by Schow, Ryan
He nearly dropped his spoon.
“What?”
The Cyberlink was a brain-machine interface invented by Darian Welch about ten years ago. It basically dropped a host of “threads” into your brain. Each of the one hundred threads contained more than five-thousand electrodes per array. What began as an experiment in helping paralyzed people eventually ended up turning people’s brains into the internet. The volume of data each person could process was astounding.
In the early 2020’s being brilliant was no longer the exception, it was the norm.
At first, the breakthrough was earth shattering. The push for the transhumanist movement was a force to be reckoned with. Merging man with machine was the natural route humans were being herded to, so when the implants became available with a simple outpatient surgery and almost no recovery time, the masses flocked to local centers to get this done.
Skylar was one of them.
“I thought that if I had increased brain power, I could make a better life for myself. Or at the very least, not get left behind like the biologicals,” she explained. “Within a year, people’s systems started getting hacked. It was mass chaos. The system eventually failed, as I’m sure you know.”
Ryker knew quite well. They were told that if the hardware interface was removed, the “client” risked not only potential impairment of their regular brain functions, they could become brain-dead altogether.
To put people at ease, and to maybe avoid lawsuits, the users were informed they could disable the GPS tracking and internet interface modules and instead use the power it had to monitor disease in the body.
It felt like a cheap ploy. It worked though.
Everyone’s awesome new brain enhancing Cyberlink had been reduced to a freaking health monitor.
“Why haven’t you taken it out?” Ryker asked.
“I needed it to get in to the Minister’s office. Everyone working for the government must have one.”
“Because it’s still a tracking device?” he said.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I found a way to shut it off before…this, but when I got here, they scanned it and found it had been deactivated.”
“Did they say anything?” he asked.
“Not at first,” she answered. “They just turned it back on.”
“Good God.
She nodded her head, her features marred with defeat. “But then they said if I got out of line, they’d jolt me with shocks to the Cyberlink.”
“They can do that?”
“Remember when the systems were initially attacked and a small spike in heart attacks were reported?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Those were Cyberlink-induced heart attacks. Basically, back when they were still online, you could hack into the system and roast someone, anyone.”
“Good Lord,” he said, truly astounded. Smiling, but angrily, like he was mad and couldn’t believe it, he said, “So basically they’ve turned your health monitor into a tracking device and a shock collar, like you’re some kind of dog.”
“When did you get yours pulled out?” she asked.
“I never got one.”
“You’re strictly biological?” she asked.
He nodded.
Looking at the time, she said, “As illuminating as this conversation is, I have to go. I hear our cot assignments are permanent, so I’ll see you tonight. Or maybe for lunch or dinner.”
“I don’t think there is a lunch once you’ve been established,” he said.
“Dinner, then.”
She got up and left, and he sat there finishing what tasted like some sort of cementing gum. Whatever it was he was eating, it was going to sit in his colon like a brick and he wasn’t looking forward to that.
On the way out of the cafeteria, one guy must have affronted another guy because all of the sudden, there was some kind of pushing match. Seconds after that, the fists were flying. He stood on his toes to catch a glimpse of one guy slamming another guy’s head into the edge of the table. They were both bloody. Then someone retaliated on the guy who wasn’t falling face down in his own blood and more joined in after that.
The Chicom guards pushed through the masses with shock sticks, hitting everyone in their way. When they got to the actual brawl, everyone got doused with pepper spray.
Groaning, they fell to their knees in compliance while everyone else scrambled out of the mist, hoping not to get any of the stinging mixture on their skin.
Ryker was slowly moving with the crowd. The closer he got to the scene of the altercation, the more he felt a tickle on his skin. He tried to hold his breath as he walked by, and blink very slowly, holding his lids closed as much as he could.
From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the guards with a shock stick just cooking one refugee’s head. Just as Ryker was passing, the man’s head caught fire causing the Chicom to move the stick to the next man.
The acrid stench of burning hair permeated the air around him. He hated what he was seeing, but he was focused on the task ahead. Still, in the back of his mind, he knew that if the Chicom guards inside San Quentin were anything like they were on the outside, they’d leave the dead men for everyone to see.
Most people just sat around the yard, the cells, and in the gym not doing anything. It was as if the Chicoms didn’t know what to do with them yet. Or perhaps they cycled work teams.
He saw them, too.
There were guys washing the sides of the buildings, other guys cleaning out trashcans and air vents and cell floors and plastic beds. Of course there was also cooking, washing dishes and the cleaning of the kitchen to do.
He’d found a guard near the wing his brother was working and asked to clean the showers and toilets. The guard just laughed.
“It’s better than sitting out in the yard with nothing to do all day,” he’d said.
“Go volunteer somewhere else,” the man said.
“I’ve tried.”
“Go to motor pool. Wash trucks.”
“That’s the first place I went,” he lied. “C’mon man, just put me to work.”
