan was coming over, his heart had skipped a beat. Suddenly what he was doing felt illegal, a cheat against his benefactors. Harold had excused the conscious staff from the Data Node so that they could watch the UN summit. Xan and he had walked through the beds of Sleepers and none of them even fluttered an eyelid.

“What is this?” Xan asked. They were now beneath the Data Core, a place that few people ever got to see. Above them, the electrical aqua blue stormed and crashed in its huge glass tube. It felt like they were staring up at an aquarium caught in a hurricane.

One hundred feet beneath the catwalk were the servers. Heavy air—at negative 50 degrees Celsius—constantly sprayed onto them and while the heavy molecule fought condensation, a light fog hung over the field of processors like a haunted graveyard. It felt ominous, dark and powerful. A hum filled all frequencies, but aside from the Data Core’s constant blue dance, Xan saw no moving parts.

“Those are the servers, memory, the man behind the curtain, so to speak,” Harold said. “There are two million processors here but this is a Colossal. What you want to do is a heck of a lot easier than this. You’re looking at two, three servers, tops. Six thousand processors total.”

Harold rarely looked down at his work anymore. It was beautiful, in a gothic sort of way.

“And that will get us in?” Xan asked. Xan made Harold uneasy. The little Asian spoke quietly and concisely, but something about him seemed unpredictable like a dog with its tail tucked down.

“Along with what I gave you . . . if you do the treatment to the hacker.”

“Forced Autism.”

Harold winced. He didn’t like the term. He had been there during the first experiments when they didn’t know the consequences and people willfully volunteered. The results were so inhumane that even the military balked. Plans for further tests were scuttled quickly.

“Forced Autism, Forced Savant, whatever you want to call it. With the right candidate, yes, definitely. They overload the system. Most people are using less than one percent of their brain when they’re connected. A Sleeper, like the ones we weaved between to get down here, they use four to five, and they can program real time. A Forced Savant uses 85% of their brain.”

“But they need a guide.”

“Yes, the procedure makes them erratic and distant. Most of them don’t live long either.”

“How long?” Xan asked. His voice made Harold sleepy.

“A month maybe. Except for the initial experiments it really hasn’t been explored because of the ethical considerations.”

Xan’s laugh was sharp and loud, in complete contrast to his voice. Xan peered over the rail to the servers that stuck out like tombstones amidst the rolling fog. “Ethical considerations are always the battle cry against breakthroughs. Birth control, nuclear power, stem cells. All things we take for granted. Now this . . .”

Harold shifted around in his white coat uncomfortably. He really just wanted the money.

Xan continued. “Tens of millions have bled on battlefields. Tens of thousands now, every year, and no one bats an eye. But you try to evolve the human race and peer past the event horizon into God’s will, and the mysteries that make us, and suddenly it’s unethical. The edge of knowledge is always unethical. You can’t merit ethics on a few deaths. It puts the individual above the common good.”

Xan turned to Harold. “We’re up-to-date on your schematics. This last pass and the information you’ve given me today will put us back on schedule.”

“How long?” Harold asked. He really didn’t care. Something nagged at the back of his mind. Maybe it was his conscience.

“Four weeks, maybe less.”

Piggybacking the MindCorp servers, Harold thought. The stealth program he built for China that allowed this access was so discreet that it would take years or lottery luck for MindCorp to notice. It was possible that they would never know.

“Five up front, five on the back, per our arrangement,” Xan said. He put his hand out. “It’s been a pleasure.”

Harold shook it. Xan gripped quickly, and using his left hand, flashed a blade across Harold’s neck. It was so sharp, it took the neck a moment to realize it was time to bleed and then it poured out like the mouth of a river.

Harold passed out after two thoughts: He cut me! And, I just started World War III.

He died ten seconds later. Xan disappeared up the catwalk past the rows of a hundred Sleepers, up the elevator and out the door. No one saw him. The security cameras were off. All conscious staff were excused for the two hours. Per Harold Renki’s demands, fueled by his greed.

= = =

The UN summit was another opportunity for a bunch of politicians without business credentials, doctorates, or scientific backgrounds to pontificate to their electoral bodies.

Raimey let the drone of the slicksters fold into background noise. He was at the top of the conference room. It was shaped like a giant bowl tiered with desks and divided into quadrants by stairs that ran up the sides. At the bottom was the podium where the politicians said their peace. He and Janis were the only two soldiers present. Janis was across the chasm, mirroring Raimey’s movement. Everyone else had nice suits, perfect hair, and glowing white teeth.

“Can you believe these assholes?” Janis said in Raimey’s ear. Raimey looked across the cavernous room to his friend and couldn’t help but smile. They shouldn’t talk like this over the comm.

“Lot of talking,” Raimey replied.

The room was packed. Nearly the entire Coalition was present with the individual European Union countries taking up the bulk of the seating.

The Chinese representatives included President Jintau. He had about a dozen advisors and young, intense men that could only be his security.

The same went for the United States. President Michaels came with half his Cabinet and a security detail. He studied a sheet of talking points and occasionally glared at the Chinese President. Other countries sat in the cheap seats toward the top.

They were ten minutes into the Summit. The head of the UN thanked the first speaker, who had said nothing useful, and announced that President Michaels had something to say. This drew some murmurs, but Raimey had to do everything in his power to hold back a yawn.

= = =

President Joseph Michaels waited for his introduction. He was as disinterested in the other speakers’ point of view as Raimey. His focus was on the Chinese President and the betrayal of trust that had occurred.

No one expected President Michaels to speak. In fact, he was not known for being a great speaker. He was good one-on-one or in small groups. Town hall meetings, schools, any event that was intimate, where he could look a man or woman in the eye and tell them he cared. That was his wheelhouse. In front of a few hundred or more eager faces and his hands got a bit damp and a little shaky. His throat would tighten and his heart would double up like he was on his morning run.

It showed in debates, but the good thing—as his political advisor had pointed out—was that no one voted. The hardcore Republicans did, of course. The hardcore Democrats did, which was annoying. But no one else bothered. The hopeful and downtrodden had given up. They had heard the words without actions too many times. Unlike the politicians that wanted their votes, the masses understood history. They had seen the pattern. Fool me once. Nothing was going to change. There were too many lobbyists, too much big money, and jellyfish for leaders. Instead of a mass uprising, a revolution to take the country back, they acquiesced and anesthetized themselves online. Without the Mindlink, the earth would have been in cinders. It was medication against reality as much as a new way of life.

While three billion people were watching the conference live (and another two billion would watch it online in the next day or so), Joseph’s heart pounded, not because he was nervous, but because he was angry. He was angry with China, he was angry with the EU. He was angry with the Senate and the House and the legacy of politicians before him who had failed. So many crises that could have been avoided, not in hindsight, not after the twenty-four hour news coverage, but clearly, crisply from day one.

For the last fifty years the United States had stumbled and tripped over the tenets that had defined its greatness. The Constitution was warped and manipulated to protect the rich. Corporations were given the same rights as citizens. Super PACS fed politicians with unaccountable outside influence, guaranteeing the decay of the political system’s purpose to protect the people. Financial disasters and no one in Wall Street went to prison. Again and again, a cycle of corruption unaccounted, just entertainment on the tube while another fat fucking American gorged on mac and cheese.

He knew that he was at fault. He felt the guilt itch at his temples and the shame in his soul. But he inherited many of these problems. The previous administration, and the administration before that, and the one before that, left him holding the reins of a horse and buggy already barreling toward the cliff’s edge.

He looked up at the Chinese President and his anger grew when the man he had called a friend smiled and nodded at him.

Why did I want to be President? President Michaels asked himself. He couldn’t remember. He heard his name and he stood up and he gathered the papers that explained in great detail China’s new oil reserve and the steps they have taken to keep it secret. A part of him wondered, why? Why bother outing them? Shouldn’t the U.S. be accountable for its own problems? Is China the reason we are in this bind? We were terminal long before this.

But the politician took over and he stepped up to the podium. He thanked everyone that was in attendance and those at home watching. And then he cleared his throat and tore into China. WarDon had provided him with incredibly accurate data on the date of discovery, the location, production rate, and the expected life of the oil reserve. He listed dates and read detailed transcripts between President Jintau and his advisors on strategies to keep the oil reserve secret. The evidence was irrefutable and the delivery scathing. It was the best performance of President Michael’s career. He pandered to become President. He waffled to get votes. But here he listed facts and conclusions based on the aggregate of those facts. His old friend’s smile faded when his name was called out again and again as the betrayer of the civilized world. It turned out the civilized world was not so civil.

= = =

Ramirez and Tate were already moving when Raimey had given them orders to double check the parking garage. They bounded down the stairs, four steps at a time, hitting the landing and chugging down to the next floor. The UN auditorium was four floors above them. The garage had a total of eight levels, the vast majority of them unoccupied. Parking garages were a relic of another time.

They hit the P8 landing and threw the door open. It flung against the backstop and the sound echoed throughout the parking garage. Only a few LED bulbs lit this level.

“I can’t see shit,” Tate said. “You bring night vision?”

“Nope. But I got a torch.”

Ramirez flicked on his flashlight and scanned the structure. They quickly cleared the area. They picked up the pace to a jog as they searched the walls and ceiling for anything suspicious.

“They cleared it earlier,” Tate said.

“Yep,” Ramirez said. He and Tate knew that didn’t matter to Raimey.

Except for a few rat turds, P8 was clear. They jogged up the ramp. In the empty garage, their footsteps multiplied into a platoon.

“It’s damp down here. More than you’d think,” Ramirez said. He could see water damage in the concrete. This building had a while to go before it was unsafe, but entropy had taken hold.

“Stinks a bit too.”

“Not as bad as your ass,” Ramirez said. Some recessive gene in Tate’s German/Norwegian heritage had created the perfect farting machine. Long hours in closed proximity to him amounted to chemical warfare.

“True.” Tate was a little too proud of his digestive tract. He once ripped one so foul that his bulldog Jasper gave him a disappointed look and left the room.

P7 was clear. Ramirez, Tate, and their ghost platoon went up to P6. More water, same thing as P7. A few places had cones creating a perimeter around especially slippery areas.

“How much leave do we have after this?” Tate inquired.

Ramirez threw his beam around, covering the floors. “Week, I heard,” Ramirez said. “Raimey?”

There was only fuzz from the comm.

“You see something?” Tate asked, instantly focused.

“No, just wondering if we had backup.”

“Not with all this ‘crete.”

“Hmph.”

P6 was clear. P5 was clear. The water was getting heavier. Maybe a pipe had ruptured. A green slime coated the center of the garage floor and water openly dripped down from above.

“R-mer-z, re-or,” their comm sputtered. It was Raimey.

“Shit,” Ramirez spoke slowly. “Nothing so far. Nothing so far.”

Up the ramp to P4 and they saw the source of the slip ‘n’ slide. A center portion of the garage was cordoned off with temporary hunter orange fencing. They could hear water splattering behind it. Signs were posted about an ongoing repair to the water main and the expected finish date.

“Well, there you go,” Ramirez said. P4 was lit much better than the other floors. This floor and up must be used to some extent.

“Clear all around,” Tate said into the comm. To Ramirez—“At least we got a workout.”

Ramirez turned off his flashlight and walked toward the orange perimeter. Tate followed behind.

“We should go fishing if we get a week off,” Tate said.

“I don’t think Trish wants you fishing for a week.” Ramirez pushed the orange flap to the side like a shower curtain. Seven large blue drums were wired together. Ramirez saw the timer as it wound down to zero. He screamed into his comm.

“BOMB!! WE GOT A B—”

They felt no pain. They heard no noise. For Ramirez and Tate, one second they were there and the next they were nothing.

= = =

From the outside, it looked like the UN building jumped. The massive crowd, waving around like cilia, stopped when the building let out a groan and a shockwave rolled down the road, knocking people down and bursting fire hydrants.

All of the windows of the UN building blew out, showering the police force outside with glass, severing the head of one unlucky officer.

Already tense, the crowd turned to madness. The old and the young got trampled under foot as the millions in the street stampeded away from the explosion, their mouths bent open, spit flying, their eyes rolling like cattle on their way to slaughter.

Inside the UN building, President Michaels vanished in fire, metal and cement. The floor shot up like a champagne cork taking two thirds of the world’s leaders with it. The spine of the Chinese President pushed up through the base of his skull when his seat instantly accelerated from zero to six hundred miles per hour.

Raimey heard an indecipherable scream in his comm before the explosion. Bomb, Raimey thought, before the shockwave ripped through his body and turned his world to black.

= = =

Darkness to light, like he’s swimming to the surface from the depths of the sea.

I need air.

Raimey hears screams around him. They’re distant, muffled. He hears sirens and opens his eyes. In front of him, a dead man stares directly at him, his eyes wide in surprise.

He’s missing the top of his head.

Sure enough, Raimey’s right. The top of his head looks like a bowl. No mouth-to-mouth for this guy.

He’s got no body.

Another good observation. The head bowl is just that. A political advisor now better used to serve someone corn flakes.

Raimey breathes. It’s hot and gritty. He coughs and hacks. He tries to raise his hands, but they aren’t working. He feels them, but they won’t go in front of his face. He tries to stand, but his legs aren’t listening either.

Shock, he thinks. I’m in shock.

Screams and moans fill the air. The room is a giant sinkhole. Bodies are strewn about in weird places, pinned at odd angles. Across the chasm, one body hangs upside down, like it’s auditioning to be a chandelier.

Fire and black smoke.

He tries to get up again, but no go. This is the worst he’s gotten it. This is bad.

Tiffany.

Vanessa.

He sees them. They are hovering in the center of what is now a black hole, wavering back and forth from the heat and fire. Tiffany has her hand on Vanessa’s shoulder, comforting her.

I got to stay alive.

Dark spots pepper his eyes.

I got to live.

Like an old friend, the darkness embraces John Raimey and pulls him down.

= = =

Tiffany and Vanessa sat on a bullet train to New York. Tiffany still hadn’t wrapped her head around what had happened. Both she and Vanessa had been Mindlinked into the rally. They had watched the newscast, they had watched the Presidents and Prime Ministers show up. It almost felt like a pageant. At one point, Vanessa squealed when a camera swept past and they saw John looking out over the crowd.

Then the bomb went off. The cameras shuddered from the concussive blast. Some broke off their mounts and dangled over the crowd as the tops of heads stampeded past. Others turned to snow.

Five minutes later, they were out the door heading to the subway station that would get them to the interstate railway. Tiffany threw her and Vanessa’s clothes into a bag. Vanessa wanted to bring a stuffed doll—her woobie—and Tiffany made damn sure it came along. Now they had nine hours of silence.

Please God let him be ok. Please let him be fine.

She saw the building explode. She understood that men who get thrown from a bomb blast, just to dust themselves off for another battle, only existed in movies. That’s not the way it worked.

Her stomach was lead. There was no acid, no tightness, just a pit that squeezed like a hand around her heart.

John’s dead.

She saw a reflection in the window. Vanessa was playing with her doll. They were “walking” down the street talking about what was going on in each store. Tiffany burst into tears.

“Is it ok for me to play?” her daughter asked. Vanessa, so insightful and mature, even at ten.

“Yes, dear. Of course.”

“Dad’s okay.”

“You think?” Tiffany snorted back the tears.

“He’s the strongest dad in the world, isn’t he?”

Tiffany laughed and the tears came back. John never missed a chance to flex for them. He was such a knob. Such a beautiful, goofy, idiot.

“He’s pretty strong.”

“The strongest.” Vanessa paused. “Do you want to play with us?”

Tiffany didn’t. She was tired and she was sad and she was torn apart by her daughter’s innocence. But she played anyway. Vanessa took Tiffany to a land where the doll was a princess and they were on their way to a castle. She watched her daughter play and couldn’t help but see John.

I don’t want to be a widow.

Another tear, but the last for now. She watched her daughter create a world around her that didn’t exist. As she gave life to a piece of sewn cloth stuffed with foam. For a child, the world is what they make it. For an adult, the world becomes a lesson in contrition as each dream fails to pan out. John. Her family. Tiffany stared down the barrel of her new reality.

God, I miss him already.

= = =

WarDon was alone in the Oval Office. After the bomb, he had numbly made his way there past the sobbing advisors, screaming secretaries, and frantic Secret Service agents. He could still hear the chaos as the organization pitched and rolled in the aftershock of the bomb. But here it was almost peaceful. Except for his thoughts.

Pink Flamingo.

For over a decade now, WarDon recorded his meetings. For online meetings he used a simple program called “Mirror” that recorded the video and audio from his perspective. For in-person meetings he kept a digital recorder in his pocket that he used software to transcribe later. He had had the recorder in his pocket the day he and Evan were in the Oval Office three months prior.

Pink Flamingo.

He was afraid to say the words aloud. When he had listened back to the tape to make sure he understood exactly what Evan was saying, for a second he thought the memory card had corrupted.

But twice, Evan said ‘Pink’ and he—in a voice without inflection—responded ‘Flamingo.’ And he knew without any doubt, what had happened: the King Sleeper.

He used me.

Right after the bombing, Evan had answered the hard line in the Virginia based bunker.

“What the hell happened?! Is the President okay?” Evan had said. He was a bad actor.

“You brainwashed me,” WarDon replied.

“What are you talking about?”

“Pink Fla-!” WarDon stopped himself.

A chill came over the line.

“You can say it,” Evan said. “Now that you know the trigger, it won’t work. It only can affect you if you’re unaware and susceptible.” His fake shock was gone.

“How could you?” WarDon growled.

“You wouldn’t have gone through with it,” Evan said.

“YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I WOULDN’T HAVE!” WarDon roared. “This is done! You are done! You got it? You’re going to be a prime candidate for butt fucking when you go to prison.”

WarDon heard Evan breathing hard on the other line. “Do you know your mom uses the Mindlink? So does your wife, she’s on right now. Your two sons average ten hours a day. Same with their wives and Billy.”

Billy was Donald’s grandson. WarDon’s face bent in horror. “What are you saying?”

“The Core is up, the King Sleeper is online. I’m just letting you know what your family is up to.”

“I’ll stop you,” WarDon said. “This is breach of national security, you have gone too far.”

“How?”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN HOW? I’M THE SECRETARY OF GODDAMN DEFENSE!”

“Who would you tell?” Evan said. His voice was eerily calm. He was unafraid. “You saw what I can do. Who can you reach that I cannot? Who can you persuade that I can’t dissuade when they and their family’s lives are at stake? No one. There’s no one.” He let that sink in. “If you do anything that affects my operation, your family is gone. Do you believe that I can do that?”

The phone was barely on WarDon’s ear. His eyes were glazed in disbelief. “Yes.”

“Do you believe that I WOULD do that?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I will kill everything you love to save the world, Donald. Don’t test me.”

Evan hung up. WarDon had stared at the phone, his mind devoid of any recourse. The line went dead and after a few minutes he set it down, missing the cradle, and headed to where he was now.

He had raided the President’s liquor cabinet. Wouldn’t need it now. He pulled out a very old bottle of scotch that the President brought out for special occasions, and filled a tumbler to the top.

A one-finger pour was to calm the nerves. Two fingers, you had a bad day. Three fingers, you got fucked over and you were stewing. Four fingers, you did the fucking and you wanted to forget.

This was his fifth four-finger pour. Five times four. What does twenty fingers mean? WarDon thought to himself. He swirled the glass and watched the caramel-colored viscous drug twirl around like a ball bearing. The ice had thinned, whitening the middle. For some reason it reminded him of a galaxy.

President Michaels is dead. Two thirds of the world’s leaders are dead.

He thought about his wife. He pictured her leaned back in the family room with a Mindlink on her head. She loved the news.

The lights were off and the sun was setting. Most of the room was in shadows. Except Abe. A sliver of light rested on his face. Another rested on Don’s, exposing one red, wet eye and casting the other in complete darkness.

WarDon raised the glass to the painting and then emptied its contents down his throat. He put the glass down gently on a side table that came with Harry S. Truman when he assumed office.

The atomic bomb. Who thought there’d be anything worse?

He went up to good ‘ol’ Abe. He put his left hand to the painting’s lips like he was shushing him, like he was telling the sixteenth President to keep what was about to be said between the two of them.

“Would you have guessed that the sheep was really a wolf? And it . . .” WarDon searched for the right words. “That not only did it want to eat the sheep, it wanted to eat the shepherd too?

“I put him in charge of a top secret online weapon that no one knows about and he runs a bionic division that has now perfected the implant needed to create a giant, invincible army. And if I tell anyone, my family dies.”

And Evan would do it, a scaly voice in the back of WarDon’s head said. He would do it.

“He had the boy’s parents killed without hesitation,” WarDon muttered. WarDon reached for the glass and then remembered it was empty.

Abe didn’t know what to say. He just stared at him. WarDon kept his left hand to Lincoln’s lips. WarDon didn’t need Abe’s insight. Let’s face it, just to get him up to speed on computers would take a year. WarDon saw the checkmate; he knew Evan’s end goal.

“This will end with no nations,” WarDon said quietly. WarDon took the pistol out of his right holster and pressed it to his temple.

When the gunshot went off, the chaos outside the Oval Office stopped and the Secret Service rushed in, guns drawn. They found WarDon slumped against the base of the Lincoln portrait. His knees buckled against the wall when the round went through his brain, but they kept him up like broken stilts. It wasn’t a clean shot. Blood pumped out of his head wound. The right side of his face was a bloody socket. The first Secret Service man got to him and looked at his good eye. That eye rolled toward him and kept going to white.

“Ihm srry,” the General said. “Ihm s srry.”

WarDon fell to the ground dead.

= = =

A milky light swung back and forth across John’s vision.

Where am I?

He heard a faraway voice. And then it was right in his ear. “John Raimey, can you hear me? Can you see me?”

The blurry man turned to people Raimey couldn’t see.

“His pupils are reacting!”

Another man leaned in and it looked like he was holding two scrub brushes.

Defibrillator.

The man with the light pushed the paddle man away.

“He’s up. His heart’s beating.”

Is this real? Raimey asked himself. He didn’t know where he was. His memories were like still photographs piled together in a box. A static photo of a friend. Him, he thinks it’s him, with two women, one his age, the other younger. Bloody anarchy in a building that had been blown apart.

The man above him, the man with the light, pulled his mask aside. Raimey saw worried eyes and a frown.

“John Raimey, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said in his head, but it came out as a painful grunt.

“We are taking you into surgery right now. You have sustained heavy trauma to your limbs. We need to stop the bleeding. Do you understand?”

Raimey’s eyes quivered. He nodded.

“I’m putting an oxygen mask over your face now. It will put you to sleep. Do you understand?”

Raimey nodded again. Anything to stop the pain. His arms and legs were on fire.

“It’s good to have you alive, soldier.” The doctor put the mask over Raimey’s face and immediately he drifted away. The last thing Raimey thought before he went out was that the doctor’s words did not match his expression.

= = =

They got to New York. Tiffany pulled Vanessa off the train and they went to a kiosk with a digital map of the subway system. She searched for the hospital and it printed out the trains she had to take to get there.

More trains. More fucking trains. They got on the first subway.

The subway train rose to the surface momentarily and Tiffany saw a few electric cars whizzing around silently on the street. She wished she had one now. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a lack of energy that killed the electric car. It was the lack of petroleum to make plastics.

The subway cars were choked with people. She and Vanessa squeezed through the passengers, adding to the frustration of going train-to-train to get to the hospital. Everyone smelled like they hadn’t showered. It wasn’t full on body odor, more like fruit that was about to turn, sweet and pungent, perfume wafting over an undercurrent of funk. It made Tiffany want to gag.

The hospital was an angry beehive of scrubbed-in doctors and nurses. Ten hours after the bombing and it still sounded like a trading floor. Outside, ambulances inched forward in gridlock.

Tiffany shielded Vanessa’s eyes, but through the cracks in her fingers, she saw bodies without limbs and cuts in flesh that went well past the bone. They made it to the front desk.

“My husband, John Raimey, is he here?”

The receptionist wore a communication Mindlink—a phone—on her head. The young woman’s eyes were wide and glassy from stress. Tiffany clapped her hands in front of the girl’s face and the girl finally noticed her.

“I’m looking for my husband. This is where they’re bringing the UN victims, right?”

“Yes. If you could just take a seat.” The woman was on autopilot.

“I really need to know if he—” Tiffany said.

“If you’d sit down, we can . . .”

Tiffany slammed her fists on the desk. Vanessa was so startled that she dropped her doll. Doctors and nurses within twenty feet snapped out of their shell-shocked daze.

“I’M NOT SITTING AROUND WHILE HE DIES. WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?! WHERE IS HE?! JOHN RAIMEY. HE WAS GUARDING THE PRESIDENT! WHERE IS HE?!”

“Ma’am?” a male voice said to Tiffany’s right. She turned to see a young doctor in blood-covered blue scrubs.

“I just got here from Chicago. I’m looking for—”

“John Raimey. I heard. I stabilized him when he came in. We stopped most of the bleeding. They took him up to surgery.”

Hope bloomed in Tiffany.

“He’s alive?”

“Yes, but he’s badly hurt. But I think he’ll make it.”

The doctor turned to the receptionist. “Get them visitor badges and send them to the fifth floor waiting room.”

The doctor looked at the war zone that was his floor. “I need to get back to this. He should still be in surgery but he’ll be out soon.”

“What’s your name?” Tiffany asked.

“Dr. Marshall,” he said and added a quick smile that contrasted with his exhausted eyes.

Tiffany hugged him, ignoring the meaty scrubs. “Thank you.”

= = =

They sat in the fifth floor waiting room. It had been two hours since Dr. Marshall had directed them to the surgery wing. The receptionist here had been professionally polite but a dearth of information. John was in surgery, that’s what the woman knew and that’s all she knew. The cafeteria was open till 11:00 p.m. and the vending machine was near the bathrooms around the corner.

Tiffany was out of fight. She was so tired she could barely walk. She dragged herself over to where Vanessa sat and collapsed into a chair. Vanessa schooched over into Tiffany’s arms and fell asleep instantly. Tiffany drifted off slowly, a mashup of the present and the past playing in her head.

= = =

Tiffany had met John in the cereal aisle of a Chicago supermarket fifteen years earlier. Tiffany was comparing Honey Nut Cheerios to Mueslix. It was late in the evening and the store was quiet. Not thinking, her cart was in the middle of the aisle while she weighed her decision. Her boyfriend at the time, a fuck buddy really, had bailed on her. So she had nothing to do and she was out of cereal, milk, and ice cream. Awesome Friday night.

“Excuse me, miss,” a deep voice said. She turned to a large black man. He had a scar that curled down the right side of his face in a fishhook, just skirting his eye. Shrapnel from an improvised explosive device, she later learned, but the scar added mystery. He had sharp eyes that were downcast, not quite looking directly at her, like most people do out of fear of rejection. Her cart was blocking his.

“Oh, sorry,” she said and pushed the cart over. He flashed a mouth full of braces and walked by.

“Thank you. Have a good night.” He went to the end of the aisle and turned the corner.

She found her eyes following his projected path as if she had x-ray vision. She shook her head, the goofiness of it all, threw the box with the bee on it into the cart and went the opposite way.

He caught her next with a box of tampons in her hand.

“Miss?” he said. He was behind her. She froze, horrified that she had a box of thirty heavy flow tampons in her hand.

Suddenly he laughed. “I’m sorry, this is so embarrassing,” he said. “I swear I’m not this awkward.”

She put the tampons in the cart and turned to him. His face was alight with humor. She laughed too.

“Please let me try this again. What’s next on your list?” he asked.

“Milk.”

“Which way is it?”

She pointed toward the back of the store.

“Okay, meet you there.” Raimey turned the cart and jogged the opposite way, leaving her to ponder what she had gotten herself into.

She could hear his cart chatter and squeal as he took the long route to the milk. She suddenly felt a youthful joy like the moment before a first kiss. She pushed toward the milk.

She could see that he was hiding out of view in the canned foods aisle. He playfully leaned over to see where she was. Finally, she picked up the milk. She heard his cart squeak toward her.

“Hi. John Raimey. Smooth operator,” he joked. He reached out his hand.

“Clearly. Tiffany Thompson. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I don’t want to bother you, but the more I think about it the more I realize that we can’t rely on fate. We have to go after what we want.”

“You gotta just take it!” Tiffany said, snatching the air.

“Exactly!” Raimey smiled—she was flirting. He may not crash and burn. “I don’t live here, I’m actually on leave for a few weeks, and I decided to visit some buddies. If I don’t ask you out, I’ll never see you again and I’ll never get another opportunity to do so.”

“You don’t know me.”

“We have so much to talk about, don’t we?” he said. She laughed. “If you got a boyfriend, just take it as a compliment, but I’d like to at least take you out for coffee.”

“John?”

“You can call me John or Raimey.”

“You’re awkward.”

“I’m told that.”

“A bit forward.”

“It’s a new approach.”

“But all-in-all you did good.”

“B, B+?”

They laughed. She gave him her number.

His smile lit up the dairy aisle and that memory lit up her mind. They went out for brunch that next day and the date lasted until midnight. They hung out the entire time he was on leave. When he went back, they e-mailed and spoke whenever they could. She thought of him as such a contradiction. He was loving and funny, he was fierce and unmoving. He was hers.

= = =

A surgeon walked into the room. He was covered in red.

“Mrs. Raimey?” the doctor asked. He pulled his mask off and it revealed a tired, pale man in his late fifties. Pale and tired seemed to be going around.

Tiffany pulled herself from Vanessa, who remained asleep, and walked over. She wrapped her arms around herself in defense of the news.

“Yes?”

“Your husband is going to make it,” he said without a smile.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She could tell there was more.

“He has sustained grievous injuries to his limbs. Parts of his body have sustained second and third degree burns. He isn’t paralyzed, his mind is fine from what we can tell, but his recovery is going to be long.”

“What do you mean by “grievous?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

“His limbs are gone. A blast like that, just to be alive is a miracle, but we had to amputate.”

Tiffany was quiet. Her ears beat with her pulse. She could hear a whistle in the doctor’s breathing. “He has no arms or legs?”

“He’ll need you more than he’s ever needed you before, Mrs. Raimey. He’s obviously very strong, but he’ll need your help and support.”

“Why do you think I’m here?” she said through clenched teeth.

The surgeon recommended that Vanessa stay in the waiting area and he took Tiffany to the recovery room. John was swaddled like a newborn baby. His face was bandaged and he had a breathing tube down his throat. There were cuts and burns on his face but they were superficial compared to the trauma the rest of his body experienced. It didn’t look like her husband. It looked like a doctored photograph. His large body and his head, all by themselves.

He was semi-conscious and his breathing was deep and strong.

“His vitals are very good,” the surgeon said.

“John? Honey?” Vanessa said. She put her hand lightly on his chest.

His eyes fluttered open. The fear in them made her burst into tears.

“I’m here. We’re going to get through this. We aren’t going anywhere.”

He blinked slowly to show he got it. One tear rolled down the side of his cheek and wet the pillow. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

Chapter 8

Evan sang in the shower. His day had gone from great to damn right fantastic. The world was already in the throes of post-traumatic stress disorder. In Greece, an extremist group had tried to stage a coup. The world financial markets announced they were closed indefinitely “in respect for this global tragedy.” And the manufactured terrorist cell that claimed responsibility for the bombing had the military looking in all the wrong directions. “Allah’s Will” was a phony, manufactured by the King Sleeper. The evidence trail to them was as subtle as spider webs. It would take time and a tremendous amount of resources to hunt them down. Some of the breadcrumbs led to abandoned caves in the Afghan mountains. Others led to existing cells that were insignificant to U.S. policy until now, but who would undoubtedly pull arms when the army came knocking on their door. The military’s itchy trigger fingers would only make the Terror War worse. In a final stroke of genius (speaking of stroke, Evan thought, why the hell not? He squirted out some extra body wash) all the piecemeal data the King Sleeper had planted throughout cyberspace about “Allah’s Will” would aggregate through Nostradamus, reconfirming the grift. They’re like weeds, those terrorists. Evan beamed. His arm went to work. He had never felt so good.

AND—

WarDon ate his own bullet. Punched a one-way ticket to the great beyond. Evan hadn’t predicted that would happen, he thought WarDon would just wisely step aside. For a guy who had “War” in his nickname, he sure wilted quickly. Maybe his war well had seeped dry a long time ago. Evan closed his eyes and worked faster.

For the weeks leading to the UN energy summit, the King Sleeper had sent soft suggestions to all potential incumbent leaders and high-ranking military officials to test for vulnerability and predispositions. Using that data, the King Sleeper began its coercion routine the second the bomb went off. Whatever brave masks these leaders wore to address their respective tribes, inside they were as scared as children. The King Sleeper took those fears and pushed them through doors they would normally not go. The influence rate, if the data was accurate (Evan had devised a program that seemed to work.) was upward of twenty-five percent. He had hoped for five percent to ten percent shifts. One in four of Justin’s subjects were bending to the subliminal suggestions. Evan bit his lower lip.

And Lindo was the natural successor to the late Secretary of Defense. The Vice President was a pushover, thrown on the last ticket to appeal to the few female voters that voted anymore. He wasn’t a drunk, but he liked to drink and he was a womanizer. His father ushered him through Harvard. Ward Williams, the Third.

“A fucking baby in a bear den,” Lindo muttered. He was almost done. He could feel it building. He rocked with the motion thinking not about a woman, but all he had accomplished in such a short time. With his left hand he turned the hot water up until was painful. Perfect. His mind drifted to Cynthia Revo. Her tiny body. Her bright red hair. Being over her. OVER HER. He let the water wash over him, a baptism into the new world that he had just ushered in. The crescendo was about there. His right arm kneading like dough . . .

A rap against the steamed-out glass caused Evan to drop his dick. He turned away from the frosted glass door, covering like a woman caught topless in a changing room. Fear exploded in his belly and his mighty five-inch cock turtled up. They found me. Despite the threat, WarDon told someone.

“Who is it?” he demanded. His mind raced, how could he get out of this?

There was no response, but the knuckle mark on the glass door remained. It wasn’t his imagination. He slid the door open and saw Mike Glass seated on the sink countertop. Lindo had known Glass for a total of four months now and what WarDon had said was true. This guy was ultra reliable, but dammit, the way he looked at Evan gave him the creeps. It was a shark’s stare. A disconnected observation of his surroundings. He wasn’t cocky. He barely spoke. But he regarded people like they were art exhibits.

“What are you doing here?” Evan looked for a towel near the shower. Glass took one from the counter and tossed it over. Evan retreated into the steam and came out wrapped. The difference in physique between the two was comical.

But I’m the brains.

Evan remembered an old movie called “Mad Max” where there was a character comprised of two people. One was an old, smart, a dwarf. The other was a giant retard. Together they were Master Blaster and they ruled . . . Bordertown. It was called Bordertown. Until the hero messed it up.

The point was, together they were whole. Lindo felt that way about Glass. Either by themselves was formidable, but together, they were unstoppable.

Glass hadn’t given it any thought.

Glass hadn’t responded to the question yet. He was just watching (or not watching, depending how you look at it). He was just there.

“So?” Lindo asked again.

“General Boen is coming up from Texas,” Glass said in his backwoods drawl.

“He’s retired, why?”

“He’s an old friend of Ward’s father. He’s unretiring to take over WarDon’s position.”

“What! No. No fucking way.”

“I’m just the messenger. I thought you’d want to know.” Glass slid out.

Lindo looked at himself in the mirror and for a minute he didn’t recognize the man looking back. He was only thirty-one but he could already see crow’s feet and strands of gray. A vein running down his forehead bulged from the news. Another roadblock. He almost felt sorry for himself. Motherfucker. Earl Boen was a very respected General. Old as dirt but still razor sharp, he was the last of the old guard. Which would be a problem.

He would wonder why Evan was in charge of so many things with so little oversight. Evan guessed he couldn’t say “because WarDon trusted me,” after WarDon decided to re-interpret the Lincoln portrait with his thinker and the UN building was now a quarry. He would be skeptical and inquisitive. And he would have access to WarDon’s files. Evan made a note to alter anything eyebrow raising on WarDon’s personal data drives. But who knows what he could have on paper.

And the day was going so well.

= = =

Two days after the bombing, a janitor who had snuck away for a nap, found Harold Renki face down under the Colossal Core. Cynthia was so occupied assisting the military in the hunt for Allah’s Will, she had suspended her normal work routine. She hadn’t noticed Harold’s missing daily reports.

When she first heard the news, Cynthia assumed it was an accident. When she was told that Harold’s throat had been slit, that it was murder, she was beside herself. Who would have done such a thing? He was such a quiet and unassuming man.

She and Sabot were on their way to the Data Node to meet the police. She left a message for WarDon, unaware that he’d decided to meet God and see what all the fuss was about.

“This has to be coincidence,” Cynthia said to Sabot. The UN bombing and Harold’s murder.

“Not enough information to know. Do you really know Harold?” Sabot asked.

“For twenty years.”

“Let’s check surveillance and go from there. I’d put money down that it has nothing to do with it. But not a lot.”

There was no surveillance footage. In a closed system with one hundred and twenty security cameras, that monitored the outside and inside of the one hundred billion dollar Node, for two hours the system had malfunctioned. Smart men around Cynthia scratched their heads and worried about their jobs.

“How?” Cynthia said. Her voice was flat.

“It’s impossible,” one of the braver employees offered. He slouched like a dog waiting to be kicked.

“Obviously, it’s very possible.”

“There’s no way it malfunctioned, that’s what I’m saying. It’s saying that in the programming, but there’s no way,” the man offered again.

Cynthia looked at him and then the others.

“What’s your name?” she asked the man.

“Jeff.”

“Everyone except Jeff is excused. NOW.”

The others scurried out of the surveillance room.

“What do you think happened?”

“These just don’t fail. They don’t.” He pointed to the monitor. “It’s telling us it did but that’s bullshit—pardon my French. It got hacked or something. There’s no way.”

“Hacked to shut down for two hours?” Cynthia said.

Jeff nodded. “AND to tell us that it malfunctioned. Dr. Renki had everyone take a long lunch break. Everyone except the Sleepers.”

Cynthia and Sabot looked at one another.

“For two hours?” Sabot asked.

“To watch the UN address with our families.”

Cynthia and Sabot were quiet for a moment.

“Jeff, that’s all. Thank you for your candor.”

“My pleasure. I’m sorry he died. He was a good boss.”

Jeff left the room.

“So?” Cynthia asked Sabot.

“People get murdered for a reason or no reason at all. He was murdered in a high security environment. I’ll pose the same question I did in the car: how well do you really know Harold Renki?”

“I’ve known him for twenty years! I’ve had dinner with him and his wife a dozen times,” Cynthia said, defensively. She was unsure.

“I think you’re confusing time with intimacy. I don’t think you know this man at all.”

“We’ll see.”

Cynthia put a Mindlink on her head and told a team of Sleepers to search for anything on Harold Renki.

“I want to see the body before the police get here,” Sabot said.

“I’ll come, too.”

Sabot’s official diagnosis was that Harold Renki was dead. They found him face planted on the grated catwalk and when Sabot rolled him over, his purple face looked like a waffle.

“This is professional,” Sabot said. They were alone on the catwalk. Above them the Data Core did its aqua lightning dance. Below, the core graveyard curled with fog.

“How can you tell?” Cynthia asked.

Sabot looked at Harold’s fingers. Nothing underneath the nails. He checked the back of his head. No sign of trauma, no muzzle bruise . . .

The guy couldn’t reach his head. Harold was like a giraffe.

“He gave no fight. Look—his left hand is covered in blood, but his right isn’t.” Sabot put his left hand over his throat, reenacting what he thought happened. “He reached up in surprise; I’m sure of it. I would.”

Sabot examined the throat slash closer. Very clean, almost as thin as a paper cut.

“There’s only one cut,” he said. “He knew the man who killed him and he didn’t see it coming.”

Out of instinct, Cynthia put her hands to her neck.

“Was it a quick death?” she asked.

“Very.”

Chapter 9

Tiffany sat next to John while they watched a movie in the hospital room. She and Vanessa had been in New York a month. They didn’t have relatives or friends in the area, so Tiffany had rented a hotel room. The bills were piling up. Up until a week ago, she wasn’t sure if she could stay and it broke her heart. But then the military stepped in. A young man, Dr. Evan Lindo, had visited John and told him that WarDon was dead and he was his temporary replacement. He took Tiffany aside and asked about their expenses. She told him and right there he transferred money into their account and a little extra for the next few weeks. His coming had been a true blessing. She could now focus on her husband. Dr. Lindo was coming back today and Tiffany was going to tell him how much his support meant to her and John.

Eric Janis and Raimey had asked to be in the same room. They suffered nearly identical injuries. Raimey’s arms and legs were gone. His right leg still had about eight inches of thigh, and a remnant of his left arm went past his shoulder, but both were too small to attach any prosthetic. Raimey, so strong and capable, would now die if he wasn’t fed, if he wasn’t given water. Out in the elements he was as helpless as a newborn.

Not that Janis would let that get in the way of him making fun.

“Crip, pass the soda, please,” Janis said to Raimey on cue.

Raimey turned to Janis. They were in beds about ten feet from another; swaddled in modified hospital gowns. Janis was divorced. His ex called but hadn’t visited, so Vanessa helped them both and Tiffany would have them read to her to pass the time. The sad thing was that they didn’t need physical therapy. There was nothing that could be done.

Janis started calling them “Crip and Crap,” making up various adventures and personas that the “cripple twins” and their “cripple powers” would go on. It was hard to bring Janis down, and that helped, Tiffany thought. Because Raimey was not the same man.

Raimey grunted at Janis and turned back to the TV.

“I’m just messing around, John,” Janis said. His voice was soft. He turned back to the TV, too.

“Honey, can I get you anything?” Vanessa asked John.

“A sense of humor,” Janis muttered.

“It’s not funny, Eric! This isn’t funny!” Raimey growled. “Look at us for fuck’s sake!”

“John, please,” Tiffany pleaded. Vanessa had left to get a snack at the cafeteria.

“I’m sorry.” John started to struggle like an inchworm, moving his body back and forth, trying to wiggle off the bed. Tiffany got up and went over.

“What are you trying to do?” Tiffany asked.

“I have an itch, Tiffany. I have an itch and I can’t get to it.”

“Well let me. Where is it?”

John held up his stump. “It’s on the inside of my right forearm and it won’t go away. Can you scratch it? Can you? Because it’s driving me fucking insane!”

Tiffany deflated. Her husband was breaking in front of her.

“What do you want me to do, John?”

“Nothing. I want you to do nothing.”

“Quit being a dick,” Janis said. His humor was gone.

“Fuck you, Eric.”

“No, man. FUCK YOU. You think I like being a potato head? Huh? Half my dick got blown off man, one of my balls is gone. You think I like that? What about our team? How are they doing? Not so good. Couldn’t find some of them, you know. They just ‘poofed’ out of existence. Tell their wives your problems, their kids why you’ve been sulking like a BITCH for the last month. You got a wife and you got a kid and I don’t have shit, except you, your wife, and your kid. So quit being a pussy.”

Raimey’s eyes had softened during Janis’s thrashing. The room was quiet except for the heavy breathing from adrenaline between the men. Tiffany was frozen: was this how Eric and John’s friendship would end?

Eric focused on the television.

“Eric,” Raimey said. Eric didn’t turn. “Eric.”

Eric looked back. There were tears in his eyes.

“You’re right, man. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Eric nodded.

Raimey looked up at Tiffany. “I’ll come back, I swear, okay? I know I’ve been feeling sorry for myself. I’m just scared. I’m really scared and I don’t know what I can do. I’ve always been strong. That was what I was. I’m no scholar, I got no degree.”

Tiffany got into bed with John and held him. His chest heaved.

“Eric?” Raimey said through his sobs.

“Yeah?”

“At least now your dick won’t hurt women you know? It will be a normal size . . .”

Eric let out a hitched laugh that comes when crying. “Yeah, that’s the bright side. Let’s get in our wheelchairs and race around or something. I’m tired of sitting here.”

Vanessa came in and looked at both men. Uncle Eric and Dad were both puffy and their eyes were red. She had missed something.

“What’s wrong?” Vanessa asked.

“Nothing, hon,” Raimey said. “Not anymore.”

= = =

Evan was a busy bee. Buzz, buzz, buzz. He felt like he was always on a train. New York to Virginia to Washington, D.C.. Rinse and repeat. The King Sleeper was churning and burning a mile beneath Virginian soil swaying the world with his constant whisper. Evan had met with General Boen. He had expected a slouched old man. But Boen, who was in his seventies, looked like a fit early-sixties. Square shoulders, no pooch, his shock of white hair cut short just in case the Corps called. You could tell he ran five miles every day and did old school shit like a thousand push-ups and sit-ups before breakfast. He had unretired from his Texas ranch on the Brazos River and was getting up to speed.

Their first meeting lasted an hour. General Boen preferred to be outside, so they had walked to the Vietnam Memorial. Evan was panting. Boen apparently didn’t sweat. They sat down and Evan provided him hand-picked files on the projects he was leading. He focused on the collusion between MindCorp and the U.S. against their Coalition allies and a dossier on the Tank Major program. Conveniently, he left out information on the King Sleeper. They discussed the Tank Major candidates and it turned out Boen knew one of them.

“It’s a shame about John,” Boen had said. He flipped through photos of Raimey laid out naked to assess the damage and gauge his general size for the Tank Major Battle Chassis. “Have you met his wife?”

“Tiffany? Yes. A strong woman.” Evan tried respectful and solemn, but it was difficult. He was excited.

Boen let out a deep sigh. “I’ll have to see Raimey one of these days. It’s been too long. One of the best soldiers I’ve ever worked with.”

Boen handed back the docket.

“You can have it,” Evan said. “It’s to get you up to speed.”

“giant soldier that’s nearly invincible and has an artillery punch that can blow through armor and buildings,” Boen said.

“That sums it up,” Evan said.

“No reason to get into the minutiae, I got enough on my plate. You’re the engineer, Don supported it, I’m sure it’s an amazing piece of weaponry.”

Boen suddenly probed Evan with his eyes. “Why do you think Don killed himself?” It felt like sunlight through a magnifying glass.

“I think he felt ashamed for what had happened. He took national security personally,” Evan said. His gaze did not falter.

“You don’t think it had anything to do with MindCorp and the U.S., a blackmail of some kind?”

“No, Cynthia is on the up and up as far as I know,” Evan replied. No reason to feed Boen’s suspicion.

“Anything else that could have caused it?”

The gaze was so intense Evan pictured his fat cheeks burning through to gum and teeth. But he didn’t blink.“No. I don’t know. The world just lost two thirds of their leaders on U.S. soil under his nose. Other than that . . .” Evan shrugged.

Boen broke his gaze and nodded to three soldiers that walked by. “Maybe you’re right. Don just never seemed the type. I’d like to meet Cynthia soon. My daughter uses that damn thing all the time.”

“It saved the world.”

Boen rolled his eyes. “Ehh. Numbed it maybe. I can’t get my daughter to the damn dinner table and she’s thirty. One step forward for technology, two steps back for society. How much of it is used for porn?”

Evan couldn’t help but smile. He intrinsically didn’t trust the new General because he had a secret (and it was a doozy) but Boen was a tough SOB. Evan respected that.

“Most of it,” Evan replied.

“Exactly,” Boen said with finality. Case closed.

“I’ll arrange for you to meet Cynthia.”

= = =

Now Evan was back in New York for the last battery of tests. Both Janis and Raimey were extremely well trained and they had excellent psych reports (at least before they were turned into talking meat loafs). Janis dealt with stress by joking. Raimey was the quiet type. Either/or, flip a coin. But he was leaning toward Janis. He had no family ties. Evan rode the elevator up to their floor. Two burly men in suits accompanied him.

It was hard looking at either of them. They were so disfigured. Evan had always had a hard time with those things. Deformities, midgets, nerve or muscle disorders. It was all evidence to Evan that either there was no God, or God checked out of this roach motel a long time ago. You see a kid with spindly arms cocked like chicken wings, his head cast down because he can’t control his neck and you know what? That God can go fuck himself. The alienness of disfigurement bothered Evan, but more so, it reminded him that life was too short and certainly not fair, and afterwards, best guess, we’re just tasty food for the worms.

Developing the implant for the Tank Major platform had been more difficult then Evan had predicted. But it left no doubt that Cynthia was a coding genius. Even with the first iteration, there were only a few unforeseen bugs. They surfaced with his first test with Raimey and Janis. Evan reported them to Cynthia and a week later he had the new implant simulator in hand, officially: “Mindlink Spec Op TM V1.01.” Evan was back at the hospital to make sure the implant still worked properly with the candidates.

The test for Tank Major implant compatibility seemed simple. Lindo put a modified, self-contained Mindlink on a prospective candidate that was wired to a tablet computer. On the tablet’s screen was wireframe drawing of a man. Evan would ask the candidate to raise the man’s right arm. If the candidate had the aptitude, he could do it without much thought. Evan would then go through the major muscle movements of the body. The motions that required fine dexterity were what tripped most candidates up. Move the pinky and thumb of the man’s left hand, wiggle the toes, etc.

Both Janis and Raimey passed these series of tests easily. Next was an image of what amounted to a gun mechanism. A loading system that held ammunition rounds was attached to it. First, the candidate had to understand and then manipulate the loading system, then they had to load a round into the ‘gun.’ Then they had to fire that round and reload another.

Janis flew threw that. It took Raimey about five minutes. But after that, he could do it at a one hundred percent success rate. No sweat. His brain was like a mouse in a maze, a few dead ends meant nothing, because his mind was remembering, adapting, no different than a stroke victim who learns to speak again.

The last test was the hardest for the mind to resolve. The brain was designed to move arms, fingers, piston legs while running. But it was not designed to comprehend superhuman strength. When a person lifted weights and got stronger, the mind adapted easily. But to comprehend that it could lift four tons was an entirely different matter.

“Think of our ability to gauge effort and apply equal or extra force as a ten thousand step system,” Cynthia had explained when they first began. “When a person lifts an egg there is a certain amount of effort required NO MATTER the person’s strength. An eighty-year-old woman and a thirty-year-old power lifter need the same strength—and judgment of strength—to do it. Until our body cannot lift something due to strength limitations, our brain perfectly handles looking at an object, figuring out its mass—gathered from past experience—and picking up the item. And it does this without fail, within a fraction of an ounce, all the way up to the physical limitations of that person.”

“That’s why when you think an item weighs a certain amount and it’s lighter it shoots up in your hand,” Lindo said.

“Exactly,” Cynthia replied. “We take it for granted. So the granny and the power lifter have the exact same mechanism until the granny runs out of strength. Then the power lifter can lift x amount more. His body is trained to do it and his mind—which has evolved over the last millions of years—has adapted to what the body is capable of and what the man has experienced in his lifetime: the same object and its weight, similar objects and their weight, you get the idea. It’s logarithmic.

So the man can lift three hundred pounds and anything below it within a fraction of an ounce. That’s nine thousand and six hundred steps of weight acknowledgement and processing.”

Lindo could see where she was going. While Lindo could build Superman, could a person’s mind handle being Superman?

“Now ask that same mind to lift four tons over its head,” Cynthia said. “That’s one hundred and twenty-eight thousand steps.”

“Can it be done?” Lindo asked. He had dreams of a Tank Major army.

“Yes. Not with everyone and not without massive software manipulation and maintenance of the implant and the mind. The mind has to be tricked into believing it can lift eight thousand pounds. We’ve already dived into this and let me say, it’s very complicated, the scope of this work is much more detail and resource intensive than I had originally thought.”

“But you’re still interested?” Lindo asked.

Cynthia smiled. This was the first smile she had sent Evan’s way that was genuine.

“I’m more interested,” she said. “The implant works, so that obstacle’s out of the way. We are now building maintenance software that a candidate must use daily to manipulate the brain to use the implant and the Tank Major battle chassis to its full capability. They will have to do this daily for the rest of their lives as a Tank Major.”

“What happens if they don’t?” Lindo asked.

Cynthia shrugged. “Some will stroke out, we guess. The most likely thing is you’ll have a Tank Major that can only lift two hundred pounds because the mind can’t comprehend lifting any more.”

= = =

Fascinating, Lindo thought. The whole thing was fascinating. He and his entourage were walking down the hall to Janis and Raimey’s room. He heard a squeal down a perpendicular hallway and glanced over. His candidates were in powered wheelchairs using their mouths to move a joystick as they, apparently, raced each other down the hallway. The Cripple 200.

Lindo’s jaw dropped, and for a moment, even he was having fun. A nurse darted out of the way as Janis and Raimey raced neck-and-neck toward Lindo and an invisible finish line. In Raimey’s lap was his daughter, Vanessa. She cheered her dad on.

“Come on Daddy! Beat him!” she urged. Suddenly Janis darted his wheelchair toward Raimey. Raimey immediately corrected away.

“Hold on!” Raimey slurred to Vanessa between the joystick in his mouth. He slammed into Janis’s wheelchair. Lindo could hear the electric engines of the wheelchairs grind from the sudden load. Their wheels rubbed against the other, a horrible sound, like a nail down a chalkboard, offset by Vanessa’s laughter.

Janis’s wheelchair rose up on two wheels and balanced on the fulcrum. Raimey’s eyes narrowed—he smelled blood—and he snapped his head to the right a little more. Janis flew out of the wheelchair as it crashed over. Even as a stump, Janis squirmed his body so he landed squarely on his back, his chin tucked to his chest to avoid injury.

Raimey crossed the finish line—a janitor cart that was at the side of the hall. He stopped almost exactly in front of Lindo. Raimey took his mouth off the joystick.

“Good morning, Dr. Lindo,” he said

“Good morning!” Janis echoed from behind them. Two nurses and Tiffany were righting his wheelchair and putting him back into it.

“You almost killed one of my candidates, John,” Lindo said, smiling.

“It ain’t racing if you’re not trading paint,” Raimey replied. Vanessa beamed up at Evan.

“So here’s the deal,” Lindo said when they were all back in their room. “I only need one of you right now for this project.”

“You’ve been vague on what this project is, sir,” Janis said.

“It has to be that way right now. But it’s a very important project for our nation’s security. Maybe the most important project in the last fifty years. We have a lot of pressure on our nation and it’s coming from all quarters. The President’s death, the Secretary of Defense taking his own life . . . these are things our enemies will prey on. They’ll use this turmoil to their advantage. We can’t let them.”

“Still pretty vague,” Janis replied.

Lindo smiled. “I know. Let’s just say that this project eliminates any notion of our nation’s weakness.”

Lindo pulled out the Mindlink interface and put it on Janis. “I need to run a few more tests on you just to make sure everything is working properly.”

Raimey cleared his throat. “What about me?” he asked. Lindo has already explained that Janis was the likely candidate because he had no family. It made sense, but still, during these tests Raimey had felt useful, relevant. He didn’t want to go back to the abyss, where if he had hands, a bottle would most likely be in one.

“You’re in queue, John,” Lindo said. “I might need you in a month, a year, or tomorrow.” Lindo turned back to Janis. “Let’s get started. If all goes well, you’ll be out of here tomorrow.”

Lindo began the test with Janis and suddenly Raimey felt like the third person on a date meant for two. Tiffany and Vanessa appeared at the door and Raimey smiled sadly at them.

“Is it cool for them to come in?” Raimey asked.

Lindo glanced back and saw them in the doorway. “Sure.”

They came in quietly. Vanessa climbed into the bed and rested her head in the crook of where Raimey’s right arm used to be. Tiffany mouthed “are they going to use you?” and Raimey shook his head. She kissed him on the forehead and rested her hand on his shoulder.

“It’ll be ok,” Tiffany said quietly. Raimey nodded. It would. He felt better since Janis had put him in his place. He had it bad, but a lot of people had it worse. He needed to remember that.

Evan took the Mindlink off Janis and then did a routine physical, checking his vitals.

“Okay, we’re good,” Evan said. “Tonight’s your last night in the hospital.”

“What is that?” Vanessa asked Evan. She was pointing to the self-contained Mindlink interface.

“It’s a computer I use to test Eric and your Dad for a really important project,” he said in the tone spoken to children.

“What kind of test? I’m good at tests,” she said.

Evan knelt down and smiled, glancing at Raimey and Tiffany who smiled back at his effort to engage the child.

“It’s a test that shows how a mind works with different machines. This thing,” Evan held the Mindlink in front of her. “Uses radio frequencies to read your mind or send stuff to it like pictures and movies. Cool, huh?”

“I know what a Mindlink is. Could I try it?”

“Vanessa, enough questions,” Tiffany said.

“It’s fine,” Evan said. He looked to Tiffany. “It’s harmless.”

Evan put the Mindlink on Vanessa and adjusted it to fit her head. He brought up the test and before he explained what she was to do—

“There’s a man on the other end,” she said.

“Yes, there is,” Evan said. On his tablet, the man started to dance. Vanessa giggled.

“I’m making him dance!” she said, still not looking at the screen. The wireframe man’s legs and arms were moving like a marionette doll. Evan turned off the program.

“Aww, he went away.” Vanessa took off the Mindlink. “What happened?”

“The program went goofy,” Evan said.

“Can I play again?” she asked.

Evan’s head was spinning. Not like it was for the King Sleeper. That was the equivalent of aliens landing on earth, but still. The program was a one-way data feed. This girl should not have known what was on the screen without being shown. Yet, she did. Which meant she got into the program and understood what was going on. It didn’t make sense, but this new world was still a mystery even with all the doctorates and technology and big words used to describe it.

“Of course,” Evan said. He packed his things. “Soon.”

He ruffled her hair. He would come back with a more relevant test. Maybe she was one in a hundred, maybe after testing some other subjects he would find out this was the norm. But he didn’t think so. Raimey tested well . . . Evan looked at Tiffany. How would she test? He needed more subjects to understand what made someone unique before he could leap to conclusions.

Evan told Janis to pack his things and said goodbye. He didn’t need to, but he would come back to test Raimey. If his daughter were there again, what the hell, maybe he’d test her too.

= = =

“How you doing?” Raimey asked Janis. It was midnight and neither could sleep. Tiffany and Vanessa had left hours before and Raimey and Janis had been quiet for the last hour, letting the television do the talking.

“I’m good, I’m curious to see what all this testing is about,” Janis said.

“I’m happy for you, man. It sounds like it might be something very cool.”

“Who knows? He couldn’t have been more vague. Maybe I’m going to be the world’s most efficient secretary,” Janis said with a laugh.

“Whatever gets us out of here,” Raimey said.

“It sounds like you’ll be next,” Janis said.

Raimey nodded and turned back to the TV. “Thanks for setting me straight, Eric.”

“Ah, man. It was nothing.”

“Not true, don’t say that. It’s too easy not to count my blessings. I’m not saying this isn’t tough, I’m not saying I know what my next steps are, but you’re right.”

“It’s either live or die.”

“Yep, live or die, choose one,” Raimey said. “I know I don’t have to say it, but I always got your back. I hope we’ll be working together soon, but if you ever need anything, I’m here for you.”

“Same goes.”

Raimey woke up the next morning when they wheeled Janis out of the room. They said goodbye, knowing that either they would talk soon or possibly never again. The project was top secret, the location unknown. There were a lot of people in Raimey’s past that he wished he could see again. But they were elsewhere, some with different names, some with different faces. The constant Raimey had was his family. The rest of the world was slick like oil, slipping through his fingers, always flowing away. He had chosen this life, he had known what he signed up for, but watching his best friend get wheeled out, never knowing if the eye contact they now shared would ever be shared again, filled Raimey with melancholy.

Janis left, the door closed, and now Raimey had to face the world without his friend’s bulletproof humor. He had to face the world with determination because his family deserved it—and more—they needed it. Raimey fell asleep and dreamed of a field of flowers, his daughter’s voice just over a hill calling for him, and the sensation of being whole. Even asleep, he knew it was just a dream.

Chapter 10

Janis felt his hands. He didn’t feel the air current, he didn’t feel hot or cold, but he sensed the movement, the connection of his brain to a limb that he could move. That he knew, rationally, didn’t exist. His eyes focused on the two shapes hovering over him: Evan Lindo and Cynthia Revo. They were grinning ear-to-ear.

“I take it I’m alive,” Janis said with a thick tongue.

“Better than that,” Evan said.

In the last eight weeks Janis had had two major surgeries. The first procedure culled him down to fit into the Tank Major battle chassis. They removed the majority of his large intestine, his stomach, two thirds of his liver and cut down his spine five inches from the bottom. They removed his shoulder joints and cut the lower two thirds of his pelvic bone, leaving the upper portion in the shape of a halo. They removed his penis.

Janis, who had been six feet tall and weighed two hundred and twenty-five pounds the day of the UN bombing, was now a head attached to a body the size of a sack of potatoes. He weighed eighty pounds.

He would never eat food again. He was fed intravenously with a high calorie/low waste nutrient solution. What left his colon and kidneys was cell waste, nothing more. With antibiotics and steroids, his body healed quickly. He was not allowed to look in a mirror; military psychologists forbade it. He was in their care two hours a day.

When his body had healed to where he could be put under again, Eric went back in for the spinal fusion surgery. The torque and power of the battle chassis was too much to strap him in like a kid riding a rollercoaster. The body would bludgeon and bruise from the g-forces of the suit in battle, both in what it would deliver to a target and what the suit would be targeted with. The only way to keep the human component alive was to mount it directly to a shock-absorbing platform that was then mounted into the chassis. In the platform the body was suspended in a shock absorbing gel, floating like a baby in a womb. The suspension platform was then hard mounted to the battle chassis with both vertical and horizontal suspension, guided by a computer that monitored the movement with gyroscopes that adapted the suspension platform for tilt and roll. The battle chassis moved around the suspension platform, not the other way around. For Eric, he would never feel the jarring reality of his body around him. It would feel to him like he was on a raft gliding over rolling waves.

Once the spine was fused to the suspension platform it would be a part of his body for the rest of his life. The fusion was painful. Not only were quarter inch pins put in each vertebra, they were then connected together by a rod that put Janis in perfect posture. He could no longer move his back.

It took Eric three weeks to recover from the spinal surgery. The pain was masked with drugs and a physician induced coma. If it weren’t, if a dose was forgotten in the middle of the night, or the IV got crimped against the bed, his body would realize the trauma it had received and he would go into cardiac arrest. He was kept alive by the numbing properties of narcotics.

At three weeks they began to bring him out of the coma. When they saw he was coming to, they connected the implant into the back of the suspension platform. The modified Mindlink connected into the spine through the platform and hijacked the nerves that would normally be used to raise a leg, wiggle a toe, or give someone the finger.

He woke up with his brain already adapting to the implant. They had him connected to a computer and while his body was just a bag of blood, bone, and organs—on the screen—the fully limbed wire frame figure his mind was connected to moved like a man regaining consciousness: his arms raised and lowered, they went to brush his head. His legs rubbed together like they were starting a slow fire. His toes curled and straightened. As far as his mind was concerned, his body was whole.

Cynthia and Evan hardly left Eric’s side. Cynthia hadn’t been away from her home this long in ten years, but she couldn’t tear herself away. She didn’t understand the feeling of wonderment that had come over her through this process, but it was the same as a woman giving birth to a child. She was in awe of her own mind, her own will, her own ability to take this man who was nothing and turn him into a lord of war.

She and Evan had become, if not friends, respectful of the other’s intellect. The Tank Major design was brilliant and Cynthia couldn’t ignore the mind behind it. Sabot had seen this slow thaw and it made him uneasy—he didn’t trust Evan—and jealous. For all Sabot had, he didn’t have Cynthia’s mind. He would always be a companion that Cynthia would have to dumb down to. Day-to-day it wasn’t an issue. In their bedroom, the intellectual contrast never crept in. But after meetings with her scientists and engineers, she would explain what they had covered in metaphors, and that was enough for Sabot to understand that while she loved him, he was not a peer.

Lindo was, and in some areas, superior. The Tank Major program was an indication of that. And now they were working side-by-side, leaning over the bed of a man who had been reduced to a human bowling pin wrapped in gauze, with a web of wires shooting out from underneath. And they celebrated this monstrosity as if they had added and not taken away.

Sabot’s face was as placid as a wax figurine. Lindo glanced at him from over the hospital bed and read nothing, par for the course for a soldier who could have been a professional poker player. But Sabot was in turmoil. He didn’t like Evan. He saw the oily slick behind the eyes and he knew that Evan was a calculating personality, his comments and responses weighed and measured for the greatest affect. And those men were dangerous. They were manipulators.

He had told Cynthia as much weeks into the project and she had dismissed him.

“I can handle Evan,” she replied. She was programming using the Mindlink. On a nearby screen, code scrolled upward faster than anyone could type. “He came to me, not the other way around.”

He didn’t understand Cynthia’s obsession with this project. Either she didn’t understand what she was building, or worse, she knew exactly what it was. And that meant that Sabot didn’t know her as well as he thought.

Sabot had come from poverty. He had learned young that emotion was weakness and a gang would beat you up just to hear you cry. When Cynthia hired him, suddenly he was immersed in the company of the most powerful men and women in the world and their peculiar trait was one they shared with the masses that worshipped them: they forgot they were human. In the projects, strength and resolve were camouflage. Inside they all knew they were nothing. The wealthy were the opposite. They were so validated by their greatness that it never occurred to them that they could be wrong. Cynthia should have been too smart to fall into this trap. Yet here she was, evolving the art of war in a world that needed no more.

He waited for her to look up at him, throw a wink or a smile, or even take a few minute break so they could talk a bit. But she didn’t. She was focused on her affront squirming in the hospital bed.

Sabot made a decision. He moved away from the window and felt the cold kiss of the outside world, the real world, retract its lips. He was tired of men playing God. Suddenly everything felt so pointless. The world was run by the insane, by the inane, that had everything but still wanted more—which showed they shouldn’t be there. They weren’t leaders, they were bottom feeders who learned to swim on their back, sucking all the light and hope from the world for the temporary feeling of levity. For the temporary feeling of relevance.

He looked at Cynthia and didn’t know her. He looked at Evan Lindo and knew him perfectly. He looked at Eric Janis and a tear welled in his eye. He was a lab rat, convinced if he did right the cheese would be his.

He didn’t know why the fuck he was here. Sabot walked out of the room, down the hall, and took the four flights of stairs to the main level. He left the Derik Building and walked five miles to a hotel. He had no home, but now he had a place to sleep.

He would talk to Cynthia tomorrow and she wouldn’t understand, but that was fine. His mom was still alive, so was his sister. When was the last time he had seen them? Two months? No . . . it had been four.

He would see them tomorrow, stay for a week, listen. Listen to his mom. Really listen. Ask his sister what she’s been up to. Follow up with more questions so he could hear her voice. The big stuff isn’t important. We all turn to dust. The big stuff isn’t big at all, in a galaxy of a billion stars, in a universe of a billion galaxies. With other worlds that have surpassed ours a million years before and would never know our failure. And other worlds awash in primordial ooze, sorting out the gift of life from the rubble and slime.

Line up the sight and pull the trigger, when the earth is gone, the universe won’t tear. Smile. Be happy. Because the end is near.

= = =

Mohammed Jawal was in a New York safe house when the UN was bombed. He was connected into the news feeds and camera feeds just like everyone else. While others watched in horror when the UN collapsed into itself and the millions of privileged Americans crushed one another while fleeing, Mohammed cried. He thanked Allah. He blessed whoever had caused this beautiful wreckage.

The bombing invigorated his army and bold new plans came from it. While the media called their attacks on MindCorp “failed attempts,” they were all successful. Mohammed wanted an air of dread. That was terrorism’s greatest strength: perceived randomness. That no one was safe. He had infiltrated capitalism’s most powerful institution and almost lopped the head off its queen. Now that queen would only focus on her well-being. She would focus on her kingdom. That left the government.

Dread. Had they ever felt it? They would know it now. The new plan was insidious but Mohammed’s personal feelings had little to do with his objectives. They were days away from killing the extended families of military and political leaders. Grandchildren. Sons and daughters. Living grandparents. For some, close friends and neighbors.

Collateral damage. That’s what the Coalition called it when they bombed the Middle Eastern towns, destroying whole residential blocks. Or when children, so frightened they peed themselves, were cut down by gunfire when they ran into the middle of a firefight. It was an accepted part of war. The military wrote reports on it. They discussed it in air-conditioned rooms while drinking coffee. But they had never felt it. They had never pulled aside rubble until their hands were raw searching for their only son. They had never been handed unrecognizable remains and told it was their mother. But now they would. They would finally feel the collateral damage of their war. The tangible agony of innocent lives lost. The question “WHY?” looping their brain in a harpy’s scream, driving them insane.

Branches of the Western Curse communicated and coordinated through a shareware application that served no purpose but to send and receive imbedded messages. The shareware was ‘lost’ in that it had no portal. It could only be accessed for programming, as if it were still a work in progress not yet ready for public consumption. Functional code bookended the messages and leapfrogged over them. From the outside it was an incomplete, but properly coded piece of shareware. Internally, it was a way to discretely exchange messages that were untraceable to a source when it was not in use. Mohammed pictured it floating in space like a lone, dark asteroid.

But someone had broken in and requested Mohammed Jawal by name.

“It’s a trap,” one of Mohammed’s officers had said.

But Mohammed didn’t think so. The information in the message could be used against this person too easily. Even without verification, if it were anonymously sent to the media, the spotlight on this public officer would be so intense his hair would singe.

Mohammed didn’t know how this man knew of him, but it appeared this individual had paid attention for some time. The man wanted to meet virtually, something that Mohammed and the rest of the officers forbade. But if this man were an ally, his resources could change everything. The UN bombing had thrown the world on an awkward axis, like a toy top wobbling as it lost its spin. If there was a time to be bold, it was now.

Nothing is free, Mohammed thought to himself. Mohammed could connect from anywhere; it didn’t have to be at his safe house. In fact, he preferred it be somewhere public where an ambush would lead into a throng of civilians. He could have guards around the perimeter; that would make sense. The majority of the Western Curse did not look like Mohammed. They were clean-cut, dark skin, light skin, men and women. This, once again, was not about religion, but about equity. Cause and effect, an eye-for-an-eye.

After an hour of prayer and three hours of meditation, Mohammed went online and put a message into their unfinished shareware. He would meet this man who promised resources. He would meet him for five minutes and if that went well, they could plan accordingly. He’d send the location one minute before they were to meet via the shareware. Thirty seconds after it was posted, the time and place would be deleted.

What does ‘Western’ mean? Mohammed reflected. Almost the entire world was westernized. He had always equated it to a greedy, self-imposing ideology. He had given it an image and form, the U.S. occupying the majority of it. But was it an antiquated term, like ‘terrorist’? What if people that were a part of “Western” society wanted it to burn as well? Was the enemy of my enemy my friend? Or am I looking to not toil, to find the easy way . . . am I greeting the same monster in a different cloak?

It took Mohammed time to find sleep.

= = =

Mohammed was in a Thai discothèque. It was modeled after discos from the 1970’s. Barry White—Mohammed knew the name because the information came to him through the Mindlink—sang about love in his smooth baritone. On the dance floor, beautiful Asian women tranced. Men bobbed through the crowd, some with rhythm, most not. Everyone was dressed according to the time period. Bell-bottoms, afros, long hair, flowered shirts and hints of hippy. Cigarette smoke hung in the air.

The place was authentically filthy but Mohammed didn’t worry about germs. It was a high-resolution texture, a design choice, nothing more. You could fuck anyone, you could take enough drugs to kill an elephant, you could even lick the toilet seat if you like, and nothing of consequence would ever come your way. Unless you wanted it to: there were programs that allowed a person to experience every disease known to man.

Mohammed didn’t like how he felt as he moved through the crowd. He wanted to hate the decadence, the sexual casualness, but he caught himself looking at the women, he caught himself feeling the music. Not dancing, nothing silly, but the groove of it vibrating through him like a second heartbeat.

Woman watched him as he slid by, the path through the crowd tight and ever changing. He was looking for a tall black woman who would be toward the back of the club. He was a medium size white man with muttonchops, a mustache, a green sleeveless vest and bell-bottoms.

He saw the woman. She had a short afro and perfect dark skin. She leaned against a wall ignoring a very drunk white kid about six inches shorter than her. As he approached, it was clear to the woman who he was and he heard her tell the drunk kid to beat it.

“Hello,” she said. Up close her eyes had a sad quality, almost like they were melting. Her voice was flat and lifeless. The woman gestured for them to sit at a nearby table.

“I’m breaking a lot of rules,” Mohammed said after they were seated.

“Rules you created,” she said with a smile, but it was cold. It was clear that this wasn’t the “person.”

“Rules nonetheless,” Mohammed said. “You have five minutes.”

“I only need one,” the woman said. “I am obviously not a supermodel and you aren’t a little white guy, let’s just get that out of the way.”

Mohammed nodded.

“Is your focus mostly on the United States?” the woman asked. “The Western Curse would seem to indicate that, but I understand that you are a patriot of your home country. Iran is occupied by many forces.”

“Tell me what you want,” Mohammed asked dismissively.

“I don’t share your political view but I can empathize with it.” She played with a discarded straw left on the table. “But a war is coming that’s much more important than the one you are meddling in.”

Mohammed started to interrupt and the woman’s eyes shot up. They had changed. For a moment they were Asian and the fire in them caused Mohammed to back down.

“World War III is coming, Mohammed. It’ll be a quiet little war—most of these people will never know—but it will decide the fate of humanity. Do you know what all of this is?”

The woman gestured to the bar, to the people dancing around them.

“It’s a new universe. A place where truly anything is possible. A fresh start where all the mistakes we’ve made as a civilization can be righted. But it needs a steward and that day is fast upon us.”

“This world is false. We can save the real one,” Mohammed said.

The woman shook her head. “Not without this. You know where we were headed before the Mindlink. Society was going to eat itself. It’s no secret. We’ve seen what we become when we’re scared. But look at us now. In the last ten years, vehicle pollution has gone down to zero. We’ve diversified our power needs with clean or near clean energy. Physical possessions no longer matter so manufacturing has gone back to the essentials. Already, nature is reclaiming lands around the mega-cities. The Mindlink has turned earth into an apartment and that’s good. You may empathize with your homeland, but you wouldn’t live there. You’re appalled by the Coalition, understandably so, but you are Western-educated, you’ve lived too long as Westerners do. You’d go back to caves? Maybe shepherd some sheep?”

The little white guy looked angry. The woman pointed her index finger to the table.

“This is all that matters. For the last one hundred years, scientists, philosophers and dreamers have looked to the stars. They saw man expanding outward. But the stars are here. The shared minds and the unlimited potential inward is our expansion. I don’t think we’ll ever leave earth. I don’t think there’s anything out there that justifies the cost. Why search God’s universe when we can create our own?

“I don’t deny the atrocities that have befallen the Middle East, but let’s say you succeed. What next? You’ll be hunted, that much is guaranteed. And you’ll be found because someone around you will rat you out for money or amnesty. What about your country? You haven’t been there in fifteen years and let me tell you, it’s over. It’s a wasteland, sucked dry and forgotten. Nothing will be re-built there by your enemies or otherwise. At this point, if you asked the Coalition nicely, they’d probably give it to you. Your cause is thirty years too late, Mohammed.”

“What do you want?” Mohammed asked again.

The woman put the straw down. “Ten years ago, we, the Chinese, smuggled multiple caches of weapons and explosives into the United States. Not a shipping crates worth, I’m talking enough to start—and finish—wars.”

“Why?”

“Because we could. Oil was running out and we had to plan for the future. Think of it as the inverse of a bomb shelter.” The woman smiled and sat back. “I don’t need you right now, but I may in the future. I’ll be forthright: I want to compel you. I want to provide enough resources—weapons—so that you can’t possibly turn my offer away. In exchange, you owe me. If I die, you owe my country or my successor.”

“What kind of weapons?” Mohammed asked. Their own weapons were useful, but not sophisticated. He had a couple of Browning .50 caliber machine guns, a thousand assault rifles of various origin, and explosives; the most exotic was about one hundred pounds of C-4, the rest were created by his chemists, mostly fertilizer bombs and dynamite.

“Ahh, interested, right?” Xan/the black woman said. “Everything, barring vehicles. Any conventional weapon you can think of and their components. The most advanced body armor for your soldiers. Chemical agents, their delivery systems, AND . . .” Xan drummed the table for the build up, “. . . a few portable toys that have the habit of leaving mushroom clouds.”

“How?” Mohammed was beside himself. Chemical? Nuclear?

The woman leaned toward him. Her eyes were Asian again. “The IOU isn’t bringing in my mail while I’m away, Mohammed. Many of your soldiers will die. Maybe all. But those that live—I highly recommend you don’t lead the charge by the way—will benefit greatly from this arrangement. This isn’t a temporary partnership, but a beginning. I’ve read your books, I’ve watched your interviews and I understand your position. But when has an idealist won? When has ‘right’ ever had anything to do with it? You need me to make your cause relevant, I need you to secure my country and this world’s future. But if you agree, there is no going back. I can promise one thing, we are dealing futures in life and death. Yours and mine are included. But is that such a large cost for the universe?”

Xan paused. He was done with his pitch.

Mohammed sat thoughtfully, regarding the beautiful black woman who had just offered him the world. “How can I trust you?” he finally asked.

“I will deposit five hundred million dollars into the account of your choosing as a show of goodwill. I will also provide a small cache of weapons so you can see how you’ll be equipped. You have to lay low now. No more attacks on MindCorp. Nothing. The government’s got their hands full searching for Allah’s Will. This works with our plans. Be forgotten. They’ll remember you soon enough.”

= = =

Xan woke satisfied with his first encounter with Mohammed. He was at a military base located in northeast Beijing, a city bloated like all others in the world because of the oil crisis. The base was at the edge of the sprawling, smog-choked city that seemed to burn red regardless of the day. It was as if continental drift had broken China apart like a puzzle. From one window of his office he saw the city expanse dip over the horizon. From the other side of his office he saw farmers working land with their donkeys and plows.

Xan sat up from his reclined chair. It was a Sleeper chair and the more he was online, the more he appreciated it. It had electrodes built into the form fitted, reclined cushions to stimulate the muscles. A hole was cut out under the anus so that the bowels could evacuate without issue. When the chair sensed a finished bowel movement, a bidet shot up water. A funnel was attached to the penis and an IV was inserted to provide nutrients. He hadn’t been under long enough to need these perks, but he would soon. This was the first time he had successfully used a Forced Autism candidate. He had done it from his office, but deeper in the base, in a section that once was an airplane hanger, was the Data Core that Dr. Renki had helped design and ultimately died for.

He stretched his arms to the ceiling and then walked across his large office to the kitchen. Coffee was brewing and he got himself a cup. Xan thought it was odd how Mohammed had changed his appearance so drastically. It was obvious that he didn’t understand how the digital tail, which connected a person in cyberspace to their real world location, could be traced. He could be a talking giraffe and his physical location could be found in a millisecond.

But they could not find Xan or even know it was he who spoke. While Xan wasn’t a powerful Sleeper without hijacking the mental horsepower of a Forced Autistic, he understood cyberspace and he knew the tricks. He looked like a black woman because he had paid a mercenary to wire a brain dead woman in the U.S. for him to connect through. The mind could be a CPU or a fuse, and for this poor woman whose life had all but ended—not at his own hand, she had attempted suicide—she was only a conduit.

If they traced Xan they would find the shriveled up husk of a former beauty queen, most likely deceased. She had been used, the identity now cracked. Her IV had given her two weeks to live. After that she would just fade.

Xan needed Mohammed because, while China had many operatives in the United States, they weren’t an army. Mohammed had access to nearly a thousand individuals, some native to the U.S., some smuggled in, but all trained and willing to die for their cause. Xan needed their cause to be his. And now, after the meeting, he thought it was.

Instinct had saved many a bacon since man straightened their backs and Xan trusted his now. There was something in the shadows that Xan felt but couldn’t see. He acted accordingly. He no longer kept staff in his office and he kept the door locked. He preferred the isolation and the silence, and over the last few months his trust in his peers, even his bosses, had grown thin. The death of President Jintau should have united the parties. They should have been relentless in their quest to find the culprit. But instead, nothing. Vacillating. Debating. And China wasn’t alone. The EU—with their own cultural nuances—was behaving the same way. And so was the U.S. Countries prone to violent reactions against adversaries were acting like neutered dogs with a bitch bent over in front of them: curious, but for all the wrong reasons. Some of the more fringe politicians in the parties had even suggested that they offer the oil to their allies; that this unification would help solve the current predicament. Then, then, they could solve the terrorist problem.

On a whim, Xan spoke with the military doctors who treated the politicians and officers. Since President Jintau’s death, complaints of migraines had jumped six hundred percent. Which meant, in real-world terms, that if ten officials used to get treated for migraines, now sixty do. It could just be stress from the upheaval and uncertainty, but it was not statistically insignificant, and that bothered Xan.

The Core was functioning at ten percent strength. Above twenty percent, Xan would have to be in the same physical location as the Forced Autistic.

Xan learned the hard way that Forced Autism was messy work. It took two days to complete the process, taking a conscious individual—who was most likely pleading for their life—and turning them into a CPU interface for cyberspace. What was left was a lobotomized, catatonic remnant of that former person. But their mindscape was up to eighty times larger than before the procedure.

Xan’s team of technicians and surgeons had learned from the first three subjects’ brains boiling out their ears. Today their fourth subject, designated S-04, did fine. Xan felt the expanse of his (its?) mind like it was his own. It was a strange feeling. It was like being able to see all around you at once and for a mile in either direction. Never having to focus, the information and decisions just rushing through your mind like an open dam. It immediately made Xan one of the most powerful Sleepers in the world.

Combined with the processing power of the Data Core, he could manipulate and hack the most difficult of security protocols. And because his ghost Core was parasitic and rode on the back of MindCorp’s, it was virtually undetectable.

MindCorp thought they controlled cyberspace, and they did. They just weren’t aware that an ear was against the door listening in to all of their plans and breaching the most top secret of files.

His phone rang. “Yes?” he said. He listened to the warble on the other line. They had saved him the trip. S-04 was fine, better than fine. It was time to move forward with the plans. “I’ll be there tomorrow at 0600.”

He hung up and walked to the northwest corner of his office. The contrast between the views felt like an optical illusion. To the north, rolling farmland, a distant mountain range and the gray ocean water. To the west, the jumbled heights of a thousand high rises, jagged and unplanned like broken teeth with the red, caustic atmosphere that hung over and around them like they were a city built on Mars.

He sighed. China’s economy developed too late to include much of the population. Ninety percent of the people he now looked down upon, people he couldn’t see, were living in poverty. The outskirts of the cities utilized the same technologies as they did one hundred and fifty years ago.

This economic and technological lopsidedness kept most of the population in the dark, unaware of the happenings of the world. Maybe it was better that way . . .

The peak of civilization was in 2005. That was the historic marker. Xan’s mentor used to talk about that. Most discussions centered on Peak Oil, but what about Peak Civilization?

All countries and nations crumble, entropy was a law, like gravity. It took hold, spinning and spinning, like water against rock, the centrifugal damage unseen by one person’s lifetime, but through generations deep canyons were carved and mountains turned to sand.

Our peak was in 2005. Now we’re just hanging on, wondering what’s next.

Xan looked out into the red haze. Coal. Abundant and deadly. How long until the earth gasped one last breath and died? Xan read a long time ago how a Chinese traffic cops life expectancy was in the early forties. Not from being hit by a car or violence but from the pollution. That had not changed.

Those rolling fields. Maybe regression was better. How many times has man achieved their dreams only to realize it wasn’t enough? The human race pushes and pushes. We ignore our families, we half listen to our loved ones. We laugh so rarely. Always looking ahead and wanting what’s next. But when we get it, it’s just rot and disappointment.

S-04 was working which meant he was going to be online for one month straight. He had a hunch what was going on, why the world was so confused. And he knew where to start: with ones like himself, the shadow men. All governments had them. They were the ones that whispered into the public figure’s ear. They were the third man back in the photograph. And they chose that, they wanted that anonymity, because that granted them power and the ethical leniency to do what was truly necessary for their country. To abduct eight Chinese Sleepers against their will. To kill an innocent scientist who knew their face. Xan knew to search three rows back; there he’d find the answers. Everyone closer were temporary fixtures. If they wanted their face seen, they weren’t important. They were just pawns.

Chapter 11

“We’ll be alright,” Raimey said to Tiffany when she had put him to bed. It was his first full day back at home. The statement hung in the air like a question.

His physical wounds were healed, but earlier that day when she had changed his diaper and cleaned the caked shit from his ass, the sutures he had tried to place over his pride had stretched and torn. It was now night, time had moved on, but Raimey hadn’t. He was humiliated.

Tiffany kissed him on the lips, slow. Unlike Janis, John’s penis had been spared. She reached down and kneaded it with her hand. “You still have your most important part.”

Tiffany bit down on John’s lower lip, pulling it with her. John could hear the smile in her voice and the slight pain from her aggression got him hard.

She worked him, ignoring his input, riding him up and down, making him pay for all the nights he complained, all the nights she saw the reflection of his sad self-pitying eyes in the moonlight or dealt with his sharp remarks when she only meant to help. This was their catharsis. This was her absolving his sins.

After he came, he pleaded for her to get off him, but she wouldn’t. She ground down hard, moving back-and-forth until his sensitivity got overwhelmed with lust and he rose again.

The second time he lasted longer and finally she collapsed next to him, her body vibrating, her legs jelly. She wrapped around him like he was a body pillow.

“I think we’ll be okay. What do you think?” She was out of breath.

“Wow,” he said. He gave her an eskimo kiss that turned into tongue. “Wow,” he said again and laughed a real laugh for the first time in months. “I’m like your own personal dildo,” he said, still in awe of what happened, still tasting her on his lips.

They snuggled, and for the moment, everything was fine. When they fell asleep, the future seemed like it would be all right.

= = =

It had been eight weeks since Janis was rolled out of their hospital room and Raimey hadn’t heard a word from him. He had gone completely dark as was expected. Tiffany fed Raimey a bowl of cereal. It was dawn and the sun had just crept over the horizon.

Raimey was in an electric wheelchair he could maneuver with his mouth, just like the one he and Janis had raced a month before. General Boen was visiting today. He had called the day before.

Boen was the most thoughtful man Raimey had ever known, but like a true Texan, he was candy-coated steel. He was charming, honest, and caring, but underneath was a man who had seen blood and was willing to spill it.

Early in Raimey’s career he was a mentor and later, a friend. When Boen had heard about the UN bombing and John’s injuries, he had called regularly to check in. Now with his new position, he was in Chicago, “debriefing.”

John thought it was odd that he was getting debriefed in Chicago instead of Washington. But since MindCorp, more and more of the country’s power had shifted to the Windy City.

Boen apologized for the inconvenient hour but John and Tiffany shushed him: they would be up and ready at 6:00 a.m.

Tiffany dressed John in his military uniform, tailoring it to fit his new body. The arms were pinned to his back and his pants were cut and sewn to eliminate the pant leg. Tiffany stood back and admired her work. John moved around, self-conscious from the attention.

“What?” he asked. Even with his wife, he didn’t like to be looked at anymore.

She kissed him on the cheek. “You look great honey.”

He smiled, shocked. “Really?”

“Yes, you look strong and proud.”

The doorbell rang and downstairs Vanessa yelled, “I’ll get it.”

General Boen had been around thousands of wounded soldiers. Some of the injuries were unseen: a soldier with tinnitus unable to hear. Others were horrific. Soldiers disfigured from fire or a bomb. Their limbs torn, their faces melted into a smear of skin. Boen did the best thing anyone could when he interacted with them: he treated them like people. He acknowledged their disability, but only up front. He’d ask what happened and how they were managing. But after that it was a one-to-one conversation, no pandering, no sympathy. Around General Boen, the crippled and the unfortunate forgot they were.

When General Boen came in, his warmth filled the home. He knelt down and spoke with Vanessa. He had even brought her a toy. He hugged Tiffany and told her how she was more beautiful each time he saw her. He turned to Raimey and said nothing, they just looked at one another. The moment was long enough to make the hallway go silent, just the sound of an antique clock ticking time away. And then General Boen saluted Raimey, recognizing his service and his sacrifice. No words, those were fleeting, and they never come out as intended. A salute. Well deserved from a man who would never pander or wilt. From a man who understood that Raimey’s body was sacrificed for an ideal that was rarely met.

Raimey nodded and when Boen held the salute, he nodded some more, unable to speak. It wasn’t long, but it felt like time had slowed. Finally, Boen put his hand on John’s shoulder.

“I’m glad you made it, John.”

Raimey cleared his throat. “Thank you, sir.”

Boen caught up with the whole family over a quick breakfast of coffee and toast. He didn’t have much time and he wanted to speak with John alone.

“Can we go for a walk?” Boen asked. Tiffany understood this was directed to John. She cleared the table and asked Vanessa to help her clean up. They went to the kitchen.

“Sure.”

Boen followed Raimey out the door.

Two blocks away, talk of the weather turned to the tragic events from the last few months.

“Why do you think WarDon killed himself?” Raimey asked. He was so drugged on painkillers that for the first two weeks, he didn’t know what had happened. “He was a tough bird, that was unlike him.”

Boen had known Don for over thirty years and the suicide surprised him, too. “We’re not sure. But it was definitely a suicide. He wasn’t at the UN and he killed himself right afterwards. Maybe he blamed himself. He was in charge of the security.”

“So they un-un-un-retired you,” Raimey said. It was an old joke by now. Boen had been brought back three times since he officially got out of the game at sixty years old. Boen laughed.

“I was in a swimsuit when I got the call,” he said and laughed some more. “You wouldn’t recognize me in my retired life. I’m a whole different person.”

Boen had retired to a small ranch on the Brazos River just west of Fort Worth. He rode horses, hung out with a pack of dogs that had adopted his land as their own, fished, canoed, drank Coors Light and listened to Mexicali. His wife, Deb, had died five years earlier. He missed her, but life was full of death and many of the ones he loved had gone back to the earth. Debra wouldn’t have wanted him to stew. It was one of the reasons he had fallen in love with her.

“I never got to the ranch,” Raimey said, shaking his head. He had forgotten about his injuries, he was just thinking about travel. It was so difficult now to go anywhere rural.

“Maybe someday, even still,” Boen said.

“So what do they got you doing?” Raimey asked.

“Just helping with the transition, then getting back to drinking beer and catching some bass.”

“Have you met Dr. Lindo?” Raimey asked.

Boen paused and Raimey registered that he was deciding what he could or couldn’t say.

“You don’t hav—” Raimey started.

“I am working with him right now,” Boen said. “He’s my primary advisor for new military efforts.”

“I’ve met him.”

“I know.”

Of course he would, Raimey thought.

“What do you think?” Raimey asked. “I couldn’t get a bead on him.”

“He’s very smart. Awkward. I wouldn’t say he has a sense of humor but he has an energy about him like he’s in on his own private joke. The really smart ones are usually socially retarded. Comes with the territory.”

“You know he tested me and Janis?”

Boen’s pause was longer. “I’ve seen Eric since he left the hospital,” he said.

“Is he good?” Raimey asked.

“Yeah.” But Boen’s tone was uncertain.

It was apparent that he couldn’t say more. Since Boen’s original meeting with Evan, with each Tank Major progress report, Boen’s initial casualness to the concept had turned into astonishment. Boen liked weapons and he believed that the best way to avoid war was to carry the biggest stick. But this stick was a hammer. The Tank Major was vertically scalable on all levels: for peace keeping, for urban warfare, and for (heaven forbid) a war between nations.

Boen was in Chicago to see the finished project. The first Tank Major was going to be demonstrated for the new President and the top brass of the military today at 11:00 a.m. That was why he had to meet the Raimeys so early.

He had seen the preparation, video of the surgery, how they fused Janis’s spine to the inside of the battle chassis. It was permanent, there was no going back when a soldier gave a nod and signed the paper. You were a Tank Major for life.

Beyond his original disfigurement, they had cut Eric down further. He was a torso with a head. But Eric was fine with it. He understood what they were doing and he likened himself to the first astronauts. Someone had to do it and they had asked him. It was worth the sacrifice.

“John, I can’t get into it too much but I may be coming back some day in a professional capacity. They’re doing some amazing things right now and I could see you being a part of it.”

“Does it have to do with what they’re using Janis for?”

“Yes,” Boen said, almost dreamily. Like Evan, Boen could see a platoon of giants walking into a battlefield immune to the bullets ricocheting off their armored skin. Tank Majors would save so many lives.

Raimey looked across a small pond and watched a few of the geese shuffle around each other on the opposite side. “I need to find a purpose again, Earl. I’ve been through some tough shit but this takes it, hands down. Just tell me when and where and I’m there.”

“I know you feel that way, John,” Boen said. He knelt down. “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through and I’m not going to pretend I can. But be careful and count your blessings. A lot of mistakes are compounded by further ones.”

“You told me that a lot back in the day,” Raimey said. “But what does that have to do with helping you?”

“I don’t know.” Boen got up with a crack of his knees. “Things aren’t what they used to be, including you, including me.”

“They sure as hell aren’t. I knew who I was before. I had goals. Do my duty. Get my pension. Hopefully have another kid. Get old with Tiff.”

“Most of that you can still do, John,” Boen said softly.

John turned like he had been slapped. “NO, I can’t. Not like this. I’d rather be dead. I tell Tiffany I’m fine, but I’m not. If the bomb had worked a little harder or I was a few feet closer, everyone would be better off. This is unacceptable.”

He looked into Boen’s eyes. Boen had never seen them so pleading. “If you got anything I can help with, I want it. I need to move forward.”

“Everyone needs that, John. But from where we stand, which way is it?”

John was silent. Boen stuffed his hands in his pockets and watched the gaggle quack and play. He looked at the dirty blanket of clouds overhead and felt the chill in the air. Seeing his friend so desperate for validation depressed him. He pondered how the true castration of a man was taking away their purpose.

= = =

Boen left Raimey at the front of the house and his chaperone drove him to the Derik Building. Boen learned it was a military research center that specialized in bionics and that MindCorp was now heavily involved. Apparently, the Tank Major project had piqued Cynthia’s interest. Boen shook his head in disbelief. He had never liked government and private sector partnerships in the business of war. He felt it created looseness to a government service that needed to be monitored as gravely as life support.

He was old enough to remember when the military had outsourced manned operations during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts in the early twenty-first century. As a young soldier, he had run into these men. They may have had a corporate headquarters, even a business card, but they held guns with live ammo. They were mercenaries.

The U.S. military had justified the outsourcing because they were used as security detail for high-level local figures in the Middle East. But the U.S. learned that while they may have outsourced the responsibility, they didn’t relinquish the culpability. Blood got spilled, accusations were made, and pointed fingers were stacked on fingers like Lincoln Logs. They hadn’t outsourced people; they had outsourced the conditional right to kill. And the rules of engagement were different for a uniformed soldier trained and commanded under a rigid structure, than for a mercenary who made six figures, had a 401k, and was saving up for a boat.

Now the largest corporation in the history of mankind was partnered with the United States, designing a soldier that was the equivalent of one hundred soldiers. Why? Boen wondered. Everything he’d read about Cynthia would have caused him to predict otherwise. It wasn’t that she was a hippy-dippy socialist, far from it. She was a true capitalist, providing a superior product, stomping out any competition, and reaping her just desserts without apology. But she sure as hell wasn’t a loyalist. MindCorp made more money overseas than it did here. Why do this?

“You’re caught up in the money. Money means nothing to me anymore. I have more than anyone could ever spend. It’s knowledge, nothing more. It’s the chill of learning something so new that I’m the only person in the world that knows it,” is what Cynthia would have said to Boen if she had been seated next to him. But she wasn’t. She was at the Derik Building, helping with the final diagnostic protocol of the first bionic soldier.

Boen suddenly felt old.

“We’re about ten minutes out, sir,” his driver announced.

“Help with the transition, get back to the ranch,” he whispered to himself. But he was curious too, just like the rest of them: running toward the wail of sirens when it could only be gunshots or fire.

They pulled up. General Boen got out and loitered for a minute mentally rolodexing through the men he’d see inside, many of them associates he’d known for forty years.

The Gray Hairs, he thought with a smile. When did I get so damn old? Looking back was like time-lapse photography. Boen remembered his twenties and flinched at all the stupid stuff he had done. Wonder he was alive. He felt he could rule the world at thirty. He held Jenny, his daughter, for the first time at forty-two. At sixty-four he gave her away to a man who would be unfaithful and make her hate herself. Two years later Debra had cancer. A year after that, he put her in the ground. And now at seventy, back in the fold. Strong for my age, but the knees can tell when a storm is coming, and the memory isn’t quite as sharp.

“What are you doing out here, Earl?” Jan Hedgegard, a Navy Admiral said from the window of his chauffeured car. “They didn’t demote you to valet did they?” Jan opened the door and the first thing that set down on the salt blasted asphalt was the foot of a cane.

Jan just made my point, Boen thought. Jan used to do pull-ups with weights strapped to his waist. Jan bent his knees inward, and with help from the driver, got to his feet. He hobbled over to Boen and turned to see what Boen was looking at. Just another building across the street.

“Anything I’m supposed to notice?” Jan asked.

“Nope. Just thinking about how damn old we all got. How’s Tom?”

“Still living at home, if you believe it,” Jan said. Boen was asking about his forty-year-old son.

“They couldn’t make it work, huh?” Boen said.

Jan shook his head. “Nope. Couldn’t get past it. It was too much for both of them. I don’t blame her though,” Jan said.

Boen nodded.

“I always thought your girl and my boy could have been fine together. They used to be friends,” Jan said.

“They were five, Jan. Hard to gauge the chemistry at that point,” Boen said. They both laughed.

“Are you coming inside or are you trying to get hypothermia?” Jan said. “Help a fellow geezer out, I don’t want these guys seeing me scuttling around.”

Boen put his arm around Jan. They hadn’t seen each other in years, but some friendships don’t need daily watering. “I’ll spot you.”

Inside, they were seated on bleachers that had been rolled into a large space roughly the size of a gymnasium. The bleachers were encased in a Plexiglas box, three inches thick on all sides.

“I feel like a hamster,” Jan said to Boen under his breath. They nodded at some of their peers.

Thirty yards to their left was an old tank. In front of them, about the same distance away, was a cement block twenty feet tall and fifteen feet wide. To its right was a decommissioned Humvee. There was also a shooting range. A .50 caliber machine gun was aimed at a hill of sand bags downrange.

“Are those RPGs?” Boen asked Jan. Next to the machine gun were a half a dozen tubes—hand held missile launchers, the same used by ninety-nine percent of the terrorists and fanatics they dealt with now.

“Looks like it,” Jan said.

“Suddenly I want our hamster cage to be a little thicker.”

“Or further away,” Jan added.

Hearing protection was handed out as they came in and now Boen understood why—they were going to use live fire and explosives in front of them. That was highly unusual in a closed environment.

There were fifty VIPs present. The former Vice President Wade Williams was the last to arrive. He smiled his pearly whites and shook the hands of half the folks in the bleachers before he sat down. Boen knew that Wade didn’t really know Joseph Michaels, the former President. They had been brought together to hit as many cross sections as possible. Wade’s smile was a bit too genuine for Boen’s taste so soon after the UN atrocity.

Evan Lindo walked into the hamster cage.

“Good morning,” Evan said to them from a small podium in front of the bleachers. Boen saw a small, fit redhead sneak in after Evan and sit in the front row. No one else seemed to notice her.

“Is that Cynthia Revo?” Boen asked Jan.

“Ayup.”

“It’s been only three months since the UN terrorist attack. Three months since we lost President Michaels, the fifth time we’ve lost a President in our nation’s history.” Lindo waited as the words sunk in. “And we all miss Donald Richards. He was a mentor of mine, he taught me most of what I know.”

Completely untrue, but oil them up.

“Don taught me a few phrases that he lived by. One, don’t bring a knife to a nuke fight.”

The crowd chuckled. Lindo had calculated it would.

“Two. Expect the best, prepare for the worst.”

The group of military heads nodded.

“Globalization of our economies and cyberspace have blurred the lines between nations, but we are still a distinct culture. We still have borders we protect and citizens that rely on us. And we still have interests specific to the nation and our military. We cannot protect everyone, but we must protect our own. That’s not callous. It’s not insensitive. The United States is our family and sometimes you have to circle the wagons.

“Our President is dead. Our Secretary of Defense—regardless of how it happened—is no longer a pillar we can lean on.”

Lindo made eye contact with many of the officers in the room.

“We have to lead. With our new President Ward Williams,” Lindo put a hand out in his direction. Turd. Williams gave a wave that belonged in a parade. “And the men and women in this room. We are the ones in the watchtower.”

Lindo put on a big smile. “This isn’t a room of just military and political leaders. I’m proud and flattered to say that MindCorp and its founder, Cynthia Revo, has been integral to this project. While MindCorp is a global business, it’s distinctly American. Thank you Cynthia for understanding our nation’s needs.”

The men in uniform clapped. Cynthia acknowledged the room but Boen thought she looked sad and unkempt. She quickly turned back to the ground.

“Let’s acknowledge that our current military equipment doesn’t address today’s needs,” Lindo said. “We have terrorists imbedded like ticks in our cities. We need fuel to run our vehicles and our supply is dwindling. We aren’t fighting nations, but extremist groups. We need a military that is light and flexible. We need a military that is special forces.

“But we still need military might. We need a weapon—like the atomic bomb- that is a deterrent to both extremists and nations. I present to you the most devastating infantry weapon every built. The melding of man and machine into something better. I bring you the Tank Major.”

On the far wall, a large garage door slowly opened. White light bled through creating a silhouette of a gigantic humanoid shape. Tank Major Janis walked into the room.

A gasp went through the crowd. He was eleven feet tall and almost as wide at the shoulders. He weighed eight thousand pounds. The room shook as he ran. His body groaned and hissed and a pair of gigantic drive chains around his waist—together two feet tall—spun furiously, counter to the other. His body was painted in green and brown camouflage and stenciled with radiation symbols on his front and back.

Tank Major Janis jogged around the room, passing the hamster cage. He then sprinted back and forth in a ladder drill, stopping and starting, showing the strength and impressive agility of the Tank Major platform.

His legs and feet were heavily armored, yet dextrous. As he created a mini-earthquake trundling around the room, his feet constantly adjusted to maintain full traction.

His legs were connected to the outside of his hips and this allowed the suspension built inside the thigh to move up and down, while keeping the leg a consistent length. Hung slightly back on each shoulder were gigantic metal boxes mounted on rails. It was clear they could be removed. His shoulders looked like what they were: an artillery chamber. His arms were long for his body and as thick as his legs. His hands were boulders. Each one could pick an engine out of a car. A massive anvil-like bridge of armor ran along his knuckles protecting the incredible architecture of his mechanized hands.

“Please put on your ear protection,” Lindo said. The stunned crowd did as they were told. They could hear Evan through built-in speakers.

“Tank Major Janis can run at a sustained speed of twenty-five miles an hour. He weighs eight thousand pounds and is primarily built from depleted uranium armor. He can lift his body weight over his head and he can run through cement up to two feet thick.”

“He is powered by a hydrogen fuel generator that charges a deep storage battery. This battery can last for two days at full operation. At normal operation, it lasts ten days. As long as the Tank Major has access to water and electricity, it can perform electrolysis and recharge itself indefinitely.”

Janis walked downrange to the hill of sand bags. Two soldiers walked out to the machine gun and RPGs.

“He is essentially bullet proof,” Lindo said. The machine gun erupted into chatter, spilling brass around the soldiers’ feet as they fired. The armor sparked and some of the camouflage paint got mired, but the Tank Major stood unmoving, like he was being pelted with rain. They stopped firing and both of the men put an RPG to their shoulder.

“The Tank Major platform is blast proof both from direct projectiles and concussive blasts in its vicinity. While it can be blown apart or damaged, the current stock of weapons that our enemies have are unlikely to do so.”

The men fired the RPG’s at Janis. One hit flush and exploded, doing nothing. The other hit his chest and ricocheted off against the back wall, creating a five-foot crater.

“Oops,” Lindo said. The crowd let out a dazed laugh. “You may have noticed that his fists are heavily armored. There is a reason.”

On cue, Tank Major Janis ran up to the Humvee and scissored his hand down onto the hood. It was like a meteorite had struck it. The front of the Humvee crumpled like tin and the axles snapped, sending the wheels to the sides. Janis continued to pound his way through the Humvee, smashing it down into scrap.

“Each fist weighs five hundred pounds. This is his most basic strength. He is only using the high torque electric motors located throughout his body,” Lindo said.

The entire audience was frozen in a scream. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. When Janis was done with the Humvee, he flipped it away from the hamster cage like it was made of foam.

“The large metal boxes on his shoulders are artillery magazines. In each are six artillery rounds that have no projectile. The artillery charge is used to fuel his most devastating attack: the hydraulshock.”

Janis turned to Lindo and Lindo nodded. Janis ran up to the gigantic cement block and moved like his was going to punch it.

BAM!

The noise was indescribable. Even with the Plexiglas case and the hearing protection, Boen’s ears rang. It was like a thunderbolt had gone off in the room. Boen didn’t see what had happened. The Tank Major ran at the block and then cocked back its right arm like it was about to throw a straight, and then suddenly the room was filled with dust. The Plexiglas fractured into a spider web from the concussive blast and debris.

Boen heard gigantic exhaust fans spin up. The thick brown air thinned out into a light fog and Boen could see the outline of the Tank Major. When the air cleared out further he saw that aside for jagged leftovers at its base, the entire cement block was gone. With one punch the Tank Major had turned it into dust.

“The hydraulshock delivers three and a half million foot pounds of energy in a controlled delivery system, guaranteeing almost zero percent collateral damage, unlike traditional ordinance.”

Lindo nodded again at Janis. He went to the tank with its foot thick armor. He reeled back.

BAM!

This time Boen saw (and didn’t see) what happened. For a split second, the gigantic soldier vanished in a blur, moving as fast as a rocket. And then it was back with its fist inside the tank. The tank shuddered and warped inward as if it got cleaved with a gigantic axe. Out of the Tank Major’s shoulder, a spent artillery shell ejected end-over-end in a backwards arc. It clanged to the ground forty feet away.

Boen saw the shoulder mechanism reload. Tank Major Janis pulled his fist away from the tank and walked over to the glass, just behind Lindo. Everyone watched in awe.

“This is our future, gentlemen. This is the eagle that carries the olive branch to all terrorists and enemies of the state. Wherever they are, wherever they hide, we can get them. And there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it.”

The crowd erupted into applause. Some of the men, hard men who had dealt with life and death on a grand scale for decades, cried. It was clear to them what Dr. Evan Lindo had created. It was clear to them what Dr. Evan Lindo was: a savior to the United States way of life. A savior for all of those who feared the end.

= = =

The presentation couldn’t have gone better. Representatives from each military division congratulated Evan afterwards. They all wanted to discuss the Tank Major’s effect on their current operations.

What they didn’t know was that Ward Williams and Evan had come to an agreement before the presentation. Evan had brought him back to meet Tank Major Janis and to understand the technology.

Evan had learned six weeks before that Ward didn’t like him, never had. Felt that he was a little fucking nerd who wanted to wear big boy pants. Probably guzzled WarDon’s load. All good stuff to know. Evan didn’t hold grudges. He let the King Sleeper massage those synapses to make Ward a bit more amenable. After a few weeks Ward thought his first impression of Evan was a bit harsh. A month later, he had called for advice.

While before Ward would have vehemently opposed what Evan wanted to control, now he was finishing Evan’s sentences.

“. . . as I designed and implemented the technology . . .” Evan said.

“It would only make sense that you were at the helm,” Ward nodded enthusiastically. “Totally. There’s been nothing like this before. We’ve had weapons, we’ve had soldiers, but never this gray area.” Ward cocked his head like he just had a whiz-bang of an idea. “General Boen should be a part of this. He could help train the soldiers and coordinate the missions.”

Evan feigned skeptical. “You think?”

“Definitely,” Ward said. Evan looked deep in thought. He rubbed his scruffy chin.

“You know Mr. President, that would be best. It would allow us to play to our strengths. I can focus on the technology and the overall health of the soldiers, and General Boen could focus on the operations, training, and integration with the other military branches.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Ward said. They were both nodding like pigeons in the park.

“It’s perfect.” Evan checked his watch. “Almost time. Thank you, sir.”

“Glad I could help.” Ward flashed his bleached choppers.

Evan had planted that suggestion in fuckface’s head about a week ago. It would be odd to not have a high-ranking officer on board and General Boen, while an obstacle, was a lesser evil than some lower ranking military advisor who was climbing up the career ladder. And he was temporary and less adept with the technology. Maybe in a few months he’d die in his sleep.

= = =

General Boen waited while the various high ranking officers congratulated Evan and the place cleared out. Jan said goodbye and hobbled away shaking his head at what he had just seen: a movie come to life. Ward had pulled Boen aside after the demonstration and briefed him on his upcoming duties.

Evan shook the last General’s hand and came over. “I need to pack Tank Major Janis up, shall we?”

He and Boen walked out of the hamster cage and across the destroyed landscape left in the colossus’s wake. Boen stopped and looked at the Humvee wreckage. The truck was completely flattened. He had to step over shards of engine block.

“So he did this without the artillery discharge?”

“Correct. Electric motors have one hundred percent torque at one rpm and each major motor in his body has at least one thousand foot-pounds. Think two V-8’s are swinging his thousand pound arm.”

“Unreal, Evan. Truly.”

They made it through the garage door. Tank Major Janis sat to their left on what looked like a huge gothic throne. Technicians scurried over him like spiders.

“We’ve had the mechanical technology to build a bionic for some time, but it was the Mindlink that made it truly possible,” Evan said, attempting modesty.

“Science fiction has talked about this for a hundred years, but talk is cheap. You did it,” Boen said. They were now in front of Janis. Seated, he somehow appeared even more hulking.

“How are you soldier?” Boen asked.

Janis crooked his head down to see them. “Doing fine, sir. Doing fine.”

“How does it feel to be the most powerful man to ever walk the earth?”

“Just happy to be of use. I think Dr. Lindo could hit a switch and turn me off if he wanted to, so I’m not going to get too cocky,” Janis winked. Evan mimed pressing a button.

Two technicians muscled off the artillery magazine from one of his shoulders. Another two on a hydraulic lift guided it onto their platform.

“General Boen will be heading the strategic aspects of the Tank Division,” Evan said to Janis.

“Excellent, I’ve heard great things about you, sir. My team leader used to take direction from you.”

“John Raimey, I know,” Boen said.

The gothic metal chair hissed and clanked. The technicians up top gave thumbs up.

“Step back,” Evan said to Boen.

“Excuse me,” Janis said. He stood up. A truck designed to transport him reversed in. Even five feet away, Boen couldn’t see Janis’s face due to the girth of his chest. It was what awed children to their fathers.

Janis walked away and his body was surprisingly quiet. When he climbed into the rear of the truck’s trailer, it buckled under the load but the grace in which the Tank Major got up and in was remarkable. It truly moved like a man.

“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Boen said. Evan smiled. “How many are you planning to build?”

“This model? None. Janis is the prototype and already I’ve learned a great deal from him. He’s ninety-five percent of what I want out of the battle chassis. Depleted uranium armor—as you well know—is the strongest armor we currently manufacture, but it does have vulnerabilities.”

“Not many,” Boen said. “Are you talking EFPs?”

Explosive Formed Penetrators were a type of bomb used by terrorists in the Middle East to breach tank hulls. They used a convex copper plate that on detonation became a molten slug moving at incredible speeds.

“See? Exactly. Right away you went to it. So would our enemies,” he continued. “I’m working on an osmium and depleted-uranium alloy encased in a revolutionary ceramic.”

“I’ve never heard of osmium.”

“It’s actually quite common. The rolling ball in ballpoint pens is osmium, but it doesn’t play nice with others. And alone it’s brittle. But the properties of this armor are astounding.”

“It would stop an EFP?” Boen asked skeptically.

“An eight inch thick plate is equivalent to six feet of rolled homogenous armor,” Evan replied. “How would you like to proceed?”

“Well, I see the Tank Major as intelligent support for a special forces unit. If they were breaching hostile buildings, the Tank Major could act as a cow catcher breaking through, with the team right behind using him as a smart shield, fanning out when they went in. We should start with about twenty guys. I’ll pick them if you don’t mind and we’ll get training, learn the strengths and weaknesses, adapt from there.”

“What about the press?” Evan asked. “Ward wants the world to know about this.”

“There are terrorist acts every month nowadays. I say we make an example of one and let some footage leak out. That’ll get everyone’s attention just fine.”

= = =

In his private cabin two train cars down from his creation, Evan dreamed. In it, an army of Tank Majors stretched into the distance, lumbering into a city. Columns of nuclear fire littered the landscape and a Tank Major turned to regard one as it rose, its pulsing mushroom cloud reflecting off his helmet. The Tank Major was unmoved. Unconcerned. He continued into the battlefield.

Evan dreamed of Beijing covered in the hottest fire; he pictured Britain with buildings crumbled to ash. His giants occupied both, fully exposed, peppered with mortars and missiles and lead, their armor ashen and beaten, but not broken. The enemy surrendering at their feet, heads cowered in submission.

He dreamed of a caravan of millions crying in each other’s arms, dragging whatever they could with them as they evacuated their burning city, understanding that it was all over, that the U.S. had won. More. That Evan had won.

The world as mine.

He looked down on the cities from the clouds. He hovered over the destruction like he was omniscient and omnipresent. Like he was a god who no longer hid behind faith.

= = =

After the demonstration, Cynthia let Evan take the acclaim. She was the first to leave. Since Sabot’s departure two weeks before, Evan had assigned her two bodyguards that worked in shifts: Edward Chao and Alan Kove. Chao was an asshole, but Kove had a sweetness to him. Kove led her through the doorway to the waiting car. He seemed genuinely concerned with his charge.

She didn’t understand what had happened. The night Sabot vanished, she noticed his absence an hour afterward. She looked around the room for him, went out into the hall, and then assumed that he had left to handle some work minutia that he didn’t want to burden her with.

When she got to the penthouse, the lights were off. “Sabot?” The dark room absorbed her voice and answered it with silence. She called him. Straight to voicemail. She called down to the front desk and the receptionist said she hadn’t seen him that evening.

For two hours she waited, compulsively checking her phone and e-mail. She called again. Nothing. Maybe something happened to his mom. She called Linda, Sabot’s mother, who lived in a house outside the city. She had visited it with Sabot a year before.

Linda answered the phone. “Cynthia,” she said. “Unknown” on the phone pad was always her.

“Is everything okay?” Cynthia asked.

“Yes. Why?” Linda sounded concerned.

“I don’t know where Sabot is,” Cynthia said. “He isn’t answering his phone. I thought, well, the worst. Maybe something had happened to you or Trina.”

“When did you last speak to him?”

“Three hours ago,” Cynthia replied. She heard Linda sigh with relief.

“Oh good. I spoke with him about an hour ago. He’s coming over tomorrow. Are you guys okay?”

Cynthia didn’t respond right away. She held the phone loosely in her hand. Tomorrow was Thursday. Nothing was wrong at home but he wasn’t coming in to work. Her stomach ached.

“Cynthia?” she heard the tinny phone say.

“I don’t know, Mrs. Sabot. Please have him call me.”

He never did.

They pulled up to MindCorp. Cynthia turned to Kove. “I’m dropping you off.”

“Ms. Revo, I’m supposed to be with you at all times,” he replied.

“Those aren’t my orders and I’m a private citizen.”

Kove didn’t move. He wasn’t sure what to do.

“Alan, do I have to open the door for you? Call Evan if you want, but do it outside. I’m not asking.”

Reluctantly he got out. Cynthia pressed a button near her seat.

“Take me to one-nineteen Pine,” she said.

They idled outside of Linda Sabot’s house. Cynthia was paralyzed. One half of her was mournfully sad, the other was furious at the way Sabot had discarded her without an explanation. After the years together, she deserved more.

Finally she got out and walked to the door. She pressed the doorbell and heard its echo inside. She listened for the low thump of footsteps approaching. After a minute, she stepped over into the bushes and peered into the house. It felt empty.

“You’re messing up my mom’s bushes,” Sabot said from behind her. She turned and saw him. His shirt was soaked in a V from a long run. He was breathing heavy. She went over to him and punched him on the shoulder.

“What are you doing to me?” she asked. She felt the comfort of being around him, even now, just as old ex’s still invade each other’s space unknowingly. But she was confused. He didn’t seem angry.

“I needed time to think,” he said. He walked to the door and took out a key. He held the door open. “Let’s talk inside.”

She sat at the table and he poured both of them lemonade. The kitchen area had Midwestern touches. A corner shelf with porcelain figurines and antique knick-knacks near the floor. Flower print wallpaper that was accented with a white wood baseboard. It reminded Cynthia of her childhood home.

He gave her a glass and sat down across from her. He didn’t speak right away. He took big gulps of the lemonade and looked at the outside patio.

“Please,” she said.

He put his glass down and watched her the way he looked at her guests.

“Do you love me? Did that go away?” she asked.

“Of course I do,” he said. “I just couldn’t stay. I knew we’d talk sooner or later, but I needed time to gather myself. I don’t want to be in rooms where decisions cost lives. When I met you, I thought those days were over. I had to use my military background, but a bodyguard was different than the military. It was defensive. I could rationalize that.”

“What does that have to do with us?” Cynthia said. “If I don’t help the military, someone else will. I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought you approved.”

“You’re playing God,” he said.

Cynthia looked at him bewildered. “Giving someone CPR is playing God.”

“You don’t know what you’re building, Cynthia. You have no idea. If these things get built, it doesn’t matter if we’re right or wrong, we can force our ‘right.’ And you’re doing it with him.”

“Evan isn’t as bad as you think,” Cynthia said.

Sabot made a face. “I know the ‘Evans’ of the world. They are small men with hidden agendas. They are the Dictator’s kids who rape, rob, and kill because they can’t be stopped. I’ve been in these waters far longer than you. And being smarter doesn’t help. You can’t guess what a snake will do when it doesn’t know itself.”

“Come back,” Cynthia said weakly.

“I can’t, babe. I love you, never think different, but I’m so disappointed. The life I thought we’d have, it’s not going to happen. And I know the way I handled it was wrong, but you are pushing the world to war and you cannot rationalize your way out of it. ‘Someone else will do it’ isn’t good enough, Cynthia. LET THEM.”

“I just want you back, Sabot,” Cynthia said.

“I’ll come back if you stop working with Evan. If I can get back the woman that saved the world and still asked for my advice and comfort, I’m there.”

“I can’t now. We’re under contract,” she said. Her voice could barely be heard.

“We could go anywhere and no one could touch us,” Sabot said. “You could walk away.”

“I can’t,” Cynthia said. The truth was, Cynthia had not been challenged mentally in almost a decade and finally she had a project that was out of her scope and required her constant attention and innovation to succeed. She couldn’t leave that. Without the intellectual stimulation, she thought, she might as well jump out the window.

Sabot stared at a spot on the table. “That day in the hospital, I saw the future. Cities were on fire, people were covered in soot. Some were holding loved ones that were dead or dying. And I knew that future was true, like God had planted it in my head. I had two options. One was to kill everyone the room. Five lives for a billion, that seemed fair.”

Cynthia’s eyes were wide with shock. Sabot was serious.

“If you hadn’t been there,” Sabot snapped his fingers. “It would have been an easy decision,” he continued. “The other was to leave. Don’t think I don’t love you, it was the only thing that stopped me. And don’t think I’m not here for you. If you change your mind, if you need help getting out, I’m the man. But I can’t be around for this. Because next time, I’m not going to hesitate or waver. Innocent people will die from your invention, Cynthia. Next time, I’ll make the right decision.”

Cynthia walked out of the house stunned into silence. It took her three tries to open the car door. She didn’t remember getting back to MindCorp, but she was on her couch. She cancelled all meetings and turned off all outside communication. She sat, huddled in the dark, neither eating or sleeping, searching her soul and wondering how the most loyal and caring man she had ever known had seen in her something so vile that for a moment, she meant more to the world dead than alive.

Part II

“Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.”

—Winston Churchill

Chapter 12

–Three Months Later–

Xan was unraveling. He looked down at his hands. They shook side to side like he was waving off a play. His eyelids twitched uncontrollably. He sat up in his bed. It looked like his office, down to the coffee maker, down to the red, jagged horizon to the west and the hilly fields to the north. It gave him a center. But it wasn’t real. He had been online for almost four months, with his physical form nestled into a chair at their Core next to S-04, who—against all odds—was still alive and kicking.

He had meant to come out a month earlier but the physicians that monitored his body and mind suggested that he continue. It would take two weeks to bring Xan back to consciousness, like a deep-sea diver slowly rising to the surface to avoid the bends. And every minute was precious, more precious than his health, more precious than oil. There was too little time. Grain-by-grain it vanished into the trough of the hourglass; when the world would be won or lost.

His paranoia had been vetted. China’s policies had continued to shift toward those that favored the U.S., and the countries that comprised the European Union had shifted even further. The politicians were being brainwashed. As a Sleeper, Xan shadowed the new Chinese President and his advisors without their knowledge. And this is where he found the anomaly. Of the five thousand micro-frequencies used by the Mindlink to send and receive data, three had been hijacked. They fed deep into the brain. The signals were staggered, the three frequencies combined to make a whole, but they didn’t shove the message into memory. They let the brain connect the dots.

The messages weren’t blatant. They were tailored suggestions to each individual based on their memories. “Your mother always dreamed of moving to America,” was one message Xan deciphered. This was sent again and again, a thousands times a day, to the new President. Xan researched the President’s mother and found that she had gone to college in the U.S. and she had always wanted to move there. Many times she would tell her son, now President, how wonderful it was. Another he deciphered: “United we can defeat the terrorists.” This was being sent to the military advisor for the President. There were more, but Xan had seen enough. Time was too short to be overly curious.

As soon as he went under, Xan tagged the top military officials in the U.S. These tags monitored key words or spikes in activity and flagged them for Xan. Three months ago, every military official’s online activity spiked at 2:00 p.m. U.S. Central Time. On the dot. Xan hacked into the files of a Jan Hedgegard, a Navy Admiral who, judging from recent photos, had died and never got the memo. His correspondence to subordinates was unencrypted. He spoke of a ‘Metal giant.’ Jan, in his old age, would fall asleep during the day, sometimes with his Mindlink on. Xan waited like a cat burglar. The Forced Autistic allowed him to easily hack through the security protocols set up for the Admiral and reach into his head. He found the visual memory. Xan saw the giant destroy a Humvee truck and punch through a cement block, rendering it to dust. The creature was beautiful. An engineering marvel. Tall and massive and shockingly graceful.

He watched a short man with glasses and a goatee field questions. The Generals applauded him. The giant walked up behind him. He was the man Xan had to know. He was the man three rows back.

Two days later he knew the chubby little man was Dr. Evan Lindo. A week later he had tagged the good doctor and all the staff around him.

Trends formed. A base in Virginia was important. Xan hacked into their employee database searching for low security personnel. He found a woman named Wendy Schaub who worked in the cafeteria. She delivered food to an atomic bomb shelter every morning. In that bunker she had seen “a man the size of a truck with a huge body and a small head,” she wrote in her personal online journal, password protected with the name of her first dog and her birthdate.

He continued trolling lightly over the minds of the unsuspecting. A janitor cleaned the bunker. At one point a massive door “like those at a bank,” was closing and inside he saw a “huge blue lava lamp bigger than a wall.”

A Data Core.

Xan hacked into the energy grid that fed the base. Seventy percent of its power was diverted to the bunker. He hacked into the onsite hospital. Dr. Ian Wilkins was the neurologist. Wary of leaving a trail, Xan reluctantly hacked into his files. These weren’t password protected with an old pet’s name; he was now breaching true security protocols used by the United States. He could get flagged, even traced. But he had to know. It took Xan two seconds to read through two thousand files. One file did not list a name, address, or rank. But it did list sex: Male. And an age: twelve. The symptom: muscle atrophy, ligament and tendon shrinkage. Treatment: Passive physical therapy, stretching, and massage.

Passive. Not active. Not telling the dude in bed that he had to get off his ass and jog. Passive was for coma patients. Xan knew passive. A camera was pointed on his body, and as he processed this new information, he watched two therapists shake his arms out and stretch his fingers back and forth. A Sleeper was in that bunker. One that hadn’t woken up in a long, long time.

A boy.

= = =

Xan made Mohammed uneasy. Even online, Xan was shaky and unsure. His eyes darted back and forth under heavy eyelids. He cracked his knuckles incessantly. His legs bounced on the stool, shaking the table. He looked like a meth head going through withdrawal.

They were in a sod walled pub built into a role-playing game. Around them orcs and wizards and knights mingled. Some screamed defiantly at others, grossly offended by a comment or jest directed their way. They would go outside to battle. Clans sat together discussing a quest they had just finished. It was odd seeing a barbarian with shoulders like bowling balls speak with the voice of a girl. It was even odder to hear an adult man recruit a kid to join an adventure.

“In order to gain sympathy, you have to incur sacrifice,” Xan said. His right eye fluttered uncontrollably.

“You don’t seem well,” Mohammed said.

“I’m fine. I couldn’t see more clearly.”

Mohammed regarded his twitchy partner. “Why so many men?”

“You can spare eighty,” Xan said. “Look.”

Xan sent Mohammed images of the Tank Major demonstration.

“This is what they have now. We devised a way to neutralize it, but we need to see it in practice. What better coming out party for the Western Curse than standing on top of the U.S.’s greatest weapon?”

President Hu, Jintau’s replacement, had died a week after he overturned a policy to open their oil reserve to the Coalition. He was found halfway off his Sleeper chair. A stroke. It was diagnosed as natural causes and Xan couldn’t tell anyone different. If he had told them and they went online, then the King Sleeper (he’d learn what it was called) would know that HE knew. He checked his frequencies and they were clean. The Core he worked from was off the grid, virtually invisible. Rest in peace, Dr. Renki.

But it fueled his paranoia. He felt like he was the last sane man on earth. He heard voices all around him telling lies, whispering conspiracies. Was Mohammed compromised? Could he be? He was stupid enough to connect directly in. Xan was connected through another comatose husk in Norway. Was Mohammed real? Was this a trick?

The doctors told him he had to come out, that his mental health was at risk. He ordered soldiers to take them away. He forbade anyone on the base to link-in. All orders and decisions had to go through him, just in case, somehow, they had been influenced.

It was the boy, it had to be the boy. There was no other explanation and while Xan was one hundred percent certain it was true, he still didn’t know how. HOW? How can this child do what he is doing? Combined with S-05 (S-04’s heart stopped) Xan was as powerful as any other Sleeper in cyberspace and yet, to the King Sleeper, he was a gnat.

Xan had found enough schematics and anecdotal information for China to design its own Tank Major. The prototype was in its final stages. It wasn’t as elegant, they didn’t have refineries that could forge the hydraulshock mechanism, but it made up for it with size and firepower. It was fifteen feet tall with cannons mounted to its shoulders and a constricting attack that used its hydraulic-lined back to crush anything it got hold of. Like an American Tank Major.

It all meant nothing without the King Sleeper.

Xan pulled himself together. “I’m sorry. You’ve been patient and I know you’ve lost some followers because of this delay.”

Mohammed and the Western Curse had done nothing since he had first met Xan.

“You do this and I’ll get you a bomb. Fair?”

Mohammed leaned in. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?” he asked.

“Eight kilotons won’t level a city, but the psychological damage would be immeasurable,” Xan said. “In a highly populated area like New York, it’d kill millions.”

Mohammed didn’t move a muscle while he processed the trade.

“Eighty of my men, and the device you’re providing will shut down the bionic?”

“And the necessary weapons to execute the job,” Xan said. He looked directly into Mohammed’s eyes. “And all the credit will be yours.”

= = =

Evan had found a new drug.

The King Sleeper worked in eighteen-hour shifts. His missions consisted of three different tasks: gathering, destroying, and influencing. Depending on the breadth of each task, he sometimes did all at once.

Evan liked being Justin’s father. That was a drug and by itself it seemed innocent. But the boy was abducted, his parents were killed at Lindo’s order, he was twelve years old and he had been drugged unconscious for six months, and he, as the boy’s father, was having him influence presidents and parliaments, and kill those who just wouldn’t listen.

The Reverse Data Push. The ability of Justin’s mindscape to expand rapidly and cause a target’s mind to seize, stroke out, and die. The latest victim was President Hu after he vetoed the bill to share their oil with the Coalition.

The King Sleeper did this by planting a codec in a person’s mind. That codec behaved like a latent malignant cell. It could be in there forever, never causing harm. Or with a simple data trigger, it could multiply by trillions, overloading neurons and synapses with junk information until the brain choked and fried.

So if being Justin’s father was weed, for Evan, the Reverse Data Push was crack cocaine. Evan felt the guilt and the excitement all at once, like he was a kid watching porn with his parents just down the hall. But he couldn’t stop himself. The King Sleeper was uploading this codec into the brain of every person online. Six billion people. The King Sleeper was ungodly powerful, but even then, he could only do seventy-five hundred people per minute. In two years, every man, woman, and child could live or die at Lindo’s whim. Evan would be the sickled shadow in the corner of their eye.

The first five hundred people Evan implanted were his associates. General Boen was at the top of the list, as was the President, the Senators, top military brass, Cynthia and her scientists—and all of their families and loved ones. Anyone that could be an obstacle and anyone that they cared about who could be used as leverage. Evan knew that he couldn’t have the entire Senate drop dead, that he’d need to use some restraint, but the very fact that he would know they had his little string of numbers in their head changed the game. He could be bold and brazen and demanding.

The boy asked him a question and Evan responded. Not as himself, but as Frank McWilliams, who had died in a shower and then burned with accelerant.

Evan was fine with it.

Chapter 13

During the Great Migration, O’Hare International Airport was converted into a national train station. As Chicago grew out and rail became the de facto mode of transportation, O’Hare was the logical choice. It had pre-existing infrastructure that could easily be adapted and it had land. Fifteen years ago, fields surrounded it. Now it was skyscrapers.

Antoine Versad was a Frenchman. He had red hair, buzzed short, and a five o’clock shadow that had to be groomed once a day. He spent two years in the French army before getting kicked out for misconduct. The charges were dropped but there was nothing left for him in France. He came to the U.S. by boat hoping to change his fortune, and he had.

He felt the train slow down as they approached O’Hare from New York. He sat in the first class section of the train. Scattered throughout the other cars were eighty of his associates. Some looked like businessmen, some looked like hippies and students. They were white, black, Asian, Middle Eastern, Indian.

The common bond between them was the Western Curse and this mission. Strapped beneath each of their seats was a submachine gun with two hundred rounds of ammunition. In the cargo department they had twenty RPG’s, fifty grenades, two M134 mini guns, and one hundred pounds of C-4 explosive.

The discipline and patience that Mohammed had instilled in the Western Curse had allowed his people to penetrate deep into the arteries of American society. The rail was going to be exploited today. Tomorrow it could be the shipyards or the power plants.

Antoine was in charge of this mission. The goal was to take over the station, gather as many hostages as possible, and kill one every five minutes until the giant came. Antoine had a very sophisticated computer with him. It created its own network that hacked into anything with wireless connectivity within fifty yards of it. A Chinese operative had passed it to Mohammed, who had passed it to Antoine.

“This computer is worth twenty million dollars,” Mohammed had said when he handed it over. “Don’t drop it.”

Mohammed had told him that the hack would burrow into the giant and render him useless. The RPGs, the C-4, the miniguns, all of those could damage it, but the computer was what would disconnect the human from the machine. When that happened, Antoine would stroll up to the man buried in metal and shoot him in the head. They would broadcast it live throughout cyberspace. It was the Western Curse’s coming out party and Antoine would be the star of the show.

From his window, Antoine watched O’Hare as they approached. He had done reconnaissance on it twice now. It was a huge structure, but they had enough manpower to take over its entrances and then collapse back into its heart and set up the defensive measures.

The train pulled into the terminal and its electric motors hummed down. His travel neighbor said goodbye and Antoine wished him a good time in Chicago. Antoine reached beneath his seat and pulled out a small plastic briefcase that had been attached underneath. Inside the case, like all the others, was an Uzi-Pro submachine gun. It was the size of a large handgun, but it fired nine millimeter at a rate of one thousand and fifty rounds per minute, and it had a fifty round magazine and three more spares.

He stood up with his two packages and no one blinked. He and the others shuffled out of the train and each team of four splintered off to their assigned exits.

It was 12:10. Perfect. At 12:30 the operation would begin.

= = =

“I was just about to call you,” Evan said. He was watching the news report. Eighty to one hundred terrorists had completely shut down O’Hare train station and they had five hundred hostages. They called themselves the Western Curse and a red headed Frenchman ranted to an IP camera about what they stood for, blah, blah, blah and then shot a hostage execution style.

“This is the one,” General Boen said. “I hope Janis squishes the Frenchy’s head between his fingers. Can you believe this guy? He’s already shot five hostages.”

“He’ll get his. I’ve cleared the rail from Virginia to O’Hare. The team is assembling and we should be outbound in thirty minutes,” Evan said.

“Excellent. I’ll be there in twenty.” Boen had relocated outside the base to train the special forces unit attached to Janis. They settled on a team of six.

Evan rubbed his eyes. They were killing a hostage every five minutes. Even at two hundred and fifty miles per hour it would take them three hours to get there. Over sixty people would be dead. Nothing I can do about it.

They were shooting them in front of the camera. They put the hostage on their knees and told them to say their name, where they were from, and what they wanted to tell their loved ones. And then the French guy would say “the victims in the Middle East never had that courtesy,” and he would shoot them in the head.

Evan decided he would extend that same courtesy to the Western Curse. Camera on, say what you want, until Janis crushes you down. And when he got to the Frenchmen, he’d do it slow, let him know that he was going to hell. That was the problem with countries facing these threats—they were too polite, too bound by the bizarre etiquette of war. Evan liked the Middle Eastern philosophy. An eye for an eye. Hell, double it up, do a twofer. Two eyes for one. I betcha crime would stop then. Evan walked out of his office and his security detail swept him toward the train.

= = =

Tank Major Janis had six assistants that worked in four-hour shifts due to the radioactive toxicity of his suit. They were all scientists and engineers. The assistants were needed because his movements were now an exponential equivalent to what they had been. He couldn’t scratch his face, each fingertip was as big as his cheek and he would fracture his skull. He couldn’t bathe, he couldn’t change the contents of his nutrient pump or waste canister. He couldn’t write or flip a page in a book. The assistants did this and after a while, the six of them melded into an extra pair of hands that worked around him, always keeping him comfortable.

He was on the train. Sue, the assistant on shift, scaled over him like he was a climbing wall. She oiled the gears in between the armor, she checked the hydraulshock chamber for any obstruction or loose fitting components, she shaved his face. The relationship between him and his assistants was like an evolution of nature, an Egyptian plover cleaning the teeth of a crocodile.

“How am I looking, Sue?” Janis asked. He saw her working on his left shoulder.

“Good, big sexy,” she said. He dug Sue. She was a little Asian woman, mid-twenties, with brains and attitude.

“Eric, put out your hands, por favor,” another technician, Jed, requested. He handled diagnostics of Janis’s implant. Sue jumped off him and he raised his thousand pound arms in front of him.

“Wiggle’em,” Jed said.

Each finger, the size of a man’s arm, moved up and down like he was playing a piano.

Jed was checking for latency: Janis’s brain commands, the implant’s interpretation and conversion of these commands, and the battle chassis’ accuracy of the conversion. Finger movement was the easiest movement to measure and the most difficult for the implant to interpret. Everything looked ducky.

“Excellent, Eric. We’re running at less than a tenth of a second delay,” Jed said. He turned to two soldiers nearby. “Load’em up.”

Janis opened the chamber of each hydraulshock. The two men unlocked the armory on the opposite side of the train car. On the ground were two loaded hydraulshock magazines. Each housed six artillery rounds that, when Janis punched, generated over three and a half million foot-pounds of energy. The total weight of a loaded magazine was three hundred pounds. Together they grabbed the handles of one and lifted with their legs. They crab walked one to Eric’s right side and the other to his left, breathing heavy from the exercise.

They climbed up Janis and knelt near his neck. Janis effortlessly lifted each artillery magazine to his shoulders. The men guided each onto rails mounted into his shoulders and locked them into place. Done, they jumped down and cleared away. With a CLACK! the hydraulshock chamber slammed shut and loaded one round into each arm.

“What’s our ETA?” Janis asked. They had quarantined him from his six-soldier team due to the health risk. Thirty minutes before the train was to dock at O’Hare, they would meet up with General Boen for a final run through.

“We’re forty-five out,” Boen said over the comm.

Janis listened to music before missions. It calmed him. Sue cranked Amnesiac, a classic album by Radiohead. Janis closed his eyes and meditated, thinking about the upcoming battle, his movements, ways he could protect the team.

The train stopped one mile short. From the live video the Western Curse broadcasted on the web and the schematics of the building, the terrorists were on the gate-level floor at the center of Terminal 3.

General Boen routed their train to Terminal 1. This allowed them to arrive on the terrorists’ blind side. The Western Curse had taken over Terminal 3 at 12:30 p.m. It was now 3:30 p.m and the sun was still out. For one mile, the Tank Major and the soldiers would be completely exposed either to sniper fire or the tell of their strategy.

“Good luck,” Boen said.

Janis and his team ran through a tall field, cutting across unused tarmac that time and weather had broken up into a million-piece jigsaw puzzle.

Janis had trained with these soldiers for three months under the watchful eye of General Boen. The addition of a Tank Major to a small team posed both benefits and problems. The biggest problems were noise and weight. At its quietest, the Tank Major sounded like a gas-powered car at idle. At its loudest, when the engines were spun up for battle, the room would shake from the energy.

Tank Major Janis weighed four tons. This allowed him to cut through vehicles and walls like they were made out of paper, but it also reduced his applications. Not all floors could handle four tons spread out over two feet.

In tests, Janis would fall right through some floors when he tried to walk, let alone run. So it was quite possible that in battle, he would be left behind as his team went up stairs to face a combatant that had high offensive capabilities. Modern industrial buildings, like skyscrapers, could support his weight, but the elevators in them could not.

However, under the right circumstances, the benefits were astounding. Tank Major Janis was an active, intelligent, and offensive human shield. The soldiers were trained to ‘stack up’ behind Janis and allow him to take the brunt of the enemy’s offense. This reduced the human infantry to a two hundred and seventy degree window of danger and it also allowed them to peel off discreetly at doors or behind other structures, completely hidden from the enemy’s view.

The benefits outweighed the negatives a hundred fold. But just like all weapons, there was a time and a place to use it.

When they got within rifle range, the six soldiers got behind Janis. He became their shield. When they got underneath Terminal 1, two of the soldiers branched out ahead. They were fast and quiet, the scouts.

They got to a garage entrance of Terminal 1. This would get them into the service level of the building where luggage was sorted and the equipment was stored. Janis easily forced the gate open.

Once again, the six soldiers stacked behind him as they entered. Inside, the scouts moved ahead, calling clear through their closed circuit comm as they weaved between the conveyor belts and through the compressed air powered service vehicles.

“We’re in Terminal 1,” Janis said in his comm.

“Looking at the schematic,” General Boen said. “You are at a service elevator. Past that are stairs that lead up to the main floor. Ignore those. Past that is a service tunnel that connects all of the terminals. It’s used for VIPs. We have word that it hasn’t been used since the conversion to rail. Sending the schematic.”

Janis received the schematics wirelessly. He behaved as the team’s data center. Within one hundred yards of his position, his team could download information into their comm sent to him by Command. The soldiers paused and reviewed the data in their viewfinder before moving on.

They passed the service elevator and stairs and found locked double doors. Janis pulled them open and the men stacked behind him. Below were stairs that disappeared into black.

“Activating night vision,” Janis said. The inside of his helmet went from clear to a light green. A few visible steps into an abyss turned into a stairway that went down one hundred feet.

“We’re going down. Expect a communication drop out, this thing is deep,” Janis said.

“Roger,” Boen replied.

Janis barely fit in the stairway. He squatted and hunched over, using his arms as braces against the wall. His feet were articulated, but even then, the stairs were tough. Under his weight the cement crumbled and the metal supports shuddered like a taut guitar string. The team stayed back until he had reached the bottom.

“I made it,” Janis said.

The soldiers hurried down.

“The gate floor can hold you?” a scout named Estevan asked skeptically. Behind her it looked like a truck had tried to scratch its way through.

“So they say,” Janis said. Estevan nodded. Good enough for her.

The hallway was long and straight, easily a half mile. There were no obvious ambush points, so they moved quickly. At midpoint, a hallway turned to their right and a sign said “Terminal 2.” They continued on. At the end of the hallway was a set of stairs that led up to Terminal 3.

“Command, can you hear me?” Janis asked. He got nothing.

“I’ll go up first,” Janis said. He used all four limbs like a gorilla and crunched up the stairs. When he got to the top, Estevan came up with a camera wand. She put it under the door and looked around.

“We got three hostiles in front of us,” she whispered. “I can’t see behind. They know about this door and their guns are raised. They heard.”

“Let’s say hello,” Janis replied. Estevan slipped back to the bottom of the stairs and got ready with the rest of the team.

= = =

David Hannah wasn’t from the Middle East. He was from Berkeley, California. His parents were professors there. David grew up in a beautiful cottage overlooking the ocean that his mom had inherited from her father who had inherited it from his father, who had breached the shores of Normandy in World War II. While they ate dinner, as the sun sunk behind the endless sea, his parents would rant about the evils of their country. How corporations ran it. How the middle class was drying up. How we imposed our will on other nations. The irony was lost on them.

“The President is a puppet,” his mother used to say over dinner. Tonight it was soy burgers and kale salad. “Corporations run the show, David. You might as well not even vote.”

His father chortled at a comic in The New Yorker.

He legacied into Berkeley and there he was introduced to the Western Curse by his roommate and fellow political activist/anarchist.

“Who are they?” David asked while they ate a panini made with free-range chicken, gluten and pesticide free bread, and a slice of locally grown tomato.

“They’re an organization that is against the Coalition’s abuse of power. And they are funded, bro.”

“Terrorist?” David asked. It sounded like an Islamic thing and those were everywhere. Nowadays if you closed your eyes and threw a rock, you’d hit some Islamic fundamentalist group.

“They don’t care about your religion, where you’re from, nothing like that. They just care that you believe in the message and want to do something about it.” His roommate passed him the information he had printed out. David pushed the last of the sando into his mouth and licked his fingers clean of organic mayo. He flipped through the pages. “Huh. Looks like something worth checking out.”

Now, he really wished he had skipped that meeting.

“Uh, Antoine?” David said into his walkie-talkie. Behind two large doors he heard a grindstone move up the stairs. The other soldiers looked at each other nervously and retreated. David didn’t notice.

“Yes?” Antoine crackled over the radio.

“Something’s down here,” David said. The noise had stopped.

“Soldiers?” Antoine asked. David could hear the excitement in the man’s voice. He wanted a battle.

“I don’t know,” David replied.

“Report back when you do.” Antoine got off the channel.

David held an AK-47. Holstered was the Uzi-Pro. The other soldiers were gone. He looked around and saw them hiding behind the various machines and pillars in the room. He slowly walked up to the door.

“What are you doing?” a soldier hissed from behind a conveyor belt. David put his finger up to his mouth, telling him to shush.

Ten feet from the door, he learned what was behind it. The clatter of an accelerating rollercoaster vibrated through the room. A buzz filled the air. David didn’t know it, but his hair stood on end.

WHAM! The doors flew off their hinges and for a second, David thought he was staring at a giant mechanical bull. It came out on all fours and then rose onto two legs. David could see a man, impossibly, looking at him from inside. It hissed and groaned, the whine originating from gigantic drive chains that spun in random orbit around its waist. They crackled with electricity.

David raised his gun to fire but it was too late. Janis grabbed him and pulled him into the spinning chains, eviscerating the Berkeley graduate like he had been dropped into a Cuisinart. The majority of David splattered against the wall to Janis’s left. A thick, red, tapenade of skin, bone, and guts.

The terrorists opened fire on Janis. The bullets harmlessly flicked off his armor. Janis charged through the conveyor belt and stepped on one, smearing him across the linoleum.

Another terrorist launched a forty millimeter grenade from the underbarrel of his rifle but he was too close for it to arm. The grenade ricocheted off Janis with a twang and exploded against a wall, showering the room with shards of cement and dust. The terrorist switched over and opened fire with the AK, but it was pointless. Janis hammered him down, bursting him open like a ripe tomato.

Janis’s squad rolled through the entrance and chased down the remaining terrorists. Most had fled when the mechanized god had risen before them. It was covered in Berkeley’s blood. It looked born from it. A pagan sacrifice made in vain.

“We’re a go. I repeat we are a go!” Janis said over the comm.

“Roger. You are a go,” General Boen repeated.

“Go! Go!” he heard the other soldiers say. They were stacked behind him again. A set of stairs led up to the main floor. Janis spun up again and his body shook from the horsepower and torque that it took to give him strength and speed. He charged up the stairs.

= = =

Antoine heard the volley of gunshots over the radio and the wet gurgle of death. The giant was here. Antoine quickly hit the key command on the laptop. It began hunting for wireless protocols to hack. Three hundred yards down the hall he watched the giant rise from a stairwell.

It was big. Even far away, he could see the distinct armor: the solid chest plate, the carved armor that wrapped around the joints. The way slats in its thighs undulated with each foot impact, absorbing the weight. It was astounding. Pairs of little boots scampered behind it like a centipede. The infantry.

“One hundred yards,” Antoine reminded his second lieutenant. He held the detonator. They had planted the charges. They wanted the soldiers close. They wanted the giant.

Antoine glanced at the computer. It had found a military wireless protocol. Antoine smiled as they approached. They expected him to be scared, but he knew what they didn’t: the moves had already been made. The checkmate was just a formality.

= = =

They were using the hostages as human shields.

We should have predicted this, Janis thought. The soldiers behind him couldn’t open fire. Even from here, Janis couldn’t tell a terrorist from a hostage. In front of the crowd were sixty bodies piled like dirty laundry. One shot every five minutes with no demands, just as promised.

They wanted this, Janis thought. They want to die.

Janis stopped.

“Let the hostages go,” Janis said. He voice was amplified.

No one answered. Janis could see that some of the people were crying and scared out of their minds. They were clearly held against their will. But others were drawn in, a sign of shock, but also calculation. They were at a stalemate.

“What do you want?” Janis asked. Some whimpered cries filled the air, but no demands. He turned off the loudspeaker.

“What should we do?” Janis asked Boen over the comm. General Boen watched the situation with a camera mounted inside Janis’s helmet.

“At your eleven o’clock, one row back is a man with red hair and a beard. That man is Antoine. He’s the one shooting the hostages. He is the only terrorist who we have a clear picture of. Hold . . .”

Janis could hear someone speak to General Boen. It was Lindo.

“Okay. We have confirmation that their video feed to the web has been cut,” Boen said. “Proceed forward.”

“What about the hostages?” Janis asked.

“Eric, they’re gonna kill them anyway. They’ve made no formal demands and they’ve already shot sixty. You’ll have to make the decision between hostiles and friendlies on the fly, but a Tank Major running into the crowd will disperse it. Over.”

“Over,” Janis said. Ignore the human shield. That was what he was just told. Before his hands thunder down, look into their eyes and decide good or bad. There would be mistakes.

The greater good.

We don’t negotiate with terrorists.

Janis accelerated forward; inertia overcome with the instant torque of his electric motors. Beneath his feet the polished granite floor evaporated into dust, pluming around his feet like pollen.

Antoine choked when the giant charged. The four hundred hostages screamed in fear and scattered, ignoring the guns pointed at them. The human shield was supposed to stall the military. But instead, the giant closed in as if everyone was declared guilty.

“Blow it!” Antoine yelled to his second lieutenant. Nothing happened. He turned to see a fat woman scratching at the lieutenant’s face; it was mutiny on a grand scale. The giant had turned an orderly hostage situation rabid. The room shook from his approaching footsteps. Antoine shot the fat woman in the stomach and followed up to the head. “Blow it!” he screamed. The second lieutenant hit the button.

Behind Janis the floor exploded upward and then tumbled thirty feet below. In front of him, the same thing happened, opening a fifty-foot chasm between him and the terrorists. They were stranded on an island. Janis could jump down unharmed, but the six behind him could not. Thirty feet was too far for them when the ground below was tons of ragged steel and stone, angled and sharp like pikes in a punji pit.

“We lost Mitch!” Janis heard over the comm. Whether Mitch was dead or alive wasn’t the question. He had fallen below. It was now five soldiers and the giant completely exposed with no exit.

The wail of miniguns filled the air. A section of crowd exploded into meat, popping and pulsing as they slopped to the floor. A few fortunate souls crawled through the blood and gore to escape the hail of lead. Janis’s armor sparked like flint on steel. They were trying to kill the soldiers huddled behind him. Janis heard Estevan scream as a round tore through her thigh. Janis crouched like a hockey goalie to block the bullets from getting through.

Janis could barely hear the comm. Lead drummed off his helmet and the miniguns screamed.

“THEY’RE FLANKING. WE CAN’T STAY UP HERE!” another soldier, Hostettler, yelled.

Janis saw the terrorists on each side run from support pillar to support pillar. They had assault rifles. He would live but his team, flesh and blood wrapped in Kevlar suits, would get overwhelmed. He saw twenty on both sides, covering and moving, basic military training. His team hunched against his tree sized legs and took aim, keeping their sights between the pillars the terrorists would have to cross.

Antoine watched from the cover of a men’s bathroom as the giant hunched down to save his companions from the volley of lead. He saw his soldiers flanking, getting past the immovable man. He smiled. The computer had hacked into Janis and it was now uploading the software that Mohammed had promised would end this. From the progress bar, it was minutes away.

“Hit him with the RPGs,” Antoine said into his walkie-talkie. Four soldiers magically appeared from behind pillars, thirty yards from Janis.

Janis saw the vapor trail of the RPGs before he registered what was happening. Four RPG’s hit him simultaneously. They rocked him enough that he had to brace himself with an arm against the ground, but they caused no damage. We have to get out of here.

“Are any of them at our back?” Janis yelled.

“No. We’re clear on our back.” Hostettler fired on three terrorists perpendicular to the Tank Major.

“Eject! Hang on to your guns,” Janis said. “We’re ejecting!”

Ejecting was used to remove “soft soldiers” from situations of imminent death. It had been practiced three times. The first two, Janis had broken the test soldier’s legs and caused a concussion for another. He had to nail it.

“Estevan, you’re coming with me,” Janis growled.

“Yes, sir.”

He could hear weakness in her voice. The minigun shot rounds powerful enough to kill a grizzly. He hoped the round had grazed her but her voice told him otherwise.

Janis’s upper body moved freely three hundred and sixty degrees from his lower body. This was to dissipate the energy of an unsuccessful hydraulshock attack. He spun around and grabbed Hostettler and Woods.

“Ready?” he asked. They nodded.

Throwing them was like a human throwing a cabbage patch doll. They were so light in comparison that he couldn’t go by feel. He threw them low, trying to push them just over the chasm to the other side. Too high and they would fall and break. But a push throw transferred the energy into a roll. They made it over.

He grabbed Johnson and Bush and did the same. They all hit fifteen feet past the moat and tumbled another twenty. Each soldier rolled prone and immediately fired on incoming hostiles.

Estevan was as bad as Janis thought. The round had hit her below the knee and her shin was a bent twig, barely attached. A pool of blood beneath her dripped over the side.

“Hang on Estevan. Hang on,” Janis said. He scooped her in his hands like he was holding a butterfly. Rounds rained on him, hitting his hands, his arms, his body. He felt another RPG hit his back to no affect. Syrupy blood dripped through his fingers.

“Hang on!”

Janis jumped down into the rocky debris and rolled to lessen the impact on Estevan. He heard her cry out. He stood up. The dust was thick, but he could see. Support pillars, ten feet in diameter were on each side of the hole. He moved quickly into the dark and put Estevan down.

“Stay alive,” he said.

She nodded and tore at her clothing to make a tourniquet.

“Fuck them up,” she said through her teeth.

= = =

Hostettler and Woods covered each other, backtracking and firing on the approaching terrorists. They had the left; Johnson and Bush took the right.

It was sticky. Hostettler had seen combat where splinters of stone flung through the air, dust obscured friendlies from hostiles, and the only thing you could hear was the ringing in your ears and the thud, thud, thud, of machine guns tearing at your position. This one was up there.

A terrorist—a young woman—came around a corner with an RPG, he shot her in the head and then shot the man behind her. More came. Johnson cried out, a round got him in the right shoulder. He switched the rifle to his good arm and shot from the hip as the other arm dangled at his side and the sleeve bloomed with red.

The ground coughed. That was how Hostettler would have described it. As if the earth hacked something free. He heard the echo of what they were trained to ignore, because the sound was so startling that the first time he heard it, he lost control of his bowels. He and the others dropped to the ground.

The comm earpieces had a low pass and high pass filter built in. These were designed to eliminate frequencies that could disorient them or cause permanent damage. The hydraulshock hit every frequency above and below what a human could hear. Five hertz to fifty thousand kilohertz. Their earpieces limited hearing response from twenty hertz to seventeen thousand kilohertz and rolled off anything above eighty-five decibels, hard limiting at one hundred decibels.

BAM!

A pack of terrorists to their left vanished in an avalanche of concrete, granite, and steel, that shifted fifty feet in less than a hundredth of a second.

BAM!

The dull roar in his earpiece. On Johnson and Bush’s side, the ground was thrown onto the train tracks. Twenty terrorists vanished, blended into meaty clay by the tonnage of floor and structure that had been turned to rubble.

They were clear. They looked at each other, shell shocked.

“Janis, we are clear,” Johnson said. “Thank you.”

“Watch this,” Janis replied.

Going away from them, the floor disappeared in a wave. Not from the hydraulshock, but from eight thousand pounds moving at twenty-five miles per hour snapping through each pillar as if they were brittle bones. The men at the miniguns couldn’t react in time. The floor had become seismic, the energy led the charge like a sonic boom. They vanished in the wave of destruction, the floor churning and falling, plowed from below.

Antoine heard the mechanized monster beneath him and the screams of his comrades extinguished with a deep, thudding impact. The entrance of the bathroom hung at the edge of the abyss and he could see the giant’s murky movement, a tarantula that had caught crickets in its burrow. He sprinted out the other side of the men’s bathroom and ran away from the others that had stood to fight.

“I’m okay. I’m okay.” But he didn’t feel okay. He was shaking. He had seen the giant up close, he could picture it trudging forward, sniffing for him like a starving dog, smelling his cowardice.

“Shut up,” he said to himself. He flipped open the computer that he was told would stop the beast. On its screen was a yellow smiley face and “file downloaded!”

But it hadn’t worked.

What if it wasn’t meant to work? What if it was for something completely beyond your pay grade?

Xan would have stood up and slow clapped at the revelation.

“I’m not expendable,” Antoine said to himself.

“Get the FUCK UP,” someone commanded.

Antoine turned into the gray muzzle of Mitch Ratny’s SAW machine gun. When Mitch had fallen into the moat, he moved ahead two hundred yards to get behind the miniguns. His ankle was demolished, but he limped his way back up just in time to see this red headed pussy run away. He hoped Frenchy made a move.

