Defenders

by Will McIntosh

  It was deadly silent save for the whistle of the wind. They were close to the ground, quickly growing closer. Pine trees hurtled by just below. Lila realized they were moving much faster than they seemed.

  Her skin was throbbing all over. They’d been just on the edge of the heater’s range. Besides her ring finger and feet, she felt like she had a very bad sunburn.

  They cleared the line of trees; Dad tried to bank so they would drop along the length of a cornfield. Lila hadn’t known you could grow corn in Georgia. For some reason the thought made her laugh hysterically. She tried to stifle the laugh, but that only made it worse. They were going down, about to crash, and she couldn’t stop laughing.

  The ultralight was canted, the left wing lower than the right. When the left wing was about a dozen feet above the corn, Lila twisted the ring to activate the crash suits.

  She had the barest instant to see the ultralight burst apart, then the suit inflated around her, pushing her flat, pinning her arms at her sides. She was turning in the air, head over heels, the blue sky framed inside the tight rectangle of vision the suit afforded, then trees, then the startlingly green cornfield, and blue sky again.

  Hitting the ground was much worse than Lila had anticipated. It felt like she was being beaten with a steel bar as she slammed into the ground again and again. Then she rolled and skidded, her momentum carrying her farther than she thought possible.

  Finally, she stopped rolling and lay still. She stared up at the sky, the clouds drifting by.

  High above, a lone Luyten flew by. Although it was high, it was surely not eight miles high, so it was reading her thoughts at this very moment, perhaps considering whether it was worth the trouble to land and finish them.

  It continued on, maybe because they were only civilians, weaponless, lying in a field scattered with wreckage.

  “Lila?”

  She had no idea how to deactivate a crash suit. When she’d seen them on the news, the people inside were always surrounded by concerned medical personnel who knew how to deflate them.

  Lila felt around with her fingers, the only part of her body she could move. They came in contact with a bulb. She squeezed it three or four times, and suddenly the suit hissed and settled around her in a plastic puddle. She pushed it off and struggled to her knees.

  Dad was heading toward her, limping deeply, a purple bruise rising on his cheek. “Holy shit,” he said. “Holy shit, Lila.” He looked at his hands: His palms were covered with angry red sores. “Holy shit.”

  “Do you know how far we are from Atlanta?” Lila asked.

  Dad nodded. “It was in sight when the Luyten showed. Maybe ten or fifteen miles to the suburbs?” He pointed to the right. “The interstate is that way. Maybe we can hitch a ride with some of the refugees.”

  Lila struggled to her feet. She expected to feel lancing pain in one limb or another, but besides her burning skin and a lot of soreness and a few bumps and bruises, she was all right.

  13

  Oliver Bowen

  March 11, 2030 (eight months later). Easter Island.

  As they stepped onto the ramp leading off the submarine, Oliver found the fresh, salty breeze delightful. They’d been on the sub for only four days, but it had felt like a month. At first all Oliver could see were the rocks of a jetty. He climbed a ramp, and as he cleared the rise he saw palm trees scattered on an open, rocky plain sloping upward. A handful of horses were grazing in the shadow of a line of a dozen or more enormous stone figures. Oliver recognized the long heads; the sharp, angular, features; the shelflike brows and unreadable expressions.

  “Easter Island. Rapa Nui.” He’d always wanted to visit, never found the time.

  Off to his left, close to shore, Oliver spotted a group of crisply uniformed officers disappearing down a stairway leading underground. There was no military base on Rapa Nui as far as he knew. It must have been constructed since the invasion. Closer to the water, a large forklift was carrying Five and his entire enclosure. The forklift set Five on a raised platform, which sank slowly into the ground until Five disappeared.

  “Dr. Bowen? This way, please.” A woman with gray crew-cut hair, wearing a black suit, sidearm, clearly CIA security, touched his elbow. She steered him toward the staircase that led under the island.

  Oliver followed the agent down the steps, stunned as the size and scope of this operation unfolded before him. He was descending into an immense open space. The cavernous room was bisected into dozens of smaller spaces, separated by transparent material that gave the facility an unnerving sense of weightlessness. Hundreds of people were visible, hurrying about, seemingly walking on air.

  “What is this place?”

  “I’m taking you to a briefing, sir,” the agent said.

  “It must have cost billions to construct this facility.”

  “You’re only seeing a fraction of it. It covers most of the space under the island.”

  The far walls were raw stone. Oliver watched as someone stepped onto a small framed platform, grasped the handles jutting from its frame, and shot out of sight. He was led into a room along one wall—one of the few fully enclosed rooms. A thin black woman who looked about sixteen met him at the door.

  “Dr. Bowen, I’m Dominique Wiewall. I head up the biological side of the defenders project.” She had a lilting Caribbean accent and spoke quickly, breathlessly. “I’ll be providing your orientation, which, if you don’t mind, I’d like to start straightaway.”

