Crimson Son

by Russ Linton

  “Fine. So, Crimson Mask…”

  “Your dad.”

  “My dad, was the last Augment in the field as of a few days ago?”

  “Technically. There are a few that were voluntarily ‘decommissioned’ and seem to still be floating around.”

  “And you say they’re trying to wrap up the program? What about the Black Beetle?”

  He holds up a finger and grins as he opens a document. Marked across the top of the page are the words TOP SECRET.

  “Jesus, man.” The paper header refers to a Pentagon Psy-Ops department. It’s from just after the Cuban incident in the Sixties, the one that made the world think twice about Augments on the battlefield. The document outlines the whole Proxy War concept and the best ways to use media sensationalism as a cover for continued Augment operations.

  “Journalists figured this out years ago,” I say with as little interest as possible. Eric smiles, wags his finger and attacks the keyboard again. Another file pops up, this one twenty years newer than the first. This file describes ways to use a similar process to systematically pit Augments against one another.

  “Why?”

  “Because we were getting out of hand,” he says.

  For a while, Eric seemed almost back to normal, so I don’t get the “we” right away. He means “we Augments”. I sigh, letting him finish his thought. “Once we got shuffled to covert programs we became an even bigger problem. Now the U.S. and Russia had a bunch of thinking weapons on their hands, trained with freaking spy skills. It was too easy to start bucking the system and making our own rules. The government even tested an alternative.” Keys clack again and a collection of diagrams hits the screen. Outlines of complex circuitry with an unmistakable symmetry fill the monitor.

  I can only stare open-mouthed at the schematics of the bunker busting drone I pried open not so long ago.

  “Yep,” he smirks. “About seven years ago, an unnamed contractor got caught up in a sting where he was shopping this bad boy around the Middle East and other countries that didn’t have Augment programs. But, get this. The documents don’t refer to him by name anywhere. That’s been redacted. When you can read it, it says bullshit like ‘A source’ or ‘Anonymous’.”

  “Black Beetle.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What else do you have?”

  Eric latches onto my excitement and returns to the keyboard, almost cackling. “He signed on with the government for a few years. Then they changed tactics.” He clicks and another document opens with a new, later date at the top.

  “That’s right after the Djinn hit New York,” I say. Eric nods. “But why would the Black Beetle be a problem for them now? Did he go rogue?” Could this be an explanation for the carrier footage? Maybe Dad only worked with him when he was one of the good guys.

  “Keep reading.”

  The document appears to be from that same “anonymous” source. It’s stuffed with complicated statistics, psychology and tactics. But the end result seems to involve maximum carnage and bloodshed, specifically designed to turn public opinion against every Augment. This would give the ones operating in secret even fewer places to hide, make them more cautious, and throw them off their game. At the same time, the Black Beetle would be built up as the villain and the face of the death and destruction. A face without nationality that would become inextricably linked to every single one of the Augments. A businesslike conclusion projects “containment” of the Augment program within five years. But where does this put Dad?

  “And the pièce de résistance,” he adds with a flourish of his hand on the mouse. This new bit of information details a secret mutual disarmament agreement between the United States and Russia. Both were on board with the plan.

  Eric folds his arms across his chest and beams.

  I don’t know how he did it, but his confidence isn’t overplayed. He’d probably be given a death sentence for looking at this stuff sideways. It must have come from some seriously secure servers behind the world’s toughest cryptography. Maybe he does know everything?

  “Tell me where the Black Beetle is.”

  Eric squirms. “I don’t know…yet.”

  “How? You got all this!” His eyes are wide, and I realize I’m standing over him wadding his shirt in my fist. I let go and back away.

  “Sorry, man,” he smoothes his shirt and turns to the monitor, his eyes darting nervously in my direction. “All I can tell is that information has got to be stored on an internal network without so much as a telegraph wire linked to the wild. My guess, most of the guys in on this program don’t even know. They were so desperate to round us up, it was a no-questions-asked situation for the guy that could do it.”

