Not healthy? More threats? “I...”
“Shut up. Not healthy for our relationship. I thought we were friends. Friends don’t lie.”
Friends? “I’m sorry?”
“You are? Well then, all is forgiven.”
“It is?”
“Of course,” said Lokner2.0 magnanimously, leaning back in his chair and clasping his fingers behind his head. “Stop looking at porn when you’re supposed to be working. That’s not what I pay you for.” Lokner looked amused, smug.
Porn? Miles almost denied it before his brain told his mouth to shut the hell up. “No, Sir,” he said instead. “It’s not.”
“Oh goodie. I didn’t think so. Now get back to work.”
Miles was back in his office. He sat, staring at his desktop, waiting for his heart to slow. By the time it did he knew what needed to be done.
Trapdoors. Deadman’s switch. Easy to trigger, difficult to disengage.
Maybe nothing would ever happen. Maybe he’d never need it. But if Lokner was as dangerous as he suspected, it could mean the difference between life and death.
The best bluff was not to bluff at all.
Miles leaned back and replayed the insane conversation. Lokner mentioned his lawyers, said they were ready to drop the bomb on Miles or something to that effect.
Hmm. What are the odds the lawyers keep everything on computers?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Sunday, August 5th, 2046
Griffin made a few calls, screamed at some officer until Abdul was put back on active duty and loaded into a truck bound for the airport, and filed a report Phil wouldn’t see until the morning. When he looked up from his palm-comp he was treated to a view of the jumbled spaghetti sprawl of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
The fingertips of his right hand felt like someone was juicing them in a blender. They were looking a little gray too. He should see a doctor.
At the airport Griffin requisitioned a military transport plane. A monstrous old C-5M Galaxy, left over from the last days of the Oil Wars in the Middle East, would fly them to McChord Air Force Base. An orbital flight would have been quicker, but there was no way to get Abdul on board without causing a major fuss. At least on the military flight no one cared that Griffin still toted a Glock 36 and smelled like last week’s garbage left too long in the sun. He and Abdul were the only passengers.
Once airborne he grabbed some radio headphones and went back to check on Abdul who lounged—or the combat chassis equivalent—in the cargo bay. The interior of the plane reeked of rotting vegetables and rancid grain. Its last flights—food drops to the sixty-million acre Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico dust bowl—were several weeks ago and the cargo bay had not been cleaned since. The floor and walls crawled with ants, and the badly patched bullet holes rattled threateningly as the wind tore at them. At this altitude, if one patch came off, the trip would be a very short one.
Why did the people who were the recipients of such aid shoot at the aircraft trying to help them?
***
Abdul, feeling the clump of Griffin’s boots through the body of the plane, became aware of the man’s approach long before he saw him. So what would it be? Friendly chat or nervous interrogation while the agent tried to figure out if bringing him along had been a terrible mistake?
Griffin limped into view. His sweat had dried leaving his gray-shot hair looking like he just got out of bed. Deep bruises underlined tortured eyes, and his nose was still puffy from being broken. “Hey, Abdul. Everything okay back here?”
Nervous interrogation then.
“Lovely, boss. If I felt any more alive I’d be alive.”
“Good to see you’ve mastered that oh-so-difficult sarcasm thing.”
“You wound me,” joked Abdul. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” His humor soured. “Well, obviously not, but maybe inside. Inside I might be bleeding. Internal hemorrhaging of the soul. If I have one.”
Griffin watched with raised eyebrows. “That wasn’t overly dramatic. And personally, I don’t believe in souls.”
“Wait until you’re dead.” Abdul stopped before he said too much. “Sorry.” He changed the subject, a blatant attempt at distraction. “Why would a man like Lokner be involved in black market crèches? He was already worth billions.”
Griffin gave his swollen nose a gentle squeeze as if testing it and his face filled with pained regret. “I don’t know for sure, but I suspect he started as soon as Scans became viable. Whatever he’s up to, I think he’s been at it for a while.”
“You mean was up to. Lokner is dead, is he not? If he was a Scan stored in the M-Sof facilities...he’s history. For real this time. And if he’s dead, Scan destroyed, what then?”
“If he’s dead, I don’t know where to go after this.”
Man and machine sat in silence for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts.
“Griffin?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are you here? Why are you still doing this? You got Riina. Why not go home?”
Griffin looked away, picked at a patched bullet hole with shaking fingers. “Nadia. If I stop now she died for nothing.” He hesitated. “That might be a lie.” Griffin stopped worrying at the patch and stared at the floor, his eyes following a trail of ants. He looked like he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about this and was even less sure how to vocalize his thoughts. “Shit,” he said before continuing. “They’re killing little kids to make better machines. Slavery with no chance of escape or redemption.”
“And?” Abdul asked.
Griffin picked a kernel of rancid grain from the plane floor and examined it, rolling it in the fingers of his right hand. “I think it’s something I heard as a child: There’s no more heroes. And I don’t want to regret not doing this.”
“So you’re here to be a hero?” When Griffin’s shoulders tensed and eyes narrowed Abdul added, “I’m not mocking.”
