(ID)entity (Phoenix Horizon Book 2)

by PJ Manney

  “Manipulators? Autocrats?”

  “We move things forward. We don’t care who we hurt to get it done. But greatness is the result. No one gives a shit about the process in the long run. Want to remake the world? Call me whatever you want, sweetie. Just call me.” She blew him a kiss.

  “Even if that means it’s a world we don’t want to live in?” asked Tom.

  “That’s your opinion. But sure.”

  “And you can’t do it without me.”

  “But now I have Peter Bernhardt, the earliest digital version of your upload, with memories from Carter, Amanda, and anyone else we could find. We’ve tweaked and adjusted it to resemble Peter’s mind as much as possible. He was a man with a vision. He is the version of you we’ve always wanted.” Amanda gestured toward Ruth and Talia. “And who they’ve always wanted. We loved you. Or at least that version of you.”

  Tom turned to Talia. “Once you called me ‘Naive. Sweet. Infuriating.’ Is that who you want back?”

  “Yes,” said Talia, tears in her eyes. “I knew what to do with that man.”

  “Ruth?” asked Tom.

  Her face wore a puzzled expression. “I do not know. Who you are. Anymore.”

  Amanda sighed and rose to a kneel. “Are we done arguing?” The others stood around her in a circle. She looked up at their grim faces.

  The circle drew in tighter.

  “We may understand,” said Veronika. “But you can’t leave.”

  “No! Mama? Here, Mama?” Peter Jr. looked uncomprehending at his bloody mother, big teardrops in his eyes. Reaching out to Amanda, he tried to wiggle out of Talia’s arms.

  Talia held him tight. She took a step back from the circle.

  Tom looked away over the marshes and farmland to the east. It was morning. The sun rose, painting the sky with screaming swaths of flamingo, lemon, and orchid. Azure-blue sky peeked through, the color of Peter Jr.’s eyes. And once, in a lifetime before, Tom’s own. Light rays stretched through the clouds, like fingers of the infinite, taunting him with endless possibilities. Of discoveries yet to be made. Of lives he could have saved. Lives he could have lived. Lives he could be living right now . . .

  Veronika broke his reverie. “Dude, I know what this looks like. But she has to go, at least in this form. Carter is torturing you.”

  “Like you know Tom’s w-w-w-weaknesses,” muttered Ruth.

  Veronika ignored her. “Who wants to do it?”

  Talia took another step back and pointed at the pretty colors in the sky, trying to distract Peter Jr.

  Ruth stepped back, too, waving her shaky hands. “N-n-n-no . . . Nein.”

  Amanda looked up at Ruth. “That’s my Ruthie. That’s why I did all this. To prevent more bloodshed.” She jerked her head toward Tom. “He will never get that. Think of all the people he killed. Or let die. He caused many deaths, didn’t he, Ruth? Untold pain and suffering. And you helped, against your beliefs. How can you continue to help him?”

  Ruth looked at Tom. Her intellectual partner and best friend inhabited the body of a young man she had helped to create. She had made so much possible. Her shoulders ticked. Her face contorted in spasms. Her eyes watered. And then she turned away.

  Veronika turned to Talia. “Well?”

  “This isn’t my fight,” Talia said. “Not anymore.” She bounced Peter Jr. in a gentle rhythm.

  “Of course it is!” said Veronika. “You dragged Peter Bernhardt into it! You helped make him what he became to satisfy yourself!”

  “No. We finished the Phoenix Club. It’s over.”

  “How can you say that?” said Veronika.

  “This isn’t about the club,” said Talia. “This is between the two of them. And we’re all pawns.” She looked into Peter Jr.’s guileless eyes, then back to Tom. “And I hate what he’s become. It has to stop.”

  Tom reached down and ran his fingers through Amanda’s bloody hair. They recognized the thick, smooth texture, the oval shape of her skull. He thought of a song: David Bowie’s “Killing a Little Time.” Carter would have appreciated that.

  Tom pulled Amanda’s head back and stared in his ex-wife’s eyes. On her knees and with her defiant expression, he could think only of a Native American woman resisting the pioneer invaders for the last time. Carter, ever the performer, was milking it for all it was worth.

  Abraded by Bowie’s discordant melody, he was falling, choking, fading away. “Why can’t you let me go? Let her go?”