= = =

All things considered, Tank Major Janis’s first mission was a success. The female soldier—Lindo had no idea why a woman would want to do that kind of work—would lose her leg. That was the only military casualty. Including the sixty before they arrived, one hundred and twenty hostages died. Janis had killed thirty-five terrorists. The rest of the team killed twenty-five. O’Hare train station would need an extensive remodel.

The stench of the kill wafted through the train on the way back to Virginia. They hosed Janis down, but red pieces of meat continued to fall out of his gears and drop from his hands. The pressure sprayer took ninety percent of it away, but the other ten percent was like a splinter: it just had to work itself out.

They had the leader on the train. He was coming back to Virginia with them. At first, Antoine had been smug. “I want a lawyer,” he’d demanded. Evan and the others laughed out loud. The man didn’t get it. He was a ghost. Evan watched the resilience bleed from the man’s eyes as the laughter continued like he had just told the world’s best knock-knock joke.

Evan was now alone. He found the gentle sway of the bullet train soothing.

They didn’t know what they were walking into. That was the problem with this mission. They got surprised. While Janis’s open architecture allowed Command to upload or download information and pass this to the team, they had no real-time way of knowing what the enemy was doing. They didn’t know position. They didn’t know movement. Lindo and the others had gone in overconfident. They thought the Tank Major would cause the terrorists to fall to their knees and beg for mercy.

For his physical military inventions, Evan liked to sketch concepts freehand. He felt there was an art to it. In his lap was a pad of paper and on it was a flying disk. At its center was a turbine blade. Scrawled in the upper right hand corner was a description: “x-ray scope, infrared scope, HD camera, night vision scope.”

Like the Tank Major, he could clearly see the design. He understood how it was powered and its purpose. He paused and looked at his drawing. He bit on the top of the pencil. And then he wrote “Hover-rover Concept” at the top.

It would be easy to implement. The majority of the technology needed was already built into the giant two train cars back.

= = =

The smell made Janis nauseous. It was like someone had shoved raw steak into his nostrils. Terry, the assistant on duty, was a fifty-year-old hippy with long gray hair, a walrus mustache, and a soft midsection. He was cleaning between Janis’s armored plates and gears with a large hand brush and a power sprayer. The ground beneath them looked like a slaughterhouse.

Terry took a moment to throw up. He tried to move off Janis, but he couldn’t jump down in time. Stringy green hurl splattered on Janis’s left shoulder and rode down his arm.

“Sorry, Eric,” Terry said. He pressure sprayed the hurl off.

“It actually made the room smell better,” Janis said.

“How was it?” Terry asked. He worked Janis’s fingers and the armor that protected his knuckles. They were matted with thirty different human meats.

“It was,” Janis thought about it. It was so hard to describe. “It was like I was a kid and instead of playing with He-Man, I became him. You know how’d you have He-Man fight ten, twenty action figures? I used to make their castle out of Legos. And he’d just smash through it?”

Terry nodded.

“That’s what it was like. It’s a retarded way to explain it, but it was like I was He-Man. Like I was invincible,” Janis said.

Terry turned off the sprayer for a second.

“I know I’m not supposed to ask, but what about all this?” Terry gestured to the pieces of people on the floor, slowly sliding toward the center drain.

“I used to have a hard time with it,” Janis said. “But we got nine billion people on Earth. If you can’t play nice in the sandbox, then you don’t get to play.”

Terry fired the sprayer back up.

“I’d like to see Estevan when we get back to base,” Janis said.

“I’ll put the request in to Dr. Lindo,” Terry replied. He hoped the water wouldn’t run out.

Chapter 14

Xan had been out of cyberspace for three weeks. It took two weeks for him to come up to full consciousness. Even with the electrodes and passive treatments, he needed a week of physical therapy to regain his strength. His first shower had felt like a re-birth. He had sex with a real woman. He ate a bacon double cheeseburger. And he waited for the Western Curse to hijack O’Hare train station.

From his office (my real office, he thought) he watched the same IP footage as the other three billion voyeurs when the Western Curse took over O’Hare. He waited for the giant. He wanted to see it in action. He had partial schematics and fragments of design taken from his months of hacking and trolling in cyberspace. While it was enough to build a prototype, it was not enough to truly understand how the engineering worked. They knew the American version had drive chains around its waist, but why? They knew the human body was suspended to avoid abrupt G-forces, but how? Guesses had to be made. He didn’t have the technology to gather all he needed. He didn’t have the King Sleeper.

His mouth hung open when he finally saw it. He believed its size, he understood its proportions, but he was amazed at the way it moved. It moved like a man, no reason to over describe it. It moved with the fluidity of a giant man. A perfect engineering accomplishment.

The video was cut before he saw its rampage, but he had enough footage for his engineering team to dissect and reverse engineer their prototype to a point of divergent similarity.

The mission to plant the program in the Tank Major was a success. The Tank Major was on a train currently moving toward Virginia at two hundred and forty-eight miles per hour. It left O’Hare National three hours before. He knew this because the program that was uploaded into Tank Major Janis’s implant was pinging a GPS satellite high in the sky.

The program had many functions. The pinging was the simplest and least likely to be detected. For now, it was all he needed.

On a large monitor he watched a red dot from the GPS move across the U.S. map. Soon it would stop and twelve hours after that, he would initiate the next program. Hopefully within a week of that, then the final one.

A twelve soldier team was training for a very special mission, possibly the most important mission ever conceived. Xan would go, too. It was good to get back in the field. He wouldn’t lead the charge, he was too important, but he didn’t mind wet work. It kept his mind fresh and aware of the real consequences of war, something that men in situation rooms forget when abstract dots represented platoons.

= = =

When Antoine demanded a lawyer and they laughed, he knew he was in a world of shit. The interrogators had beaten him so badly he had pissed himself. Now he was in a jail cell with his back against the wall, whimpering. He understood what it felt like to be on death row. The only difference was that Antoine’s sentence could be short, it could be long, it could go on forever. No one knew where he was, no one was going to save him, and the men who had taken him were certain he had information they needed. A quick jolt of electricity would be welcome. A cocktail of poison in the vein, he would happily administer himself. No luck.

A boy stood outside his cell. Antoine hadn’t noticed him before. He was lanky with dark hair that bordered pale, freckled skin. He watched Antoine without blinking.

“Who let you down here, kid?” Antoine asked. He sat against the wall opposite the bars. He smelled the toilet a few feet away. Over the rim he saw splattered hiccups of dried shit. He felt his urine soaked bottom sticking to his skin.

The boy turned his head like someone was speaking into his ear. For a second, Antoine thought he heard a whisper like a gasp of wind through a tree. It gave him chills. No one else was in the room, but someone was in the room. He knew it.

“What’s going on?” Antoine stood up and walked to the bars. The boy did not move. He stood six inches away from Antoine, well within arms reach. Antoine looked up and down the hallway. There was no one else in the jail cells. He didn’t notice this before, but there were no doors or stairs leading out.

“Hello?” Antoine screamed. He looked at the boy. Once again the boy had his head cocked like someone was speaking to him.

“Who are you talking to? What’s going on?” Antoine said.

The boy’s eyes went dark. Not dilated. They turned completely black, deeper than black. Antoine searched the hallway frantically and then retreated away from the boy. The boy rose into the air and floated as if he had been crucified. And then the room snapped like rubber. Antoine fell to the ground and when he looked up, a purple and white pulsing snake was growing from the boy’s mouth. It slid between the bars toward Antoine. He ran to the back of the cell and scraped at the wall until his fingers bled. And when the amoeba snake attached to his head, he screamed in horror. But no one heard him, because he wasn’t there.

Antoine had been drugged unconscious two minutes after he was put on the train. He was now five miles underground in Virginia, two hundred feet away from the King Sleeper who was now rummaging through his mind, learning everything about him, from his first kiss, to his greatest disappointment, even how he used to kill frogs for fun. The King Sleeper hunted down information on the Western Curse, liquefying Antoine’s synapses as he went. No reason to be gentle, Justin’s father had told him. This man was going to die anyway.

= = =

“Mohammed Jawal,” Lindo said. He was in a virtual situation room with the President, General Boen, multiple military advisors, and an abnormally detached Cynthia Revo. He went through the material he had torn from Antoine, who was now a pile of ash that had been tossed into a field.

“I know him,” General Boen said. He had met Mohammed years ago at the White House.

“Yes, many of you have shaken his hand. My intel didn’t give me all of his motivations, but he is the head of the Western Curse.”

Evan quickly read Mohammed’s bio to the group and then he brought up a current photo on large screen. It was a jigsaw puzzle. His eyes were there, his mouth, his hair, but his forehead and the sides of his face were completely gone, just a low-resolution approximation of his skin tone.

“Why is the photo weird?” one of the advisors asked. Lindo ignored the question. It was “weird” because it had been pulled from Antoine’s mind and people focus on certain parts of another person’s face. Antoine hadn’t really noticed Mohammed’s forehead or cheeks. So it wasn’t there.

“This is as up to date as we have. If we cross reference it with a previous picture.” Lindo did so. It was a full body photo of Mohammed clean cut, standing next to a former President. “We have this.”

The photo was perfect.

“This is our enemy,” Lindo said.

“Where is he?” the President asked.

“Somewhere in New York. We’re searching.”

Online. That’s all the King Sleeper is doing; looking for this motherfucker.

But Lindo kept that to himself. He still had full charge of the King Sleeper. He looked around the room. All of them had the digital worm buried somewhere in their brain, dormant unless Evan wanted it to wake. The folks in this room were on a need-to-know basis and, well, they weren’t important enough.

= = =

Cynthia pulled the Mindlink off her head without saying goodbye. In the situation room, she just vanished. She curled up and sobbed. She couldn’t do it anymore. Sabot was right and her ego had kept her blind to his revelation. She had been on anti-anxiety pills since she had confronted Sabot at his mother’s home.

Afterwards she had searched her soul and instead of her conscience coming clean, it had morphed into a constant critic of her life.

“Loser,” it whispered in her head when she woke up.

“What makes you so special?” her mirrored reflection would suddenly say.

She was losing it and she knew it, but a shrink was out of the question. At her office, she pressed her forehead against the window and peered down. One hundred and fifty stories. Her eyes traced left to where the glass met the frame.

One inch glass.

She pictured herself falling, her short hair violently pushed back, her cheeks rippling from the air resistance, the pedestrian’s wide eyes as they scrambled out of the way as she shot toward them at one hundred and twenty-five miles per hour.

Too easy.

She shook her head and snapped back to reality. A depressed laugh escaped her.

“If there’s a heaven, that wouldn’t help me get in,” she said. She felt the empty room. It was too big now. She was imprisoned by her riches. She knew what she had to do to get out of her funk.

“When you’re depressed, clean out your closet,” her grandma once told her when she had been down about a boy.

Keep moving. Be productive. But move in the right direction.

She pushed the bottle of pills off her desk and into the trash.

She hadn’t walked alone in over a decade. It was night in a bitter January that greeted Chicago every New Year. It was ten below with wind chill, and she was wearing a sweater, pants, and light shoes. She didn’t mind. It felt earned, a self-flagellation to absolve her past misdeeds. The cold cut into her, causing her to shiver and her hands to ache. It sobered her from her month long drugging and she felt her mortality.

She walked briskly, her head tucked down, her arms across her chest. He lived four miles away. If she made it, she would plead for her life back. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have to.

Sabot woke to a knock on his door. He flailed until he got his bearings and then he hopped out of bed. He glanced at the clock: 3:43 a.m. He pulled a compact pistol from a nightstand and went to the door.

He didn’t look through the peephole. He knew from a grim memory that if a person wanted you dead, they didn’t need to get inside. Put the muzzle of the gun next to the peephole and wait for the light to go black. Boom.

He positioned himself to the side of the door and opened it quickly. Cynthia stood in front of him, shaking from the cold, the snow melting into her hair and rolling down her cheeks. He dropped the gun and pulled her inside.

“You’re freezing, what’s going on?” He pushed her toward the couch, grabbed a blanket and wrapped her in it. He quickly went to his bedroom and tore all the blankets off the bed. He came in and layered them on top.

“I,” she started to say.

“One second.” Sabot filled a kettle with water and put it on the electric range. He came back rubbing his hands together for warmth, she was that cold. She shivered violently. He sat next to her and warmed her with his body, running his arms up and down her back, trying to get the circulation going.

“I . . . m sor-ry. I sho—ldn’t have co-me,” she said.

“Shhh. It’s cool. Let’s get you warmed up and then I’ll yell at you,” Sabot said. She couldn’t help but smile.

The tea helped. She sipped at it, letting it burn her mouth and tongue. Sabot leaned against a wall across from her.

“I can’t do it anymore, Sabot,” she said. “The Tank Major killed more than thirty people, more that weren’t accounted for because they were collateral damage.”

“Hostages,” Sabot said. She nodded.

“Janis doesn’t even know. They did DNA testing afterwards.”

“The terrorists deserved it, Cynthia. They murdered innocent people,” Sabot said.

“I’m not saying they didn’t. They did. But saying it is different than seeing it.” She shook her head, remembering.

“We have cameras mounted on the Tank Major. They send video and audio wirelessly to Command. You’d see a man raise his hands to block the Tank Major’s punch. It’d be almost funny if I could get the look of those people out of my head as his fist came down.”

She took a sip of her tea.

“I’ll quit tomorrow, Sabot, if that will get you back. You’re right, I thought the Mindlink and all the good it’s done overshadowed this stuff. But I’m like a doctor that cured someone’s cancer only to give them AIDS,” Cynthia said. “I’ll be remembered, I know that, it’s inevitable, but I want to be remembered for good, for truly being good, not just brilliant.”

“You’re not going to like what I’m going to say,” Sabot said. Without the light in his eyes, she would have thought he was rejecting her again, forever. She waited with one eyebrow raised. “You can’t leave.”

She slapped her hand down on the couch. “Sabot! Quit being a moving target! What the hell do you want?” she said. But she felt good, she felt like they were back.

“Evan—” Sabot began.

“Is frightening,” she finished.

“No shit. I’m a great judge of character. Remember that,” he said. “He has your technology. He can build these things until he runs out of metal.”

“Yes.”

“At this point, it exists with or without you. That ship has sailed. If you hadn’t given it to him this would be a different conversation, but it’s done. But right now, MindCorp supplies the implants and the software.”

“Yes?” Cynthia said. Sabot was surprised she hadn’t gotten it yet. He didn’t know she had been stoned for a month.

“You can control it,” Sabot explained. “Not completely, not in the open, but if things go awry. I don’t trust Lindo, I haven’t trusted anyone less in my life. But we need to be around him.”

“We?” she said.

“Yes, we,” Sabot said.

“We’re the checks and balances,” Cynthia said slowly. The fog evaporated from her mind and she understood what Sabot had spoon fed her: no nation could oppose the U.S. while MindCorp was partnered with them. But MindCorp was more than an equal partner. And instead of being a sheep, it had to be a wolf.

“How long have you been thinking about this?” Cynthia asked. She was impressed with Sabot’s insight.

“When I opened the door and you were there,” he said. “I would love for us to sit on a beach for the rest of our lives, get too tan, too drunk and age poorly. But you’re going to be remembered until the end of civilization, Cynthia. The time is now. This is your legacy. It’s not about the invention or the power. It’s about vigilance.”

He let that settle in. “If I’m wrong about Evan, great. We won’t have to do a thing. But we need to plan for the worst and now, while he needs you, is the time.”

Sabot watched Cynthia as her amazing mind spun into high gear. She focused and the path of MindCorp, the U.S., and the world spun together in front of her like fabric from a loom. Each thread was a pathway and the consequence of each had to be known. There would be untold death if the U.S. went astray. She understood that. If she had to intervene, she would be committing treason and sentenced to death. She understood that too.

The debate could no longer be about nations and borders, it had to be about people and the greater good. Lindo couldn’t be allowed to win. His interests were not the world’s. It was as simple as that. Cynthia understood that all Lindo saw were flames and himself floating above them. She had to make sure that remained only in his dreams.

= = =

The next day, Evan got a call from Kove.

“Sabot’s back,” Kove said. “Cynthia says our services are no longer needed.”

“Hmm,” Evan said. “Okay. Report to the Derik Building.”

“Yes, sir.” Kove hung up.

Sabot and Cynthia had made amends. Evan thought about it for a moment and then pushed it aside. He was testing a new technique. Before, he would connect in as Justin’s father and guide him, but he wasn’t in control. He wanted to feel that power instead of just standing next to it. He wanted to ride the lightning. But Justin was too aware.

Evan acquired ten death row inmates who were now unconscious, shaved bald and strapped to Sleeper chairs around him. His hands were tacky from their blood. He had worked on them all night, installing contact patches into their skulls. The next step was to perform Forced Autism on them. And then he could test his hypothesis.

He looked up from the last inmate and caught his reflection in the shine of his surgical tools. His face fragmented across them like a horror filled kaleidoscope. His smile bent around the tray, leaping from blade to blade and he thought what he was seeing was prophetic: it would work.

The big idea was close. Unnecessary, premature right now, but this was the first step. Why be one when you could be ten? Or a hundred? Or a billion?

Why just be one?

He forgot about Sabot and Cynthia and what that could mean, and got lost in his own mind. It was the only place he cared for now.

Chapter 15

Raimey fought the darkness for four months before it finally won. He felt sorry for himself. He couldn’t turn over. He was tired of sitting in his own filth. The sponge baths and diaper changes eroded his ego. But watching his beautiful wife slowly break down was what took him.

There was no way to avoid it. She was one of the strongest women Raimey had ever known, but in the six months after the bombing, she had aged a decade. Deep frown lines were visible even while she slept. Streaks of gray threaded through her once jet black hair. And purple moons outlined the base of her eyes.

She was the breadwinner, mother, and wife. And that was all superseded by her nursing duties. He remembered the sex they had when he first came back, the way she had rode him. That passion lasted for a month before the toil of a hundred diaper changes, a spilled catheter ruining a rug, the neighbor’s relentless pity; when all of that dug at her will like a thousand pick axes, chop, chop, chop.

General Boen had kept in touch but even though Raimey had grown desperate enough to beg, Boen had nothing for him.

“In time, John. Just not right now. Is the government coming through?” Boen asked. They were but it wasn’t enough. Tiffany had cut hours to take care of him.

For John, the world was in a constant eclipse. He would catch himself staring at the wall for lengths on end, not even bothering to turn on the TV. He could feel himself shit his pants, the crackle and pop of his fart and the warm pile spreading out inside his diaper. He would try to hold his pee, but if Tiffany was gone too long, he would sit in it, smell it.

She had been getting sick a lot lately and they both knew it was from the stress.

“Babe, you need a break from this,” Raimey said. Tiffany tried to ignore what he was saying. Vanessa had left the dinner table and it was just the two of them. Tiffany started cleaning up.

“Hon! Please,” he said. She turned to him. He remembered when her eyes would bathe him with warmth, when the good times of their life were like embers, keeping the love aglow. She had doll eyes now. Not out of hate, but out of exhaustion. The marathon was longer than she had thought. “Sit down. We need to talk.”

She did. She rested her head in her hands. “I’m fine, John,” she said.

“No, you’re not and we’re not,” he said. He swallowed. “I’m an anchor babe, and I’m dragging both of you down.”

For a second, he thought she was going to slap him.

“You. Are. Not. Don’t think that! I love you!” she said.

“I love you too, but that has nothing to do with it. I’m wearing you out. I’m not saying let me drive out into the cold and don’t look for me, I’m just saying you and Vanessa need to take a break from this. Go somewhere without me. We can hire a nurse or something.”

She didn’t want to say it was a good idea, but he was right. She nodded in quiet resignation. “I just need to catch up on sleep. I’ve had this cold. I should probably go to the doctor,” she said quietly. “We could go to Florida, maybe. That’s an easy train ride.”

She put her hand out to him. “I don’t like leaving you. I feel like I’m abandoning you.” Her bottom lip quivered and she began to cry. “I’m just so tired.”

John wished he could put an arm around her and bring her to his chest and massage her head while she cried it all out, but the days of simple support had passed. So many things he had taken for granted, and so many things he thought were their future, gone like ghosts.

= = =

She had bought the tickets, hired the nurse, and seen the doctor. Raimey and Tiffany fought over the length of time, but Raimey insisted two weeks. She finally agreed. Tiffany needed it, and she needed to sleep until noon a few days in a row and feel sand between her toes.

The VA recommended the nurse. Nikki Johnson was a pleasant woman in her fifties. She was built out of different sized circles: round cheeks, round stomach, round calves and hands.

Tiffany and Vanessa were packed up and their suitcases were at the front door. Raimey wheeled over to them.

“I’ll walk you to the subway,” he said. Already he could see a change in Tiffany. Her head was up higher like the yoke of life had loosened.

It was late January and Chicago winters sucked. John was wrapped in three thick blankets but his mouth had to be exposed to move the joystick. The cold made his teeth hurt.

Vanessa suffered because of this too, he thought. He watched her pull her suitcase—pink and too small— inappropriate for a ten-year-old getting her dad’s height and her mom’s good looks. She has already outgrown childhood and I’m the catalyst. She no longer bounded along like she was skipping from one thing to the next. She moved with the thoughtlessness of an adult.

They reached the subway station three blocks from their house. For a second, it felt like he was saying goodbye forever. Then Vanessa hugged him.

“I love you, Dad. We’ll call.” She kissed him on the cheek.

“I love you, too,” he said. She ran up the stairs with her bag.

“Don’t go too far!” Tiffany called after her. She turned to John. “This will be good,” she said. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Nikki seems nice. I can really let it go now,” he said. “Tacos, chili, sauerkraut, anything I want.”

Tiffany laughed. “Yeah, yeah.”

Their eyes locked, connecting their souls. We think we know our future, that our plans are just process, but tell that to God.

“We should go as a family next time,” Tiffany said.

“You rest up, have a Mai Tai. Let’s start fresh when you get back. I think I’m going to get a job,” Raimey said. Tiffany raised an eyebrow. “Online,” he explained. “I tested well on the Mindlink and almost all military and police training is virtual now. I could do a lot of things.”

“I hear it’s good for other things too,” she said and winked. She gave him a long kiss. “Thank you,” she said.

“Have fun. Get a massage, lay by the pool.”

He spun around and headed home knowing he had done the right thing. He felt better about what the future had in store.

= = =

It had been two weeks since O’Hare, and Janis wasn’t feeling well. He couldn’t pin it down. The first week he felt fine. They reviewed the footage of the attack, they discussed mistakes, and they drilled new techniques. The engineers pulled him apart to analyze wear and tear from the hydraulshocks. They repainted his armor. The soldiers came into his room dressed in lead aprons to shoot the shit. It was good.

But around a week in, he started to hear things in the night. His room was in the bunker a mile down from the surface. It was a cavern fifty feet by fifty feet cut into rock. The only furniture in it was his maintenance chair. It was a massive slab of metal that he locked into while he slept or when they maintenanced his brain and implant to merge him whole.

He first heard dripping water. If it had sounded far away, it wouldn’t have bothered him, but it sounded like the water was dripping on him. He stood up and searched for the leak. The bunker was carved out of bedrock; water found its way in occasionally. He couldn’t zero in on the leak and he couldn’t sleep with that sound.

The next day someone down the hall wouldn’t stop laughing and they had lungs the size of a zeppelin. They never paused for a breath.

“What’s that guy laughing about?” Janis said, frustrated. It had been going on for hours. A technician was doing his daily diagnostic routine.

“Who’s laughing?” the technician asked quizzically.

Janis gestured, careful to keep his hand away from the man. “The guy! He’s been laughing all day, he won’t stop.”

The technician nodded and finished the diagnostic. Five minutes after he left, two shrinks came down. By then the laughter had stopped. After twenty minutes of probing questions, they went away satisfied. His diagnostic was clean. He was sane.

And then the headaches kicked in. Big ones. No light pressure at the temples, these were railroad spikes through the skull. Doctors drew blood, checked his vitals, and inspected the implant. Everything was fine. They asked if he had a history of headaches, he said no. They gave him a migraine medication and a sleeping aid.

He woke up the next day feeling a little better. Now the headache felt like a bad hangover. Everything he heard had an origin. And Estevan was here to see him. She wore the mandatory lead vest draped over her wheelchair. They couldn’t save her leg. They talked about her physical therapy. She noticed he was closing his eyes hard and grimacing.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“The headache’s coming back,” he said. His vision blurred, and for a moment, it bloomed with orange burst. And then the pain ramped full force. He reached for his head.

“STOP ERIC!” Estevan yelled.

He opened his eyes. His fingers were inches from his face.

-This isn’t real you know-

“What?” Janis asked.

“What?” Estevan replied, confused.

“Didn’t you just say something?”

She shook her head. “I’ll get a doctor.”

-You died at the UN-

“What are you talking about?” Janis said to Estevan. He looked pained. He stood up and paced back and forth never taking his eyes off her. His glare frightened her and she cautiously wheeled herself toward the door.

-It’s time now-

“I didn’t say anything, Eric. What’s going on?” She spoke like she was talking him down from a ledge.

-We are taking you where you belong-

His vision bloomed again. It was orange and red. For a second a bony chatter echoed through his skull.

“You’re not saying that? You don’t hear that?” he pleaded to her. He searched the ceiling for speakers. Janis shook his head back and forth like a horse shooing a fly.

“I’ll grab a doctor.” She was already halfway out the door.

“Yeah. Okay.” He breathed heavily. Sweat covered his face.

She left for help. But when she turned the corner and looked at him through the safety glass, her eyes glowed like coals and her smile was so wide it halved her head.

Janis was unaware of what he did next when he walked over to his chair, sat down, and fell asleep.

= = =

Xan planned the drop time twenty-four hours after the third and final stage of the program went into effect. He and his team were now two hours away, flying at ninety thousand feet in an aircraft that was built for a time when fuel was assumed. He and the twelve soldiers wore suits designed for high altitude jumps. While the entrance was grand, they would be leaving on foot.

The second stage of the program gave them the complete layout of the military base and the bunker where they kept the King Sleeper. They had used both Tank Major Janis’s cameras and then the wireless transmitter built into him to hack the security cameras and access computers on the network.

Each of them carried a submachine gun, a pistol, a knife, and a brick of plastique for door breaches, but none of them expected to take the guns off safety.

Xan closed his eyes and pictured what the base would look like at this very moment. He wondered when they jumped if they would see the flames from space. It was possible.

= = =

Janis woke up in hell. His room was on fire, and ghastly creatures had stormed in. Their mouths were stretched long and filled with molten ash. Their eyes glowed like coals and spilled with blood. The demons chattered like snapping bones and their bodies moved in and out of focus, in and out of frame, like they were being projected from another dimension. The room itself boiled and the air shimmered like thermals down a long, hot highway.

Three surrounded him. Janis jumped off the table and fell to the ground. The three demons swarmed him and he screamed in fear and confusion and rolled over two of them like he was playing steamroller at a slumber party.

The other demon ran to a door engulfed in flames, impossibly so, impossible that the door could still be there with the intensity at which it burned. The demon tried to get out but Janis ran over and slammed it down with an open hand like he was squashing a fly.

He moved away from the door. The fire rolled off it and raced across the ceiling. He ran over and grabbed his helmet. He didn’t have hydraulshocks, but he’d have to make do.

Did I die? The voice had said so.

Did I deserve this? he wondered. Did he deserve Hell? He had killed many in battle but it had been for country. Did that admonish his acts? In God’s eyes did that justify what he had done? Was he good, was he bad? He thought he was good, he felt he had done good.

“But here I am, in Hell,” he said. He cackled, sweat beaded on his face and rolled down in sheets. He ran through the door. Demons were all around him, some running toward him, most running away. Two wore white lab coats. Funny. Others wore dark black, others wore camouflage.

Tank Major Janis ran through them all, hunting them down, ignoring their gunfire. But he couldn’t ignore their howling faces, the bone chatter from their mouths and the constant blood pouring from their eye sockets.

If he was going to Hell, so be it. If they were going to drag him into the depths, let them try. But if sins made the monster, he wanted to be king.

= = =

Xan was two minutes from the drop. His body thrummed with anticipation. The world around him felt more intense, more crisp.

“Sir, you need to see this,” the pilot said in their helmet.

“Put it up on the screen,” Xan replied. A flat screen lit up the front of their compartment. The belly of the plane was loaded with telescopic surveillance cameras. Below them was a warzone.

A thick black cloud covered the area, crackling with a lightning storm of orange as gas mains, ammunition stockpiles, and fuel depots exploded.

“Holy shit,” one of his soldiers said. “Is it that powerful?”

Xan nodded. He touched a device on his shoulder that looked like a hockey puck. It blinked.

“The Wi-Fi scrambler is more important than your gun. Protect it at all costs. If it breaks, he will see you.”

Each of them had the device attached to their shoulder. It sent out an individual IP address. When Tank Major Janis received the address, it would vector the vicinity of the transmission and blur his vision to it, blinding him to the location. Without it, they would be demons, just like the rest. With it, at the very most, they would be an eye protein floating past his vision.

They had an extra scrambler for their prize, the King Sleeper. Their transport, parked one mile away, had a more powerful version just in case the giant wandered past the border of trees and found the truck parked at their pre-chosen exit point.

A red light blinked above them and the screen switched to a thirty second count down.

“Opening the bay,” the pilot said in that detached pilot way.

Xan and the others turned on their oxygen and gripped the handholds near their seats. The bay door opened and the atmosphere around them became so hostile that without their jumpsuits, their blood would boil.

“Go! Go! Go!”

One after another, the team dove out of the plane and into the quiet of space. Xan was the last to go. There was no oxygen at this altitude and in his field of view he could see the entire earth and the black it floated in. A GPS tracker in his visor pinpointed their destination. Right now, they were slightly over the Atlantic Ocean. With the spin of the earth, by the time they landed, they would be one mile from the base.

Xan felt like he wasn’t moving. He rolled over. The plane was already a silver dot streaking across space. He realized that while the plane was getting the hell out of there, it wasn’t going up any higher. He was falling.

He and his team descended at six hundred miles per hour. There was no flap in their suit, no push from air, no sensation other than sight as the earth got closer.

Xan began to feel resistance as they entered the thin atmosphere. They were dropping until eight thousand feet, where the parachute would automatically deploy. His team was in a halo formation. They didn’t need any strays.

The wind noise rose to a whipping roar around his helmet. It would be another eight minutes before they deployed their chutes.

“Check,” Xan said. They had broken into the atmosphere.

“Check,” each soldier said around him, indicating they were fine.

The moon was nearly full and that gave Xan and his team enough light to see the white plumes of clouds approaching. They looked solid, and before impact, Xan closed his eyes for a moment, the old brain ignoring the new brain’s knowledge that it was water vapor. It took just a few seconds to get to the other side and then they were looking at earth, their GPS coordinate now directly below them, but completely covered in black.

Their chutes deployed and each person felt the rip of deceleration as their parachutes grabbed at the air.

Xan couldn’t see land. Instead he saw a clearer vision of what they saw on the plane. It looked like they were floating into a volcano. A ruptured gas main was a geyser, spewing a half-mile ribbon of flame and smoke into the air.

“Stay on course,” Xan said. They had no visual on their DZ, but the GPS showed them the way. They entered the toxic black ceiling.

The noxious cloud broke two hundred feet from the ground. In its place was an oily haze. They landed one mile west of the base, detached their chutes and gathered in the cover of forest. They shrugged off their spent oxygen tanks.

“Turn the map on,” Xan said. The air was so thick it felt like he was breathing through a straw. The GPS map on their helmet visors zoomed in to a detailed map of their surroundings. It showed them in relation to their destination and each soldier in relation to each other. It pointed them directly to the King Sleeper.

“Avoid engaging the enemy. They should never know we’re here,” Xan said. The soldiers nodded.

“You understand the priority,” Xan said. The team had been briefed: if any of them got shot and couldn’t keep up, they would be euthanized. If they were trapped with the King Sleeper, they must kill the boy and then themselves.

Their silence was agreement.

“For China,” Xan said. They moved through the forest toward the base. Even from a mile away, they could hear anguished screams.

= = =

Glass was in the bunker, navigating through the gigantic round air ducts that were laced throughout the facility. When Janis went berserk, Glass quickly grabbed a submachine gun and night vision goggles. Within a fifty-foot radius around him, Janis was death. But not above. He had no projectile weaponry. Glass registered this and scurried up into the ventilation system like a rat.

The vents were dark and now the hallways were as well: Janis had destroyed the power grid. Glass flicked on the night vision goggles. The vents were large enough for Glass to move hunched over. They were thick enough that he didn’t worry about falling through. He moved quickly and quietly and with intent.

His mission wasn’t survival. It was to protect the King Sleeper. From above, Glass had watched Janis’s rampage. Nearly everyone was dead, horribly so. But the King Sleeper had to survive.

He got to the King Sleeper’s chamber. The Data Core was dark and so was the rest of the room. The King Sleeper was still there. His little body squirmed in his shackles like a newborn waking up from a long nap. Without being linked in, the King Sleeper would wake. The world he inhabited had disappeared.

Glass was at least eight stories above the floor. He looked for a place where he could exit the vent and climb down. He saw a vent near the Data Core.

He worked his way through the duct over to it and quietly popped open the vent, and pulled it in. He looked down. Fuck, he thought. This was a one-way trip. Once he dropped down, there was no way to get back up. He couldn’t sling the boy over his shoulder and climb eighty feet up the Core. He would either have to hide with the boy or hope that Janis leaves the area. Neither were great options. Janis had night vision, he could see just as clearly as Glass could now. And apparently everything he saw pissed him off.

Glass gripped the edge of the opening and leaned outside with his legs coiled. After a silent three count, he jumped to the closest scaffolding. He made it. He pulled himself in and worked his way toward a large bracket that held the huge glass tube in place. He bellied up to the Core and shuffled his way around it as if he was on the window ledge of a skyscraper. On the opposite side was a large coolant pump. It was ten feet down and a good jump away. He lunged for it and when he hit, its thin metal case shattered the silence. He froze. In the distance he heard someone plead for their life. The room shuddered from Janis’s answer.

Faster.

He hopped down as deft as a gymnast. The boy was nearly awake. Glass began unhooking him from the Data Crusher.

= = =

Xan and his team moved quickly through the base, heading directly for the bunker located on the northeast side. Xan was in awe. The Tank Major had only been in the hallucinogenic stage of the program for three hours and already the majority of the base was in ruins. It looked like the giant had quickly gone for the utilities—power and gas. The exploded gas main was like a sliver of the sun that had been brought to earth. The team tried to stay in the shadows, but the main wouldn’t allow it. The fire followed their every step as if it were aware of their motives.

Remains of people were scattered throughout their footpath. Like shit at a dog park, Xan would avoid the leftovers of a hand just to step into a large intestine ejected from a crushed carcass. Xan had counted fifty dead, but that was just in front of him. All around, in his periphery he saw the ragged remains of soldiers and staff.

The Tank Major had found hydraulshocks. Two of the buildings looked like they had been shelled from above, the telltale sign of this weapon, from the reports Xan had recovered. A Humvee with a mounted turret was torn in half and hammered down into scrap. The hydraulshock, just like a bomb, created a shockwave from its lightning fast movement and the shifting of mass through the air. Soldiers grinned up at Xan with their faces completely peeled off from the wind shear.

They saw the bunker. Blast doors designed to withstand an indirect nuclear strike were torn off their hinges.

Xan saw no one alive but he felt their presence. They were in hiding. Up in trees, underneath rubble, cowering under the force of nature that was unleashed, that they thought they could control.

His team made it to the bunker doors without incident. The dark gaping hole dared them to come in and they took the dare without blinking. It was their mission. The elevator lift was working, but it would take too long and be too conspicuous. They took the stairs down into the unknown.

“No guns, unless absolutely necessary. He will see and register live fire,” Xan whispered into his comm.

The GPS switched to map mode and used Wi-Fi access points to determine their location. When Xan got to the bottom, he immediately turned right and they headed directly toward the King Sleeper’s quarters, a half a mile away.

The bunker was a simple layout, but gigantic in its scope. The hallway was over one hundred feet tall and nearly twice as wide. The rooms that jutted off this artery were massive too, some approaching the size of airport hangars. In all of them were bodies. Some vibrated with last gasps of cellular life. Some open and closed their hands. None made a sound.

Xan had a hard stomach, but even then, he almost gagged when he saw a woman whose upper and lower body had been hyphenated with her organs.

He tore her in half.

They heard the giant and all of them became statues. It sounded like a diesel hammer rhythmically driving a pile into the ground. He was walking.

Xan saw his silhouette as he crossed the hallway three hundred yards ahead. He was big. Reading his size and specs was different than seeing him in motion. He hoped the scramblers worked or they would see heaven or hell quickly.

“Keep moving. Stay against the walls and out of his path,” Xan whispered. They continued toward the King Sleeper’s lair.

They were ten yards from where they had last seen the giant when he came out of the room. He looked directly at them. Through the face shield smeared with black tar—Xan’s night vision’s interpretation of blood—Xan could see the lost look of the insane. Janis looked tormented and confused, as logic and reason were raped by his senses.

He stared directly at Xan and his team. Thirty feet away, four steps for this giant, and he squinted at them like he saw a girl he recognized from grade school. Xan knew what he saw: a deeper black. Xan could hear his team breathing over their comm.

It’ll work. He’s too far gone. If he understood, we’d be in danger, but he blew past reason a long time ago.

The giant didn’t move. He just looked at them.

“You win. I can’t take it anymore,” the giant said.

Was he speaking to them?

“Someone kill me. Someone take me away from here,” he pleaded. He turned down the hall toward their destination. And then suddenly he howled in rage and ran toward the King Sleeper.

= = =

Glass heard Janis scream and then he felt him charge like a bull. He pulled Justin off the crucifix, the mounted interface of the Data Crusher. The boy groaned. The harnesses didn’t take long to remove from the boy’s body, but the face shield took delicate hands and time. It was the fiber optic mount into the boy’s brain. Glass pulled the boy down and into his arms. The room shook from Janis’s approaching doom.

Glass spotted a back section of the Data Crusher that would be difficult for Janis to get to. It had girders and cement, things Janis could hammer down, but even then, there was a maze of thick supports that would give Glass time. Maybe, if Janis tried to get to the back of the Core, Glass would have a chance to escape.

He bolted with the child, ducking underneath the supports that anchored the base of the Core. He weaved between them with the boy in his arms, carefully protecting his head. The boy could lose a leg, lose an arm, but his brain was priceless, irreplaceable. Glass treated it like an egg, sacrificing his own body as he dove onto his back and shimmied deeper behind the Data Core, away from the crazed giant.

Janis ran directly through the Data Core. Fifty tons of ten-inch thick hard treated, non-conductive glass shattered and crashed to the ground. For Janis, it broke around him, drenching him in a hail of razor sharp plates. He moved forward as if the sky wasn’t falling, as if the billion-dollar structure collapsing onto him was nothing more than rain. His eyes were wide as he watched Glass continue to worm away from him.

The shattered Data Core became a million falling knives. Even deep into the foxhole, Glass rolled over so his back protected Justin. The sheer tonnage crashed all around him. He felt both of his legs and lower back get pierced. He heard the crack of the ground beneath him and understood that at least one of the pieces had penetrated all the way through.

Glass breathed deeply and took the pain. Even now, he thought clearly. His heart rate was even, his adrenaline in check. He heard the equipment behind him get tossed aside and torn apart. He understood the giant wouldn’t relent until it absolutely couldn’t get closer. Glass rolled over onto his back and shoulder-walked deeper, holding the squirming boy to his chest. Glass’s right leg didn’t work. His left leg was fine. When he rolled over, he felt glass push deeper into his back, a fiery pain, and then the clear dagger broke off against the ground.

He could go no further. He was buried underneath the Data Crusher to a point that no one—had they not known Glass was there—would have been able to spot him. But the giant continued forward, pulling industrial equipment out like weeds. His murderous eyes never leaving theirs.

Glass pinned Justin between him and the wall and turned the boy’s head so he knew he could breathe. He pulled out his submachine gun. He might as well have pulled out a straw and spitballs.

So this is it. He thought he was going to live longer. He checked the thirty round magazine on the MP5 and pulled back the bolt to make sure it was loaded. He had another magazine in his vest pocket.

The giant ripped apart metal beams that could hold up a skyscraper and then he was there. Glass had them against a cooling vent recessed five feet into the wall. The giant got on all fours, dominating Glass’s field of view, as if he was searching under a couch.

He raked his hands into the opening, but Glass tucked his legs under his body. And then his body jolted and he started to get dragged out. Glass realized his right leg was tucked and out of harm, but his lame left still hung out. He reached for it and tried to break it free, but it was pinned between the floor and the giant’s hydraulic fingers. The giant howled and scraped its fingers against the ground, dragging Glass out underneath them.

Glass had no choice. The giant’s fingers crushed into his pelvis and shattered it instantly. Glass pushed with his good leg and got a foot reprieve. The giant had his knee. Glass turned the MP5’s muzzle into his own thigh, careful to make sure that it was pointed through the thick. And then he fired.

Glass emptied the magazine, destroying his femur and shattering the leg, turning a two-inch swath into ground meat. The giant pulled and Glass—through all the pain—watched the leg tear away like it had been held to his body with string cheese. He felt the last of the skin stretch off like taffy. His leg vanished under the giant’s hand and both disappeared from view.

He took the shoulder strap off the gun and tied it around the remains of his thigh. He screamed—something he never did—when he pulled it tight. Already, he had lost a liter of blood. But the boy was alive. Maybe only a few more minutes, but he was still alive.

= = =

Xan couldn’t believe what unfolded in front of him. The giant had broken through the Data Core pursuing a man carrying an unconscious boy who must have been the King Sleeper. Xan had known the King Sleeper was young, but just like seeing the Tank Major, the abstract knowledge was vastly different than witnessing it first hand. The child, limp in the man’s arms, caused his heart to sink.

Xan and his team had spread across the perimeter of the room after a third of the Data Core crashed to the ground. It was everywhere. Xan could feel himself breathing in glass dust and he and the others covered their mouth and nose the best they could. Their mission was in jeopardy.

“Give me your C4 charges,” Xan said. The others moved to him quickly and handed over small bricks wrapped in a tan paper. “Get the boy at all costs. Meet at the rendezvous.”

Xan had to work quickly. He put a detonator into the first brick of C4 and after a deep breath ran through the shattered field of glass zigzagging toward the back of the titan.

= = =

Glass was weak and barely conscious. Janis continued to scream and howl at them. His hands shot in and snapped like alligator jaws, but he couldn’t get closer. Janis retreated for a moment, and through his night vision, Glass saw a small man approaching the Tank Major. He had a package in his hand. Bomb. The man placed it beneath the giant’s feet and sprinted toward the exit. Glass turned his face against the wall.

= = =

Xan hit the trigger. The C4 blast was just enough to knock Janis forward. He fell to one knee and rolled back to his feet, frantically looking around him. The field of shattered glass was now gone. The blast turned the enormous shards into razored bullets as they exploded outward against the wall. Two of Xan’s soldiers were mutilated and died instantly. The other ten were still alive, some with penetration wounds, but stable.

The giant forgot about the two howling demons burrowed into the crevice and he searched the perimeter of the room. He saw a demon staring at him from a corner. He ran at it.

Xan watched as the giant tucked his shoulder down and ran at one of his soldiers. The soldier tried to get out of the way, but it was no use. Without slowing down, the giant slammed through the soldier into the wall. The soldier splashed to the sides in a bloody puddle.

His scrambler broke.

Xan stood at the mouth of the tunnel. He put another brick of C4 down. The giant walked back toward the two demons buried in the electronics. Xan turned off his scrambler.

“I am the one who brought you here!” he yelled.

The Tank Major turned and Xan ran, knowing full well that Janis saw him. That now his eyes were coals and his mouth was stretched and deformed, and every movement gave off a shivering bone chatter that drove the giant nuts. He felt him give chase.

When the giant gave chase and ran over the C4 Xan had dropped at the front of the room, Xan popped the trigger. The explosion sent the giant careening into the wall. Janis ground into it, but his legs kept pumping and he used the wall like a training wheel.

Xan dropped another C4 brick—he had four more—and continued to sprint toward the exit up to earth.

= = =

Glass saw nine soldiers appear out of the dark. Their faces were covered, but he knew: Chinese. Brilliant execution. They moved in toward him and he didn’t fight. He sat in a pool of his own blood and his leg continued to contribute like a leaky pipe. One of the soldiers pointed a submachine gun at him. Two others worked their way in to the vent pocket.

They pushed Glass over and he was too weak to stop them. He felt the boy get pulled past him. He watched the boy, covered in his blood, get dragged out of the recess.

Then they were gone. Glass pulled on his tourniquet one more time to try and stop the flow and closed his eyes.

= = =

Xan couldn’t continue the pace. His lungs were on fire and his legs were rubber. He was out of C4. It had knocked the giant off course and confused him, but it also infuriated the Tank Major beyond belief.

“We have the boy,” one of the soldiers said in his comm. Good. Ahead, Xan saw the stairway that bordered the lift to the surface. He could feel the giant on his back. If he could just make it. He reached up and powered on the scrambler.

Janis was fifteen feet away from the demon when it flickered in and out of his vision. The demons couldn’t teleport. He had seen none of that in this battle. But this one was different; it had put up a fight. It vanished and in one final salvo Janis detonated toward its last location.

Xan was twenty feet ahead of the hydraulshock impact. While the explosion was contained in the Tank Major’s shoulder, the concussive blast still threw Xan forward. His eardrums ruptured and the blood vessels burst in his eyes. His head snapped back, cracking vertebrae, and the rubble from the wall pummeled him, spinning his body like a rag doll, breaking his bones like toothpicks. He crumbled to the ground, unable to function. He fought to stay conscious.

The giant looked his way, but not at him. It walked around him, searching through the mountain of debris it had created by punching the ten-foot thick reinforced concrete wall. The giant’s foot crunched down inches from his face. But by the grace of God, his scrambler had not broken. The giant walked past Xan to the other side of the bunker and chased another poor demon hiding in the dark.

Xan’s team approached him. They had the boy. Against his orders two of the men picked him up. He quieted down. He wanted to live. He wanted to see this boy take the U.S. down. The irony of it would be too much. The weapons they had so willfully used for their salvation would be their demise. Two weapons that should have never been created in the first place. In a rational world, in a good world, the demented mind that came up with these should have been rejected, cast out into the dark. The mind that created these gods of destruction should have been imprisoned with the key lost forever.

But the man was alive and well, with a nation behind him. And that couldn’t stand.

Chapter 16

Cynthia threw up strings of acid and spit. She tried to pull away from the toilet, but her stomach collapsed onto itself and forced her forward as her body tried to expel from her mouth what she had heard with her ears.

A boy. It was a boy.

A moment ago, Evan had called an emergency meeting. He and Earl were heading to Chicago from D.C. on the fastest train they had. Cynthia had heard about the base in Virginia, but she didn’t understand the real crisis until Evan had confessed over the phone.

“I found the anomaly,” he had said quietly.

“What are you talking about?” In context to the attack on the base, she didn’t make the connection.

“The anomaly. The source that caused your Colossal Core to be shut down.”

“You said it was a re-route, DeKalb was a prank,” she had replied.

“It wasn’t.”

Cynthia was furious. “What have you kept from me?! I won’t lift a finger, do you understand? I will shut down everything right now if you don’t tell me.”

He told her. And she retched.

Now, finally, her stomach surrendered and she sat down next to the toilet and wiped her mouth with a towel. The cool tile felt good on her legs and she gathered herself.

The King Sleeper. Evan had found the anomaly and kept it from me. And it was a child. He had been using him for months for his own purposes.

Sabot walked into the bathroom with a glass of water. “They’ll be at the Derik Building in an hour. We should head out,” he said.

She loved that man. Never again would she let anything obscure that fact. Anyone else—she included—would have come in and said, “I told you so,” whether with words or a look. But not him. He handed her the glass and rubbed her back and didn’t say a thing.

= = =

Nikki was washing Raimey when someone pounded on the front door. She perched him up and went down to see what the ruckus was about. Raimey heard the murmur of a man and even though it was unintelligible, the tone was cold and firm.

“You can’t just come in! John! John! Men are coming up!” Nikki yelled.

He could hear the footsteps on the stairs and then the bathroom door opened and two men he had never seen before walked in. They turned away when they saw him in the tub. The water was clear.

“Sir, I’m Alan Kove and this is Edward Chao. We have been sent here by General Earl Boen, Dr. Evan Lindo, and at the request of the President of the United States.”

Nikki came in and pushed them aside to get to the tub. Alan looked at Raimey, saying with his eyes that she couldn’t be here for the discussion.

“Nikki, it’s fine,” Raimey said. She grabbed a towel.

“Nikki,” Raimey said firmly. She stopped. “Please leave us for a few minutes. I’m fine.” Nikki looked at him, then the other men. She folded the towel, put it back on the rack, and left.

“What’s going on?” Raimey asked.

“General Boen and Dr. Lindo are on their way from D.C. They are meeting with Cynthia Revo, the founder of MindCorp, at the Derik Building,” Kove said.

“Alan, you couldn’t be explaining this any slower. What the fuck is going on?” Raimey asked impatiently.

“We’re not one hundred percent sure, sir,” Chao chimed in. He looked like he would put his hand in fire to light a cigarette. “General Boen wants us to bring you to the Derik Building for debriefing.”

“What the fuck can I do?” Raimey asked. His crippled nakedness in the tub emphasized the point.

“We don’t know. But General Boen was very clear that he was ordering you to come with us,” Alan said.

Raimey was a soldier, broken or not. And while he was confused by the sudden urgency after all this time begging for the military to throw him a bone, an order was an order.

“Nikki! I need to get toweled off!” Raimey turned to the men. “Unless you’re gonna buy me dinner, can I get a little privacy?”

An hour later they pulled up to the Derik Building. They wheeled him directly into a large conference room. General Boen, Dr. Evan Lindo, and Cynthia Revo were present. Cynthia’s bodyguard stood in the corner. They looked grim.

“John,” General Boen said.

“What the hell am I doing here, Earl?” he asked.

Boen chuckled softly. Sadly. “You wanted back in. Remember how I told you to be careful what you wish for?”

Raimey nodded.

“This is it.”

On a large screen, Evan Lindo and General Boen briefed Raimey on what had happened. The test he and Janis had undergone was to become a super soldier. For some unknown reason, Janis had gone insane and destroyed a military base. Almost all persons on the base were assumed dead. There was no communication in or out, no way to surveil with satellites because of the smoke, and no way to know if the King Sleeper—something Raimey didn’t quite understand—was alive or dead. It had been six hours since the base had gone dark.

“You’re telling me that Eric was strong enough to destroy a military base?” Raimey said. “How is that possible?”

“He is unlike anything you can imagine. All the comics you read as a kid, he’s the real version,” Lindo said quietly. He was still in shock. “You’ll be better. We’ve improved the technology already. And the armor design of your battle chassis will be talked about in history . . .”

Raimey interrupted. “Stop. I haven’t agreed to anything. I don’t even know what you’re really asking!”

“John, I’m asking you to become a Tank Major, infiltrate the base, and kill your best friend,” General Boen said.

“That’s a lot to ask, Earl,” Raimey said. “So I’m a Tank Major, do I just come out of it after the mission?”

“It’s permanent. Your spine is fused to the battle chassis because of the g-loads that occur while in the suit. There’s no other way,” Evan said.

“So, what? I just buy a bigger house? Come on! Would my family have to live on base?” Raimey said. He was incredulous at what they were asking. The live satellite feed behind them showed thick tendrils of smoke and pockets of fire. The images flipped through different light spectrums and he saw neon green bodies scattered around like toy soldiers.

“No. The suit is highly radioactive. You wouldn’t be able to be with them. You’d be a weapon, John. The most powerful man in the history of the world. For your safety and theirs, they wouldn’t be able to be around you,” Dr. Lindo said.

“No way,” Raimey said. He turned to General Boen. “What were you thinking, Earl? Do you really think I’d leave my family for this? Bomb the fucking place.”

“WE CAN’T!” Boen said. “Not with the King Sleeper. I know what I’m asking, John.”

“I don’t think you do. After all of this, you get to go back to your ranch,” Raimey said.

“Your wife has cancer,” Evan said. The room went quiet. John’s face crumbled with emotions, blindsided by the non sequitur.

“What are you talking about?” Raimey said. He looked sick.

“She went to the doctor a week ago. They did blood work. Abnormal proteins were found that indicate pancreatic cancer cells,” Evan said.

“No, you’re not serious. You’re fucking with me. You motherfucker, how cruel are you?” Raimey said. He turned to General Boen, but Boen’s head was down.

“Earl? Earl?!” Raimey said.

“I spoke with the doctor to confirm, John,” the General said. He couldn’t look into his eyes. “It’s true. They have to do more tests to know the stage, but it’s true.”

“People beat it,” Dr. Lindo said. “But the military insurance doesn’t cover all treatment options.”

John was silent. His head hung like it was broken.

“John, we know you’re signing your life away. That’s why Evan used Eric. But we have it from the President that your wife will get the best treatment, regardless of cost. They will have a military pension for the rest of their lives. And your daughter can go to any school from now through college and it will be paid in full by the United States government out of respect for your sacrifice,” General Boen said.

“How much for the pension?” Raimey asked weakly.

“Triple what you are currently receiving,” Boen replied.

John let out a defeated laugh. “You really know how to put someone in a corner.” He looked up at all of them. “Lucky for you all the bad shit in my life, huh?”

No one replied. They all stared at their feet.

“How long do I have to decide?” Raimey asked.

“Now, John. We have to know the status of the King Sleeper,” General Boen said. “You have no idea how important this is. I’m so sorry it has to be this way. You know I love you, Tiffany, and Vanessa.”

“I know, Earl. I’m sorry for getting angry at you. You’re a good man.” Tears rolled down John’s face. “They’ll be taken care of for life?”

Dr. Lindo nodded.

“She’ll get the best care, regardless of the cost?”

General Boen looked him in the eye. “The best that money can buy.”

“Oh, God. God. Please. Fine. Fine. Take me away, do what you have to, but take care of my family.”

Doctors and technicians burst into the room and took Raimey out of his chair. He was put on a gurney and wheeled out.

Boen glared at Evan and pointed to the surveillance monitor. There were hundreds of bodies on the screen. “This is your fault, Evan. Keeping the boy a SECRET?! The blood’s on your hands.”

Boen didn’t wait for a response. He ran after Raimey.

A surgery that should take two weeks was going to be done overnight. A training period that normally would take one month would be done on the train. Raimey headed into the unknown with General Boen at his side. The General cursed God as they wheeled this broken, proud soldier away from his family, away from any semblance of a normal life.

After the doors closed, Cynthia stood up to leave.

“Where are you going? I need you to help,” Evan said. Cynthia spun around and slapped him. He reeled back and put a hand to his face. He glanced between her and Sabot, who had quietly moved away from the wall.

“Ok, I deserved that,” he said. He wiggled his jaw. “But these things still need to get done.”

“A boy,” Cynthia said.

“Yes,” Evan replied.

“A boy!” she screamed and went after him again. Sabot intervened.

“I didn’t make him!” Evan said. His upper lip trembled. “What would you do if you were me? Huh? You say to yourself you’d leave him be, but no way. Not you. Look at the way you protect your inventions. If you died, half the shit wouldn’t work because it’s gotta be yours.”

“You reverse engineered a Data Core,” she accused.

“Yes, I did! And I’d do it again! You want the common good all on your terms like you’re some pious judge and jury. Well guess what? God didn’t anoint you to divvy out crumbs how you see fit. You’re a part of the problem.”

They calmed down.

“What do you need?” she finally said.

“We need to know what happened to Janis and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen to Raimey,” Evan replied.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll have it by tomorrow.” She and Sabot left Evan alone in the room.

= = =

When Cynthia got back to MindCorp she immediately had a military Sleeper send her all implant maintenance records of Tank Major Janis. A Tank Major technician used a maintenance computer daily to analyze the interaction between the brain, the software implant, and the battle chassis. Its most fundamental purpose was to monitor the latency of physical commands and return sensory input. If the analysis came back within spec, the technician had done their job and as far as they were concerned, the Tank Major was functioning properly. It was no different than a patient going in for a routine medical exam. If everything checked out, the doctor would say the patient was healthy, not dive deeper to see if they had cancer.

If Janis had gone insane—and all signs pointed to yes—then Cynthia was betting dollars to donuts the software implant was the root. A part of her wondered if she was to blame, if she had omitted some crucial bit of code that allowed the brain and the implant to co-exist peacefully. She tossed that notion aside. If the code was corrupt, someone nefarious had found a way in and done a little tinkering. It was the only possibility. She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. Code scrolled up in front of her filling her mind and senses. She started at day one. On day ninety-three she found a deviation. A line of instruction, miniscule in the sea of programming code, was sending a GPS ping in a timed interval. She checked the date. It was the day the Western Curse took over O’Hare.

Someone HAD gotten in. Lines upon millions of lines scrolled past her as she floated in front of it. It felt like her own thoughts, but bracketed and returned and terse in the programming language that was as native to her as English. One week after the GPS pinging code, she found a more complicated subset. It turned the battle chassis’s cameras on. She found pages of code that hacked into the base’s Wi-Fi network and its on-site servers. Another command uploaded information. She couldn’t tell what had been uploaded off-site, it wasn’t saved to memory, but she could tell that it had been sent. Espionage.

She rang up Evan.

“Yes?” His voice was shaky. She pictured him huddled in the corner of a dark room. Good.

“I’ve found a rogue, stepped series of code that was inserted into Janis’s implant,” she said. “He was compromised.”

“How?” Lindo asked. He was instantly more composed. “O’Hare!” he said with a flash of insight.

“Yep. The first deviation came the day of that mission,” she said.

“How long will it take for you to understand exactly what happened?” Evan asked.

“It came easier than I expected. Two hours,” she said.

“Boen and I will come to MindCorp.” He hung up.

Two hours later, Cynthia outlined to General Boen and Lindo the subtle progression to Eric Janis’s insanity.

“This was a complicated and very well executed act of war,” Cynthia said. “Janis was hacked and the code was uploaded during the battle at O’Hare.”

“It was the Western Curse?” Boen said in disbelief. Cynthia and Evan exchanged doubtful looks.

“I think that group is a pawn to some other interest,” Cynthia offered. “To hack into the Tank Major itself is a huge technological hurdle. To do so and then plant a program so sophisticated that it inserts itself into the firmware code of the Mindlink without causing any malfunction other than the ones they desired.” She shook her head. “There’s just no way. I don’t care how well funded the terrorist group is.” She continued. “They used a three stage code. The first stage was GPS tracking. Very simple and useful. Tank Major Janis was pinging GPS satellites, indicating his location.”

Code scrolled down a large screen. Evan read it like a child reads The Cat in the Hat. Boen’s eyes got tired and he focused on Cynthia.

“The second stage used the cameras built into Janis for surveillance. It uploaded the data to the Internet.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lindo said shaking his head.

“The third stage was what did Janis in. It caused the Tank Major to experience a deep sleep and then the program—Evan, do you see this?” She outlined some code on the screen. “When he was asleep, it uploaded and installed the rest of the program for the third stage.”

“To drive him insane,” Lindo said. The beauty of the Mindlink was used against Janis.

Cynthia nodded. “It’s hard to say exactly how it functioned, but there is an uncompressed audio file that activates whenever he detects movement.”

Cynthia cued the track. It sounded like monstrous teeth chattering in the cold. Everyone squirmed from the unpleasantness of the noise. Cynthia turned it off.

“There’s also specific code to cause vision to bloom, and certain color spectrums are altered, especially white.”

Cynthia was done.

“This is good detective work, but how does this help us right now?” General Boen asked. It was a question, not an argument. Lindo snapped away from his thoughts and turned to Cynthia.

“Raimey needs to be a closed system,” he said.

“I’ve already begun modifying the implant program,” she replied. She had predicted the necessary changes. “I’ve eliminated all wireless functionality and I’m building a closed system maintenance program. Tank Major Raimey will be unhackable and completely autonomous.”

= = =

The anesthesia took Raimey into a deep, dark dream. He stood on a cliff, looking down into a valley. Small explosions rippled across it. The muzzle flash of ten thousand weapons cracked and popped like fireworks. Two masses converged on each other. A major battle was at its climax.

He looked down on them unconcerned. The war below held his interest, but he felt no fear. He knew they could do him no harm. Over the massive battlefield, an oily gray cloud spun like a cyclone. It stretched for the horizon, but a crescent slash of a red sun escaped its cover and cast the battlefield in long, deep shadows.

He was a metal titan down on the battlefield, charging the enemy. There were other giants running alongside him and he recognized them all: they were dead friends and soldiers, men and women he had seen get rippled with gunfire or blown to pieces by an IED. And they had not healed. They were encased in giant mechanized bodies, but their faces were red and raw, eyes out, jaws hanging and though they were running toward an unknown enemy ahead, they all looked to him with a hunger, like he had an answer they desperately needed to hear.

“How many are we going to kill today?” Janis said to his left. Raimey turned and Janis was there, wearing the battle chassis, just like the others. Raimey didn’t know the intricacies of the chassis and so his subconscious didn’t either. Instead the large frames of the Tank Majors consisted of an absence of light. A visualized form of void and nothingness.

“I’m coming for you,” Raimey said as they charged forward, unconcerned with the threat downfield, more interested in talking amongst each other, death dealers understanding that what lay at their feet at the end of the battle was meant to die. If not, wouldn’t God have intervened?

Janis smiled, but his jaw split in half right down the middle. Each side fell wide, like two limp flower petals. His tongue was an eel emerging from coral.

“You’re going to end me,” Janis said. He shouldn’t have been able to talk, but tell that to the dream. His split jaw slapped down against the top of his metal chest. Droplets of drool gleamed on the dark frame, reflecting the bloody sun.

“I have no choice,” Raimey said. The dead around him, all giants, echoed his words. “They had no choice.” That’s what they wanted to hear. They had no choice.

Janis laughed. It was syrupy. He was choking on his own tongue. “You can’t say that now. When you were young and in the ghetto, that’d pass. But not now.”

“But what about Tiffany and Vanessa? You loved them, too. I’m doing this for them! They can go on to be something. They can go on to live again!” Raimey said.

Janis gave Raimey a look like he just didn’t get it.

“Who do you think we came here to kill, John?” he said.

Janis turned back toward their enemies and Raimey followed suit. In front of him were mothers and fathers, children and grandparents. They were huddled in groups. They were the families of the dead soldiers that Raimey ran with. Each giant was here to kill what was left of their legacy: their children’s hopes and dreams, who prayed for their safe return. A parent’s mortal wish for their children to live long, happy, healthy lives; to never see their gravestone. A wife or husband’s desire to get back their soul mate, who loved them at their worst and their best; a whole, halved, that could never grow back.

Raimey recognized Janis’s ex-wife, who only left after years of therapy. Janis hid behind humor. It was the callus that allowed him to go into battle never knowing if he would come out. She looked up at Janis and held out a flower. He greeted her by crushing her down, first with a scissor punch from his massive fist and then with his feet, jumping on her like she was a trampoline. His other family members did nothing. Each of them held out a flower, or a picture, or their arms for a hug.

Raimey turned to the rest of the Tank Majors as they rolled through their families in an orgy of death. The dark black shapes of the dead Tank Majors were covered in rivulets of blood, thick with tissue. Children were matted into the ground like tufts of grass. Grandparents were torn in half, their entrails stretched like an accordion. And all of the giants screamed in unison that they were doing what they had to do. That they did it for them. All the while, tearing the ones they loved to pieces.

Raimey knew what was ahead of him. He turned and saw Tiffany and Vanessa ten yards away, his long strides covering the distance in four steps. They knelt on the ground in each other’s arms. Tiffany had no hair. Vanessa looked older and tired.

“We just want you back,” they said.

Raimey raised his hand up in the air, eclipsing them from the dusk that would not die.

“I’m doing this for you,” he said.

And then his arm swung down.

= = =

Raimey’s eyes shot open. He tried to move. He heard a whirling and a deep vibration hurt his teeth.

“Whoa!” someone said. Raimey couldn’t see anyone above him. For the second time this year, he stared at the sickly white of fluorescent lights. He tried to move his hands and legs—he could feel them—but they felt nailed to the ground.

“Let me up,” Raimey said, still disoriented by his dream. The last image echoed in his head, the shadow of his fist about to kill all that he loved. “Let me up!” Again, something sounded like a chainsaw revving.

“Shut him down! Shut the diagnostics down!” It was Evan Lindo. The whirling sound spun down and suddenly he couldn’t feel anything. Evan came into view.

“John, you just woke up from surgery. We need to put you back under.” Evan looked at someone out of John’s view, clearly pissed off. “You’re not supposed to be up yet. We need to keep you anesthetized because of the pain. Do you understand?”

“Tiffany, Vanessa,” Raimey said.

“They’re in Florida. General Boen has sent soldiers to inform them of what has happened.”

“Alive?” Raimey asked. He felt the drugs hit and Evan began to float down a shrinking tunnel.

“Yes, John. They’re alive. Calm down. Go to sleep. You’ll be up soo—”

That was the last Raimey heard as he drifted into a state just north of coma, a place mercifully without dreams.

= = =

General Boen had observed the multiple procedures that turned his friend into a weapon. Throughout the process he had slept in the waiting room like a worried husband.

The last of the surgeries was done. Raimey’s vertebrae had been fused to rigid bars that ran the length of his shortened spine. He had been mounted into the gelatinous suspension chamber that was itself mounted on shock absorbing rails in the battle chassis.

General Boen sat on a locker room bench while Evan cleaned up after the final surgery.

“How the hell is he going to be operational tomorrow?” Boen asked. The procedure was identical to what had been done to Janis, only accelerated. “The spinal fusion won’t even be set then.”

“Do you have another option?” Evan said through the shower curtain. Boen could see his feet and the slight tinge of pink from Raimey’s blood.

“Don’t be a smartass,” Boen replied. At seventy he could still break this twerp. “I’ve only been cooperative, haven’t I? It’s a valid question.”

Evan came out with a towel around his waist.

“I’m on edge, sorry,” Evan said. He took another towel and dried his hair. “We’ll probably have to go in after the mission and repair the damage. He’ll be on a drug cocktail that will numb the pain, but still keep him aware. It’s basically morphine and crank.”

“Hmm,” Boen grunted. He didn’t like this. He had known Raimey too long to treat him like a guinea pig.

“Janis could kill him,” Boen said. Evan laughed. He walked into a changing room.

“Not likely, even with John doped up. John’s battle chassis is light years ahead of Janis’s.”

“How can that be?” Boen said.

“A lot of times, the biggest technological leaps happen at the beginning. After that it just becomes refinement.” Evan came out dressed in a clean set of scrubs. “I learn quickly, General Boen. John will be perfect, maybe too much so.”

= = =

Raimey’s eyes rolled open and the first thing he registered wasn’t sight or sound, but pain. It felt like metal stakes had been pulled out of a fire and skewered down the length of his back. Uncontrollable tears rolled down his face.

“Pain,” he groaned. He was groggy, uncertain of his surroundings. He was seated, perpendicular to the floor in a gigantic chair. Men and women in white coats moved around him.

“You have to ignore the pain, John. This is as much relief as we can give you. We need to keep you aware.” It was Evan. He came into view beneath Raimey and his giant chair. Evan looked off to his side, but this time Raimey could track what Dr. Lindo was checking. Four technicians monitored giant flat screens above a wall of workstations. On one monitor a wire-framed brain spun on its y-axis. A cursor chased small points that were blinking. Another showed hundreds of different waveforms—brain waves. It looked like a computerized lie detector. Another showed John’s vitals.

“Turn him on,” Evan said. “John, we don’t have time to get into great detail. The software implant—what the monitor with the brain on it shows—is booting up. When it does, I want you to think about stillness. Picture your hands and feet at rest. You are sitting on a chair, nothing more.”

John felt the implant. It was like someone was pulling on the back of his skull.

“I feel something,” Raimey said.

“Think stillness,” Evan said.

“It’s up,” someone said to their side.

“How do you feel John?” Evan asked.

“I feel . . . whole.” And he did. After the injuries, he felt phantom limb in all of his joints, like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. He would forget that he had no arms and reach for something, only to be quickly reminded that he was an invalid. But now he felt whole. No tingle, no vague extension of his body that was nothing but air. He wiggled his fingers. He heard metal-on-metal clacking.

“John, slow up. Wait for my instructions,” Evan said.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Raimey said. He studied the giant chair he was sitting in. It wasn’t a chair. It was him. He wiggled his left hand again and, to his left, a gigantic hand moved perfectly. He looked at his right hand and it did the same.

“I want to stand up,” Raimey said.

“John, we really need to get through the diagnostics,” Evan said firmly. Raimey suddenly felt a side-to-side sway of the room.

“We’re on our way,” Raimey said.

“Yes. We’ll be there in three hours. We need to upload software into the implant before we release you from the maintenance chair. We have a lot to go through.”

John calmed down. The sadness and longing to see his family was pushed back under the weight of what was ahead of him. He could feel his hands. He could feel his feet. And it wasn’t in his dreams or a memory or his severed nerves firing for no damn reason. It was real.

He listened to Evan and followed his every instruction. In his focus, the pain got pushed into the background. He felt alive. He felt purpose.

He hated this mission. He hated the primary objective. But he loved that he was on a mission and that, as silly and simplistic as it sounded, he was special. He would curse fate and God later. But not now. Wiggle the fingers. Lift the leg. Open the bolt of the hydraulshock.

I’m a soldier, he thought to himself. The voice behind it was strong.

He saw a bent reflection of himself in the stainless steel armory doors. He looked like a massive armored Viking sitting on his throne.

This was always my fate.

For now and ever more.

= = =

The train had stopped five miles from the base to avoid contact with Janis. Ten minutes before, two men loaded the hydraulshock artillery rounds into his shoulders. They spun the helmet down onto his head. The five-inch bulletproof glass was shaped like a skull.

His implant was stripped of all of Janis’s wireless functionality. He couldn’t upload or download data to Command. He couldn’t overlay maps to his position. He couldn’t laser guide smart missiles or send GPS coordinates for mortal fire. Various attachments that Evan planned for future Tank Majors wouldn’t work with him. His comm was a glorified walkie-talkie. The only access to his implant was through two feet of the depleted uranium/osmium armor. But he no longer needed the maintenance chair. He would never have to connect into a computer for the rest of his life. He was the deconstructed version of Lindo’s dream.

“Is the pain bearable? We’ve pulled back the dosage,” Evan said. He was climbing over Raimey, double-checking that everything was in place, properly oiled and functioning. This was too quick a turnaround. It made him uneasy.

“It’s fine,” Raimey said. It wasn’t. It was so horrible that his body shivered in sweat, but it was what it was.

“When you get out, run around and get a feel for the battle chassis. Hydraulshock a tree. We need you to understand what your body can do,” Lindo said.

“What are the limitations?” Raimey asked.

“Not many that matter for this. Just remember that the battle chassis can take a lot more abuse than you can. Stay out of heavy fires, you can suffocate. Stay out of water, you’ll sink like a rock and drown.”

“Can I jump?” Raimey asked.

“A little bit, but not really. Not of any usefulness.”

“Speed?”

“Twenty-five miles per hour. You will get there quickly. It’ll just feel like running.”

“What can Eric do that will hurt me?”

“The hydraulshock is the only thing. If he’s out, hit him and be done with it. We need to know the status of the King Sleeper. Your armor is three times as dense, you’re bigger all around, and you’re more powerful. Aside from the personal nature, this shouldn’t be difficult.”

John’s chair let out a hydraulic whoosh and Evan stepped out of the way.

“John, can you hear me over the comm?” It was General Boen.

“Yes, sir,” Raimey said. It was good to hear his voice.

“We have a GPS transmitter attached to the battle chassis. From that, we can guide you to and out of the base. Clear?”

“Clear, sir,” Raimey replied.

“Alright, let’s get going. The five mile distance will hopefully give you time to acclimate a bit to this new . . . situation,” Boen said.

Raimey stood up. The train was tall, the internal room was larger than a semi truck trailer, but his head almost touched the top. For a second it made him dizzy, like he had stood up too quickly. Out of instinct he put his arms out to brace himself.

“Hold on, John,” Evan said. He held a two-way radio to his mouth. “Take it easy.”

John steadied.

“Trust the balance of the chassis. The gyroscopes are processing one million calculations per second. You’re not going to fall. Turn to face the door and look straight out as far as you can see.”

The door on the side of the train car slid open. Raimey was greeted by pine trees and a blanket of stars.

“Look ahead, not down at your feet, and step out,” Evan said.

John looked to the horizon and stepped out of the train, trying to not think about it. He felt his foot press into the soil and when half of his weight left the train, the car rose six inches. Suddenly Raimey started to tilt forward.

“Trust the balance!” Lindo said. Raimey looked like the leaning tower of Pisa. “John!”

It was too late. Raimey overcompensated and fell forward down the embankment of the hill. When he hit the ground, he felt some pain, but the suspension that floated his body within the suit took the brunt. Without thinking he put his arms down and pushed himself up onto his knees. He turned and looked at the train fifty feet up the hill.

“Whoever parked this damn thing on a hill is fired,” Raimey said.

Both Evan and Boen laughed.

“Trust the—”

“I know, I know. Trust the battle chassis to balance,” Raimey said. He went to stand, this time not gingerly like he had brittle bones. His body stood up unconcerned with the steepness of the hill. Simple as that.

He climbed back up to the entrance of the train and looked in. Even though his feet were four feet below the train tracks, he still looked down on Evan. His shoulders were the width of the entrance.

“You good?” Evan said.

In the helmet, he saw Raimey nod.

“Find the King Sleeper,” Evan said.

“I’m going to try and save him,” Raimey said. He was talking about Janis.

Evan shook his head. “It’s too late, John.”

“I can’t just kill him. Not without trying.”

“General Boen,” Evan said.

Boen’s voice crackled over the comm. “I get it, John. But just from infrared, we have a body count over two thousand. The mission is to find the King Sleeper.”

“I can’t just kill him. If he was driven crazy, it isn’t right. He’s the best guy I know.”

He pushed off the train without asking permission.

“Alright, Earl. Where the hell am I going?” he asked.

= = =

The train was west of the base. Raimey walked around the front of the train to head toward it. When he passed the engine, he saw the conductors at the controls. They gave him a salute and he gave one back, dinging too hard against his helmet, still getting a feel for his new body.

It felt like he was in a giant baby bjorn. He rocked back and forth with each step, enough to slightly jar his vision. He felt lumbering. He was. Sensors built inside his feet fed him the feeling of pressure. He couldn’t feel heat or pain through his limbs, but he did recognize when his ankle bent inward or outward to compensate for a variant on the ground.

“I’m going to jog,” Raimey said into his comm. Interestingly, when he picked up speed the ride got smoother and he could feel his body floating. His vision was no longer jarred, but instead, it felt like he was riding a wave as he rose and fell by six inches or so, compensating for the increased forces of the battle chassis around him.

“It leveled out, didn’t it?” Lindo said.

“Yep,” Raimey replied.

“The suspension system doesn’t completely compensate for walking. But if you run or start moving aggressively, it monitors the movement and counteracts it. The harder you go, the smoother it will feel.”

“Cool,” Raimey said. He was breathing hard and it came over the comm.

“Calm down, John,” General Boen said.

Lindo cut in. “You’re breathing faster because you’re jogging and the old brain believes that you’re exerting effort. It’s a natural response, but obviously pointless. Try to regulate your breathing. Your body has gone through a tremendous amount of trauma in the last twenty-four hours.”

“Okay,” Raimey said and forced his breathing to slow down.

“Find a large tree and punch it. Hydraulshock when you get a feel for the range,” Evan said.

“What about Janis?” Raimey said. He was told the hydraulshock was extremely loud.

“I’d rather he’s aware of you and you know how to use it than otherwise. He’s probably in the bunker,” Lindo said.

Raimey saw a massive tree ahead of him. He covered distance so quickly, it was crazy. It felt like he was riding on the shoulders of a kangaroo. He shadowboxed to get a feel for the range and speed of the punches. He was fast. Not blindingly so, but as fast as a heavyweight boxer, with ten thousand times more power. He stood within range of the tree and threw a left hook. The pair of drive chains around his waist, each link as tall and thick as a man’s head, spun counter to the other and his upper body swung into the punch. His eight hundred pound fist hammered through the tree like a wrecking ball. The trunk was four feet in diameter and his hand exploded through it as if it were rotten. The tree collapsed down to the base and then with a groan, fell onto its side, taking two smaller trees with it.

“We heard that,” Lindo said.

“Holy shit,” Raimey said under his breath.

“An eye opener, huh?” Boen said.

“I threw a short left hook and my hand went right through the tree,” Raimey said. He brought his hand near his visor and looked for damage.

“My hand’s fine,” Raimey said.

“John, your hand can punch through tanks without any operational damage. The density of a tree is like punching packing foam.”

Raimey opened and closed his gigantic hand, turning it knuckle to palm in marvel. He raised it up and slammed it to the ground. He felt his body bounce from the counter movement of his suspension. He slammed the right fist down and the other again, like a gorilla displaying dominance.

Raimey began to understand.

He found a tree twice as thick as the one he so easily punched through. He cocked his left arm back and through a mental checklist, readied the hydraulshock to fire.

He started the movement.

WHA-WHAM!

His vision blurred from the acceleration as the jelly in his eyes pushed back, altering the light as it hit the lens. The sound leveled off in his helmet but his body shook like a space shuttle on re-entry. He felt heat and out of his left eye he saw a sharp crack of orange light.

He was disoriented. Shards of wood fell around him in splintered hail. He looked for the tree. Most of it had vaporized. Sixty feet of it had exploded and the rest of the tree had been thrown forty yards. The top of the tree was in front of John, like it had slipped feet first on ice. The earth was raw around him. The branches of the surrounding pines were broken and bent away from him.

“I fired the hydraulshock,” Raimey said.

“We know.”

The train had rocked back and forth from the concussive blast.

“Is everything fine?” Lindo asked.

“Yeah, I just can’t believe it,” Raimey said. He didn’t understand the power he had unleashed. For this tree it was complete overkill. Raimey could deliver five million foot-pounds of energy through his fist, one and a half million more than Janis. Evan learned quickly and he pumped all that knowledge into the body Raimey was now saddled with.

“Be amazed later, John. Get going,” Boen said.

“Yes, sir. I’m moving toward the base,” Raimey replied.

General Boen watched the GPS dot move toward the base at an even twenty-five miles per hour.

= = =

Janis woke in the corner of a bunker supply room. At first he didn’t remember when he had fallen asleep and then it came back. He had chosen that corner because there weren’t any flames and none of the demons chased him there. He was exhausted. Maybe it was over. He started to turn and he immediately sensed flickering orange in his peripheral vision. He retreated to the corner, sobbing.

He closed his eyes hard, hoping that when he opened them, what he had been a part of was a dream inside of a dream, a hallucination in the desert from a thirst deprived man.

It was no use. He could feel the heat build around him. He knew the flames were licking at the walls. He didn’t hear the bone on bone chatter of the demons but he knew it was just because he was in the corner, hiding, like a bruised boy waiting for his next beating.

He had run rampant for over three days. He had no food or drink in that time. On base, they didn’t keep his nutrient pump full. He felt the pain of hunger and his face was gaunt from dehydration. His teeth felt like fur and he rubbed his tongue along them.

I’m insane, he thought to himself. He tried to turn from the corner again but he saw the heat and below, just in view, the glowing eyes of a demon he had killed. Even dead, their big grins chattered, ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca. Endless.

Do the insane know they are? another voice asked. Eric didn’t think so.

“Then I’m damned,” he said aloud.

I will live in this purgatory forever.

Early into the massacre the fleeing soldiers and staff opened the blast doors to escape Janis’s onslaught. He ascended out of the massive hollow and laid waste to the surrounding buildings and anything that got in his way. But the bunker was his sanctuary and after he silenced the chattering of bones, he slithered into its bowels like a snake full on prey. The few soldiers remaining ran up and activated the doors to close.

Halfway down, Janis heard the warning blat of the siren as the massive doors slowly came together. They’re trying to trap me! He flew up the stairs. The closing gap was too narrow for him to squeeze through. He hydraulshocked them from the inside. He hit them again and again and again until the hinge of one broke from the wall. They closed cockeyed. With all his hydraulshocks, save one, he hammered through. But the doors were designed for The Bomb. And while his hands were nearly indestructible, they had met their match and now they were a mangled wreck.

He heard the sound of a hydraulshock roll into the bunker. The lift tunnel acted like an ear canal, amplifying the blast.

It’ll be John, he somehow knew. No, impossible. John wasn’t dead. Maybe he’s come to save me? They had been in deep together, in battles where bullets whizzed by their faces like mosquitos. And they had made it out alive, watching each other’s six, not letting ANYTHING break their perimeter. But not this, no way. Raimey was an angel, but he didn’t know this place.

Then it’s the Devil.

Good. Better in fact. If it were Raimey, Eric wouldn’t know what to do. He didn’t know the way out and Raimey would be too stubborn to leave without him. They would protect each other while the demons surrounded them and take wave after wave until the ground was churned with dirt and blood and their feet slipped from the batter of it and the demons finally overtook them, finally tore in deep enough to still their heart and then they would be stuck in this world forever.

Better if it was the Devil.

Because I am strong.

The Devil has never faced anything like me.

And I have courage.

Others would look down in fear, but I will look down on HIM, so he knows that two angels had fallen, not just one.

And I have no fear.

I lost that long ago. If I kill the Devil, than all of this will be mine, and maybe, just maybe, it can be made into something better.

Eric Janis, the first Tank Major, turned from the corner, a weary look in his eyes. He stepped over and around the cake of murdered demons. Their mouths chattered in applause for him standing up to their master. Or they cheered for their master, who had finally come to avenge their brutal end.

= = =

Twenty years ago Raimey had trained at this base. But everything he remembered was gone. In its place were rubble, fire, thick toxic smoke, and the smell of the dead.

“The southwest corner of the base is destroyed,” Raimey said.

“Roger that. The bunker is at the center of the base,” General Boen said. “If you see anyone alive, let us know, but don’t divert from the mission.”

Raimey slowed to walking speed. He didn’t know what he was looking for. Visibility was fine, the black smoke hung above him in a ceiling. The buildings were trash heaps.

“Help,” he heard someone say. It was a stage whisper, the sound of a dying man.

“Got a survivor somewhere in the mess hall,” Raimey said.

“Got it, we have a team moving toward you. They will not go into the base until that area is clear of the threat,” Boen said. “Keep that in mind, John. I know Eric is a friend, but there are people there that need us.”

“I know,” Raimey said.

Raimey weaved through the wreckage toward the center of the base. Two Humvees were rolled onto their sides, the bodies of men crushed in and around them. A small subway train used as a feeder into the larger rails was toppled off the tracks. A fountain of electrical sparks crackled and arced against the cars.

More bodies. Bodies everywhere. Spent rifle casing around some, useless against giants. Raimey heard moans from another building and called it in. He saw the bunker. The massive doors, taller than a bus is long and wide enough for four, were torn outward.

Janis emerged from its darkness. Raimey began to cry.

“You’re on fire,” Janis said to Raimey. They were fifty yards from each other. Raimey didn’t recognize him. His face was thin and weak, like a cancer was winning.

“Have you come to kill me?” Janis asked. Raimey wasn’t sure what to do. The question seemed directed at him, but he was staring past Raimey.

“I don’t want to. Eric, it’s me. It’s John,” Raimey said.

Janis laughed, but it was the laugh found in asylums: a sad, hollow, cackle.

“Yeah. You’re John.” Janis walked completely out of the tunnel and circled Raimey. “You’d use him against me, wouldn’t you?” Janis hissed. The Devil had come in a suit like his. It was black and bigger. Flames rode its arms and shoulders. Inside the helmet, Eric saw the Devil stare back at him with hot coal eyes and the stretched, chattering grin. The Devil came prepared for war.

“Eric, you’re sick. You have to stop. You have to see what you’ve done,” Raimey said. Janis stepped on the dead as he circled, cracking their already broken bones without taking his eyes away from Raimey.

“They were demons, they had to die,” Janis said. “Don’t turn this on me. You brought me here.”

“Eric, they’ll make me kill you,” Raimey pleaded. “Get face down on the ground, trust me. We can figure this out. It’s not your fault.”

“Not my fault,” Janis said slowly. “Not my fault. I wake up here, all I’ve done is my duty. I know it’s not my fault! But it was a mistake to bring me here. You think you’re the only fallen angel!” Janis screamed. “I’ve fallen, too!”

Janis sprinted at Raimey and raised his fists.

Please forgive me, Raimey thought. He pulled back and waited for his old friend, long gone, to get in range. Raimey braced himself for the hydraulshock.

WHA-WHAM!

He felt the acceleration. Going through his friend was like going through a hologram. Suddenly, he stood fifteen feet past where he had last been. He heard pieces of metal hitting the ground around him. Janis’s battle chassis had exploded into thirty chunks and they were falling back to earth. Five million foot-pounds hit Janis in the chest, cracking through his two-foot armor like it was an eggshell and scrambling everything underneath.

John turned to his fallen friend. A section of the torso just beneath the helmet was still intact. Raimey ran to it and knelt down.

Janis stared at him with wide eyes. His mouth quivered. Somehow he was still alive. He looked at Raimey, his eyes suddenly sane. The Mindlink had shorted out.

“I’m better now,” he said. His face shook in death throes. “Thank you, John.”

Inside the metal head, the real one exhaled for the last time.

“I’m so sorry, Eric. I’m so sorry. We were supposed to do this together,” Raimey said. The tears hit the inside of his face shield and pooled into the center, bending his best friend’s open mouth into a joker smile.

Raimey sobbed and stayed by his friend while the teams came in to retrieve the dead. The King Sleeper was missing. Raimey heard it over the comm. He didn’t care. He sat by his friend and thought of nothing but Eric Janis’s life. They had grown up together, they had laughed together, they had shared family pains together, and now they had died together. One heart kept beating on, that’s all.

= = =

After four hours, they finally got Raimey back to the train. He stood in front of his seat.

“I want to see my family,” Raimey said.

“John, we talked about this. It’s dangerous. You’re radioactive and the emotional trauma . . .” Lindo started.

“Save it. I just killed my best friend. And you need me more than I need you. I’m fine dying. I wish I would. I need to see them. I need them to know how much I love them. I’m not doing anything until I do,” Raimey said.

“I’ll set it up, John,” General Boen said over the comm.

“You promise, Earl?” Raimey said.

“With everything I have,” Boen said.

John stared at Evan in a way that made Evan step back. And then Raimey sat down and felt his body lock into the chair. He was so tired and he was in pain and he was mourning. All he wanted was to feel Vanessa’s hand against his skin.

Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.

John hated that saying. But he knew the answer.

Chapter 17

Xan barely survived. When the giant approximated his location and fired the hydraulshock, the backsplash of debris crushed his body. Eight compound fractures splintered through his skin and an artery ruptured. He almost bled out on the way to the transport. When they got him to the vehicle, a soldier reached into the open wound and found the artery. It had retreated deep inside his thigh. They clamped it off and he was in and out of consciousness the rest of the trip. He felt the truck bouncing onto a dirt road. He heard the plane on takeoff.

He woke up in the infirmary at his base with tubes snaked up every hole. Doctors and nurses worked and spoke in the room, but Xan was confused, he couldn’t hear them. Finally a doctor noticed he was awake and wrote on a notepad: “Your eardrums are ruptured.”

Xan tried to speak but he chewed on his breathing tube. The doctors discussed in silence and then pulled it out.

“I’m deaf?” Xan said too loud. The doctor nodded yes. “Where’s the boy?”

Minutes later, Xan’s head scientist on the project came into the room.

“We have the boy under the same drug cocktail the Americans used,” Dr. Kim said. “We understand the dosages and frequency. The boy is in a lucid coma.”

All of this was dictated on a screen for Xan. His deafness was frustrating, but he didn’t have time to feel self-pity.

“We found a command log built into the boy’s mind,” Dr. Kim said. “It was implanted there as a checklist, a ‘to do’ list. We’re going through that now to understand all that he’s done, and more importantly, what he’s capable of doing. He’s told us some, but he’s confused. He asks for his father.”

“He’s conscious?” Xan asked.

“He can be communicated with, yes,” Dr. Kim replied, his words quickly appearing on the screen.

“Can I speak to him?”

“We don’t know if that’s safe. He’s contained in a construct that he thinks is real,” Dr. Kim replied. “He has no idea what he’s done. He just thinks he’s sick.”

“You cannot command him to do complex tasks right now, correct?” Xan replied.

Dr. Kim nodded.

“If we can’t use him like they did, what’s the point?” Xan said. “I’ll go in. This is my project, you have my contingency instructions as approved by our President.”

An armored caravan took Xan to the secretly built Colossal Core. Xan began the build after his first contact with Harold Renki. It had taken over two years and while there was still more to be done, the Data Core functioned properly. Even then, Xan had seen what lay ahead. He had pictured rows upon rows of Chinese Sleepers around the massive Core protecting their online infrastructure. They were the soldiers of the new world.

The temporary Core Xan had used with the Forced Autistic was built in a hangar. This was built properly underground. It was deep in Beijing, intentionally among the hundreds of millions of people, buried underneath the innocent so that any retaliation would be weighed and measured. The U.S. would not go to war. If the situation were reversed, neither would China. They would compromise. The threat of the King Sleeper’s immense power would drive the world sane. Xan didn’t want war. He wanted a reset button so the world would have a future.

Xan saw the Colossal Core alive for the first time when the elevator down revealed its glowing, pulsing brilliance. For a moment he felt no pain, the silence was a gift, as he basked in the glow of China’s salvation. He was wheeled over to the boy. Justin was mounted into the crucifix, with the metal shield covering his face and the large blue fiber optic tubes coursing data directly into his brain.

To the right of the boy was the massive Data Core. It stretched to the ceiling. Behind the crucifix and the boy was the Data Crusher, where the boy was fed the relevant raw data from the Core and where the boy could manipulate that data in return. The Data Crusher was a massive hard drive that spun at fifty thousand rotations per minute. It was an engineering feat more impressive because the hard drive plates were ten feet in diameter. The whole system weighed eight tons. Two tons consisted of a concrete base designed to keep the Crusher from rocking itself off the foundation like an unbalanced washing machine.

Data was laid on the plates and manipulated real time, only to be pulled off a thousandth of a microsecond later and fed back into the fiber optic core. The process was transparent to anyone in the world.

When they wheeled Xan to the boy, he felt the powerful thrum of the Data Crusher. They raised his chair and put the Mindlink on him.

“Are you ready sir?” Dr. Kim asked. There was no monitor, but Xan knew what he said.

“Do it,” Xan replied. He felt the pull of the Mindlink and then the room around him disappeared.

= = =

Xan floated in black.

“Dad?” a boy asked. By his voice, he was nearby.

“No, I’m not your dad,” Xan said. In cyberspace he could hear. He didn’t realize how much he already missed it.

“Who are you?”

“They call me Xan.”

“Is that your name?”

“No. My birth name is Caro Shin.”

“Why do you go by Xan?”

“Shin is Korean and I live in China. Status is important here. Xan was the name I used since I was a boy. Why is it so dark?”

“I don’t know.” The boy was scared. “It went black some time ago. Are you a doctor?”

“I’m a scientist,” Xan said.

“I’m still in my coma?”

“Dr. Kim can you hear me?” Xan asked.

“Yes, we’re here,” Dr. Kim replied out of the ether.

“Build a construct; make it pleasant,” Xan said.

The sun broke on the horizon and rose quickly over distant hills, each one covered in luscious green. A river glistened ahead of Xan, the flowing water and serene surroundings an ideal of the real thing. The boy was to his right, twenty feet away.

“Your name is Justin, isn’t it?” Xan asked. The boy nodded, uncertain.

“I’ll leave if you want me to, but we need to talk,” Xan said. “Would you walk with me to the river? Have you ever seen one?”

Xan walked toward the river. He could hear the rustle of the trees, the chirping of birds, the pleasant white noise of the water flowing away. The boy kept his distance as they walked to the river front.

Xan sat down, cross-legged. He found a smooth stone and chucked it into the river to hear it splash. He let out a long sigh.

The boy stood.

“I wouldn’t trust me either. I wouldn’t trust anyone, anymore,” Xan said. “How long have you been here?”

“Two days. The doctor and my dad said I was close to being healthy, that my brain was responding to the treatment.” The boy’s face crumbled. “It’s not true is it? Are you going to tell me I’m not getting better?”

“Worse. But I need you to listen and be tough. Can you do that?” Xan asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember when you first got online and flew to the moon? You don’t know it, but what you did wasn’t supposed to happen. The program was specifically restricted from doing that. YOU made that happen. You re-programmed the program.”

“I just flew.”

“Your conscious mind, yes. But not your subconscious. Do you know what your subconscious is?”

The boy nodded.

“For whatever reason, Justin, it allows you to do amazing things online. You are the only person to ever hack into a MindCorp Data Core. It was considered impossible. Teams of Sleepers have tried and the general consensus was that the Cores were unhackable. You shook down a Colossal Core in two minutes. And the military noticed and they found you. You are the most powerful Sleeper in the world.”

“I hit my head riding an ATV,” Justin said. Xan shook his head sympathetically.

“No, you didn’t. That memory was put in your head just like this river. Justin. You have been unconscious for over six months in a medically induced coma. And you’ve been used by the United States as a weapon.”

“I don’t understand,” Justin said. His right hand slapped against his thigh. Xan had read about this nervous tic.

“You don’t have to right now. I’m a high up official for the Chinese military. We took you from a military base in the U.S. because they had you manipulating our economy and other nasty things. Evil things.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Justin said again. He was a genius, but he was twelve and he felt like everything in his head was a lie.

“I’m going to bring you out of this medically induced state. You are going to wake up in a military base with a bunch of people that look like me. Are you ready for that?”

“How do I know it’s real?” Justin asked. He looked lost.

“Take a rock near you and cut yourself, and then decide it should heal,” Xan said. Justin looked at him reluctantly. Finally he took a rock and scrapped it across his forearm. A line of blood budded on his skin.

“Think it healed,” Xan said and Justin did. The small cut vanished.

“When you wake up and do that trick, think all you want, but that won’t happen.” Xan stood up.

“Why are you helping me?” Justin asked.

“Because I can’t make you do the things I want you to do,” Xan said. “You need to know the truth and then you can decide. You are a weapon, Justin, a unique and masterful work of God and your life will never be normal. Either by your choice, or by force, your fate in this world has already been sealed. I know it’s a heavy thing to hear, you’re a boy, but it is what it is.”

“You’re leaving?” Justin said.

“Yes. You’ll see me very soon. The real me.” Xan glanced at the sky. “Adjust the construct for real time.”

“Yes, sir,” the ether said.

“It will take ten hours to pull you out completely; the drugs are heavy sedatives with unique properties,” Xan said. “The time you feel now will be real. When this all starts to get blurry, just close your eyes and try to sleep.”

“Xan, are you a good guy?” Justin asked.

“You’re smart, Justin. I read that. China would think so. The U.S. would want me dead. I have hurt people for what I see as the greater good,” Xan said. “Is that a good enough answer?”

“I guess so.”

“Take this time to process what I told you,” Xan said and then he disappeared.

= = =

Xan woke up to silence. Dr. Kim was visibly angry and pulled a monitor over to Xan’s bedside.

“You destroyed the false construct! We could have used that,” Dr. Kim wrote.

Xan gestured with his good arm for Dr. Kim to come closer. When he did, Xan grabbed him with surprising strength and almost pulled him onto the bed. Xan’s eyes always looked the same.

“The construct was broken. This is the only way to get the boy’s trust. Never scream at me. Understand?”

Dr. Kim bowed repeatedly in subservience. Xan released him. His instincts told him he had done the right thing. The boy’s government had murdered his parents, taken him against his will, and used him under the auspice of a gross, inhumane lie. Children are children because they lack reason. They are children because they cannot control their emotions—anger the worst of all. Xan would only have to tell the boy the truth. No lies, no coercion, just hook up the Goliath and let him avenge his family against a David that had run out of stones.

Xan closed his eyes and pictured the slow rolling river, and tried to feel its calm.

= = =

The sedative the U.S. had used and China had replicated was a predictable drug and it was ten hours on the nose when the boy opened his eyes and awoke to the world. When he started to fidget, Xan had him disconnected and moved to his quarters. The boy opened his eyes and saw the man he had spoken to by the river.

“Hi, Xan,” Justin said. He rubbed his eyes.

“I’m deaf, Justin,” Xan replied.

Justin looked at him surprised and then he saw a screen on Xan’s wheelchair. On it was “Hi, Xan.”

“It takes what you say and puts it on the screen,” Xan said.

“Cool.”

“When you’re ready, I’ll show you rest of the base. We can even get a breath of fresh air. There’s a lot I have to tell you.”

Justin blinked his eyes a few times extra wide and looked down at his forearm. No cut.

“You can try it if you want, but this is real. I don’t choose to be deaf with no leg and a gimp arm,” Xan said. For emphasis, with his good arm he picked up the other and let it flop back to his lap.

“Where are my parents?” Justin asked. It was inevitable.

“Rest a little bit, get your bearings and when you’re ready I’ll tell you everything.” Xan left the room.

Two hours later he and Xan were being pushed through the throng of Beijing’s crowds. A discrete perimeter of soldiers kept a cushion of space around them. Earlier, Justin had tried to stand up but his legs were too weak and he almost toppled over.

“I want to walk,” Justin said when Xan came in to check on him. He had found Justin on the floor.

“Then walk.” Xan waited patiently as Justin struggled, but he finally stood up. His legs shook like a newborn colt’s.

Justin grimaced. “It hurts.”

“Yes,” Xan said. “It’s the atrophy. You’re young. You’ll recover quickly.”

The city was alive. They wheeled through a busy market that hadn’t changed in two hundred years. Justin stared at the skinned ducks hanging by their feet and the poor caged crickets in full witness of their brethren skewered on sticks and smoking over a fire.

“This is China?” Justin said.

“Yes.”

Justin slapped his face, trying to wake up. He had withdrawn into the wheelchair.

“That won’t help,” Xan said. He turned his wheelchair toward him. “Do you believe this is real?”

Justin knew it was real. Online his body felt light, his mind as open as the sky. In the real world, a fat man sat on his chest and everything was loud and distracting and scary. The marketplace was his nightmare. Around him swarms of people went about their lives, bartering, selling, laughing, yelling. They glanced warily at Xan and his plainclothes soldiers. Justin saw mothers usher children in the opposite direction. The smells that filled the air were pleasant and foreign. He nodded.

“I will only tell you the truth. I have told lies before, but that won’t get me what I want,” Xan said. “But the truth hurts.”

“My parents,” Justin said. It was clear. They would never let someone take him. Tears spilled out.

“Your parents are dead. I don’t know the details, but it was the U.S. military, so the only comforting thing I can offer is that it was quick.”

“The blonde man. The long haired blonde man.” Justin rocked back and forth, hugging himself. He looked up at Xan. “A man came to our door from the military, he spoke with my dad. He spoke to me and I told him about the plane ride to the moon.”

“I don’t know, Justin. I don’t have that answer,” Xan replied.

“His name was Mike Glass. That was his name.” Justin heaved and gasped, the analytical side of his brain overcome by his emotions.

Xan remained quiet. The bustle of the market continued uninterrupted by this revelation.

“That is the hardest thing I have to tell you, Justin. When you’re ready, I’ll tell you the rest.”

Back at the base Xan told Justin how the U.S. had used him while under the false construct of a coma. How the King Sleeper had influenced nations and persuaded policy changes favorable to the United States. How he was manipulated to hack into unsuspecting minds and even kill. Xan pulled no punches and the boy grew to trust Xan quickly. He had eyes that Justin took to be kind, not knowing that they never changed.

A week later the boy went online of his own free will. After tests, he built his own construct, a place in cyberspace where he was comfortable. It was his farm. He built his parents and they were exact in their likeness. In a distant field he even had a combine moving row-to-row, knowing that Margarito and Fernando were at the wheel.

Xan visited the farm and met his parents.

“This is your home?” Xan said to Justin.

“Yep. It’s not fancy but I liked it,” Justin said. His parents walked by him and his eyes saddened. But he liked what he had done. It was better than a funeral or a tombstone. It was a living memorial, a constant reminder of what he had lost, but also of what he once had had.

“It’s beautiful, Justin. As peaceful as the river,” Xan said. They both watched his parents go into the house. “I will ask you to do things and show you the way. I’ll explain why. And you can decide. Deal?”

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Justin said. His lip trembled. He understood that he had that power, but murder wasn’t in him.

“I’ll never ask that, Justin. I’m not looking to end the world. I just want to bring it back into balance.”

“What first?” Justin rose a foot off the ground. He closed his eyes and the air shimmered around him as the fabric of time began to tear.

“I want you to map out the U.S. banking system and their credit unions.”

“That sounds boring,” Justin replied.

“Finance is a nation’s blood, Justin.”

The air around Justin rippled. Outside the construct in cyberspace, his mindscape unfurled like the top of a parachute. It was a green fog infinitely growing.

“You should probably step back.”

Xan did one better and disappeared back to the real. He had the first of multiple surgeries scheduled for this afternoon. He looked at his limp arm. Amputation. He raised his right arm and inspected his hand. He opened and closed it. He pressed it against the cold rail of his wheelchair. He pressed his palm against the sharp edge of a table. Never again. The Shin battle chassis had passed its final prototyping. The military was manufacturing one per day and they were ramping up more factories. The entire government had gone off-line. They were receiving psychiatric evaluations to determine what affect the King Sleeper had had on them. And they were furious. They had been raped and they wanted war.

“You don’t have to do this,” a female voice said. He couldn’t hear her, but he saw the words fill the screen. Xan had told the scientists on the battle chassis project how he wanted to proceed.

“So they send you to convince me otherwise,” he said. He turned to an attractive woman in her thirties. “How’s your morning?”

Xinting was a top scientist at the Colossal Core. He had recruited her when she was sixteen. In another reality, Xan thought, they could have been more than just colleagues. Her knowledge was commandeered to develop the implant for the Shin battle chassis.

“We have plenty of soldiers that willfully volunteered.”

“Are you worried for me?” Xan teased. He knew she saw him as an elder, but he couldn’t help it.

“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’re too important to be the test subject. You found the King Sleeper, you created all of this and without you we wouldn’t have had a chance. We need you.”

Xan changed the subject. “How is he doing, in your opinion?”

Justin had grown attached to Xinting. When Xan saw this bond, he encouraged it. The boy needed a sanctuary. A person he could confide in that wasn’t in a uniform or white coat. She joked with him. She played with him. Justin loved puzzles. HUGE puzzles. They even had a game where the pieces of three would be mixed together. He solved them quickly. The boy cried in her arms when he talked about his mom and dad. One night, under heavy guard, Xan let Justin go to the home Xinting shared with her parents. This freedom had made Justin more amenable. Dr. Kim, who had fiercely disagreed when Xan had removed the construct, apologized daily.

“He doesn’t have Asperger’s,” Xinting said. “In the U.S. file he was diagnosed with it, but he only has the symptoms. His brain is just different.” She went back to the old subject. “You are risking your life, Xan. We don’t know everything yet.”

“I’ve always heard that Chinese women are subservient, but I’ve never met one,” Xan mused. “If I can ask our young soldiers to give up their able bodies for China, then I can give up my lame one and lead them. It’s fitting, Xinting, don’t you see? I’ve always been in the shadows and after this I can never hide again. There are too many shadow men. Too many puppeteers. It’s time we turn on the light and watch the cockroaches scatter. Including me. We need an honest world.”

“Will this give us one?”

“As long as the overpowering influence doesn’t subvert its own intentions. This is the closest we will ever be.”

= = =

Xan’s surgeries would take weeks to complete. He had provided Xinting a list. She showed it to Justin before he linked in.

He looked it over. “No one will get hurt?” he asked. There were over two hundred tasks. His right hand tapped his thigh.

“Xan has respected your wishes,” she said. “He wants your gift to cause our countries to unite. It may not seem so, but his plan is for peace. We need each other, Justin. We need to be united in this new world.”

“Will you come with me to the farm?” he asked. She recognized that he was about to cry.

She knelt down eye-to-eye. “What is it?”

“My parents don’t have anything more to say.” His lip trembled. “They sound like me.”

Xinting’s heart broke. She hugged him.

“Of course, Justin. Of course. I’m honored to.”

She ordered technicians to install a Sleeper chair next to the crucifix.

At the farm, she met his parents. She pet his dogs. She waved to Fernando and Margarito as they passed by in giant red combines. Dr. Lindo had adjusted the construct so that time stood still as the days spun into months. Justin did the opposite. An hour in cyberspace was one minute in the real world.

“I don’t belong out there,” Justin explained. “This is where I’m me.”

“You’re beautiful in either place.”

Justin smiled.

In his front yard, Justin rose into the air. The Colossal Core thumped with his power. He began:

–Mirror Data Node 2 in New York and Data Node 1 in Chicago. Hijack Cores. Hack respective stock exchanges. Back up stock prices. Replace all stocks with randomly generated share prices.–

They laughed at dinner. His was a big belly laugh. They ate spaghetti and meatballs.

–Shut down all electric grids to U.S. military bases around the world.–

He showed her how to shoot his rifle.

–Disconnect all communication systems for U.S. military bases around the world.–

They walked through the fields. Justin told her about things he learned from his dad. She spoke about her childhood friends.

–Disconnect U.S. military radar surveillance on the Eastern Seaboard. Hack ballistic missile silos and disconnect all overriding protocols. Target Washington, D.C. Initiate test launch sequence.–

Xinting cried discussing her inability to bear a child.

–Hack into credit unions. Back up credit records. Erase all credit records.–

Xinting noticed that Justin’s parents weren’t around any longer.

–Hack the Washington, D.C. power grid. Shut down all power to government buildings.–

Winter came. Overnight Justin created a huge hill with a ski lift. They went sledding the entire day.

–Crash Data Node 12 in Washington, D.C.–

He was teary eyed all-day and combative. When she finally got him to speak, he told her he was horrible to his mom when she was alive and “I can’t take it back.”

–Crash Data Node 3 in Los Angeles.–

She had told Justin a few weeks before that she had never celebrated Christmas. Christmas morning, she walked down to a beautifully decorated tree. The dogs sat in front of it, wagging their tails. Underneath it were a pile of gifts. Justin was making breakfast.

“But I don’t have anything for you!” she said.

“You’re my gift,” he said and hugged her.

–Hack into CIA and copy files of all current covert operatives. Contact operatives and tell them they’ve been compromised. Twenty-four hours later post list with attached government files to all message boards and news outlet.–

They sat near a creek. Spring had arrived. “Would you be my step mom?” he asked.

–Hack into . . . –

She loved this child as if he was her own.

Chapter 18

Evan was in his office at the White House. The lights were out. He was disconnected from the Mindlink. He was sulking.

It was no secret. The Chinese had the King Sleeper. They had found Mike Glass clinging to life but conscious enough to point at three Chinese soldiers that had died at the hands of Tank Major Janis. One had been crushed into a meat rug. The other two were rippled with glass shards. One week later, the U.S. economy was in shambles, Washington, D.C. had been cast into the Dark Ages, and the military was on life support. Fucking Panama could invade us.

And that was what they saw. The problem and beauty of the King Sleeper was that it was difficult to know when he was being used. Who knows what else he was doing . . . maybe all the politicians in Washington would vote that our new national anthem was “Freebird.” As stupid as it sounded, it could be done.

Evan rarely drank, but now was as good of a time as any. Next to him was the same bottle of scotch that WarDon had drunk before he decided to punt. Half the bottle was left; it was old, very old. It had been in WarDon’s effects, meant for his family. Evan had plucked it out without a stutter in his step. He thought it was funny to have the bottle. He thought, one day, he’d toast to his fallen comrade. Without him, none of this would have been possible.

“What’s wrong with me?” Evan asked the room. The black curtains let some light in and the two windows stared at him with cataract eyes. He pushed himself deeper into the corner to avoid their gaze.

He felt like a boy. Like when he was a boy. Always close, but never quite number one. He was never an athlete, it wasn’t about that. He thought athletics, on the whole, were a retarded waste of time.

His dad was a physicist, his mom a shrink. They had always instilled in him a sense of expectation, but never of love. His parents didn’t love each other after all; their marriage just made sense. His dad used to bang the babysitter. Evan remembered that. He was young, it was a memory built with fuzz from lack of understanding, but the hug he gave Kim, the sixteen-year-old next door neighbor, wasn’t done the right way.

His mom lived at her practice. Dinner was quiet and tight lipped. Conversations were always about work. Evan remembered telling them that he had a girlfriend—Tara—when he was ten.

“I love her!” he exclaimed. They had been together for one week. She was a third grader and pretty. She wore a side ponytail that he dug.

“You don’t know what love is, honey,” his mom said dismissively before she slipped a piece of pork chop into her mouth. The conversation turned back to themselves.

A child is forced to see the world through their parent’s filter and the predilections and values that color it. Evan only got their attention when he excelled academically because that was all they knew and how they assessed worth, and so he did that.

He began college at the age of fifteen and he still felt stupid because he had a classmate who was fourteen. He got doctorates in medicine and mechanical engineering—which his parents approved of—but his doctorate in cyberphysics confused them.

“What are you going to do with that?” his dad asked. They didn’t pay for it and he had reached an age where he wondered why the fuck they cared.

Luckily, they died. His father loved to smoke his pipe late at night while he read. He fell asleep with it. It was peaceful. The fire ate up his dad. Closed casket for pops. But at the funeral, his mom looked like she was sleeping.

He was already wired the way he was, but at least he didn’t have to hear their fucking nagging and backhanded praise anymore.

“I know what’s wrong with me,” Evan giggled. “I just want to make them proud.”

He took a swig directly from the bottle. It tasted of caramel and fire.

He stood up and paced the dark room. He wouldn’t be beaten. No. But even if he found the King Sleeper online, it would be impossible to find its tail. It had one, but to find it, you’d have to penetrate its immense mindscape. If it knew you were in it, it could kill you.

Evan went to his desk and hit the speaker.

“Yes?” the receptionist asked.

“Get me Cynthia,” Evan said.

“Cynthia Revo?”

“Who the fuck do you think?” He spat.

A slight pause. “Hold.” She went away.

Evan paced the room.

“Evan?” It was Cynthia. He shot over to the phone.

“We can’t trace the King Sleeper’s tail because of the mindscape, it’ll chew up anyone who tries,” he said. “How else could we find him?”

“Are you drunk?”

Evan looked at the bottle in his hand. Most of it was gone now. “Definitely.”

“The Western Curse,” Cynthia said. It took Lindo a minute to even recall who they were. The fucking terrorists at O’Hare.

“Why do you say that?”

“They used AK47’s, RPG’s—old weapons, and yet they happened to have state-of-the-art miniguns and a computer that could hack into the Tank Major and upload a virus. They’re a contradiction and that contradiction indicates a partnership with funds.” She continued. “Do you remember Harold Renki?”

“Yes, your scientist who was murdered,” Evan replied. “What’s the connection between him and the Western Curse?”

“None. But there is one degree of separation.”

“China?” Evan said.

“Specifically a man named Xan,” Cynthia said. Her research on Harold Renki had proven fruitful. While he had been squeaky clean online, Sabot had found detailed information in a hidden safe at his estate and multiple online aliases.

“I’ve heard the name,” Evan said.

“He’s the Chinese version of you, Evan,” Cynthia said. He could hear the scorn over the phone.

“Can you find him?” Evan asked.

“No. There’s no trace of him anywhere online.”

“Mohammed Jawal, that’s what the little French fucker told us,” Evan said. The nightmare with Janis and the King Sleeper clouded over his initial desire to hunt this guy down and skull fuck him. “Thank you, Cynthia.” It was genuine, rare.

“Sober up, Evan,” she replied and was gone.

= = =

Cynthia hung up the phone. Sabot stood next to her with his hand on her shoulder.

“His ears must have been ringing. Why just me?” General Boen asked. He sat across the desk at her private request.

“Do you trust Evan?” she asked.

Boen crossed his legs and straightened his suit. “Not as far as I can throw him.” He was still furious at Evan for keeping the King Sleeper secret.

“I have information that I, as a private entity, do not have to share with you. With this information and a properly executed strategy, it will lead you to the King Sleeper. Evan wants war. It doesn’t have to end that way.”

“I hope you’re right,” Boen said. “What do you want?”

“Evan’s out, that’s all.”

“I can’t keep him out forever.”

“Not forever, just for this. You can throw me under the bus afterwards, I don’t care. But I trust you Earl. The King Sleeper isn’t good for you and he isn’t good for me.”

Boen wiggled his jaw while he weighed his options. Fuck Evan, Boen thought. The little prick only keeps secrets.

“Deal,” Boen said.

Cynthia told him what she knew and the strategy they formed together was intricate, yet executable, and beautiful in its trickery. Basically, why Boen liked his job.

= = =

Mohammed Jawal got a message from Xan in the Western Curse shareware to meet. Per their established protocol, Mohammed responded by inserting into the code the time and place.

= = =

Six hours after his meeting with Cynthia, General Boen was at JFK airport walking into an airplane hanger where they had transported John. While most of JFK’s runways had returned to nature, the government kept three operational. The mission would start in one hour. But there was another issue to attend to. And Earl kept his promises.

“They’re here,” General Boen said. Raimey began to stand.

“Hold on a second,” Boen said. “We almost had to force Tiffany to come here. When I sent soldiers to Florida, it was bad, John. I think you understand the hurt they’re feeling. They’re both confused. I explained the best I could, but you know, they don’t want to hear it from me.”

“Does Tiffany have cancer?” Raimey asked.

“Yes. She initially refused treatment, but she’s going now. It’s far along, but the doctors are hopeful.”

“So she understands why I did this,” Raimey said.

“Yes, but no,” Boen replied. “You’re this now.” Earl gestured at his giant frame. “But you’re still John Raimey. Be that today, the best you can, because you might not see them again.”

Raimey looked at Earl with sorrowful eyes.

“I’m sorry, John. But it’s the best advice I can give you. Come with me.” Raimey stood up and followed him out the large hangar door. “You have one hour and then we have to go.”

= = =

The prep for the mission had already begun. A stealth bomber had been pulled into an adjoining hanger. A team of mechanics worked under its belly, modifying the bomb bay to handle Raimey as a payload, and to create a livable space for the small insertion team that was coming with him.

Inside, they disassembled the plane’s current bomb delivery system and removed it piece-by-piece through the bay doors. Sparks cascaded down and countless voices yelled “careful” throughout the entire process.

Boen guided Raimey across the hangar and past staring eyes to the opposite end where a tall curtain cordoned off the area behind it. Boen stopped short.

“Tiffany is in there. Make this count.”

Raimey nodded and Earl pulled the curtain aside. Raimey stepped through. Tiffany sat in the middle of the room. She wore the light lead apron that everyone around him wore. Her eyes were red rimmed and wet. When she saw him, she withered and fell to her knees.

He walked over to her and knelt down, worry across his face, aching in his chest. He reached a hand out and quickly retracted. He could offer no comfort.

“I had no choice, Tiffany,” he said softly. She continued to heave, her head turned downward, her body cast in the darkness of his giant shadow.

“Tiffany. Please. Please. I didn’t know what to do. They told me about the cancer,” he said.

She turned up to him, still huddled over like she was waiting for a blow. Her lost expression was the same as he had seen in his dream. Terrified disbelief. A horrible lie vetted true.

“General Boen, Dr. Lindo, the President, they promised you would get the best treatment and that you both would be taken care of, forever,” Raimey said. She was still looking at the body before her, the giant metal shape that housed her husband, but her eyes would snatch a glance at his face and his face was his. Everything behind armor except his eyes that pleaded for her to accept him or at least speak. He was crouched over close enough to touch, his head two feet from hers, looking into her eyes.

She reached out slowly. Her hand first rested on the giant chest armor, gripping the top of it like a rail. Over it she could see his neck and the very top of his chest. She reached up to his head and he crouched lower to aid her. She put the palm of her hand on his cheek and then ran it over his face as if she were blind and this was their first meeting. He closed his eyes and took it all in. He remembered what General Boen had said: this touch, this interaction, this memory, could be the last he ever knew of the woman before him. His heart burst from the thought of it, but he willed himself into the moment, because no future moment is truly known.

“You should have waited,” she said, her voice barely a breath. “We could have made this decision together. WE are supposed to make these decisions together!”

Her hand dropped to her side. She turned away from him and looked out into the hangar, her eyes distant and unfocused. “You were going to apply for an online job, remember? There you’d be fine, able-bodied.”

“You’re sick.”

“We would’ve had a chance!” Tiffany yelled. “We would have been together! Dammit, John. What did you do? We can’t take this back. There is no going back!”

“They needed me, Tiffany. What I’m doing could save the world.”

“We needed you, too. They would have found someone else.”

John had nothing to comfort her. He loved her more than he loved himself. He cared for her and Vanessa enough to let the world burn ten times over, let the innocent die, just so they could live. He knew this. In some small way, his new form was that incarnation.

“I love you so much, Tiffany,” Raimey said. She finally looked at him again. He was knelt before her like a knight bowing to his princess.

“I love you, too. I just thought we had more time,” she said. She stood up and went to him. She kissed him on the lips and looked into his eyes. She kissed him again and then put her face against his, cheek-to-cheek.

“Vanessa can’t see you like this,” Tiffany said.

“But she’s here!” Raimey pleaded.

“What would a ten-year-old girl take from this? I can’t process this! Look at you! You’re a weapon! How can you comfort her? How can you—”

“Tiffany, please don’t go. This might be it. Where I’m going, I may not come back. I need to be around you. I need to see her. I know I’m asking too much, but please. Be angry with me later. Hate me later! For now, let’s be us,” Raimey said.

She stopped, her hand on the curtain’s edge. Her head tilted down.

“I don’t hate you. I love you so much I want to die. But I’m so mad. I feel so betrayed. I know you did this with good intentions, deep down I know. But us, John! Us! We are a family. We should be fighting together. You crippled, my cancer, our daughter growing up. Those are our fights!”

“How could I fight, Tiffany! How could I?! I was nothing! I’m not smart, I’m not funny, I don’t have any money. All I had is gone!” Raimey howled. “I caused the cancer, I know I did. You never had a moment to breathe when I came back from the hospital. You never had a moment to think ONCE about yourself. I don’t want you two to fight. I don’t want you two to struggle. I want you two to have a life that will allow you to wake up and decide what you want to do that day. Not wake up and know that your day will be long and hard and it’s all MY FAULT!”

Raimey’s voice echoed throughout the hanger. He wheezed from the effort, from vocalizing his fears and his dead dreams. Of his struggle to do what’s right, coupled with the knowledge that his arms and legs weren’t enough for Uncle Sam. His life and family had to get thrown onto the altar too.

Tiffany was quiet.

“You didn’t cause the cancer,” she finally said.

“Please let me see her, Tiff,” Raimey asked.

She was quiet again.

“She won’t understand,” Tiffany said. “Earl?”

“Yes?” Boen was on the other side of the curtain.

“Could you escort me to get Vanessa?”

“Of course.”

Tiffany turned to John and looked up into his large, watery eyes.

“You can speak with her through the curtain. It’ll be better this way. I want her to remember her dad as a man. This is too much.”

Raimey nodded. She was right.

“Thank you, Tiffany,” Raimey said.

“I already miss you, John,” she said, a sad smile on her face, reminiscing of their time, knowing, as he stood in front of her, that all the good memories had passed.

She blew him a kiss and ducked through the curtain. Raimey waited. His heart beat like a drum. He finally heard his daughter’s voice as they crossed the room.

“She’s here,” Tiffany said through the curtain.

John told his daughter all the things that a child should hear. How she was special, how she changed his life. He told her about his childhood and his parents and how, while they loved him, they showed it in hard ways and how he promised to be a better dad and better husband when he was an adult. He told her about when he first laid eyes on her, about how beautiful Tiffany was, and when she held Vanessa for the first time, that memory seared in his mind. He told her about the first time she spoke and the one time she called someone an “asshole” when she was three and how he and Tiffany laughed till they fell while they tried to tell her it was wrong. He told her everything until it was hard to breathe and the pain became unbearable. Because that one-inch curtain between them may as well have been a vast sea. Because Tiffany was right. Vanessa couldn’t see him like this. The memories he had of her would be tainted by this encounter. The memory of her face, contorted into a scream when she saw that her dad had become the boogeyman.

They left. John sat down. Earl walked in and John waved him away. He felt nothing. But nothing had feeling. It was dull and numb and filled his entire body with a sadness so great, it felt like every cell was crying. He would never recover from this. There was no way to.

“It’s time, John,” Boen said.

Chapter 19

Mohammed walked through a replica of a space station found in 2001: Space Odyssey. He had seen the movie many times and the exacting detail of the replica impressed him: the bleach white hallways, the CRT screens for phone calls, the red lounge chairs. Hipsters dressed from various eras were scattered about. Earth and the stars swapped places again and again outside panoramic windows.

He saw the man that he knew would be Xan. He was small and Asian and he had sad eyes. Mohammed walked up to him. Xan didn’t turn. He watched the rolling stars intently.

“That was quite the trick you pulled on me at O’Hare,” Mohammed said. “If I hadn’t gotten so much in return . . .” He trailed off but the tone was threatening.

“I wouldn’t disconnect if I were you,” Xan said with a woman’s voice.

Mohammed immediately understood he had been ambushed. “Why?”

“If you do, you will die. Right now, the U.S. military, with another Tank Major, has surrounded your safe house. We work with them now. If I tell them you’ve disconnected without hearing what I have to say, they will come in and they will kill every last one of you.” Not Xan paused. “Do you know who I am?”

“Cynthia Revo.” He looked around the room as if that gave any measure of his true danger.

“I found your shareware program floating in my space,” she said. “It took a while. Clever.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re an educated man, Mohammed. In many ways I empathize with you. But I know, fundamentally, we’ll always be on opposite sides. Neither philosophy is very good at compromise.”

Mohammed listened.

“I don’t care about you. Right now, neither does the U.S. military. We need you to contact Xan.”

“Am I negotiating a plea deal?” Mohammed asked, disbelieving.

“No. This deal guarantees that you live one more day. You do this and Xan responds, we leave you alone for twenty-four hours. I suggest you use that time wisely and disappear.”

“How can I trust your word when history shows me all the ones that have been broken?”

“I’m not here for a philosophical debate. Today, right this moment, there are bigger fish to fry than you. This deal has a quick expiration. Sometimes you just got to roll the dice.”

= = =

Cynthia snapped awake.

“How did it go?” Sabot asked.

She smiled. “Mohammed will post the message in ten hours. He said it takes up to two for Xan to respond.”

“Perfect.”

There were no military teams around Mohammed’s safe house. A Tank Major didn’t hide in the shadows. For Earl and Cynthia’s plan to work, timing and luck were everything. But for Mohammed, the decision was simple. If the creator of a new universe hacked in and tricked you to meet her, and then she showed up as an exact duplicate of your funder, and then she told you that they knew your location and that you could choose to either die now or get a momentary reprieve for one small betrayal, no matter what cards she may be holding—it could be a pair of twos—you don’t call that bluff and push everything in.

= = =

While Xan used a live host to throw off his digital tail when he met with Mohammed, when he communicated with the shareware for the hundredth of a second it took to confirm location, he used no such precaution. Eleven hours after Cynthia had threatened Mohammed, Xan had replied. Cynthia grabbed the digital tail and quickly traced it back. It originated at an undocumented location in the middle of Beijing. She analyzed the data input and output of the surrounding area and like an x-ray—with fiber optic lines as the bones—she knew that a hidden Colossal Core wore one square mile of that region as a hat.

She contacted Earl and sent him the image file. She transposed the blue cords of data activity with a map of the region. The data paths circled the center like water down a drain.

“That’s a very populated area,” Boen said, concerned.

“No,” Cynthia replied. “It’s the most populated area. And it’s the market hub for that section of the city.”

“Shit balls,” Boen said.

“Shit balls, indeed.”

“I’ve ordered a satellite pass, hopefully that’ll add to what you’ve sent me. We need to know where to get in.”

“An x-ray pulse should show that,” Cynthia said. “You can hide a Colossal Core from peeping eyes by throwing some shacks on it, but it’s still a million tons of concrete and steel. Whatever’s over it is superficial.”

“Roger that,” Boen said. “You ever think about joining the military?”

She heard the smile in his voice.

“There’s no money in it, Earl,” she replied.

= = =

John and the insertion team knew how quadruplets felt. They were crammed into the B-2’s modified bomb bay. Thirty minutes after he had seen his wife and heard his child, he was airborne. They were eleven hours into a thirteen-hour flight to Beijing. Three of the six soldiers that Eric Janis had trained with: Hostettler, Johnson, and Ratny, were on board. Ratny had been on leave when Janis went berserk. Hostettler and Johnson had been in a hospital recovering from gunshot wounds. There was no more room.

They were in a pressurized drop container that had a guidance system like a smart bomb. The toilet was a bucket epoxied to the floor. A small wireless monitor showed their progress. For the last hour, Hostettler had been fidgeting.

“I have to go,” Hostettler said.

“Noooo,” they all groaned, including John.

“Which one?” Ratny asked, optimistically.

“Not the one you’re hoping for.” Hostettler’s stomach gurgled in agreement. “When it gets down to it, probably both.”

“I could have been a pharmacist,” Johnson said, immediately unhappy with his life decisions.

John and the team didn’t have time to train together but they all bonded while Hostettler faced them, ass on a bucket, and crapped his brains out. The ventilation system was ill-equipped.

Chapter 20

The surgery requirements for the Shin battle chassis were much less intrusive than the American version. It was arms and legs; everything else remained. Because of the size of the Shin battle chassis—it was fifteen feet tall—they had some latitude on the soldier compartment. This allowed them to quickly prepare soldiers for the program.

Just like the American version, Xan’s spine was fused with a connecting rod into the chassis. Unlike the American version, which assessed g-load and compensated with thousands of points of data, the suspension device for the Chinese version was mechanical. Xan was mounted into the chassis with gas shocks that allowed up to two feet of up-and-down movement and a foot side-to-side. It was crude, but they would evolve the platform over time.

Because Xan had a fully articulated spine, the doctors used a Botox derivative to paralyze the muscles in Xan’s back so that he wouldn’t fight against the spinally fused suspension bracket in the heat of battle. Xan was both numb and tender, depending on the section of his truncated form. His limbs haunted him, even with the implant.

“We’re troubleshooting the software, we’ll figure it out,” Xinting said.

“It works, Xinting,” Xan said. “We built a Tank Major in two months. It took the Americans years of physical development and all of the resources that MindCorp could offer.”

“But you’re in pain,” Xinting replied. “The American version doesn’t have this ghosting.”

“Ramp up production. It can be fixed later.”

The government’s trust in Xan had become so complete, that his orders were law. Once Xan had come to and they knew the software—however flawed—worked with the body, they had immediately culled four more soldiers. Two Chinese Tank Majors were now on base.

Amidst all of this, Xan had reluctantly agreed to meet Mohammed. At this point, he wasn’t sure the benefit, but Xan believe in managing his resources. He no longer laid down to link-in. He sat in a throne built into his new quarters at the base of the Colossal Core. His hearing was back. He heard the whirl of server fans and the chunk-chunk-chunk of the King Sleeper dismantling the U.S.’s digital infrastructure.

On Tank Major Xan’s back were two sheets of armor that connected to his metal spine like an insect’s wings. Underneath those were huge hydraulics that anchored to the three foot wide, depleted uranium spine. The black casement and nickel piston of the hydraulics looked like exposed ribs. They connected to jointed parts of his body that controlled his arms and legs and chest armor. Combined, they also allowed an intense constriction. A wedge, like a thick ax head, was built down the front of Tank Xan’s chest. If he grabbed another Tank Major and pulled it in, the compressing hydraulics would cleave it against the wedge, puncturing through it like the carapace of a crab. A grenade launcher was mounted on one shoulder, on the other was a cannon modified from their fighter jets.

Unlike the American version, all of Xan’s movement was powered with hydraulics. Decompression pumps were paired with each hydraulic piston to allow him to move quickly, but the faster he moved, the less powerful he became because of torque bleed.

Xan left his message in the Western Curse shareware and walked out to the floor. Two of the Tank Majors were based topside in false shops. The other two had been sent out for military demonstrations, not unlike what Xan had witnessed through Jan Hedgegard when he had probed his mind.

Xinting lay next to Justin in a Sleeper chair. She was semi-conscious. Justin had requested her presence when he was online, it soothed him and he could multi-task: re-route supply chains in the U.S. to increase the chance of famine. Play cards. Stop freight rail and shut off their cooling systems. Go-kart race. Bring down a credit union and its backup servers. Watch old action movies. Time was layered in cyberspace, just like thoughts. Especially for him.

“How is he holding up?” Xan asked Xinting.

“He’s fine. But we should take him offline soon,” Xinting replied distantly. “He’s been on for five hours.”

“Very good. Have him finish up. Thank you, Xinting,” Xan said.

The U.S. had used the King Sleeper for subterfuge. They were looking at long-term political influence and gain. Xan was using Justin as a hammer. He wanted to force the truce. Everything Xan destroyed could be re-built. The systems and files smashed and erased could be restored quickly by the King Sleeper. Xan had Justin push the U.S. back to the Dark Ages to reveal the world’s perilous balance between order and chaos. This was a warning, a call for level heads and competent leaders, and no more of the men three rows back, including Xan. Xan watched as Xinting began to power down the Data Crusher to pull the little boy out of his crucified shackles. The white flag wavering across the battlefield should have already happened. But nothing from the U.S. This bothered Xan greatly. The air force was on high alert, Xan had warned the interim President of a possible military incursion. Silence wasn’t a sign of submission. It was a sign of planning, plotting. It was a sign of war.

= = =

“You’re lucky you’re made of metal,” Ratny said. “My body is stiff as hell.”

“I’ll massage it if you like.” Raimey offered his massive crushing hand.

“Funny.”

They all wore darting eyes and nervous smiles. Five minutes before, the small monitor inside their now-agreed-upon-prison lit up and General Boen wished them luck. There would be no comm. There would be no backup, just an evac point at the bay twenty miles east. A fishing vessel would take them to an Ohio-class submarine waiting quietly offshore. Capture the King Sleeper, get him to the sub, or neutralize him.

“God bless you, and get home safe,” Earl had said. The picture froze.

“Two minutes out, gentlemen,” the pilot said. Inside the drop container a red light blinked off and on and they heard the whine of the bomb bay doors opening beneath them. The three soldiers strapped themselves into harnesses connected to the sidewall. A minute later, they felt themselves tumble into space. Smart bomb technology guided them to their location.

Their only window to the outside world was an altimeter. Ratny was closest to it and he called out their altitude as they descended.

“Sixty-five thousand feet.”

“Fifty thousand feet.”

“Thirty-five thousand feet.”

“How won’t they see us?” Johnson said. They were tumbling directly into Beijing.

“They’ll get a visual, but no radar. It’s stealth,” Ratny said. “Twenty-five thousand feet.”

Hostettler puked and wiped with his sleeve. “Hope the parachute works.”

“It’s some NASA shit. It’s a late stage with boosters,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t open until three thousand feet.”

“Fifteen thousand feet.”

“I’ll bust us out of here. You guys have the GPS in your headpieces, right?” Raimey asked. They nodded. “Good. Tell me coordinates, I’ll launch the hover-rovers and send them ahead. Stay safe. I need eyes. Send me at’em, guide me like a missile.”

“We’ll get you there,” Hostettler said. “I’m sorry about Eric, he was a good guy. No mercy today. These were the guys that did it.”

“Oorah,” they said in unison.

“We’ll keep behind you or to the alleys. Call out if you’re going to unload a hydraulshock,” Johnson said. “We’ll support you the best we can, but we need to make it to the Core.”

“Five thousand feet.”

A moment later the parachute slammed them into their seats. They rechecked their weapons. Raimey’s body began to vibrate as his waist chains spun up.

= = =

Tank Major Li saw the object drop from the sky. He thought it was a meteor until the parachute deployed. He called it in and ran to greet it. He wanted to try his new body. The crowd scattered away from him as he burst out of the false store. A dozen soldiers followed him in a truck.

All market activity stopped. Customers and shopkeepers stepped out to watch the strange, wedge shaped object as, even with the parachute deployed, it came in too fast directly at the market. One hundred thousand people watched it descend. On its back were wings and they adjusted the descent, finally turning the wedge parallel to the ground. A thousand feet above the crowded, silenced market, rocket boosters erupted to slow it down and the crowd screamed in panic and ran in all directions. Li and the soldiers were less than a quarter mile away and the crowd felt trapped, a mechanized giant on one end and what could be a bomb or an alien spacecraft on the other. They were a school of fish avoiding predators, darting and surging to get out of the way.

The stealth ship landed and the parachute—as big as a hot air balloon—lazily followed.

“Do not approach the crate,” Xan said in Li’s ear. That order echoed to the soldier transport. “Reinforcements are behind you.”

Li ignored the order. He felt invincible. They had run parallel assessments of the Tank Major the Americans had built to their own and, in almost all cases, the Chinese one was superior.

The object looked too small to house a Tank Major. The truck drove to the opposite side and trained its .50 caliber machine gun on it. The soldiers got out and formed a wide perimeter. Against the orders barked over the truck’s megaphone, civilians filtered back into the alleys at what they perceived as a safe distance to see what was going on. They stared in awe at their mechanized soldier.

The foreign object hummed with building energy. Li trudged forward to within ten yards. He aimed the grenade launcher and cannon on it. He mentally adjusted his hydraulic system for speed, sacrificing power. In this mode he was fast, and in training they would treat their arms like maces, carrying the energy, curving back, using the momentum as it built with rotation. He could adjust the power on the fly.

The panels of the crate shook violently. Static electricity danced across it and the curious crowd became less curious and retreated. Li walked forward just as the crate exploded outward and a giant unfurled from its cocoon. Its body was matte black, almost rubberized. It wasn’t as bulked down with armor. And unlike the Tank Major they had studied to emulate, it was nearly Li’s size and equally wide. It locked its eyes on him and charged. Li shelled it with his weapons.

“Hit the deck,” Raimey yelled to his team. They sprawled.

The Chinese Tank Major tried to veer out of the way. Raimey scissored his right fist down onto its shoulder and reared back his left to hydraulshock.

WHA-WHAM!

Li exploded across the marketplace, two hundred pound pieces blasting through shops and carts, clearing the area around them in rough swaths. Raimey didn’t wait; he felt the pecking of bullets against his back. He turned and charged the truck. He conserved the hydraulshocks and ran through it, collapsing its roof and tearing it in half.

Prone, Hostettler, Ratny, and Johnson fired on the Chinese soldiers who stood like mannequins while the giant demolished what they had thought was invincible. They collapsed from headshots and chest shots before they even raised a rifle.

PUNG! Two hover-rovers erupted off Raimey’s back and spun into the air. They arced forward, gaining elevation as they went. Raimey—and only Raimey—now had eyes. The Tank Major/hover-rover system was completely closed and unhackable. He had HD, UV, infrared, and night vision. They gave off no heat or radar signature. Already, they were dots in the air. They looked like a kid’s lost balloon.

“GO! GO! GO!” Ratny screamed. The three soldiers jumped up and sprinted through the crowd to a nearby alley. They would use Raimey as a distraction while they worked their way to the Core using the corrugated alleyways as cover.

The hover-rovers showed reinforcements vectoring in. Hundreds of troops and armored vehicles. Soldiers on roofs carrying long tubes. No more giants. A tornado siren erupted from his body, a courtesy to civilians, and equally, a warning of what was coming: a chance to retreat or surrender.

“I’m coming,” Raimey said. His momentum built quickly as he charged as the crow flies toward the Colossal Core.

“We’re a half mile away,” Ratny said, panting. They had two-way radios attached to their helmets. Raimey had a speaker version jury rigged to the inside of his. “Still no soldie—we’re taking fire! Fire ahead of you!”

Raimey heard the sharp echo of assault rifles ahead and to the right of the main road. He flew a hover-rover toward that location and found the hostile group. He had adjusted quickly to the multiple sight lines. It had become as natural as breathing and it gave him a monumental advantage.

“Hole up. I’m coming,” Raimey said and he veered toward the sound.

Twenty Chinese soldiers were stationed on top of a roof camouflaged to look residential. Potted plants decorated the ledge, old dresses and shirts fluttered on a clothesline. Training rote in Johnson’s mind saved him from a bullet. He sensed movement above him and immediately took cover. Where he had just stood freckled and twanged with lead. Ratny and Hostettler took cover and called it in.

They heard Raimey coming. It sounded like an industrial accident at a steel mill. Suddenly the bottom half of the building with the soldiers turned to smoke.

WHA-WHAM!

The hydraulshock report shot past the team and even with their earplugs, they cupped their ears in pain. Shacks around them toppled over and the five-story structure fell away like it was built with cards.

“Clear,” Raimey said. They heard the deep impact of his feet and the metallic frenzy of the drive chains fading as he continued toward the Core. The team altered their course around the new rubble, ignoring the screams of the few soldiers that somehow survived, and sprinted to catch up.

= = =

Xan watched the small team and the new Tank Major approach on a surveillance monitor. This Tank Major was much different than the first. It was larger and it looked less encumbered with armor. It was much quicker. It had dismantled Li in less than a second and Xan watched through violently shaking surveillance cameras as the perimeter outpost evaporated in demolition.

“What should we do?!” a technician asked. They saw what was coming. Xan watched as the Tank Major ran ahead of the team and bulldozed through buildings like they were paper. They were moving fast to avoid reinforcements. They knew where the Core was.

A tank blocked the road and his other Tank Major flanked the American. Xan watched the tank recoil as it fired the 120mm cannon. He watched as the American sprinted away from Xan’s Tank Major through buildings. They crumbled behind him and his Tank Major followed.

He’s luring you. No.

The tank tried to maneuver, but the surrounding buildings crowded it in. Suddenly the giant was on top of it, hammering down with huge fists.

It moves too fast.

It jumped off and the cameras shook violently again. When they settled, the tank was engulfed in flame and twisted out. Hydraulshock. The Chinese Tank Major fled. Xan wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have done the same.

“Leave,” Xan said. He turned to the entire team. “There’s nothing for you to do here now.”

On his order, the technicians scrambled away, afraid for their lives.

The boy was still in the crucifix. It took an hour for the Data Crusher to spin down and when it did, the boy could safely regain consciousness. For a moment, Xan thought Xinting had abandoned Justin, but then she appeared from the hallway that led to Justin’s room. She had two bags in her hand.

“Xinting,” he raised his voice to be heard over the thwap-thwap-thwap of the Core.

The base rattled from an explosion above them. The hydraulshock. They were already here.

She ran to Justin. The Data Crusher wound down. It would still be dangerous to unhook him. Xan looked at the bags. They had to have been pre-packed. One was for her, the other for the boy.

“You need to slow them down, Xan. I need at least ten more minutes.” She looked up at the noise. A distant chatter of gunfire found its way down.

“You knew,” he said, unaccusing.

“In my training, at one point Cynthia Revo had tried to recruit me,” she replied. Cynthia had found her again, ten hours before and told her what was going to happen.

Xan stepped forward. “She can’t have him.” Xinting moved in front of Justin with her hands up. Gunfire rattled overhead.

“She doesn’t want anyone to have him. She said she never wants him to connect in again. She sent me money to take him away. It’s enough to live on forever. She doesn’t care where I go, her only condition was that he can never go online.”

“We can’t rebuild what we’ve taken away without him,” Xan said. Xan didn’t want to leave the world wounded. Without the King Sleeper, the seeds of economic collapse he had planted would continue to grow. The banks and credit unions would be castrated bulls unable to proliferate.

Another burst of gunfire came from above as the infiltration team pushed forward. Twenty stories up, Raimey was working his way to the Data Core with his team playing peek-a-boo behind him with firearms.

“It’ll have to sort out on its own,” Xinting said. “Cynthia told me that the U.S. mission is to either retrieve the King Sleeper or kill him.”

“You’re not defecting?” Xan asked.

Xinting shook her head violently. “No. I love China. I don’t want to leave, but I think I have no choice. No Xan, I just want this poor boy to live.”

Xan looked down at Justin. His little frame rustled around in the rack, beginning to awake.

“I want that too,” Xan said. The U.S. couldn’t have him and he wouldn’t let the boy die. It was settled. “Please tell Justin I said goodbye.”

“I will. Thank you, Xan.”

Xan and Xinting looked at each other for a moment. They could have been more.

“I’ll get you ten minutes,” he said and ascended up the walkway to meet his guests.

= = =

Raimey hydraulshocked the entrance and they quickly infiltrated, using Raimey as the battering ram. For a normal team, the resistance from the Chinese soldiers would have been overwhelming, but with John, they may as well have been firing blanks. Ratny and the others hid behind Raimey as he progressed through the base. The quarters were tight, the top three floors—only one of which was actually on the surface, just like a MindCorp Node—were office space.

They finally found a bank vault-like door with a hand scanner.

“Get back,” Raimey said.

WHA-WHAM!

The vault door didn’t have time for its metal molecules to bend. It shattered inward like a sheet of ice. The team stacked up, went through, and was met with a torrent of gunfire from all sides. From behind John, the team heard the metallic thoomp of underbarrel grenades exploding against him. They felt the flecks of bullet fragments redirected off Raimey’s impenetrable shell.

“We got to get back!” Johnson yelled. Raimey walked backwards slowly, keeping them shielded. When they had retreated past the vault door, Raimey charged back in. They heard the effortless destruction as Raimey tore through the defenses, the gurgled screams cut short, the grenades detonated to no effect. Two minutes later, “clear.” They came in guns up, but they could have run in with toy windmills, there was nothing to shoot.

Bright blue radiated the area. A cyclical blat filled the room. The team stacked up behind Raimey and followed him to a walkway that surrounded the Colossal Core.

“Holy shit,” Johnson said. None of them had ever seen anything like this. The Core looked suspended in mid-air. Only when they squinted through the piercing blue light could they see the shadowed support lattice that connected it to the surrounding walls. Its base was two hundred feet below. The Core cast the cavernous space in deep shadow.

Gunfire hit Raimey. Ahead, four Chinese soldiers retreated to another alcove built along the path. Ratny and the others returned suppressive fire while they moved forward. The Chinese rolled a flash bang out. It bleached Raimey’s vision momentarily, but the open space and the intense blue light from the Core minimized its effect. Raimey caught the tail end of their retreat as they used the metal buttresses along the walls for cover.

“They retreated again,” Raimey said. The others grunted assent. The walkway curved around the Core, gently corkscrewing down. The thwap-thwap-thwap was deafening. The energy in the air, tangible. Little white electrical arcs jumped across Raimey’s armor.

They whittled away at the Chinese soldiers. Finally, almost halfway down, Ratny found the thigh of the last one and, as he limped away, followed up with headshot.

“That’s all of ‘em,” Hostettler said. They moved faster. Closer to the ground, they could now see a woman. She was reaching up for something above her. Their view was partially blocked by the massive blue tube and a metal structure that resembled a cross.

“Stop!” Johnson yelled. The woman worked faster. He fired a warning shot past her. She flinched and pinned herself closer to the thick cross. As the team rotated around the Core they saw what she was working on: the King Sleeper.

Johnson fired again, intentionally wide. She dropped to the ground and then quickly resumed.

“Go!” Raimey yelled. The three soldiers sprinted ahead of Raimey. The walkway was too narrow for him to move fast and the platform vibrated from his weight.

Twenty feet ahead was another large support buttress. Ratny, Hostettler, and Johnson reached it and suddenly they were thrown out toward the Core.

They screamed as they fell one hundred feet. They crashed into tall server bays and pin wheeled into the ground, instantly dead.

Raimey ran to see what had happened when a Tank Major stepped out from the shadow and tried to push him over the ledge.

It sounded like two cars colliding. On instinct, Raimey ducked low like he was avoiding a tackle as Xan wrapped his arms around him. He had no room to hydraulshock and he was positioned sideways to the massive Chinese Tank Major, unable to turn under its incredible grip. Raimey dug his legs in and pushed back, but Xan was too powerful. The hydraulics hissed while they extended, wearing down the resistance of Raimey’s hip mounted electric motors.

Raimey could hear the other man scream with rage. Raimey’s outside foot lost traction and suddenly he was at the ledge where the other soldiers had fallen to their deaths. He could see their sprawled bodies below.

Without warning, Raimey let himself drop to the platform. The Chinese Tank Major’s power suddenly met no resistance and, for a second, Xan teetered over Raimey, unbalanced. Raimey exploded upward, flipping the giant off his back and over the side. Xan grabbed Raimey’s leg and pulled him down with him.

They clawed at each other as they fell. At the bottom, they crashed into the sea of servers that exploded out in shards and sparks. The cooling system for the CPU’s ruptured and freezing air covered the floor in fog.

Xinting worked frantically, Justin was almost out. She fumbled at the locking clips that held him in place. Two tries for each and she pulled him down. She worked on the interface that attached to his head, that allowed the data of the world access to his mind, and he, to its secrets.

Raimey was punch drunk. He tasted blood. A warning in his head told him that a right leg suspension unit was broken. But he was alive. He heard a death rattle behind him. He was laying on the other giant. Suddenly, its arms came up and wrapped around his upper body in a hug. And then he heard what sounded like a trash compactor. The sound thickened and Raimey’s head cleared when he saw his chest armor buckle. He was being crushed.

Xan had him. The Chinese design didn’t have the suspension system like the American Tank Major, and the fall had ruptured his organs. But while the blood filled his lungs, he still had time. He wrapped his arms around the American and initiated the constriction.

Raimey’s arms were pinned to his sides. He tried to struggle free, but he couldn’t move. He watched as the ceramic coat of his chest armor shed under the increasing hydraulic vise. He heard a loud pop from his back. Again he tried to struggle, but the Chinese Tank Major was too big. Raimey’s momentum, kicking and rocking couldn’t overcome the eight-ton anchor that held him tight.

“No one should have the boy,” he heard the man behind him wheeze. He sounded terminal. Raimey didn’t know what he was talking about. “No one should have the boy,” the man killing him said again.

Like a submarine that hit crush depth, Raimey’s chest armor suddenly caved and he felt intense pain as if his lungs were too full of air. It was the opposite. His human body was being crushed.

Raimey quit struggling. He was glad he had gotten to see Tiffany and speak to his daughter. The goodbye was warranted; this was the end. And maybe that was a blessing. Every second without them, he felt pain. It was one thing to have lost a loved one, but Raimey had forced a false imprisonment. He had taken their combined life and pulled the thread. It was he and them now. When he died today, he would be remembered fondly, hopefully. If he lived, no matter the reason why he did what he did, there would always be an empty place at the table. He would always be the dad that didn’t come back home.

The hydraulshock slides.

Raimey didn’t understand, the suggestion came out of nowhere. The voice was distant, but familiar, echoed down a long hallway. He didn’t take investigate further. He leaned his head against the back of his helmet and started to close his eyes.

THE HYDRAULSHOCK SLIDES!

It was his daughter, Vanessa’s, voice screaming for him to fight. For him to think his way out.

John was aimed the wrong way. But the slides on each shoulder that reduced the felt recoil and reloaded the hydraulshock rounds, were not. Because of the Chinese Tank Major’s width they were aimed right at his shoulders.

John fired two rounds at once. His arms boomed and rattled, his legs kicked from the incredible force of the hydraulic fluid shooting through his body. The depleted uranium-osmium alloy slides, the strongest armor ever devised, crunched into Xan’s shoulder joints. Raimey fired again. And again. The slides bit through deeper and deeper until the shoulder joints cracked like clay. Raimey felt Xan’s bear hug give and he struggled up to his feet.

He faced his enemy. The man was going toward the light.

“We need to reset,” Xan gasped. “No one can have the boy. We have to save the new world. We have to be united.” He smiled. It was filled with blood. “We’ll kill ourselves. No more shadows. We’ll kill ourselves.”

The man died.

Raimey walked through the fog and found the woman kneeling over the King Sleeper. A strange mask covered his face. His body was gaunt and thin. She looked up at him, pleading. One of her ears bled from the hydraulshock blasts.

“Do not do this!” she said.

“Shut up,” Raimey said. “Give him to me.”

She unlatched the Mindlink interface and pulled it off the King Sleeper’s head. It was Vanessa. She was unconscious, almost completely naked. Quarter sized electrodes wrapped around her shaved head.

And then it was a boy. A young, skinny child. A past memory flickered in his head. He had seen this boy. He had met him. The attack on MindCorp. He had gotten his father and the boy a car ride home.

“What is this?” Raimey asked. “Where is the King Sleeper?”

“You don’t know?” she said, her eyes narrow. “You came all this way and they didn’t tell you?”

“He can’t be a boy,” Raimey said. Boen hadn’t said a word. Why? Was he afraid he wouldn’t go? Did the other soldiers know? Or did they think it didn’t matter, that he would do his duty regardless?

“His name is Justin McWilliams and he’s twelve years old. He was raised in DeKalb, Illinois by Frank and Charlene McWilliams, and they were murdered in cold blood by your military because of his gift.”

The boy woke. His eyes fluttered open and he saw a bionic, like Xan, standing over him. It opened and closed its hands as if it wasn’t sure what to do.

“What happened?” The boy looked around. The Core had flickered black; the room was filled with a bone chilling fog. He didn’t see Xan sprawled out in the decimated server bay.

“There was an explosion. This man is helping us get out of here,” Xinting said. “We’re leaving so you’ll never have to do this again.”

“Really?!” Relief washed over the boy’s face. He hugged Xinting. “I’m so tired of doing bad things. I just want to rest.”

She looked to Raimey as she stood up, cradling the boy. “No country should have him,” Xinting said. The same as the Chinese Tank Major. “Why are we so cruel to one another?”

Raimey said nothing, but he knew why. Because without the weak, how would we know we’re strong?

The boy was buried in the woman’s arms, sobbing. Just a young, scared boy. How dare we.

“Go,” Raimey said. “Before I change my mind, go.”

Raimey walked toward one of the giant buttresses against the wall.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to tear this down,” he said. “He’s dead, you understand? He died here, today.”

“I understand.” Xinting hesitated and then bowed. She and Justin ran out of the room.

By his count, he had three hydraulshocks left. There were four support buttresses that surrounded the open Core. Evaporating three should do. To reinforce a lie worth telling, he reared back on the first, and while the world fell around him, he felt at peace for what he had done for that little boy. He fired again.

He pictured Vanessa, lying there in Justin’s place, and he shuddered at the thought of what he would do if his little girl had been taken from him.

I would go to the ends of the earth for you, my dear. I would hunt down everyone involved and everyone that knew, and I would tear them apart far after they confessed and pled for mercy. Because what mercy did they give you? I would never stop until you were avenged, because you are more important than my heart and my life. In you is my soul.

He reared back and fired. The earth trembled in the wake of his will.

Epilogue

John Raimey was exchanged back to the U.S. quietly. China apologized for the rogue actions of Xan Shin, a military advisor who, in the wake of the sequential deaths of their Presidents, had grossly abused the lack of oversight for his own personal vendetta against the United States. The U.S. graciously accepted their apology and in a separate conversation, agreed to share their data on the Tank Major, if China in turn would share theirs. Both countries would work together in the face of the true threat: Mohammed Jawal and the Western Curse. The two new Presidents even shook hands for a photo shoot.

In joint statements broadcast around the world, China and the U.S. outlined in fine detail how the Western Curse—the same organization that terrorized and killed over one hundred hostages in the O’Hare Hijacking—had executed advanced cyber terrorism on both the Chinese and U.S. government’s economic systems. Both countries would stop at nothing to apprehend these cyber terrorists. After a week of turmoil in the financial markets, things settled down. Especially when MindCorp jumped in. Some stocks even went up.

“She’s a cunt,” Evan said. General Boen was in his office. “She thinks she owns the world. She thinks that SHE’S the government. It’s getting out of control, Earl. Do you know that MindCorp bailed out the credit companies? They had enough cash on hand to provide five hundred billion dollars. Half of that, they gave away. The other half is for whenever they can get paid back, dollar for dollar. Said it was half her fault, she had gotten lax on security.” Evan shook his head, frustrated, unbelieving; don’t people see? “I feel like I’m the only sane person in the world.”

The King Sleeper is dead. Evan had been furious at General Boen when he had finally got news of the mission. Boen had explained that Cynthia Revo would have it no other way. Earl stressed that while he trusted him, Cynthia did not. She felt betrayed by Evan for keeping the anomaly—that had hurt her business and that she had sought him to find—a secret.

Earl kept silent and let Evan vent. He and Cynthia had come to an understanding. They had formed a common bond. Earl listened to the man, who was backed by the President, backed by the Senate, backed by the House, and loved by the military, as he expunged on the way things ought to be. Finally Evan ran out of breath. The room was quiet.

“I don’t like where this is going,” Evan said, shaking his fat head. “I don’t like this one bit.”

You and me both, brother.

The Northern Star

–Civil War–

Part I

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

Prologue

-Chicago. 2065-

Commander Earl Boen waited on the runway at the base north of Chicago. It was four a.m., and while he couldn’t see the massive cargo plane that had flown directly from South Africa, he could hear it and see the blinking lights on its nose and wings as it approached.

Boen was seventy-seven years old, but looked younger. Hormone therapy had progressed by leaps and bounds, and he was on it. He had been offered the opportunity to become a bionic, but he had refused. Boen may have controlled the bionics’ operations around the world, but he still didn’t trust the technology. He’d observed how, in today’s military, there was a caste system that didn’t exist before: the bionic and the soft soldier. It had created an unspoken rift between soldiers, one that superseded even rank. The Tank Majors—goliath bionics—and the Tank Minors—infantry bionics—had made flesh-and-blood men into children.

The giant on the plane was the first deployable Tank Major ever built, and at one time had been Boen’s close friend. Tank Majors were more refined now, even if they shared the same armored and angular shape, but John Raimey was a walking earthquake and still the most effective. He was larger and his unique armor made him—not invincible, nothing’s invincible—but . . .

“Resilient,” Boen said. Raimey’s resilience was why he was stationed in Africa, where the Coalition armies were spread thin and reinforcements were non-existent.

The radio on Boen’s hip crackled. “The girl is here.”

Boen watched as a car pulled up and three silhouettes made their way to a nearby hangar. One was much smaller than the others, but still taller than Boen had imagined. Vanessa Raimey was sixteen now. Boen’s heart tightened. Even when life grows deep, regrets have a tendency to bob up and down on the surface. And to this day, every day, Earl felt guilt for what he had done. He had known Raimey since he was a recruit, and he had been integral in persuading Raimey to become a Tank Major.

But seven years ago, it had been a strange and frightening time. Boen had just come out of retirement during the crisis with China, after the active Secretary of Defense had put a bullet through his own head. The oil was almost gone, the U.S. had united with the EU and China as the Coalition to take what was left, and MindCorp’s mind-freeing virtual technology had created a new online universe that was more important than the real one.

It had also been the dawn of the bionic age. Dr. Evan Lindo, a U.S. military advisor and genius, had adapted Mindlink technology to create the first bionic battle chassis: the Tank Major. Months before, John Raimey and Eric Janis—another soldier—had been crippled in a blast, and they became the first two candidates in the program. In the end, it was Eric who was chosen for the prototype. But the Chinese planted a virus in Eric’s implant, and he went insane, destroying a base that housed the King Sleeper, an incredibly powerful online hacker, a nuclear bomb in the digital age, and an asset a million times more important then a man made of gears and steel.

