by Linda Nagata
I sit there with it in my hands, afraid to put it on. What if it doesn’t work? If the EMP blew out the microbeads in my brain, then a skullcap isn’t going to do me any good at all. I’d need to have the microbeads reinstalled. I don’t think that’s ever been done before. I don’t know if it’s even possible.
“Shelley?” Lissa asks, her voice taut with worry. “Are you okay?”
But the beads are organic, aren’t they? And organic structures are immune to EMP.
Stop screwing around, I tell myself. Just fucking try it.
I duck my head and slip the cap on, pressing it close to my scalp. I can’t get it as close as I’d like—I’ve got a quarter-inch of hair on my head—but if even a partial signal gets through, I’ll know the beads are working.
I hold my breath. Two seconds, three . . . and I feel a sense of lightness rising in me, countering the weight of the shadows in my head. Relief flushes through me. And gratitude.
I run my gloved hands over the cap one more time. And when I’m absolutely sure? I give Lissa a smile. “I’m okay, baby. I’m doing fine.”
LINKED COMBAT SQUAD
* * *
EPISODE 3:
FIRST LIGHT
LISSA AND I HUDDLE TOGETHER in the backseat of an army SUV. Chen is up front with the driver. We’re one vehicle in a well-armed convoy taking our C -FHEIT soldiers to Kelly Army Medical Center. Twenty-four hours have passed since the bombs went off. An enforced quiet presides in San Antonio’s streets. Lissa describes the barricades and checkpoints she sees, controlled by National Guard troops and curtailing all civilian traffic. Only military, police, fire, and ambulances are allowed to move.
She tells me of damaged cars littering the streets, some still with mournful families waiting in them—the flotsam left behind from yesterday’s flood of traffic as a million people tried to flee the city.
Traffic lights aren’t working, none of the stores are open, and scattered plumes of smoke stain the dawn sky. “But I don’t see any big fires,” she says. “And no looting. It was worse in San Diego. Here, except for the wrecked cars, there’s hardly any damage.”
But there’s damage under the skin, in the city’s nervous system, in its collective cyber mind. San Antonio is deep in the grip of the Coma.
• • • •
“Oh God,” Lissa says. “The hospital’s turned into an armed encampment.”
We’re barely moving now, rolling forward at maybe ten miles an hour.
“There’s razor wire, and MPs with dogs . . . and hundreds of civilians. They’re all standing in a long line like they want to get inside.”
“They’ll be taken care of,” I tell her, hoping it’s true. “Anyway, you’re not going to wind up out there. You’re staying with me.”
Major Chen is on the phone with hospital security. He arranges for two MPs to meet us beside the car. An attendant is there too. She puts a monitoring sleeve on my forearm even before I get out. I’m moved into a wheelchair, and then the MPs escort us inside.
The power is on, evidenced by air-conditioning, and overhead lights that break into bright fragments in my vision. The lobby sounds packed, people on all sides, questions being asked and answered, a groan of pain, and one high, frightened voice.
“Are they wounded?” I ask.
The attendant answers. “Mostly civilians with minor injuries, sir. A lot of them are still here because they don’t have any way to get home.”
We move quickly through the lobby and onto a waiting elevator. “Lissa?”
“I’m here.”
The elevator doors open and we proceed, passing rooms or offices, I don’t know which, but I hear people talking, discussing patients, discussing strategy. The attendant tells me, “We’ve got you on a priority schedule, Lieutenant Shelley. Right now we’re going to do a medical assessment, and then we’ll commence with your course of treatment.” The wheelchair comes to a stop. “Ma’am, you’ll have to wait outside.”
“No.” I sit up straight, gripped by a sudden fear that if Lissa slips away from me again, she might disappear forever. “Lissa stays with me!”
“Take it easy, Shelley,” Major Chen warns in a stern voice. “You do not need to worry about Lissa. We didn’t pull her out of San Diego just to lose her on the streets of San Antonio.”
She says, “Shelley, I’ll be okay.”
My heart is pounding in my ears, but I’m wearing a skullcap that doesn’t allow me to harbor irrational fears for very long. Lissa kisses my cheek and whispers, “Don’t worry.”
I’m taken into a room. The door closes. I know someone is with me, though I’m not sure who, until Major Chen speaks. “Shelley, you’re going to be here at Kelly AMC for at least a week while you get put back together. During that time you will exercise extreme caution in all contacts.”
“Yes, sir. I told you, I understand the security requirements.”
“I require absolute compliance.”
“Major—”
“You will not mention the Red—you’ve never heard of it. You will not discuss the mission to Black Cross with anyone, not even Lissa. You will not mention Thelma Sheridan’s name or the name of her company, nor will you suggest knowledge of her involvement in the insurrection. So far as you’re concerned, you don’t know her, and she isn’t involved. Is that understood?”
“Yes.” I do understand the need for silence, but I’m exhausted and crippled, hunger is grinding at my belly, and every muscle I still have is aching. I don’t need to hear his doubt on top of that. “What the hell makes you think you can’t trust me? This isn’t going to turn into a whitewash, is it? Colonel Kendrick said we had a confession from Blue Parker.”
