by Emily Suvada
The self-destruct sequence’s timer is being displayed on every screen in Homestake, and every exit has been sealed. Down in the civilian levels, people are locked in their rooms. It looks like the ventilation system is running normally, but there’s an error code pinging from the air-recycling system.…
Cole coughs again, drawing in a wheezing breath, and my blood runs cold.
Anna’s head snaps up, looking between me and Cole. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” I say. If something has happened to the oxygen levels in this room, there’s a good chance it would only be affecting Cole. I’m not really here, so I’m not breathing, and Anna’s tech is running smoothly. She’ll have blood-oxygenation code in her panel to let her hold her breath for minutes. But Cole’s tech is a glitching, failing mess. He’s totally vulnerable.
“So figure it out,” Anna grunts, tugging furiously at the cover over the door’s sensor.
I nod, focusing on the bunker’s life-support systems. The error code pinging from the air-recycling system doesn’t tell me anything, but I follow it back to its source, weaving through security protocols, finally reaching a tiny hidden script deep in the bunker’s operating system.
Mutiny response.
My blood chills. The script is just a handful of lines hidden in the bunker’s core that executes a single command. The system is designed to shut down the fans when Cartaxus detects a mutiny. If the countdown isn’t stopped, it’ll switch the airflow from oxygen to carbon dioxide. The bunker is locked, and it’s going to suffocate everyone inside it.
“It’s killing them,” I breathe. “It’s already started. There’s no air.… They’re going to start pumping carbon dioxide.”
Cole’s face grows pale. “Everywhere?”
“Everywhere,” I say. “Every exit is closing—the elevators are blocked. They’re just going to wipe everyone out.”
“I knew it,” Anna says, growling. She finally wrenches the cover off the sensor, exposing the sparking wires underneath. “Cartaxus would rather turn this place into a tomb than lose control. I’m not getting trapped inside here. We’re gonna find a way out.”
I just sway, my head spinning. Cole, Anna, and Ziana are going to suffocate. I’ll be fine, but I can’t help them. I can’t break down the door. I can’t carry them to an exit if they pass out. “What can I do?” I ask, my voice rising with panic. “There has to be something.”
“Can’t you do some kind of hacker thing and get the air running again?” Anna asks, tugging out one of the wires in the door’s sensor controls. “I think we can blow this door and get out of this room, at least, but it’s gonna to take a few minutes.” She shoots a glance at Cole, who coughs into his hand. “We might not have that long.”
I nod, balling my hands into fists, scanning the code. It’s designed to be controlled remotely in the event of an uprising. It’s only able to be triggered or stopped by a list of encrypted passcodes, and I don’t have any of them. I try sending a virus at the server, but it doesn’t have any effect. The countdown is still ticking on the screen, the alarm blaring through the air. I read through the code again, my heart pounding. “I don’t think I can stop it, but it says this countdown is a chance for us to surrender.”
“To who?” Anna asks, grabbing two wires from the sensor, blowing a stray lock of hair from her eyes. She coughs for the first time, her lungs rasping.
“To Cartaxus,” I say. “There are half a dozen encrypted passcodes they can use to call this off remotely. Dax must have one of them—I’m going to try to get through to him and see if he can help.”
“Crick?” Anna snaps. “He’s running Cartaxus. Who do you think is doing this?”
My stomach tightens—she’s right. If Cartaxus triggered the bunker’s self-destruct, Dax must know about it. But I can’t believe he’d let tens of thousands of people die. He’s dangerous, and I definitely don’t trust him, but surely he’s not a killer.
“It’s worth a shot,” I say, dragging up my panel’s interface, trying to contact Dax. My vision flickers for a moment, but the connection doesn’t load. “Come on,” I mutter, calling again using Dax’s old personal code. Still nothing. Either he’s ignoring me, or he’s too busy to answer.…
I pause, pulling out of my comm interface, and check Cartaxus’s network.