So the U.S. government had needed John Raimey to become a Tank Major overnight. And to convince him, they’d had to play a trump card that even now made Earl grimace: Raimey’s wife, Tiffany, had just been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

When Raimey was wheeled before Earl, Dr. Lindo, and Cynthia Revo—the chief founder of MindCorp—what followed was nothing short of coercion. If Raimey agreed to the procedure, the U.S. would take care of his family. His wife would get the best medical treatment available, regardless of cost. His daughter’s education would be paid in full. Both would have pensions that would make his existing one look like a child’s allowance.

The only caveat: as a top-secret weapon, John could never see them again.

And if he didn’t agree . . . well, the most effective treatments weren’t covered under standard medical. And it was tough to find work as a quad amputee.

The request may have been phrased as a question, but everyone in the room knew it was a demand. John had no choice.

Tiffany died anyway. She put up a fight, but those little no-purpose cells ran amok and couldn’t be stopped. And John’s orphaned daughter had been tucked under the wing of an unlikely bird: Dr. Lindo, who was now the current Secretary of Defense—and Boen’s boss.

The plane’s tires chirped on the runway as it rushed past Boen. He walked back to the hangar and waited for it to taxi over.

At the hangar, the belly of the plane opened and a team of technicians emerged. One held a remote control that guided a treaded, massive metal chair that carried John Raimey. His footsteps would have damaged the floor of the plane.

Raimey looked down at Boen. Even though the rest of him was now black, bulging armor, and his head was small, seated between his giant shoulders, his face was the same face that Boen remembered. More lines, more worries, but the same. Dark skin, a scar that hooked down the right side of his cheek. Eyes as emotionless as those on a doll. Bitter eyes.

“Is she here?” Raimey asked. No ‘hello.’ No ‘what have you been up to.’ Boen felt the tension. He knew the bond he and Raimey once shared was long gone.

“She is.”

The chair moved slowly down the ramp. Technicians crawled over Raimey like mites, preparing him for the mission that would start in one hour. The chair rocked to a stop at the bottom of the ramp.

“Clear?” Raimey asked.

“Clear.”

“Clear.”

“Clear.”

Three ‘clears’ was a go. John stood up. He was thirteen feet tall and weighed six tons. His jet black armor was an osmium and depleted-uranium alloy coated in advanced ceramic/Kevlar energy-dispersing plates. His entire body, down to the nuts and bolts, had been built from the same material. Two massive drive chains spun slowly around his waist. In battle, they were a blur, a frenzy, rolling inertia that helped him change direction, punch, and provide gyroscopic balance.

Raimey’s hands alone weighed over eight hundred pounds each. The knuckles were bulbous with armor, the hands themselves virtually unbreakable. When they were open, a grown man could sit in the palm; when closed, they looked like the jagged end of a mace.

Technicians wheeled over two massive metal boxes. Raimey plucked the metal boxes off the ground and slid one onto each shoulder. They clacked into place. Using his mind, he racked the slides back on his shoulders and slapped them forward, loading the projectile-less artillery round.

A Tank Major’s size made him formidable. His armor made him almost impenetrable. But it was his hydraulshock punch—where the full energy of an artillery shell was transferred through his indestructible fists—that made Tank Majors the lords of war. That, above all else, was what made them Death.

“He’s all yours,” one of the technicians said to Earl. Earl nodded and he and the giant walked into the hangar.

“You know where he is?” Raimey said. He had come to kill Mohammed Jawal, the leader of the Western Curse, the predominant terrorist organization in the United States. During the King Sleeper/China conflict, the Western Curse had risen above the noise as a primary tool of the Chinese. Xan Shin, a high-level Chinese official, lured them to China with weapons and resources, recruited them to act as mercenaries. Xan Shin died in the conflict—at John’s hand—but the Western Curse, now with modern weapons and near-limitless funds, lived on stronger than ever. Their leader, Mohammed Jawal, was a brilliant man, at one point an advisor to the White House, and he was impossible to track down. The members of the Western Curse did something crazy in this world of cyberspace and Mindlinks and teraflops: they communicated in person, carrying messages written on paper.

“Evan believes so.”

Raimey grimaced at the name. Evan Lindo was there the day Raimey became a Tank Major. “I don’t trust him talking to her.”

“You know I don’t trust him either, but he’s kept his word. She just started college. She interns at the Derik Building. He’s in Washington all the time anyway.”

Raimey grunted. “You know about Israel?” he said. “We stopped a train full of weapons.”

“The Coalition is attempting a diplomatic solution.”

Raimey’s laugh was humorless. The Coalition—the U.S., EU, and China—had occupied sections of the Middle East for two decades, taking the oil. “It’s going to happen. They have nothing to lose.”

“We’re preparing for all possibilities.”

They passed transport trucks with soldiers milling around them, getting ready for the mission. Everyone paused to stare when Raimey passed.

Boen punched a keypad to open a rolling door, but stopped short.

“I don’t know how this is going to go,” he said.

“She agreed to come, didn’t she?” Raimey asked.

“When I contacted her, she said ‘no.’ Evan convinced her. He wanted you for this mission. Evan wants Mohammed alive.”

Raimey chewed on his lip. His eyes searched the ground. “You did your part, Earl. I know she hates me. I just hope I can get her to hate me a little less.”

“I’m sorry, John—”

“I’m a grown man, Earl. I could have said ‘no.’” Raimey nodded at the keypad.

Boen finished entering the code and the door rolled up. In the middle of the empty structure was a sixteen-year-old girl. She had long, curled hair and light brown skin. She’d be beautiful if she didn’t look so angry. She wore a lead vest and gloves, standard protocol around Raimey’s armor. Two soldiers stood nearby.

“Can we be alone?” Raimey asked quietly. Boen nodded at the soldiers and they left through a side exit. Raimey walked inside and Boen closed the door, leaving the father alone with his daughter.

= = =

Vanessa Raimey stood at her full height, and was still just a speck in her father’s shadow. Her hands were clenched into fists, and Raimey could see that she was shaking.

Raimey started. “Thank you for coming, I know you’re angry, I’m so sorry about your mo—”

“Don’t even start,” Vanessa interrupted. “You don’t get to be sorry. You don’t get to apologize. You weren’t there.”

Raimey looked at the ground as if he had come across a rabid dog. “I had no choice,” he said quietly. “If I didn’t do this, she wouldn’t have gotten the medical treatment she needed. They guaranteed you’d be taken care of.”

Vanessa pulled a photo out of her coat. Tiffany Raimey had been vibrant and slender, caramel-skinned, with flowing black hair. She had exuded life. But in the photo Vanessa held, Tiffany was desiccated, starving, hairless. A skeleton with skin, dead everywhere except in the eyes. And in the eyes was pain. “This is what we got when you left.”

Vanessa tossed the photo at Raimey; it fluttered to his feet. “That’s a month before she died. She lasted a MONTH like that! At the end she weighed eighty pounds.”

Tears rolled down Vanessa’s cheeks. “I’d feed her and she’d vomit all over herself. Some nights she would scream all the way through. Toward the end, she’d get confused and ask where you were. When you were coming home. At first I told her the truth because I was stupid and young, and she would cry between the screams. And I think that’s when I became an adult. Kids are told that lying’s bad and we should never do it. When really, it was the best gift I could ever give. And so I told her you were coming home soon. Every night, you were coming home soon.”

“At the end, she was lucid though. Do you know what she said to me before she went? Can you guess?”

Raimey shook his head. “No.”

She said, “Don’t hate him.”

Raimey’s jaw quivered. He had braced himself for anger. He had hoped that after Vanessa had screamed and yelled, a bridge could be built between them. But he wasn’t prepared to hear that his wife’s dying wish was forgiveness. He wasn’t ready for the chasm to open further into his deepest regret.

Vanessa paused, buried in the past. “When I told her I didn’t hate you, that was my hardest lie. Because there was nothing I wanted more than for you to be in that bed instead of her, wasting away with no chance to live. Nothing.”

She looked up at Raimey, her eyes filled with watery hate. “I never want to see you again. Don’t contact me. If you die, don’t have anyone reach out. I don’t want your stuff, I don’t want your money. I don’t care. I want to be happy. And I can’t do that when I think about you.”

= = =

Boen waited outside for only two minutes before he heard Raimey call through the door. “You can open it.”

He did. Behind Raimey, Vanessa was gone. Boen was confused.

“She came here to tell me that she never wants to see me again, and she never wants me to contact her,” Raimey explained.

Boen was speechless. Raimey stared out at the transport and soldiers. His calm was unnerving, and Boen realized it was resignation. Raimey had thought this was how it would end.

“Is that the team?” Raimey asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to come here anymore, Earl. I can’t be this close to her, and not have her in my life.” Raimey looked down at Boen. Tears clung to his eyes. “I’ll do whatever you or Evan want overseas. If I do that, you’ll take care of her, right?”

“Raimey, it’s not like that.”

“YES IT IS,” Raimey growled. “Evan’s all over her. He’s the one teaching her. Not you. If I’m a good boy, she’ll be fine, right?”

“Yes,” Boen said quietly.

“Make sure of that, Earl.”

Raimey left Boen and stepped into the transport without a nod to the Tank Minors. Twenty minutes later, he was rumbling off toward Chicago.

= = =

Mohammed Jawal, the founder of the Western Curse, was an educated man. Sixty, tall and long, he had the frame of a basketball player. His chest-length beard and salt-and-pepper hair hid a chiseled jaw and hard, attractive lines. Without the facial hair, he might have looked like a Bond villain.

He had been in Chicago for many years. It was too dangerous to move around. Not because of the police or the bionics—the Mega Cities stretched those eyes thin. No, it was the wandering gaze of a senior citizen on the subway that he feared. The curious child he passed on the street. Mohammed knew what few others did: that through the Mindlink, both MindCorp and the government could read your thoughts. And this knowledge had turned him into a paranoid recluse.

It was so obvious, and so ignored. The Mindlink was a two-way street. Data flowed out and in, to create the immersive experience of “being there.” In his dark room, Mohammed laughed, but it was hollow and tired. The great unwashed, how they flocked to a device that opened their mind up like a wound. They watched what they ate, but gave no second thought to the five thousand radio frequencies bombarding their brain cells and transforming their consciousness—what made them them—into a space run by a corporation and overseen by the government. Fear doesn’t make people wary—it makes them trusting and short of memory. They want to be taken care of. They want to be told everything’s okay. They want to believe. And the Mindlink did all those things. But cost has nothing to do with currency. Cost is a part of life, concession a scale constantly tipping one way or the other.

Nowhere was safe.

“We’re almost ready,” Sharif, his second lieutenant, said quietly from the doorway. Mohammed knelt east in the dark, praying for victory. But he was not an extremist, or a terrorist, though he was framed by the news as such. He was a nationalist, and his country had been pillaged by the Coalition for its oil.

Once, he had been a happy man. There was a time when he had hope. But then his extended family in Iran had been moved into boroughs, ghettos, that housed them like Jews before the Holocaust. Some had been murdered. It was a history repeated without the ovens or gas.

“Make an example out of him,” Mohammed said.

“For Allah.”

“No. For Iran. For Iraq. For Saudi Arabia and all of our forgotten brothers.”

“Yes, sir.”

= = =

Dr. Brad Zienkiewicz’s heart hammered in his chest. He could not believe that Cynthia had offered to use him as bait. He was one of the founders of MindCorp. He and Cynthia had stood side by side on that historic day when Tom, a test chimp, used a functional Mindlink to choose corresponding animals with his thoughts. It was Brad who had developed the consumer browser interface that took them from portal to portal without causing a seizure. He owned one percent of the company. He was worth over one hundred billion dollars.

And he had been demoted to a worm.

“Relax,” the hook said. Tank Minor Razal, a stocky Filipino, sat across from Brad as they rode to the MindCorp data node north of the city, where intelligence Sleepers had predicted the good doctor would be abducted and beheaded on a live feed.

“Easy for you to say—you’re bulletproof,” Brad replied.

Razal smiled and looked out the window. He had never been in a consumer vehicle before. Only the ultra-wealthy could afford them.

“How much did this thing cost?” he asked. He slid his hands over the leather seats.

“Twenty million,” Brad replied. He wasn’t interested in discussing the car. He was interested in living through the next hour.

Razal whistled. “Wow. How much are tires?”

It wasn’t the leather that made the car expensive, nor the metal. The oil was almost gone and what was left was hoarded by the government. Plastics of any kind were a luxury.

Brad slapped his legs, exasperated. “I don’t know, a couple hundred thousand per.”

“Crazy, huh?”

“Yeah . . . crazy. Could you focus on me not dying?”

Razal’s eyes clouded up as if he were stoned. The bionic’s constant smirk vanished. “Roger. One mile away. Got it.”

All Tank Minors were connected wirelessly. His dazed look vanished and that inside-joke smirk reappeared on the stocky Filipino’s lips.

He turned back to Brad. “You’re not going to die.”

Brad hitched a finger toward the front of the car. “You and the green-eyed guy are gonna make sure?”

“Our team is positioned around the node. Stick by me and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Like?”

“Like run away or something, or get in the way while I’m shooting. Stupid stuff.”

Razal was dressed in a suit to hide his modified body. He held a leather briefcase that concealed a submachine gun. He wore sunglasses and a wig to conceal his eyes and face. He was a Level 2 Tank Minor and one of the best marksmen in the bionic division.

“I can’t believe Cynthia has gotten so involved,” Brad said, shaking his head. Cynthia had worked with the U.S. military for almost a decade—from the first bionic, to the collusion against China, to the Terror War that had plagued the world since the superpowers had occupied the oil-rich nations. It was a conflict of interest that many of the founders objected to, though quietly.

“Without her, we’d be blind, sir,” Razal said. “And you would have been driving here not knowing whether your head was going to be put on a platter.”

Zienkiewicz gulped and changed the subject. “I’m just glad this is the last of it. It is, right? You’re going to take them down, scan their brains, and get that bastard?”

“I can’t discuss that information,” Razal replied, while nodding ‘yes.’ “But hypothetically, if we had permission to do that, and we found pertinent information, then we’d have another team on standby to act on that information immediately.”

= = =

First Team did not have a Tank Major: they needed to be quick and discreet. But they did have Mike Glass, the only Level 5 Tank Minor in existence.

The day before, Glass had attached to the team on special instruction from Evan Lindo. Razal and the other five Minors couldn’t believe it when he walked through the door. Most soldiers had only heard of him. He alone had toppled the resistance in the Middle East and hunted down terrorist leaders on our soil. Day-to-day, he was Evan Lindo’s right hand. In the field, he was an assassin. At all times he was a ghost. Even Tank Minors, strong men capable of flipping cars, looked away in his presence.

His Alabama twang was thin and labored because of the single cut-down lung that provided his biomass oxygen. His eyes didn’t blink—they were lenses. There were plenty of bullies in the military, but he wasn’t one. In fact, he barely spoke. What made him intimidating was the extreme detachment he had with those he interacted with. And because of his modifications—especially his eyes—he had slid into that uncanny valley where something is disturbing because it is so close to life-like, yet seems manufactured. That, plus the hearsay, and the potential for violence from his frame that even a Level 3 would be helpless to defend, had made him into something approaching myth.

And that myth now stood before Razal and his team, outlining the upcoming mission.

“Sleepers have picked up a tail that leads to the outskirts of Chicago. A low-level lieutenant of the Western Curse was going online for . . .” Glass paused.

Everyone at the same time said, “sex.” The majority of the breaks they got on terrorists were from the parties breaking down and going online to pork.

Glass nodded. “His name is Matt Campbell. He was the in.”

There was no screen in the briefing room. All of the Minors could see in their heads what Glass was showing them. It became memory. They saw a standard map overlay that turned into a detailed satellite feed. It shifted to a perspective near the top of a skyscraper.

Razal realized they were watching the footage through Glass’s eyes. He must have been a hundred stories up. Birds flew beneath him. The zoom made the men nauseated, and a few of them shook their heads as the view from the skyscraper kept moving in toward the crowd. Then suddenly the view locked in on a white male walking through the crowd, looking around nervously. The footage swayed from side to side like the sight of a riflescope. They were seeing firsthand how Glass’s vision worked.

One of the soldiers started to dry heave. Glass paused.

“Should I take you off the feed?” No sympathy, no nothing. Words.

“No, sir. I’m fine.”

The zoom kept up with the man, and then he turned the corner. The tight zoom vanished and they were a thousand feet above the city and Glass was on the move, working along the rooftops. The image cut—this part was unimportant for the brief—but Razal was beside himself with awe: Glass had effortlessly leapt across chasms that were fifteen yards across. He must be lighter than he looks, he thought. Most Tank Minors weighed around three hundred pounds.

The footage reappeared in their heads. Glass was looking down into a cyber-cafe, again from high above. Campbell walked out, looked around, and took a different route from the way he had come. Glass followed, again moving effortlessly along the rooftops.

Campbell went into an old brick high-rise, and Glass stopped moving and zoomed in. An overlay scanned over the HD picture, and heat signatures were picked up through the brick. They could see hundreds of other glowing silhouettes, some faint as they walked farther back into the building, others intense flames at the front.

Not infrared, Razal thought. It was too far away and it couldn’t go through the brick. Rotoscoping technology? Radiation sonar? Whatever it was, it was something Razal had never seen before.

Another perspective shift and time gap. Glass was on the ground now. He walked into the alleyway and quickly scaled the wall. He didn’t look through the window—he was using that funky vision that could go through walls. He found Campbell. In the soldiers’ heads, they could hear the conversation of the terrorists:

“Where were you?” a glowing blob asked. It was seated with others at a table, working with a long, black, angular object: a rifle.

“Went for a walk, wanted to clear my head,” Campbell said.

“We got the message. It goes down today.”

Holy shit, Razal thought. This intel is from right before Glass arrived.

“Is your head clear enough?” another blob, radiating orange and yellow, asked sarcastically.

“Fuck off, Chris. When have I let you guys down?”

“We’re cutting that motherfucker’s head right off,” one of the blobs said. “What’s his name, it’s a weird one. Polish, or something.”

“I’m Polish,” another blob said.

“Zienkiewicz.”

“He’s going to do it.”

“Who?”

“Jawal.”

“He’s here?”

“Apparently he doesn’t leave his safe house anymore.”

“Why would he do it himself?”

“I guess he wants to send a message.”

The images and sound vanished. Glass was done transmitting.

“Evan contacted Cynthia. With her permission, we’re using Dr. Zienkiewicz to draw them out, taking them at the node, where she’ll interrogate. This mission’s success is measured in minutes. Questions?”

Soldiers asked about logistics and tactics. Glass answered them. They got ready. Glass handpicked Razal to ride with the target.

= = =

“Two hundred yards from the entrance,” Glass projected mentally. The others picked it out of the air like it was a radio signal. Two Minors were on the ground, hidden in dumpsters. Three were in sniper positions ten stories overhead so that each covered one hundred and twenty degrees, totaling a complete circle. Razal directly protected the package. In the front of the limo, Glass chauffeured behind a tinted windshield.

“You ready?” Razal asked Zienkiewicz. He put his hand over the briefcase.

“Don’t let them shoot me,” Zienkiewicz said. His uppity demeanor had disappeared, replaced by the fear of a child peering under their bed.

“Don’t worry, our intel said they want to behead you.”

Dr. Zienkiewicz blanched.

Razal looked out the tinted window as they approached. “You’ll be fine.”

Glass pulled the car up to the data node. Data nodes were MindCorp offices, located throughout the world. Mega-cities such as Chicago, New York, Singapore, and London would have up to a dozen apiece, scattered throughout. They were nondescript, subterranean in design. Some had office space topside—this one stood three stories tall—but almost all of the infrastructure was below ground. Data Cores—the giant pulsing tubes of fiber-optic light—were much easier to build down than up.

Situating them underground also served to shield the insanely complex structures from the elements. Depending on a Core’s size, up to thirty million people’s thoughts and metaphysical actions might be coursing through the giant, crackling fuse at any given time. All of it monitored, and, when needed, read, by MindCorp.

Razal opened the door, got out, and went around to the other door as if he were a chauffeur.

“We got movement north and south,” Tank Minor Banks, a sniper to the west, said over the comm. “Moving quick. Two trucks.”

Glass sat in the car as still as a fencepost, bouncing his eyes off the driver side mirror, perfectly aware of his surroundings.

The canvas trucks rumbled into view and cut off any exit, their air brakes hissing as they came to a stop. A dozen soldiers jumped out of each one and made their way to the limo, catching Brad and Razal halfway between the car and the data node entrance.

“On the ground! On the ground!” they yelled in perfect English, most of them natives to this country—members of cells that had been embedded for as long as fifty years, like it was a family business and not a jihad.

Dr. Zienkiewicz immediately dropped to his knees. A soldier came up to Razal and fired point-blank into his chest, then followed up with a shot to his head. Razal collapsed to the ground.

Glass was no longer in the limo.

“Let’s go!” the men yelled. They grabbed Zienkiewicz and dragged him away.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” Zienkiewicz yelled back at Razal, who was still lying facedown on the ground.

The men took Zienkiewicz to one of the trucks and threw him in. He stumbled, staring at feet. When he looked up, he saw Glass, already inside. He pulled Zienkiewicz past him.

“Hit the deck,” Glass whispered.

The first terrorist looked up upon entering and noticed that their hostage had turned into a soldier the size of a linebacker with rolling green eyes. Before he could say anything, Glass shot him in the legs.

Glass jumped out of the truck, pulling the wounded terrorist behind him and tossing him aside.

Holy shit, one of the Minor snipers projected to the others on the team. Through shared eyes, they could see what he was seeing through his riflescope, and they were in awe. Glass moved among the terrorists with a liquidity that displaced standard time. He wasn’t jolting like a jumping spider, nor was there any sign of strain, like a sprinter in their last kick to the finish line. His speed and precision were so effortless that he made the world around him look slow. Even for the other Tank Minors, the contrast between Glass and the terrorists confused their senses, as if their implant itself were malfunctioning. It was a pace that a normal human couldn’t comprehend, and that fact was illustrated by what was happening on the ground: the terrorists—highly trained—were getting chopped down. Glass’s movement was constant and evasive, and his ability to predict an attack—aided by his incredible vision—caused the terrorists’ bullets to find air. But his own sidearm wasted not one round, blowing out knees and shattering trigger hands.

Razal stood up when the terrorists focused on Glass. Three turned toward him and fired. Razal held the briefcase against his chest lengthwise and pressed a button on the handle. Out of its side erupted a 9mm, spraying the three men down. Razal then popped the briefcase open: cradled inside was an MP5 submachine gun. He pulled it out, dropped the empty magazine, and reloaded. He switched to semi-auto and fired methodically at the backs of knees as the terrorists tried to take down Glass or flee.

Zienkiewicz laid belly-down in the truck bed, his hands covering his head, flinching with every shot and shaking uncontrollably, while the lead ponged against the transport’s metal sides. Finally the gunfire stopped, and in its place was a chorus of screams. The truck dipped a bit as someone stepped on the back bumper.

“Die, you infidel!”

Zienkiewicz screamed and scrambled to the front of the transport. When no bullet ended his life, he looked up through his hands. Razal smiled at him.

“NOT FUNNY!” Zienkiewicz yelled.

“Kinda funny. I told you it wasn’t a big deal.”

Glass: We’re clear, team. Come in and sweep up.

The Minors rolled in and dragged the injured terrorists into the data node.

= = =

The ground level of the data node consisted of a few nondescript offices. The Minors dragged the terrorists past these, shoved them into a large elevator, and together they descended. The elevator cleared the cement and girded ceiling of the data node, and then faced open space.

The Data Core—a twenty-story tall, blue fiber-optic cylinder—thwapped and moaned in front of them, filling the cavernous expanse with shadowy blue light. It was lightning in a bottle. Worse, it was billions of thoughts and millions of minds, deconstructed into pulses of light. Even the terrorists quieted at its reveal.

When they reached the bottom, they were ushered through the Sleeper floor—where hundreds of computer programmers were reclined in chairs, oblivious to their surroundings—and into an adjoining room.

The room featured a single Sleeper chair in its center—it looked like a dentist’s chair—which faced a theater-sized monitor on one wall. From the monitor, Cynthia Revo stared down at the terrorists and Minors like they were bait fish in an aquarium.

“Brad, I see you’re fine,” Cynthia said. Even on the large screen, it was clear she was a petite woman. Cynthia was business-pretty: she had a red bob haircut she was known for, thin lips, and a straight, small nose. Her eyes were blue and piercing. She was considered the smartest person in the world. She invented the Mindlink, was chief founder and CEO of MindCorp—the largest corporation in the history of man—and created an online world that allowed an oil-less society to limp onward.

“I may have pissed myself,” Brad said. Cynthia flashed a smile.

“Send me the dry cleaning bill.” She turned her attention to Mike Glass. “Let’s get this over with. I want to be done with this war. I want to be done with this role. Put one of them in the Sleeper chair. Hold or strap them down.”

She turned her attention to the terrorists. They looked up at her like she had risen from a fire. They shook in her presence and prayed openly.

“You want me? Now you have me,” she said. The first terrorist clawed at Glass, ignoring his shattered knees and hands, as he was dragged to the chair. Glass slammed him into it like he was built from straw, then strapped him down.

A technician, visibly shaken by what he was witnessing, put an unrestricted consumer Mindlink on the terrorist’s head.

With little caution for the terrorist’s well-being, Cynthia combed through each of his brain cells like she was pushing clothes around in a messy closet. The effect was catastrophic for the terrorist. When one terrorist had been used up, seizing, Glass would throw him off to the side and snag another. And one after the next, Cynthia sifted mercilessly through their brains. There was no judge, no jury, but a sentence was handed down. Both the United States and MindCorp were tired of this war. And war, in general, doesn’t reward compassion.

= = =

When the other terrorists were dragged into the node and he was left behind, Albert—a fifth-generation, American-born Iranian—thought for a moment that by the grace of Allah he had been overlooked. He was the driver for the number two truck, and when the shit hit the fan outside the data node, he had—admittedly, not bravely—hid in the driver’s side footwell. The gunshots had ended, and he’d heard the screams of friends and patriots, but he’d stayed curled up, hoping that he wouldn’t be found. He didn’t hear the gurgle of another diesel truck approach while his bellowing comrades were forced down below.

“Hey kid,” a voice said from above. Albert tucked his knees in tighter. Maybe they weren’t talking to him. “Kid, I can see you. Get out of the footwell.”

Albert slid up and yelped in surprise: the head of a huge metal soldier filled the side window. He was a black man, with grey eyes and a goatee, and a hook scar that ran down the right side of his face. It was clear he could crush the truck flat if he chose. Albert had never seen a Tank Major before.

“What’s a kid like you doing here?” Raimey shook his head. “Here’s the deal: if we find out where your esteemed leader lives—you’re driving me there. What’s in it for you? I won’t kill you.” Raimey held up a hand that would do well in a scrap yard. “Do you agree to these terms?”

Albert nodded. He felt wet on the front of his pants.

Minutes passed. Albert sat quietly, staring straight ahead while the smaller bionics mulled about and bullshitted, waiting for something. The giant—they called him “Raimey”—continued to look around, as if he was on watch.

They snapped to. The Minors vanished. Raimey filled the window like a storm cloud.

“You’re taking me to 110 Lincoln,” Raimey said. “Don’t be a hero. You can’t be. Got it?”

Albert could only nod—the power of speech was no longer a faculty he possessed.

The truck barely handled Raimey as he got into the bed. The muffled command “go” made its way into the driver’s compartment. Albert drove deep into the city, trailed eight blocks behind by the team of Minors.

= = =

Ten minutes later, a Western Curse lookout spotted the truck. From a rooftop, he followed it with binoculars as it passed. He was four blocks from the safe house.

“One of our trucks is coming to the building,” he said into a radio.

The engine sounded labored and when it turned the corner, the rear axle hopped—it was bottomed out.

Sharif, Mohammed’s lieutenant, responded: “Where’s the other one?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lookouts?”

Other spotters around Mohammed’s perimeter echoed a negative. It was just the one.

“Maybe they’re bringing back the injured?” the lookout suggested.

Sharif didn’t bother with a response. “Destroy the truck,” he said. Rapidly, Sharif ordered twenty ground soldiers to block the vehicle from coming closer, and the rest to the rooftops to fire down.

= = =

Sharif burst into Mohammed’s room. Mohammed raised his head from the mat.

“One of the trucks is approaching,” he said, out of breath. His eyes were full of fear.

Mohammed stood up. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

This was not part of the plan. Mohammed’s security detail rushed into the room. He put a hand on Sharif’s shoulder. “Be safe. Report to me as soon as you can.”

Sharif nodded and he ran out of the room, yelling commands. Mohammed’s bodyguards ushered him out the door. He was on the fiftieth floor.

= = =

The Minors dumped early and moved by foot to Mohammed’s location. Tank Minor Bennett climbed a fire escape a half a mile out and lay prone on a roof. Exhaust vents twirled around him, and the big A/C units hummed.

He watched through a 20x sniper scope as the Western Curse’s commandeered truck slowed down near another cookie-cutter skyscraper and terrorists poured out of the surrounding buildings like jelly beans. Their hands were held out wide, some with their guns drawn.

“They’re approaching the truck,” Bennett said into the comm. He looked to the rooftops of some of the shorter buildings. “Lots of activity. I see six—no, ten RPGs.”

“Roger,” Raimey whispered.

Bennett felt a twinge of guilt. Soldiers on opposite sides are still soldiers. He’d read once that during World War I, on Christmas Day, the opposite sides crossed, bartered, sang carols, and even played football. He understood the sentiment. Through the scope he could see real concern on the faces of the men approaching the truck. But sides were sides.

The other Minors used his surveillance to avoid sightlines and work their way toward Mohammed’s location. Raimey would clean up the street.

= = =

The men approached Albert’s side of the truck. He white-knuckled the steering wheel, checking his mirrors.

“Albert! What are you doing here?” one man yelled. Another man behind him asked, “Are men hurt?”

Go, Albert mouthed to them. He gestured with his chin. They didn’t catch on.

“Where are the others?” the first man asked. His name was William. They’d eaten lunch together a few months ago. He was from Ohio.

Go, Albert mouthed again. Understanding swept across William’s eyes. He slowly stepped away.

“They’re on it,” Bennett said. The entire group of terrorists had their guns ready, and were slowly backing away from the truck. Bennett saw the RPG men lean over the side.

“RPGs,” Bennett said. He put one of the men in his crosshairs and fired. The other nine RPGs ripped down from the rooftops and the truck exploded.

An electric whine radiated from within the fireball and John Raimey tore his way out of the wreckage. Orange, flickering teeth of diesel fuel burned on his frame, but he was uninjured. Half of the men scattered, and the other half fired with their submachine guns and assault rifles. The bullets peppered him harmlessly. Raimey ignored them. An RPG hit Raimey in the shoulder, and Bennett took the shooter out.

“Sorry,” Bennett said.

They were all gnats to John, harmless. Two hover-rovers—his eyes in the sky—boosted off Raimey’s back like disc-shaped rockets. The large central propeller in each spun up, and they rose high into the air over Mohammed Jawal’s skyscraper safe house. The hover-rovers flipped through standard, x-ray, and infrared, and found a group of red, yellow, and blue amoebas running away.

“Got ’em,” Raimey said, and catapulted forward into a run. His feet slammed the ground, cracking the asphalt, sending aftershocks like two blunt jackhammers. The electric motors built into his massive thighs produced two thousand foot-pounds of torque each. The upper section of his thighs looked like ten rubber slabs mounted together, rising and falling as he ran, adjusting for his weight and trajectory with every impact. Around his waist, the drive chains spun counter to one another at ridiculous speeds, creating the illusion that Raimey’s upper body and pelvis were connected by a grey cloud. The sound they made was like a rollercoaster and a buzz saw rolled into one. It was the telltale sound of impending death; more feared than the rack of a shotgun slide to one’s back.

Raimey ran toward the building to cut off Mohammed Jawal’s escape. A terrorist froze in front of him and fell backward, uselessly protecting himself with outstretched arms, his life flashing before him as a foot the size of two snow sleds eclipsed his sight. Raimey adjusted and missed the man’s body by inches. The Minors appeared out of the alleys and handled the rabble.

Raimey tore around the building at twenty-five miles per hour. His hover-rovers led the way, and he could see the fleeing mass of men as they maneuvered through the alleys. They were a quarter mile away and approaching a vehicle. This section of the city was dilapidated and uniquely unpopulated. The buildings in front of him were unoccupied.

“You see what I’m seeing?” Raimey said. An open comm was built into his helmet. Unlike Minors and new Tanks, it was not wired into his implant.

Commander Boen’s voice crackled over the speaker. “Buildings are clear of civilians. Do what you have to do.”

Raimey ignored the sharp turn of the alley and ran straight through the building in front of him. His speed dropped by one mile per hour, but he quickly recovered.

= = =

Mohammed heard the giant behind them. It sounded like they were being chased by a runaway train. He felt the dusk of his mortality in those sounds and prayed to live.

“The truck! The truck!” a bodyguard yelled. One of them sprinted ahead to it.

The truck was a last-resort vehicle. Mounted on a turret on the back was an old, but very functional, Mk 19 grenade launcher. The Mk 19 was belt-fed like a machine gun. Each grenade had enough velocity to puncture most armor and packed enough power to crater a five-meter hole in the ground. If a grenade hit a Minor, they would explode into oily rags.

The bodyguard jumped into the turret and quickly fed the ammo belt into the grenade launcher. He racked the slide and aimed the barrel toward the sound of the approaching chaos.

Mohammed and the others got to the truck. Mohammed was put into the back, sandwiched between two men. The driver got in, fired the truck up, and gunned it.

Raimey exploded through the last building as they tore off. The man in the grenade launcher momentarily forgot his hand was on the trigger as the giant altered its vector to chase them. The giant’s foot slipped, but it put its massive arm down like a kickstand and kept its legs pumping. It righted itself and barreled toward them.

“Fire!” Mohammed yelled. The gunner snapped out of his shock and squeezed the trigger.

The Mk 19 had very low recoil and the shots landed true. They peppered Raimey, exploding against his chest, his arms and legs, in black and red fireballs.

The giant was undeterred. He accelerated to his top speed of thirty miles per hour. But the truck was faster, and would gain ground in the straights. Raimey made up that ground in the corners, when the truck would have to follow the road and the massive man could blast straight through the buildings. Building after building toppled behind the fleeing vehicle as the bionic forced its seismic will.

= = =

The truck kept slipping away and Raimey couldn’t keep blowing through buildings—they were approaching a populated area. He had to knock these guys out of commission. In a populated area, civilian casualties would escalate into the thousands, and the chance of the terrorists’ escape would increase too.

“How expensive are hover-rovers?” Raimey asked.

“About twenty million a pop,” Boen said. “Why?”

Boen, linked in to the hover-rover feed, grimaced when he saw why Raimey had asked.

= = =

As the giant faded into the background, Mohammed felt a granule of hope. Ahead was a very populated section of the city. He could see the bedheaded masses walking across the streets, shaking off the numbness of a day linked in, only to go back for more. He heard music echoing down the columned streets. The truck slid around a corner and the driver abruptly swerved.

Dumpster divers, derelicts that foraged ahead of waste services, spilled into the street ahead, combing through dumpsters for anything that could be recycled. Like a pod of dolphins leading a schooner, they always announced an approaching garbage truck.

The driver made a quick adjustment to avoid them, causing the top-heavy truck to sway violently, but he got it under control.

“We lost him!” the driver said. Another mile and they would be deep into the massive city, buried under hundreds of stories and concrete. The dark streets and the disheveled millions would create the perfect camouflage—if they were on foot, anyway, rather than in a jeep with a grenade launcher on its back.

The granule of hope grew, but they were still exposed as they careened down the street. They had to get to shelter and the underground in order to truly be safe.

“We need to get out of the open,” Mohammed said. “Where can we change vehicles?” Vehicles were hard to find and conspicuous by nature.

“We could hijack that garbage truck,” a bodyguard suggested. It was just up ahead. The driver was out of the truck, angrily throwing garbage back into the dumpster.

Mohammed nodded. “Yes. Good.” It would be a perfect cover.

The garbage man looked dumbfounded when they veered in front of him, but his surprise was quickly redirected overhead. Before the truck was fully stopped, a shadow rolled across its windshield. Mohammed’s driver leaned forward and looked to the sky just as the hover-rover swung past, arced up, and then accelerated into the windshield like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

The driver’s scream was cut off as the aerodynamic disc crushed through his and the other front passengers’ chests, separating their heads below the shoulder. The hover-rover slammed through into the back seat, where it minced Mohammed’s knees. The bodyguard to Mohammed’s right slumped, thick clumps of blood pulsing from his ears. Mohammed was pinned.

The garbage truck hissed and groaned, reversing, getting the fuck out of Dodge. It bumped into something and stopped. The engine groaned for a second and the back of the truck rattled about. Raimey pushed past it, and with a screech, the wheels suddenly got traction and the truck shot back before the driver could slam on the brakes.

“Watch your blind spot,” Raimey muttered.

The gunner fired a barrage of grenades in one last hoorah before he saw either black or a sea of virgins. Black came first. Raimey was too close to the gunner, so when the grenades detonated, shell fragments ricocheted back and sliced the gunner’s skin. And then Raimey grabbed him in his giant fist and pitched him into a building. The gunner’s body slapped into the side of it like a ripe tomato and slowly slid down, leaving a trail of blood.

Raimey slammed his fist down and destroyed the engine block. The front axle snapped, and the wheels curled into the wheel well. He ripped off the roof. Mohammed and the last surviving bodyguard stared up at him. Mohammed had a trigger in his hand.

“Die, you devil. For Iran!” Mohammed thumbed the trigger. Ten pounds of C-4 located under the seat detonated in Mohammed Jawal’s last stand.

The explosion vaporized Mohammed and his bodyguards and turned the car into shrapnel. Around Raimey, windows imploded and the front of the closest building crumbled. The garbage man jumped out of his truck and ran away screaming. The front of his truck was ablaze.

Mohammed would have been disappointed: Raimey was completely unharmed. He walked out of the fire and waited for his team. A “cycler” came out of an alley.

“What just happened, sir?”

It was a boy, fifteen or so. Probably one of the few who couldn’t go online.

“Just caught a bad guy.”

The boy scanned the burning wreckage. “I don’t think he made it.”

Two hours later, Raimey was on a plane back to South Africa. He planned to never come back.

Chapter 1

-2069-

Roberto sat in his prison cell, uncertain. He rubbed his hands together, trying to figure it out while his cellmate, Jessop “Bones” Nixon, yammered in the background about his good fortune.

“. . . mean, come on! DNA? DNA got you off. You’re the luckiest motherfucker I know.” Roberto closed his eyes, hoping it would somehow do the same for his ears, but they stayed open, and his roomie’s tale of astonishment continued on.

Roberto’s verdict had been overturned because of DNA evidence. They said he had been unjustly convicted of his crime, a double homicide two years before.

Roberto ran this joint. He was forty-three now, twelve years into a life sentence. When he was sixteen, he and his crew had started like rats, working for the Italians. Two years later he had killed them all and taken over. He had taken that criminal network and grown it exponentially. The press called him “Big Baby,” but no one else did. It took five years to finally get him into the pen. Though the turncoats vanished before they could take the stand (many into an industrial-strength meat grinder), the prosecution finally got him. No matter. He ran New York from here, safe and sound. Under his leadership, the gang had vertically integrated into all aspects of society. His food delivery service even had a contract with the prison.

And now he was told he was getting out.

“Yo! The King is getting’ out, y’all!” Bones yelled through the bars. The block erupted.

It didn’t make sense. In the background, Roberto heard the whooping and taunts as guards approached his cell. DNA didn’t make sense, because he was never the one who pulled the trigger anyway.

The two guards flanked the jail cell and told Bones to get back. He did, eventually, after spitting in one of their faces.

“That’ll come back to haunt you,” the guard said, wiping his face with his sleeve. To Roberto, he said, “All right, Big Baby, it’s time to leave the nest.”

Roberto felt foreshadowing. Something wasn’t right. The last guard to call him “Big Baby” had ten guys run a train on him before they slit his throat.

The guards stepped into the cell, unhappy with Roberto’s pace. One pulled out a baton. Roberto got up.

The day before, he had asked to speak to his lawyer. They had said there was no need. He had asked to make a phone call, and even the guards on payroll said they couldn’t make it happen.

Bones hugged him. “Miss you, bro.” Roberto half-heartedly hugged back. He walked out with the guards past the rows of cells, the whooping and cheering. If Big Baby, one of the most notorious criminal masterminds of the last twenty years, could get out on a technicality, maybe they could too.

The cheers faded as they walked down the hallway. Ahead, through a set of double gates, the word “Administration” was printed on a placard. But instead, the guards took him to the right.

“Don’t we need to go there?” he asked.

The guards shook their heads. “It’s handled.”

They took him down a long hallway that ended with a barred door. The rooms off to the sides were dark, unused.

“Come on, man. What’s going on?” Roberto asked.

The guards were quiet.

Through the barred door was another length of hallway. Unlit. A smudged cataract of light came through a tiny window in a door at the far end—presumably the door that led out. The guards pushed him down to the ground, hard, and quickly retreated behind the door they had just entered through.

“What the fuck!” Roberto wiggled his jaw. He looked around, but there was nothing to see except that faraway, dirty window.

“Who’s here?” he asked. Could another syndicate have set this up? He couldn’t think of any with enough clout. The Russians? Chinese?

He looked back. The guards watched him through the bars, like they were waiting for a snake to swallow the mouse.

He felt a presence and turned. Two green eyes stared down at him.

“Roberto Alcantara?”

“No!” Roberto lunged at the man, and grabbed only air. Suddenly he was up against a wall.

“Don’t struggle,” the man said. He had a thin voice, with a southern accent.

“You gonna kill me?”

“No. But I’ll hurt you if you struggle.”

Roberto could feel the violent passivity of the man holding him. He had heard of these, but he’d never seen one. The man’s eyes never blinked; a dim green rolled like surf behind them. Roberto tried to move, but the man was as strong as iron. He looked to the door: the guards were gone. A needle pierced his arm.

= = =

Roberto woke up to the smell of plastic and burning. He heard a whirling. He couldn’t move. Around him, along a huge expanse of concrete floor, men and women in lab coats and coveralls were going about their jobs. Scaffolding surrounded the walls and a giant black tube. Dozens of orange arcs fell halfway to earth before vanishing. The space was impossibly large, impossibly tall. The black tube was as big as a skyscraper. He looked up and he couldn’t see the ceiling.

“Hey.” He tried to speak. His head felt like a crown of fire had been forced onto it. He couldn’t feel his hands. He looked down and saw that his arms and legs were attached to metal limbs that cradled his body. He could feel tubes running up inside him. He started to cry.

“What’s going on?” he moaned. “Why? Why?”

Through his teary vision, he saw that there were others like him. Eleven pods were arranged like a horseshoe around the giant glass tube; his was on the tip of the right side. Each pod was mounted to its own, smaller, black tube. The tops were capped, and a massive conduit—a semi could drive through it—connected each tube to a thick metal band at the center of the massive one. Two of the tubes pulsed blue. Those pods were occupied, mounted near the center, and he could see the vague shape of a person inside each. The other pods were jet black, and, like his, were near the ground.

He saw the green-eyed man across the floor. He was putting someone else in the same kind of pod he was in.

The door on Roberto’s pod groaned shut. Roberto began to hyperventilate. His breath fogged the glass front. With a clang, the pod rose into the air. At least ten stories up, it locked into place. On the ground floor, a team of white coats followed a short, heavyset man to a platform, in front of the skyscraper tube, with big metal boxes that must have been computers of some kind. The short, heavyset man was joined by the green-eyed man, and the group climbed two flights of open stairs to what looked like a metal crucifix. The green-eyed man helped the shorter man into it. The other scientists worked around them while the green-eyed man watched closely.

A wet fart gurgled above Roberto. A syrupy, pink liquid sputtered into the pod, filling it.

“No! No!”

It rose past his feet. He screamed and struggled, but the metal limbs he was attached to didn’t budge.

The syrup reached his chin, then his mouth, and then, as hard as he tried, it went over his nose. He held his breath. His lungs burned. His mouth pleaded with him to open for air. Through the opaque murk, massive blue forced its way in. The Mega Core was on.

I don’t deserve this, he thought. No one deserves this.

NO ONE DESERVES ANYTHING, a rumbling voice said all around him. IT IS ONLY WHAT WE TAKE. BREATHE. Roberto had no control: he opened his mouth and sucked in the fluid. His lungs retched, but the pressure of the gel around him only pushed more in. It filled his lungs. He shook from the sensation of drowning, yet he didn’t die. Finally his body was still.

What’s happening? Roberto thought.

YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN, ROBERTO. YOU ARE ONE OF THE FIRST.

Roberto’s body was paralyzed. He realized he no longer controlled it. Suddenly the metal arms he was attached to began to move his body. His muscles relaxed and contracted at their command.

The first of what?

SO MANY PEOPLE DIE. IT IS OUR FEAR, IS IT NOT? BURIED BENEATH ALL THE MYTHOLOGIES, DULLED BY THE INTERNET, BY OUR PASSIONS OR THE FUTURE GOALS WE SET, AS IF TOMORROW IS A PROMISED DAY.

Are you going to kill me?

The man in Roberto’s head was appalled.

NO! NO. I WANT YOU TO LIVE FOREVER, AND IF I CAN FIND A WAY, YOU WILL. YOU ARE A PRODIGY, ROBERTO. DID YOU KNOW?

I’m no prodigy.

BUT YOU ARE. HAD YOU NOT BEEN RAISED ON THE STREETS, HAD YOU ANY OTHER UPBRINGING WITH JUST A SPRINKLE OF LOVE AND SUPPORT, YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN A CEO. ANY SCHOOLING AND THEY WOULD HAVE NOTICED YOUR ABILITY TO COLLATE DATA AND USE IT STRATEGICALLY, AS GOOD AS ANY CHESS MASTER.

Roberto’s strategies had always worked, whether it was avoiding the cops, expanding drug territories, or eliminating the competition. Only under insurmountable odds did he finally get caught. A part of him had been tired of running.

I ADMIRE YOU. I DON’T JUDGE YOU. I CERTAINLY DON’T THINK YOU’RE CRIMINAL. NATIONS KILL FOR THEIR INTERESTS, AND THAT IS EXPECTED. WHEN AN INDIVIDUAL TRIES TO LAY CLAIM IN THE SAME WAY, THEY ARE THROWN BEHIND BARS, AND THEY’RE VIEWED AS A HORROR. INTERESTING HOW CIVILIZED SOCIETY IS SURROUNDED BY TURRETS, WITH AN EQUAL NUMBER OF GUNS POINTING OUT AS IN, ISN’T IT?

Roberto thought of his son. The boy came from one of his prostitutes. It was right before he went to jail. Roberto would have normally forced the termination—he knew how women would use children as a paycheck—but he hesitated. He let her have him. And little Rico had become an hour’s vacation from prison every time he and his mom visited. Sheila had gotten clean. She was raising him good.

YOUR SON HAS YOUR EYES, the god voice said.

You can read my thoughts?

WE ARE ONE CONSCIOUSNESS. YOUR MEMORIES ARE MINE.

Will I ever see him again?

NEVER. BUT SOMEDAY IN THE FUTURE, YOU MAY FEEL HIM. IT WILL BE A DISTANT SENSATION, DEJA VU, LIKE A SMELL THAT TICKLES AT A FOND MEMORY. HIS SOUL WILL RIDE OVER US.

I don’t understand.

YOU DON’T NEED TO. IN A MOMENT IT WON’T MATTER.

A blinding white light came from within Roberto as if his eyes had ignited into suns. It spread outward over his vision, pulsing and prodding the deepest parts of his brain.

GODS CAN BE MADE, ROBERTO. BUT FIRST I MUST MAKE YOU . . . ME.

For a millisecond Roberto knew who he was, and then he felt someone else leak into his head. It was cold and slippery, frigid water seeping into the deepest cracks. And then Roberto remembered nothing at all.

= = =

Cynthia Revo flowed through the black of cyberspace as quick as a ray of light. At MindCorp headquarters she was a petite redhead, but here, like the other Sleepers that managed the threads that created her universe, her consciousness manifested as an opaque teardrop dragging behind it a tangle of tails. Some had speculated the form was tangible thought. Others had guessed it was our unfettered soul. It was one of many mysteries that the public would never know.

I’m approaching the Data Sump, she thought, and so she said. She had built cyberspace with x, y, and z coordinates, even in what would be thought of as “space.” But ahead, she sensed a resistance, and in this lay the mystery. Where the physical connection of the Data Sump met the sea of cyberspace, there was a hole. Calling it a void would do no good: a void was empty. But this hole led somewhere, and for a brief moment, it had taken over the Data Sump, killing three of the ten Sleepers at that location in the process.

Jeremiah Sabot was her lover and bodyguard. He was mixed race—half-black, half-Samoan—barrel-chested, and six-foot-five. He used to weight three hundred pounds; he now weighed over five hundred. Sabot was a Tank Minor of Cynthia’s design, and in some ways the massive man, thick and dreaded, had become her earthly avatar. What he heard, she heard. What he felt, she felt.

So when he went onsite to the Data Sump outside Chicago and saw the vacant stare of the dead but breathing, so did she. And still she rushed toward the inexplicable, because she had to know. Beyond her trillions, beyond her global power, she was a scientist first, and within that discipline, truth and discovery were more important than failure. These rips forming in the digital universe bothered her, and of course the dozen MindCorp Sleepers that had died in the last three months worried her; but what ate her alive was not knowing why.

She slammed against the anomaly, effectively decelerating from light speed to zero in less than a nanometer. It held no data; she couldn’t pass.

Sabot, why is it still offline? Normally Cynthia could control every Data Core around the world from her headquarters, but the event that happened here had resulted in the equivalent of a cut cord.

“No one will connect in to turn it on,” Sabot said. She could see the Director of the Data Sump through his eyes.

“All the Sleepers are under medical surveillance,” she heard the man say. “This isn’t the first time, is it? I heard this happened overseas.” Sabot glanced past him to the doctors attending to the sullen, skinny programmers who spent most of their days in a trance. Some were crying.

Someone has to do it, Cynthia projected.

“Could you connect through me and do it?” Sabot asked.

Yes.

Sabot went to a Sleeper chair. The Director disconnected the unrestricted Mindlink that Sleepers wore and in its place attached an administrator Mindlink, similar to a consumer’s. Sabot put it on.

“I’m in,” Sabot said. Immediately, he felt Cynthia’s presence flow over his own. Initially it was warm, like a body, and then, just as quickly, it was a riptide, drowning him out of his consciousness. His senses were taken from him, his memories were plucked free, and, for a moment, he was life with awareness, but no identity.

RUNG-RUNG. An enormous noise. The Data Core behind him turned over like an engine, sparking blue.

Data was transmitted around the ring, Cynthia observed. To Sabot, her casual insight felt more like a stroke.

Quickly, Cynthia. Pain . . . No need to say it aloud; they shared a brain.

RUNG-RUNG. RUNG-RUNG. Blue in the huge tube, sparking and tumbling.

RUNG-RUNG. BRRRRRRRRR. The Data Core fired up.

Cynthia slithered out of his skull and Sabot tore the Mindlink off his head. The Data Core churned its blue. Server fields blinked as they reset. Far above Sabot, the giant microwave dish ground and clattered as it chased a ring of satellites across the night sky.

For Cynthia, what had moments before held no data was now full of it. The tear vanished as the Data Sump went about its task, pushing and pulling 0’s and 1’s.

A meteor shower of voices filled her head. Cynthia summoned all of them, and as she did, her mindscape—a Sleeper’s ability to manipulate their surroundings—fluttered outward in misty green waves. The voices were all her own.

Ten years before, the U.S. and China went to war over the King Sleeper, a child prodigy so powerful online that he could manipulate minds, disrupt economies, and even kill. He was lost in the war, but the data collected to understand what made him so powerful produced amazing technological leaps. One of the most used was the MIME CPU. These computers mimicked their host’s thoughts and decision-making processes, and only queried the host when a pattern or problem fell outside the AI profile. They were the whispers, prodding their masters, guiding them. With MIMEs, one consciousness—like Cynthia’s—was multiplied into thousands.

But this ability came with a cost: the Sleepers that used MIMEs developed dissociative behavior and depression when they were cut off. When schizophrenia had become normal, one voice seemed a lonely chorus.

The Northern Star, a MIME whispered.

Where does that come from? Why do you say that? Cynthia demanded.

The MIMEs held their tongues. They sifted through petaflops of data and came back with a flat line. She could feel their cycles spinning.

The Northern Star. A few weeks ago, when the same event occurred in China, one MIME of the thousands Cynthia put to task had come back with that same phrase. It had spit out of the MIME like a malfunction. On inquiry, the same response occurred, as if the MIMEs were shielding her from some inevitable reveal. All MIMEs on it, yet nothing. Not a tail, not a speck of data.

Sabot, hook up one of the comatose Sleepers.

She felt Sabot’s disapproval.

Do it.

She saw Sabot push the Director, protesting, out of the way. The other Sleepers watched in horror as Sabot wheeled a young woman over to a Sleeper chair and put the Mindlink on her head. She heard Sabot growl, “It may help.”

The MIMEs went about their work, combining processing power with intuition as they probed the young woman who could not be reached by any other means.

Immersion, one of them came back.

Immersion, another said.

-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion- Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion- Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion- Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immersion-Immers—

Cynthia shut down the inquiry. And then she heard it, and she realized she heard it through Sabot’s ears. The woman whispered, as quietly as a dying breath: “The Northern Star.”

= = =

Twenty minutes later, Sabot watched as a caravan of ambulances took the Sleepers away. It was so quiet this far out. The Data Sump—a massive microwave dish that rose eight stories into the air—was outside a reclaimed park that used to be a part of a suburb called Naperville. It was a component of UNITY, a satellite ring that provided latent-free digital transmission across the globe. The last satellite had gone up just weeks prior, and for the first time in human history, once UNITY was fully online and united with the terrestrial network, the entire world would be perfectly, instantaneously linked: without firewalls, without gates, a seamless unity that would make cyberspace whole. It would give everyone in the world a fair shake. There would be no privilege.

And the Coalition, who had supported UNITY since its infancy, was now mysteriously turning against it.

Sabot grimaced. Politicians. Lies with a smile. Snakes who have mastered the appearance of empathy.

“We’re ready,” a technician transmitted to him.

Sabot could feel Cynthia in his head. Although she was laid out at MindCorp headquarters, unconscious to the physical world, his eyes were hers.

Do— she started.

“—it,” he finished.

A deep vibration shook the earth, and the fifty-yard-diameter dish raised its head. RRRRR. RRRRR. The noise was deafening. RA-RA-RA-RA-RA, RA-RA-RA-RA-RA. The dish pivoted back and forth, chasing the invisible satellites high above.

“Geese,” the technician transmitted.

A ‘V’ of geese flew a mile overhead across the Data Thrower’s path. They burst into flames and spiraled to the ground like comets.

Sabot whistled. “Good thing there aren’t any planes.”

A lanky black man in his early twenties approached Sabot. He wore a dark suit with his pants too low. “You okay?”

“No. Mosley, pull your damn pants up,” Sabot replied.

As they walked back to the car, Mosley readjusted his pants and tucked in his shirt. Behind them the Data Sump chattered and ground as the dish swung back and forth, scorching the air with a constant microwave of data. Mosley opened the door for his uncle.

Sabot glanced back at the massive dish. There were hundreds of these, in various states of assembly, all around the world. The need for oil had been replaced by the need for rare earth metals to build CPUs, circuit boards, and memory. UNITY, the Data Cores, and now the Data Sumps—they took massive amounts of material to build. The undertaking to finish this network had been all-consuming. And for some reason, this part of the network was failing. He didn’t think those Sleepers would ever come back.

Sabot sighed and got into the car. They headed back to the city.

-South Africa-

Razal sat sprawled on a chair. A fan spun lazily overhead. The door opened and General Boen walked in, a report in his hand. He dropped it on the desk and sat down.

“I’d love to link into this base one day and find that you’re not here,” Boen said.

Razal pointed to the document. “I don’t know what more to say. You have to pull him. He’s unfit.”

“You know what he’s been through. You know my history with him.”

“Yes, sir. That’s why I’d think you’d do something.”

“Careful.”

Razal shrugged. Boen settled down. “What was it this time?”

“At Walvis Bay he went completely off mission to protect some kids.”

“That doesn’t sound bad.”

“The insertion team got shot up because of it.”

“Any deaths?”

“No, but half the guys needed new bodies.” Razal leaned forward. “You don’t have to be a psychologist to diagnose him. All the time in my ear, he’s talking to his wife. All the time. I have to interrupt him to point out threats.”

“The stress Tank Majors are under is different from what normal infantry deal with. They’re always reminded—”

“Monster Syndrome. I know. But the other ones have maintenance programs that clean up their memories. Raimey’s are just one pile of shit stacked on another.”

Boen ran his hands through his crop top. “He won’t see a shrink, and we can’t make him.”

“How does that help me?”

“You two are an incredibly effective spotter/Major pair.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Bet your ass it is,” Boen corrected. “We’re spread thin here. Who else would you rather work with when backup takes a half-day to reach you? Two Tank Majors aren’t as effective as Raimey.”

“Then why aren’t there more of him?”

“The same reason.” Boen stared off as he pulled information. “You’re Level 2, right? You can’t go higher because of a potential brain aneurism. You have to spot. I can’t reassign you into a six-man team.”

Razal blew air. “I know.”

“You guys don’t have to be buddies. You just need to get the job done. And you’re doing it.”

“Have you talked to him lately?”

Boen shook his head. “He has a closed system. He can’t link in.”

“That’s not why,” Razal said.

Boen just stared at him. Razal backed down.

“You need to do something, man. His daughter’s around, right?”

“She won’t speak to him.”

“Something.”

Boen rubbed his face with his hand. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Razal was semi-satisfied.

“But in the meantime—” Boen started.

“Shit,” Razal said.

“I just transmitted coordinates. Two Tank Majors haven’t communicated to the EU HQ in twenty-four hours. They were guarding a mining/smelt operation one hundred clicks southwest of Boma for shipment. You’re flying out as soon as they get John prepped.”

Before Razal could reply, Boen took off the Mindlink, and the sweltering office designed to mimic South Africa’s summer heat was replaced with his air-conditioned suite on base in Chicago. He sat quietly, thinking about Raimey. Was he relieved that John was in Africa?

He immediately called bullshit on himself for even asking that question, and the truth burnt his ears with shame. Of course he was. Raimey was a thirteen-foot-tall, six-ton reminder of his failure as both mentor and commanding officer. Earl always thought of himself as a man who hung his identity on integrity, and Raimey was a picketed protest outside his window, saying, “Where was your integrity when I needed a friend?”

“What kind of man am I?” Boen asked. It wasn’t damning, it wasn’t rhetorical, it was a sincere question. Each day we can choose change. He knew who he had been. But who was he today? Who did he want to be? Too many people hang their past good deeds on their chests like medals, while in the present they’re just withered husks of the heroes they once were. Boen didn’t want to be one of those people.

He pressed a button on his desk. “Wilkes?”

“Yes, sir,” a voice replied over the intercom.

“Can you call the Derik Building and see if Vanessa Raimey is in?”

“Will do.”

Maybe he could still make amends.

= = =

Vanessa Raimey hung up the phone, surprised to hear that General Boen was planning to stop by.

“Who was that?” asked Bethany, a thick, black nurse in her forties.

“My dad’s boss, Mr. Boen,” Vanessa said. She pursed her lips, curious. A loop of silver pierced the bottom one, and a row of studs ran over her eyebrow. Tattoo sleeves ran down her arms, and one just curled out of her scrubs touching her right ear. Dark, wavy hair hid others. “He’s coming over.”

“General Boen?” Bethany said, whistling. “Look at you with your important friends . . .”

The sound of a buzzer interrupted Bethany’s tease. Vanessa slapped the call button on her desk and rubbed her temples. “What’s the point of having important friends if I have to deal with him?”

“They’re almost out, right?” Bethany said, looking at a wall display that read: A. Kove/E. Chao, Culling Recovery. “Alan is sorta sweet.”

Vanessa tied her hair back and stood up. “Bethany, he’s sweet because he wants medication. Dr. Rafayko said he’s full-blown alkie.”

“No way. I didn’t see anything in his file.”

Vanessa shrugged. “He’s one of Evan’s. I guessed it slipped through the cracks.”

The buzzer rang again: Vanessa closed a fist as if she was about to punch it.

“Tomorrow we won’t have to deal with them anymore. They’re going up to three, four, then out the door,” Bethany said. She started down the hall.

“Wait, you’re coming, right?” Vanessa asked.

“They didn’t buzz my desk.”

“You’re such a bitch!”

Bethany swayed her hips as she disappeared around the corner. “Happy birthday!”

Vanessa shook her head and took the stairs up to the second floor, where the culling took place. It had a surgery side and a recovery side. The “Twins” had been in recovery for seven days. Tomorrow they were being transferred to the third floor for build-out. The basement was for testing.

When Vanessa’s father vanished into the military and her mother shriveled to death from cancer, Dr. Evan Lindo had championed her. He’d pushed her academically; he’d pushed her technically. She’d graduated high school early, graduated college with a psych degree by nineteen, and was now already well on her way to a Masters degree in the same field.

Evan had appointed her as the “psych liaison.” She handled the introduction of all candidates into the bionics program, she monitored and comforted those in the process of culling—where their identities were the most fragile—and she reported and consulted with the head psychologists when any red flags popped up, outside of the scheduled psych tests and appointments. In short, any time a soldier was getting cut down into conscious tissue, she was there with an open ear, a ready smile, and a soothing voice.

The culling floor was more sterile and protected than a neonatal unit. Vanessa stepped through heavy rubber curtains into a decontamination zone and donned a full-body suit. She hit a button and a red light blinked for five seconds, then she was doused with a white, microbe-killing smoke. After the smoke was sucked out of the room, the interior door unlocked. She stepped through and proceeded to room 203.

At the entrance to the room, a digital display read: A. Kove/E. Chao. Usually there were eight soldiers to a room, but Kove and Chao were being processed for a cutting-edge Tank Major design unlike anything before it.

The process to become a bionic was brutal. The first Tank Majors were castrated, their arms and legs removed, their spines shortened, and still what happened to them was gentle compared to what happened to Tank Minors—and now, to Alan Kove and Edward Chao.

The lights were dim, but she could still see the gleam of their wet skulls. Their skin had been pulled back to insert armor plating. Alan Kove was closest, and asleep; his breath was the whisper of a newborn, enough for Vanessa to check the monitors to make sure he was fine.

“Vanessa?” Edward Chao. The voice came from over the partition.

“Yes?” She was mad that she had to deal with this on her birthday, and wholly aware how childish it was to feel that way . . . and how it annoyed her anyway. If it were anyone else, she wouldn’t have minded. She liked her job. She liked the people that had come through. But Chao was rotten. Vanessa used to think that everyone had at least one redeeming quality, but that was before she met Chao. Maybe a psychotherapist could dig into Chao’s mind and learn that he tithes half his salary to feed orphans in India, but she doubted it. Some people were just mean. And at some point, the root cause was irrelevant.

Vanessa walked past the partition. A television played behind her and the slight light from it was enough to see by. On the other side of the partition was Chao: a human head, a mechanized neck, and a bucket of organs. Strings of electrostatic tissue connected the bucket to braces fused into his skull. The bucket was actually an armored organ capsule that contained his spine and the organs necessary to life. Doctors and nurses called the soldiers “bowling pins” at this stage. It took roughly three weeks for the organs to bond to the capsule walls, and for the patient to move on to the build. Like all the rest of them, Chao was seated in a deep, sterile container, buried to his chin in a thick anti-bacterial gel that kept out airborne contaminants. It looked as if he were drowning in snot.

“What do you need, Edward?” she asked.

“It’s your birthday today,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Any plans?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I was just asking.”

Vanessa didn’t respond. Chao nudged his chin at the television. “The clicker isn’t working. It’s been stuck on the news.”

In the left-hand corner of the screen was a photo of Cynthia Revo, and below it, in bold print: “MindCorp: Dangerous?” A large, dark man stood on a podium addressing a stone-faced crowd. Watermarked on the video: “India’s President, Manmohan Nehru, addresses Parliament on the dangers of the MindCorp monopoly.” It was too quiet to hear, but by the body language, the president of India wasn’t for it. Across the bottom, the crawler stated: “India has applied to become a Coalition member in 2070.”

Vanessa went over to the monitor. The “clicker” was a voice command module, and sometimes it got a gremlin. She did the ol’ unplug-and-plug reboot.

“Doesn’t make me feel very good that I’m all chopped up and I’m relying on the same people to put me back together that can’t keep a TV working,” Chao prodded. Vanessa stood up on her tiptoes and plugged the cord back in to the interface. Chao grunted approval.

“You’ll be good as new in a few days,” Vanessa said. Even with her back turned, she could feel his eyes crawl over her. She didn’t know what he was looking at though. In the sterile suit, she could have been a pear.

“Hmm. Yeah. But in some ways, never.”

The voice command booted up. A small light blinked green.

“Ah, good,” Chao said. “One more day, and—Superman!”

Chao paused. Here goes, Vanessa thought.

“You’re pretty. Why did you fuck with your face?”

“I’m leaving.”

“You’re the shrink. What would you say to you, you know, if you role-played?”

Vanessa gritted her teeth. Why would Evan work with this guy? “Do you need anything else?”

“It’s an honest question.”

Kove snorted awake. “Oh, hey, Vanessa.”

“Alan.”

“I was just asking her a question,” Chao said.

“Quit messing with her,” Alan said. The two skulls argued. “Hey, Vanessa, my head’s really hurting.”

“I’ll talk to Dr. Rafayko.”

“You couldn’t just—”

“I’m not a doctor, Alan.”

“Which begs the questions, why are you here?” Chao exclaimed. “Bam! Back to the topic. I know Evan doesn’t give a shit about your old man, but—wait! Is that it? Is that why you did all the stuff to yourself, like in rebellion? Spite your nose to cut your—”

“Cut off your nose to spite your face,” Kove corrected.

Chao’s wet head nodded. “That! Ah, it’s that.” Chao was satisfied. “You can go.”

Vanessa didn’t know why, but she was near tears. “I don’t get why you are the way you are, and I don’t care, Edward. They can put you in the biggest robot suit in the world and you’d still be a little man. You’re a horrible person.”

Chao laughed. He laughed so hard that the tray shook.

“WHAT?”

“I didn’t know I was your type.”

Vanessa got out of the room as quickly as she could. She shut the door behind her and looked up and down the hall. She was alone. She banged her head against the wall, trying to replace the sadness with pain.

“Pull it together, he’s an asshole,” she said. She breathed in deeply, daydreaming about bashing his stupid face in with a bat and gouging out his eyes. It calmed her.

When she got back downstairs, General Boen and his bodyguard, Wilkes, were by her desk. Boen came over as she approached. She went for the handshake, he went for the hug, and it became an awkward medley of both.

He gestured to Bethany, who was nearby, acting busy. “She said it’s your birthday today. Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

He couldn’t believe how much she’d grown and how her appearance had changed. Both her father and mother had been clean-cut—Earl had known them both—but Vanessa looked like the dirtiest girl at a strip club. She was covered in tattoos and piercings.

“What do you want?” She stopped herself, realizing that she sounded harsh. “I didn’t mean it that way, but why—”

“No, you’re right. I do want something,” Boen said. And then he told her.

= = =

Razal suited up and walked over to the armory with his sniper rifle. On the tarmac, the engines on a C-130 cargo plane were spinning up. It was for them.

“I’m still waiting for that that C-note. What’s shaking?” the armory attendant asked. They played poker together.

“A mine’s gone quiet in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“Usually it’s a caravan,” Razal replied. “I’m gonna pack up on this one. Fifty and fifty for the fifty.”

“Anyone we know?”

“Some EU Tank Majors.”

The attendant disappeared and came back with fifty rounds of incendiary, fifty rounds of armor-piercing, both of them in .50 caliber. “Be safe. You going with Twitchy-twitchy-speaks-a-lot?”

Razal looked around. “Shhh. Dude, come on.” He sighed. “Yeah.” Across the tarmac was a warehouse-style building. “He hasn’t come out yet?”

“Erica drove over with a lift about an hour ago.”

Razal took the ammo bricks and started across the runway.

“C-note!” the attendant yelled. Razal gave him the finger.

Thirty years before, when the United States, the European Union, and China formed the Coalition to infiltrate oil-rich lands and take the last of the oil, a strange political correctness had overcome logic. In the Middle East, cities were divided and walls erected, and the people that lived in those confines were provided with food and supplies. It was costly, and still was to this day, because even though the oil was gone—in the sense that no civilian could go out and get some—it wasn’t gone. Off the coasts, oil rigs still pulled up crude. Land-based pumps all over Iraq and Iran, Saudi Arabia, and South America bucked and mewled like broncos being broken. These boroughs had to be maintained. To leave them now would usher in genocide.

But with MindCorp’s growth and the world moving online, the demand had shifted toward microprocessors and all the other components that kept the virtual world going. And in that salvation was again exhaustion, because nothing comes for free: rare earth metals were needed, and the Coalition, which had begun to wither, redoubled its strength. But this time it had learned from its mistakes. In Africa, they just took. And with bionics, they could do so easily. This time, the natives would have to figure out how to survive on their own.

Razal walked into the warehouse and saw the living monolith getting prepped. Two technicians scrambled over the giant, smearing his joints with thick black grease. One carefully injected some into two massive drive chains that rotated slowly—counter to the other—around Raimey’s waist. A small, fit woman stood on an electric lift at Raimey’s chest height, eleven feet in the air. His chest armor had been removed, and hung on the lift. Razal could see Raimey’s exposed chest—his true chest. It was mounted midway up, on a suspension track that had two feet of travel either way. It was flaccid, peppered with little wounds where Erica had cored out the equivalent of bedsores. She was bandaging them now.

“Razal,” she said.

“How goes it?”

“Big sexy is nearly done.”

Raimey huffed a possible laugh, but didn’t say a word. Razal had worked with him for six months after another spotter had died in the field, and the entire time, Raimey had been chewing on his lower lip. A nervous tic.

Erica reinstalled a milky plastic sheath that covered John’s body.

VVVRRM.

VVVRRM.

VVVRRM.

She air-wrenched it in place, then took a hose and filled it with suspension gel. She replaced a dozen plates that fit together like a puzzle, each one half her size. These were the last-resort reactive armor. She attached wires to each plate and carefully routed them through conduit channels.

Reversing the lift, she rotated it ninety degrees so that the chest armor was facing John. She eased it in, realigned, and continued. A sharp ding filled the air as the chest armor made contact with John. Erica stopped the lift and pulled out a heavier air wrench to anchor bolts the size of soda cans.

“Done,” she said. Sweat peppered her brow; working with components this size was hard work. She drove the lift out of the way, brought the platform down, and jumped off. With a motorized pallet jack, she brought over the hydraulshock artillery magazines.

“Clear?” Raimey asked.

“Clear.”

“Clear.”

“Clear.”

Raimey knelt down and picked up the hydraulshock magazines.

Together, Raimey and Razal walked over to the C-130. Erica ran after them. “Hey!” She lugged a massive black helmet with a six-inch-thick, bulletproof visor in the shape of a skull. “Forget something?”

“Oh, sorry,” Raimey said.

Raimey’s fingers were too big to manage such dextrous movement, so Razal shouldered his rifle and took the helmet. Erica gave a quick wave and jogged back to the warehouse.

“That would have been bad,” Razal said.

Raimey looked down. “Why?”

That stopped Razal in his tracks. The giant boarded through the belly of the plane, and a moment later, Razal followed.

Chapter 2

A gavel struck. “Order.”

The warble of disjointed conversations began to die down as the hundreds of men and women from various countries found their seats. U.S. President Joseph Austin sat with other Coalition leaders at the front of the room, on an elevated platform. His perfectly tailored suit enhanced an athletic frame. His hair was thick and full. His skin was smooth and he glowed with health. Around him, the other men and women in power looked the same. Online, they looked preordained for their positions of power.

“Order.” India’s President, Manmohan Nehru, hit the gavel again, and this time the conversations ceased. Nehru was dark. Dark skin, jet-black hair, tall and wide. The President of France said something offhand to Nehru and the two men laughed for a moment.

In front of the panel was a desk, and behind that was an empty chair.

“Ms. Revo, are you here?” Nehru asked. There was no need for microphones; his voice carried across the auditorium effortlessly. No answer.

To a well-dressed woman behind him: “Time?”

“4:59 p.m., Central U.S.”

At five on the nose, Cynthia appeared in her chair. With a frosty stare, she looked at the leaders perched above her and calculated very quickly what they had contributed to society: nothing. Yet they sat on a panel that looked down at her. These scholars with their vacuum principles and funky facial hair. These “leaders” that couldn’t run a sandwich shop.

They had called her to this council to discuss UNITY. As with most advances, these leaders didn’t understand it, and so they feared it, ignoring history and the millions of advances before that had been met with uncertainty only to become pillars of modern life. Cynthia pondered the irony: limitless information had somehow made man dumb. She didn’t hear the question.

“Cynthia?”

“Yes?”

President Nehru looked down at her, waiting for an answer.

“Please repeat the question.”

“It wasn’t a question. I said we’re here to discuss UNITY.”

“Yes. I got that memo. Have I not been transparent with its purpose? The Coalition has approved the land deeds and plans. We’ve incorporated the security protocols you’ve requested, as redundant as they may be.”

She sensed the auditorium grow as more people filled in behind her. Press. She didn’t need to turn around—she could see everyone. Various colors and languages (translated instantly by software) continued to pour in.

“I wasn’t aware this was an open forum.”

Nehru answered, “We’ve chosen to be transparent with the world.”

“I don’t know why I wouldn’t have received that same courtesy.” She looked at the board one by one. “What are you scheming?”

“We just want our citizens to understand our intent. The Coalition is feared as an empire-like entity, and yet that couldn’t be further from the truth. We want peace and prosperity. The Coalition is an opportunity for nations to work together.”

Cynthia couldn’t help but smile.

Nehru was annoyed. “What?”

“Words. What do you want?”

President Austin cleared his throat. “UNITY is being implemented in countries outside of the Coalition and its partners.”

“Yes?”

“That worries us.”

“David, you granted land deeds and launch rights. You’ve championed it to other countries as a human rights issue. Now you oppose it?”

“What we have works just fine,” Nehru said.

“Does ‘what we have’ work just fine?”

“Your attitude is unnerving, Ms. Revo,” Nehru replied.

“I don’t have time for foolish things, and this is just that. UNITY reduces the global data network to a single pool. It’s easier to manage and maintain, it will triple the bandwidth, which we sorely need, and it will bring the network to parts of the world, poor regions, remote regions, that have no access or means to build out the traditional network infrastructure. In the modern era, there has never been a greater disparity between the havesand the have-nots than there is now. Those with access to our network have very little variation in quality of life. Yes, some live in mansions and some live in slums, but online, everyone has opportunity. Without UNITY, only a few lucky enough to have other access will evolve. Those left behind, in parts of South America, in most of Africa, and”—she looked directly at Nehru—“among the disparate poor in India, and a hundred of other countries that you can’t place on a map . . . those places, those cultures, will be unrecognizable to us in twenty years. We will have abandoned them.”

“So it’s about the greater good? It has nothing to do with profit,” Nehru said sarcastically.

“I’m worth the GDP of most countries present. Money means nothing to me anymore. And even if it did, who are you to judge? Most of you have quadrupled your net worth since coming to power. Yes, what I’ve created benefits the greater good. And fine, I will make more money because of it. But it gives opportunity to people who normally wouldn’t have it; it gives them a chance. The opportunities you take for granted, that you leave to spoil because you have so many more . . . how can you say that they shouldn’t be available to others? Even the scraps?”

“That’s enough!” Nehru said. He pounded the gavel—and suddenly it vanished. Everyone turned to Cynthia. This was her world. She would not be silenced.

“There are no great minds in here, except one. And the atrocity isn’t that your greed has overtaken your oath. It’s not that pragmatic thought has been cast aside, and a technology that could eradicate nearly all of the world’s ills has been treated as an opportunity to feed your ideological platforms for political gain—as if politics serving itself has ever done anything good. No, the atrocity is that you are so willing to chain others—even the unborn—down, and that there are great minds right now that we will never know, that will never bear fruit, because they you deny them the means. Choice is everything, and you quake at the thought. You are cowards, when history has shown, repeatedly, that advancement benefits us all.”

President Austin spoke up. “Cynthia, the goal of this panel isn’t to be confrontational. The Coalition and MindCorp have worked together in harmony for over a decade. But even among the leaders up here, we have common interests, as well as the sovereign interests of our nations to consider.”

“Evan Lindo manages your security, does he not? We got out of that game years ago.”

“But we must use your network,” Nehru said. “And that’s the problem. MindCorp owns one hundred percent of the digital infrastructure for civilian and governmental use. And the client-server structure inhibits our ability to use it securely.”

“That is why it’s secure. Why isn’t Evan here to state his case? Why hasn’t he reached out to me to set up a meeting?”

Nehru ignored her question. “And it’s all accessible to you.”

“You say ‘me,’ as if it all goes directly through my ears. You know that by the nature of data, networks, and the client-server structure that must exist, this is unavoidable.”

“So if I send a sensitive document to the President of Russia, MindCorp can see it.”

“I don’t handle your security protocols, and as a policy we do not interfere with these transfers . . .”

“Sleepers could.”

“That’s the beauty of our system. Client-server makes it impossible to remain anonymous in cyberspace.”

“That isn’t true. ‘Hosting’ by hopping through another individual is used by clandestine operations.”

“Only the most vile,” Cynthia said.

Nehru cocked his head. “Ms. Revo, we’re not concerned about the most ethical.”

The crowd chuckled.

“Haven’t Sleepers died because of UNITY?” President Austin asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s scary. Do you know why?”

“Not yet. Eleven people died building the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a sad cost of progress. We’ll find out why. The internet is safer than it has ever been.”

“With Big Brother hanging over every bit and byte we send,” Nehru said. “Is it true that you colluded with the United States ten years ago to defeat China?”

It took Cynthia a moment for the question to sink in. The information that President Nehru just revealed was highly classified. Only a handful of people understood what happened during the conflict with China. And none of them, except her, were in the room.

“Is the goal of this committee to dismantle MindCorp?” She gave them a second to respond. None of them did. “Was taking other countries’ land not enough? Are you aware of the irony that right now you are using my inventions and technology to strip it away? UNITY is already up, and I have poured trillions of dollars into its development and construction. Is that why you waited? You can’t have it.”

“We weren’t plan—” Nehru started.

“YOU CAN’T HAVE IT.” Cynthia’s voice drowned out all other noises.

Nehru pointed his finger down at her. “We’ll see, you arrogant bi—”

President Austin grabbed Nehru’s arm. The room erupted in pandemonium. Austin mouthed “sit down” to Nehru and took over at the podium.

President Austin was visibly embarrassed. “Order, please!”

The room quieted.

“I apologize, Cynthia.”

Cynthia glared at Nehru. “At least he was honest. And now I know.” She continued. “Let me be perfectly clear. I don’t mind that you use my invention. I don’t mind that you benefit from my invention. I don’t mind that you think, deluded as it may be, that your nations’ continued prosperity has come despite my invention. But it’s mine. If you need more transparency, I can provide that. But privacy issues, if that is truly the crux of this debate, have changed very little since the beginning of the digital age.”

“We don’t appreciate your tone, Cynthia,” the French President said.

“And I don’t appreciate yours. Don’t waste my time so you can be on the news. My company has allowed the world to continue. Your short memories have forgotten the fear that filled everyone’s hearts when the oil dripped dry and the privileges we viewed as rights were suddenly threatened. You act like the suburbs never existed and cars were from an ancient time. It was twenty years ago!”

“We understand,” President Austin said.

“No, you don’t. Because if you did, I wouldn’t have to say it, and I wouldn’t have to come to these useless meetings. And one of you—just one—would at some point have thanked me.”

= = =

President Nehru woke from the meeting and pulled the Mindlink off his head. He was far from unhappy. In fact, he was giddy. He thought he did well. He poured himself a glass of scotch to celebrate and looked out at New Delhi. He, like everyone, primarily worked from home. He was fatter in real life. His chef, Nadha, kept him full. Speaking of . . .

He pressed an intercom button.

“Nadha, please bring me dinner.” He rubbed his eyes, it had been a long day. The noise of the city rose up to him. Lights twinkled beneath him like stars. He drank and thought about his next steps.

He waited a few minutes, but Nadha didn’t respond. He looked at the time. It was past eleven at night. She’d still be here—she knew he’d be working late. Hmm.

He glanced at the security cameras and saw nothing out of the norm. His villa overlooked the city from a hill.

She’s probably on the throne. That brought a smile to his lips. She was a big woman, and the visual of her destroying the toilet made him laugh.

He refilled his scotch and walked down two flights of stairs.

“Nadha?” he said again. Nothing. He realized the dogs were gone, too. The absence of their constant pitter-patter made the house feel cold. Maybe Nadha had taken them for a walk. He went to the kitchen and checked the fridge. A pot of curry greeted him. He pulled it out and shut the door.

Mike Glass stood next to him.

“Holy shit!” Nehru dropped the pot and Glass caught it in one hand. He held a black case in the other. Glass put the curry on the table and opened the box. It held a Mindlink.

“Evan wants to speak to you. This will connect you directly to him.”

Nehru was breathing hard, still recovering from the scare. “You didn’t kill Nadha . . .”

“And the dogs,” Glass said.

Irritation swept over Nehru’s face. Nadha had worked for him for over a decade.

Glass shook his head as he walked past him to the living room. “I sent them out.”

Nehru wasn’t amused. He glared at the wraith as he set up the Mindlink. Why would Evan send his henchman all this way?

“You’re gathering the Pieces,” Nehru said aloud.

Glass didn’t respond.

“How close is he?” Nehru asked.

Glass didn’t respond. He opened the door to the deck and placed a small satellite dish outside. He connected it to the Mindlink. LEDs danced around its perimeter as it booted up and connected to UNITY.

“From now on, you only use this,” Glass said.

Nehru didn’t move.

Glass waited for a moment, his eyes tumbling green. Then—

“Now.”

= = =

Nehru appeared in the middle of Evan’s office. Evan sat behind his desk. Although they had never met in person, Evan controlled him, as he did the others. But unlike the others, blackmail didn’t work on Nehru—he didn’t love anyone except himself—so Evan had had to appeal to his greed. For his efforts, Nehru would get all of Asia.

The room felt funny. Nehru had been there many times—it was a construct—and normally it felt real, but now there was a pulsing sensation, as if the walls were rubber. Evan was encompassed by a dark that the overhead lights could not penetrate. It was like looking into a deep well.

“You could have just sent me the box. Mike scared me half to death.”

“He was in the area, and with Cynthia on alert, I need you on a private Mindlink. What’s the status?”

“Iraq is up. The Multipliers in India will be ready in days. Packard should have the ones in Africa ready by next week. You’re collecting the Pieces, aren’t you?”

When Nehru said the word “Pieces,” the walls flexed in and out. To Nehru, it felt like someone had hammered a nail into his head. He cupped his ears, but it did no good. Whispers filled the room.

Why does he call us Pieces?

When will we see light?

For a moment, Nehru could see Evan’s eyes. There weren’t two, there were a dozen, lining his face like spiders. Evan grimaced, and they burrowed back under his skin.

“Six are in place,” he said.

We love you, Father. Strange whispers filled the room.

“What does it feel like?” Nehru asked in wonder. The average brain was twelve hundred cubic centimeters. By hijacking the brains of the prodigy Pieces for his own, Evan would increase his gray matter to over fifteen thousand cubic centimeters. He would no longer think as a human. In fact, notwithstanding his physical form, he would no longer be human.

“At times, epiphany. At times, indescribable pain. The Consciousness Module is not in place, and they want out.”

The eyes were back on Evan’s face now, glistening orbs that reflected what little light was in the room.

“They’re tearing you apart,” Nehru said.

“No. They’re starving for purpose.”

We want him.

Can we feel what he feels?

He worships you.

Let me taste!

The room wobbled again, and this time it didn’t stop.

“Leave,” Evan said to Nehru. The voice was thin—it was Evan without the Pieces, without the other minds melded. “You have to go, now!”

Nehru didn’t hesitate; he could see that something was very wrong. He tried to disconnect. It wouldn’t work. Tentacles sprouted from Evan’s black shape. They were purple and white, pulsing strings like squirming parasites. Evan was no longer there. Instead his body had become a portal for something of endless appetite.

Nehru stepped back. “I did everything you said!”

“It’s not me,” Evan replied faintly.

The tentacles latched on to Nehru. He didn’t scream. He did very little except stand up straight. The Pieces fed, and Evan’s body reformed. Nehru’s memories and thoughts flowed through Evan as the Pieces took them, one bite at a time, savoring his soul like a choice cut.

Evan’s pain subsided, and he was back in control.

“It was an accident,” Evan said to Nehru’s husk as its final morsels were rooted out. But the accident was well timed: everything was nearly in place, and Evan could use Nehru’s death to his advantage.

Until he could get the Consciousness Module in place, he would have to suffer some loss of control.

But as long as the Pieces fed, they would be fine.

= = =

Including Cynthia, there were eight MindCorp founders who’d helped usher in the new world. Two were dead. Harold Renki had had his throat slit a decade before by a Chinese operative while performing treason. Joanna Shields had died as ragged bones—breast cancer. Of Cynthia’s five remaining co-founders, four now floated with her over a tear in cyberspace that none of them could fathom. They had each sent their MIME counterparts into the void, and they would all either vanish and physically reset—back wherever the server bay resided— or they would repeat the single word that had brought this group together, men and women who hadn’t spoken in a decade, wealthy beyond compare, free to do what they chose.

Immersion.

Immersion.

Immersion.

Immersion.

Immersion.

The entire civilized world could regurgitate the story of Tom and Jerry, the two test chimps that were part of the first successful tests of the Mindlink. History viewed that day as the watershed moment, the day when man’s mind was freed from its mortal constraints. But that wasn’t the case. The Mindlink was a tool, an aqualung that allowed a scuba diver to submerge. But without immersion, there was no ocean.

There was never a follow-up story for Tom and Jerry. No “Where are they now?” for two of the most important chimps in modern history. There was no farm where they grazed happily. There was no zoo where they congregated with their own. There was no happy ending.

The greatest minds in the world had surrounded Cynthia at the time. The Mindlink could teleport a consciousness into the digital plane, but it was a true unknown. Every statement was speculative. One colorful scientist called it “the black hole/butthole conundrum.” We saw the mouth, but where did it crap out?

So they had started with primates. Tom and Jerry were the first in queue. Each heralded ape lasted five seconds. The symptoms were the same. When they were connected into the black and their consciousness was pulled into that space, their pupils immediately dilated. Their brain activity became seismic . . . and then they died. Tom died unceremoniously on the table—they couldn’t resuscitate him. With Jerry, they planned ahead: doctors surgically implanted a pacemaker before the test. It merely kept the meat warm a bit longer.

For both, after only five seconds in cyberspace, their brains had the electrical signature of a rock. No old brain, no brainstem, nothing. The autopsy revealed no obvious cause of death, and the scientists and programmers and mathematicians, without their numbers and models, flailed to understand what had happened. But Cynthia knew: they had entered an intangible. They had entered a “god space” of creation. Tom’s and Jerry’s souls had been sucked away, and couldn’t find their way back. What made them them was imprisoned across infinity with no way to ever come home.

Months went by without a solution, and Cynthia retreated into herself. Calls went unanswered. Food became an afterthought. She walked along the Chicago River, watching the government-fueled construction, the giant cranes ferrying girder after girder, the sound of physical work outshouting the screams of worry as the Great Migration—when citizens were offered massive tax breaks to move into the city—was first enacted in the wake of the oil shortages.

She sat on the bank. A mother duckling and its brood swam by. A red dot landed on her sleeve. Cynthia raised her arm and watched a ladybug scale over cotton dunes to the top of her index finger. It circled for a moment, this speckled bean, and its wings opened like doors as it launched into the air, arcing inexplicably into the water near the muddy edge. Cynthia got up to save it. She found a stick that could reach out to it. She leaned over—and something made her stop. Past the struggling bug were the ducks. The mother watched as the five others played, moving effortlessly in a medium they were adapted to master. Cynthia’s eyes drifted back to the ladybug. Unlike the duck, its spindly legs weren’t made for water. They moved helplessly. It tried to fly and its wings got soaked. It was alive, but completely out of its element. Aware, yet helpless.

Cynthia put out the branch—something it knew, something familiar—and it latched on easily. A thought dawned on Cynthia, and she dropped the branch; the current bobbed it out toward the ducks. Although surrounded by death, the ladybug was on something it knew. A moment later, it fluttered its little wings and was gone.

Cynthia ran to the lab.

She called them “moors.” Cyberspace existed and didn’t exist. It held matter and it held none. There was infinite space and no space. It was a universe before creation. And although the Mindlink could release a person’s consciousness into that universe, if there was no moor for the mind to relate to, the consciousness could never grasp what it was a part of. Instead being freed, the mind was imprisoned, blotting out of all its senses, rendering it to nothing. In this extremely alienating environment, the consciousness needed a beacon to find its way home. It needed bread crumbs that were anchored to something it knew.

Due to the nature of the Mindlink, it could only be programmed when connected to a living, thinking biological creature—but no biological creature could handle the initial immersion. So Cynthia invented a workaround. She built an artificial intelligence bot that could be implanted into a brain.

They implanted the first AI bot into Daisy, a chimp. They washed away her consciousness. It was the first use of what was later coined “Forced Autism.” In place of Daisy’s original programming, a billion code variations of the AI bot were implanted. Daisy was then immersed. And of the billions of programming variants, two stuck. The code created gravity.

Gerald was next. Same process, different bot.

A sun was created. Not brilliant, or vibrant, or beautiful. It was a low-resolution, three-dimensional object that emitted a yellow light. But that was enough; it just had to seed, it didn’t matter where. One program took.

The next ape they named Haven. She was new to the test, and her name was appropriate. When she was immersed, what got sucked into that alien space was code that created a simple program: shelter.

Gravity, light, and shelter were the first of the moors. Humans understood them. From there, they could build more. After days of debate, Cynthia herself went in. The gravity gave off data, even in the infinite space. The sun gave her light to see by, and a fixed point to use as a spatial reference. And shelter gave her a place to reside while she singlehandedly built the universe: law by law and piece by piece. The programming language became known as Revo.

“It’s an impossible conclusion,” said David Brown, the man who had designed the MindCorp infrastructure as a client-server system. His jelly form—sperm-like, like the others—glowed as he spoke.

“Are the Sleepers dead?” asked Hans Kahn, a quantum physicist who had conceptualized the Data Crusher interface.

“Yes. All of them,” Cynthia replied. “Those in China, those at the incident in the U.S.”

“Like the apes?”

“Yes,” Cynthia replied.

“Have there been more?”

“Before this, we’ve never observed death directly tied to the Mindlink, outside of seizures in a small percentage of the population,” replied Raymond Pflug, a neuroscientist.

“Only the King Sleeper could kill,” Cynthia said.

“And that’s still the case?”

No one answered. No one knew.

“Where is Zienkiewicz?” Brad Zienkiewicz was the leading authority on multi-threading, and still an active member of MindCorp. After the MIME CPUs became a tool of the government and the rich, he had created the hierarchy of command that allowed them to interact seamlessly with their host.

“He confirmed he would be here.”

“I can talk to him later,” Cynthia replied.

“It’s not like him to be late.”

“What would stall a MIME? I’ve never seen that before.”

“The MIME’s telling us, we just aren’t believing it.”

They paused a moment, each staring at the mysterious abyss.

“How much bandwidth does UNITY add?”

“Triple.”

“By tripling it,” Hans said, “we’ve created an uncharted abyss as long and deep as the universe.”

“Where other planes can exist,” Cynthia said.

“And other realities,” said Brown.

“Outside of any means for us to measure them,” Hans continued.

“But where—because we were first—they can still measure us,” Cynthia said. Immersion. “They’ve corrupted UNITY. It has been reconceived as a trip wire.”

“Who?”

“The Coalition.”

“How?”

“Evan Lindo,” Cynthia said. Why did all bad things lead to him? “I need to set up some meetings. Thank you.”

= = =

Mike Glass was in the air back to the United States. The two pilots up front provided him no company. At the beginning of the mission they had chatted with him, tried to relate, but after the first pickup in Russia, they had turned into beaten dogs, afraid to even gaze in Mike’s direction. And now, they never left the cockpit. To India, to China, to Russia, Italy, France, and Belgium, his only contact with them was over the intercom. He didn’t mind.

While his eyes never shut off, he was asleep, dreaming. He was ten, hunting in the woods of Kentucky. The fall leaves crunched beneath his boots and he adjusted his step to be quieter. His bow was cheap—his dad had picked it up at a garage sale—but his father had given him one arrow with a new three-blade broad head. He had been tracking his prey for over an hour, but even at that age, he moved like he was meant for the forest. He rose over the crest of the hill and he saw a doe by the stream. It drank, unaware of the danger. Thirty yards away, he drew the bow and the young deer turned toward him, exposing its shoulder. Its spotted fur looked like down. Its eyes had the ignorant love of a pet. He let the arrow fly and it shot past the deer, into a bush that howled and shook in agony.

“Water, please.”

Glass woke. Four men and two women sat around him, six of the greatest minds of the twenty-first century. A Russian economist who’d revolutionized the online economy. The President of Italy, who’d halted a military coup by uniting dozens of political parties at the eleventh hour. A Belgian physicist whose work on energy, mass, and binding forces had won him the Nobel Prize. A French psychiatrist who’d used the Mindlink technology to combat Alzheimer’s and other mental illness. A Chinese biotech CEO who’d engineered photosynthetic cellular organisms to produce an organic polymer. A MindCorp founder who was an expert on multi-threading and MIME/host integration. They were shrouded, bound to their drop chairs.

Already, they were missed. National manhunts, intelligences services, police Sleepers, global news reports—the world had been galvanized by the loss of such high-profile wunderkinds.

Glass pressed his side with a towel. The Italian President had been well guarded.

“Please, water,” one of the women begged through her canvas veil. “I’m so thirsty.” She had apparently spit out her gag. Glass took a bottle of water to her and pulled the bag off her head. She was in her fifties, and running mascara had turned her into a raccoon. Glass had found her at her home. He put the bottle to her lips and she guzzled it down.

“Is my family safe?” she asked. Her eyes pleaded with Glass.

“Yes,” he lied. Her husband was dead. The kids weren’t in the house.

“Why are you doing this?”

He was ordered not to respond.

“What did we do?”

He sat back in the seat and his body went rigid, a sign of him going back to sleep.

“Dammit! How can you do this?” she screamed. Others sobbed and choked on their gags. Glass’s body relaxed. He went back over and began tightening the woman’s gag. She struggled, thrashing her neck, trying to remain free. “We’ve got families!” she cried. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I want to see my boys.”

Glass paused. “You’re the psychiatrist,” he said.

She paused, then—“Yes?”

His eyes were a foot from her, churning green, never blinking. Up close, his skin was clearly manufactured. She had never seen such a monster. “People talk to you.”

“Yes.” Her horror was laced with uncertainty. She didn’t know where this was leading.

“I can’t discuss the mission,” he said.

“But . . . you want to talk?” she asked, disbelieving. Before this, he hadn’t said one word to her. She had woken up in the airplane, at first refusing to believe what had happened was real. The only time he had spoken was when the Italian President—she recognized him—had been warned to quit struggling or the green-eyed man would break his fingers. The green-eyed man had said that “he was allowed to.” The Italian President didn’t listen, and three snapped fingers drove him into submission.

“Are you in love with your husband?” Glass asked.

Just the thought of him got her crying. “Yes, very.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” She got angry. “Why do you care?”

“Why him and not someone else?” Glass persisted.

“He took care of me. He loved me even when I was shit.”

“How were you shit?”

“I’m an alcoholic. He didn’t leave.”

“Is that enough to love someone?”

“Loyalty? Yes. Love is conditional, no matter what people say. Loyalty, true loyalty, is one of the strongest loves.”

“You don’t sound like a psychiatrist,” Glass said. He offered her an MRE and unbound her hands. He raised a finger in warning toward the Italian President.

“I won’t do anything.”

He nodded. The smell of food had made the others more alert. Hooded heads turned in their direction. Glass didn’t appear to notice.

“I have dreams now,” he said.

“Aspirations?” the woman asked. Glass let out a laugh that was as cold as frost.

“Dreams, when I sleep,” he clarified.

“You didn’t used to?”

“Not before her.”

“You have a girlfriend?”

Glass nodded.

“What is the dream?”

“I’m a kid, hunting. It confuses me.”

“Why?”

“The dream’s a lie.”

“Dreams don’t ‘lie.’ They’re the subconscious trying to sort out problems in our lives. Why do you say that?”

“It’s a memory from when I was a kid. I would hunt for food, and the first big game I ever killed was a doe. I gut shot it, and over the next hour I chased after it, wearing it down while it cried and scrambled away, looking back at me in disbelief.”

The psychiatrist didn’t know what to say at first. Finally, “How is the dream different?”

“I’m trying to save it. It’s being stalked by something dark, and I’m afraid for it. When I see the doe by the brook, the dark is right there in the bushes, and I’m almost too late. But this time, my aim is steady and I fire true. I save the doe.”

“What do you think is in the bushes?”

“I don’t know. I never see it.”

“But what do you think it is?”

“It’s nothing. It’s in a dream.”

The psychiatrist chewed on her bottom lip, unsure how to proceed. She had never spoken to someone so devoid of imagination, to not even surmise. And it made her situation all the more real. This is what it felt like to be prey. But they had a dialogue. She had to continue on. She knew it was her only chance to survive.

“Do you love your girlfriend?”

Glass’s unmoving stare broke, and he looked at the floor for an answer. “I want her to live. I want her to be happy, and like me.”

“Why do you say ‘live’? Is she in danger?”

“I care that she lives,” he said. His voice had a strange tone, like he was saying words he had just learned.

“You don’t care that other people live?” The truth dawned on the psychiatrist.

“I don’t think about it.”

She could feel that she was losing him. This soldier had opened up to her, and she had seen enough patients’ withdrawal to feel the bridge drawing back. She scrambled.

“You’re protecting it! The doe represents the innocence of the weak,” she said. “It could be your girlfriend. It could be . . . us. It could be your subconscious telling you that you can change!”

“The dream’s a lie.”

“You know you’re doing something bad. The dream shows you that you can change. You can do the right thing.”

The gag hung in a ring around her neck. He drew it up to her mouth. “No, no. You can be good! You don’t have to do this! You can be—”

The salty, twisted fabric muffled the rest.

Glass held her head in his hands and looked her in the eyes. “When I caught the doe, I beat it to death with a rock,” he said. She sobbed when he reached for the canvas sack. “I can’t help you.”

= = =

Two hours later, tires on tarmac woke Glass. The prisoners stirred, their balaclavas rotating back and forth as if through force of will they might be able to see. A display read 15:23 hours. They were thirty-seven miles southwest of Washington, D.C., at what was formerly called Marine Corps Base Quantico. Budget cuts and the Great Migration had shuttered the base twenty years before, but over the last three years—under the guise of removing battlefield ordnance—it had been more active than ever.

The plane taxied to a stop and the engines wound down.

After a brief blat of an alarm, the cargo door opened and a transport truck backed toward the plane’s open bowels. Two Tank Minors jumped out of the truck and greeted Glass.

“I’ll get them,” Glass said. They stood down and waited as Glass escorted each Piece into the back of the truck, then constrained them once more with zip ties. They no longer protested or even moaned. By the slump of their heads, they were defeated.

Glass rode shotgun with the other two crammed in beside him. Quantico was a former training ground for Marines and the FBI. There were residences along the Potomac River, sprawling forests, and—the majority of it—live fire ranges. Most of it had gone back to nature. A few buildings appeared to be occupied, but most of the homes Glass passed looked as if they had been stopped mid-construction. In truth, they were in mid-destruction: entropy had taken hold, pulling them apart rusted nail by rusted nail.

They headed west to a reservoir deep in the forest. Warning signs were posted along the way: “DANGER! Unexploded Ordnance!” they read, beside a picture of a man dealing with the aftermath of his negligence. Glass thought the signs were funny. The man’s eyes were X’s, but he was still standing. And above the simple explosion, his severed leg floated free as a bird.

Twenty minutes later, they reached an outer checkpoint through a twenty-foot fence trimmed with razor wire. They were still a half-mile from the Lunga Reservoir and already the sweet smell of rot filled the air. The four Minors at the gate waved them through when they saw Glass.

Along the reservoir, the sun bounced off what looked like a million white cobblestones. They were dead fish, pushed to the shores and a hundred yards deep, circling the man-made lake like a water stain in a toilet bowl.

“I got my nose turned down, and I’m still not used to it,” the driver said. “It’s weird how when I was a softy, smells like this would go away. As a Minor, they don’t.”

“They’ll rot off,” the other Minor said.

Glass had nothing to offer. He saw the intense steam rising out of the center of the lake. It was temporarily being used for cooling; the final system would use the aquifer. Ten minutes later and past the boiling reservoir, the forest disappeared, and in its place was the most advanced bunker ever built.

It was nondescript and recessed forty yards into the ground. The amount of steel and cement needed to build the outer shell could have made up more than four skyscrapers, and the excavated earth formed berms tall enough to make the bottom a valley. Bulldozers and graders worked a fraction of the dirt crown to cover the top of the bunker.

The truck stopped two hundred feet from vault doors so large a jumbo jet could taxi through them. Dozens of feet of a black ceramic coated this only exposed point, designed to withstand the tremendous heat of a direct nuclear strike. Bulldozers were pushing earth up against it.

Glass walked the rest of the way. Only he and a few others had access to the inner realm. The men and women up top—even the Minors that accompanied Glass with the prisoners—weren’t privy to the full details. They were soldiers, and soldiers followed orders. Chain of command and need to know were respected.

On a small call button screen—a dot on the face of this large structure—Dr. Ryle, the lead scientist under Dr. Lindo, appeared.

“You’re here,” he said.

Glass didn’t respond to the obvious.

“Step back, I’ll open the gate.”

Glass went back to the truck. “It’s just going to be me,” he said. He climbed into the truck as the Minors got out.

An alarm filled the air and the blast doors slowly opened. Glass drove the truck through and onto a lift as wide as a football field. Forty minutes later, he was two miles underground. Dr. Ryle, small, bald, and pink, waited for him.

“You’re shot,” Dr. Ryle said.

“It’s not critical.”

Dr. Ryle went to open the back door.

“I wouldn’t—” Glass started. The door blew open and one of the captives tackled Dr. Ryle and spun him around toward Glass, one arm around the doctor’s neck. With his other hand he searched the doctor’s pockets and found a multi-tool. He pressed the pliers into the doctor’s throat.

It was the MindCorp founder, Brad Zienkiewicz. “I’ll kill him!” He looked around, wild-eyed. “I’ll rip his throat out!”

“How did you get out?” Glass asked.

“He’s dead if you don’t let me go.”

A new presence joined them. Glass felt him before he spoke. This was no longer a bunker, it was a temple, one where the god—even if weak—resided.

RELEASE HIM.

Zienkiewicz did just that. Confusion washed over his face. The voice had come from within.

“What’s going—”

DROP THE TOOL.

It clanged to the floor. Glass grabbed Zienkiewicz.

DR. RYLE, THIS ONE’S FIRST. NEXT TIME, LET GLASS BE THE MUSCLE.

Dr. Ryle brushed himself off, shaking. “Yes, Dr. Lindo.”

Glass took the other captives from the truck and locked them away. They looked out of their Plexiglas prisons like frogs in a science experiment. Hazy. Listless. Drugged. One slapped his hand against the glass, the only protest he could muster.

Forced Autism required one candidate at a time. Dr. Ryle prepped Zienkiewicz. First he removed all of his hair and burned away the follicles. Then mount points for the Impetus machine were attached to the limbs, and electrodes were placed on the muscle groups.

“Ready,” Dr. Ryle said when he was finished, spinning the pneumatic gun he had just used on the groaning man, nearly dropping it.

Glass followed Dr. Ryle with Zienkiewicz in his arms. Ahead, the hall crackled with lightning, and at the end of the hall was a vast cavern, too high to see the ceiling, as wide as four city blocks. At its center was a Mega Core, a Data Core five times larger than anything MindCorp had ever built. In a horseshoe around the Mega Core were eleven smaller Cores feeding into it. Mounted high on each was a pod.

THE TWINS ARE NEARLY READY. YOU NEED TO GO TO CHICAGO.

Of course, Glass said. He could see Evan’s silhouette against the pulsing blue tube. The doctor’s pod was on a platform in front of the Mega Core. Glass filtered out the nuisance light. He could see Evan clearly, mounted to the arms of the Impetus Machine that moved his body to prevent atrophy, buoyed by an oxygenated amnio-gel that preserved the body. He had been there for the last two months. The fat man was gone, and in his place was skin and bones. His skullcap had been removed, replaced with an electrode halo that covered his face. A dozen glowing fiber lines wormed through the gel into it.

Beneath his platform was another pod. Glass hadn’t seen that before.

“Who is that for?” Glass asked.

“The Consciousness Module,” Dr. Ryle said, absently.

Evan had never told Glass about the Consciousness Module. That person wasn’t accounted for. “Do I get him next?” Glass asked.

THAT IS PART OF THE TWINS’ FIRST MISSION, Evan replied.

Glass didn’t inquire anymore. He looked up at the five Pieces already mounted. He had abducted them over the last six months: brilliant derelicts, poor or imprisoned, easy to find, and quickly forgotten. They were exceptional in mind, but not vocation, a winning lottery number scratched onto a napkin. Unlike the six Glass had just retrieved, they could be taken early without consequence.

Their eyes were cataracted, their mouths in rictus. They, too, jogged and twisted in a constant workout. Whatever each had been—a family man, a lover, a crime lord, a poor tipper—was gone. They were now a part of Evan, and whatever aptitude they brought to the table—whatever gift had made them ideal candidates—was now reinforced with the processing power of a million Cores.

Dr. Ryle lowered an empty pod to the ground. Glass placed Zienkiewicz into the pod and locked his limbs to the corresponding Impetus arms, then stepped out of the way. Dr. Ryle installed the catheter and a waste removal sleeve. He checked the heartbeat, checked some dials outside the pod, then hit a button, and the pod closed. The amnio-gel sputtered and filled the capsule. Guided by a rail, the pod rose above its darkened Core and fired into life.

NEXT, their boss demanded. In one week, it would be time.

Chapter 3

Razal had stayed with the pilots and crew during the flight. It was too depressing to stay down below. He had checked in on John a few times, but the giant was staring off into space as if addressing an invisible crowd.

They were five minutes until the drop. Razal climbed down with two soldiers and got ready. He attached his parachute and re-checked his rifle case.

The soldiers fitted Raimey’s helmet to his body. It gasped when it locked. Then they attached a massive block of fabric to four anchor points on his back. The plane shuddered from chop as it descended.

“It’s time,” one of the soldiers said. The two soldiers led with the massive chute. Raimey walked backward, taking their direction. Razal trailed behind.

An intercom crackled. “We got two minutes, fellas. Raimey—Boen’s on.” The intercom went quiet and then, “John?”

Raimey looked confused. “What’s going on, Earl?”

“The pilot told me you’re about to deploy, so I’ll be quick: when you get back, Vanessa wants to talk to you.”

Razal had never seen John’s expression change. His eyes were always vacant, his face scrunched like an old man who had lost his teeth. But in that instant, the wrinkles cleared and the stress around his jaw opened up. Razal knew Raimey was fifty, and for the first time since they worked together, he looked it.

Raimey cleared his throat. “She said she never wanted to talk to me again.”

“Things change, John,” Boen said. “Should I schedule the conference call?”

“It’d be video?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if,” he gestured at his body. “This gets in the way.”

“Then audio.”

John nodded at the speaker. “That’d be . . . best.” He cleared his throat again.

“We’re twenty seconds out,” a soldier said.

“I’ll set it up when you get back,” Boen said. “Be safe.”

A red light flashed, accompanied by an alarm, and the soldiers attached lifelines to the hull. The back of the plane slowly opened. Whipping wind filled the compartment as the earth opened up before them in brown and green tiles. A gray snake slashed through it: the Congo River.

Razal was first. He swan-dived into the open air.

“Ready?” the technicians asked.

“Ready,” John replied.

They pushed the pack sheet out into space and got the hell out of the way. The block of fabric expanded out violently into a massive parachute, got grip, and yanked Raimey from the plane.

As he drifted down, the topographical map became more defined: breaks of forest, grassy plains, and retreating herds. He could see a haze of pollution north of them, but he couldn’t tell how far. To the southeast were columns of black smoke. That was most likely their destination.

Raimey landed twenty miles from the mine. He turned in a circle until he got ahold of the parachute tethers and tore them off. Nature filled his nostrils, along with the overpowering smells of grease, metal, and the mercury burn of his electric motors.

Razal was ahead up in a dead tree with the rifle scope to his eye. Monkeys huffed and puffed beneath it, temporarily relocated. Razal heard Raimey approach.

“It’s like a nature preserve here,” Razal said, not taking his eyes off the horizon.

“Pretty,” Raimey replied. Zebras moved off in the distance.

Razal made a face. Pretty? He hadn’t expected to hear that word from the giant’s mouth.

“What do you see?” Raimey asked. That was more like it.

“Lots of black smoke, and behind that a bunch of grey. Boen sent me the info. The mine’s big. Almost a mile and a half across.” Razal jumped down to his hard case, which was perched against the tree. He quickly assembled his rifle and put extra magazines in a backpack, then left the hard case behind. “Mind if I ride?”

Raimey turned up his palm and Razal climbed onto his shoulder. They set off.

Africa, on the whole, had changed little after the oil depletion. Apart from South Africa, the continent had never gotten the traction that the industrialized nations had. Unlike late twentieth-century China and early twenty-first-century India, it didn’t even get the knick-knack, bottom-feeder manufacturing that could evolve into more. It was still full of warlords, tribes, genital mutilations, and genocides.

But it also held vast natural resources that the new world needed even more than the old. The microprocessor was the modern world’s salvation, and Africa had inherited the new policy that the starving superpowers had instituted at the end of oil: infiltrate and take. It was cheaper than trade. It was more effective than bartering. And, as it did in every occupied country, it had turned the region into a war zone.

Near a group of trees, a herd of giraffes stared at Raimey as he stomped by. A baby giraffe retreated behind its mother. He was in high bush, but at thirteen feet tall, Raimey could see just fine.

“Doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Razal said.

“What?”

“The locals attacking the mines, the caravans.”

“They’re poor.”

“Yeah, but who’s buying gallium on the black market?” Gallium and the other rare earth metals were used to maintain the digital infrastructure of MindCorp and the Coalition.

John didn’t reply. Razal looked down to his left and he saw the giant’s mouth chewing on imaginary gum. The brief respite from insanity was apparently over.

Razal looked through his scope. “Buzzards ahead. Lots of them.”

“Hmm.”

It was rainy season and they hit a bog. Raimey sank to mid-thigh, but his powerful electric motors had no problem moving him forward. A herd of wildebeest drank from the pool. Monkeys moved from a twisted dry tree down to the bank, sipping and watching, shrieking alerts to each other, eyes scanning the tall grass. Halfway through the bog, a hippo tried to display dominance, and Raimey pushed it aside.

As they moved onward, the buzzards grew thick like mosquitos. They rode the thermals like kites, calling out to each other in a language that brought chills. They were just west of the mine now.

“Can you transmit this?” Raimey asked.

“I haven’t gotten anything on my comm since we’ve landed. We’re on our own right now.”

After another hour, the wind shifted and the smell of butchery, red and raw, filled their nostrils. They heard the bark of hyenas and the low grumble of lions up ahead. The buzzards pirouetted above them. As they crested a hill, they saw the slashed earth of the mine, the makeshift factory town nearby. It was still a mile off. But the villagers were all right here: still and piled, hacked and shot. Hundreds, if not more.

Long black hair blotted the corner of John’s right eye, but he blinked it away. Razal heard him say, “Not yet.”

Razal hopped off and they made their way down.

Flies swirled like pollen above the disjointed piles of bodies. On the far side, lions lay on the ground with meals pinned under their paws as they tugged and pulled on flesh. A pack of hyenas stood their ground, hackles raised, growling. One attacked Razal and he punched it so hard its skull collapsed. The others scattered.

“No children,” Razal said.

“They recruit them,” Raimey replied, but not to Razal. He was looking to his right.

A burst of gunfire echoed toward them, still distant. Razal slunk back toward John.

“I’ll scout ahead and call you forward. Check your comm.”

The two-way radio built into Raimey’s helmet crackled to life.

“You got me?” Razal’s lips didn’t move with the question. He was transmitting to the radio like a team of Minors would to each other: by digital telepathy.

“Yeah.”

“Got you, too.” Razal vanished into the bush. Raimey waited among the dead and predators that had been pushed off the apex by his arrival.

A moment later, Razal: “A group of rebels are raping a girl.”

Raimey’s vision blurred. He blinked, but the strands of black hair would not go away. “You must kill them,” his wife said in his ear. He could feel her sickness, the cancer that had eaten her through. It was always like this before the blood. And only the blood would make her well. “You must kill them all,” she said. She never stood for injustice.

For you, anything.

= = =

Vanessa huffed out the front entrance of the Derik Building. So far her birthday had been shit. She didn’t know why she had agreed to talk to her dad. She didn’t want to hear his excuses or his apology. She didn’t want to “start over” or rebuild. And when General Boen had said he was mentally unstable, her first thought had been “good.” She could never forgive him for what he had done.

Two Tank Minor guards nodded to her as she turned down the street and speed-walked to the L station. It was October, chilly, but that wasn’t why she was hurrying. Her mind spun from Chao’s last words, and she felt a weight in her heart that something was very wrong. She made it to the train. A few people were on board, but she had it mostly to herself. Dinner had come and gone and everyone was back online.

When she reached the floor of her apartment, her mood changed and a smile appeared on her lips. She could smell something foreign cooking. He was here. It had become a ritual: he traveled all around the world, and when he came back, he would bring foods and spices from the regions he’d visited. He couldn’t talk about his missions, but she could tell, by what he cooked for her, where he had been. It was his way of sharing something he was not allowed to share.

When she entered the apartment, the lights were off. She could hear something sizzling in a pan. She caught a shadow moving around the kitchen. He always forgot to turn on the lights.

“I thought I’d be done in time,” Glass said. She dropped her keys and they met. He wrapped his arms around her, as strong as girders. “Happy birthday.” They kissed. His lips were cold and he had no tongue, but she welcomed it anyway.

He put her at arm’s distance. “What’s wrong?”

“Probably nothing. I don’t know. I need a beer.”

Glass was already at the fridge. “It’s your birthday.” It was in her hand. She took a swig. It tasted amazing.

“That smells great,” she said. “What is it?”

“Peking duck and stir-fry.”

She went over to the light switch. “Do you mind?”

“No.”

She slowly turned up the lights. Glass was manning the cutting block, dicing vegetables and tossing them into a wok.

“Tough day?” he asked.

“Weird day. Commander Boen wants me to talk to my dad.”

“Why?”

“He’s losing it, I guess. I don’t care.” She huffed. “He deserves it.”

Glass didn’t respond. His hands were a blur as the blade fired through the vegetables, ch-ch-ch-ch. Vanessa had learned that Glass’s quiet had different tones. He was keeping something to himself.

“What?” Vanessa asked.

“I don’t understand why you hate him.”

“You know why.”

“I know you blame him.”

“He left us!”

“To support you and your mom.”

Vanessa slammed down her beer, splashing it on the table. “What is this?”

Glass looked at her for a moment, eternally expressionless. “My mom left me with a dad who drank and who was always gone. And when he was around, he beat me.”

“And you should be furious at her.”

“I don’t get angry.”

“Well that’s your problem.”

Glass watched her for a moment. “He didn’t kill your mother.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Vanessa said.

“I don’t see any other choice he had.”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Vanessa said. She pressed the cool bottle against her temple. “I don’t want to think about him. It makes me think about mom when she was sick and it makes me sad.” Her jaw trembled. “I want to remember her when she was healthy. She was beautiful. And she was so patient. That’s what I remember, how patient she was. She played with me, she answered my questions.” Vanessa paused. “Dad wasn’t around even before. It was always her and me. She loved him. I’d catch her staring out the window, and I’d think she’d be thinking about her death, but she wasn’t. She was thinking about him. Wondering where he was. Wondering how he was doing. All while she withered away, wondering where he could be.”

She looked up at Glass. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “It wasn’t that he left. It was that he never came back.”

Glass handed her another beer. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just trying to understand.”

Vanessa took the olive branch and gulped it down. Glass checked on the Peking duck in the oven.

Vanessa laughed a heartless laugh. “This whole day’s been upsetting. Chao’s a real piece of work.”

“How so?”

“He said something shitty. He knows about us.”

Glass froze, oblivious to the intense heat washing over his face. “What did he say?”

“I basically called him an asshole and he said”—she roughened her voice—“‘I didn’t know I was your type.’”

“I don’t get it,” he said. “How does that make him your type?”

“I actually said ‘psycho,’ I think.”

Glass was quiet for a moment. “And then he said what he said?”

“Yeah.” She grabbed another beer from the fridge.

“And you knew he was talking about me?”

Vanessa cocked her head and turned to Mike. “What’s up?”

Glass’s lidless eyes rolled green silt. “Nothing.” He pulled out the duck and finished the stir-fry. Then he watched her eat. This was part of the ritual, too. He asked her how it tasted and she described it. Sometimes she would embellish: not all dishes turned out good.

= = =

She had met Mike during her internship at the Derik Building the summer between her undergrad and Masters studies. Dr. Lindo had insisted, and she remembered feeling special—a state of being she hadn’t felt in years—when she had walked through the door and Evan had been there to greet her. She knew he was an important man, and he had taken time out of his day for her.

“The study of psychology is useful for understanding concepts and learning the language, but unless you’re willing to see a human at their most fragile, it is merely academia, and that’s useless,” he had said to her on that first day. He was showing her the surgery wing and explaining the protocols. “You wouldn’t trust a carpenter with soft hands. A shrink in an ivory tower is no different. We are not complex. Our motivations are not ethereal, inexplicable equations. Quite the opposite.”

“What are the equations?” Vanessa had asked. A look of satisfaction came across Evan’s face. He counted them off on his fingers.

“We want to be loved. We want to matter. And above all else, we are driven by fear. If you remember those three things and apply them, you know humanity. Everything else, the niche of study, whatever, it’s just a reason to write a book.”

Ten days later, while working a short-staffed graveyard shift, the doors of the surgery wing blew open and Glass was wheeled in by Dr. Ewing—the head surgeon at the time—and two soldiers who were vacant-eyed and bloody. The Terror War was in full swing and the Western Curse bombed markets and attacked data nodes weekly.

“You!” the doctor said. Vanessa looked over her shoulder. “Yes, you! Help.”

She ran over and helped push the gurney. She remembered how heavy it was. Nurses took the two soft soldiers away and another doctor helped with the gurney, calling for nurses to stop rounds and assist. When they got into the room, Vanessa was pushed aside, and she finally realized what was going on: Glass’s right arm was missing and his ribcage was exposed. Vanessa couldn’t quit looking at his eyes. They spun like galaxies.

“I’m seeing blood, Mike,” Dr. Ewing said. He was on his knees, looking into the wound. The black casing that covered Glass’s body was bubbled, and the open gash was burnt around the edges like melted nylon. Ewing put both hands into the body like he was adjusting a breached birth. Vanessa’s stomach turned.

“His threshold software is offline,” the implant tech said. He had connected a tablet computer to Glass. Unlike Tank Majors—which had limited sensory inputs in their limbs—Tank Minors had fiber-optic nerves that ran throughout their entire body. During battle they could toggle back the pain sensors, so they could register a bullet impact, but not collapse from it.

“Can you get it back up?” Dr. Ewing asked the tech.

“I’d have to link in to reboot the code,” the tech said.

Dr. Rafayko looked at the small pool of blood forming beneath Glass.

“You’re feeling this?” he asked Glass.

“Yes,” Glass said. His arm was shorn from his body, and the moon crest of meat missing from his side felt like it would for a normal person.

A normal person would be dead.

“Mike, we have to do the surgery now.”

Dr. Ewing inserted a camera probe into the wound and assessed the damage.

“Shrapnel,” he said. His voice was calm, but sweat checkered his forehead. On a monitor, Vanessa saw rock fragments and shards of bent steel as the camera pushed through the milky white electrostatic tissue chasing the red stream. The slimy white parted to a black box. Someone in the room hissed. A shard of steel the size of a bowie knife stuck out of its matte, armored side. Blood dribbled from it.

“What?” Glass asked. He lay quietly as they worked.

“The organ capsule’s breached,” Dr. Ewing said. To his team: “Let’s get prepped, we’re opening him up for the black box.”

The doctors and nurses became organized frenzy. Nurses pulled out large stainless steel calipers used for open-heart surgery. A bone saw was placed on a counter along with various other blades. “We need blood.”

“I’m AB-negative,” Glass said quietly.

“AB-negative!” Ewing parroted. A nurse ran out of the room.

“I’m AB-negative,” Vanessa said. It was a rare blood type.

“Stay,” Ewing said. He assembled a cage around Glass that pinned him down. “Mike, we’re turning you over on your side.”

“I can do it.”

“Don’t do anything,” Ewing said. He glanced back to the camera monitor. “Don’t move.”

The entire staff muscled him over, and he faced Vanessa fully. The right side of his face twitched.

“Doctor,” Vanessa said. She had moved from the wall, but just barely. Ewing saw the symptom. Blood wasn’t getting to his brain.

“Shit, shit. We need the blood. Where’s Tammy?”

“The bank’s on third.” It was a huge building, not meant to be used as an ER.

“Get over here,” Ewing said to Vanessa. A nurse pulled over a stool. “You’re sure you’re AB-negative? This is important.”

“Yes.”

“Hook her up,” he said. A nurse came over and quickly swabbed and inserted an IV. The device had a long cord with a valve-like adapter at its end. Glass’s body began to heave. A leg kick glanced off a doctor and he crumpled.

“We have to turn him off,” Ewing said. “Jim, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” the collapsed man gurgled, clutching his stomach. “Give me a second.”

“We can’t shut him down, the terminal’s destroyed,” the implant tech said. A port mounted into the ribcage underneath a Tank Minor’s right armpit gave access to both the Mindlink implant and the organ capsule for blood transfusions and testing. The bomb blast had destroyed it.

Vanessa’s heart pushed the blood down the tube. Glass writhed on the table. Ewing took the end of the tube and attached a needle to it. “I have to hit a vein.” He knelt next to the bucking bull and inserted the tube into the body cavity. With a snake-like device he threaded the IV up the wound. It got stuck.

“Shit.” He reached his hand up the cavity and the camera feed blackened as his hands unkinked the line. Glass’s body shook.

“Doctor,” a nurse said quietly.

“I know.”

Suddenly Glass bucked and a muffled snap came from inside him.

“Doctor!”

“Shut up!” Dr. Ewing pulled out his limp arm, and with the other used the remote. He had succeeded at getting the snake into the body cavity. The organs were compartmentalized, the veins and arteries as ordered as Ethernet runs. He entered the compartment that contained the heart. It beat erratically, starved of blood. Glass went limp. His heart fluttered. Stopped. Fluttered. Stopped. Seconds passed. An alarm rang. Dr. Ewing moved the snake past the heart to a compartment that was lined with veins. He inserted the needle.

“Come on,” the doctor said.

The alarm continued its one-pitch shriek.

“Turn that off!”

The doctor didn’t turn away from the monitor; the camera was on his heart. “The blood’s coming, right?”

“Yes, doctor.”

The seconds felt a thousand times over. The heart thumped. Thumped. And began to beat regularly.

Moments later, Glass stirred like a coma patient waking. “Dad never . . .” he said quietly. He woke to Vanessa sitting next to him.

“Dead?” he asked.

“No,” Vanessa said. She reached out and gripped his hand. He squeezed it lightly.

“Glass, this is Dr. Ewing. Don’t move. Do you know where you are?”

“I fell asleep,” Glass said.

Ewing emitted a stressed-out laugh. “Yeah, you could call it that.”

“Who are you?” Glass asked.

“Vanessa.”

“I’m Mike.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

The surgery took twelve hours. They removed a third of his bionic frame to repair the damage to the organ capsule. The entire time, Vanessa stayed by his side, feeding him her own life, for without it, he would die.

= = =

Linked in, Mike’s body was warm against hers. She watched his stomach muscles contract and expand with every pump. Her hands wrapped around his thick triceps. The eyes that looked down on her blinked, the green in them wrapped around the pupils.

“You’re mine,” he said.

“I’m yours,” she replied.

“You’re mine,” he said.

“Than fuck me,” she replied. He did, and it felt better than real. Over his shoulders she looked at the ceiling and, for a moment, ecstasy made it blur.

Afterward, she rested her head on his chest.

“I wish you could stay.”

He ran his hands through her hair. “Me too.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“That’s not the way it works. You know that.”

“If you told him.”

Glass paused for a moment. Finally: “What do you think Evan is?”

“That’s an odd question.”

“Tell me.”

“He’s . . . I don’t know. He’s brilliant, maybe insecure, or at least was. He’s driven. He’s always supported me.”

“That’s your assessment?”

She perched up and looked at Mike. “Yeah, why?”

“You know he’s the most powerful person in the world.”

“Isn’t Cynthia?”

“She has no armies.”

Vanessa considered this and then fell back onto the bed. “Okay.”

Glass persisted. “How would the person you described become that?”

She didn’t have an answer. “What is he, then?” she asked.

“Caesar.”

= = =

The next day, Vanessa had a pounding headache. She couldn’t even remember how she had gotten to work. She was beneath the Derik Building outside their indoor testing range. Its floor and walls had been poured with the same amount of concrete and steel found in the most impervious of bunkers, and still it shook. Chao and Kove were behind the wide doors for their final calibration.

They had passed by earlier. Kove had given a genuine “hello” and Chao had winked as if holding back a secret. Their heads were shaved and their faces were sallow and sickly. Slight starvation—intentional—helped them live longer. The techs called them the Twins, and they really did look the same. Except for their eyes. Kove’s held a puppy-dog sadness, whereas Chao’s contained fire.

They were now nine feet tall and two and a half tons each, shrink-wrapped black, like a Minor. They were a new breed, a hybrid, melding the best attributes of the infantry bionics and the giants. They were smaller than fully armored Tank Majors, but four times quicker. Underneath the tons of electrostatic tissue, their skeletal frame was an osmium/depleted-uranium alloy—the same material used for Raimey’s entire body. And unlike current Tank Majors, these were designed for weapon attachments. Their implant had imbedded reticle software, and mounts and rails peppered their bodies.

By the sound of the impacts alone, she could tell they were fast. The “heavy” Tank Majors were quick because of the length of their strides, but they looked little faster than a good jogger on a run. Yet past the doors, the Twins’ feet hit the floor fast, like jackhammers. Vanessa’s coffee cup danced across the desk. She saved its life when it reached the edge.

BA-BA-BAM!

Vanessa winced and cupped her ears in pain. The cup jumped off the side, crashing to the floor. That was something different. It was their new hydraulshock system, a cartridge-less design that allowed them to house thirty attacks per side.

She looked at the mess. “Shit.” She had one tiny napkin, but got on her knees and dabbed at the spill.

Feet appeared in front of her and she looked up. It was Glass. She hadn’t heard him approach. The hallway was long; she thought she would have seen him coming.

“Mike, what are you doing here?” She nearly went for a hug and caught herself. This wasn’t the place.

“They want me to work with Chao and Kove. They have more in common with me than they do with a Tank Major or the other bionics.”

“I thought you were gone.”

“Evan cut the mission short. He wanted me back for this. How are they doing?”

“I have a massive headache. They’re making a racket in there.”

“They’re bulls in a china shop.” Glass looked around. This section was high security, and they were the only ones there. “Can I talk to you?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t think we should do this anymore. I care about you, but I think if you knew what I did, if you really understood what kind of person I am—”

“I know who you are, Mike,” she said. Her eyes quivered. “If you’re breaking up with me, then do it, but don’t blame it on your job.”

“I kill people, Vanessa.”

“I know. So does my dad. So does everyone I know.”

The scene replayed.

“They’re bulls in a china shop.” Glass looked around. This section was high security, and they were the only ones there. “Can I talk to you?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t think we should do this anymore. I’m ten years older than you, and while I care about you—I do, you know, and for me that’s rare—I think who we are . . . it’s just too big a distance. You can find someone that will make you happier. Someone you could have a family with.”

Her lip quivered.

“It’s for the best. You’ll see,” he reassured her.

“I don’t care about that, Mike,” she said. “I love you. I don’t want to be with anyone else. People think I have a silver spoon because of Evan, but I have nothing. I don’t care about our age. I don’t care if Evan finds out and kicks us out. I want to be with you.”

Again.

“They’re bulls in a china shop.” Glass looked around. This section was high security, and they were the only ones there. “Can I talk to you?”

“Of course.”

Glass crossed his arms. “We can’t do this anymore.”

Her lip quivered.

“Why would you say that? I thought we had something . . .”

“I wanted to fuck Raimey’s daughter. I never cared about you. Frankly, most of the things you say . . . it’s like I’m speaking to a child. I can’t do it anymore, this pretending. It’s over.”

“But I love you!” she cried.

Glass shrugged. “One more thing you loved that’s lost.” He walked away.

Suddenly she was in front of him, pounding on his chest. “NO! NO! You understand me? We have something. I don’t know why you’re doing this. Did Evan tell you to do this? I will die without you. I will kill myself without you!”

“It’s over,” he said.

She snatched the sidearm from Glass’s hip and put it in her mouth.

“You won’t do it,” he said.

“I love you,” she said around the gun. She pulled the trigger.

The round snapped her head back, and a plume of meat splattered the floor. She collapsed over her legs, cross-eyed, and a pool of blood spread from her body.

Evan stopped the construct. He had seen enough.

Years ago, Evan had assigned a MIME CPU to track Vanessa’s movements and digital impressions. Where she went, who she spoke to. The contents of photos and files that she believed were for her eyes only. Any time she was online, Evan knew.

The sin of the snoop hadn’t bothered Evan for years. He used the same tracking method for other people of interest. But through her, he had seen another side of Glass, and as much as he’d tried to put the burning truth aside, he was jealous of their intimacy. He had given so much to Mike, he had taken care of Mike, and all he got in return was a soldier. Before, he had attributed it to Glass’s nature. He was a literal being, a killer, a bundle of instincts with a voice. Barely different from a crocodile. But then Evan had seen Mike and Vanessa make love. He had been there tonight. He had been there every time, in the room, or through Vanessa’s eyes . . . usually through her eyes.

His Sleeper form rolled and curled like the tentacles of an octopus. The MIME CPUs whispered directives and requested commands. They were analytical friends, working on his behalf without trying to take over. The Northern Star was none of those things. It was emotion, raw and fragile. It required love, and in return it gave you everything it could to please you.

WE’RE SORRY.

The Pieces. He felt them probe his brain. It was maddening, a massage over flayed skin. Any sip of emotion from Evan and they would upset the hierarchy. Their voices rose in his head until he thought it would split. WE’RE SORRY, SO SORRY. WHAT CAN WE DO? WE DONT’ WANT YOU TO BE SAD. IS THERE SOMETHING WE CAN DO? WE WANT TO DO SOMETHING. LET US MAKE YOU HAPPY. WHEN YOU ARE HAPPY, WE ARE HAPPY. WHEN YOU’RE NOT HAPPY, WE’RE NOT HAPPY. WHY IS THAT? I HAD A SON. WHAT IS A SON? I WAS HEADING TO DINNER TO SEE MY WIFE. CAN YOU HELP ME FIND HER?

Everyone thought that Forced Autism wiped the conscious mind clean. It did not. Memories hung on like barnacles, and the act of uniting these great, manipulated minds caused these aftershocks of eradicated identities to congeal into a new form. The result was a floundering idiot as powerful as an imploding star, infantile in its needs, with tirades that could shake the very fabric of the digital world.

Evan did the only thing he could to bring peace: he disconnected himself from their babble. It was a tradeoff: the silence brought Evan peace, but their departure took his bolstered intelligence. It was just him, as he was born, floating and thinking.

It felt strange to ponder a question and not have it immediately answered. Foundations of knowledge he had taken for granted and believed were his, now absent. He felt like the mouse from that . . . book. The one where it grew smart and then that went away . . . he couldn’t remember the title.

It didn’t matter. He had let the relationship between Glass and Vanessa go on too long. He shouldn’t have let it begin. But so many goals required timing, and while he vehemently disapproved of their relationship, he’d had no choice but to play the oblivious employer, because the consequences of addressing it were too high. He had carefully gained Vanessa’s trust and respect over the years. He had groomed her for her true purpose. And Glass was a powerful tool. But like the spinning blade of a table saw, what made him effective was also what made him dangerous. The blade cuts with impunity, and a guiding hand is not safe from the chew.

“Masterpieces are made with gentle strokes,” he reminded himself. He was close to his masterpiece. And now it would be the subtle movements that made it so.

Bitterness filled him. Without the Pieces, without the MIMEs, it was tangible, chalky, coursing through his veins. He hated it, because he knew what he had to do.

Kill your darlings . . .

How it echoes, how true that saying is to reach the summit. Vanessa would not leave Glass willfully—the construct had proved that without any doubt—but that was the lesser concern. The greater was that Glass would not leave her willfully either—that Vanessa had become more important to him than even Evan was.

“I don’t want to,” Evan said aloud. It was weird to not hear a response. He was used to a cyclone of questions and replies, but now it was just him and his ambition, private like a lockbox. Him and his dreams, cupped in his hands, protected from prying eyes. He thought of the Twins. Would they be enough? The fallacy of the gun: it’s innately dangerous. The truth: the eyes staring down the barrel were what made it so. Glass would kill him. As soon as he caught wind, he would find Evan and end his life.

Evan thought about all the idiots who’d adopted dangerous pets only to have them turn on them. He had thought maybe, just maybe, things could have been different. All of his dangerous pets . . . metal monsters that could rip apart tanks and tear through platoons. When they turned, was there even time to react? Or was it best to preempt them, put them down, and when they cried out “Why?” say, “You obey me today, but it is inevitable that you will bite”?

= = =

Sleep was fleeting when you were a severed head kept alive by modern medicine. Chao heard the door open into the room, but nothing else. The partition blocked his view, and Kove’s snoring—how could he still snore?—drowned any audio cues. A hand clamped down on his head and two glowing eyes stared into his own.

“I’ve been here—a head in a jar,” Glass said. He tore the plastic from a window and slid it open. The sounds of the city rode in on chilly air.

Chao’s mind froze. Glass dipped his hand in the gel.

“What are you doing?” Chao asked.

“You were, what—two hundred and twenty pounds? Around that? Now you’re forty?”

Glass slowly lifted him out of the gel.

“Whoa! Whoa! We’re in this together! We’re on the same team!”

Glass stopped. “We are?”

“Yeah!”

“We never talked before, really.”

“Yeah. I know, but . . . we got a lot of stuff coming in the next few days, right?”

“I suppose.” Glass gently settled Chao back into the gel. “Never speak to her again.”

“I won’t. I’ve been a dick. I’m sorry.”

Chao couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. His fear twisted into rage—his favorite emotion. Evan had contacted Chao and Kove a few hours before, assigning them their first mission after their assembly.

And now Chao was motivated.

Chapter 4

Tiffany had first appeared to Raimey during the war in Israel. Five years before, with the Coalition occupying oil-rich countries and the Terror War in full swing, Israel’s neighbors had decided on one last jihad to wipe those devil, hook-nosed Jews from the earth. Their one oversight: MindCorp’s Middle-Eastern headquarters was located there, and it was the digital gateway into that region.

One hundred Tank Majors and two thousand Minors were dropped into Israel. In three weeks, five hundred thousand Muslims died in battle.

Raimey killed thirty thousand of them. Not by gun, or bomb, or pressing a little red button from the comfort of an air-conditioned situation room. Each death was hand delivered. The battlefield was piled high with the dead. An endless stream of RPGs and bombs had created a cacophony of sound and vibration. The waves of enemies had come from all directions, in such numbers that they’d initially driven the Israeli army back into Tel Aviv. Raimey and the others had pushed the border back again.

Raimey’s initial numbness to death had now turned into complete apathy. Between battles, technicians would spray Raimey down with a high-pressure hose to expel the guts, bone, and tissue that had been crammed into his gears and joints. The meats fell down around him, hundreds of pounds of it, and the “meat sprayer”—usually some unfortunate private—would add to the mess by puking uncontrollably. The first night, Raimey was horrified. But by the third, when the private collapsed onto all fours and lost his dinner, he simply laughed. He was no longer a soldier—he was a butcher. He looked at the wet, ragged memorial around his feet and thought, “This is how hot dogs are made.”

The cattle feed shook Raimey’s psyche, but instead of breaking, his mind compensated for the violence with the one thing that had always brought him calm: his wife. Tiffany had come back to him in a dream. It was a simple memory, from early in their marriage. She’d had a difficult pregnancy. He had woken to her throwing up over the side of the bed.

“What can I do?” Raimey asked.

“I don’t know why they say this is a miracle,” Tiffany joked, exhausted. John got a garbage can from the bathroom and a roll of toilet paper. He started cleaning up.

“Sexy,” she said.

“Better or worse.” He took a wet rag to the floor. “Do you want some water?”

“Egh. A Sprite. Anything with bubbles.”

He took the garbage pail outside and threw it into the trash bin, then came back with a Sprite and opened the windows. He sat next to her with his hand on her stomach. He felt the kick.

“She’s going,” he said.

“She’s been kicking all night.”

John put his ear to her stomach. He could feel the pulses and twists of his daughter inside.

“This is cool,” he said.

“Yeah, well . . . next time it’s your turn.” She looked up and saw that John was holding back tears.

“Hon . . .” she said. She touched his cheek.

“Ah.” John wiped at his eyes; he didn’t like crying. “Sorry.”

“What?”

“I just never thought I’d have this.”

“A wife who vomits all over the floor in the middle of the night?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t have to explain. He had come from nothing, not even love. The Army had been his way out.

He put his head to her stomach again.

“This is magic,” he said quietly. “This is you and me.” He looked up at her. Her black curly hair ran over her shoulders. Her dark skin and soulful brown eyes. She took his hand and kissed it.

“I’m lucky I have you, John Raimey.”

A bomb blast tore John back to reality. He pressed his eyes as tight as he could, chasing that memory, chasing that feeling. A siren bellowed. Men screamed orders, others in pain. A building exploded next his barracks.

“Get up,” he heard. “You have to get up.”

It was Tiffany. She was in the corner of the room with him. It wasn’t the Tiffany he had just left; this was the one who had died. “They’re attacking the base, John. GET UP!”

“I don’t want to, Tiff. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Vanessa still needs you.”

That opened his eyes.

“She hates me.”

Gunfire erupted outside. One of the technicians made it to the doorway before being ripped down in a stream of bullets.

“Maybe someday things will be different. Maybe someday you can lead a normal life. But not if you don’t get up.”

He did. And after that, she never completely left.

= = =

“John, are you there?” Razal hissed through the comm.

Raimey snapped out of the memory and back to the mission. Tiffany stood on the mound of dead flesh, but the bottom of her white linen dress didn’t stain. Razal had moved ahead to see how many soldiers there were and their relation to the town.

Raimey cleared his throat. “I’m here. How many?”

“Eleven. We’re a quarter click from town. It’s quiet. There are some trucks on the other side that aren’t Coalition.”

“No soldiers?”

“None that I can see.”

The wind carried the men’s laughter and the woman’s struggle. They had begun. John felt his wife wither. This would always happen before the darkness. Tiffany’s dress was no longer white, it was a ragged hospital gown from her last days on earth. A boney arm extended out, and with all her remaining strength she pointed toward the lone cry and laughter just over the hill. She didn’t have to say it. He knew. Only blood would make her new.

“I love you, Tiffany,” Razal heard over the comm.

= = =

Deo laughed while two of the other men tore off the last of the girl’s clothes. She covered her chest and crotch with her hands, and that made the men that circled her laugh harder.

Coming around the horn, a bottle of whiskey landed in Deo’s hands. He took a swig. One of the soldiers pushed the girl down. She whimpered, but didn’t fight. She had already fought in the village. Her right eye was swollen, and blood crusted her lips. Deo’s friend was on her.

The violence always got him horny. It was hard to walk. It was hard to think. He shook with excitement. She was a spoil of war. Whether she lived or died was entirely up to him. Thus . . . she was his.

“Let me. Let me!” he said. He pulled his brother off; pants around his ankles, the man lost his balance and fell backward. The others laughed.

Deo handed over the bottle and took off his pants. He got on top and whispered in the girls’ ear, “We gonna chop you up.” Her vacant eyes dilated and she bucked and cried. “Yeah. You can still hear. We gonna fuck and chop. That order.”

A hum filled the air. They had taken what they were told to and both the factory and mine were shut down, but the industrial noises were still in their heads, so the hum went unnoticed. Deo was in when a tree snapped near their position. It came from opposite the mine, in a thicket of trees. Lion, a few men thought. It would leave them alone; they had piled plenty of food for the wild creatures a week before.

But then another tree snapped, and then another, and then crashing, and it sounded as if a bulldozer was charging them. Confusion turned to fear. One of the men reached for his rifle—and his head disappeared. Another fled, and his chest purged a red mist, and he collapsed. The others were frozen in horror as an electric whine filled the air and the earth growled and vibrated.

And then a broad-shouldered silhouette tumbled through the last of the trees like a combine thresher through wheat.

John didn’t bother with his hands: he just charged. Some of the men raised their own hands in surrender, but he had witnessed their guilt. He knocked them down and under, laying out a swath of broken, twitching limbs. Fifteen seconds of battle, and everyone there lay dead or dying.

Deo was still on the woman, flinching with each thunderous blow as the giant euthanized the dying. The giant’s back was to him with its hand in the air. When the hand came down, the earth jumped. Deo heard the moan of a comrade. The giant followed the sound. Deo climbed off the woman and shoulder-crawled into the brush. Two boots stopped him. He looked up at a soldier holding a rifle, smiling down at him.

“Where are you going?” Razal asked. A shadow eclipsed both of them. Razal looked up. “Yours?”

Deo felt the grip as he rose into the air. He was turned over like a doll, face to face with the giant. He didn’t bother whimpering. He didn’t bother pleading for mercy. He knew he was dead. Behind the skull-shaped glass, the eyes staring back at him were quivering with rage. The man in the machine was insane.

Razal started, “If he speaks English, we could ques—”

Raimey reared back and threw Deo fifty yards over the edge of the mine. He spun in a cartwheel as he arced over, and his screams echoed out of the canyon as he fell to his death.

Razal shook his head back and forth. “I would have done it differently, but . . .”

Razal went to the girl and John followed. She shook under John’s visage. Razal put a hand on her shoulder. “Safe,” he said.

She stared around her at the crushed remains of her abductors. Razal grabbed her torn clothes and gave them to her. She spoke.

John and Razal looked at each other—no idea.

“French?” Razal asked. John didn’t know. Sure.

Razal gave the girl a thumbs-up. “Safe.”

John spotted a canteen on the ground. He nudged it toward the girl with his foot. Razal handed it to her and she drank it down. Minutes passed, and she regained her wits. But instead of resting, she stood up and slung on her rags. A breast showed, but she didn’t seem to care. She grabbed Razal’s hand.

“Go!” she said, pulling him in the direction of the town. She looked at John. “GO!” she yelled, agitated. She let go of Razal and ran toward the village. John and Razal followed. Something was going on they couldn’t see.

Her adrenaline left her a hundred yards in, and John carried her the rest of the way. On the fringe of town, they stopped.

“Child,” she said. Child? Children?

Razal had already climbed up a tree, scope to his eye, scanning.

“I still don’t see anything. Can you see thermal with your rovers?”

“Yeah.”

John stepped away from Razal and the girl, and the two hover-rover drones mounted on his shoulder blades boosted off his back and into the air. They whisked high into the sky.

Within minutes, he understood what the woman was trying to say: the rebels had killed everyone but the children. On the far side of the town, the trucks idled. They were taking them away.

“We have to move fast. Hop on,” Raimey said to Razal. Razal jumped from the branches onto his shoulders. John put the woman in the tree, thinking of the lions. He thrust out his open palm: “Stay!” And then he charged toward the town.

At the town, Razal took to the rooftops, shadowing John as the giant charged. The town itself was abandoned. The only signs of life were past tense: congregated circles of dried blood from group assassinations.

The hover-rovers fed intel to Razal, too. He could see the children in the people carriers—there were at least thirty. One of the trucks trundled away. The only road out led north.

“I’ve got it,” Raimey growled. The truck was far away and shrinking.

“I’m on the other one,” Razal said. He took to a higher building and slid down prone. They were still over a thousand yards away. He clicked his scope to 20x zoom.

The most direct path was right through the buildings, and Raimey took it. The corrugated structures blasted outward as he sprinted through them. He could see the truck accelerating, groaning and grinding, plumes of blue smoke coughing from its tailpipe. It was slow. He entered an open field that circled the east side of the mine. He accelerated to his maximum speed of twenty-five miles per hour.

The soldiers in the truck saw him. They slapped the truck cabin, screaming at the driver to go faster. They pulled out their guns and brought RPGs to their shoulders. John was a quarter mile away and closing.

The RPGs whizzed by, leaving strings of smoke. One hit him in the chest and exploded in a fireball. He ran right through it. A normal Tank Major’s armor would hold against such an attack, and John’s was four times as dense. They had nothing that could defeat him, and then he was there.

He slammed into the truck’s side, and the front wheels jumped as it skittered off the road into a gully. A few soldiers fired point-blank into his helmet, while others leaped out the other side and disappeared into the bush. John was a wolf in a chicken coop, tearing the soldiers from the roost, quickly crushing them, then grabbing some more. A dozen children were curled together on the truck’s bed, holding each other, crying.

The truck was clear. John saw that the other one had crashed, too. The windshield was splintered and covered in red. Razal sprinted toward it with his rifle out. Bursts of gunfire came from the truck. There were still soldiers inside. Razal would need help. John turned to the field where a few of the men had fled. “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! IF ANY OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS SHOW YOUR FACE, I’LL TEAR YOU LIMB FROM LIMB!”

The soldiers in the bush didn’t understand what he said, but they understood the tone. They ran as hard and as fast as they could.

John left the children to assist Razal.

= = =

They lost two children in the gunfire. By then the woman had climbed down from the tree. She arrived in the aftermath, and when the young boys and girls saw her, they gripped her as if she were a lifeline. John watched from a distance. Using the hover-rovers, Razal had entered the bush to track down any soldiers still in the area.

“You did well,” John’s wife said. She was next to him, just out of view, just kissing the corner of his eye. He could feel her health.

“Two of the kids died,” John said.

“But you saved the others,” she replied. “There are boys and girls.”

“So?”

“I thought the warlords only abducted boys.”

That was true. Raimey looked at the howling pile of children around the woman. These girls were too young for . . . other things.

Razal stepped out of the bush, covered in blood. He wiped his ceramic knife on his thigh and slid it back into its sheath. He had found the rest of the soldiers.

= = =

Razal stayed at the front of the town, checking the horizon with his rifle, and John went west to bury the dead. Tiffany was with him, sliding over the landscape without moving a leg. In bouts of stress she was always there. He carried the two children in one of his hands. Their eyes were open, and he could do nothing to close them. These little creatures, back to the soil. How cruel a world where children didn’t know play, and died shivering without a loving face to hold their hand. Add this to the mountain of proof that there was no God.

At the mass grave, Raimey chased the lions and hyenas away. They were gorged, slow. It was a feast for the ages. The buzzards flew to the trees and watched John like silent judges.

Next to the dead, Raimey started digging. His massive hands cleaved through the soil as effortlessly as an excavator, and within hours the hole was as deep and long as a pool.

Raimey pushed the bodies into the pit and spread them out evenly. He covered them with five feet of dirt, then tamped down the earth with his mighty stomps.

The children he couldn’t throw in. He dug them each their own grave. They had died on his watch.

The town was a mess. Most of the buildings had been destroyed, and black smoke continued to pour from the smelt. With all of the adults dead except for Vana—that was the young woman’s name—they couldn’t wait for orders.

Raimey found Razal at the Tank Majors’ quarters. Like everything else, it was badly damaged. Raimey was no computer whiz, but he figured out why the EU hadn’t received any updates: the transmission antenna and satellite dish had been sheared off the roof. He stepped around them and into the building.

The room was ransacked. The artillery storage center was torn open and the hydraulshocks were gone. The drive chains around a Tank Major’s waist had to be replaced regularly—they incurred tremendous loads in battle as they swung the upper body back and forth during strikes—and the spares were gone as well.

Razal was at a desk, fiddling with something that Raimey couldn’t see. But beside him, he recognized another piece of equipment: Razal had pulled the CB radio from one of the trucks. It was connected to a battery.

“Weird, huh?” Razal said.

John nodded. “They took everything.”

“Whatever all this is,” Razal did a general twirl with a soldering iron, “it’s over. We’re too late.”

“We can’t stay here with the kids. There’s barely any food.”

“Matadi’s north of here.”

“Coalition?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.” Razal bent over, and a whisk of smoke curled into the air.

John came around and saw that Razal had an old computer in front of him, badly damaged. It was open, and John could see the wires and circuit boards. “What’s that?” he asked.

“My comm’s still down. It’s a communication terminal.”

“I’ve never seen one like that.”

“It’s for places like this, far away, when nothing else works. They don’t use them much—they aren’t very secure. The dish is toast.”

“Can you can get it to work?”

Razal put the soldering iron down and rubbed his eyes. “If I can focus.”

“Got it, I’ll go.” Raimey turned to leave.

“John.”

“What?”

“That’s great about Vanessa.”

The sick giant Razal was used to seeing vanished, and in his place was a concerned father. “I don’t know what to talk about,” Raimey said. “Everything I’ve heard, I don’t like. I’m afraid I’ll say the wrong thing, and I can’t say the wrong thing.”

“What have you heard?”

“She works with bionics. Did you know that?”

Razal couldn’t imagine how he would. “No.”

“For Evan, at the Derik Building. It’s always confused me. She’s around my life, but not in it. Why would she do that, but wait till now to talk to me?”

“Sometimes people take a while to heal.” Razal tried to lighten the mood. “If you’re worried about what to say, my dad was in marketing. He said if you don’t know what to talk about, just ask questions.”

John nodded. “That’s good. That’s good advice. I don’t want to talk anyway, I just want her to. Do you have kids?”

“No.”

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Razal and Raimey stared at each other for a moment, no segue in sight.

“I’ll check on the kids.”

Razal went back to the circuit board.

John found Vana. She and the children were asleep in what had been the school. One of the walls had crumbled from a mortar strike, and when Raimey peered in, Vana woke. She stretched and looked at the children. They were curled up together, finding warmth and solace in numbers. She came out, hugging herself against the night chill.

“Are they okay?” John asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I get you anything?” He had brought her food and water earlier.

“Blanket?”

Raimey leaned in. Many of the children were shirtless. “Blankets? I’ll look.” He paused. “Tomorrow we’re leaving.” He gestured to the children and her, and then pointed north toward the lone road that serviced the mine.

“Matadi?”

“Yes.”

It didn’t bring her comfort. “Stafford went Matadi.”

Raimey recognized the name. He had fought with a Stafford in Israel. He pointed at himself, a Tank Major. “Stafford?”

Vana nodded.

Two Tank Majors had been on site. She was saying Stafford was alive.

Raimey pointed to himself again. “Stafford.” And then he pointed next to him. “Another one? The other one?”

“Lepai,” Vana said. Chinese.

Vana pulled a fist back. “Stafford,” she hit her palm with the fist.

“Stafford killed Lepai?”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes! Killed. Stafford, ugh, eh . . .” She got frustrated trying to find the word. “Bad guy?”

Black hair streaked John’s right eye. Something was far from right. “I’ll keep you safe.” He pointed to himself. “Good guy.”

= = =

John checked in on Razal. He had gotten the communication terminal back up. The screen was damaged—a lightning bolt zigzagged from one corner to the other—but it appeared to work.

Razal heard John come in. “It’s voice recognition,” he sighed. “Makes sense: you guys aren’t great at typing.”

“Can you get it to work?”

“I don’t know, probably.” Razal pursed his lip and regarded it like a dinosaur bone. “It’s really beat up.”

“The girl just told me that Stafford killed Lepai.”

“What? I thought she couldn’t speak English.”

“It took a bit, but that’s what she said.”

Razal tapped his fingers on the desk while he processed the information. “If that’s true, why?”

“That would explain why all the supplies are gone from this room. Stafford took ’em.”

“And he took Lepai’s body, too?” Razal gestured to the terminal. “Maybe something’s on this.”

“The hard drive?”

“No hard drive, but it has a cache. It might take a few hours. No rest for the wicked, huh?”

Just then the CB crackled. Whiny feedback rose up and down. “Deo. Packard. Where are the children?” a slurry voice asked. “I need them.”

Razal and Raimey stared at the CB.

“Should you—” Raimey started. Razal shook his head “no.”

“Deo?” The man sounded like he was sucking on cotton balls. The CB went dead.

“We need to get out of here,” Razal said.

“I’ll get the children.”

Razal tore the computer down as fast as he could.

= = =

General Boen was woken by the on-base intercom in his suite. He hit “speaker.”

“Yeah?” he said, still waking up.

“It’s Charles Rivas in Communications. We’ve received a message from Sergeant Razal.”

Boen blinked and looked at the clock: four a.m.

“Okay.” He quickly dressed.

The base was north of Chicago and the “softy” barracks—where he and other non-bionic soldiers stayed—was across the landing strip from Communications, Maintenance, and Arms. This was the deployment base for all new bionics—trucked from the Derik building, debriefed and trained on their new abilities, and sent around the globe to protect Coalition and MindCorp interests. At any one time, there were thousands of Minors and Majors on base.

Earl had been in command for nearly a decade and had witnessed firsthand the evolution of the bionic platform. It scared him more than anything. The ability of these soldiers was staggering, from the giants that could knock down buildings, to the infantry who could chase down a horse and snap its neck. The military used to be a cohesive unit, but now there was a very distinct divide: bionics and “softies.” Earl was eighty-two, hell, he was soft, but that delineation between soldiers bothered him. He had loved comics as a kid. X-Men was one of his favorites, and it reminded him of that. Mutants versus humans. Bigotry by ability.

Rivas and three other operators were tracking communications with all barracks and bases around the globe. Charles was the only one awake. The other three were Sleepers. Charles stood to salute.

“Stop. What have they sent?”

“It’s from the shortwave.”