  Oliver nodded. “Please, I’m dying to know what’s going on here.”

  Wiewall motioned for Oliver to take a seat at a circular meeting table in what looked to be her office. There was a computer station in one corner, a dozen or so small wood carvings of Moai along a single shelf, and a big framed poster of a gorgeous rain forest. Along the bottom of the poster, Island Rain was printed in teal cursive lettering.

  As they sat at the meeting table, an impressive three-dimensional display of the island materialized above it.

  “Rapa Nui is a volcanic island,” Wiewall said without any preamble, still speaking rapidly. “The underground is riddled with caves—lave tubes created by three volcanoes that formed the island. The original residents lived in these caves in the years before they died off. The caves, and the incredibly remote location of the island, made it a perfect base of operations.”

  A red line appeared, surrounding the island.

  “Elaborate precautions have been taken to keep the Luyten from becoming aware of this project. No one knows the details of the project except those on the island, and anyone who comes to the island, stays.”

  “You mean, I have to stay here indefinitely?” Oliver thought of Vanessa, then reminded himself: Vanessa was a weakness. No weakness.

  Wiewall nodded. “You will. If all goes well, though, that should not be long. Maybe three months. The project is in its final stages.” Her head was nearly shaved, leaving only a sheen of tight black curls outlining the elegant shape of her skull. Come to think of it, most of the people Oliver had seen had severe haircuts, as if time was too precious to devote to hair grooming.

  He couldn’t imagine what they were working on, what sort of weapon would justify expending such massive resources. For the first time in a year, he felt a flicker of hope.

  It’s a desperate, last-ditch effort.

  Oliver had almost forgotten Five was there. What is? he thought. Five would already know the details.

  Five didn’t answer.

  The display changed, from Easter Island to an enlarged map of a human neural network, the receptor sites for the various neurotransmitters highlighted with different colors.

  “I know you have a background in psychology, so I’ll skip the preliminaries,” Wiewall said. “We’ve studied Luyten physiology using corpses salvaged from battles. Based on those examinations, our medical experts think the Luyten’s telepathic ability relies on the presence of the neurotransmitter serotonin.”

  Oliver nodded. That made sense. Se
rotonin was what made humans feel human, what made them feel love, sexual desire, awareness, and interest in the world.

  In the display, the serotonin receptor sites vanished. “If there is no serotonin present, the Luyten can’t read the target, and their telepathic advantage is neutralized.”

  “If you removed people’s serotonin receptors, they’d be in a catatonic state, so there’d be no mind to read.”

  Wiewall nodded. “That’s true. But we haven’t removed serotonin receptors from human brains; we’ve designed a brain that functions without serotonin.”

  “Designed a brain?” All Oliver could think was Wiewall was speaking metaphorically. “You mean some sort of advanced AI?”

  The display changed to another neural network. It was organic, but utterly unrecognizable to Oliver.

  “The world’s superpowers have all had well-funded genetic engineering programs since the beginning of the century. Soon after the Luyten invaded, they began pooling their resources and knowledge.”

  Oliver leaned forward, examined the display more closely. “But if you excised the entire serotonin system, you’d have a domino effect. You’d have to change everything.”

  “We did. And more.” She stood, motioned Oliver toward the door. As Oliver stood, Wiewall paused, then smiled for the first time. “I have to admit, I’m looking forward to seeing your reaction to this. Most of us have been here the whole time, and we’ve gotten used to seeing them.”

  “Them?”

  Wiewall’s smile broadened. She led him out, down a long transparent hallway, into a lift that took them down six, seven, eight stories.

  “I was sure you’d be looking toward AI technology,” Oliver said as they dropped. “That seemed the obvious direction; what little success we’ve had has involved drone and robot technology.”

  Wiewall shook her head. “That would have been a dead end. Robots are stupid in all the ways that matter in this war. Luyten can’t read their minds, sure, but they don’t have to, because robots can’t develop independent battle plans, can’t come up with creative strategies without human assistance. They can’t react to anything new the Luyten throw their way.”

  Transparent dividers were suddenly replaced by thick concrete walls.

  They’d engineered humans with utterly different neurological functioning? Oliver couldn’t quite buy that. It just couldn’t be right. He kept expecting Five to weigh in, but Five stayed silent.

  They slowed to a stop; the lift door opened.

  Oliver clutched the wall, his knees jelly, his heart hammering fiercely.

  They couldn’t possibly be real.

  “They won’t hurt you,” Wiewall said. Her voice seemed to be coming from a distance, although she was still right beside him.

  They were sixteen feet tall at least, walking on three legs, ghost white, their huge faces obviously inspired by the statues ringing the island.

  “How is this possible?”

  The creatures were engaged in a training exercise in an enormous space that must have been a half mile square. Their movements were fluid, athletic, assured; the third leg allowed them to run incredibly fast—faster than a Luyten.