Griffin flicked the kernel toward the rear of the plane and stared at his fingers. He kept his eyes averted from the chassis, but Abdul saw how red they were. “Fucking ridiculous, eh?”
Shaking fingers or heroism? Abdul, unsure, kept pushing. “Shut down a crèche another opens. What’s the point?” He needed to know.
The plane banked hard as it left Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport airspace and Griffin looked ill as he fought to keep his balance. Giving up he collapsed into the nearest seat and tried not to get caught in the webbed restraints.
“I have to try,” said Griffin. “Even if I fail, at least I’ll know I tried. I’ll know I didn’t sit passively while little kids were being killed.”
“And this valiant stand, in the face of overwhelming odds and certain failure, this is what it is to be a hero?”
“As far as I can see, yup.”
The rumble of the plane’s engines filled the emptiness.
Abdul examined Griffin, taking in the shaking hand and the way he sat, hunched around his stomach wound. The man’s temperature had spiked into a low-grade fever. Perhaps they’d pulled the wrong man off active duty.
He thought about his little sister, Janani, forever missing. Just gone one day.
“Count me in,” Abdul said.
***
At McChord Air Force Base Griffin requisitioned an army-green two-and-a-half-ton truck. When Abdul climbed into the back, muttering something about being treated like cheap luggage, the suspension sagged and groaned in metallic complaint.
The truck took them to Redmond following the I-5 and I-405, ducking west along the WA520 for the final leg of the journey. In all, the trip took an hour and a half, and was finished in complete silence. When they arrived at M-Sof they found the property surrounded by NATU military vehicles and personnel. The sprawling grounds were huge, with scores of buildings littered across hundreds of acres. The center of the destruction seemed clustered around the ruins of three buildings at the heart of the facility. A dozen NATU Combat Chassis patrolled within sight.
/> As they approached, a NATU Marine backed by a Heavy Combat Chassis, waved the truck to a stop. Abdul leaped from the truck in a flash and the suspension whimpered in tired relief as it returned to something close to its original position. Griffin climbed from the cab, groaning. Are they even going to let me in? He wasn’t sure how much influence he had here.
The Marine, a Corporal, kept a nervous eye on Abdul. “ID and business,” he said to Griffin.
Griffin flashed his ID and said, “Special Investigations.”
The Corporal glanced at it. “Toronto. Long way from home. Business?”
“Way above your pay-grade,” interrupted Abdul. “Run along and get a real officer. Someone with a Sir.”
When the Marine turned a frosty eye in Abdul’s direction Griffin threw in, “Best do as he says. He outranks you and he’s grumpy.”
Five minutes later a Captain stood in front of them and two minutes after that they were into the M-Sof grounds.
The Captain, making no attempt to hide her curiosity, walked at Griffin’s side. “Special Investigations all the way from Toronto.” She nodded towards Abdul. “With a personal combat chassis no less. Interesting.”
Griffin grunted noncommittally and kept walking, surveying the grounds. The M-Sof facilities resembled a battleground. Large caliber machine-gun fire had chewed holes in walls, and only sand remained of the windows. One building, which looked to have once been an older red brick structure, lay in ruins. The once pristine soccer field had been mulched by helicopters and combat chassis. Media choppers hovered overhead.
Probably hoping to catch sight of body bags and grieving families, thought Griffin.
When he didn’t answer, she continued. “When we first arrived swarms of remote micro-drones went after anything that stepped on the grass. Several of my people were tasered and issued trespassing fines.” When Griffin glanced at her she kept a straight face. “Some weird things have been happening....”
“Such as?” Griffin asked.
“Such as not being told what’s going on here.” She gestured at the destruction surrounding them. “This was a military strike. There are Scan-piloted helicopters missing from two different nearby airports. Some of them are combat choppers. There are an unknown number of chassis missing from M-Sof as well. Well-armed Security models. And then...” she seemed to change her mind. “And then there’s you. You must have left Toronto the second the word was out. Maybe before.”
Keeping secrets wasn’t going to get him anywhere and his life would be a lot easier if this Captain gave him her full cooperation. “All this,” he waved his left hand, “may have nothing to do with why I’m here. The timing though, it’s a little suspect. I don’t like coincidences.”
“Me either. Go on.”
“I’m here investigating possible links between some M-Sof employees and black market crèches.”
“Not naming names?”
“Sorry, not yet.”
The Captain shrugged philosophically. “So you aren’t here because of the attack on M-Sof?”
“Was already on my way here when I heard about it. I get the impression you weren’t finished telling me about the weird things.”
“There’s a surprising lack of evidence. We suspect the facility’s garbage drones have been dumping everything on the ground into the incinerator. We think they’ve been at it since whoever attacked this place left. It screams inside job.”
Abdul gestured toward the red brick ruins. “What was this? It seems to have suffered the brunt of the assault.”
“Research and Development,” the Captain answered. “It’s going to take us weeks to sort through that rubble.”
Griffin stopped. In part because he wanted to take in the scope of the damage and in part because he was exhausted and his guts hurt. Abdul and the Captain stopped too.
“I don’t suppose anyone knows if there were Scans stored in the R&D building?” Griffin asked.