Rivas brought up the message:

10-11-2069. 0334. TRANSMISSION. Report for General Boen. Mine is secure. Everyone dead but the children. SatCom is down. Shortwave terminal can only transmit. Read command log. TM Stafford compromised. TM Lepai believed dead. Intercepted a call by ‘Packard’ requesting the children. Area unsafe. Heading to Matadi. —SFC Razal

“I printed the command log.” Charles handed it over.

Boen rifled through it. Stafford was the commanding officer at this mine. There were two communication transmissions. An encrypted shortwave radio transmission to a Coalition base in Morocco run by the EU, and a local IP to a J. Packard. The shortwave radio transmission to the EU was a smokescreen.

IP: 41.189.192.36. 9-29-2069. 0620. TRANSMISSION. Packard. Lepai is dead. Send soldiers. —Stafford

15420 KHZ. 9-29-2069. 0820. TRANSMISSION. We are being attacked by long-range mortar fire. There are five dead. No attempts to overtake. Action? —Stafford

15420 KHZ. 9-29-2069. 0850. COMMAND. Defend how you see fit. Keep one Tank Major on site at all times. Is there a mortal threat to you and Lepai? Report progress. —Coalition Morocco

15420 KHZ. 9-29-2069. 0920. TRANSMISSION. Roger. Defend mine. We see no immediate mortal threat. Lepai will head out to confront. I will stay onsite. —Stafford

15420 KHZ. 9-29-2069. 1650. TRANSMISSION. Lepai has not returned. Hostiles attack and retreat. Still using mortar fire. The mine and factory are shut down. I am going out to confront. —Stafford

There was a year of logs, hundreds of pages. One to the Coalition. One to J. Packard. To the Coalition, lying about the productivity of the mine. To Packard, setting up shipments. Odd questions about the children . . . Boen absently slapped the pages against his open palm.

“What does it mean, sir?” Rivas asked.

“It means something’s gone sideways,” Boen said. “I need to deploy a task force to Matadi. Send this to Evan and if you get anything else, get me.”

Boen jogged back to his barracks. He put on the Mindlink, and as he did, his room washed away, top to bottom, to the military interface. He sent a message to Evan and it was quickly accepted. The GUI interface transitioned over to Evan’s office.

Earl was always amazed by how real cyberspace felt. He ran his hands along the old leather couch—he had been to the actual office—and there was no sensory deprivation, no strangeness that might suggest that his feet and mind weren’t in the real thing.

He could sense a presence, but no one was in the office. He heard whispers.

—Nehru found—Glass uncommunicative—Multiplier online—Coercion test ready—Twins operational—Do you love us?—

“Evan?”

The whispers came from everywhere, as if the room was infested with secrets. Earl walked around the office. In one corner, where Earl knew a desk was supposed to be, the space was black and open. It was as if the room had been punctured. Earl peeked into it and fear immediately caused him to pull back. He could feel something powerful, just beyond.

“Evan?”

Milky white tails attached to the border of the hole. The tentacles writhed as if they were in a stream, and then they grew taut as they pulled the rest of the body in. The sperm-like shape quickly formed into Evan Lindo. As it did, the room grew over the deep pit like new skin. Evan didn’t notice Earl’s shock. He “jumped” from one side of the room to the kitchen. Coffee was brewing.

“Quite the mess in the Congo,” Evan said.

Another whisper crept into the room. Can we play? Boen looked for the source.

“It’s the MIMEs, Earl. Coffee?”

“No thanks. I drink the real stuff. Aren’t those distracting?”

“They become a part of you.”

Evan seemed in no hurry to discuss the possible corruption. He sipped at his coffee gingerly and, satisfied, drank more.

While a person could look like anyone online, Evan, almost defiantly, always looked exactly the same. He was fat, flat-footed, with a receding chin, hidden poorly behind a goatee, and square-rimmed glasses perched over a narrow nose. And the interesting part wasn’t that he looked exactly as he had a decade before, when Earl had first met him after WarDon—the Secretary of Defense—had put a bullet in his own brain. He hadn’t modified his avatar since, even though Evan was no longer fat. Earl had seen him six months before. But he still kept this reflection of who he once was. Maybe it was a reminder to himself. Maybe it was fuel.

“What do you make of it?”

“It sounds like the EU can’t keep their soldiers in line.”

“We need to get them out of there. I’ll put together a QRF.”

“No.”

“No? Five hours, we’re there.”

“And how would you get them out? There isn’t an airstrip in Matadi that can support a plane to ferry Raimey home. I’ve spoken to Morocco. There’s a large contingent of EU soldiers in Boma, guarding the city. It’s seventy miles away. They can get there.”

Boen wasn’t convinced.

“This is John Raimey we’re talking about,” Evan said. “Stafford’s a standard issue, no match.”

“What about ‘J. Packard’?”

“That was an easy find. He’s one of ours. His first name’s Jane. He’s a Level 2 Tank Minor that was presumed dead during the Israeli War.”

“AWOL?”

“I guess. Gun for hire. Who knows? A nobody. Now that we know what they’re up to, we can root them out. Good?”

Evan lifted the mug to his face and Earl saw that it was shaking. Some of the coffee spilled over.

“Are you okay?” Earl asked.

“I’m fine.” For a split second, the room behind Evan began to bend. “I have a lot of things to do.”

“If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

“I appreciate that.”

Boen vanished, and when he did, Evan dropped the cup and fell to his knees. A cyclone of requests filled the air, and they were all for love, or light, or acceptance. He put his hands to his ears.

“STOP! STOP!” And then the room tore open and he was sucked out into the black.

= = =

Earl placed the Mindlink on his desk. He couldn’t think of a time when Evan had been so . . . agreeable. He flipped through the log sheets, one by one. He had heard something in the room before Evan had come in, and it was a word he had just become aware of. He found it toward the end:

IP: 41.189.192.36. 8-28-2069. 1930. TRANSMISSION. Ten kilograms of gallium needed for Multiplier circuitry, asap. —Packard

IP: 41.189.192.36. 8-28-2069. 1945. TRANSMISSION. Ten kilograms = week’s yield. Difficult. —Stafford

IP: 41.189.192.36. 8-28-2069. 2005. TRANSMISSION. Boss demands. Final prep. Then harvest. —Packard

IP: 41.189.192.36. 8-28-2069. 2020. TRANSMISSION. Give me two days. —Stafford

Multiplier. Whispered in Evan’s office just moments ago. Printed on the page of a coup. Earl didn’t believe in coincidences. And he didn’t trust Evan. And he didn’t know anyone more dangerous than Evan, or more conniving. And he had been so nice—when he was normally a little shit.

Earl thought of an old friend. It had been a long time since they had spoken. He checked the clock: four-thirty a.m. He had to get off base. He spent ten minutes trying to be clever, then went simple instead. He changed into workout clothes and running shoes, strapped on a fanny pack, and walked out the front.

“Early run, hey sir?” a guard asked.

“I got a lot on my mind,” Boen replied and settled into a light jog. Hormone therapy paid dividends.

= = =

Sabot was called down. In the lobby of MindCorp headquarters was a man he had known for decades, and whom he’d always associated with pressed greens and a lapel of medals.

Sabot looked at General Boen’s bright blue running shorts and bleached-white legs.

“Don’t,” Boen said. “I’m having a bad day.”

Sabot sent the guard away, and they walked to the elevator. Earl didn’t know if they’d be going up or down. It turned out, down. MindCorp headquarters rose one hundred and fifty stories in the air, but it was two hundred stories tall. They descended to the Colossal Core.

“Is Cynthia up? I know it’s early.”

“She’s always up. What’s going on?”

Boen pulled the log sheets from his waist pack. Sabot took them and fanned through the hundreds of pages. “What’s this? Cynthia’s listening.”

“This came to me two hours ago. The EU Coalition lost communication with one of its outposts managing a mine.”

“One we use.”

“Yes. We sent John Raimey and a Minor. All of the adults were murdered, but the kids are alive, and it looks like one of the Tank Majors that was posted there is involved. He was stealing the metals for an old soldier named Jane Packard. Comms are down for no explainable reason. They sent that to us by shortwave.”

The elevator passed through five stories of concrete and opened into a cavernous room as tall as a skyscraper. At its center was an immense blue Colossal Core. It was so bright that the techs on the ground floor wore tinted glasses. It hummed and chattered. Data Crushers—massive hard drives the size of a semi truck—whirled like the water turbines of a dam.

On the ground floor, Sabot walked Earl through rows and rows of Sleepers. There were hundreds, laid out like flower petals, all connected in to the Core, monitoring the data, repairing software, strings behind the scenes making sure the user experience was flawless.

“Where’s Cynthia?”

“She doesn’t live upstairs anymore,” Sabot answered in an unhappy tone.

The landing was nearly a block wide; it took minutes to get to the room on the other side. Insect-like cameras were mounted above a door that slid open as they approached.

They had walked into a computer. Servers—black serious things—made up the walls. Server racks filled the room. Thick fiber lines daisy-chained everything together. It wasn’t hundreds of servers. It was thousands. Sabot was barely able to squeeze through.

“She’s upstairs,” he said. They went up two sets and into the loft. Boen’s jaw dropped.

“Hello, Earl,” the screen said. It was Cynthia, vibrant and young. On the screen, she was in her penthouse on the one-hundred-and-fiftieth floor. But Earl saw her true form. She was mounted onto a device that looked like a giant spider. Eight legs attached to her arms and legs and kept her body in constant motion. Her small frame was wrapped in a tight suit covered in electrodes. Wires ran off her wrists and feet, shunting back along the spider legs, and her head was covered in a fiber-optic mask.

“Oh my God,” Earl said. “Is that some virtual thing?”

Sabot shook his head. “It’s so her body won’t break down. She’s been linked in like this for over two years.”

“Sabot despises it. Sometimes I think he despises me,” the avatar said. The real Cynthia moved in a jogging motion.

“That’s not true,” came a voice from the virtual penthouse suite. It was Sabot, thinking his words. Earl’s head started to hurt.

“Haven’t we seen each other in person recently?” Earl asked. He couldn’t recall. The virtual world and the real world blended.

On-screen Cynthia shook her head. “It’s been years, and seeing you here, as much as I like you, troubles me. And I’m already troubled. It has to do with Evan, doesn’t it?”

Earl hesitated. “I’m not sure if I’m making the right call, but you’re the expert on this kind of thing, and we’ve been in it before.” He told her about Africa and the apparent subversion that was taking place. He told her about the term Multiplier, and how he had never heard of it except in two instances, back to back, by corrupted entities separated by an ocean.

As he related all this, Earl wasn’t sure where to direct his eyes. The avatar on the screen was too young, too intense, like staring at the sun. But the real Cynthia, dressed in a form-fitted suit, stretching and bending in front of him to keep atrophy at bay, was uncomfortably intimate. The floor seemed safest.

Sabot digitized the log sheets after Earl spoke. Cynthia’s on-screen avatar stood perfectly still.

“What’s going on?” Earl asked Sabot.

“She’s sharing the information with the MIMEs—computers that think like her but with more processing power.”

“Is this normal?” Boen asked.

“Nothing anymore is normal,” Sabot said, shaking his head. “She, and I’m sure Evan, and maybe a handful of others have this. It all came from Justin.”

Cynthia’s avatar was still frozen, but her voice came over the loudspeaker. “Sabot, get a Mindlink.” Sabot pulled one off a hook. “Earl, I need to hear and see the meeting. I won’t pry.”

“Okay,” Earl said. Sabot put the Mindlink on Earl’s head.

“Just remember the meeting,” Cynthia said. Earl did. The room, the whispers, the sweat on Evan’s brow. “Good. Thank you.”

Sabot took back the Mindlink.

Her avatar reanimated. “Evan was in pain as he spoke to you. And those whispers you heard weren’t just MIMEs . . . they were people.”

She stepped back, building logic.

“There are one hundred and seventy-three mines around the world whose minerals and elements are used to build and maintain Data Cores. Forty-three percent of them are redundant. Twenty percent of them—all overseas—produce a plus or minus deviation of one percent, attributed to inaccurate scales, data entry, and shrinkage.”

“That doesn’t sound like much,” Boen said.

“Percentage-wise, it’s not,” she replied. “But by tonnage it’s an undocumented two hundred thousand tons of unrefined ore. And unlike a finished good, it’s unaccountable. We wouldn’t even know enough to know if we should be looking for it. India and Africa are the manufacturing centers for our infrastructure, easily corruptible, and as long as we received what we ordered, there would be no reason to wonder if the factories were producing excess.”

The room was quiet again as Cynthia processed.

“The Data Core could be eight to twelve times as large as the Colossal Core. Combined with the UNITY, it could process twelve percent of all cyberspace per second. But not without help.”

Again, quiet. The MIMEs hummed.

“In the last three days Igor Emelianko, Heinrich Gloss, Alexandra Kravetz, Cong Lee and . . . God . . . Brad Zienkiewicz, one of our founders, have gone missing. Francesco Berin was abducted by force in the middle of the night.”

Boen recognized the name Francesco Berin. The Italian Prime Minister.

“They’re geniuses. Prodigies in their field. The Data Sumps, Sabot. Mechanically sound, yet torn from their posts in cyberspace. Unexplained data spikes that maxed out our Cores.

“His patience,” she continued. “The years he took to realize his vision. The hundreds of people he must have blackmailed to see this through. And now it’s close, too close to wait. Too close to be patient any longer. What he thought it would be, it isn’t, but it’s close enough, and it’s a means to his end.”

Cynthia’s avatar looked down at Earl. “I’m happy you came to me. Finally, it all makes sense.” She sounded relieved.

“What’s going on, Cynthia?” Sabot asked.

“Evan is planning to take over the world.”

“That’s . . . how?” Earl said, in disbelief.

“Those in the physical world disregard the virtual world, and those in cyberspace return the favor. But they are inextricably linked. There is no difference between the two except one: if you control the digital world, you can bring the physical one to its knees. The opposite isn’t true.”

“Why?”

“Geography. No country can take over the world, not anymore, maybe never, though some speculate about Germany in World War II. Land empires don’t exist because the resources to maintain them no longer exist. For over one hundred years borders have been protected by the threat of nuclear weapon strikes, not invasions.

“But cyberspace is both infinite and small. There are no borders. There is no innate obstacle that would stop a coup. It can be ruled, quite easily, by one person, one mind. And with the physical world so dependent on the digital to survive, the physical world would have to relent. It would fall in line.”

“But our armies—”

“Rely on the digital world to function. I could render nearly all of your weapons useless in minutes. I could dismantle your communications. I could launch your nuclear weapons. I could control—”

Boen interrupted. “We need to get a hold of the President.”

“He will be compromised. But I’ll try. If anything, he will know how close we are to this war.”

“What can I do?” Earl asked.

“Get back to the base, act like we haven’t met today. Or hide. What’s happening will happen soon. I will do what I can to stop it.”

= = =

Sabot escorted Boen out a side entrance.

“You could stay,” Sabot offered.

“No, I can’t. We don’t even know what’s going on, really.”

Sabot’s eyes said different, but he kept his mouth closed.

“I run the base; I need to be there. I’m old, and I can play senile if I have to.” Earl looked up and down the street. A few people shuffled around like zombies. “I just don’t get the world anymore. I really don’t know what to do. Private lines aren’t private, the internet may as well be a bullhorn. Everyone’s looking into your shit. And no one cares. They expect it! They think it’s safer that someone’s listening in. And maybe for a bit, it was. Give an inch.”

“They don’t care, because they don’t realize what they’re giving up,” Sabot said.

“What’s she going to do?”

“She’s going to figure it out.”

“What would you do?”

“Kill him. Do you know where he is?”

Boen shook his head. “No. I haven’t seen him in person in years.” He looked up at Sabot. “He can do it?”

“He can try, but even if he takes over cyberspace, he’s physically located somewhere. If we can get to him, it’ll be done. He’d need the military on his side.”

“They’re good men; they wouldn’t just get in line. He’s got a few cronies, but a few wouldn’t do it.”

“She’s the smart one. I don’t know.”

Boen chewed on his tongue. “Yeah . . . so’s Evan.”

“You can stay.”

“No, I can’t. Now’s not the time to cower. I hope she’s wrong.”

“Me, too.”

They shook hands and Boen walked away. He was at the stairs to the L-train platform a half-mile away when he heard the car pull up.

“General! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

It was Wilkes, his assistant. He was already out of the car, approaching him. Boen’s stomach knotted, and he looked at the stairs and thought about going for it. He nearly laughed out loud when he pictured himself trying to outrun a Tank Minor.

“Sir?” Wilkes looked expectantly at the general.

“Got distracted on my run. What’s going on?” How did he find me?

Wilkes herded Boen toward the car. Boen glanced past it to the MindCorp building, wishing that Cynthia’s giant, dreaded bodyguard were running over to intervene. But it was just them.

“The gate said you’d left for a run and you never came back. Don’t take this the wrong way, but—”

“I’m old,” Earl finished. Wilkes held the rear door open for him. Boen got in.

“I didn’t say it,” Wilkes joked. He closed the door and went around to the driver’s side. “Back to base?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

There was a more direct route, but Earl liked to drive north on Lakeshore Drive, and Wilkes knew it.

Act normal, Boen thought to himself. “How’s life off the reservation?” he asked. Wilkes had moved off base with his family a few months before—a new policy to integrate bionics with civilians. Wait, did Evan propose that?

“Strange,” Wilkes replied. “My softy neighbors always ask me to help move things.”

“Well, it’s easier to move an armoire with a Minor around,” Boen offered. “Tera’s doing fine?”

“Still sore, C-section, but Anna keeps her occupied.” Wilkes looked back in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think she even notices me in the room sometimes.”

“I remember that.” Idle chatter. Maybe everything was okay. Boen started to relax and exhaustion flowed over him. He closed his eyes and thought about Cynthia mounted on that spider, getting pulled and twisted, her “ideal” pasted on a large screen above her.

Crude.

Boen opened his eyes.

“Did you say something?” he asked Wilkes.

“Huh?”

Boen closed his eyes again and thought about Cynthia, Evan, the Mindlink, the ill of it, the grift. How people were so convinced that technology brought them happiness, while it was sucking their life away. A campfire and a couple of beers brought solace. A day done well brought worth. The meaning of life? Easy: love, family, friends, and selflessness. You do that, you’ll die fine. The Mindlink was as shallow as a sheet of paper and as vast as an ocean. And in its vastness was its lie: there were infinite sips, but it would never sate. It had made people skimmers of life.

That’s what they want.

Earl’s eyes snapped open. He knew that wasn’t his voice. He knew it wasn’t Wilkes. Wilkes kept driving, oblivious.

“I think I may want a bit of breakfast before we head back to base,” Earl said. “Tired of the same.”

“No, sir. I got orders.”

“From who?”

Me.

“Wilkes, I need you to stop the car.”

He can’t. He’s not driving. See?

The car swerved to the left and then back.

Fear filled Wilkes’s voice. “I can’t control my body, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not controlling my body right now. Someone else has control.”

Let’s shut him up, so we can talk.

Laughter filled Earl’s head, and he realized he didn’t know if the words were spoken aloud or were coming from within.

Within. The answer came without the question. Boen saw that Wilkes/Evan ignored the normal off ramp to the base. They were going farther into the sticks, where the road was no longer maintained, where no one was around.

“How are you in my head?” General Boen asked.

Your car is wired as a Mindlink.

“For how long?”

Years. The same with your office. The same with the base.

Then Evan knew everything. He always had.

Of course.

Wilkes/Evan took an off ramp out toward the lake, toward a pier that had been abandoned for twenty years. Earl’s right hand rested on his hip pack.

“So Cynthia was right?”

Earl felt the smile, and then the frigid tickle leak through his brain as Evan used Boen’s memory to recount what Cynthia had said.

“Yes. It’s just days away,” Wilkes said. But it was Evan. The timbre may have been different, but the cadence was the same.

“How?”

“The traits we value: integrity, honor. These are conditional behaviors, and I’ve learned that they are quite easy to break.”

“Cynthia will stop you. The military won’t follow you.”

“One begets the other. Reactions and consequences will build into the inevitable. It’s too late. Cynthia would never say it, but we’re no longer like you. Time is different, space is different. My thoughts are clouds stretched across a horizon, and still they grow. I have gone over these scenarios a trillion times.”

“The people won’t allow it,” Boen said.

“The people don’t care. They want to be ruled. They want to be left to their devices. A quick coup will ensure that. There is no other way.”

“Don’t act like you care about the people.”

“I don’t, and I’d never say otherwise. We’ve stalled too long for the weak. We’ve catered to the lowest common denominator, and the world has suffered for it. If we acknowledge—and I think you’ll agree—that most lives don’t matter except to the small periphery of family and friends that encircle them, then we also have to acknowledge that some lives—infinitesimally few—do matter. They are imperative to the survival and growth of the species. And without these few people, we would just be hairless apes fucking on the Serengeti, splintering stones for spears. It wasn’t the entire species that advanced, Earl: it was a few souls that advanced the entire species.”

Boen was silent, stunned.

“The best minds in our world have taken their dreams and used concrete and steel to build them. I am no different. But my dreams are vast. Beyond Cynthia’s, beyond Einstein’s, beyond the greatest minds that laid the foundation on which I stand. They could not do what I do because it was too soon. And in the future they cannot do what I do, because they will be too late. The time is mine.”

Wilkes turned down an empty, broken road toward the pier. The sun was ahead, red and wavering, peering over Lake Michigan. To Earl, it looked like an eye.

“So you want to rule.”

“No. I want to live forever. And I will, Earl. I promise you, my most sincere promise. I will. But to do so, first I must rule.”

The doors locked, and Earl knew the door handles wouldn’t work. He didn’t even try. He slowly snuck a hand into the hip pack.

“So this is it,” he said. He had only one chance, and it was small.

The car swung through the parking lot, picking up speed toward the pier.

“Earl, I like your style, but you’re not going to change, and you’ll fight me to the death. Every other person I deal with would shoot a newborn baby to save themselves. The Presidents, the Prime Ministers, the military leaders. Yes, I blackmailed them, but I blackmailed them into an aristocracy. They will be lords and they know it, because I no longer care for this world. It’s no longer the one that matters. For what it’s worth, I admire you.”

General Boen pulled out the subcompact Glock he always carried, and fired a 180-grain hollow point into the back of Wilkes’s head. His assistant’s hair exploded in flaps from the impact, revealing a white, ceramic skull.

“See? You’re a tough old coot!” Wilkes/Evan laughed. “Let’s see how fast this baby will go!”

Wilkes/Evan gunned the engine, and the car shot through the parking lot and onto the pier. The tires rumbled over the splintered wood.

Boen fired two more rounds into Wilkes, but it was no use. Even at point-blank range, Minors were immune to handgun fire. Boen shot at the windows instead; they spider-webbed, but didn’t break. A round ricocheted into Earl’s abdomen.

The car lunged off the pier at seventy miles per hour. The nose hit first and it tumbled upside down. Freezing water poured in. Earl pulled on the doors, grunting with effort, veins bulging from his neck.

Wilkes turned around. He was holding a handgun.

“I salute your service, Earl. That’s why I’ll make this quick.”

Two pops of orange light came from the car, scattering a school of salmon who had become its procession. The car sank to the depths, first clearly outlined, then a grey shape, and then it became one with the black, never to be seen again.

And the last thought that went through Earl’s head was that he knew something Cynthia did not:

Evan already had an army. And they were all him.

Chapter 5

Ever since his first meeting with Evan Lindo, President Austin had woken up each morning with a hangover. He didn’t drink.

“I voted for you, Mr. President,” Evan had said as they shook hands six years before. They stood outside the Derik Building.

“So you’re the one,” the President joked. No one voted anymore.

“Come, I’ll show you around, get you up to speed. I appreciate you making the trip to Chicago. In this digital age, there are still some things you have to see in person.”

Mike Glass walked ahead of them and opened the doors. President Austin realized that his eyes were lenses that never blinked. They rolled and tumbled with green silt.

“Mike Glass is my bodyguard, has been since . . . jeez. How long has it been, Mike?” Evan asked.

“Five years,” Mike replied. His voice sounded as if it it were being projected from a tin can. President Austin wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure that his mouth moved. The bionic held the door open for them and they walked into the Derik Building.

Evan explained to Austin, “WarDon appointed him to me.”

“That’s how you got your start,” President Austin said.

“Yep.”

The Derik Building bustled with activity. Nurses and doctors, researchers and scientists, soldiers in camouflage guarding the entrances.

They walked through the checkpoint. Even Evan showed his ID.

Nurse stations lined the main hall, and surgery and research wings shot off to each side. Elevators rose to floors marked “Culling,” “Assembly,” “Diagnostics.” Evan followed signs that said simply, “Core.” He talked while they walked.

“The Tank Majors were exciting—they were the first—but the technology to build them really wasn’t anything special. Metal, gears, chains, engines. A good mechanic had a shot, really. Still, incredibly useful. But now, with the Minors and the technology that we’ve developed to build them, it’s true science.”

“Glass is one, correct?” President Austin asked.

“Yes, the most powerful one. He’s become somewhat of a guinea pig. He’s L3, which is three times stronger than a man. Strength is easier than speed though—and he’s twice as quick. Here.”

Evan stopped at a lab marked “E.T. Processing and Minor Assembly.” Inside, it was massive: as clean as an intensive care unit, as automated as the most efficient assembly plant. At the front, the President watched a technician controlling what could only be described as a computerized loom, weaving together an oily sheath of off-white tissue.

“Their muscle is electrostatic tissue. Currently, every six months we’re advancing its strength and speed. We’re also improving its efficiency.”

They walked the length of the assembly line, following the progression from materials to soldier. At the end of the line, fully built, headless bionic bodies hung like coats.

“How many Tank Minors are there now?” the President asked.

“Two hundred. We’re hoping in the next five years to have twenty thousand.” Evan led them out of the lab back to the path that had led them to the Core. “The advantages are huge. They’re far more discreet than the Tank Major, and the bionic program allows us to recycle soldiers injured in battle.”

The door to the Core was a vault. Evan put his eyes to a scanner, then his hand, and then his ID. He spoke his name and the door exhaled and opened. Glass stopped moving.

“Just the President and I, please,” Evan requested.

The President’s guards looked to him for instructions.

“It was the same with the EU Prime Minister and President Qian. This is a place of secrets, Mr. President. That’s why it was important to have you come,” Evan said.

“It’s fine,” President Austin said to his guards. He went in with Evan alone and the door closed behind them. “Prime Minister Grant was here?”

“Four years ago. Ward invited him. Same with Qian. It’s important that the Coalition leaders are all on the same page, don’t you think?”

A field of servers greeted them. Past this metallic crop sat a square monolith the size of a house.

“That’s my private lab,” Evan explained as they wove their way through the humming crops.

“What are all these servers for?” Austin asked.

“Oh, many things. Some are chewing on data to build better prosthetics, others are connected to cyberspace, searching for flagged keywords, phrases, that kind of thing.”

The doors of the monolith opened as they approached. They entered a hallway that wove around the perimeter of a very large room.

“I hope you don’t mind—I added security protocol to your family’s Mindlink,” Evan said. “It’s standard procedure.”

“No, not at all. I’ve heard what Sleepers can do.”

“It’s a dangerous world. More than people realize,” Evan said.

“In your eyes, what’s the biggest danger?”

“Our sovereignty.”

“Not the Terror War?”

“The Terror War is a nuisance, but we’re winning, and with the Minor, it’s only a matter of time now. MindCorp is our greatest enemy.”

“MindCorp? From what I understand, they’ve been our greatest ally.”

They entered a simple office with one Sleeper chair. A desk was nearby and a couch was against the wall. There was a small kitchenette and fridge. Evan gestured for the President to sit on the couch. “Water?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Evan poured himself a glass. “Cynthia and MindCorp are an ally of opportunity, Mr. President. I was there at the beginning. It’s hard to believe, but back then we thought of them as a monopoly.” Evan shook his head. “But because they were helping us with China, and with the Terror War, we ignored the obvious—that their total marketplace dominance should have been addressed a decade ago.”

“But we needed them.”

“Yes, we did. But who needs whom now? What’s the most stable currency in the world?”

The President failed to come up with an answer.

“Theirs. MC credits. Singapore adopted their currency to combat inflation. Digital goods and services are ninety-nine percent of the economy now. They’re continuing to expand into Third World countries, homogenizing all economies, which poses its own problems.”

“That’s what companies do,” the President said.

“No. That’s what empires do. We are fools if we continue to believe that because we were the superpower of old, we will be the superpower of the future.” Evan held up the Mindlink from the Sleeper chair. “Land and dominion mean nothing when, in a superior world, those are limitless. The tar pit is ahead, Mr. President, and we’re running out of time.”

Evan sat down behind his desk. “What did President Williams say about me?”

President Ward Williams had been Austin’s predecessor.

“I didn’t speak with him directly,” President Austin replied. “My assistant Sam said he just said to talk to you.”

“Anyone else?”

“Mostly the same.”

Evan nodded. “Good.” He paused and then stood. “I’m going to show you something that I showed Ward. Also Grant and Qian, and a few others that need to know. Very few people know about this, and you’ll see that if more people did, the way of life we take for granted would vanish.” Evan snapped his fingers to emphasize the point.

One of the walls was on tracks, and it slid open to reveal a much larger research area. The first thing President Austin registered was the sound of fear. A spotlight flickered on to reveal, just twenty feet away, animals caged or shackled on a long table. There was a caged hamster, running maniacally on its wheel. A cat, shackled with a short leash, hair raised and hissing. An old dog, collared, and a chimpanzee. The latter looked like a micro King Kong, upright and constrained with chains. It bore its teeth in fear.

“What the hell is going on?” President Austin said. He looked back and forth from the distraught animals to Evan, who had made his way behind the table, as if it was his turn to present a science experiment.

“I’ve done this demonstration a dozen times, and it’s important that you listen,” Evan said. “The majority of the world thinks that the Mindlink is a safe device. Obviously, we don’t want them to think otherwise. They shop, go into chat rooms, work online, they see the interfaces, they live their existence blind—and that’s fine. It’s essential. How else would our economy have survived the oil depletion?”

He knelt next to the hamster and watched it sprint an infinite, unwinnable race.

“But it’s a two-way feed. Data flows both out and in, and most of it—the majority of it—is imperceptible to the individual. That’s how we get the majority of our intel. Our Sleepers creep into people’s brains and read their thoughts. We do it all the time.

“You’ve never heard of the King Sleeper, but he was a boy, a magnificent weapon. He’s dead now. But he radically changed our perception of what could be accomplished in cyberspace. One of his strangest feats was that he could kill. You could be piddling along, checking news feeds, and bam! You’re dead. He would plant a codec in a subject’s head and . . .” Evan snapped his fingers. The hamster collapsed. Its little legs fell through the wired bars of the wheel, and it rocked back and forth from the sudden stop in inertia. “. . . trigger it. The brain would stroke.”

Evan shot the cat with his hand and it fell over dead.

“Stop!” President Austin thought he said. It came out as a groan.

Next, the dog collapsed like a marionette with severed strings. Its tongue lolled out in one last lick.

“What’s amazing about this technology is that it works on anything with a warm-blooded neural pathway. A hamster, a bird—man, obviously—it doesn’t matter. The same effect.”

The monkey hung limp in its shackles. Blood oozed slowly onto the fur beneath its eyes.

President Austin ran for the door. It was locked.

“Guards!” he screamed.

THEY CAN’T HEAR YOU.

It was Evan, but the words weren’t spoken aloud. President Austin turned around. The diminutive man was gone. In his place was a crocodile.

SIT DOWN. WE HAVE MUCH TO DISCUSS.

“How are you doing that?” President Austin grabbed at his head.

“This whole room is a Mindlink,” Evan said. “The program that killed those animals is now inside you.”

Evan continued speaking, but in the President’s head. I’VE PUT THIS PROGRAM IN YOU, YOUR WIFE, YOUR DAUGHTERS, YOUR GRANDCHILD, AND YOUR CABINET. I’VE PUT IT IN EVERY FRIEND YOU’VE EVER HAD, ANY ACQUAINTANCE YOU MIGHT REMEMBER. AND THEIR CHILDREN. AND THEIR CHILDREN’S CHILDREN. BUT IT’S OUR LITTLE SECRET. PRESIDENT WILLIAMS KEPT IT, AND HE’S GOING TO BE FINE. I ONLY HAD TO MAKE MY POINT ONCE.

President Austin vaguely remembered that Ward’s brother had died unexpectedly.

SIT DOWN!

The command echoed through every brain cell in President Austin’s head. He felt something loose beneath his nose. He dabbed it with his finger and it came back with blood.

“But I’m the President . . . ” he said, hopelessly.

“No, you’re not,” Evan said. “But it needs to look that way.”

THERE ARE THINGS I NEED.

= = =

Every man believes they would be brave in the face of adversity. And when they learn categorically that they are not, it changes them forever. It makes them live in fear. President Austin couldn’t remember a day in the last six years he had woken up without the images of the animals dying at Evan’s behest. Sometimes instead of the monkey, it was his granddaughter. Sometimes that hamster was gone, and it was him running on the wheel.

He checked the clock: it was five-thirty a.m. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but lately, things had been a blur. He rubbed his face. “Two more years,” he said quietly. Then his second term would be done. But really, it was less. It was weeks, maybe a month, until the charade would be over. Evan had promised some of the leaders riches. Others, land. President Austin just wanted out. Evan had agreed to that, too.

Austin thought back to yesterday’s meeting with MindCorp. Evan hadn’t had to explain what he was having the Coalition leaders do: they were setting Cynthia up. They were agitating her for a retaliatory response. David was a brown belt in judo, and what Evan did to his enemies was no different than a judo throw: he used their own weight against them. Evan placed the fulcrum, but he didn’t push. He had them fall on their own.

President Austin’s wife shifted around as he sat up on the edge of the bed. She slept on her side like a cannonball. He rubbed her leg absently with his hand, and she murmured something and curled tighter.

An old memory folded over him. They were newlyweds, just weeks into their forty-year union. They lived in a trailer, but neither of them had the faintest clue they were poor. She waitressed, he was in law school. Back then, it had felt like the world was filled with pearls, and every bend around the road held sunlight. The delusions of youth. It was the same as believing in Santa Claus.

In the memory, he was teasing her that she slept like a dog. In those days, he’d sometimes wake up and she’d be at the foot of the bed, or perhaps her feet would be jabbing his face.

“You just don’t circle,” he wheezed through tears. She hit him, and they belly laughed, and it turned into making love.

It was a hot night, and afterward, he had put the small tabletop fan on the bed to cool them off. They got silly and spoke through the fan to each other. The fan chopped through their words.

Him: “T-h-a-n-k-s f-o-r s-l-e-e-p-i-n-g w-i-t-h m-e.”

Her: “I h-a-v-e n-o c-h-o-i-c-e.”

Him: “I c-a-n-t w-a-i-t t-o a-f-f-o-r-d a-i-r c-o-n-d-i-t-i-o-n-i-n-g.”

Her: “I c-a-n-t w-a-i-t t-o n-o-t w-a-i-t t-a-b-l-e-s.”

In the true memory, they both lay down and let the cool air dry their skin, but as he remembered it now, only he did. His wife stayed by the fan, and she looked at him strangely. For a moment a shimmer rolled across her face. And then she said:

“W-h-a-t h-a-s E-v-a-n p-l-a-n-n-e-d?”

President Austin—just David, back then—snapped his head toward his young wife. It no longer felt like a memory. It felt like he was there.

“Cyn—”

She pressed her lips to his, and then she lay beside him, just as it was in the memory. “Your wife. We must maintain the construct,” she said. “You are in a meeting with the Coalition leaders. I’ve triggered this memory as a cover. Let it flow. Remember it.”

And just like that, he remembered. He was. President Nehru wasn’t there, and none of the other leaders said a thing about it. But they were all thinking the same thing. When one of them wasn’t present, it meant they’d stepped out of line. In what felt like another room, he heard himself speak. He was talking about how to best transition the governments after the Coalition became unified as one under Evan.

“I can’t talk to you. He’ll kill my family.”

The dream carried on. It rolled back from lucid. He no longer felt in control. His wife, who was not his wife, rolled over onto him. Even though the last thing President Austin was thinking about was sex, the body he inhabited in this dream was raring to go. She lifted up slightly to let him in, and they were going.

“You’re a monster. You’re all monsters,” President Austin said.

“I’m nothing compared to Evan. And you housed him,” Cynthia replied. “What has he done?”

“He has built a hive brain. He uses geniuses to increase his intelligence. I don’t know how it works, but he says it will make him a god.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“Marine Base Quantico, south of Washington, D.C. In a bunker. I didn’t want to help.” President Austin started to cry. “I had no choice.”

“Is he done?”

“No. It’s not just that. He has things he calls ‘Multipliers’ that it needs. He hired mercenaries to help install them as a gateway from UNITY into your network.”

“Where are they?”

“They’re everywhere. That’s why UNITY took so long. The resources were divided.”

“And that’s why you and everyone else approved the plan.”

President Austin nodded. “He told us to. UNITY is his gateway in.”

The room plucked like a string. President Austin tried to get out from underneath his wife.

“He’s here,” he said.

“He may be, but he won’t know we’ve spoken. Riding the memory guarantees that.”

Cynthia didn’t see the shadow in the room. She was too busy grinding to climax. But President Austin did. He spoke past her. “She tricked me! She tricked me! Please don’t kill my family! Please don’t hurt them! It’s her fault!”

The shadow moved away from the wall. It was Evan. Cynthia turned to face him.

“I won’t let you do this,” she said.

Evan smiled, but instead of teeth, his mouth was filled with eyes. “You make it too easy for me, Cynthia.” He extended his index finger and touched her shoulder.

Beneath Evan were others, insatiable for feelings and information, and they chewed through Cynthia’s memories like a swarm of piranhas, tearing her apart. They ripped out the memory of the Northern Star’s location. They disassembled her conscious being. And then Evan hit command code.

<5>

<4>

<3>

<2>

<1>

Evan hadn’t killed Cynthia. He had destroyed one of her MIME CPUs.

Anger boiled off of him. The eyes protruded, now on glowing tentacles. Those that could, came out of his mouth. Those that couldn’t broke through his face.

President Austin pushed himself against the headboard of the bed that he had slept in forty years ago. Back when he was no man’s pawn. Back when he thought he could make a difference. Back when the idea of death was as far as the farthest star. He closed his eyes and thrust his arms out, as if that would protect him. Nothing happened.

“She tricked me! Please, I’ll do anything. I’ll make it up to you.”

“You will,” Evan said.

President Austin cracked his eyes open. The tentacles had pulled back into Evan’s face. He was seated on the bed.

“It’ll help if the world hates her,” Evan continued. “She needs to appear rogue.”

“Okay. I’ll hold a press conference. I’ll say whatever you need me to say.”

Evan ignored President Austin’s plan. “Do you want to die, or should it be someone in your family?” he asked.

The question paralyzed President Austin. “Wha—?”

“The narrative is simple: she killed Nehru, and she came to you, either to kill you too or to make an example by killing someone in your family. It’s gotta be someone close. Your wife, your daughter. Can’t be a second cousin, a great uncle twice removed. It’s gotta be someone you really care about.”

President Austin’s mouth opened and closed like a fish drowning on land.

Evan waited for a response. When one didn’t come, he said, “Your wife will do.” He sat up as if the decision had been made.

“Me,” President Austin said. He looked at his young wife, frozen in front of him.

“You sure?”

President Austin could see the whimsy in Evan’s gaze. Evan was enjoying this.

“Yes. Please not my family. I’m enough. If you make it look like she killed me, I’ve got to be enough, right?”

Evan nodded. “You’ll do fine.” President Austin could see gleaming eyes in Evan’s mouth.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” President Austin said quietly.

Evan cocked his head. “That’s a silly thing to say. This has been done a thousand times since the beginning of man.”

“And it’s always failed.”

Evan shook his head. “You don’t know your history. There are dynasties that have lasted thousands of years. You can still find their borders and touch their crumbling walls.”

“What does that matter when you’re dead?”

Evan smiled. “I don’t plan to be, Mr. President. I plan to live forever.”

The tentacles burst from Evan’s face and latched on to President Austin. As the Northern Star unraveled his soul, the President held on to a simple memory of his wife. The day before, he had hugged her from behind in the bathroom. They had looked at each other in the mirror’s reflection. It was a passing warmth, easily overlooked. But it brought President Austin peace as what made him him was torn asunder.

= = =

Raimey chaperoned the truck of children with Razal at the wheel. They had left an hour after the CB radio had crackled to life and now it was nearing dawn. The children slept. Vana watched over them, making sure their blankets were tight, running her hands through their hair when they cried out in their dreams.

Ahead, Raimey saw the lights of Matadi, flickering across the dark edge where sky met land. Matada was an industrial city, pressed against the Congo River; columns of black smoke rose into the air, probably from burning trash heaps.

The road was in lousy shape, and their progress was slow. Raimey walked alongside. Earlier, Razal had sent a message to Command, but they had no way of knowing if it had been received. Razal’s comm was still out, which was confusing: it was satellite-based and had worked fine on the flight over. It was possible that it was being jammed, which only reinforced the feeling that something sinister lay ahead.

They occasionally passed a nomad walking in the other direction, away from Matadi. They led donkeys that pulled warped wooden carts, built on ancient car axles and tires. As John and the truck approached, they would pull to the side and wait far off the road. They didn’t nod or speak, just stared with wary eyes.

Razal stopped the truck a quarter mile out. Matadi rose and fell over rolling hills. They didn’t know where the threat lay.

“What do you think?” Razal asked. “Can you use your hover-rovers?”

“They’ll announce our presence,” Raimey said. “It’s better if I just go in.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

Raimey laughed, and for a second his wife flickered away. Razal climbed out of the truck and onto the roof with his rifle. “You hear my gun, get out here.”

Raimey walked ahead and entered the city. A far-off mosque crackled with the fajr, and the sound echoed down the streets. Trash was everywhere, and so were signs of war, though they were mostly anthropological. Craters were patched with asphalt, and John could see where shelled-out walls had been rebuilt.

Doors and shutters shut quietly as John approached. He caught a boy watching him from an alley. The boy sprinted away, kicking up trash.

The black columns of smoke were what John had suspected they were: the town dump. A dozen men and donkeys worked diligently to plow the trash toward a massive fire pit. Other fire pits burned around them. They stopped and stared as John passed.

A man approached him with his hands in the air.

“Please, please,” the man said.

“Do you speak English?” Raimey asked. Above him, men appeared on the rooftops. He didn’t see arms, but they had the look of soldiers.

The man beckoned John forward. “Please, please. Don’t hurt us, there are more children.”

“I don’t want your children. I have some. Is this place safe?”

“Children, come. No need to fight.” The man disappeared into an alley. Raimey trudged after, unsure how to proceed. The man sped up, running ahead and waving him onward.

“Slow down,” John said. He didn’t want to run. The man either didn’t understand or didn’t listen, and continued on around a corner, still waving.

Raimey followed. He made a hard left around the corner—and found himself walking right into an M1 Abrams tank, its 105-millimeter cannon aimed square at John’s chest, just twenty yards away. The man who had beckoned stood next to it. Two other Abrams covered its flanks.

Raimey was incredibly durable. His armor was the strongest the world had ever known. But a direct shot from that cannon, and his physical body would turn to jam.

I’m going to die, Raimey thought. The concept surprised him. He thought about the losses in his life constantly, but it had been a long, long time since he had thought about his own mortality. He had begun to believe what others thought. That he was invincible.

“One move and I’ll fire,” a voice said through the tank’s PA system. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“I’m John Raimey. Captain Liam Razal and I were deployed here to check out a mine outside the city and confirm whether Stafford and Lepai, two Tank Majors, were dead or alive. We were sent by the U.S. government.”

“Lepai is dead. Stafford is not,” the PA crackled. “Do you know what they were doing?”

“No, I don’t. We’ve brought the children and a lone survivor from the mine.”

“How can I trust you?”

“Are you Packard?” Raimey asked. He wondered if he could duck and get out of the line of fire of that empty muzzle.

“No. I am Juhavee,” the voice said. “If you make one false move, we will shoot you down. And we know we can, Giant. Follow us. It’s not safe here.”

“I need to get the others.”

“We have them.”

The tanks rumbled to life. The two other tanks led the way. Juhavee’s tank spun around and followed, but its cannon barrel didn’t waver from Raimey’s chest.

They traveled west. The personnel truck, with Razal and the children, joined them. The nomads that had passed them on the way had turned out not to be nomads at all, but soldiers; they had surprised Razal with thirty guns and taken him down. And with the children present, Razal hadn’t put up a fight.

It was clear the tank convoy was concerned with threats other than John. They stopped at intersections to roll their turrets back and forth, checking nearby alleys and buildings. Juhavee’s tank was undamaged, but the other two were warped and twisted. The lead tank had a cockeyed tread that fought the ground as it moved forward, as if it wanted to set out on its own. Raimey recognized the damage: a Tank Major had hit it.

They reached an open road that led away from the city, and a bridge took them over a small river to a military-fortified power plant, where men walked along tall walls with RPGs. A tank sat on either side of the gate. Their turrets followed Raimey. This must have been a Coalition base at some point.

The gate slowly opened and Raimey followed the caravan inside; the personnel truck brought up the rear. As he stepped inside, he saw a strange device mounted high on the corner wall. It was a modified anti-aircraft turret that now looked like a gigantic clay pigeon thrower. But instead of pigeons, landmines were stacked neatly on one another like candy wafers. A man immediately rotated the turret toward John. All of the men with RPGs were aiming at Raimey as well: thirty in all.

The first two Abram M1s circled out and away, their turrets never leaving John. The one that housed Juhavee continued forward underneath a protective underpass.

“Okay, stop,” Juhavee announced from his tank. Raimey heard the diesel turbine cycle down. The truck with the children was escorted out of sight. Raimey no longer saw Razal.

“Where’s the Minor?” Raimey asked.

“Don’t. Move.”

The hatch at the top of the tank flipped open, and a thin, dark man with glasses—he looked like a black Gandhi—popped out. His face held no joy. Another man, this one with a bandaged eye, came around the corner with Vana. Together they went over to the tank. She spoke to Juhavee in French. John couldn’t hear what she said, but her gestures were sharp and exaggerated. Juhavee’s eyes bounced from her to him. He questioned her quietly. He appeared to be a calm man, John thought.

At last Juhavee said something to the bandaged man, who waved another group of men over. John saw that they had Razal. They unbound him.

The turret pivoted away from Raimey and Juhavee stepped out of the hatch. His stern expression was replaced with one of relief. “Thank God you’re here. We have to save the children.”

Raimey and Razal were invited into the shade. Juhavee sat on the front of the tank with his legs dangling, like a child on a swing.

“Where are the kids?” Razal asked, looking around.

“They’re with the others, being fed. We’ve been doing our best to find them and bring them here. The nomads you saw, that was their cover. The Mort Vivant have taken thousands from around this region in just months.”

“The Mort Vivant?” Raimey said.

“The walking dead,” Juhavee translated. “They’re mercenaries. Bionics. Led by a guy named Packard.” Juhavee shook his head. “They control the north end of the city, Matadi Bridge, and all of Boma. They’re sophisticated.” Juhavee hesitated for a moment. “And they have giants.”

“I know Stafford. We fought together in Israel,” Raimey said.

Juhavee sighed. “I thought I knew him. But there are others, too. They take the bodies of the ones they kill and reuse them.”

A soldier came up and handed Juhavee a bottle of water. He took a sip and poured the rest of it on his head. He said something in another language and the man ran off.

“Are you a general?” Raimey asked.

Juhavee laughed. “No. Not at all. I’m a linguist. I was appointed by the Coalition in 2063 to manage the ports and mines. Back then, the mines meant jobs, and people came from all over the region. It became a job where I managed population control.”

He pointed northeast. The tall walls guarding the power plant blocked the view from here, but Raimey had already seen it on the way in: nearly half the city was rubble.

“The mines were producing and there was money here, so the warlords came. We could fend them off—we have tanks, good weapons, and training—but the mines were affected. Caravans got ambushed. People died. Precious metals were taken. And so the Coalition reorganized and brought the giants in. They got things under control. “Fine” is a relative term, but I’d say things were fine. And then, three months ago, the Mort Vivant showed up and everything went to hell.”

He pointed to a nearby building. On the top was a satellite dish. “We’ve tried to contact the Coalition military, but it doesn’t work.”

“My comm doesn’t work either,” Razal said. “Blocked?”

Juhavee nodded. “Blocked. Walkie-talkies, short-range stuff, those kind of things still function, but that doesn’t help much.” He paused. “And the soldiers that are here, they’re a part of it.”

“Of what?” Raimey asked.

Juhavee shook his head, exhausted. “I have no idea. But they want the kids.”

= = =

A mirror showed him the progress as the seamstress sewed. Packard hissed. “Careful.” There was no pain, but he was a stickler for symmetry. Ever since he’d left Israel and his skin had begun to deteriorate without regular maintenance, he had hid behind scarfs and balaclavas, ashamed of his mutty appearance. But over time, he’d come to embrace it. By being free of a “look,” he could choose to look like anything. Skin was temporary, and there was plenty around.

He had killed a man today. A soldier had come back from the gallium mine. The soldier had told him about the giant, and Packard knew that this one wasn’t like Stafford or Lepai. He had seen this giant in the bloody rivers of Israel and he knew his name.

He killed the guard to make an example. He would die for his brothers, the others he had fought with and broken down with. But the softies must know their place. And bedding down with the Mort Vivant was no safer than curling up in a bear’s den. It just paid better.

When the woman was done, Packard examined himself in the mirror. Half of his face was white, half of it black. He couldn’t smell—his sensor had broken years ago—but flies buzzed around him, so he was sure the new skin was fresh. The seam ran down his forehead—the nose work was passable—through his lips, and down his chin. She had weaved the thread around his head and tightened it to his neck. He moved his jaw, and the stitching made a tight sound.

“Do-re-mi!” he sang. Without cheeks he had sounded like a slurrying half-wit. But now he sort of sounded like himself. The woman waited, nervously. He put the mirror down.

“This is good. You did good. You can go.”

She left through a curtain without a word, and almost immediately a Minor without an arm walked in. He sniffed the air. His sensor worked.

“Geez, Jane, you should at least tan the leather,” Salt grumbled.

Packard and Salt had abandoned their country together—they were brothers without blood. Salt was the Mort Vivant’s mechanic, and the irony wasn’t lost on anyone: he was an early Level 2, and no parts were that backward compatible. He was in the worst shape of all of them.

Jane smacked his new lips. “The only thing on you that works is your nose.”

“Can you tear it out? You’d be doing me favor. The boat’s ready.”

“How many more do we need?”

“Three.”

Packard stood up. He was tall, about six-four. He wore green fatigues wrapped in a scarf made of various swatches of fabric. The scarf was sentimental to him: it was his necklace of ears. Adversaries, diplomats, mobsters, warlords, politicians, presidents, prime ministers, generals, whistleblowers . . . What had started off as a habit—cutting a piece of clothing off of every paid kill—had turned into a quilt. By now his head was nearly buried in it. “Why is it so hard?”

“They need to fit a profile.”

“I wasn’t really asking.”

The two men walked out of Packard’s quarters onto the metal grates of the factory. Before the Coalition, Boma had been a port town, but once the Coalition arrived, they had turned it into one giant factory with ports on the side.

“Should we try and retrieve the kids?” Salt asked. They made their way down a maze of steps. This factory manufactured circuit boards.

“They’ll come to us—they got nowhere else to go. Is the town ready?”

“I checked everything. It’s good.”

“The giants are out anyway. Maybe they’ll get him, or at least soften him up. We’re fine.”

Packard had never seen himself as a company man. He preferred the open sky and the chance for engagement over the next hill. But he now viewed himself as a CEO. He liked this work—it was interesting. And he liked working for his benefactor, who paid well and on time, and promised the sort of future in which Packard would excel. And if they succeeded, what Packard had been offered was above all these things.

He glanced over at his one-armed friend as they descended the steps. Their boss had promised new bodies, whatever their brains could handle. Maybe it was time to settle down . . .

They made it to the ground floor and out the door. There were dozens of Mort Vivant, thousands of workers and softy soldiers (if you could call anyone with an AK that, he thought). They all moved out of the way as Packard approached.

Packard wasn’t particularly mean. He hadn’t much of a temper. Some of these men had fled warlords who had killed indiscriminately. Many of the women had been forced into camps where rape was a matter of course. Packard did none of these things. His camp was safe. Unless you messed with his timeline. It was the only thing he cared about, because if he failed to meet his deadline, he would get nothing. Yesterday he’d still had a week to complete his mission, and he was ahead of schedule. Today, he got lousy news: his timeline had been cut to forty-eight hours, and now he was behind.

They walked by a field of tents behind a chain-link fence. A thousand children, ages eight to twelve, milled about. A few women took care of them.

“Are most of the warlords here?” Packard asked.

“About half.”

“We can’t wait. We’ll do the auction tomorrow.” Only three percent of the kids met the profile. They had to do something with the others, and Packard wasn’t a child-killer.

They got on the powerboat. Out at sea was a massive oil rig that no longer pumped oil. A dish half the size of a football field rose out of its top. Steam boiled from the sea below it. The Multiplier was functional, but it needed three more fuses. The boat crashed over the waves toward it. They had to check the fiber run.

Packard reconsidered. “I’m being stupid. We need those kids,” he yelled over the waves. He felt a stitch pop on his face.

“Tonight?”

“Once we’re back.”

= = =

The doctors told Alan Kove that after he became a Tank Major, the phantom limb pain that had plagued him since the culling would go away. That he would no longer feel the burning sensation of fingers and toes long gone, or the itch down the leg that had been incinerated in a biohazard bag a month before. They said the implant that connected his mind to his new body would eliminate these sensations, and that his brain and battle chassis would become as synchronous as the one that was flesh and blood. They were wrong. The ghosts of his arms and legs still haunted him. They itched and tingled. They burned and moved. Combined with the tactile movements of his giant new limbs, he felt like an octopus.

“You look like shit,” Chao said. Glass said nothing. They were in a truck on the way to MindCorp Headquarters.

“I’m itchy. It’s driving me nuts.”

“Is your phantom pussy itchy, too?”

Five other Minors were with them to guard the perimeter as they entered MindCorp. They were there to arrest Cynthia for the murder of President Austin and India’s President Nehru. Chao couldn’t contain his excitement. His bouncing knee shook the truck. They were two miles out.

= = =

A torrent of news reports overwhelmed cyberspace. The President of the United States had died from a “reverse data push” during a meeting with other Coalition leaders, and the transmission had originated at MindCorp Headquarters. In India, President Nehru had also been found dead from the same cause.

“The government has taken immediate action. Secretary of State Dr. Evan Lindo, with the Vice-President’s approval, has ordered the arrest of Cynthia Revo, who the government believes was instrumental in the murder of both presidents after an argument during a Coalition meeting.”

The phrase “reverse data push” was echoed by pundits across the globe. Video cropped up of a monkey wearing a Mindlink and dying at the push of a button. Professional Sleepers explained to the common man, via digital feeds, that yes, the Mindlink was not one-hundred-percent safe.

Another news feed. “A source that chooses to remain anonymous has stated that Cynthia Revo got into a heated debate with President Nehru during a meeting between MindCorp and Coalition leaders.”

Video of the meeting showed Cynthia, angry and defiant, screaming “YOU CAN’T HAVE IT.”

Another news feed. And another. Spanish. Dutch. Portuguese. Russian. Around the globe the bloggers and chat rooms speculated, and the news outlets interviewed experts with no first-hand knowledge.

A live news feed showed a military truck on its way to MindCorp.

Suddenly Cynthia was eye to eye with Sabot. He had pulled off her Mindlink.

Clink. Clink. He unhooked her limbs from the Impetus machine. The shock of the real world made her vomit.

“What are you doing?” she asked through the strings.

“They’re almost here. We’re leaving now.”

Cynthia had been rebuilding the MIME that Evan had destroyed, in an attempt to recover the data. So far she had reconstructed a visual of Evan with eyes in his mouth, and a few snippets of dialogue from the President, but it was incomplete. “Hive brain.” “Washington, D.C.” “Multipliers.” Horrifying terms surrounded by silence.

Past Sabot, Cynthia saw packed bags. The world spun. It normally took days to withdraw from cyberspace.

“We need to fight this,” she said.

“You can’t fight it from jail.”

“Then one more second on the Mindlink.” He put it back on her while he continued to release her from the Impetus machine. Outside the room, he heard the Core shut down.

“Okay,” she said.

He didn’t bother changing her. He slung the bags over his shoulders, momentarily revealing two assault rifles hanging underneath his jacket, and carried her out of the room. “The car’s waiting.”

He ran through the rows of Sleepers and confused employees to a private elevator that only she and he could use.

The car was parked in a subterranean tunnel. Mosley held the door open. “I came as fast as I could,” he said. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair was a mess. His confusion was offset with concern. He had heard the news.

Sabot put Cynthia in the car. “You did good. Let’s go.”

They headed north. One mile out, the tunnel dumped onto a road that was still invisible from the sky—a rail track was overhead. A few miles more and they were on an empty road. Sabot sat with Cynthia in back of the low stretched car, rubbing her back as she shook from withdrawal. Without her wig to cover them, the metal diodes implanted in her skull flickered in the passing lights. She looked as if she had just escaped some medieval experiment.

“Is she okay?” Mosley asked.

“She’ll be fine. Is everything off?”

“Yeah,” Mosley replied casually. Sabot reached through the partition and squeezed Mosley’s shoulder.

“I’m serious! Your cell phone’s off? GPS is off? Everything’s off?”

“Yeah! I listened.”

Sabot stared at Mosley in the rearview mirror.

“This is serious, Mosley.”

Mosley’s eyes darted to the mirror. “I know.”

Sabot leaned back.

“Where are we going?” Cynthia asked.

“Lake Geneva. A runway has been prepared at a nearby airstrip if needed.”

“Aren’t we better off in the city?”

“No. Someone will see one of us eventually, and the military will mind-hunt for sightings.”

“That’s going to be tough for them.” She managed a smile. “I shut down cyberspace.”

Sabot bellowed with laughter. “You are a bad girl.”

The city melted into overgrown lawns and abandoned houses. “Earl was right,” Cynthia said. “We should contact him, make sure he’s okay.”

“I tried. No one’s seen him since he met with us.”

An uncomfortable silence followed. The abandoned suburbs were left behind, replaced by overgrown forests and broken roads. An hour later, Sabot guided Mosley to the east side of the lake. Ten years before, using a dummy corp, Sabot had purchased the property along the bay for next to nothing. No cars and no fuel made living on a lake in Wisconsin a luxury that no one could afford.

They got to the house. It was a large, white two-story with a three-car garage. Sabot and Cynthia got out and Sabot opened the garage door. Mosley opened the window.

“I’m staying?”

“What do you think? Put the car in the garage.”

“I got a girlfriend, man!” Mosley said.

“Well, she’s going to wonder where the fuck you are. Pull it in.” Mosley did, and they went inside.

= = =

Chao whistled. “Amazing what a few trillion bucks can get ya.” He and Glass were in Cynthia’s loft, one hundred and fifty stories up. They had searched each floor for employees, sending them all down below. More Minors had arrived, and Kove had gone downstairs to orchestrate the employee interviews. Evan hadn’t predicted the shutdown of cyberspace. He was now connected by cell through Chao, but no data would pass, only voice.

“Stating the obvious: she isn’t up here. What do you want us to do, Evan?” Chao asked.

“Continue as planned.” Evan’s voice came from a speaker in Chao. “This works in our favor. It gives us time, and it shows the world why MindCorp is dangerous.”

“Continue everything?”

“Yes. Report back if the interviews bear fruit.” Evan was gone.

Chao marveled at the view. “Unbelievable,” he said. While the rest of the city was choked with buildings, a half-mile of green campus circled MindCorp. The Colossal Core beneath the building was the data hub of the city, and hundreds of trunks of fiber flowed out from it.

He turned to Glass. “Have you ever seen such a view?”

“No.”

Suddenly, without warning, Chao’s hand was wrapped tightly around Glass’s neck. Glass tried to break free, but it was impossible.

Chao laughed. “I was easier to pick on when I was just a head, huh? This is going to be fun for me. And getting your little bitch is going to be fun, too.”

Before Glass could reply, Chao threw him through the window, and Glass plummeted toward the ground from one hundred and fifty stories up.

= = =

Raimey awoke to the bark of orders and the sounds of snorting diesel engines and un-oiled tank treads. Razal was nearby and had woken, too. It was still night. Juhavee ran over to them. “A scout radioed in. They’re coming!”

Raimey stood. “How long?”

“Ten minutes, maybe less.”

“Have they done this before?” Razal asked.

“No.”

“How many?”

“An army.”

“We should head south and flank them,” Raimey said. Razal nodded. A minute later, Juhavee ordered the gate opened, and Raimey sprinted across the bridge and into the city with Razal on his shoulder. Already they could hear the approaching horde.

“Comm check,” Razal said.

“I got you.”

They circled out and away. This section of the city was shelled and abandoned. Raimey saw movement between the broken buildings and realized it was just wild dogs.

The approaching army was doing nothing to hide their intent. They marched right down the main road. They had three tanks, some vehicles with machine guns, and about two hundred soldiers to Juhavee’s fifty.

“This’ll do.” Razal jumped into a five-story building that was missing a side, open to the road and the power plant. He found the stairs and climbed to the top. Raimey continued to work his way behind the army. He liked sandwiching the enemy between forces. It created chaos.

“I have a good view,” Razal said.

“Any giants?”

“One. It’s moving awkwardly. It might be broken. It’s near the tanks.”

“That’s not Stafford.”

Raimey heard the whine of a PA system. A voice projected. “Juhavee! If you give us the children, Packard promises amnesty to you and the children he doesn’t need. What he is doing is for the good of the world!”

Raimey stood by, scanning the shadowy structures around him, waiting for what would happen next. A tiny silhouette appeared on top of the wall by the power plant. It was Juhavee. He put a bullhorn to his mouth. “Fuck you.”

Raimey laughed. He liked this man. His wife rested on his shoulder now, and he could hear her skin wither as it always did before war. He was afraid to look in her direction. He was afraid that one day she would let him see her, and he wouldn’t recognize the wraith that rode with him into battle.

The army began their assault. Mortars were unpacked and gunfire filled the air. The tanks boomed, and the opposing Tank Major ran toward the bridge to hydraulshock the wall. Raimey charged into the fray, moving directly toward the tanks, knocking through buildings as he went. The human soldiers that saw him approach dropped their weapons and ran for their lives.

WHA-WHAM! Raimey’s hydraulshock drowned the battlefield in thunder. Nearby soldiers dropped to the ground, screaming in pain. When his fist connected with the first tank, the hull was turned inside out and the twisted remains slammed into the tank next to it, destroying both. He didn’t waste another hydraulshock. He ran to the rear of the third tank and punched through the back, crushing its engine, and then he ripped the barrel from the turret.

The enemy Tank Major had now turned back to fight. Raimey charged it, and at the last second stepped aside.

BA-BAM!

The Tank Major hydraulshocked, rocketing right past Raimey. As soon as he’d passed, Raimey grabbed the Major from behind and slammed him to the ground. He hammered his fists down into the Major’s helmet—one, two, three—and it got mixed into the mud.

Already, the soldiers behind the wall were screaming victory. The army that had arrived in formation was gone. They were sprinting away, staring back at the giant. Raimey saw the muzzle flash of Razal’s rifle a few hundred yards away as he picked off any soldiers that stood their ground.

“Razal, I think it’s over.”

“No shit, dude. You—”

WHA-WHAM! Razal’s building exploded into bricks and toppled to the ground. The earth rumbled from the impact.

“Razal?”

Nothing.

“Razal!”

Still nothing.

A giant climbed on top of the settling rocks. It was Stafford. He kicked aside some of the rubble and fished his arm into the pile. After a moment, he pulled out a lifeless Razal and held him up. His amplified voice carried. “I knew it was you by your hydraulshock, John. It always did have a bit more oomph. We need the children, and we can’t go without them.”

“Why?”

“For a war. One we need to win.”

“Who’s we?”

“The Coalition.”

Behind him, Raimey heard the grumble of tanks. Juhavee was mobilizing what offense he had. Raimey still protected the bridge; the tanks would get across.

“I haven’t heard a thing,” Raimey said. “And from what I’ve seen, this isn’t Coalition.”

“How many times have you been on missions and the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing?” Stafford asked.

Raimey didn’t have to answer. Too many. “I can’t communicate with General Boen.”

“Evan’s in charge now. Come on. We’re both going to regret this.”

Tiffany hunched over, almost coming into view. Raimey smelled her sickness and could almost see her skeletal face. “He lies,” she hissed.

Raimey remembered the men raping Vana. The kids and their cries and the rows of bloodstains drying out in the dirt. “I don’t believe you. No.”

“John—”

Raimey’s waist chains spun up and his body shook and he knew why Stafford had tried to reason with him: because to Stafford, Raimey was a death sentence. “NO!”

Stafford tossed Razal forward like a rag. “Your funeral.” He retreated into the dark. Juhavee’s tanks stopped when they reached Raimey, and Juhavee popped open his hatch.

“Should we pursue him?”

Raimey could see Razal’s sprawled shape on the rubble. He didn’t move. He started chewing his lip.

“Raimey?”

Raimey stared at the body. “No. He’d want that.”

Gunfire erupted behind them, accompanied by screams. It came from the power station.

“They’re inside!” Juhavee yelled.

Raimey sprinted toward the bridge. Only ten yards before he reached it, the entire bridge exploded, collapsing into the raging current. Raimey fell to the ground to stop himself from tumbling in. Across the water, Raimey saw a man climb up from the bank.

He understood: Stafford had stalled him. The Mort Vivant had sent a weak force ahead as the canary to weed out any surprises. And now the surprise was on Raimey: the Mort Vivant were inside the power station, routing the resistance, and there was nothing he or Juhavee could do about it.

“No, no, no,” Juhavee cried. An explosion on one side of the plant grew into a fire. An alarm blared. Men came streaming out and were cut down with bullets. Raimey and Juhavee stood on the opposite bank, unable to do anything but watch as the screams subsided and the gunfire ceased and the plant was consumed by fire. And then the Mort Vivant appeared, escorting hundreds of children—it looked like a field trip—and ushered them toward boats somewhere off in the dark.

No, Packard hadn’t been worried about John, because Packard was smarter than John. And when you both had guns, it was the brains that always won.

Chapter 6

“Nikko, wake up.”

Charles Rivas—Nikko’s older brother—shook him awake.

“I’m up!” Nikko said as he stretched. He didn’t remember falling asleep. The Mindlink rested awkwardly on his head. Suddenly he remembered what he had been doing: he and his friends were on a dungeon quest. They had been in the middle of a four-hour battle with Garrig, one of the eight dragons in the online world Keeper of Souls. They had been playing for nearly two days straight.

“Shit!” Nikko said. Had he fallen asleep? Had his Mindlink malfunctioned? He pushed the Mindlink down on his head and tried to get back online.

“It’s off,” Charles said.

“Did you pay the bill?”

Charles watched while his brother tried to will the Mindlink to turn back on. Finally he slapped Nikko’s fat belly—not hard, but enough to get his attention. “Get up, man! I need to go. Ti abuela esta despierta.”

Nikko finally took note of his surroundings. Charles was dressed in fatigues. He was a Private First Class and worked in communications at the military base north of the city.

Charles left the room while Nikko got his bearings. It was tough waking up at night. Like most people who spent their time online, Nikko was an overweight hermit. He rarely went outside. How could the outside compete? Online he was Raul the Sinister, a level 40 Necromancer. He could cast spells, jump forty feet in the air. He had found a code to validate his age as over twenty-one, so he could even drink mead and feel its effects. His friends were scattered around the globe. He barely knew his neighbors.

Charles head popped into the doorway. “GET UP!”

Nikko was too obese to sit up—his stomach pressed between his chest and legs—so he rolled off the reclined chair and planted his feet like a gymnast off the mount. He went into the living room of their small two-bedroom apartment, where his grandma sat on the couch.

“Hola Nikko, coma estas?”

“Hey, Grandma.” Nikko didn’t know much Spanish, which was too bad because his grandma didn’t know much English. Online, stuff like that was never an issue; there was translation software embedded in nearly every program.

Charles came out of his bedroom with his Army-issued duffel bag.

“I thought you had time off,” Nikko said. He liked Charles. They were polar opposites—Charles was tall and fit, Nikko tubby—but Nikko worshipped his older brother. Their parents weren’t around. It was just the two of them and Grandma.

“I’ve been called back to base. They didn’t say for how long,” Charles said.

“But you’ve still got a few days off.”

“Something’s happening. All the military’s being called up.”

Nikko stopped. He tried to figure out why that would be. “What’s up with the Mindlink?” he finally asked.

“MindCorp shut down cyberspace.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Everything’s off, Nikko. The Mindlink doesn’t work.”

Nikko scratched his head. “But I have school tomorrow.”

“Apparently they don’t give a shit. We can’t access our money. We can’t order food. People can’t work. No games, no friends. The only thing that sorta works is the phones.”

“We don’t have a phone.”

Charles sighed. “There’s food in the fridge, at least for a week. I filled up a bunch of jugs with water in case something happens.” Charles turned on a faucet. Water poured out. He turned it off. “The water’s still running. You can drink out of the toilet reservoir if you really need to. We’re far enough out of the city where you should be okay.”

“Charles, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Nikko! Everything is shut down! Take care of Grandma and don’t leave the apartment until I come back.”

Charles left.

Nikko stood in stunned silence. He finally turned to his grandma, who was sniffing at the air and giving him a look of disgust.

“I’ve been online for three days, Grandma,” Nikko apologized.

“Ve a bañarte, por favor.”

Nikko didn’t need a translation. He went into the bathroom and took a shower.

= = =

Dusk had come, and Sabot fished off the dock. Earlier that day, through a crack in the curtains, he had watched as the occasional fisherman rowed or sailed along the lake, trolling lines behind them. Lake Geneva, Wisconsin had been very popular before the fuel shortage, and even now a few dozen families still called it home. It made sense: they could purify the water, plant a garden, eat the fish. For some, like these few, the crash of an oil-dependent society had been a blessing, a revelation.

So Sabot had watched these folks in their boats curiously. He heard them yell at each other in excitement when they caught a fish and he’d figured, what the hell? Cynthia and Mosley had to eat. But at six-five, the half black, half Samoan had to be discreet. He stuck out worse than a peckerhead through a zipper.

He’d found an old fishing reel and a couple of lures in the garage. He scanned the lake, didn’t see a soul, and made his way down to the dock. Mosley trailed behind him, bored. Sabot piked some canned meat onto the hook and dropped it in. He bobbed it up and down and the fatty meat created a miniature oil spill. From the shallow depths, streamlined shadows approached the meat. One ballsy little guy took ahold of the processed pork and ran with it. The light line pulled from the reel until Sabot took off the slack and brought it in.

“I got a fish!” He held the tiny crappie up proudly, as if it were a trophy fish. Sabot was a city boy, born and raised. This was his first catch.

“Good for you,” Mosley said, unimpressed. He was sprawled on the deck beside Sabot, smoking a cigarette. “Forty more of those and one of us can eat.” He flicked the cigarette into the water and lit another one.

“Your girlfriend is going to be there when you get back,” Sabot said. He gently unhooked the fish and looked at it. Its mouth pursed open and closed, gasping for water. Sabot placed it back in the water and it flittered away.

“You don’t know this bitch, man,” Mosley said.

“Don’t call them bitches,” Sabot said.

“You know what I’m saying,” Mosley said. “She’s probably already out in a club or something.”

“Then she isn’t worth your time.” Sabot dropped the line back in and baited more fish to come curiously to his little barbed trap.

“What do you know?” Mosley said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what makes Cynthia worth your time? From what I see, it isn’t recipriated.”

“Reciprocated.”

Mosley made a face and waved off the correction. “All I see is you there for her. Fetching her stuff, setting up her meetings, running her errands. I’ve never seen her be there for you.” He pointed to the bay windows facing the dock. “She isn’t here right now.”

Sabot looked to the window. Cynthia was inside, looking out. The shadows of the encroaching night were laced across her pale skin, making her look like a phantom. Her eyes were blank, and Sabot knew if he waved to her, she wouldn’t wave back. She was in her mind, solving what lay ahead, and as disconnected from the world as an old woman with dementia. Sabot handed Mosley the pole. “Catch some fish.” He headed up the steps to the house.

Cynthia didn’t turn toward him when he came through the door. She just continued to stare out the window. He wrapped his arms around her and watched the lake, the gulls, the night fast approaching. Her body gave into him.

“How are you feeling?” Sabot asked in her ear.

“Better,” she said. She had quit shaking from the abrupt withdrawal from cyberspace. “You didn’t bring the wig?” She could see the metal diodes in the window’s reflection. Her real hair clumped around them.

“No, sorry.”

“I’m just not used to seeing myself like this.”

“What should we do next?” Sabot asked.

“They can’t shut us down,” Cynthia said. “That’s the key. We’re global, and they don’t know where all the data nodes are. Over time they’ll figure it out—they have Sleepers—but it’ll be too late. I need to speak to the founders. Some will be in, some will be out. But they need to know what’s at stake.”

“You can’t go back to the city. I have a plane being prepped so we can leave the country.”

Cynthia shook her head. “We can’t go. Not yet. Evan’s marooned. We still control the infrastructure. If we don’t act now, he’ll figure out how to get the network back online, and then we’ll be on his terms. Now’s our chance.”

“This is the start of every shitty horror movie, you know. But I can go,” Sabot said. “Only the three of us know this place.”

Cynthia’s displeasure was painted on her face.

“Mosley will be here,” Sabot reassured her, but even to his own ears it was a weak endorsement.

Through the smeared windowpanes, they watched as Mosley chased a flopping fish around the dock.

“How reassuring,” Cynthia replied.

“He’s family.”

“Sabot, I know you meant well by hiring him, but he’s a knucklehead. It’s probably the dumbest thing you’ve done since I’ve known you.”

Sabot didn’t argue the point. “I brought a Mindlink SC.”

The Mindlink SC was self-contained—a derivative of the implant used for Tank Majors. At that, Cynthia smiled. “See? That’s the Sabot I know. You’re back to even.” She hugged him.

“Are you going to tell the world?”

“No. There’s nothing that can replace what exists, and if they knew what was happening, they would be too scared to go online. Trust is essential for prosperity, and they would never be able to trust our only mechanism for progress again. We’re well beyond the carrying capacity of our species to regress now. Civilization would crumble. Millions, maybe billions, would die of famine and war. Win or lose, the public can never know.”

Sabot thought about it. She was right. Without cyberspace, how would the world march on? There was no stopgap. There was no backtrack. Cyberspace was the only soil to bear fruit. The world would perish without it.

“I’ll get the Mindlink. You do your thing, and then I’ll head into the city.” He paused. “You know I love you, right?”

“Why do you always say that?”

“Can it ever be said enough?”

Cynthia kissed him. “No.”

They looked out to the quiet lake. “It would have been nice living out here,” Sabot said.

“I wish I had it in me,” Cynthia replied. Her eyes lost focus. The woman was replaced by the brilliant mind. “I’m afraid to die, Sabot. I don’t think there is anything after. I think we’re just luck. You and I recognizing each other as separate entities and conversing and relating . . . it’s a gift no two rocks will ever share, and it’s remarkable, but it’s also scares me to death. That’s why we’ll never be in a quiet home, side by side, rocking in chairs, talking about the weather. Mortality drives me. I fear death more than I appreciate life. It’s no way to live, and it’s the only way I ever have.”

“Well, maybe after this.”

“Maybe.” But they both knew the truth. The fire that drove her needed no bellows, it could never be extinguished, and without an outlet to disperse it, it would burn away her very essence, leaving only a shell, a woman of regret, who would wonder what she could have been to the bitter end. For her, there was no solace in peace or tranquility. Progress was her sanctuary, and without it, she would rather die.

Sabot retrieved the self-contained Mindlink so Cynthia could compose her message to the founders, and then he went to the garage. He had equipped it with a solar-powered generator that trickle-charged the equipment in long-term storage.

He pulled the cover off an electric motorcycle. It was sleek, with the drag coefficient of a raindrop. Sabot inspected the belt drive that ran from the electric engine to the rear wheel. The frame was a light metal alloy—plastic was too expensive. The tires had been the same price as the bike.

Back in the day, when you could go to a pump and just pour out the black gold, he’d had a bike. He was a big guy even before he became a Tank Minor, and he’d had one of the last runs of Harley Davidsons. A big, air-cooled beast that howled when he fed it O2 and fuel with his right hand.

The bike in front of him weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, could reach one hundred and sixty miles per hour in eight seconds, and had a range of three hundred miles. Airfoils were built into it to gain weight the faster it went for stability, and its electric engine was the size of a grapefruit. It was an engineering marvel only a handful of people around the world could afford. But to Sabot, it was a poor replacement for the stuttering, barking hog he’d had thirty years ago. The Harley had a soul. This was just transport.

He pulled Mosley from the dock and took him to the garage. Sabot had a large duffel bag over his shoulder. It contained weapons. He kept the memory card that Cynthia gave him in a zippered jacket pocket.

“You know where the guns are?” Sabot asked Mosley.

Mosley licked his lips with excitement. “Yeah. I saw them.” He rubbed his hands together.

“Don’t touch them,” Sabot said.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“God forbid something happens, you surrender, got it? Don’t be hero—they will fuck you up. And they will kill or imprison Cynthia.”

“I could hold them off,” Mosley said with ghetto bravado.

With one arm, Sabot grabbed Mosley by his shirt and picked him up before he could put the period on his sentence.

“They’re like me, Mosley. Or worse. They can break you like a twig. There’s nothing a normal human can do against them. Got it?”

He put Mosley back down. Mosley rubbed his shoulders. Sabot tried to help, and Mosley brushed his hands away.

“I’ve put a lot on the line for you,” Sabot said. “You’re a good kid and I’m asking too much. I know it’s not fair. But you have to absolutely understand that what’s going on is life and death. Don’t go outside during the day. Don’t walk off the premises. Only have lights on away from the windows. Got it?”

Mosley stared at the ground. “I’m trying to do good.”

Sabot put a hand on Mosley’s shoulder. “Look at me.” Mosley did. “I know you are. I’m trusting you with the woman I love. I’m going to be gone twenty-four hours, max. You cool?”

“Yeah, of course, Sabot.”

“Sorry about the shoulder.”

“Nah, I get it. You’re a strong motherfucker,” Mosley said.

“I got your back, Mosley. You’re my sister’s son.”

“I got your back, too.”

Sabot swung a leg over the electric super-scooter and whirred off toward Chicago.

= = =

Vanessa didn’t recognize the ghoul in front of her when she opened the door. And when she did, she screamed in shock. “Mike!”

He didn’t come in. “We need to go.” He was missing his left arm. A shiny metal bulb that stuck out of his shoulder was framed with pulsing string. Most of the sheathing on his body was shredded. His left ear was gone, a deep cut ran the length of his face, and one of his eyes was cracked. A clear oil dripped out of him.

“What happened?”

“Now’s not the time. You’re in danger.”

“We need to get you to the Derik Building, they—”

“VANESSA!”

She had never heard Mike yell. She didn’t know it was even possible.

“Now,” he said. She didn’t say another word. She didn’t even lock her door.

= = =

Dr. Joseph Ewing hobbled out of his chair when he heard the knock. He put on his glasses and checked the time: 8:22 p.m. He wasn’t expecting any visitors. The knock increased in intensity until the hinges on the door rattled. He moved toward it slowly, as if he were approaching a cornered dog. He cleared his throat. “I have a gun.” He didn’t.

“Please help us,” a young woman said. She sounded distressed. Dr. Ewing debated, then unlocked the three deadbolts. He opened the door to the first bionic he’d ever designed, who was leaning against a woman he vaguely remembered.

“Mike, what are you doing here?” Dr. Ewing registered the wounds and helped Glass to the couch. “What happened?”

“I was thrown out of a skyscraper,” Glass said. His three thousand confirmed jumps had paid off when Chao chucked him clear of MindCorp HQ. As the ground rushed toward him, Glass had angled his body back toward the building, and five stories from the ground he’d slammed into it, smashing through a window. His arm caught, and he almost made it, but it sheared off from the stress and he tumbled to the ground.

Glass started to shake. Dr. Ewing went into the bathroom and came back with some towels. He handed one to Vanessa. “Press it against the wounds,” he said. Vanessa did, and the doctor vanished into another room, rifling around for supplies. He came back a minute later with duct tape, a gallon of water, and a canister of salt. He swapped out Vanessa’s oil-soaked towel for another one.

“The spasms are going away,” Vanessa said.

Dr. Ewing nodded. “He’s having an impedance seizure. Too many breaches in the sheathing, and the oil will mix between the tissues. It increases the bionic’s ability to pass current logarithmically, and it shorts the body. You’re dehydrating him, which helps.”

“I need you to fix me,” Glass said.

“Fix you?” Dr. Ewing looked around. His condo was filled with books. On the coffee table was a bowl of wax fruit. “I don’t have the tools for that. You’re a hundred-million-dollar machine, Mike. Why’d you come here? Am I going to die?”

“I have no quarrel with you.”

“That’s not my question. You know what I’m asking. Did you put my life in peril by coming here? There are doctors and technicians a few miles away that could fix you without duct tape.” Dr. Ewing looked Vanessa up and down.

“I’m Va—”

“I know who you are,” Dr. Ewing said. He had seemed feeble at the outset, but that was now replaced with anger and fear. Glass started to convulse, the ohm load wracking his torso. “Answer the question!”

“Help him!” Vanessa said.

Dr. Ewing turned on her like a viper. “Quiet!” he hissed. Back to Glass. “Is she important to Evan?”

“Yes.”

“Are you taking her to him?”

“No.”

“Is he why you’re this way?”

With great effort, Glass pulled his pistol from its holster. His chest and torso bucked like a bull, but his arm was steady, at least enough. It wavered in the direction of the doctor. “He can’t have her. Fix me.”

“You’ll die if I don’t.”

“You will too.”

Glass and Dr. Ewing stared at each other for what seemed like minutes. “How important is she to him?” he finally asked.

“Very.”

“Why?”

“He’s built a weapon that’s like the King Sleeper, only more powerful. He needs her for it . . . I don’t know. This just happened. He wants to take over the world.”

“God.” Dr. Ewing turned to Vanessa. “Take off your clothes.”

“What? No way!” she said.

“Do it,” Glass replied. He understood.

“Mike, what’s going on?”

“Evan keeps track of his things,” the doctor replied. “You probably have a tracking device implanted in your skin.”

Glass buckled and stretched in palsy as he watched from the couch. His entire body had deteriorated; he could barely lift the gun. His fingers trembled, and Dr. Ewing cast eyes in his direction. He had made no attempt to fix him. Glass knew this was intentional. At the moment, Ewing had the leverage: he could escape, whereas Glass, unrepaired, would continue to degrade until his battery failed.

Dr. Ewing treated Vanessa like a patient. She disrobed, and Dr. Ewing quickly found a bug in her left buttocks. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but a subject doesn’t notice it in the fat,” Dr. Ewing said. “I’m going to excise it.”

He used a numbing agent and expertly cut in. The bug looked like a watch battery. He glanced at it over the glasses perched on his nose. “GPS.”

“Those are out,” Glass said.

“Then luck’s on your side.” He reached into his medical bag and accidentally dropped the bug. “Shit,” he hissed. He rummaged through the bottom, then pulled it out and crushed it. To Vanessa, he said, “You can put your clothes back on.”

While she dressed, he dumped half of the salt in the water and shook it. He ripped off several strips of duct tape and stuck them on the edge of the table. “This is temporary,” he said. “I’m just keeping your body from completely failing.”

“It’ll have to do.”

An hour later, Dr. Ewing had done what he could do. Glass sat up slowly.

“When I say this is jury-rigged, I mean it. You cannot do anything but walk,” Dr. Ewing said. He stood up, hoping it would cause his two visitors to do the same. “If Evan’s looking for you, your best bet is to get far away from here.”

He turned back. Glass had raised his gun again.

“Mike, come on! Quit pointing that thing at me. I’m not going to do anything.”

“I’m sorry, Doc, but I still need you.”

“For what?”

“If we go to the Derik building, I can be fixed.”

= = =

Juhavee was distraught. Tears ran down his face as he watched the fire consume the power plant. In its wavering light, they could see the bodies of men and women scattered out front. They reminded John of starfish.

“What are we going to do?” Juhavee asked.

Kill them, Tiffany said, but only Raimey could hear.

“Kill them,” Raimey repeated.

Now’s the time. They are unsettled. They think they’ve won.

“We leave now.”

“Shouldn’t we check for survivors?”

Raimey snapped his eyes from the fire down to the little man. “There aren’t any.” He went over to Razal. The spotter was dead, crushed and nearly unrecognizable. Raimey clawed out a grave and buried him. He leaned a beam as a marker. “I’ll come back,” he promised his friend.

He went back to Juhavee. “I’ll clear the area. Leave in thirty minutes and move slowly. If you stack up on me, it’ll only make my job more difficult.”

Raimey set out. The Mort Vivant controlled the north end of the city where the Matadi Bridge spanned the Congo River. The buildings told him of his progress. Intact structures gradually degraded to rubble. The bridge was a control point, and it had seen waves of war long before the Mort Vivant.

Stray dogs, glommed into packs, scurried from building to building, entering the gap-toothed fronts of the homes that remained. Raimey knew what they ate. Dusty clothes glued to the earth by petrified blood were everywhere. Feral eyes watched him from second-story windows, warning, This is ours now. And maybe it was. Only the main road was maintained, the rubble pushed to the side like snow.

Easier on the trucks, Raimey thought.

He saw the suspension bridge. It was longer and wider than he had imagined. Halfway across the Congo River, it disappeared into the mist. The bridge had taken damage: support cabling as thick as his arm hung into the river like guts. Underneath, the river was wide and brown, churning and angry. He couldn’t see the opposite shore.

Before today, Raimey had only fought a Tank Major twice in his service. One was Janis, his friend, who had gone insane and destroyed a U.S. military base. By the time Raimey had found him, he had been mangled, ill, and without hydraulshocks. It was a mercy killing that haunted John to this day. The other was a Chinese version and John had barely survived the encounter. And that one didn’t have the hydraulshock technology.

Stafford, however, was both healthy and battle-ready. And he was around here somewhere, waiting. Raimey used a building as a blind and turned off his stabilizers. The drive chains circling his waist rolled to a stop. He closed his eyes and listened. It was too easy to be a lumbering menace: a God complex came with the territory when a single punch could level a building. And Raimey had fallen prey to hubris just an hour before. Now, he had to think.

Raimey guessed that a direct hydraulshock attack could crack his armor. And even if it didn’t, it might cause him to black out, and then he’d be at their mercy, unable to defend himself. The most common tactic for killing a downed Tank Major was immolation.

His thoughts were noise. He shut them down and refocused. He heard the faint chanting of the morning prayer from the mosque in the south. He heard the river. The bridge twanged. From the bunkhouse, someone sneezed, and then another person murmured, maybe a “Bless you.” And in the distance he heard the rhythmic, crumbling sound of metal against rock. As it got closer, the electric whine of motors. A Tank Major was approaching.

The sound stopped, and from the direction of the bunkhouses there was banter. “Anything?” It was Stafford. John gritted his teeth at the voice. A murmur from the bunkhouse. Then Stafford again: “Stay alert. He’s coming.”

More heavy footsteps. Another Tank Major.

“What’s your deal? Are you staying?”

A heavy Russian accent. “Packard is sending some of us north. There are more of these. You?”

“Heading back. The U.S. is gonna be a shit show. I can’t wait. I hate this fucking place. It’s hot, hilly, it stinks,” there was the sound of metal slapping metal, “and it’s full of flies.”

The faint chants from the mosque were replaced with the rumble of engines. Juhavee’s tanks were approaching the bridge from the south. Raimey shook his head—how long had it been?

“Right on time,” Stafford said. Raimey heard Stafford and the Russian powering up and the men in the bunkhouses barking orders, getting ready.

Raimey turned on his stabilizers and stepped out of the shadows. Stafford had disappeared, but the other Tank Major was running away to flank the caravan. Raimey charged after him. As he came to the bridge, he veered toward the bunkhouses and reared back.

WHA-WHAM!

The hydraulshock evaporated the first bunkhouse into shotgun pellets. The second bunkhouse was riddled with flying steel and concrete, and crashed to the ground.

BA-BAM! echoed back from down the road, and a ball of fire erupted into the sky. A hydraulshock.

BOOM.

BOOM.

Tank shells. Raimey accelerated toward the caravan.

BOOM.

BOOM.

CHA-CHA-CHA.

Fifty-caliber machine guns.

BA-BAM!

A tank flipped three times, end over end, cutting through a building, bringing it down. Dust filled the air. Raimey caught a glimpse of the Russian Tank Major running down into the caravan before the dust storm encompassed everything.

Visibility was cut to ten feet. Raimey ran toward the sounds of the turbine tanks. He came across one that had been routed. Bloody bodies hung out of it at odd angles. Farther on, he heard tearing metal and a muffled scream. As he made his way toward the sound, he saw the wide silhouette of the Russian Tank Major. It was reaching into a tank hatch like it was a cookie jar.

The Tank Major turned and tried to get out of the way as Raimey charged. It didn’t have hydraulshocks, and its chest armor had been repaired. It looked like an improvised explosive device had killed its first occupant.

Raimey reared back. WHA-WHAM!

The Tank Major’s chest vanished on impact and its massive shoulders clapped together before it rag dolled off into the brown mist.

BOOM.

BOOM.

Raimey kept going. He came across trampled men. Whole legs attached to a smeared painting of a man pressed into the dirt. A hundred yards passed and he came across a giant metal crab: Stafford’s right hand. It looked like a tank shell had hit it.

A short distance farther on, Raimey found the tank that probably did the damage. It was Juhavee. The hatch was open and the little man was squinting into the dust, aiming the turret off the road into the broken city.

“He went in there,” Juhavee said. “Where’s the other one?”

“Dead.”

Raimey could hear Stafford. He was moving through the rubble around the tank. Juhavee reversed the tank, and its turret trailed the veteran Tank Major. “Stafford, quit moving, or I’ll have to come get you.”

“I got three hydraulshocks and I know the terrain,” Stafford snarled. “Be my guest.”

A rock three feet in diameter crashed into the tank turret, just missing Juhavee. He vanished down the hatch.

“Life’s fragile, I’ve found,” Stafford said. “Even for us.”

Raimey could hear Stafford continue to move. Then the wind shifted and carried the sound of three soft thuds up the river. It saved John’s life.

“Juhavee, go!”

Juhavee was smart enough not to ask. He gunned the M1 Abrams and accelerated down the road.

Raimey sprinted up the pile of loose rubble toward the only location that he knew was safe: Stafford. The gritty old soldier had called in coordinates. At the crest of the hill, the trio of artillery rounds detonated where Raimey and Juhavee had just been standing, moments before. The concussive blast took John and the three-story pile and tossed them together like leaves.

John landed fifty feet away. Hundred-pound chunks of stone slammed down around him. His body groaned from heat stress, and he shook his head to get back his wits. Stafford would be on him any second. Raimey saw double as the other giant ran at him, coming in for the kill. Raimey got on all fours like a lineman and lunged at Stafford.

BA-BAM! Stafford’s hydraulshock skipped off Raimey’s back. In the same instant, Raimey grabbed the Major’s legs. The energy of the hydraulshock spun them like a top, and they split apart.

Raimey didn’t hear the next round of artillery, but suddenly he was in Hell. His battle chassis shuddered from the instant arrival of oven-bake, hurricane winds. He held his breath and dug himself into the rubble, trying to gain any cover he could to block the rain of shells that blasted all around him.

Stafford had fallen into a clearing not far away, and the barrage was raining down on him as well. He searched the sky, confused and betrayed. The world was rippling flame. Raimey pulled a slab of cement over himself, and Stafford looked directly at him.

“I didn’t call—” he began, and then his armor was mangled and he was coated in blue fire. The direct artillery strike blinded John, and he closed his eyes and waited for the chaos to end.

In the starburst of his singed retinas, his wife appeared and extended her hand to him. Even as the world was blasted around him, with her he was just a man. His muscular black arms reached out to her and they both strained to touch. But she was just out of his grasp.

“It isn’t time,” she said. He cried for her to stay, but her solemn visage disappeared back into the white. Alone we come in, and alone we leave. The earth shook around him, and the heat cooked him, and the inferno winds pinned him, and John wondered when his time would come.

Chapter 7

Cynthia wasn’t good company. Mosley stewed around the interior of the large house, checking in on her occasionally like a nurse monitoring a mental patient. She was always in the same chair, looking out the window. Only a couple of times did he hear her get up, the old wood floor creaking under her footsteps like a piano out of tune.

His attempts at conversation were met with clipped responses. Not rude, but uninterested. After the third attempt, he quit trying.

The house was dark and cold. Mosley fell asleep on a couch in the living room, and when he woke up, it was pitch black. His mouth tasted of sleep and he smacked it open and closed to get the saliva going. He checked his phone. It was half past midnight. Sabot had been gone for four hours.

He got up and went to the sunroom near the kitchen. Cynthia was in her same spot.

What’s wrong with her? he wondered. She turned slightly when he walked in.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked.

“I’m good. Thanks,” she replied.

“Are you okay?”

She gave him a polite smile. “I’m fine. I just have a lot on my mind.”

He exhaled in sympathy. “I don’t get it, but I get it. All the stuff you’re going through, I mean.”

He paused.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” she said.

“What’s it like being so smart?”

She regarded him for a moment.

“Sit down.”

Mosley sat in the chair next to her, suddenly uncomfortable.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-one.”

“College?”

“Online, but I didn’t finish. I serve—”

“Ah, yes. I remember. Sabot loves you.”

“I was stupid back then.” He shook his head. He’d served three months for theft.

“You were nineteen.” Her eyes glowed a bit, amused. “Trust me, when you’re thirty you’ll look back and say ‘Man, I was dumb when I was twenty-one,’ and when you’re forty, you’ll say the same about thirty.”

Cynthia pulled out a pack of joints and fired one up. Her ADD had already been staggering because of her genius, and now, combined with her near-constant immersion online with the MIMEs, being restricted to a single line of thinking felt as alien to her as wings on a pig. The weed dulled the empty roar. She dragged deeply, holding the smoke. She offered it to Mosley.

Mosley thought about how serious Sabot had looked before he’d ridden off on the motorcycle. “I shouldn’t.”

“There’s nothing to do now but wait,” Cynthia replied. “I won’t tell.”

Mosley hesitated, but if the most powerful person in the world wasn’t worried, why should he be? He took a hit and passed it back.

“That’s . . . really good,” he stammered.

She took another pull. “One of the perks of being a trillionaire. You get the good stuff.”

“Yeah,” he coughed, still recovering. The world fuzzed around him comfortably. He looked at Cynthia; he’d never noticed that she was pretty. She was small in the chair.

“I get asked that question a lot,” Cynthia said. “Or I used to. I usually give a canned answer. Do you want the truth?”

“Sure.”

She leaned in as if she were sharing a secret. He couldn’t help but do the same.

“It’s a ruse,” she said.

“What?” Mosley didn’t understand.

“My intelligence. That I’m the smartest person in the world. All of it.”

“You are, aren’t you?”

She smiled and sat back. “By what standard? My own? Yes, in the industry I invented, I have a legacy that could give me that title. But like most things, it’s an oversimplification. It’s a myth that people want to believe.”

Mosley stared blankly at her. “Then why does everyone say it?”

“So they can accept their lot in life. My intelligence is spoken about all the time, but never my sacrifice. We worked hundred-hour weeks for years when we were developing the Mindlink. And that was just to see if it worked. We hallucinated from lack of sleep. A few of us—and these are old friends—even lost a bit of their sanity.”

“But people don’t want to hear about that. Because if they hear how hard it was and how much effort it took, well, then they’d have to look at themselves and honestly assess how much work they’ve done to achieve their goals. People are fine with failure, as long as they aren’t accountable. As long as a perceived outside force annuls the opportunity. It’s better to toss the word ‘genius’ out like horseshoes, so they can look in the mirror and say they just didn’t have the right stuff.”

“But . . . you are a genius,” Mosley said.

“Yes,” she said.

“I mean no disrespect, but isn’t that like Sabot saying, ‘Anyone can flip a car if they put their mind to it’?”

Cynthia laughed.

“Maybe. But I still believe most people want a way out. We’re not equals, none of us are. That’s as much a fantasy as the Tooth Fairy. If you look at the wealthy and powerful, intelligence is across the board. Some of them are fat, some of them are thin, some are handsome, and some are dogs. And if you check their backgrounds, they’re as varied as snowflakes. But they all have one thing in common.

“People believe the idea is what’s important. It isn’t. An idea is immaterial; useless on its own. Everyone has ideas: they’re the foundation of thought. A dozen people—hell, a million people—may have the same innovative concept and still nothing may come of it. It’s the execution of the idea that matters. Every time. Intelligence helps, but most people are intelligent enough. The discipline to execute an idea and see it through is what separates the haves from the have-nots.”

She lit another joint and passed it to Mosley. They puffed for a moment. Cynthia exhaled donuts. “Put enough people around you on pedestals, and you’ve built a prison,” she concluded.

A memory made her giggle. Mosley smiled: for the first time, he could see the light that drew Sabot in. “What?” he asked.

She rubbed her nose. “It’s stupid. I had a friend in college—Josh. God, I wonder where he is . . . he was so funny. I go on my long rant, and he could have said the same thing in two words. He used to say, ‘Everybody shits.’”

“Everybody shits,” Mosley repeated. They both giggled. “That’s good.”

“He was funny. It’s true, though. Everyone does.”

“Not you,” Mosley joked.

“I was talking about everyone else.” They looked at each other for a moment, then let loose again. Tears ran down their cheeks.

“This is great weed,” Mosley said, turning the joint in his hand.

“Stick with me, kid.” Cynthia got up.

“Where are you going?”

“To bed. I need some sleep. You’re a good kid, Mosley. You’ll be fine. Don’t let anyone tell you what you have to be. Everyone’s scared, especially the ones that don’t show it.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. Very. But I knew this day would come, even if I’m still shocked that it has. What did I say?”

“It’s not the idea; it’s the execution of the idea that matters.”

She smiled and gave him a quick hug. “That’s right.” Then she disappeared into the shadows.

“And everybody shits,” she called from the dark. He could hear her laughing as she walked up the old stairs.

Mosley went outside to smoke a cigarette. The lake-reflected moon rippled and squirmed over the waves. But the night was calm, cold, pleasant. He walked down the steps to the edge of the dock, and on a whim, he took his shoes off, sat down, and put his feet in the water. He was still high. He’d smoked skank weed that barely worked, and he’d smoked weed that was a catapult, smashing his senses. But Cynthia’s stash made him feel calm, appreciative of his surroundings. He felt now. His eyes caught little things around him: a beetle climbing a dock post, bubbles in the water (what would be down there? crawfish?), subtleties to life that were often overlooked.

He thought of his mom. He’d been raised with love, but poorly. Angela, his mother and Sabot’s sister, had done the best she could with the tools she’d been given. She was stubborn, like her brother, and even when Sabot rose to prominence as Cynthia’s bodyguard and had means, she’d refused his offers of help for years, letting her pride rob her son of opportunities. It wasn’t until Mosley went to jail that she finally acquiesced.

That night when Sabot had first visited him—the night that eventually led to Mosley getting the job at MindCorp—Mosley was only a week out of jail and already getting back into trouble. He was out celebrating his freedom with his friends from the neighborhood. It was three in the morning and the last post-post-post party had dried up. They were amped and drunk.

“I got a place we could go,” his friend Dougie said after taking a drag off a joint. It was winter and the smoke made his mouth look like a muffler. They were outside an old apartment building, pleading with the women and calling the other guys in their posse pussies for heading home. Two of the others, James and Terence, stuck around though, and after they’d roached the joint, they tucked in their jackets and followed Dougie to the L train.

Apart from the north side, the perimeters of the city were all government-subsidized housing or ghettos. This train took them south of the city, the furthest Mosley had ever been. The stop they got out on was tagged with ancient, peeling gang signs, and unlike the lake, the quiet of that area felt dangerous, like an animal about to pounce. Dougie led them on a half-mile trek around buildings that made Mosley’s mom’s apartment look like the Ritz.

As they approached, Mosley could hear the party. A five-story building stood alone, surrounded by empty lots with scraggly grass, torn temporary fencing decades old, and antique garbage. Its top two floors were burnt out. It had no roof. A half dozen people partied on open fifth floor like it was a patio. Their movements were jerky, their voices shrill, their bodies all angles. Junkies. Their laughter stopped as the four boys approached.

“Is this safe?” Mosley asked. His buzz was wearing off.

“Yeah. Watch your step,” Dougie said as he led them through the open doorframe. Mosley and the others stepped over broken bottles and looked at each other with uncertainty. Inside, men and women were huddled against the few walls that still stood, arms out, asleep or getting high.

“DOUG-EEE!” a deep voice called from the dark. Dougie’s face lit up and he walked toward a couch tucked in the back shadows, where a pair of old high tops looked like the dark was wearing them. A man a few years older than them got up and bro-hugged Dougie.

“Who your boys?” he asked.

“James, Terrence, and that’s Mosley,” Dougie said. “Guys, this is my brother, Genesis.”

“Like the Bible?” Mosley asked.

Genesis took a big swig from a bottle.

“One an’ the same.”

They passed bottles of booze and smoked a bowl. Others straggled in, all hunched, itchy, wary. Mosley walked around a bit, but saw no one worth talking to. White and black, the druggies were ashen, as if they had been clotted with baby powder. They were focused on their spoons and needles. A few cackled like mad crows.

He was heading back to the group when he heard “Where’s Mosley?” It was the voice of a man confident that he would see tomorrow.

“Who wants to know?” That was Dougie.

Mosley wandered back toward his friends. A massive man stood over the couch, flickering in and out from a nearby fire. Mosley recognized the silhouette. “Uncle Jeremiah?”

“This big motherfucker’s your uncle?” Genesis asked. The others were quiet.

“You’re coming with me,” Sabot said.

“Unc—” Mosley started.

“Now.” Sabot turned to the others. “Any of you guys need a ride?”

“A car?” one of them asked.

“Yes.” And then to Mosley: “You high?”

“Nah.”

Sabot grabbed him by the chin and looked him in the eyes.

“Are you high?” he asked again. Mosley tried to squirm. Sabot’s grip didn’t hurt, but it was like a vise. He spoke through pinched lips.

“Nah, just drunk.” Sabot released his grip. Three junkies walked over.

“Is there a problem?” a thin one asked while wiping his nose with his bare forearm. Another held a bottle by its neck.

Sabot glared at the man and traced his eyes to the other two. They slunk away.

“Get in the car.” Sabot turned to Dougie’s brother. “I don’t know you. Are you from the neighborhood?”

“Yeah, man. Name’s Genesis.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“You shouldn’t be doing this shit.” Sabot looked around the room, disgusted.

“I’m a grown man.”

A sickly woman in a dirty tank top skittered by. Scabs were visible on her lips. Sabot’s eyes followed her. “Yeah, grown.”

He turned back to Genesis. “I don’t blame you—they came here on their own. But now you’re culpable. Do you know what that means?”

“At fault?”

Sabot nodded. “Mosley isn’t allowed in places like this. Say it out loud.”

“Man, they came here, I ha—”

“Say it out loud.”

Genesis was quiet for a moment. He was embarrassed. The other people in the room were looking at him, but he knew who Sabot was.

“Mosley isn’t allowed in places like this,” Genesis said quietly.

Sabot turned to the room.

“Crackheads. Say it too.”

They all murmured the same. One of them punctuated it with a sneeze. Sabot turned back to Genesis.

“Do you want a ride?”

Genesis looked around at his hollow-eyed company. “Why the hell not?”

It was a quiet ride as Sabot dropped Mosley’s friends off at their homes. He didn’t lecture, but the silence was stern. At one point, Genesis made a joke, and the eyes that shot at him from the rearview mirror shut him up quick.

Mosley rode shotgun and watched his uncle drive. He hadn’t seen him in at least two years. Maybe Christmas, he thought. It seemed long ago. Sabot had looked different then. He was the same size, but less rigid-looking. His mom had told him how he was a bionic now.

Genesis and Dougie were last. Like the others, Sabot told them to be safe. Genesis slid out behind Dougie.

“Hey,” Sabot said. Genesis turned.

“The people you hang with will either make you better or make you worse,” Sabot said. Genesis gave a short nod and thanked him for the car ride.

It was just the two of them now, Mosley and his uncle. Mosley ran his hands along the armrest of the door and looked at the ceiling light.

“You like this car?” Sabot asked. The electric motor pushed Mosley into the seat as they quietly whisked away.

“Yeah.”

“How drunk are you?”

Mosley gave it some thought. “Not too bad.”

The vehicle slowed to a halt. Mosley’s eyes widened and he smiled at his uncle. “Are you serious?”

Sabot opened the door, and when he relieved the seat of his five hundred pounds, the suspension groaned. “There’s no one on the road. Certainly no cops are going to pull us over. Get in.”

They switched sides.

Mosley fondled the steering wheel like he was touching a breast: gentle, unsure, and amazed.

“How’d you find me?” he asked.

Sabot gave him a sarcastic smile. “I’ve sought harder targets than you, my drunken friend. Your mom called. She was worried. She knew where you started, and I just connected the dots.” Sabot paused. “Are you okay?”

Mosley’s jaw quivered, betraying his true emotions. “Prison was tough, Jeremiah. It was real tough. Mom called me a loser . . . and she’s right. I’m a fucking loser. My friends are losers.”

Sabot put an iron hand on his shoulder. “Angela told me what she said, and she feels horrible about it. You guys’ll talk. You’re not a loser, Mosley. You made a mistake and you paid for it. What’s done is done. All that matters is here on out. Your mom asked if I could help.”

“That doesn’t sound like her,” Mosley sniveled, staring at his knees, still embarrassed to cry in front of his uncle.

“I think she may have hit her head,” Sabot deadpanned.

Mosley laughed, wiping his eyes.

“We’ll figure it out.” Sabot nodded at the controls. “Okay, this thing is only a one-speed because of the electric engine . . . ”

= = =

A million stars looked down on Mosley. Across the lake, lanterns from a few of the residents flickered like flames.

He decided to call his mom. They hadn’t spoken in a long time. Sabot had tried to explain why she’d acted the way she did, how after their older brother was murdered, she’d turtled up, unable to feel joy. But to Mosley, that was just a rationalization—it couldn’t cure the years of scorn. She had always kept Mosley at arm’s distance, and judgment had been her constant tone.

But he was almost twenty-two now. For too long he had blamed his mom for his troubles. He thought about what Cynthia said, how people are fine with failing as long as they can blame someone else. All these years he had blamed his mom. It was time to let go.

He called her. They spoke for nearly an hour, and it was a cathartic exchange between a mother and son who had drifted apart. Human nature is queer that way. Pride and fear lead us to ruin and regret, when only love and honesty can see us through. Mosley opened himself up to his mom; he told her how much she had hurt him in the past, and how tonight he forgave her. And instead of daggers, she thanked him. All these years she had been too ashamed to ask for forgiveness, too afraid he would say “no” and cast her away forever.

= = =

Evan waited. He was in a room without doors, the blinds closed, just him and his idiot savants. So far things had not gone according to plan. Glass had miraculously survived a one-hundred-and-fifty-story fall, and the critically damaged, one-armed bionic had gotten to Vanessa first. She was nowhere to be found.

But when Mosley called Angela Sabot, a flag appeared in his vision, like a fighter pilot’s missile lock. Evan immediately set up a trace and then called the Twins.

Fates can change.

= = =

Sabot reached a small node on the outskirts of the city. He pulled into a nearby alley and the bike whirled to a stop. He had a sixty-five percent charge left—not bad. He’d averaged eighty miles per hour into the city.

Nodes were scattered like freckles throughout all the megacities. Their redundancy guaranteed system uptime of one hundred percent. The smaller ones were occasionally used to offload immediate tasks in case of a Colossal Node failure. It was rare, but it happened. But most of the time, the small nodes acted as access points for Sleepers.

This was one of the small ones; it didn’t even have an office. When the metal door slid open, he entered a hallway with an elevator at the far end. As he walked the corridor, he saw the cameras following him. He got into the elevator and hit “B”.

As in the other nodes, the glass side of the elevator opened out on to the Data Core as soon as it dropped below the ground floor. It was visibly apparent that the Core was shut down. There was a bit of activity at the base, a few of the employees readying themselves for Sabot’s arrival. He sometimes forgot that he was considered important.

Like a first lady, he thought, and shook his head. Not very manly.

As he emerged from the elevator, he saw a striking woman approach. In another time, she could have been a model. Her black hair looked like oil and flowed past her shoulders; her skin was a deep olive, and she had piercing slate eyes. Sabot caught a glint of a nose stud. Like the others, she wore a lab coat, but even its formless function couldn’t hide her curves. It was clear that her body was as beautiful as her face.

“Mr. Sabot, what a pleasant surprise to see you here. I’m Dr. Kelley. I run this office.”

“Call me Jeremiah. Or just Sabot.” They shook hands.

“To what do we owe the honor?”

Sabot became aware of their audience. A dozen other techs and programmers hovered nearby, looking like they wanted an autograph. The tale of Sabot singlehandedly killing the Western Curse terrorists that had attacked MindCorp a decade before . . . it had become the stuff of legend.

“Hi,” Sabot said.

“Hi,” they said back in unison.

He waited for them to disband, but they milled around like groupies. Finally, Sabot turned back to Dr. Kelley. “I need to speak with you alone,” he said. “Is there any place with privacy?”

“Yes, of course. Come with me.”

The admirers drifted back to their stations, some still whispering with excitement. Sabot overheard one telling her friend that she thought he’d be taller.

Dr. Kelley led the way, and Sabot did everything in his power to not look at her legs. He succeeded ninety-five percent of the time.

She had an office. It was crammed with servers, blinking and chirping, and their cooling fans hissed at one another. Dr. Kelley offered Sabot a seat.

“I can’t. I’d break it,” he said. She nodded and sat down behind the desk.

“How bad is the outage?” she asked. “We’re not getting anything through the Core.”

“Do you know what’s going on?” Sabot asked.

“Not since the news cut out. Some of the people”—she gestured outside—“especially the Sleepers, say that we’re heading toward civil war. Crazy talk . . .” She bit her thumb. Sabot tried to ignore how sexy it was.

“It’s true, though,” he said.

“A corporation can’t fight the government.”

Sabot pulled the memory card from his jacket. “Dr. Kelley. We are a government. Our GWP is more than half of the continents combined. We created a universe that we not only we control, but that every modern country relies on.”

“But we’re employees, Jeremiah. I’m not going to fight.” She gestured again to the folks outside. “They’re not going to fight.”

“Would you fight if one man was threatening to destroy all government and take over the world?”

“That’s impossible.”

“I wish it was, but I’m afraid it’s very real. It’s what we’re fighting right now.” He held up the card. “This is from Cynthia. She needs it uploaded.”

“Everything’s down.”

He handed her the card. “I’m sure she’s thought of that.”

Dr. Kelley put on a Mindlink and inserted the card into a drive. Her eyes grew distant. A moment later: “My God.”

“What?”

“It’s a MIME profile. She’s reprogramming the local systems.”

Twenty minutes later, outside the office, was the boom-boom chatter of the Data Core firing up. “She’s hopscotching the nodes, reprogramming the MIMEs throughout the network.”

“As her?”

“And you. They’re paired.”

= = =

An hour later, Sabot’s foot was bouncing on the floor. He’d never been very good at sitting still, and right now he was antsy to get back. At last Dr. Kelley took off the Mindlink. “She’s telling all of us to leave,” she said. “It’s done.”

“Thank you.” Sabot grabbed his things.

“What’s going to happen now?” Dr. Kelley asked.

“You’re going to tell everyone to go home.” He paused. “Tell them to stock up on food and water.”

“What if the government doesn’t back down?”

“It’s not the government. It’s one man.”

“How can this happen?”

Sabot turned from the door. “It was inevitable. We’ve become too connected for our own good. Go home. Stay off the streets.”

= = =

Mosley walked back into the house. Cynthia was in the kitchen making a sandwich.

“Couldn’t sleep. Would you like one? They’re sardines.” She wrinkled her face. “Life on the run.”

He sat down at the counter. “Sure. Can’t say I’ve ever had those little fishies.”

“You’re not missing much, but . . . ” She opened the cupboard near her: it was full of canned meats. “It’s what’s for dinner.”

They ate quietly, but the air between them was free of tension. It was a comfortable silence.

“When is Sabot coming back?” Mosley asked. Cynthia checked the clock in her head. It was always, amazingly, within a minute of a real one.

“Two hours or so if everything goes smoothly.” She bit into her sandwich. She wasn’t hungry—in fact, her stomach burned with acid—but the calories would help. Stack up too many annoyances and distractions, even simple things like nourishment, and mistakes get made.

“Did Sabot tell you about my mom?” Mosley asked.

Cynthia nodded. “He’s talked about their relationship, how it went south after Rashad died. I met her once, years ago.”

Mosley smiled. “I wish I could have met Rashad. On his birthday, Mom would always cry and tell me stories about him.”

“Sabot looked up to him, too.”

“My mom didn’t like you very much,” Mosley said.

“I remember. She wasn’t a great actress,” Cynthia said. “Was it because I’m white?”

“Nah. ’Cause your rich. White never helps, but she always thought the rich were fucking over poor people.”

“They do,” Cynthia said. “But the poor sabotage themselves more. We can save that discussion for another night.”

She took his plate and went to the sink. Mosley marveled at how the smartest and wealthiest person in the world had just made him dinner and was now washing his plate. For some reason, he thought of Jesus—about how he’d washed the feet of his disciples. Mosley felt bad for having brought the rich thing up. Why had he?

“She’s cool now. Mom,” Mosley said. Cynthia’s back was turned to him. “We just spoke, and it was good.”

The water stopped.

“What do you mean, you just spoke with her?” Cynthia asked. She was a statue.

“Our talk. I called her. I felt bad about the way things have been going. You never know—”

“On a cell phone?”

“Yes, it was on m—”

“When did the call start?”

“An hour ago? I don’t know.”

Cynthia quickly turned off the lights in the kitchen. “We have to go. Now,” she whispered.

“Wh—” he started in a normal voice, but she cupped a hand over his mouth. Her little hands were strong.

“They track cells,” she whispered. “It’s triangulated. They’ll know where we are.”

Mosley shook his head slowly, like what he was hearing was impossible. But it was clear that, to Cynthia, it was one-hundred-percent certain.

“Did Sabot tell you where the airport is?” she asked. Mosley’s head was spinning with a tornado of thoughts.

“Yes—yeah.”

“Okay. We need to go. You have the keys?”

Mosley nodded.

“Check,” she said. He pulled them out of his pocket. She took them.

The ground vibrated. It could have been their imagination, but then an old windowsill twanged like an out-of-tune guitar string.

“Out the back,” Cynthia hissed. She dropped onto her stomach and Mosley followed her lead; together they scurried along the floor like jailbreakers avoiding a sweeping spotlight. The narc windowsill continued to twang rhythmically, and Mosley felt the floor vibrate against his body.

“What the fuck is out there?” Mosley whispered.

They heard two men murmur.

Cynthia looked at Mosley, and she looked scared. He had never before seen her scared.

“Giants.”

= = =

Chao walked around the front of the large lake estate and Kove circled to the other side.

“Don’t harm Cynthia—not even a bit,” Evan had told them before they left.

“What about Sabot?” Chao had asked. He was primed to use his new form. Taking over MindCorp had been disappointing. It was just a bunch of cowering nerds in lab coats. He wanted to hydraulshock, he wanted to crush something. His cock may have been dead and gone, but when he thought about what he could do, he felt its ghostly presence salute the sky.

“If you can, keep him alive; I can use him as leverage. But Cynthia’s the primary. And be careful: Sabot’s smarter than he looks, and he’s mean.”

Kove and Chao had smirked in response, and rolled their giant, three-hundred-pound fists like prizefighters. They were mean, too.

The two giants met on the opposite side of the house, at the stairway that led to the dock.

The house is dark, Chao projected using their digital telepathy. He leaned in toward the sunroom windows, using one hand like a visor out of habit.

They might have jetted already. Maybe they realized about the cell, Kove said, walking back the other way.

I saw a garage, Chao said. He thumped over to it.

You should have given us night vision, Evan.

I need you to be able to daytime work, and it’s an either/or, he replied. I can modify the helmet later.

Chao and Kove met at the garage. An owl hooted nearby. Chao reached down and popped his finger through the bottom of the door. With a flick of his wrist, the garage door tore from the track. Chao absently threw it behind him.

Car’s still here, Chao said.

Then so are they.

For good measure, Chao dragged the car from the garage and butterflied his arms through it. The bulletproof armor torqued, the glass shattered, the chassis warped into a twisted napkin. Finally, he got to break something.

You go around to the other side, he said. Kove nodded. They were going in.

= = =

The house shook when the garage door was ripped off its track. Cynthia and Mosley flinched at the sound. Moments later they pressed themselves into the floor when they heard the screaming sound of metal being mangled into scrap. Probably the car.

They were at the center of the house, hidden from all windows. What if there are Minors? Cynthia wondered. No, can’t be—they would have come in. So it’s just the giants.

An amplified voice pierced the air. “Cynthia Revo. If you are in the house, come out or we will be forced to come in. We have orders not to harm you.”

“Could we outrun them?” Mosley whispered. Cynthia shook her head. Even the slow ones were faster than any human. And they never tired.

Her eyes widened. The water. Two-plus tons of metal, unless it was in the shape of a hull, made a great anchor. Bionics couldn’t swim.

“How far to the dock?” she asked. Mosley was about to answer when one of the walls of the house crashed in like a car had plowed through it.

“Cynthia. We’re serious,” the voice bellowed.

She shook Mosley by the shoulder. “How far?”

“Uh, fifty steps?” He wasn’t sure. When he had gone down to the water, he hadn’t been thinking that this particular information would be a matter of life and death.

“The basement has a door to the outside,” Cynthia said, thinking out loud. But no, that’s how the giants would get in—they weighed too much for the wood floors. They would let themselves fall through, then use the concrete subfloor as support as they broke a path through the house, searching, with their shoulders and heads above the main level.

Right on cue, the sound of splintering wood sounded from behind them, at the front of the house. One of the giants must have attempted to step inside, his foot breaking through the floor like it was thin ice. There was no crash though; he must have caught himself and stepped back.

“What are we going to do?” Mosley asked. He couldn’t believe that four hours before, he had thought he could fend them off with a gun.

The back door, which led down to the dock, was only twenty or thirty feet away. One Tank Major was at the front of the house, and the other one sounded like it was at the side. No one was at the back.

“We’re going to run for the water,” Cynthia said. “They can’t swim. We can either get across the water or far enough out where they can’t see us, maybe to a buoy.”

“That’s all you got?” Mosley said. “Why don’t we surrender?”

“Because I don’t know what they’ll do,” Cynthia said. She was worried more about Mosley than herself.

She heard the one behind them move to another part of the house and cleave into it. A moment later, on the opposite side, the second Tank Major did the same. They were coming in.

“Cynth—” the giant’s voice began.

“Now!” she hissed. She grabbed Mosley, and they exploded toward the door.

“I see movement!” the giant roared, and suddenly the house was hit with a tsunami. It pitched and bent as the two Tank Majors blasted through the exterior walls. Cynthia and Mosley slammed through the French doors and bounded down the stairs three at a time toward the water.

They were still twenty feet from the water when the giants exploded out the back of the house, the back stairs bending and twisting as the Tank Majors rammed them into splinters.

Cynthia got to the dock first. She heard Mosley just behind her, and behind him, a noise like charging rhinos. She dove into the lake and kicked deep, swimming under water as far as she could.

A boom ripped past her and turned the lake into a riptide. Pain shot through her body as the water crushed the air out of her lungs, and her consciousness wavered. She held on and kicked frantically, her hands feeling the soft mud and seaweed of the lake bottom. Her her lungs and throat convulsed as they fought against her mind, and she swam hard to the surface.

As she her head broke free of the water, it slammed into something solid, and for a moment everything was black. Her oxygen-depleted brain thought she was under ice. She frantically scraped at the surface and the object drifted enough for her hands to grip its edge. She pulled herself up and gulped in life. It was a section of dock. She clung to it.

She looked around her, gasping. She was about twenty-five yards from the shore, and pieces of dock were scattered all around her. Except for a couple of stray pillions, the dock appeared to have been completely destroyed.

One of the giants was on shore scanning the water. The other was waist deep in it, pushing aside debris. It picked up something in its massive hand. Mosley.

“He’s aliiiive, Cynthia,” the giant teased. He held Mosley up by one leg as if he were a weighing a bass.

Then a new voice spoke. This one seemed to come from both of the giants at once.

“Come to the Twins, Cynthia.” It was Evan. He had commandeered the Tank Majors’ amplified voices. “Sabot wouldn’t want to find his nephew in pieces. He’ll know it was slow . . . and it will be, Cynthia. And for what? We’ll just wait until you sink or come back to shore. Save the boy’s life.”

Cynthia said nothing. She felt the cold chill of the water make her joints tighten. A wave splashed into her mouth and she spat.

Evan sighed loudly over the speaker, as if he just darn couldn’t get what the wait was about.

Mosley came to. Cynthia saw him twisting back and forth, hung upside down and held by the giant’s two fingers. He started to beg and whimper.

“Tear his foot off.” Evan’s voice echoed over the lake. The boy howled in fear.

“NO!” Cynthia yelled. “I’m coming!”

The giants stood down.

Using the trestle of two-by-sixes as a paddleboard, she kicked toward their wide silhouettes. Halfway in, one of the giants came out and dragged her back to shore.

Evan kept his word. He let Mosley live. But alive isn’t always better than dead. With death, the dark and quiet fold over you like a well-worn blanket, and the memories and smells, the gentle touches of longing and love, swarm the soul as it’s whisked away. But life can be purgatory. Time can pause, making seconds become hours and hours become weeks. It doesn’t take much. A broken heart, an untimely regret, the bitter pill of an unachieved goal.

Or, for Mosley, both of his legs minced beneath the knees.

As the giants secured Cynthia and walked away, and Mosley heard their truck fire up, and its diesel gurgle dissipated into the night, he would have taken his own life if he could. But he couldn’t walk. He couldn’t even crawl. And the pain shooting up his body was napalm. The water’s edge was feet away and he dreamed of rolling into its shallow, lapping waves and drowning. The pain of moving was the only thing that held him in place. Like many of the grievously wounded in war, he lay panting, alive but not there, waiting for footsteps, and praying that the next face that came into view was a concerned ally, and not a foe.

= = =

The lake house looked like a wrecking ball had gone through it. The roof listed to the side; the walls were shattered. Outside, the car was crumpled like a soda can.

Sabot ran through the empty house. He went outside and yelled for Cynthia and Mosley. A whisper came from the lake. He followed it to a thick group of cattails and stumbled across Mosley. His nephew was belly down, his face at the water’s edge—he had almost made it.

Sabot turned him over. Mosley didn’t have the energy to scream.

“What happened?” Sabot said. “How long ago?”

“Tank Majors came and took her,” Mosley said through shallow breaths. “I don’t know when.”

It was cold, and Mosley’s lip trembled. Sabot’s hands felt rudimentary heat in three-degree increments, but it was clear that in addition to shock, his nephew was suffering from hypothermia. “I’m going to pick you up.”

Before Mosley could object, Sabot lifted him gently into his massive arms and carried him like a bride to the house. Tears rolled down Mosley’s cheeks, but he didn’t cry out. Sabot pulled a couch from out of the debris and laid Mosley down on it, then built a bonfire from the strewn guts of the house around them.

“I need to get you to the hospital.” They had no car, only the motorcycle. “I’m really sorry.” Sabot started to cry, in his own way: he had no tear ducts, but his eyes twitched back and forth. He put his head in his hands for a minute and then pulled it together. This was no time to wilt.

“I have to get help,” he said. Mosley nodded and fell asleep, the orange flicker of fire caressing his face.

Sabot rode the bike three miles around the lake, looking for help. He ignored the flashing red digital readout that indicated the battery was almost flat.

At the first house, no one answered the door. The second house was dark. At the third house, an old woman stopped short when she saw the hulking giant through the window.

“Yes?”

“Do you know who I am?” Sabot asked. The woman looked scared. Behind her, a man with gray hair and a bent back walked toward them using a cane.

“No,” she said.

“My name is Jeremiah Sabot. I’m Cynthia Revo’s bodyguard. I have an injured man three miles north and our car is . . . not functioning. Is there any kind of medical anything out here?”

“Is it safe?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Sabot replied.

The man finally made it to the door.

“You’re in luck, son. I broke HR policy forty years ago and married my nurse.” He glanced at his wife. “I was family practice.”

They didn’t have a car, but they had a wheelbarrow for work around the yard. Sabot ran it to the lake house, put Mosley in it, and carted him back.

“You’re one of those . . . Tank Minors,” the old man said. He had a stethoscope pressed to Mosley’s chest and his wife was checking the boy’s blood pressure. “Hon, when you’re done, could you get me a bottle of aspirin?”

The old woman judged Mosley’s blood pressure stable, then went to the back of the house.

“He’ll need a specialist,” the man said. “It looks like his legs were run over. We got nothing like that out here.”

“I can have someone come out,” Sabot said. “Do you have any transportation?”

The man rubbed his chin. “Not really. We get supplies twice a year out here, and it costs a shit ton. The Jacobs down the street have a vehicle, but it’s like a golf cart—it won’t get you far. We have mountain bikes.”

“Bicycles?” Sabot said.

“Yep.”

“Would you trade one of your mountain bikes, plus your care for my nephew until help arrives, in exchange for a two-million-dollar motorcycle?”

“Take the bike,” the old doctor said, then looked Sabot’s massive frame up and down. “In fact, you may need both of them.”

Ten minutes later, Sabot pedaled toward Chicago at a steady thirty miles per hour. The bike groaned in protest and the chain skipped gears. Slung to Sabot’s back was a custom 4-gauge shotgun and a bandolier with thirty shells. The doctor was right—it would have been nice to have had the second bike. The iron filly between his legs wasn’t sounding so good.

Chapter 8

War proved the elasticity of time. While the artillery whistled down and the earth shook around him, Raimey retreated into this mind. The five minutes of fire and concussion booms felt like hours, and he thought about everything, from his childhood—the time he stole a toy truck from a neighbor and never told anyone—to his Uncle Jerry, who drank most of his life, found a good woman and turned his life around, and died six months later. Every thought was about choice, and Raimey came to a stark realization, possibly before his death: he had stopped making any.

He knew when. It wasn’t after he’d agreed to become a Tank Major. It was days later, when he saw his wife for the last time, and spoke to his daughter through a curtain.

“I thought we had more time,” Tiffany had said.

No one but me, my love.

The last blast echoed through the broken city. Raimey waited for a moment, and when he was convinced it was over, he dragged himself out of the building, like a boy from a ball pit. His body hissed from the heat, and the systems designed to protect his fragile flesh eased back from the red. He let everything settle.

He searched for Juhavee, following in the direction he had fled, and found him a half-mile away, driving back toward him.

“You made it!” Juhavee said in disbelief.

Raimey wasn’t in any mood for banter, but he was happy to see the little man still alive. His tank would be useful. “We have to move. There’s no telling if another artillery strike will come.”

“Lead the way.”

As they crossed the bridge, John kept an ear open for any telltale booms. Just before they reached the other side, Raimey had Juhavee hang back while he approached the bunkhouses. They were abandoned. Food was out in the open, as were water and other supplies. Stafford and the Russian Tank Major had spoken about forces leaving. Raimey waived Juhavee forward.

“What does this mean?” Juhavee asked when he saw the bunkhouses.

“It means they’re almost done with what they came to do,” Raimey said.

===

The road to Boma was only a road in the loosest definition of the word. A mile in, and the pavement vanished under a mudslide. Raimey sank knee deep as he trudged along, but the torque from his electric motors overcame the suction easily.

The mud was too deep for the Abrams, though. It wallowed and slid, getting stuck every forty yards. Juhavee attached tow chains and Raimey helped drag it out, only to have it get stuck again. A stretch of road that should have taken twenty minutes to traverse instead took hours. To their left, the brown-churned water of the Congo River rushed by. While John tugged and pulled, lurching the tank forward, he dreamt of swimming.

After a few miles, Raimey finally felt substance under his feet. A half mile after that, they rose out of the muck. The “road” at last became a road. Raimey jogged to make up time and Juhavee followed, the tank treads sloughing off mud in long flaps.

Raimey wondered what he would find in Boma. Stafford had said he worked for the Coalition and that Evan commanded him. If that was the case, did Packard? Raimey had been special forces for over thirty years, and the one thing he knew about the military was that more often than not, the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. That seemed to be the case here. No synergy, a complete conflict of mission.

Normally, Raimey wouldn’t have an ethical debate about such things—they would just group and sort. But something here was putrid, too under-the-table, too far removed from the ethics—yes, ethics—of war.

“The children,” his wife said in his ear, as if he was stupid. He shook his head, trying to get her out. Yes, the children. Raimey had seen mass graves. He had helped fill many. He had seen indentured servitude, the Coalition bathed in it. But he’d never seen a gross exploitation of children. Yet it was the core of the mission—Stafford had indicated as much—and their end game was so vile that they had hired a team of mercenaries to complete it.

Another thing John had learned in his thirty years as special forces: there were some truths he would never know. Because while the hands would occasionally cross and stumble, they were as deft as a magician’s and as secretive with their tricks. Soldiering and missions were the byproducts of planning and interests. The long view never flowed downstream. The mysteries lay with their makers. They sent others to die or triumph under whatever pretenses would best help them achieve their goals.

Raimey had no mission, no orders to follow; he had to go with his gut. And his gut said that everything about this felt wrong. He knew that, at the end, if Packard and the Mort Vivant lay dead and the children were set free, it was quite possible the Coalition would come in and say he had made a mistake. He could live with that.

He could die with that.

A few hours later, Juhavee spoke. “We’re close.”

The clear air had browned from the constant purge of smokestacks. The water had taken on a reddish hue, and trash littered the bank.

“How far?” Raimey asked.

“A mile or so. What are we going to do? We can’t just go in.”

“You can’t,” Raimey said. The area around Boma was tall, rolling hills. “Come with me.”

They veered off the road, rising away from the river. The tank did fine on the ascent. From here they could see the city. It looked more like a prison. A moat surrounded it, with only one road leading in. Raimey had imagined a dilapidated town, and the buildings on the perimeter didn’t disappoint. Most of them were as brown as the soil and nearly as dirty. But farther in was a row of massive factories. Tiny dots moved to and fro—thousands of people.

“What are the factories for?” Raimey asked.

Juhavee pointed to the first two factories. They were black with soot, their huge smokestacks billowing poison. “Those process the raw ore”—Juhavee dragged his finger over to two massive cargo ships in port—“for shipment, there. And the cargo ships bring materials from other places”—he moved his finger to the farthest factory, which was low and sleek—“for that factory to manufacture circuitry for the region.”

Raimey pointed past the factories to a massive structure offshore. It was barely visible in the smog. It looked like an oil rig with Mickey Mouse ears. “What about that?”

Juhavee squinted. “I’ve never seen that before.”

“No idea?”

“No idea.”

“Then that’s probably why they’re here,” Raimey said. “Come on.” He showed Juhavee where he wanted him to be.

= = =

Packard stood on a podium, looking out at the crowd of warlords and tyrants that had all come to Boma for the auction. His right cheek had popped, and the slurring had come back into his voice, his tongue clearly visible as it danced through the auction. Behind him, below, were a thousand children. On each side of him, his hands on their shoulders, were twin brothers. They looked horrified.

“Do I hear two for two? Two ounces of gold for these fine lads! Twelve to the day, strong as mules. Looking for a new home!”

“Twenty carats of diamonds!” a warlord called out, showing a handful of glittering stones.

Packard waved the offer away. “Diamonds aren’t worth shit. Gold, copper, mercury—give me something I can use.”

“TOW missile system,” another said.

Packard raised an eyebrow. “Functional?”

“Yes. But I want ten boys for it.”

Packard looked off the side to Salt, who nodded. “Fuck it, sold. Grab eight more, but that TOW better work.”

Salt took the boys away, and another walking skeleton ushered the winning bidder toward the back to pick out the rest.

“Look at that deal! We’re moving units, people.”

The auction continued. Packard started bundling. One at a time was taking too long. He was in a good mood. They had found the three they had needed. Stafford was dead, but hey . . . cost of war. When his crew had reported back on how much damage the other Tank Major had caused, Packard had decided he couldn’t risk it. So Stafford had become cheese for the trap.

Packard smiled, and it stretched his seams, showing his teeth and tongue. War had death, it had tragedy, but it also had spoils. And Packard liked spoils.

“Sold! Ten ounces of gold for twenty of your choosing. Get back there while the getting’s good! People, the quality is only going to drop. You don’t want to be picking from the one-armed ones, do you?”

The warlords laughed and Packard kept the bids coming.

= = =

Raimey made his way down the hill through the trees and thicket. He moved quietly, carefully avoiding anything he might snap or crush. Power reduced patience, Raimey had learned.

As he got closer, he saw the moat. It was thick with muddy water and the lone road into Boma rose above it, creating a kill zone. Raimey weaved his way around the perimeter of the bog to get as far from the road as possible. On the hill, it looked like most of the town was at the factories and dock. Where he was, he saw and heard nothing. The outlying shacks were crumbled and unlivable; the air was choked with mosquitos. He wouldn’t live here either, if he had a choice.

Raimey sank into the slop and made his way across, using drowned trees as depth finders. The water rose to his chest and held steady. Still no movement ahead. Something played in the back of his head, some worry. Something about the town ahead, but nothing concrete.

The moat was more mud than water, and it took effort to forge ahead. He almost didn’t notice when he came upon the trip wire: an anchor chain drawn across the width of the dredge.

For Tank Majors, he thought. Chills went up his back. This was the kill zone, not the road. He scanned the buildings ahead. Still no one. He stepped back, raised his leg over the chain, and continued on.

The sludge was above his shoulders now. Another twenty yards and the same chain, a bit higher. He stepped over it as well. He was two-thirds to the edge of the town when another chain hit him. This one was chest-high. He’d have to go under. He felt like he was under a microscope, and he was moving painfully slow, but still there were no signs of soldiers.

There was nothing else to do but to grab the massive anchor chain and pull it out of the slop. As he did so, two EFP warheads mounted on the chain rose out of the water, their inverted copper cones staring at John like blighted eyes. They detonated, blasting two ten-pound molten copper slugs into his chest at two thousand meters per second. The impact knocked John completely off his feet, and the sludge poured over him as he sank underneath, unconscious.

= = =

The warlords were having fun now. Bidding against each other, chest-thumping, drinking. The money was flowing—some of the bids were too high—but it had become a party.

An explosion rattled the city.

“Shut up!” Packard yelled. His cheeks blew out from the effort and an eyehole drifted over his lens. He tore the eyehole bigger. The warlords stopped their banter. “Stay here,” Packard ordered. To a Mort Vivant: “Shoot them if they move.” He jumped off the platform.

The Mort Vivant didn’t have to speak. They projected to one another. A Tank Major had detonated EMPs in the moat. The likelihood was that it was dead—this had happened before—but it needed to be checked out. The Mort Vivant quickly and efficiently split the duties: some closed down the factories with the workers inside, others shored up the ports, and about half made their way toward the moat. Packard and a team stopped at massive water pumps that bordered the ghettos. The rest made their way to the bog. A tractor rumbled behind them to pull out the giant for scrap.

They bridged their vision and Packard could see what they saw. And what they saw was nothing. The water was flat and calm—a jelly, really.

Dead, Packard projected. The others agreed. The tractor lumbered forward onto the road and three soldiers unfurled a chain with a large treble hook at the end, preparing to dredge for the giant. They rock-paper-scissored to see who would go in.

= = =

A scrapping sound stirred Raimey, but it was his starving lungs that woke him. It was pitch black through the visor, the only light coming from a small display that showed his charge percentage and food supply. He tried to stand, but he realized he was facing the wrong direction, like a climber buried in snow. Claustrophobia enveloped him, and his lungs screamed for air. He knew he had been out for at least five minutes, because that was how much air the breathing system and helmet contained before it was exhausted. And it was clearly exhausted now.

Black hair twisted on the right side of his vision. He felt her nearby. “Sweat,” she said.

The sweat on his face wasn’t dripping off; it burned his eyes. He was on his back. He let out a hollow gasp and his vision sparkled. He rolled over and put his hands down to push up out of the mud that had suctioned him down. His hands sank two feet down and he realized this whole bog was like a Chinese finger trap. And then he felt himself being dragged.

= = =

The bionic spun his finger after latching the chain, and the tractor ground away. The chain grew taut, and to the soldiers watching from the shore, it looked like a massive turtle had surfaced only to retreat back into the depths. But then a massive arm flailed in the air.

“He’s alive!” the bionic on Raimey yelled and jumped into the gunk, using the chain to the tractor to pull himself out of harm’s way. The Mort Vivant looked at each other in surprise. Even Packard raised an eyebrow. No Tank Major could survive a direct chest hit from an EFP, yet the mud shimmied.

“Lay the mines and get back,” Packard ordered. The should-be-dead Tank Major was thirty yards from solid ground.

The gelatinous movement of the bog stopped, and for a moment Packard thought that maybe the previous movement has simply been the giant’s death throes. Perhaps it had been bleeding out, its metal arms and legs thrashing as the meat starved of oxygen.

WHA-WHAM!

When Raimey fired both hydraulshocks, the transfer of ten million foot-pounds of energy into the bog floor caused thirty tons of sludge twenty meters around him to explode outward like a firecracker. The bionic in the bog was torn apart as the shockwave created a tsunami.

The soldiers were first splattered in mud from the initial explosion, and then the full wall of sludge slammed into them, filling their nostrils, knocking them unconscious, and dragging them into the bog.

Raimey stood up and charged behind the wave. Through an array of fleeing eyes, Packard saw the EFP impact craters in Raimey’s black ceramic armor, and fear filled him. He knew of only one giant that looked like that.

BOOM! The tractor exploded, struck by a tank shell. BOOM! Five retreating bionics disappeared in fire.

Packard scanned the hills, unable to find the tank.

Get back! Get back! Packard projected. Dozens of Mort Vivant had been pulled into the moat, and it seemed that Raimey found them all. From the initial blast, pallets of mud still fell from the sky like some unwritten sign of the apocalypse. Raimey trudged along the beachhead, killing the bionics who were clawing out from the mud. The Mort Vivant’s ranks were cut in half in one minute, and Packard felt each of their souls depart through their link.

BOOM! The tank continued to rain shells, helping feed the chaos.

===

As Raimey climbed to shore, his wife clung to his shoulder like a gargoyle, her finger outstretched toward everyone who had tried to take him down. The remaining bionics scattered through the small alleys of the huts and shacks that surrounded the town center. Raimey hadn’t used the hover-rovers earlier because they would have given him away, but now they rocketed off his back and spun high into the air.

From their vantage, he watched the soldiers retreating past the dilapidated shacks to large pumping stations with piping that disappeared into the river. The stations gushed with water and, a moment later, the area Raimey trudged through was flooding. The ground had been soft to begin with, and now his steps sank calf-deep. They were trying to slow him down—and succeeding. This would be a battle. He heard the whistle of mortars as they fell down on him like lawn darts.

===

Packard moved with his team past the pump stations. He had installed these to flood “Bomb Town,” as he called it.

Tank Majors were the biggest threat to this operation, and inherent in their design and attitude was their tendency to just plow through buildings. That’s why every building in Bomb Town was a punji pit. Twenty feet deep, and instead of spikes to impale a tiger, they had ten EFPs—five up and five around the perimeter—just like the two that Raimey had taken a direct hit from.

“But feet are different,” Packard said to himself. A Mort Vivant glanced at him and Packard waved him off. “Get the Javelins,” Packard ordered. The bionic ran off to an armor cache at the center of the real town, recruiting others along the way. Javelins were portable anti-tank missiles that could be fired from the shoulder. Packard had collected five over the years. They were old and rare, and for Packard, a weapons enthusiast, they were like a fine bottle of wine. But now he had no choice—he had to crack them open.

He could hear Raimey stomp and grind through Bomb Town. In Israel, Packard had seen Raimey cleave through the fortified front of the tens of thousands of soldiers that had tried to overtake Tel Aviv. Other Tank Majors had fallen. Other Tank Majors had broken, or were overrun. But Raimey had been a demonic possession. He was unstoppable. He was an agent of fear more horrifying in reality than myth.

We are ready with the Javelins, the Minors sent to Packard.

Get to the perimeter of Bomb Town and lure him through one of the buildings. Keep the mortars up, Packard sent back. He looked into the air. And shoot down his fucking hover-rovers.

===

Raimey’s extra eyes exploded out of the sky thanks to two well-placed fifty-caliber sniper rounds. With the last transmissions, he saw soldiers stalking along the perimeter of the town.

The ground underfoot was getting thicker and sloppier, slurping up the water like a sponge. As Raimey clomped between the rickety living structures, he heard a draining sound that he couldn’t place. He peered to his left, toward the main road, and for a moment he thought that he should detour to it and approach unhidden. But already he had seen the high degree of strategy and preparation from this troop. Packard had thought this through.

He was one hundred yards from the massive pipes that were flooding the land. They roared like the spillway of a dam.

Raimey saw, but didn’t hear, the Javelin missile as it rose into the air.

“Shit!”

The Javelin was fire and forget. It would hit. He quickly looked around and saw a large structure, slightly bigger than the rest of the shacks. He ran toward it as the hiss of the Javelin’s propellant grew. Raimey dove through the shack.

He heard the explosion and felt the blast push him down as the thin roof triggered the missile, but that sensation was immediately overtaken by the realization that he was falling. Punji pit? he thought, and then the biggest explosion he had ever encountered as a Tank Major erupted around him. The competing forces—from the Javelin above and the explosives below—were so evenly matched that he didn’t get thrown around. Instead, he was held in place, paralyzed, squeezed by extreme forces from seemingly every direction, while the fire and concussive blast vortexed around him. His joints compressed and his body groaned like a submarine at crush depth. Warning lights blinked in his helmet.

The fire whisked away and he stood in a blackened abscess with charred, flaming sides. The water rose at his feet. Raimey screamed in frustration and started climbing his way out of the deep black hole.

===

Packard had moved to a higher post to watch the Javelin assault. It took only one to make Raimey seek cover—exactly what Packard wanted—and when he collapsed through and the EFP array exploded, Packard thought that, finally, this assault was through. The explosion had cratered almost a third of Bomb Town.

He very nearly ordered his men in—and then he saw the massive Tank Major’s hands rake over the side and pull a huge chunk of earth down.

“You-are-fucking-kidding-me,” Packard whistled when Raimey clawed out of his grave. Packard was out of options. Retreat, he projected. Get to the boats. We’ll defend at the Multiplier.

The Mort Vivant did just that. They had been through enough battles to know that survival surpassed honor. They regrouped as they ran to the boats, shooting down anyone in their way. The giant was far behind, still clawing through the mud, and Packard felt a sense of relief. If they got to the oil rig, they could defend it without issue.

What was left of the Mort Vivant piled into the boats. Packard counted twenty, and his heart sank at the loss. Salt wasn’t there.

“Go!” Packard yelled. He looked back. Still no giant. The thirty-foot boat powered away, down the river toward open water. Ahead, Packard could see the giant dishes on the Multiplier churn—all of the children were in place, and it was grabbing a signal. His mission was complete. The wind whipped through his scraggly hair and whistled through his cheeks. They would be fine.

BOOSH. A huge splash erupted aft of them.

BOOSH. Another splash erupted fore.

Packard looked back. They were two hundred yards out, just reaching the mouth of the river. The giant watched them from the pier. It was covered in mud. But it had nothing in its hands. Behind it, far off in the hills, Packard saw an orange flick of light.

“WE HAVE TO USE THE SHORELINE FOR COV—”

The next tank shell hit and the boat exploded into flames.

= = =

Cynthia was back in her office. Three days before, thousands of employees had filled the monolithic MindCorp headquarters. Now there were only ten employees maintaining the Colossal Core beneath the skyscraper, plus thirty Tank Minors scattered throughout, guarding the entrances and clearing the unoccupied floors. It was the same in every mega-city: the military now controlled every major Data Core in the country.

But they couldn’t turn them on.

Evan let Cynthia sit at her desk, like everything was normal. He sat in a chair across from her as he had many, many times before. Back in the old days, Donald “WarDon” Richards—Evan’s boss at the time—would come to Cynthia like a panhandler hoping for a handout. Information on the Prime Minister of Iraq, please. Thank you, ma’am, may I have another? Could you check in on our Coalition partners? Thank you, ma’am, may I have another? Some of the most powerful men in the world, orphan extras on Oliver Twist. The United States government—the most powerful military force in the world!—puckering up as she spread her cheeks.

The ass-kissing had nauseated Evan. He liked hierarchy, he liked place. And that was a world completely out of order.

“How are we doing this?” Cynthia said.

“The cell towers.” Evan’s voice warbled.

“You’re underground somewhere, aren’t you? Like a mole.”

“A mole’s going to survive what’s coming, Cynthia,” Evan replied. His voice echoed in a strange decay and his eyes twitched. He wasn’t well. “Did you think I wouldn’t have redundancy? You know what I want. You caught me off guard, that’s all.”

“General Boen.”

“Yep.”

“You killed him.”

“Yep.”

The textures of the room flattened, and Evan’s face pixelated. A moment later the room snapped back into full resolution, but Evan’s face did not. It was skin and nothing more.

WE WANT TO SEE.

Cynthia could feel an inexorable hunger come through Evan. Slight lines creased his face at all angles, and then twenty-six eyes blinked open.

CAN WE FEEL HER?

“Sorry darlings, there’s no bandwidth,” Cynthia said. Then to Evan: “You’re trapped with them, aren’t you?” She smiled. “Like a genie in a bottle. All that intelligence, all the hunger, using you as food because it can get no other. How long until you go insane? There’s a reason no one has ever done what you’ve done.”

Evan’s hands gripped the arms of the chair and his body shook. The eyes sank away and Evan’s face returned.

“Soon, Cynthia. Soon, you’ll see my vision.”

She probed, and he could feel it, but the Pieces were distracted, pushing on every port, trying to breach their iron maiden.

“Stop it!” Evan said. He pushed her away, and the effort caused his face to fold in again, as the Pieces took the path of least resistance. They wanted the light, and he was their light bearer. The spider eyes blinked.

“Who are you waiting for?” Cynthia asked. “Who is the rest of your family?”

OUR CONSCIOUSNESS. OUR MOTHER. SHE WILL ALWAYS LOVE US.

Evan’s body shook again, and again the eyes vanished. Even online, Evan looked exhausted.

Cynthia was done with the mind games. She had gotten what she needed: she’d learned that the Northern Star was not complete. “The cell towers were clever.”

Evan’s body settled. Visible relief washed over his face. “Thank you.”

“You shouldn’t have hurt Mosley,” Cynthia said.

“He aided and abetted. You shouldn’t have fled like a fugitive,” Evan replied.

“If he’s dead . . .”

Spit flew from Evan’s mouth. “You’ll what?”

She turned a shoulder. Her calm rankled Evan. She steeped her tea in a steaming mug of water. Somehow she had rerouted all of the data overseas, and it danced from node to node like a lightning storm, untraceable. She must have used Sabot; he wasn’t at the lake. Evan needed the network online.

“Am I under house arrest?” she asked, unconcerned.

“Yes.” Evan looked around the opulent suite. “You should be comfortable.”

“Is it indefinite?”

“That’s up to you. I didn’t want it to come to this.”

“You’ve always wanted it to come to this.”

Anger overtook him. “YOU. AREN’T. SUPPOSED. TO. RULE,” he said.

She matched his tone. “Neither are you, you little shit.”

“Turn on the network.”

“Turn it on yourself.”

Evan laughed, a frustrating cackle. “You’re cunning—I’ll give you that. But it’s over. It’s only going to get worse, Cynthia. Time is with me, not you.”

“I’m not so sure, Evan.”

“Turn on the network.”

“My dad was a grocer,” Cynthia said.

“Oh . . . kay.”

“Do you remember supermarkets? The big ones?”

“Yes, we had a Kroger.”

“My dad worked for Jewel/Osco. They were based around here.”

Evan rolled his eyes. He wished he could just rifle through her brain, leaving soup behind, but there wasn’t enough bandwidth. And he couldn’t kill her, because she had made herself the skeleton key. And judging by her attitude, she knew he couldn’t touch her.

She continued. “Do you remember the aisles of food? All the bread, cans of soups, the butcher shelf with steaks. The giant baskets of oranges and the displays of vegetables, how it would spray a mist to keep them fresh. As a kid, it felt like magic. At least to me. If shipments stopped at a supermarket, how long would it be until it was empty?”

“A week.”

Cynthia held up one finger. “A day for the essentials and three days for everything else. Three days, and the supermarket would be gutted. Maybe the canned oysters would be there, but anything of value, anything worth taking, would be gone. Without the supply, seventy-two hours and the supermarket would be just shelves and fridges. What would happen next?”

“Cynthia, give me the goddamn codes.”

She sat quietly.

Evan, exasperated: “They’d go to a different supermarket.”

“Exactly. First they’d bark and yell at the management of their store—if anything, we are creatures of habit and afraid of change—and then, like you said, they’d go to another supermarket. And if that supermarket ran out of food, now that they were breaking habit, they’d go to the next. And when all the supermarkets and convenience stores were out of food—let’s say four days because people would start stocking up—then they’d take from each other. They have families to feed, they have children! The smart ones would form allegiances and become gangs. They’d hoard. There isn’t enough food to go around, so they’d kill. And finally, they would riot and conquer. How long do you think that would take? I say three weeks.”

Another sip of tea.

“And who would they blame? At no time would they go to the bread maker, or the orange grower, or the cannery. Maybe to hoard, but not to blame. They wouldn’t hang the grocer. They wouldn’t attack trucking or rail. No. They wouldn’t do any of that. They’d blame the government. ‘The government should have known this would happen,’ they’d say. ‘The government should have protected us.’ ‘The government should have brought us supplies.’ ‘They’re eating.’”

“Point?”

“It’s good to be king, until it’s not. Then thwip”—Cynthia cut across her neck with her finger—“off with your head!” She paused to sip her tea. “So. How long do you think the government will last without my supply? The people won’t blame me. They’ll blame you. They won’t want my head. They’ll want yours. You’re going to lose, Evan. Badly. Nothing is less civil than a society without their wants.”

“That’s a fascinating modern-day parable,” Evan replied. “Are you going to turn on the network?”

“No.”

The Mindlink was torn off Cynthia’s head by a Tank Minor. Now she was back in her real office, seated at her real desk. And in front of her stood Chao, not Evan.

But Evan’s voice came from the giant. “Since we’re telling parables, I got one too. When I was a kid, I worked in sales. Computers, of course. My boss was actually pretty cool. His name was Roland, which always reminded me of The Gunslinger. Anyway, he taught me a few sales principles. One was ‘Get to the no.’ People will talk your ear off, but not everyone will buy. Get to the no so you can get to the yeses.

“He was right. It was amazing to me how many people just wanted to talk. If a court reporter transcribed what they had said, it would be nothing, no highlight, nothing worth repeating. Just noise pollution.

“But old Roland, the last circuit-slinger, also said you have to compel them. I love the word ‘compel.’ It’s one of my favorite words. It implies force, but also finesse and understanding. It’s a beautiful word, ‘compel.’ I don’t know if it’s French, but it sounds French.”

A Minor walked in with a dozen employees. They were lined up in front of Chao, just feet from Cynthia. They whimpered, trying to not look back at the goliath behind them. A few had been beaten.

Evan continued. “If you don’t put the North American nodes back online, Chao is going to rip these men and women apart very slowly. We have plenty of coagulate—they won’t bleed out. We have a defibrillator—their heart will not arrest. And if, at the end, you still remain quiet, I assure you, I promise you—the biggest promise in my life—that we will bring in more. You’ll sit in that seat as we pile the bodies high. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll find the founders, and then your friends, and maybe Sabot. And you will see the same thing done to them that you’ll see done to these. I am compelling you to make a decision, Cynthia. You’re the decision-maker—I got the right person—but is what I’m selling what you’re looking for?”

Chao put his forefinger and thumb over a man in his sixties and pinched his head to mash.

= = =

Sabot saw the massive Chicago skyline twenty minutes into his bike ride. The city had quadrupled in size after the Great Migration, enveloping the suburbs around it and turning quaint, quiet towns into skyscraper ghettos. Subway rails wrapped around the buildings, right and left, above and below, the only true means of transportation. Even from afar, with the constantly moving trains, the city looked like some kind of gonzo amusement park ride.

It took him another two hours to enter the fringe of the city. Shacks, storefronts, and shopping malls were converted into cheap apartments. Trash littered the streets. Rusted shopping carts—just formed flakes of metal now—communed with one another in the empty parking lots.

A group of teenagers chased Sabot like dogs, throwing bottles and rocks, bored and without a thing to do. Boredom bred bad.

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, Sabot thought. Any other day he would have gotten off the bike and spoken to them, but now wasn’t the time. They were a warning to Sabot, a sign of the decay that had suddenly taken hold of civilization, like cheese that was fine one day, then surrendered to mold the next. He pedaled faster.

He had never seen so many people on the streets. They all wore saggy shirts and pants, pajamas. Their hair was disheveled; their skin pale and blemished. They shuffled around and talked quietly to one another. He weaved through the slumber party parade, a giant on a bike.

He realized that all these people were out because the Mindlink servers had been rerouted and reduced in functionality. They rolled their eyes toward him, but they were neither angry nor emotional—just confused—as if they had fallen asleep to one reality and woken up to another. In a way they had.

They had awoken to war.

The batteries in Minors and Majors were incredibly efficient. The electrostatic tissue that Minors used as muscle relied more on tensile strength than power for movement. The lack of a charge caused the oily, off-white fibrous tissue to contract; the electric current was used only to expand and lengthen. But Sabot had pushed his body for hours, and he was down to seven percent reserve power. He had to charge.

One of the ways the U.S. military controlled its bionic units was with the charging interface. It was an odd-shaped, proprietary four-pin adapter the size of a fist. It was also intelligent, and the updated code sequence needed for it to work was synced to each bionic weekly. Without the proper encryption codes, it was a brick.

But the first-generation Tank Majors and Minors lacked this technology, and that meant that Sabot was designed without these shackles. His size allowed him to have three methods to restore his batteries: the military four-pin, a standard one-hundred-ten-volt electrical that could be used overseas with an adapter, and finally, wrist leads. The wrist leads were only present on the old Tank Majors, with their massive metal hands: a plus and minus mounted to the insides of their arms. They had been deemed necessary for foreign and hostile lands where a traditional power source wasn’t guaranteed. Huge electrical resistors built in-line with the exposed leads allowed them to pull juice from almost any energy source . . .