When he saw some of the guys lining up, he’d heard they were being bussed out, reportedly to work inside the city, although no one really knew what they did. He didn’t want to do that because it would put him far from his brother. Getting him out was the only reason he’d come to this refugee/labor camp in the first place.
“Let me see,” he said as he went inside the old Officer’s and Guard’s Block. “Stay here.”
“The only happiness that is true is the happiness you feel in servitude,” someone next to him said.
“Why don’t you go with them into the city then?” he turned and asked the run down looking woman.
“I hear things,” she whispered.
“About the work brigades in the cities?” he asked, now interested. She nodded, her eyes ninety percent vacant, maybe more.
“They wash the Chicom’s vehicles, polish the boots of the soldiers in their field stations, haul dead bodies to the stacks after the death squads killed them.”
“I wondered who was doing all that,” he said.
“They aren’t fresh kills, mind you. We’d only moved the bodies after they spent days rotting in the sun, or bloated from the rain and the subsequent heat.”
She picked at something in her hair, looked at it, then rolled it between her fingers like fresh booger.
“You worked in the cities?” he asked, trying not to look at her hands. She nodded, her eyes clearing. “Was it…bad?”
She looked away, her eyes returning to that thousand yard stare.
“The only happiness that is true is the happiness you feel in servitude,” he said repeating her words. “What did you mean by that?”
“Service to God,” she whispered, low and conspiratorial.
Now he understood.
Everyone had some resistance in them, whether it be physically, mentally or emotionally. This woman was a Christian, something the Chicoms h
ated. But she was also broken, not lost, but close.
“They hate us,” she said, her withered hand dropping the nodule and flexing into a fist. Her eyes were clear and sharp again, her mouth twisted into a grimace.
He stood back.
“They hate that we love God more,” she all but hissed. And then she was back to her old self. “My sister died when we took the bus last time. They…they do things to the girls, you know, and sometimes the boys, too. She was my baby sister. Fifteen years younger.”
“What happen—” he started to say before the guard walked back outside.
“You still want to clean bathrooms, Gweilo?” he barked.
“Yes, sir,” Ryker said.
“Come then!”
“Good luck,” he said to the woman, but she’d already checked out.
Before he’d managed to hitch a ride back to the one place he swore never to return, San Quentin, he’d learned from one of the Chicoms he’d befriended on the outside that his brother was in North Cell Block.
When he thought of befriending the man, it wasn’t exactly like that. It only meant that he’d given the man’s family a chance to live. The things he had to do to get information about his brother sickened him to a large degree. But on the other hand, it had been a necessary evil and he’d pay his penance on the day of reckoning if need be.
As he followed the guard down the long hallway toward the bathrooms and showers, Ryker thought of the man’s family. Ryker was basically holding a woman and child captive until he got his brother out. Arrangements with friends were made for these two hostages to remain in captivity until his brother was out safely.
When he got to the bathroom/showers, he saw several of the Chicom guards lingering about. One of them came to meet him. This was his contact—the man whose family he was holding hostage.
He looked at Ryker with the most intense hatred imaginable. Ryker was no fool. He understood the guard’s feelings toward him. It served him right, he thought. This guy was used to being on the giving end of pressure, not the receiving end.
The guard quietly said to him, “Make contact, and then I will come and get you two. Once we leave, we’ll be heading to a bus into the city. You have seats saved. The driver will take you the specified location, a burn site you’ll be cleaning up. There’s only one guard there and he knows you will run. He won’t chase you. Around the block, there will be a car waiting. If you do not take these men to my family, they will kill you. If you release my family unharmed, you will be free to go.”
“If this works,” Ryker said, “you have my word that nothing will happen to your family, and I will release them as promised.”
“If you double cross me,” he hissed, his breath sour with rage, “I will make it my life’s mission to find you and torture you for years to come.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Ryker said, cool.
As he walked inside the bathrooms, down a short walkway with five foot tall lockers (with no benches for seating—they’d been torn out), he thought of his brother, Boyd. He also thought of Skylar, which was a surprise. He’d only just met her, and even though she made one hell of a first impression, his focus should have been single-minded.
A moment ago, to the guard whose family he was holding hostage, he’d almost demanded passage for a third person, but Skylar was too much of a risk. Maybe even too high profile. If her Cyberlink was reactivated, she’d be easily tracked, which would put him on the map along with her. If she hadn’t had all that hardware in her head, he would’ve considered it. As it was, there was no way he could take her anywhere with him.
When he got to the showers, several of the guards were finishing up and drying off. He did not look at them for two reasons. One, he wasn’t a meat gazer, even inadvertently, and two, he didn’t want any of these men as witnesses against him if things went to shit.
He went around the other side of the lockers, paused there, found his brother. He was scrubbing the shower floors, looking tired, run down. Just as he was about to approach him, give him the good news he could not provide him earlier, the guard—Ryker’s contact—came early. He approached his brother.
“Move,” a guard told Ryker.