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
This isn’t the only self-destruct in progress. They’re happening all around the world. “Uh, guys,” I say, staring at a stream of warnings scrolling across my vision. Anna is helping Cole strip back one of the wires. It looks like they’re trying to short-circuit the sensor and open the door. “Guys—I couldn’t get through to Dax, but this isn’t the only bunker they’re killing. There are fourteen more on countdown right now. This has to be a bluff.”
Cole coughs, his hands starting to shake, and looks back at me. “You think they’re doing this to send a message?”
“I don’t know,” I say, looking at the list of bunkers: São Paulo. Hanoi. Amsterdam. They’re spread across the globe. “But fifteen bunkers, that’s… that’s over a million people.”
“It’s a hell of a message is what it is,” Anna says, twisting the wires together. “Cartaxus has three billion in their bunkers. What’s a million people to them? I wouldn’t count on this being a bluff.” She slams the panel of the sensor back on again and grabs Cole’s arm, pulling him away. He’s doubled over now, pale, his eyes growing glassy. The sensor beside the door flashes red, a curl of smoke rising from the top. And then it explodes.
Thick black smoke billows out, broken shards of plastic and metal flying through the air. The door clicks, sliding open into the loading bay, letting in the sound of gunfire, screams, and shouted orders from the next room. The soldiers are standing on one side of the loading bay, facing down a row of gleaming, steel-legged gun-bots guarding the exits.
The self-destruct protocol hasn’t just switched off the air-recycling system. It’s turned the bunker’s weapons on its own citizens.
“Shit,” Anna hisses, scrambling back from the doorway, pressing herself flat against the wall. “I don’t know how we’re gonna get past those bots. That’s the only way out. We’re screwed.”
“This is chaos,” I say, staring out at the rows of soldiers, the skittering gun-bots. “This whole thing—the self-destruct command—it’s madness. It doesn’t make any sense that Cartaxus would do this. It’s sending a message to the civilians, but it’s not the message you think. The bunkers are supposed to be safe. That’s the only reason people let Cartaxus keep them locked up. They won’t accept being controlled if they know Cartaxus can kill them and their families with no warning or reason.”
“So it’s a bad move,” Anna yells, shrinking away as a bullet hits the doorway, sending out a spray of concrete. “Do you expect anything better from Crick?”
“Yeah, I do,” I say. “I really do. He’s smarter than this. I don’t think this is coming from him.”
Cole looks up at me. “This is going to ruin the civilians’ faith in Cartaxus.…”
I nod, my stomach tightening. “Which is exactly what the Viper wants.”
“Goddammit,” Anna says. “If this is the Viper, we’re dead. She’ll never call this off. She’s gonna make the civilians as angry as possible. Killing a million of them ought to do the trick.”
She dodges again as a spray of bullets flies through the door, followed by a slender metal canister that explodes as it hits the floor. A blinding light flashes suddenly, a roar echoing off the walls of tanks, and a cloud of thick gray smoke billows from the canister.
“The bots are trying to smoke us out,” Cole yells, coughing harder now, grabbing Ziana’s limp form from the stretcher. He lowers her to the floor and drags the collar of his shirt over his mouth and nose, then yanks off his jacket and drapes it over Ziana’s face. His skin is pale, beaded with sweat, the muscles in his forearm twitching. His body is starting to struggle again. He isn’t going to make it much long
er without more oxygen.
“I’m calling Agnes,” I say, tilting my focus into my cuff, bringing up my comm. Agnes hasn’t answered my messages for weeks, but I have to try. I send a call request, and her name flashes in my vision along with the message I’ve seen a hundred times.
Out of range.
I pull up the screen to send a text, drawing the words together frantically. Agnes. If you can stop this, you have to. Call me. Please.
“I couldn’t get through,” I say, squinting in the smoke.
“Send a message telling her we’re here,” Anna shouts back. “We have to be worth something to her. She had a box of files on us in the cabin—tell her we’re gonna die.”
I bring up the message interface again, but I don’t know if Agnes will care about Anna or Cole. She might want to protect me, but I’m not in danger right now. I’m only here through Veritas, and if the bunker self-destructs, I can just jump away. My eyes cut to Cole, curled over Ziana’s slumped form. Ziana still hasn’t woken up, and I’m starting to think she’s never going to, but she must be valuable to Agnes if she kept her hidden in that tank.