  “You don’t listen,” said Amanda. “You need to figure out why for yourself.”

  Tom released her hair and staggered a few steps away. “I can’t. You knew it. I can’t do it.”

  Bowie crowed in pain. The band played arrhythmically, out of time, like a broken heartbeat, as if the song itself were unhappy with his refusal to kill.

  Veronika moved to Tom and whispered, “Dude, Amanda died a while ago.”

  “No,” said Tom. “You saw it. There’s a little bit left.”

  “She’s Carter’s puppet,” said Veronika. “Like, a hostage forever. Do you think that’s what she wants?”

  Amanda watched their exchange, bright-eyed, as though she knew something they didn’t.

  “So much for merciful,” Veronika said. “Heroes suck. They’re never what you want them to be.” She stepped away, dug around in her backpack, and pulled out the same butcher’s knife she’d used on Winter in Santa Barbara.

  Amanda giggled. “No, my dear. Heroes all contain the same parts. The good, the bad, and the ugly. You just don’t like looking at slimy things under the rocks. But I do.” She sneered at Veronika. “I remember wanting your mother to die. I thought it might be fun to see her burn alive. See?” She gestured to Tom and then at herself. “We know what that’s like. But I didn’t kill her. Stupid bitch wasn’t worth the effort. I saved her life. So was . . . ero? Or a villain?”

  Shaking, Veronika held the blade high above her head. “You crazy-ass motherfucker!”

  Laying a calming touch on her arm, Tom gently removed the knife from her hand. Holding it by the grip, he stared at it for a moment. Bowie raged, roared, falling, choking, bleeding. Tom whipped around and thrust the blade under Amanda’s sternum and up to her heart, lifting her body off the ground.

  “Monster,” he said, an inch from Amanda’s face. “You will never know me.” He wiggled the knife, then yanked it out and threw it on the ground. His hand dripped bright red. Amanda collapsed into the dirt. The song finished abruptly.

  Talia hadn’t covered the toddler’s face in time. Peter Jr. wailed.

  Looking into Tom’s eyes, Amanda gasped for breath, her lips trembling. “Pete . . . we . . . love you . . . ” Was that Carter or Amanda? Was it true or a lie? Did it matter?

  She died with her eyes open and a smile on her face.

  Tom had been manipulated. Killing Amanda had been the game all along, and he couldn’t stop it. For a moment, he wondered what the two personalities had experienced inside Amanda’s dying body. Had she wanted to die? Had it felt like Carter’s first time dying in the basement of the Phoenix Club’s bunker? Or more like the second, when Tom had killed Winter? Was Carter getting good at this? Was he taking Amanda with him? And if Tom’s present body died, would death be the same for him?

  “You . . . You are the monster!” cried Ruth, stepping away from him. “P-P-Peter would never. Have made that choice!”

  “Of course Peter did!” said Veronika. “Carter’s a manipulative shit, and he’s trying to destroy us all! Can’t you see that?”

  Talia spun on Veronika. “No. You think you’re in control, but you’re a pawn in their game, like the rest of us.”

  Still in a murderous musical daze, Tom turned to Talia. “You never trusted me. Never . . . ”

  “Who’s next?” asked Talia. “Me? Ruth? Will you kill us all?” Talia handed Peter Jr. to Veronika with a sneer. “Take him. I’ve got no father to offer this child. You and Tom deserve each other.”

  “Port Everglades was your
idea!” insisted Veronika. She regretted it the moment she saw Talia’s expression of grief.

  Talia stiffened, marched up to Tom, and leaned in close to his face. “I will never forgive you. Not for Steve. Not for me. Not for Amanda. Not for Peter. Not for anyone.”

  “Years ago, you said you were my guardian angel,” Tom said.

  “And now I hope you rot in hell,” Talia spat. “Come on, Ruth.”

  Ruth reached into her worn khakis and removed a small specimen bag. Her hands shook as she opened it. Wrapped in a piece of cotton wool were two glass slides, sandwiching two droplets of blood. Since she and Peter Bernhardt had memorialized their intellectual and business partnership in a lab at Stanford University, this memento had come to represent everything they had done together and meant to each other. She threw it to the ground and tried to crush it under her ratty sneakers, but her shoes and the dirt were too soft to damage it.

