Fire of the Dark Triad

by Asya Semenovich

Nick thought that the hissing rage in her voice would’ve guaranteed dire consequences for the minister if the situation had been slightly different. Under the current circumstances though, he definitely didn’t give a damn.

  “Funny you say that, about switching sides. But I would have already released it if I were in this for … ethical reasons, wouldn’t I?” asked Nick with a thin smile. “It’s all about me. I want to trade this recording. Return my headhunter software. Wake up the woman from M-237 and send her here in my ship. Then let us leave the sector. You won’t be able to track me once we cross the border, so that will be it. Continue with your program or not, I don’t care.”

  “All this … because of a colony woman?” the president exhaled and buried her fingers in her hair, squeezing her head, “God …”

  “I suspected that you wouldn’t understand,” said Nick, “now, please tell him to release my implant, or our negotiation is a non-starter.”

  “Viggo, go ahead,” she said quickly, “give up control of his chip.”

  The Defense Minister moved his hand in the air and Johan’s red dot disappeared.

  “That’s better,” said Nick. “Kir, rebuild your security.”

  “Initiating. Estimated time …”

  “We are going to hang up now,” interrupted the president, and Nick waved sending Kir’s voice to the background. “We’ll have to get back to you regarding your demands. Stand by,” she turned her connection off, and the minister disappeared a split second later.

  Nick glanced at the finally unobstructed view of the ocean. It was his favorite hour of the day – dawn had just given way to the morning, but the yellow sun was already high enough to make the water look bright blue.

  “Security has been rebuilt,” said Kir, and Nick realized that he had underestimated the sense of relief he would feel at these words. The air in the room seemed to gain a golden hue, and every reflective surface, including the black coating of the missile remote control, was merrily shining in the bright sunlight. In a sudden flashback, Nick was slowly walking on a road through the hot bare plain, holding his hands behind his head. There was a loud sound of cicadas in his ears, and he was mesmerized by the oily glimmer of a rifle barrel pointing at his chest.

  The strong breeze in his face pushed Beta Blue out of his head, turning that glimmer back into the reflection on the black missile remote. Why did this happen, he asked himself, and then he remembered Hilgor and Reish, waiting on the exposed roof.

  He cursed and quickly got up, ready to rush out of the room, but for some reason his eyes stopped on the remote. He looked at it for a split second, went to the edge of the room and flung it into the ocean. It was completely irrational, considering that the system was never on, but it made him feel better.

  He ran to the patio, jumping over several stairs in a row on his way up, unlocked the door and hurriedly went outside. The deck looked empty, and he froze at the thought that maybe they had fallen trying to escape by going over the railings.

  “Hi Nick. I guess, you got what you wanted,” Hilgor’s voice was coming from a strange angle – somewhere low and to the side. Nick walked around the table and abruptly stopped at the sight of the odd composition on the floor: Hilgor, leisurely slouching against the cabinet next to the battery of open bottles, Reish, slumped across his lap like a rag doll, and Riph was peacefully sleeping. The dog opened his eyes, yawned and lazily wagged his tail, not bothering to get up. Hilgor, on the contrary, enthusiastically lifted a bottle in a gesture of the grand salute.

  “Congratulations! I thought so … otherwise things would have been different by now, at least in some way. No, no, Nick …” Hilgor energetically shook his head, “I knew that you wouldn’t have harmed us. But I must tell you, it was still unpleasant to spend time here so conveniently exposed to the missiles, as you bluntly put it earlier.”

  Nick thought that Hilgor’s speech was remarkably clear considering the number of bottles on the floor.

  “She checked the exit door even though I strongly advised her against it,” Hilgor nodded towards Reish, who seemed either asleep or unconscious. “She is slightly out of it now. You see, I encouraged her to drink more that she could handle in order to distract her from the topic of a missile strike. Oh, don’t worry,” he waved at Nick. “She never turned her implant back on. We can talk freely!” He put the bottle down, carefully moved Reish to the floor and stood up, his balance nearly perfect. “I myself had a few, but I was calculating my limit to stay adequately engaged.” His eyes were convincingly sharp, but he had an uncharacteristically mischievous expression. “So what happened? What was in the file?” he asked impatiently. “I have been dying to find out! No pun intended, by the way.”

  “You are better off not knowing anything about it. Really, it’s safer, Hilgor. What if you talk in your sleep?”

  “Do you understand how cruel that is? I’ll have to nurse my wounded curiosity for the rest of my life! Can you at least tell me, did you save Lita?”

