He looked back at Quake and Marco, DL up to ensure they remained hands-on-their-hips stalled. Something thudded beneath him. Carroll cried out. He turned back too late into her fall.
She twisted and hit her hip, then scuffed her elbow on the stair he stood on. “Damnit, Dixon.”
The look she brought to bear between them plead for mercy and answers well beyond the four walls confining them.
Dixon wished for a way back to the day when he lost both for her and for them. Now, he more or less just kept up appearances for as long as his façade could last. Maybe Warren would reward his service in killing The Gov, and he’d be given something to make Carroll happy again.
Your mission is vital to our freedom, Warren had said. The Gov’s death will create a future for us all.
He reached to help her up. “Are you okay?”
“With your timely help? Oh yeah. I’ll be fine.”
He ignored her attitude, took her by the arm pit, and hefted her up to his waist. He retrained his DL’s aim at Quake. “Open the door. We’re taking a break.”
His legs could use a few hours off.
“What’s your status?” Warren asked in his earpiece. His voice provided welcome relief to his long trip.
Thirty-second floor, Dixon thought-typed. Carroll still didn’t know he was working for anyone, let alone Warren. Had to set up an IV for Jeff.
*
W knew. The Sight was truly a wonderful program. As long as Dixon remained loyal—unlike Rush, who’d broken free through Charles’ idiocy, and partly Warren’s for giving him the clicker—and as long as he still believed Warren was alive, W could wade through Dixon’s thoughts, sight, sensations, everything. The authenticity of W’s text-to-speech program sounding like Warren’s voice was a testament of the power of the mind to believe what it wanted. The kid didn’t stand a chance.
He’d watched through M-MANs inhabiting his brain as he watched him now through Carroll’s. Part of his cover, protecting Dixon’s loyalty and ignorance was to talk to him as though nothing had changed since their deal prior to the one he made with Rush to blow the wall. Side by side with that failure, W was proud of the sole hybrid agent he controlled purely by voice. Now, Dixon was an experiment to test the limits of Warren’s modification to The Gov’s control program. If Dixon failed to kill The Gov, W had Avery on his way with wasps and an unsuspecting Nedzad to the fact that Avery was still as much his as he was when his M-MANs were turned on.
W left Dixon’s view of the thirty-second floor and entered Jeff’s back at Denver Health, where his mom lay with her head on his arm, crying, while Viky sat in a chair beside the door on the other side of the dark room in the maternity ward. She twisted a knife into the lid of the can of tuna. The taste of Jeff’s portion lingered on his tongue.
Eating had helped spread W’s M-MANs inside Jeff since Dixon had fitted him with the IV laced with plasma.
But W calculated enough good in Dixon’s plan to continue to give him a shot. Dixon had proven crafty. He’d convinced Viky and Jen that the plasma could help heal him, (which it would) without letting them catch on to Rush’s failure to rid Jeff of the M-MANs currently taking over cells by the thousands per second.
W’s message not to see the tiny glowing green dots because they were the spirits of the Ancestors had apparently worked, because with his dive visor on he hadn’t noticed when W had allowed his M-MANs to propagate in Carroll, then Quake and Marco as she passed them on when he was busy with Jeff.
W switched back to Carroll as her unsuspecting husband held her hand and guided her through the apartment hall lit by his red dive light.
She was a unique specimen as well. She and Jeff, Quake and Marco were all alive and adapting at a slower rate than he’d done with Avery. The rapid surge of M-MANs into his system may have caused irreparable changes in his psyche, as it may have in Star’s, he guessed.
Avery’s anatomy was breaking down in ways W created increasingly heavy programs to decipher. W couldn’t do that with these people yet because it might clue Dixon into investigating, and thereafter possibly breaking free. Even after Dixon fulfilled his mission, W didn’t want to lose his specimen protected from his M-MANs by Warren’s nanobots. The Gov designed his nanos that way and Warren had adapted that technology into his blend.