  “Katsevte,” she said. She spit at Tom’s feet, then spun on Veronika. “Un a shtik fleish mit tsvei oygn.”

  Tom was a butcher. And Veronika was a piece of meat with two eyes.

  With one last dead-eyed glance back at Tom, Talia led a sobbing Ruth away. The last words Tom heard were, “They are d-d-d-dead to me!”

  He knelt in the dirt and picked up the glass slides. The blood droplets had turned black with age. His gut knotted. These women had loved him, each in her own way. They had saved and even created his body multiple times. And now they hated him. He pocketed the slides.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Talia and Ruth headed for the Osprey. Where would they go? What would they do? The two women who knew more about Tom than anyone else, in some ways more even than Carter, were now his enemies. They knew his physical, mental, and technological strengths and weaknesses. They had all the information about his plans. Ruth controlled the hash keys and codes to his existence as an AHI. Talia had once controlled whatever was left of Prometheus, and he assumed Carter had access to it all. They were sure to take advantage of it.

  They would fall right into Carter’s plan. They would join Carter, and whatever version of Peter Bernhardt he claimed to possess. Now that they had left, Carter would make sure they found the man they loved.

  Tom sent a message to the Osprey pilot: Take Talia and Ruth anywhere they want to go, within your fuel constraints, except the Zumwalt. They are never to step foot on board again. Then come back for us. He turned to Veronika. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll need you to help me lock Talia and Ruth out of the Major Tom and Zumwalt systems.”

  She looked shocked.

  “Please,” he continued. “I think they’ve left to find their Peter Bernhardt. They’d work for Carter in order to do that.”

  “I can only do, like, so much from here,” said Veronika.

  Tom headed away from the well and Amanda’s body. Veronika followed, trying to carry the boy, but she couldn’t get a grip on him. Peter Jr. seemed to sense the insecurity of her grasp, and he sucked in larger gasps of air with each scream. As his distress grew, so did Veronika’s, a classic feedback loop of adult-child anxiety.

  Tom wiped his bloody hand on his clothes. But as he grabbed the child, red smears still covered the little blue T-shirt and jeans. Tom put the boy down and held his hand, hoping they both might relax. He searched expert opinions as they walked, but there was no information about “How to Calm a Child Who Just Watched You Kill Its Mother.”

  Still crying, Peter Jr. let go of Tom’s hand and grabbed Veronika’s leg. “Is it just us?” she asked, struggling to pick the boy up again.

  “Maybe,” said Tom. “I contacted Dr. Who. Told her the whole story. We’ll see who convinces her.”

  It was Tom, Veronika, and little Peter against the world. Overwhelmed, he screamed at the sky. “Carter, you bastard!”

  “You don’t have to yell,” said a familiar voice in his head. “You’re clear as a bell, my dear.”

  Not what Tom wanted to hear. He grabbed his hair, yanked at it in chunks, and shook like a madman. Little Peter whimpered.

  “What’s wrong?” said Veronika, clearly frightened. “You’re scaring the kid.”

  “Carter’s in my head!” Tom yelled. “Leave me alone!”

  “Hey, Peter, let’s just sit for a sec. Okay?” She dug around in her backpack, pulled out a GO, keyed it to an interactive cartoon site, and handed it to the boy. “Go nuts, lil guy.” Still scared, the child half-heartedly pressed buttons and soon lost himself in the screen. Veronika sat on the ground next to him, pulling on her MR glasses. “He’s not in your server,” she said to Tom. “He’s just messing with you on some communications network. I’ll cut him off. Need a minute.”

  An image arose in Tom’s mind: Carter, waving a white flag covered in tiny gold fleur-de-lis. “Vive le Roi-Soleil!” he said with a grin.

  Long live the Sun King. He brandished the flag of French monarchy, used for four hundred years until it was supplanted by the revolutionary republic’s tricolore. The fleur-de-lis’s three petals represented the three social classes under the control of kings: workers, clergy, and warriors.

  They would all be warriors soon.

  “Get him out!” Tom begged Veronika.

  “Of course you know, this means war,” said Carter. “Or as your dear Veronika likes to say, ‘Corruption abhors a vacuum.’ Or simply, there always needs to be a leader. Most aren’t capable of the task. So when you find one who can do the job, you hitch your wagon. Or your star. I’ve got one named Peter Bernhardt.”

