Francis looked up when I entered, his face an emotionless mask. He was a wreck. This was not the crisply dressed boy projected for communications. This was a kid ruined by neglect. His clothes hung from his bony body in rags, the white of his suit long since worn down to a rusty brown. His sunken eyes were set in a face sallow with hunger and aged by the elements. The boy’s white hair fell in long wisps of ghostly blond. His fingers frantically worked across a console.
“Stop,” I said. “This has gone far enough.”
He didn’t seem to hear, continuing his feverish activity. He was up to something, up to something bad, I’d bet. I pulled out the BB gun and pointed it at the boy.
A car crashed through the glass dome, bringing with it a shower of glass and the rush of clean night air. The deafening cacophony of combat roared through the room as her car skidded across the marble floor.
I raised my shield against the glass, and Abi ducked under its protection. Trish crouched in her crashing car, battered but still holding her twin pistols. She jumped and rolled as the car slammed into the console, and before I could recover, she stood up and trained both of her pistols at the boy.
“Sneak over there and plug in,” I whispered to Abi. “You have a shot at this. You can do it.”
She nodded and started making her way around behind Francis.
Then Francis jammed a bundle of cables into the back of his head and the world changed.
Trish fired as he moved, but he was too fast. She kept squeezing bullets, but the boy ran. At least, that’s how she probably saw it. In my modified eye, I could see the same thing. He was now the Francis I’d seen before. Healthy, clean, smug. He smiled a handsome smile and his eyes twinkled. In my other eye he ducked down behind the console and hid like the coward he was.
“Trish,” I shouted. “He’s still right in front of you!”
Trish blinked with confusion, turned to me, fired.
She didn’t hit me.
She wasn’t aiming at me.
Zane, behind me, staggered. A well of blood erupted from his shoulder. I raised my shield, protecting as much of his body as I could.
“Stop the weapons, Francis,” Trish said as she walked forward. “Call them off. It’s done.”
“That’s not Francis, Trish.” I stood up and walked forward to meet her.
The guns outside stopped. What was Francis playing at? A distraction?
“Quit protecting him, J.D.” Trish looked at me with her jaw set hard. I knew the look and no smart man wanted to be on the other end of it. “I’m going to bring him in.” Her cruiser drifted behind her, presumably following her mental commands. “I’ll bring you in too, if I need to.”
There was no use talking. The words would come out wrong, anyway.
“I’ll go,” said Zane. “I can distract her and you go for Francis.”
“No.” There was no way to know if he could hear me. “Too dangerous.” If Zane gave himself over to Trish, then Francis would have the upper hand.
I leapt at Trish and bashed hard, ramming her with all my strength. She was heavier than she looked, but I was damn strong. My legs pumped and kept pushing until the two of us toppled over right into her cruiser. I grabbed one of her pistols and tossed it aside.
Trish kicked me back, drawing her other pistol. As she raised it to fire, the cruiser began to drift upward.
Zane jumped into the fray, knocking Trish’s pistol away. Blood sprayed as he moved. The cruiser lurched under his weight and started to spin. The pistol clattered onto the hood.
“Go!” Zane said.
I didn’t go. I lunged forward, dipping out of the way.
Trish grabbed Zane’s leg and heaved, toppling him backward so he smashed his head against the plastic edge of the vehicle. With one leg, she swept my shield aside and kicked me hard in the face.
I staggered backward, nearly falling over the edge. She followed up with a punch to my gut that left me reeling. “Stay out of this,” she snarled.
She turned to Zane, who had managed to rise to one knee. She reached to draw her pistol and found it wasn’t there. The cruiser spun faster.
“Go,” Zane rasped. He was on his knees and didn’t look like he had the power to get up.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “I won’t leave you with her.”
Trish hopped onto the hood of the cruiser. The car dipped to one side and the gun slid closer to the edge.
“It’s too late for me,” said Zane. “My nannies are gone. The bugs got me.”
“No.”
“She’ll just take me away. She doesn’t see what’s real.”
“I’ll tell her.” I clenched my fist. “Hard.”
Trish grabbed the weapon, but I had my shield up between her and Zane.
“Don’t move,” she said.
I moved. Shield first, I rammed into Trish. She was ready. She took my momentum and sent me stumbling over the edge. My metal hand grabbed out and for a second I was dangling a few meters over the marble floor.
But it was too long.
“Don’t move.” Trish had her gun pressed against Zane’s forehead.
There’s no way he could move. Nobody was fast enough to get out of that. It would be suicide to twitch in that situation. It would be suicide to think about twitching. There was no way—absolutely no way—that Zane would move with that gun at his head.
The cruiser spun faster and faster, drifting out the window into the open sky. Skidders hung all around, their riders watching in a silent agony. What were they seeing?
Zane didn’t move. The fight was over. I pulled myself up onto the cruiser, careful not to make any quick movements.
“I’m sorry, J.D.,” Zane said. “You need to stop that boy.”
So long as Trish had her gun pressed against Zane’s head, Francis had the upper hand. All Francis needed to do was make her see something that would cause her to pull the trigger. A gun in his hand, or a knife. A look in his eyes. I couldn’t go after Francis without the risk that Francis would make her pull the trigger. Zane was a hostage.