“We have a confession, this is not going to be a whitewash, and you will not mention either of those subjects again.”
“Okay.” Time will prove the truth. For now I have another concern. “Lissa knows about the Red.”
“I believe it’s her theory,” Chen says, a sardonic note in his voice.
“She’ll want to talk about her theory. I’ll want to listen.”
“Understood.” His tone softens. “Layla Wade will receive a posthumous promotion to specialist. C -FHEIT will hold a memorial service for her the day after tomorrow. I know you’d like to attend, but you need to be here.”
“Wait, can’t I—”
“No.”
“I’m not even wounded.”
“You hope you’re not wounded, but we don’t know the condition of your eyes yet. We need you put back together, ASAP, so we’re flying in an eye surgeon tonight who specializes in overlays. She’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning.”
He takes my hand and puts a phone into it. “From Guidance. They say it’s voice trained. Keep it with you and answer if it rings. Service is spotty, so no guarantees, but we’ll try to hook you in during the service.”
He leaves the door partly open when he goes out. I hear him tell Lissa, “He’s got a full schedule of appointments. It’ll be a while.” Their footsteps recede, and for the next two hours I’m weighed, measured, and analyzed. They tell me I’m not radioactive and that I was far enough from the blast not to suffer significant biological effects, but they won’t let me eat until I take another shower.
The skullcap fits better when my hair has been washed away.
I still don’t get to eat, though. I dress in T-shirt and shorts, and then I’m met by Specialist Bradford—the same CNA who took care of me before. “Lieutenant Shelley, didn’t expect to see you back here so soon.”
“Didn’t expect to be here. How have you been?”
“Oh! You’re gonna wish you didn’t ask that,” she says, taking the handles of my wheelchair. “But let’s get you on your way. Sorry to be the one to tell you, but his royal majesty has asked you to come visit.”
“You mean Dr. Masoud?”
We pick up the tramping footsteps of the two MPs as she whisks me into the chatter and traffic of a hallway. “Anyway, it’s been a nightmare around here. A third of the staff not coming in, patients flown down from Dallas, civilians at the emergency clinic. There’s not enough of anything—you’ve probably noticed you didn’t get the luxury-model wheelchair this time around? And there’s not one empty room. We had to put three beds together to open a room for you.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Oh, no, no. Special orders for you. Special escort too.”
It occurs to me how it looks. “I’m not a prisoner.”
She chuckles. “Uh-huh. All our patients like to think that way.”
We get on an elevator. The MPs don’t let anyone else get on with us. “Please wait for the next elevator,” one of them says as the doors close. I’m not sure if they’re here to protect me from reprisals or to make sure I keep my mouth shut. Probably both.
• • • •
Masoud is waiting for me, and he’s not in a good mood. I can’t see him except as an undefined shadow that blocks the light. He says very little as he checks out the bioelectric interface in my legs. His hands are steady and gentle as always, but I smell anxiety in his sweat. I brace myself for an explosion of temper when he decides it’s my fault that he’s not going to get his Nobel Prize.
A series of little electric temblors shoots up through the stumps of my legs—and then Masoud makes a happy grunt deep in his throat.
“The interface is undamaged, Lieutenant. It’s Nakagawa’s unshielded processors that failed.” He’s so happy, he actually chuckles. “I’ll let him know.”
“He’s not going to take it well, is he?”
Masoud outright laughs. “Joby does not like to admit he can make mistakes.”
A few minutes later I’m in the basement, in a dentist’s chair, staring at the weird patterns cast by the ceiling light while Joby’s technician swaps out my legs again. Joby’s office is across the hall, but he doesn’t come to see me—not that I’m complaining.
“Are you putting back the old set of legs?” I ask the technician.
“Joby says it’s a temp fix. He can’t put together new limbs overnight.”
I shrug. “The old set worked fine.”
When she starts snapping together the electrical connections, a searing pain shoots up my spine, but it settles quickly to a vague burn.
The tech says, “I’ve turned the sensitivity way down, since you can’t adjust it yourself anymore.”
I stretch the leg out, pull it back up again. “Let’s do the other one.”
I can’t see anything but fractured lights and shadows, but I still manage to walk out to the hall, where Specialist Bradford is waiting. “Look at you, Lieutenant Shelley. Now what am I going to do with this wheelchair?”
Turns out Lissa is there too. “Oh my God, Shelley! You’re walking!”
Behind me, the tech snorts. “Replaceable parts. Makes him easy to fix.”
Major Chen said something like that, back at C -FHEIT. I don’t doubt that Command is taking notes.
I reach out my hand and Lissa grasps it. Then I turn to where I think Bradford is standing. “Any chance of getting some food?”
“How does fortified water sound?” she asks cheerfully, because next on the schedule is a surgery to repair and upgrade my skullnet, local anesthetic only. I complain about that: “I’m exhausted. Can’t you just put me under and let me sleep?” The answer is no, so I’m sitting up the whole time, my head bolted into place and my empty stomach coiling into an angry knot. But it’s over within an hour. The surgeon glues my scalp back in place, a nurse watches over me for another hour, and then I’m finally allowed to go to my room.
