by Sean Platt
Kate’s hands raised in surrender. “Fine! Fine. You want to do what Rachel Ryan wants, be my guest. I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
Kate stormed forward, avoiding eye contact with Nicolai and Kai. She ripped an antique hunting rifle from Braemon’s wall and made for the door.
“There’s no way you’ll be able to shoot that,” Kai spat after Kate.
Kate turned to lock eyes with Kai. The blonde was a full head taller. She turned the big weapon end for end, holding it midbarrel like choking up on a bat.
“I ain’t plannin’ to shoot with it, sweetheart,” she said.
She ripped the chair aside, opened the door, and stormed out.
Sam sat in his apartment. Just to torture himself, he checked the time. It was 4:16 p.m.
The woman’s arrival had given Sam a burst of hope. Even her departure had given him hope. Somehow, he’d been certain that she was a real person — not even AI, benevolent or malignant. And if someone could join Sam in the hole and then escape, there must be a way out.
But it had been — well, there was no way to say how long it had been, since he’d renewed extrication efforts at 4:16 p.m. and it was now already the ripe old hour of 4:16 p.m. Still, here he was, with only a stubborn idiot microfragment for company.
Was the physical presence of the microfragment cause for encouragement? It meant his mind hadn’t fully succumbed to the illusion. Some part of Sam’s used-to-be-tech-addicted mind hadn’t entirely redonned the cape of addiction. That part was letting him see the fragment for what it was. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out that a floating fractal that changed color and shape when it spoke in its electronic voice wasn’t a part of everyday, not-in-a-hole reality.
“If I kill myself in here,” Sam said, “would I really die?”
“Sam Dial Sam,” said the microfragment. It became a three-dimensional starburst, pulsing like a heart. It became a mostly flat dodecagon. It became a cube then blushed red.
“If I die in here but not in life,” Sam said, “would I just reset?”
“Sam Dial Sam Sam.”
He stood. He’d destroyed the illusion’s walls a few times. He had to keep trying, but he was so damn tired. And he’d made no real headway other than inviting the microfragment and possibly the angelic woman. That had been a boon: She’d revealed important information that he couldn’t act on. Now he was still just as fucked, but at least he knew exactly how much damage he was doing by failing to deliver his message.
He had to let Costa know that whatever he’d been told, it was a trap. Time was frozen, and he had no idea how long he’d been in here, but he could sense awareness leaking through the glitches. He could sense the real world out there, even if he couldn’t reach it — and to Sam, it felt like it was falling apart.
“It’s not just me,” Sam said. “There are a bunch of holes forming on The Beam now.”
“Sam Dial,” the microfragment replied.
“Something with The Beam. Something is changing. That’s what she pretty much said, right? The woman? The woman who had no problem leaving this place?”
“Dial Sam.”
Sam stood. The microfragment swooped out of his way like a startled bird. He looked into his apartment’s corner, where wall met wall. Near where the woman had been. He tried to remember her, tried to push out with his mind.
Nothing happened.
“There must be a way.”
“No,” said the microfragment.
“She got in,” Sam countered.
“Crazy.”
“And she got out.”
“Crazy,” the microfragment repeated.
When you were trapped in a hole, you had to do something that forced the system out of its repeating rut. Something…yes…kind of crazy. But he knew, somehow, that time wasn’t as late as he’d feared. Just as he knew that the woman wouldn’t have been able to speak with him before this section of The Beam had begun to fracture and change. Things were different now. But there was purpose to everything, it seemed.
A firm conviction, spoken in the woman’s voice, entered Sam’s mind: You wouldn’t have got the warning if there wasn’t a way to deliver it.
Something unexpected.
Sam slapped the wall.
Sam punched the wall.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m stuck in a hole.” And because it was odd and unexpected behavior, he stood on one leg.
The wall blinked. For a split second, Sam saw the Starbucks room before his own room reappeared.
Sam stood on his single leg again.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m standing on one leg.” He used the other leg to kick his table. It hurt. Good. So he kicked it again, enough to spill a glass of water.
A blink. The wall was gone for longer.
Encouraged, Sam hopped. His mind tried to focus, to see the truth, to hold the image of the Starbucks carrel in his mind’s eye.
I’m there, not here. I’m there, not here. And then, because it was bizarre in his apartment but made perfect sense where he actually was, Sam said, “Canvas! Bring me a latte!”
No latte appeared, but now one entire wall became the smooth pale surface of a Starbucks room. It looked odd abutted to his apartment’s walls but was definite progress.
“I still have time.”
“Maybe,” said the microfragment.
“I can stop him. Whatever Nicolai is going to do, I can stop him in time.” It didn’t matter that Sam had no idea what Nicolai wasn’t supposed to do, that he didn’t know what Nicolai had been told or given. It didn’t matter that Sam didn’t even know the motherfucking time of day. It only mattered that he had a way out. And that he wouldn’t have been given the warning if there wasn’t a way to deliver it.
“Maybe Sam Dial Sam,” said the microfragment.