  “Reality check—there is no ‘us’ in Augment, Eric.”

  A hurt look crosses his face. He stabs a finger in the air and dives back into the data. Newspaper clippings pop up about Chinese girls being abandoned, or worse, by their parents.

  “You also aren’t a little Chinese girl.”

  “No, dumbass.” More furious fingers and windows pop open. “See!”

  “The Foundation for a Brighter Hope? Ending Infanticide? What the hell does this have to do with anything?”

  “The foundation isn’t real! It’s a cover! They were snatching babies for some kind of experiment!”

  “Even if you’re right, last I checked, you still weren’t a little Chinese girl.”

  Maps fly onto the screen along with more scanned news clippings, and websites splashing open. “The hospital I was born in is right here! They used to have an office, here.” He points wildly a few blocks from the Hospital symbol on the map.

  “What does that prove?”

  “They lost me in the hospital, the day I was born. The nurses couldn’t find me when it was time to check out. Everyone panicked. It was two hours and twenty-six minutes.” Under Eric’s direction, a hand written note scrawled on hospital stationery shows onscreen. The times are readable, but that’s about all. More incident reports from the hospital cycle by. “My parents talked about this all the time!”

  Up until now, despite the conspiracy vibe and the crazy insistence he was an Augment, his information made enough sense that I could at least see where he was coming from. This switched-at-birth crap, though, isn’t even in left field; it’s in the parking lot for the next stadium over. That, and the crazy look in Eric’s eyes has come back.

  “That’s what the experiments at the Foundation were all about. They wanted to replicate an earlier experiment and create Augments that had special brain powers. I’m exactly like you, Spence.”

  I peer at him out of the corner of my eye, trying to gauge his hopeful expression and get a feel for exactly how much insanity might be in there. “Eric. I’m not an Augment.”

  His face pinches in disbelief.

  “No, seriously. I’m not an Augment.”

  Eric sits there, his hand lifeless on the mouse and a great pressure builds behind his eyes. His mouth opens and closes in abrupt bursts before he blurts, “You’re not?”

  I shake my head.

  “But, but your Dad.”

  I gesture at the screen. “How many other Augments did you research that have little Boy Wonders running around?” All this information, all these classified documents, all the lists of Augments with their powers, yet he’s blind to this single, obvious fact. He doesn’t respond, and this is too close to home for me to stop the assault on his delusion. “Why haven’t they come to get us? Huh? You just showed me how they killed and rounded everyone up. Why not us, too?”

  His mouth works limply but no sound escapes. I can’t watch him struggling with the truth.

  “I was only ever a stupid kid. A kid with a fucked-up family and an equally fucked-up life. I’ve got nothing left that my dad’s Augment bullshit hasn’t picked up, crushed and hurled through a brick wall. My friends, my family…” Family. The word sticks in my throat. I grab his shoulder again, hard. My turn to go batshit crazy. “What about my
mom? Where’s my mom? Show me!”

  Eric’s eyes widen and he turns to pull up more information from his digital conspiracy files. Mom’s face appears on a photo from the DMV.

  I let go of his wrinkled shirt and stare. Unlike everybody else in the world, she liked her license photo. That fact alone captured her perfectly. Carefree. Making the best of life, even a rushed headshot in the ghastly light of a DMV office.

  Eric is speaking but I can barely hear him. “Her birth certificate. Places she’s lived. Places you’ve lived. That trail ends on that day. She disappeared as soon as Beetle got her.”

  “What?” I hiss.

  “Beetle’s an outsider, Spence. A ghost. Nobody wants to be linked to him. I explained that.” His voice drops to a whisper. “Information even I can’t find.” This hole in his “power” is a source of pain, I can see that. And seeing it helps me remember who really caused all this. Why I have no reason to be mad at a friend who has sacrificed so much.