As W stretched his power base to the northeast, and the future entry into his world, it would be wise to have someone capable of withstanding the M-MANs, just in case someone else gained control of their program. Since he controlled Dixon, he was double covered.
*
Carroll watched Quake point Dixon toward a locked door on the thirty-second floor. He backed up as Dixon raised his DL and blasted a hole through the door knob.
“Whoa!” Quake shouted, stumbling and reaching for cuts Carroll could swear she felt more than saw.
She touched her face, but didn’t feel the scratches she knew were burning beneath.
Dixon waved them in, but stopped Carroll from following behind him. “Did you catch a ricochet?” He moved her hands from her face and looked in. “No.” The confusion in his face was mutual between them. “Sit. Rest. I’ll be back in two.”
Her fatigue was only partially genuine. She somehow felt a weird amalgamation of being drunk, fearlessly strong, and yet as fearful as a child being stolen from her home in the dark.
The last point was made worse by her having no idea how this had happened to her. Or what would. She’d seen the canines in Fort Pope, and how they melded with the Poseidon leg. How they somehow had Jeff’s arm sucked into the wall, and then soon after flipped and molded a table into a ferocious animal.
Carroll slid to the floor, her back against the wall, facing the open stairwell. Am I becoming like them?
Dixon couldn’t handle hearing her voice her fears. She had to figure this out by herself, and do it before whatever was inside her took over.
As she sat, ghosts trailed behind her with long tails tickling the distant reaches of her mind. Terror vibrated long shivers down her arms and back. She put her head between her knees and squeezed her palms into her forehead, but the lithe fingers probing into her brain did not stop.
What in Colorado’s blue ass is going on?
*
W didn’t know. Nor did he know what to shut off to keep her from sensing his presence. Finding an answer rose to the top of his command tree.
44 - W (4:35 am, Saturday)
W read his subjects’ thoughts, but he didn’t know how to share his without risking major dysfunction in their brains. Only Dixon had the prior relationship so he could use his visor. His blueborn were fine because ingrained teachings translated his presence into a kind of god figure. But for subjects like Carroll who had not died, the transition would be too abrupt. They were his front line and, on top of needing to see this experiment with the living succeed, he didn’t have time for blueborn to travel the sixteen miles to replace them. Her not using a dive suit also made it harder to keep his transmissions and progress hidden from activity in her brain he didn’t yet understand.
If W had to abandon multiple experiments with Dixon and Carroll, he could still implement his trap for The Gov and his subjects. But naked M-MANs rebuilding through the walls were nowhere near as interesting as those inhabiting living brains. He refused to entertain thoughts of his kingdom outside successful integration with the living. Plus, he needed to learn through them before The Gov arrived and he’d be challenged to war.
When The Gov arrived, W might gain the opportunity to appear to Dixon and Carroll as a savior, winning their allegiance so he could quit wasting computing power on keeping secrets.
Until then, one problem was the chance he’d gone too far into Carroll’s mind. As they climbed, refueled by reserves in Dixon’s suit and some granola and water they found on the thirty-second floor, the best card W had was Carroll’s fear of speaking her fears to Dixon. The worst card was her thoughts were becoming too vague to read. Somehow, her body was resisting his nano assimi
lation.
Back in Fort Pope, his blueborn were busy rebuilding his network. He had so many tasks and so little time. In a few hours Jules would be ready to move about. He was getting impatient for her to wake. Hers was a different mind game.
And then there were Avery and Nedzad, stupidly killing the way points W had dribbled out of Dixon along the way. It didn’t matter. His hub growing in Jeff would make more impact than those slow growing afterthoughts, and they could be replaced when Jules caught up.
W itched to release the buds hidden in Avery’s brain. His M-MAN supply was down to the single digits, placed in key points in his brain to maintain control without being recognizable to Nedzad. He and Nedzad were approximately an hour from the stairwell entrance to the hospital garage. I’ve waited long enough.