“I love you, J.D.” Zane said. He flicked his wrist and a pistol snapped out of his sleeve. He met Trish’s eyes, raised the weapon, and—
Trish pulled the trigger.
The loss hit me harder than the gut punch. Rage boiled up in me as Trish turned my way. She’d killed him. Zane was dead.
She’d killed Zane.
I roared in fury and charged. With a backhand I sent her pistol flying off into the darkness. I punched with my right hand, not caring that it was a mistake, not caring that it hurt so bad as my fist slammed against her reinforced skeleton. Rage was all I had.
Trish was tougher than me. She took my punches, whether they came from the natural fist or the metal one. She rolled with the strong hits and stood against the weak ones.
Trish was stronger than me. I threw a sloppy haymaker with my metal fist and she caught it in her hands. I shoved hard and she shoved harder. She twisted against the joint and despite my strength I had no choice but to drop to one knee.
Trish was smarter than me. Hell, she’d always been smarter.
But I was bigger.
I reversed my effort and pulled, lifting her straight into the air. My reach was long enough that she couldn’t hit back. She couldn’t kick. My breath came in hard rasps. Rage was easy. I held Trish over the edge of the car. We spun fast now, high above the Quintech building.
Bracing myself against the spin, I prepared to throw her far as I could. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I slammed her down hard on the floor of the cruiser, hoping it was enough to stun her.
It wasn’t.
She was up in a crouch as fast as I could blink. A couple quick jabs sent me reeling. She grabbed a handful of my hair, rage in her eyes. She pulled back for a punch that I knew would knock me out if it didn’t kill me.
A gunshot sounded. Trish clutched her shoulder and dropped me.
Below, Abi stood with her rifle aimed in our direction. The gunshot
gave away her hiding spot. Kivas leapt up to surround her. The console was still too far away.
Abi backed away, firing her rifle at one Kiva after another. There were too many.
It was all happening so fast. The cruiser spun around and around. Trish stood up, recovering from the shot. She lunged at me.
I jumped.
The plan was to hit the edge of the broken dome, use it to slow my fall, and then deal with Francis and the remaining Kivas. It almost worked.
I missed the dome, clipping it as I passed and spinning out of control in my fall. I struck the floor hard, my fall softened only by the wires on the ground and the snapping of bones in both of my legs.
Waves of molten pain surged through my body. My breath came in labored gasps. I was too far back to shoot Francis. The angle was wrong to help Abi.
Abi screamed. Gunshots.
“Do it, J.D.,” she shouted.
Grabbing the floor with the metal arm, I inched myself forward. If I could only round the end of the console, maybe I could get the shot I wanted. It was too far. Already, the edges of my vision darkened. Pain threatened to overwhelm me. It was too much. Too much. Despite my effort to be at peace, here violence had snatched my life away again. Zane. Zane was gone. Maybe Abi too. Everything I fought for was ruined. Every time. My shoulders slumped and I fought back sobs.
There would never be peace for me. At the end it was easy to look back and see the mistakes of a hard-fought life. Of course, there couldn’t be peace. The world would never allow it. Anyone resembling a righteous man would never see peace in a world like this. Not for one minute of one day. The world was full of such violence and hatred and pain that any second spent at peace was complacency. Every idle moment, a guilty pleasure. There would never be peace in Texas. Not in my lifetime.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t worth fighting for.
I calmed myself and looked down at the floor. Right there, under my hand, was the Umbilical, just like the one Court had talked about. It ran from the console back into the main computing center, but there was another branch on this one. It ran straight down into the floor. With an agonizing effort, I pulled my way forward with my metal arm. When I got there I ripped open the floor and saw what must have been a maintenance slot. It was a connector much like the one on my skidder.
Francis stood next to me with a revolver inches from my head.
“Don’t mess with my shit, old man.”
“Who did you meet? Who told you this was the right thing to do?”
His eyes narrowed. The gun in his outstretched hand stayed steady.
“The way I see it, you had your ideas, but you didn’t act until you met someone smarter than you.” Outside, lightning flashed across the sky.
“He is not smarter than me. Nobody’s smarter than me.”
“Maybe. But there are things you don’t understand and he helped you get your head around it. Helped you cope.”
“So what if he did? He let me cope with all the wrong you did. You killed Ma. You’re the one who needs justice and the whole world is going to get the peace it deserves.” His gun didn’t waver. He kept it steady in his outstretched hand, and even when I shifted to the side it stayed trained right at my face.
“Ben got worried when you left. He’s the one who told you that the world needed peace, wasn’t he? He’s the one who said I needed justice.”
Francis didn’t move.
“He was right,” I said. “But the world doesn’t deserve the peace you’re giving it, and there’s no way to make me suffer enough to make up for what I did to your family.”
“What makes you think I won’t shoot you down right now?”
A long moment passed. Lightning lit up the sky again, flashing up above in the dark clouds. The cannon fired again. “You’re not armed,” I said.
“I’d be a fool to walk around without a weapon, wouldn’t I?”
“A fool or a child.”