  “Maybe I can help you fill that gap.” I head over to my backpack. Once my hand closes on the bag, I find it hard to pull out the thumb drive. A voice tells me I should stop. Let all this go. Leave Eric alone and tell him to get on with his life. This is way too big for him. In his current state, maybe this won’t save him but wreck him completely. I look up to check his expectant face.

  But Mom’s eyes are smiling at me from the monitor.

  As I remove the bag with the thumb drive, Eric sees the biohazard symbol. With tiny shuffles of his feet he rolls his chair across the room. “Relax. It’s not smallpox or something. It’s data. Stuff my dad collected.”

  “Why the bag?”

  “It’s sorta infested.”

  “Infested? Virus?”

  “No. Like tiny nanobugs the size of a gnat’s testes.”

  With the same short shuffles of his feet, Eric scoots forward. “Really?” He sits gaping at the bag for several seconds and then wheels hurriedly to the outside door. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The afternoon sun has shifted. Dust motes drift across a ray of light seeping through a chip in the black paint over the door’s windows. He stands and reaches up to the top of the frame. Ferreting out the main coaxial cable for the ISP, he traces it to a nest of wires and cables near the server rack.

  “I really need to label these someday.”

  “Never heard that before.”

  “You’re the one that did the wiring. You could have done it just as easy. Make yourself useful. Hand me a pen and some tape.”

  Excavating the desktop, and finally scrunching my head against the wall to peek behind the monitor, I find a pen on the floor but no tape. A sticky note gets torn into a strip. “Why bother doing this now?”

  “Never went wireless. I pull this cable, there’s no way we get compromised.”

  “You’re not planning on hooking up that thumb drive?” I can’t help but sound incredulous.

  “Hell no. But I can’t see nanotech and Babe is monitoring all incoming and outgoing traffic. The second she detects an anomaly, she’ll let us know. I want it clear which cable we yank when that happens.”

  “Sure, but this thumb drive is where that snippet of code I posted came from, so we need to get in here.” I hold off on telling him exactly how right he is to be paranoid. Maybe I’m the one who is crazy?

  “Oh, yeah, that.” Eric drops into his chair and glides to the computer desk. “A memory dump of a failed login. What a great place to start, said no one ever.”

  “Yeah, pretty weak. Was it enough for you?”

  “Uh, no.” He turns his head, fingers continuing to jump between the keyboard and mouse.

  “So the NSA guess wasn’t far off?”

  “Dude, closer to NSA meets E.T.” He calls up a site I’ve never seen before. It’s a forum with a simple black background and above that a flaming eye stolen right out of Mordor burns across the header.

  He stops with one finger on a key and the cursor on the login screen. Old Eric has left the building, again. A suspicious glare from him and I cross the room to sit on his bed. The keys click as he asks, “You never answered my question. Where did you go?”

  “What?”

  “You dropped off the radar completely.”

  “A bunker at the North Pole,” I say as he nods and shrugs, unimpressed.

  “Arctic bunker. Scary good encryption. Makes perfect sense, you know,” he mumbles and opens a thread. He wheels to the side and makes a sweeping gesture at the screen.

  I return to the computer. A picture of a middle-aged guy, greying hair tufted around a bald spot, looks out from a neatly formatted rap sheet of sorts. It’s only a portrait shot, but twenty-to-one says the guy has a pocket protector.

  “He’s one of us,” says Eric. “And I know exactly where he is.”

  *

  George Carrick Walker aka Polybius.

  from Conspirapedia, the only – free – encyclopedia of the New World Order

  George Carrick Walker (June 23, 1948 – ?) was a cryptanalyst for the National Security Agency during the Cold War. Much debate surrounds this clandestine Augment and his role in a number of what became high-profile incidents of divulged Soviet secrets. Walker presumably masterminded the communications crack behind the к северу звезда (North Star) initiative. The break led to the exposure of a series of bunkers inside the Northern Hemisphere, designed to rapidly deploy Augment strike teams into the continental United States.