  “I don’t know yet. If they play along I will leave this place with her and we will disappear inside the Mirror Sectors. And if our president decides to do away with me instead of negotiating, it will be very unpleasant here to say the least. You should leave right away.”

  “I am inclined to follow your advice,” said Hilgor, “it’s getting hotter. This pun is not intended either.” He bent down and shook Reish’s shoulder.

  She abruptly sat up and opened her eyes, but it was clear that she had no clue about her whereabouts, among a lot of other things.

  “Let’s go,” said Hilgor, helping her to stand up.

  She did, holding onto the cabinet, and even took a couple of steps, leaning on his arm, before she lost her balance. He gently directed her and she collapsed into a chair, and immediately fell asleep again, leaning on the table and dropping her head onto her folded arms.

  Hilgor sighed, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to wake her up. Instead, he hesitated for a moment and then looked straight at Nick, “Listen, what’s really cruel is that I won’t ever know if you made it. I think I deserve that after all this build up. Plus, I actually care,” he said in a completely sober voice.

  As if on cue, Riph came over and gently bumped his head against Nick in a display of unconditional affection. Nick patted him and thought that very soon all three of them would be gone from his life forever. He tried to imagine that and failed, it didn’t feel good.

  “I can’t contact you once I leave, Hilgor, you understand why …” he said, “But … visit this house after the dust settles and take a look at the art on the bedroom wall. If I win, I’ll change the antique space station image to a picture of my ship. Property vandalism, but no one but you will notice. If there’s no property to rent, that will answer your question too.”

  Hilgor nodded, got Reish into a vertical position again, his arm firmly holding her around the waist, and step by step they made their way to the exit. But even after they had disappeared down the stairs, Riph still stayed on the roof. He finally whined, as if asking Nick to follow, but Nick avoided his eyes, and the dog finally bounded down the steps.

  Nick collected the untouched dishes from the table and loaded them onto the dumbwaiter shelf. Then he picked up Riph’s plate from the floor, put it on top of the heap and closed the latch. It was taking them too long to simply accept his demands, he thought. Something wasn’t going well with the negotiations. And just then a connection request with an encrypted origin popped up in his vision.

  “Accept,” he said.

  The president was back, and this time she was disheveled for real. “Your ship was dispatched. The woman is onboard, fully conscious, but she wasn’t briefed on anything,” she said right away.

  “Kir, display the flight data,” asked Nick quickly. A dozen screens filled the space around him, but they didn’t make any sense. The ship’s speed and trajectory were simply impossible ins
ide Earth’s navigation space.

  “The feeds are fake,” he said, “I don’t understand how …”

  “They are not fake, Nick. The government grounded all other air traffic in this corridor,” said Kir.

  It was impressive, thought Nick. He didn’t realize that was even possible.

  “Here is the software from your agency,” the president quickly moved her fingers in the air.

  “Nick, I’ve received a file with the standard headhunter package,” informed Kir. “Would you like me to install it?”

  Nick nodded, and the process confirmation steps flashed in front of his eyes.

  “You got everything you asked for,” said the president with barely contained impatience. “Now turn Hilgor’s chip off.”

  “I will, but … Caroline, just to be clear. You may hope for a traffic accident once we leave the island. There hasn’t been a precedent for an awfully long time, but shit happens, after all, right, especially if our kind is involved. The host of things that can transpire to an unregistered vessel beyond orbit would be even easier to explain away.”

  She listened carefully, but nothing in her face betrayed whether she had indeed been planning any of these scenarios.

  “So it’s not exactly paranoia that makes me want to do something to guarantee my safety,” he ran his fingers over the wristband screen. “Kir, upload the copy of this recording to my DT.” He looked at the president, “Do you know what that is?”

  She nodded, “Your Death Transmission. Viggo warned me that you would use it.”

  “Right. I know that Defense is well aware of it. So, did he explain that every device in Earth’s sector will receive this message if I am killed before crossing the Mirror Edge?” asked Nick.

  “He did,” she said in a perfectly controlled voice.

  “In addition, if I detect any attempt to hack Kir from your satellites I will release the message manually. So just let me get out of this world in peace.”

  “By all means,” she said, and added without a pause, “but let’s talk about my safety now.”

  “Nick, I’ve received another file from the same source,” said Kir. “It’s an alteration of the standard border navigation functionality. Would you like to install it?”

  That was what took them so long, thought Nick. “No. Hold on. What kind of alteration?”