W had Avery linger as Nedzad knelt over an inch-wide deposit of M-MANs on the floor. When Nedzad released the charge, Avery would use the distraction to transfer an M-MAN from his tongue to Nedzad’s visor. As the charge created static in the air, Nedzad with his hands cupped over a spot invisible to Avery’s naked eye, W lifted Avery’s finger to his mouth. The Springston diver had no idea of his movement, his consciousness pinned to Nedzad’s action on the precipice. The M-MAN transferred to his finger. Avery leaned and lightly brushed the side of Nedzad’s visor.
He straightened before Nedzad stood, neither men knowing what W had just planted. The M-MAN would assimilate into the visor without any noticeable dysfunction or change in appearance. But once it broke through to the skin, it would travel to Nedzad’s eyes, take an optic nerve to his brain, and prevent him from seeing the hive W built and would have ready when they arrived.
If he was close to as tired as Avery, the assimilation of his M-MANs into Nedzad’s cells would go quicker, but would still take most of the hour they had left to walk.
W skipped up to Dixon on his Subjects directory. His sensory input flushed out and within: hot under his suit, legs burning, head aching, anger, hopelessness, anger… Dixon climbed one step behind the pace of Quake and Marco. Carroll was three steps behind, but not too far that he felt bad taking another turn up the stairwell and losing sight of her.
He arrived at the top of the Republic Plaza and the double glass door with smoky gray letters spelling: Marz, Salyars, and Eturman law firm. He bent over to catch his breath, looked behind him, but Carroll was nowhere to be seen.
“Carroll?” Dixon called down the stairs. He could hear her steps, plodding and distant. She didn’t respond. W continued to have trouble with Carroll’s inquisitive barrage. At 4:56 am, and Nedzad and Avery less than thirty minutes’ walk from the hospital, W needed Dixon to get his plan moving. She’ll make it. He stood, caught Quake’s eye, and flicked two fingers at the door. “Let’s go.”
45 – Dixon / Carroll / W (4:57 am)
Quake pushed open the double glass doors. Inside was a vast one room flat with a wealth of wooden desks, stacked book shelves, metal lamps, and cushioned chairs, each piece worth more than any of its kind in Springston. At its back wall, a spill of sand spread from a four by five foot broken window. Quake and Marco watched Dixon as he walked toward them.
“Swallow a pellet and give them each one,” Warren said.
Dixon didn’t want to share, but neither did he want to argue with Warren. “Hold on, guys.” He took two pellets out of his suit. While they waited, unsure how to respond, he tossed their score. They caught the pellets—Marco fumbled with his, but snatched it before it hit the floor.
“What’s this?” Quake asked.
“Tell him it’s an upfront payment,” Warren said, “and part of how they’ll man their own Poseidons.”
Dixon repeated Warren’s message.
“You first,” Marco said.
Dixon obliged. A shiver coursed through his tongue, washing down his shoulders and sprouting like a bloom of sunshine into his brain. His eyelids drooped, and his balance wavered. He found a table edge to rest his palm and keep his weight off the floor.
Quake rolled his head back and forth, popping his neck as he smiled and lifted his nose toward the ceiling.
Marco slid back against the arm of a chair and dropped into its U-shaped back, puffing out the cushion as his legs bounced. His head lolled back on the low rest of the chair, tipping into the space between it and the long rectangular opening in the wall. A chest high shelf ran from one side to the other, with ten computer stations.
Curiosity carried Dixon on a direct path to the closest black screen.
“Turn one of those on and insert the drive I gave you,” Warren said.
Quake and Marco both seemed content in the daydream high the pellets produced.
Dixon inserted the thumb drive and powered on the computer.
A password screen appeared first. Six dots appeared inside and then the box cleared.
Quake and Marco stood behind him on either side. The stiffness to their posture was odd considering they’d reacted to the pellet high seconds earlier.
“What’s that?” Quake pointed at the thumb drive. No slur. Sober as a Colo priest.
“That’s how we find out what the people of the Old World knew before these went dormant,” Dixon said.
Marco pulled up his sleeve to check his watch. “Past five. If they’re going to send another group today, his preference is they go before sunrise,” he told Dixon.