  Walker was reportedly one of the first Augments to manifest increased mental ability from the secret Augmentation process. Early Air Force military records describe an above-average intelligence and physical ability, but gave no indication of the future level of genius into which Walker would finally evolve. Even among the Augment program, the results were reportedly astonishing.

  As an Augment, Walker took on the code name “Polybius”—an ancient Greek who created an early form of cryptography using a matrix of letters which were assigned numerical substitutes. His work with the NSA was highly classified; however, it is speculated that he was involved in the following:

  British Spymaster Anthony Tobias’ exposure as a Soviet double agent.

  Annihilation of the Soviet Augment team, Iron Hammer, in a skirmish over Northern Afghanistan.

  Successful compromise of Syrian communications and the evacuation of the Iraqi Embassy during the 1996 Israeli Offensive.

  Most controversial was perhaps the hacking of a series of privately-owned email accounts after an online service provider failed to comply with a United States government request for access. The break led to the deaths of a number of foreign nationals reported to be part of an Islamic terrorist cell with links to the rogue Augment, Djinn. A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court secretly convened to give the green light to the Augment strike force which killed the presumed terrorists.

  While most of America supported the outcome, the controversy surrounded the ease with which Walker reportedly hacked the account system. Several sources quoted that within three hours of refusal of cooperation, the system had been compromised. At the time, company officials confirmed they were using the latest encryption routines, which, by private industry standards, should not have been susceptible to such a rapid attack.

  This led to an enormous outcry for more transparency in government operations. Privacy organizations feared that ordinary citizens’ data would be compromised in sweeping mass surveillance programs. With the U.S. Augment program already under increasing fire, Walker’s exploits and involvement were continually downplayed until he appeared to have left active service.

  An anonymous leak to a website in 2008 indicated that Walker had slowly been becoming mentally unstable. The identity of the leak was never confirmed, nor the veracity of the claim. However, Fredrick Paulson, well-known author and expert on worldwide espionage, asserts that the claim was from a legitimate source. This has led to speculation that while many Augments’ abilities center on physical strength and power, which r
eportedly leads to early retirement from service, Walker’s mental abilities may have placed unusual stress on his cognitive processes.

  Walker’s current status and whereabouts are unknown.

  Chapter 29

  “So this Polybius guy is in a retirement home?” I ask.

  A new site is on the screen. Another old dude, this one with a grill full of perfect, too-good-to-not-be-polymer teeth, smiles at us from the website header. His teeth match the groomed cloud of hair on his head. He’s on a patio in a lawn chair, reading a book. A log-cabin style building sits behind him, complete with a window box full of flowers. Tall trees rise on the horizon.

  I check Eric’s face for any signs of crazy. Yep. The smug grin is out of our high school yearbook but a bit too broad, too excited. The sound of a door closing upstairs saves me from what can only be an awkward conversation.

  “Shit, my mom! Hang tight.” He rolls his chair to the bottom of the stairs before hopping out and stomping up them.

  Must be later than I thought. Eric’s dad was like a project manager, and his mom was a nurse at the local hospital. They never made it home before five. Barely ever in time for dinner, even. And often, his mom worked weird shifts. When the rest of the world was sleeping, she was checking vitals and inserting catheters. When he wasn’t herding cats, his dad was wasting time navigating the BART system to get downtown.

  Usually when I’d stop by, I’d never set eyes on his fam. I don’t think they ever came down here. If they did, well, maybe it wouldn’t smell like it does. Anyway, it never bothered me that his parents kept out of his stuff. Sorta every teenager’s dream, really. They were a nonentity in our secret world of pirating and stolen baseball broadcasts.

  Heh. Maybe I have more in common with my dad’s top-secret bullshit than I thought.

  I wander the room in a haze, trying to absorb all the new information. This place seriously used to be our own Bunker. Once we salvaged the secondhand microwave and his parents got him the mini-fridge, we were set. Then came the never-ending computer upgrades. I still don’t know where he got the money for that. Well, I knew, but never asked. Credit card accounts weren’t tough for him to crack.