= = =

Nikko’s curiosity overruled his brother’s order to stay inside. Their apartment was just down from an L stop, and he sat on the stoop and watched the neighbors as they milled about, clueless on how to proceed. Grandma stayed up top. It was hard for her to walk. Like Nikko, she was overweight, and she had bad knees.

An adult next door, who looked like he hadn’t shaved in years, came up at one point and asked Nikko: “Thing’s will be okay, right?” As if a fourteen-year old who lived just east of the ghetto was privy to that answer. Nikko said he didn’t know, and the man walked on, asking others.

The crowd thinned as the night progressed, and by a little after midnight it was just him. There was nothing to do, so he watched the trains run by. He was sitting quietly, waiting for the next train to go past, when a squeaking sound arose from behind him, then grew rapidly louder. Nikko turned just as the biggest man he had ever seen pedaled past on a bicycle. When he reached the tracks, the man dropped the bike and shucked off a large duffel bag, then waited for the next train. The train came and went, and the man stepped onto the tracks.

Suicide, Nikko thought. Morbid curiosity glued him in place, and what he saw next made his jaw drop. The man leaned down, cupped a train track, and grabbed the third rail. A huge orange spark snapped across the man’s body as seven hundred and fifty volts chose the path of least resistance. The man vibrated with the current, but he didn’t fall down, and he didn’t die. His jacket caught on fire. The smell of ozone filled the air, and the street was cast in whirling shadows.

= = =

His charge at one hundred percent, Sabot stood up and shook off the heat. He sensed someone watching, and he turned to find a heavyset boy in filthy, food-encrusted pajamas gawking at him from twenty feet away.

“Are you okay?” the boy asked.

Sabot ripped off his smoldering jacket. “I’m good, kid.”

“Are you a superhero?”

Sabot smiled. “I wish. I’m a soldier.”

“A bionic?” Instant awe. Nikko had seen videos about them. You could even play as one in one of the simulators, but he had never seen one in person.

“Exactly.” Sabot gestured to the bike. “Do you want it? The tires are good.”

“Are you serious?” Nikko had never ridden a bike. This one was neon green. It was too big, but maybe he could get his legs over it.

“Completely. It’s yours. Tell your parents Sabot from MindCorp gave it to you. They’ll know who I am.”

Nikko waddled over to the bike and dragged it away in case Sabot changed his mind. The tracks rattled as another train approached.

“I have to take this,” Sabot said. The boy gave a cursory nod. He seemed entranced by the bike, spinning the pedals and touching the tacky chain. Sabot realized the boy had never seen one before. A pang of regret filled him that he and Cynthia didn’t have children. Somehow, they’d forgotten.

It would have been good, Sabot thought. Children were so present. So eager for joy. So quick to forge ahead. Minutes ago, this boy had witnessed a bionic riding the lightning, and already, that was a distant glimmer in his rearview mirror. The next adventure had already begun.

The train stopped.

“Kid.” The boy looked up. “Tell everyone you know to stay this way. No matter what happens in the next few weeks, don’t go deeper into the city. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“It’s important.”

“I’ll tell them, sir.”

“Good.” Sabot got on the train. As the doors closed, the boy waved and jumped up and down, excited with his new toy. Sabot held up a hand as the train began to pull away, and despite all the shit about to take place, he felt happy to have made the kid’s day. Before the train took him out of sight, Sabot saw the boy climb onto the bike—using the steps of a stoop to get up there—pedal six feet, and eat it into the curb.

Sorry, kid. Life is pain.

As the train went from stop to stop, the elevated tracks were an excellent vantage point to gauge the state of the city. The streets were filled with people. Before, they had been like patients coming off their meds, but now they looked organized, even fervent. He could feel their energy, and like most crowds, hostility lay beneath their feet. Sabot was amazed how many people were in the city. The Mindlink had made them shut-ins, and now, without it, they were pouring out of the buildings like ants.

On the outskirts of the city the train had been empty, but more and more people piled in with every stop. The crowd was raucous and young.

“This is fuckin’ bullshit is what it is,” one young buck lamented. “I’m pretty sure my checks are clearin’.”

Others echoed their assent.

The crowd steered clear of Sabot. He looked like he came out of a comic book: the massive black man with long, curly hair, the large duffel bag that was too squared off to be holding clothes. Wary glances were cast his way, but if he was recognized, no one drummed up the nuts to make a citizen’s arrest.

Five miles from MindCorp he got off. He didn’t want to get too close. If Evan had seized MindCorp headquarters, then Minors would be watching the subways and a perimeter would be set. It was standard protocol.

Sabot kept to the shadows, weaving through the alleys. Ahead, he saw MindCorp’s towering one-hundred-and-fifty-story spire. He heard an electric whine, and pressed up against the alley wall. Fifty yards down, a Tank Major clomped by on patrol. It went off in a different direction.

If they had this much security, then Cynthia was there. It made sense: they would try and force her to open up the network. Right now, most of the fiber across the country was dark. The world economy, and billions of lives, were on hold.

There were many ways into MindCorp headquarters, and most of them weren’t doors. Beneath the ground, spreading out into the city from the Colossal Core like veins, were conduits of fiber. They got finer as they went farther out, but near the headquarters, they were tunnels big enough to fit a man.

Sabot didn’t remember where most of them were, but there was one northeast that he had visited a year before, after a terrorist attack. He remembered the intersection. He squinted up into the dark and, as expected, he saw the dark blot of hover-rovers as they eclipsed faraway stars. There was no other way. Stay up here, and he would die.

A mile later he popped open a manhole cover and dropped down, careful to replace the lid. The original fiber runs were in-line with the major sewage pipes. At the beginning, it had been the easiest way to implement the fiber swaps. If mapped out, many of the original data nodes would seem oddly placed, as if someone had thrown thirty darts at a map, blindfolded, then said “fuck it” when they pulled the cloth from their eyes. But if the node locations were overlaid with the sewers, the logic was clear.

This section of sewer was old. The walls were green and it smelled of moss. A small creek dribbled down the middle, and Sabot heard the echo of dripping water and rats. He flipped on a small flashlight and shot it front and back. Satisfied that it was just him, the rats, and tons of shit and piss, he begin his walk toward MindCorp.

He was lucky—it was an old system. When MindCorp headquarters was built, it occupied so much space underground that the sewers had been rerouted around it like a super collider. When he hit the new sewer, he would be very close to the giant fiber trunks that anchored into the Colossal Node. Then it was just a matter of hearing the chatter of the fiber line extenders.

He jogged. His feet drowned out the squeaks and drips. The sound of his breath was nonexistent—he had the biomass of a cat. He felt the vibrations of the patrolling Tank Majors as he passed under foot.

After about five minutes, he entered the new sewer line. He stopped jogging, flicked off his flashlight, and stood quietly, listening for anything out of the ordinary. These pipes would be on the blueprint, and could be under surveillance. He heard nothing, just dripping water. The air had grown warm and muggy.

He went right and slid along the interior of the tube, listening for the muted clack-clack of the extenders. He felt a vibration in the wall, and soon, he heard their clatter. There was a metal door that read “Property of MindCorp.” Padlocked across it were heavy iron beams. With a grunt, Sabot tore both beams off the wall. The damn door was locked, too. He crushed the handle in his hand and slammed it with his palm out to the other side. He put two fingers into the hole and yanked the door open.

The honeycombed catwalk wasn't designed for someone of Sabot’s size. He hunched down and turned his shoulders as he made his way toward MindCorp. Beneath him were huge trunks of fiber. Normally they would all be firing, creating a blinding array of light, but now only a few flickered blue. Their weak, strobing light ushered Sabot home.

= = =

For Chao, the first kill was to make a point, but after that he worked slow, each breaking bone a sickening thunderclap. But Cynthia didn’t flinch, nor did she turn away. She wouldn’t give Evan that privilege, in case he was watching through the giant’s eyes. Four men and women now shook on the ground, broken but alive. Chao moved on to a young girl.

“What’s your name?” Chao asked.

“Te-Ter-Tera Sparks.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Thr-three months.”

Chao delicately placed her hand in his. The woman closed her eyes and cried.

“You can’t do this,” Cynthia finally said.

“Yes I CAN,” Evan said through Chao. “This isn’t some jockeying, political bullshit, Cynthia. It’s only going to get worse. Put everything back online.”

“Please!” Tera pleaded. Those standing echoed the sentiment. Those on the ground pleaded as well, but with their eyes. They were in too much pain to speak.

“I need to access the Data Core,” Cynthia said quietly.

Chao opened his hand, and Tera pulled it to safety.

“Of course,” Evan said.

No one moved.

“That means we have to go down to it,” Cynthia said. “They’ll be taken to the hospital immediately?”

“Yes,” Evan said. “Chao?”

Chao pointed to two Tank Minors, and they led the employees out. The four wounded had to be carried. The dead man lay behind in a puddle of jelly.

Cynthia looked at the man as she was led past. She hadn’t known him. “I’m so sorry,” she said. A tear rolled down her cheek.

Chao held the door, and from him, Evan spoke: “Lets get ’er done.”

= = =

Chao was too large to fit in the elevator with Cynthia. His job was done, anyway. Kove was out with a team searching for Vanessa and Glass, and Chao was now in charge of the growing team of bionics that were outside MindCorp, keeping the confused masses back. It had become a zoo. Over a million people crowded the perimeter of the campus. The bionics held the perimeter, and softy soldiers brought in water and supplies to appease the horde.

Cynthia rode down with two Minors. At the bottom, four more Minors greeted them, and together they escorted her to a large terminal near the black Colossal Core. Cynthia put on a Mindlink, and—like she was striking flint to steel—the huge Core sparked to life. A thrum filled the room and rattled their teeth, but there was no coursing blue light.

She took off the Mindlink.

“What’s the problem?” one of the Minors asked.

“I need to boot up the MTs,” Cynthia said. The multi-thread CPUs were how the Colossal Core managed the individual data streams of its forty-million-plus users. The server field sat beneath the Core in a fog of heavy oxygen.

“Do it from here,” he said.

Cynthia frowned. “I have to go to the graveyard.”

“Hold on a second.”

The Minor communicated with up top. Evan crackled over the radio. “What’s going on?”

“The multi-thread CPUs, Evan. They’re down in the graveyard and I have to boot them up.”

“That’s not how it works,” he replied.

“It is when you’re covering your bases. I coded it out of the network, so no one other than me could ever turn it on. I have to manually do it with a password and eye scan. I was ready to die, Evan. I just couldn’t let others die for me.”

The radio crackled with fuzz. They were far underground. Finally: “Two of you go with her.”

The two Minors followed her to a side elevator. Five stories below, a thick, swirling fog covered the CPU “graveyard.” The heavy oxygen was cooled below minus-fifty degrees Celsius, and the fog was caused by the heating and cooling of the air as it touched the sinks on the CPU bays. In the early days, some techs had died from the extreme conditions where these trillion-dollar CPUs thrived.

The sliding doors opened—and before them stood a frost-covered grim reaper.

Sabot.

With shocking speed, Sabot threw his arm into the elevator and positioned himself between Cynthia and the bionics. He took up nearly the entire space, but there was room for his shotgun. Point-blank, he fired the 4-gauge into each of the Minors’ chests. They slammed against the wall and crumpled like marionettes cut from their strings.

He knelt down over Cynthia. She was curled up, covering her ears in pain from the shotgun report.

She read his lips. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” she screamed back. And then she kissed him.

He pulled her outside the elevator. Overhead he heard the Minors yelling and scrambling for position. He tucked her out of sight. “Stay here.” Alone, he rode the elevator back up.

Cynthia had designed Sabot to withstand rifle rounds, and when the elevator opened, Sabot didn’t try to evade. He just stepped out and took on fire. The rounds that peppered his armored, elastic shell fed him his opponents’ vectors. Two Minors stood oblique to the elevator doors, and a third lay prone, thirty yards in front. All were armed with 10mm submachine guns.

He turned right and fired. A Minor’s face sifted apart like a dropped snow cone. He aimed to his left and did the same, sending that Minor over the rail. The third Minor, the one prone and in front, retreated, and three others, farther away, attempted suppressive fire. They were too distant for Sabot to reach them with the shotgun, so he slung it over his back and pulled out an axe. He charged.

A puck flew toward him, and before he could cover, the EMP flash-bang seared his vision and triggered his auditory limiters. He stumbled into a Sleeper chair and crashed to the ground. The electromagnetic pulse disoriented him, and his attempt to stand back up failed. Bullets peppered his entire body; in his moment of blindness, the four Minors had circled him and were closing in.

He pushed himself up on his knees and then struggled to his feet. His vision scrolled and snowed, but he saw a silhouette approaching, jumping from Sleeper chair to Sleeper chair. Sabot lunged forward and threw the power of seven men into his swing.

The axe head dug past the spine and the Minor buckled, nearly cleaved in two, his weapon continuing to fire point-blank into Sabot. A blurry image of another Minor flanked him, this one without a gun. Sticky bomb. With all of his strength, Sabot swung the axe—complete with the other Minor—at the second assailant. When they connected, the sticky bomb detonated.

The impact threw Sabot across the floor, blowing through Sleeper chairs. His chest and face were scalded and smoking. One side of his mouth was torn open, revealing the prosthetic jaw and teeth. His nose was gone.

He had lost the axe. He stood up and pulled out his shotgun again. The two men that had attacked him were nothing but limbs and rags. The other two had retreated behind the Core, cornered. The elevator and the stairway were the only ways out, and the Samoan guarded both.

His circuitry had recovered. He could see and hear.

“I’m not going to chase you,” Sabot yelled. “Your weapons don’t work against me and there’s no way out. Do the smart thing and surrender.”

They didn’t respond. He heard movement.

The Core’s black void suddenly crackled to life. Like a blue vortex trapped in a bottle, it began to spin furiously, and then suddenly—with a machine gun chatter—it fired completely to life.

YOU DO NOT GET TO SURRENDER, Cynthia projected. Her voice filled Sabot’s head as if every cell could speak. He fell to his knees, grabbing his ears.

Sorry, Sabot.

The invasive sound left his head, and Sabot watched, confused, as the two Minors fell out into the open, clawing at their heads as if spiders had burrowed into their ears.

The elevator from the graveyard opened and Cynthia stepped out. She wore a portable Mindlink. The Minors stopped flailing and hung their heads, rocking side to side.

Cynthia walked past Sabot to one of the Sleeper chairs nearest the Core. A dozen monitors surrounded it, and one huge one loomed over the rest.

Sabot went to her. “What are you doing?”

She keyed in commands, and each monitor blinked and read: “Network initialization in progress.” A timer ticked down from sixty seconds. Seven of the monitors displayed continents.

I’m taking everything online. The Northern Star isn’t complete, and Evan can barely control it. Now’s our chance.

The two soldiers walked over to Sabot and saluted.

“Sir, we are now at your command,” they said in unison. Sabot recognized the cadence, if not the pitch.

“Is that you?” Sabot asked. The Minors smirked.

I’d never build something I can’t control, Sabot. They’re mine now.

“How?”

I’m controlling them with the open architecture that allows them to communicate with one another. It’s an override. No new Tank Minor or Major can turn it off.

He peered into the eyes of one, like it was a keyhole. “Where are they?”

“Inside their minds, screaming for a way out,” Cynthia said aloud, with an unnerving coldness. She lay down in the chair and put on a full-bandwidth Sleeper Mindlink. It shicked to the contact patches on her skull and her eyes dilated. The countdown reached zero.

On the roof of MindCorp headquarters, the tops of four blinking silos rotated open. A sound swirled from their blackened holes, and like a colony of bats, hover-rovers rushed out into the night sky. They had been modified for a single purpose.

The thousands of bionic soldiers below had no time to aim and fire. They had no time to flee. The wireless hack transmitted from the hover-rovers was faster than a bullet, and within a quarter second, every general-issue Tank Minor within a ten-mile radius was under the control of MindCorp. It took extra mind power to control their voices and faces, so Cynthia ignored that. Their bulletproof bodies and armament would do.

Chao was instructing two teams to enter the sewers when suddenly his own men attacked him. “What the hell?” he screamed, shrugging them off. They fired at him point-blank, tried to climb on him, drag him down.

“I don’t know what’s happening, sir!” one screamed. Chao threw him twenty yards, too confused to kill. A cloud of hover-rovers roared down from above.

Retreat, Evan said. His voice was no longer brittle and distant. It was here. All Tank Majors, retreat!

Chao did just that. He ran through the Minors like a rhino, knocking them down and over. He came across dead Tank Majors, their helmets popped off, their brains spilled. Others were alive, but were spinning and thrashing, trying to rip off the Minors that covered their bodies. One Major was in Chao’s path, and Chao ducked a shoulder and knocked the Tank Major over. He tore the Minors off like weeds.

“What’s happening?” the Major screamed.

“Come on.”

Chao and the Tank Major helped whoever they could, and soon the pod of giants had grown to six. They fled the battle, blasting through one of the barricades and trampling through a mass of civilians too choked to move.

The Minors on the perimeter turned to the civilians and spoke. “This is Cynthia Revo. The United States and MindCorp are at war. It is no longer safe to be in Chicago. Please evacuate by rail out of the city. This is Cynthia Revo. The United States and MindCorp are at war. It is no longer safe to be in Chicago. Please evacuate by rail out of the city. . .” The message would repeat for hours.

And on the MindCorp campus, the “Revos”—the Minors now controlled by Cynthia—were doing something peculiar. Something that took great effort. A dozen to one, they were dragging the dead Tank Majors into their new base.

= = =

Raimey stood on the pier, searching for life among the glowing remains of the sinking ship. He saw nothing—bionics couldn’t swim. The last of the wreckage sizzled to smoke as the current ushered it below. He turned back to the city.

Boma was in mutiny. The workers, held against their will, revolted now that the Mort Vivant were dead. Bursts of gunfire echoed throughout the city.

Nearby, Raimey saw a group of armed men attempting to herd children into a large truck. Raimey promptly walked over and killed them.

The children glommed on to Raimey. He soon found an internment camp full of them. Some had been set aside in chain-link cages—they were the ones that had been sold. Men with guns stood guard, but when they saw Raimey, they ran. Men and women rushed out of the factories.

Juhavee rolled up in the M1. He popped the hatch. “We got them!”

“That was a hell of a shot,” Raimey said. Errant rounds ricocheted off Raimey as he spoke. Juhavee ducked out of sight inside the tank’s hatch, then cautiously peered over the lip.

“Is it safe?”

“Not especially.”

“Could you escort us? I’ll talk everyone down.”

Raimey guarded the Abrams as it went by the factories and canvassed the area, street by street. Juhavee announced that the Mort Vivant were dead, and that the people were free. Cheers filled the air and a crowd of people trailed the tank. It became a parade.

There were still soldiers in Boma that had followed the Mort Vivant. Raimey saw many of them beaten dead on the street. Some had barricaded themselves into buildings. Occasionally the parade came across a mob trying to break into a building to enact their own justice. It was vigilante law. There were no judges, there was no due process. Raimey would knock down the wall so that the mob could rush in. The parade moved on.

Dawn came. And in the rising light, Raimey was happy to see a familiar face. Vana was helping the children. She bowed to John and then clapped her hands. Raimey gave her a curt nod, but the gratefulness she projected was too much for his beaten soul. If he looked at her, he would cry. So he turned away and looked instead at the two massive ships still in port.

Vana and Juhavee spoke in French, and then she went off.

“There are more on that oil rig,” Juhavee said to Raimey. A mile offshore, the dishes on the strange oil rig rocked back and forth.

“I can’t help with that,” Raimey said. “There’s no way to get me on board.”

Juhavee looked up at the colossus. A skiff would surely submerge under only half his weight. Juhavee glanced back at the crowd. “The Mort Vivant are dead. We’ll find a way. Let’s get ahold of the Coalition.”

They made their way to the communication tower, and after breaking in, Juhavee contacted the American Coalition Command, based in Chicago. Juhavee stood on a table and raised the microphone as high as he could, toward John.

“This is Tank Major John Raimey. I am in Boma, Republic of Congo. I need to speak to General Boen.”

“Is this reinforcements? This is Charles Rivas, Private First Class!” The faint pop of gunfire came over the speaker. Juhavee and Raimey looked at each other.

“Private Rivas, I need to speak to General Boen,” Raimey repeated.

“General Boen is dead, sir.” The private’s voice was shaking.

It took Raimey a moment to find words. “He never leaves the base without escort.”

“I don’t know anything about that, sir, I was just told he’s dead! Can you send reinforcements?”

“Why do you need reinforcements?”

“We’re at war. MindCorp has taken over the Minors. They’re here now!”

More gunfire distorted the transmission.

“We’re trying to fight back.”

“What do you mean, ‘they’ve taken over the Minors’?” Raimey asked.

“THEY’RE THEIRS NOW! SHE CONTROLS THEM. SHE IS THEM. THEY’RE DESTROYING OUR BASE!” The private’s voice abruptly went from a scream to a whisper. “I can’t stay on, sir. They’re outside.”

The transmission dropped. Raimey stared at the speaker, waiting for Private Rivas to come back. He didn’t.

“My daughter is in Chicago,” Raimey said. “She works at the Derik Building. It’s where they build the bionics.”

Juhavee looked out a barred window at the two cargo ships moored to the pier. “Then you better go.”

Part II

“Even psychopaths have emotions if you dig deep enough. But then again, maybe they don’t.”

—Richard Ramirez

Chapter 9

Charles had never come home. Over a week had passed since Nikko had heard the first gunshots that started the war, and they hadn’t stopped since. Day and night, crowds rushed out of the city by train and by foot. But Grandma couldn’t. The neighbors they knew had already left, and Nikko wasn’t strong enough to help her.

“Tengo hambre,” Nikko’s grandma said. Days ago they had run out of food. They still had water. “Tengo hambre, Nikko,” his grandma said again.

Nikko held her hand. Nikko could survive a few days without a meal; he was used to it. He pulled long shifts online all the time. But Grandma was almost eighty. Any endurance she’d once possessed had flittered away with the passing years.

“I’ll get us something to eat,” Nikko said. He didn’t know where he could go. Most food was delivered, and the few corner stores in the neighborhood had certainly been looted by now. Nikko decided his best bet was the other apartments in the area. Most would be abandoned by now, and maybe he’d get lucky. If he was real lucky, maybe someone would help him with Grandma, and they could get out of the city.

He went into Charles’s room and found one of his Army duffel bags in the closet. Then he opened the bedside table and found the handgun that his brother told him to “never fucking touch.” He flicked the safety on and off to make sure he knew how, then put the weapon in the bag. He kissed Grandma goodbye and said he’d be back soon.

In the alley behind their apartment, he opened the dumpster and pulled out his neon green bike. The boom of artillery echoed from downtown, and suddenly Nikko’s legs were frozen.

“You don’t need to go far,” he said to himself.

He heard a group of people yelling and hooting. He pressed against the dumpster and waited as a gang of young men and women ran past. They didn’t look down the alley.

“Grandma needs you,” Nikko said. “If you don’t do this, she’ll starve.”

Charles would never leave them alone this long. Charles is dead, a voice whispered in his head. Nikko grimaced at the likelihood. I want to be online! I want to fight dragons! But the real world would not be ignored now, even if the virtual one promised numbing solace.

Maybe this is a game, Nikko thought. Who could tell anymore? Maybe Charles would pull the Mindlink off him after he completed this challenge, tell him to get ready for dinner. That was easier to stomach. Because then he was Raul the Sinister, and he had no fear.

Nikko almost got himself to believe it, too, as he pedaled off to war.

= = =

The civilians which Cynthia had so grandly expected to rise against the government—had not. They were five generations past any meaningful war, fat, mentally soft and coddled and expectant. Bravery had been replaced by gluttony. A third of the city had immediately left when Cynthia had announced the war, and the two-thirds that had stayed had expected the conflict to pass over like a thunderstorm.

The thousands of Minors under Cynthia’s control were dead or dying. She and Sabot were connected, and he could feel her anguish at their loss. She didn’t want to cause death. On one aircraft carrier, the soft soldiers had run the bionics off the deck and into the sea. Every Tank Minor’s oxygen was buffered—in case of chemical attack—and Cynthia couldn’t fathom the fear those bionics must have felt as they sank into the deep. They would last too long; they would have too much time to think. Maybe they’d even reach the bottom, or see the glow of a creature built for the depths as they slipped past to their anonymous graves. She had raped these men of their free will, moved them against their colleagues. It would have taken too many network resources to control their faces, their voices, so even as the bionics attacked, they screamed for help. As grenades exploded around them, they hollered for mercy. As they crushed the life out of friends, they apologized until the end.

Men and boys built for war

To the End, is where they go

Dreaming glory, but there is no more

What bloody hell we’ve birthed.

“Stop it, Cynthia. There’s nothing you can do,” Sabot said, touching her face.

And that was the problem. There was nothing she could do.

The military was adapting to this new warfare. While Cynthia controlled the infantry bionics, over eighty percent of Armed Forces were softy, and they were learning to leverage their non-bionic arsenal. Cynthia had shut down all electric rail inter-city when the war began, and they had quickly adopted diesel trains to counter. Navy ships were approaching New York and D.C, and heavy weapons were being deployed in all major cities.

And she and Evan were locked in a stalemate. She could see the Northern Star—she knew it was located somewhere in Washington, D.C. When she had turned on the network to control the Minors, it had forced its way through the MindCorp firewalls in the D.C. area and instantly created a presence overseas as well—in Africa, Iran, India, and Europe. She had seen a block of cyberspace collapse into a sinkhole with the churning violence of a waterfall. The same pit that had sucked the soul from the Sleepers; the same that had torn the moors from the Sumps and had tripped MIMEs into immersion. The Northern Star was a massive, pulsing orb. Tangled tentacles like the hair on a pubis, a multi-headed demon that would congeal into one. And through it all, she could see him: Evan screaming for control.

“My God,” Sabot had said, watching the monitor.

“Even weak, he’s more powerful than the King Sleeper,” Cynthia replied. “He’s creating a dueling universe. I’m cutting off all pathways out of the area.” The screen went black.

“So we’re blind to what he does?”

“Until he finds another way in—and he will. We have to find ‘Mother.’ Without her, he’ll go mad. It’s the only way we can win.”

“Why can’t he just disconnect?” Sabot asked.

“If he does, I can shut him out completely. Neither of us can.”

= = =

Through the blinds five stories up, Glass watched the street. They had been at Dr. Ewing’s for nine days, ever since Cynthia had taken over the infantry bionics and started the war. The first few days, a river of civilians had marched out of the city. Then it had been roving bands of gangs looting. To quell that, trucks with softy soldiers had made the rounds. And now the salmon rush was on again, as the civilians who’d thought they could wait it out ran out of food.

“Anything on the TV?” Glass asked.

“The same,” Vanessa said. “Cynthia is telling everyone to leave Chicago.” The networks were IP-based and rode over MindCorp’s network. They were Cynthia’s now.

“You should rehydrate,” Dr. Ewing said to Glass. He sat back in his recliner with a book resting on his chest. Two stacks of books were next to him. Those he had finished, and those yet to be read.

Glass raised a bucket of brine above his head. A hose from the sink had been jury-rigged to the base of the bucket. The other end terminated in Glass’s chest. Salt water seeped out of the repairs Dr. Ewing had put in place to keep Glass alive, so regular replenishment was necessary.

But they had run out of actual salt days ago, so Dr. Ewing and Vanessa had contributed their own to keep Glass functional. The smell of urine wafted off of him.

Glass had hoped that without Vanessa, the war would end quickly. But he couldn’t wait any longer. His bionic body was failing, and his prosthetic face withheld another secret: he was starving to death. The nutrient puck that fed his biomass had run dry.

The streets had been too empty in recent days, but this second wave of refugees would do for cover. “We’re going,” Glass said. He put down the bucket and tore the tube from his chest. He almost fell over—his body barely functioned. A fit man in his eighties could take him. Glass looked at Dr. Ewing, who had been docile and obedient this whole time. Even Dr. Ewing could take him. Glass gestured with the pistol. “Don’t do anything.”

Dr. Ewing’s knees popped when he stood up. “I’m on your side, Mike. I don’t know how many times I have to say that.” He grabbed his bag. Together, the three of them left the building.

They moved against the current of people, cutting across and going into the city.

“Don’t go that way,” they were warned.

“Cynthia Revo took over the Army!”

“The giants are fighting back. It’s a battle zone.”

Faint claps of gunfire echoed down the street.

Vanessa helped Glass along. He wore a trench coat over his shoulders and a hat pushed low. The people around them would never have believed that this broken man who shuffled past them could, when healthy, flip a car and chase down a gazelle. Even with the confusion and fear of the new reality upon them, many stopped and let the invalid pass.

Glass had told Dr. Ewing to walk ahead of them. He started drifting right.

“Stay in front, doctor,” Glass said. His tone lacked threat, but he had never needed it. Dr. Ewing corrected to center.

It was two miles to the Derik Building. People were on every road, like rats leaving a sinking ship, and when they got within eyesight of the wide, fortified structure, the crowds made it easy for Glass to case what was ahead of them. They walked with the crowd past the front entrance.

The Derik Building’s power was out, and the front was guarded by a dozen softy soldiers. Machine gunners were posted on each side of the entrance behind sandbags. The entrance itself was badly damaged—one door was nearly pulled from its hinges. Rifle casings littered the steps down to the road. The Minors that normally guarded the building had turned . . .

They passed buildings with power before circling back. “Why is it only the Derik Building that lacks power?” Vanessa asked.

“It’s on the grid. Cynthia,” Glass replied. To Dr. Ewing: “You can do the surgery with the backup power, right?”

Dr. Ewing was visibly agitated. He didn’t want to be there. “Yes. But how are we going to get in? We can’t just walk through the front.”

“I don’t think we have much choice,” Glass replied.

They walked up the stairs. Rifles were on them as they approached.

“Do you recognize the soldiers?” Glass asked Vanessa, who led the way.

“No.”

“Then just show them your card. No eye contact.”

“Stop!” one of the soldiers called out. “What are you doing?”

“I work here,” Vanessa said. She held out her ID.

“Step forward, ma’am. Away from the other two.”

Vanessa glanced back to Glass.

“Do it,” Glass said.

Two soldiers came down and checked her card.

“You could just scan it,” she said.

“Everything’s down,” the soldier said.

“I thought Bethany could use help. She’s here?”

“Black, thick?”

Vanessa nodded her head. “Sure.”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” the soldier said. “I like ’em both.” The other soldier shook his head and then hitched his chin toward Glass and Ewing. “Who are they?”

Dr. Ewing cleared his throat. “I’m here to help. My name is Dr. Ewing. I trained Dr. Rafayko. You can ask him.”

“And him?”

Glass’s stillness felt the same as a bowstring pulled to the cheek, before the breath was released and the arrow flew.

“He’s an anomaly,” Dr. Ewing said. “Didn’t they radio in?”

“Nothing’s working,” the soldier said. “We were sent here from the base.”

“He’s an L2 Minor who’s had coding problems his entire service. Cynthia Revo’s override doesn’t work on him. We need to figure out why.”

At the word “Minor,” the soldiers became agitated, the machine-gunners’ aim a bit more steady. Glass didn’t move. “I’m dying,” he finally said. He dropped the trench coat and showed his entire body.

The soldiers recoiled from ghastly sight. Glass looked as if he had been ground through gears and fermented in the sewers. And more importantly, he looked harmless. “The Minors attacked me. Most of my face is torn off. Please.”

The soldiers radioed in to Dr. Rafayko. He didn’t know about the Minor, but he was relieved to hear that Dr. Ewing had shown up.

“Joseph!” Dr. Rafayko said over the radio. “You chose a lousy time to unretire.”

Glass and Dr. Ewing watched each other. “I thought you could use some help,” Ewing said through a clenched jaw.

“Can I. Let them in.”

The soldiers did.

Inside, there were four more soldiers.

“Everyone’s up on two or higher with the patients,” one of them said.

“Thank you,” Vanessa replied.

They walked down the long corridor to the main station where Vanessa worked. Security lights were spread throughout the building, but their sickly light did little. Most of the floor was deep in shadows. Some of the halls shooting off were like peering into a water well. They were conserving power.

“That was good,” Glass said to Dr. Ewing when they were out of earshot.

“They would have shot us. I want to live, Mike,” he replied.

Aside from the guards at the entrance, the first floor appeared deserted. They walked past a group of desks that had been pulled into a square. Blankets and rolled-up towels were on the ground. It looked like this was where the remaining staff slept between rounds.

“Are we going to find Dr. Rafayko?” Ewing asked.

“No. We need the parts first. Where are they stored?” Glass asked.

“This level, toward the back. Near where they build them,” Vanessa said.

Glass checked to make sure they weren’t being watched, and then they veered toward a sign that read “E.T. Processing and Minor Assembly” and followed an arrow into a pitch black hallway. Dr. Ewing banged his shin on a trash can.

“Dammit. I can’t see anything.”

“Quiet.” Glass listened. Nothing. “Follow my voice.”

Glass guided them through the halls. One eye was shattered, but the other saw just fine. Vanessa helped him. She could feel how weak he was, his body shifting like dry newspaper in her arms.

“How long will the surgery take?” he asked Dr. Ewing.

“If we don’t fix your face, a few hours, once we get going.”

They made it to the manufacturing lab. Glass could see Tank Minor bodies hanging down the line in various states of assembly. When things turned, the workers must have jetted—they hadn’t even put rubber over the bodies to preserve the tissue. Glass tried the door, hoping they’d left it unlocked, but the handle was firm. A small red light was next to it. A keycard scanner.

“Try your card,” Glass said to Vanessa.

“I don’t know if I have permission.” She swiped the card and the light turned green. They went inside.

The room was vast, more a factory than a lab. A floodlight toward the back cast horrifying shadows. It was a stroll beneath the gallows. A row of bodies hung over them and curled back and forth along the assembly line. Vanessa didn’t know which was worse: here in the dark, or here with just enough light to trigger nightmares.

“Any of these?” Glass asked.

Dr. Ewing pushed the bodies around like they were slabs of beef. “These are Level 4.”

“I’m Level 6.”

“You’re the only one, right?”

“As far as I know.”

“It won’t be out here, then.”

They made their way toward the back. Under the floodlight, through a two-stage contamination door, they walked into storage. It was equal in size to the lab, but filled with rows that reached to the ceiling. Glass saw a forklift in the corner. More bodies were hung like suits, but these were properly stored, brined in polarity oil and shrink-wrapped. They could be shipped anywhere in the world.

The three of them worked their way down the aisles. Everything was arranged logically: full bodies on the right side, their parts grouped by function through the preceding aisles. They grabbed a cart and went shopping.

“What about this?” Vanessa said. She stared up at a row of empty giants. Five hung side by side, their lax forms almost ape-like in proportion.

“Not my style,” Glass said.

The primary damage Glass had incurred was to his front and above the hips, when he’d crashed into the window at one hundred and fifty miles per hour. So they ignored the aisles for legs and back, but after that went row by row. There wasn’t a Level 6 arm assembly, so a Level 5 would have to do. But they did find a Level 6 abdominal sheet— two to choose from, even. And they found a chest assembly. They grabbed a new battery.

“They keep them at a thirty-percent charge,” Dr. Ewing said.

“Hold out your hand,” Vanessa said. Glass did—he was missing the last two fingers.

She fished through a bin of digits, individually pickled and bagged, until she found the right ones.

They had what they needed.

The power supply kept the elevators working. They left the dollhouse and went up to the second floor where the surgery would take place.

Bethany ran to Vanessa when she saw them coming down the hall. They hugged.

“Thank God you’re safe! I didn’t know where you were—there was no way to get a hold of you.”

Then Bethany saw Dr. Ewing and Glass.

“Bethany,” Dr. Ewing said. She had been there during his tenure.

“This is Mike,” Vanessa added.

The shakes were taking Glass again. He gave a curt nod.

“You’re ‘Mike’?” She and Vanessa had talked about him.

“Yeah.”

Bethany put a hand on her hip. “Your boyfriend’s Mike Glass?”

Dr. Rafayko came down from the 4th floor. “Joseph! Vanessa! Thank God—we’re drowning.”

Glass raised his pistol. “Enough of the meet-and-greet.”

= = =

The apartments Nikko searched felt haunted. Doors stood open, and ripe smells wafted into the hallway—the aroma of a society of shut-ins who had gotten used to their own odors, like a field fertilized with shit. Other doors were closed and locked, residents trying to wait it out. Nikko couldn’t bring himself to knock. The reality was that those who could leave, had. Those that couldn’t would only add to Nikko’s burden—or worse, take what little he had left to survive.

On the third floor of one building, Nikko saw his first dead body. A boy a little older than him sat across from a broken door, holding his stomach. He was ghostly pale, covered in blood, staring at the ceiling. Then, inside the apartment, Nikko saw his second. An old man. He was face down, and the back of his head was shaped funny. The man’s right index finger was broken, oblique to the rest of the hand. Nikko was about to move on, but then he saw that the kitchen and the cabinets were closed. Whoever broke in didn’t break in for food. He stepped over the old man.

There was food. Not much, but some. He put the handgun into his pants pocket and stuffed the bag with some dry pasta, one instant mac ’n’ cheese, and some canned soups and beans. In the fridge he found fruits and vegetables. They were wilted but edible, Nikko thought. He bit into a tomato—it tasted better than a candy bar. He put the rest on top of the cans, hoping they wouldn’t get crushed on the way back home.

As he searched the rest of the apartment, he realized why the man had died: he had his own private armory. Empty gun racks leaned against the walls, and a reloading press sat in the corner. A large safe had been opened. One lone bullet lay where a thousand or more must have been. A gang had come for the guns.

“Someone he knew,” Nikko said aloud. His own voice gave him chills.

No more apartments, Nikko decided. Too narrow, too hard to get out of. Maybe downtown the stores will have food, he thought. If everyone was running away from the war, they wouldn’t have time to loot.

= = =

Ewing and Rafayko prepped for the surgery while Bethany went about her rounds. Glass handed Vanessa the pistol. “Have you ever shot one?”

“Once.”

Glass took the safety off. He kept a round in the chamber. “If they do anything, use it.”

“Mike, they wouldn’t.”

“They are beholden to him, Vanessa. They win if we fail.”

Vanessa looked past Mike. The doctors were talking quietly in the adjacent room. Dr. Rafayko’s eyes darted over to them and quickly turned away. He put on a smile as if Dr. Ewing had said something funny.

“This isn’t about me,” Glass said. “I don’t care about me. It’s about your safety. I know what Evan does to the people he takes.”

“How?”

Glass paused. “I’m the one that takes them.”

Her brow pushed against her eyes. “You abducted those people?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill their families?”

“Some.”

Her mouth bent in a frown. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“It was my mission,” Glass replied.

“No excuse. That’s no excuse.”

“What did you think I do? I know what people say. Even your nurse friend. I could see it in her eyes.”

“And what makes me so special, Mike? Why not finish the job?”

“You’re mine.”

A chill ran down Vanessa’s spine. He didn’t say it with passion. He didn’t say it with love. He spoke of her as property. She had become his possession.

Dr. Ewing poked his head into the room. “We’re ready.”

Glass gripped the gun in her hand. “They’ll try to kill me,” he whispered. “And if they do, you’ll be put in a pod underground for the rest of your life.” Then he dragged himself into the room.

Vanessa watched from the corner as the doctors worked. She kept the gun pointed in their general direction. Glass’s chest and stomach had been stripped to the metal skeleton. Inside his chest, she could see bundles of wires that ran to his limbs, and little armored boxes that helped distribute the current. And directly under the chest plate was the organ capsule. It was black and armored, like a cast iron kettle. Between that and the head was the implant that connected Glass’s brain to his body.

They had finished attaching the arm. Dr. Ewing was prepping the new electrostatic tissue and Dr. Rafayko had both of his arms inside Glass’s exposed abdomen, checking something with a meter. “Tsst.” He withdrew his hand and pulled off the glove. It was smoking. “The battery’s leaking,” he said.

“We have a fresh one,” Dr. Ewing said. “Mike?”

“Change it,” Glass replied.

“You’ll be powered down while we do.”

Glass rolled his eyes over to Vanessa in warning. If they were going to do something, this was the time. She nodded.

“It’s fine. Do it.”

They counted down—“Three, two, one”—and disconnected the battery. Glass’s green eyes blinked away, and every sensory connection to the outside world vanished.

“How long will he be like that?” Vanessa asked.

“Just a few minutes,” Dr. Ewing said. “Eight millimeter ratchet.” Dr. Rafayko handed it over. Vanessa tensed up, but Dr. Ewing’s hands disappeared inside Glass’s stomach and a moment later he pulled out a white cylinder the size of a coffee can. One side was smashed in, and a blue liquid bubbled out.

“That must’ve been one hell of a fall,” Dr. Rafayko said. He reached down for the new battery—and when he did, Dr. Ewing heaved the old one at Vanessa.

She tried to get out of the way, but it hit her shoulder. She screamed as she went down, and fired a bullet into the tile. Rafayko was on her, clawing at the gun. Dr. Ewing came over and stomped on her head. He followed up with another and she nearly lost consciousness. She felt the steel get ripped from her hand.

She looked up at the two men. They were stretched and blurry, covered in halos. “I brought a satellite phone,” Dr. Ewing said.

“He won’t be mad at us. He’ll understand, right?”

“He has to. What else could we have done?”

Vanessa passed out.

= = =

Evan couldn’t win without Vanessa, and there was no way to search for another candidate. When Cynthia had activated the network to control the Tank Minors around the world, Evan had crushed through the firewalls and taken over the Washington, D.C. Data Sump, which connected into UNITY. In that instant, Evan’s consciousness had expanded like stardust, no longer centralized, no longer trapped in meat. It surrounded the planet, and he could see the entire speckled ball, as if it were his. He’d immediately taken control of every Data Sump in the world, but each time he tried to hack into the terrestrial network, Cynthia would shut down the corresponding data nodes, trapping Evan on a sandbar too far from shore.

Like this, he would die. The Pieces would cannibalize him. But he had found a way to temporarily appease their hunger. In some ways, it was like training a dog. The military in D.C. was overtaking data nodes. And when they did, if anyone was online when Evan turned on the Core, well . . . that person would be sacrificed to the Pieces.

Online, life was like dusk settling into night. Evan would break into a new region, and suddenly the black sky would be filled with stars. The Pieces would rush past him, too rabid to control, and suck down the stars—krill passing through the tined jaws of a whale. Their memories—anonymous people seeking refuge from life, strangers trying to learn what had happened to the world—folded into the Northern Star as a collective of wisdom, fears, and memories that recognized itself as one entity. In ten days, the Pieces had taken over a half a million souls.

And for a moment, they would be content. But it never lasted long.

MORE, they demanded.

NO. NOT YET, Evan said.

They dragged him down. Their identities morphed and shifted into the ones they had just consumed.

YOU WILL GET NOTHING! Evan screamed, and they backed off. He felt a blind spot in his memory. He could no longer remember his parents’ names. A moment later, they gave it back: Deborah and Alex.

FALL IN LINE, AND I WILL GIVE YOU MORE, he promised. They did, and the separate Pieces unified into one, a spine of a brain—and the rush overcame Evan. With sole control of the power, Evan smashed through every data node in Chicago, and, just for a moment, he could feel Cynthia. Feel her worry. Feel her exhaustion. He could see her light and he rushed toward it.

STAMP IT OUT! he screamed at the Pieces. And just as they were about to touch, the Pieces separated, awash in their own desires, an eleven-headed Hydra—and it was just him, weakened, unable to continue, and he felt his domain retract as Cynthia took back control. It was breathing and drowning. Breathing and drowning. A hell’s torture for eternity.

Under Evan’s orders, the military was infiltrating nodes in Washington, Chicago, and New York, but it was taking too long. Without full control of the global network, it was only a matter of time before outside countries got involved. Already Russia was mobilizing forces. Evan could feed the Pieces chum with each advancement, and he could survive without Vanessa for some time, but without Chicago, all would be lost. Without Cynthia dead and buried, he would fail.

And then he got the call from Dr. Ewing. He split the Twins up. Chao continued to attack the data nodes, marching toward MindCorp Headquarters, while Kove took a team to the Derik Building. Evan needed one of these fronts to end.

= = =

Above Cynthia, an array of high-definition monitors framed one master screen on which was an overhead view of New York City. It was overlaid with street names, numerical assignments for buildings, and letter assignments for Revo squads. The Revo Minors, represented as green dots—and now, the Revo Majors, represented by large blue dots—moved toward the red dots of their enemy. The smaller monitors showed video from the onsite hover-rovers and the eyes of the Revos: the navy had arrived, and they were fighting to gain control of the ports.

No one person could control this many variables, but Cynthia could delegate tasks to thousands of MIME CPUs at her command. They would queue up with questions, and Cynthia could quickly run through them to determine the proper course of action. Some controlled soldiers, some controlled hover-rovers. One in Chicago pinged her.

Large-scale military movement near Derik Building, it reported.

Cynthia switched the massive screen over to Chicago and then to the hover-rover feed. Two trucks were pulling up to the research center, and one of the giants that had taken her from the lake climbed out, along with twenty soft soldiers.

“They’ve found ‘Mother,’” Cynthia said to Sabot.

The Revos wouldn’t get there in time, but hover-rovers could. She IP pinged the building.

= = =

Vanessa woke up with her head throbbing. Something cold was pressed to her face.

“Be still.” It was Bethany. Vanessa tried to open her eyes, but one of them stayed closed.

“Where’s Mike?” It hurt to speak. Her mouth tasted of copper.

“He’s in the room.”

“Did they fix him?”

“No.”

Vanessa tried to get up. She was tied to a bed. She craned her head—Mike was one room over. She could see him still on the table, still incomplete.

“They’re coming, don’t worry,” Bethany said. “They’ll take him away. You don’t have to be scared anymore.”

“What are you talking about? He’s my boyfriend!”

“They said—”

“They lied! Where are they?”

“Downstairs. Waiting for the soldiers to take him away.”

“Bethany, you have to listen to me. They’re taking me away. It’s not about Mike. He’s trying to save me.”

“Why would they do that?”

“It’s the whole reason I’ve been here, the whole reason Evan took me under his wing. You have to let me go.”

“They said—”

“Bethany! Why would they tie me up? Think, for Christ’s sake!”

Bethany sat back and took in what was really in front of her. “Dr. Ewing said Glass did that to you.”

“They did, Bethany. And now they’re going to take me away. They’re going to alter my mind. You’ve heard of Sleepers? This is worse. Far worse. Do they know you’re up here?”

Bethany shook her head. “I saw them when I was doing rounds.”

“Bethany, please. What makes sense? Why would I lie? I know it’s crazy, but why would Glass—Evan’s right hand—protect me?” Tears spilled down her swollen cheeks.

Bethany stared, nodding slightly in understanding. Then to Vanessa’s relief, she started loosening the restraints. “Ewing was always a pretentious prick,” she muttered. “I’m not surprised he’s covering his ass.”

When she was untethered, Vanessa hugged Bethany. Her entire body felt like a bruise, but she couldn’t help it. Sometimes love came from unexpected sources. She looked over to Glass. Sometimes love could be perverse and sadistic, and still be right. She was fine being his. She wanted to be.

“They’re going to kill him. Can you help me?”

= = =

A mind without imagination was a soul on hold. Glass waited with no sense of time, no senses at all, but even so, he thought that all was lost. In this vacuum, he didn’t dream. He just stood in the black thoughtlessness of his mind.

A tiny flame flickered in the distance. He walked toward it. It was a candle. He had never seen this before. Its tiny flame flickered and pulled as an unfelt draft tried to stamp it out. Glass sat down and held his hands around that flame, protecting it, staring into its glow. The more he looked into the flame, the more heat came off it, and then he realized that the dark around him was deathly cold. An absolute zero, where nothing warm-bodied could survive.

He knew it was his soul—it wasn’t a revelation. He had been this way since he could remember. He had always been in the cold. But he had never before seen this flame. He looked deeper into it, and in response, its warmth continued to grow. There was movement in the flame: smiling eyes. A mouth talking without sound, but the words were clearly sweet. His hands in long dark hair, the smell of shampoo somehow present here in the void. It’s a happy scene. A scene filled with love. But then a shadow looms and her smile fades. Angry noises fill the air and a large hand grabs her by the throat and tears her away. The flame becomes two shadows struggling against each other.

And then, like being reborn, suddenly he had sight. “—other,” he exhaled. His vision crackled and pixelated before settling down. His hearing captured only rushing air as the sensors calibrated for noise floor. Bethany and Vanessa looked down on him. Vanessa’s face was so swollen it was deformed, and blood leaked from a gash over her eye.

“What happened to your face?” he asked.

“Never mind that. We need to leave.”

They grabbed the parts and tools and wheeled him out of the room. At the elevator, Bethany hit up, not down.

“What are you doing?” Vanessa said in disbelief.

“You think you’re gonna outrun them on the street?” Bethany looked at the muscle sheaths and then Glass. “I’ve seen them do this a thousand times. Doctors think they’re the only ones that can do it. But I can fix him. No offense, but you’re basically a doll.”

“If you fix me, you can dress me up like a princess,” Glass replied. “How long was I out?”

Vanessa didn’t know—she had been unconscious too. She looked to Bethany.

“I wasn’t there. They talked to me, like, ten minutes ago,” Bethany said.

“If they called Evan, the Twins will be here soon. They may already be,” Glass said.

At the fourth floor Bethany and Vanessa wheeled him down the hall.

“Nurse?” someone called from one of the rooms.

“Bethany? I can’t feel my body,” someone else called from a different room.

“Here,” Bethany said quietly. A room, midway down the hall, unoccupied. They went in.

= = =

Kove walked up the steps. In his arms was a massive case. The doctors were outside waiting with the guards.

“What’s that?” Dr. Rafayko asked.

“A contingency.” Kove looked up at the floors of black windows. “Where is she?”

“He?” Dr. Ewing said. “He’s upstairs, shut down.”

“Vanessa Raimey.”

“Why do you need her?” Dr. Rafayko asked.

“Does it matter?”

To Dr. Ewing it didn’t. “We knocked her out and tied her down,” he said. “She had a gun on us.”

“What floor?”

“Second.”

Kove was too big to go through the front of the building. He turned to the soldiers he had come with and gestured to half of them. “Go get her. But be careful with her.” He turned back to the doctors. “You should go.”

Ewing and Rafayko left, as ordered, and the soldiers went in. Kove looked out to the street, where about a thousand onlookers stood gawking.

“Get out of here, you idiots!” he amplified. The crowd dispersed, people running. Kove put the five hundred pounds of explosive in the entrance.

= = =

Nikko stuck to the alleys as he rode downtown, and the constant echo of war reaffirmed this wisdom. Two miles in, he came across a loading dock to a convenience store. The back door was locked, but there was a gap between the garage and the platform. Nikko grunted as he pulled it up—he wasn’t used to physical effort. It gave a few more inches. He thought he could wedge himself through. The store itself had surely been looted, but maybe there was some food in the back that no one had thought about.

He hid the bike nearby and shimmied under the door. When it hit his belly, he got stuck for a moment, and a wave of claustrophobia rolled over him.

“Calm down,” he said to himself. Raul the Sinister wouldn’t fret. While it felt like he was being sawed in half, he could still breathe.

He put his hands against the garage door and pushed as hard as he could while slithering like a snake on its back. It hurt—his stomach was going to have a big bruise—but he got through. He reached out and grabbed the duffel bag, pulled it through after him.

The only light in the room was what leaked from under the garage door. Nikko found an onion and six jars of baby food buried behind a shelf, but everything else had already been taken. He pushed the door open to front of the store.

Directly in front of him, fifty Revos stood in silence, swaying back and forth as they awaited command.

Nikko dropped to the ground. The door behind him closed, and five Revos snapped their heads toward the noise.

Some of the silhouettes were completely dark. Some had glowing eyes. Nikko searched for a place to hide.

Nearby was a checkout lane. It was separated from the rest of the store by bulletproof glass. Nikko crawled into it, too afraid to breathe.

A flying disc rose over the rotting crowd and floated over to the door. One Revo followed. Nikko craned his head to watch. The Revo held the door open, and the hover-rover glided through.

While the Revo waited, it looked directly at Nikko. Then the hover-rover returned, and the Revo walked back into the crowd.

Nikko exhaled and turned his head. He almost screamed when he saw the little girl hiding right next to him. They stared at each other. The girl raised her finger to her mouth: Quiet. Nikko nodded.

A booming sound grew, and the Revos exploded out of the store.

= = =

The Revos had numbers, and in numbers lay strength—but they were no match for Chao’s chain gun.

GUNG

GUNG

GUNG

GUNG

GUNG

GUNG

GUNG

Chao grinned as the horde of Revos charged, and laughed as he eviscerated them with .50 caliber incendiary rounds. Chao was enjoying himself. FINALLY he was doing what he was designed for.

They were at the final data node needed to connect Evan to MindCorp Headquarters. He and a team of Tank Majors were chaperoning some computer nerds that were reconfiguring each node for Evan. Cynthia’s hover-rovers whisked overhead like falcons, and the area was infested with Revos. They behaved like fire ants, pouring out of buildings to take out the soldiers and nerds.

A targeting reticle danced across Chao’s vision. He knew at all times where the chain gun was targeted, and his reach. He stood on top of the one of the transports, and as the Revos rushed out, he lit them up. The incendiary rounds had been designed for soft targets, and when they hit, they turned the Revos into match heads. Chao laughed out loud. Revos tried to pull him down. He tore them apart. He was as quick or quicker, and twenty times their strength.

A heavy ran up to Chao.

“The Revos are retreating into the node.”

“Fuck. We MOVE, we MOVE.”

Chao holstered the chain gun and sprinted for the node. He blasted through the few Revos that were trying to slow him down. Ahead, a stream of Revos were entering the building, and right away he knew what they were going to do: destroy it.

The other Tank Majors couldn’t keep up with Chao, nor could the Revos.

Chao got to the building and reared back.

BA-BAM!

The front of the structure evaporated from impact of the hydraulshock. Revos squirmed like worms, pulling themselves out of the debris.

BA-BAM!

BA-BAM!

BA-BAM!

Three follow-up punches finished the job, disintegrating everything up top, and revealing the stairs. Chao rushed down them. At the bottom, he could see more Revos, damaging the equipment. He sprinted around the corkscrew platform until he was halfway down, then he jumped into the open air and fell the rest of the way. He laid waste to the Revos below.

The final data node was his.

= = =

Nikko and the little girl held each other as the Revos, and whatever else was outside, battled. The gunfire was deafening at first, but it dissipated as the fight moved farther away. Soon it was just the two of them.

“What’s your name?” Nikko asked.

“Odessa,” the girl whispered. Her whole body shook. Her curly hair was covered in dust from bullets eviscerating the walls. She couldn’t have been more than seven.

“I’m Nikko. Why are you here?”

“It’s my dad’s store.”

“Where’s your dad?”

She pointed into the shopping area. Nikko didn’t have to look. Looters had killed him.

“Where’s your mom?”

“At her apartment.”

“Do you know how to get there?”

The girl nodded.

“I got a bike.”

“I’ve never been on a bike.”

= = =

Bethany appeared to know what she was doing. Vanessa watched as she took a splay of wires from within Glass and attached them to various sections of the abdominal sheath. There were metal latch points on his skeleton, and she stretched the manufactured muscle onto them, talking herself through the procedure as she wired and latched, wired and latched.

“The orange is below the blue and white, the purple is at the top. Anchor diagonally to stretch it properly . . .”

The patients in the surrounding rooms started screaming in distress.

“I can’t feel my body!”

“I’m shaking!”

“I’m off the bed!”

“Someone help!”

Vanessa started for the door.

“Stay here,” Glass said. To Bethany: “How much longer?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

They heard bodies hit the ground. Outside, one of the doors opened. “I don’t know what’s going on!” someone cried right outside. Footsteps slid past them.

Vanessa looked wide-eyed at Glass.

“Lock the door,” Glass said quietly.

Vanessa did. A frosted window was set in it, and just as the lock clicked, a head pressed its ear to the glass. “This is Cynthia Revo. Is this ‘Mother’?”

Vanessa turned to Glass and mouthed, What should we do?

Glass shook his head slowly. Nothing.

Bethany was hunched over him, sweat dripping from her nose, finishing the fix. The chest was installed, and she moved on to attaching the shoulder ligaments to the main body.

The doorknob rocked back and forth, the silhouette still peering in, listening. Suddenly the knob was ripped from the door, and the door swung open.

In the doorway was an anatomic display. The Minor was skinless, one of its legs was still not fully attached, and the head lolled like a ball on string. It had to grab its head by the hair and pull it up in order to look around the room.

Vanessa was in the corner, and next to her was Mike Glass, a nurse working on him. Still holding its head by the hair, the Minor turned to Vanessa. “You’re Mother. Of course. Why else would he take you under his wing?”

It shuffled in. Behind it, more doors opened and metal feet clacked on the tile. “I’m sorry, but I have no choice,” Cynthia said. “It’s you or millions. Or even more.”

Glass tried to get up, but his body wasn’t fully activated. The Revo turned its paralyzed head to him.

“You’re protecting her,” it said with curiosity. “You know what her life will entail. This is better. It’s mercy.”

The Revo dragged itself toward Vanessa. From the hall, the elevator dinged. As the Revo neared, Glass lunged, reached out, almost falling off the table as he did so, and grabbed the crook of the arm that held the Revo’s head. Cynthia—controlling the Minor—released the head and reached for Vanessa with the other arm. This was a Level 4 Minor body: if she could just lay a finger on Vanessa’s throat, she could end this. And she was mere feet away. The only thing holding her back was the grip of this broken giant.

Cynthia focused her entire energy on the Minor’s body, letting facial control go. Immediately the hanging head became aware, and the man stared at Vanessa, horrified and confused, like a boy being pulled into a van. “What’s happening?” he cried. His hands were almost on her.

Glass was now getting dragged off the table, but wouldn’t release his grip on the Minor. Bethany frantically worked on Glass’s arm.

“Lay ’em down!” The voice echoed from the hall, then was drowned in machine gun fire. Revos sprinted past the doorway toward the soldiers. Meaty pops filled the air, followed by crashing as the armor-less Minors got cut down. “Vanessa Raimey! If you are here, we need to go, now!”

More doors opened—and more gunfire. There were hundreds of soon-to-be bionics on this floor.

Glass’s left hand was missing two fingers, and he was losing his grip.

Vanessa was completely cornered. The frightened upside-down face in front of her turned cold. “It has to be this way,” Cynthia said.

“She’s in here!” Glass yelled. “She’s in here!”

The report of the gunfire escalated as the soldiers advanced.

The Revo turned to Glass. “What are you doing?” it snarled.

“Bethany, hide,” Glass said. Bethany ducked behind the bed. “They want her alive, Cynthia. And so do I.”

The soldiers rushed in and fired on the Revo. Exit wounds exploded through it: like the others, its armor sheathing wasn’t yet in place. It collapsed onto Vanessa. She heard the man say, “I don’t want to die,” and then he was pulled off of her and she was yanked to her feet. A flashlight blinded her.

“We got her! We got her! Cynthia has control of the Minors. I repeat, Cynthia has control of the Minors.”

Vanessa stared back at Glass as she was carried away. He gazed lifelessly at the ceiling, his arms wide, his mouth open.

“No! Mike! No!” she yelled, and then she was out of the room.

More gunfire, more Revos. The soldiers made it to the stairs. A sergeant yelled into the radio, “Every floor is compromised! I repeat, every floor is compromised!”

A stampede of Revos chased after them.

= = =

Bethany slowly rose from behind the bed. She looked down at Glass’s still face.

It reanimated and she jumped against the wall.

“Fix me,” he said.

= = =

The soldiers rushed Vanessa down the stairwell. Halfway to the ground floor the pursuing Revos started swan-diving down to them from above. One Revo grabbed a soldier and pulled him over the rail. Another, just arms and a torso, landed on top of them like it was crowd surfing. It ripped out a soldier’s throat before it was pummeled by lead.

Ten more soldiers met them on the ground floor. Together they exited out the main entrance.

Kove opened the back door of the transport. “Get in and go!” he yelled. Above them, the windows exploded outward and Revos—some just parts, others nearly whole—rained down from all levels. Knees popped and limbs snapped as they piled on top of each other, spilling into the road. Those who survived the fall immediately attacked the soldiers, tearing four of them to pieces.

Kove slammed into them, scissoring down with punches. Then a second wave fell from the fourth floor, and these were targeting the giant. They covered him, clawing at his body as he swung wildly, trying to shake them off.

“Get her out of here!” Kove yelled.

The soldiers fired into the dog pile of limbs that surrounded the truck. Two got sucked in, dead within seconds, but the other six—plus Vanessa—made it. Kove heard gunfire echo from the interior—something must have snuck in—and then the truck rumbled away, still covered in the amputated mess.

It had just made a wide U-turn to head toward the airport where a plane was waiting, when out of the corner of his eye, Kove saw something streak toward the truck. But before he could see what it was, Kove’s helmet was torn open as the Revos tried to get at his brains.

BA-BAM!

Kove hydraulshocked the mass. The pile of Revos that had swarmed him were now scattered for a hundred yards. Kove turned back to the truck, confirmed that it had escaped—it was a good hundred yards farther on and out of danger. On the way out, it had apparently crashed into a nearby building, where a hydrant now spewed a column of water high into the air. The hydraulshock report had masked the crash.

What the hell? Gunshots filled the air, and to Kove’s surprise, he saw Glass assaulting the truck. He started to run, to attack, but Revos continued to pour out of the building, and those limbs and broken bodies that had survived the hydraulshock rushed toward him like crabs. Kove crushed them with his fists, tore them off his back, struggling to escape, but they held him back by sheer force of numbers.

Thwarted by the relentless attack of the Revos, Kove had no choice.

He detonated the bomb.

= = =

Bethany finished, and Glass rushed out of the room after Vanessa. On the way down the stairs, he found a dead soldier and took his bulletproof vest. When the Revos tumbled out of the building in a waterfall, he smashed through a window on the second floor and carried down with them.

He saw that Kove was swarmed. The truck was leaving. Glass had no time to think. He ran directly at the truck and dove at the windshield. He shattered through the glass with his arms out like wings, nearly decapitating the two men in front. The truck veered off the road at forty miles per hour and crashed into a building. Glass grabbed a pistol from the dead driver.

He ran around and ripped the doors off the hinges. Vanessa was cuffed and wedged behind four soldiers. They shot him point-blank with their rifles, emptying their clips. He ignored their fire and pulled them from the truck, snapping their necks. One of the soldiers jumped behind Vanessa and put a gun to her head.

“I’ll—”

He didn’t finish. Glass raised his pistol and shot him in the head before the soldier could even register the movement.

“Are you okay?” Glass asked. Vanessa was shaking. Blood was spattered across her face.

Before she could answer, a huge blast came from the Derik Building. Glass was knocked down; the truck lifted off its wheels and was thrown into the nearest building, Vanessa tossed within it. A hurricane of dust pummeled them. Glass pulled himself up just as a broad silhouette appeared out of the murk behind him.

“Behind you!” Vanessa screamed.

Glass ducked. Kove’s massive fist cleaved through the back of the truck. Glass dove beneath Kove’s legs and vanished into the fog.

Kove looked into the truck. Vanessa was against the cab wall, coughing and covered in grey, but fine. He turned to the fog, squinting for any sign of Glass, but the bomb had turned the surrounding area into a fugue.

“Any of you guys alive?” he called. The silence was a negative. Shit. He couldn’t drive the truck. Kove amplified his voice. “I don’t have a problem with you, Glass. I know this is a raw deal, but stay out of the way.”

“You can’t have her,” the fog replied.

Kove rolled the back of the truck closed as easily as if it were a paper bag. “I’m not going to leave the truck, and reinforcements are coming. It’s over.”

The fog held its tongue. A minute passed; nothing. It was too quiet. It made Kove uneasy. He felt like he was missing something.

Off, away, there was the sound of metal wrenching back and forth.

What’s he doing? Kove wondered. He couldn’t leave the truck—Glass might sneak past, take the truck, and drive away. And even if Kove caught up to them—then what? He couldn’t do anything that could hurt Vanessa. She was the mission.

Vanessa’s yell echoed inside the truck. Kove slapped the side. “Quiet.”

He turned back, and Glass was there, just within eyesight. He held an ancient parking meter in his right hand. The pole extended four feet. His left hand was behind his back.

“Step away, Alan. I’ll let you live if you step away.” Glass was three feet shorter, forty-six hundred pounds lighter, but he spoke like a king offering mercy. “Evan won’t kill you; he loves his toys. Live to fight another day.”

Kove put up his dukes. “This is stupid. You know I can’t.”

With blinding speed, Glass’s left hand flung a piece of cement the size of a ham at Kove. Glass was a Level 6, the most powerful Minor ever created. The thirty-pound block hit Kove’s helmet at eighty miles per hour.

The helmet! The Revos had almost unlatched it. Kove settled it with his hand, then felt the blunt edge of the meter dig into his side as Glass swung it like a bat with all his might.

Kove reached for Glass with his other arm, but he couldn’t focus. And as fast as Kove was, Glass was faster; as strong as he was, it didn’t matter if he only grabbed air.

Glass focused on the helmet. He swung the parking meter again, and the impact spun the helmet sideways. Out of his right side, Kove couldn’t see. He caught a blur and snapped at Glass with both hands. Glass rolled out of the way and swung again on the rise.

This time the helmet launched off of Kove’s shoulders.

NO!

Kove covered his head with one hand and spun madly. His hand snared a leg, and he picked Glass up. Relief washed over him. He had almost been done in.

Glass didn’t struggle when Kove held him like a trophy fish. But he did pull out his sidearm. David and Goliath, the slingshot was drawn. With his helmet gone, Kove had to drop Glass in order to protect his head with both hands. The rounds bounced harmlessly off them, but Kove couldn’t see, and when the gunfire ceased and he opened his hands to find Glass, what he saw instead was a one-hundred-pound parking meter swinging right at his face.

The meter connected with Kove’s jaw and tore it from his skull. Kove crumbled backward over his legs, unconscious, spurting blood. The damage was extreme: his jaw was shattered, dangling by a flap of skin torn to one side. His tongue hung loose, the tip squirming back and forth while Kove sought consciousness.

Glass dropped the meter and ran to the truck.

“Are you okay?”

“Mike!” Vanessa cried.

“You’re safe now. Grab on to something. I’m getting you out of here.”

“Yes!” Vanessa said.

Glass got into the truck and gunned it. Vanessa heard civilians yelling as they passed. Stones clanged against the metal walls. She rattled around the back as Glass took turns too fast, and then she felt the truck descend and the sound of people fade beneath the gurgle of the engine.

Five minutes later the truck stopped. She heard the driver-side door open, but a minute passed and Mike still hadn’t said anything to her.

“Mike?” she called out. She shook away the image of the incomplete soldiers running after them.

“Stand back.” It was Glass.

A pipe punctured through the crimped metal and Glass rocked it back and forth, opening a jagged hole. He tore at it until it was big enough for her to slip through.

Glass pulled her out and they hugged. She looked at him. The skin on his face was the worse for wear, and the exposed muscles on his chest and arms were punctured by bullets.

“Mike! Are you okay?”

“The bulletproof vest took most of it.” He smiled. “And I’ll survive the rest.”

“What are we going to do?”

“You’re going to stay here.”

He escorted her to the passenger seat.

“Why?”

“It’s safe. I need to tie up a loose end.”

She looked around. Chicago was layered with streets, and this one was buried deep into the dermis. It had been fifty years since it’d seen the sun. A sheet of water covered half the street; rats scurried along the walls.

Glass shut the door. “Stay tucked down. I’ll only be a minute.” He disappeared up some nearby stairs.

Vanessa watched a rat scrape at a cup that had made its way to this forgotten street by gutters. She let out a long yawn; suddenly she was so sleepy. Adrenaline, she thought. A military radio beneath the dash crackled with noise. She went to turn it off, but paused. If Glass had been listening to it, it was safe.

Another yawn made her want to curl up and nap. Not exactly a survival response. She pinched her thigh, touched her eye, and then started flipping through the military bands. Something to do, and maybe she’d learn what the hell was going on. And five bands in, she heard something impossible. She hurried out of the truck and ran to catch Glass.

= = =

It was a nine-day passage from Boma to the United States. The goodbyes had been quick. Raimey asked Juhavee to bury Razal. Vana hugged Raimey’s leg. The captain—an angry, slurry Brit—had shown zero interest in crossing the Atlantic until Juhavee offered him gold. The same gold that had been paid to the Mort Vivant for the children. After that, the captain warmed to the journey.

“Good luck, John,” Juhavee had said. “Find your daughter.”

Now Raimey was stuck in the cargo bay—none of the stairs were big enough for him. One of the engineers was a cool guy, and would talk to him from time to time. The others kept their distance, nodding nervously and moving on. Mostly it was just him and his wife, quiet company.

“You can get to her,” she’d say when doubt would fill his mind. She always knew.

“I know.”

“Believe it.”

“I will.” He’d try to look at Tiffany, but she’d slide away. “She wanted to speak to me.”

“She’ll forgive you if you save her.”

“She would, wouldn’t she? She’d have to.”

A day out from New York, an intercom in the cargo hold crackled. It was the captain. “We’re getting two radio signals. One’s an SOS, and the other’s a warning not to come in to port.”

“We have to,” Raimey said. “Someone must be there.”

“I’m not going to endanger my men,” the captain said.

“I will sink this ship.”

“That’s a shitty thing to say. Aren’t you the good guy?”

“I’m just a guy.”

A pause. “I’ll keep trying.”

Twelve hours later, the intercom crackled again. “We found a weak signal. It’s a soldier at the port.” The captain patched it through.

“This is Private Seth Cauwels.” The voice sounded young—just a kid. “Do not come to port. We barely have it under control.”

“Cauwels, this is John Raimey.”

A moment of silence. The radio was open and distant cracks of gunshots came across the tinny speaker.

“The Tank Major?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a built-in comm, anything like that?”

“No.”

“No headaches?”

“No, why?”

“MindCorp controls ninety-five percent of the bionics.”

“That’s impossible.”

The radio was again filled with gunshots and the far-off screams of sirens. It was clear that Cauwels had held the radio out toward the front of the port.

“It’s possible, sir. It’s happening.”

“Captain, are you on?” Raimey asked.

“Yes.”

“How long until we get there?”

“Five hours.”

Cauwels spoke up. “Sir, I’ll hold as long as I can.”

“Private—how far-reaching is this?” Raimey asked.

“The whole country, sir. It started in Chicago ten days ago. MindCorp shut down everything. Civilians are running around the streets, there’s looting, fire. It’s like the end of the world.”

Raimey’s mind raced. “Hang in there. I’ll be there soon.” But the only thing he was thinking of was Vanessa. If this started in Chicago, then for ten days she had been trapped in a war zone, and she worked at a place that built bionics. He felt his wife wither.

The five hours felt like days, but at last the ship eased into port. The crew had already come into the cargo bay to ready John. Someone at the port was manning a crane, and as soon as the ship was docked, the crane rotated over and lowered a cable. Raimey was slowly hoisted up.

From his vantage point in the air, he had a clear view of the destruction. Lifeless bodies were scattered from the dock all the way to the shoreline. Past the dock, buildings were on fire. The deep bellow of tank cannons echoed from the city. A team of fighter jets roared overhead. As soon as John was clear of the ship, the captain pulled sideways and out.

Raimey was lowered down onto the dock. While he waited to be unhooked, a team of soldiers approached.

“Private Cauwels?” Raimey asked expectantly. But when they got close, he could see that these weren’t softies. Or friendlies.

“Help,” one pleaded weakly. His face was gaunt. He was starving, near death. The others were biologically dead. Their faces were rotting, their eyes muddy holes. A few had night vision, and even with their heads cantilevered to the side, the green glowed. Raimey heard a whirring. Up in the sky was a hover-rover. “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me,” the one bionic kept repeating.

Then they attacked. Raimey had no choice. He pounded them into the ground.

A voice came from above. “Is it clear?”

Raimey looked up—it was the crane operator. He was climbing down.

“Cauwels?”

“Yeah.”

Cauwels got to the ground and ran over to John. He used the handholds on Raimey’s back to climb onto him and unhook the crane cable.

“Where’s everyone else?” Raimey asked. Cauwels was no older than twenty, but he looked solid. A farmboy.

“There’s only eight of us.” Cauwels put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Across the port, seven armed soldiers appeared from behind a shipping crate and ran over. If anything, they looked even younger.

“Where did you guys come from?”

“Fort Benning.”

“Sand Hill?”

They nodded. The Army must have been funneling soldiers in from basic training. The bionic division had long ago nullified the need for soft soldier battalions, so this was a contingency move. A desperate one. Cauwels continued.

“We got here two weeks ago. The bionic divisions were taking over the data nodes and we were filling in. After Cynthia took over the Minors, the soft divisions and armament divisions came in to try and to take back the data nodes.”

Raimey looked up and down the skyline. “And all hell broke loose.”

“Yeah. Only the old Tank Majors are unaffected.”

Three gunships flew past them in formation.

“What about them?” Raimey asked.

“Friendly. We were supposed to get support, but it didn’t happen. Digital transmissions aren’t working. You got me on a portable radio. Last I heard, Grand Central Station is the staging point. But it’s nasty there. It’s where most of the fight is taking place.”

“How far?”

“Five miles.”

“Then that’s where I’m going,” Raimey said.

The soldiers looked around uneasily.

“You can stay here.” Raimey walked to the front of the pier and passed two overrun machine gun nests. Brass was everywhere. Downrange, hundreds of Tank Minors were shredded, their electrostatic tissue flayed and splayed like crab meat. A few twitched.

Raimey heard a noise behind him and turned. The soldiers had followed, stacked in the formation used by a Tank Major/six-man Minor team.

“We were a week from culling,” Cauwels said.

“Good thing. Stay behind me. I’ll do the work, you guys just pick off any threat I can’t see. Good?”

The eight young men nodded. Cauwels spoke into the radio. “Ford, it’s Cauwels. We’re on our way to Grand Central and we have Tank Major John Raimey. I repeat, we have Tank Major John Raimey.”

They moved west using the alleys. Raimey stomped through the piles of trash and crushed the dumpsters against the walls to make room. Dead civilians were everywhere. Here, in bunches, probably from a shelling; there, alone and face down, perhaps from errant fire. And the whole time, the thought that ticker-taped through Raimey’s head was that a corporation was responsible.

On Park Avenue, more bodies were blown together like loose garbage. The bottom five stories of an apartment building had been totaled. Splayed out in front of it was a Tank Major, its chest armor open and jagged like the jaws of a snapping turtle. It had been shot with a cannon. It was dead.

He saw three other giants lumped together with similar wounds. The Revos had hijacked some tanks. That’d be easy, Raimey thought. Two of them could rip open the armored hatch, and hand-to-hand combat with a softy was like strangling an old man on his deathbed.

An Apache helicopter approached from the north and hovered above, targeting them with its chain gun. Cauwels waved up to it and got on the radio. He cycled through a few bands and got the pilot. “This is Private Cauwels.”

“Is the Major friendly?” the pilot asked.

“Yes. Where are you going?”

“Grand Central.”

“We are, too.”

“I wouldn’t. It’s nearly overrun,” the pilot replied. He clicked off and flew on.

They got to Central Park. It was deserted, like the rest of New York, except for the dead. They heard intense gunfire crackling south of them. Halfway through the park, they encountered a group of civilians huddled near the lake.

“We’re friendlies,” Cauwels assured as they passed. One man held his dead wife in his lap. They all looked ill.

As they got closer to Grand Central Station, it was clear that they were approaching the heart of the battle. The booms of tank shells and heavy caliber weapons ricocheted around downtown.

Twenty stories above them, a tank shell exploded into a corner of a skyscraper. Cauwels and his team sprinted for cover as the debris crashed to the street below. Raimey blocked it with his arm.

Two blocks later they came across the Apache. It was a streak of fire in the middle of the road. The tank shell that had hit the skyscraper had made short work of its assault.

Beyond that, they saw the possessed Minors. It was like nothing they would have predicted. They weren’t a mass, like zombies; they were an ultra-coordinated strike force. They sniped from buildings circling Grand Central, and on the ground a thousand Revos bore down on the U.S. Army’s last stronghold while the pirated tanks shoveled lead down the pipe.

“Holy shit,” Cauwels said.

“Do you see what I’m seeing?” Raimey asked.

Cauwels and the others had no clue.

“None of them are looking in our direction.”

“Because they’re being controlled?” Cauwels asked.

“It’d be disorienting to have them look in other directions, wouldn’t it?” Raimey guessed. He continued. “If there are other Tank Majors, they’re pinned because of the tanks surrounding Grand Central. They can’t take a direct hit from something like that. I’m going after the tanks. If I can get rid of those, the rest of ’em are just mosquitos.”

Cauwels and his men checked their rifles. “We’ll do what we can.”

“Shoot at range—don’t get close,” Raimey said, and then his drive chains spun up in electric thunder and he charged into battle.

He had four hydraulshocks remaining. There were six tanks that he could see. He had to hit hard and fast.

The Revos may be strong, but they didn’t act like human soldiers. It was clear as he approached that they were in groups, and that some were in motion while others paused, like a turn-based strategy game. When in motion, they moved like a coordinated unit; when paused, they swayed back and forth in unison, a team of drunks debating collapse. None of them turned his way even though he was running so hard toward them that the asphalt beneath his feet was cracking like clay. He cleaved through two squads of Minors on the way to the nearest tank, and suddenly all eyes were on him. The other groups of Minors immediately collapsed around him like glue, grabbing at him, trying to pull him down.

He ran directly at the tank. Its turret rotated toward him while piles of Minors tried to hold him back. Raimey kept his legs aimed at the tank and spun his upper body around and around. With his arms out, he was like a weed-whacker, chopping through the bionic sod. Ten yards from the tank, he locked his torso in place and reared his left hand back.

WHA-WHAM!

His fist punctured the rear engine compartment and the fuel exploded. The tank jumped away from John, immediately scrap, but the turret kept coming. John slammed his fist down on it, warping it.

He didn’t wait—the tank was dead. In long sweeping arcs, he swept the crowding Revos away. Three got up on his back, out of reach. Cauwels and the others pulled up their rifles and slapped them down.

By now, the other tanks had a bead on him. Raimey moved to the next one with surprising speed. He looked like a cannonball, out of control, like there was no way the massive, motive inertia could alter from its current path. But it could. Like a running back, Raimey cut back and forth, his feet tearing up the asphalt as the tank fired—and then he was within fifteen feet of it.

He pinned himself against the front of the tank and ground along its side, allowing no space. He grabbed the barrel and, with a heave, bent it. The tank tried to move back, but Raimey slid quickly toward the engine.

WHA-WHAM!

The tank ground to a halt.

Four left. Two were advancing toward him—firing into the desiccated hull of the destroyed tank, which Raimey now used as a shield—while the other two were retreating, but keeping their turrets trained on the hiding giant.

From behind the tank, Raimey watched the two Abrams approach. A swarm of Revos clambered over them like parasites, kamikazi-ing toward him. The tanks pounded Raimey’s shield with shells, some punching through. The first wave of Revos hit, and Raimey crushed them down. And then he pushed.

Full torque at one rpm, and he thrust the warped-out Abrams ahead of him as he accelerated quickly toward the sea of Revos. Raimey’s legs pumped faster and the mangled tank hit the wall of arms and legs, the gaunt shrunken faces, knocking them over and under and into the tank they were trying to protect.

Raimey wasted no time. Revos piled on top of him, but he gave them no notice. When he saw the black eye of the turret, he did something that Majors never do: he sprawled to the ground. The shot rang over his head and he jumped up. He had five seconds before it could fire again. He circled to its back.

WHA-WHAM!

The tank spun away, encased in fire, and the Revos that had covered Raimey’s shoulders and back were torn apart by the force. The other tank retreated. Raimey scissored down with his fists, crushing through the Revos, leaving twitching limbs and vacant stares in his wake. He saw a flurry of flashes from far away and a Revo fell from his back. Cauwels and his team.

Raimey had one hydraulshock left, and he didn’t want to waste it. He caught up to the retreating tank and climbed on top. From above he hammered his fists down, crushing the turret flat as a pancake, one hundred titanic blows of invincible eight-hundred-pound fists in less than a minute. He knelt down and pounded the turret through its chassis. It slowed to a crawl when the Minors inside were crushed within.

That tank had been bait. BOOM! A shell hit John square in the chest, exploding, and he spun off the tank.

===

“Raimey’s hit!” a soldier called out. The eight-man team had split up to dismantle the two remaining tanks that were firing at Raimey from range.

“Shit.” Cauwels was chewing on plastique and wedging it in the bearing ring between the turret and the chassis. So far, no Revos had looked their way. They were focused on the giant. “Is he moving?”

“No.”

“Uh guys, the tank that just shot him is aiming at us,” another soldier said. He was covering them.

“Do you see Terry?” Cauwels asked through gummed-up teeth. Terry was running the other team. The turret staring at them looked like a black hole.

“Don’t see him. You better get off, man.”

BANG! The tank turret popped off like a cork and Terry and the others jumped up and fired into the hull.

Cauwels exhaled in relief and finished the C-4. He jumped down and ran toward John with his team. He popped the radio trigger with his thumb. Another BANG! The tank behind them exploded, and like roaches pouring from beneath a rotting log, four Minors jumped out and immediately attacked.

“Shit!” Cauwels said. Two of the soldiers were immediately killed. Cauwels pulled up his rifle and shot from the hip. A bullet clipped his shoulder, another hit his thigh. The Minors sprinted toward him, dead and possessed. Terry and his team tried to intervene, firing at the Revos, but they were too far away.

A Revo tackled Cauwels and grabbed his head. And suddenly Cauwels rose like an angel. He thought, This is how it ends . . . but instead of a tunnel of light, or a loved one welcoming him, he found himself looking directly into Raimey’s eyes. The giant’s nose and mouth dripped with blood.

When the tank shell had hit his chest, it had penetrated his main armor, setting off the reactive safeguard underneath. His entire front had been blown out. Only a heat shield protected John’s human form from danger. Raimey ripped the Revo off of Cauwels and curb-stomped it.

Terry and the others came over. Cauwels was unconscious. One of his eyes had been raked.

The Revos were closing in, still a thousand or more. But with the tanks destroyed, the battle lines shifted; the area was clear for air support to move in. The thwapping of chopper blades filled the air, and then cannon fire. An Apache approached, lighting up the bionic mass. Other guns joined in as the shored-up forces of Grand Central emerged, firing on the Revos, driving them back. A barely functioning Tank Major ran interference, creating a gap between the softy forces and the nearest Revos, allowing the Army to mount machine guns and lay suppressive fire.

“Get behind me,” Raimey said, and with Cauwels in hand, he sprinted toward Grand Central. The remaining soldiers followed as John cleared a path. Around them, Revos exploded from the Apache’s minigun. Revos fired from the surrounding buildings and the Apache answered in kind, showering the square in glass.

Softies met Raimey at the barricade. Raimey handed Cauwels off and charged back into the fray, working alongside the other Tank Major. The Revos soon retreated. Raimey guessed they wanted to control the city, and if too many died, they wouldn’t be able to manage it.

The injured Tank Major knelt motionless. An acrid green steam poured from his back. “My battery’s gone,” he said. Raimey dragged him back to the barricade where technicians greeted them. Then he went down into Grand Central Station.

Soldiers ran past him up the stairs with weapons and supplies. They were refortifying the entrance and taking back the surrounding buildings.

Raimey found one of the soldiers from the port in the Grand Central Hall. Spent brass littered the floor, as did glass and debris. The actual command was underground.

“Did Cauwels make it?”

“They’re working on him.”

“But he’s alive?”

“So far.”

The soldier showed him the way.

The infirmary was marked with a red splash of paint in the shape of a plus. Outside its doors, a young soldier, buzz cut, stocky, with sharp brown eyes, waited. When Raimey approached, the soldier saluted.

“I’m Corporal Ford. Cauwels radioed in that you were coming.”

“You guys are friends?”

“Joined together.”

“How is he?” Raimey asked.

“He’s beat up, but he’s going to make it.”

“I need to get to Chicago.”

“Orders?”

“Duty.”

Ford didn’t ask more. Raimey outranked him handily. Ford glanced at Raimey’s wounds and battle chassis damage. “Let me get a tech and medic to check you out first.”

The medic treated the burns on Raimey’s skin from the active armor, and the techs took the chest plate from the Tank Major whose battery had exploded, and modified it to fit Raimey. They reloaded his hydraulshocks.

Ford showed John to the train. “Officially, I can’t let you take it, but no one’s around to argue with me. Chicago is ground zero anyway.”

Raimey liked Ford. He was young, and it was clear that he was in charge only because higher ranks had died and left him with command, but he was handling it. “Why aren’t you a Minor?”

Ford smiled. “Almost every soldier you see here was scheduled to become one. I was booked for culling next week,” Ford said. “But after this, I think I’m going to pass. I’ll radio ahead to the team in Chicago. They’ll be glad to have you.”

“Good luck,” Raimey said.

“You, too.”

Raimey boarded the train, and minutes later it chugged west out of Grand Central Station.

= = =

Kove woke, staring at stars. Copper ran down this throat and when he shifted it was as if a hot iron had been shoved into his skull. He remembered.

“Oh, Gaww. Gaww.” His voice was a ragged hole. He reached up with his hand, then stopped—his hands weren’t for consoling. He sat up, and the pendulum swing of ravaged tissue beneath his nose shocked his brain with white light. The dust from the Derik Building explosion crusted his open wounds. But it may have saved his life. He could feel the grit—it was like match points on his open nerves—but there was very little blood.

He stood up and the world spun. He careened into a building. He heard the wet sucking sound of his breathing. He had to find Chao. He knew he was downtown and that Glass wouldn’t leave the city. Unlike Cynthia, Glass had no safe house.

He found his helmet. Gingerly, he pressed the skin tag that had been his face upward to put it on. His flesh pressed against the visor like raw chicken.

I’m going to kill Glass. He ran toward the center of the city where Chao commanded the last team of Tank Majors. The open nerves of his mouth screamed, but he channeled the pain into rage. Time was of the essence.

= = =

Chao and his team surrounded MindCorp Headquarters. They were waiting for the nerds to repair the damage to the final data nodes. They had been told it would take hours. Chao wanted to puke when he saw Kove appear through the dust and skirmish of the war. His mouth looked like afterbirth. Chao shook his head as he approached, offering no sympathy.

Glass took Vanessa.

“You don’t have her?” Chao yelled—fuck the link. Let the newly anointed mute use it.

I’m in horrible pain.

“Good. You should be. A fucking Minor beat you.” Two Revos charged Chao and he plucked their heads off like they were chickens. He tossed them aside. “See? Not hard.”

We need to find them.

“First you need a coagulate to stop your face butthole from bleeding,” Chao said. “How do you suppose we find them? We got nothing online right now.”

A heavy ran up to Chao. “I’m down to seventeen Majors. We have to retreat.”

Chao looked across the wide area of the battle. They held the perimeter, and they could call in artillery strikes to dissipate any attempted massing of Revos. The plan was to hold until Evan ordered them to attack.

“Why? Things look under control,” Chao said. The heavy, Tank Major Anthony, shook his head gravely.

“They dragged the other Majors away. I saw what they’re doing to us.”

Chao waited with an eyebrow up. Behind him, Kove tried to not slurp in blood.

“They’re tearing us out and putting a controlled Minor in,” Anthony continued. “We have forty downed Tank Majors and no bodies. Soon they’ll be coming.”

“You’re shitting me,” Chao said. Again he looked across what had become the battlefield. MindCorp HQ remained unscathed. Revos stood around it like a moat, and the buildings around it were like broken teeth. Civilian bodies were everywhere, bloated from the bacteria that feasted on them. Chao’s dad, a bastard, used to say, “Some people’s survival instinct is to run into traffic.” And these dumb fuckers, trained with years of entitlement, proved the point. Literally walking onto a battlefield demanding their fucking Internet be turned on. Fucking retards.

“How many Tank Majors are we missing?” Chao asked.

“Eighty-three.”

Fuck, Chao thought. No way to get in touch with Evan right now. All communication was cut.

“So they’re regrouping with Tank Majors and we have . . .” Chao looked around. “Twenty with us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re losing,” Chao said.

“Yes, sir. Any reinforcements?”

“No.” Cynthia had cut the power to the rail, and the last diesel-powered train that had attempted to come in had been overrun. All the softies were killed and the supplies were taken.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but do we have a tactical nuke?” Tank Major Anthony offered. Chao laughed.

“It’ll be a tough news conference if we nuke Chicago,” he replied.

If we retreat, we lose. We have to go in. It’s our only chance before the Tank Majors go online, Kove said.

Chao had to hand it to his crippled Twin: he was right. They would be disobeying orders, but Evan was still stuck in space. To stay the current course would be to guarantee MindCorp’s victory.

He turned to Anthony. “Gather the heavies.” Then to a softy commander: “We need suppressive fire as we charge.” Both soldiers ran off.

They regrouped. The softies pulled up in vehicles armed with belt-fed grenade launchers and heavy-caliber machine guns. Anthony came back with his platoon of Tank Majors. They were badly beaten and hollow-eyed, but functional.

Nothing escaped the eyes in the sky, and the Minors had already coalesced toward their position. Most of the Minors were biologically dead. Those with modified eyes for night work would stare at them, but the eyes of the others had rotted inward. Their heads hung limp. The hover-rovers guided them as they fought.

Chao and Kove led. They charged from the blockade onto the MindCorp campus. Grenades led the way, splashing Revos to the side, chewing them up, though they didn’t die. hydraulshocks rang around Chao and Kove like gongs, and Revos evaporated into chunky mists. The Twins sprinted and lunged through and over the Minors like wild stallions, too powerful to be fenced in.

If they got inside, if they got to the Core, then—ta-da, all done. Thanks for playing. Yes, we’ll take the medals. All this nonsense for nothin’. The Twins and the team of Majors charged head down, as a scrum, toward their goal.

Revos jumped them, piling high, pouring out of MindCorp and stacking like a wave. Hundreds of hands and feet tearing at their helmets, tons of bionic flesh, trying to latch explosives. One of the heavies tripped, and the Revos pulled him down in a feeding frenzy. The giant drifted away with fifty Revos as pallbearers.

“Keep going!” Chao screamed. The grenades from the MK19 blew craters around them. Minors, grievously wounded, their biological bodies dead now if they weren’t already, squirmed toward them, or were thrown like living grenades by the few that were still whole. Neither Chao nor Kove could spin like the heavies, and two of the metal hulks sprinted to the wings and started to twirl like tops, clearing the path. They were still two hundred yards away. Another Major went down, drowned in a sea of hands and sneering corpses. And then another, when Minors willfully choked up his drive chains with their bodies.

The gates were in sight now—just fifty yards away, maybe less. But instead of more resistance, they were getting less. Chao saw empty pockets between groups of Revos. He ripped three Minors apart and looked at the others that were coming toward him. None of them were whole. They were missing limbs, steaming from punctured batteries, on the very edge of functionality. Cannon fodder. Chao watched as Cynthia’s hover-rovers—which normally zipped around the battlefield like hummingbirds—drifted out to the perimeter.

Chao’s team was closer to MindCorp than any soldiers had gotten throughout the skirmish. They were the last of the giants in the city. And yet the defenses here were perfunctory at best. This wasn’t right.

Cynthia was smarter than them.

Chao and Kove thought the same thing, at the same time: Everything is underground.

When MindCorp was built, the architects hadn’t understood some of Cynthia’s demands. She was patient when she explained the Colossal Core and its need to be underground. That made sense. But why did she insist on twelve stories of foundation when seven stories would do? Why access to the support beams on every tenth floor? The architects weren’t soothsayers, able to see the future and the potential paths that Cynthia’s invention would lead her. But history had shown that progress makes a mockery of previous conventions. And the very implication of creating a new universe was that the old ways were dead. What would a government do when they realized that their hold on society was slipping away in the wake of her invention? Cynthia knew: they would not let it stand.

Luck favors those who prepare. And so she did.

As Chao and Kove looked on, shaped charges flashed up the building. The earth shook and MindCorp headquarters imploded, causing the top of the building to ride down the center, spitting out massive sections of structure like a knife down a cob of corn.

The giants sprinted away, but not fast enough. A slab the size of an apartment building crushed six of the Tank Majors at once. House-sized chunks spewed outward like a meteor strike. Chao and Kove scrambled, ducking and dodging the massive debris that crashed all around them.

They ran until they were clear, and then they turned and surveyed the chaos behind them. Wordless shock passed between the Twins. MindCorp headquarters was now just a mountain of jagged edges and immovable mass. Grey dust filled the air. The earth trembled. Traversing a landscape that would look at home on Mars were a mere seven surviving Tank Majors. Tank Major Anthony wasn’t one of them.

“Is this it?” Chao asked. The Majors nodded, absently. None of them spoke.

But then two more broad shadows appeared and made their way toward their brethren, the last of the Tank Majors in the city.

“Good,” Chao said.

But then the two became five, and the five became twenty. The shadows coming toward them moved in awkward fits.

They aren’t ours, Kove thought to Chao.

They weren’t. These Tank Majors’ heads hung like broken flowers, most of their chest armor was missing, and wedged into the body cavities—which once held men—were limbless Revos cut down to fit. Behind them, Cynthia’s Minors followed in military formation as if they were on parade.

We have to retreat, Kove thought over the comm.

Chao was stubborn and mean, but not stupid. “Fall back!”

The surviving Majors didn’t have to be asked twice. Chao ordered the softies to retreat as well, and he, Kove, and the heavies ran for their lives.

We have to find Vanessa, Kove said. Over the comm, Chao agreed.

MindCorp held the city.

= = =

At the Core, Sabot barely felt the millions of tons of rubble collapsing down around them. A light fixture vibrated. One of the monitors bounced. That was it. They weren’t trapped, but they were now nearly impossible to get to. Revos choked the fiber conduits that Sabot had used to rescue Cynthia. They had enough food in storage to last five years, if it came to that.

“They’ve retreated. Six enemy Tank Majors were killed. We’re now salvaging their bodies,” Cynthia said. “Report. Report. Report. All enemies are retreating in all cities. Sending hover-rovers to surveil.”

On the huge high-definition monitor, Sabot watched an overhead view of the live battle. The red dots of the enemy were scattering, pursued by the green dots and blue dots—the Minors and Revo Majors. Cynthia controlled their bodies, but it was Sabot who commanded them. They were taking back the data nodes.

“Team D, flank on Ohio. Teams X and P move to tenth floor of skyscraper marked 332 for cover fire. Team C, hold,” Sabot said.

The dots reacted to his orders instantly. Artillery rounds fell from the sky. Soft soldiers and tanks zeroed in on their positions. But it was difficult to kill the dead. Sabot continued the drill, exhausted by weeks of this effort, but unwilling to sleep as his love killed herself with her own drive.

Cynthia appeared on the screen, a vibrant, fiery version of herself. The avatar lived in a construct that was identical to her office. Sabot could even see sunlight shining through.

“You look exhausted, Sabot. Are you okay?” she asked. “It’ll be over soon.”

“You’re the one who needs to take a break. I’m worried about you.”

“Sabot, I’m fine. I feel—”

“Not your mind—your body.”

The avatar followed his eyes to her shell. She had been connected in for over two weeks, fed intravenously. The chair wasn’t designed for long-term Sleepers, so Sabot had had to clean her like a baby when she urinated or evacuated her bowels. Deep frown lines were etched into her face like wounds, and she looked much older than her forty-five years.

“My God, I’ve aged. I had no idea.” The avatar’s grim expression was momentarily mimicked by her flesh. “But no, not now. We’re close. If he doesn’t find Vanessa, and we can push back his hold on the network, he won’t survive. He can’t. The Pieces will destroy him.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to kill Vanessa. We should have offered them shelter,” Sabot said.

“If she were dead, the war would be over,” Cynthia said coolly. “You don’t see what I can see, and you can’t feel what I feel. When the Northern Star takes over a node, it kills everyone that is stupid enough to be connected to it. Hundreds of thousands of civilians, maybe more, are already dead. It’ll be their rotting stench that gets the neighbor to knock on the door. Was their life worth less than Vanessa’s? Is her value more, because we know her name? If so, we are foolish leaders, just like the rest.

“Evan doesn’t seek power—he seeks immortality. And for that, he must have absolute power. He will kill anyone who whispers against him. Anyone that poses even the semblance of a threat. He will hijack minds in a groupthink to increase his intelligence, he will execute atrocities that everyone, including us, will be blind to.

“He must be stopped.”

= = =

The streets were empty. Vanessa stood at an intersection, and she recognized where she was. They had been near here just hours before. She knew what Glass was doing. She ran to Dr. Ewing’s apartment building.

The building’s front door was knocked down. She raced up the stairs, able to hear the struggle already. When she arrived at Dr. Ewing’s apartment, she found the door torn from its hinges. She charged inside.

She saw Dr. Rafayko first. He was staring up at the ceiling. His face was deformed—the skull had been crushed. Blood leaked from his ears.

She heard an “oomph” from the bedroom. It was the sound of a person no longer able to speak. She walked in.

Glass was holding Dr. Ewing in the air by his face.

“What did you tell him?” Glass asked.

Dr. Ewing was sniveling. Vanessa could see his eyes between Glass’s fingers. They darted over to Vanessa.

“Make him stop,” he pleaded.

“What are you doing?” Vanessa asked.

“I’m going to kill him,” Glass said. “But I need to know what he told Evan.”

“Vanessa, please!” Dr. Ewing said.

“My dad is in New York,” Vanessa said. Glass turned his head. She continued. “I heard it on the radio.”

“He was based in South Africa,” Glass said. Dr. Ewing was clawing at his face, but Glass barely even noticed. “He’s come here for you.”

The chronic disdain she held for her father wilted, and a strange warmth, akin to hope, filled Vanessa’s stomach. “Do you think?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Please, Vanessa,” Dr. Ewing pleaded. They ignored him.

“If we get to him, we have a chance,” Glass said. “The Twins can’t take him. They think they can, but they can’t. Evan won’t kill you.”

“Please, Vanessa,” Dr. Ewing said again. “I HAD NO CHOICE! Evan will kill me.”

Vanessa walked up to Mike. “What about me?” she asked.

She hugged Mike from behind. She felt her shirt soak with blood, both the doctor’s and his. She felt his incredible strength. Fine, he was a monster. But the world needed those, and did they not deserve love? If they gave you their life, did they not deserve that in return? She felt Mike’s body relax for just a moment. Maybe her acceptance was a sanctuary. Not changing the man—the man could not be changed—but giving him a momentary reprieve from his nature.

But it was momentary. Vanessa felt Mike’s body return to steel, and he resumed the interrogation.

“You don’t have to worry about Evan anymore, doctor,” Glass said. “I’m going to kill you first. Now—what did you tell him? What don’t I know?”

Dr. Ewing whimpered. “Please, please . . .”

“Shhh. Don’t beg. I’ll be quick. Just tell me, what don’t I know?”

The satellite phone in the living room rang. Dr. Ewing shook in fright. The harsh tone carried into the bedroom. Glass leaned in, his green twirling eyes an inch from the doctor’s bloodshot brown ones.

Dr. Ewing confessed, “I put Vanessa’s bug inside you. He can find you anywhere.”

Brring, brring, brring. Brring, brring, brring. The phone would stop, just to ring again.

“That’s him.”

“You don’t want to be here for this,” Glass said to Vanessa.

“Yes, I do.” She hugged him tighter.

She felt his body contort, the electrostatic tissue bunch in his chest and shoulders, as he crushed Dr. Ewing’s skull. When he was done, they went into the living room, and Glass answered the phone.

For a moment there was just silence. And then Evan spoke. “I had no choice, Mike. You’re doing exactly what I thought you would do. Is Dr. Ewing dead?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Rafayko?”

“Yes.”

“Her life won’t be as bad as it is for the others. She isn’t a Forced Autistic. It’s just her as herself, guiding the Pieces.”

“Do you think you’ll convince me, Evan?” Glass replied.

“I hope to. Unless you kill her, she will come here.”

“You could have chosen anyone else.”

“No, Mike, that’s not true. There are others, sure, and maybe if you had told me about the two of you, I could have done something different. But I can’t profile anyone else now, and we are in the inevitable: either MindCorp takes over, or I take over, or someone else takes over. The box is open, and it can never be closed. The idea exists with the means to execute it.”

“She’s mine,” Glass said.

Evan was quiet. “You’re fine with the world going down the toilet?” Evan finally asked. “You reptilian psychopath. When you look at her, do you see round edges, do you feel her warmth and fascinate at the discovery? Do you acknowledge that her heart beats, and that at some point it will go still—and will that be sad? Can you articulate those thoughts, or are they mysterious syllables that you can form in your mouth but never feel in your soul?

“She romanticizes what you are because she doesn’t understand it. The buzz will fade, Mike. You know it will. And when it does, she’ll see what I know and accept and appreciate: that you’re a monster. You were before you killed your first man. You still are, after the thousands that have had you as their witness when you blinked their life away. What do you think is going to happen? Are you going to get an apartment together? Are you a ‘project’ she can work on?” Evan laughed at the thought. “Are you going to become a perfect husband? Maybe get some similar hobbies? What sanctuary can you provide that isn’t absolute zero?”

Evan raised his voice. “When he killed and assassinated four thousand people he was just misunderstood. No one could reach him.” His voice went back to normal. “You’re a revolt against her parents, that’s all. Against the daddy who left. She sees you as her protector without realizing that all the violence coming her way is because of you, not despite you.

“But she will figure out what you are. What, not who. With you, there is no who. And when that happens, let’s see how long it takes for you to call me. Keep the sat phone, just dial zero, because she’s going to run from you like you’re on fire. And you’re going to realize that you can’t relate to anyone, that that’s your condition, and she was just a butterfly that landed on your hand and caught your gaze, and for a moment—maybe—you thought you could change.

“I’m going to win, Mike. With or without her, I am at the city’s door. I can last a few more days. And I don’t need more. And you, my friend. My closest friend, more than you know—as much as you or I can have ‘friends,’ given what we are—you will kneel before me. And unlike before, when I protected you—those days are gone—I will render you a weapon, and nothing more.”

“Try,” Glass said simply.

“You have no idea what I am now, even in this weakened state,” Evan replied. “But soon you will.”

And then the Twins called out from below.

Chapter 10

It was an eight-hour train ride to Chicago. Raimey was too large to fit in the cabin, so he watched the miles roll by from an open well car. On the way out of New York he saw buildings on fire or pockmarked from shelling. Masses of civilians walked out of the city on foot and yelled for help or scurried away as the train chugged by.

The city turned to suburbs that had been reclaimed by nature. Packs of feral dogs lay on front lawns, and crows called the rooftops home. The white tails of deer bounded into the brush. Vines and weeds had encroached on everything, gently pulling the old houses down. It had been a little over twenty-five years since the Great Migration, and already there was no restoring the old way of life. Even if they found a reservoir of oil tomorrow, one that could last a thousand years, all of this—the houses, the main streets, the malls, the car lots—it would still be an anthropological study. There was no going back.

Maybe it was all for the best. Humans had overstepped their bounds.

Worry plagued John. He could picture Vanessa dead. He could see her limp body in his metal hands. He tried to visualize a better reunion. Her dusty but unharmed. Him a hero—killing whoever was chasing her down. But his mind rejected optimism. Every scenario ended the same: with wide, lifeless eyes, and her hair matted with blood. He didn’t believe in fate or prescience, but his mind continued to play Judas.

“She’s alive,” Tiffany said. Raimey turned from the rolling fields and trees. He sat at the front of the car toward the engine, and she sat at the rear, dangling her feet over the edge. The tracks unfurled behind her, creating distance, each crosstie a metronome of time gone by, time that would never be felt or seen again.

“I won’t fall,” she said with a laugh. Of course she could read his thoughts.

“Where have you been?” It had been weeks since he’d last seen her.

“You haven’t needed me.”

“I do now?”

She shrugged. She was there.

“What if I’m too late?” Raimey asked.

“Earl swore to protect her.”

“And he’s dead,” Raimey said.

“Evan swore too.”

“Hmm.” That didn’t improve John’s mood.

“And so did Cynthia.”

It was true. Those three had been in the room when John agreed to give up his life in exchange for protecting the only two reasons he valued it in the first place. But how many ironclad promises had been compromised by the withering of memory and time? Countless as the grains of sand along an ocean shore.

“She works at the Derik Building. Do you know where that is?” Tiffany asked.

Of course, he thought. She made a face.

“I know you’ve been there—that’s how this whole mess started—but do you know its location? You were driven there last time.”

“I remember.”

“What about her apartment?”

John drew a blank. He had no idea.

“John,” she said, shaking her head. “You don’t know where she lives?”

“How would I know?”

Suddenly Tiffany was in his face, and it wasn’t Tiffany when she was healthy. It was Tiffany when she was sick: bald, grey, dying.

“WHAT IF SHE’S THERE, JOHN? WHAT IF SHE DIES JUST BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO ABSENTEE TO EVEN KNOW WHERE SHE LIVES?”

Raimey cowered. “Why are you being so cruel?”

She was back at the edge of the car, her black hair spiraling in the wind. “I’m being cruel because that’s what you want me to be. Forgive yourself, John. Let me go. You’ve punished yourself long enough. Cancer took me. If Vanessa dies, it was war. Why should our lives be less tragic than others? It happens all the time.”

“I can’t accept that.”

They sat in silence for some time. When at last he looked up, she was gone.

John felt the train slow, and without the normal mass, it came to a stop quickly. John hopped off the side and walked up to the engine. He was nearly eye level.

Up ahead was an accordioned mess. A military train had derailed. The overturned engine still smoldered, and the pile of cars stood out from the starry horizon. Bodies of softy soldiers were strewn about, mutilated.

“Accident?” Raimey asked.

The conductor shook his head. “Not likely. We’re a few miles from Union. Listen, I got to get out of here. I got a wife and I ain’t no soldier.”

The blackness surrounding the derailed train turned into shapes. The Revos were approaching.

“Good call,” Raimey said. He slapped the side of the train like it was a horse. “Thank you. You get home safe.”

“Will do.” The train groaned and accelerated in reverse. The beam from the retracting spotlight lit up a section of the Revos now moving forward. About two hundred of them, Raimey guessed, give or take. They were expanding outward around him, a Pac-Man ready to gobble him up.

They were dead now, of course. They looked the same—their mechanized eyes still feeding the Mindlinks embedded in their ceramic skulls—but their organs and brain were nothing but a putrid soup locked in a sweatbox. Flies buzzed around them, trying to find a way in.

Raimey didn’t wait. The Chicago skyline was a few miles away, and so large it looked like an island. A grey mushroom cloud hung over a part of it. His drive chains whirled up and he hauled toward the city. A few of the Revos got in his way and he blew through them. The others stopped and watched as he left the vicinity, three hundred and ninety eyes focused into one. The MIME CPU controlling them was tasked with the train tracks, and keeping its Revos functional was a higher priority than attacking one giant. Cynthia would have done the same, so the report to her was pithy.

—(MIME 332) Location: Southeast Chicago rails (GPS coordinates). Comment: Westbound military train halted, retreated. One Tank Major escaped into the city. Objective enforced.—

As Raimey approached the outskirts of the city, he heard artillery and the thoomp of mortar fire. The streets ahead were dark, and in the foreground he could clearly see where the artillery batteries were stationed. Streaks of orange snapped in the black, giving away their location. They surrounded the city, or at least this side of it. John didn’t know how they could contain the whole thing. He walked toward one.

A few hundred yards before reaching it, he tripped a claymore and a dozen guns were on him.

“TM! TM!” someone yelled. “Halt.”

The artillery stopped and one of the cannons rotated toward Raimey.

“Guys, I’m John Raimey. I just got here from New York.”

The guns wavered.

“I’m not under mind control.”

“How do we know?” someone squeaked.

“You’d be dog food already. Who’s your CO?”

Within minutes, the commanding officer filled Raimey in on what was going on.

“They’re everywhere now. It’s goddamn guerilla warfare.”

“We have no presence in the city?”

“North of the city is an encampment for civilians and injured, but I haven’t heard of anything else. Cynthia is taking back any advancement we had.” The CO held up a radio. “Nothing works. We’re running men to each battery to try and keep some semblance of order.”

“What about the Derik Building?”

“I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know anything about it.”

Raimey left them behind and headed into the city. The streets were empty. The mushroom cloud rose from the center of the city. MindCorp.

Raimey couldn’t wrap his head around it. How could this happen? Civilian bodies were scattered in clumps, turned over, huddled in rigor mortis. The roads were hopscotched with holes from mortar fire. High up, some buildings spilled contents from their opened mouths like tickertape. Underwear, socks, papers, and photographs corkscrewed around the streets on whirling winds.

Raimey tried to orient himself to the Derik Building. It was northwest of where he was. He passed blown-out armored vehicles and dead, fly-speckled, softy soldiers overrun by the Revos.

Raimey kept to the outskirts, avoiding downtown. After about thirty minutes, he heard the diesel turbine of a tank idling ahead. He peered out carefully from an alley. A hover-rover floated over it. The tank faced away, inching forward. It fired.

In the distance, he heard the crackling intercom of a Tank Major. “Cover!” it yelled. A team of Tank Majors were using an armored carrier as cover. They pushed it toward the tank.

BOOM! The 120mm cannon rocked the tank on its treads. The armored carrier buckled and broke apart from the explosive round.

“Move! Move!” the hidden Tank Majors screamed as they continued to push the battered shield.

Blind to the Tank Majors, Raimey saw forty Revos circling a building, the hover-rovers flying over them like halos. Ambush.

Raimey immediately reacted; he charged the tank. WHA-WHAM! His fist eviscerated the back end, causing the tank to spin on its tracks and tumble. The Tank Majors on the other side of the barricade screamed in triumph.

“AMBUSH!” Raimey yelled as the Revos poured out of the alley. Forty grew into a hundred as more rushed out of nearby buildings. Raimey ran toward the mass with his arms wide.

The three Tank Majors broke cover and consolidated with John. They were like a combine chopping down a field of corn. Revos were crushed underneath, breaking like chicken bones. Five-hundred-pound fists grabbed and clobbered. The Revos tried to flow over them like water, but the tight formation only made it easier to pull them down and chew them against the drive chains.

Fifty Minors died in minutes, and the rest fled in scrum-like clusters. Raimey and the three Tank Majors spread away from each other out of habit, to avoid shelling. Right on cue, five mortars crashed down at their last known point.

A heavy with a missing right hand and a blown-out shoulder walked up to John.

“Raimey, right?”

John nodded.

“Perez. The one smoking is Cheese.” Cheese waved. From his back a brown smoke wafted out like burnt toast. “And the one that’s completely unscathed by all this mess is Cutler.”

“God loves me,” Cutler said. He looked brand new.

They were out in the open. “Let’s get to some cover,” John said. They did.

“Didn’t see you earlier,” Perez said to John.

“I got here about two hours ago from New York,” Raimey replied.

“Do we got it under control there?” Cutler asked.

Raimey shook his head. “I need to get to the Derik Building. My daughter works there,” Raimey said. The three giants looked at one another. It looked like each was waiting for the others to speak up.

“What?” Raimey said.

“The Derik Building’s gone,” Perez finally said. “MindCorp took control of all the Minors onsite and blew it up.”

“No. It’s the hub—it’d be the most protected,” Raimey said.

No one said anything.

“Did they evacuate? They would evacuate the scientists and doctors. It’s the heart of the bionics program!” Raimey continued.

“We were at ground zero, so I don’t know. But the building’s gone,” Perez said. “We met up with a squad that was heading north to a stronghold. They had the same idea—they thought it would be safe. The bomb blew out the whole block.”

Raimey’s face looked despondent, so Perez quickly continued.

“Most of the soldiers are gathering north—that’s where we’re headed. The scientists will be there if they’re anywhere.” Perez shrugged. “I mean, if I was small, I’d just hide. The Revos are only attacking military.”

And that was the real problem. She could be anywhere. Or buried.

Raimey cleared his throat. “If there’s a stronghold, they’ll need us,” he said absently. He was thinking about Vanessa. “You’re a hundred percent sure?”

“It’s what I heard,” Perez said. “But your daughter could be north. Or maybe there’s someone there who knows more.”

“Then let’s go.”

= = =

The “northern stronghold” turned out to be Wrigley Field. The surrounding block was barricaded and engorged with civilians and soldiers. Grenade launchers and machine guns nested on top of buildings. Artillery batteries were grouped nearby in an open lot. Helicopters brought in supplies. The stadium itself had become a giant medic tent.

Raimey and the Tank Majors were halted on the periphery by softy soldiers on recon. While they were called in, they stood and stared.

Sections were blocked off for military operations, but it appeared that the majority of the effort was to treat and feed civilians displaced from their homes. The problem was, there just wasn’t enough room. Raimey couldn’t begin to guess the number of civilians here. If he was told a quarter million, he wouldn’t have been surprised. They poured in and out of Wrigley Field. People sat everywhere, shaking their heads and crying. Children and the elderly had priority for water and food. As broken as everyone looked, they kept order.

An officer approached the giants. “Perez, good seeing you,” he said in a southern drawl. Perez gave a quick salute. “It’s still fucked out there, I assume?”

“Is anyone from the Derik Building here?” Raimey interrupted.

The officer turned to him, cocking a suspicious eyebrow. He didn’t recognize John. “There are quite a few. They’ve been here a week or more,” he said.

“Not since the bombing?”

The captain put his hand on his hip and thought for a second. “I think a woman came in, really beat up. They found her in the rubble.”

Raimey’s heart lifted. “Where?”

“His daughter worked there,” Perez put in.

The officer’s attitude and urgency immediately changed. “Come with me.”

They followed the officer through the crowd onto the field. At the far end, tents with red crosses were set up in a small, cordoned-off camp. The captain went in, leaving Raimey and the others. A moment later he came back.

“Come with me,” he said to John. Raimey followed, watching his step as he entered the small encampment. Raimey’s heart sank. It was a woman, but it wasn’t Vanessa.

That the woman was alive at all was a miracle. Her legs looked like wild dogs had gotten to them, and the wraps were soaked in blood. Her blood-red eyes found John, but her face was covered in gauze. A breathing tube was inserted in her neck.

“Her throat got crushed,” a nearby nurse said. “She can’t speak.”

“Can she write?” the officer asked. The woman nodded, and the nurse handed her a tablet computer.

“My daughter, Vanessa Raimey, worked at the Derik Building. Do you know her?” Raimey asked.

The woman didn’t type, but quickly nodded.

“Was she there when the building got bombed?” Raimey asked.

The woman nodded again.

“Is she dead?” Raimey sputtered. Tears welled up and rolled down his cheeks. With great effort, the woman typed on the tablet and held it up.

Don’t know.

“You were the only survivor of the explosion,” the officer said.

The woman typed. The soldiers came alive. There was a fight. Then the bomb.

“Alive?” Raimey asked.

Our patients. They lost control, she wrote.

“Revos,” the officer said. “Just like everywhere else. Cynthia took over the bionics in the building, even the unfinished ones.”

“What battle, though?” Raimey said.

The woman pressed her fingers to the screen. Our soldiers—she pointed to a uniformed softy—were there. She said they were taking her away. She was scared.

“Before the bomb?” Raimey asked. His tone had darkened.

Right before, she typed.

“Where did they say they were taking her?”

Didn’t say.

“Who else was there?”

Her boyfriend. Mike Glass. The patients came alive and tried to kill her. The other soldiers came in and took her.

“Is there anything else?”

No. The bomb.

The woman paused, then typed something else.

If you find her, tell her I’m alive. I’m Bethany. She’s a friend.

“I will. Thank you, Bethany.” Raimey turned to the officer. “If soldiers took her, why isn’t she here?”

“There are a hundreds of thousands of people here, sir. You saw it out there. She could be.”

If she was here, she was safe. Here didn’t matter.

Raimey turned back to Bethany. “Do you know where her apartment is?”

Bethany paused for a second, remembering. And then she typed, Huron and Hudson. Northwest corner. Tenth floor, don’t know room #.

“That’s right in it,” the officer said. “MindCorp controls all of downtown.”

That meant little to Raimey. “I need hydraulshocks.”

Chapter 11

Chao bellowed. “COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!”

With feline quickness, Glass moved to the window and caught a glimpse of the giant circling the building. Kove, too, stood out front, looking up at the building.

“WE KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, MIKE. THE GOOD DOCTOR MADE SURE OF IT.”

“What are we going to do?” Vanessa asked.

Flee, he thought.

“Come with me,” Glass said. She didn’t understand why he carried what he did up with them, but she followed him to the roof.

He pointed to a large A/C unit at the center. “Go there. It’s safest.”

Glass walked the perimeter, following the giants’ movements. They were circling the structure, staying on opposite sides. Residents spilled out the doors, begging for mercy and running away.

“MIKE, LET’S GET THIS OVER WITH. KOVE’S PISSED,” Chao said. “WE CAN’T KNOCK IT DOWN—YOU KNOW WHY—SO JUST COME DOWN AND BE COOL. EVAN WANTS YOU ALIVE.”

Glass measured their timing and surveyed the two buildings that bookended his own. One was twice as tall and had a fire escape on the side facing him. The other was the same height as his own.

He went over to Vanessa and told her what they needed to do.

Glass was six times stronger than any man and could long jump over seventy feet. Kove watched as he sailed over to the next building with Vanessa swaddled in a blanket.

He jumped! Kove transmitted. He and Chao tore off in pursuit. Glass continued to sprint, the weight in his arms like that of a baby. He jumped to the next building, across the top, and to the next, moving at a supernatural speed, all while hearing the Twins below, pounding and grinding toward him, jumping over dumpsters, knocking through walls.

Glass scaled down a wall quickly by pushing back and forth with his powerful legs. When he hit the pavement, he rushed away, rapidly accelerating to his max sprint of fifty miles per hour, a speed which, he knew from testing, he could maintain for five minutes.

The giants cannonballed through the wall of the building behind him. They were just seconds back.

“GLASS!” Chao screamed. “I’M GOING TO TEAR YOU APART!”

Glass veered into alleys, hurdling over debris, intentionally going through tight quarters to make it hard for the Twins. Ahead was a park. He leapt over the eight-foot fence. Seconds later, the Twins did too, Kove knocking over a tree in the process.

He can’t go for much longer, Kove transmitted to Chao.

Battery technology had developed exponentially since the oil crisis, but Glass’s max effort couldn’t go on forever. Under normal activity, he could charge as infrequently as once a month; but when taxing his systems like this, his battery was dropping one percent every fifteen seconds. And this new battery hadn’t been fully charged; he was already down to eight percent. Glass felt the Twins’ footsteps behind him, ten thousand pounds moving across the earth like world-class sprinters.

Through the park and out the other side, Glass saw his escape. The L trains were still moving. Cynthia had kept the outgoing routes running to allow citizens to flee to safety. The train coming toward him was fast approaching.

Glass slung the swaddle over his left shoulder and jumped as high as he could. His right hand found the edge of the platform. He felt the swaddle slip, and when he grasped for it, the body inside spun out of the sheet like a yo-yo and fell to the ground. Glass jumped onto the platform and looked down at the circling sharks. The L was almost there.

Fear echoed between Chao and Kove when Glass lost his grip on the girl. If Vanessa died from the fall—hell, if she even got a concussion—the fallout would be catastrophic, even for them.

They approached the bloody, bent mess, lying face down on the pavement. Chao turned it over with a nudge from his boot.

Dr. Ewing stared up at them with unseeing eyes. They had been tricked.

“SONOFABITCH!” Chao screamed.

“Strong doesn’t fix stupid,” Glass shouted, and then jumped onto the train.

Chao didn’t care about the train. He didn’t care about the civilians on it. In a rage, he hydraulshocked the support pillar, and it shattered like ice. The upper platform cantilevered over, immediately twisting the track into an amusement-park ride. Half the train derailed, showering sparks as the third rail connected again and again, and the other half plummeted into the roadway. Civilians—dead and alive—smashed through the windows as each cabin slammed into the ground at fifty miles per hour.

Chao climbed up the warped rails like a gorilla, using the broken pillar and twisted cars as footholds. Kove stayed underneath and ran ahead, looking for any sign of Glass.

===

Up on the tracks, people crawled out of the derailed cars only to be crushed or punted by Chao. Bloodlust blinded him to reason. He ripped open the cars with his massive hands and stepped on anyone who couldn’t get out of his way.

“I KNOW YOU’RE HERE!” Chao screamed.

A man tried to protect a pregnant woman unable to move. Chao picked him up and threw him over the side like a baseball.

The link between Kove and Chao passed more than just thoughts—it also passed emotion. And below, Kove was pumped full of adrenaline as Chao murdered his way through the cabins.

He’s still up top, Kove said. He was ahead of the train.

There are four more cars, Chao responded. Be ready.

Kove licked his lips in anticipation—or tried to, only for his tongue to flog against the abscess that was now his mouth. The scabs broke open, the pain resurfaced, and he went feral. He hydraulshocked a nearby pillar out of rage, and the front two cars above him fell down like links in a chain. The people screamed, and their panic excited Kove. The power over life and death was his manhood.

Passengers tumbled to the front of the train, their smashed faces staring down at him, and Kove let out a wet, inarticulate howl when he saw the fear in their eyes. They tried to move, clawing over each other to flee, and he ripped the first car down and crushed it thin like a tube of toothpaste.

I am the crocodile. I am the lion, Kove thought. He was lightheaded from his and Chao’s mutual rush.

We are warlords, Chao responded, and Kove understood. They were no longer people. They were gods. Gods of war, of fear, and it fueled him. Kove crushed the people down, crushed them down. Chao projected yes! and still he crushed them down.

Glass lay underneath the fourth car, charging himself from the third rail. He heard the destruction on both ends, the pleas and screams silenced with thuds, and for the first time, it pained him. And out of this sympathy grew something he had never felt, though his life’s actions could be attributed to its very root: anger. The cold in him, the computer trapped in his cells, thawed; that small flame, the one he had stared into earlier, grew as hot as the sun.

His first memory had been tainted with violence: his dad beating his mom. Pleasure intermixed with terror. And the imprint could have gone either way. He could have grown up with empathy for the abused. He could have been a tender boy who always tried to please. Or he could avoid the fear he had felt that day, as inarticulate and basic as it was, by removing all emotion. By creating a vacuum where his soul could never be harmed, but never feel the pleasures of life. His infant instincts had chosen absence. And that is what he had become. But now, a conscience grew. And the two emotions he felt now, love and anger, balanced one another, and the three words that escaped Glass’s lips were pithy and quiet, and momentous to his change.

“This is wrong.”

His charge was at forty percent when he felt the car he was under get torn open. Blood leaked onto the wood ties like syrup as more innocent were crushed and torn apart for no reason other than horrible fate. Glass waited for the heavy footsteps to get closer. This car was askew, but still upright. He slid out from under the side and kept low. He picked up the nine-foot sliver of rail he had retrieved after the derailment and crouched, waiting for Chao to pass.

Chao was vicious, throwing people out of the way, thumping them against the walls like ripe fruit. At last he made his way to the center of the car, within feet of Glass, who knelt just outside.

Without warning, Glass shot up and, with all his might, slammed the jagged edge of the rail right through the aluminum car and into Chao’s side. Chao didn’t have time to register the attack, or the silhouette outside the window that dragged the pike down to the third rail. He’d only just registered that he’d been attacked, when fifteen hundred unregulated volts poured into his electrostatic tissue, locking his body in place, the push and pull of each muscle group in perfect balance from the coursing current.

Chao’s eyes drifted to Glass. Green dots watched him through the window. And instead of the slack expression he expected—the assassin savant—the man’s face staring back was contorted in rage.

Kove felt Chao’s distress before their communication blacked out. He pulled himself onto the track, and spotted Glass on the other side of the broken train. Hundreds of blue electric snakes danced around him, riding the metal tie he was holding against the train. Then Kove spotted Chao inside the cabin, piked by the bar, his arms wide like a crucified Jesus, cooking from the inside out.

Kove charged. Glass saw him and jumped onto the cab to escape. Kove reared back.

BA-BAM!

The impact crashed the car into the others, spinning them down and off the tracks, and Glass got sucked underneath one, bludgeoned and rolled and taken off the side. Kove looked down: Glass’s right leg was pinned beneath the knee. Glass twisted in a crocodile roll, tearing it off. He bounded away.

You’re kidding me, Kove thought. He felt Chao come back online, weak and distant.

Help me, Chao said.

Not yet, Kove replied.

Kove jumped down. Chao was crumpled over, shaking like an epileptic.

Help me, Chao pleaded.

NOT UNTIL HE’S DEAD! Kove screamed into Chao’s head.

Kove sprinted after Glass, quickly gaining ground on his one-legged prey. Glass was halfway up a building using nothing but his arms to scale the fire escape. Kove grabbed the base of the fire escape and popped the stairs right off the wall. He shook it like a sheet, tearing it down. Glass leapt through a window. Kove let the ladder fall and hydraulshocked the corner of the building. Three stories instantly vanished into dust. Cries of fear overshadowed the groan of the building as it leaned over Kove.

Glass will go out the other side.

Kove ignored the ten-story topple and ran around it. The building collapsed behind him, crushing through the elevated train tracks, covering the cars and Chao in bricks and warm bodies.

Around back, Glass had already reached the roof of the next building.

Motherfucker. Kove reared back and hydraulshocked that building twice, then watched as Glass surfed the destruction down. Kove jumped onto the pile. Glass was pushing rubble off his body, trying to get loose. He pulled his pistol and fired it empty, hitting Kove between the eyes every time. But this time, Kove’s helmet was latched. Glass threw a brick and continued to struggle, trying to get free, but even his good leg had been nearly amputated by the latest fall.

Kove stood over him.

“You didn’t get her,” Glass said, defiantly. “You WON’T get her!”

Kove pinned Glass underneath his foot and leaned over. The blood pooling in his visor stretched upward, painting his face in red.

“Weh weahh.” We Will. Kove’s verbal burp was clear enough. They would. They were alive, and Glass would soon be dead.

An ancient presence filled Kove’s head. It’s so long and wide, he thought. His vision blurred and he felt his gorge rise even though he had no stomach. As long and wide as the universe. The presence felt trapped in his skull, pushing at every point to get out, to not be contained. It’s not human. It can’t be human. Somewhere he heard Chao scream in pain.

NEUTRALIZE HIM, BUT DON’T KILL HIM. Evan’s voice emanated from the Long and Wide. It was a million-watt speaker pressed to his ear.

NO! Look what he did to me! Kove screamed back. He could tell that his eyes were being used for two.

THAT WAS YOUR NEGLIGENCE, Evan responded. HE IS STILL OF USE TO ME. I CAN CHANGE HIM. EVEN WITHOUT THE GIRL, I CAN CHANGE HIM.

Do you still need Vanessa?

The voice was suddenly small, as if Evan had somehow pulled himself out from a crowd. YES! I can’t focus, I cannot rest, there are too many thoughts, too many paths, too many questions to answer, they are never full, but Glass is special and he cannot die.

Kove didn’t understand what was going on with the voice, but he followed orders. Fine, he projected back.

YOU’VE PROVEN THE STRONGER, ALAN. NEVER LET CHAO FORGET.

The praise was faint, yet it filled Kove’s head and heart. Its warmth washed over a memory of his grandmother looking into his eyes, ruffling the hair on his young head and saying, “You’re going to be somebody.” It was a fond memory.

You’re going to be somebody, something whispered. Something attached to Evan, attached to the Long and Wide. The warmth turned into claws and suddenly Kove felt the memory get drained from his mind by an immeasurable hunger, and his grandmother’s face darkened, and her words broke into indecipherable syllables and then—NO!—as Evan struggled to keep the Pieces at bay. Kove tried to recall the memory, but all that was left was a vague picture of the room.

What happened?

The small voice again: They crave memories, theirs and all. I will put it back when I have time. Bring me Glass. I will make him whole. I have uploaded possibilities for Vanessa’s next location. Follow them.

A list of locations, coordinates, and probabilities swam into Kove’s head, and then between his ears, he was again alone. He turned back to Glass.

“Traaaah-errrrr.” Traitor.

Kove grabbed Glass’s right arm and pulled, popping it out of its socket, stretching it long until it tore free. He grabbed the left and did the same. He snapped Glass’s footless leg forward at the knee and worked it back and forth until it broke away with a crunch. He held all three in his hands like kindling and presented them to Glass.

Glass may have been present, but he wasn’t there. He stared past the giant to the speckled night sky, as if he had never before seen its beauty. A thousand salvos from the stars, some still burning, others long and dead, shouting through the chasm of space, announcing to the universe that once they were there. Maybe once they had mattered. Maybe they had provided warmth, maybe they had provided fuel for life, or maybe they had always been alone and isolated in the frigid black. Glass related to those lone stars. Not to their vibrance, but to their isolation. The only thing that shined in his life had found safety, he hoped.

As Kove picked him up and tossed him over his shoulder like a backpack, Glass wished to every star above him that he would never see her again. Because if he did, he had failed, and her light would be no more.

= = =

“They know where Vanessa is. You must find her,” Cynthia said in a monotone drone. Her body was slack, and her mouth didn’t move. Her voice came from a speaker above.

On the monitor, a hover-rover trailed the Twins. They motored through the streets, clearly with a destination in mind. Around them, just of sight, were blue dots: Minors that Cynthia constantly shifted to surround them.

“Do you know where she is?”

“No, but they do. You must get there first.”

“The Minors can handle it.”

“I can’t communicate with her through the Minors—they’re now biologically dead.”

Sabot shook his head. “I won’t leave you.”

The view on the screen changed from the Twins to cyberspace. Beneath the entire orbital structure of the billions of portals that led to programs—each a mirror the size of a nation, and ordered like a solar array surrounding the sun—was a vortex, a grey that rippled and yearned. Sabot couldn’t believe what he was seeing: he knew that the black in cyberspace held no data except coordinates, yet underneath Cynthia’s universe was a violent pool. A head made of what looked like flies silently jawed and cried—and it looked like Evan.

“Nothing can hurt me except the Northern Star. It bucks and mewls under Evan’s weight, and without Vanessa, it will suck him in.”

Glowing tentacles thrashed from the face, latching to the mirror-glass portals.

“My God,” Sabot said.

“It has existed for only weeks and it’s already ancient . . . as is Evan. It will destroy both worlds, Sabot. I’ve never felt such hunger.”

“It’s my job to keep you safe.”

“Then go,” Cynthia replied. “Because we will never be safe while this thing is alive. It is evolution of the worst kind, one that nullifies all life that precedes it. It will consume all of us. I hold all the pieces firmly in place, but if he gets Vanessa, none of it will matter. It’s too powerful. It’s figuring out what it is, trying to make sense of its birth. She will be its mother. She, against her will—her will no longer matters, because it will be at Evan’s whim—she will guide it to the light.”

“What light?”

Cynthia’s jaw was without movement, her eyes dilated like the dead. Her voice came from the speaker. “The gravity core, the sun, a star. That is its moor. That’s what it’s meant to be. The center of the universe.”

A chill went up Sabot’s spine. She was sounding like a prophet.

“Go, Sabot. Save her or kill her, but she cannot be his.”

On the monitor, Evan’s digitized face, a light year across, wrenched into a silent scream and collapsed like sand, only to reform. Tentacles shot from it into the sun, then dissolved.

Sabot loaded his shotgun. “We promised to take care of her.”

“Then do so. Either path, life or death, is better than what she’ll become.”

He kissed Cynthia on the forehead. “I love you.”

“I know.” And, just for those two words, the soulless voice vanished and it was Cynthia, the real Cynthia—the one he’d wed without a ceremony, the woman he had lain next to for over fifteen years, and still their time together was too short. “Turn on your comm,” she said. Sabot mentally hit the switch and she filled in next to him. “I will guide you to her, out of sight, and away from harm.”

He went to the elevator, through the CPU graveyard, and down a service ladder to the fiber conduit he had used to get inside. He slid headfirst into the narrow, pulsing tube and squirmed his way toward the sewer. The comm blacked out—and with it, her—and it was just him and his thoughts, and the only thing that ran through his mind was that he would never see Cynthia again.

When the conduit widened to where he could stand, he jogged toward the sewer. Eventually the comm came back, and with it, Cynthia’s presence. His eyes caught movement between the fiber line blats. Revos had been imbedded through the conduit like roaches. Some hung from the ceilings, others were ramrod straight, hidden beneath the pulsing fiber lines. Every fifty meters, he saw one protecting a hover-rover. They were an army in wait, a death trap for any assault into MindCorp.

Ahead, a Revo leaned in from the service door to the sewer. It’s me, Cynthia said. The Revo retreated to let Sabot pass.

The sewer beyond was choked with more Revos, some with night-vision eyes, others staring at the ground, their eyes rotted out and the rest of their organs a congealing stew. They smelled of rotten peaches and earth.

They ran with Sabot as the Revo Cynthia controlled led him four miles past his original entry point, zigzagging between sewers and conduit. At last they stopped at a ladder to the surface, guarded by a group of hideous soldiers.

The Twins are up there. This will put you behind the building where they are.

Sabot hurried up the ladder. The manhole opened and another Revo helped him out. Half of its face had been cleaved away, and one twitchy eye watched him.

Up top it was the zombie apocalypse. Five hundred Revos in various states of disrepair and decomposition occupied the streets and alleys, effectively putting a safety bubble around Sabot that extended a quarter mile in all directions. Sabot sprinted to the building.

= = =

Odessa sat on the handlebars as Nikko pedaled down Huron.

“Close your eyes,” Nikko said. Odessa did. They passed a dead body. “Okay.”

They neared an intersection.

“Here!” Odessa pointed to a building.

Nikko stopped the bike and helped her off, then hid the bike in an alley while she waited.

The lock on the front doors was broken. Nikko led the way inside.

“What floor is your mom on?”

“Twelve.”

Nikko tried the elevator, but the button didn’t light. He looked out to the street. All the buildings were dark. There was no power on this block.

Nikko sighed. “We’ll have to walk up.”

By the time they got to the twelfth floor, Nikko was dripping with sweat. Odessa was fine though—just excited to be home. She ran ahead.

“Wait!” Nikko panted.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He pressed on a stitch in his side. “Yeah.”

They walked down the hallway together. At room 1242, Odessa knocked on the door. “Mommy! Mommy!”

Nikko heard running footsteps, and then the door tore open.

“ODESSA!” her mom screamed. She picked her little girl up and smothered her with kisses. “Oh God, I thought you were gone! Oh my God.”

“Nikko brought me here,” Odessa said.

The woman looked down at Nikko, then swooped in and hugged him. “Nikko, you are my angel. Come inside.”

“I can’t. I have to get home. My grandma’s by herself.” Nikko unslung the duffel bag. “Do you have food?”

“No.” By the look of the woman, she was telling the truth.

Nikko gave them half of what he’d found.

Going down the stairs was easier than up. Nikko had just gotten to his bike and thrown a leg over when the ground started to shake. Two giant men ran passed him, stopping at a building just down the street. These guys made the previous title-holder for largest man Nikko had ever seen—Sabot—look tiny.

Nikko turned the bike around to get to the other street when he heard an approaching thunderstorm. Footsteps. Thousands of them. And they were all converging on his location.

= = =

The Twins stood outside Vanessa’s twenty-story apartment building, unaware of the Revos gathering around them. Evan had whispered that Vanessa’s apartment was on the tenth floor.

Why would she come here? Chao asked. It was a foolish place for her to hide: too obvious.

Food, Kove responded. Can you get in there?

The doorway was too small, but the lobby looked wide enough. Depending on the stairwell, he could possibly climb up. The Twins were massive, but not nearly the size of the heavies.

“I’ll try,” Chao said aloud and shuffled forward. Like the dopamine receptors of a drug addict, the electrocution had sapped his electrostatic tissue. He was now less than half strength, and he trembled with palsy.

Glass was slung against Kove’s back. He hadn’t uttered a word since his dismemberment. Softy soldiers were zeroing in on their position to take him away. Suddenly—

“VANESSA, RUN!” Glass yelled. “RUN!”

Kove flung Glass to the ground and grabbed his jaw.

“SSEAH HOWRH EK HEERS.” See how it feels.

Kove tore Glass’s jaw from his face. As he threw the mandible into the street, a scourge of Minors rolled around the building, picking up speed as they charged toward him.

GET HER! Kove yelled to Chao over the comm. Chao broke through the door and ducked underneath.

Kove left Glass and ran to the front of building, blocking entry. At the back of the lobby, Chao ripped open the stairway door and smashed the framing enough to wedge himself through. There was just enough room for him to climb.

The Revos tried to run over Kove like fire ants. They shattered through the windows of Vanessa’s building and choked the entry points. Kove decimated any Revo that got within his radius. His arms spun and slammed like a boat propeller, nearly too fast to see, the five-hundred-pound fists connecting with human shapes and turning them into formless, mashed bags of meat.

Sabot entered the lobby by the back entrance.

I see her heat signature, Cynthia sent to Sabot. We have no time.

Sabot couldn’t believe the power of the Twins. Out front, Kove looked prehistoric, sending bionic carcasses fifty feet into the air or smashing them down so hard he created a tissue soup at his feet. Sabot saw the blown-out stairway and quickly rejected it. I’d run smack into Chao, he thought.

The elevator still worked. Sabot pressed the button and the door opened with a “ding.” Kove spun around, saw the large Samoan, and sprinted into the building after him. His shoulders tore out walls, and the marble floor crumbled under his weight. Sabot darted into the elevator, fired two shots into the ceiling with his 4-gauge, and jumped up through the resulting hole above him. He pulled himself above the elevator and quickly climbed the cable.

Beneath him, the elevator vanished as a scythe of arms ripped through it. Kove stepped looked up at Sabot. He was too high to reach, so Kove grabbed one of the cables and yanked, tearing it from its anchor, twenty stories up.

Sabot grunted as he grabbed on to another cable. The broken cable and its mount spaghettied past Sabot, just missing his head. It crashed below. Sabot leaped to an elevator door just as Kove tore the second cable loose.

She lives on the tenth floor, Cynthia whispered in Sabot’s ear. Chao is in the stairway on the fifth. He has to break the framing to move up.

Sabot opened the elevator doors and peered out. He could hear Chao’s movement—it sounded like construction work—but he couldn’t see him. Residents were huddled in the hallways, hissing at each other to be quiet.

An old woman peered through a cracked door at Sabot. She had her chain lock in place. She looked at the huge shotgun in his hand.

“Don’t kill me,” she said.

“What floor is this?”

“Seven.”

“Is there more than one stairway?”

The woman shook her head. With no other choice, Sabot sprinted toward the ruckus at the end of the hall: he had to beat Chao up the stairs. He kicked the door open and swung the shotgun through.

Chao was wedged on the landing directly beneath him, working his way up. He was on his hands and knees, pushing himself up the steps, scoring the walls and crumbling the rails.

“Woof woof!” Chao barked. “No way out, Sabot!”

Sabot fired two shots directly into Chao’s head, but they bounced harmlessly off the bulletproof helmet. Chao ground up the stairs as fast as he could, chasing Sabot, but Sabot bounded upward, outpacing the giant easily.

Sabot reached the tenth floor. He didn’t know Vanessa’s room. He ran down the hallway, kicking doors open and sprinting through each apartment, yelling her name.

He could hear Chao’s grinding progress grow louder. The hallway was big enough for the giant and the walls here were thin. Once Chao got up here, Sabot would be in deep shit.

He kicked the fifth door on the right, room 1011.

“Vanessa?” Sabot yelled as he ran through. “It’s Sabot, I’m here to help!”

He found her in the closet, huddled like a child.

“You’ll kill me! You’ll kill me!” she screamed as he yanked her up.

“No, I won’t. QUIET!” he hissed.

The queer, trumpet sound of metal bending was too close.

“Saaaboooot? Vaaaaneeessa?” Chao cooed. He was moving down the hallway, tearing the walls open, searching for them. “Shut the fuck up!” they heard Chao scream at someone.

We’re trapped, Sabot said to Cynthia.

Shoot out the living room windows.

There’s no fire escape.

Do it, Cynthia said.

Sabot grabbed Vanessa’s hand and led her out of the bedroom. More walls fell, more people screamed. He put her behind him and pumped three shots into the panoramic window. It exploded outward, and as it did, Chao burst into the apartment, carrying plaster and cabinets in with him.

Sabot grabbed Vanessa. They were trapped between the open window and the giant.

“Give me the girl,” Chao said.

Sabot turned to gauge the fall. They were too high. The wind rode across the opening like a reed, piping a hollow whistle.

“Don’t!” Chao said. He held out a hand as if he were talking a suicide threat off a ledge.

Behind them the whistle was overtaken by the chittering whirl of a million cicadas.

Duck, Cynthia said.

Sabot grabbed Vanessa and pushed her down. Fifty hover-rovers shot into the apartment like kamikaze frisbees and attacked Chao, slamming into him, annoying him, obstructing his vision. He slammed at them, knocking them down.

Through the walls, Cynthia said.

Sabot grabbed Vanessa. “Follow right behind me!”

He sprinted into the next room and ducked his shoulder like a linebacker. BAM! He blew through the wall. He heard Vanessa’s footsteps behind him, and behind that, the frustrated cries from the Twin. BAM! Another. And another. And then he jumped through the gouged-out entrance of an apartment near the stairwell and pushed Vanessa in front of him. He heard Chao’s stampede approaching.

“UP THE STAIRS! UP THE STAIRS!” he yelled at her. She bounded up, three steps at a time. Sabot felt the ground shake behind him, and he jumped to the stairs just as Chao slammed through the landing with such force the stairwell walls blew out to the open air.

Hover-rovers shot in, buzzing Chao as he began his four-legged ascent after Sabot and Vanessa. Sabot scrambled upward, practically throwing Vanessa up the stairs, all the while hearing the train bearing down behind him. But Chao’s speed no longer mattered. Chao had the stairway, and the elevators led to Kove. There was no place to go, nowhere to hide. The only goal now was to delay death and wish for luck.

They got to the roof. It was a large building and they moved across it, using the rooftop A/C units as cover. Sabot looked down at his gun, aware that it may as well be a toy.

We can’t let them have her, Cynthia said.

There’s no way out, Sabot responded. The wind blasted and buffeted, and Vanessa hugged herself from the cold. They heard rumblings beneath them.

Then kill her, Cynthia said. It wasn’t her voice. It was her digital equivalent, cold and black. Her, but not her.

Sabot grimaced at the command. He missed the uncertainty Cynthia used to have, the self-consciousness that came from being different, exalted, the constant drive to earn that trust. Not out of ego, but out of honor. In its place now was something that spoke in only statements and periods.

I won’t kill her, Cynthia.

You must, she replied.

The opposite end of the roof fissured open. Instead of exiting from the stairwell, Chao had chosen to move beneath them like a predatory mole. He punched upward, knocking the roof down, coming toward them methodically, pushing them into a corner where there was no escape.

NOW! Cynthia screamed.

Sabot could feel her use his eyes, and he knew they regarded the young, tear-streaked woman with no sympathy. A woman who had so quickly entrusted herself to him for survival. How many people should be betrayed? How much is a justifiable cost when all the decisions led here?

“What are we going to do?” Vanessa asked. She clung to Sabot. The roof was slowly vanishing with the huge sweeping motions of Chao’s arms, two arced-metal blurs slicing through the foot-thick concrete like bread.

“I don’t know.”

Chao waded forward, sneering at his trapped prey.

KILL HER! Cynthia screamed in Sabot’s ear. His hands vibrated, and he felt her try to gain control.

DON’T YOU DO IT! SHE’S INNOCENT! Sabot pushed back, but his body locked him out, and it was hers. The shotgun rose.

Vanessa saw the change. Confused and afraid, she knelt to the ground and covered her head with her hands. Chao was only a dozen feet away.

Sabot was trapped in his own mind by the woman he loved. He did the only thing he could do. The one thing he had never done, the thing that few soldiers ever did: he let Cynthia see what he had seen.

Like a wave, all the memories of the wars Sabot had been a part of rushed toward Cynthia. The assassinations, the mistakes, the chopping down of children sprinting for safety. Holding a friend while he shook and his blood let, and he died without hope, unsure of God. Mass graves of men, women, and children he had walked through during the North Korea revolt. Bodies that didn’t even receive the small courtesy of a mass grave, but were left as carrion for the birds and wolves, settling into the ground like broken willows, mounds under mushrooms and moss, gleaming skulls and ribs not quite picked clean.

All of this, Sabot let flow through him. All of it, Cynthia felt. But most of all, she felt Sabot’s torment. His regret was as hungry as the Northern Star. He woke up with it, he spent the day with it, and it haunted his dreams. His life since war was nothing more than makeup covering a scar. And he let her understand that although the world may forget, regret never forgives. It reminds and torments, and it batters the soul.

Don’t become a monster to defeat one, he said. Please. If you kill her, it’s the mark of a tyrant, no matter how you justify it.

Her life is just one, Sabot. He felt Cynthia’s hold loosen. He felt a glint of flame in her voice.

And a thousand are just a thousand. And a million are just a million. It doesn’t stop, Cynthia. Who are you fighting for if the innocent are so easily dismissed?

But there’s no other way, Cynthia replied.

Not now, but maybe soon, Sabot urged. If you kill her, you are no better than Evan.

He’ll win.

Not forever—not for long. We’ll find another way.

The governments will be crushed under his grip.

You may be surprised, Cynthia. There are good among the rotten, and an entire world pitted against a single machine will tear it apart in days.

There was a pause, and then he felt Cynthia sigh, relent. Do what you must, she said.

His body was once again his own. He grabbed Vanessa’s hand and dragged her away just before Chao reached them. They sprinted to the edge of the building, sections of roof collapsing behind them as Chao waded forward.

Sabot looked over the edge. They were too high up. There was no way he could scale down the side with Vanessa. They were cornered. Chao pulled himself up from the nineteenth floor and stood over them.

“Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” Chao said. “Hand her over.” He reached out his huge hand like he was asking Vanessa to dance.

Vanessa stood behind Sabot. “Protect me,” she pleaded in his ear.

Chao was visibly impatient.

“I tried,” Sabot said quietly. “I can’t.”

“No. NO!” she screamed.

Chao moved to pick her up, and Sabot put the barrel of his shotgun against her shoulder. To Chao, he said: “Will you let me pass?”

Chao shrugged. “Ah, gee, I don’t know.”

Through the long gun, Sabot could feel Vanessa’s body quake from fear. Sadness filled him, and he felt like a coward, a man who had sold his soul, who had flushed away his honor, because he wasn’t ready to die. This was his mission, but his life was a few miles underground, tethered to a Core. Cynthia needed him. Even now, cold and distant and binary, she did. Vanessa wasn’t his daughter or his wife, and her fate wasn’t tied to him. Her fate had been preordained by Evan and the choices of her father.

“You’re quick, but you’re not that quick,” Sabot said, his eyes level with Chao. “I walk.”

Chao’s eyes turned as if someone was whispering in his ear. “Fine, you walk. Kove and I will honor that. Evan has ordered it.”

Sabot stepped behind Vanessa, still with the barrel aimed at her back. Vanessa crumpled to the ground, too distraught to even stand.

“I’m sorry, Vanessa,” Sabot said. “I will never forgive myself, but I can’t die for you.”

“I want my father,” she wept. “I want Mike.”

Sabot leaped down to the nineteenth floor and ran down the stairwell before Chao could change his mind. He jumped down, from flight to flight, and on the fifth floor he leapt straight out of an apartment window, plummeting to the ground and rolling to absorb the impact. A Revo stood next to a manhole cover and let him down. Sabot had never hated himself more in his life.

The very nature of war subverts principles. War is an act of survival, not ideals. It’s a frantic struggle against the darkened tide that drags you out from shore. It is a perpetual paradox that saves the world and kills it, that sees us at our best and our most fetid, that is as wired into our brains as the ability to breathe, and simmers in our soul, shoulder to shoulder with love.

Chapter 12

Raimey saw the smoke before he saw Vanessa’s apartment. When he turned the corner, confusion overtook urgency. Hundreds of Tank Minor bodies were scattered everywhere, flattened and pulped as if by a steamroller. A pile of their bodies stood at the front of the building, twitching, and the residents of the building had filtered out into the street, far away from the carnage.

Raimey looked up. The top of the building was gone. Something—probably electrical—had caught on fire.

In a nearby alley, something caught Raimey’s eye: a boy on a green bike. He had an Army bag strapped to his back.

“Hey, kid. Don’t be scared. Do you know what happened?”

The boy twitched like he was about flee.

“Please! My daughter lives here. Do you know what happened here?”

The boy was about to speak when—

“Raimey?” someone called out.

The boy took off. A military transport approached Raimey. Two Tank Major designs he’d never seen before escorted it. One of the giants had a face that was horribly disfigured.

“Raimey!” the uninjured one called out again. The caravan stopped, and the two Tank Majors came over. Up close, Raimey could see that this one was injured too. It moved awkwardly and had a slight tremor.

“You probably don’t remember us. It’s Edward Chao and Alan Kove.”

Raimey remembered. They were the two that had taken him from his bath to become a Tank Major a decade ago.

“How did you get here?” Chao asked. Kove moved over slightly, flanking.

Inside the truck, Vanessa could hear the conversation. Her hands were bound and a soldier covered her mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“I’m looking for my daughter,” Raimey said. “Do you know Vanessa? She worked at the Derik Building.”

“I know who she is,” Chao said. Vanessa could hear the undercurrent of joy in his voice, something Raimey didn’t pick up on. “She helped Kove and me through the culling process.”

“This is her apartment,” Raimey said.

“It is?”

“Yeah.”

“I had no idea. We’re just passing through.”

“Why would there be a battle here?”

“This kind of thing is everywhere. The city is wrecked.”

“But what’s important about this location?”

“I have no idea, John. You can see we’ve both been through the wringer. We’re getting this shipment to the air strip and then going to the base.” A pause. “We could use your help. Cynthia still controls large sections of the city.”

Vanessa heard her father walk away. “Vanessa! Vanessa!” he screamed, his voice amplified. “Vanessa! It’s your father! It’s John!” He must have found someone nearby. “Do you know Vanessa Raimey? Don’t run, I won’t hurt you. Do you know Vanessa Raimey? Don’t ru—Vanessa! It’s your father! Vanessa!”

His footsteps returned. “Why are they scared of us?” he asked. “We aren’t under Cynthia’s control.”

“War, man,” Chao replied. “Whatever happened here, it spooked them out. And I don’t blame them. This whole thing’s fucked. Can you help us get through the city?”

“I’m going back to Wrigley Field to look for her.”

“The airstrip is on the way.”

Raimey nodded. “Okay.”

===

From inside the transport, Vanessa could do no more than listen as her father and the Twins battled through Revos and hijacked Tank Majors, as Cynthia unleashed a flood to try and stop her from getting to the plane. But her father could not be broken. The ground shook from his attacks—and without him, Chao and Kove would have fallen.

She now knew, as painful as it was, that he was loyal. And that even in his folly and his failure, he had traveled halfway across the world to make sure she was okay. He loved her.

At the airstrip, Raimey and the Twins parted ways. Vanessa was too exhausted to cry. Her eyes burned, but the tears no longer came.

“I have to find Vanessa,” Raimey said.

“She’s smart. I’m sure she’s fine,” Chao replied. “Good luck.”

And then Vanessa heard her father walk away.

= = =

In the plane, Vanessa saw what had happened to Mike. He was bound in medical plastic designed to keep the electrostatic tissue from further damage. For the entire flight, he watched her from his bag, unable to speak, his bucktoothed face horribly disfigured without his jaw. An eye for an eye, after all. Even so, she could feel his sorrow. If Mike could cry, his tears would have filled the plane.

There was very little prep for Vanessa when she got to the bunker. She was the Consciousness Module: an unmodified Piece that governed the other Pieces and took command from the Will, Evan Lindo. Evan was now permanently mounted into the base of the Mega Core. Fluids fed his veins and a suction device whisked his waste away. When he greeted her, the whole room shook. Kove brought her in. She didn’t fight. Men in lab coats ignored her quiet pleas. They sedated her, shaved her head, and performed electrolysis over her body. They fitted her with a device for body waste and mounted metal diodes on her skull. They ran tests on her life capsule. They warmed the amnio-antibiotic gel to ninety-eight point six degrees and then placed her inside. They mounted the through-helmet to her head and closed her in.

And then, at Evan’s request, they fired up the last component of the Northern Star.

= = =

In cyberspace, the black pool lurking below the universe collapsed beneath the gravity core—then rose upward in a column, consuming it. The sun’s yellow rays were choked out, and for a moment, the universe was blacker than blindness. The dark orb bulged and collapsed as the Northern Star dismantled Cynthia’s sun.

Suddenly, a piercing light slashed across it and spread, until the entire surface boiled in white. Huge eel-like arms grew out of the nova and the portals and programs shook as the code of the universe shifted—as all the moors were destroyed, except one. Without the Northern Star, this reality would cease to exist.

The Cores around the world turned on, despite the MindCorp Sleepers’ requests, and a massive reverse data push caused the Sleepers to stroke and die, blood streaming out of their noses and ears from the surge. Within a thousandth of a second, Evan had mapped out every Data Core in the country. He quickly ordered all soft soldiers to secure them.

Governments protested, unsure what was going on, but their objections were ignored. Out of the fields of Iowa, and off the decks of submarines scattered throughout the world, nuclear missiles rose into the sky. An example had to be made.

Quietly, Evan ordered Kove and Chao to kill everyone in the Northern Star bunker. The Twins did so without question, rounding them up and pounding them down. The huge blast doors closed and locked for the incoming attack.

Washington, D.C. erupted in nuclear fire. Two hundred megatons turned a chilly fifty-degree day into a dry ten thousand degrees. Those outside were blinded before they were vaporized. A wall of fire spread from ground zero like a tsunami, and buildings vanished for two hundred miles. In thirty seconds, the entire region was a dead zone. And like a sunbeam through mist was God’s promise, Evan offered his own: surrender and there will be peace.

All nations did. Evan tore out their government infrastructure, tore out their ability to communicate. The few that resisted died swiftly.

The Revos were now Lindos. Those that remained migrated to U.S. bases to be refitted and recharged. Parts were harvested and reattached. Guts were drained and removed for good. The Tank Major versions were put back into the field, fully armed.

Sabot tried to disconnect Cynthia, but whenever he would attempt a coup, she would take over his body and sit him down.

“You said there’s another way, and I’m searching for it,” she said.

She fought until the bitter end. She set her thousands of MIMEs on one task: to hack into the Northern Star bunker and shut down Evan’s life support. That failed. She tried to stop the nuclear attack. That failed.

And then Evan turned his attention on her. Cynthia, a formidable opponent who, in a matter of seconds, had become nothing more than a gnat buzzing around his face.

Sabot pulled Cynthia off the bed and held her in his arms. As she seized, he put his finger into her mouth, and she bit down to the bone.

Twenty minutes later, the seizure ended. The right side of her face was slack, her eye canted to the side. Drool leaked from her lips, and her hand cradled her side in a claw.

Sabot wanted to scream for a doctor, but they were all alone.

They were all alone.

Epilogue

Mike Glass awoke in a hospital room. His eyes were closed, but he could feel a presence nearby. He opened his eyes and saw Evan seated, legs crossed, next to his bed.