Sam slapped the microfragment. It was a digital projection and shouldn’t have been touchable, but Sam’s mind was finally clawing its way up. Unplugging from his old enhanced brain’s rote circuitry, from before he’d gone underground and become Shadow. The microfragment — possibly a representation of whatever had locked his mind into this loop — spun like an assaulted cartoon character.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m kicking your ass!” Sam shouted.
“Sam.”
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m stuck in a hole!”
The microfragment started to pulse as if planning to respond, so this time Sam kicked at it. The something inside him gaining strength must have landed a kick too because the thing shot across the room, struck the wall, and made a stylized splat, complete with sound effect.
Giddy, Sam rushed forward then did a little dance in front of the assaulted microfragment. The loop wanted something unexpected? Sam could do unexpected.
He pushed his rear toward the slowly reassembling microfragment and gyrated.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m wagging my butt!”
A second wall fell away, again becoming white. There was a strange sucking sensation, and Sam, who’d been quite sure he was standing, found himself sitting in a molded Beam chair. He’d surely been here all along, but now he could see it. He could feel it, pressing into the butt he’d so recently wagged.
Sam looked around the room. Saw the room. Believed.
And it shattered, becoming nothing, and then he was again in his rented privacy carrel. The table beside him, as he watched, delivered the latte.
Sam threw his hands in the air, knowing how ridiculous he’d look if anyone was watching. But they weren’t. And he didn’t care. And there was still time. Just as Ebenezer Scrooge realized at the end of Dickens’s tale, there was still time.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I finally got out!”
Sam expected the canvas to blip in acknowledgement, but instead the microfragment reappeared for a split second in his hazy inner eye. It seemed to say Sam Dial Sam Sam then was gone forever.
Sam bolted from the chair. Checked the time. Checked Beam Headlines to watch streami
ng video of the Respero fundraiser at Craig Braemon’s place, where Nicolai would be.
Something was going wrong. A commotion, which would let Sam sneak inside, just as the young woman had told him.
It wasn’t too late.
Sam ran. He watched a huge sum tick out of his account in his heads-up display — the fee for his rental. He pushed through the front door then ran and ran.
Leonidas saw only the cloud.
All of his old augments had activated. Every single one. Just as all of the others’ augments and new add-ons had activated. It was laughable, with Leo’s current perspective, to think he’d ever believed himself dormant. And really, for as smart of a girl as Leah was, it was laughable that she’d thought her detector would be able to circumvent his programming. He’d felt the commands unlock one after the other: new knowledge coming to him like a string of epiphanies.
He didn’t need to understand how to reactivate the refurbishment nanos that would lubricate and restore composites in his Warrior’s Fist.
He didn’t need to understand how to reboot the hardware in his eye — which, come to think of it, he was pretty sure he’d had mostly scooped out when his nanobots were supposedly flashed.
The hardware understood enough to do the job. Or rather, the software understood enough to tell the hardware how to pick up where it had left off. Dead nanobots must have come alive; Leonidas had felt it like a shot of adrenaline. His old arms again felt young. His fist again felt strong. As the things re-tinkered the old configuration of his eye — not the same as it was, but improvising with what his body still had inside it — he’d again been able to see his heads-up display.
At that point, he’d begun to see the cloud. They were networked, so he’d pushed it out. All the old prison augments had a few nanobots still inside them, and of course those nanos had been reproducing, on an exponential curve, for hours. Now that the cloud fell upon them, Leonidas found that his will (his compulsion, his directive) belonged to the group. Leah’s limitations had snapped like nothing. Weapons had replenished. Bone had been stolen and fashioned into native shivs — appropriate given the add-ons’ prison origin. Those who’d had metal in their bodies would surely find it rerouted.
The intelligence took care of it all.
The cloud took care of it all.
The software — which felt to Leo like buried memories — easily stepped right over Leah’s barriers. It was of a higher mind, like Gaia’s Hammer had always been. Now they were all of a higher mind.
As the last of the group climbed through the hole they’d blown in the gathering’s floor, Leo’s tracker began to search. What had been an urge became a compulsion.
His target was here. Just as the Beam signature promised, York was here.
A man came at Leo with a firearm — something kept concealed for just such an emergency. It was a slamgun, not a slumber.
The man fired. Leo felt the sting of splitting skin, but the man had struck an under-skin component, nothing vital. He looked up from his blood-spattered, shredded shirt, staggering forward after rocking on impact, and met the man’s eyes.
Leo loosed the swarm.
Within seconds, the man was clutching his head. Grabbing his ears. Leo walked away, not caring to see the man’s eyes burst, which might happen. The swarm would do damage until vital signs ceased. Sometimes, that damage was invisible. Plenty of times, it wasn’t.
He marched forward. There was something happening onstage in the large room. He could see several well-dressed people fleeing after Scooter blew a hole in the wooden platform. Scooter fired again, and Leo watched a woman fall, but despite his compulsion and directive, Leo found his eyes drawn to a girl who’d been beside the woman. A girl who was now screaming as Scooter fired shot after shot — shots, which, it seemed, were flying right through the girl as if she wasn’t even there.
Leonidas knew her. Somehow, he knew her.