Lissa meets me there. While I blindly wield a fork to devour the meal brought to me by a CNA, she sits in a chair beside the bed and tells me her news: “Major Chen wants a modification of the Pace Oversight contract, requiring me to work on-site in a secure facility up in Austin.”
“That’s good. I don’t want you going back to San Diego.”
The MPs are stationed in the hallway outside, but the door is closed, cutting off most of the noise of carts rolling by, and conversations spoken in passing.
“I’m afraid for you, Shelley.”
I pause with a forkful of rice halfway to my mouth, wondering what she’s been told. Even before the bombs went off, she’d guessed the Red was back in my head. Post-Coma, it still exists. I should be afraid of that, but I’m not.
I finish conveying the fork to my mouth, and chew slowly on the rice. “What’s going on in the rest of the world?” I ask her. “Have you heard anything? Were any other countries targeted?”
“I don’t think so. Whoever did this was trying to isolate the United States, knock us out of the Cloud.”
“And it worked.”
“Only partially. There are still satellite uplinks, if you can afford them, and data networks can still function in local areas . . . at least if there’s power. No, if this was an attempt to lock out the Red, it was a clumsy one.”
I hesitate, unsure how much I can say, finally settling for what she already knows. “The Red has kept me alive. Mostly, it’s been on my side, but I don’t know why. I don’t understand what it’s for. You said it was a marketing program. But what does that mean? That the Red just wants to sell us stuff ?”
She laughs. It’s a brittle, cold sound, like the crack of glass that doesn’t quite break. “Sure, maybe. The thing is, it knows us.” I hear her stand up. She touches my shoulder, her fingers moving in a slow stroke down my arm. “Imagine it has data tentacles everywhere, reaching into browsing and buying records; game worlds; chats; texts; friend networks; phone conversations; airline, banking, utility, and entertainment records; GPS locations; surveillance cameras; whatever.” Her fingers return to my shoulder. “It could know more about us than a spouse or lover knows. It could figure out who we really are, and what we really want—down to the dreams we won’t admit to ourselves—and then steer us in that direction, onto new paths that optimize who we are, that lead us toward the lives we’re best suited to live.”
“That’s what Jaynie was talking about,” I realize. “Right before the Coma, she was telling me about all these people who just suddenly decided to strike out in new directions.”
“That’s what I think it’s about.” Her voice is trembling.
“Lissa?” I reach for her hand, take it in mine. I reach up to find her smooth cheek, and feel tears there. “Baby, what’s the matter?”
“You, Shelley,” she says with an edge to her voice. “Look at the path you’ve taken. Look who you’ve become.”
I’ve already done that so many times, and it’s true that I never planned this life. That spring in New York . . . I already had my applications in for graduate school. Internships would follow, and eventually a place in my dad’s company. It never occurred to me to go into the military. I would have laughed at anyone who suggested it. Then I uploaded that video, and my life changed. “Baby, that wasn’t the Red. It was too long ago. That was just me, pretending I could make a difference.”
“That’s what you tell yourself.”
“Come on, Lissa. My dad wants to blame Elliot for what happened. Now you want to blame the Red. Both of you need to accept that it was me. I put myself on this path.”
And I don’t need anyone—or anything—to blame.
I think Colonel Kendrick was right when he said I belong in the army, that I’d been lucky to find my place, but it wasn’t lucky for Lissa. I betrayed her when I took up this life.
I want her to kiss me, but she pulls away. She’s angry with me, and that is not what I want. “Lissa—”
“You don’t regret anything, do you?”
It’s like she knows what
I’m thinking.
“I regret a lot of things, but it wasn’t the Red that put me on this path. That’s all I’m saying. The Red is new. It didn’t exist before this year. I think it saw first light around the time I transferred to the Sahel.”
“Uh-uh. That’s just when you woke up to it.”
“No. That’s when it got real. I still don’t get it, though. What’s its purpose? Why is a marketing program messing with our lives?”
She answers with a sarcasm that’s rare for her, “Well, I can’t know for sure, but penniless fuckups make lousy customers, don’t they?”
It’s so absurd I have to laugh. “So the Red makes optimized customers? Happy little consumers who buy more shit?”
The silence is so cold it crackles. She’s going to walk out on me; I know it. “Lissa, I’m sorry—”
I hear a little snort, and then a giggle. “You know, when you put it like that it does sound kind of silly and shallow.” She sighs. “But that’s what it looks like to me . . . and people who threaten the system, like those fanatics who cut us out of the Cloud—”
“Those people get slammed.”
She returns to the bedside, takes my hand, and kisses it. “You work for the Red, Lieutenant.”
I slip my arm around her and pull her in next to me, hoping we don’t knock over the tray. I kiss her cheek. “Yafiah and Dubey sure got a rotten deal.” I don’t tell her about Allison, the little girl I shot down at the bottom of Black Cross, but she got a lousy deal too.
“No one of us matters all that much,” Lissa says. “Not measured against the backdrop of an entire world.”
“So you told all this to Chen?”
“Most of it.”
“When do you go up to Austin?”
“I told him I’m not going. Not so long as I can stay here with you.” She turns her head; her lips brush mine. “He said we probably have a week.”