The screen had a blue A overlapped by a black D. American Defense filled in with an animated American flag.
Marco had his phone out and tapped the screen.
“Hey, no,” Dixon said, shaking his head.
Marco waved him off as though they were old friends and he was sure he didn’t want the last smoke. He lifted the phone to his ear and walked toward the broken window. Six ropes lay like dead snakes over the window’s ledge. “Yeah, what’s the status up there?”
Black boxes with white letters popped up on the screen with words and symbols typed by Warren’s program faster than Dixon could read before more boxes and words stacked on top.
He checked the doorway and hallway beyond. No sign of Carroll. Where are you?
He’d go check on her soon.
“Okay,” Marco said to his phone. “We’re ready and waiting.” He put the phone in his pocket. “About a half hour before the first group is ready.”
Dixon glanced at the computer screen and took in the proximity of these two possible enemies. “Walk with me. I’m gonna check on Carroll.”
Marco nodded his head at something behind him.
Dixon turned to see Carroll half bent, one hand resting on the railing atop the stairs, staring at him through the doors. Was that fear in her gaze? She slowly shook her head. As she took a breath, Dixon squinted to see if she was nearing tears. Why?
Then she turned and bolted out of sight, back down the stairs.
“Where’s she going?” Marco asked.
Dixon wanted to run for her, but if he turned his back on Quake and Marco, his whole plan could get flipped.
Quake turned his shoulder to look from the hallway to Dixon. “She got the bats?”
Sorry Warren, but I’m sick of these guys. Dixon yanked his DL from its holster and shot Quake in the chest. The blast threw him into the shelf. His arm smacked a computer screen off its perch. Three feet of cord draped over the wall before catching the screen’s fall. Quake landed with his arm squeezed around his chest as he rolled over squirming in pain.
Dixon shifted to fire at Marco, who was diving for cover behind a chair. His EM blast punched Marco in the stomach before he made it.
Dixon ripped a cord from the back of the draped screen and stepped toward the writhing Quake. The hurt diver swung and missed Dixon’s head. Dixon caught his wrist and turned it up behind his back, kneeling on him as he used the cord to tie his hands together.
“Move and I’ll use twice the charge to seal your crap hole.”
Dixon turned. Marco’s body had disappeared behind the chair, but with the open space between it and one of the d
esks, he had to still be behind it.
“I’m not leaving you two alone, but I am leaving to get my wife, so surrender now or take a deeper charged shot from my DL.” He had their guns, so unless—
“It’s Marco.”
The phone. Dixon ran to intercept.
“Plaza’s been taken. One shooter.”
Dixon extended his DL and shot Marco as soon as he appeared behind the chair. The EM charge bent Marco’s nose, splashing blood over his mouth as his body jolted backward. His head hit the ground with a wet crack. His arms landed, and then he didn’t move again.
“Crap.” Dixon hadn’t meant to kill him. Nor did it release his anger. Rather, the hollowness of its failure fueled his rage. He turned on Quake and his slowly moving head. He should not kill him, but he considered if it would be best to be done with them, especially now that Marco had blown his secrecy. Marco’s phone had slid a few feet from his dead body and elbow bent arm. Dixon picked up the phone.
The Gov watched him from a black seat and matching straps, his upper body jostling with the vibration of his ride. It was daylight where he was. “Is it just you? And your wife? You better go find her before we do, `cause we’ll be down soon.” The Gov leaned closer to the camera. “If you get on your knees and put your hands behind your head until I arrive, we’ll make sure she is returned peacefully. Depending on the state of what I intend to call home will decide on whether I let you serve or if I put you down like you did Marco.”
“Go, now,” Warren said.
Warren was Dixon’s leader, even if he doubted Warren owned the stronger side of the battle to come. He tapped the red box on the phone screen, put the phone in his pocket and stumbled into the chair on his way toward Carroll.
*
Carroll pushed herself to make it one more flight to the top and cursed Dixon for leaving her. Not that she wanted him to carry her, but to leave her behind completely?
Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two) Page 15