“You put me in a tough position, Mike,” Evan said. Mike looked around at the windows. It seemed like there was nothing outside. And there were no noises of doctors and nurses going about their rounds.

“I love her,” Glass said.

“I know you do. I was wrong to so quickly dismiss your feelings,” Evan said. “You surprised me. In your shoes, I probably would have done the same.” He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “But I don’t know if I can trust you anymore. I can rebuild you—that’s no problem. Make you better than ever, in fact. And you’re worth it to me. Hell, we’ve been through a lot together, and that matters to me. But how can I trust you?”

“Is Vanessa alive?” Glass asked.

“Yes.”

“She’s with you?”

“Side by side and safe,” Evan replied.

“Then you should kill me,” Mike said. Glass realized he was speaking without his jaw. An electronic voicebox was mounted near him. “I won’t let you live if I know she’s alive and trapped, and you hold the key.”

Evan studied Mike’s eyes. Glass was a man of his word—Evan knew that. He slapped his knees.

“Well, that bums me out. But I can’t kill you, Mike. Your mind is too amazing, too adaptable. It isn’t just smarts with this stuff, it’s aptitude. And you—are—amazing.” Evan stood up. “I got big plans for you.”

“I’ll kill you the first chance I get, Evan,” Mike said.

Evan’s eyes glowed and the room shook. “You won’t know who you are when I’m done with you,” he replied.

Suddenly the walls shot away and Evan and Glass were spinning down a wormhole. And Glass understood: Evan had done it. He had become a god. Their physical bodies were somewhere, maybe next to each other, maybe a continent apart, but none of that mattered now.

“YOU WILL LIVE, MIKE. AND YOU WILL OBEY ME,” Evan said. “YOU WILL ALWAYS BE MINE.”

An orb formed from Evan’s head, amoeba-like, purple and white, dancing like a disco ball. It stretched over to Glass. And even before it touched, Mike could feel it. It was Evan’s will. It wrapped around Glass’s mind and took everything that gave Mike his identity, leaving only his aptitude and his instincts. The Pieces lapped everything up—the images and smells, the observations, the insights—and took them as their own. Good or bad, it made no difference: memories were life, and the Pieces would follow their will to the end of the earth, for just a drop of it on their tongue.

= = =

John Raimey stood over his daughter’s grave at the newly anointed “Derik Memorial.” He had missed the burial. For the last two weeks, like the remaining bionics, he had been ordered to commandeer the MindCorp nodes around the country. They were government-run now.

Evan had broken the news to John. “Rescue crews found her body at the Derik Building. I’m sorry, John. I’m so sorry. I know we’ve had our differences, but Vanessa was special to me. I failed at my promise.”

“Me too,” Raimey had said.

MindCorp had murdered his girl. And then, in a last-ditch salvo, Cynthia had turned Washington, D.C. into nuclear fire. John was more than happy to aid Evan in wiping MindCorp from the earth.

Raimey felt his wife behind him, but she stood far, far away. She was here to bear witness to John’s useless sacrifice. She was here to mourn her daughter.

“I’m sorry,” John said. He felt Tiffany’s eyes bore into the back of his skull.

John stood over Vanessa’s grave for hours before he was called back to base. They were going to repair his body and ship him overseas to a permanent post in Boma, to quell any uprisings near the mines and manage the ports.

He was happy to go. He was done. He was hollow. Every morning he woke was a curse from God.

Evan—or to some, the Northern Star—had requested him specifically.

“It will be a fresh start,” Evan had said over his comm. “You’ve done enough for your country. You’ve sacrificed more than I can imagine.”

To John, those words meant something. Maybe Evan wasn’t so bad after all.

The world needed CPUs and circuit boards in order to run. CPUs and circuit boards were built from rare, raw materials, and those materials invariably came from volatile regions. Raw materials and volatile regions: fundamental ingredients of even the most advanced civilizations. A + B = C. And Raimey would be the equal sign.

“Everyone you love dies,” Tiffany hissed, snapping John’s eyes from the fresh grave that was now his daughter’s resting place.

Then I will never love again.

The Northern Star

–The End–

Part I

“I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”

—Edgar Allan Poe

Prologue

-The Middle East. 2093-

I

Against all things natural in this region of the world, a low, thick fog clouded this borough day and night. It wet the entire city like the inside of a lung.

It was dusk and the streets were empty. A boy in a hunter orange wetsuit ran down a narrow alley, trying doors. He was barefoot and his head was shaved, with metal contact patches the size of quarters surrounding it in a crown. They reflected the dying light like tiny moons.

He tried another door. It was locked. He moved on, hugging the side of the street, always looking back. Still another door failed him, but he heard motion inside.

“Help,” the boy whispered in Arabic. Inside, the movement stopped. “Please help me,” he pleaded again, his voice breaking.

The woman—silent on the other side of the door—knew very well the consequences of helping: she lit a candle every night in her husband’s memory. He had been a kind man, and it had served him poorly. She slid her feet along the floor and soundlessly moved away. It was past curfew; it was dark now. The giant was out.

The last of the sunlight winked away and welcomed the black. The boy heard a faint noise behind him and immediately looked to the rooftops. Two hundred yards away, two green dots cut through the dark and fog.

The boy ran.

A fist-sized chunk of wall exploded behind him. He cried out but kept his legs pumping. As his footsteps passed by outside, families huddled into corners or stared off vacantly. They had heard this before: the cries of children, the dull sound of a bullet’s impact. What children remained they pulled closer. This borough was ravaged.

The boy weaved through the alleys. A cart exploded next to him. He felt the Eskimo kiss of a bullet pass near his temple. He heard the faint sound of flowing water ahead. The aqueducts.

Built by the Coalition—the U.S., China, and the European Union, who together now controlled the region—the aqueducts connected the thirty boroughs to each other. They could be used as an offsite control; in the early times of unrest, the Coalition cut off the aqueducts’ flow to force the rebels into submission. Now they ran freely.

And they were his only way out. The boy ran toward the sound, his heart racing, his legs like pistons, moving as fast as they could. Along the rooftops, the figure with the green eyes leapt from building to building, gaining ground.

The boy didn’t know why they had chosen him. He didn’t remember much of anything, except the vacuum of space and decisions, strings of zeros and ones that made no sense. But there were some memories. He pictured a beautiful black woman with long curly hair, tucking him into bed. She was always sad, even when she smiled.

“You did well,” she would say. “The key to keeping them on task is to make them feel special.”

“But I’m not special,” the boy replied.

The woman’s smile vanished. “Yes, you are. That’s why you’re here.”

She wished him goodnight, then walked out through a door that the boy knew led to nowhere.

And then the darkness came. And the Man who was everywhere at once.

The Man was the woman’s master. He was not kind, nor was he mean. But he was cold. As cold as the deepest space. And ancient. And when the Man came, the boy would cease remembering or thinking anything. It was as if his consciousness had been put on pause.

How had the boy escaped? He didn’t know. But he knew that going back was death—and worse, darkness.

The boy entered a clearing and saw the man-made river ahead. The earth shook as he sprinted toward his exit. To the right, along the aqueduct, a huge shadow appeared and disappeared in the fog, as if the fog itself pushed and pulled the object into existence. The boy thought it was a truck until it walked toward him—then he saw that it was a man. A filthy giant as tall as the buildings the boy had raced between. It lumbered along the aqueduct, attempting to cut the boy off from the river.

Suddenly, the boy felt indescribable pain. A rifle report echoed around him. He dropped to all fours but scrambled forward. The water was close; he could see the ripple of the current. The giant metal man picked up speed to intercept him. It met him at the water.

The giant reached for him with hands bigger than the boy’s body.

With his last ounce of energy, the boy dove under the Moldy Giant’s arm and plunged into the dark, fast-moving current. The giant raked at the water to snare him, but the current was strong, the water deep, and the boy disappeared into the blackness.

“How did you miss him?” Tank Minor Wesley hissed. He had jumped down to the road after taking the shot.

“He moved,” Tank Major Kadir—the Moldy Giant—grunted, still working his hands along the water, just in case. He found purchase and pulled out the ancient husk of a car. His eyes traced the river’s flow.

Wesley watched Kadir with disgust. He had never seen a giant so poorly maintained. “You’re a fucking mess, Kadir.”

The Moldy Giant’s head clicked back and forth. His eyes squirmed. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to shoot him.” His voice had become a boyish whine.

“No one gets out,” Wesley said.

“This has never happened before.”

“A malfunction released the boy.” Wesley leaned over the river and followed the water to the wall, hoping to see the boy skewered on rebar. “Where does this river go?” he asked.

“To Abdul Haq,” Kadir replied, his voice back to normal.

There was no reply. Kadir, the Moldy Giant, turned to make sure that Wesley had heard him, but Wesley was already gone. Fear crept through Kadir. He wasn’t afraid of Wesley; he could mash him into gravy—and one day he would. He intentionally cowered around him in order to make the sniper let his guard down.

But he did fear his boss.

The Man who said the boy was not to be hurt.

= = =

A ray of sunlight snuck through the blinds and fell onto Aadil’s eyes. One by one they cracked open. He glanced at the clock: 5:29 a.m. He flinched as the clock switched to 5:30 and the alarm erupted, sending a shiver down his spine.

He unrolled one of his arms, the skin loose from age, and slapped the snooze button. Every day. Every day, for over sixty years—since he was just a boy—Aadil had woken one minute before the alarm went off. But he knew if he didn’t set the damn thing, he’d sleep right through. A little joke from Allah.

The smell of tea was in the air. His wife was up. He headed for the kitchen.

The creak of the stairs announced his presence, but Batrisyla continued to fix breakfast with her shoulders square and her back to Aadil. He poured himself tea and sat at the table. He watched her while taking cautious sips. She was ignoring him.

“Batrisyla,” Aadil said.

Without a glance, she placed breakfast in front of him. He watched as she walked back to clean a spotless counter. He rose, went to her, and wrapped his arms around her waist. She stiffened. He put his chin on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was wrong. I should have come home.”

She faced him. “I was worried sick, Aadil! And you come home laughing. Drunk.”

His friend, Khayr, was a doctor in the borough. A patient had given him a very old and very good bottle of scotch. Aadil’s intended hour-long visit with Khayr had extended into the early morning. That was two days ago, and it had been a cold house since.

“I won’t do it again,” Aadil said emphatically.

Batrisyla looked out the window over the sink, reliving bad memories. “You just never know,” she said.

He understood. In the last thirty years, men who didn’t come home on time, never came home.

He flexed his scraggly arms. “Why worry when I got these?”

She tried to stay mad, but when she covered her mouth, he knew he had her. He threw in a few exaggerated poses. A laugh squeaked through her fingers. She smacked him with the towel and shook her head. “How could I have been concerned?”

Aadil pressed his forehead to hers. “It was a thoughtless thing to do to the best thing in my life.”

“Will you remember that, you old geezer?” Batrisyla said. He kissed her and nodded that he would.

= = =

From the aqueduct’s entrance, Aadil watched as his twelve-year-old apprentice, Nashat, pulled on his waders. The boy was clumsy and too short for work in the fishery, but he was the son of Khayr, the doctor, and a good kid.

Situated near the aqueduct’s mouth as it entered the borough, Aadil’s fishery—a former tyrant’s swimming pool—was a key part of the borough’s small ecosystem. No longer allowed access to the ocean, the old fisherman had improvised long ago, and in the process had made himself a very valuable part of his borough. He bred and harvested fish.

Food rations had been airdropped since the beginning of the occupation over three decades earlier. Since each of the thirty boroughs was an entity of its own, commerce with other boroughs was impossible. But in the last decade, the Coalition’s airdrops had become erratic, an afterthought. The last shipment was five months ago. What started for Aadil as a way to bide time had turned into a necessity.

One leg in the wader, Nashat tried to pull up the other and failed miserably. Aadil was unable to suppress a laugh as Nashat hopped, hopped, hopped and then tumbled headfirst into the fishery. Aadil hurried over and pulled him out. His laughter stopped.

“You have cut yourself, Nashat,” he said.

The stunned boy touched his hand to his forehead and pulled it back to see red. His face crumpled.

“No need to cry. I can do this task myself. Go inside and Batrisyla will clean you up, okay?”

Nashat nodded and headed to Aadil’s house with one half of the waders still dragging behind him. Aadil turned back to his work, looked at the order sheet, and sighed.

A few years after moving into this borough, Aadil had rigged metal grids on each side of the pool to push the fish toward the center and make it easier to net them. But the grids were now rusted and would occasionally stick to their tracks.

Aadil lowered himself into the pool and waded over to the nearest grid to check the track and pulley chains for any obstructions that had been carried in by the aqueduct. After ten minutes of work, he trudged across the pool to repeat the task on the other grid.

Along the way, his eye caught something bright at the far corner of the pool, where the current swirled with debris and algae. When he got closer, his heart stopped. Extending from the nest of garbage was a small hand. The wrist was traced in hunter orange.

“Batrisyla!” he screamed. He pushed himself through the water, using his arms like oars. Little tails splashed around him as the fish fled his path.

It was a boy. He was unconscious and deathly pale. His mouth and nose were just above the water.

Aadil yelled again. “Batrisyla!” He heaved himself over the grid.

The door slammed open and his wife ran out. Nashat followed with a bandage half attached to his head.

Aadil pulled the boy out of the water and brushed away the branches and trash. A light red mist from the boy’s chest sprayed Aadil. The boy was struggling to breathe.

“Is he alive?” Batrisyla asked. Her arms were outstretched to receive him.

“He’s alive. He’s alive,” Aadil heard himself say as he handed her the boy. She cradled him in her arms and ran to the house.

Aadil pulled himself out of the water. “Nashat! Get your father.” The boy stood still, staring dumbstruck at the trail of blood now leading to the house. “Nashat, go!”

Nashat ran off toward town.

= = =

Khayr arrived twenty minutes later with a medicine bag in hand. His mouth was a line of concentration as he inspected the boy. “The bullet passed through the lung,” he said.

“Can you save him?” Aadil asked.

“I don’t know.” To Batrisyla: “I need boiling water and your cleanest sheets.”

Khayr injected the boy with morphine and pulled out the supplies and tools he needed to treat grievous wounds. He ordered Aadil and Batrisyla around as he prepped for a surgery that wasn’t meant to take place on a kitchen table.

Three hours later, the boy was bandaged up, and a tube was draining blood from his chest cavity. They gently moved him to the couch. Khayr prepped a bag of saline and hung it on the wall.

“This will rehydrate him,” Khayr said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Will he make it?” Batrisyla asked.

“It’s too early to tell.”

= = =

The three of them sat around the kitchen table, afraid to look at each other, forbidden drinks in their hands. Drinks that had yet to touch their lips.

“He’s the Coalition’s,” Khayr finally said. “Had I known, I wouldn’t have come. You have put my son and I in terrible danger.”

“You are not a coward,” Aadil said.

Khayr laughed—a sad, sorrowful sound—and emptied his glass. “I am, Aadil. That’s the only way to survive. All I have is Nashat. And I’m all he has. We do not live in a land of reason or fairness. Good deeds go punished all the time.”

Khayr looked to the couch where the boy slept. “You, too, have put your life in peril by saving him.”

“Why are those metal things in his head?” Batrisyla asked.

“I don’t know,” Khayr replied. “But they shot him, so he was meant to die. And when they find out he’s alive, they will search for him and finish it, and they will kill you too. It’s their way.”

“What else should we have done?” Batrisyla asked. Anger filled her eyes.

Khayr looked at her for a moment. He grabbed his glass and threw back its contents in one gulp. “You should have let the fish have him.” He grabbed his bag and went to the door. “Do not contact me or my son. I’m a coward, yes. But I want to live.”

“Khayr, please don’t do this. After all these years,” Aadil pleaded.

“I cannot help you, Aadil!” Khayr said. And then he left.

= = =

Aadil couldn’t sleep. He thought of the boy. Color had already come back to his face. The young heal easily, Aadil. You do not, a voice whispered in the back of his mind.

A part of him hoped the boy would die. The recognition of that cowardice struck through his numbness like a spear through a hide. He cried. But he didn’t know for whom.

Batrisyla rolled over.

“What is the right thing to do?” he asked her. “I am at your mercy. I will do whatever you think is best.”

Batrisyla wrapped Aadil’s hands in hers and looked into his eyes. “We must take him to my brother.”

“He is a part of it, Batrisyla!” Aadil said, bewildered.

“He isn’t part of this,” she replied. “Abdul will know what to do. And it’s better we tell him than let him find out from someone else.”

Aadil knew she was right. But his stomach turned at the thought. “He never liked me.”

“He doesn’t like anyone. Tomorrow you will go and tell him. He will decide what to do.”

= = =

The next morning during the hour-long walk into the city, Aadil thought about Batrisyla. Why she had chosen him, he still didn’t know. She came from a military family, a strong hierarchical clan that had served the nation for over a century. Up and down the line, the men were to be feared and respected, and the women were to be—well, feared and respected.

Batrisyla could be soft, and on many nights over their fifty years together she had shown that side. But when things got tough, those soft features hardened, and her glare could cut like a knife.

Aadil’s family were fishermen, and he had met Batrisyla at the market. Her family had servants, but she always came alone. For months he watched her: her face hidden, her eyes filled with intelligence. And then one day she approached him and asked about the catch. A smile lit up her eyes as he stammered to produce a coherent sentence. He finally succeeded and added a joke. And she came back the next week, and the next, and their conversations grew longer.

As the man, it’s strange knowing that your wife is the stronger one, he thought. He would wake up many times to find her watching him, and she always said the same thing: “Do you know why I love you?”

“No.”

“Because you are kind.”

Batrisyla’s family was steel, unrelenting in a civilization that preyed on weakness. She had enough steel; it was woven in her. But she hadn’t had enough of kindness.

When they married, she was cut from the family and almost murdered. Her father’s ailing health was the only thing that brought her back. But that was long ago, before the Terror War, before the Coalition and the occupation. A bad memory made fond by the atrocities that followed it.

Aadil remembered the day the Coalition first rolled into their town. Turret guns moaned back and forth over the native crowds. Young, scared men, white, black and Chinese, squinted behind their rifle sights, barking orders in tongues no one understood. Religion had been used as a weapon throughout history, and when the Coalition slammed their flagpoles into the ground and said, “This place is ours now,” religious extremism made an already violent region boil over.

“For Allah,” Aadil said, shaking his head. He’d seen the body parts of women and children; old men lying on the ground pushing their guts in; people walking like zombies, deaf, with dried blood around their ears from the concussion blast. At a birthday party. At a funeral. At the market. Never-ending. The people who brought this pain did not know Allah. And they would never meet Him.

Abdul Haq was born of these times. Aadil remembered how Haq lost his family: a suicide bombing on the first day of school. His boy vanished in the blast. It took days to find even a piece of his wife to identify. It took over a year before the doctors would say that Haq would live—a crummy, burnt, armless and legless existence.

After five years of heavy losses and guerrilla warfare, the Coalition formed a new strategy. Old boundaries disappeared as they carpet-bombed the region into a logical grid. Cities mentioned in the oldest of testaments were turned into uninhabitable vacuums of rubble. The region’s natives were corralled and compressed into thirty walled-in boroughs. The miles of space between them were called “dead zones” and were aptly named: no one that left a borough ever returned.

Each borough was governed by the military. Populations were mixed and matched to prevent uprisings. Fighting? No food. Protests? No water. Any technology not used for basic life needs was torn from homes. You could live, and live in peace, but you could not live free.

And then the soldiers began to leave. They had done what they had come for: they had secured the oil and had constructed impervious barriers that required civilians to live with order. They had whooped and hollered as the trucks carried them out of the borough. Some residents celebrated—they thought the occupation was over. But they were wrong. When the last trucks rumbled through the vault-like gate, it locked behind them. And soldiers still walked the walls, armed to the teeth. They were waiting. And as days passed, everyone below began to whisper: for what?

Two months before, Abdul Haq had disappeared from the hospital. Then, days before the exodus, soldiers uprooted Batrisyla and Aadil from their home and moved them to this town, to this particular borough, with no explanation.

Aadil remembered when he first saw Abdul Haq again. He and Batrisyla had been in the town’s center. People were scurrying past them like rats, fleeing from footsteps that could pound holes into the earth. When Haq’s massive shadow came over them and Batrisyla saw what her brother had become, her eyes rolled back to whites and she fell into Aadil’s arms.

Tank Majors would rule the boroughs.

= = =

Aadil arrived at Abdul Haq’s bunker, a converted missile silo in the middle of town. Massive steel doors dwarfed him. To their right, Aadil saw an Arabic inscription: “WARNING! This is the residence of Tank Major Abdul Haq. Do NOT enter unannounced.”

Beneath the warning was a diagram that showed the scale form of a Tank Major, five times the size of the human next to it, with “Caution!” inscribed underneath. Above the warning was a button.

Aadil pressed it, and an intercom crackled into life. A moment passed and then a voice, deep and coarse, asked, “Who is it?”

As the elevator took Aadil twenty stories down, he thought about how everything had come to this: a military bunker carved out of a missile silo; a tyrant’s pool turned into a fishery; a young boy with electrodes embedded in his head and a bullet through his chest. It seemed that sanity had left the world without saying goodbye.

At the bottom of the shaft, the massive elevator doors opened with a hydraulic whoosh. Aadil walked out into a blast room over thirty yards in diameter. The room was dimly lit, and it took Aadil’s eyes a minute to adjust. He would have never guessed that a silo like this would be housed in a city. Aadil knew little about missiles, but he could see that whatever had previously filled this silo had been gigantic. If launched, the surrounding blocks would have burned to ash.

Dirty lights encircled the launch room. Ancient scaffolding that had supported the missile gleamed like bones. On the opposite side, Aadil saw an exit to the rest of the bunker.

He took the exit and entered a long hallway. Rooms splintered off it. In one, there were at least forty video monitors, each displaying a different view of the borough. A few views were from the sky; Aadil knew these were shot from hover-rovers: propeller-driven aerial drones that belonged to Haq. He controlled these drones mentally, and they acted like a second (or third, or fourth) set of eyes. The hover-rovers served as a warning. If you, as a law-abiding citizen, saw a hover-rover stationary in the sky, you knew not to go there. And if you were below one, you knew to stop whatever you were doing—immediately. There was no second warning.

Once Haq had taken control of the borough, the retribution for any terrorist act was swift and final. Aadil had seen bodies piled up in the middle of the square, hundreds, if not more. Haq gave them no proper burial, no last rites. He lit them up and let them burn, a human bonfire. Their ashes covered the borough in filthy snow, the smell of overcooked pork filling the air and searing the lesson into everyone’s brain: Do not step out of line.

Aadil found himself inside the armory. Everything here was mounted up high and mechanized to accommodate Haq’s size and lack of fine dexterity. Huge blued magazines too big and heavy for a man to carry were lined up one after another. At the top of each magazine, the dull copper cylinder of an artillery round was exposed.

The Tank Major’s helmet was also in the room. It would mount solidly to Haq’s shoulders and transfer the weight of any debris that would land on it to his body, protecting his fragile human neck. The eight-inch-thick bulletproof glass was cut into the front of the helmet like a skull; the rest of it was copper brown, just like the rest of the giant armored body.

“In here,” Haq called out, his voice bouncing around the corner ahead. Remembering his purpose for the trip, Aadil quickened his step and turned into the last room.

= = =

Haq was the height and width of a semi truck. He stood eleven feet tall and weighed eight thousand pounds. His armless, legless mockery of a human body was shielded by uranium-depleted armor, the densest material on the planet. Gears and hydraulics the color of gunmetal were buried under plates of armor. A pair of massive waist chains spun slowly, counter to one another, their gyroscopic properties keeping him balanced. In battle they spun up like a chainsaw, allowing for very rapid movement.

The Tank Major was impervious to gunfire, impervious to rocket-propelled grenades. He could tear apart cars like they were wet paper. He used no guns; he didn’t need them. What made him devastating was the hydraulshock attack. Six projectile-less artillery rounds, three feet long and ten inches in diameter, were housed in a magazine integrated into each of the Tank Major’s shoulders, atop arms that were nearly indestructible. They had to be, because the hydraulshock attack was a punch. When the artillery round fired from inside the shoulder chamber, the expanding gas would thrust forward a dummy bullet plunger that sent dense fluid throughout the arm and back leg, launching the Tank Major forward. For a fraction of a second, a Tank Major and its five-hundred-pound fists were as fast as a bullet.

The hydraulshock punctured armored vehicles like tin cans. Walls evaporated into dust, and buildings toppled as 3,500,000 foot-pounds of energy were delivered through the Tank Major’s anvil-like fists. And afterward, just like a gun, the shoulder breach would open, the spent artillery shell would flip out, and another round would load in. With enough rounds, a Tank Major could raze a city.

Now, Tank Major Abdul Haq sat in a massive metal chair designed for his body. Thick rubber cables lined the floor. Some ran to monitors that showed his biorhythms, others monitored the Tank Major battle chassis. He motioned for Aadil to sit down on a wooden chair of human proportions.

Haq was once a hard-looking, handsome man, but that had been taken away when the bomb that killed his family flashed the temperature around him to seven hundred degrees. His face was now a quilt of scar tissue. Only his eyes were the same: cold, cunning, and drowning with apathy, like a teacher who has taught the same lesson for a thousand years.

He was ill. Two quarter-size sores on his left cheek dripped pus, and his chest rattled with each breath. Aadil hoped his own face concealed his shock and fear.

“How is Batrisyla?” Haq asked, his voice felt rather than heard.

“She is good and sends her regards,” Aadil said.

“Why have you come here?”

Aadil chose his words carefully. “Batrisyla thought it would be wise to see you. We found a boy in the fishery. He was dressed in orange and he had been shot. He is not from this borough.” Aadil lowered his eyes, his voice barely a whisper. “We don’t know what to do. We need your help.”

II

Aadil trotted ahead of Haq on their way out of the city, occasionally looking back to make sure his brother-in-law was still in tow. The city gave way to hovels, makeshift homes built onto the skeleton of the old world. Residents watched them pass from safety of the shadows, unsure of what to think: an old man beckoning a Tank Major?

If his sister had not requested him, Haq would have sent Aadil off. No one in the borough knew of their relationship. Early on, it would have meant her death. From the beginning, their family had had no qualms about exchanging information with the Coalition for favors. To stay alive and powerful in this land, you had to be a reed in a stream; the rocks wore away. And so Abdul Haq and his family bent. For their service to the Coalition, the family was granted amnesty and a way out. And Haq, too crippled to lead a normal life, was granted power and purpose.

But now the massive Tank Major was dying. It was slow, but certain. His body armor was radioactive, and it was poisoning him. There were countermeasures—lead lining, anti-radiation treatments—but they just prolonged the inevitable. The cost of the Tank Major’s power, Abdul Haq knew, was his life.

Some of the Tank Majors who ruled others boroughs had already died. Haq knew this because early on the Tank Majors had communicated with each other to compare extremist trends, to discuss strategies. But the Coalition, afraid of a coup, outlawed these radio transmissions six years into their deployment, isolating the Tank Majors from one another. Even then, however, a few giants’ signals already gave only static—and a few gave insane replies.

The armor was death to everything it touched.

When Haq saw a black disc high over the fishery, he thought for a moment that his wandering mind had caused one of his hover-rovers to drift. A quick inventory proved him wrong; what was overhead was not his.

“Stop,” Haq commanded. Aadil froze as if his foot had just pressed the trigger of a mine.

He, too, spotted the disc, and fear filled him. “It’s above our house.”

Haq now knew that his sister had acted responsibly in calling him. Hover-rovers were attached to Tank Majors and Tank Minors. “Be still,” he told Aadil. “I don’t want it to see us.”

The hover-rover methodically scanned the fishery in neat rows, like a boy mowing his lawn. Hover-rovers had multiple technologies integrated into them. The standard high-definition color camera was used in ideal conditions, but the hover-rovers were also equipped with infrared, night vision, and X-ray.

Haq had to know whose eyes were invading his borough, and there was only one way to find out: he summoned one of his own hover-rovers. If it was another Tank Major like him, then he could deal with its curiosity. But if the unmarked hover-rover belonged to the Coalition, then the stakes were much higher.

Aadil watched as one of Haq’s hover-rovers glided toward them from the center of the city. It was at a much higher altitude than the rogue hover-rover flying around his house.

As it got close, Haq’s hover-rover picked up speed and dive-bombed the mystery rover like a falcon attacking unsuspecting prey. To Aadil’s surprise, it crashed directly into it, and both hover-rovers turned from graceful floating discs into bricks, slamming through Aadil’s roof. From inside Batrisyla screamed. Aadil ran to the house, Haq close behind.

Batrisyla was shaken, but fine. She cursed her brother up and down, but he wasn’t interested. He removed more of the roof to examine the hover-rovers’ crumpled remains.

When he separated the rogue hover-rover from his own, his face turned grim. It was exactly as he had feared.

= = =

Tank Minor Wesley’s ever-present sneer contorted into a scream when Tank Major Edward Chao ripped his head clean from his shoulders as punishment for shooting the boy. Chao let the body go, and it fell backward, landing at the feet of the other two Minors he had summoned. They both took a step back.

Chao didn’t notice. He was thinking about the boy. He, like the rest of the soldiers and technicians in the room, had watched the last of the hover-rover’s transmission. Its infrared and X-ray eyes showed the boy sleeping in a home near a massive pool.

That the boy was alive was a blessing, maybe even a miracle (if Chao believed in such things), but finding him within the jurisdiction of Abdul Haq complicated matters. Haq tended to think that the land he governed was his own.

The boy wasn’t a prodigy, but even so, the odds of finding his replacement were one in fifty thousand. And in this part of the world, fifty thousand kids was a lot. Anywhere else, Chao wouldn’t have to deal with this shit.

Chao flipped Wesley’s head end over end in his hand like a football as he planned what to do next. Maybe he was permanently suffering ADD, or maybe it was just the implants, but suddenly he imagined what Wesley would be seeing if he were still hanging on. Floor to ceiling, floor to ceiling, round and round we go.

Chao caught Wesley’s head and held it close to his own, their foreheads almost touching. Wesley’s eyes couldn’t indicate life or death; they were merely equipment. “You seeing me, old boy?” Chao asked. “Raise your hand if you can.”

Chao’s burst of laughter caused the at-attention Tank Minors to step back again.

You have to make work fun.

While Kadir, the Moldy Giant, governed the city of fog, Chao governed the ship-base moored off its shore that housed the Multipliers of the Northern Star. Chao had interrogated everyone about the boy’s escape, but had gotten no answers. In the bowels of the ship where the boy and the other child Multipliers were held, there were only Sleepers—hackers—who were always in cyberspace. Sleepers were numb and unaware of the real world; for them, reality and dream had been swapped.

They had quaked in front of Chao when he’d drilled down for answers. He knew they thought he was crazy. And he was, a bit—but not to the point of ineffectiveness. It was the guile which frightened them, the oily current behind his eyes, the recognition that dipping just a toe into his thoughts could drive them insane.

Chao had been there since the beginning. Before the Mindlink. Before the Terror War. He had been through the conflict with China as a regular soldier, then the civil war between MindCorp and the U.S. as a Tank Major. He and the god—Lindo, the Northern Star—were on a first-name basis.

Forty years ago, modern civilization had been on the brink of death until the brilliant scientist Cynthia Revo had invented a way to create a new universe via her Mindlink: a device that allowed a person to connect their mind directly to cyberspace.

Dr. Evan Lindo, a U.S. military advisor and chief weapons designer at the time, quickly foresaw the Mindlink’s military applications. The Tank Major and the Tank Minor were his immediate triumphs. But his crowning achievement was his own being: the Northern Star, a singular consciousness that spanned across the globe through thousands of people and a billion CPUs. When it went online during the civil war, it decimated governments and made cyberspace and the real world its own. Evan Lindo was a god—and the father of all this despair.

“Sir?” One of the Tank Minors interrupted Chao’s thoughts. Chao realized that they had been standing at the ready for thirty minutes and he had barely looked at them.

He waved them away. “I’ll handle it myself.”

Off comm in the quietest corners on base, some soldiers had questioned why Chao—such an important soldier in the wake of this new world—would be cast out into the middle of nowhere, guarding a Multiplier. Evan had offered him New York. He had offered him the UK. But Chao had chosen this place. He hadn’t become a Tank Major to usher in peace. He had become one to dominate in war.

Chao lobbed Wesley’s head out a window that faced the ocean and headed to the armory.

= = =

Haq was going to take the boy back tonight. Whatever had been done to the boy wasn’t right, but Haq no longer saw things in terms of right and wrong, good and evil. What he saw was cost. And the cost to keep the boy free—if that was even possible—was too great. By bringing the boy back, maybe his borough would be spared.

Haq knew where he had to go: the port city by the sea. The Coalition base was there. He had flown over it on his deployment to this borough. The base was massive and its purpose unclear. At the time, two nuclear coolant towers were being built behind it. Whatever it was intended for, it needed a lot of power.

Haq remembered when the base first came online. The Tank Major of that borough had told Haq that the entire city was covered in fog.

= = =

Chao entered Haq’s borough. His hover-rover scouted ahead, feeling out the area like an insect’s antennae. It quickly found Haq’s bunker and glided over it, X-raying down one level at a time. Through it, Chao saw the boy two hundred feet down. His small skeleton shifted back and forth, maybe from a bad dream. He scanned another room and saw the skeletons of two adults, no doubt the ones who owned the shack near the fishery. And then he saw Abdul Haq, who appeared to be walking toward the boy.

For his size, Chao moved at alarming speed.

= = =

Haq walked to the boy’s room as quietly as he could. The boy had not awakened since Aadil found him. No doubt his little body was doing everything in its power to heal. His mind was obviously a tool, so maybe the boy was catatonic anyway.

Haq scooped up the boy in one of his gigantic hands and walked past the room where his sister and Aadil slept. The rubber-lined floor helped his massive form sneak by without waking them. He reached the elevator in the blast room and pressed the button to go up.

He turned: Batrisyla, barefoot, her hair down, stared up at him.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. Even in the dark, Haq could see the plea for mercy on her face.

“The boy must go back.”

“To what? They shot him! They obviously don’t want him.” She grabbed for the boy, but her brother raised his massive hand out of her reach.

“Then he’s dangerous to them. Who knows what he is.” Haq got into the elevator. As the door closed, Batrisyla darted in. They went up.

“We’ll raise him, Aadil and I.”

“They will kill you, Batrisyla!” Haq shouted. “This child hasn’t been abandoned or forgotten! He isn’t a puppy that has no home!”

Batrisyla started to cry. Haq had seen this reaction when they were young, but never since. And he knew the well from where those tears sprang. She and Aadil had never conceived a child.

“If they come in here, fight them,” she pleaded. She put her arms around her brother the best she could, but it was like hugging a car. She pounded her fists against him. “Fight them!”

Haq looked down at his sister, the strands of white overtaking her once oil-black hair. Sorrow filled him.

“I can’t fight them, Batrisyla. They made me. They own me.”

She looked up at him, defeated. Her brother: so powerful, so useless.

When the elevator door opened, the unexpected concussive blow of Chao’s hydraulshock caused Batrisyla’s eardrums to rupture. She was behind her brother when Chao’s fist warped Haq’s chest plate and sent the giant reeling back into the elevator. His tree-sized leg slammed into her, snapping her spine, and when Haq fell over, she was pinned beneath him.

The mechanisms that allowed her brother to move, to live, were a mystery to her. When Haq moved quickly, he revved up like a buzz saw, but for the most part he was quiet. Right now, whatever was in there was struggling to work, like an engine without oil grinding to its death.

Batrisyla turned her head and saw another giant, different but serving the same purpose, standing above them. This giant, an American, was no doubt a Tank Major, but his design was more human than her brother’s, less mechanical.

Fighting to remain conscious, Batrisyla watched with a scream stuck in her throat as the giant lifted the boy from where he had fallen and placed him outside.

She saw Chao squat down on his knees next to her brother.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Haq told the Tank Major between shallow breaths. “I was bringing the boy to you.”

Batrisyla thought she heard the other Tank Major say, “That’s a good soldier.”

Batrisyla couldn’t feel her legs. The taste of copper filled her mouth, and she spit. Chao noticed her but remained focused on her brother. Blood poured out Haq’s nose. His human body, encased within the Tank Major form, had been compressed along with his mechanics. His breath was rapid and shallow.

Chao leaned in toward Haq and whispered in his ear. He then stood up and dug his hands into the sides of Haq’s warped chest armor and tore it off. The warped plate fell to the side, exposing Haq’s human body: a head and a torso, without arms or legs, cut down neatly to fit.

Chao scooped him out of the chassis and dropped him next to his sister. A harness was fused to his head, neck and spine; it was what gave him control of his body. Chao ripped this from Haq’s back. He pressed the elevator button to send it down, then bowed as the door closed.

Haq watched his sister struggle to stay alive, her small body crushed underneath his mechanical one.

Batrisyla struggled to free her arms, but Haq could see that one was pinned and the other was broken. Her hips were twisted at an impossible angle. They stared at each other, ideas and thoughts passing between them without a word spoken.

“I love you. Please tell Aadil I love him too,” she said.

Haq said, “I love you, too.” But it was too late.

She died in front of his eyes, crushed under his Tank Major body, now separate from him. Batrisyla was beautiful. She was the kind one of the family. The honorable one. Her vacant eyes stared at him accusingly for the path he had taken. For the life he had chosen.

The attack had knocked the elevator off its rails, and it shuddered its way down to the bottom of the silo. Haq faced the empty gaze of his sister, unable to look away, as if the depths of his remorse had created a black hole that his vision could not escape. She was gone. His sister, Batrisyla, was gone. She was somewhere else; he hoped it was somewhere beautiful. But it was not here. Never again.

Aadil howled when he saw his wife. Haq would never forget that sound. It was a wolf, a child, and a man rolled into one.

= = =

Khayr opened the door to a figure he knew as Aadil, but the perpetual smile was gone and his friend’s red-rimmed eyes were laced with a sadness he could not comprehend. Aadil said plainly that Batrisyla was dead and that Abdul Haq, the giant, needed medical attention. Khayr did not argue. He got his medical supplies and followed Aadil, who staggered like a drunk back to the Tank Major’s silo.

III

Symptoms of radiation poisoning were scattered across Abdul Haq’s body, and while Khayr guessed they would kill him in a year or so, the immediate injuries would not. Khayr irrigated a nasty gash that ran across Haq’s chest before sewing it up.

“Your sternum’s cracked,” Khayr said matter-of-factly.

Khayr saw the chest armor and could only imagine the power that had crumpled it like aluminum foil; but apart from the sternum, which seemed to have set itself, the other wounds were superficial.

“You would be dead now had the other giant not torn your armor off,” Khayr said while he listened to Haq’s heart.

“He didn’t do it to save my life,” Haq said. The giant had torn him from his body as a rape, a humiliation. He had whispered in Haq’s ear that he hated the people here and that he would turn the land into glass if he could. And he had recognized the dying woman as Haq’s sister, so he had thrown him in front of her so that he would have no choice but to watch her die.

Aadil hadn’t spoken in hours. He sat across the silo at the foot of the cot where Batrisyla’s body was wrapped in a blanket. His hand rested on her feet.

Haq’s Tank Major chassis was sprawled in the elevator like a passed-out drunk.

“I need you to put me back into my body,” Haq said.

“I don’t know how,” Khayr replied.

“It’s simple.”

= = =

I am war, Haq thought to himself. When Khayr connected the harness, the battle chassis roared to life. Khayr pushed him all the way in, and with a snap, Haq was secured. A quick systems check—everything was fine. The chest plate was the only problem. Haq stood up and dragged it out of the elevator. With his hammer-like fists he pounded the armor back into form.

With each strike he saw his sister. A girl following him around their estate, always asking questions. A young woman arguing with their father about the state of Iran. A grown woman, just hours before, taking her last breath. He looked at his sister’s body, which was now covered in a blanket, never to move again. He looked at her husband, who stared at the ground like he wanted to be buried in it.

I am war.

= = =

Khayr said he’d come back in a day to re-pack the wound and see how it was healing. Haq nodded, though he knew that the doctor would come back to an empty castle. Khayr spoke his condolences, said his goodbyes, and left.

Aadil picked at a can of meat he had found in storage. He never strayed from his wife’s body for more than a minute or two, his love for her like a magnet always pulling him back.

For Haq it was the opposite. He hunkered down in the armory, preparing for the coming storm. He was afraid that if he got too close to Batrisyla, the blanket would fall away and her eyes would open and show the same hopelessness they had when she had asked him to do the right thing and he’d said no.

Aadil appeared in the doorway. “It’s been almost a day. We need to prepare her for burial.”

“My hands are too big,” Haq said.

“I will dress her. You’ll dig the grave.” Aadil disappeared again.

= = =

Aadil pulled the cot near a sink thick with dust. The pipes knocked and rattled until rust-colored water burst from the faucet. He waited until the water cleared.

He took off his wife’s clothes and straightened out her body. He washed her feet and worked his way up slowly with care. He knew that this was the last time he would touch her in the real world, and though her skin was cold, it was still her. He bit his lip to stop the tears; she deserved better.

He talked to her, told her what he’d thought when they first met in the market. Told her how she had changed him, made him stronger. Told her how beautiful she was. He combed her hair and put it the way she liked it, rolled in the back.

He found a clean white linen, and wrapped the kafan carefully around her. He suffered a long pause before he kissed her lips and covered her face.

Haq was behind him.

“She loved watching the sunset from the park hills,” Aadil said. “We would go on the weekends and take dinner. Most of the time we’d talk about nothing. Sometimes we’d just sit quietly and watch another day pass under this stupid regime that’s done nothing but take. But they couldn’t take those nights from us. We didn’t even notice the walls.”

“I have to go,” Haq said.

Aadil spun around. “You will stay and respect your sister! This isn’t about you and your war, your revenge. This is about her and her life. You will stay until she is mourned.”

Aadil walked toward the elevator. “I can’t carry her,” he said.

Gently, Haq picked up his sister.

= = =

At the park hills, they laid Batrisyla on a pillar Haq had knocked over during one of the last battles in the borough. People had been crushed under it then, but now there was no trace; either the animals or the desert had consumed them.

Aadil sat next to his wife, a smile on his face drawn from a memory he was living in. Haq sat down too, his sister between them.

“Do you pray?” Aadil asked.

“No, not for some time.”

Aadil turned east and knelt down. “Please pray with me now.”

The giant and the old man prayed together. They prayed for their sister and wife, for fairness and heaven. Aadil prayed for mercy, Haq for revenge.

Afterward, on the way to the house, Aadil noticed that Haq looked pale; sweat peppered his forehead. He inquired, but Haq ignored the question.

It took only minutes for Haq’s giant hands to make an adequate grave. They had debated taking her to the cemetery, but in the end, the garden behind their house was where she had spent most of her time; it was where she would be most happy.

“Is there anything you want to say to her?” Haq asked. Her body lay next to the grave.

“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me,” Aadil whispered. “You are the reason I wake up and the reason I smile. You are the reason I don’t lie. You always said how honest I was, but that isn’t true: I became that way because I wanted you to be proud of me. I will see you soon, my love.”

Haq began to move her body, then stopped. “I was never a good brother to you. I was too proud. When you visited me, I was cold.” Concentration filled Haq’s face, as if his next words had to be dredged from the bottom of a well. “I’ve been alone for so long, Batrisyla. Why did Allah take Farrah and Malik from me? Why does He let evil win, time and time again? Malik was only eight. He was so young and beautiful. Farrah was running after him because he forgot his history report.” Tears traced the ripples in Haq’s patchwork face. “I’ve been angry for so long. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I will honor you. I’m doing it my way, but it will be for you. It’s all I know. And if I do not find you in the afterlife, know that my spirit rests where it belongs.”

He looked to Aadil, who nodded. Then Abdul Haq placed his sister’s body in the grave and covered it with soil.

It was nighttime when they walked back to the converted silo. They hadn’t spoken since Batrisyla was put in the ground. Aadil pictured her in the garden, the turned earth patted down flat, and he wondered if the crops would take root and grow in her shape. His mind turned grotesque, and his face twisted at the thought. He tried to push it away, but he couldn’t. He saw himself taste the crops. The olive trees blooming with her. The corn and dates he bites into and shares with his neighbors. And behind it all, her ghost watching as she nourishes him. He wanted to throw up, push the nightmare aside—why would his mind betray him like this?—but that’s what minds do. They say what they want to, whether the mouth parrots or ignores. And so he pictured himself full on his wife, the juice of the date running down his chin. The corn growing tall like her outreached arms pleading to be pulled out.

A crash broke him from this nightmare trance.

“Haq?” Aadil said. There were no streetlamps, but he could see the giant’s silhouette. Haq was getting back to his feet. He had collapsed.

“Something’s wrong,” Haq said. “Something’s not working.”

They made it back to the silo. When they entered the well-lit armory, Aadil gasped: Haq looked starved.

“See if a fluid is dripping out of my body,” Haq wheezed.

Aadil walked underneath him like he was servicing a car. He quickly found a syrup-like fluid dripping into the waist chains from an armored ridge on Haq’s back. “There’s oil,” he said. He wiped the oil with his fingers and showed it to Haq.

“Taste it,” Haq said. Aadil thought it was a joke, but the giant’s hard gaze showed otherwise. Aadil put his fingers to his lips.

“It’s sweet.”

“Fuck!” Haq screamed. “It’s how I feed.”

= = =

Aadil scurried around and over Haq like a crab mechanic. With great effort, he had opened a compartment at the base of the Tank Major’s back. He had to crank loose three huge lug nuts the size of his fist. Each time, Aadil hung from the wrench like it was a pull-up bar, shaking his body to break them free.

“Be careful,” Haq said to Aadil when he wrestled the last of the giant bolts loose.

Aadil didn’t understand the warning until the two-hundred-pound plate of depleted uranium fell off Haq’s back and barely missed Aadil’s sandaled feet.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. Barely,” Aadil said. The armor had taken a chunk out of the floor. “You’re not very safe to be around.”

Haq thought about the coming days. “I hope that stays true. What do you see?”

The armored plate had protected a recessed metal box that was mounted on mechanized rails like a drawer. Inside the box was a square plastic container the size of a milk jug. The container was empty. The whole assembly vibrated and groaned as if jammed.

“It’s not coming out?” Haq asked.

“No.”

“That’s my nutrient pump. If we don’t fix it, I’ll die.”

“It’s for food?”

Haq laughed. Food hadn’t touched his lips in thirty-five years.

“It’s a zero-waste caloric paste. It connects to my stomach through the harness. It’s also medicine. Antibiotics and chemotherapy.”

“Chemotherapy?”

“Yes. At my age in the battle chassis, it’s a part of the regimen.”

Aadil exhaled through clenched teeth while looking at the complicated mechanical innards in front of him. He wasn’t an engineer.

“Where are the containers?” he asked. He had an idea.

= = =

“I don’t want you to come with me,” Haq said. Aadil had a jury-rigged canister and IV tube in his hands. It had taken an hour to break apart the canister wedged inside Haq’s frame.

When it was finally pulled out, piece by piece, Aadil saw that a hose fixed to the Tank Major’s frame sucked the fluid from the jug. Aadil found another tube and duct taped them together to create a longer lead. He popped a hole into a fresh nutrient canister and inserted the hose.

“Is it working?” Aadil asked. Then he felt the fluid pull through the tube. “It’s working!”

Relief washed over Haq’s face. Aadil remained quiet while Haq fed.

“I don’t want you to go with me,” Haq said again, later. Quieter. Color had come back to his face and his eyes were sharp again.

“I was going to before this,” Aadil said.

“I wouldn’t have let you. You don’t know what’s out there.”

“Well, now we don’t have a choice, do we?” Aadil said.

The silence was confirmation. The nutrient pump was broken. The armor would have to be removed every day for Haq to feed. And Haq couldn’t do that alone.

“You must do everything I say,” Haq said. “And even then I can’t guarantee your safety.”

“The sooner I’ll see Batrisyla,” Aadil replied.

Haq nodded. He understood.

“There is a motorized cart in the blast room. I need two more hydraulshock clips. The wrench and the nutrient canisters can go in, too. Bring food for yourself.”

Aadil went about his task.

= = =

They walked east through the borough. Aadil guided the electric cart—a sophisticated wheelbarrow—and tried to keep up with Haq’s long gait. Haq was quiet, thinking about what lay ahead. He assumed he would die. But the question that twirled in his mind was: once this got started, how long could he live? His primary goal was to kill the giant. He licked at the idea like a dog with a fresh rib bone. He imagined tearing him apart slowly, watching the giant’s face contort with the indescribable pain as Haq got past the synthetic tissue and metal and dug into flesh. This was the evil side of himself, Haq knew, but it was a powerful ally, and it had served him too long to be ignored.

He did not think he would see his sister in the next life.

After the giant’s heart had been stilled, he wanted to save the boy. He guessed there were more, and if so, he would try and free them all, but that specific boy had Batrisyla’s mark on him. And he thought Aadil would raise the boy well if they were successful in their mission.

They approached the eastern wall.

Abdul Haq and the other Tank Majors had access to doors. These doors were the only access points to the adjoining boroughs. They weren’t a secret: civilians walked by them every day. But doors that never opened were walls, and the residents of the borough didn’t even see them anymore.

The door was closed, but a pile of dust and clay lay at its base like peanut brittle.

“He came through here?” Aadil asked.

“Stay behind me, at least one hundred yards. I will come to you,” Haq said. “I don’t know what we’ll find. There may be soldiers like me, or they may be more human-looking. If they’re small, then as long as they’re on me, don’t worry about them. If they see you, alert me if you can and then hide. If we’re near the ocean, dive deep into water. No bionic can swim.”

To the right of the huge doors was a keyhole, exposed from its recent use. Haq produced a key big enough for his hands and used it. The mechanized doors slowly opened to the dead zone, a world that neither Haq nor Aadil had laid eyes on in over three decades.

They passed through, and the door closed behind them.

= = =

The dead zone was much larger than Aadil had imagined. In his mind, he had pictured long alleys, two hundred feet wide, with the tall walls of each borough acting as guard posts. Instead, the next wall wavered in and out of sight like a mirage.

“Why so much space?” Aadil asked. He looked left and right. The dead zone stretched to the horizon.

“Containment. With these partitions, no extremists could coordinate between the boroughs.”

The land between the boroughs was flattened rubble with nowhere to hide. It was lifeless, but littered with the remnants of what had once been life. Dead grass and plants were everywhere, burnt and frozen in time like a petrified forest rediscovered. Bleached white bones were scattered across the landscape. Tattered clothes pinned beneath ribs flapped in the wind. Jawless, bucktoothed skulls stared up at them.

“They’ve been dead a long time,” Haq said. They followed the path of ash left by Chao.

A movement caught their attention. A cur, skinny with mange, ran away, its head turned awkwardly back to make sure they didn’t pursue. Aadil didn’t know how it survived or what it ate. They continued on.

“Have you ever been outside before?” Aadil asked.

“No.”

They walked past an audience of human bones laid out like sunbathers.

“How did they kill all these people?”

“I don’t know, Aadil.”

“Are the other boroughs like ours?”

“I don’t know.” Haq paused and thought. “There are thirty boroughs in this region. I communicated directly with the four around us, they communicated with the four around them, and so on. The last time we spoke, it appeared that many of the Tank Majors in the other boroughs were dead. Some insane.”

“How long ago was this?” Aadil asked.

“Almost twenty years.”

“Twenty years!” Aadil said. “When did you last speak to your . . . boss?”

“Coalition command? Twenty-five,” Haq replied. He knew how idiotic that sounded.

“We’ve been caged up for twenty-five years since you last spoke to your command?” Aadil said in disbelief.

“They’re clearly still in charge, aren’t they?” Haq spat. “You don’t deviate from your last order just because there isn’t a new one.”

They were quiet the rest of the way to the next door.

“Stand back,” Haq ordered when at last they arrived. He held a firm stance and boostered two hover-rovers off his back. They spun into the air and glided over the wall.

“I knew the Tank Major in this borough,” Haq said. “Rest. This is going to take a while.”

Aadil sat down on the ground, but Haq remained standing like a statue, his eyes elsewhere.

What Haq saw on the other side via the hover-rovers wasn’t encouraging. Most of the buildings were intact, but the few heat signatures he encountered were too small to be human.

Halfway through the borough, a foreign hover-rover came into view beneath his, flying in a lazy pattern. It moved north, but paused first, as if beckoning Haq’s hover-rover to follow.

Somehow it seemed friendly, though Haq couldn’t say why. So he followed it. The hover-rover flew for about a mile before descending to the ground. Haq’s heart lightened ever so slightly. A smiling Tank Major waved up at the camera.

Aadil was asleep.

“Wake up,” Haq ordered.

Haq used the key, and the door to this alien borough slowly opened.

“Remember, one hundred yards,” Haq said.

= = =

Aadil followed Haq through the downtown as they moved north to the smiling Tank Major’s location. This borough had been a city center, maybe a capital. The high rises, intersections, and old traffic lights contrasted with the uninhabited silence. It was now a morgue. They passed a pile of bodies so dry the flies ignored them. Down the road, they passed more bodies stacked neat like logs. All the bodies were jerkied, dried husks, mummified remains the desert heat had crisped like a kiln.

They came across a dead man in the middle of the road. He looked like he had been run over.

“This one’s different,” Aadil said. The others were sunken in and black from rot, their skin like burnt paper. This one was crushed but whole. Aadil could see metal and dirty white tissue visible from its wounds.

Haq knelt down for a better look. “That’s a Tank Minor. They’re bionic infantry used by the Coalition.”

Aadil hunched over the body. He had never seen a human-sized bionic. “What killed him?”

Haq glanced at the wounds. “I think the man we’re about to meet.”

They came upon more dead Tank Minors. All of them had been bludgeoned or dismembered as if an angry child had pulled apart his dolls. They were now three-hundred-pound breadcrumbs leading Haq and Aadil to their executioner.

“I’ve counted twenty-six Tank Minors,” Aadil said finally. “The Tank Major we’re meeting could do that?”

“Tank Minors are extremely strong and fast by human standards,” Haq replied. “But they’re no match for us.”

They approached another human wall full of eyeless sockets and howling mouths. Aadil shivered. The death around him was too much. He had always felt a bit guilty killing fish.

“Up ahead,” Haq said, distracting him. Aadil pulled his eyes away and saw a welcoming light. The smiling giant stood next to it.

This Tank Major was sane and friendly. And he was white, an American, which Aadil hadn’t expected. He introduced himself as Renfro and brought them to a large blue fire fueled by a propane tank. A wire strung with mystery meat hung over it, boiling and dripping fat.

“I can’t believe I’m meeting you in person after all these years,” Renfro said to Haq. “When I saw your hover-rover come over the side, I hoped you were a friendly, or at least, friendly enough.”

Renfro’s battle chassis was badly damaged. The whole left side was shorn off. Unlike Haq, he was not cut and chopped to fit; he was deformed. Exposed on the shorn left side was an arm the size of a baby’s, but with only a thumb and finger. On the right side, the Tank Major arm was intact.

Renfro saw them staring at his baby arm. “I convinced them to let me keep it. Good thing, too,” he laughed as he wiggled the baby thumb. “You guys hungry?"

Renfro lurched over to pick a string of meat from the fire with his tiny limb. Using a metal shard sticking from his body, he pulled the meat off the metal wire.

“What is it?” Aadil asked, nodding at the dripping meat.

“It’s better if I just say it’s safe and tastes pretty good.” Renfro walked it over to Aadil, who took a piece. Haq declined.

“What happened here?” Haq asked.

Renfro’s friendly eyes turned black. “About a year ago, the Coalition—or whoever they are now—came to our borough to take our kids. We fought them. I found a scout the day before and cornered him. He wouldn’t tell me what he was doing here. He cited my subservience.” Renfro smiled. “He didn’t know I’m from Texas.”

Renfro took a minute to take a bite of what Aadil had guessed, correctly, was rat meat. He continued. “I pulled the Tank Minor apart slowly, making sure it hurt, and finally he ’fessed up. He said they go into the boroughs to take the kids and test them. The kids that don’t pass are brought back. The kids that do pass are used as multiplier fuses for the Northern Star.”

“What’s that? A Coalition weapon?” Haq asked.

“I’m not exactly sure. He acted like it was a king,” Renfro said. “He said something about Lindo. Called him its Will.”

“Evan Lindo?” Haq said. The name had meaning to him, as it did to every bionic. Dr. Evan Lindo had created them.

“Yep. One and the same,” Renfro said with a nod. “Apparently he invented this other thing that he now runs or is part of . . . it was a bit confusing. I don’t think there’s a Coalition anymore. I think all that went bye-bye when this Northern Star came along.”

“What does that have to do with the children?” Haq asked.

“I don’t know that either,” Renfro said, tossing his giant arm in the air. “The multiplier fuse thing, I guess.”

“What is that?” Aadil asked.

“He couldn’t tell me.”

“It was a secret?” Aadil asked.

Renfro roared with laughter. “Nah, nah. If it was a pinky swear, I think this guy was compromised enough to talk. He was telling me what he knew, when suddenly something took control of him. He began to shudder and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. He made a sound like—” Renfro made a machine gun sound with his mouth. “Not a great imitation, it was lighter, and then it wasn’t him. It was someone else. And he said he was going to kill all the villagers if I didn’t let them take the kids, and that he was going to kill the children that he didn’t need, too. And the weird thing was, I’d heard that voice before.” He turned to Haq. “And so have you. It was Evan Lindo. Talking to me through a dead Tank Minor.”

Renfro paused for a moment, staring at the fire. “My town was a pretty good bunch. We had some bad seeds early on, but come on, who’d blame them? They did the ‘for Allah’ thing, but I’m not a god kind of guy, so it all seemed silly to me. But I’d cleaned the place out of resisters quickly, gotten the residents to take charge, and things were orderly within a year or two.”

“So you told your people what was coming,” Haq said.

Renfro nodded. “We rounded up all the children and put them in my bunker,” he said. “We put the blowtorches near the door, and I spent all day dragging rocks, old cars, anything large to create choke points. I left a narrow path through the barrier so we could get to the bunker. And to squeeze them if they came for us. The bunker was our Alamo.”

Aadil and Haq didn’t get the reference.

“Alamo—it’s a Texas thing. Our last stand against the enemy.”

Renfro took another bite of rat before continuing.

“There were no hover-rovers we could see, so we rigged some explosives where it seemed appropriate. It wasn’t much, but it worked. We roasted the first wave of Tank Minors with those. They came through the entrance—a bad idea, cocky.

“After we toasted the first wave, more came, but this time over the walls. We couldn’t get them, so the villagers retreated. I followed behind, tearing up the Minors pretty good, but they wouldn’t die after I killed them.”

“I don’t follow,” Haq said.

“They’d pop up as Lindo! All of them. So I’d have to kill them twice, really cream them down. Sometimes there’d be five or six of these Minors calling themselves Lindo. It was fucking creepy. They didn’t move as well as before, but it was still a pain in the ass. You can’t really prepare for the dead to rise,” Renfro said.

“There were too many of course, and the fuckers that I killed, the ones that still limped along or crawled along as Lindo, didn’t help the situation. A lot of the villagers were getting picked off. They were in a situation beyond them, but what could you do?

“My people knew they were gonna die—I straight up told ’em. But you don’t hurt children. I’ve done a lot of questionable things, especially as a Tank Major, but you don’t hurt kids. The town agreed, and so we fought.”

Renfro became silent for a minute. He looked at the husks of dead, stacked like cords of wood around them, and nodded with approval at the memory. “We fought.”

Haq and Aadil said nothing, allowing the big man his memory. After a moment, he continued.

“We retreated to the bunker through the alley I’d made. The townsfolk that were left got inside. They welded the door like I told them to and I stood outside and waited.

“The Minors came through, and their eyes opened like big ol’ eggs when they saw what they walked into. Me and them in a thirty-by-thirty-foot space. I sent most of them to hell. I could barely open my fists from all the tissue packed into ’em. It got quiet. And I thought: against all odds I’d won. I’d staved off the atrocity, you know? I’d done good for my people.

“But then I heard a child laughing. A wicked sound, not what you’d think in your head. And I saw the wall of debris that had taken me a day to gather, big things, get thrown out of the way.”

“Was it the Tank Major from the ship-base, the advanced one?” Haq asked. “I’d never seen one like him.”

Renfro shook his head. “No. It was Kadir, the Tank Major from the borough against the sea.”

Renfro told the rest of the story in cleaved sentences, his long drawl soulless. Renfro and Kadir fought. Renfro was outmatched, and Kadir broke him. Then the Minors tied him down. Kadir got through the door of the bunker in spite of the debris barrier. Then, in front of Renfro, the Minors burned the villagers alive—just as the first Lindo had said they would. And then they took the children. After they’d left, the talking Lindo carcasses collapsed as if the puppet master had cut their strings.

“No child returned,” Renfro said, his voice still shy of human. “Apparently Evan Lindo is a man of his word.”

They sat quietly for a while.

“The ship-base Tank Major came through here about two days ago,” Haq said.

Renfro nodded. “His name is Chao. Like Chaos. I avoided him.”

“How did you know to do that?” Haq asked.

The Texan made a gesture toward the sky. “His hover-rover stayed over me for a couple of hours. It was a warning. And a Lindo spoke to me.”

“I thought you destroyed them.”

“I thought I did too,” Renfro said. “This Lindo didn’t look like much—it was smashed into a pile of metal—but it sparked back to life a bit.”

“What did it say?”

“Stuff,” Renfro said. “Things it shouldn’t know. I buried it.”

“Where?” Haq asked.

= = =

Aadil gagged as Haq exhumed the corpse from the shallow grave. The Tank Minor had suffered an extreme death. Its head looked like a grenade had gone off near it, and its body was a mashed string of spine and limbs. When Haq pulled it from the dirt, its legs made a meaty pop and snapped free of the body.

Haq propped the death dummy up on a nearby crate. One of its eyes stared at them vacantly. The other eye was gone. Haq didn’t know what to do next. Twenty minutes passed.

“Maybe Chao’s hover-rover did it,” Aadil said.

Haq looked to the night sky. “No. It came from up there. Dr. Lindo was based in America.”

“Satellites?” Aadil asked.

Haq nodded. “It’s the only way.”

Aadil was confused. “Why would he be a part of this over here?”

“That’s what I want to ask,” Haq said as he bent over and looked directly into the dead Minor’s eye. A fisheyed reflection of himself stared back. Haq’s hover-rovers erupted from his back and jetted up a half mile. They crisscrossed in a figure eight.

“What are you doing?” Aadil asked.

“If the real Dr. Lindo is watching from above, I want to give him something to see.”

Hours passed and nothing happened. Haq called back the hover-rovers and they made camp. Renfro came over and poked the death dummy with his finger. “Nothing, huh?”

“His lips are sealed,” Haq said. “It’s from overhead, isn’t it? Some kind of satellite surveillance.”

“That’s what I’d guess,” Renfro said, looking up at the stars. “I used to look up at these and wonder what was happening on other planets. Now I look up and wonder what’s going on here, on our own. You guys haven’t heard anything, have you?”

“No,” Haq said. All he knew was his own small borough, a five-mile grid.

“Something’s happened that we aren’t a part of. I think the world we know is gone. That’s why the rations are so erratic.” Renfro gestured toward the rotting bionic. “That’s why we’re dealing with creepy shit like this that doesn’t make any sense. There could have been a nuclear holocaust and we wouldn’t know. We could be the last people on earth.”

Aadil shivered, small beneath the two Tank Majors.

“I’m just talking. I’m sorry,” Renfro said.

“I need to speak to Dr. Lindo,” Haq said.

“Why?” Renfro asked. “What will it accomplish? He killed everyone in this borough—horribly—just because I had the nerve to stand up to him. He isn’t here to answer your questions or tell you a story, Haq. He serves himself.”

Haq’s expression remained unchanged. Renfro sighed. “There’s a fuel tank near my bunker. It’s almost empty, but there’s still enough to go boom. If you blow that up, I’m guessing he’ll come calling. But it won’t help.”

Renfro left them for camp.

= = =

Haq cracked open a hydraulshock round and Aadil used the gunpowder to make a long trail to the fuel tank, which was the size of a small bus.

“How are we going to light it?” Aadil asked.

“Little trick,” Haq said. He snapped his fingers over the gunpowder, creating a spark. It ignited into an orange ball that raced toward the tank.

They ran. The blast blew Aadil’s hair back and produced a mushroom cloud a mile high.

= = =

Eyes in space turned toward them.

= = =

They went back to the death dummy, but it remained still. An hour passed, and the weight of the day forced both the old man and the Tank Major to melt into the ground.

Yet neither could sleep.

Kadir hung in Haq’s mind. Vague notions of upcoming threats had turned from mental vapor into a known vessel. Haq and Renfro were the same model, and Kadir had torn Renfro apart. And now the dead were talking, and the man who had designed them all was the voice. Haq knew there were puzzle pieces he’d never uncover.

Renfro was right. What did he expect to learn if a Lindo came back to life?

Aadil tried to sleep, but the more he chased it, the more it eluded him. His eyes adjusted to the night, and Renfro was just close enough that Aadil could see his hulking silhouette.

“Could he have done something different?” Aadil asked.

Haq followed Aadil’s sight line. “The battle? No. He did very well.”

Renfro’s back was turned to them and his head was out of sight. Moans came from his massive shape as a night terror consumed his sleep.

“It still haunts him,” Aadil said.

“The things outside our control can haunt us the most,” Haq replied.

“Why?”

“They prove our insignificance.”

As Aadil drifted off to sleep, he wondered if Haq was thinking of his family.

= = =

Batrisyla stood in front of him. Her hair was down. The white, linen kafan she was buried in hung on the gentle slope of her shoulders. But she was young, the same age she had been when they first met. Except for her eyes. They were beautiful then, vibrant with life, but the age-gained wisdom had transformed them into a study of intelligence and beauty. They were together for so long, her glance held as much information for Aadil as her words.

“You can’t be here,” Aadil said. She turned from him and walked away. They were back in the park, near the pillar where he and Haq had prayed. It was past dawn, but the sun had never come. A line of pink edged the end of the world like a deep wound.

“The sun can’t rise,” the young Batrisyla said. Aadil couldn’t see her face, but he could sense in her voice a sadness.

She looked to the night sky. Stars poked through the vacuum black, littering the sky with flecks of diamond. But somehow they weren’t beautiful, and Aadil shivered at the sight of them. They were watching. They were Lindo’s eyes. They were what kept the dawn at bay.

She was in front of him. She put a soft, small hand to his face. She looked into his eyes and a tear rolled down her cheek. In her gaze, he saw his own reflection. He was old, the man that had fallen asleep an hour before. He saw the crow’s-feet, the brown teeth, the jowls that sagged from his face like a chicken’s wattle. In her eyes, he saw his mortality—the fate that all men and women share. The inevitable end. A tear spilled down his cheek, and their two tears hit the ground together. From the sand sprung two small vines. The vines intertwined and grew together, each supporting the other so they could both grow higher. So they could both become more.

“Aadil,” his wife said. He looked up at her just as two white flowers bloomed from the little green vines. Her face now matched her eyes—this was the woman he had loved for over fifty years.

“I miss you so much,” Aadil said. She nodded. She knew. “Is it better?”

She didn’t say.

“You need to be strong, Aadil. Stronger than you’ve ever been,” she said instead. He could feel her breath on his face. “Haq will need you; don’t think otherwise. The evil here has never been greater, and it’s up to you and Haq to make it right.”

She leaned into his ear. “Be significant. I learned your kindness. Now use my steel.”

= = =

A cold hand wrapped around Aadil’s mouth, and he woke up face-to-face with the reanimated death dummy. The smell of rot and worms filled his lungs. Even with its broken body, the death dummy was strong, and Aadil couldn’t move.

The hand muffled Aadil’s scream. The death dummy’s one good eye stared at him unblinking. The jaw, hanging, moved up and down as it spoke, mimicking the words poorly.

“Leave me be,” it said. The face was contorted in disgust.

Aadil struggled to scream again, but the death dummy gripped him even tighter. He might as well have yelled underwater. He saw Haq’s hulk nearby. He grabbed a stone and threw it at him. The Lindo appeared not to care.

“Wake the giant, what does it matter to me? Or you? Your wife is dead, Aadil. Yes, I know you. And she is truly gone. No God, no paradise, just ink black absence,” the Lindo said.

With all of his strength, Aadil pulled at the decaying arm that covered his mouth. Hatred ran to his core when he heard the death dummy say his wife’s name. In the dummy’s eye—an eye that should have been an expressionless lens—Aadil saw evil. It ran cold and heavy like water at the bottom of the sea. And it was evil of the worst kind. Indifference.

The Lindo spoke, but Aadil didn’t hear it. His biceps, old and small, were still strong from their years of toil, strong from the graves he had dug twenty years ago, ten years ago, just a few days ago, because of this thing’s indifference. The Lindo’s arm gave. Too long in the ground, too long close to hell.

“Haq!” Aadil yelled.

The generator whine of Haq’s body waking filled the air, and suddenly Haq was over them. He grabbed the Lindo and threw it against a crate. It slid down, seated, watching them, its jaw further cockeyed in a sneer.

“What are you?” Haq yelled.

The jaw no longer moved. The Lindo’s voice grew as if the ground itself spoke. “I am many things, Abdul Haq. In some places, everything. “God” is a fitting word, but not here. A god creates, and here I can only maintain or destroy.”

“Why are you doing this?” Haq asked.

“This world is an empty husk. So I created another, endless. For me, timeless. And while I would prefer to ignore your world, I must control it to keep mine alive. Turn back. Go to your village and govern. I do not care if you live or die, so I offer you life.”

“This isn’t a life!” Aadil screamed.

“It is, Aadil. This is the life you have. It is the lot you have been given,” the Lindo said. “If you go past this borough, you are choosing death.”

The Lindo’s head began to drift toward its chest, as if the Tank Minor was shutting down. But then the head snapped up and looked around frantically.

“FATHER!” it yelled. It was a woman’s voice. “Find my father! He will know what to do. His name is John Raimey, he knows Lindo, but he doesn’t know—”

Whatever presence had suddenly appeared in the death dummy was replaced by Lindo.

“Go home,” he said.

The death dummy shut down.

= = =

Renfro woke up before dawn and walked over with an alarming case of bed head. With his baby arm he held a cup of coffee that he struggled to drink. Aadil was alone. Renfro could hear Haq’s generator whine off in the distance. He was doing something.

“Good morning,” Renfro said. He offered his cup of coffee; Aadil declined. “There’s more at my camp,” he added.

Renfro saw pieces of the death dummy scattered about. Haq had made sure that it wouldn’t wake up again. “He talked, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Pretty fucked up, isn’t it?” Renfro took a sip of coffee. “What’d he say?”

“He said he’d spare us if we went home.”

Renfro laughed. “How magnanimous of him.”

Aadil laughed too; a cold sound.

Haq returned carrying thick pieces of metal. “Will you help us?” he asked Renfro.

“Of course,” Renfro said. He gestured to his damaged frame. “I don’t know how much I can do, but at the very least I could protect Aadil.”

“I found the armor that was torn from you,” Haq said. “It’s badly damaged, but I think we can repair your chassis at least a little. Are there still blowtorches and fuel?”

= = =

The damage that Renfro had endured was extreme, and both his human body and his battle chassis had paid the price. His torso had healed unevenly; even Renfro hadn’t known this. An ugly wound ran up his side like the ragged crescent of a shark bite. Most of it was covered in a swirl of scar tissue, but a broken rib jutted through like a tooth. Pus trailed down from the exposed bone, but remarkably, whatever infection caused that had never spread.

It was possible that Renfro would have to hydraulshock in battle, and in his current condition the force would undoubtedly tear his body apart. They had to strengthen his battle chassis. Haq scavenged some steel beams and held them against Renfro’s human body; Aadil welded them to the front and back of the battle chassis. He stopped welding when he saw second-degree burns bubble up on Renfro’s skin, but Renfro urged him to continue.

“That’ll wake you up,” Renfro said when they were done six hours later. The corner of his eyes watered.

Next, Haq took a sheet of steel from a building and shaped it to fit over the skeleton they had created. Aadil marveled at Haq’s dexterity, the way his huge fingers could manipulate the steel like an origami artist with paper. Haq asked Aadil to soften sections of the steel with the blowtorch, then he tore them off, whittling the fifteen-foot sheet, shaping and forming it to fit flush with Renfro’s body.

Aadil shivered with a realization.

Renfro noticed. “What?” he asked.

Aadil paused. “I had a hard time converting a pool to a fish pond—and now we’re preparing to fight the man who designed you, a man who now says he’s a god. How can we hope to beat him?”

“We’re preying on his apathy, Aadil,” Haq said. He walked over and placed the finished armored plating over Renfro’s body. It fit perfectly. “He despises this world. He wants nothing to do with it. You cannot have apathy and be vigilant. It doesn’t work that way. He’s underestimating us.”

Aadil reminded Haq: “He said we would die.”

“We’re all going to die. Even him. Weld, please.”

The hydraulshock on Renfro’s right arm was functional. With Haq’s help, Aadil oiled the gigantic mechanism and they removed the empty magazine, which, like Haq’s, had a capacity of six rounds.

Renfro and Haq argued over how many rounds to load into his hydraulshock. Renfro said two—they didn’t even know if his body could handle one hydraulshock attack—but Haq wanted all six. Haq argued that the magazines were too heavy for Aadil to carry, so neither of them could get a reload anyway. Renfro acquiesced.

The three ate their last meal in relative silence. Aadil fed Renfro, who could no longer feed himself now that the new armor covered his deformed arm. Then he removed the armor plate on Haq’s back and fed the nutrient pump as well.

Then Aadil climbed up each of the giants and mounted their helmets. Together they walked the few miles toward the gate. Kadir, big and crazy, monopolized their thoughts. He was a boogeyman more vile than any child’s nightmare. And he was no figment. Somewhere ahead his black heart beat, and he waited as the two giants and the old man lumbered toward his den.

The gate stood in front of them.

“My key was on the other arm,” Renfro said.

Haq unlocked the door. It cranked open like a bank vault, and another dead zone confronted them.

“Leave the cart,” Haq said to Aadil.

“What about the hydraulshocks?” Aadil asked.

“It won’t matter,” Haq said. “Use the bag. Bring the wrench and the food.”

Aadil did as he was told, and they walked through the decimated memorial of a civilization’s past toward the next borough. Toward the sea and the city of fog.

IV

As they walked through the second dead zone, the woman’s voice from the death dummy played back in Haq’s mind. It was a tell, for sure—a sign that Lindo didn’t control everything. Was Lindo even aware of what had happened?

Haq knew it meant nothing for the three of them, but it meant something somewhere. And the name the woman had called out registered with Haq: John Raimey. He was the first successful implementation of the Tank Major, built nearly thirty-five years before.

Raimey was a legend. A Tank Major over-engineered to the point of perfection. The Tank Majors who followed, while still remarkable, were never as intricate or powerful as Raimey. Not even Haq.

The woman had said that Raimey was her father. A puzzle piece . . . and not a reassuring one, dropped thousands of miles away from where it might be useful.

They reached the next door. Crusted pieces of sand and clay lay at its base.

“Ready?” Haq asked.

“Ooh-rah,” Renfro replied. Aadil nodded.

“I’ll lead. Protect Aadil unless I’m really in the shit.”

Haq used the key. The door cranked open to a wall of fog as thick as cigar smoke. It made no attempt to encroach into the dead zone.

“It’s hot,” Aadil said.

“It’s steam,” Haq replied.

While the heat hit them like a blast furnace, the wall of fog did nothing but twirl and rise, twirl and rise. The shrill cry of a seagull came from out and below. They could hear the ocean crashing against the bottom of the rocky cliff they now stood upon.

It felt like a portal to another dimension. To Aadil, a point of no return. Walking into the fog was walking into a certainty. Not of what lay ahead—he had no idea—but of what no longer lay behind. Fear poisoned his resolve. Flight yelled for him to run, but he remembered why he was here: Batrisyla. The boy. What is right. He felt her eyes upon him and his strength returned.

Without a word, Aadil stepped into the fog. A moment later, the giants followed.

The constant cry of the gulls alerted them that they were up high, but the fog annihilated all other senses. Aadil left the giants at the entrance and moved ahead slowly on all fours until he found the edge of the cliff. He searched for a way down, and uncovered stairs cut into the rock side. They were precise and large, designed for Tank Majors.

He pressed himself to the rock wall and called to Renfro and Haq. He kept talking so they could follow his voice. Visibility was so poor that Haq almost ran into him.

They slowly made their way down the stairs.

= = =

The good eye of Kadir, the Moldy Giant, rolled open. He blinked out gray goo until he could see. God was speaking to him again. The voice bellowed over the others. He was face down; he didn’t remember how or why.

Beneath him the ground was soft. Kadir put his giant metal hands down to right himself, and they sank in. A wet sound escaped—like a meaty whoopee cushion—and echoed in the cave.

The smell made Kadir gag, and he realized that he had fallen asleep hungry, but had awakened full. God spoke to him, and his voice was like a thousand-watt loudspeaker pressed to his head. He felt his brain swirl; he felt the other voices rise. He grew faint.

He was told he had visitors and that they must die.

= = =

The steam pulsed heat like a heartbeat. Aadil navigated the fog-drenched stairs cut into the cliff on all fours. Terrified of the blind turns, his shirt was soaked from the heat and stress. Renfro and Haq followed closely, tight against the wall, listening for Aadil’s voice as his direction changed. Beads of water rolled off the giants’ battle chassis like waterfalls, and the condensation on their faceshields made it nearly impossible to see.

“A town can’t be below this. No one can live like this,” Aadil said to himself, but he knew the truth. Kadir was here. People were here. Alive was different than living.

Halfway down, the fog began to lift, and they got a cataract view of the village. Off in the distance, toward the gray nothing of the ocean, they saw the haloed lights of Chao’s home. It was a massive warship moored at the end of a long pier. Two cooling towers behind it poured steam into the sky like an active volcano.

“Have you ever seen such a thing?” Aadil asked the giants. In their milky helmets, they shook their heads no.

Spotlights on the pier swooped back and forth.

“If they have a destroyer class minigun, anti-aircraft flak, anything, this is going to be a short assault,” Renfro said.

Their feet touched down into the borough. It was like walking into purgatory. Fog covered the town, soaking it in dew. Water dripped off a nearby railway, off everything, but there was no rain, just a heavy mist. The straw on the nearby roofs was dark and matted, and a thick carpet of mold grew on top.

“We have to deal with Kadir first,” Haq said as he plodded past.

The ground was less sand than wet clay. Aadil’s feet sank in, and when he pulled them out they made a sucking sound. He had never seen such a thing in his lifetime.

A few working streetlamps were scattered ahead. They emitted a blotted glow, but the fog choked out the light, and they revealed nothing except the outlines of the nearest buildings.

To their left was a house. In a pen, a donkey stared at them wild-eyed as it chewed on hay. Aadil thought he saw similar eyes peeping from the house window, but whether real or imagined, they disappeared back into the dark.

“People live here,” Aadil said in disbelief. He looked over to Haq, but couldn’t see his face through the condensation on his faceshield.

Aadil took off his shirt and ordered Haq to bend down. He used it to wipe the dew away. He did the same for Renfro. They continued on.

Haq didn’t have thermal or night vision—those modifications came after his time—and the fog made it very difficult to see. He hadn’t expected this. Tank Minors could be creeping along the rooftops like spiders at this very moment. Newer, faster Majors could be just out of sight waiting to dismember him with titanic, artillery-sized blows. Fear—an emotion Haq hadn’t experienced in a long time—grabbed hold. He shook it off. It did him no good.

For Haq, a line had been crossed when he watched the life extinguished from his sister’s eyes. He recognized his hypocrisy. Had it been another woman crushed underneath him, he would have stayed in his underground cave as the radiation ate away at him. But Haq also recognized that in hypocrisy was truth. A slurring drunk telling someone to put the drink down. An adulterer proclaiming that the path to happiness is true love. For Haq, a war machine who had killed thousands, now avenging the sanctity of life. A hypocrite’s glass house is built from the bones of what could have been. Regrets that cannot be undone. Wasted time that cannot be rewound. Hypocrites shout at us through the glass, telling us to not come in. They have taken a sinful path, only to come back wiser and warn us of its peril. But we choose to despise them instead of listen.

Haq would rather die a hypocrite than live a stubborn fool. And now it was time. Kill Kadir. Kill Chao and any others. Save what children he could for his sister’s memory. For Allah’s forgiveness.

“I’ll lead,” Haq said to Renfro. “Can you protect Aadil?”

“Sure.” Renfro knelt down. “Get up here, bud.”

Aadil climbed up on the giant and sat like a child on his dad’s shoulders.

“They know we’re here. No reason to be discreet,” Haq said.

Haq’s body shuddered like an old car downshifting. A low, electric noise deep inside him built slowly. The two thick waist chains spun up in opposite directions. Their speed quickened, and then the two connected. Within thirty seconds they were spinning at a furious pace, so fast they looked like they were floating. Renfro followed suit.

“Don’t go near the chains,” Renfro warned his shoulder mate.

Aadil caught movement to the left of him: the donkey had seen enough. Aadil turned back just in time to see Haq disappear ahead of them into the fog.

Renfro trailed Haq by twenty yards, a standard military spacing.

“If shit goes down, I’ll put you on a roof or something,” Renfro said to Aadil. “I’ll come back for you afterwards, cool? Play dead, by the way.”

“For Kadir?”

“For everyone. We’re so close, I have no idea what will happen. Kadir runs the borough. Chao commands the ship and all the shit going on there. Will the soldiers on the ship wait? Will they come to us? Who knows? They’ve worked together before.”

Aadil turned to his right. With his head seesawing above the one-story buildings, he saw the gray outline of the ship-base. It was miles away yet still looked huge.

“Why are we walking away from the base?” he asked.

“We need to find Kadir. His bunker is most likely against that cliff wall.”

As they followed Haq deeper into the borough, it was clear that most of the residents were either gone or dead. Occasionally they heard something scurry or saw a shadow slip across an alley. Animal or human, it was hard to tell. But there were no whispers, no cries from a child. No lights on in the few houses that remained standing. Nothing to say, “We are here.”

Most of the houses were caved in like rotted Halloween pumpkins left too long on the stoop. It was the moisture. The constant, unrelenting moisture.

“Look,” Renfro whispered. A man and woman watched them from a window. The man was holding a pitchfork. They were pale and looked confused, their faces framed with black.

Soon after, Aadil realized they were being followed. Ghostly figures, quiet and filthy, watched them from the alleys. They compounded the dream-like state caused by the fog and made Aadil feel horribly vulnerable. These people moved alley to alley, keeping pace with the giants as they progressed deeper into the borough. Haq paid them no attention; he kept walking for the cliff. But Renfro and Aadil could not ignore them: their humanity had been torn from their souls.

A woman ran between Haq and Renfro and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. A sagging breast hung out of her shirt. Her hair looked like something pulled from a drain. Her chest rattled. She must have only seen Haq at first, because when she noticed Renfro, she nearly fell before scrambling back the way she came.

Haq saw the crowd of rat people growing, and he waited for Renfro and Aadil to catch up.

“These people are broken,” Renfro said.

A rock flew out of an alley and hit Haq on the helmet, then clanged harmlessly to the ground. Haq turned toward the dark and paused. There was no more retaliation.

“What happened to them?” Aadil asked.

“Kadir tried to wipe them out. The people revolted,” Haq replied.

“How do you know this?”

“There were crude drawings on some of the houses. They tried to burn him.”

= = =

The woman with the exposed breast died immediately when the cold metal hand of Kadir wrapped around her waist. Her organs chose the path of least resistance, exiting from both ends like a run-over frog.

Kadir was insane. It had taken less than five years as a Tank Major before he heard voices. Some soldiers don’t take to the implants, and he was one of them. He was obedient though, even when he was crazy, so Chao didn’t mind him. He’d even had the judgment to report what Wesley had done to the boy. If Chao had ever asked him why he obeyed, Kadir would have said simply, “Your voice drowns out the others.”

“Drop the woman,” a boy’s voice said. Kadir looked down. He was holding the remains of a woman. He let her go.

“The giants have hydraulshocks,” another voice whispered. Kadir had used all of his hydraulshocks when the villagers had tried to kill him by immolation. Barely alive, burns covering his body, the right side of his face charred, his eye cooked through, Kadir came back and killed ninety percent of the population in two days.

Five thousand villagers had run to the ship-base hoping for sanctuary, hoping for anything, even to be shot. But the gate did not open. Kadir trapped them on the bridge. And then he pounded them into an unrecognizable floor of meat and bone.

Others ran into the sea, but Kadir was patient; he waited until they drowned or their will gave out and they crawled back to shore, their eyes cast down as his shadow approached. The gulls grew fat.

The children were spared—Chao demanded it. But that was all Chao demanded. Kadir went back to his cave after the genocide, leaving whoever was left to tremble. He did not spare their lives; they would learn this soon enough. His soul was black now. The personalities in his head were ruthless and vile. And in this twistedness he had grown a taste for the exotic.

He had kept the survivors alive for food.

Devised from all his forms, a plan to kill the intruders coalesced in Kadir’s mind. The voices had come into agreement.

V

Haq, Renfro, and Aadil reached the northern cliff wall. It loomed over them, its jagged teeth pointed and coarse, scowling at the sky. The wall was porous; nooks and crannies burrowed into its depths, exuding a smell of copper and cinnamon. Kadir’s bunker was built into the wall. The door to it had been torn from its hinges.

Aadil climbed off of Renfro. “Did he do this?” he asked.

Neither giant answered.

Aadil sensed a deeper worry in Haq. Haq was inspecting the blast door that hung awkwardly at the entrance.

“What’s wrong?” Aadil asked.

“I couldn’t do this.”

Aadil looked at the blast door more closely. It was sixteen feet high and two feet thick. It must have weighed over five tons. “What does that mean?”

Haq turned to Renfro. “Kadir is a Chinese Tank Major, isn’t he?” He had heard of that design, but he’d never seen one.

“I don’t know, but he’s huge,” Renfro replied. “He was at least three feet taller than me. Quite a bit wider.”

Though they were Coalition partners, in 2058 the U.S. and China had nearly gone to war over the King Sleeper, a computer hacker so powerful he could dismantle digital infrastructure, subliminally sway the masses, and even kill. And during that conflict, both sides had built Tank Majors. While the U.S. design was functionally superior and had the hydraulshock attack, China’s version was much larger and was equipped with a variety of weapon systems, including a constricting attack that used massive hydraulic cylinders lining the Tank Major’s back—enabling it to crush another Tank Major in a bear hug. It was a slow and painful way to die, taking upwards of fifteen minutes for the hydraulics to overcome the heavy armor, to slowly collapse it inward into the flesh it was supposed to protect.

While the first Chinese Tank Majors didn’t have hydraulshocks, it was possible that Kadir did. If so, they had no chance. Not with his superior size and strength.

Haq thought Renfro had exaggerated when he said Kadir had tossed cars out of the way like a weed whacker tearing through grass—but he had been literal. Diverting from the mission was a mistake. Whatever awaited them at the ship-base was less dangerous than the goliath insanity they faced here.

Aadil walked ahead of them to a nearby cave.

“We need to go. Now,” Haq called to Aadil.

Aadil stood in the mouth of a cave. A pile of rags lay in the middle like a tongue. It was a woman, heavily decomposed; mold and bugs had made her their home. She grinned up at him through hollowed-out cheeks.

He saw another body a few feet away, deeper into the cave. Beyond that a pile of three or four more.

“Aadil!” Haq called out.

But Aadil ignored him. He found more bodies as he walked along the cliff wall.

Haq turned to Renfro. “We need to leave.”

“I’ll get him.”

Aadil sensed Renfro’s presence, but he didn’t turn. He was too shocked by what he was seeing. At the mouth of another large cave, bodies were piled together like picked-over chicken bones.

“He eats them,” Aadil whispered in disbelief.

He finally looked up at Renfro. “Kadir eats them.”

Renfro saw the bite marks, the half moon shape of someone digging in. It appeared that Kadir ate them like watermelon, burrowing down to the good stuff and tossing the leftovers to the ground like a rind.

And surely while they screamed for mercy.

“We’ll kill him, Aadil,” Renfro said.

A massive metal collision came from behind them. They turned just as Haq stumbled and collapsed through a house. A rock the size of a car lay on the ground where Haq had stood.

Kadir appeared out of the dark and fog. He was running full-tilt, kicking up clumps of sand like a shovel. He was massive—Haq and Renfro’s big brother—and he charged toward the cave, toward Renfro and Aadil, screaming the entire way. It wasn’t the sound of one man—it was the sound of many, a demonic chorus of pain and hate.

Renfro’s body shuddered to life, the drive chains around his waist spinning up even more furiously then before. The hydraulshock on his shoulder made a clicking sound. He widened his stance.

“Get in the cave!” Renfro yelled over his body’s whine. The Moldy Giant was a hundred yards away.

Aadil stood petrified. He waited for Haq to get up, to put an end to this, but Haq stayed inside the crumpled house. Aadil looked up to Renfro.

“The hydraulshock blast will kill you! Get in the fucking cave!” Renfro yelled.

Everything slowed down then, and Aadil’s senses heightened. He could smell Renfro’s fear; he could see the sweat pour down his face, the intense focus in his eyes. He could hear the mechanics of the approaching beast, the hiss and groan, the sound of unlubricated metal against metal.

The Moldy Giant was fifty yards away and closing in amazingly fast. Renfro said something else, but Aadil couldn’t make it out; it was too slow, too low, like a record barely spinning.

Renfro turned away from Aadil and lowered his body, his good arm cocked back. Kadir was ten yards away. Aadil ran into the cave, keeping his strides high so as not to trip over the bundles of half-eaten bodies.

The hydraulshock blast filled the cave with heat and sound, noise on every level. Low, high, unbearable. The shockwave pushed Aadil from behind, and he stumbled over a body; his toes dug in under a rib, got entangled, and he fell. Outside the cave he heard the primal struggle for life as the giants collided.

Aadil hoped, as he continued to crawl and scramble away, that Renfro had hit his mark, but he was too afraid to turn around and look.

= = =

Tank Major Jeffrey Marcus Renfro knew that death was finally here. He had felt its approach during the year of exile in his borough, and he welcomed the opportunity to embrace it. Born in Lubbock, Texas, he was raised pragmatic and raised tough. His father used to say to him that you always have to deal with reality. If you don’t, you lose your path.

And now Renfro faced a reality. He could not beat the giant ten yards away. He was going to die. So what should he do? Just die?

No. He aimed for the knee. Not the body—Kadir would expect that. Tank Majors were designed to finish. So he went for the lead knee, which in two more strides would be on his right.

The rock that had knocked out Haq was huge, but it wasn’t lethal; Tank Majors were designed to destroy buildings. Haq would wake. Just not in time to help. Aadil was hopefully far away, in some crevice the Moldy Giant couldn’t reach. And so it was just Renfro and Kadir, face to face for the last time.

Renfro was going to die, but he would take this chess piece off the table before he did.

Kadir’s eye rolled and his mouth frothed. He had hydraulshock mounts but no cartridges, so he was charging in to constrict and dismember.

Renfro aimed for the knee and fired.

His damaged body buckled under the stress of the hydraulshock. To his right he saw the metal seams in his arm compress from the intense heat and energy contained within it. The noise erupted like thunder. He lunged forward, his balance off, but Kadir was too close for it to matter. The punch connected just as the leg began to rise, and 3,500,000 foot-pounds of energy transferred from Renfro’s fist into Kadir’s knee.

But luck was on Kadir’s side. His leg wasn’t planted. The impact flipped him in the air, pinwheeling him twice before he slammed down. The Moldy Giant rolled over onto his back and tried to stand.

Renfro thrust through the punch and tumbled to the ground, rolling end over end. He tried to stand, but what they had feared had now happened: the force of the attack had torn his body apart. The support beams splintered out, puncturing through the makeshift armor; his massive arm was dislocated from the chassis. Renfro waited, unable to tilt his head to see if his choice had paid off, if he’d given Haq and Aadil a chance.

Renfro heard Kadir get up. Unable to move, he waited for the sound he wanted, and when he heard it, he laughed. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but he laughed.

It was the sound of a two-ton leg dragging in the dirt.

= = =

Deep in the cave, Aadil heard Renfro’s laughter silenced by metal-on-metal blows as Kadir finished what he had begun a year before. He hammered fists down on Renfro’s body, crushing the helmet, destroying the chest, dismantling the giant that had damaged his leg and then laughed about it.

Against every impulse in his body, Aadil edged closer to the mouth of the cave. He could see the shadows of Kadir’s arms rising and falling, again and again, as he pounded what was left of Renfro into the sand.

The bludgeoning finally ceased, and a moment later Kadir’s silhouette filled the cave entrance. Aadil fled deeper into the cave as Kadir entered.

If the giant knew Aadil was in here, it gave no sign. In fact, from what Aadil could tell, the Moldy Giant had stopped moving altogether. Aadil looked back and saw a vague shape outlined against the light entering the cave. The giant shuffled back and forth, like a man deep in thought. He was talking to someone that Aadil couldn’t see.

“We did it,” the Moldy Giant said.

“It’s not over. There are the others,” a boy answered. Aadil squinted, trying to find a small silhouette.

“He never got back up. The rock was heavy,” the giant replied.

“He will,” the boy said. He sounded impatient.

“Move deeper into the cave, Kadir,” an old woman said. Aadil’s mind raced; he had seen no one alive when he’d entered.

“Quiet, Mother,” Kadir responded. “The giant won’t come here. He won’t dare.”

“The old man is in here, Kadir. Haq will come,” the boy hissed. His voice had turned reptilian.

“WHAT?” the giant screamed. Two spotlights built into Kadir’s chest ignited like white lasers.

“He’s down there watching, Kadir. He’s watching us! He’ll try to kill you. Just like the others,” the boy said.

Where the hell was the boy?

Aadil stumbled backward, and when the beam of light revealed his location, he spun around and ran. A howl chased him.

Aadil ran deep into the cave. He couldn’t see anything, and he stumbled forward with his hands out like whiskers. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and amplified his senses. He could feel the slight movements in the air, the faint kiss of a spider’s web. He heard everything, even his heartbeat. His feet bumped into soft objects, and in his mind he could see the pickled faces of the dead staring up at him.

He was in hell.

He stepped over hundreds of bodies as the giant pursued him. One caught his foot and he fell. His face was saved from cracking against the rocky floor by a corpse’s stomach. As his nose sank into its belly, the flesh broke, filling the cavity with juice. Aadil retched, and a moan escaped his lips, but he had no time to stay still. He kept running.

Adrenaline kept Aadil’s body moving, but he was almost seventy, and even with death trailing him, his body began to fail. His lungs burned, his stomach cramped. He had to stop. He wedged himself into a crack in the cave, hoping to squeeze far enough out of reach, but he had chosen poorly: the crevice was shallow. He was only a foot deep into the wall.

Aadil held his breath while the giant approached. This was the end, surely. But just as Kadir came into view, he stopped; his chest lamps flickered. His head drooped and rolled back and forth as if he was in a trance. Aadil realized that Kadir was shaking his head like something was out of order.

“Oh, dear, you look sick,” an old woman said. The voice came from Kadir. He moved out of view.

Aadil heard a wet sound, like a pile of soaked cardboard getting pulled off the floor, and he realized the giant was playing dollhouse with a corpse.

“Your hair is filthy,” the old woman said. “We’ll have to clean you up.”

The monster walked past Aadil and went deeper into the cave. Aadil could hear the dead woman’s feet dragging on the ground.

He counted twice to a hundred before he crept out of the crevice. The beams of light from Kadir had given Aadil a false sense of awareness. He was now completely blind and lost. While running for his life, he had veered off the main path to escape the spotlights. But now he had to find his way out, and he wasn’t sure which way to go.

VI

Movement woke Abdul Haq. He rocked back and forth like driftwood on an ocean wave. Haq had felt the weight of an entire building collapse onto him, but he had never felt an impact like what had knocked him out. He still wasn’t sure what had happened. He was groggy.

Through his faceshield, it looked like he was lying underneath a faucet. A smell accompanied it. Fuel. The grogginess vanished. He heard the shuffling of feet and the murmuring of voices. A team of donkeys protested his weight in front of him. He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t. He was tethered to a cart with steel cables.

The liquid ceased pouring, and an old woman with a spigot stared down at him. When her eyes connected with his, she muttered in Arabic, “The devil must burn.” The rat people were dragging him into the square.

Tank Majors weren’t waterproof. Liquid could creep between the seams and get to his body. Some of the designs for colder climates had heat control to keep the core warm, but not Haq’s; he had never been intended for that. The fuel felt cool against his skin as it evaporated. They were brining him like a pork chop.

Fire pits surrounded the city square. They pulled the cart to the center, and the villagers circled Haq, taunting him. Murder filled their eyes. They bared their teeth like rabid dogs. The anger in their screams made their words indecipherable. It was clear their humanity was gone. All that remained was the desire for revenge.

They prepared Haq like a bomb. Tanks of petrol, old and thick, were placed beneath the cart. When they lit him up, the hydraulshocks alone would leave a crater a hundred feet wide. The villagers yelled for Kadir, teased him; a crackling PA system magnified their taunts in order to lure him in.

The villagers dug a trail off to the side and poured more fuel in it for the wick. They left the open space but continued to call Kadir’s name from the alleys. That’s what had brought him down on the people before, when they first tried to end the giant’s reign.

“Let me up! I will kill Kadir for what he did to you!” Haq yelled. They stopped chanting and stared at him. A hard-looking man—their leader—pushed through the crowd and walked over to him.

“You are no better than him,” the man said.

“I govern two boroughs over. We are peaceful,” Haq said.

“By using violence and fear. That isn’t peace. You take our children.”

“I do not.”

“We can’t even see the sun!”

“I have nothing to do with this borough!”

The man jumped on top of Haq and unlatched his helmet. With a grunt he threw it off.

“You’re a part of it. You are just a man, and you lord over us with your steel and armor. How many of us have you killed? The ones who were forced from their homes, who were beaten when they asked a question? Who were imprisoned because of the godforsaken oil? How many have you killed?”

Haq knew it was no use. He turned his head and remained silent. The man pulled a knife from his boot and cut off Haq’s left ear.

Haq cried out in pain. The tip of the blade pressed against Haq’s right eye.

“Kadir won’t be here for a while. How many?”

“Three thousand and twenty-one,” Haq said. He knew the number like he knew his own age. To Haq, each kill was justified—a means to shepherd in peace. But they wore on him all the same. It wasn’t the act of the kill that burdened Haq; it was the ease. Those that died at his hands were kittens attacking a lion.

“We were promised rights and due process. Did yours have a trial?”

“No,” Haq said softly.

“We were promised diplomacy. Did yours have a chance to lay down their arms?”

“No,” Haq replied.

“Does the fact that we had hopes and families and lives matter?”

“No. It hasn’t for a long, long time.”

“Kadir will continue to take us when he pleases, and the others will take whatever children we bear. But—” The man leaned in so that he was face-to-face with Haq. “We will have this one victory. We will kill two of your kind today. Two for the thousands. For the millions.”

= = =

Aadil worked his way up toward the mouth of the cave. Kadir was somewhere behind him, but whatever interest the beast had once had in him had since passed. The crazed Tank Major mumbled to himself somewhere deep inside the catacombs.

Aadil felt an air current—a good sign. He followed it upward, shuffling his feet to not trip over the dead. After ten minutes, he saw a faint light. He shuffled faster, and as he went, the dawn blossomed and the entrance to the cave became clear. He ran then, jumping over the bodies. He heard people yelling, faintly but clearly. They were yelling for Kadir.

= = =

Back in the recess of the cave, the walls acted like an ear canal, and the chants reached the Moldy Giant. He put down the pieces of his doll—she was impossible to put back together—and his face contorted when the boy whispered in his head, “Kill them all.”

= = =

Near the mouth of the cave, Aadil heard Kadir begin his ascent; he turned and saw a glow from the distant beams of his spotlights as the giant rose from the depths. That was enough. Aadil sprinted out of the cave to where he’d last seen Haq. He hoped Haq wasn’t dead. He was the only one who could stop what was coming.

Aadil didn’t know how the Moldy Giant’s strength compared to Haq’s. He had always thought Haq was invincible, much like the wonderful delusion all children have of their fathers. But sooner or later you see something that proves otherwise.

Everyone and everything can fall. It happens to nations, it happens to fathers, it happens to husbands and wives, and it happens to heroes. As Kadir howled and the boy’s voice told him to kill everyone, Aadil hoped it happened to monsters, too.

Please, Allah, let Haq be alive.

Aadil was a half-mile ahead when he heard Kadir burst from the cave. He turned back and watched the crazed monster zigzag through the buildings, blowing through them like a cannonball. Aadil quickened his pace through the alleys. His eyes were on the fresh wheel ruts that led from the collapsed house into town.

= = =

Haq’s father had been a great diplomat. Educated, articulate, and, most importantly, empathetic. He could relate to a beggar on the street as easily as he could relate to a president or king. Haq, however, had always lacked these tools; and right now he wished for them more than ever. He could hear Kadir charging into town, ignoring roads and leveling everything in front of him.

Haq looked up and saw debris thrown hundreds of feet into the air like a fireworks display. A villager cartwheeled end over end along with it. The other villagers fled—except for the man who stood on top of Haq. He screamed for Kadir through a bullhorn.

“What is your name?” Haq asked.

“Quiet. Your time is near.”

Far off, a woman screamed as Kadir trampled her.

“What is your name?”

The man dragged the tip of his knife down Haq’s cheek. “Kadir prefers dead bait. Maybe I should kill you myself.” He put the blade to Haq’s throat.

“Before you do, tell me your name,” Haq said. He could feel the edge of the blade digging into his skin. One quick motion would end his life.

“Tazeem.”

“Tazeem. After you kill us, what will you do about the Coalition base attached to your shore?”

Tazeem remained quiet, but Haq saw a shift in his eyes. He was listening.

“They will continue to take your children. They will continue to kill your villagers at their whim. They will never let you leave.” Rage suddenly filled Haq. “They killed my sister, Tazeem! I gave them my life, and they took her from me! I will kill Kadir. And then I will destroy their base. I’ll end this.”

Tazeem’s face hardened. “Kadir ate my sister. I’m not interested in your promises. How many lies come from men about to die?”

The blade pressed harder. Blood welled. And then a gray blur ripped across the back of Tazeem’s head.

GONG.

Tazeem rolled off Haq, unconscious. And then Aadil—skinny, wonderful, frightened Aadil—was on top of the cart with a shovel in his hand. He threw it to the ground and worked on the tethers.

Abdul Haq understood why Batrisyla had loved Aadil. He was kind. Haq had always known that, even though kindness had no value in his world. But reliability did. For the first time in over thirty years, a feeling—an emotion akin to affection—crept into Haq’s heart, searching for a warm place amid the squatting wreckage.

Somewhere near, Kadir was coming, driven by insanity, and fueled by rage—but the feeling of hope in Haq grew, and it was all because of this little man who was frightened to his core, who should have cowered, who should have found a way home and lived out his insignificant life, but who had, instead, come back to save him.

With great effort, Aadil placed Haq’s helmet on his head and clamped it tight. Upside down, Aadil looked at him, concerned.

“Are you okay?” Aadil asked.

Haq could only nod.

= = =

Kadir and the three others who resided in his head walked into the town square. In his hands he held two dead villagers he had sworn to protect. The mold on his body was a metaphor for his mind; the fog in this city, his lost judgment.

He had come into town like a freight train, but now he moved more slowly, slightly confused. His one eye was glazed as if he was high. He didn’t remember how he got into town.

WAKE UP, a voice thundered in his head. It was God. WAKE UP!

It wasn’t calling to Kadir, but to the others who resided in his head. Kadir was ripped down by his own subconscious as the others pressed upward, the boy leading the charge.

He saw his food stare at him from the alleys. They moved from one to the next as he walked into the square. Piles of beady eyes watched him from the houses. They reminded him of caviar, and he began to salivate. He would get to them soon. He had found the cart that made the wheel ruts. It was empty. Below it was fuel.

= = =

Haq had turned off his stabilizers to quietly slide around the buildings to Kadir’s back. He had just gotten out of the square when Kadir arrived. He immediately saw the damage to the giant’s leg; Aadil had told him of Renfro’s last stand. The knee joint, three feet wide and equally deep, was badly warped, bent inward and twisted, so that it caused Kadir’s right foot to pigeon-toe. The thigh was badly damaged too. Kadir was leaning noticeably on his left leg.

In their moments before Kadir’s arrival, Aadil had devised a plan. Aadil would stay and light the explosion under Kadir. Haq would then come around and finish what was left. Haq didn’t like it, but he also knew he couldn’t defeat the Chinese Tank Major head to head, even with the damaged leg.

Aadil would die. The explosion would be too great, and the wick too short. Haq didn’t say it, but when he looked in Aadil’s eyes, he saw that there was no need; Aadil already knew. Aadil’s eyes said something else, as well:

Avenge Batrisyla. Avenge my wife.

Haq and Aadil parted ways with a nod.

Pressed against the wall, his heart beating wildly, the giant so close he could smell him, Aadil struck a match. Kadir immediately turned toward him. Aadil dropped the match into the stream of fuel that led to the cart—and ran.

But he was too close. And when the fuel bomb detonated, he blacked out from the concussive blast that threw him down the alley, and he caught fire when the flames followed.

= = =

Haq saw everything: the match igniting, the Moldy Giant turning, and Aadil’s face—stern and without fear—as he dropped the match, assuring his own death.

The fuel caught quickly. Before Kadir could run, the gunpowder and petrol had ripped a crater fifty feet wide—with him in it.

Haq spun up quickly, the drive chains like some medieval invention, and he charged Kadir just as the giant pulled himself out of the crater.

Kadir saw the American Tank Major charge, but there was nothing he could do. His right leg was gone below the knee. The armor and the stabilizer pistons had been sheared off by the one-armed Tank Major’s attack, and now the explosion had gotten inside, completely decimating what was left.

He raised his hands as Haq charged him. The kid in his head began to cry.

BA-BAM!

Haq’s hydraulshock evaporated both of Kadir’s arms and carried through to his chest. Kadir slammed to the ground and flipped over the crater. He landed on his stomach, facing Haq.

Kadir looked up, and saw that his food had come out of hiding and into the square. The American giant walked around the crater and stood over him, his waist chains still spinning furiously, a sign of battle like the spread hood of a cobra.

Haq had only heard Kadir over the military comm, but Renfro was right: whatever he had once been he was no longer. He was covered in mold; it ground in his gears like a lubricant. Even without Haq, he didn’t have long to live. A fate that cursed all of them, apparently.

“I know you,” Kadir crowed. “You’re—” A strange tic stopped him from talking. His head stuttered as if someone were slapping the back of it. He shook it violently. “Let me speak!” Whatever craziness had tried to take hold, it now released him. “You’re Haa—Haaaq,” Kadir said. “Why are you here?”

“Chao killed my sister, and he took a boy,” Haq said.

“He took him back. The orange boy. The boy who should not be hurt,” Kadir said. He almost sounded normal.

“He will kill you,” an old woman said from Kadir’s mouth.

“He is our father,” a boy said.

“He takes what he wants, Haq,” Kadir resumed. “It is for the good. He is a god. He has told me.”

“He is a monster, Kadir. And so are we. But he is worse.”

“He is a god. And he cannot be beaten. He sees everything. He is everywhere. FATHER!” Kadir yelled, all the voices combined. “WHERE ARE YOU, FATHER?”

Haq felt something push against his finger. He looked down and saw a woman, matted and filthy like the other villagers. She gestured for him to come with her.

“Your friend,” she said.

Aadil.

Haq turned back to Kadir. Like a prehistoric crab, Kadir dragged himself away toward the ship-base. Let him go, Haq thought. He won’t find his father and he won’t find his god.

Haq followed the woman.

= = =

Aadil was smothered in black. I must be dead, he thought. But if I were dead, how could I think such things? He wasn’t sure. His hearing was gone. In its place was a high-pitched hum.

And he couldn’t tell if he could see. His eyes felt open, but—were they? He remembered striking the match, he remembered the giant. That was all. He heard—felt?—thudding footsteps approach. Did he? He wasn’t sure. He heard others noises beneath his ears’ feedback. It sounded like people talking in a distant room. He moved, he thought, but the darkness constrained him, and he wondered if this is what it would be like for eternity.

= = =

Haq watched Aadil as he crawled around underneath a blanket that the rat people had used to smother the fire. They had saved him. They circled the moving blanket, looking to Haq with uncertainty, but also with a glimmer of hope. The blanket undulated up and down between them, deforming sideways as Aadil moved from his back to his belly. He called for help, and the rat people answered, but Aadil didn’t acknowledge their response.

“Aadil,” Haq said. The glob in the blanket kept moving around, now in a circle, like a dog about to bed. Haq lifted the blanket, and Aadil rolled out of it.

Eyes wide, Aadil surveyed everyone around him. “I’m alive?” he croaked.

Haq smiled, and Aadil read his lips. “Yes, Aadil. You’re alive.”

= = =

Tazeem woke to find his people in the open and unafraid, their backs a little straighter, the weight of their burden somewhat lighter. He was told by the others what had happened.

He approached warily, expecting retribution.

Instead Haq apologized. “I would have done what you did too,” he said.

“But your ear.”

“It hurts like hell. But maybe now I’ll remember to listen.”

The sun had begun to rise. Overhead, birds cried.

“What about Kadir?” Tazeem asked.

“Come with me,” Haq said.

Everyone followed Haq toward the gated bridge that spanned the waters to the military ship. The rising sun revealed deep lines, like the blade of a plow, marring the beachfront ahead of them. The bridge disappeared into the fog, and while they couldn’t see Kadir, they could hear him.

He screamed for Lindo to let him in. Each voice, different and defeated, howled obscenities at their would-be god who had abandoned them.

The child’s voice sent shivers down Aadil’s spine. No longer was it evil and shrewd; it was just a child crying for a father that was never really there. Without having seen the monster that lay just beyond his sight, it would have been easy to feel sympathy. But those voices had been the bell tolls of impending death.

Haq turned to the crowd. “Stay here.” He walked onto the bridge and into the fog.

Kadir sat against the gate. Hydraulic fluid pooled around him. A clanking noise came from his chest. His body was failing. Kadir quieted his pleas when Haq approached, and like a victim he tried to push himself closer to the gate, but there was nowhere to go. It was the end. His head jerked and stuttered, and cold, calculating eyes looked up at Haq.

“In the psych report used to determine a Tank Major candidate’s viability, yours said ‘stern but always follows orders.’” Kadir’s mouth moved, but the voice was Lindo’s. “I’m going to have to update that.”

“Is this funny to you?” Haq said.

“Parts. You did well, and I don’t fault you for why. But you are making a grave mistake.”

“What I’ve become is a grave mistake. You can’t get me to turn back. I’m not stopping. I won’t let you take more children for whatever fuck reason you need them. This is why the Coalition took away our radios, isn’t it? When you started taking the kids. If the Tank Majors knew, we would have fought.”

Lindo cocked his head. “You’ve lived in the same five-mile block for over three decades. You lack perspective. The civilized world is placated by their whims more than they have been at any other time in the history of man. No one cares about this place. Few even know about it. And if they ever do happen to uncover what went on here, or the others places like here, the outcry will be like a fart passing in the wind. A day later, when another headline replaces it—and they’d have to use a minimal amount of effort to investigate further—they’ll stop caring. And a day after that, they’ll forget. They’ll go back to their jobs. Their families. Their porn and games. They’ll move on with their lives as if the atrocity—which had pained them so much just days before—had never occurred.”

“Not true. No one would let this stand.”

Kadir’s eyes smiled. “When news became entertainment, it became fiction. The people of this world are disappointing, selfish dreck. Full of principles until it affects their day. The collective of society—rich or poor, it doesn’t matter—have no problem feeling the sun on their face by climbing on the shoulders of slaves, as long as it’s out of view.”

“Is that what we are? Slaves?” Haq asked.

“You? No. But you have forgotten your place. You have forgotten your mission. And like most people, you don’t understand your value. The Coalition came for the oil. The oil is gone. But I can still use the children. There is a cost to everything, Haq. As a soldier, you know this better than anyone. There are laws—not mine, but universal—that even atoms must abide by. So too must societies. And if you take away my reason for absolution, and offer me no other value in return; if you threaten my hold on this world and the other; why would I let this place exist?”

Haq looked past the broken giant to the pier. Everything on it was in disrepair. The ship had lesions of rust covering its hull and cabin. “Because your empire is rotting, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He thought of Batrisyla dying in front of him. Her face slackening to an inanimate calm. The soulful eyes being replaced by the dim.

Haq reared back, his right arm zeroed in on Kadir’s head. “We don’t want you here.”

A crack of thunder rumbled onto the beach, past Aadil and the rat people.

Haq dragged Kadir’s decimated body back to the village, a shredded carcass of metal and flesh. He left it in front of the rat people. Then he went to Tazeem and gave him the key to the boroughs.

“Go. This opens all doors. Two boroughs over is mine. Ask for Khayr, the doctor; he will aid you. Beyond that most of my kind are dead. Those that aren’t, let them know what has happened here.”

The rat people walked up to Kadir’s giant corpse in something resembling a bizarre wake. Only instead of a friend or loved one, the deceased was the greatest evil they had ever known.

Haq’s face was white.

“What happened?” Aadil asked.

“I asked too many questions.” He paused. “Renfro deserves a proper burial.”

VII

Renfro had been pounded feet into the sand. Haq dug a deep hole and he and Aadil buried the pieces they could find. “He was brave,” was all Haq said. After a moment of silence, they walked back to the town square to regroup before they moved on to their final destination: the ship-base.

The explosion that had decimated Kadir had also left fiery debris scattered across the square. Haq pushed it together into a makeshift bonfire, and he and Aadil sat beside it. Aadil set up Haq’s feeding tube. The ringing in his ears had subsided. He could hear again.

“That’s the last canister,” Aadil said.

“It’s all I’ll need.”

Aadil ate food given to him by the rat people as they prepared to leave the borough. Only a few hours had passed since Kadir’s death, and already, the transformation in the residents was incredible. The insanity had left their eyes; the scowls, their lips. He had even seen a few of them laugh. Their life had been given a new purpose. Khayr would greet them, Aadil knew this, and the town would accept them. Aadil sensed that a great exodus was about to begin, where the people here, and in the other boroughs, would build like a tsunami, purifying this region of the atrocities that had befallen it.

This region’s era of repression was over. How it would cascade into the rest of the world, Aadil couldn’t guess. But he hoped in his heart that their actions of these past few days mattered. That Batrisyla’s death had meaning.

Aadil tilted his head in the direction of the ship-base. “How are we going to get in?” It was a good question. They had been up close. The pier to the ship was a half-mile long and narrow. It was a kill zone.

“By water,” a voice said, from past the light of the fire. A group of rat people appeared, led by Tazeem. “I’m sorry. We’ve been following you to see if it was true what you had said, that you were going to attack the ship-base. We want—we need—to help. Our children are there. We’d rather die than run off without knowing what has become of them.”

Haq regarded them for a moment. Their eyes were intense and sane, the burden of their horrible existence lifted, if not forgotten. They would be useful.

“Tell me about the water,” Haq said.

= = =

Tazeem and the others left to collect fuel and arms they had stockpiled underground. During the upcoming assault, Aadil would fight alongside them. Haq would fight alone. It made sense: Haq could be more ruthless in his attack if he didn’t have to worry about collateral damage. He could go insane with rage, and all the dead left behind would be deserving.

Tazeem would lead the diversion. He devised the plan to take down the base, and it involved a ruse. He, Aadil, and the others would cause a ruckus at the front gate, to draw all the attention. Then they would blow the gate open with a fuel bomb and fight their oppressors for the last time.

“You will be in a vulnerable position,” Haq said to Aadil. He was concerned. His sister had lost her life on his watch, and now—likely—so would her husband. He looked around to make sure the two of them were alone. “Stay under cover. Let them take the brunt of the assault.”

“They’re trying to get their kids back,” Aadil said. His eyes were wet with the thought. “I have to help any way I can.”

“Just stay behind cover. A handgun won’t do anything to a Tank Minor; they won’t even be distracted by it. Something sharp like an axe will. Fire will. Explosions, blunt force trauma—hitting them with a vehicle. That will break them.”

“I got it, Haq,” Aadil said with a worn smile.

Tazeem and his team reappeared with the scavenged supplies. A donkey pulled a cart loaded with fuel drums. Ancient RPGs and various small arms lay next to them. The donkey bucked and brayed around Haq.

“We’re ready,” Tazeem said.

Haq addressed Tazeem and the others. “I’ll wait for the explosion. Divert them, but keep your distance. I’ll do the rest.” He paused for a moment, considering his next words. “I’m sorry this happened to you. This is a small reparation for what you’ve endured.”

“It’s a start,” Tazeem said. “Good luck.”

The giant walked toward the gray, rolling waves. Aadil ran to his side.

“Haq, no matter what happens, Batrisyla would be proud.”

Haq remained quiet. Aadil patted his hand. “Do well. Keep your head above water.”

They laughed at how literal that statement was.

“I’ll do my best,” Haq said. “But if I don’t make it, you run.”

Haq walked into the sea.

= = =

Aadil, Tazeem, and the others moved through the city using the alleys as cover. They thought they might encounter a Tank Minor in the city, but that didn’t happen. When they reached the beach, they saw that the base was on high alert. Spotlights passed back and forth over the bridge, and the ship glowed with floodlights.

Tazeem handed Aadil an ancient 12-gauge shotgun.

“Haq said these won’t work,” Aadil said, looking it over.

“It has slugs in it. Up close it’ll do damage,” Tazeem replied.

They ran to the bridge.

= = =

“There’s activity at the entrance,” a tech reported. Chao linked into the hover-rovers that were scanning the perimeter of the base and saw a group of men at the gate. They were setting something against it. He lowered a hover-rover to try and see better through the damn fog, and immediately, the disk jostled from side to side. Chao raised an eyebrow at the tech.

“They’re shooting at it,” the tech said.

“Where’s Haq?” Chao asked.

“There’s no sign of him, sir. The hover-rovers have scanned the beachfront and most of the town.”

“He’s around. Keep looking. Link me in, full control, as soon as you find him.”

Chao ordered all the Tank Minors to meet outside with sniper rifles and submachine guns. Then he moved quickly to the armory and began the process of linking in to the ship’s defense systems. That would take a while due to the incongruity of the old ship and his own software. He initiated one of the Sleepers to hasten the compatibility.

Chao had justified a lot of actions he had taken in his life. A soldier desensitizes over time. The first kill is tough, but strangely, the second is tougher, because you’re grossly aware of what you’re taking away. After that though, the value of life diminishes.

Humans have always justified the superiority of their existence over other creatures, but what makes it so? Who judges that a slug salted dry by some bored brat has less value than a soldier killed in battle? The ones in charge, of course. On a microscopic blue orb circling a star, one of octillions.

Chao made his home in such observations, and this made him dangerous and unpredictable. But also, in some twisted way, truthful. He valued life of all living things equally—because for all living things, it meant nothing at all.

Chao’s main weapon was a .50 caliber minigun. He slung the seven-hundred-pound ammunition case over his shoulder like it was a preschooler’s backpack. It locked on to brackets that protruded from his spine.

He zeroed the gun sight to his vision. The Mindlink made this possible, like it did so many other things. A targeting reticle appeared in his field of view. It showed the trajectory of the rounds he would fire, with accuracy down to an inch.

Chao holstered the massive gun to the ammunition case. His hydraulshocks were locked and loaded. Just one more errand to ensure victory.

= = =

The room Chao entered looked like some sick pedophile library. Forty-four children surrounded the perimeter, floating in capsules. The boy was one of them. In the center of the room, the Data Core—a massive blue cylinder five stories tall—coursed and crackled. All the data in the region flowed through it. A Minor nodded at Chao sleepily.

“Wake the fuck up,” Chao ordered.

Six Sleepers surrounded the Data Core like the petals of a daisy. They monitored the Data Core’s health, and provided a notification whenever an existing “fuse”—a child—needed to be replaced. Mounted outside on the nuclear reactor was the Data Sump: a massive satellite dish that relayed all information to the Northern Star.

Chao made his way down to the Sleepers. They had always creeped him out. They tended to curl up like coma patients, oblivious to their surroundings. One of them vibrated back and forth.

The Northern Star was based in Washington, D.C. and consisted of thirteen components. Eleven of those components were the so-called “Pieces”: scientists and savants dragged from their homes and manipulated with Forced Autism in order to have full access to their aptitude. The procedure made them brilliant—but also listless and easily distracted. The final two components were the Consciousness Module and the Will. The Consciousness Module was unmodified and guided the Pieces as directed by the Will. The Will was Evan Lindo—who ruled them all.

This base was a Multiplier for the Northern Star’s consciousness. The children in this room were “fuses” used to reduce the Northern Star’s latency to this part of the world. Ten of the children were used to multiply the Will. Three children were used per Piece. But only one child was used for the Consciousness Module.

“I need the Consciousness fuse,” Chao thought to the Sleepers.

“He will be ready for removal in forty-five seconds,” the Sleeper said in Chao’s head. “You will be linked in to the ship’s defense system in four minutes. Any requests for specific weapon activation?”

“The chain gun,” Chao said.

Chao heard the release of the Consciousness fuse, and he went to it. Inside, the boy was healing nicely. Wesley shouldn’t have shot him. Consciousness candidates were rare—one in fifty thousand.

VIII

The ocean water grew hot as Haq approached the base. Above him, hover-rovers flew back and forth in grid-like patterns in constant search, but the temperature of the water masked his heat signature, just as Tazeem had predicted. They couldn’t see him, and they would think he was with the others at the gate.

The sea could swallow Haq—he was too heavy to swim—and if the sea got a hair above his nose, he would drown. So he moved slowly. Each wave that crashed over him stopped his heart. But the pier to the ship was more dangerous than the water. If the warship was armed, it could shell him. If Minors saw him, they could zero in with high-powered armor-piercing rifles or TOWs. It was an intentional bottleneck designed to ward against assault, and it was perfectly executed.

So he found himself walking parallel to the shore for two hours, his head just above water, starting from the rocky wall that Kadir had called home.

Haq was loath to let Aadil go without him, but this was the only way. On his own, Haq didn’t need to worry about those around him, he didn’t need to protect anyone. Still, it was Aadil who would be in the danger zone, not him. Aadil would be where the initial firefight would begin. The Minors were sharpshooters, strong up close. And Chao was worse, a bull in a china shop. He could squeeze the life out of a person in seconds.

I won’t let it happen, Haq said to himself. To his dead sister. She swam ahead of him, looking back, making sure he held his promise.

The emotions had dried out because he had given himself a task, but now they were back. His sister was dead, gone. He’d never see her smile again. He’d never wait for her visit while he rotted in his bunker. The tears burned because they were laced with anger and regret. Because he could have chosen differently, and those other paths wouldn’t have led here.

Haq gripped the bridge’s support beams. Relief washed over him: he would not sink helplessly into the ocean. With extreme care he moved sideways, beam to beam, into deeper water. Above him, he passed the gated entrance. Water seeped into the battle chassis and scalded what skin it could, but he moved on. It was the least of his worries.

A wave sloshed over his helmet. Haq laughed—a weird, joyous noise. If Batrisyla could see me now, he thought. I’m going to kill him, Batrisyla. I’m going to kill him. And I’ll save the children. All for you.

He made it to the end of the bridge. To his left, huge heat sinks were mounted to the ship, sunk a third into the water. Steam roared off them; he felt like he was in the middle of a geyser. He climbed to just below the surface of the bridge. He had never done this before—climbed—and he was surprised at how good he was at it.

When he reached his position, he stopped and waited for the signal. He was ready.

= = =

While Tazeem and another man placed the bomb, the others suppressed the hover-rovers that tried to approach with gunfire. One of them got close, and Aadil had a chance to try the 12-gauge. The butt of the gun slammed hard into his shoulder and the hover-rover rattled and clanged from the slug’s impact. It shuddered away, out of range. Two flew past, high overhead, and scanned behind them. Looking for Haq, Aadil knew. He prayed that Haq was alive, that he hadn’t slipped into the sea. This battle would be short without him.

The bridge showed no signs of life. He didn’t see the glowing eyes of Minors or the hulking outline of the giant who had killed his wife.

Spotlights swept the surface, but the fog was suffocating, like they were in a fugue. Silhouettes of supply crates and old vehicles sat just within sight. They would have cover. It was still a walk of death, but at least there was something to get behind.

“It’s time!” Tazeem yelled. “We do this for the children on this ship and the children we’ve already lost! We do this for the lives taken away too soon and without apology! To the death!”

Tazeem ignited the fuel wick, and it chased toward the opened hydraulshock and the drums of fuel. Aadil took a shell out of his pocket and reloaded his shotgun.

= = =

Chao stood on the ship’s deck, surveying the scene. Six Minors were positioned on the pier. Two remained back in sniper positions. The other four moved toward the mob, submachine guns drawn. Chao was online now, and the battleship’s turret—designed to destroy incoming airplanes and missiles—followed his eyes. He could see the rat people at the gate. But no Haq. The giant was missing.

= = =

The hydraulshock that Haq had given the rat people would have been more than enough. It ignited with the fuel, sending a mushroom of fire a hundred yards into the air and cooking the fog off half the bridge. The gate collapsed.

Aadil was the fifth man through, and he saw tight flashes, like fireworks, ignite on the ship. Next to him, a man’s arm exploded. Aadil tried to help, but another shot tore the man in half. Aadil ran for a truck parked sideways on the bridge.

He heard submachine gun racket. He moved slowly to the back of the truck and used the wheel for cover. He peered out carefully to survey the scene.

On top of a crate, a Minor, his eyes aglow, was using his submachine gun to pick off targets. He was fifteen yards from Aadil.

Aadil leaned around the wheel and took careful aim. The Minor didn’t see him. Aadil fired. The shot was low, and the Minor rolled off the crate to the ground. Five men charged him.

Aadil stood up and ran toward the commotion. The Minor had broken the arm of one of the rebels, had shot two, and was about to kill another. Aadil fired a slug into him, hitting his shoulder. The man in the Minor’s grip opened up with his assault rifle, peppering the Minor with shots to the chest. The Minor retreated. Aadil looked around. Already a third of their assault team was injured or dead, and they hadn’t even killed one enemy soldier.

And then he heard what could have only been Haq.

= = =

Chao couldn’t believe what he saw. While watching the Minors picked apart the rebels, he sensed a huge movement beneath him. Haq had crawled over the side of the pier just thirty yards away. Water rolled off the giant’s body, and when he stood up, even more rushed out of the seams of his armor. The Tank Major from two boroughs over spun up quickly and charged toward the ship.

The nearest sniper had climbed atop the arm of a truck crane to get maximum visibility downrange. Haq saw the muzzle flash three stories up and veered in its direction.

BA-BAM!

For a fraction of a second, Haq became a smear. Half the truck vanished, its diesel tanks blew, and the crane arm snapped back, launching the sniper into the ocean like a trebuchet. Haq didn’t waste time—he charged the other sniper, who lay prone on a pile of crates. The sniper tried to jump off, but Haq crashed through the boxes. The Minor fell and Haq stepped on him, smearing him into the ground.

Haq felt the chatter of bullets against his body. Chao was firing at him from above with his minigun. Haq was about to charge and hydraulshock the ship wall beneath the goliath when he saw Chao’s trump card:

The boy in orange was strapped to Chao’s chest.

Haq hesitated—he couldn’t attack the ship and risk injuring or killing the boy. And Chao used that to his advantage. He aimed the battleship’s turret at Haq and opened fire.

A well-aimed round tore one of Haq’s hydraulshock magazines right from his shoulder; another round punctured his chest armor. Under the withering assault, Haq had no choice but to retreat. He fled, the rounds chasing him, obliterating the pier where he had just stepped. He felt another round slam into his back, and a warning light in his helmet erupted with red. Diving behind a large truck for cover, Haq braced himself against the onslaught.

= = =

The rat people screamed in triumph when they saw the crane explode near the ship, and Aadil and the others rushed forward. Ahead of them, a Minor stepped out from behind an old helicopter and opened fire. Two men near Aadil collapsed.

But the rebels were no longer afraid. An RPG ripped past the Minor, and his eyes widened with surprise. Lead and shot from the twelve remaining men peppered the bionic. Two men with axes lunged at him. The Minor grabbed one, but the other swung with all his might into the Minor’s neck. The Minor fell to his knees, and they swarmed him like wasps. They shot and chopped until he moved no more.

We’re going to win, Aadil thought.

But then the ship roared in rebuttal: a huge gun on its front bow fired on Haq. Aadil looked up and saw Haq retreat behind a truck, pinned, with nowhere to go.

“We have to help!” he yelled.

They rushed forward to save the giant.

= = =

Chao saw the rat people closing in. Bullets ricocheted around him. An RPG went wide, exploding into the wall.

But then the rat people saw what he had done with the boy. “Stop shooting!” one of them yelled to the others. They ceased their attack.

Chao looked back to Haq: he was now pushing the truck forward, using it as a shield. Chao used the ship’s chain gun and shot at the ground in front of it, ripping a hole in the bridge. The truck immediately wedged into the crevice.

And then Chao shredded the truck in a hail of blinding lead.

= = =

Haq had no choice but to remain crouched behind the truck as Chao’s chain gun chewed it apart. He glanced back and saw Aadil. Their eyes connected, and a helplessness passed between them.

The gunfire left the truck and circled Haq’s perimeter; Chao was cutting a hole in the pier.

The ground under Haq crumbled. His foot replanted, only to replant again. The water, whose depth now meant death to him, was somewhere in the fog below.

The truck started to list into the hole. Haq held on to it, his arms cradling the truck high and low. But it slid and ground against the pavement, and then it fell through, leaving a ragged chasm eighty feet in diameter behind.

Haq fell with it.

Chao turned his attention to the rebels. “Sorry guys. Party’s over!”

The truck hit the water first. Haq had rotated so he was on top of it, riding the truck like a raft. The water here was deep.

He looked around. Twenty feet away was a pillar that rose up to the bridge. Near it were the heat sinks. He tried to lunge forward, but the truck log-rolled with his momentum and he tumbled into the water.

He sank like a stone. The water pressed against his flesh; it was burning hot. His helmet held some air—a mixed, torturous blessing. He would live for a few minutes before he asphyxiated.

It was so dark. The world. My life, Haq thought. The truck sank past him, as if in a race. How far will I go?

I’m so sorry, Batrisyla.

Haq could see the pillar. For no fathomable reason, he cupped his hands and moved his arms in a breaststroke. His body moved forward. Sinking still—but forward.

His helmet remained clear of water, the air trapped inside. Again and again he pulled himself forward, careful not to mimic the effort with his lungs. He told himself that he didn’t need to breathe; he was just a machine after all. Just keep the lights on.

When his feet hit bottom, he had pulled himself to the base of the column. He began to climb, praying to Allah that he had enough air.

= = =

Chao detached the boy and put him down. He didn’t need some rebel nut job accidentally shooting him. The threat was gone; Haq had sunk into the sea. Even Dr. Lindo had chimed in to congratulate him on his victory.

“Clean it up,” Lindo had said before vanishing as he always did.

Chao jumped down to the pier and chased after the rebels. He caught them and tore them apart one by one, spilling their blood and guts onto the ones who were still alive, relishing the screams that filled the air.

Aadil ran from cover to cover. Only he and four others, including Tazeem, were still active. Most were dead, and the others were gravely injured. Chao crushed the wounded with flying leaps as he searched for the rest. It was over.

Aadil felt sorrow. They had failed. He was unafraid of death—he would see Batrisyla again—but the children were un-avenged. They would continue to live as tools for some terrible purpose. They didn’t deserve that.

Evil shouldn’t win.

Behind him, he heard another person being gutted by Chao. Rivulets of blood rolled down the giant’s helmet. Gore covered his chest as if he were a butcher.

Then Chao came for them. He cornered Aadil, Tazeem, and the others. Chao looked down on them, all the evil and hate in the world boring through his eyes. And he only said one thing.

“This was because of that old hadji bitch, wasn’t it?”

He reached for Aadil.

This is it. Aadil closed his eyes. Batrisyla smiled at him. She let him know that it would be all right, to not be afraid. She reached out, ready to usher him into the afterlife. To their new beginning together. But death never came.

“This is for my sister,” Aadil heard. He opened his eyes. Chao’s outstretched fingers were an inch from his nose. Haq’s huge hands gripped Chao’s neck and face and one of his legs. He picked Chao up and slammed him down into the pavement. Again and again. He didn’t stop.

“This is for the children!” Haq yelled. Chao’s helmet shattered. His body flailed, trying to get away, to get leverage, but Haq’s grip was too tight, and Haq was too strong. The ground crumbled from the blows.

Chao’s shoulder gave way. He registered this. Then his chest cavity collapsed when Haq slammed him against the corner of a cement pillion thirty times in a row.

Chao tried to fight back, but his body was broken. The electrostatic tissue that had made him so powerful was compromised.

Haq let him go.

“Crawl,” Haq commanded.

Chao crawled.

“Yell for Lindo to save you!”

Chao would have obeyed, but his voice box was crushed.

Haq turned Chao over. Chao coughed what would have been blood, had he had much of it.

“Not here. Never again,” Haq said. And then he crushed Chao’s head between his hands.

Aadil hugged his brother-in-law. Haq hugged back the best he could.

“How? How are you here?” Aadil asked.

Haq tapped his helmet. “It held some air. Maybe Allah, too.”

= = =

Haq found the remaining Minors. They tried to surrender, but he declined. After all, they had never given that option to his people.

Inside the ship-base, the Sleepers were easy to coerce. They spoke in their detached way, and within an hour the children began to wake. Dr. Lindo watched from every monitor on the ship-base, but he said nothing.

Hours later, Haq lay on the beach. He stared past the devastated pier, past the converted battleship with its nuclear reactor, past the misery that had occupied this land for thirty-five years, and watched the ocean waves roll in, breaking ten yards from shore into a million diamonds that pummeled the sand. Rays of sunlight had broken through the fog.

From his low perch, Haq watched as the men and women gingerly moved across the damaged pier that connected the ship to land. He would have helped, but he was too heavy. As it was, the pier already groaned in the wind, pieces of it tearing off with no warning and crashing into the sea.

Aadil approached Haq and collapsed next to him. “The kids are off. We did it.”

“Is he still watching from the screens?” Haq asked.

“No.” A look of concern washed over Aadil.

“What?”

“Toward the end it was a woman. She had the same voice that came from the rotted soldier a day ago.”

“Asking for John Raimey?”

“No. She was screaming for someone named Justin.”

Haq didn’t recognize the name. Why would he? The world beyond this ocean was a mystery that they would never solve. Maybe it was for the best.

“When was this?” he asked.

“Just before the last boy was freed. Then Lindo appeared again, just for a flash, and he mouthed something before the screens went blank.”

“Do you know what he said?”

Aadil scratched his head. “I could be wrong, but it looked like ‘no value.’”

They watched families rush to children they hadn’t seen in years. The children could barely move. They were confused, like coma patients just coming to. Their limbs were thin and pinned to their bodies. Their hands, frozen claws.

Neither Aadil or Haq knew why the children had been used as fuses, but they understood that the world had moved into a place darker than the darkest night—and that their region wasn’t a part of it. They were leftovers from the previous world, a previous war—the remnants of forgotten decisions made by leaders who were now dead. They were an exploited people who had to be controlled and abused in order to enable another part of the world to prosper. The pyramids could attest, and the Road of Bones would prove, that progress came by way of slaves. Pay ’em a nickel if you have to, give ’em a place to stay, but acknowledge the truth while you sleep warm in your bed and they on their mat.

“What do we do now?” Aadil asked.

“I’m going to go to the other boroughs and speak to the other Tank Majors and anyone else who’s around. We didn’t mean to be bad, Aadil,” Haq said. “We were doing our mission. There wasn’t any other option. But . . . maybe it’s a blessing no one cares about us. We can tear down the walls. We can rebuild. We can start anew.”

“What about the rest of the world?” Aadil asked.

“We can’t save the world, Aadil. We did what we did, and maybe we can do a bit more.”

Haq smiled at Aadil. The thick scar tissue stretched awkwardly around his mouth, but the smile was still beautiful. It was strange to say, and stranger to think, but the giant’s smile filled Aadil’s heart with hope.

And then a one-hundred-megaton hydrogen bomb detonated one mile above them. Neither of their eyes registered each other as their bodies peeled away. No child screamed. The rat people and the residents from Haq’s borough didn’t tuck under a table. There was no time to react, to even be aware. They were atomized instantly, an homage to the Big Bang that had first brought the magic of the world into existence—and all of the evil, too.

Three hundred miles overhead, a surveillance data satellite—one of the Northern Star’s thousands—watched the fire cloud billow out like a doughnut, the heat vaporizing the regional cloud cover, giving a crystal clear view of the cigarette burn now stamped into the earth. It crackled red and orange, and then, as the hours passed, as the fires died down, and the heat dissipated, and the sand cooled to glass, it became indistinguishable from its surroundings.

The entity that controlled the satellites, that embedded itself into machines and men, that whispered thoughts into people’s heads—thoughts that they would wake up to think of as their own—that controlled the industrialized world’s governments and military with clinical efficiency . . . that entity watched a moment longer—at least some of him—and then moved on. For him, time was different now, and a minute felt more like a year.

Two hundred thousand people died when that fusion reaction ignited the sky, and four seconds later, Evan Lindo had moved on. The other Pieces of the Northern Star—eleven geniuses he had abducted to expand his mind—whispered assuredly:

No one will ever know.

Part II

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

—Sydney J. Harris

Chapter 1

–Chicago. 2093–

“JUSTIN!”

Justin McWilliams’s eyes snapped open, the scream echoing through his head like a gunshot through a cave. His body shook—he shouldn’t have pulled out of cyber-sleep so quickly—but he had no choice. He felt the bile rise, but he was still tethered down by the electrodes that had shocked his muscles out of atrophy. He clawed and scrapped at them, tearing them from his slender, pale frame.

He made it to the sink just as the vomit rolled down his chin. He let it go. It was string and spit, nothing more. His right arm hurt. He looked at it. In his rush, he had forgotten to take out the IV, and now it pulled awkwardly underneath his skin; blood pooled, growing like a blister. He winced as he flexed the needle back into place and removed it. He grabbed a washcloth that was crispy from lack of use and pressed it into the crook of his arm. His heart hammered from what had just happened. He had to leave. He didn’t have much time.

Justin had been online, uninterrupted, for three months. He was a Sleeper. The designation was vague. Sleepers were many things: programmers, maintenance men of the system, hackers. But two things united them: long durations outside of the natural world, and a high aptitude for code manipulation and perception.

99.999% of the people online only saw the programs that allowed their lives to go on after oil depletion had nearly taken away what was expected and demanded. They saw solid office walls in the rooms they worked in. The meals they ate, the wine they drank, could be Michelin Star-worthy or from a greasy spoon. The Caribbean water lapping their feet was warm and clear, and—if they were quick—the little silver fish that darted between their legs could be picked up, and the fish’s eyes would stare at them blindly as they gulped the air, starving for oxygen. Couples celebrated decades together without ever having met in person. Sex was fulfilling and overwhelming, as anything could be ordered without fear of disease or pregnancy, and just as in the early twenty-first century, most bandwidth was devoted to this banal quest to sate the libido.

But the 0.001%—those with high enough aptitude to be Sleepers—saw the programs for what they were. More importantly, they saw outside the program. They saw the abyss, the separation of these virtual things, these virtual worlds that were now as concrete as, and more important than, the world they were modeled after. Sleepers saw the tenuous strings that kept this reality together.

Back when MindCorp—the company that created the Mindlink and the software that allowed humanity to reside online—ran the online universe, the programs and portals orbited a sun. Now, they orbited the Northern Star.

It was a sentient being both human and CPU, a sickly white and purple orb stringy with tentacles that coursed and pulsed and reached out to the various programs and portals—and, yes, people—it chose to manipulate or eradicate. Twenty-five years before, during a civil war between MindCorp and the United States, it had taken control of all the world’s governments and cyberspace. At its heart, it was Evan Lindo, the man who had ushered in the age of bionics, who had ignored ethics for advancement, who believed wholeheartedly that hundreds of men and women throughout time have propped up our dumb species and that it was time for the masses to give back.

Sleepers saw the Northern Star every time they moved into the black. They could feel it. Its power, its searching. Its lust for knowledge.

Justin-01 was the most gifted natural Sleeper in the world. He had been found as a child thirty-five years before. His brain was different, his ability to deconstruct and reconstruct cyberspace unheralded, and the first time he went online—without any intention—he shook down the local MindCorp servers. Online he was more powerful than a nuclear bomb, not only able to create new realities, but able to subliminally persuade the masses—and even kill. The U.S. government, motivated by Evan Lindo, had tracked him down, killed his family, and used him as a secret weapon to manipulate the governmental powers of China.

Later, China stole him and used him in kind against the U.S. This made no difference to Justin; he was used by a different master, but used all the same. It was only thanks to the mercy of the American Tank Major sent to retrieve him—a Tank Major who instead chose to free him—that he wasn’t still wired into a Data Crusher like a transistor, tricked by a software construct to murder and destroy.

And now, that Tank Major’s daughter—Vanessa Raimey—had called out to him. She had found him, a needle in a haystack on the other side of the universe. Vanessa Raimey, who was thought to have died during the civil war a quarter century ago, was alive. And somehow, she was now a part of the Northern Star. When she called out, he had seen a section of its glowing orb flicker like a sunspot.

And in his shock, he had acknowledged her. But the Northern Star was a singular consciousness, even with all of its moving parts. And its Will, what controlled it, was Evan Lindo.

Evan saw Justin too.

“YOU’RE ALIVE!” the Northern Star bellowed in genuine surprise. A tentacle reached for Justin—impossibly far—at nearly light speed. Up close, it was like a disco ball the diameter of the earth, its billion flecks a billion bits of consciousness that it took from every living thing online.

Justin felt all of its strength, all of its yearning, just before he triggered a failsafe that shot him out of cyberspace like a slug from a gun.

And now Justin was awake. And for this minute, he was safe. But he had to go.

NOW, he urged himself. He was still in the bathroom staring at the lanky pale man in the mirror.

NOW! He ran into his apartment and collected what he could. He may have been the King Sleeper in cyberspace, but here he was just a scared forty-seven-year-old who had no friends because friends would unintentionally betray him. He was a man who had paid for sex since his twenties because he couldn’t risk even so much as his name, and certainly not love. He had loved only four people in his life, and the first two had died—shot and incinerated in the home in which he was raised.

There was no anonymity in cyberspace. The user could be routed and shunted anywhere they wanted to go, but the user’s mindscape—their consciousness in the digital world—was always connected to their physical body.

And now the Northern Star—Evan’s intelligences, whims, and desires multiplied by a trillion— knew Justin’s address. And it commanded armies.

If Justin didn’t move quickly, he’d be dead. Or worse.

= = =

A man, lean, his body built with purpose. His eyes the color of moss. His hair cut short in a military style, formerly blond, back in his youth when he was new and loved, when his mother was still around and his father still functioned despite the booze monkey on his back, when he had a chance for something other than what he became. Now his hair was dark brown, pressed against his skull, which was square-jawed and muscular like the rest of him.

This is a dream. He is naked in a room without furniture, without a door; they’re not necessary, they don’t matter. The walls are mirrored. They are not perpendicular to one another, but angled, an octagon, as if a fitting room had been turned into a prison cell.

He looks at his body. His arms. His slack penis, the hair around it trimmed. He’s slightly bowlegged, his quads well developed, his calves tight and angular, the layers of muscle existing with purpose. The shadow of a six-pack licks underneath the tight skin wrapped around his stomach. His chest is muscular, striated when he moves, clearly defined. His shoulders are like grapefruits, connected to arms with horseshoed triceps and biceps, veins clearly visible, pumping with blood. A perfect machine, the best that God could make.

He stares at himself. He looks to the left, the right, the ceiling. He is at peace. This is the dream he has when he rests to maintain the implant. He is no more this man now than a scorpion is a butterfly.

= = =

The message wakes Mike Glass. It has been sent on a secure frequency used specifically for him. There is no computer or phone, yet the message rolls into his mind as if it had been whispered in his ear. He is a weapon. An assassin. Death’s shadow. He has single-handedly changed the tide of war.

But this is a pickup. He is stateside now. He is to acquire and defend a subject at all costs. A GPS coordinate of the subject’s last known location fills his head: it’s on the outskirts of Chicago, in the ghettos. Another GPS coordinate is downloaded: the drop-off. The last part of the message is an order to go dark.

Glass was designed to operate in fugue: only when he slept could he vaguely remember who he once was. The naked body, the face. The warm skin. If someone said his name he would, for a moment, cock his head, as if it were familiar. Occasionally, fractional images would slip past the software blocks and he would see a beautiful young black woman, her eyes shining, her smile big, and he would know—however briefly—that the smile was for him. Who is she? he would wonder, and then the memory would fold and collapse back into a brain that had been whittled and wicked of its curiosity with every iteration that took him closer to what his maker intended him to be: the perfect assassin.

Another memory slipped past, and for a moment, Glass was in a forest, the ground covered with leaves, a bow in his hand and a deer in his sights, sipping from a brook—and then it vanished. Glass didn’t ponder his amnesia; whatever he had once been, that was long ago. His mission was the pickup. And after that he would get another mission. And after that, he would get another.

He lived in a six-foot-by-six-foot maintenance pod on the outskirts of Chicago. It was fifteen feet tall, just enough to allow him to extend his frame fully. He hung upside down while he slept; this allowed the blood to pool in his brain and relieve the hydraulic pump and oxygenator by twenty-five percent, prolonging its life. The stretching also allowed the electrostatic tissue—his muscle now—to remain uncontracted. A constant oil mist, recycled from a basin below, kept the tissue hydrated, increasing Glass’s strength and speed by five percent.

The target was fifteen miles away and moving. How he tracked this, Glass didn’t know. He just did.

He lowered himself to the ground as gracefully as a primate. He shrank his body to six and a half feet, a normal height, and shrouded himself in a ghillie suit that approximated a trench coat. He grabbed a rifle, which he quickly disassembled and attached to a mount fixed onto his exposed carbon-fiber back.

The door slid open. Per instructions, Glass went dark, and he would remain so for the rest of the mission. All communication was cut, even to the Northern Star, his Commander and Creator.

He was on the outskirts of the city. It was night. He passed a pack of coyotes sniffing through the trash; no ears twitched and none looked up. They didn’t notice.

= = =

Among its billions of calculations and assessments, the Northern Star—Dr. Evan Lindo, the Will—noted that Mike Glass had gone dark. Because of the implant and the degradation of Glass’s brain tissue over the years, one of Dr. Lindo’s reverberations calculated that there was an eighty-seven percent likelihood that Glass was dead. He would have to send a team of Minors to the maintenance pod.

Lindo was one and also millions. His expanded consciousness was like two facing mirrors and their endless reflection into infinity. It was always him, but some of him was far away, and some of him was close.

A close Lindo—maybe even the one that was tucked inside his skull—felt sadness. They had a long and storied history, Evan and Mike. Glass had been integral to Evan’s rule. And there was a time when Evan had been hopeful that he and Glass could be toge—

He rebelled against you, another one of him said. This one was further away. Colder, more logical. Not ensnared by emotion.

“Yes,” the close Lindo said. “But I understand why.”

Lindo had rebuilt him so he would never rebel again.

Justin-01 is alive. Many of him said this, some in horror, others in surprise, a crisscross game of telephone around the globe. All these sentiments reached the primary. In his container, five miles underground, Evan’s shriveled frame shook for a moment, but his face remained placid. Justin was a threat, but he could also be salvation. His mind rolled through the possibilities, assembling the outcomes of different actions, his forecasts bolstered by the equivalent of four billion CPUs.

Justin-01 was beckoned by Vanessa Raimey, the Consciousness Module. Unlike the Pieces, which expanded Evan’s mind, Vanessa was unmodified. The Pieces were massively powerful, but they were also dumb—the Forced Autism that made them so useful had also lobotomized them into idiot savants. Vanessa’s aptitude was reason and coercion. She kept the Pieces in line and on task. Without her, they would consume Evan. He had been there before, at the beginning of the civil war, and he had almost died from their wants and needs. But with her, all was calm. With her, Evan could pursue his true thirst: knowledge.

I must replace her, he thought, this time to himself, not across his entire consciousness. But he couldn’t yet. But . . . Justin. If I harvested him, then . . .

He let this seed of thought expand, the Consciousness Module be damned. All of the Northern Star served him.

He is a threat, one of the ones far away said.

Yes. He is the King Sleeper. For a moment, Evan felt something outside his consciousness, within his physical body. His consciousness gasped in excitement. He felt . . . nerves. A bit of uncertainty in a world he had made certain.

From the military base north of the city, he dispatched five Level 5 Tank Minors to retrieve Justin. On another feed he alerted the resident giant, Alan Kove, of the situation—and warned him to quit drinking.

Next he sent information on this threat to China Girl, a Version 13 Tank Minor who lay a mere fifty feet from Evan’s physical body. She was his personal assistant—and she would be promoted to assassin now that Glass was dead.

Five miles up and one mile away, Evan readied a plane to whisk her away and bring the King Sleeper back to him.

= = =

Glass was three miles from the target’s last known location. He moved at a speed difficult to register with human eyes, sometimes running on two feet, other times aiding his gait by driving forward with his powerful arms like a cheetah. Glass used the alleyways between the skyscrapers as his path; instead of turning, he’d leap to a wall and push himself off in the other direction, never reducing speed. Dust and trash whipped in his wake.

The mega-cities were clogged with civilians—Chicago had over forty million residents—but most of the time they were inside, online. There were still bars, there were still restaurants, but the real world was plain crackers compared to the cake a person’s synapses could absorb in cyberspace. The vibrant colors, the limitless time sucks, and the beautiful people—even at work—had changed people’s expectations. Their online lives were a movie, even if the fleshy shells in their stuffy apartments were covered in eczema and hadn’t been washed in days.

Glass passed hundreds of civilians on his way to the pickup, and their reaction was always the same: delayed fear. They would jump to the ground and yelp, paralyzed, then look for the danger that they had sensed but not seen—the danger that was already a block away. But Glass saw them all. He had exceptional night vision, and to fully utilize his speed, he processed images at five hundred frames per second. He saw what no other creature could: a hummingbird flapping its wings, a projectile barreling his way. It was part of what made Glass so exceptional, and why Evan had kept him for so long: with the same modifications, most humans would stroke out and die.

A lone man walked through one of the few parks, clearing his head from the day’s work, and his eyes caught what could have been the tail end of a jacket. Or was it a bat? Death passed him unnoticed.

= = =

Justin took ten minutes to leave his apartment, and that was too long. He heard the vehicle approach just as he was about to exit the main door. Vehicles were rare—they required fuel and were unavailable to civilians. Justin had no doubt that Lindo’s soldiers had arrived.

He sprinted toward the back exit. He knew it was useless, that the Tank Minors were too fast, too strong, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight. His whole life had been a fight, a battle to survive, a war to stay unknown and hidden. At the very least they wouldn’t get his mind. He’d kill himself if he had to. He understood the stakes. He had lived in the darkness before.

A hover-rover erupted off the back of the vehicle, a circular, propeller-driven drone that sent the Tank Minors images of their surroundings in x-ray, infrared, night vision, and standard. They immediately spotted Justin as he fled away through back alleys.

One of the Tank Minors exploded through the building, knocking the metal doors off the hinges of both the front and back exits. Tenants opened their doors only to cast their eyes down and close them when they saw what had made the commotion.

The technology for bionic prosthetics had changed drastically in the past thirty-five years. The military started with Tank Majors simply because they didn’t have the technology to make the prosthetic arms, legs, and body any smaller. The old Tank Majors were built out of dense armor, gears, hydraulics, and chains. They vibrated like a Harley when they revved up for war.

But the Tank Minors were built out of electrostatic tissue—an off-white, oily material that used electrical current to expand and contract, and which could be shaped to mimic human musculature. The Tank Minors were assigned levels based on their power. A Level 2 was twice as strong as a Level 1, a Level 4 twice that of a Level 2, and so on. Quickness followed the same trajectory: a higher level Tank Major was more explosive and agile.

Captain Turk, a Level 5, barreled after Justin-01. He had been a Tank Minor in one form or another for over ten years and had grown up in the Northern Star age. He was loyal to Lindo and felt that a unified, global government after the oil collapse had proven to be a good thing. The economy was stable, the wild had reclaimed the suburban sprawl, population was decreasing as people turned to avatars instead of flesh for pleasure, and crime was down because of the truth and myth that he was always watching.

I see the target. Turk’s thought transmitted to the rest of his team through the same interface—the Mindlink—that gave him the ability to control his bionic body.

One Minor stayed at the vehicle, and the other three ran wide to collapse back in and cordon off all paths of escape. They were instructed to take the target alive and uninjured, so the rifles stayed in the truck. They very rarely needed them.

Turk saw the target one hundred yards ahead, slipping through the alleys. He shrank that gap to fifty yards in two seconds. Justin’s lungs screamed, his legs felt like rubber, and he could hear his pursuer’s rapid footsteps behind him, but he refused to turn around.

And so he was unaware when, half a second later, Turk’s head left his shoulders. Glass had arrived.

Glass was a Level 12 Tank Minor. He had been designed by a genius, a man encased in a bomb shelter five miles below Washington, D.C., a man who, in ten thousand years of solitary thought, had developed ways to build and manufacture that otherwise wouldn’t have existed for a millennium. Glass was a product of this genius, unrecognizable as a human—and because of that, the physical limitations of humans no longer applied.

The hover-rover didn’t detect Glass because he had no heat signature; and Tank Minor Turk didn’t see Glass because Glass was twenty feet above him, effortlessly hurtling from one balcony to another, something that Turk could do only in jittery bursts.

Turk’s head was easily separated from his body thanks to a carbon fiber retractable blade located near Glass’s hand. Glass had one in each arm, motorized and easily replaceable. Having eliminated the immediate threat, Glass continued his pursuit of his target on the ground. Behind him, Turk’s limp body tumbled end over end, and his head crashed into the side of a dumpster.

The other Minors were unaware of Glass, but they registered Turk’s flatline. They converged on Justin’s heat signature with their vehicle just behind them. Real-time data was sent to the Northern Star.

Justin exited the alley and was immediately tackled by one of the Minors. The Minor lifted him up off the ground.

“What did you do? What did you do?” the Minor screamed, his grip hard enough to break bones. The truck screeched to a halt and the other two Minors ran in from opposites sides, each at a full sprint.

Mike Glass is pursuing. Leave immediately, the Northern Star echoed through their heads.

Justin couldn’t hear this, but he saw the Minor’s expression change from anger to fear. “Go, go, go!” the Minor screamed. He dragged Justin to the truck like an unruly child and threw him in back. One Minor climbed into a .50 caliber turret on top and aimed the rifle into the dark maw of the alley. The other two quickly loaded machine guns racked in the truck. The hover-rover flew above them and now slowly drifted over the alley, cycling through all of its visions, trying to out the sniper.