I found Ziana, I send. I know you need her. She’ll die if this doesn’t stop.
The message sends. Agnes’s name stays gray. Out of range. I open my mouth to yell to Cole and Anna that it didn’t work, but the blaring alarm in the ceiling cuts out suddenly, and the fire from the gun-bots falls silent. The countdown on the screen freezes, and a text flashes in my vision.
Hello there, Bobcat.
The breath leaves my lungs in a gasp. Until now, some deep part of me has been holding out hope that it wasn’t really Agnes behind all of this—that she wasn’t really the Viper. But the proof is there, in the frozen countdown on the screen and the deafening silence in the wake of the alarms. The vents in the ceiling start up. The oxygen is cycling again.
I close my eyes, letting out a slow breath. I guess I figured out how to get you to text me back.
Agnes doesn’t reply, but my vision flickers, and the outline of an elderly woman appears next to me. She must be using Veritas and an avatar to talk to me. Her features draw slowly into focus. Gray hair, keen eyes, and a smile that makes me think of soup and laughter and warm blankets. But that isn’t who she really is.
“You shouldn’t be here, Bobcat,” she says, squinting as she looks around. The smoke is thick in the air, Cole and Anna barely visible against the wall. “I’ve unlocked the exits here for your friends, but they’ll close soon. They should get out while they still can.”
“You have to stop this,” I say. “The people in these bunkers haven’t done anything. You can’t just let them die.”
“They haven’t done anything?” Agnes asks. She gestures to the tanks surrounding us. “They’ve been locking people in tanks. It’s disgusting. They’re doing the same thing at the other bunkers that are self-destructing now. Those people they’ve locked up are our friends.”
“And you’re going to kill them.”
She shakes her head, her eyes crinkling as she smiles. “The people locked in the tanks won’t suffocate, Bobcat. The genehackers will be free once this is over.”
My breath catches. She’s right. The self-destruct sequence won’t affect the fluid in the tanks that’s keeping the genehackers alive and unconscious. Only Cartaxus’s people will be killed. Tens of thousands of them will die, and the rest of the civilians will blame the genehackers for the attack.
This is just another part of Agnes’s plan to push us into a war.
“I know this is hard to understand,” Agnes says, “but Cartaxus has to be destroyed, and this is the only way to do it. This is difficult, but the sacrifices we’re making now will bring us peace and save billions of lives.”
“But you’re killing people.” I look down at Cole and Ziana. He’s still slumped over her, dragging in breaths now that the oxygen is back, but it won’t be running at the fourteen other bunkers around the world. “How can this possibly create peace?”
“Would you kill one person to save a million?” Agnes tilts her head. “Of course you would, Bobcat. You’ve killed before just to save yourself. You would have killed someone to save me. I’d do the same for you.”
“But that’s not what’s happening. This is just genocide.”
She shakes her head. “You’re smarter than this, Bobcat. Cartaxus is going to fall, and there’s going to be a war. There’s no avoiding it—you know it as well as I do. And if you know there’s going to be a war, what do you do?”
“You try to stop it,” I say, my voice breaking. I dig my fingernails into my palms, but it’s useless. “That’s what I’m doing now. I’m trying to stop a war that you’re about to cause. I trusted you, Yaya. You were the only person I still believed in.”
Her face softens. It almost looks like she truly cares, but I know she doesn’t. Otherwise she wouldn’t be doing this. “This war can’t be stopped, Bobcat,” she says. “Cartaxus’s civilians are too angry. If you know a war is going to happen, the only thing you can do is take control of it. That way, at least you can control the way it ends. I’m saving as many lives as I can. That’s what I’ve always tried to do. It’s guided everything I’ve created, and everything I’ve done. This isn’t easy for me, either, but I’m doing this to save us. One day, I hope you’ll understand.”
Her eyes glaze as though she’s going to leave, and my heart slams against my ribs. I can’t let her do this. There are fourteen bunkers full of people dying because of her. I have to stop her. I look around wildly for a way to change her mind. So far the only thing I know she wants is Ziana. The limp, unconscious girl lying on the floor beside Cole.