Startled, he stood back and said, “I’m sorry.”
By the time he’d returned his attention to Boyd, he saw the guard leaning forward to tell him something. Apparently they were a go, but sooner than he thought.
Good.
Before the guard could even get a word out, his brother drove a shiv right in the man’s neck.
“No, no, no!” Ryker said.
The guard fell to the floor as his brother tossed the shiv away. Several guards rushed in to the room, firing on his brother, killing him in spectacular display.
Ryker backed up, horrified.
When the guards went to check the man on the floor, gasping for breath, Ryker said, “Is he going to be okay?”
“Get back!” the guard screamed at him, turning and pointing the weapon on him. The two were chattering in their language as his contact bled out on the small white tiles.
“Now!” he said, seeing Ryker still hadn’t moved.
Hands up, he stepped back toward the shiv. While his brother lay there dead, blood leaking out of a dozen holes, one of the guards was on his knees trying to staunch the dying guard’s bleeding. He was wide eyed, gulping for air, almost scared looking.
If his contact died, Ryker had no way out. He had to at least know who to contact to get a bus out of there.
Taking one last look at his brother, wiping his eyes, he told himself it was time. There was nothing left to live for but vengeance.
Knowing more guards would arrive soon, Ryker moved in quick, punched the shiv through the standing guard’s neck, then shoved him aside and stuck the one keeling over. He grabbed both of their pistols, hustled to the spot behind the entrance to the shower room.
More guards moved in, heading to the reported scene of the incident. Ryker snuck a peek down the hallway, saw no guards coming—although there were surely more on the way—and popped all three with shots to the back of the head.
The barking sound of gunfire in the showers was deafening. He snuck a look down the hallway. It was still clear. He rushed to the downed men, grabbed their weapons too, hid at another location.
He popped the mags, set them down beside him.
Four more guards rushed in, squawking too fast for him to understand. He put those four down, too, but only when they cleared the line of sight from the hallway.
By now his heart was kicking about a hundred miles an hour, his chest rattling with the punching sensation of a man doing very bad things. The way he felt, all this adrenaline, this was where guys whooped and hollered, or shot off guns, or danced around. This is also where guys threw up, froze up or lost their edge entirely. Wiping sweat from his brow, he looked back at his dead brother. This was all he cared about.
Now he was dead.
Dammit, Boyd, he though to himself. He wiped his eyes again, eyes that wouldn’t stop pooling with tears, and he thought, Why’d you leave me hanging like this?
Two more guards rushed into the showers, both armed, both cautious. When they got in the entryway to the showers, they slowed their approach. They ducked low, the five foot tall lockers obscuring Ryker’s view.
Cursing to himself, he tracked them by their voices. Then they stopped moving. They were in the line of sight of the hallway. He couldn’t kill them there without alerting others coming into the gauntlet.
He heard more voices.
A new group of men piled in, pushing the others forward. Then it was a flurry of noise. With a pistol in each hand, he stood and fired on the men, catching three of them with multiple rounds.
When the weapon dry fired, he switched hands, changed position, stood and fired, taking the top of one guy’s head off and missing the other two.
He needed to move fast, keep them on their heels.
He heard one of them whispering in a two-way, his w
ords strung together so fast there was hardly a space between each one.
Dropping down, he bobbed his head out, saw three more men, all crouched down. One was on the two-way, another was trying to see if his friend who lost the top of his head would live, and the third was peeking around the corner at the other end of the hallway.
Ryker checked the other side, looking down a long hallway and saw nothing. Keeping as low as possible, he slipped out and fired three rounds taking out all three men.
As quickly as he could, he grabbed their weapons, pulled them aside, although there was now a massive blood slick in the walkway.
He was just getting the last man aside when the thunder of footsteps shook the hallway. Before the army of men rounded the corner, he ducked aside, moved into the only position he could—behind the doorway.
So far, these men were not smart and they were not trained tactically. Perhaps their occupation made them lazy. Or maybe they were third-string soldiers. The benchwarmers. The guys who did paperwork, monitored communications, ran the secretary pool.
Either way, when they moved in, Ryker waited as long as he could to get them all in range and then he fired on the farthest one from him, moving quickly through the line of six. All six fell, and even though some got shots off, he was spared any damage.
Rather than finishing off the six that were dead or dying, he dropped down and fired on three more men running back down the hallway. He got two in the back, but he missed the third.
“Dammit!” he barked.
Wasting no time, he took the closest man to him, ripped off his hat and clothes, and did a quick change. His heart threatened to tear itself apart it was beating so hard, but he kept cool under pressure. He’d been in high-stress situations like this before.
This one just had more enemies.
By the time he squeezed himself in an ill-fitting jacket and pants, changed out his mags and confiscated two more pistols, he heard the sounds of more men coming.
His pulse was roaring in his neck, the pounding so loud it thumped his head with every ferocious beat. He wiped the sweat from his brow, steadied himself.