But the tracking arrow was blinking, and Leo felt himself wanting to turn. His fist clenched. His target was near. The signal was confused. It kept seeming to blink around. But he could still home in on it. He could still see it. And it was close.
Leonidas turned. He saw a woman who, in another life, had shared a garden with the man that Leonidas had temporarily become, after implantation and before activation. He seemed to recall that she’d specialized in growing carrots. Leo watched as she overloaded a nearby man, forcing her signal across The Beam and into his inputs.
York.
He hadn’t realized it until recently, but the need to find and end Stephen York had been beneath his skin for a long time, like an itch. And now was the time to scratch that itch.
A new blip. A fresh direction.
Leonidas turned, sensing the cloud. Screaming and shouting continued behind him.
He walked on, heavy metal ready for action.
None of what Leah was seeing made sense.
All it was making right now was Leah nervous.
For most of Leah’s life, she’d been both a conscientious observer and an action taker. That, she’d always thought with a small amount of pride, was what had differentiated her from the other Organas. They talked about peace and simplicity and fighting The Man. But Leah, often with Leo’s help, actually fought. She’d found Null, then become a force within it — not as an anonymous drone like the rest, but as someone with a name and an online face. She’d gone to school to hone her hacker’s tools. While the other Organas discussed The Beam’s evils, Leah had got herself in front of a pair of Quark PD clerics then dropped nanobots and their keyhole AI behind the firewall. She’d used those nanobots to pop the other, more-content-to-braid-flowers-and-bitch-than-do-anything Organas out of NPS custody. Leah had taken it upon herself to dig deep, to snoop, and to eventually uncover the cabal’s transcript, pointing to some sort of bizarre assassination plot against…against Crumb, of all people.
If Leah had been like all the others, she’d have done dust, worn rainbow clothing, and maybe participated in an occasional sing-along. But she wasn’t, and never had been.
And yet right now, Leah had to admit there was nothing she could do.
The sensation was horrible. It was like being on the back of a screetbike driven by a maniac. What she saw on the small console screen made Leah’s heart skip beats, and yet her hands were tied. Someone else was driving this catastrophe, and she could do nothing as they headed toward the cliff — or into a growing fireball.
Leah paced the hotel room Leo kept in the city, her feet heedlessly kicking her small pile of belongings as she passed. She’d been here over a week and hadn’t spread much beyond her small circle around the couch. It was a decent metaphor for Leah in life: she’d always left a tiny footprint.
She picked up her handheld then reopened the Undercover app even though she already knew what she’d see. It was still all fragments. All noise. All chaos, as if the app wasn’t looking at The Beam at all but was instead facing a raw dump. It didn’t look like that on the surface; she could watch the canvas’s console and see that much. But the fragmentation made the entire sector feel like thin ice. One misstep, and anything could happen.
And none of it made sense.
She tried to ping Shadow. The ping returned an echo — an automated response proving that Shadow, wherever he was, had received it. After Dominic’s paranoia about Shadow, Leah had crawled through Undercover’s belly (before the app had begun showing nothing but garbage) and applied a temporary geotag. Shadow was here, in DZ, not far away, and on the move.
Shadow — whoever he was in life — had been in a Starbucks parlor for hours. Now he was rapidly moving toward the Braemon event, refusing to answer her ping.
When that made Leah feel an uncomfortable itch, she’d called Dominic. But the captain was nowhere to be found, so either The Beam obscured policemen’s locations beyond Leah’s abilities to find them or he was…well, dead. But she couldn’t hear or see any evidence of Dominic communicating with the event, so the idea of him being so
mehow hidden didn’t quite square. Wasn’t he supposed to be in charge of this whole thing? Wasn’t he the interim police commissioner? If so, why wasn’t he paying attention?
So Leah had called Leo. No dice there. Leo wasn’t visible, probably because Leah no longer knew what his Beam signature looked like now that he was carrying all that deactivated Beam-facing hardware. She’d deactivated most of it, but the network components were still up, and even the dead parts in the Organas were sort of noisy.
But Leah saw no Leo. No amorphous new collective stumbling through the city.
Where were the Organas?
Where was Leo?
Why was Shadow hauling ass toward the fundraiser? What business could he possibly have there?
And where the hell was Dom?
Feeling ridiculous — like a control freak robbed of her control, maybe — Leah had even tried to ping SerenityBlue. When Serenity hadn’t answered, Leah had gone snooping. But what she’d been able to see of Serenity had been somehow different. She’d felt different. And then Serenity had more or less vanished, too.
Leah paced, faster and faster. She picked up her handheld and sent Shadow a Diggle, tagged Urgent. Nothing came back, and on Leah’s display, the dot showing Shadow’s disintegrating tracer continued to move.
She should dose with her tiny remaining amount of Lunis. She should dive deep then try to make sense of the nonsensical mess she was seeing at the node that seemed to be forming in the core network. But there wasn’t time, and no way she’d be able to relax fully enough to let the drug do its meditative work.
Leah sat. Went to a wireframe. She overlaid her platform-stripping app and looked beneath the Beam-level language, under the architecture, down deeper than any programmer who valued her efficiency would bother to go. Leah zoomed in and out, removing and re-placing the stripping filter.