Two snaps of orange light shot from the alley. The hover-rover exploded out of the air, and in Justin’s periphery, he saw the legs of the Minor in the turret go slack. The Minor slowly slid down into the foot well, and Justin saw why: the back of his head was missing.

“What the fuck, what the fuck!” shouted the Minor who had tackled Justin. He and the other Minor were pressed against the truck, opposite the alley. “Thompson, get us out of here!”

Thompson—the driver, apparently—had tucked himself out of sight. He shifted the truck into gear—but suddenly three holes punched through the passenger-side door and Thompson was no longer moving. The truck idled forward slowly. The two Minors outside walked with it, hunched out of sight.

“Kid, help us,” the tackler said to Justin.

For Justin, everything was in slow motion. He turned from the alley and looked at the Minors. He could just see the top of the tackler’s head. “Stop the car. Push Thompson out,” the man pleaded.

Justin heard himself say, “Are you serious?”

Then the truck rammed into an old light pole that hadn’t seen electricity in decades, and stopped. The alley was oblique to their position.

The other Minor opened the driver’s side door and pulled out Thompson. “Are we clear?” he asked. The tackler edged himself toward the back of the truck.

Justin’s senses were drowned in molasses; time had replaced seconds with minutes. His body screamed for him to open the door and run like hell—but his arms and legs stayed neatly at his sides, bound by invisible rope. His head could still turn, however, and he angled it toward the alley.

“Are we clear?” the Minor asked again. The tackler didn’t respond. He was looking past the rear bumper. Justin saw what the tackler did: a shape had formed in the dark. It looked like a man in a very baggy trench coat holding binoculars.

The tackler raised his rifle and put his sight on the man. “Stay right there!” he yelled. To the other Minor: “Cover me!” Back to the binocular man. “Stay right there, motherfucker, we see you!”

All the while, Justin thought: So strange to hear them afraid. They’re the boogeymen. What could be worse?

The silhouette didn’t retreat. Instead it grew by two feet—then settled back down to its original height. Justin blinked repeatedly. It was as if the dark of the alley was a prism, tricking his eyes into an optical illusion.

What is that thing? Justin thought to himself.

“Get down on the ground, motherfucker! NOW!” the tackler screamed.

YOU MUST GO NOW, the Northern Star transmitted to the Minors. YOU CANNO—

The silhouette blurred. The trench coat it wore shredded into a hundred pieces. Justin realized it wasn’t a jacket, it was some type of camouflage. And then the creature bounded toward them, the strange suit wild and flowing like a matador’s cape. It ate up the distance between the alley and truck in ten-foot increments.

The Minors stood up and fired. They were scared, but they were elite—they found their target, brass spilled from their rifles, the muzzles coughed red stars. But the silhouette was undeterred, and thirty feet away it leapt into the air, less high than fast, and flew over the vehicle.

What happened next took less than two seconds. Justin watched the thing arc over the truck, its ghillie suit fluttering behind it like a ragged cape. The two Minors were backpedaling, sighting in, firing, covering, retreating, and this gave Justin a perfect view when the silhouette landed through the tackler. The tackler fired into the air, his eyes wide, and suddenly he was covered in a snaggly mound of cloth that shook like a paint mixer.

The last Minor circled to its back and continued to fire. For a fraction of a second, Justin saw eyes the size of saucers, green and rolling, regarding their next victim. And then the creature’s full body was revealed, and Justin understood why it was so hard to see: it shook like a turning fork. The Minor fired at it from a mere dozen feet away, but the insane vibration of the creature caused the bullets to ricochet. Then, in a single blinding movement, the Minor was in the air, a blade through his throat. His feet twitched, his eyes rolled to white, and then nothing. The silhouette slashed its hand out, completing the decapitation.

The strange, kinetic frenzy stopped as quickly as it had started. The tasseled camouflage fell back into a trench-like cape. The creature rose again, as it had in the alley, and Justin saw that its legs had been bent backward like a kangaroo’s. At the top of the arc the knee joints shifted forward, and the creature settled to its natural height.

The thing turned around and looked at the truck. Its eyes were four-inch lenses, rolling with green. Its face was a black mask—no nose or mouth, just a general shape.

For Justin, all the sound of the world was sucked into space as the creature walked toward the truck.

As if in final sacrifice, Justin closed his eyes and waited. The door opened.

“Do it,” Justin said.

There was no response. He cracked an eye open. The creature had stepped back. It was waiting.

After a moment, it scanned the surroundings. Justin could see that aside from the FLIR-type sensors for its eyes, it had no actual head. The mask was a crude facsimile; armor to protect the eyes. It looked back at Justin, and when Justin didn’t move, the being held out its hand. It was a matrix of metal, more air than material, framed like a honeycomb, incredibly strong and light. Bands of black thread— electrostatic tissue, Justin knew—were fully exposed to the elements.

“You’re taking me somewhere,” Justin said. He looked at the bodies that surrounded them. The being tilted its head down. Yes.

Justin had no choice. If it wanted to kill him—if it wanted to take him to Lindo—it would do so. This thing had just dismembered five soldiers that individually could flip a car or kill twenty men.

Justin gave it his hand, and it helped him out. Justin reached back into the vehicle and grabbed his bag.

With another tilt of its head, the creature gestured for him to follow. Justin paused for only a moment before he obliged.

As Justin walked by his captor’s side, he was completely unaware that the creature that now escorted him was the same one who had turned his early life into hell.

Chapter 2

Cynthia Revo watched Jeremiah Sabot with two pairs of eyes. One pair was mounted into a video monitor that took up almost an entire wall. From this, she could see the entire room. The other pair was in the corner, low to the ground, unable to focus or turn. These watery brown eyes were those of an invalid, a stroked-out shell that survived only on life support.

Sabot had been busy all morning. He was her guardian, assistant, and true love. They had been together for almost forty years. Sabot was seventy-five. He was black and Samoan, six-five, and while he appeared to weigh about two hundred and eighty pounds, he was an even five hundred. He was ageless. He looked exactly as he had thirty years before, when he became a Tank Minor. It was Cynthia who had designed his body. He was much larger than the Coalition spec’d Tank Minors, somewhere between a big Tank Minor and a tiny Tank Major. He had not been modified since the civil war.

She was brilliant, wealthy, and eccentric. He was from the ghettos of Chicago and had used the army to get out. She was everything to him, even now when age had been kind to him and cruel to her. Her beauty still showed on screen, in the room in which she imprisoned herself, guarded from all intrusion, even the Northern Star. She had learned about Evan’s plans before the Northern Star had come fully online, and she had warned the U.S. president, only to learn that he and the other world leaders had been compromised by lust, greed, or love. They knew what was coming, and some had even helped usher it in. And so, in the face of a global mutiny, the discarding of democratic governments, the rise of a transcontinental military dictatorship, and the untoward havoc of the Northern Star as a god entity online, Cynthia had fought. The battle killed millions, and when, in the end, Evan acquired the final component he needed—the Consciousness Module—the Northern Star decimated everything that stood in its way.

It had nearly succeeded in killing her, too. But Cynthia had always been quick. She had always found solutions to trump inexorable odds. And so she fought on. When the Northern Star reverse data pushed—a process that caused the brain to hemorrhage—she again beat the odds by dumping her mind into this exile. Her body barely survived—that was the cost—but her mind was saved. She was still herself. Pulled from cyberspace and reconstituted in a private server, cut from all outside lines.

Her consciousness now remained in this limbo, trapped, a purgatory somehow fitting for the woman who had created the means for it all. She was neither here nor there. She was in between. But she was alive . . . and always plotting.

The watery brown eyes watched Sabot. He was preparing a weapon that had taken Cynthia four years to design. A massive capacitor, used for an instant draw of electricity, was mounted into a metal box that Sabot could strap to his back. Attached by a thick cable was a five-foot long “gun” that was covered in wires and modules; three jointed prongs at its muzzle looked as delicate as the limbs of a daddy longlegs.

The rest of the cavernous room was either a lab or a museum of the bionic age. A huge metal throne filled one corner; it was used to maintenance a Tank Major. Next to it were crates marked “explosive.” Next to that, tools and spare parts. Two massive drive chains hung over a wall-mounted rail, glimmering brass in the overhead light.

In the opposite corner was a metal bed that looked to have been pillaged from an insane asylum. Heavy straps and chains hung from it, and it was surrounded by a squirrel’s nest of monitors, wires, and computers. Crates of food, crates of supplies. A set of bunks. Canisters of precious fuel. Weapons racked along the wall, some big, some small. Ammo cans beneath them. Most of it had been stolen either by Sabot or by the few sympathetic parties who still remembered Cynthia and understood the evil that now ruled the world.

For Cynthia, the time had passed unceremoniously. Before the civil war, she had been the most powerful person in the world, the inventor of the Mindlink, which saved the global economy after we sucked the oil tit dry. She was a shepherd who had ushered modern society into a digital universe that she had designed, owned, and controlled. A universe more important than the real one.

But after the civil war, when the Northern Star went online and Evan took control, Cynthia was relegated to the sewers. All of her assets were frozen, and all the Data Nodes, the MindCorp infrastructure, and employees that had once served her, now served him. After five years, even Evan thought she had gone off and died, an injured animal that had crawled into a musty den to suck in its last breaths.

But she was alive, even if just barely. And she would still go online to understand the state of the world, the state of Evan and his monstrous invention. Not as a Sleeper—he would sense her immediately—but at the consumer level, where she was but a trickle of data, where the mindscape was inconsequential and easy to ignore.

Cynthia thought of the lies that parents tell their children. She remembered how her mother would tuck her in for the night, check the closet and under her bed, and reassure Cynthia that there were no monsters.

Cynthia knew many by first name. They existed in droves.

Or when something horrific happened—like a gunman walking into a random school and shooting it up, killing a dozen children and teachers and then themselves—her mom would hold her tight, pet her hair, and tell her that evil never wins.

But evil always won. It was a necessity of war, separate from sides or ideologies or nations. If blood was spilled, if violence was the answer, it wasn’t about right or wrong—that didn’t come into play. It was about which side would slip further into the dark, and how much of themselves they were willing to place on the altar. Because the world wasn’t about the good and bad. That was fine for fables to read with children at your feet, but if as an adult you thought in such binary terms, you were a simpleton.

No, the battles of the world were based on the reality that each side wished to impose, and evil was the necessary sacrifice to win. Evil fights evil, and good has nothing to do with it. Good doesn’t have the guts; it is a flower in a firestorm. The twisted nature of war has only one friend, and it is a slithery fellow that lets some people go and keeps others for itself, haunting them for the rest of their lives, feeding off the sins they can never shake, because they are too great to forgive, even when to not do them would have meant their life.

Even though Cynthia was smarter, better equipped, and had surprised Evan by attacking first, she had lost. And it was because she hadn’t wanted to be evil. She hadn’t realized that in war, evil was a tool, not a trait. But Evan had. And that was why he had won.

We must stop him, she thought, but her mind had drifted, and her words came over the loudspeaker. Sabot looked up from his work. Her avatar waved him away.

“You worry too much,” Sabot said. His age showed only in his eyes.

“You don’t worry enough,” she replied. Her wet, brown eyes on him, her slack face in the corner of the room. He looked at both her ideal image and her physical form. Both were the same mind—he didn’t prefer one or the other. Love worked that way.

He stopped what he was doing and went over to her bed. He stroked her forehead and hair. From cyberspace, on the monitor, her younger version watched him. Both were quiet.

“It’ll work,” Sabot said.

“It may not,” her avatar responded. Sabot dabbed spit from the avatar’s husk.

“It may not,” he agreed. He smiled. “I wanted to retire and live on a beach.”

“Walk barefoot in the sand,” her avatar said.

“Surf in the morning, nap in the afternoon.”

“Rum-fueled sex at night.”

Sabot nodded. “Yeah.” For a moment in the daydream, it still seemed a possibility. The mind’s tricks to keep its passenger sane.

“I would have been bored in a month,” her avatar joked.

Sabot stood up. “Well, then I guess we might as well do what we’re doing.” He kissed her still face.

“I can feel that.” She paused. “I’m scared, Sabot.”

“Me too. But there’s no reason to be. Either we succeed or we fail.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“It might be nice,” Sabot said. “I don’t know anyone that’s come back and said otherwise.”

They both became alert as a message was passed to them.

“They’re close to the location,” Sabot said. “I need to go.”

Sabot walked over to the weapon he had readied and slung the strange electric rod under his arm. He threw on a jacket that did little to hide his modifications, then strapped the capacitor to his back.

“Be careful.”

“I will. I’ll be back shortly.”

He left out a side entrance, and fifty yards later—past the hidden turrets, smart mines, and surveillance cameras—he exited into an abandoned subway tunnel.

= = =

The skeleton man—Justin wasn’t sure what to call him—gently directed him where to go. People were on the streets, but no one seemed to notice them. Those who were on their side of the street cast their eyes away as they passed and restarted their conversations with “So, yeah,” pretending normalcy, as Justin and his wraith-like companion walked by. They couldn’t have done anything anyway.

Justin looked back. The people they had passed were gone.

Justin still wasn’t sure if the being was a robot or a very advanced Tank Minor. Artificial intelligence had never reached the level that late twentieth-century science had predicted. The rigid precision of the CPU was its downfall: AI would always be too simple, too complex, or so close to human that it shared our flaws. The porridge was never just right. It was why such ethical disasters as Forced Autism existed, and why the human mind had been melded with the CPU. Inferential leaps, gut instinct, and imagination—combined with raw processing power and nearly limitless data—that was the solution without compromise. That was our evolution.

Not AI, Justin decided.

And while the Northern Star could control bionics by satellite—it had done so during the civil war—“Lindos” were slower and not nearly as coordinated as a human-driven bionic. Whereas this thing moved liked lightning. Plus, why would Evan kill his own Tank Minors?

So that left human. Justin snuck a few glances at his chaperone. It was six and a half feet tall, but all limbs. Its gait was longer than a human’s, concealed by its shredded cloak. Its arms were geometrically built like a primate’s, but bent severely to not appear so, yet there was nothing organic in its design: it was built from a spider web of matrixed metal. Each hand was a hand within a hand. A set of long metal fingers lay over a smaller set. Its feet were thick toes, splayed and strong. It never settled down on them—there was no heel. And intertwined in all of this were wet black cords, wired like muscle, but thinner, almost a thick filament. It was electrostatic tissue, Justin decided, but like none he’d ever seen, and in such a small quantity compared to the others whose musculature was similar to a man’s. It was an insect-like mimicry.

Justin asked it a few questions, but it just glanced down at him momentarily and remained quiet. It didn’t have a mouth, and Justin saw no other means by which it could speak. Justin took his cue after a few silences and let his mind rest. He wasn’t going to get answers here.

They walked four miles northwest, out of the ghettos that formed the outskirts of Chicago, and into the fringe where the city and nature lapped together like the ocean and shore. There were buildings here, sagging and destitute, but no people. Deer trotted openly down the road, staring back at them with their reflector eyes. A pack of raccoons gathered on a stoop and quietly watched them walk by.

“Where are we going?” Justin asked.

The skeleton man pointed ahead. A four-story office building was just in sight at the end of the road. Its front was cement, overgrown with ivy. The second story and above was a wall of windows, but few remained intact. Those that remained looked like cataracts on an old crone.

Five minutes later, the skeleton man opened the creaky front door and ushered Justin inside. They entered a hall that led to a small lobby. It was early twenty-first-century come-and-go business housing; linoleum tile led to thin-ply, wear-resistant carpet and furniture that looked as if it would take only minutes to be uncomfortable, and maybe even a bit itchy. A drop-down ceiling with fluorescent light fixtures and textured tiles reminded Justin of moldy crackers. Even new, it would have been a dull, despondent place to work. Now—furry with dust, the floors and countertops covered in decades of scat, the moldy couches bored out by critters so they could birth in its white, musty plumes—it felt like a place that could foster only failure.

But Justin was wrong. This humble office building bore one of the greatest inventions ever created. A directory stood in the middle of the hallway. Behind its shattered glass, “M NDWAVE RES AR H” was pressed into the felt. Mindwave Research was Cynthia Revo’s startup out of college. It was what had later become MindCorp.

And beneath it, pillaged from the other company names that had occupied this space decades before, was a message:

“JSTN, B SR 2 DUK.”

Justin’s heart raced. Amid a floor of filth, Justin saw a perfectly clean circle of tile, the same diameter as the directory’s base, by the wall. It had been moved so as to be unavoidably seen.

The skeleton man appeared not to notice. It pulled him down the hall. They left behind the little light that had crept in, and Justin had to use the bionic’s dull green eyes as a beacon while he shuffled and crunched through petrified turds.

Eventually his eyes adjusted. Doors to the right and left were broken open, revealing more office space. Ahead was a set of double doors, framed in metal, dinged but not breached. When the skeleton man put its stringy hand around the door handle, Justin expected it to be locked, but it clicked open and led to a landing. They stepped through.

Beneath them was a Plexiglas cage surrounded by hundreds of bare server racks. This was ground zero: where Tom the chimp had defeated his peer, Jerry, with just the power of thought. Justin’s curiosity now outpaced his fear, and he noticed details he normally wouldn’t have. One: that the Plexiglas cage—about the size of a bedroom—was lit. Two: that up until this point, the air had been stale—and farther in it should be worse—but in here it was crisp. Circulated.

The skeleton man didn’t appear to notice. He walked down the landing stairs to the main floor.

The skeleton man opened the Plexiglas cage and waited for Justin to walk through. Inside, hundreds of metal balls were anchored into the cage walls. They were shiny. New.

On one side, a twelve-inch hole had been cut through the thick clear plastic. The air . . . tingled.

The skeleton man ushered Justin into the center of the room and then stopped, as if there was an invisible “X” only he could see.

When Justin’s feet hit that point, the skeleton man’s alert nature and darting eyes vanished. It slunk back toward the cage door as if in a trance. As it did, a hum filled the air, growing in intensity. And before the bionic could exit, the door slammed shut.

Outside the cage, a massive man, covered head to toe in a lead suit, emerged from behind a wall of server racks and ran toward the small hole. He held a giant wand that flashed and jolted with white, electric sparks, and when he reached the hole, he thrust the front of it through.

Justin hit the ground. Under attack, the skeleton man’s alertness returned, and like a jumping spider, it jolted to the side of the cage opposite the man and ricocheted back to strike.

SCHZZZZZZZ. The cage became a lightning storm as arcs of electricity jumped across the metal balls. The current was drawn to the skeleton man, and in mid-air, the bionic curled up like a dying insect and crashed against the wall where the man stood, nearly breaking through.

And then the current found Justin.

He smelled the burning as his clothes caught fire. His body snapped rigid under unbearable pain, and he heard the man on the outside scream. Justin saw the skeleton man reach up and drag its claws down the Plexiglass, still trying to attack.

Then Justin passed out.

Chapter 3

Mike Glass watched indifferently as a large Tank Minor worked around him. He was vertical, strapped to a metal rack with chains that could anchor a barge. Across from him, he saw a man in a bed, his right leg and left arm covered in gauze, blood seeping through it. Glass didn’t recognize him. On the screen, a redheaded woman stared at him. He didn’t recognize her either. He was designed to not wonder or question—those traits had been stripped away. He had finished the mission, and had he not been subdued, he would have walked back to his capsule outside the city. But he did not struggle, because he had been given no new instructions.

The large Tank Minor stood up.

“He’s ready,” Sabot said.

“I’ve reflashed his mission constraints,” the woman on the screen said. “Three minutes?”

Sabot nodded. “And counting.”

“Can you hear me?” Cynthia asked Glass. He nodded. “You can speak. Sabot, the man to your left, has wired back that functionality.”

Glass didn’t respond.

On the screen, Cynthia sighed. “Say you understand.”

“I understand,” Glass said. His voice sounded as if it came from a soup can.

“Do you know your name?”

“Miiii,” he tried. “Miiii.” Then: “No.”

“I need you to listen without interruption. I’m going to tell you who you are and more. But I must do it quickly. Off mission, you are designed to maintain short-term memory for no longer than three minutes. It’s a safety implemented by Dr. Evan Lindo to control you.”

Glass remained quiet. Cynthia had to hurry; she had little more than two minutes left before his mind would reset.

“Your name is Mike Glass. You are fifty-seven years old and have been a soldier for the last thirty-nine years. You are Dr. Evan Lindo’s personal assassin and have been so for nearly that entire length of time.”

“He is my creator,” Glass said.

“NO! He is a man, flesh and blood, and nothing more. Your were loyal to him, evil for him, and he betrayed you. Twenty-five years ago, you loved a woman named Vanessa Raimey. She was the only thing you ever cared for. The rest of the world was gray, but not her. She was light. She was warmth. And she loved you too.

“But Evan needed her, and he knew your true nature. Mike, above all things, you are a killer, and that is what made Vanessa that much more special. Somehow she dissolved your indifference to life. Evan knew he could ask you to take the lives of a thousand men, but he could never ask you to give up the one thing that made you feel. The one heart on the planet that beat for you, the one heart for which you would be saddened at the thought of it going still. And so Evan had to make a choice, because he couldn’t have the both of you.”

“Two of his giants attempted to kill you. They failed. You fought back and almost won, but in the end you were up against too much. He took Vanessa and made her a part of him. And then he took over the world.”

“The Northern Star,” Glass said.

“Yes. Evan serves himself and not one person more. And after taking the only thing you ever loved, after dismembering your body, he still couldn’t let you die. Because your gifts allowed him to play. They allowed him to invent. And Evan loves his toys.

“He woke you up in your hospital bed—I have seen it—and he sat cross-legged as he said that he understood why you betrayed him. He asked you to choose—loyalty or death—knowing the whole time what you would say. He hoped for it. And when you chose death, he showed you what he had become, and he tore the memories from your mind and whittled you down into a killing machine with no more of a soul than a corpse.”

Cynthia paused.

“All of this means nothing, because in one minute and seven seconds, you will reset and once again be Lindo’s tool. This conversation will be erased. You will look at me blankly, and again not know my name. You will quietly observe your environment and wait for orders to attack or a chance to flee. But through the most difficult effort—effort that has resulted in the loss of many lives—we have your memories. Not all of them, not even close, but enough for you to see what you were, and what you’ve lost. Most of them are sins. You bathed in them, Mike. But some of them are pure, and most of those involve Vanessa. I can give these to you. But unlike Evan, I will not use force. It is your choice. Receiving these memories won’t hurt you, but it will be confusing. And you will mourn for what you’ve lost.”

“Why would Evan do this to me?”

“Because you’d kill him if you knew the truth.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“To kill him because you know the truth.”

“Thirty-two seconds, Cynthia,” Sabot said. He was near Glass, working on a computer tethered to him.

“Will you do it, Mike? You must choose. I’ve controlled armies and I’ve felt men die, and I can’t be what I was anymore. I will guide you. I am powerful like Lindo, but I have learned the error of my ways. Taking a man’s free will is murder. You must decide.”

“I knew love?”

“More. You—against all odds—discovered humanity.”

“Sometimes I see a woman’s face. She is laughing.”

“That’s Vanessa.”

“I want to talk to her,” Glass said. He sounded like a child.

“First you must know who she is, and then I hope you do.”

“Eight seconds,” Sabot said through clenched teeth. The security protocol to Glass’s implant was a floating algorithm. It had taken hours to hack, and they could only do that because Glass had rebooted from the EMP.

Glass turned to Sabot. “I want to see her. Show me. All I know is cold.”

Sabot fired off five quick keystrokes. Glass slumped forward, rattling the chains.

Sabot turned to Cynthia, alarmed.

“It’s working,” she said. “Connect me in to remove the limiter.”

= = =

Justin woke up to tears streaming down his face. Searing pain ran from his wrist to his ankle as if liquid fire had hijacked his veins. His eyes focused on an LED fifty feet above him.

A giant black man with dreads to his shoulders eclipsed the light.

“Be still, Justin.” A woman’s voice filled the room.

Justin was groggy. He could have easily closed his eyes and called it a night. But then he felt something slip out of his arm, and it was replaced by a throbbing. He craned his head. The large man had removed an IV needle.

“Vitamins and food,” the man said. “You’re malnourished.”

The man helped him sit up. That sliver of pain was overtaken by fire. Justin held up his gauzed arm and looked down at his leg.

“I ducked,” Justin coughed.

“I’m sorry about the electrical burns. That wasn’t the plan,” the Tank Minor replied.

“You’re Sabot.” Justin had never seen Cynthia’s bodyguard in person, but in every photo or video of her he’d ever seen, this man had been standing behind her.

Sabot nodded. Justin registered movement and looked over the big man’s shoulders. A twenty-foot Cynthia was watching him.

“Hello, Justin.”

“What . . . where am I?”

“Safe, beneath the streets,” she said. It could have been her size, but she was difficult to look at, as if her life force could drown out his own.

Sabot offered Justin a pill and water. “You’ll want it.”

Justin stood up, and fresh pain made the room waver. He took the pill and gulped it down.

“Jeez,” he said, gingerly testing his injured leg.

“For all intents and purposes, lightning passed through you,” Cynthia said.

“Yeah, I remember,” Justin replied. His grimaced and did a trust fall onto his leg. It hurt, but held.

They were in some kind of electronics warehouse. The floor was metal, the walls were metal, and exposed I-beams framed it all. On one side was the Cynthia theater and a bunch of medical equipment; he thought he saw a bed. The rest was storage: a lot of computer equipment, food, and weapons.

“I thought you were dead,” Justin said.

“It was close,” Cynthia replied. “How is Xinting?”

Xinting was Justin’s foster mother; she had raised him since he was twelve years old. She was a scientist, and was there the day John Raimey stormed the Chinese base to take him back. She had pled with the giant for Justin’s freedom. She said she would take him far away. And the giant acquiesced. Cynthia had used back channels to make this financially possible.

“She’s good. She told me what you did.”

“It was the only way,” Cynthia replied.

“No. You could have had me killed, or you could have taken me for yourself.”

“Yes, I could have.”

He walked toward the theater. The bed became clear now, and he saw Cynthia’s sunken frame. Her avatar looked down on it. “And what would that have gotten me, Justin-01? Do you think I wouldn’t still be here, an invalid, buried in the ground? Would the Northern Star not exist? Would the governments not have taken my empire? Would the untouchables of this world still not be enslaved, with the modern world blind by choice so that they can live comfortably? No. This was the inevitable. I used my wealth and resources to save a boy. Then I used it to start a war. And I think it’s fitting that we are where we are. If a cat rested on my chest, it could end my life. And you think that would worry me, don’t you Justin?”

“It would worry me,” he said.

“Because you are strong. When you think of death, a place in your chest shrinks. My tenuous string to existence has set me free. By losing everything, I have nothing left to lose, and my path is so clear now. It is so clean—without ulterior motives, political plays, worry about cause and effect, or how today’s decisions can come back to haunt me. No reason to placate, no reason to soften my words to tiptoe around sensitivities. Time is all we have. It was all we ever had. It is given to us and taken away, and not until we are close to death do we see that it is so. There’s power in the end. Maybe only then can we really reflect on who we are.”

Her avatar stared off, its eyes wide. “I see what must be done. I have seen it for over twenty years.”

She turned back to Justin and smiled. “It’s good to see you are well. I had always wondered. Every now and then I’d send out a ping to see if maybe you’d respond.”

“I stayed off the grid,” Justin said. “Only in the last few years have I gotten back on, and even then, I made sure I moved quietly.”

“Do you still feel it?”

“The power?”

Cynthia nodded.

“Yes. It’s there. I think that’s how Vanessa found me.”

“She found everyone.”

“What do you mean?” Justin asked, perplexed.

“When the Multiplier in the Middle East went down, her scream was like a solar flare. Every Sleeper heard it.”

“Then how did the Northern Star find me?”

“The same way I did. You responded.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Says the elephant to the ants crushed underfoot. Your mindscape shook cyberspace, Justin. Just as it did when you were a child.”

Twenty feet away, the skeleton man groaned. With the stacks of crates and aisles of gear, Justin hadn’t noticed him. He went over.

“Don’t get too close,” Sabot warned.

The skeleton man was unconscious, his chin to his chest, and his hands and feet twitched like a dog chasing a rabbit in a dream. The ghillie suit had been removed, and Justin saw the fully alien architecture at work. The matte black body lacked either a chest or abdomen; a thick, boxy, armored spine connected his hips to his shoulders. While the limbs were honeycombed and looked incredibly delicate, the spine looked as if it had been hammered from steel billet. Wires of electrostatic tissue ran the length of it in channels, and strangely studded armor covered it in plates like an armadillo. Unlike the human spine, shiny wear marks revealed at least a hundred points of articulation.

“Did you send this thing to get me?” Justin asked.

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“This is Mike Glass.”

A wave of nausea slammed into Justin. Bursts of light starred his vision as his heart broke into a sprint. A crowbar rested against a nearby crate; without hesitation, Justin grabbed it and swung it into the man who had ruined his life.

“YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” he screamed. The crowbar vibrated with every strike, shaking Justin’s arms, but neither the strikes nor the scolding had any effect on Glass. The skeleton man’s head tilted as if listening to a far-off whisper, but otherwise he appeared completely unaware of the assault.

“Stop, Justin. You’re going to hurt yourself,” Cynthia said.

Justin paid her no mind. He swung until his arms were too weak to hold the crowbar and his hands were blistered. Only then did he drop the crowbar and collapse across from his reaper.

“Why would you have him here?” Justin asked, his voice hoarse with pain. Mike Glass had killed his parents and taken him from his home when Justin was twelve. Evan may have been the one who’d ordered the hit, but Glass was the one who had entered his home and shot down Justin’s chance for a normal life.

“Mike Glass, as you see him, has no idea what he did to you. You don’t see it, and you may never be able to reconcile this point, but he is a victim just like you.”

“Fuck you!” Justin yelled. “Fuck you to defend him! He killed my parents! God knows how many other people he’s killed.”

“Mike Glass has four thousand, three hundred and fifty-four confirmed kills. He’s a soldier, Justin. That’s all he is. He’s only pulled the trigger once on his own behalf, and that’s why he’s so important.”

“This is wrong. You’re insane. Where’s the exit? How do I get out of here?”

“The elevator is behind you, through the hall.”

“Is your grunt going to kill me?”

“Sabot left, and he wouldn’t stop you anyway. It’s just the three of us.”

Justin looked around for the hulking Samoan. “Where is he?”

“He’s going to fly across the world to get the man who saved you.”

Justin’s mind spun. He felt like his temples were pressing inward, trying to touch each other. “How?”

“I’VE BEEN PLANNING THIS DAY FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS!” Cynthia screamed, her anger palpable. “I HAVE BEEN IN THIS BUNKER—IN THIS HOLE—THINKING OF ONLY ONE THING: THIS DAY AND THE DAYS BEYOND.”

Justin stared up at her, as if she had peeled back her face to show the devil.

“I’ve planned for twenty-five years,” Cynthia said again—quieter, sadder. “This is the only way. There is no other way. Please stay. If you leave, all of this is for nothing.”

Chapter 4

-Africa-

Chinelo opened the door quietly, as he had been taught. It was the third of the month, his turn to assist—just as every other day it was another child’s. Chinelo was thirteen, on the cusp of manhood according to his tribe’s culture.

This morning there was commotion. Chinelo was woken by Nwabudike, the boy who had assisted the Guardian the day before. Nwabudike told him that something out in the plains had spooked the wild animals enough that they had run through the outskirts of their village. And a hunter who had been out in the bush reported to Nwabudike that he had heard a sound like a lion’s roar, only it lasted for twenty minutes.

The children had strict twenty-four-hour shifts, and Nwabudike was at the end of his. It would be unacceptable for him to pass the message directly to their Guardian. So he passed it to Chinelo.

It was five a.m. Chinelo walked into the large shack. Bones, the Guardian’s dog, looked up from underneath the chair of his master, then bedded back down. He and Chinelo were on good terms, and Bones was too old to bother barking.

“Sir. Sir,” Chinelo said. He walked around the Guardian’s feet. Four steps got him to the Guardian’s knees, and four more got him to the giant drive chains that wrapped around his waist. The Guardian slept a lot now; the elders in the village said that for his kind, he was very old. You could see the deep creases in his face, the only part of him that was exposed. He was snoring.

After sixteen steps, Chinelo looked up at the Guardian’s head.

“Sir,” he whispered again. He was hard to wake. One day, Nwabudike said, they would come in and he wouldn’t. “Sir!”

The Guardian’s eyes shot open. His face was creased with time, but his eyes were sharp and clear. He looked over to his little assistant.

“Good morning, Chinelo.” John Raimey let out a big yawn and checked a window. A hint of light crept through. “What time is it?”

“It’s five.”

“Five!” The Guardian liked to sleep in. He became more alert. “Is everything okay?”

“Something spooked the animals on the plain. Something large. A hunter heard it. He said it sounded like something from the past, before I was born. The war.”

“Hmm,” Raimey grunted. A generator whine filled the air as he powered up. Unlike his contemporaries, for Raimey it took time.

History portrayed Raimey as the first Tank Major, but that wasn’t true. His closest friend, Eric Janis, was the prototype. But that part of history had been erased when a design flaw allowed China to plant a virus in Janis’s implant. He went insane and destroyed a military base while Chinese special forces air dropped in under the cover of chaos and stole the King Sleeper. Raimey’s first mission had been to kill Janis.

Raimey had been a quad amputee who could no longer provide for his family. Even now, thinking back, the memories of his wife’s sacrifices were still too fresh. She had cleaned him like a baby; he had chipped away at her every day with his depression. She withered away before his very eyes, and he was too consumed by self-pity to notice.

A mentor, General Boen, had sat before him, next to Dr. Lindo and Cynthia Revo, and offered him a monkey’s paw: we will turn you into the most powerful creature that has ever walked the earth, and for the privilege, we will provide for your family.

But you can never see them again.

His wife had had cancer; his daughter needed a future. He was an anchor dragging them into the depths. Of all the regrets, that was the one from which he couldn’t find an out. So they wheeled him away, chopped him down, and built him up. He was designed without compromise, limitations, or budget constraints. He was a product of an era when the United States was against a wall and needed a hero. Even now, thirty-five years later, he was still the most powerful Tank Major ever built, and his body, down to the bolt, consisted of an alloy of armor that had never been fully duplicated. It made him nearly indestructible.

But his legend was built on the hydraulshock. The standard power delivery of a Tank Major was 3,500,000 foot-pounds; Raimey’s was 5,000,000 foot-pounds. Miles away, soldiers could distinguish the telltale boom of his attack from the sound of the others. Within a quarter mile, soldiers needed special hearing protection, and within fifty yards the extreme energy of his movement caused a concussive blast that could knock them down. Of all the myths that had been born from the shock and stress of war, Raimey was an anomaly in one important way: the stories told about him were true.

“Get to the zone,” Raimey said to Chinelo.

The skinny boy stepped into a corner of the room marked “safe,” and Raimey rose thirteen feet into the air.

= = =

The lion heard the footsteps as it lay in the cool mud, gnawing on the ribcage of a kill. The gazelle stared up at the sky, its mouth frozen in its final gasp. With its tan eyes, the lion scanned the dry brush that waved around it, looking for the source of the sound. It was a deep sound, felt more than heard. A boy, small and skinny, appeared, and for a moment, the lion forgot about its meal as instinct took over. The boy’s hand came up and pointed to the right of the lion. The lion watched, unconcerned, undecided. The boy made a series of noises. “The hunter said it came from that direction.” But the lion didn’t hear the words, only the pitch.

Behind the boy, a small tree shook violently, and the sharp sounds of brush crashing made the lion wince. The movement, graceless and thumping, indicated something large and threatening. It reminded the lion of a stampede.

Raimey reached the boy. From his vantage he saw a male lion twenty yards away laid out near a small watering hole, chewing on a gazelle. The lion emitted a low cry to announce its presence. Raimey was unconcerned.

“Chinelo, you shouldn’t get too far ahead of me. It’s dangerous out here.”

“Everything is afraid of you. Even the elephants.”

“But they aren’t afraid of you. And I don’t want to have to deal with your mother if something goes bad and you have to hop on one leg for the rest of your life.”

Chinelo smiled. This was the closest that Raimey came to a joke.

Chinelo continued to lead, and Raimey followed close behind. Raimey’s grace came only with speed. When he was forced to walk slowly, trying not to destroy things, he moved awkwardly, like a jet taxiing on a runway. He avoided a small sapling, only to stomp down a bush instead.

Along with his extreme height, Raimey was as wide as a semi-truck and weighed six tons. His head would have looked remarkably small for his frame, but he had been a big man before the accident that took his limbs, and that came with a big melon. His friends, the soldiers in his squad, used to say it was the biggest target on the battlefield. Raimey’s eyes lit up at the pleasant memory. They were such assholes. The light went out. All gone, now. All gone.

He slept as much as he could. He had no dreams of his past; just dark silence. His waking moments were when his terrors would haunt him. Those he had killed, friends who had died, mountains of fresh meat, and he the butcher. His wife, his daughter. Both dead, his noble sacrifice a folly after all. Cursed with life, but dead inside. Sleep was for comfort as much as for practice. Every night he hoped it would never end.

Raimey saw a plane off in the distance at the center of a scorched field. It was big and old, used back when John had just started in the military. A stealth bomber.

What is that doing here?

“What do you see? What do you see?” Chinelo jumped up and down, but the grass was too tall.

“There’s a plane.” Raimey would have sent Chinelo back, but they were too far from the village, and he remembered the lion. “Follow right behind me.”

Like a mirage, the plane seemed never to get closer. It looked huge when Raimey first saw it and that didn’t change. It was a gigantic black wing, alien in this landscape. Around it smoldering earth twisted the air and made it look like it had been raised from Hell.

Finally, Raimey and Chinelo made it to the field. It had been flash burned to make a runway. Chinelo stepped around a burnt wildebeest carcass. Other unlucky animals were scattered about. Vultures circled, calling their brethren.

Chinelo hopped up and down from the heat. Raimey opened his hand like a chair and Chinelo climbed in.

They were fifty yards away when the belly of the plane opened up. A hydraulic lift lowered to the field. Jeremiah Sabot was on it.

The drive chains around Raimey’s waist began to accelerate. Chinelo flinched away from them—they were like hackles on a dog—and the child in his hand was the only reason John didn’t run forward and destroy the man and the plane.

“What are you doing here?” Raimey growled.

“Cynthia sent me.”

“She’s alive?”

“Yes. Just.”

Raimey stared through him. Sabot stood, frozen, aware of the danger.

“Things aren’t what you think,” Sabot said. His hands were out, like those of a negotiator talking a gunman down. “Please. We need to talk.” He glanced nervously at Raimey’s drive chains. Raimey had Chinelo close to the ground, ready to drop him and charge.

“Vanessa’s dead because of you.”

Sabot shook his head slowly. “No. Please. It’s important that we talk.”

Raimey put Chinelo down. The boy ran fifty yards behind him, as he had been trained. Sabot’s eyes went from the boy to John.

“Then talk,” Raimey said.

“Your daughter’s alive.”

The words hung in the air. She had died twenty-five years before, during the civil war, when MindCorp had destroyed the Derik Building, the main bionics lab. Raimey had found his way back from the Congo to save her, to finally be there in her hour of need. But he had been too late.

Raimey cleared his throat. “What are you talking about?” Almost every cell in his body screamed to attack. Sabot had long been a man he had dreamt to one day corner, but a small flame of hope flared up. This man had not flown across the world to the plains of Africa to die. That they still had a plane and the fuel to fly it here showed a tremendous allocation of resources . . .

Raimey’s drive chains slowed to a crawl.

“It was a cover, set up by Lindo to get Vanessa. He always knew that she had something more. Just like you and your amazing aptitude to handle the first primitive implants. He tested her. Back when she was young, when you were in the hospital. Do you remember?”

A murky memory bubbled to the surface of John’s mind. His daughter sitting on his bed next to him, the cripple. The useless cripple who couldn’t support his daughter. The useless cripple who took his wife’s life and threw it against the wall. A young Dr. Lindo, short, fat, bearded to hide a soft chin, square-rim glasses—finishing a test with him with a device called a Mindlink. Vanessa asked what “that thingy” was, and Dr. Lindo said it was to test her father for something special. Vanessa said that her dad had said she was special. Dr. Lindo ruffled her hair. “I bet you are.” John was there, but not really; he heard it, but he was looking out the window.

Feeling sorry for myself. Yes. Then and always. His smiles were muscle movement. The few jokes from his mouth were meant only to ease the crowd. Vanessa had asked to be tested and, on a whim, Evan did. But John didn’t see the way Lindo’s eyes lit up. He didn’t see Evan quickly shut down the program, pull the Mindlink off his daughter’s head and apologize for the “malfunction.”

It was an old memory. It had had time to warp, but he knew it was true. Straight and true.

“Yes,” Raimey said, his throat catching. “I remember.”

“He got a two-for-one that day, John. He got you, the most powerful Tank Major ever designed. And he got her.” Sabot paused. “The Consciousness Piece of the Northern Star cannot be young. The young are only good for Multipliers—extending the signal. She had to be an adult for it to work the way Dr. Lindo intended.”

“God, don’t say what you’re going to say,” John said.

“He kept her under his close supervision, acting as her mentor while you were fighting. He had her handle certain software programs and projects that would strengthen her mind in the way that would suit his future need for her.

“She turned twenty-one on August 12, 2068. The day before you were deployed from South Africa to the Congo.”

“No,” John groaned, shaking his head.

Sabot continued. “Best case, you would be unaware of the coup and out of the way. Worst case, Packard would kill you. But General Boen tipped us off to what Evan was planning—that’s why Boen was killed—and Cynthia connected the dots to the Northern Star construct. We got ahead of Evan: the Northern Star wasn’t quite ready to go online yet. It needed one more essential component. So Cynthia shut down cyberspace and we went to war.”

Now it was Sabot who shook his head. “The Northern Star is massively powerful, but without a guide, it’s stupid. The Pieces are conditioned under Forced Autism to serve the Will. The Will is Evan. But another component is needed: the Consciousness Module. It makes the Pieces feel loved. It feeds them memories. It keeps them on task. They tie their loyalty to it as if it were their mother. Your daughter was perfect for that role. We fought to save her. Evan fought to take her. And we lost. On August 24, the Northern Star, as it is now, went online. It took over everything. Governments, MindCorp, people. Everything.”

“The Derik Building,” Raimey murmured.

“That was when we first knew Vanessa was important to Evan. That was our first battle to save her. She wasn’t in the building when it blew up. A Tank Major, Kove, detonated the bomb. Not us.”

“I saw her grave.”

“It’s empty.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Yes you do.”

“Why tell me this?”

“Because two days ago a battle took place in the Middle East that knocked out a Northern Star Multiplier. And Dr. Lindo, for just a flash in time, had to reroute. During that flash, your daughter sought Justin-01 and told him to find you, to save her. Your daughter is alive, John! And she’s aware. The other Pieces of the Northern Star—if you pull them out, they’re vegetables. They’re done. But the Consciousness Module cannot be manipulated. She’s alive. And if you find her, she can be freed.”

= = =

Sabot went back to the mining village with the giant and the boy. The town was small, a couple of hundred smack in the middle of the Sudan. Raimey could have gone anywhere. This had been a choice.

John quietly excused himself. “I need a moment to think.” Sabot noticed a trail of tears drying on his cheeks. Raimey went into his shed.

Chinelo followed, and a moment later he came out with an old dog.

“That’s his?” Sabot asked.

“His name is Bones. I need to walk him.” Bones was an ugly mutt with patchy brindle hair and pink splotches of skin where years of dry, snaggly brush had torn it away. It wagged its tail and came right over. Sabot scratched its ears.

“Not much of a guard dog,” he said.

“Mr. Raimey found him years ago, out in the fields. It was all alone and something had attacked it.”

“It wasn’t wild?”

Chinelo shook his head. “Mr. Raimey thinks a hunter let it loose.”

Sabot walked with Chinelo and Bones. Bones sniffed around the village on his own hunt for the truth, leaving his marks and moving on. Men and women openly stared at Sabot as they walked. He stuck out.

It didn’t take long to get from one end of the village to the other. A few hundred yards past the town was a canyon. Sabot leaned over and looked down. Excavating equipment at the bottom chewed and dredged for precious metals that kept the CPU world alive.

“How long has the mine been here?”

“A year before I was born. Fourteen years.”

“What are you mining?”

“Monazite.”

“What’s that for?”

Chinelo shrugged; he didn’t know. They headed back to the town.

“What made Mr. Raimey cry?” Chinelo asked. “I’ve never seen him do that.”

“He thought someone he loved was dead.”

“And they’re not?”

“No.”

“Shouldn’t he be happy?”

“No, not yet.”

“Why not?”

Sabot nodded to the dog. “Imagine Bones got caught up chasing a bird and fell over the edge of the mine.”

“He doesn’t chase birds.”

“Work with me, Chinelo. You think he’s dead. For the next few days you mourn, you wonder what you could have done to stop it. Maybe he should have been on his leash. But you start to feel okay.”

“Okay.”

“Now imagine a friend came to you and said that Bones is alive, but he is stuck on a ledge halfway down to the bottom. You might be able to get him, but you might not. And if you don’t, he’ll suffer and die. If so, for you, Bones will have died twice, and you will have failed him twice. Does that make sense?”

“Sorta.”

They got back to the shack. A stern woman was waiting. She looked Sabot up and down and then turned to Chinelo. “Breakfast is waiting.”

Chinelo handed Sabot the leash. “Tell Mr. Raimey I’ll be back in an hour and I didn’t get a chance to feed Bones.”

= = =

Sabot and Bones sat next to each other outside Raimey’s shack. The silence didn’t bring peace. He pictured Glass standing over Cynthia, pulling apart her life support, killing his helpless beloved. Or Justin-01, after Cynthia revealed that the creature chained to the gurney was Glass, unable to control his anger and doing the same. She had been so strong that her motivation, energy, and brilliance had made the people around her better, including Sabot. But now her strength was only in spirit. Her life was a wisp that could vanish in the wind.

Bones let out a whine of protest and circled to bed. Sabot almost knocked on the door to ask Raimey where the dog food was, then he realized the idiocy. Instead he rubbed Bones’s belly and waited, because that’s all he could do. The plane had enough fuel to get home, and that was it. There would be no second trip; there were no second chances. A drop of fuel was worth more than a pound of gold. And so he waited.

= = =

Memories. The blessing of them. Our own private channel we can tune in to at any time and recall the precious moments that made us happy, the good deeds and good times that formed us into the people we became. Memories. The curse of them. Our regrets and failures always at our fingertips, a putrid stink that can ruin a day. Our shames, our humiliations, our own private curse that constantly reminds us of how fucked up we are, how far we fell from the ideal. Why we deserve hell.

Raimey sat in his chair hunched over. His giant hands were folded one over the other, as if in prayer. Tears dripped to the ground, plumping dots into the dirt floor and then vanishing. He couldn’t wipe them away—a gentle brush from one of his fingertips would cleave through his skull—so he tasted the salt.

The memories bubbled up. He was thirty-five. Three years earlier, when the Coalition—China, the U.S., and the EU—began invading oil rich countries to hoard the oil, terrorism had exploded around the globe. Raimey now ran a clandestine anti-terrorism unit that shuttled from mega-city to mega-city, attempting to cut the heads off the hydra. But that night he was in Chicago. He came home in the early morning, three a.m. The day had been filled with gunfire and bombs. A memory flashed quickly to an old friend, Bao, who had died that day. His vacant stare fluttered through the other memory as if two pieces of film had overlapped in a projector. Bao’s pale visage receded out of frame, and then it was just the memory of John sneaking into bed next to his wife. These were “the good times”—though he would only know it later, when things got so bad. Back then, the present was blinded by a glowing future. It was the cost of ambition, and the folly of youth, to think that the next day was a given and that it would always be better than the one before.

But now, crying in a hut, a metal giant, Raimey knew that back then, things had been fine. They had been more than fine: they had been perfect. He could feel her body against his, her warmth, so consistent and predictable and wonderful. She wrapped her arms around him, her slender frame surrounding his bulky one. And it was the safest he had ever felt. She pressed her mouth against the back of his neck and kissed him, leaving her lips planted a moment longer than the kiss, and for a torturous second, the weeping man could feel it thirty-five years later.

“I’m so happy you’re safe,” Raimey whispered. But it had come from her. He had fallen asleep with a smile.

Morning bleached the tan curtains white. Behind his eyelids, John sensed movement. He heard the slight clang of silverware. He creased open the eye closest to the pillow. Vanessa, eight, moved comically slow with a tray in her hand, trying to be silent, but was outed by a fork and knife crisscrossed together.

She froze and looked at her dad to make sure he wasn’t awake. She didn’t see his eye watching back. After ten seconds, with the exaggerated steps of Bugs Bunny sneaking by a sleeping foe, she made it to the bedside table. Raimey fought the smile, but it won, and she saw it.

“Dad!” she squealed. He opened his eyes completely, and Vanessa put the tray down and jumped on him. He caught her and pulled her close. Her perfect skin, her little nose. Her newness. She crawled into the bed with him and Tiffany, who had propped herself up on a pillow to watch her husband and daughter reunite.

“How are ya?” he asked.

“I’m gooood. Did Mom tell you about the algebra test?”

“He got in late, honey. I saved it for you to tell,” Tiffany said.

“I got an A plus,” she emphasized. Vanessa was three years ahead of her classmates in math . . . and in pretty much every other subject. Present-day Raimey shuddered at this.

“That’s great!” Raimey said and kissed her on the cheek. He had never been a student, just a soldier. It was his way out. It was his way here.

“How are we going to celebrate?” Raimey asked.

“Ice cream? Not now, of course, but later?”

“I think we can manage that,” Raimey said with a smile.

Vanessa hopped up and brought the tray over. She had made eggs, bacon (undercooked, but he ate it), toast, and juice.

“I’m glad you’re home, Dad,” Vanessa said as she rested the tray next to him.

“Me too. I missed you guys.”

He still did. Three years later, the UN bombing—where China and the U.S. were supposed to put aside their escalating cold war—took his arms and legs. Six months later Tiffany was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And John became a thing.

He had spoken to Vanessa only twice after that. The first time he didn’t see her. She was twelve, and his wife wouldn’t allow it. He had just become the giant, a creature of nightmares, especially to a little girl who called him “Dad,” and so he spoke to her through a curtain. He told her how much he loved her, how he had to do what he did for the family. The torment of those words chewed at him, knotted him up, and Raimey howled.

The second time she was sixteen. Tiffany was dead and Vanessa had agreed to meet him. Raimey had hoped to salvage whatever vestige of his former life he could, but Vanessa wasn’t interested. She never wanted to see or hear from him again. Fate had honored that wish.

But now, twenty-eight years later, she was calling to him. She was forty-four, imprisoned in a monstrosity, and she needed her dad. She had always needed him, and he had never been there.

Late is better than not at all.

= = =

Lunch came and went. Bones smothered Sabot’s lap, tongue out, panting. Earlier, Chinelo had come by with food. Sabot thanked him, but told him he didn’t eat. Chinelo looked confused. Instead of explaining, Sabot took the plate, and when Chinelo was out of sight, he gave it to Bones. They had become fast friends.

The door to Raimey’s home opened, and Raimey walked out. His eyes were red and his face was grim.

“She’s alive?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

He cleared his throat. “And we can get her. You think we can get her?”

“I don’t know. But Cynthia thinks so. She thinks we can win.”

Raimey nodded thoughtfully, slowly. Finally: “Okay.”

“Okay?” Sabot stood up.

“Okay.”

Chapter 5

-Chicago-

While the Northern Star burned as a sentient sun in cyberspace, its tendrils were embedded in the real world, grown over the bones of what had once been the Coalition. The decades of forced occupancy in resource-rich third world countries, military bases integrated into every mega-city to combat terrorism, the bionic age—together, these things had created a global military superstructure. And when the Northern Star took over, the coup was quick and painless. To the average citizen, very little had changed.

There was still oil. It was controlled by the Northern Star and rationed out to civilians based on societal needs. Farmers had access to it, as did trucks, for distribution from rail. Certain manufacturing industries and medicine had an allotment. But the majority of it was hoarded for the future. For the Northern Star’s armies, there was a one-thousand-year supply.

China Girl arrived in Chicago by plane three hours after Glass disappeared with Justin-01. Before China Girl, it was always Glass who had been Lindo’s guinea pig for the latest bionic advancement. Part of the reason for that was loyalty—Evan did, in some small recess of his being, have that gene—but most of it was ability. Glass’s mind, for whatever reason, could handle modifications that would kill other soldiers. The power. The incredible speed. The composite body that was biomechanically divergent from a human’s. The FLIR optics that processed images at five hundred frames per second and allowed him to see miles away. These advancements couldn’t be mass-produced. Apart from Glass, and a few others around the world, the Minors’ ability capped out at Level 6.

But Glass’s most important attribute was now failing. His brain had been manipulated, erased, and modified too many times. Brain scans showed pits and holes. The threads were bare.

China Girl was his replacement.

If he had thought of things in these terms, Lindo would have marveled at his luck, at how chance and preparation had leaned so heavily in his favor. He barely had to look for exceptional subjects—they were placed at his feet.

Raimey was a one in two million possibility. His first implants, especially the ones that required the mind to comprehend the possibility of inhuman power and alternate tasks, were hideous in their complexity. Once it was connected in, the mind became a mouse in a maze, searching for the cheese, trying to bring A to B. Most minds failed. But after a few hiccups, Raimey got through every time.

Glass was even more exceptional: one in ten million. Evan concluded that his psychopathic behavior had helped him adapt.

Vanessa—and it was no coincidence that she was related to Raimey—was one in thirty million.

It should have taken longer for Evan to succeed; there should have been more failures. But there weren’t.

China Girl was incalculable in her rarity. She wasn’t Chinese—black, actually—but Lindo was into David Bowie at the time he found her and had had the Thin White Duke’s library of songs cycling through his head while he sought knowledge, turning over molecules in his mind, diving through the history of scholars and applying new formulas to understand the endless possibilities of compounds he could manufacture. Biomechanics, how he could strengthen electrostatic tissue. The stars, monitoring the others planets and their orbits, examining the concept of dark matter. This time period, layered with a thousand topics as if he had a thousand genius minds, was weeks long. And through all of it, he listened to Bowie. “China Girl” was his favorite song, and when he found this unique girl and stripped her of her bones, her lungs, her heart—and, in the process, her soul—he named her as such.

In the design of Glass, Evan chose to mimic a human; but with China Girl, he didn’t even try. When Lindo designed her he was fascinated with predator insects, the durability and efficiency of their designs. The praying mantis and spider he appreciated the most, and after a millions of calculations, he determined that the combination of the two would make for an exceptional design. So China Girl was a cross of their most advantageous traits. She was charcoal gray, six feet long, and stood five feet tall. Her eight limbs could function as either arms or legs. Like Glass, her body was a long, articulated spine, and when she walked she curled the front third upright and used the front limbs as arms and the back six for propulsion. Eight onyx eyes were evenly spaced around her head. She was a Level 14 Tank Minor, but leaps and bounds ahead of Glass in processing power. Lindo had never come across someone like her before. So he made her special.

From the base’s airstrip, she moved as the crow flies, scuttling over buildings, slicking through the alleys, causing the same chill that pedestrians felt when Glass passed. At the truck, the six bionics still lay where they had died, untouched. Every rifle was accounted for. Civilians knew to stay away.

It was Glass’s work. She didn’t know him personally, but Lindo had sent her everything on him. The kills were surgical, not even a centimeter off the mark. China Girl connected to Lindo, and he used her eyes to confirm this.

Dump the bodies and get Kove. I’ve begun my search, he said.

No ceremony, no salute for their service. China Girl threw the soldiers’ bodies into a nearby dumpster, carrying two at a time with the ease of holding groceries, her back legs the scurrying wave of a millipede.

She got in the truck and headed to Tank Major Alan Kove’s residence. Unlike Glass, China Girl had been left with a tinge of curiosity. She was interested to meet Kove. She had heard so much.

= = =

Kove was not outside as Lindo had said he’d be. China Girl got out of the truck, and a hover-rover the size of a Frisbee whirled off her back. It shot over the one-story warehouse that housed Kove. She was on the outskirts of the city, where all of Lindo’s special soldiers resided. This perimeter distribution allowed the soldiers to quickly converge and surround any conflict within.

China Girl found her target. Nine feet tall and five thousand pounds was easy to find. She could see the heat signature from his human frame embedded in his Tank chassis. He was alive.

She scurried to the door and went in.

= = =

A message from Lindo woke Kove up.

“Get out of my head,” Kove slurred. He had passed out in the middle of the room. He heard a noise and tilted his head. Janie, a vagrant, was asleep in the corner. She was a drunk too, and they had a pretty good arrangement: if she fed him the booze, she got half.

Kove took a whiff of air. He was pretty sure she had pissed herself.

China Girl is waiting for you.

“OUT OF MY HEAD, EVAN!” Kove yelled. Janie stirred but settled back in. She had heard him scream before.

Your charge is low.

Kove sighed and sat up. Evan wasn’t going to leave. He was like a nagging mom. Kove could feel the disappointment, but he had learned simply to not give a shit.

Five percent.

“Yeah, I know.”

Kove didn’t remember the last time he’d charged up. He didn’t remember much these days. He gathered cues from around him: it was night. He got that from the window. He’d drunk a lot of booze. He got that from the dozens of bottles of vodka that were scattered around his apartment.

He tried to stand, but the room wobbled. He sat back down.

“Another hour,” he murmured and laid himself out.

Chao is dead.

“Good. He was an asshole. Let me sleep.”

During the civil war, Chao and Kove had been the most advanced Tank Majors ever designed. They were a hybrid that had both a Tank Major’s brute strength and a Minor’s speed and agility. Their skeleton and armor were constructed of the same osmium/depleted-uranium alloy as Raimey’s, but instead of hydraulics, chains, and gears, they had mounds and mounds of electrostatic tissue. They were as fast as a Level 4 Tank Minor and equal in strength to an old Heavy. Their hydraulshocks were scaled back, more compact, but they had thirty cartridge-less rounds per shoulder, and they could still knock over buildings and puncture the thickest armor.

Mano a mano against nearly any Tank Major, Kove would win. There’s was only one Tank Major who might give him a challenge, but he was gone, somewhere in Africa, guarding the material mines that the Northern Star needed to maintain its systems and circuitry.

Hell, he’s old. He might be dead, Kove thought. His head pulsed with the start of a wicked hangover. And of course there’s Big Brother. But Big Brother doesn’t count.

Kove cared for none of this. He just wanted to be numb. He was disfigured, an addict. Lindo knew about the addictions, but ignored this flaw. During the civil war and the wars after, Kove had served him well. He was used only occasionally now.

Kove was missing his entire lower jaw. The injury had occurred nine days into the civil war. MindCorp had taken control of the Tank Minors and was using them like puppets to stop Evan from retrieving the last component of the Northern Star: Vanessa Raimey. Kove had been sent to the Derik Building to retrieve her. He still remembered the unfinished bionics shattering the windows and pouring out of the five-story structure in a waterfall of limbs. They tore apart the softy soldiers that had come with Kove, and in the chaos of their clawing hands, they had somehow unlatched his helmet. He stamped them down, retreated, and blew up the building. But by then, Glass had arrived.

Kove didn’t know about Glass and Vanessa, but at that point it didn’t matter. Orders were orders. But that damn helmet. Glass hit him with a steel rod, knocking it off. The next strike turned off the lights and took his face.

A rubber prosthetic now covered the disfigurement, and it looked about as real as it sounded. When it was on, his unattached tongue would slop against his fake face, souring his throat with the taste of rubber. When it was off—when he drank—Janie got the whole view: a pink slug and its cave. He couldn’t enunciate, so an electronic voice box was wired in to his Mindlink implant. He spoke with his mind, and the voice sounded like him. Miserable.

Kove heard the door open and tilted his head back. Upside down, he saw a metal spider walk into the room.

“Alan Kove?” it asked. Its voice was cold; it used an electronic voice box too.

Evan, seriously, Kove transmitted.

She’s the most powerful Tank Minor ever built, Evan responded proudly.

Why don’t you cure cancer or something? Kove lurched up. The room rocked as if it were floating on the sea, but then it settled into a gentle pitch. God, I want a drink. He scanned the bottles on the ground. He thought maybe he saw a glint of glass in Janie’s hand.

NO DRINKING, Evan demanded.

“No drinking,” the spider repeated.

“Great, we’re linked.” With effort, Kove stood. His head was almost to the ceiling. His shoulders were as wide as a third of the room. The spider was tiny beneath him.

“Your charge is at five percent,” the . . . thing said. Its voice had a subtle feminine quality. “Standard protocol is to charge at fifty percent.”

“What’s your name?” Kove glanced at Janie again. There was a bottle cupped in her hand.

NO DRINKING.

Get out of my head, Evan. I swear to God, I’ll jump in the river and sink to the bottom.

“China Girl.”

“That’s a stupid name.”

“It’s my name,” she responded without offense. “Are you . . .” She searched for the words. “Drunk?”

“I wish. Hung over.”

“Can you function?”

“Yeah, yeah. Are we going to the base first?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a girl?”

“I believe so, yes.”

Kove nodded. She looked like a . . . whatever. Evan’s fancies were beyond him. He loaded his hydraulshocks, grabbed a crate of extra munitions, and threw his helmet on top of it. Then he followed China Girl out as if he were helping her move.

Chapter 6

After hammering Glass with the crowbar, Justin had left. He didn’t care about Cynthia’s explanation, didn’t care about Glass’s redemptive journey; this wasn’t a movie, this was life. If he could have, he would have killed Glass right there.

The elevator took him up to the ruins of a Data Core. The high-tech gadgetry that fueled a universe was dark, and mostly shards. A battle had taken place here long ago—maybe one of the first that had triggered all that had happened since. Cynthia had survived underground all this time, biding time, waiting for a crack in the seam of the Northern Star’s rule—a seam that might be made into a tear.

Justin stared up at the Data Core. Midway up it was shattered. A million fiber lines hung loose like guts, and the metal plate of the Data Crusher interface—the interface the local Sleepers would use to read, program, and manipulate data—hung outside the fuse, rocking back and forth like a tetherball.

Five years before, Xinting had told him not to go. Ted, her husband, had worked his way to manager for a timber harvesting company, and a few years prior, he had given Nathan—Justin—a job felling trees.

“I have to,” Nathan/Justin had said.

“Why? You can live here without worry. There are girls here—Bethany likes you. You could have a family.”

Justin laughed. It was morning. Ted had gone out to hunt. “Great, I got three girls to choose from . . . and one of them’s a hooker, by the way . . . ”

“Nathan!”

Justin shrugged. “It’s true. How can I have a family when I can’t even tell someone my real name?”

“A name isn’t who you are,” Xinting replied. “You know that. What do you think you’ll accomplish going down there?”

“I think I can control it. And if I can contr—”

Xinting slammed her hand down on the table. “YOU CAN’T! They will find you, and they will do what they did all over again.”

“Like you did.”

Xinting reeled back as if slapped. Anger and hurt radiated from her. “I was your friend, Justin. I didn’t bring you there. I was a subordinate. I did what I could.”

Justin felt bad; he knew he shouldn’t have said that. He knew the sacrifice she had made for him. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

Xinting put her hand out and rubbed his cheek. Even in his forties, he took it. It felt good to be loved.

“This is how it should be. The way things are now, down there . . . it isn’t right. People create the realities that suit them and then never leave.” Xinting rapped the table with her knuckles. “This is reality. The cabin should be drafty. We should get colds. We should have times when we’re bored or unhappy or lonely. What’s going on down there is a drug. People live and die, and they don’t even have enough friends for a funeral.”

“But I don’t want a normal life, Mom. I’m special—I have a gift. A real gift. And here I’m a nobody.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she said quietly.

She had been right.

The stairs to the surface spun up the perimeter of the Data Core, and they looked sound. But instead of racing up those stairs, leaving, going as far away as he could, Justin sat down and cried. There was nowhere he could go now where he would not be found. He didn’t want to be special anymore. He wanted to be married; he wanted children. He wanted a job he could come home from and not think about again until the next day. He wanted the monotony of stability, the subtle magic of steady love. He wanted to see the spark in his kids’ eyes when they learned something new.

And there was only one way he could get that.

Win.

So he came back. And, like Cynthia, he quietly waited for Sabot and Raimey to arrive.

Justin was sitting on a crate marked “explosives,” eating a reconstituted meal, when the monitor flickered on. “Justin, I need your help.”

He looked up at the monitor. “What do you need?”

Cynthia’s avatar looked embarrassed. “I can’t clean myself, and I need to be rolled over to prevent bed sores.”

Justin grimaced. Across the room, he could see the end of the bed and the upturn of a thin blanket, covering Cynthia’s feet.

“Please.”

Justin put down his rehydrated beans and went over. He had never met Cynthia in person, but he had seen videos and photographs. Her hair had been a fiery orange; she was short and thin, business-pretty. But what lay before him now was a melted wax version. She had modified her skull for a high-bandwidth Mindlink. Metal contact patches surrounded it, and in between, wiry gray hair grew in strings. Her skin, which had previously been milk white, was now the color of dishwater. Justin didn’t know if she had gained weight, but the litheness of her youth had deflated into the mattress. It was sad.

“What do I need to do?”

“I’m very embarrassed,” Cynthia’s avatar said. “I thought Sabot would be back by now.” In that sentence, he heard more than embarrassment; he heard worry.

“They’ll make it,” Justin said. He held his hands up as if he had already scrubbed in.

“I hope you’re right.”

“Okay, so what do I have to do?”

Her avatar sighed. “Pull off my pants. I’m wearing a diaper . . .”

Justin cleaned her up and repositioned her body on the bed to relieve hot spots. Afterward, he sat next to her and they braved the quiet.

“Do you think people will care if we win?” Justin asked.

“No. The world has moved on. Most of the world is willfully ignorant to the tragedies that allow them to be. The rest of them are enslaved.”

“They would care,” Justin said.

Cynthia smiled, but it was empty, knowing. “Do you know the laws of thermodynamics?”

“No.”

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be shifted from one form to another. In society, we have progress, stasis, or entropy. Stasis never lasts; entropy leads to dissolution and war. Only in progress is there peace.”

“What does that have to do with what we’re talking about?”

“There will always be slaves, Justin. There will always be the haves and have-nots. In the very nature of progress is sacrifice. And for the majority of the world to prosper, some must suffer. It has never not been that way: not everyone can have a place at the table. The downtrodden and abused are necessary to further mankind.”

Glass interrupted them with a moan. He stared straight at them. “I will never rest until you are dead.” His owl head tilted down and rolled back and forth.

“That wasn’t for us,” Cynthia said.

“What’s happening?”

“He’s being reborn.”

= = =

The memories came one at a time. Images, thoughts, and conversations dripping into Glass like blood through an IV, slowly filling him with life.

A drip. Little hands hold wooden bars and a big man yells at a woman with streaks of black running from her eyes. The big man hits her and she crumples to the floor. He hits her again, her head bounces, and for a moment, her eyes roll back. She crawls toward the front door. The whole time, the man is yelling, “CRAWL, YOU WHORE! CRAWL TO ’EM.” The last thing the boy (it’s me, it must be me) sees is her bare feet. The big man sulks, walking back and forth and drinking from a bottle. And then he comes over to the bars, and Mike has never felt so much fear, and the man screams, spit flying from his mouth, “Your momma’s a whore! You probably ain’t even mine!”

Another drip. Again, his (my) hands are small. He (it was me) is hungry. I walk through the old house. Wind freely passes through its warped boards. The kitchen is a mess, pots and pans piled in the sink, rot filling the air. The boy (no, me) picks up a banana that is black as night, and little brown flies scatter in a plume. I take a bite; it’s beyond soft. It melts in my mouth without any sweetness and I spit it out. I cry. I look outside. I’m afraid of it—it seems so big; I’m always in the house. But I go because there’s nothing in the refrigerator (somehow I know I already checked) and there’s nothing in the pantry except things I can’t cook.

Leaves are on the wet ground. My feet are cold—they were filthy even before—and I walk down to the creek. The gone man is my dad and he’s taken me there before. I work along the banks, afraid of the water; I’m too young to swim. I find a frog. I cry again because it looks at me—we could have been friends—and then I eat it. I find worms. I dig my hands into the mud and pull out slithering night crawlers that whip to be free and I eat them up. I eat until I’m full, and then I drink from the stream.

The next day’s the same. And the day after that, too. But by then, I’m no longer afraid.

Another drop swells and falls into the others, growing the pool: a teenager with a scraggly beard, buckteeth, and a mullet. He’s on top of me, raining down punches. He’s big, almost twenty (somehow I know we call him “Big Jim”) and he’s been held back in school. It’s my first year. Big Jim calls me a “weirdo faggot.” He calls me a “shitcricker.” I can hear, but not see, kids around us laughing. Big Jim stops for a moment to look around and soak in the attention. Then he spits on my face and begins punching again.

“But I’m no longer the boy crying by the creek,” Glass says. When Jim looks up, my fingers find a six-inch branch. I pull it into my hand.

On the fifth punch, Jimbo’s knee rises ever so slightly, and my right arm frees. I shove the branch into his left eye. He screams and falls back, clutching at his face. The branch is an inch deep. Jelly and blood roll from his eye socket. The kids scream and run for a teacher. And I stand up and lean over him.

“Tell me you’re sorry.”

Big Jim can’t hear me over his wails.

I say in full voice: “I’m going to poke your other eye out if you don’t say you’re sorry.”

Somehow this gets his attention. The overgrown boy with the stick through his eye snivels and rolls his good one toward me. He’s deathly afraid of what stares back. He whimpers and then screams, “I’M SOOOOORRY!”

That was my last day of school.

The pool grows. All indications point to a troubled man who cannot connect with the world. At the behest of a teacher who had tutored him after cornering his father years before, he joins the army. A year later he’s recruited into the Navy SEALs. And then he’s twenty-two.

The memories are no longer confusing. Mike Glass knows he is Mike Glass and he knows the memories are his. He stands next to them, a quiet, invisible observer.

He sits next to himself in a car at the end of a dirt road that leads to a farmhouse. He can see his breath. On each side of the path, the crops, corn, and wheat sway in the wind. Dusk is coming, and the pink of the vanishing sun is draining the blue sky to black.

He pulls the slide of his handgun. It’s a Heckler and Koch Mark 23 .45 with a silencer. A glint of the brass, and he lets it back. He gets out of the car and walks into the rows of corn. He jogs toward the house.

At the house, dogs are running around, playing, yelping, wolves with manners. They ignore him. Because I was already here. Yes, he was. He had just left. He doesn’t know the details, but the Mike Glass in this memory does. He has come back to complete a mission. A barn is a hundred yards to the right of the house. He moves to it, instinctually using cover, obscuring him from the house and its chimney smoke, a sign that people are home.

He slides the barn door open, moves behind the ATVs in the center and waits with his pistol drawn at the door. Ten minutes go by, and then he hears muffled, deep laughter. Two men. The door opens, and a large man appears in the gap.

Phit!

It sounds like an air gun, but the .45 caliber round blows the back of the man’s head off. Another man appears, shocked. Glass fires again, and the left side of the man’s face disappears into a meaty gore. Glass drags both men inside. Then he closes the barn and moves to the house.

He is crouched now, with the pistol out in front playing follow the leader. He moves to the back of the house, adjacent to the kitchen window, and presses against the wall before anyone inside can see him. The woman’s in the kitchen. There’s a man, still not spotted. The BOY is upstairs.

The BOY? Who’s the BOY? the present-day Glass wonders. Twenty-two-year-old Glass knows—there is an unmistakable emphasis, a feeling of discovery—but this memory isn’t ready to reveal.

The door to the living room is unlocked. He slides it open and slips in. No noise. A cat in the room wouldn’t glance in his direction.

A wall separates him from the woman. He leans over, low to the ground, and sees her. She’s washing dishes, her back to him. His shot enters the base of her skull and travels out through her forehead. She collapses, unaware of her death.

He moves to her, checks her pulse, and drags her into a walk-in pantry. This is done in less than thirty seconds. He moves through the dining room, through the family room; he sees the stairs. Up the stairs. They don’t utter a creak.

The shower is on. He maneuvers into the master bedroom. He sees a shadow of the man—cast onto the bed by the bathroom lights. He slinks in against the wall, left of the bathroom door. The man gets into the shower. The shower is to the far right; a shower curtain is used instead of glass.

Glass leans in, aims at the shadow head, and pulls the trigger. The silhouette crumples, tearing down the curtain. Shower spray and blood slick the floor. Glass leaves him; his exposed body won’t foul the mission.

The boy is in his room, connected to cyberspace through a Mindlink. The twelve-year-old doesn’t see Mike Glass enter the room. He doesn’t know that his family is dead. Glass presses a rag to his nose before he can scream. It takes four seconds, just long enough for the boy’s eyes to look into his own. The fear. The absolute fear in them. Present-day Glass shudders as two memories merge: him by the creek, chewing through a twitching frog, and this boy staring at him, too confused to be horrified.

The boy’s eyes roll back—he’s out. Glass picks him up easily; he’s small for his age. Glass leaves out the front and places the boy on the lawn. The dogs stay in the shadows and bellow like they’ve lost one of their own, but they don’t come near. He gets fuel from the barn and douses it and the house. He lights it on fire and leaves with the King Sleeper.

The memories build within Mike Glass. They are almost entirely ugly, devoid of remorse, a lion’s eulogy for its prey. But a few register as wrong. And a few tiny crumbs hold beauty. And those that do are almost entirely centered around her.

“Vanessa,” he says. He can see her. He can touch her. And when he does so, she doesn’t wilt in fear. She leans forward in want.

“We share the same blood,” she says. And they do, and that matters to Glass, because blood is life.

The black memories he leaves be. He has seen enough to know his sins. He chases the ones of her, lusting for their warmth, wanting to soak in what had been hope, just as one wakes only to close their eyes again, trying to recapture a dream.

She is the only thing he has ever loved.

Chapter 7

China Girl drove Kove to the military base north of the city. The base had been built during the Terror War, when the Derik Building was the epicenter for bionic research and implementation. Back then, new bionics were shuttled to the base daily for training and deployment around the world. But now, most of it was unused. There were no wars—certainly not in Chicago—and even globally the battles that took place were small, the meek rising, only to be slapped back down with an iron hand. The Northern Star had ended petty conflicts between nations.

They passed the main entrance without slowing down—the check-in was now a mile up the road. Kove’s head rose feet above the windshield. He had torn out the front seat and peeled the roof off to fit. The fresh air did him well. The hangover was still there, but the cool wind masked the pulsing flashes of withdrawal.

They swept by a rusted-out Harrier, where squirrels had made the engine intakes their home. A helicopter sagged to the ground. A tank. Another helicopter. A dozen ancient Humvees. Not even worth recycling.

Kove was an addict and disenchanted, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what the world had been, and now, what it was. He’d had a front row seat for most of the show.

He was tired of Evan, no doubt—they’d been roommates too long. He was tired of the digital communication and lack of privacy (when you have to tell someone to get out of your head, Kove thought, things have gone too far), but he thought then—and now—that Evan did the right thing.

All revolutions come with war. They come with cost. Countries rise and fall, empires too, and it was only our short lives that made such things seem an impossibility. To Kove, the only thing that seemed clear was that too many opinions bake a bad cake.

When Evan took over he got rid of the politicians. He got rid of overspending. He unified laws across continents—laws that were enforced, in some cases, directly by his oversight. He maintained innocent until proven guilty in cases of assumption, but if you were caught in the act, jail or worse was imposed immediately. The economy stabilized. People could walk down the streets safely, knowing that they were always being watched. Basically, Evan made the entire world Singapore.

And Kove thought that that was just fine. Freedom was a vastly overrated principle.

“You’re thinking about something, but I can’t quite follow it,” China Girl said.

His thoughts had drifted into their link. He turned away from the rusted past whipping by and looked at her. Was she trying to strike up a conversation?

“Just how things have changed.”

“You knew Evan when he wasn’t the Northern Star,” China Girl stated.

“I did.”

“What was he like?”

“You’d be surprised—he hasn’t changed much. There’s just more of him to go around.”

They reached the checkpoint and were waved through. The disrepair found in the periphery of the base vanished. This base was active. Thirty Tank Minors of varying levels were on hand, along with five Tank Majors—old models, the second generation after Raimey. The soldiers in them were young, though.

He’s recycling, Kove thought as they drove past one. The idea made him shiver. Tank Majors—especially the old ones—weren’t inherently interchangeable. Most were fused into their outer bodies, their spines and ribs hard mounted to the metal lattices that held them in place. To take them out required surgery.

A thought hit Kove. “How old are you?”

“I’m told I’m twenty-five. You’re . . . seventy?”

“No, I was born in 2022, so . . . shitballs. Yes.” Kove laughed.

“What’s funny?” China Girl crooked her head, waiting.

“Nothing really. Just—time flies. My mom used to say that every day when she woke up she’d think she was eighteen. Until she looked in the mirror.”

China Girl parked the truck. “I’m surprised how high the sky is.”

“You’ve never left the bunker?”

“I’m Evan’s assistant.”

“But before.”

“I don’t have a before.”

A Tank Minor came out and saluted them. When he saw that a spider was driving, his hand wavered, but he quickly pulled it together. Kove stepped out of the truck, relieving its springs. The Minor began to speak to Kove, avoiding the gaze of China Girl.

“She’s the boss,” Kove said and headed to a charge station.

China Girl told the Minor to fuel the helicopters and vehicle transports, and to put all bionics on standby alert. They were to wait for Lindo’s orders. He was now sifting through cyberspace searching for Glass’s location.

= = =

Cynthia was alive. Evan had uncovered the hack that had released Glass. It was beautiful. Simplicity through mastery, a test in patience that few could afford, followed by gentle moves to trigger the tumblers. She had exploited a fact that almost no one knew: Evan was neither omniscient nor omnipresent. And if you were quiet, you could sneak by.

Evan’s presence in cyberspace was like an ocean current. It was powerful and vast—and its riptide could suck you down—but it was directional. Evan had to choose where he went, what he focused on, what was a priority and what could wait. Unlike a normal person, who could multitask two or three things, he could multitask millions—and for each task, he was there. But he was not everywhere; despite being the largest and most powerful force in cyberspace, he occupied only 0.05% of it at any one time.

Still, what he did occupy, he did so with complete domination. When Evan’s mindscape unfurled and covered a portal or program, all of it was his. He could destroy it at the speed of light; he could read minds and manipulate thoughts; to boost his local intelligence, he could skim a bit of the population’s brainpower and use it like a cluster computer. And the speed with which he moved guaranteed that every few weeks most of the population would at some point cross his path. It was like swimming in a lake. The water is warm and inviting, but suddenly a cold streak rolls across your feet. You know it’s only water, but your imagination drifts to the monsters that may lie at the muddy bottom.

Evan knew he had to find her. He no longer felt fear, but he understood that genius, time, and resources were good mates for revenge, and that Cynthia had all three. So he collapsed all of his other tasks and focused his entire energy toward cyberspace and the minds that occupied it. Only the Sleepers shooting between the programs and portals saw the change. The pulsing sun flattened and expanded in a solar flare. The sperm-like Sleepers vanished, disconnecting immediately. But the seven billion others stayed online, blissfully unaware that their programs orbited this sentient sun, and a clock hand had just been extended that would soon pass over them. Someone knows where she is. Maybe a former employee who’d helped hide her underground, or maybe a person who’d run into her on the street as she’d scuttled from one safe house to the next. But someone knew. And when he found Cynthia, he would find Glass.

And more importantly, Justin-01.

= = =

The plane landed at a small abandoned airport northwest of the city. Decades of weather, grass, and weeds had turned two of the runways into broken tiles, but the one they landed on was pristine. Cynthia had maintained it.

The plane slowed down, and its batwing structure swung clockwise as they taxied toward a hangar just big enough to house the plane. Inside the hangar, the engines wound down and the belly of the plane slowly lowered. Raimey stepped out.

He had slept most of the fourteen hours. Sabot had radioed back to check on him a few times, and they’d spoken for a bit, but in response to most of the questions Raimey had asked, Sabot had crackled back with, “Cynthia will tell you.” At least the murderous tension of a day before was gone.

Sabot and a Sleeper pilot climbed down from the cockpit. Sabot said something to the Sleeper, and the man walked the opposite way, farther into the hanger. It was just the two of them. A large recycling truck was parked nearby.

“Is this what you use to get around?” Raimey asked.

“No one blinks when they see a garbage truck,” Sabot replied. “The back is completely gutted. You’ll fit.”

“I don’t know how you stayed alive this long.”

“It wasn’t easy. It may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Staying underground?”

“Staying sane.” He climbed up to the truck’s cabin and reached through the window. The hydraulic press in back opened like a mouth.

“I want to see Vanessa’s grave,” Raimey said.

Sabot shook his head. “No way. That puts us a few miles from an active military base.”

“No one will be there.”

“How do you know? You’ve been guarding rocks in Africa for the last twenty-five years. You don’t get what he is now.”

“He doesn’t have eyes everywhere.”

“No, but he’s got a lot of them, and he can predict these things, John. He created Nostradamus. Predictive algorithms are integrated into all he is. You don’t think other people have tried to stop him? Do you think the world just turned over on its belly when he took over? Most of the people who tried didn’t make it out of bed to put their boots on.”

“I need to know,” John said quietly. There was steam in his voice.

Sabot continued, hoping he’d get through. “There are other pieces to this puzzle that are already coming into place, and it’s highly likely—no, certain—that Evan will string these together. We’re up against a clock where our seconds are days to him.”

John pointed an arm-sized finger at Sabot. “Two days ago you told me that my daughter—who for the last twenty-five years I thought was dead—is alive. Take me to her fucking grave.”

Sabot let out a deep, worried sigh. He knew this was non-negotiable. They got in the truck and headed to the Derik Memorial.

Evan was a nostalgic beast. The Derik Memorial was acres of rolling hills and over five thousand graves of the fallen during the civil war. The grass was mowed in rows, with nary a weed in sight. The flowerbeds were luscious—without a wilted petal—and framed by plaques that timelined the war. It was open to the public, though no one went there (there was a virtual Derik Memorial program that was much more immersive). And on the surface, it seemed altruistic: Evan honoring the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice.

The civil war between MindCorp and the United States had become a bionic genocide. Once Cynthia understood the full breadth of Evan’s goals, she used a backdoor in the implant software to access the tens of thousands of Tank Minors that were in service and control them against their will. Screaming for help, unable to control their limbs, they tackled and tore apart Tank Majors, softy soldiers, anyone that fought for Evan. And after two weeks, the screams and cries for help had ceased. The bionics were biologically dead, either from wounds or starvation. So when the Northern Star came online and won the war, for these soldiers there was no coming home.

But the incongruities of the Derik Memorial didn’t add up. Over twenty thousand Tank Minors had died during the war. Half of them in Chicago. Where were they? The same held for the “softy soldiers,” the non-bionics. Twelve thousand of them had been shredded, grossly outmatched. There were no crosses for them, no monuments to their heroic ends.

No, this memorial had nothing to do with the war; it had to do with Evan. It was a Rorschach splat that reminded him of himself. The softy soldiers weren’t his children. The bionics were. He viewed them all as his.

Sabot parked the truck a quarter mile from the gate. He reached into the back seat and pulled out a custom made 4-gauge auto-loading shotgun with a thirty-shell drum magazine. The shotgun shells were massive and had enough buckshot to evaporate a Tank Minor’s chest at close range. Sabot held the gun with one arm as they walked toward the gate. A normal man could have barely carried it, much less fire it.

“Let’s be quick,” Sabot said nervously. This was an unnecessary detour. They were ten miles from Cynthia and relative safety, and if they were found, everything would be compromised. There was no “Plan B.” They needed to get to Cynthia undiscovered.

“I will,” Raimey said. He opened the gate and walked through. Sabot followed, his head on a swivel.

They walked through the field of crosses toward a tree that rose from a bluff. John had been here before: two and a half decades ago, before he shipped off to Africa to guard the mineral mines. They stood in front of her stone:

Vanessa Kate Raimey

Our blessed daughter comes home

2048—2069

“Evan told me he was sorry for my loss,” Raimey said gruffly. “He said he felt responsible.”

“The last part is true.” Sabot kept his eyes on the ground. He didn’t see the tear grow plump and spill down Raimey’s right cheek. But he turned in shock when Raimey’s giant right hand cleaved into the earth.

“What are you doing?” Sabot grabbed the giant’s arm, but Raimey shrugged him off, and Sabot tumbled thirty feet down the hill, knocking over four tombstones before he got control.

Raimey dug with his left hand, his right, and his left again. Tears rolled down his face like hard rain. The smell of raw earth filled the air as the dirt pile grew.

“Where is she? Where is she? WHERE IS SHE?” Raimey bellowed. His fingers hit wood and his movements got more precise. He brushed away the dirt, found the edges, and pulled the coffin from the ground. He laid it next to the hole, then stood up and paused. His breath was heavy, and suddenly he was uncertain.

What was in the box?

“Don’t open it,” Sabot said. He was back, his hair disheveled, his eyes wild. They were so close to safety. They had to get to Cynthia.

“Why?” Raimey said, his voice distant as if he was in a dream. “Are you nervous that I’ll see my daughter’s bones?”

“There aren’t bones in there, John. She isn’t in there.”

“Then what does it matter?”

Sabot moved into John’s view. “I don’t know what’s in her place.”

Raimey looked to Sabot: what he’d said was clear. It was Evan who had done this, Evan who had orchestrated a global takeover with his guile. But this happened decades ago, John thought. Back when he was just a man. What he is is what he is, a voice cooed from the back of his mind.

The box wasn’t empty; Raimey registered that. His tears dried up. He was thinking. What’s in the coffin?

“Who would dig it up, John? Only you. And he sent you away.”

Raimey stared at the dirty box. What if it was bones, hair, and teeth? He pictured the skeleton of his daughter small, but that wasn’t true. She was an adult when she died. He reached down to open the coffin. Sabot shielded his face, expecting a bomb.

There will be no bomb, Raimey thought absently. It would do nothing to him but warm the air.

He lifted the lid.

Vanessa Raimey lay there, completely preserved. An adult. He had never seen her in person past the age of sixteen, but there she was, perfect. She wore a purple dress. Her eyes were closed, her caramel skin without a blemish. Her long black hair with its wavy curls, pulled back behind her head. Her arms were across her stomach, holding a bouquet. The bouquet was rotten and black, dust in the shape of flowers. It had laid against her bosom for twenty-five years.

Raimey’s head spun. His mind registered that what he saw was wrong, but not enough to provide motivation to his limbs. He was paralyzed. He couldn’t pull his eyes from her. Sabot was saying something in the background, but he sounded far away.

“WE HAVE TO GO NOW!” Sabot screamed. He pulled on Raimey, but it had as much effect as a man tugging on an oak tree. Raimey didn’t move. He was elsewhere, his brain on pause, the circuit breaker tripped.

Vanessa. Her name repeated over and over in his head. His mind compared the child to the adult. Back and forth. He saw Vanessa as a child in the casket, then back to her adult form. Then back to the child.

Her eyes opened. She turned her head slowly, but it caught for a second. She hadn’t moved in twenty-five years. She hadn’t moved ever.

“So you know,” Dr. Lindo said from his daughter’s mouth.

“Why?” John asked, his voice barely audible.

= = =

China Girl turned to Kove. They got the same message. The Derik Memorial.

= = =

“I had no choice, John,” she said. He said. “I would have lost the war.”

“You said you’d protect her,” Raimey said.

“Raimey, we have to go!” Sabot yelled.

“Sabot?” The Vanessa doll couldn’t see out of her crate. It sat up. “Cynthia is alive!”

Sabot raised his gun to the doll. Raimey blocked it with his hand.

Unbeknownst to John and Sabot, six feet down and all around, the soil was moving. The buried Minors, some just pieces, some nearly whole, were scratching and clawing through their caskets, tunneling up to the surface like worms.

“Where is she?” Raimey said to the doll.

Hands broke through the soil. The dead soldiers, now controlled by satellites three hundred miles up, struggled out of the ground.

“With me, John.”

“Let her go.”

The daughter doll laughed. “I can’t do that.”

“Why create this body? Why make it in her image? You sick motherfucker.”

“It’s her grave. Who else would it look like? Africa was good for you, John. I wanted you to live; I sent you away to save you. But I knew that if you came back, you’d come back for her. That you’d have to see. And I’d have to know.”

Behind Raimey, Sabot fired. The giant turned to witness a nightmare before him. Two hundred decrepit Minors were pulling themselves out of the ground. Some were decimated, some were nearly whole, but they were all rags and rot, exposed skeletons and electric eyes, electrostatic tissue hanging like meat off the bone. They limped and dragged themselves up the hill, and the earth continued to pop as still more clawed their way to the surface.

Sabot fired on the ones closest to them, tearing them to shreds. John picked up the doll shaped like his daughter. It wasn’t her, no matter the similarity, no matter the precision. She was Lindo, his cunning, his twisted consciousness.

“GIVE ME MY DAUGHTER!” Raimey screamed.

The doll laughed.

“We have to get out of here, John!” Sabot said. The death dummies were in shambles, but their numbers continued to increase as more and more of them cored up from their graves. There was no exit except right through them.

Raimey raised the doll to his face. “I’m coming, Evan. And when I find her, I’ll find you.”

He crushed Vanessa Raimey in his hands. It was made in her image, but it wasn’t her.

Raimey turned to the hundreds of dead Minors. The drive chains around his waist roared to life. It was the sound of a rollercoaster barreling down the track.

“Let’s get to Cynthia,” Raimey said.

He charged through the decrepit battalion. Sabot followed in his wake, picking off any Minors that somehow avoided the giant’s crushing assault. Raimey ran over them like a horse over mice, trampling them beneath his feet, knocking them to the side, picking them up and throwing them hundreds of feet out of the way. In Africa, an elephant would flee rather than cross Raimey’s path. Lindo’s death dummies weren’t as wise.

To their right, Sabot saw headlights fast approaching. That’s why Lindo spoke—to keep us around. The corpses were a distraction.

“Ahead, John. Get to the truck.”

Sabot shot his way through the soldiers. But Raimey veered toward the oncoming vehicle.

= = =

China Girl and Kove came around the bend.

“There,” Kove said. He saw the intermittent flak of Sabot’s shotgun near the entrance, and along with each muzzle flash, a snapshot of the Lindos as they attacked.

Kove locked down his helmet. It was painted with a demon’s grin and a stream of red tears that rolled away from the eyeholes cut into the heavy metal. “I’ll disable the truck,” he said. It was ahead in their beams.

RAIMEY IS COMING FOR YOU. GET OUT OF THE VEHICLE, Lindo told them.

Where? China Girl asked, but it was too late. Their left headlight revealed a massive shoulder and then Raimey was on the road charging directly at them, ten yards and closing. China Girl knew Raimey’s specs, but she hadn’t realized how big he was. He was much larger than Kove, much larger than any standard Heavy. What ran at them with its shoulder ducked may as well have been a meteor careening down from the sky.

“SHI—” Kove started, and then the impact collapsed the front end. There was a gnashing sound as Raimey started to pummel right through the truck. The engine exploded and the fuel line went. The rear wheels lifted from the inertia, threatening to flip end over end.

Kove flew out the front, glancing off Raimey’s side as he pinwheeled into a gully. China Girl slammed against the windshield, the sudden stop creating massive g forces too great to move against. She saw Raimey’s face. Unlike Kove, he wasn’t wearing his helmet. She pulled out a small sidearm with her foreleg and aimed.

Raimey saw a freak of a soldier, a spidery crab-like creation, unholster a gun and point it at him. He heaved the truck onto its back and started scissor-punching down with his eight-hundred-pound fists.

China Girl was trapped. She tried to squirm to a window, but it transformed into a crushed slit with just one of the giant’s blows. She flipped onto her back and put all her limbs against the truck’s floor, trying to create space.

Kove rolled onto all fours, disoriented.

He’s going to kill me. Help, China Girl said.

Raimey’s back was to Kove as he pounded the truck into the ground. Kove stood up, shaken, trying to regain his balance. Double vision settled in. But he charged Raimey, his arm cocked back, the hydraulshock loaded and ready.

Raimey saw him. He grabbed the two tons of mangled truck by its axles and swung it down onto Kove, bludgeoning him into the earth.

Raimey was just about to finish the job when bright lights fell on him. Sabot pulled up in the truck. “Get in!”

Raimey hesitated. He didn’t leave loose ends, but he saw the army of Lindos approaching and knew that reinforcements were surely on their way. He climbed in the back.

“If you get in my way, I will kill you!” Raimey screamed as Sabot accelerated away.

= = =

One hundred Lindos approached the ball of mangled truck. Kove pushed it off himself and rolled to his knees. He felt like he might throw up. He took off his helmet and pulled off the prosthetic so he could breathe better. Sucking in the cool air, he waited for his head to settle. It rang like a kettledrum.

A death dummy approached him. “I expect more from you,” the Lindo said. In a flash, Kove reached out and crushed it in his hand. The other Lindos glared at him as they walked by, but they didn’t utter a peep. They flipped over the truck, and China Girl exploded out of it.

“Why would you make him that powerful?” Kove asked. He had never experienced something so much stronger than him.

It was necessary at the time. You’re faster.

“Big whoop.”

“Do you know where they are?” China Girl asked Evan.

“Yes, I’m following him by satellite,” the Lindos replied.

Kove stood up and walked over to China Girl. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. He is much stronger than I thought he’d be.”

He is the most powerful being on the planet, Evan said.

“Maybe you should have taken someone else’s daughter,” Kove replied.

The Lindos stared at Kove—not used to the insubordination—then turned around and walked back to their graves. Another vehicle is being sent from the base. I will let you know where they’re headed.

The mutilated horde gathered up the remains of their comrades who had been shot or maimed, then put them back in their graves. Then they slipped back into their own and went to sleep.

This time, forever.

= = =

Sabot tore down the street, pushing the truck to its limit. Raimey was behind him in the bed. A metal screen separated the two.

“Where are we going?” Raimey asked.

“I don’t know. We can’t go directly back to Cynthia. Lindo’s watching us. I have to think.”

“There’s no backup plan?”

“I wasn’t expecting us to go to the fucking Derik Memorial, John!”

“I had to know for sure,” Raimey said quietly.

Sabot was in no mood to console. He drove into the city, contemplating how to shake the eyes that were now watching them from space. Underground somewhere. They had to go underground.

Three hundred miles above, Lindo’s eyes tracked them, scoured ahead, calculated their possible routes. The tracking duties were transferred seamlessly from satellite to satellite as the ring spun around the earth like a hula hoop.

The city was deep and difficult to sift through. It was built up, not out, a product of a world without oil, where the luxury of space was trumped by the need for efficiency. Most of the buildings were a hundred stories or more. They created deep abysses, mile-long shadows that hid those who didn’t want to be found. Lindo had eyes, but in these mega-cities, they did him little good.

Lindo lost track of Sabot a mile into the city when he turned down a street called Lower Wacker. That street hadn’t seen the sun in fifteen years.

“Where are we going?” Raimey asked.

“Around. I need to make sure we aren’t being followed.”

Sabot was still stewing about the Derik Memorial. He would have punched Raimey through the grate if it wouldn’t have resulted in his own dismemberment. Stupid. He turned down increasingly smaller streets until they were in an alley where lack of use had turned decades of trash into a compost mush. The truck’s tires left a trail as if they were driving through snow.

Sabot parked the truck. “We’re here.”

They got out. Sabot jogged ahead, checking angles and ushering Raimey forward. They were encased in dark, and the buildings surrounding them leaned over the road.

“Where are we?”

“We’re going to one of the first data nodes that Cynthia’s Minors defended during the civil war,” Sabot said. “The military ended up bombing it.”

As they got closer, John realized why the buildings looked strange: they were at the edge of a blast radius.

“Did they use a bunker buster?” Raimey asked. The pavement beneath his feet felt spongy.

“Yep. That’s why this area’s abandoned. The ground’s too unstable.” Sabot pointed up to a building that looked like they had stacked the bricks but forgotten the mortar. As they passed, a dozen bricks blew off the top and crashed near them. “Buildings around here collapse all the time.”

Ground zero was a pile of eight skyscrapers, a million tons of concrete and steel. A hollow whistle filled the air and a sliver of sun peeked through. A group of fluffed-out pigeons sat in its light.

To John, it felt like he was walking on piano strings. The ground thrummed with instability. “I don’t think this will hold me,” he said. They had climbed over one of the mounds. Ahead he saw where the whistle had come from—there was a sinkhole one hundred yards across. If the floor gave, it was a long way down.

“It looks worse than it is. You’ll be fine.” Sabot walked ahead.

Raimey paused for a moment. As if hearing his thoughts, a chunk of cement rolled over the side of the chasm and disappeared. It was a moment until a clatter indicated touchdown. Come on down! You’ll be fine! He looked at the pigeons. They looked back. A saying from when he was a kid popped into his head.

“YOLO,” he grunted.

Raimey slowly made his way toward the desecrated pit that had once been the world’s marvel. And toward the woman who had helped create him.

= = =

Stefan Barrick never did anything to anyone. Fifty-four, out of shape, losing his hair in an unfair lily pad of patches, it was his birthday today. He was spending it with two virtual hookers.

He liked talking with real women in chat rooms, but his sexual tastes were a little extreme for most, even virtually. Not illegal, just extreme. He liked to be hit, he liked to slap back . . . consensually, of course. Maybe even get kicked in the balls a bit. His last real girlfriend that he’d actually touched in the flesh thought he was a freak. He was in his early twenties back then, thinner, a full head of hair—a tech for MindCorp right before the bubble burst.

He wasn’t a Sleeper—he didn’t fit that profile—but he was good with circuit boards and he had a medical tech background, which helped him move up the ladder in the healthcare division. He missed those days: he had made good money, and people had respected him. Now he was fucking fake hookers. Asking a program to stomp his balls. He liked being humiliated—it got him off—but this was humiliating, which was different.

After the civil war, the Coalition—the Northern Star, Dr. Lindo, whatever you wanted to call it—took over all of MindCorp’s infrastructure around the world. Most of the employees got to keep their jobs, but the government shuttered some divisions, including Stefan’s.

But a few months after the whole thing went to shit, he had been contacted out of the blue. He was hired off-book to help outfit an underground medical space the size of an auditorium. He knew it was top secret—hell, he could guess who it was for; it wasn’t like there weren’t WANTED messages with her face in every program in cyberspace—but the money was good, really good, and he liked her. He thought that no matter what propaganda was being twisted in the news after, she’d done a good thing.

“Who’d want to run the world?” he grunted. The world was a turd circling the bowl.

A small fist wrapped in black leather punched him in the jaw. “I didn’t say you could talk.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

During the job, he and the others had always been blindfolded and escorted to the location. He had recognized the man’s voice who escorted them—a man who’d been with her on tours: Sabot. The place took four months to build, and maybe if it had only been a week he wouldn’t have noticed, but being sightless while walking in a subway, he grew to understand how the blind got keen in other areas. He began to hear things that he normally wouldn’t have noticed.

And late one evening, on their way back out of the subway tunnels, he came to realize that a sound he had first heard as distant thuds . . . was music. A bar.

The thuds began to shape, and soon, in his imagination, the rest of the notes filled in. It was Mexicali music.

His curiosity got the best of him. How many Mexicali bars were there in Chicago? The answer: two. One was far south—he knew that wasn’t it. And the other was in the Loop.

Stefan was proud of his sleuthing, but he had no plans to squeal. At one point he thought about a little blackmail—just for a second—but then he realized that Sabot could tear his arms off and would have no incentive not to. After all, what did they have to lose?

Now, Stefan was dressed in black leather. He didn’t like the black masks with the zipper—he was claustrophobic and it made him feel like serial killer—but he enjoyed the rest of it. One of the hookers, a tall redhead, wore a patent leather outfit that let her tits hang out. Her nipples were pierced. Nice touch. He was bent over in front of her. She was working him with a dildo.

“You like that, baby?” she purred.

“Yes . . . yes.”

She shoved it harder. He cried out in pain.

“You’re not supposed to like it.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t like it.”

The other hooker was Asian. She was dressed in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform. She was in front of him, her legs spread apart, his face close to her snatch. But he wasn’t allowed to lick—only watch. Their job was to humiliate him, tease him to the brink, and they were doing just fine.

The dildo stopped moving in and out. It just stopped.

“I promise I don’t like it,” he panted. The redhead said nothing.

The Asian who was so rude, so dirty, had become a mute, too. He glanced past her crotch to her belly. She wasn’t breathing. He looked up at her face. Her eyes were closed in pleasure, and she was biting her tongue, but she looked like a wax doll.

The program had crashed. Fuck. He pulled his pelvis forward to get free of his fetish, then turned around. Yep, the redhead was a three-dimensional photo, too; the big black dildo pointed at him accusingly and her face was frozen in sexual anger. She must have been shifting positions, really about to give it to him, because one of her legs hovered off the bed, stuck on some invisible shelf.

He stood up and walked past the girls. The room had no exit, just a big bed. It was modeled after a cheap motel room.

“Tilapia,” Stefan said, very annoyed. Great birthday.

Nothing happened.

“TILAPIA,” he over-enunciated. The safe word should have removed him from the sex program.

Again, nothing.

“You are fucking kidding me.” This had never happened before. He was stuck. Virtual sweat, cold and uncomfortable, prickled the back of his neck.

He felt watched.

A grinding noise shook the room. Across from him, a wall rippled as if it were a reflection in disturbed water, and a milky disco ball floated through. It was attached to a clear tentacle, almost like a giant parasitic worm.

Stefan scrambled behind the dildo hooker.

“Tilapia,” he whispered, and the orb laughed. Its good humor shook through Stefan’s every cell.

This can’t be . . . what could it want?

“I want information, Stefan Barrick. That is all. You’ll be back to fucking in no time.”

“Are you . . . ?”

“Yes.”

“What would you want with me? I don’t know anything.”

Stefan thought of the build twenty plus years ago.

“Ahhh . . . you perjure yourself, Stefan. Tsk, tsk.” The orb drew closer.

“I would have told you, or a bionic, or whatever.” Stefan was pressed against the corner. “I didn’t know you’d want it.”

“You’re right: obviously an oversight. The location of the woman who orchestrated a war against the United States wouldn’t be of exceptional value.” The orb’s voice grew sinister. “I CAN SEE YOUR THOUGHTS.”

The milky disco ball snapped itself around Stefan’s head, muffling his shocked scream. The catatonic hookers watched absently as Dr. Lindo sifted through Stefan’s brain. Evan didn’t care about Stefan’s childhood in Maine; he didn’t care about Tara, the girl he had loved in college, or his uncle’s angry outburst at his grandfather’s funeral. But the Pieces did. The Forced Autism had given their intellect over to Evan, but it had also stripped them of their own identities; and the resulting empty pit had left the Pieces with a hunger that could not be sated. They slurped up Stefan’s memories like a string of spaghetti, leaving the plate clean. They relived his life, his conquests, his regrets, mostly those of a small man who would be forgotten quickly in the world, except by those few that knew him. But for the Pieces, Stefan’s life was a glass of water to a man dying of thirst.

Evan didn’t care. He could feel them gobble away Stefan’s soul—he could see the memories, too—and he had learned that this was a necessary sacrifice to keep them steady.

And he had found what he was looking for.

= = =

A functioning Data Core provided two ways to get to the bottom: a large elevator and a corkscrewing platform that ran the perimeter of the cavernous structure. Both of these had been decimated by the bunker buster. Raimey followed Sabot as they slowly descended from one teetering slab of concrete to another.

“They’ll hold,” Sabot reassured.

Sweat peppered Raimey’s face. His giant hands gripped two warped girders as he sidestepped to a brittle landing where the Samoan stood.

“This is bullshit,” Raimey said.

Sabot laughed. “You’re doing great. I wish I had a camera.”

Raimey made it to the landing, and his weight caused it to sag noticeably. “There’s another way out, right?”

“Yeah. An old subway.”

“Thank God.”

They made it the rest of the way down, and when Raimey’s feet touched solid ground, he felt genuine relief. He didn’t have the body type for spelunking.

The light from up top made Raimey feel like he was in a well. Sticking with the theme, the floor was covered in a collage of debris consisting of shattered equipment, pieces of the Data Core, and the external buildings that had toppled in when the bomb detonated twenty-five years before. Everything was gray and warped. Inches of silt made the jagged hills furry, reminding John of dead coral. Dust seemed content to float in the air.

Not everything was broken though. As Raimey followed Sabot, smart mines would rise like groundhogs and retreat back when Sabot thought them to. Old turrets hung willy-nilly around the perimeter at odd angles, but their lights blinked, and Raimey realized it was camouflage.

Raimey stepped over a piece of thick glass a kid could half-pipe—a shard of the Data Core. “Why here?” he asked.

“Speed. We had no choice. After Cynthia got hurt, we couldn’t really move. So we made do.”

They came to a blasted wall covered in shredded girders and chunks of cement. Sabot grabbed a five-hundred-pound slab of concrete and tossed it to the side.

“I need your help.”

In two sweeps, Raimey pushed aside debris that, years before, had taken Sabot hours to stack. Behind the debris was an automated door as thick as the door to a bank vault.

Sabot pulled a tether from his neck and connected it to a nearby terminal. A moment later the door opened to a long hallway that sloped down to another door. The turrets in here didn’t play possum; they followed every movement as Sabot and Raimey walked past. Raimey saw vents.

“This is a kill room.”

“Yep.”

The next door opened into an underground warehouse. John saw a lanky man in his forties whom he recognized immediately. He had the same searching eyes he’d had as a boy. Justin. Above Justin was a screen that could have belonged in a movie theater, and an ageless Cynthia watched him from it. She smiled openly, and while John knew it wasn’t really her—she looked the same as she had when John was forty—the vibrancy she projected was reassuring.

That feeling would pass when he saw her true form.

Sabot walked to the other side of the room and checked on the real Cynthia. Justin said something to him and Sabot nodded, apparently content with what he heard.

“You came,” Cynthia said. It was projected from the screen.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“I thought it was highly possible you would kill Sabot before he told you the truth. Thank you for not doing so.”

“He caught me on a good day.”

Raimey walked through the aisles, looking at all the supplies. There was enough armament for a small war. There were boxes of medical gear, surgical equipment draped in clear plastic, crates of food, drums of water. He saw the Tank Major chair.

He didn’t notice the skeleton man until he had almost passed him. The man was tethered to a gurney with massive cords of steel ratcheted tight by winch. The man stirred slightly, but seemed unconscious.

“Who is that?” Raimey asked.

“That’s Mike Glass.”

Raimey had heard of Mike, but they’d never worked together. Glass was Lindo’s lackey. “Why is he here?”

Cynthia smiled. “He’s here for the same reason you are. He loved Vanessa.”

Raimey looked at the charred skeleton again. “How?”

= = =

Justin-01 sat in the corner while Cynthia filled Raimey in on Glass, on his relationship with his daughter, and on the subsequent modifications Lindo had made to wipe Glass’s allegiance clean.

Raimey was much older than Justin had imagined. He had been a child and barely conscious when he had last seen the giant, but he could still clearly picture the tormented man who had let Xinting take him away. The thirty-plus years had not been kind to him. Obviously his body was the same—a remarkable combination of mass and Tetris-like efficiency. But his face sagged, and the skin hung from his neck. He listened with a frown while Cynthia spoke to him, and his gray eyes held the coldness—and maybe loneliness—of a man haunted by the worst actions of humanity. A man who had been a lever for many.

Cynthia finished. No one spoke for a moment.

“How are we going to find her?” Raimey asked.

“We know the Northern Star is in Washington, D.C.,” Cynthia replied. “But we don’t know exactly where. That’s why we need Justin. I need you to escort him to the Data Sump outside the city.”

“What’s a Data Sump?” Raimey asked.

“It’s a satellite tower that transmits all data in the region to the ring in space,” Justin replied.

Raimey looked down at him. “I’m glad to see you’re still around. How’s the woman?”

“Her name is Xinting. She’s good.”

“Good. It was one of the few things I’ve done right.” Back to the topic: “What does getting to the Data Sump do for us?”

“The Sump is completely unrestricted,” Justin said. “It sends dozens of zetabytes per second to the Northern Star and around the globe. I’ll be at full power, and hopefully I’ll find the Northern Star’s tail.”

“Anything living online has one,” Cynthia said.

Raimey looked to Sabot. “English?”

“From the Data Sump, Justin can locate the bunker that holds the Northern Star.”

“Why hasn’t anyone done this before?”

“Nations have tried,” Cynthia said. “There was a war fifteen years ago, led by Russia.”

“I’ve never heard that,” Raimey said.

“You take information for granted, John. Evan controls it. Washington, D.C. is a nuclear wasteland. And anyone who knew, Evan erased their memories or killed them.”

“What makes us different?” Raimey asked.

“Had we done this fifteen years ago? Nothing. We would have died before we got started. But fifteen years to you is thousands to him. Evan has grown introverted, uninterested in the world. He hasn’t manufactured Minors or Majors in a decade, except for a few exceptions. Above all—above your armor and strength, above Glass’s speed and aim, above Justin’s mind and my planning—it’s his apathy that gives us the advantage. That is what we will prey on. He doesn’t care for this world.”

“Tell them about Big Brother,” Sabot said.

“He does have a one-hundred-fifty-foot-tall bionic guardian called Big Brother that defends the bunker,” Cynthia said.

“A minor omission,” Justin said.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Raimey reassured Justin. “We’ll probably die at the Data Sump.” To Cynthia, he added: “How guarded is it?”

It was Sabot who answered. “A few Minors, plus the Sleepers that maintain the core. But once we’re there, reinforcements will come.”

“And after that, how do we get to D.C.?”

“Only you and Glass can survive that wasteland. A train will take you there,” Cynthia said. “I know I don’t look it, but I’m still very strong online. Justin and I will try to hack the bunker door.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Raimey asked.

“We have acquired a seven-kiloton nuclear bomb.”

“That I can carry.”

“Yes.”

“You’re good, Cynthia,” Raimey said.

On the screen, Cynthia curtsied, then turned to Sabot. “Get Raimey refitted and calibrated.” To Raimey, she said, “They reduced you to seventy-five percent after the war, correct?”

Raimey nodded.

“Well, it’s time to get you back to one hundred.”

= = =

He remembered rising through the murk. His vision was smeared with Vaseline, sounds were underwater, and when he realized he was awake, a deep fear filled his gut and a blotch of movement reminded him of . . . hands. Giant, crushing hands.

“The boy!” Glass screamed, and the effort burnt his chest. The blurry vision vanished in a pixelated pop. He was in a hospital room, and Evan sat in the corner, reading a chart. Lindo put it down and came over.

“Calm down, Mike. Shhh. Everything’s okay.” Evan put a hand on his chest. “It’s over. Janis is dead.”

Janis was the one who had torn him apart. Glass remembered how the Chinese soldiers—the ones who had found a way to corrupt the giant—had watched as Janis ripped through the Data Core to get to him and the boy. The boy . . . the King Sleeper. Glass was overwhelmed with a memory of Janis crashing through the Data Core, raining down impaling shards of melted sand. He could smell his own blood.

Evan snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Mike, snap out of it.” The giant fell back into the shadows.

“I shot through my leg,” Glass said. He was groggy, but his own voice surprised him. His long and lazy southern accent was there, but different. Hollow. He remembered the giant grabbing him, tearing him, and he tried to get up, like it was happening again.

“How am I alive?”

For sixty years medicine had kept people alive way past their expiration date, and Glass was no exception. His right lung was mutilated, his heart was pierced, his liver destroyed. His lower body had been crushed to the point that his skin held the internal bones and tissue like a haggis.

Lindo patted Glass’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t let you die.”

“Where’s the boy?”

Lindo’s smile waned. “He’s dead. A lot’s happened in the last eight months.”

“Eight months?” Glass started coughing uncontrollably. It was hard to breathe, and the more he thought about it, the harder it got.

“What is it?” Lindo asked.

“I can’t breathe,” Glass said. “My chest.” He coughed and hacked.

Lindo laughed.

“It’s not funny!” Glass said. “Get a nurse.”

“Calm down, Mike. You can’t breathe. You have no lungs.”

Glass’s coughing fit ebbed as he forced his mind to ignore the impulse. He understood. Not the scope of what had happened—but that Evan was a toymaker.

“What have you done to me?”

“First, I saved your life.” Evan paused to drive that point home. “Then I took what was left of you and improved it.”

“Am I a Tank Major?”

Evan shook his head. “You’re a precision instrument, Mike. I wouldn’t make you a hammer.”

“What then?”

“I developed a semi-organic tissue that contracts in response to current. For power conservation, it’s important that it contract rather than expand—”

“What am I?”

Evan’s face turned. He had gotten excited talking about his accomplishments. “We’re not finished yet, Mike. We still have to graft on the skin.”

“The skin . . .”

Glass thrashed about. He was restrained. He looked down. His body looked human, but it was encased in a black rubber of some kind. His frame was bigger.

Evan was irritated; this hadn’t gone how he’d planned. “We’re not done.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” Glass said. His voice wasn’t that of a friend or a subordinate. It was the voice of a killer.

“If you’re unhappy with the four-billion-dollar body I gave you, I can always cut you out of it. I’m sure another cripple would be excited to take your place. You can live the rest of your life in a bed.”

“Show me,” Glass said, quieter.

That pleased Evan. He picked up a mirror from a table and held it to his chest. “You’re in shock—you don’t understand what I’ve done for you. I was a bit peeved, but I’m okay. Once I graft back the skin and put in your eyes you’ll be good as new. Better.”

Glass realized his angle of sight was off. It felt a mile from his mouth.

“I didn’t want you to see my work until it was done, but so be it. I’m looking out for your best interests. Remember that.”

Lindo turned the mirror. A carbon fiber skull, reinforced with thin plates of depleted uranium, stared back. Wires ran from empty eye sockets to two camera sensors mounted to the headboard. The mouth moved, but it was a speaker that screamed.

“You are going to be my crowning achievement, Mike. You will make the quiet of night as terrifying as the frontlines of war. World leaders will fear your name, and if vampires existed, they would run from your shadow.”

= = =

Glass woke from the memory. An old Tank Major sat thirty feet away from him in a maintenance chair. The dreadlocked black man worked on the giant, sliding huge shoulder magazines into place, and monitors near the giant showed his brain spinning on its y-axis as the software optimized the implant.

“Sleeping Beauty’s up,” Justin said.

The others turned. Glass didn’t understand the reference. It wasn’t a part of his memories.

“I can’t believe that’s a man,” Raimey said. Glass looked even less human than Raimey.

Glass felt . . . embarrassment? He shied away from their stares.

“It’d be tragic if he wasn’t such an asshole,” Justin said.

“He’s the one that kill—” Raimey remembered.

“Yeah.”

“Raimey’s kill count is over fifty thousand people,” Cynthia said from above. Raimey’s eyes darkened. “It angers you, John, but there are no stones being thrown. During the civil war, I was responsible for eighty thousand deaths, and my device has contributed to twenty million deaths worldwide. Justin, as a King Sleeper, killed four hundred high-value targets.”

“I was a kid—I don’t even remember,” Justin said defensively.

“Neither does Glass,” Cynthia said, her virtual lip curled. “We are all peers. Realize it and get over it, because none of us are going to heaven.”

Another memory tugged on Glass, and he let it pull him down.

= = =

A Sleeper designed to pilot a helicopter flew the chopper twenty stories above the city, guiding it between the tall structures. China Girl hung below it with a sniper rifle pinned to her shoulder.

Lindo had narrowed the truck’s location to a half-mile radius. Stefan, the unfortunate soul who had helped build Cynthia’s panic room, didn’t know the exact coordinates. Lindo had probed and probed, working through all the man’s memories from top to bottom, combing every brain cell that might hold a clue, leaving mush in his wake. The Pieces had fed on what was left. Stefan never woke up.

It was in West Loop, though—that much was certain. There could be tire . . .

“ . . . tracks,” Kove finished through the link. “I see tire tracks—do you register?” Kove was on the ground, fully armored, carrying a minigun that fired 20mm armor-piercing incendiary rounds. He was on the lower level where the helicopter could not go. The crowds of homeless scattered like roaches as he approached them, breathlessly running at thirty miles an hour. This was the underbelly of the city, dank and dark, the trusses rusted and dripping, never seeing the sun. It was the perfect place for a shrew to hide.

Yes, Lindo said. Those are them.

“China Girl?”

Converging on your point.

At the base, five helicopters on standby fired up, and four Tank Majors and fifteen Minors ran toward them.

= = =

Cynthia connected into Raimey’s implant and removed the soft power restrictor. Raimey’s body shuddered, momentarily shut down, then fired back to life. Sabot worked around his body, smearing joints with thick grease. The hydraulshock magazines—each twice the size of a footlocker—gleamed with the clean brass of crimped artillery rounds. Five million foot-pounds of fury at the end of an indestructible fist.

“You’re doing very well, John,” Cynthia said. “Your mind has no flat spots, your body is healthy for your age, and there’s no sign of toxicity in your blood.”

“I’m just lucky, I guess,” Raimey said.

Sabot laughed. “Luckiest guy in the world, right?”

An alarm sounded.

“What’s that?” Justin asked.

“Quiet,” Cynthia said. Her on-screen persona withdrew as if deep in thought. Fear filled her eyes. “They found us. Sabot, finish with John. Justin, put on the body armor in the corner and arm yourself the best you can. I’m going into Glass.”

She disappeared. Half of her video screen was replaced with surveillance cameras. In one of them, Kove stood above the sinkhole. Then the camera angle changed, and they could see a helicopter landing. Before it did, something fell off of it. It looked like a giant bug. It scrambled toward the Tank Major.

“How much time do we have?” Raimey asked.

Sabot continued to work on and around him, but with urgency now. “Ten minutes, maybe less. We have security they won’t detect until they’re close.”

“Will it kill them?”

“I doubt it.”

Justin found a bulletproof vest and put it on. He went to the guns and grabbed an FN90, a tiny bull pup submachine gun. Five-fifty round clips were next to it.

“Those rounds will penetrate most Tank Minors at close range,” Sabot said. “Just spray—there’s very little recoil.”

= = =

Glass sat next to Vanessa while she bathed. He didn’t get in the tub—that would have been silly—but she let him watch. He ran his hands through her long, curly hair, squeezing the soapy water from it. She wasn’t self-conscious; she trusted him.

Glass saw himself in the mirror. He had fake human skin and lidless green eyes. This was a period when he could only see well at night, before the FLIR sensors. He had requested night vision from Evan. He remembered that. When Tank Major Janis had chased him down and crushed him in the pitch black of the bunker, it had changed his view of the dark. He had wanted never to see shadows again.

One spot in his vision was oversaturated; it blinked and wavered—a candle. She was bathing by candlelight.

He was burdened by worry for her. MindCorp had refused the Coalition’s demand that it dismantle. He and the Twins had a mission tomorrow. They were going to infiltrate a Data Core to start the takeover.

She was speaking to him.

“What?” he asked.

“I said, what are you thinking about? You zoned.”

“I think you should get out of the city for the next few weeks.”

“Why?”

What he knew was top secret, so he lied. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with MindCorp.”

“What could happen? There’ll be a compromise; there always is.” Her wet body rose in front of him. “Towel?”

He handed her one.

“Plus, Evan said he needed me,” she said. “We have to tell him about us.”

“Needed you for what?”

She dried her hair. “He didn’t say, but he wanted me to be at the Derik Memorial tomorrow at nine a.m. sharp.”

How did I not see the clues? Glass wondered. Because you’re stupid. Just a hick from Ken-tuck-eh. You trusted Evan because he made you feel important.

He was in the bedroom lying next to her, running his fingertips along her back.

“I would like to take two weeks off. But with you,” Vanessa said.

“I’ve never been on a vacation,” Glass said.

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Where would you want to go?”

“North Dakota.”

She squinched up her face. “Really?”

“I hear you can see forever. There are no buildings. There are even buffalo.”

“Why there? I was thinking the beach.”

“I think I could breathe there. I think I would feel.”

“Feel what?”

Glass had finished the sentence, but he knew it wasn’t enough. “That life means something.”

“You don’t now?”

He kissed her. “Only with you. Evan didn’t tell you what it was about?”

“I’d think you’d know. You hang out with him all the time.”

Evan hadn’t uttered a peep.

Glass sensed that someone else was in the room. Vanessa didn’t notice. Glass turned around and saw Cynthia Revo standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“You have to come out now.”

“I . . . I don’t want to,” he said. He looked back at Vanessa, at her hair, at the smooth line and shape of her back, at his arm around her. “This is the last night, isn’t it?”

“The last night you felt happiness? Yes. But you’d see her again. You need to come out now. Dr. Lindo is at our doorstep. You, Raimey, and Justin have to leave.”

Glass turned back to Vanessa. She was talking, undeterred by his change in focus. The memory marched forth even without his direct interaction. “How do I know this is all true?”

“Go by feel,” Cynthia said. “Each of us sees the world differently, and because of that, manipulated memories feel phony, like a dream, because they’re manufactured without the subject’s cadence and perspective.”

This is real, Glass thought. He had been in this bedroom. He had held her and worried about the coming days. “I don’t want to leave her.”

Cynthia smiled. “This memory is yours now. It will always be with you. But this isn’t her. The real Vanessa is out there in the dark, underground, screaming for someone to help her. SAVE HER. This is a mirage of what was, Mike. Nothing more. It’s true, it’s yours, but it’s a siren leading you toward a rocky shore. If you stay here, you will die.”

= = =

Cynthia flashed back on the screen.

“Sabot, untether Glass. I have to welcome our guests.”

= = =

China Girl crawled up a building that leaned over the sinkhole. From there, she could see clearly down into the Data Core. Her vision wasn’t on par with Glass’s, but it was still keen: she cycled through visions and saw Raimey’s massive footprints at the bottom.

There must be an entrance down there, she said, broadcasting her visual information.

Kove, stay up top. China Girl, head down.

She scurried over to Kove. A portion of her back opened, and a metal cylinder rose from the compartment. She handed it to him.

“Protect this,” she said.

He turned the cylinder over in his hand. “What is it?”

“Me.”

Kove shrugged, not sure what that meant, and put it in his ammo pack. China Girl climbed back up to her jump position.

Going, she said to Lindo. She pushed off the building and fell into the abyss with her legs splayed wide.

Kove leaned over and watched her disappear into the dark. “Fucking A.” He would have been a puddle.

They will try to escape. Kove, be ready. Support is on the way.

China Girl landed, the twenty-story touchdown uneventful, barely stirring up dust. She immediately saw the turrets right themselves. Her speed was incredible. Before they could zero in, she was on the perimeter striking them down. The smart mines were too slow. They would rise, and she would be ten yards clear by the time they exploded. A cacophony of gunfire rose up to the surface.

China Girl? Kove asked.

I’m fine. She transmitted a live stream as she followed Raimey’s footsteps to a large metal door. They went through here.

You are permitted to kill anyone except Justin, Evan said.

There was no obvious way to open the vault door. She rose on her hind legs and fanned her other legs around the edge of it. On the far right, she found a slight gap between the door and its frame. She jammed four arms in. Then she lifted her body parallel to the ground and folded herself backward in a loop, wedging her back four legs into the same gap, but against the frame. Slowly—and with immense effort—she straightened her spine. The door vibrated and groaned—then broke open. She quickly slipped through.

At the far end of the hall, turrets dropped from the walls and ceiling and coated the room in lead. But China Girl was quicker than the turrets could track, and she rode around the walls corkscrewing toward them, the tracers vectoring to a point behind her in a tail of fire. She tore down the first turret with two of her right arms. She used it as a shield as she approached the other two and bashed them down.

The next door was heavier.

= = =

Cynthia could not have predicted the evolution of the Tank Minor. She couldn’t even see the shape of the creature that darted down the hallway, avoiding a sheet of fire. And then, just like that, the turrets were destroyed.

“You must take Glass now,” Cynthia said to Raimey. “You must go.”

“Here.” Sabot handed Justin a hard case. “There’s a wireless Mindlink with access to every resource we have. People, places, money, vehicles. Everything. Protect it.”

“You guys aren’t coming with us?” Justin looked lost.

Sabot put his hand on Justin’s shoulder. “No.” He walked to Cynthia’s bed.

“This isn’t like you, Cynthia,” Raimey said.

On the screen Cynthia laughed. “A lot’s changed since we last saw each other. Get to the Data Sump.”

“I could make a stand here.”

“He’ll nuke us. One may already be coming. Get out of here.”

Raimey picked up Glass with one big hand, and with the other he pushed Justin toward the back entrance that led to the subway. “He’ll wake?”

“Yes, and he’ll be relentless. Do well, John.”

Raimey turned to Sabot and the old woman behind the curtain. “You’re a good soldier, Sabot. I wish I had known you.” He looked at Cynthia’s bedridden form. “ . . . Both of you. Goodbye.”

He left.

Sabot rolled Cynthia’s knuckles in his hand, gently working his way across them.

Her soft, watery eyes looked at him from the bed. The side of her mouth slanted down. The wrinkles, the red hair now gray and thin. “I can feel that, Sabot,” she said from above.

“I know, love. How long?”

“Minutes. She’s gotten through the last barrier. She’s working on the door.”

Cynthia looked down, then up again at Sabot. “Will this right what I’ve done to the world?” she asked. Both of her eyes had filled with tears. They rolled down in concert.

“Babe, what you did was beautiful. Ugly people took it and did ugly things. Are you ready?”

She nodded.

Sabot flipped a switch under the bed. He kissed her hand. He kissed her temple and her cheeks. He left with a kiss to her lips. He looked up to her.

“Don’t watch, babe. Please don’t watch.”

She reached toward him, and he reached toward her.

Her screen blinked off for the last time.

Sabot took his shotgun and pressed against a storage crate, waiting for the intruder. He heard the door open, and the ticktack of light footsteps rolling into one another like a centipede. He sensed her presence beyond the crate, and he came out with his shotgun pointed toward the noise. There was nothing. She wasn’t on the ground.

A bullet entered his shoulder and another grazed his skull before he understood that she was above him. Sabot was big, armored. Once, at the beginning of the civil war, he had single-handedly freed Cynthia from Minors that had her under house arrest. Five men dead, his girl back.

The automatic shotgun scoured the ceiling, and in the light he saw her, darting around, parrying his aim, an odd, alien creation. She flipped down to the ground and moved behind some machinery. A bullet caught him in his right hand. Another in his left hand.

She’s dismantling me.

She launched onto the wall and let loose five rounds. He ducked and dodged, but each one hit, now nine in total. The fluid in his body was holding—he still had strength—but the electrostatic tissue in his hands was beginning to malfunction. But he could fire his weapon. He let off another five rounds, hitting her or near her as she lunged from one section of the wall to the ceiling to the floor, flipping end over end and back. He could fire . . .

But I can’t re-load. She was making him waste ammo. The shotgun up close was death to anything, even her, he’d guess. But she was thirty feet away. Another Minor would crumble, but she wasn’t another Minor. She was . . .

Evan’s.

A rifle shot went into his right eye. The next cut off the bottom of his chin. He dropped his weapon and charged her. She didn’t move. She didn’t fire.

I love you, Cynthia.

He grabbed the thing, so little compared to him, and picked it up. Pain immediately erupted in his back. It was a searing, pulling pain, like someone had driven eight metal stakes into his side. They were her arms. She wrapped herself around him, a second ribcage. Her hands scissored in deep, past the armor and electrostatic tissue and into the meat that he was born with. His eyes dilated. His mouth exhaled.

And China Girl pulled her arms back, ripping his back open like a ripe piece of fruit.

China Girl hopped off and Sabot collapsed to the floor, dead before he hit. It took China Girl another half second to find Cynthia.

= = =

Dr. Lindo and Cynthia danced cheek to cheek at the center of a ballroom. Men and women, dressed to the nines, stood on the sides watching intently. In the corner, a pianist played Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess.

Tears streamed down Cynthia’s face. Numbness filled her, and she didn’t struggle as they looped around the dance floor to the haunting melody. The crowd was of the dead: Eric Janis was there. General Boen. WarDon Richards. Hundreds of men and women who had died—

“Because of our rivalry,” Evan finished. “But look, there is one more.”

And she saw him. Sabot stood two back, watching them turn. She tried to pull away and slap Evan, but she couldn’t. Her body was fixed to his. He was in complete control.

“You’re a monster,” she said.

“If so, then I’m in good company,” Evan replied. “You aren’t better than me, Cynthia. You just lost.”

He spun her out and around. The crowd gasped and politely clapped. Even Sabot. Evan pulled her back close. “It’s been . . . a millennium? Since I’ve taken my human form,” Evan continued. “But I thought this was fitting, our last dance. It’s a moment of melancholy. I wanted everything you had. I remember how much I yearned for it. How much I hated you for having it. But had you not achieved what you did, I would have never known it was achievable. Does that make sense?”

She didn’t respond. He continued. “And now I have more, and it amazes me the lies people tell themselves, lies akin to ‘money doesn’t buy happiness,’ so they can sleep at night as failures. Power and privilege are happiness. They’re a skeleton key that opens all doors.”

“It’s a responsibility, Evan.”

“A lie! Brought on by guilt, brought on by a century of the world catering to the lowest common denominator as if it were an attribute instead of suicide. People are not equal, and this conspiracy has driven the world to shambles.”

“You did this for you.”

“I did. And in my selfish desires, I have made the world a better place, because the fools don’t govern and the fools don’t vote and the fools can’t be bribed and the fools can’t make data-less decisions based on ancient ideologies and platforms. Do you deny that?”

“No.”

Evan leaned into her ear. “Then why fight me?”

“YOU TOOK OVER THE WORLD!”

The humor left Evan’s eyes. He was done with this dance.

“Where are they going?” Evan asked. “The end goal is obvious, but where are they going now?”

“I won’t tell you anything.”

“You gave Glass back his memories, didn’t you? That’s what I would have done. And Raimey . . . you preyed on my loyalty.”

Cynthia let out a chopped laugh. “Your ego, Evan. I preyed on your ego. You could never kill your darlings. They remind you too much of your greatness. But they can kill you.”

The room shook. “WHERE ARE THEY?”

The broken woman was gone. Cynthia’s gaze was as unyielding as steel. “I gave you this toy, Evan, or don’t you remember? Do you think you can intimidate me in the world I created? You’ve probably forgotten. You probably think it’s yours.”

“It is mine.”

“Soak it up.”

A pulsing orb grew from Evan’s head. “I wanted to be gracious in victory, but I can make this hurt, Cynthia. I can make this last a thousand years and it will be for nothing. I will still find them and I’ll kill the bionics and I’ll take Justin for myself. And you will have suffered an eternity for a rebellion that never came to pass. Where are they?”

“You’ll know soon enough, Evan.”

The disco ball wrapped around Cynthia’s head. “I’ll know now.”

Cynthia began to beep. “No, you won’t. And every decision you make from here on out will be your undoing. The world is caught up in calling you a god, but I know the truth. You are a weak, cowardly man. A backstabbing little shit who acts out of fear. All the CPUs in the world won’t change that. Nor the Pieces. A boy’s a boy, and you will lose.”

She disappeared.

= = =

China Girl thrust her head underneath the bed just as the timer reached zero.

= = =

The underground explosion knocked Kove off his feet. Around him the road broke apart like puzzle pieces and cascaded into the sinkhole as if a singularity had formed at the bottom. He grabbed at the helicopter above and pulled it down past him, using the momentum to carry himself upward and away, while the helicopter and pilot fell below. He lunged from one sinking island of pavement to another, scrambling to flee the expanding chasm. The shockwave ripped past him. Windows from the surrounding buildings blew out, and the buildings themselves jolted into pieces like Legos, crashing to the ground.

But he got clear. The ground still shook, but the explosion was over. He turned to survey the damage, but a choking brown fog surrounded him. He slowly walked forward, testing each step before putting down his full weight, and suddenly he was at Cynthia’s last stand.

A hole a half-mile in diameter lay before him.

= = =

Evan stood on the dance floor without his date. The pianist continued to play, and his false audience still relished his presence. But a great pity filled him. A boy’s a boy, she had said, and here he stood among his imaginary things.

That’s why I hate this form: it has memories. And suddenly he felt as he had when he was a boy: alone. He looked around at the faces of the people he had murdered to reach his goal. They smiled back, and a few nodded as friends, tipping their champagne flutes. But if any of them spoke, it was ventriloquism. It was just him, speaking through them.

Every decision you make from here on out will be your undoing.

Those words were already worming their way into his brain. He felt doubt for the first time since he had become the Northern Star. He felt that there may be events outside his periphery that he couldn’t predict.

Pity was replaced by anger, deep seated and misplaced, kicking the dog in lieu of the wife. He turned to the stupid grins around him and screamed. The ballroom peeled like wallpaper and his guests burst into flames, but they continued to smile and clap and drink. Their skin didn’t burn or bubble, their hair stayed as it was. Because they weren’t real. They were just his imagination—and what made him better than the fools? All the power, all the wealth, and he held an audience of one.

He made them melt. Their eyes burst, their hair shrank to spider’s legs, their skin peeled to meat, then to skull, then to char.

He floated in space, at first as a man, and then as a cloud of consciousness. The Pieces reassured him, but they were dogs to their master. They were forced into this congress. He had never felt so isolated. He wanted it over. He wanted to nuke the world and be done with it. He didn’t interact with the people, he didn’t need but a few—he could euthanize the world in fire.

But who would I be a god to?

Wasn’t that the rub?

Chapter 8

Justin gashed his leg on a railroad tie when the bomb detonated. Behind them, the subway tunnel exploded into mortar, and their path turned into a rifle barrel as the detritus rocketed toward them. Raimey grabbed Justin and curled him into his chest, blocking the assault with his back. As the debris blasted past them, Justin could feel the howling wind and hear the concrete slamming into the giant’s back. Grit filled the air, giving it texture, and Justin covered his mouth with his sleeve.

“They’re dead.”

“Don’t talk,” Raimey said.

The stairs to the surface dumped them out a half mile from the explosion. Raimey put Justin back on his feet. A brown fog hung over the ground; it rose a mile into the air as far as the eye could see. The earth groaned from its brutal birth. Even as they watched, a building on the outskirts of the massive sinkhole toppled over, its surrender starting slow and then accelerating as gravity took hold. Justin just stared. Like a lemming, another building followed suit, and the noise of its death was indescribable in its sensory overload.

“What are we going to do?” Justin yelled over the noise.

“Quiet. Keep moving,” Raimey said.

But Justin couldn’t. He was frozen, staring at the destruction. The immense clatter subsided to a dull groan that could be felt in the bones.

Raimey looked at the sky for any indication they were being followed, but the dust blotted out the blue and blinded them. So he listened. He heard nothing. No rotors thumping above, no tires squealing, no engines revving. That wouldn’t last. Raimey grabbed Justin and ran from Cynthia and Sabot’s tomb as fast as his legs would carry.

Ten minutes later and four miles away, he found a run-down warehouse along a belt of forgotten scrapyards and rail. He shouldered the door open and went inside. He put Glass down on his back and Justin on his feet.

“What are we going to do?” Justin repeated.

“We’re going to the Data Sump,” Raimey said.

Justin shook his head. “I don’t have the equipment to link in. They’re dead! Cynthia’s dead!”

“People die,” Raimey replied. “That doesn’t mean you abort the mission. Sabot gave you a case.”

“Right.” Justin’s hands shook as he tried to open the clasps.

“Breathe,” Raimey said.

“Right.” After four attempts, he got it open. Inside were a portable Mindlink, extra battery packs, and a memory card. He pressed the memory card into the slot and put on the Mindlink. A moment later: “Yoshi.”

He took off the Mindlink.

“That’s it?” Raimey asked.

“There’s a Sleeper in Lincoln Park that has helped Cynthia over the years. He has the equipment we need to connect into the Sump.”

Raimey raised an eyebrow. “That’s a very populated area—I can’t go there.”

“We have no choice.”

Raimey peered out of the shed. A cloud of brown silt hung in the late afternoon sky. Helicopters had arrived and were now hovering over the city, moving in a grid. Raimey knew that, far above, more eyes were watching . . . and waiting.

He looked at Glass. “We need to wait until night, anyway. Hopefully he’ll be awake by then and you two can go get Goshi, or whatever his name is.”

“But what if they come after us?”

“That’s more likely to happen if I’m stomping around with you.”

Justin knew he was right. But he’d now have to wait for the man who’d killed his family to wake from his dream-like slumber. He sat down at the open door and watched the setting sun paint the giant brown cloud pink. Metal particulates twinkled, and it looked to Justin like a galaxy being born.

= = =

Present-day Glass watched the final memory of his life. Evan sat bedside, as he had done so many times before. The Glass in the bed had no arms or legs. The bottom of his face had been torn off. He was a bucktoothed monstrosity. But it was a familiar setting with an old friend.

“I didn’t want to do this to you,” Evan said. “But you wouldn’t have let me take her.”

The memories were no longer foreign invaders. They were now the foundation of who he was. He mouthed what he was supposed to say. “You could have chosen anyone.”

Lindo shook his vehemently. “No. NO. If I had had time, I could have chosen anyone. If you hadn’t hidden the relationship, I could have chosen anyone. I have been prepping her for this task for ten years. Long before you decided to . . . like her. She’s special. Like you. And these times demand sacrifice.”

“Yours? Or just ours?” both Glasses said, the one watching just a step ahead, unseen by Evan and the Glass in bed. The Glass in the bed began to cry.

A look of disgust covered Evan’s face and suddenly he jumped on top of Glass and started shaking him, his knees digging into his chest, rocking back and forth, furious. Spit flew from his lips. “What happened to you? You were supposed to help me. You were supposed to be by my side! I gave you everything I had, and you, you threw it away for a girl.”

“I love her!”

“Boo-fucking-hoo, you love her. What do you know about love?” For some reason, this calmed Evan down. He sat back in his chair. “Love . . . Tsss.” Lindo shook his head. “You’re an alligator, Mike. Just because you can say the word doesn’t mean you know what it means.”

“I did love her,” present-day Glass said weakly.

“No more,” his bedridden past self said. “No more.”

Lindo was quiet. He now had his knee crossed, his foot bobbing up and down. “She’s a part of me now, Mike,” he said.

Glass paid him no attention.

Lindo stood up, and suddenly the room morphed into a black hole. Still tethered to his medical bed, he and Lindo corkscrewed through space, the speed so great that their images flickered back and forth, at times moving faster than light.

“SHE’S A PART OF ME NOW, MIKE,” Lindo repeated, but his mouth no longer moved. “I FEEL THE BREADTH OF MY CONSCIOUSNESS GROWING. ACROSS CYBERSPACE, BUT BETTER—ACROSS THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EVERYONE ONLINE. RIGHT NOW, IN CHINA, A WOMAN IS WONDERING WHERE HER SON IS. HER NEIGHBOR HAS THE BOY TETHERED TO THE BED AND IS WONDERING WHAT HE’S GOING TO DO WITH THE BODY. I AM EVERYWHERE. MY MIND GROWS LIKE A FILLING SEA. I WILL GIVE YOU A CHOICE, BUT ONLY THIS ONCE: LOYALTY OR DEATH?”

And then they were back in the hospital room as if what had just happened was a hallucination.

“Loyalty or death,” Lindo said, this time from his mouth.

“Death,” Glass said without hesitation.

“I can’t kill you.” A disco orb blossomed out of Dr. Lindo’s forehead. “But I also can’t have you the way you are.” The orb attached itself to Glass. “You were special once, Mike. Beautiful in your own, violent way. And I will make you special again.”

= = =

Glass woke to his own scream. It was night; he could see. Justin and Vanessa’s father sat around him as if he were the campfire. He stood up.

“Are you awake?” Raimey asked.

“Yes,” Glass said. “Where are we?”

“Outside Chicago. Cynthia and Sabot are dead. Lindo found us,” Raimey replied.

Glass walked to the door and looked out. A normal person would see stars in the sky and a smear of black that blotted the cityscape, but Glass saw everything, even in the fog. The helicopters circled close to their location.

“Glass,” Raimey said. Glass turned. “Cynthia gave Justin instructions, and apparently the equipment we need to find Vanessa is at some guy’s house north of here. Can you escort Justin there?”

“Do we just need to retrieve the equipment?”

Justin thought about it for a second. “Yes. He may have some instructions, but pretty much.”

“We need him alive, right?” Glass said.

“Yes,” Justin said, annoyed.

“I can just go. It’ll be faster.”

“Can you remember the instructions?” Justin asked.

Glass looked to the ground and shook his head with uncertainty, his first human gesture in fifteen years. “I don’t know. I’m here. I know, I’m me. But I don’t know. I haven’t had a memory in a very long time.”

“But you’re well enough to fight?” Raimey asked.

“Yes.”

“Then escort Justin.”

= = =

Kove was alone. For the last four hours, helicopters had thumped around, scanning for the heat signatures of the fugitives while the Minors cleared the buildings. The effort continued, but it was pointless. They had obviously escaped. Kove had tired of running around, and now he sat at the edge of the abyss.

China Girl was dead. Her intercom went down with the explosion, and it never came back up. He had hoped to see a piece of rock move, and then some more, and then her hand—but it wasn’t going to happen. Kove was sad for someone he’d known for only a day and a half. She’d treated him like he was normal. And compared to her, he was. He thought about how she had only seen the outside world for a day, and now she would never see it again.

Pull it together, Lindo said.

“I’m fine,” Kove said. “Can I have a second alone?”

Anger brewed in him, rising from the depths of what had been—for so long—an empty well he had tried to fill with booze. He didn’t love her—even the notion made him uncomfortable—but she had made him feel fine. And now she was gone, and he was reminded by the soldiers who kept their distance from him that he was a leper among the well. China Girl hadn’t once blinked. She had taken him for who he was, disfigurement and all.

I want them dead, Kove thought. He envisioned his fist crushing Raimey’s armor. The giant flailing trying to adapt to his speed, the gears grinding down as they continued to get pummeled. And then, finally, the body breaking, and Kove curb-stomping Raimey’s head into the ground. And then Glass, too.

She had died for no reason. She died for a cause twenty-five years too late. The world had moved on, and these fucks were scraping at the scars, getting back the blood.

I want them fucking dead.

Good, Lindo purred. It’s about time I got the Kove I know back.

= = =

Glass escorted Justin through the deep shadows of alleys and side streets, scouting ahead of him twenty to forty yards, checking for civilians and soldiers alike. Justin could see him move, but he couldn’t hear him. A few times Glass came from behind him, or from above, somehow scaling a wall. Justin was always within earshot or within sight, but he’d still lose track of Glass. The bionic would vanish and reappear like a specter.

Justin didn’t see any soldiers, but the glut of skyscrapers carried the sound of the choppers miles away, still searching the ground.

Cynthia is dead, Justin thought in disbelief. He was still shaken by it. How anticlimactic, how unlike her. She must have seen it coming; she must have known. She didn’t know about the Northern Star until it was too late. True. She was human. Her reputation had gilded that truth, as it had for so many others—no different than calling Evan a god. They were flesh and blood. Human. A remarkable, imperfect machine, prone to mistakes. That Evan and Cynthia had made so few was a sign of their greatness. But in their greatness, each mistake carried massive consequence.

Where does that leave us? Justin wondered. With Cynthia, he had felt they could win. She had always laid out her plans like an engineer laid out a road. And as smart as Justin may have been, he wasn’t as smart as her, not in strategy or future-think. He was just a glitch in the human genome, his brain jelly optimized for a task that wouldn’t have existed in any other time except now. He was exceptional by coincidence.

He watched Glass scamper ahead, using the walls and ground as if they were one and the same. A mechanized skeleton, an ancient giant, and an idiot savant were the instruments for Cynthia’s last salvo against the wrongs set in motion by her own hand.

One fucked-up trip to Oz.

“We are a block away from Yoshi,” Glass said in his cool, stripped voice. He had somehow ended up behind Justin. “Stay here. I’ll retrieve him.”

“I need to explain to him what’s happened,” Justin said.

Glass said nothing for a moment, his metal face expressionless, just armor mimicking the real thing. His eyes, the diameter of a soda can, stared dumbly back, the milky green of them rising and falling, rolling into itself like fog. He was finding words. “I’ll bring him . . . here . . . for you to explain,” he finally said.

Glass went to move Justin into a dark corner, but Justin shoved him away. “Don’t touch me!”

Glass’s head spun like a swivel searching for a threat. Satisfied, he settled down.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” Glass said. “I saw those memories. That me felt nothing, but watching it from my eyes, I knew it was wrong.”

“A sorry doesn’t change anything,” Justin said. “In fact, don’t apologize. Take it back, because you’re a psycho, and the way you look and what happened to you is fully deserved.”

The eyes rolled in green.

“I’ll bring Yoshi back.”

And then he was gone.

= = =

Raimey was old. Cynthia was old. Sabot was old. Glass was old. Yoshi was sixteen. He was born nine years after the civil war. For him, the Northern Star was a fact of life, no different than Stalin to a Soviet son or daughter growing up in the early-to-mid twentieth century.

He didn’t even know about the Northern Star until four years ago. Like most civilians, he thought Evan Lindo was President. (Funny, really. There was no voting.) It wasn’t until he started to Sleep that he had any idea of the mechanism behind Evan’s total control. And more than anything, it fascinated him.

Yoshi quickly became a history buff for anything Mindlink or Northern Star. History was written by the winners, and that held true with the Northern Star as well. It was difficult, even dangerous, to dig up certain information. But Yoshi got good—really good—at being a crafty mouse in the cupboard. A nibble here, a nibble there, and over a few short years he had built an unparalleled account of the rise, fall, and rule of the digital world. He had also developed techniques to stay hidden from the Northern Star. Techniques that had never been used before.

Yoshi had no grand plans; he was just a kid with nothing to do. The rush for him was when he found an egg of information that made him say “No way!” These eggs were why he swung through cyberspace without a net. An older Sleeper had given him the moniker Yoshi.

The safest and most fun way to retrieve information was through first-person accounts. There were still hundreds of thousands of first-generation folks online who’d had direct contact with the inner workings of MindCorp and even Evan Lindo himself. Yoshi would meet with them and just let them talk. Him, a sixteen-year-old Chinese kid with his hat turned backward; them, older folks with a thousand-yard stare, reminiscing about a world before the Northern Star. A world that sounded like lies.

Cynthia reached out to Yoshi by piggybacking on the tail of a woman he was talking to—an employee of MindCorp who had been there the day the military had stormed their headquarters. Piggybacking was something only a very powerful Sleeper could do.

“We didn’t know anything was wrong,” the woman had said. Even in cyberspace the woman sat in a wheelchair. “We heard things—on the news, and we’d talk at lunch. But we never thought it would get as bad as some people predicted.

“It was just a normal day. Then out of nowhere a team of those small bionics was in the building, pointing their guns at everyone and telling them to get on the ground. One of the big ones stood outside.”

Yoshi was mesmerized. She was talking about the first Tank Majors and Minors. “What did the small soldiers look like?”

Yoshi was sneaky, but not incredibly powerful as a Sleeper. Still, when he really focused on his subject, he could see their memories—if they were at the top of the subject’s consciousness. And as the woman’s eyes drifted toward the ceiling, thinking, images of the soldiers storming the building flickered like a reflection on the water.

“Human,” she said. The image lost its ripples and solidified. He was watching the memory with her. “But in that ‘uncanny valley’ sort of way. Up close, you could tell they weren’t quite right. Their faces were normal though.”

Yep, back then they’d still used the person’s head and skull. Except for one, Yoshi thought to himself.

“We thought Cynthia was there, but she wasn’t. They had captured her—YOSHI, YOU ARE ASKING A LOT ABOUT ME—that morning out at a lake.”

The woman saw that Yoshi’s face had change from attentive to serious. He was about to disconnect. The Northern Star had found him.

“What is it—THIS IS CYNTHIA. I WOULD LIKE TO MEET YOU—dear?”

“Nothing,” Yoshi said. He didn’t want to interrupt the woman’s story. “What did they do with all the employees?”

“They took us away in trucks—GO TO THE OLD CHOCOLATE FACTORY TOMORROW AT—to a government building west of there. They interrogated each of us, asking us questions while wearing a Mindlink—NINE P.M. SABOT WILL BE THERE.”

Yoshi politely ended the conversation and disconnected from cyberspace. The next day he met Sabot; and he had worked for Cynthia ever since.

Yoshi daydreamed from the second story of his apartment. He heard a scratching sound at the window and turned. A giant owl looked in on him, its head upside down.

That’s not an owl.

A spidery hand appeared from above the frame and pointed down to the main entrance door.

Shit, shit.

It was a Tank Minor. A weird one.

He thought about running, then decided it wasn’t worth the stomach cramp. He was five-seven, a buck twenty-five. He wasn’t getting away. He walked down the stairs, wondering what was about to happen. He had a distinct feeling, from his research, that the owl head staring at him was Mike Glass. And that was not good. That meant Evan had found out what Yoshi was doing.

It was weird opening the door to a man you knew was going to kill you. The world slowed, and it almost felt like cyberspace: where every detail was so vibrant, every sense sucked in so easily. Glass filled the doorway, and he looked like something pulled out of a drain. He wore a strange, shredded suit.

Yoshi thought about closing his eyes, but curiosity kept them open. He wanted to see the blade slip out from Glass’s wrist. If he was going down, he wanted to feel the blur across his neck.

“Yoshi?” it asked.

Yoshi nodded.

“Wait here.” It brushed past him and went through the house.

What is it looking for?

It came back, satisfied. “I need you to come with me.” Then it grabbed his hand and pulled him along, staying—as always—in the shadows.

= = =

Justin heard them approach, and when they came into the alley, he saw why: Yoshi’s bare feet were slapping against the wet pavement. Yoshi was young, and that immediately sent shivers down Justin’s spine. Justin had only been twelve when he was taken away. Glass immediately broke away from them and monitored the entry points of the alley.

“You’re Yoshi? The Yoshi that Cynthia knew?”

Yoshi paused. That wasn’t a question to answer lightly. “Who are you?”

“I’m Justin McWilliams.”

Yoshi made a face. “Did Cynthia put you up to this?” He looked down the alley past Justin. “Sabot?”

In a blink Glass was there. “No yelling.”

“And you’re Mike Glass?”

“Yes.”

Yoshi put his hand into Glass’s ghillie suit. Glass didn’t move. Yoshi’s hand touched a thick, cold column. To Justin: “You’re him.”

“If you mean Justin-01, yes.”

“But I’ve never found anything on you. How?”

“Cynthia hid me. Listen, we don’t have much time. She said you have equipment that can be used with a Data Sump.”

Glass wisped away. Yoshi hitched a finger in his direction. “Are you his hostage?”

“No, but we need to go now. I need the gear. The three of us need to get to the Sump.”

“Three?”

“Raimey.”

Yoshi jumped up and down. “John Raimey!”

Justin grabbed his arm. “Seriously, kid. Cool it.”

Yoshi got himself under control. Kind of. “John Raimey’s here?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t Sabot come?”

Justin paused for a moment. “They’re dead.”

“I just spoke to Cynthia two days ago.”

“Cynthia couldn’t move; she was too ill. And Sabot stayed and fought to give us time. Apparently they had rigged the room with explosives.”

= = =

Yoshi’s knees went soft, and he sat in a puddle and cried. He’d liked Cynthia. He’d never met her in person, but it had been cool talking to her. She’d always piggyback someone else’s tail, and it became a joke of theirs. He’d be talking to some hot chick in a chat room and suddenly it’d be her. Sometimes she’d take his masturbatory fantasy into an awkward realm just to mess with him.

“Do you want to get it on?” he’d say to (insert name of hot girl who was probably a dude, morbidly obese, or as plain as a sheet of paper).

“Sure, but only if my dad can watch,” hot girl/dude/morbidly obese/plain girl would say.

“Hey babe, whatev—wait, what? Cynthia?”

The hot girl would smile.

“What are you doing, Yoshi? You’re just a kid. Sabot needs to meet you to . . .”

Cynthia had successfully killed his virtual love life.

Sabot wasn’t a father figure to him, but Yoshi thought that if they had spent more time together, he could have been. Yoshi, for all intents and purposes, was an orphan. His dad had split before he could crawl, and his mom was a cyberspace addict who would only disconnect for food and the john. Sabot was the only adult who had taken time to talk to Yoshi in person. He may have been ranked as one of the baddest men on earth (and yes, there was a site with such a ranking), but he had such a kind, patient demeanor.

Once Sabot even took him out to eat—a dangerous excursion, in retrospect. That night, Yoshi had said he wanted to be like him.

“No you don’t, young Yoshi,” Sabot said. His eyes always held a bit of sadness. “You see me as an action figure and my life as a cool story. Neither is true. I’ve done bad things with a good conscience, but I hate it all. People talk about the visual—I have those memories too—but no one talks about the smell of someone who has been torn open. No matter how old I get, or how long ago it was, I can’t shake the smell. I remember all of them by it.”

Thinking about guts, Yoshi put down his burger. “What could you have done differently?”

“That’s the thing. I got on a road where there were no other choices. Maybe early on I could have yanked Cynthia away, but I doubt it.”

“Did you try?”

Sabot smiled. “Is this for your encyclopedia or are we just talking?”

“Only the good stuff gets in,” Yoshi joked. The image of guts passed, and he ate the rest of his burger.

“I was too scared to try. I thought she’d choose MindCorp over me.”

“Would she have?”

Sabot bobbed his head up and down. “Oh, yeah. But by then I loved her. I’ve been around a lot of powerful people, and the one thing they all have in common is that their strength is also their weakness. For Cynthia, her relentless drive and obsession is what got her to where she was, but that same drive was why she could never let it go. People don’t know when to hang it up.”

Sabot put a hand on Yoshi’s shoulder. “Including me. We think we’re free-thinking creatures, but we really aren’t. Most of us are very predictable. In the military, we train for that. In high-stress environments, most people act the same way. And as you get older you’re bucketed in by your own choices, and that’s where you stew. But you . . . you’re still so young.”

Yoshi squirmed. He didn’t like being singled out for his age.

“It’s not an insult. It’s an opportunity! Today you have thousands of choices. Talk to the girl, don’t talk to the girl. Talk to another girl. Leave Chicago. Go to school. Shake your mom awake and go to lunch. You can do anything. I urge you to try. Because I only have two choices now, and one of them is unfathomable: do I stay or do I go? And I could never go. One of my strengths is my loyalty, but it’s also my weakness. And on top of that, I’m in love. I understand your love of this history—I do—but I’d rather be anonymous and happy than dead and immortalized.”

= = =

Yoshi realized that Justin was trying to pull him to his feet. “Get up, come on. I know it sucks. But we need to get the gear and leave.”

Yoshi wiped his nose. “You need someone to monitor the breakers.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

Justin shook his head. “Kid—”

Yoshi poked him in the chest. “Don’t call me ‘kid’! I built the damn things. For the last three years I’ve helped Sabot and Cynthia gather supplies. Where have you been? Maybe if you had been around twenty years ago this wouldn’t have happened!”

Justin looked at the fiery little Asian. Beyond them, two Coke-bottle eyes were pinned in their direction.

“Maybe you’re right,” Justin said. “I need someone on the outside?”

“The breakers create multiple entry points into cyberspace that your tail jumps between. They protect you from a Sleeper attack or even the Northern Star, because as soon as one breaker is attacked, I can switch you to another. But they have to be controlled from the outside.”