“I’m not a child.” His muscles twitched and he seemed to grow taller. “I grew up the moment you killed my Ma. I grew up when I looked around and saw Texas was broken. Your Texas was broken.”
“It’s the best we could make it.”
“But not the best I could make it. I’m bringing peace and an end to all that shit you people have felt the need to deal with all along.”
“Like freedom?” I propped myself up against the console.
“Freedom? You call that freedom? People will feel free when I have this working. People will feel loved.”
“What about the kids you hook up to the machines? Will they feel free?”
He twitched. “That’s a prototype. It won’t always be like that.”
“Now you’re hooked up to that same machine. You’re driving it, aren’t you? It’s using your brain to drive its alternate reality.”
He winced. “It needs imagination.”
“I bet.”
In my good eye I could see that he wasn’t next to me at all. He wasn’t holding a gun. The starved, sickly boy was cowering against the other side of the console. His face was glistening with sweat and his hair was plastered against his head. He’d gone pale. The bundle of cables ran from the back of his head to the console.
The blackness almost took me. I slipped, put too much pressure on a broken leg, but recovered.
I let the shield drop from my arm and jammed my hand into the console on the floor.
My awareness burst with information. I was the building and every bit of tech in it. The weapons outside felt like the bristling hairs on the back of my neck. The Kivas wandering the halls were like crawling bugs on my skin, but I could also see through their eyes and control their bodies. The antenna was a sense all its own. Through it, I reached the world. The eyes of everyone around became like my own senses. Their ears became my whole world.
In a split second, my focus moved to the cluster of Kivas nearby. Four of them dragged a kicking Abi down a curved hallway. I could see through her eyes and I could feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins. The sights of the Kivas were there for me too, but I had more control over them. With a mere thought, their hearts stopped and what was left of their brains shut down. Relief washed through Abi as she freed herself from their grip.
There was no time to linger. Another presence exerted its control. It was a stony presence, an unmovable will that stood like a tower in a field during the chaos of battle. It was Francis. He was still connected and now via the machine his mind was working against mine.
He was frightening.
The battle raged outside. The sense of it nearly overwhelmed me. A few seconds were all I would need, but if I dropped the building’s defenses I might not get that. Cold, calculating logic told me to leave those defenses up. Solid logic told me to let the army suffer a little longer for the greater good. It was undeniable.
But that logic didn’t come from me. It came from Francis. His mind was closer to mine than I thought possible. His thoughts echoed in my head, and for a brief second I felt what it was to be Francis. It was frightening. He didn’t have the logic and reason I’d always assumed. His mind crawled with pain and fear. His life was an inability to cope with the raw emotion of being alive. Whenever something hurt him, he killed the part of himself that was hurt. Over and over again he crushed himself until the only thing left was a monster, and then he moved on to do the same to the world. His mind was strong and his logic was sound. He almost convinced me to step back.
But stubbornness beats logic any day. I shut down the turrets.
Far below, Tuck fought back a wave of coyotes. He was injured and bleeding, but the look on his face showed both rage and satisfaction. It was his moment of revenge. Tuck cut down one coyote after another, wading through the makeshift defense of something on the ground floor. Something nearby…
He was headed for a power generator. If he took it out, power would drop in the entire facility. That would take everything down hard. Francis’s cold logic told me that the hard collapse of the fi
eld might snap Goodwin’s tower all the way over in Austin. It would also cause a dangerous crash of my own hardware, possibly killing me.
I denied logic again. The coyotes that had hardware in their heads dropped dead. The rest fled like the scavengers they were. Tuck pulled the pins on a couple grenades and tossed them into a hole he’d already punched in the side of the generator building.
Seconds remained.
Far away, I could sense another force. Instinct told me to fight it, keep it at bay. This must be Goodwin’s tower. Goodwin’s field encompassed all of Texas. Zane had told me this, but now it made sense on an instinctual level. My smaller field existed as a thorn in Goodwin’s side, constantly drawing power and constantly posing a threat.
What a threat too. An increase in power, even a slight one, could set off a resonance that would bring both fields down. Both towers would be slag in the aftermath. The sub-quantum net would cease to be. Technology as we knew it would be done. Person-to-person communication would stop. It would be impossible to mentally control cars or machinery. Prosthetics like my own might cease to work. The nanomachines would stop.
Tech would be set back hundreds of years.
If I powered it down, the tower would likely never be active again. It was unstable. I could feel it at the edges of my fingertips. The field would collapse soon, even if I did nothing. Getting it started again was not something that could be done through this facility. Not anymore.
An age seemed to pass in a single second. Outside, Cinco Armas poured into the console room. They swarmed the surrounding buildings and obliterated what remained of their enemies. The deputies still alive rode side by side with brutal outlaws in the assault on Quintech. They’d destroy everything soon.
A world without tech would be better. There was no doubt in my mind about that fact. How much pain came from the horrors of technology?
The iron logic that Francis poured into my mind told me that people would die when that field dropped. Cars would fall from the sky. Society would collapse. People who had modified themselves with technology would be ruined. I would be crippled, maybe killed. Logic told me what I knew already in my gut.
Peace in an Age of Metal and Men Page 26