“No, but interesting you should ask. The rest of the facility was raided for Scan storage and transportation hardware. Perhaps someone wanted to carry an awful lot of Scans out of here.”
So if Lokner wasn’t dead, he might have been kidnapped instead? This got stranger and stranger. “Any idea how many Scans were taken?”
“Maybe none. Officially, aside from those inhabiting chassis, there were no Scans stored here at all. It’s possible the gear was taken to be used later or even to be sold on the black market.”
Griffin rubbed at his stomach and grimaced. He was here looking for a Scan of Mark Lokner. Someone with serious connections had stolen Scan transportation equipment and specifically destroyed this building. The obvious culprit was the one Griffin least wanted to think about. Did Lokner know I was coming? Was all this to cover his tracks?
“M-Sof had military contracts?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“Of course. Sole supplier of Scan storage gear for the NATU military.”
“And this was a military strike?”
“Not our military,” the Captain clarified. “These days, what corporation doesn’t have its own military force?”
She was right. Griffin felt the fight leak out of him like his femoral artery had been snipped. He sat on the nearest pile of red bricks and slumped forward, his head hanging. He stared at the ground. Dead ends were everywhere. There were no leads here. The tendons in his right hand vibrated like piano strings tuned too tight. He couldn’t make a fist for fear they’d snap.
He looked up at Abdul. The chassis was as expressionless as ever. Like talking to a damned wall. “I should still be in the hospital. If I’d stayed, like the doctors wanted, she’d—”
“Hindsight is merciless,” said Abdul. “And self-pity a useless indulgence. I should know.”
The Captain watched the exchange without comment.
Griffin nodded and sat straighter. His stomach didn’t like it at all. “Captain, I’m going to need you to collect any witnesses together for me. I have to talk to all of them.” It looked pointless, but he had to try.
Griffin paced around the Hilton Bellevue Hotel ground floor room. Redmond, while cooler than Dallas, was still far from pleasantly temperate.
Abdul stood by the door. “Security here is garbage.”
“It doesn’t matter. Everyone is dead. No one is threatening us.”
Griffin thought back over the failures of the day.
The few people he’d managed to question were ignorant of Scans being stored on the grounds, unaware Mark Lokner was still alive, and had no idea who attacked them. Useless.
The day had turned out to be yet another colossal failure.
How many is this?
“Go to bed,” said Abdul, standing guard at the door. “You need the rest. Tomorrow we’ll question those we couldn’t get to today.”
“Yeah? Why? This case is dead.”
“Only if you kill it.”
Griffin ignored that. “I can’t sleep. Lying down hurts too much.”
“Well if you don’t lie down you’re going fall down. I bet that’ll hurt more.”
Griffin stopped pacing and turned to face Abdul. “You’re right. I’m going to go get something that’ll keep me on my feet.”
“What, like methamphetamines?”
“Whatever I can find.”
“You’ll need a prescription,” said Abdul reasonably.
“I thought you were seventeen. What the hell is wrong with today’s youth? Anyway, I have a gun and a badge.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Forget it. Stay here. I’m going to the pharmacy around the corner. No one is after us, remember?”
***
Abdul didn’t want to wander the street any more than he had to. In here, no one stared at him. And Griffin was right. Everyone who might wish them harm was dead.
“Fine,” he said.
He watched Griffin exit the room. With three-hundred and sixty degree vision, he had no choice but to watch everything all the time. It was eno
ugh to drive a guy crazy. Take a brain from its flesh and bone cage, make a digital copy and then trap that copy in a mobile metal box. Bombard the new brain with information in formats it was never meant to recognize, force it to accept three-hundred and sixty degree visual input on a range of frequencies beyond what anything alive had ever seen. Rob the brain of the sensations to which it was accustomed and replace them with modeled chemical and hormonal input.
He knew what brand of air freshener the cleaning staff used and that the maid ate asparagus recently. It was all there, hanging in the air.
It was amazing every Scan alive wasn’t a bubbling maelstrom of psychoses, phobias, and emotional issues.
Or are they? Abdul remembered Marlene’s hesitancy to talk about her sanity. What if this was endemic to the reality of being a Scan? What if they were all crazy, doomed to an eternity of madness?
Abdul tried to laugh. He had to force it, and it sounded sad, lacking conviction. No more real than me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Sunday, August 5th, 2046
88 reviewed the stunning lack of fallout from her attack on M-Sof. It was too easy. It was like Lokner hadn’t been expecting a reprisal and that made no sense at all. Could he have assumed his economic warfare somehow crippled her?
No. Since launching her attack, her attention hadn’t wandered from M-Sof for even a second. She saw two options. Either Lokner was a fool, or he hadn’t been expecting an attack. Since she didn’t believe for a moment that he was foolish, the second option seemed more likely.
But why wouldn’t he expect a counterattack?
She saw one answer: because he hadn’t attacked her in the first place.
88 assigned a host of Mirrors to retrace the economic war M-Sof had waged with 88.5, following every bit of data back to its source, and report their findings. Their report took longer than expected. The data, they informed her, hadn’t been easy to follow. It had jumped from country to country, bouncing chaotically all over the world. Eventually they found a single point source.
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