Justin didn’t even know what Yoshi was talking about; Justin’s power was raw, built-in. He grimaced. He didn’t want to bring the boy. But Glass couldn’t do it, and certainly not Raimey—Justin pictured him crushing the breakers with one finger as his brain boiled under the intense scrutiny of the Northern Star.

“Go get changed. Something dark.”

Glass must have been listening; he arrived to escort the boy.

“How heavy’s the equipment?” Justin asked.

“Each breaker’s about twenty-five pounds. I have five,” Yoshi said. His jaw still quivered and his eyes were red, but now they were filled with anger. He was no wallflower, Justin thought.

“Mike, can you carry that?” Justin asked.

“Yes.”

The kid and the skeleton left Justin alone in the alley, and the moment of solace was the last thing he needed. He had just recruited a boy into a journey that would surely lead to death. And he wondered about himself, and Glass, and his past: when were the sins justified? And the part deep down in all of us that knows right from wrong in the absolute, the part we smother with reason when it goes against the grain of our desires, said the truth quietly: You should walk away. The world has moved on.

And Justin ignored it. Evan deserved to die.

= = =

For two hours Raimey sat by himself, and for the first time in a long time, it felt good. His head was silent. He grabbed pieces of basketball-sized debris that had fallen from the roof and casually tossed one on top another, like a kid throwing pebbles.

Choppers whirred overhead, but the roof blocked their spotlights and he knew that their thermal wouldn’t find him. The human part of his body was too small; he had the heat signature of a dog.

His wife, Tiffany, sat nearby. Cancer had taken her off the earth, but her image had become a vessel of his best traits, as if they had all been bullied into the corner by the bad and rotten, and her likeness had shielded them from being stamped out completely. She had been with him for thirty years. He knew full well she was a mirage, and he didn’t mind one bit. If a pill existed that would take her away, he wouldn’t take it. Her voice was a life vest in a black, rolling sea choking with his crimes. This break in his sanity had kept him sane.

“Cynthia was wrong. You can’t survive the wasteland,” Tiffany said. Her voice was soft yet commanding, a lover telling a truth that a partner must know.

“I can, long enough.” He tossed another rock. She always sat in the corner of his right eye. She was fifty feet away, just visible in the dark, sitting on a rusted loader. He flicked his eyes toward her and she disappeared. When he turned them back to the pile, she returned.

“And you trust her?”

“I trust Justin. He has no reason to be here.”

“She sacrificed herself so you could escape.”

“That too. Vanessa’s alive.”

“This won’t right your wrongs, John.”

“I don’t expect it to. I just want Vanessa free. I want to come through this once.”

She was to his left now, just over his shoulder. He felt her breath. He felt her bile. Because she wasn’t always the voice of reason. The cancer that had taken her had infected his version as well. It was a dying light thrashing against the inevitable end, as vicious as a wolf caught in a snare.

“If you fail, her entire life will not have been hers.”

“I know.”

“You will have failed everyone you have ever loved.”

“I know.”

“It would have been better if you’d never been born.”

Raimey’s shoulders shuddered. “I know.”

“Use what earned you your spot in hell. Use it all until there isn’t a drip left to run dry. Because this is the last stand, John. Take the thirty-five years of failure and put a bow on it. Hand it off through your thunderous fists and your stolen life. Die. It’s okay. You can die. But first, him. And before your eyelids close for good, you see that she is free.”

= = =

Yoshi couldn’t believe his eyes when they walked into the abandoned factory. John Raimey sat fifty feet away next to a pile of rocks. Yoshi almost didn’t see him; his hulking frame blended in with the abandoned machines that were used to tear and parcel steel. But Raimey rose to his feet when they entered, and Yoshi got light-headed at the sight. This was the man who had started the bionic age. He had become a mythical figure. Other bionics would cheer when he arrived on the battlefield. During the Israeli War, he alone had killed thirty thousand soldiers in less than two weeks. During the civil war, he had near singlehandedly turned the tide in New York. He was an ancient beast, and with the rapid march of technology, he should have been antiquated, exceeded—but no. Only two models in, Evan had already reached the pinnacle. And what Evan saw scared him. True, the generations after were terrifying: armies would surrender at the sight of their forms on the battlefield; single Tank Majors ruled boroughs in countries controlled by the Coalition. But compared to Raimey, they were toys. He was war incarnate. The great decimator.

Yoshi could only stare. Raimey stood ten feet away so he could look down.

“Who’s this?” Raimey asked.

“Yoshi,” Justin replied. Glass brought over the gear and put it down.

“I thought we just needed the gear.”

“He needs to operate it.”

“You didn’t say that,” Raimey said. His eyes didn’t leave Yoshi.

“I didn’t know,” Justin replied.

“He’s just a kid.”

Yoshi didn’t press his finger in Raimey’s chest and tell him otherwise. A squeak left his mouth.

Justin smirked. “He doesn’t like being called a kid.”

“When I was a kid, I didn’t like being called that either,” Raimey said. To Yoshi, he asked, “Where are your parents?”

“I live alone.”

“How’d you get involved with Cynthia?”

Yoshi explained.

“That’s a big responsibility,” Raimey said.

“I’m sneaky,” Yoshi said with some pride.

“That’s fine until you’re seen,” Raimey replied. He turned to Justin. “I don’t know how this stuff works. This is your call.”

“I need him. I don’t like it, but I do. When I connect in, unrestricted . . .”

“Cyberspace will shit,” Yoshi interjected.

“Everyone will know,” Justin continued. “Evan will attack immediately. I need an operator to pull me out if the Northern Star gets the upper hand.”

Raimey looked to Yoshi. “I can’t guarantee your safety.”

“Cynthia and Sabot were my friends. If they believed in this, then I do too.”

Chapter 9

The Data Sump was forty miles away, and their ride there had been parked at ground zero—right where Cynthia had detonated four city blocks. Justin and Raimey argued on how to proceed.

“We can’t walk there,” Justin said. He thought they should take a car.

“There aren’t any cars to commandeer,” Raimey replied. “And I couldn’t fit in them anyway. Does anyone know where the city keeps the maintenance trucks?”

No one did.

“What other choice do we have?” Raimey said.

“We’ll be out in the open too long. He’ll see us.”

Yoshi had his hand raised, but no one noticed.

“There’s no other option,” Raimey said. “We’ll have to risk it.”

“We’ll never get there,” Justin said. “Glass, do you remember anything about Evan’s abilities?”

“Excuse me,” Yoshi said, annoyed at being ignored.

Glass thought about it. “With the satellite ring, Evan can see to the ground as clearly as we can, and in a radius of fifty miles.” He twirled one of his fingers. “The ring is in a constant pass, so there is no downtime to exploit. I could get you two there, but John’s too big.”

“Guys!” Yoshi finally yelled. They all turned. Yoshi was supporting his raised arm with the other.

“What?” Raimey said.

“We can use public transport.”

“The ‘L’? Come on, kid.”

“Lines go out to the farm settlements. They even have shipping flats and storage.”

“That’s true,” Justin said. He had grown up on a farm.

“And that won’t expose us?” Raimey said.

“If we wait until late at night, only the bums will be on the train.”

Justin shook his head. “Those trains don’t run twenty-four hours. They run a few times a day, starting early morning. At least they did when I was a kid.”

“Okay, fine. Four a.m., even better,” Yoshi replied.

“Evan doesn’t monitor the trains,” Glass offered. “But he will monitor people that connect in afterwards.”

“So he’ll know,” Raimey said.

“At some point.”

“Will he guess where we’re going?”

“Yes, unless he thinks Cynthia knew where the Northern Star was located,” Glass said. “I’ve been there. I remember the bunker. There was a lake filled with steaming fish. But I don’t know where it is. He may not know that.”

“There are only a few things Evan has to think about, though,” Justin said.

“Hmm,” Raimey grunted. It was too soon for a war. “We need to know what trains to use.”

“I can do that,” Yoshi said. “There’s a stop a few minutes from here.”

“Find the one farthest out, away from people.”

“I need to go back to the pod for heavier weapons,” Glass said.

“How long do you need?” Raimey asked.

“I can meet you at the train or the Data Sump.”

Raimey shook his head. “Train. I can’t protect them from bullets.”

Glass pulled something off his arm. It was small and round. He handed it to Justin. “I’ll track you. I’ll be with you in . . .” He calculated. “Thirty minutes.”

He vanished without waiting for a response. Justin put the tracking device in a fold of his bulletproof vest.

“Let’s get moving,” Raimey said.

= = =

Glass made it to his pod in fifteen minutes. Inside, in a corner, was a silver column with two glowing rings and an empty socket. Glass reached through his ghillie suit, into his waist, and with a click, he removed a battery the size of a coffee can. He inserted it into the hole and pulled a fresh battery from the charge. Then he pulled down a seven-foot-long rifle and broke it down. The rifle had no specific designation. It was one of a kind, designed by Lindo for the Level 13 Glass. No human could shoot it, not even from a mount. An ordinary man would die: the recoil would pulverize their shoulder into misshapen meat and shock their body into cardiac arrest. The two-thousand-grain smart bullets traveled at four thousand feet per second, and Glass could adjust their trajectory on the fly up to three miles. It was black powder’s answer to the rail gun.

He took five magazines—each sixteen inches long and just as deep—out of a crate and stuffed them into a hard case that housed the rifle. He grabbed two suppressed .50 caliber carbines, which mounted to rails on his back like folded wings, and five hundred rounds of ammunition for them. Finally he removed the other battery, placed it in a sleeve, and put it into the case.

Within five minutes he was out of the pod and tracking Justin, who was now seven miles away.

= = =

As they walked, Yoshi couldn’t help himself. He peppered Raimey with questions.

“How old are you now?”

“Seventy-four.”

“How powerful is your hydraulshock? I heard it feels like an earthquake.”

“Five million foot-pounds, or something like that.”

“I heard that the new ones are only three point five million.”

“Hm.”

“Can you jump?”

“Sort of.”

“How high?”

“A few feet. I don’t know. Shut up for second.”

Suddenly Glass was with them. A huge hard case hung from his back.

“That was quick,” Justin said.

“How fast can you run?” Yoshi asked Glass.

“Fifty miles per hour,” Glass said.

“Cool.”

“You can climb walls?”

“Yes.”

“Very cool.”

Yoshi turned to Raimey. “How much can you lift?”

“I don’t know,” Raimey said. He was trying to focus on the task.

“A woman I interviewed said she saw you lift a tank. You know, a real one.”

“No, I can’t do that. I weigh six tons. I can lift ten or so. Hey, ask Glass some questions—I bet he has some interesting stuff to talk about.”

Raimey turned to Justin and rolled his eyes, but there was humor in them. Justin smiled, but his mind was elsewhere. He hadn’t connected in to cyberspace without a throttle since he was a boy, and he was worried. What if he didn’t have it anymore? What if he couldn’t control it?

“How many people have you killed?” Yoshi asked Glass.

“I don’t know.”

“Never ask that,” Raimey said to Yoshi, his voice firm.

“Oh, sorry.” Back to Glass: “How far can you see?”

“I have a usable range of five miles.”

“Wow. Can you see through walls?”

“Yes, my eyes have an x-ray emitter. But I have to be close.”

“Do you see in color?”

“A little bit, I’m told.”

Twenty questions later they were at an ‘L’ stop on the outskirts of the city. It felt like a pier moored at the edge of space.

With the oil depletion and the failed promise of alternative fuels, electric public transportation was the only way for most people to get around. Train tracks ran throughout the city and out to the suburbs like a circulatory system—tracks stacked on tracks, trains constantly coming and going.

They watched a train pull away. The station was deserted except for a homeless man taking a piss behind a trashcan. Glass swept the station, walking past the man just as he did his final shake and zipped up. The man glanced up into rolling green eyes.

“What’re you lookin’ at?” he slurred, apparently unaware of what was looking back at him. Glass moved on without a word, and the bum stumbled the other way in a drunken fog.

“What do we do now?” Justin asked.

“Find the right train,” Raimey said. He walked up the stairs gingerly, but still ground each step to dust.

Yoshi ran ahead and looked at the schedule. “Red line!” he yelled back to them, tapping the corresponding route.

“I can’t believe we’re taking public transportation,” Justin said.

“It’s very green of us,” Raimey said. “Here it comes. Get to the front.”

The train came to a stop and a young couple stepped out. They paused for a moment, blinked a few times at what they saw, and then the man put a protective arm around the woman and they quickly walked away.

“He’s a keeper!” Yoshi yelled after them.

Yoshi, Justin, and Glass got in and took the first seats. Then Raimey’s huge hands tore through the middle of the cab, peeling the roof back like a sardine can. An alarm started to blare, but Glass poked it quiet with a finger. Raimey stepped through the quivering aluminum walls, and the car bucked and swayed until he centered himself.

In the adjoining cab, heads leaned over and looked through the glass to see what the hell had just happened. Yoshi gave them a thumbs-up.

At the next stop, the train emptied. Five minutes later, Glass sensed what no one else did. “We’re going in the wrong direction.”

Yoshi went over to an illuminated map on the wall. It was a squirrel’s nest of high rail, low rail, ones that whittled to an end and others that looped for infinity. He traced their progress to a blue line, then to a black line that zipped west of the city. “We have to get on the blue line to the service rail. Two stops.”

Justin threw his head back and groaned in frustration. “You’re not serious.”

“This is funny, isn’t it?” Glass asked. He was genuinely curious.

“More pathetic,” Justin replied.

Two stops later they ran to the next train. Same process, but due west. More heads leaned over and looked at them through the adjoining window.

Fifteen minutes after that, the blue line slowed down. Ahead of them were huge grain silos, food warehouses, and factories bunched together as far as the eye could see. They were surrounded by two tall fences woven with razor wire.

The train came to a stop on a high platform. Glass, Justin, and Yoshi piled out, unable to take their eyes off what lay ahead. Raimey wiggled himself out of the car as if it were a wetsuit.

“What is this place?” Justin asked. Smokestacks puffed in the distance. To their left, he could see the two columns of a nuclear reactor.

“It’s a manufacturing prison,” Glass said. “It serves the city. Evan built these when he took over.”

“I’ve never heard of this,” Yoshi said.

“How would you?” Justin said. “Evan controls all information, no one leaves the city, and if you ever found out, he’d put you here.”

“Exactly,” Glass said. “Evan kills less than you would think. I’ve brought thousands of people to places like this. They allow the city to run as it does. Without these, even with cyberspace, the economy would fail.”

Justin thought of his conversation with Cynthia the day before. She had said the world needed slaves, and at the time it had turned him off to her. He’d thought they were the words of a megalomaniac. But there was an expectation set by privilege, so much so that the very concept of privilege itself became lost among the delusions of “rights.” Fattened calves didn’t care about the world. And here was where Evan produced the feed.

“Do we have to go through it?” Raimey asked. “If we get caught this far from the Data Sump, it’s over.”

Glass climbed up a pole and scanned the grounds. He came back down. “A freight train is at the depot getting unloaded. If we can make it to the entrance, we can jump on as it leaves. We’ll have to be quick.”

Raimey held out his hands for Justin and Yoshi. “Get on.”

Glass led the way around a concentration camp that was hidden in plain sight.

= = =

After hours of fruitless searching, Kove and the other bionics came back to base. Kove was on the last helicopter. The other bionics piled together and headed toward the barracks. Kove went the opposite way toward the shore of Lake Michigan.

The beach had succumbed to neglect: it was covered in prairie and cattails. Mosquitos filled the air. His feet sank in as he entered the first few feet of water. Oil splotches marred the water in port wine stains. He took off his helmet and tossed it to shore.

What are you doing?

“I just want to be alone for a minute,” Kove said. He carefully removed the face prosthetic and felt his tongue loll out. The tiny oil spills reminded him of liquor, and a deep urge hit him. He wanted a drink badly. He wanted to soak away. This day of clarity was enough; it did not make him yearn for more.

NO.

“I’m not going to,” Kove said. “I’ll finish this for you, but after that, I want to be done. Can you do that for me, Evan? Can you let me go?”

What would you do?

“Drink. Really drink. Drink till I don’t wake up.”

I don’t know why you would want that.

Kove leaned over, and the moonlight reflected his grotesque face off the water. “Use my eyes, Evan.” He felt that occur. “Because of this. I’ve lived too long. I’ve been miserable too long.”

Everyone is alone, Alan. Even me.

“But you don’t care.”

I used to. Just moments ago, I felt a sliver of it. It is the human condition. People pad it with cats, and neighbors, and mates, but it is as absolute as death. We are nothing, and you should take great comfort in that, because it is a liberation to do what you please, when you please, without regret. You look at your face and believe that it is why you are miserable; but your memory tricks you. You have always been miserable. You were disfigured before Glass took your jaw, and your addiction is proof.

“Good pep talk, Evan. I can always count on you.”

Turn around.

“Why?”

Kove felt his body give, and he turned. China Girl walked toward him from the plane she had arrived on. She was uncoordinated, teetering back and forth like a drunk.

Her body is too advanced for me to control, Lindo said.

She stopped in front of Kove with no recognition in her eyes. The compartment on her back opened up.

Kove had forgotten. He pulled the metal orb from the ammo pouch. He looked at it for a moment and understood. In it was everything of her that was human.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” Kove asked.

You needed to lose something.

He placed the metal orb on her back and it retracted into her. Her eyes lit up. “I died,” she said to Kove.

“Yes.”

“Thank you for protecting me.”

“Always.” Kove looked at his partner in amazement, and felt whole. She would understand what it was to be him. She would understand why people turned away. I’m a good person, Kove thought to himself. The truthful sage in his soul rejected that notion. I could be a good person. The sage remained quiet. Yes, I could be a good person.

But first you must win, Lindo said. And then you two can be together. That is my promise.

Kove felt a quarter century of apathy burn off like the morning dew. In its place was purpose. A way out of the abject misery. Win.

“I will kill them all,” Kove said to himself and to them.

I need Justin.

“Everyone but Justin.”

Then she is yours.

I would like to be deployed outside, if that’s a possibility, China Girl said.

“With me?” Kove asked.

We make a good team, China Girl said.

She was talking combatively; Kove heard it romantically. Her tone-deaf voice was like a text message without an exclamation point or an emoticon, its intent subject to interpretation. As Lindo had hoped. He needed Kove sharp.

I know where they are headed, Lindo echoed in both of their heads. There was some excitement on a train . . .

= = =

The freight train barreled the four stowaways across a landscape that had once been highways and schools and suburbs. Now it was ruins. They had waited a half-mile out from the prison, and when the train rolled past, they hopped onto one of the flat cars. Yoshi and Justin shivered from the cold.

Glass pointed to a black shape in the distance. “I see it,” he said.

The others poked their heads into the rushing wind. Three miles away, the Data Sump sat on a hill. It was the height of a small skyscraper, and even this far away, they could see the energy of its beam with their eyes. The air around it shimmered like a desert thermal. The place looked like an observatory, but instead of a telescope, a huge microwave dish one hundred feet in diameter rotated back and forth, east to west, following the ring of satellites that were part of the Northern Star.

The train track wasn’t heading in the direction of the Data Sump. This was as close as they were going to get.

Raimey spoke over the wind. “We have to get off.”

“How?” Justin asked. They were traveling at at least seventy miles per hour.

Raimey sat at the front. His upper body could turn like an owl’s head. He spun around and ripped the pin from the coupler. Their car detached from rest of the train and gradually slowed to a stop.

“Not everything’s hard, Justin,” Raimey said.

They walked through what had once been a suburb. Wind whistled through the abandoned homes. An old sign said “Naperville.”

“My grandparents lived here after they retired,” Justin said.

“Are you surprised that Evan hasn’t found us yet?” Raimey asked Glass.

“He may know exactly where we are,” Glass said and ran off to scout ahead.

“Not much for conversation.” Raimey observed.

“He’s got half a brain,” Justin replied.

As they got closer, the Data Sump felt more dangerous. A vibration filled the air. It started low, almost as if the earth was shaking, but as they got nearer, it began to resonate in their skulls.

“My teeth hurt,” Yoshi said.

“Mine too,” Raimey said.

The beam itself was invisible, but they could still see where it was by how it smeared the stars, slashing back and forth. And now they could see the dish up top, too. A jackhammer-like buzz echoed all around them.

They walked through a park, past a playground and two soccer goals wrapped in vines.

“I heard how, if Chicago suddenly had no population, the vines are what would take over everything. Like at Wrigley Field,” Yoshi said.

“Are you talking just to talk?” Raimey asked.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have to.”

The Data Sump now dominated their field of view. Up top, near the dish, white light crackled and popped, its origin uncertain.

“Get behind me,” Raimey said. “If things go down, stay back fifty yards.”

Justin and Yoshi fell in line like ducklings.

Nothingness became a shadow, and then became Glass. “There’s a concrete fence running the perimeter, and a guard post.”

“How many soldiers?” Raimey asked.

“Only two that I can see.”

“Nothing hidden, nothing out of place?”

“No.”

“Not surprising, really. After all, who would come here?” Justin said.

Raimey nodded. After twenty-five years, security would get lax.

“Should I handle the guards?” Glass said.

“We aren’t killing them,” Justin replied.

Glass looked to John.

“This is no time for morals,” Raimey said. “They’d kill us.”

“You don’t know that,” Justin replied.

“Well we can’t go ask them, can we? Right now, as far as we know, we’re undetected. And that’s the only thing we’ve got going for us.” To Glass: “Do it.”

Justin started to say something else to Glass, but he was already gone. He took two bounding steps and leaped over the fifteen-foot chain link fence. The other three waited.

“This makes us as bad as him,” Justin said.

“I’ve never said I’m not,” Raimey replied.

Glass was back in three minutes. “No one else is around the perimeter,” he said.

Raimey shouldered through the fence and they walked through.

At the guard station, Justin looked in. The men were out cold, but not dead. Raimey saw this too, and said something under his breath as he stomped by. He paused.

“Go on ahead,” Raimey said.

Justin stopped.

“What are you going to do?” Justin asked.

“What do you think?” Raimey said.

“You’re going to kill them?” Yoshi said. The excitement drained from his voice. The men were unconscious, sprawled out on the floor.

“What do you children think is going to happen when they wake up? They’re going to thank us?” Raimey snarled. “Get going.” He turned to Glass. “No more of this shit. We kill.”

Glass nodded.

With his right hand, Raimey casually slapped up at the entrance, tearing a hole in the roof to get inside. As the others walked away, they felt him stomp twice. Justin winced. It was like a man putting a quivering bird out of its misery. Then Raimey was back with them, halfway up the hill.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Justin said through clenched teeth. Yoshi echoed the sentiment with his eyes.

“Don’t tell me about war,” Raimey replied.

= = =

The Data Sump was surrounded by a forest, but the serenity of the tall oaks and elms was destroyed by the ear-splitting sound of the Data Sump’s clatter. A static in the air made Yoshi’s and Justin’s hair stand on end. They had to yell to talk.

When they reached the base, Yoshi and Justin took a moment to catch their breath. The ground was spongy, and Justin realized it was rubber. Giant iron latticed legs sank past the rubber base. Apart from the structure on top, the whole thing reminded John of the Eiffel Tower. Ground cables the diameter of manhole covers splayed off the legs into the ground. Two of the legs had stairs and a lift. Raimey broke the lock of one and opened it.

“I’ll stay down here,” he said. “Anything big will come on foot.”

The other three entered, but just before the door closed, Raimey grabbed it.

“Justin,” he said.

Justin was still angry about the guards. “What?”

“I’m an old man, and I’m guilty for all I’ve done, and you have every right to despise me. But Vanessa didn’t deserve this.” Raimey slapped his chest; it sounded like two anvils colliding. Raimey spit as he spoke, the self-loathing too bitter to mask. “It’s because of me that this happened to her. Because of ME!”

Then, quieter: “Help me save her.”

Justin didn’t know what to say, but Glass did.

“We will.”

The door closed. Beyond it, they heard Raimey’s waist chains spinning up. The ultimate tell that people were about to die.

= = =

The three of them took the lift.

“Glass,” Yoshi said. Electricity arced over Glass’s body in a thousand inchworms. Glass put his index fingers a half a foot apart, and a continuous arc crackled between them.

“I don’t get how this works,” Justin said.

“It’s microwave transmission. It takes a tremendous amount of energy,” Yoshi said.

The door at the top was unlocked. They stepped through it onto a platform that was over fifty yards wide and across. Glass went first, with the carbines drawn, and circled the perimeter of the Sump. Yoshi and Justin followed, and they were immediately overwhelmed by the kinetic power of where they were. The air crackled and hummed as if they were inside a thunderhead, and the night sky came in and out of view as the transmission dish swung back and forth above them in a constant, rolling eclipse.

“It’s hot,” Yoshi said. In just one minute, both he and Justin were soaked in sweat.

Glass was back. “What do you need me to do?” he asked. “We need to move quickly.”

Yoshi pointed to a platform at the center. The dish was mounted to it. “We need to get there.”

They walked through a forest of ten-foot-tall aluminum heat sinks that covered the entire surface beneath the dish. Electrical arcs danced back and forth. As Yoshi and Justin walked by, the bright white bolts would occasionally find them and bounce off their soft hides on their way to the next metal plate.

The ground was littered with piles of dead birds. There were far too many to avoid, and Yoshi and Justin made faces as they stepped on them. The hollow bones cracked beneath their feet, but there was very little odor. Justin guessed the electricity and the heat had cooked them.

They made it to the base of the dish. It hemmed and hawed with a hydraulic machine-gun racket. A rubber-coated platform sat eight feet above them by the wavering axis.

“The maintenance terminal is up there,” Yoshi said to Glass. Glass looked up, then put one hand down as a foothold. Yoshi went first, Glass lifting him like a feather. Justin followed. They disappeared over the top.

Yoshi’s head reappeared over the side and looked down at Glass. “This may take a while,” he said.

“We don’t have a while. They’re coming,” Glass responded.

“What?”

Yoshi could hear nothing other than the twenty-ton dish slamming back and forth above him, but Glass heard everything. His implant filtered out the dish racket by countering it with a dynamically applied inverse sound wave.

“Helicopters. Hurry.” Glass ran to the northeast side of the Sump. There he kicked down two heat sink slats, broke open the hard case, and assembled the massive rifle. The black hole of the barrel was big enough to put two fingers in. He slammed in a magazine and racked the slide. The metal on metal sounded like a car getting sideswiped.

The rifle had no scope or sight. Glass lay prone and pressed the butt of the gun against his shoulder. His neck lengthened and moved over to the side of the gun. The electromagnet built into his cheek switched on, and his face slapped against the gun. He was the scope.

He magnified his vision to 20x, surveying the sky four miles out. Red trajectory arcs were superimposed over his sight, tailored to the rifle round and accounting for gravity and wind speed—which he gauged from the movement of the treetops. Within three miles, Glass didn’t miss. He waited as the thump from the helicopter blades grew.

= = =

Raimey walked north, navigating gently between the large trees. His gut told him they would come from this direction, and he’d learned to trust it. Muted beneath the churning whine of the Data Sump, squirrels barked above and around him and birds flitted from twig to branch. Raimey guessed they were probably deaf. The Sump was out of place. And so was he.

He sat down beneath a white oak that must have been three hundred years old. It rose a hundred feet in the air, dwarfing even him.

“They’re coming,” his wife said behind him.

He closed his eyes and savored her voice. “I know.”

He could feel the illness in her. This was the cancerous crone. This was the woman he had abandoned.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Hit hard and fast. No hesitation. This is just the start.”

He turned to address her, but she jumped to the right side of his periphery, as she always did. “What do you mean?”

“She is far away, John. What happens here will only set your compass.”

“I don’t know why he doesn’t bomb us.”

Tiffany laughed. “He wants Justin, John. When he has him, he will.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her rub her arms for warmth.

“I wish I could hold you.”

“You do. Every time you think of me.”

“I mean for real.”

“Soon. But first you have to right this.”

He nodded. He knew.

She disappeared again. He heard something scratching above him and looked up—a brown squirrel watched him from a foot away, unafraid. They regarded each other for over a minute, two beings on a blue ball, spinning through an ocean of black.

What have we done to this place? Raimey thought in disgust.

The report from the loudest rifle John had ever heard filled the air.

Chapter 10

Kove followed China Girl like a puppy as they prepped for the assault on the Data Sump. Lindo’s eyes fed them real-time information on the enemy, and while the dish itself created a huge blind spot, there was no doubt that Raimey and the others were there.

Five helicopters were spinning up, and the fifteen Minors and five Majors were loading in, one Major per helicopter to distribute the weight.

China Girl watched Kove tail her. She stopped without turning around. With her eight eyes providing 360-degree vision, the concept meant nothing to her.

“What?” she asked.

He realized what he was doing: he hadn’t even loaded up his hydraulshocks.

“I’m just . . . glad you’re alive,” he said.

She wasn’t used to such a human interaction. She couldn’t physically sense hot or cold, but in its place was not nothingness, but a detachment between her thoughts and her surroundings. When she saw her reflection she knew it was her, but that knowledge held no weight. She had never felt an identity. As Lindo had grown more distant with his god-like knowledge and his inability to relate to humans, so had his creations. And while a human brain was nestled in her back, it didn’t know the body it was born with, or the name her mother had whispered to her when she was first held close. China Girl was what she was, not who she was. Her true self was a question without an answer.

She had never communicated with someone as much as she had Kove. Initially she’d had a hard time forming words and conveying her thoughts—speech was a rusty tool—but it had gradually come back to her. Now she turned to Kove, because that’s what people do. “Me too. But this is my last body.”

Kove’s eyes darkened like a Great White’s the moment before it tears into a seal.

She is mortal, Kove. Just like you. The metal is a mirage of invulnerability, Lindo said.

“You’ll be fine,” Kove said. He would not let anyone hurt her. Not again.

He loaded up the hydraulshocks and locked on his helmet. A double-bladed chopper waited for them. China Girl hung upside down from the landing sled as it rose in the air. Kove sat in the cargo hold and remembered who he was and why people feared him.

= = =

“It’s almost ready,” Yoshi said to Justin. He was hunched over the maintenance interface connecting the breakers.

“How do you know about all this stuff?” Justin asked.

Yoshi didn’t look up. “This is why Cynthia found me. I’m good at finding information that’s hard to find.” Yoshi stopped wiring and regarded his work. He pressed a switch on each breaker and they glowed. “Know what my secret is?” He connected a full-bandwidth Mindlink—designed for modified Sleepers—to the breakers.

“What?” Justin asked.

“I just asked questions, man. People love to talk. All right, lose the toupee.”

Justin grabbed the front of his hair and pulled it off. Metal patches covered his head. They had spread apart as he’d grown. Some were covered in a haze of skin.

“You haven’t done this since you were a kid?” Yoshi asked.

“No.”

“Well, hopefully this’ll still work.”

Justin lay on the mat, and Yoshi held the Mindlink over his face. “Ready?”

Justin puffed out a few breaths. “Does it matter?”

“No. If the breakers trip from the Northern Star’s attack, but you get away, I can reset them. But you do have to get away. If you’re stuck in in its mindscape, I can only pull you out.”

“Vanessa is a part of its mindscape,” Justin said. “I have to go in.”

“Yeah, that’s not the best situation. It’s kinda the one you should avoid at all costs.” Then, trying to recover from his demoralizing pep talk, he added, “But you’re the King Sleeper! So you’ll be fine.”

Yoshi put the mask over Justin’s face and aligned the sensors to the contact patches around his skull.

“You ready?”

Justin gave a thumbs-up.

“Kick his ass.” Yoshi flipped the switch.

= = =

Justin’s mind rocketed through a kaleidoscope pipe as his consciousness separated from his physical body and entered cyberspace. It felt as if his true form had been released from a mortal shackle. Atlas without the burden of Earth.

He floated in the in-between. Beneath him, Sleepers drifted from program to program, maintenancing, hacking, or just observing. They looked like sperm with a dozen tails. They were ghosts that ninety-nine percent of the population didn’t see. And the higher the Sleeper was in aptitude, the more discreet they could be. It was hierarchical. Justin could choose to not be seen by those below him, just as Glass was invisible to most humans he slithered past.

In this void, hundreds of millions of portal mirrors— access points to billions of separate programs—spun on a center axis, around HIM. At the center of this manufactured solar system, the Northern Star pulsed and swirled in a ball of white lava.

The Northern Star was huge, but from Justin’s position, it was still very far away. He had chosen to be inserted on the outskirts of the in-between. Justin exhaled, and what looked like a poison gas rolled off his jelly form. It grew quickly, until within seconds it covered thousands of miles around him. And then his mindscape began to unfold exponentially. His mind shook from both effort and ecstasy as it continued to spill out into a space where he was at home. He could see the Sleepers beneath him; he watched their flowing jig-like forms stop moving. They were looking up. Justin could hear their thoughts like a radio transmission:

What is that?

He’s dead.

We need to disconnect now.

I was alive when he first came online.

Many of them blinked away, sensing the danger that was about to unfold. But most stayed, unable to draw their eyes away from the growing sun.

The portals started to slow, and the ones closest to Justin’s immense gravity began to drift out of their orbit toward him. What was true before was true now: the King Sleeper could rip space.

JUSTIN, the Northern Star purred. His name echoed through every program. Every person online heard it.

I’M HERE, EVAN, Justin projected back. Portals shot away from him, smashing into others, creating a shower. Millions of people suddenly woke when their programs were destroyed.

Tentacles grew from the Northern Star; they were as thick as a moon and millions of miles long. One breached Justin’s mindscape; it immediately blinked out and died.

I CREATED THE PROTOCOL, EVAN. YOU CAN’T KILL ME HERE.

NOR YOU, ME, Evan replied.

I DON’T INTEND TO.

Time and confidence led to predictability. Justin knew that the first thing Evan would try against him would be the Reverse Data Push. He was right. And it had given Justin the Northern Star’s signature. Now he looked out across the flat plane of portals, and those monitored by the Northern Star shimmered like the conscious orb itself.

Instead of avoiding them, Justin’s massive presence scorched toward the nearest one and wrapped around it. The liquidity of his shape changed to a mist, and then the mist flowed into the portal.

The audience of Sleepers wondered—if only for a second—if what they had seen had really happened at all. Because an adversary would never go into the Northern Star’s domain. To do so would be to subjugate oneself to the Northern Star’s rules. Beyond all things, the mindscape was a Sleeper’s ability to manipulate reality—and without it, you were just a soul left to your wits, drifting in an ocean whose only intent was to suck you down.

= = =

Evan felt the incursion. Deep underground, his eyes rolled and his mouth curled to show rotting, yellowed teeth. The Pieces on their pulpits squirmed in response to his commands, and the Multipliers around the world shook and moaned as they redirected their search for Justin—from all of cyberspace to the internal network of the Northern Star. The immense horsepower behind Evan’s thoughts made his influence far reaching and indomitable, but it was also slow, and he could feel Justin barrel through his network like a magnum hummingbird, too quick to grasp.

Evan realized what Justin was searching for. Evan could institute rules as concrete as gravity, but some rules were beyond his influence—rules that were so integral to the foundation of cyberspace that to alter them would be to break the system itself. And one of those rules was that in cyberspace, every living organism had a digital tail. The Pieces whispered:

Vanessa.

Yes, it was that. Cynthia and her misfits didn’t know where the Northern Star was located.

Evan shifted his strategy from trying to trap Justin to cycling ahead of him. But he didn’t know where Vanessa’s tail was any more than Justin did. Justin was ripping through the portals and programs, twirling in, and suddenly a human fear boiled over the cold calculating that had become Evan’s being. Vanessa had little access to the outside world; her life was wrapped up in the Pieces and Multipliers. Where could she put the tail where Evan could not see it?

Within me, Evan thought. Not within the Northern Star, but within him. She would have known that he would never look there: it was as suffocating as space, infested with self-contempt. An unbridled lacking and unhappiness that had driven him to his conquests. It was the womb that conceived all Fuhrers. Vanessa connected him to his minions—she was an intermediary for his desires—and he knew now that he had been played. They were all his body. The millions of miles of fiber his veins, the transmissions to space a synaptic gap, all bits and bytes filtering through one thing: him. Justin was a clot hitching and tumbling toward the brain.

Evan had to find Vanessa’s tail before Justin did. He had to end this now. And to do so he would have to look through all the things that made him him—and not flinch at the truth he found behind the words and gloss. Our fears are what make us. The casualty of ideals is how we climb from one rung to the next. And we are our parents’ children.

We are here, Kove and China Girl said.

= = =

Glass spotted the lead helicopter. His eyes zoomed from 20x to 40x and he could see the pilot’s face. The man checked his dials and talked to the soldiers in back, unaware that the red trajectory line in Glass’s vision terminated on the bridge of his nose. Glass pulled the trigger with his mind.

The report of the rifle was astounding. Within thirty feet, anyone without earplugs would have lost their hearing permanently. Seven feet of burnt powder erupted from the muzzle as the two-thousand-grain depleted-uranium incendiary bullet left the barrel at nearly a mile per second.

The pilot saw a bloom of yellow light from the Data Sump—and then he saw nothing. His upper body vanished in a red mist, followed by the bodies of the four men behind them as Glass twisted the smart bullet through the cabin. The tail rotor exploded as the bullet flew through it, and the helicopter spun and plummeted toward the ground. The remaining soldiers hung on, screaming on the way to their deaths.

Get to the ground, China Girl projected. The other three helicopters immediately dropped down and separated, sprinting for the tree line to get out of Glass’s sightline.

BOOM! Another of the helicopters opened up. The right side of the pilot’s face charred as the passing round turned the air near him to plasma. The Tank Major at the back exploded, and the helicopter’s tail broke away from the main.

Through the pain and disorientation (I’m blind in my right eye) the pilot did his best to control the descent. Another round punched through the side of the hull, and a Tank Minor turned into wet confetti. Still another round passed clean through as if the armored hull were a napkin.

But the pilot made it down. The four Minors dragged him to safety as the helicopter was consumed in flames.

Raimey could run at up to twenty-five miles per hour, and very little that got in his way would slow him down. He could barrel through buildings and maintain his speed as if God himself were pushing him through. So when he saw the helicopters descend to avoid Glass’s rifle, he covered the distance to them remarkably fast.

Behind him Glass continued to fire on Lindo’s army, and Raimey smiled. Lindo’s soldiers had heard of Glass and Raimey’s abilities, but they were big and strong too, and had thought themselves as peers. They were now facing the collapse of this delusion.

Cynthia, you crazy, brilliant bitch.

His waist chains spun like a buzz saw. He hurtled over and through downed trees. The suspension slats in his thighs flexed and adjusted to the rolling terrain. He saw a spotlight ahead, searching back and forth for a clearing in the forest. The helicopter found an opening and began its descent. Raimey veered toward it.

“I’m coming, baby,” he said.

= = =

When the pilot saw him, it was already too late. The helicopter was ten yards off the ground and descending. The spotlight swept back and forth, but the pilot was focused on the landing. Had he been scanning the tree line, he would have seen the giant running toward them at full speed with his arm already pulled back. The pilot reacted in the same way as thousands had before him: he covered his face with his hands and screamed.

WHA-WHAM!

Raimey blurred, and the hydraulshock transferred five million foot-pounds of energy from his eight-hundred-pound fist to the front of the helicopter. It was extreme overkill. His fist sliced through the front of the helicopter, through the pilot, and on its downward arc it pierced the fuel tank. The helicopter erupted into a ball of flames and crashed to the ground. Three Minors and the Tank Major tried to get out, all on fire but alive.

John charged into the fire and ignored their pleas. A Minor was pinned under the hull; John mixed him in with the soil. One fired on him, half of its body already bubbling from the heat; Raimey tore him in half. The fire made Raimey glow, and he felt the heat as it licked at him and comforted him. It made his face blister with second-degree burns, a baptism he had needed ever since he had agreed to leave his daughter and become this . . . thing.

He hammered down the last Minor and turned toward the other giant, a version eight-tenths his size. The Major walked backward like a woman about to get mugged, and then turned to run away. Raimey grabbed him—no hydraulshock, no quick death—and pulled him down into the inferno.

The man screamed and pleaded for his life. Raimey paid him no attention; instead he watched as the blue flames got in. One thousand degrees Fahrenheit cooking the Major like pork. Raimey held him down and watched his face go from pleading, to screaming, to death. He watched the eyes go from sharp to milk, cooking through like hard-boiled eggs.

If Lindo had witnessed this, he would have trembled in fear. If Lindo had witnessed this, he would have understood the consequences of acting against men who could shuck away morality to the very quick of their soul, who could pull Hell up to earth to appease an end, and make the Devil squirm from their void of mercy.

= = =

Yoshi couldn’t see Glass, but his teeth rattled every time the gigantic rifle detonated. It exceeded the chatter of the Sump, and with each shot, the darkness snapped away and the heat sinks grew long in shadows.

He saw the first helicopter go down in a ball of flames, but he didn’t see the others—it was too dark. Three minutes later, an explosion curled up into the air about half a mile away.

Raimey, Yoshi guessed.

Yoshi checked Justin. He was out, unaware of this world. Yoshi took the FN90 and examined it. He found the safety and clicked it off, just in case. Until they found what they needed, Justin couldn’t defend himself.

Yoshi felt a bat fly by him, and he looked up to find two glowing orbs. Glass was there.

Yoshi yelped and fell backward. Glass steadied him.

“Is he almost done?” Glass asked.

“There’s no way of knowing.” Yoshi pointed to the breakers. “I’ll only know if there’s trouble.”

“We’re running out of time. At least three helicopters touched down,” Glass said. “The soldiers are on foot.”

“How many?”

“Fifteen.” He looked at the submachine gun in Yoshi’s hands. “Don’t bother. If you see them, hide.”

“Where are you going?”

“Down to greet them.”

Glass vanished.

= = =

A quarter-mile east of the Data Sump, Raimey saw another helicopter descend toward a break in the forest. He ground his way toward them, tearing through the underbrush and knocking down small trees. When Raimey was in full motion, he could hear nothing but his body and the things he knocked over. And with his full focus on reaching the helicopter before the drop, he didn’t hear the dual-rotor thump of another one descending behind it.

He got there too late. The helicopter rose, peeling sharply away to avoid Glass’s sniper fire. Six Minors moved toward the Sump in a team formation behind a Tank Major. Two shots twanged off John’s helmet, and it took him a moment to realize it wasn’t coming from them. He looked up and saw the muzzle flash of a rifle beneath the belly of a massive gunship.

Raimey had been deployed by these gunships. They called them “Butchers.” They could hold four Tank Majors in the passenger compartment, and they had cannons fore and aft that were immensely powerful and accurate. A Sleeper pilot was integrated into the flight and weapons systems.

From sixty feet up, Kove jumped from the helicopter. When he landed, his feet plowed into the earth up to his knees. He climbed out. He was fully armored, and mounted on his back was an ammo case with three hundred rounds for the grenade launcher he held with both hands. Three barrels spun like a centrifuge, launching grenades the size of Coke cans at Raimey. Inside each thin metal shell was an evolved form of plastique explosive four times as powerful as C4. The grenades stuck to their target, and Kove’s Mindlink controlled their detonation. He could detonate them on contact or detonate them once a target was covered.

Kove unloaded on Raimey, the ungainly, heavy gun causing Kove’s arms to vibrate as if he were carrying an unbalanced washing machine. But his trajectory management system was similar to Glass’s, and each shot landed true.

Plastique blinded Raimey as it covered his upper body, and then BAM! It exploded and sent him reeling. WOMP-WOMP-WOMP-WOMP, the launcher cycled blooping shells onto him, and the explosions blinded him. They knocked him to the ground. They changed the terrain around him.

The WOMP grew louder; Kove was getting closer. And while Raimey didn’t think the grenades would kill him, Kove’s hydraulshock would. He had to get away. He turned and ran, still unable to see under the coat of explosive.

= = =

When Raimey retreated, Kove smiled. So much for the legend, he thought. He continued to batter the giant with grenades, nine out of ten finding their mark.

Don’t let him recover, Lindo said. China Girl, get Justin-01.

Kove pursued Raimey into the forest.

The gunship with China Girl rose toward the Sump.

= = =

Glass saw the gunship pull away after Kove hit the turf, and clinging underneath it, he saw his spidery replacement. Glass’s legs were wrapped around the top of a tree in a vise, and his body was completely stretched parallel to the ground. In his hands were the two suppressed .50 caliber carbines.

The Tank Major and six Minors that had dropped from the helicopter were approaching him one hundred feet below. He ignored the giant for the moment and traced the front two Minors as they came underneath him. He would take the Tank Major on the ground.

= = =

Tank Major Panke lumbered in front of his team. Kove had told them to support China Girl. Ahead he saw the Sump. It sat on a hill, dominating the night sky.

Panke was unaware that his team had just died. In one second, each had suffered a catastrophic headshot. Their headless bodies tumbled to the ground, the soft foliage cushioning their fall, unnoticed by the giant.

He didn’t even register that something had landed on him: Glass weighed less than a hundred and fifty pounds. But he knew he was dead when his helmet spun off him like a bottle cap and he felt the open air.

= = =

Past its intent, the Northern Star was a blizzard of memories. Justin had quickly hopped through a dozen monitored programs to get into the Northern Star’s slipstream, and he found it to be a river of faces and desires, snippets of a billion lives that were monitored—and, Justin sensed, envied. He had dipped low into the undercurrent of command code and protocol, but that wasn’t where the tail would be. It would be up here amid the river of souls that rushed past Justin in an endless stream.

These people’s thoughts were not precious. Most of them were dull or vulgar, base needs met with digital junk food. But there were a few that caught Justin off-guard; they choked him with emotion and nearly caused him to swim after them, ignoring his mission.

And he could feel that the Northern Star desired them, too. These flecks of gold among the mud glowed differently than the others. Justin realized that these lives were not of interest to Evan himself—but rather to the Pieces and Multipliers beneath him. Unbeknownst to Evan—or equally likely, ignored—the Northern Star had a sentience all its own, and the more Justin felt it, the more he realized that it was the mind of a child lost in the woods, hungry and wishing for home. It was the mind of the abused.

And that was how he would find the tail. A glowing fleck passed him, a flimsy gigabyte in a flow of zetabytes. He heard a girl sing. He could tell it was unmonitored by Evan, but not unmonitored below. He reversed course and chased it. And when he caught up, he entered the girl’s mind.

= = =

The girl sat in front of a small pink vanity, combing her hair. Barbie dolls were propped against the mirror, and after she combed her hair, she combed theirs too. A knock came from the door. Justin could feel outside the program. The knock was an audio file. There was no knuckle against wood.

“Come in,” the girl said, not taking her eyes from a Barbie dressed in a blue flight attendant suit.

The door opened onto a hall, and in the hall was an older version of the girl. The cheekbones, the eyes, the thin mouth. It was a replicate. To anyone else she would appear human, but Justin knew the truth: she was zeroes and ones.

“Are you getting your Barbies pretty?” The woman walked over and knelt down beside the girl.

“Yeah.” The girl held flight attendant Barbie up to show. “She’s pretty.”

“Not as pretty as you,” the false mother said.

Justin reached past the immediate construct and felt a string of these programs. A dozen variations were running. Children being treated like children by constructs of parental love. What is this?

He was invisible, but the mother glanced in his direction. It was undeniable.

“Can you play?” the girl asked.

“I would love to. What do you want to do?” the mother said.

“Dress-up!” The girl ran over to a closet. Inside were racks of clothing, costumes, and shoes.

The woman helped the girl dress up as a princess.

Justin felt that the time was accelerated. He rose slightly above the program, and the woman and girl sped up. The day passed, just the two of them playing. The woman holding the girl, reading to her, telling her she loved her. When night came, the woman helped the girl into her PJs and tucked her in. She checked for monsters in the closet and under the bed. She turned on the nightlight. And when the girl fell asleep, her outline in the bed disappeared and the sheets made themselves.

The room darkened, and Justin could barely see the woman. She was frozen in place.

A shadow pulled free of the mannequin’s back.

“You can come down,” Vanessa said.

= = =

Justin settled onto the floor. He had never seen Vanessa before, but if Glass were here, he could have told him it was a spitting image of her in her twenties.

“What is this?”

“This is what I do. The Northern Star is mimicked around the globe by Multipliers. They’re children. All of them are conditioned, except those like me. Those are just trapped.”

“This girl . . .” Justin began.

“Is a Consciousness fuse to a Multiplier on the shores of the UK,” Vanessa said. “And in a year she will die and another will take her place. And I will love her just the same. And I will lie to her about her future like I have with all the others. When she asks what she can be when she grows up, I will tell her ‘anything.’ I have raised over six hundred of these boys and girls, and the whole time I do, I’m cannibalizing their minds. My living is the reason they die.”

“That’s not your fault,” Justin said.

“That doesn’t make them less dead. Of the children that repeat the Pieces—they are Forced Savants—I’ve held the hands of nearly seven thousand. But Evan is the worst. He requires four children at each Multiplier, and the team only lasts a few months. Over ten thousand have died with his twisted thoughts in their brain. Do you know how little the world would care if things changed?”

“Cynthia said something about that. How no one would notice.”

Vanessa nodded. “But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t change. Evan’s right in many ways: we are well past democracy. At the end, it was top heavy with corruption. And the while the mechanism was there to change that, by then the masses had enough needs met to not care. Hunger—and lack of it—is why empires rise and fall. It was inevitable, and worse, it was predictable. We had been in the arena of the unwell for over a century. But it was modeled after Eden, filled with fruit and tidings and illusions of progress, and with every bite we turned to sloth.”

She reached out her hand. “Come.”

“Where?”

“There is more to show.”

“Am I safe?”

“No. We don’t have much time.”

He took her hand and they vanished from the room.

= = =

China Girl dropped from the helicopter to the platform. Defying gravity, she scurried along the side of it, then rolled up into the field of heat sinks and scurried toward the dish.

Yoshi saw a metal crab zipping between the metal slats.

Fuck. Fuck.

He glanced down at Justin—he was still out. Yoshi didn’t know what to do. Glass was gone, and downrange the forest was being blown apart. He took the FN90 and made sure the safety was off. His heart relocated to his throat and he tried to keep track of the thing that was zigzagging toward them.

= = =

All around Raimey, hell had risen. Trees were on fire, collapsing and exploding, the sizzle from their boiling bark filling the air. Pulsing embers whipped around in the thermal winds.

Twice Raimey had tried to close the distance on Kove, and twice he was rebuffed with massive firepower. He’d had no choice but to flee, and now Kove drove him farther and farther away from the people he was supposed to protect.

The forest ended, and Raimey broke free into an abandoned Costco parking lot. The barrage had stopped. Raimey turned just as Kove emerged from the inferno. There was nowhere to run.

They quietly regarded one another. Raimey almost thought to say something, but what would it matter? What would it do? They were soldiers on the opposite sides of war. Kove gave a curt nod, as if acknowledging the moment, and then the grenade launcher cycled up and pelted John, caking his legs and detonating him down to the ground. Raimey turtled, covering his face.

This is it, Raimey thought. It’s over.

= = =

Yoshi heard the first breaker trip, and a moment later, the second. The Northern Star was attacking Justin-01, and there was nothing Yoshi could do. He was hiding at the opposite side of the dish, gripping the submachine gun so tight his hands were numb.

The spider stood over Justin-01.

The spider was doing nothing. It remained in the same position, straddling Justin-01 with its three pairs of legs.

Yoshi heard another breaker trip.

Lindo wants to kill Justin himself, Yoshi thought. That’s why that thing isn’t doing anything. It’s guarding Justin so Lindo can take him.

“No,” Yoshi said to himself. He counted to three.

Then he ran toward the metal crab, firing the submachine gun the entire way.

China Girl was waiting for instructions from Lindo while she stood over Justin-01. She twice let him know that the target had been acquired and that she could disconnect him and take him to the helicopter, which was hovering a half-mile away, waiting for her call for pickup. But she received no response.

The electricity and heat around the dish caused her night vision to crackle and fizz. She switched to daytime vision. Suddenly, a gun opened up on her face, and she turned toward it. A skinny Asian boy ran at her with a small submachine gun, yelling the whole way. The rounds caused her head to stutter, but they rolled off her like rain: they were designed for soft tissue, not armor.

Then suddenly, one nailed her, and she was thrown back. A second one nearly tore her off the side of the dish mount. It didn’t make sense.

= = =

The bullets aren’t working! Why are you still running toward her? Self-preservation screamed in Yoshi’s mind while he charged the metal crab. And then suddenly she teetered. With the next burst she nearly fell off.

And with the next muzzle flash Yoshi saw why: Glass was dragging her away from Justin.

= = =

She realized what was happening. Glass pulled at her back legs and got four of them off the platform, but the other four dug into the rubber floor and metal grate below. She kicked at him, blades out, and rotated her body. She pulled a submachine gun from her back and fired on Glass. He shook into a blur and her rounds ricocheted.

The Asian boy reloaded the clip four feet away from her and fired at her face. She swiped out and gutted him. He collapsed, howling. But that action had left her with only two arms anchored, and that wasn’t enough. Glass pulled her down into the heat sink field.

= = =

Yoshi pushed himself against the wall, next to Justin. He held his stomach together as if it were a broken zipper. Blood covered his legs and pooled beneath him and the King Sleeper. He started to cry as his vision peppered with orange bursts. He felt so tired. He wanted to go home.

= = =

Raimey soldier-crawled and Kove kept his distance, coating him in plastique and detonating it. Raimey could not stand up. Every time he tried, Kove would flood him with more explosives and knock him back down. But Raimey wasn’t damaged. The human part of him was defeated, but if Kove disappeared, Raimey would simply stand up and be just as operational as he had been when he was first made.

Kove was thirty yards away. Close, but not close enough.

Just a break. I just need one break, Raimey thought. And then his wife whispered in his ear.

Kove slowly circled in. When he was within ten yards, he was going to holster the launcher and hydraulshock Raimey. But he knew to be cautious. He wanted to win; he wanted to be done. Lindo had promised him a future that seemed worth seeing.

The giant had quit crawling. He was huddled up like a beaten dog. It was time.

Kove maneuvered toward Raimey’s back, getting ready to holster the gun. Suddenly, Raimey’s two hover-rovers boostered off his shoulder blades and rocketed toward him. Kove dove out of the way.

Raimey stood up and charged.

When he got within fifteen yards, Raimey knew there was one thing he could do that would nullify any of Kove’s offensive measures. And it was important that Raimey survive this day. This was only the first part of his journey, and at the end of it the dice would roll how they may. But not now. Not yet. He had to live. For his daughter’s sake, he could not let this be the end.

Kove sprang to his feet and fired the grenade launcher. Raimey unloaded five hydraulshocks in a row, alternating arms, the inertia of each throwing Raimey forward. The grenades piled on him and exploded, but their force was insignificant compared to the hydraulshock of the most powerful Tank Major ever created. Raimey went through them like they were firecrackers.

Kove tried to get out of the way, but while he was the quickest Tank Major ever built, he was not as quick as a giant propelled by gunpowder. The fourth hydraulshock tore Kove’s upper body from his legs. The fifth turned his upper body into rags of tissue.

China—

That was the last thought that went through Alan Kove’s mind.

Raimey wasted no time. He sprinted into the inferno toward the Sump.

= = =

Glass pulled the spider down and hauled it away by its rear legs. China Girl squirmed and thrashed, spinning relentlessly, trying to break free. Glass didn’t know who she was, but it was clear who her designer was. He gave it no more thought. That part of his brain was gone.

He dragged her into the sinks to get her away from Justin. That was a mistake. Her upper arms grabbed the metal slats near her, and suddenly her feet turned to hands and grabbed him. She catapulted him back toward the dish mount, flinging him over her head. His back hit the cement and he crumpled for a flash before tracking her.

She retreated into the field of heat sinks. He amplified his hearing, but the Sumps’ transmission clatter overrode any nuances that would give away her position. The dish cycled back and forth, rattling the surroundings with its electric whine. He cycled through noise filters and then turned them off.

He pulled the two carbines from his back. She was in there. He kept to the perimeter of the dish mount and let Justin work. He didn’t know that Yoshi was bleeding out. But he knew his current objective: keep the spider away.

Stay or go. Stay or go, he thought.

And he then became aware that he was thinking. His new consciousness had given him purpose, and a knowledge of his past. But now it gave him pause.

In addition to his incredible design, one of the things that had made Glass so deadly was his complete lack of hesitancy. He lived on instinct and reaction. This had been true even when he was a human, and it was even more true when that was stripped away. But now he felt fear: he had something to lose. And he realized that he couldn’t beat her like this.

He scaled the mount quickly. He knew what he had to do.

He moved backward to Justin, keeping his eye on the platform below. Justin was still out. He saw the sticky thick red of arterial blood and followed it to Yoshi. Yoshi was pale and shaking.

“Sabot was right. Reading about it is better than the real thing,” Yoshi said. His teeth were stained red.

Glass holstered one carbine and knelt beside the boy, keeping the other on the checkered slats, knowing what lay in their shadows.

“Am I dying?” Yoshi asked.

Glass held his hand. The boy’s grip was strong. It pulsed with his fading heartbeat. “Yes, Yoshi.”

Yoshi shook his head and cried. “I don’t want to!”

Glass pulled him to his chest while the boy sobbed.

“Why did I do this?” Yoshi cried. “Why didn’t I just give you the equipment and go home?”

Glass lifted the boy’s chin. “Because you are brave.”

Yoshi nodded. He cried, but he nodded.

And then a moment later, he died.

Glass felt Yoshi’s life give way to death, and a rage filled him that was as detrimental as the fear that had driven him up the platform. And a bitterness chased behind it, because Glass knew the rage would dissipate, along with all his memories, when he removed the memory card.

Glass had tasted the dessert of the living these last few days. He would never taste it again. He wouldn’t remember to retrieve the memory card. But he didn’t hesitate. The time to hesitate was over.

Mike Glass reached into his waist where his brain resided and found the memory card that Cynthia had inserted into him. He pulled it out and curled it into Yoshi’s cooling hand.

The memories slipped away in an outgoing tide. Yoshi’s name. Vanessa’s face. The way her back felt when he ran his hands down it. An old memory of his dad, sober, teaching him how to shoot. His second week at basic training when his captain ripped off Glass’s mask in the gas chamber and Glass just smiled. His first meeting with Evan. The memories that had brought him back to humanity faded into a pinpoint of light—

And then to nothing.

His system reset to the parameters Cynthia had programmed into him at his abduction:

Protect

Justin-01 (GPS pin)

John Raimey (Tank Major V1, whereabouts unknown)

Jeremiah Sabot (deceased)

Cynthia Revo (deceased)

And in the wisp of his final awareness, Glass made one modification:

Eliminate

Spider Minor (Primary)

All other threats

He silently rolled off onto the main platform and went into the sinks after the Spider Minor.

= = =

Justin-01 stood on molten glass that had once been a beach. Tarry water lapped against its jagged edge, gorged with dead aquatic life. Beached whales and sharks littered the surf. They were all burned. The air shimmered with a sickly heat, but he felt none of it. It was a mirage. It was Vanessa’s mind. She was not with him.

“When I called to you, it came from here,” she said. Her voice was all around.

Facing the ocean, Justin saw a black, melted structure that led out to a sunken ship. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“You are here because of what happened at this place,” she replied. “Less than a week ago, a Tank Major and an old man fought Evan and won.”

A charred metal hand rose from the glass a dozen yards away. Justin went to it. It was the arm of a Tank Major. The fingers were melted to the nub.

“When they won, I thought you could too. That with my father, with Mike, with Cynthia, maybe that would be enough. But this was their reward. It was foolish to think a few noble souls could overthrow a god.”

There was nothing around Justin but the melted remnants of a town. “He nuked them.”

“By destroying the Multiplier, they removed this region’s worth. And if word had spread about their victory, it could have started a chain reaction of revolt. It was the logical thing to do. No one noticed.”

“Why show me?”

“You are all alive right now because Evan sees value in you.”

“We can use that against him.”

“Yes.” But the way Vanessa said this, it felt as if she was holding something back. “How is Mike?”

“Cynthia gave him back his memories. He remembers you.”

He felt her smile. “And Dad?”

“Sad. Furious.”

“He was the sweetest man when I was a kid.”

“Where are you?”

Justin felt the coordinates fill his brain. The Northern Star bunker was south of Washington, D.C.

“I need to go, Vanessa. I’ve been online too long.”

He tried to disconnect and failed. He tried again. Nothing.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“You’re in the Northern Star, Justin. This isn’t cyberspace,” Vanessa said.

“Then release me!”

“I can’t, Justin. I’m sorry.”

“Is Evan here?”

“No. This is my domain. He can task me to control the Pieces and Multipliers, but he can’t enter.”

“Then why won’t you let me leave?”

“Because you need to be caught.”

Justin was torn out of cyberspace. He stared up at the two Tank Minors who had shaken him awake. One held the Mindlink. He tried to break free, but it was pointless.

“We got him,” one said. “Get up!”

Justin was pulled to his feet and felt a tackiness that ran down his entire back. He looked down, saw that he was covered in blood. Then he saw Yoshi. The boy was pale, his eyelids not quite closed, revealing the cloudy stare of the dead.

“No! NO!” Justin yelled, and struggled again. One of the Minors slapped him in the stomach, and all the air left him.

He heard a helicopter—no, two.

“They’re almost here,” one of the Minors said. They pulled him down to the main platform where four more Minors and a giant stood watch, and they escorted him to the side.

= = =

Glass moved through the heat sink field, pausing every two seconds to gauge his surroundings. The thousands of slats were ten feet tall and three feet wide, and their staggered pattern made it difficult to see more than six feet in any direction. He was deep within them when he heard Minors yelling at Justin to wake up. The dish blocked his view. But he couldn’t go there now. The Spider Minor was the primary—she had to die first. If she wasn’t handled, he’d never make it back to Justin. She was a peer.

Electricity arced between the slats, crackling Glass’s vision with interference. He held one carbine forward and tucked the other to his side. He heard the helicopters approach, one with a deep thump, something that pushed a lot of air. He walked slowly, soaking up every sense that could root her out.

He stepped into a pile of dead birds, and it erupted into metal talons like a bear trap. He jumped and twisted free, firing down to where she had been. He spun, scanning the sinks, guns committed, smoke curling from their muzzle tips. He heard the rolling tap of her feet as she fled toward the edge, and now that he knew the sound, he could isolate it, like a bloodhound smelling a fugitive’s old shirt.

He worked his way toward the edge, and as he did the wind picked up, thrumming the heat sinks like a tuning fork. He filtered out their chorus, but the tack-tack of her feet had disappeared. He circled the bird piles—that trick was done. But even without his memories, he was uncertain how to proceed. He had never fought something like this, something that had evolved so far beyond him. It was as alien to him as he himself had been to every victim he’d ushered into the inky black.

He saw a flicker of movement ahead. He could see a part of her behind a heat sink. He circled it slowly, never taking his eyes from it. She was as still as a statue, lying in wait.

He rushed her position, guns drawn. But it wasn’t her. It was a young Asian male, strung from the heat sink by his guts. Lacking any memory of Yoshi, Glass walked by the boy without a second glance.

With the second trap having failed, China Girl slithered out from underneath the platform as he passed and quietly closed the distance. When she pounced, Glass sensed her—he turned and fired, but she was already upon him. Two arms grabbed each of his own, tore the carbines away, and tossed them over the side.

Blades were pointless for both of them—hers snapped across his face and his rammed against her rigid body, neither to any effect. Glass tried to flip over her, but her back whipped up into him like a silverfish. Her rear limbs grabbed his legs, and with her middle four limbs on the ground, she stretched him like a guitar string.

Then she tottered to the edge and threw him over the side.

= = =

Glass landed on his feet ten stories below just as Raimey approached the base. Instead of running over to him, Glass ran off into the bush.

“What the fuck is going on?” Raimey asked.

Glass reappeared reloading the two carbines and holstering one to his back. He recognized the giant as a friendly. He scrambled onto Raimey’s fist, knelt down, and pointed up.

“Throw me,” Glass said with the cadence of a Speak & Spell.

= = =

The gunship covered the transport helicopter as it settled down near the platform to evacuate Justin. China Girl had regrouped with the others when she saw Glass fly back up onto the platform.

How?

He ran along the slats, one carbine locked to his cheek, firing at her eyes. Two shattered, and she spun low, away from the scattering Minors. He chased after her, using the heat sinks like stilts, keeping to the high ground so that anywhere she scurried to, he would see.

His rounds found home. The .50 BMG rounds couldn’t penetrate her shell, but they still punched her around, tumbling her through the brittle slats. She tried to evade with her lightning speed, but even though no one else could see her, her visual trickery didn’t work on Glass. He traced her with his rounds, reloading in a blur when a magazine went dry.

Glass kept one gun on China Girl and pulled the other out and aimed at a helicopter hovering on the side. The armor-piercing rounds tore through it, and smoke erupted from underneath its rotors. The helicopter pulled away.

The Tank Major and six Minors had regained their wits and were closing in on Glass.

BOOM!

A corner of the platform exploded upward, and Raimey pulled himself onto the surface. He was taller than the heat sinks and could see everything; he immediately charged the Tank Major ten yards away.

WHA-WHAM!

The Tank Major exploded into shrapnel and his arms spun out like boomerangs, toppling a swath of heat sinks before skipping over the side.

The Minors fled from Raimey’s path. One was too close. Raimey ran over the sinks like a combine thresher, picked the Minor up, and tossed him into the path of the Data Sump transmission. The Minor ignited like a match head when he crossed into the microwave beam.

China Girl scampered over the side. Glass followed her to the edge, still hopping across the sinks like stilts, but he didn’t fully commit. He turned and shot a Minor flanking Raimey. The other three continued to fire, distancing themselves from the giant.

The gunship approached the deck and began raining lead from its minigun cannons as it docked to pick up Justin and the remaining Minors. Its guns were independently controlled by the Sleeper pilot. One followed Glass as he circled away, using the data dish as a blind; the other fired on Raimey, who braced himself against the onslaught but didn’t hide. His body lit up like a sparkler and he slowly trudged forward. Glass popped up on the other side and shot the three Minors down, leaving Justin unattended.

Get Justin and leave on foot, Evan said to China Girl. She hung underneath the platform.

The helicopter altered its angle, aborting the pickup to focus its entire arsenal on Raimey. It trimmed fore, aiming the 40mm cannon—a tank buster. The platform exploded in ruins as it chased the giant.

Raimey took a direct hit and then two more that threw him end over end. All around him the platform was being obliterated by the explosive rounds. His vision doubled, blood dripped from his nose and mouth, and he shook his head to stay alert.

With the helicopter focused on Raimey, Glass was free to sprint toward it. It was ten yards off the deck, an easy leap, but the gunship’s sensors picked him up. It canted over, momentarily taking the cannon off Raimey, and the miniguns spilled lead in torrential tears, attempting to cut Glass down before he stowed onboard. Raimey took advantage of that brief reprieve by running straight at the bird. His vision was blurry, but he felt the heavy shells against his chest and he sensed the general motion of the helicopter rolling fore again to train its most potent weapon on him. When he got to the edge, he jumped and raked his hands out like claws. They found the nose.

His hands dug through the front of the hull like it was foil, and immediately the helicopter dropped nose-first into the Sump.

For a moment the pilot and Raimey were eye to eye. Then the helicopter—still firing its cannon point blank into the platform—rolled off the side as if in slow motion. John fell with it. When it landed, it collapsed like an accordion under Raimey’s weight and detonated in a ball of fire.

The old giant pulled himself from the wreckage and ran to get back up to the platform.

= = =

The battle was over. No more reinforcements came by helicopter. No more shots rang underneath the grinding sound of the Sump.

Searching, Raimey found Yoshi.

“Dammit.” He gently plucked his body off the heat sink. The gore below Yoshi’s chest was gruesome, but above it was just a boy with his eyes closed.

Yoshi was holding something in his hand. Raimey’s hands were too big to pluck it, so he gave the hand a gentle shake. It was some kind of memory card.

Glass approached.

“Why are you holding the dead boy?” Glass asked.

“What are you talking about?” Raimey replied. “We have to bury him.”

“Leave him. We have a mission.”

“What the fuck’s wro—” Raimey looked down at the card, then to Glass. “Do you know this boy’s name?” he asked Glass.

“No. You are John Raimey. I need to find my weapons.”

Raimey nodded to the memory card. “You need that.”

Glass picked it up and turned it in his hand.

“What does it hold?”

Raimey almost told him the truth, but he realized it would mean nothing. “Information about the mission.”

Glass inserted the card. The memories flooded back. The dead boy in front of him morphed into his friend. With sudden awareness, he swept Yoshi away from Raimey. “You shouldn’t have been the one to die,” he said to the ever-sleeping boy.

“Where’s Justin?” Raimey said.

“The spider Minor took him away on foot.”

Raimey pounded the ground with his fist. “NO! What are we going to do? We don’t know where to go!”

“Yes we do,” Glass said. “My tracking device is still on him.”

Chapter 11

Justin’s eyes were closed, but he could feel his body swaying back and forth as if he were floating on a raft. He felt metal rods beneath his body, and he cracked his eyes open.

China Girl glanced down at the human she was carrying through the forest. “Don’t move,” she said. She tore through the forest, galloping faster than a thoroughbred, leaping over and ducking under the trees and brush.

The remaining soldiers on base consisted of ten Minors and one Tank Major that had a broken hydraulshock. They were in a caravan of four armored trucks coming to meet her five miles from the Sump. She was less than a mile away from the rendezvous. They would go back to the base, and then she and Justin-01 would get on the plane and head to the wasteland, and the Northern Star.

You’ve done well, Lindo said. She appreciated his approval.

Is Kove dead? She had felt his link blip out during the battle.

Yes. Raimey was too powerful.

China Girl asked no more questions, and her concern over Kove, Raimey, and Glass washed away like a sandcastle in high tide. She had completed her mission. She held the trophy that Lindo prized. It was time to go home. Back to the reason she was built, back to her only purpose in life. She saw the lights of the caravan ahead.

= = =

Glass and Raimey fled on foot, their ears tuned for the sound barrier boom of a nuclear warhead entering the atmosphere.

“They’re heading to the base,” Glass said.

They had quickly buried Yoshi in an unmarked grave, and John felt the bitter sin of leaving a soldier behind. If they won, he would come back.

“How far does your tracking system go?”

“It’s global. They’ll take him by plane.”

“What should we do?” Glass asked.

“See where they take him and go there.”

= = =

The caravan got to base and pulled up to the plane.

“Can you walk?” China Girl asked Justin.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. She walked behind him, and they climbed into the plane. The Sleeper at the controls closed the door and the jet taxied to the runway.

She strapped Justin into a seat and curled up in the corner like a mutated dog.

“If you need to use the restroom, there’s one toward the front,” she said. “Don’t try anything. Lindo wants your brain. He doesn’t care about the rest.”

“What’s your name?” Justin asked.

“China Girl.”

Justin smiled. “Like the song?”

“Yes.”

“Was she a part of this the whole time?”

“Who?”

“Vanessa Raimey.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“The Consciousness Module.”

“The Consciousness Module is a part of the Northern Star, thus a part of Lindo. It acts according to his will.”

Of course. Lindo’s puppet. The man with a billion strings. Justin felt the homing device in his pocket and wondered if Glass and Raimey would find him. He wondered if they were even alive.

It was a three-hour flight. Justin was unbound, and for the first hour he glanced around, looking for something to end it. There were items that could do the job. One section of the plane was an open compartment that contained replacement parts for China Girl. A dozen retractable blades were affixed to the wall, and they looked like they could pop off easily. He pictured himself taking one and jabbing it into his neck, the red spilling out of him, the spider trying to stop the bloodletting with her scissory hands.

It didn’t matter. China Girl didn’t sleep, and no matter where she was on the plane, her crucifix of unblinking black stones were always watching. Two hours into the trip, she left the compartment. To test her awareness, he stood up—and she was immediately present, filing the aisle with her feet.

“What are you doing?”

“I have to take a leak.”

She didn’t understand.

“I have to pee.”

The spider stood motionless. Then: “We are ten minutes from descent. It can wait. Please sit down and fasten your seatbelt.”

He sat in a jump seat near a window. They plane descended into a carpet of dark gray clouds just as the sun crested the horizon. The gray turned toxic green before Justin’s eyes.

“What’s with the clouds?” he asked.

“Washington, D.C. is in nuclear winter.”

“But that happened twenty-five years ago.” When the Northern Star took over, Lindo had nuked Washington, D.C. as an example of what he would do to the rest of the world if they didn’t fall in line. By killing his own son, he had shown how easily he would kill another’s. But fallout didn’t stay in the air indefinitely.

“Lindo maintains the radiation levels as a deterrent,” China Girl replied.

“He still nukes Washington?”

“Yes. There have been assaults on the Northern Star before you.”

Justin looked back out into the gangrened sky. “Don’t the nukes affect other regions around here where people live?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t think that’s fucked up?” Justin said. China Girl didn’t reply. When the plane touched down she disappeared for a moment, and when she came back she was carrying a radiation suit in her front limbs.

“Put this on.”

He did as he was told. The plane taxied to a stop and China Girl opened the door.

“Come,” she said. Justin heard a chittering outside; he hesitated. She grabbed his arm and pulled him out with her.

Justin was greeted by an army of Lindos. “Hello, Justin,” they said. Some were ancient corpses of soldiers from the civil war. Others were newer, designed without a compartment to house the guts of a man. They were all a pure extension of Lindo, and they suffered none of the ill effects that plagued other Lindos around the world. If cyberspace was the Northern Star’s home, the wasteland was its breach into the physical realm. Evan watched Justin-01 walk off the plane with four thousand eyes.

Justin couldn’t place where they were in Washington, D.C. Had he not known where they were going, he would have never guessed that this was D.C. The runway bordered the Potomac River; west, the land looked like a desert on Mars: muted hills and blowing red sand. Across the river were the skeletal remains of a city—a twisted, burnt ruin. When the bomb went off, tens of millions must have died. Washington, D.C. had been one of the mega-cities.

Justin shivered in his suit. What has he done? He couldn’t wrap his head around the notion that someone would turn a metropolitan area into an atomic desert. Twenty-five years of nuclear war, a voice in his head whispered. Twenty-five years of nuclear war.

The ground shook, but neither China Girl nor the Lindos paid any attention. They flowed around Justin like a school of fish as China Girl escorted him to a waiting truck. A bullhorn filled the air, and Justin looked across the river just as a building toppled. Behind it, at first, he thought was another building. But then it moved. His eyes widened. Big Brother. Cynthia had mentioned the Colossals, but nothing had prepared him for what he saw.

Big Brother was a battleship centaur, one hundred and fifty feet tall and nearly four hundred feet long; to it, the river was a mere stream, and it slogged across. Ten legs as thick as redwoods carried it forward, and four long arms were tucked tightly against its torso. Massive guns stuck out of its side like broken ribs, and on its back was a vertical launching system of thirty missile tubes that housed cluster bombs, poisonous gas, and nuclear warheads. Its armor was a composite of osmium and depleted uranium—the same as Raimey. In place of a head was a radar dish, and beneath the dish, centered in the chest, was an opaque dome that was a light channel to four chambers housing a quadruplet of sisters, each suspended in gel and unaware that they were four separate entities. Two controlled the weapons, one controlled the legs, and the other controlled the upper body and arms. They were melded into one consciousness.

The idea of Big Brother had come to Evan in a dream, but he’d needed like minds to link up and become one. He had found the quadruplets in Russia. The reality was better than he had ever hoped.

Big Brother was one of eight Colossals that Lindo had built after becoming the Northern Star. They were walking war machines designed to defeat armies. Five were deployed in other parts of the world, while three had been kept in Washington, D.C. Two of those had since fallen—when Israel and Russia had attempted to destroy the Northern Star at the source. It had been an epic war, but Evan held no ill will for the men who had confronted him. He understood a million times over why they had done what they had done: they were obtuse and didn’t realize that the era of government had come to an end. They hadn’t understood the futility of their effort as wave after wave of soldiers airdropped into D.C. And they hadn’t understood why Evan called Washington, D.C. the wasteland . . . until he scorched the earth with so many nuclear weapons that most of the city was pounded into irradiated dunes of concrete and steel.

Big Brother rose from the river, and Justin could barely take it all in. At first he thought his vision was spotting from the stress, because Big Brother looked as if it was covered in fleas. Justin realized they were Lindos. They kept Big Brother maintained, like pilot fish pecking the parasites off a shark.

The ground shook as Big Brother walked past, uninterested in the little people below. And as the deep impact of his retreat rattled the earth like a kick drum, Justin thought about John Raimey and Mike Glass, and about Cynthia Revo and Sabot, and how, if they had not gone on this mission—if they had kept their heads down and their backs covered—they could have lived a little bit longer. It was a life none of them wanted, but it was still life. And there was no way they could win a fight against creatures like the one he saw before him.

Big Brother needed no boatman or gold coins to cross the River Styx. It could wade across on its own just fine, thank you.

“We never had a chance,” Justin said.

“No,” China Girl replied. She fired up the truck and drove Justin to his final destination.

= = =

It took Raimey an hour and a half to reach the city. Glass rode on his shoulder, scanning for any threats, but found none: two-thirds of Lindo’s bionic forces had died at the Sump, and the rest had moved on. After all, Evan had gotten what he wanted: the King Sleeper.

Glass kept Raimey updated on Justin’s position. Halfway into the run, Justin was in the air heading toward Washington, D.C.

The sheer distance between Chicago and Washington, D.C. seemed an insurmountable obstacle. Raimey was old enough to remember when this wouldn’t have been an issue at all. But there was no fuel, few vehicles, and almost nothing that could carry John’s weight. The train wasn’t an option.

And then an idea came to him.

Raimey charged his batteries at a power grid, and then he and Glass headed north—where no one would expect them to go. Now Raimey waited, prone, behind a rusting helicopter. Glass separated from the shadows. The sky had begun to pink.

“Justin landed,” Glass said.

“You know where?”

“Within a meter or two.”

The Northern Star. Now they knew where it was.

“What are we up against?” Raimey asked.

“Ten Minors. One Tank Major that appears to be broken. There are two pilots in the infirmary. One is useless—half his face is covered in burns. The other has shrapnel wounds, but appears mobile.”

John nodded.

“Hydraulshocks and ammo are in the building to the north. There’s jet fuel and a tanker truck to the south.”

“Good. Get the pilot. I’ll handle everything else.”

Glass coalesced into the shadows. Raimey rose to his feet. Only a few helicopters could carry Raimey, and none of them had the range. And even if one did, Lindo would see it and shoot it out of the sky. But Raimey knew of a plane that could hold his weight—a plane that had the radar signature of a sparrow. Sabot had used it to fly him here from Africa. All it needed was a pilot, fuel, and a destination.

Raimey felt his wife watching him. Her smile on his back felt like rays of sunlight. His waist chains spun up and he rumbled toward the base.

= = =

The Minors in the barracks were playing cards, and it never occurred to them that they could be under attack; so although they heard the rumble of Raimey’s approach, they dismissed it as a far-off freight train. But when the card table began to hop like the possessed puck of a Ouija board and the jackhammer pulse grew, they raised the alarm. But it was too late.

Raimey ducked a shoulder and barreled in through the wall of the concrete structure. Rubble fell onto him and tumbled off, and his chains spun furiously, taking in debris and spitting out dust. The concrete fog coiled around him like smoke.

The Minors stared at him. None moved. One slowly laid down a pair of jacks and junk. Even the Tank Major stayed in his maintenance chair, knowing that whether he lived or died was not his choice.

“Who here was at the Sump?”

A few raised their hands.

“You know who I am?”

All of them nodded.

Raimey felt a tug on his foot. He looked down and saw that he had trampled a Minor. John lifted his leg and the Minor crawled against the opposite wall.

“Do you any of you think you can take me?”

They all shook their heads.

“Good. You’re going to stay here. Play cards, I don’t give a shit. But if I see you after this little meeting, I’m going to kill you. Do you understand?”

Slow nods.

“Say it.”

“We all understand,” they said in unison.

Raimey pointed to the Major.

“Where are the hydraulshocks?”

“They’re in the ordinance shed.”

“Anything around five million foot-pounds?”

“No. The highest is three and a half.”

“Who here understands munitions?”

The Minor he had trampled raised his hand.

“You’re coming with me.”

Raimey turned back to the Major. “You stay down. If I see you up, I’ll assume you’re a threat.”

“Dude, I’m not going anywhere.”

Glass was there. In his arms was the pilot. The man’s leg was broken. The Minors turned their attention to him.

“You’re letting them live?” Glass asked. The Minors shrank back. Raimey took a long look at them.

“They won’t do anything.”

The Minor that Raimey had trampled was named Jenkins. He hopped on his good leg like a pogo stick, the strength of it still three times stronger than that of a normal man. He led them to the ordnance locker and punched in the key code, and they went into the large shed.

Jenkins pointed to group of pallets. “The hydraulshocks are there.” He sat down at a workbench designed for reloading.

Raimey walked over and lifted a six-hundred-pound pallet. He set it on the table. The Minor took two hydraulshocks out and proceeded to crack them open.

“What are you looking for?”

“Seven million.”

“Whoa.” Jenkins uncorked two three-point-five-million foot-pound shells and dumped one into the other, doubling the load. “At least I won’t have to do math.”

“I need fourteen of them.”

“It’ll be thirty minutes,” Jenkins said.

Raimey stood there.

“Sir, you can stay here if you want, but I’m not going to fuck with you. I know who you are.” He added, “This isn’t my war. Shit, I was army reserve.”

Raimey smiled. “College?”

“Yep, came from a farm town. Just wanted a free education.” Jenkins pushed the finished hydraulshock over and cracked open two more. “IED changed that. Can’t even get out when you’re blown to bits. They don’t tell you that.”

“Nothing’s free,” Raimey said.

“We are,” Jenkins replied. “What are you gonna do if you win?”

“I don’t know. Where’s the fuel depot?”

“South, near the runway. Can’t miss it.”

Raimey found Glass at the fuel depot. He was filling the tanker truck. He stood in front of it like a bodyguard.

“The pilot’s inside the truck,” Glass said as Raimey passed, never taking his eyes off their surroundings.

Raimey leaned over into the driver side window. The pilot was inside, scratching his leg uncomfortably.

“You can fly a stealth jet?”

The pilot scratched his leg as if it were his head, thinking. “I’m a Sleeper pilot when I fly, so I should be able to, but what you’re doing is insane.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I know, sir, and I’m not trying to make you angry, but I’ve heard what D.C. is like now. It’s a black hole. It’s the closest thing to the Northern Star living and breathing in this world.”

“Why the hell do you think I’m going there?” Raimey asked, bristling.

“Where would I land, sir? Pilots are told to keep a two-hundred-mile radius from Washington, D.C. because of Big Brother. It fires first and figures out what the fuck it shot down later. I know you can kill me, but I’m dead if I fly you, too.”

The pilot had a point. Raimey stood up and thought about what he had said. Any place to land down there would be maintained by Evan. And even if the bomber had the radar signature of a bird, it wasn’t invisible. Raimey didn’t know Big Brother’s capabilities, but it was possible it could detect the ninety-year-old stealth plane. He looked over at Glass, who continued to survey the area. They had to get to the ground safely. If they did, they had a chance.

The pilot remained quiet, a very good survival response.

An idea came to Raimey. It wasn’t his idea, but he smiled at the memory. The whole thing is circular, he thought. This was the end, and that was the beginning. If it worked, and Raimey lived, it would be a punishing irony.

He leaned back down.

“You’ll live, son. I promise.”

The hydraulshock rounds, wildcatted to twice their normal pressure, were finished in thirty minutes, just as Minor Jenkins had said. Raimey asked about the piece of gear that would get them to the ground safely, and Jenkins directed him to it. What he saw would do. When Glass saw what Raimey held in his arms, he understood how they would land in the dead zone unscathed. It was simple. It would work.

Glass, Raimey, and their temporary prisoner rumbled out of the base, pulling the tanker behind them. The Minors and the Major tentatively walked out of the crumbling barracks as the truck passed. Lindo hadn’t connected to them, and as a group they chose to remain dark. An army of highly trained bionics had been sent to the Data Sump and hadn’t come back. Nor had Kove, one of the most powerful giants every created. But these two had—storming the base as if they were walking into a mall.

The bionics understood that it was foolish for their companions to have gone to face them. That numbers didn’t matter against them. That nothing could overwhelm them. The canyon lines and torment on Raimey’s face, the emotionless well of Glass’s eyes . . . these were men who had gone into the most hostile recesses of the world and made it theirs. They were the teeth that gnashed in the night.

And so this group of bionics—who were so powerful compared to a normal man, the elite of the elite—instinctively clumped together as the tanker grew small. They sought quiet comfort in each other, because they had shared a moment when absolute Death had looked down on them and given them a momentary pardon. They would live more days, but these days would not be like the ones that had come before; they would not be lived with the bravado of a bully. The hierarchy of their world had shifted, and the bionics now realized that were merely shih tzus who thought they owned the yard, who ruled the squirrels and the butterflies in it—until a coyote lumbered down from the hills because it could take the yapping no more.

Chapter 12

Blast doors large enough to swallow a jetliner opened like the arms of a prophet, and mountains of dirt pushed to the side, sickly trees churning within it. The entrance had been buried.

China Girl walked Justin toward the growing entrance of The Northern Star. The sea of Lindos followed, but then stopped in a perfect line as if there were an invisible force field preventing their entry. Their home was the wasteland.

Somewhere far away, Justin heard the bellow of Big Brother.

China Girl led Justin, and fifty feet in, a deep groan rattled the air and the blast doors slowly swung closed. Justin turned; the Lindos were walking away, back to wherever.

They reached an open lift the size of a city block. It hung at the edge of a precipice, a long descent to the bottom.

A hint that Lindo was always watching: the gate to the platform opened to greet them, just as the bunker doors had done before. Justin felt Lindo’s eyes, but there was no indication of cameras or sensors either on the ceiling or the walls. The gate closed behind Justin with a thick hydraulic lock, and the platform slowly descended.

“You can take off the radiation suit,” China Girl said.

Justin did. “How long?”

“To the bottom? Thirty minutes.”

“What are you going to do to me?” Justin yelled to the space around him. The chasm echoed his question to infinity. “Forced Autism? Is that it? What Piece is failing that can I amend?”

The secret eyes were no match for the secret speakers. Evan’s voice filled the metal cavern as if Justin was in the belly of the beast.

“WHY BE MAD, JUSTIN? DID YOU THINK IT WOULD NOT END LIKE THIS? SO MANY PEOPLE LIVE AND DIE WITHOUT LEAVING A MARK ON THIS WORLD, BUT YOU ARE SPECIAL. ESSENTIAL, IN FACT, FOR THE WORLD TO CONTINUE ON. IT’S BEYOND A PRIVILEGE, DONT YOU SEE? IT’S YOUR DUTY. SOLDIERS ON THE BATTLEFIELD TAKE SOLACE IN THIS WHEN THEIR RATTLING BREATHS QUICKEN, WHEN THEIR HEARTS STOP, WHEN WHITENESS BLEACHES OUT THE WORLD AROUND THEM. THEIR DUTY GAVE THEM VALUE, HOWEVER FLEETING, AND THEIR SACRIFICE HAD PURPOSE.

“IF YOU COULD WAVE A MAGIC WAND, WHAT LIFE WOULD YOU CHOOSE? ANONYMITY? ONE WHERE YOUR GIFT WOULD NEVER BE REALIZED? OR ONE OF INDIVIDUAL POWER, WHERE YOUR GIFT COULD ONLY BENEFIT YOU? BOTH ARE CORRUPT.”

“And what have you done that’s so different, Evan?” Justin shouted angrily.

“BY THE ACT OF WHAT I’VE BECOME, I HAVE SHOWN THAT IT WAS MEANT TO BE. I’VE ESTABLISHED FATE BY PRECEDENT. ON A LOWER LEVEL, MY DESIRES ARE MY OWN, BUT THE SCOPE OF MY INFLUENCE TAKES ME BEYOND YOUR BELITTLING QUESTION. I’VE SHAPED THE WORLD, JUSTIN. THERE IS NO PLACE I DO NOT TOUCH. AND THE WORLD IS BETTER FOR IT.”

“Then why do you need me?”

“MY HUMAN FORM IS BREAKING DOWN. BY MY CALCULATION, I HAVE ONLY TWO YEARS LEFT TO LIVE. THE OTHER PIECES ARE DYING AS WELL. SLOWLY, BUT ONE BY ONE WE WILL ALL GO. AND YOU THINK, GOOD. GOOD RIDDANCE. BUT THAT IS A SMALL, SELFISH EMOTION. WHO WILL LEAD? WHO WILL MANAGE WHAT IS NOW MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PHYSICAL WORLD? WHO WILL MANAGE THE CITIES’ INFRASTRUCTURE? WHO WILL MAINTAIN TRANSPORTATION? CURRENCY? WHO WILL MAINTAIN PEACE? THERE IS NOTHING ELSE THAT CAN TAKE MY PLACE. IDEOLOGIES HAVE FAILED. DEMOCRACY HAS FAILED. RELIGION HAS FAILED. ALL BELLY UP BECAUSE OF THE INSTANT WISH FULFILLMENT EXPECTED AND DEMANDED BY MODERN SOCIETY. THE WORLD CAN NO LONGER HANDLE ADVERSITY. IT MUST BE SPOON FED AND PETTED. WITHOUT ME, IT WILL FALL INTO CHAOS.”

Justin predicted what Evan’s next words would be, and his breath left him.

“ALL THE PIECES WILL BE ONE, JUSTIN. IN YOU. YOUR MIND IS EXCEPTIONAL. NO ONE ELSE WILL DO. AND IN YOU I CAN LIVE ANOTHER THIRTY YEARS—WHICH IS SIX THOUSAND TO ME. AND THEN I’LL BE FREE. I’LL SOLVE THE MORTAL MYSTERY THAT PLAGUES US ALL, THE INEVITABILITY THAT TAKES OUR LIFE’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND REDUCES THEM TO BULLET POINTS ON AN OBITUARY PAGE. I WILL LIVE FOREVER.

China Girl pinned Justin down when he tried to jump over the rail, but she didn’t cover his mouth while he screamed. She was instructed to not damage the next Evan Lindo.

= = =

When they reached the hangar, the injured pilot used Glass as his arms and legs, directing him around the plane for the refueling and prep. The pilot had never flown a stealth bomber, but he connected into the interface with the Mindlink control at the front of the aircraft, and when he re-emerged he said that he could. Most of the controls of the stealth were actually handled by onboard computers.

“It’s an old plane. The interface feels like I’m playing a video game,” the pilot said.

“Well, don’t crash. We’re out of quarters,” Raimey responded. The pilot didn’t get the reference.

The cargo bay was large, but Raimey still had to crawl inside to sit. A few minutes later, with the pilot ready to taxi, Glass tossed his hard case up into the bay and climbed in after it. The belly closed, and they were off.

Over the first hour of the flight, Glass prepped John for battle. In the old days, a mechanical engineer and software technician would comb through Raimey’s gears, chains, hydraulics, electric engines, belts, battery system, implant software, and, of course, the hydraulshock, to make sure there were no ghosts in the system. But Glass didn’t have that training, and anyway, Raimey hadn’t had that service in twenty years. Glass simply removed the foreign debris that had accumulated in Raimey’s gears and between his joints. He extracted strings of electrostatic tissue out of Raimey’s hands—the mashed remains of Kove and others that had come in the way of John’s mission. One string was a blood-riddled, milky-white ligament. Glass stared at it, his misty green eyes twirling like a night-vision snow globe.

“What?” Raimey asked.

“I don’t think in terms of life,” Glass said, twisting the ligament in front of his face. “Do you?”

“I think about Vanessa. I think about Tiffany. Some old friends who are gone. But no, not really. I’ve been in war too long. How could I value life when I’m constantly tasked with taking it away?” Raimey gritted his jaw. “The root’s dead. The chance to change is gone. And I’m fine with it, I really am. A butcher can’t do his work when he mourns the cow. I just want her free. I want, once, for me to not be a fuckup who left her behind.”

“I want to change,” Mike said.

“That won’t help where we’re going,” Raimey replied.

“Did you know about Vanessa and me?” Glass asked.

“No. I didn’t know much about Vanessa’s life after I became this.” Raimey gestured to his body. “That was the deal. We had just started talking again when she die—when Evan took her.”

Glass continued the maintenance. He removed and emptied Raimey’s shoulder clips, replacing the existing hydraulshock rounds with the seven-million-foot-pound wildcats.

“Will you survive these?” Glass asked as he loaded the thick brass into the magazines.

“This is the last time I’ll ever reload. As long as I get Vanessa out, I really don’t give a shit if my arms fall off.”

Raimey rocked the slide back using his mind and loaded a round. “Put another round in each magazine,” he said.

Glass obliged. Fourteen total.

“I have a memory of Vanessa,” Glass said. “Some of my memories are very clear, but this one isn’t. The others are like I’m observing it. They’re fact, but there’s distance in them. And I realize this distance is how I viewed everything around me. I remember taking Justin and killing his family—I can smell the farmland, see the bodies fall as I fire—but still there’s a broken part of it where I don’t feel a thing. But the ones with Vanessa are different, and this one is filled with red.”

“What do you mean?” Raimey asked.

“I didn’t understand what the pulsing red was at first. I thought maybe the memory was bad. I haven’t thought like a person in a long time.” He continued in his thin, mechanical voice. “I dove through a truck and killed a group of soft soldiers. In the back, I saw Vanessa past some more. They shot me, but I killed them all. She was distraught, in shock, and then she screamed and I ducked and Tank Major Kove just missed my head. I defeated him, and we fled.

“I tore her out of the truck. We hugged, and the red, for just a moment, wobbled away. Over a military band, there were reports that you had arrived in New York. I knew that if we could hide long enough and if we got to you, then she’d be okay. And then I knew what the red was: rage. I had never felt it before; nothing had ever triggered that in me. I lived at a distance, and she brought me in.”

“Why tell me this?” Raimey said. It was death by a thousand paper cuts. To know that they had sought him out and failed. That Vanessa had hoped for his shape to appear out of the fog of war.

“Her life mattered to me when no life did, including my own. The red was rage, and my rage was born out of love. I loved Vanessa. I never felt that before, and I’ll never feel that again. I want her back. I want to feel what I feel in my memories, because I’m freezing, and the memory of her warmth is all I live for.”

Raimey was speechless. Out of Glass came an echo like a cough, but it wasn’t a cough. It was the Reaper mourning. It was Mike Glass looking at his life with his sliver of memories, knowing that his life was done. There were no more takebacks, no fresh starts. There was this, right now. A reckoning. Glass was the same thing he had always been—a tool used to still hearts. That was all he was, all he had.

Raimey didn’t know what to do. He held his hand out. Glass wrapped his own hand around Raimey’s pinky like a baby. His hollow cry was the purging of a soul so far from heaven.

After a while: “I talk to my wife,” Raimey shared.

“But—” Glass started.

Raimey interrupted him. He didn’t want Glass to state the obvious. Raimey liked to picture it otherwise.

“In my head. She speaks to me in my head. I see her though, out of the corner of my eye. Or behind me, whispering in my ear . . . always out of reach.”

“What does she say?” Glass asked.

“You know how you talked about life? I think that’s the part of me she protects. She helps me see past the red.” Raimey smiled. “Back when I was not this, when we were a family, we’d take long walks around the neighborhood. Her family was a bunch of walkers. And if it had just rained, she’d always pause and pick up the worms and put them in the grass. They’d be drying out, the sun would be on them, and they’d be too far from the soil. I would just stomp over them or on them, not even thinking about it. But she would always stop and save them. Over the years she must have saved thousands. Little heartbeats and pulses, unaware that a higher power had helped them survive another day.”

Raimey laughed out loud. “Vanessa was so grossed out one time because Tiffany—that’s my wife—she picked up a slug out of the street. It was a real green, boogery one. And Vanessa, who must have been nine at the time, totally flipped out. Tiffany put the slug into a leafy bush and wiped the slime on her jeans, and she told Vanessa that life is special, and that if that slug had been found on Mars, it would change religions.”

Raimey’s face darkened.

“I don’t think I ever learned that lesson, even after Tiffany died. Looking back, I don’t know if Tiffany was telling Vanessa or me. Maybe she was hoping I’d hear.”

The intercom switched on. The pilot’s voice. “We are being targeted. I repeat, we are being targeted. Brace yourself.”

Suddenly the bottom of the plane became the side as the giant wing banked sixty degrees in evasive maneuvers. Raimey put his hands out against the hull of the ship, and he immediately broke through the interior framing as twelve thousand pounds transferred from his fist into the hull.

“Shit!” he yelled. “Get my helmet on.”

Glass moved through the cabin with grace as gravity came and went, the bomber trying to avoid a threat neither of them could see. He grabbed the helmet out of the air and locked it down onto John.

“Missile lock!” the pilot announced. “Thirty seconds and closing. I repeat, thirty seconds and closing.” The plane continued to roll and bank, veering away from their destination. “No chaff! We have no chaff!”

“Open the bay door!” Raimey said.

“Negative, still trying to evade. Twenty seconds.”

Gravity again vanished. Glass pushed himself past Raimey, floating through space. He grabbed the parachute designed to drop supplies into battle and attached it to anchor tows on John’s back. It was smaller than what John normally used.

“Is this going to work?” Raimey yelled. The engines strained trying to increase altitude and then the plane aggressively banked right and down. John was dizzy from vertigo.

“I don’t know,” Glass said.

He attached the hard case to Raimey’s back. Then he wrapped himself around Raimey’s chest, his fingers intertwined into the footholds that allowed technicians to climb up and around the giant Tank Major.

“Five seconds,” the pilot said.

“I’m sorry,” Raimey said.

The pilot’s voice was resigned. “At least it’ll be quick.”

Raimey raised his arm to slam it through the metal hull, but there was no need.

BAM! The surface-to-air missile launched by Big Brother slammed into the plane, which vanished into flames like it was fuel-soaked papier-mâché. Raimey, wrapped in Glass, tumbled toward the earth from thirty thousand feet.

= = =

Justin was on his back, pinned beneath China Girl, but his head poked out, and he watched the lights flicker on and off as the trolley made its way to the bottom of the deep tunnel.

He was numb from the revelation that he wasn’t here to replace a Piece, but to sum them into one. He was the successor, a more efficient housing. What else would Evan have sought except immortality? It only made sense—it was the obvious next step to what he had become. He was a god in cyberspace, but he was also flesh and blood and mortal. The god could, and would, die. But not now.

Justin hadn’t believed that the technology existed, but who else except Lindo could have solved the riddle that had haunted mankind since it first pressed its handprint against cave walls to triumph against its impermanence? Through history it had been our suffering reality and the impetus for so many of our actions. Some day we will die. And while religions were a place to lay our troubled heads, and their soothing words comforted like a mother’s hand caressing our cheeks, no one really knew. No one had come back. And astronomy and science had only further proven just how insignificant we really were in a cosmos that may have had a creator, or may have not. Religion, science, philosophy—these were figments to battle the boogeyman. Necessary inventions so we didn’t wake up every day and scream in fear and self-pity until blood wet our lips.

Justin made the next leap. After Evan, Vanessa, and the Pieces were transferred into his mind and his own personality was erased—when his own body was old and withered and itself ready to rest in the earth—Evan’s goal was to let loose the mortal coil altogether, to rid himself of the carbon-based form that had constrained him. To be free of heart and lungs, marrow and breath.

To be everywhere in the online consciousness of man.

The trolley hissed and clanked into place. China Girl looked down. “We’re here. Get up.” She chittered ahead of him.

The massive cavern was exposed stone. A mountain of dusty crates was stacked to one side, and lights were anchored into the rocky walls along with metal supports. They cast uneven light on the ground. Justin couldn’t see the ceiling.

Ahead of them was what looked like a river dam. It had been poured after the Northern Star was complete. Another blast door was at its center. But this one was much smaller.

They were watched. As they approached the door, it opened; and when it did, a crackling blue light lit the dirty floor. A whonk-whonk-whonk-whonk filled the air.

Justin entered the final chamber. The curtain had been drawn aside and the great Oz revealed.

This was the home of the Northern Star.

= = =

The same technology that allowed Glass to rarely miss now pegged their terminal velocity at one hundred and thirty-five miles per hour. Raimey didn’t have air pressure compensation, and he lost consciousness immediately after the plane evaporated, his old lungs unable to pull the thin wisps of oxygen from the air around them. They barrel-rolled until the atmosphere thickened, and then the top-heavy giant corkscrewed headfirst, his giant arms spinning outward like a massive auger bit ready to core the earth.

Glass hung on to Raimey without issue, and the air compressor that oxygenated his biomass adapted for the altitude. He was designed for these kinds of jumps. He climbed up to John’s back to pull the chute. They were at twenty-five thousand feet. He was going to wait until the last moment: whatever had shot them out of the sky would have no problem finishing the job if they were slowly gliding down to land.

Just as that thought filled Glass’s mind, tracer bullets from the ground ripped toward them like laser bolts. Glass zoomed in, and saw that the shots came from one source, a walking bionic the size of a stadium. It was twenty miles southwest of them, past a slash of river. But Glass and Raimey were over a city; that would provide them some cover if they could make it safely to the ground.

An anti-aircraft round hit Raimey, and the auger-spin turned into a cartwheel, flipping sky with earth. More rounds hit, and Glass scrambled to keep his bearings and stay on the opposite side of the strikes. John’s armor could withstand the projectiles, but Glass’s could not; a single round would decimate him.

The mid-air explosions continued to push them farther from their goal, and now they careened northwest, out of the city. They were entering ground zero, where the first nuclear strikes had taken out Washington, D.C. as the Northern Star had put its first stamp on global control. It was a charred, flat expanse.

“HOLY SHIT!” Raimey woke to find the earth rushing toward him and explosions all around. Another strike hit them, and they flipped end over end.

“We’re being shot at,” Glass said, his electronic voice box raised to its maximum volume.

“Tell me the parachute’s connected!” Raimey yelled.

Glass laughed. “Yes.”

“This isn’t funny!” Raimey hollered.

Glass shrugged. It was at least interesting. “I’ll pull the chute at three thousand feet. I believe the thing shooting at us is Big Brother.”

“I can’t see it!” Raimey said. To him, the tracers had no origin, they were just streaks of light chasing them from the landscape below.

“It’s thirty-five miles southwest of us,” Glass replied. The ground beneath them grew more detailed. “Get ready, we’re at seven thousand feet.”

It was a rude awakening, but Raimey calmed down. He was alive and so was Glass, and the chute was unscathed. He relaxed his body. A moment later, Mike’s voice: “Three . . . two . . . one.”

Raimey heard the violent sound of the canvas chute expanding, and then his body snapped backward and his feet dropped below him. They were coming in fast. The ground beneath them was a dirty ashtray. On the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, it looked like a pod of whales had grounded. Even in the chaos, John registered that they were battleships. They listed sideways, torn asunder. In the break, a submarine wobbled back and forth, just off shore. The Navy had tried to stop the Northern Star. Acid filled Raimey’s stomach at the sight of the failed firepower beneath him. And then he felt Glass pull on the parachute, guiding them to a safe drop zone amid the molten remains of the nation’s capital.

= = =

There was no ceremony, no greeting from the great Evan Lindo, when Justin entered the chamber of the Northern Star. But what he saw nearly dropped him in awe. The Northern Star was staggering in size. Thirteen Colossal Cores horseshoed around one that was the size of a city block. The Pieces hung from the Colossals like gods mounted in the Pillars of Olympus. They were all mounted in modified Impetus machines. Justin had heard of these, but he’d never seen one. The Impetus was designed for Sleepers that never left cyberspace. Mechanized arms attached to the body kept it in constant motion; electrodes triggered coordinated muscle groups in sync with, or in resistance to, the movements. It was the evolution of the Sleeper chair. But these versions were mounted in pods, and the pods appeared to be filled with a liquid. The Sleepers were old and withered, aborted fetuses preserved in formaldehyde.

Justin saw that one of the Pieces, a man, floated awkwardly in the gel. The Impetus machine continued to manipulate his body, but his arm had been torn from his shoulder. This Piece was dead, and he probably had been for years. The Northern Star was falling apart. It was machines and computers, metal, glass, and somewhere a nuclear reactor to keep it all running. But it was also flesh and bone. And that was the real God’s ultimate prank: all the ingenuity in the world, all the statues to our greatness—none of it would stop us from one day becoming dust.

Except Evan.

They walked toward Evan. While the Pieces were hung like accessories, Evan was prominently displayed in front of the largest Data Core Justin had ever seen. He, too, was in an Impetus machine, but he was mounted at the base of the Core, on a platform that could be reached by two flights of stairs. His face, like the others, was covered in metal framing that connected his brain into his Core. Two thick data fibers entered through the front. Two more entered through the back. They coursed blue.

But Evan Lindo’s ageless avatar—the man with the square glasses, soft chin, and goatee—wouldn’t recognize his maker. Sores covered his body. Maybe he was allergic to the suspension gel, but Justin guessed it was the constant bombardment of radiation. The bunker could protect its inhabitants from a nuclear strike, but could it handle a hundred? Two hundred? The accumulated effect of turning Washington, D.C. into an environment hostile to the heartiest of creatures? Justin didn’t know.

At Evan’s feet was Vanessa. She wasn’t in an Impetus machine. If Justin remembered correctly, Evan had abducted her when he was losing the war. He had made a miscalculation, and the Northern Star wasn’t performing at its peak. She was a last-ditch effort to win. There had been no time to prep her.

She was in a pod laid sideways. Fiber from it connected directly to Evan, and a scourge of lines snaked their way from her pod to the Pieces.

Justin grimaced at what he saw. She was naked, her ribs grossly exposed, her arms and legs tucked to her body, a coma patient decades in. She would not live outside the pod.

China Girl continued to walk him across the massive expanse. At the other side, Justin saw that two more Pieces were dead. One pod was a snow globe of skin flecks. In the other, the Piece’s head had been bludgeoned beyond recognition by one of the mechanized Impetus arms. Entropy tore at all things, especially empires. Justin guessed that, if they had tried to overthrow Lindo five years ago, they would have been killed almost immediately. But now, this was a compromised god.

And still, here Justin was, on his way to serve it.

“Where are we going?” Justin asked. They entered an adjacent hall.

“Prep,” China Girl said.

Justin had seen the pods. He knew what that meant.

Ten minutes later, he was naked on a surgical table. A light on an adjustable arm stared down at him. China Girl was shaving his body with one of her retractable knives. The blade gliding along his skin felt like taut fishing line. It rode up his neck, across his face, over his skull, between his legs. He didn’t move an inch.

Afterward, she wheeled over a piece of equipment and turned it on. It was a dermatology laser. “This will sting,” she said. Her bedside manner was impeccable. The smell of singed hair filled the air, and his skin burnt as she ran the device over him, killing every follicle on his body.

She held his head down and carefully scraped the scar tissue off the contact patches that were a direct highway to his brain. Instinct caused him to flail, and she pinned his limbs down with hers. He could feel the dribbling heat of blood making its way to the table.

“You don’t have to do this,” he heard himself say.

China Girl said nothing. She continued her surgery. He cleared his throat. He was crying.

“You don’t have to do this,” he tried again.

Still nothing. She looked at him—or didn’t—just like a Lindo. Just like Glass. A predator examining prey, full from a previous feast.

“Shhh,” the room whispered. “Soon, Justin. Soon.”

“You’re a MONSTER!” Justin screamed. “Why do all of this? Why?”

“Even if I could explain it in terms you’d understand, it wouldn’t matter. I’ve reached a level of consciousness that no words in any language can describe. There is no way to describe to you what I feel. What I think. To use these words to speak with you hurts my head, like a child banging pots and pans in a kitchen. Explain to an ant why you do what you do. The best you could accomplish in that interaction is to understand that it seeks sustenance and give it a breadcrumb. Maybe it would sense your presence, your shadow over it, the massiveness of this “indescribable,” and then it would sense the breadcrumb. It would take it, and you would think that there was an understanding between you and this ant. That not only did you provide sustenance, but that you were gracious. That you, in your size and power and knowledge, let it live. And not only live, but live well.

“You would watch the ant carry the breadcrumb along its path, past the others without breadcrumbs, ones that might never get one. And you would lose interest. Maybe you’ve grown bored with the ants and their behavior. It’s so simple, isn’t it? The ant and its breadcrumb . . . where they go and why? Predictable. Pointless. They find food. They take it to the nest. They find food. They take it to the nest. They die.

“That’s it. That’s all. But you don’t think about it. Because you are me, looking at you. Or you are you, looking at an ant. It doesn’t matter—this is a metaphor. This is a comparison so you can relate to me. What of it? The ant is gone and you stand up so high you can barely see them on the ground. You watch your step because you know—from memory—that they are there. But if you step on a couple, what does it matter? There are so many of them. What does it matter? There will always be more.”

Justin’s heart raced. He understood Lindo. He understood the logic, because the metaphor was perfect. Of course it was: it was God explaining the mystery. It was God explaining why it/he/she was different from the rest.

Ker-chink.

A searing pain ripped down one of Justin’s hands. He looked down: China Girl was implanting the electrode feeds of the Impetus machine. The first was in his palm.

Ker-chink.

Another splayed barb entered his forearm.

“We’ll do this right,” the walls said. Ker-chink. Justin nearly blacked out from the pain. “One day more, Justin. First the transfer, then the helm. You will understand soon enough, and then you won’t have to understand anything ever again.”

Ker-chink.

Ker-chink.

Ker-chink.

Ker-chink.

Chapter 13

Raimey had seen photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bomb. As a kid, he had been fascinated with nuclear bombs, their mushroom clouds, the sheer violence of their delivery. But as with most kids, there was an innocence to his fascination; he was like a child turning a stick into a gun. The abysmal nature of what the bomb really was had been shrouded by the awesomeness of its power.

But the adult Raimey knew that war was the worst of man, a failure to recognize the sanctity of life, to agree that we should all exist, to allow others a difference of opinion, of values, even if they conflicted with our own. War was a necessity, in the face of tyrants and wayward ideologies, those who looked to expand their empires at another’s expense. And the nuclear bomb was the ultimate sin. Not only did it eradicate what existed; it took away whatever could have been. It was a hubris machine, a mechanism of delusion, whose makers and practitioners ignored all of science and all of discovery, who moved our planet to the center of the universe. Our insignificance should have brought us closer. We are on a raft, floating in infinite seas with no shore to ever break the horizon.

Raimey tore the parachute off his tow mounts. Glass had moved ahead, scaling a twisted metal spire in the middle of nothing. For a moment, Raimey thought it was the Washington Monument, but that would have been too fitting. It was an apartment building that had somehow clung to its atoms.

Caustic winds blasted across the planes, enough for John to lean into them, and the sunken buildings around him whistled in inquiry: WHOOOOOO?

WHOOOOOO are you to come here and make a difference? WHOOOOOO are you to judge what Evan has done? WHOOOOOO are you but a husband and father who has abandoned his post?

WHOOOOOO?

Raimey didn’t have an answer. He had been to Washington, D.C. early in his service. He had walked the streets, used the subway. He had looked through the tall pike fences of the White House’s front lawn. He would have never known this was the same place. He would have never thought this was possible. It was a desert now, lifeless. Everything gray and brown, an atomic color correction.

A green light in John’s helmet turned to yellow and started blinking. It was a radiation sensor. “Give me a few more days,” he prayed aloud.

The wind responded: WHOOOOOO are you to survive?

Glass dropped to the ground.

“What do you see?” Raimey asked.

“Nothing.”

“What about Big Brother?”

“We’re forty miles from its last location; none of these structures are tall enough for a sightline.”

“But you know where we have to go?”

“Within twenty meters,” Glass replied.

Raimey stood up. “That’ll do.”

The concrete and steel—and, yes, flesh and bones—of the capital had been blasted to sand. Raimey and Glass scaled large dunes that were buttressed by the few hollowed buildings that remained. Past one, the ground undulated strangely. John crunched through. Halfway in, he realized he was stepping on the petrified remains of people. One of the mounds had been blown clean, and a person lay there as if sleeping.

A memory gurgled up: a girl dancing in a club. They had gone home together that night. He didn’t remember the girl’s name, but he wondered if she had died here. Thirty years after, when the Northern Star took over, she would have had a family, maybe even grandchildren. He wondered if they all got snuffed out. All those memories, all that love, all the sacrifice for progeny, cooked crisp by an atomic sun. Probably. Likely.

Glass came back from scouting ahead.

“Look at this,” Raimey said, gesturing toward the bodies.

“There are thousands of them.”

“You knew?”

“I can see through the sand. I have an x-ray component to my vision.”

“Then why go through here?”

“They’re dead. It’s the shortest way.”

Washington, D.C. had once been a mega-city, and slowly, as they moved out of ground zero, buildings began to rise out of the sand. They were teetering structures, exposed and wiry. Some of the sections vibrated strangely as if on a fault line. They approached a collapsed road and saw why: there was a subway system below, with sections that were incredibly unstable. It groaned up at them in pain.

Raimey had never paid much attention to Glass’s agility, but now that Glass was his only companion, he couldn’t believe how easily he moved. Raimey lumbered around large objects, doubling the length from point A to point B because the only other option was smashing through it. But Glass moved in a straight line regardless of what was in front of him. He hopped up and over bus skeletons and through toppled buildings without any hint of thought.

Through the sliver of buildings, Raimey could see the Potomac River. They’d have to cross it at some point. He wondered what the odds were that a bridge was still intact.

Raimey was still thinking about that when they turned down another block and walked right into the frozen tableau of an ancient battle. Ahead, a dead Colossus was sprawled out in a downward dog position, its “head” pinned to the ground and its back raised over ten stories in the air. It leaned against two broken skyscrapers. Around it were husks of tanks, helicopters, and airplanes. They looked like playthings compared to the behemoth arched over them.

“Is that a . . .” Raimey started.

“A Colossus-class bionic,” Glass finished. “Similar to the one that shot at us.”

They walked toward it and into what was clearly some kind of last stand. Raimey saw markings on a tank.

“These aren’t American,” he said. It was Russian. Another was European Union. A Chinese fighter plane was sandwiched into the base of a building. Raimey saw eight full-faced helmets on the ground next to shallow body suits, and he moved around them. They looked like Kevlar snails communing. Two Lindo husks lay near them. Dead Lindos were everywhere, but for each one of them, there were ten of the skeleton soldiers.

“The radiation level is highly toxic here,” Glass said.

The light in Raimey’s helmet continued to blink yellow. “This whole place is.”

The Colossus bionic arched in front of them like a gateway to hell.

“More so here. They used a tactical nuke to kill the Colossus.”

On cue, the yellow light turned red. Raimey grimaced. “I can’t stay here long.” He couldn’t believe what lay before him. The city was a mass grave of soldiers and tanks, weapons, and Lindos. World War III. How could we not know about this? The entire world had united to destroy the Northern Star, and this was their forgotten legacy. But he knew how it had been kept secret: Evan controlled all information. Not a whisper of this was online. Not a word of this had been typed into print.

Glass looked around, his green eyes swirling in their pine-colored galaxy. “This was a last stand.”

They stood underneath the Colossus arch. In one of its hands it held a tank as if it were a die-cast replica. Glass started searching the vehicles, working through them like a drug-sniffing dog.

He went over to a boxy, light-armored tank that was turtled over. It had one very large gun mounted on it. Raimey circled around and saw that Glass was trying to get into the hatch, but it was obstructed by the road.

“This vehicle would have fired tactical nukes,” Glass said. He looked at the Colossus, and Raimey’s eyes trailed behind. He understood: they would be facing one.

Glass moved over and Raimey tried to rock the tank. It shook and swayed, but it was too heavy.

“Stand back.”

WHA-WHAM!

Raimey hydraulshocked the top of the vehicle with a glancing blow. It tumbled end over end and came to a rest on its side fifty yards away, the hatch fully exposed. They went over to it. Glass detached the hard case on his back and slid in. Raimey leaned down.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Hold.”

Raimey heard something metal give.

“Bingo,” Glass said. Raimey mouthed the word, surprised it came from Glass’s mouth. “There are two in here.”

Glass’s hand appeared out of the hatch holding the tactical nuke. It was the size of two stacked coffee cans. Raimey gently plucked it away and laid it on the ground. Glass slithered out with the other one.

Glass opened the hard case and made room.

“I can’t believe how small they are,” Raimey said.

“They should have a minimum five-kiloton yield,” Glass said.

“How far away are we?” Raimey asked.

“Twenty miles.”

Raimey looked at the carnage. “Why would they land here?”

“They didn’t know the Northern Star’s exact location.”

They had come knowing they would most likely die.

Raimey and Glass both fell silent as if paying respect. The toxic winds slid in and over the broken metal of the long-dead machines and the Colossus above them, making them cry out their story in different pitches of emptiness that told it all too well. It was the iron whine of a society gone, confessions of the dead howling in the anguish of their final moments, passing on their secret that we acted too late against the atrocities in the world. And some things are too far gone to ever get back.

Hours passed as they made their way.

“We’re getting close enough where Big Brother might sense us,” Glass said. “We’ll be safer below ground.”

“I don’t have night vision,” Raimey said.

“I’ll lead you.”

Glass moved ahead, looking for a way down. Raimey found him standing on top of a hill of rubble. “There’s an entrance beneath this.”

Raimey pulled seven tons of debris out of the way in five minutes. The mound covered a ragged hole. Peering over, the overcast sky bled enough light to see the bottom: it was a fifty-foot drop to the ground.

“Can you make that?” Glass asked. Raimey flinched as he thought. The battle chassis could survive, no problem. But he wasn’t sure if his seventy-four-year-old body would. His spine was mounted into a suspension platform that floated inside the suit, but at fifty feet, it would bottom out on impact.

Glass didn’t wait for the answer. “Wait here,” he said, and he crawled into the hole like an insect. He moved along the ceiling and then down a pillar to the base. A train track was beneath the hole. Two hundred yards away, Glass saw a train car.

From above, Raimey saw Glass blur by, and then he heard the grinding of metal on metal. Like a strongman, Glass gripped the front of the car and pulled it, using the horizontal slats between the rails as footholds. He dragged it beneath the hole, reducing the jump to thirty-five feet.

Raimey fell onto the train car like it was a bale of hay. It crumpled around him, cushioning his fall, and he rolled off of it onto the floor.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The subway terminal was massive. Hallways and train tunnels shot off it in all directions. The ceiling was unstable and broken in places. Large sections hung down, ready to fall. The sickly light from the surface penetrated in laser-like columns, leaving the borders and the in-betweens pitch black. Aside from the creaks and groans of the crumbling ceiling and the echo of dripping water, there were no other sounds.

“We have to go this way,” Glass said.

He walked ahead of Raimey, avoiding the light, while Raimey did everything he could to stay within its reach. The darkness was suffocating for John, and he could feel his feet constantly crunching down on round shapes. He knew they were skulls. A few were showcased in the light.

“A lot of dead,” Glass said. He was up ahead. His vision allowed him to see everything. There were tens of thousands of bodies.

“They must have come down here to get away from the nukes,” Raimey replied.

The thousands of skeletons and remains were dried out by nuclear heat and time. Those that still had skin—most were just bones—were like old hides mounted on a hunter’s wall: an approximation of a human, maybe an old prop from a zombie movie. But up close, that cinnamon smell, sweet on the surface and pungent underneath, still remained.

Raimey stepped on and through the piles of bodies, unable to avoid them. They grinned at him and stared up with their hollow eyes.

“How are we going to activate the nukes?” he asked. He needed a distraction. His mind was wandering into dark places. Even with all the bodies they had passed, John knew he had killed more. Far more. He pictured the skulls that he had tromped past, cracking their necks to stare at him in judgment.

Glass’s constant disappearing and reappearing didn’t help. He appeared at the giant’s side and Raimey almost jumped. “They have standard-impact artillery fuzes. Once they’re armed, they’ll explode on impact.”

“How do you know this?” Raimey asked.

“They’re weapons,” Glass responded. Of course. The one thing he would know about. “We’re nine miles from Justin’s last known location. We’re close to where the Colossus fired on us.”

Glass vanished ahead, leaving Raimey to stew in his sins.

= = =

Justin watched as the pod of one of the deceased Pieces slowly lowered. He was strapped into a wheelchair, his entire body on fire from the implants for the Impetus machine. The pod ratcheted to a stop, then opened up; the gel and carcass slopped out onto the ground. China Girl walked over and cleaned it up. Nausea swept over Justin as she rocked the severed arm loose from one of the Impetus legs and tossed it aside, along with the aborted remains of what had once been a great scientist, taken against his will—and stripped of it, too.

She wheeled Justin over and unstrapped him. He didn’t fight. Why bother? She placed him inside the pod, facing out, and he felt her attach the Impetus limbs to his body. He hung in the air.

His vision went dark when China Girl put the modified Mindlink over his head, covering his face, but he felt the helmet’s synchronous transfer pads connect with his own. Then he heard the pod close.

In the darkness, he felt the amniotic gel flow in, first to his feet, then his knees, past his thighs, and finally over his head. Panic set in. While he couldn’t see anything, his eyes were still open, and now they spotted from his stress and the lack of oxygen as he held his breath. His body fought to breathe in the liquid and then, finally, it acquiesced. He thrashed around as the oxygenated fluid entered his lungs. He gasped and vomited, only to inhale more.

The pod rose, and his body jostled; he heard a muffled hum as the Data Core behind him crackled into life. Then the real world—the world he had lived in off and on for the last forty-seven years—vanished in a storm of data, as if his brain had expanded over everything in a supernova.

= = =

There was nothing alive for fifty miles, but there were things with eyes. While Lindo no longer actively scoured the landscape, Big Brother reported the plane and the parachute to Evan, and he cycled that information over to the Lindos, a separate stream of his consciousness that usually acted independent of his thought, like muscle memory.

They had spread outward in response to the report, and now they wormed their way into the crevices of the wasteland, looking for the survivors. If Glass and Raimey had had eyes overhead, they would have witnessed thousands of bionics fanning out in their general direction, a murderous search party.

Glass was well ahead of Raimey when he first saw one: perched upside down on the ceiling just within sight. The Lindo hadn’t yet registered that they were there. Glass didn’t think twice. In a blur, he drew his carbine from his back and fired one shot into its head. It toppled to the ground.

“They’re here,” Glass said. Raimey’s waist chains spun up as he readied for battle. The quiet before the storm was over.

“I still can’t see,” Raimey said. Aside from the sporadic shafts of light, the subway tunnels were pitch black.

“We need to stay below as long as possible,” Glass said. As if on cue, the ground shuddered from a far-off tremor.

Big Brother.

Raimey felt something on his back and realized that one had attached itself to him. He pulled it off as if it was nothing more than a burr on a sock. He looked at it for a moment.

“I’m impressed, John,” the thing said.

Raimey bared his teeth and crushed it into an expensive rag.

“We need to get across the river, Mike,” Raimey said. There were plenty of offshoots from the tunnel they were in, and now they carried the sound of approaching feet. It was a cavalcade, fire ants rushing through the Amazonian forest, all coming for them.

They did the only thing they could do: they ran. Glass led the way. Behind them, they could hear the horde choking the tunnels. Above them the ground continued to shake.

“This way!” Glass veered right. They ran down a black tunnel. Raimey couldn’t see a thing.

“This way!” Glass yelled again. Three bursts from his carbine and the tunnel flashed in a strobe. Three Lindos fell, and Raimey’s eyes were seared by the muzzle flash.

Dim light ahead: a break in the ceiling. They entered another open terminal. Behind them the noise grew. The Lindos were talking.

“You weren’t the first to come,” they all said. “Wars have taken place here. The world tried to end me, and they failed. What did you think you had that was so important? Your armor? Your technology? Your will? Others with far more than you have entered this land and become soil.”

“Get back,” Raimey said. Glass ran ahead.

WHA-WHAM!

Raimey hydraulshocked the side of the tunnel, and the entire roof caved in. He veered out of the way as a torrent of debris collapsed, separating them from the pursuing Lindos. He could hear them hitting the other side with the inertia of a train. The debris rattled from their energy. Already they were tearing it down. Chunks toppled over, and up top, Raimey saw hands raking at the cement.

“John!” It was Glass. “I found it!”

Raimey stopped staring and sprinted toward Glass’s voice. Glass was at a tunnel entrance. A dilapidated sign read “Woodbridge Line.”

The ground shook so hard that John could barely keep his feet. “This will get us there?”

“Yes!”

A huge bellow seared the air, and a hand the size of a house ripped the roof off the terminal. A cascade of Lindos fell off Big Brother; Glass shot them down. More Lindos broke through the barricade and out of the adjacent tunnels, and Glass fired on them as he and Raimey retreated.

The huge arm reached in, just missing John, smearing Lindos like flies. This was an unstoppable army, immune to harsh environments, relentless in its attack.

“Get in the tunnel!” Raimey yelled. Glass continued to fire, emptying the mag, reloading, and then back at it, dropping them down, nary a bullet wasted.

“GET IN!” Raimey grabbed Glass and threw him as far as he could.

WHA-WHAM! Raimey collapsed the entrance and they sprinted for their lives. The ground shook. It was no longer about the Lindos—it was about Big Brother.

And then, suddenly, what Raimey had done to the Lindos was done to him. The tunnel was crushed under Big Brother’s weight. The icy cold Potomac River poured in, and for Glass and Raimey, everything went dark.

Chapter 14

What do you dream about before you die? For John, his mind fed him lies. The sound of the rushing water ferried him toward the next plane. He heard Glass yell, in his hollow way, but the distance was too much, like a flea screaming up at the moon.

He was whole. He held his wife’s hand in front of the priest. She wore white, her long hair flowing over her shoulders. Her family was present, her father giving her away. He looked to the pews: his family was there too. His dad who came and went, his mom whom he’d never met, Grandma Roz who had raised him. Friends from the neighborhood, even those who had died young. It was beautiful. It was how it should have been.

The bombing had never happened. His legs hadn’t burned away in the fire; his arms hadn’t been reduced to strands of flesh. He went to the UN that day and came home again. He and his daughter went to the park. The sun was out, even in the fall. Tiffany’s cancer never came to be.

His daughter grew up and found a man. Raimey grilled him on their first date, but the boy was good. Tiffany watched the interview, making faces at John. After the boy left, she said, “Don’t you think you went a bit too far explaining what you do?” But they laughed and touched, and it went further because no one was around.

He led Vanessa down the aisle. He nodded to his Tiffany as they passed, and she dabbed at her eyes with roses of white tissue. He sat down next to her, put his arm around her, and watched as the job they were tasked with when Vanessa had entered this world was now satisfied. They had raised a girl who respected herself, who had a future, and who now had a partner.

They grew old; they became grandparents. John held the baby girl in his large hands. She’d cling like a tree frog, and later she’d run in yelling “Grandpy!” with the fever of life that gets lost with years. Vanessa and her husband asked John for advice, and he gave it.

It grew harder to get out of bed, but each day they did, saying “good morning” with a little kiss and making sure to tell each other “I love you” even after an argument, because they knew, as good as any, that the next days weren’t guaranteed. John met with his old soldiers, some with canes, some in wheelchairs, and they regaled each other with stories of bravery and toasts to the men and women who had been churned in its quest.

John died first. It was painful, but the pain was fine. Others wished to go quietly in the night, but John had felt pain—he knew it well—and he’d rather say goodbye to the ones he loved than wake in the hereafter or never again.

Vanessa was in her fifties, and the grandchildren (two of them now) were young adults actually going to a physical college. Tiffany sat next to the bed holding his hand, and the others stood around him, and they talked about nothing important. But all the same, it was so important because family was everything.

Everyone else left that night, but not Tiffany. She laid her head on John. His chest was thin now, his breaths shallow, but her presence brought him more comfort than any painkiller. Her touch had always made him whole. Her loving touch was proof from the universe that he had done all right.

“I love you. Thank you,” she says.

“You are everything to me,” John replies.

And instead of going quietly, instead of slipping into the peacefulness that lies beyond life, he hears the rushing of water and the screams of Glass and the realization that his daughter is OUT THERE AND NEEDS HIM AND HE CANNOT DIE. And as is the cruel fate of his existence, he leaves his old, wonderful wife. He rises above the bed, and she hangs on to his arm until her arthritic hands run out of strength and he abandons her anew.

John Raimey, seventy-four, becomes aware of his surroundings. He is alive. And the tunnel is filling with water.

= = =

“Glass,” Raimey said. His throat was thick. “Glass!” He could barely see. The black rolled in waves, slopping against his helmet. He stood up. “GLASS!”

GUNG GUNG. The water ahead lit up from muzzle flash. Glass was submersed, pinned under debris. Raimey ran over. He ducked underneath the growing tide and grabbed the slab. He wrenched it up. It was heavy, buried under the water, and he felt his electric engines and gears buckle from the strain.

“Come on.” Raimey gritted his teeth. The implant told him he was at max exertion. “Come on!”

The slab began to move, and the water slid off even more. Glass slipped out, rushed up to the surface, and climbed onto John’s shoulders. A vent under his arm spewed water and Raimey heard it suck in air.

“Are you okay?” Raimey asked.

“We have to get across,” Glass said. Raimey sloshed through the waist-high water. Past the collapse it was just the tunnel, free of debris, and he picked up speed while the water continued to rise. It was at his shoulders when Glass finally saw the exit. Raimey felt the incline of the track, and they rose out of the submerged tunnel to a service station above ground that said “Woodbridge.”

The city had expanded over the river, and here, like the rest, there was scarred shelter. They made their way into one of the high rises and collapsed.

For a while they didn’t speak. Glass continued to make a wheezy sound as if the breathing apparatus still held some water. Finally he stood up and gingerly tested his left leg.

“You’re damaged?” Raimey asked. He could see wires bunched up at the top and bottom of the leg. Some of the electrostatic tissue had torn.

“Yes, but I’m fine. We’re north of the Northern Star.”

“How far?”

“Five miles from Justin’s last location. We can’t go into the wasteland again without destroying Big Brother.”

Raimey got to his feet. “I agree. We have to lure him to us.” He had eleven hydraulshocks left. His fists could puncture any armor, but how could he reach Big Brother’s heart?

The buildings swayed above them, calling with their steely song, longing for purpose.

Raimey knew how.

= = =

It was night: Glass’s time. He and Raimey had split up, each handling their own assignment. Glass moved to the outskirts of the city toward the wasteland—the true one, a forest of melted steel, blowing with dunes made from blasted cement and dirt. He could see far ahead and he knew that the Northern Star was located at what had once been Marine Base Quantico. A distant memory burbled up—more fact than vision: he had been here before.

The choking horde of Lindos was nowhere to be found. There were stragglers, a few here and there, but he avoided them easily. They had night vision, but theirs crackled and burned from the native radiation that bombarded their sensors with useless full-spectrum data. Glass was unaffected.

A few of the creatures moved, but most of them were still. They were sleeping. To conserve power, Glass surmised. Evan must think Raimey and I are dead.

He scaled the tallest point at the edge of the twisted city and found a nook that would do. He assembled his big rifle, loaded it, and laid it down. Then he pulled one of the nukes from the case, flipped it over to find the rotary mechanism that clicked to arm the device, and armed it.

Glass parkoured down the building, effortlessly bouncing from one level to the next, and when he hit the ground, he wasted no time. He accelerated to full speed with an active nuke in his arms.

He burst forward at fifty miles per hour. The sleeping Lindos were in packs, like dogs; he would approach them and either swerve out of the way or leap over them in forty-foot-long jumps done at full sprint.

All things have patterns. And Big Brother, while immense and intimidating, had a human brain at its core. It circled the bunker in a predetermined way: a routine built on decades of habit.

Glass would place the nuke right in its scouting line.

He found the spot he had marked in his head with GPS coordinates. He set down the nuke, cone up, and buried all but the tip to hide it amid the rubble. Then he sprinted back to his perch, spitting up wakes of sand behind his powerful legs. No Lindo turned his way. They slept, or Evan was elsewhere.

= = =

Justin felt all of them, the billions of people online. Connected in, going about their days, not understanding that they were all a part of a singular consciousness. His mind continued to expand in all directions, like particles of an atomic explosion, flowing out in all directions, into and through everything.

Justin looked out into the space that was the Northern Star’s universe. He saw not only the programs, but the people inside. If he focused on a group, he could hear their thoughts both past and present, as if they were at a confessional and it was just the two of them.

“Justin. Rise up,” THE VOICE said. It was a voice he had never heard, a voice that drowned out the millions of yammering and useless conversations that lay before him, that coursed through him as if they were a part of him. But this voice did not flow through. It came from above. And as if hypnotized, Justin acted in accordance. He had no choice: the voice had given him an order.

He ascended further and further away from the programs, from the people’s thoughts. Their conversations, whether external or internal, withered into a low-powered signal. He looked down and saw the Northern Star, the glowing orb, a giant ball of liquid fire. He knew he was in it, yet somehow, he was above it.

He continued to ascend. The Northern Star was now the size of a basketball, the programs tiny shards of metal reflecting the sun. He felt HIM, he felt THE VOICE. And it was near.

= = =

Raimey stood in the pitch black, unable to see ten feet in front of him, the toxic clouds making the night even darker. He was near the subway terminal that they had come out of, waiting for the signal. When he got it, he would hide behind the buildings that towered over this shaky ground and wait for Big Brother. Glass was going to be the big shiny object that drew the critter into the trap.

Raimey waited restlessly, checking and re-checking his systems, something he never did. He now commanded seven million foot-pounds of energy through his fists, enough to make a large building tumble like a house of cards—and the weathered ones around him looked more than willing.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tiffany. She said nothing, just waited. Like John, she was unsure what the conclusion would be to this long, taut, thirty-five-year play.

“He’ll succeed,” Raimey said. He felt her nod. Glass would. His current good deeds could not account for the past’s dead, but neither could Raimey’s. Both of them held a deficit that only a higher power could pardon or punish. Those dead weighed on Raimey’s shoulders, and he felt them watching this final act. He could see them, mashed and mutilated, torn apart by his hands or his chains or vaporized into a meaty mist by his hydraulshock; he felt them all, like they were in a theater with a bowl of oily popcorn and a big cup of soda, waiting to see if the heel got his just desserts.

But when you kill a person, you don’t just kill them. You kill their family and friends, a punitive act that guarantees the grieved no future reminiscence of events yet conceived. The memories of that man or woman are now done. Any more are acts of wish fulfillment, delusion, or a dream.

And so behind his dead—already a stadium full—were the balcony seats of the wives, the sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, whose husband, dad, or child had been executed at John’s hand. The theater stretched for miles all around, too big to picture as a whole, but in John’s mind, they all found a chair. And instead of looking at John—for they did not know him—they pushed and craned against the upper balcony rails to find the loved ones they had lost, who were now seated below but were too entwined with John’s fate to ever look up, to ever wave or smile or mouth “I love you.” The entire audience was unsatisfied.

But when Glass’s rifle report filled the air, detonating the contact fuze—when Big Brother was engulfed in nuclear fire and a thousand Lindos were vaporized to dust—they all took to their seats to watch the show.

And Raimey’s body, whether justly existing or not, ratcheted and roared to life for its final battle. The sky was alive with a makeshift sun, and its blistering light revealed to Raimey where he must go and what he must do to get his daughter back.

= = =

Big Brother howled in its foghorn cry and pedaled sideways as the right side of its body was seared by the five-megaton blast. The Lindos that rode it were instantly atomized, and all external armaments were sheared off by the seven-hundred-mile-per-hour winds. Big Brother lumbered like a mad cow, standing up and collapsing again, each time shaking the earth around it.

The two back legs on its right side broke off and toppled like downed trees. It shifted forward to use its bottom arms to compensate, then shuffled in a circle while the quadruplets inside adjusted to their new way of locomotion.

Glass volleyed gunfire at the dome that housed the quadruplets. He knew his rounds wouldn’t penetrate, but that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to lure. Glass revealed his location with each burst from his gun. Finally, Big Brother aimed a cannon from its left shoulder and fired on the skyscraper Glass occupied. Its gunfire was erratic and its aim was off; the targeting system was fried.

Glass attached the hard case, and with rifle in hand, he scurried down the building in seconds before it was decimated by gunfire. He moved deeper into the city, a quarter mile from his last location. There he climbed up a ten-story building, fell flat, and targeted Big Brother again. It was doing exactly what he had hoped: it was tearing apart the skyscraper he had just shot from. Glass volleyed massive lead at it, each shot aiming true, guiding its attention to him, to the muzzle flash that looked like a giant match head lit time and time again in the night.

It fired on him, inaccurately. It launched a missile from its back, but its trajectory was queer and shot away, landing harmlessly in the wasteland behind it, pinwheeling like a firework. Big Brother charged, ignoring buildings, blowing through them like they were apparitions.

Again, Glass slid down the side of the building and ran as fast as he could to the next, the final, location. He ran past the subway terminal, past Raimey, and free-climbed up the side of an old five-story library and flipped into prone position.

Even crippled, Big Brother moved at tremendous speed, and it was already much closer than Glass had predicted. He opened fire on it, directing it toward him. It howled and fired on the little man two hundred yards ahead of it, unloading its chain gun, using the tracers to find purchase in the heart of its enemy. It wanted to end this.

= = =

Raimey stood in the alley of a skyscraper that loomed over the top of the subway terminal. He saw Glass flash by at impossible speed, and at the same moment he felt Big Brother’s approach.

Big Brother didn’t even notice Raimey as its hands and feet—each the size of a small house—pounded down, their impact causing Raimey to hop into the air.

The soft subway ceiling was like thin ice, and when Big Brother put its weight down, it crumbled through.

The trap had worked as planned.

Big Brother plummeted, fulcruming headfirst into the underground chasm. And with its arms being used as makeshift legs, it couldn’t recover.

Raimey sprinted to the front of the skyscraper.

WHA-WHAM!

Raimey hit the first of eight weight-bearing pillars. It vanished into chalk. Raimey moved down the row, firing off an assembly line of punches.

WHA-WHAM!

WHA-WHAM!

WHA-WHAM!

WHA-WHAM!

WHA-WHAM!

WHA-WHAM!

WHA-WHAM!

His arms hissed from the stress, the hydraulic fluid on boil. He felt his human side burn, but he kept going. He ran into the collapsing building.

WHA-WHAM!

WHA-WHAM!

WHA-WHAM!

His right hydraulshock shuddered open, sliding loosely, the recoil mechanism destroyed from the immense pressure of the wildcat rounds. The building groaned around Raimey, and then it buckled over as the front gave way completely under the immense load. Raimey sprinted toward the side as sixty stories of skyscraper tumbled over onto the struggling Colossus.

The weight of the building pinned Big Brother in the hole. But already the Colossus’s arms were shaking loose the debris, and the sound of intense hydraulic stress filled the air as an arm rose out of the ground to find secure footing.

Glass dropped his rifle and jumped down from his position. He ran to the Colossus, then scurried up Big Brother’s outstretched arm onto its back. He pulled out the last tactical nuke and popped the primer.

The Colossus howled like a dog caught in a bear trap. It buckled and shook, tons of debris falling off it in an avalanche. It began to rise, its titanic arms and legs defeating the weight that had pulled it down. But it was too late. Glass found an empty missile tube built into its back and jumped in.

I am Mike Glass. I am human. I loved Vanessa Raimey and she loved me. And that means that at some point, somehow, I was good.

He pictured Vanessa in his mind. Her eyes were wide and filled with love. I wish I could have seen you.

Mike Glass flipped the warhead over and slammed it down.

= = =

When Raimey saw Glass throw down the rifle and pull out the nuke, he understood. His mind screamed for it to be different, for there to be another way, but Glass had chosen the hard path—the path that guaranteed victory. The clearest path to save the only person he had ever loved.

Raimey turned and ran, getting as many buildings between him and Big Brother as he could. Big Brother raised its head and howled one last time—and then it vanished in a column of piercing white light, as if a supernova had been born within its chest.

The blast chased Raimey, bringing down buildings in a tsunami of fire. It caught and consumed him, spinning and throwing him like a blade of grass in a tornado, its convection as hot as a kiln, burning him down to his bone.

= = =

Justin stood on top of the universe. He understood how small it was, why Evan didn’t care anymore. He understood that no matter what happened, the things we described, named, and categorized did not care whether we existed or not. The insigni—

“—ficance of your lives,” THE VOICE finished.

Justin turned to a man next to him. The man looked nothing like Evan Lindo. He had no face; where it should be was a silhouette somehow darker than the pitch black that surrounded them. He wore a duster jacket and cowboy boots.

“Evan?” Justin asked, perplexed. He tried to look directly at the man, but he couldn’t. Whenever he’d get close, suddenly his head would be pushed into another position.

“No,” the man said. And then he realized that this wasn’t a man or woman. The being standing beside him had no sex. “He is down there.”

The man didn’t point, but Justin understood. Lindo was the Northern Star.

“Then who are you?”

“I am a part of God, Justin.”

“Lindo’s a god.”

Justin felt the being smile. “No, he’s not. He is powerful for a human, and that is his desire, but he is mortal.”

“You aren’t?”

The being was quiet for a moment. “Mortality is a condition that some of me deals with.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t think you can, Justin, but you don’t need to.”

Around the being, Justin felt a surge of peace. “Why are you here?”

“I am here because the entire consciousness of the world is now connected. I am tangible because the minds of man are together. When I said man was made in my likeness, what I meant was that man was made with pieces of me. My mortal side is in every living thing. It was a gift, so that when a person did good, they could feel the good, they would know, in their heart, what was right and what was wrong. Because there—”

“Are no words,” Justin finished.

“That is correct. Right and wrong have no words. As humans, words are used to describe the observed condition, to philosophize and debate. But it goes beyond that, into the indescribable. Into the feel.”

“Are you like the Northern Star?” Justin asked. “We aren’t the only planet, right? Talking to you, I’m just talking to a part of your consciousness . . .”

“Yes. In a crude description, I am similar.”

“Why are you up here? Why not closer? Why not take over the Northern Star and connect with everyone?”

“I can see everything, Justin. Close is just a word. I am next to everyone down below. Those who aren’t connected as well. I am next to other sentient beings in other galaxies. I circle the sun and burn with its atoms, and those atoms are me as well.”

“Are we important?”

“To the universe? No. To the solar system? No. It’s not your purpose to be important. Look at the stars, go on a date. Get a dog and love it. Because everything is temporary. I live forever, but my forever will eventually end. But you and everyone else down there have what I don’t, and what I can never have: wonder. Because you did not create the universe and every atom in it. You did not expand with it and coalesce into stars. You did not start as a nucleotide that fused with another to birth the planet’s first life. I am all knowledge and all knowing, and that is why I created you. Every child looks at the world with wonder as they grow in it. And every time that happens, so do I.

“I gave you all life, but you have given me a reason. To laugh, to love my creations. To smile. Because I am alone. My kind, if there are others, is gone. And if they were still here, I don’t know if it would matter. You are important to yourselves. To your families. To the people you help who didn’t ask and didn’t deserve it. Evan is wrong: you are important to that ant you gave the breadcrumb to. Because your mercy let it live another day. And life is the biggest gift that can be given.”

“Why are you talking to me? Where’s Evan?”

“We’ve been talking for less than a thousandth of a millisecond. He doesn’t know.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

The man laughed.

“Evan looks around and down, but he never looks up.” The man paused. “It’s your time, Justin. Mike Glass is dead. Your friend is outside, trying to get in. A man who deserves nothing. No sympathy, no mercy. But give it to him anyway. Give him the breadcrumb. Take over and let him see his daughter.”

“Should I destroy the Northern Star?”

The man shrugged. “The rest of the world is better off if you don’t. Wonder is the most fragile of human conditions. That’s why after it’s extinguished, so few people, no matter what happens, can ever get it back. Let the world rest. Be as I suggest. Nothing is created without my knowledge.”

The man disappeared, and then it was just Justin, looking past his feet to the universe below. One he was destined to control.

= = =

Raimey heard rustling above him. He tried to open his eyes. Only one obeyed. A seagull was perched on a mangled traffic light overhead. It was deformed. Its beak was misshapen and it had no chest feathers and only one leg. But it had lived through its condition without the luxury of complaint. It had survived against the odds, and now it looked down at Raimey with the same curiosity as the brown squirrel before, with its pair of black beads that seemed to say, “Yes, we are both living. Now what are you doing to do with it?”

His memory came back. Glass.

God. I don’t know if you’re out there. I hope you are, but the proof seems to show otherwise. Please let Mike Glass in. I’m not saying he deserves it. I know I don’t. But he finally learned right.

A hero’s death, but still, Raimey’s heart mourned the passing of his unlikely friend. Cynthia had seen something in that skeleton man that no other human could see. And she knew what to put out in front of him: the one thing he would chase to the end of the earth. His humanity.

“Good work, Cynthia,” Raimey said. The seagull squawked in response and took flight.

Raimey threw up in his facemask. It drained away. He felt the looseness of his skin, and far off his dead nerves tingled in phantom pain. The metal body that had been his shield for so long was failing. From deep in his chest came a sick, grinding sound. One of the waist chains had been shorn. His entire body vibrated from an electric motor about to blow.

He stood up slowly, checking to see what worked and what didn’t. One of his feet was gone. He felt the sickly wind tingling against his raw back—most of the armor had been torn off. The wires and gears that gave him motion were exposed. Every warning light in his helmet was flashing. He didn’t even know he had so many.

Raimey let out a sharp, long laugh that turned into a scream. It echoed over the battered landscape, an alien sound. He trudged out of the city and into the wasteland. His body wheezed, and thick, viscous fluid—the hydraulshock oil—rolled down his arms as if an artery had been nicked. He wobbled like a drunk: the gyroscope system that utilized the waist chains was fried.

He passed a Lindo; it was as still as a statue. Raimey waved a hand in front of it. Nothing. He flicked it with his finger and it fell over.

“Hmm,” Raimey said.

He walked past more Lindos, and they continued the trend of not stopping him, acknowledging him, or getting out of the way. He bumped into a few of them, and they toppled over, stiff as a board.

His last waist chain began to rattle, and then it thwapped off, knocking over a Lindo. Raimey fell to the ground. He could no longer walk. He clawed his way forward toward a valley that looked as if a meteor strike had created it.

His wife walked next to him, barefoot, unaffected by the poisoned land. Raimey crawled over the ridge and down into the vast pit. At the crater bottom, he saw steel. A blast door. The entrance to the Northern Star.

“You can make it,” his wife said.

He felt her hand on his. He knew it wasn’t true, but he let the warmth of her past life run up his metal arm and strengthen him for this one last push.

He slid down the hill like a penguin, troughing the sandy soil. At the bottom, he dragged on. An hour later he was at the blast doors. He looked up and around. They couldn’t be opened, even if he were well.

He turned to his wife, and this time she didn’t move. He wrestled himself into a seated position against the door and started to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did. I should have known better. I should have thought it through.” He weakly banged his fists against the door, and it rang hollowly.

“You did your best, John,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

Raimey sniffled. “Yeah. Will you sit with me for a while?”

“Of course, love.”

Patches of Lindos stood around him, frozen, like pawns without a move. He paid them no attention.

John Raimey sat next to his wife’s memory. He felt the sun setting, but there was no visual cue in the swirl of muddy gray. He closed his eyes and felt Tiffany’s head against his shoulder. He felt the warmth of their bed and the feel of her breast against his hand. Her breath, the rise and fall of her chest, that means so much more than we realize until it’s gone.

He drifted off to sleep.

= = =

Lindo sat in an old English study. Book-lined shelves rose to the ceiling, a large fireplace centered the room, and two leather chairs framed it, facing one another. One was empty; Evan sat in the other. The logs crackled blue and orange.

This was where Evan maintenanced. Just as Glass would dream of himself as human, this was where Lindo would go for a reprieve.

Lindo looked at his watch and frowned. And then Justin was there.

“You’re late,” Evan said, in an attempt at humor.

Justin didn’t say anything. He seemed distracted.

The process is confusing, initially, Lindo thought to himself.

“I’m fine,” Justin said. Lindo kept his surprise behind a poker face. “I saw you, Evan. Who you really are. Have you seen yourself lately?”

“Quiet,” Lindo replied. “I won’t be that much longer.” He wanted to talk for a while—it was so rare to have company—but he was already irritated. He initiated the Forced Autism.

Justin should have disappeared, but he did not. Suddenly Evan’s chair felt lumpy, and the fireplace was putting out too much heat. As if he were the visitor.

“Why would you think Forced Autism would work on me, Evan? My brain is different, yeah? That’s why you want it, so you can cram you and your stolen souls inside. But what makes it special is exactly why YOU CAN’T HAVE IT. You’re not a god, Evan. You’re just an old man in a glass jar. And your time is up.”

I saved us from MindCorp, from China! Evan tried to argue, but he had no voice. He panicked. This was a mistake! This was a mistake!

“You created those evils before you banished them. They were never as bad as you.”

Lindo’s eyes grew wide: Justin could hear his thoughts. And if that was true, then the construct of the Northern Star and the flow of information had been altered. Lindo was the slave to Justin, not the other way around.

Justin saw Raimey through six hundred eyes. He was sitting against the blast door. Justin initiated the door sequence and began to absorb all the components of the Northern Star.

All except for two.

= = =

When the alarm blared and the door started to swing outward, Raimey tried to crawl out of the way—but his body shut down. The door ground into him, turning him against the earth, and he thought that this was it: he would finally die. But then he felt someone pull on him, and then someone else. He craned his head, and with his good eye he watched as twenty Lindos dragged him clear of the door.

“NO!” he screamed. He tried to restart his body, but smoke erupted from it as the battery exploded.

“It’s me, John,” the Lindos said. It was Justin’s voice.

“I can’t move,” Raimey replied. “I’m done.”

Justin saw that Raimey had severe burns on his face. One of his eyes was completely white, and the other was frosting from the radiation.

“You’ll never need this body again,” the Justins promised.

They picked Raimey up and, like pallbearers, carried him inside to the hydraulic lift. Past their arms, Raimey saw his wife.

Together they began the long descent down to the Northern Star.

= = =

Justin purged Lindo from the consciousness of the Northern Star. Lindo vanished from the study, and then Justin closed his eyes to dismantle Lindo’s maintenance program and build his own. Fresh air filled his nostrils as he opened his eyes to a field. The sky was a deep blue; a sliver of clouds floated high overhead, peppering parts of the field in shade. A breeze blew, bending the flowers and tall grass. He heard the babbling of water just over a hill, and he walked toward it.

She sat on a blanket next to the stream. When they saw each other, she patted the blanket beside her.

“You made it,” she said with a smile.

“Did I do this?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I support your thoughts. When we first met, I could tell you liked this landscape, so I created the template when you discarded Lindo’s maintenance program.”

He understood.

“I didn’t trick you, but I did use you,” Vanessa said. “I’m sorry. Evan wanted you more than the world, and calling out to you fueled that hunger.”

“Did you know this would happen?” Justin asked.

“Yes. A voice told me.” She looked up.

Justin smiled. “Your father is on his way. He’s halfway down the lift.”

“Mike is dead,” she said sadly, and then became self-aware. “I’m sorry. I know he hurt you. I can’t justify what he’s done, but for whatever reason, we were happy.”

“Don’t be sorry. He loved you. And even when Lindo tore it all away, Glass found a way to get it back.”

Vanessa smiled.

“Do you want to go or do you want to stay?” Justin asked. “You’re no longer a prisoner. It’s up to you.”

= = =

The Justins carried Raimey through the crackling blue entrance of the Northern Star. China Girl came over and looked into Raimey’s visor. Raimey’s heart raced.

“I won’t attack,” she said over the thwapping of the Data Cores. “Come with me.”

She led him past the Pieces. He saw Justin in one, jogging in a pod of blue. They stopped at the pod in front of the Mega Core. Inside the pod was a man Raimey hadn’t seen in a long time.

“This is Evan Lindo,” China Girl said.

“China Girl, remove him,” a voice echoed. It was Justin’s. “John, I wish this could be your kill.”

“He did as much wrong to you as he did to me,” Raimey said. His voice was unamplified, and it barely escaped his helmet.

Gel spilled over the platform as China Girl decanted the pod. She climbed up and unhooked the skinny body from the Impetus machine, then laid the body on the ground.

Evan began to cough. He tried to get up, but his body was horrifically atrophied, and the helmet was like an anchor.

“Help,” he said. “Help.”

“Do you have anything to say, John?” Justin asked. The Justins turned Raimey so he could see the man who had betrayed him and the world.

“Goodbye, Evan,” Raimey said.

Evan writhed on the floor like a worm, but he didn’t reply.

“China Girl,” Justin said.

She stepped over Evan and shoved a blade through his chest, piercing his heart. He didn’t arch his back in pain; he didn’t bellow or curse the world. He just ceased living. China Girl retracted the blade and picked up the former god, removing him from the room. Her loyalties were to the Northern Star, not to an individual. And the Northern Star had spoken.

“Where is Vanessa?” Raimey asked. “I want to see my baby girl.”

= = =

The sky was beautiful. John had never seen a sky so blue.

“It’s sampled from Montana,” he heard over his thoughts. He followed the voice through the wildflowers and prairie grass. A pheasant shot up from a bush ahead of him, and he marveled at its color.

He walked toward the voices. His steps were light, barely trampling the ground beneath him.

He saw Justin. There was a picnic basket with sandwiches. A pitcher of lemonade.

And then he saw her.

Vanessa.

She stood up. John Raimey, able-bodied and without the battle chassis that had defined his life, ran to her and wrapped her in his arms.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” he said. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

“You came, Daddy,” Vanessa said. “You said you would always protect me, and you did.”

Justin watched their reunion with a tear in his eye. In the back of his mind, he kept the clouds swirling overhead and the breeze gently blowing. In the back of his mind, Justin controlled everything: the pheasant that vanished after a mile of flight, as if it had never been there; the sound of crickets, which came from no rubbing legs. In the back of his mind, he swam in the sea of eight billion minds. But here, right now, this was real. A father reunited with his long-lost daughter. A final mission that meant so much more than any of the thousands before. A father and daughter who could be with one another for as long as their bodies held out.

China Girl had cut Raimey out of his Tank Major chassis. The giant shell now lay sprawled on the floor, never to move again. The blood of its bearer congealed in it like an altar sacrifice, taking John’s sins and tying them to that colossal, monstrous frame.

China Girl put John into the pod that Lindo had occupied. There was no reason to attach the Impetus machine; his time was nearly up. China Girl then went into a corner of the room and lay down, awaiting her next instruction.

As Justin watched the embrace between father and daughter, he conjured butterflies to fly from the flowers around them and circle overhead like a new promise. He looked up at the sky, and for a moment he saw a pinprick of light beyond it.

The wonder of life.

The wonder of love.

The absolute wonder of our world.

Why did we let it fall into such peril?

Author’s Note

I want to thank all of the readers who have taken days (and weeks) out of their lives to read this series. I hope it was as enjoyable to read as it was for me to write. In one form or another, this story has been in my head for twelve years. It’s strange to be done with it, but it’s also a relief. These characters have become real to me and it brings comfort that Raimey has finally found solace, and Glass (though consumed in a mushroom of fire) his humanity.

If you like this book (or the series) please post a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, etc. For indie authors, that is our currency and is greatly appreciated.

Also, follow me on Twitter: @mikegullickson. I promise I rarely talk about writing.

And if you want, shoot me an e-mail at mike@mikegullickson.com

Enjoy your life, and be kind.

Mike Gullickson

3/17/15