  “We will stop you,” said Tom.

  “You can’t, my dear. This is part of larger historical processes. We’ve both been playing roles for a long time. We have to see this out. To the end.”

  “Why are you dragging the whole world into this?” asked Tom. “Can’t you and I just fight it out, once and for all?”

  “Why do you always assume this is all about us? It isn’t. It’s about the nation. It needs to rise again, like it always has, every few generations. Like a phoenix.”

  “Empires don’t always rise again. Rome ended. And the Holy Romans. Victoria’s British Empire ended. Byzantium, Babylonia, the Cholas and Ottomans and caliphates. They all end.”

  “But they don’t,” Carter said. “You know better. They just layer over each other. The Roman Empire crumbled, reorganized, and became the Holy Roman Empire.” Carter displayed a map of Europe, evolving, morphing, and remaking itself again and again through the centuries. “Then the Thirty Years War, then a bunch of pseudo revolutions and unifications, then a stupid attempt at a mythical Third Reich. Then the European Union. Then the dissolution we see now. They’re creating, dissolving, and recreating the same empires through time. We’ve had two empire-reshuffling wars already: the American Revolution and the Civil War. Revolutions, civil wars, they’re all the same. They burn away the fat and flab of civilization, and we start again. It’s time for number three.”

  “And with them came death and destruction,” Tom said. “You’re dragging billions into chaos, maybe extinction—an event horizon, a point of no return—all for a vision no one wants but you.”

  “War is hell,” Carter said, “but sometimes it’s the only way. This isn’t an event horizon. It’s a phoenix horizon. Doomed to reincarnate forever. You’re the Buddhist-flavored upload. Should be familiar.” Carter transformed into a Civil War general, but he wasn’t wearing blue or gray. His uniform was bloodred. He suddenly appeared on both little Peter’s GO and in Tom’s processor. “So long, my dear. Until we meet again, on the field of battle.” He saluted, winked, and disappeared.

  Tom knew he wasn’t kidding. There would be dark days ahead.

  “There. He’s gone,” said Veronika.

  Collapsing in the dirt, Tom said, “No, he’s not.”

  A video link arrived, marked URGENT. Tom shared it with Veronika.

  Dr. Who appeared. “Watch this,” she said. “Then let’s talk.”

  Back in a warehouse in what Tom assumed was Los Angeles C
ounty, Arun adjusted a pair of MR glasses to record the event.

  “Uh, coming in clear?” he asked. “Or is it too dark?”

  “Looks good, Arun,” a young voice responded.

  “Okay,” said Arun, “so I know Major Tom and the gang are probably busy, and I hope you get to see this, but this is what we’ve been up to since I left. Fingers crossed!”

  In front of Arun was a large mass, covered in a white, plastic sheet. In the distance, four students—three young men and one young woman—guided a stretcher with a patient on it.

  The patient was Dr. Who.

  She pointed to the mass. “That’s it?” she asked Arun.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We got explicit instructions from you-know-who that you be as protected, comfortable, and independent as possible. Otherwise, what did he say? You’d whip my ass.” He laughed. “Take a look.”

  She reached over and yanked off the plastic, uncovering a convertible wheelchair/exoskeleton. She didn’t say anything at first. It looked like a clever machine, but Tom could see the doubt in her eyes. The machine’s multipositionable tank treads could climb and descend stairs and hills. Its hoverboard technology would allow it to rise above the ground about six inches for a smoother ride on uneven terrain. Below the seat, locking leg and hip braces made of superlight carbon nanofibers could hold her body and raise her upright while providing her legs, hips, and back the stability and strength she had lost. The exoskeleton’s lower half could also detach, its micromotors allowing her to walk. It even had autopilot.

  She frowned. “Guess all things come to an end.”

  “And a beginning,” said Arun. “We’ve got some private medical help lined up in a secure facility near Caltech. They’ll check you out, and then I’ve got orders to make sure you get to wherever you need to go.”

  “Hon,” said Dr. Who with a sigh, “if only I knew.”

  “Doc, you’re a legend. If you want to stay with us at Caltech, I can guarantee hundreds of young acolytes to take care of you. Not everyone can say they know the real Foxy Funkadelia.”