Agnes asked if I’d kill one person to save a million. Maybe I would.
“I’ll kill Ziana,” I blurt out.
Cole stiffens, still curled over Ziana, coughing in the smoke.
Agnes pauses just long enough to tell me the threat has hit a nerve, but then she smiles again. “No, I don’t think you will.”
“I will,” I say, my voice wavering with the threat of tears. “I swear it. She’s already hurt. If you don’t stop the self-destruct sequences in every bunker, I promise you, she’ll die.”
Agnes stares through the smoke, squinting at Cole. For a second I think she’s going to end the call, but then she turns to me. “What a long way you’ve come from the frightened girl I found in that cabin.”
I clench my hands into fists. “I guess I’m learning from you.”
Agnes’s face tightens. “Fine, Bobcat. I’ve stopped everything.”
I tilt my focus into my cuff, checking Cartaxus’s networks. It looks like the self-destruct sequences in all the bunkers have ended. She isn’t bluffing. The smoke begins to clear, and Agnes’s eyes drop to Cole and Ziana. She freezes for a second, then lets out a low chuckle.
“Agnes, listen to me,” I say. “I don’t know why you need Ziana, but whatever you’re planning—”
“Hush, now,” she says, cutting me off, pushing a wisp of gray hair from her forehead. “You’ve had your way, and I won’t go back on my word. I won’t start the sequences again. I’m not a monster, Bobcat. You’ll see in time that this was the only way to save us. But now I need to go.”
“But… I still have Ziana,” I say. She doesn’t respond. Her image blinks away, and the call drops out. I stare at Anna and Cole. “What the hell was that?”
“It looked like a success to me,” Anna says. “She shut down the self-destructs. Let’s get out of here.”
I frown. The only reason the self-destruct sequence stopped is because I threatened Ziana. Agnes only answered my comm when I said we’d found her. She clearly didn’t want to risk anything happening to her. At least, she cared until the smoke cleared. Until she saw her.
“We’re going to need to run for that hallway,” Cole says, still catching his breath, crouched by the door.
I stare at Ziana’s limp form, ice prickling through my veins, thinking of the girl locked in the tank at Cartax
us. The one who looked just like me. The girl without a full brain that Regina grew as a decoy. She looked just like Ziana did when Lachlan carried her out of Entropia: limp, lifeless, unresponsive.
“Guys,” I whisper. “I don’t think that’s Ziana.”
CHAPTER 31 JUN BEI
“JUN BEI!” MATO SHOUTS, SCRAMBLING out of the van. He slams his door, his footsteps crunching through the dirt behind me. My cuff picks up a pulse of energy from him—he’s using his mask to lock onto the Lurkers, sliding into their panels. He’ll launch the scythe if he thinks they’re going to attack me. “Jun Bei, wait!”
I spin around. “Do you trust me?”
His eyes widen, and he stumbles to a stop. “There are thousands of them. We just sent the code—”
“Do you trust me?”
He waits for a long moment before nodding. “Of course I do.”
“Then let me go.”
I don’t wait for a response. I turn back to the Lurkers and stride toward them, clenching my fists, punching down the fear spiking through me. The Lurkers turn to stare at me in unison, their faces still locked in sneers and scowls, but they already look different—hesitant and confused, like they can’t figure out how to respond to me. The scent of them hits me like a wave. Filth and smoke and rotting meat. Their hands are stained black with blood and dirt, their skin blistered from the sun. They look skinny, their lips chapped from dehydration. They won’t make it much longer out in the heat like this.
If the Panacea works, it won’t just give them back their minds—it’ll save their lives.
None of the Lurkers move to attack me as I walk closer, but the first row lets out a chorus of snarls. The drone whines above me, dropping closer, its cameras tilting to get a better view. Mato said it’s a Cartaxus drone, sent to get footage to show the civilians how dangerous life still is outside of Cartaxus’s protective walls. They’re probably hoping the horde will tear me to shreds. It would send a compelling message to the bunkers. I’m going to send them a message too—but it won’t be the one they expect.