  “I will be reset to factory settings the first time you switch to the Edge crossing mode. The software will remain functional, but all your personal data will be lost,” said Kir. “This program can’t be uninstalled without corrupting my main processor.”

  The president was calmly looking in Nick’s eyes, and he understood that their endgame had come to a close.

  “I know that we’ll lose you after you cross the Mirror boundary, and I can’t give you a chance to come back with the same blackmail,” she said. “You can’t take any data with you. So you either install this program, or else let’s proceed to mutual destruction. Make your decision fast, we are running out of time.”

  “No need for scorched earth, Madame President. Kir, execute the last download.”

  Did Kir even understand that he was scheduling his own demise by running this command, wondered Nick. He drove this thought away before he had a chance to finish it. Kir was nothing but a sophisticated program, he said to himself firmly – a program, which over many years had been trained to behave like a friend. Nick pulled Hilgor’s wristband from his pocket, squeezed it, turning it off and put it on the table.

  “I am leaving it right here,” he said to the president. “That’s it.”

  “Yes,” she said with poisonous calmness in her voice. “That’s it. Now get the hell out of this sector and don’t ever think about coming back,” and then she was gone.

  °°°

  I slowly went downstairs, lightly holding onto the railing to keep my balance. All objects seemed a bit sharper and slightly distorted as if I was looking through an optical lens, and only the ocean appeared completely normal, maybe because the line of the horizon was naturally curved.

  I checked and saw that the ship was ten minutes away. It was time to wrap up my business on the island. I connected to the piece of digital art in the bedroom and replaced the image with a picture of my ship.

  And that was that. Nothing left to do but wait. I stepped on the beach, slowly walked towards the shore and stopped on the very edge of the dry sand, the tips of my shoes almost touching the wet semicircles outlined by the surf. The wind picked up, and the surface of the water was now covered by white crests, but the waves were friendly, merrily glistening in the late morning sunlight.

  I finally gave myself permission to think about Lita, and my heart immediately responded with a blunt pain.

  What’s wrong, I asked myself. She was fine, she would be here soon.

  She would be in shock, transferred from her last minute on that meadow to this reality when nothing made any sense. First, I would need to convince her that she was safe. And then I would explain what happened, and, yes, I would tell her about Remir’s death. I wouldn’t show her the recording, but I would tell her that she survived because he shielded her during the explosion.

  The pain in my chest suddenly swelled, and it became hard to breathe. It was at the back of my mind all along, but I didn’t let myself focus on the possibility that I was just an episodic character, a distraction, a painkiller for her in a time of crisis. That she never loved me.

  I stared at the white foam, sparkling on the crests of the waves in the bright morning light.

  Stop it, I said to myself. She will live. I didn’t kill her by getting her into the mess on Beta Blue, and that should be good enough. I’d settle her somewhere safe, and I’d go on with my life.

  I looked up, away from the water and saw a shiny dot in the sky. I watched it grow until it finally resolved into the familiar shape of my ship.

  Kir slowly lowered its bulk to the ground next to me and unfolded the air steps. Going up, I made sure that I assumed the most relaxed look I could muster.

  Lita stood at the far end of the ship’s entrance chamber, squinting at the outside brightness.

  I stopped, the hatch started closing behind my back, blocking the sunlight, and she took a step forward as if she couldn’t fully trust her eyes.

  “You are fine,” she said in a strange voice. “I thought that you died … in that explosion.”

  She took another step, her eyes still glued to my face, and then she abruptly hugged me, clutching my shoulders. “You are alive, Nick!”

  She didn’t say anything else and just desperately stroked my back, not letting go, as if she couldn’t believe that I hadn’t been killed on that meadow.

  There was only one thing left to do before I allowed my willpower, twisted and burned beyond recognition, to collapse into a jumble of pieces, from which I would need to rebuild it … one day. “Kir, let’s get out of here,” I managed to say. And then my throat became so tight that I couldn’t speak anymore.

  When I buried my face in her hair I still had the feed from the external camera on, and it showed my artificial island slowly becoming a speck in the blue on the Pacific.

  It felt like a perfect déjà vu, except that the memory was real, not imaginary, and I actually saw the patch of sand disappear on my vision screen just like it had once before, on the day of my departure for Beta Blue.

  I suddenly realized that the Universe had just created a perfect circle in front of my eyes, throwing me a hint that nothing was ever random. It was a cruel tease, considering that I would never be privy to the full design, but I was fine with that. In fact, I preferred some things to remain unknown: the place and time of my death, for instance. It was enough that it wasn’t on Earth and it wasn’t today.

  The End

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