  It’s not a footrace, Five said. There was something in his voice. It was tentative. Afraid, even. They wasted their time bringing me here.

  Why had they brought Five? Oliver had been too mesmerized by the giant warriors to consider the question until Five brought it up.

  They want to find out if I can read them.

  “Can you?” Oliver asked aloud.

  Wiewall glanced at him. “Can I what?”

  “Sorry. I was speaking to the Luyten. I don’t know why I do it out loud.”

  “It’s speaking to you right now?” Her voice held a tinge of awe.

  “That’s right.”

  The giants were carrying standard weapons: bayoneted assault rifles, grenade launchers, all enlarged to match their massive scale. On top of this there were what appeared to be blades running down the sides of their arms and legs for hand-to-hand combat. Other hardware was attached to their skintight black uniforms at their forearms, like it was a part of their anatomy. In that regard, it reminded Oliver of Luyten weaponry.

  “The weapons bulging from their forearms…” Oliver began.

  “Their arms and legs are artificial, from the joints down. That not only made them simpler to design from a genetic perspective; it makes them stronger and faster. They control their artificial limbs entirely through thought.”

  Oliver watched them for a moment. “Their movements are so fluid.”

  Wiewall smiled like a proud parent. Then the smile was gone, and she was all business again.

  “Notice they only have three fingers. Our ergonomics team determined that was maximally efficient for handling weapons.”

  Their fingers looked like powerful claws, thick and long. And they were fleshy—not at all mechanical-looking. “Are these all of them?” Oliver asked. He counted twenty.

  “So far we have two thousand. If they’re effective against the Luyten, the plan is to produce several million at facilities already being constructed under cities around the world. No one involved in building the facilities has any idea what they’re for; they’re working from blueprints.”

  Oliver nodded. It was an incredibly ambitious undertaking. The cities involved must be diverting a substantial percentage of their resources to the construction.

  Do you know what she’s thinking about you right now? She thinks you’re bizarre. You never make eye contact. You fidget. Just now, you were digging at your scalp with a fingernail while speaking to her.

  Willing himself to ignore the comment, he turned to Wiewall and asked, “How will you convey battle instructions to the—what are they called?”

  She wonders if you’re autistic.

  “Defenders. That’s the point—humans can’t know the defenders’ intentions; otherwise the Luyten will as well. They fight independently. They develop their own battle plans.”

  He gawked at Wiewall. “You’re kidding me.”

  “They don’t look it, but they’re extremely intelligent. They’re epigenetically primed to learn extremely rapidly. They learn to speak in a matter of weeks. Then, when they’re not here training, they’re in a classroom studying warfare. All they know is military strategy and tactics. They don’t sleep, so their training is almost nonstop.”

  Oliver didn’t know what he’d been expecting. An airborne virus that affected Luyten but not humans. A new superweapon. He hadn’t expected this. If the Luyten could read the defenders’ minds, though, they’d be nothing but bigger targets.

  “You said your medical people think the Luyten’s ability won’t work without serotonin present. How confident are they?”

  Wiewall paused, then, in a careful, deliberate tone, said, “Some are more confident than others.”

  You just scratched inside your nose. Yes, it was just barely inside, but it doesn’t matter. Do you know how uncomfortable you just made her? Do you see how she’s averting her eyes? It drove Vanessa crazy when you did things like that in public.

  Oliver squeezed his eyes closed, knowing that would only make him seem odder to Wiewall, but needing a moment to regain his composure.

  “Five isn’t going to help you,” he said, opening his eyes. “He understands what the stakes are. He’ll die first.”

  The young scientist’s expression did not instill confidence. “I was told that wasn’t my concern.”

  “Whose concern is it? Mine? Because I’m telling you right now, Five may talk to me, but believe me, he doesn’t say anything useful.”

  Dr. Wiewall swallowed. She was blinking rapidly, clearly uneasy. “I’m not sure what to say. If there’s a plan, there may be a good reason no one in the Luyten’s range is aware of it. Or maybe they’re just hoping the Luyten will slip up. I don’t know.”

  Chuckling morosely, Oliver looked at the ceiling. “If that’s the plan, they don’t know Five very well.”

&n
bsp; 14

  Oliver Bowen

  March 12, 2030. Easter Island.

  Hands on hips, his breathing slightly labored from the walk up the sloping field, Oliver took in the line of statues. Moai, the locals called them. They were watching the horizon, their faces resolute. Waiting. At least that’s how it looked to Oliver, now that he’d seen the defenders. The resemblance was uncanny. How the geneticists had engineered that resemblance, Oliver could not imagine.

  “What do you know,” Oliver said aloud. “Maybe the Hulk and Spider-Man showed up after all.”

  No response. Oliver thought he knew why Five had gone mute: He didn’t want to risk tipping off Oliver about whether he could read the defenders.

  So much had changed since Oliver learned of the defenders. Five had been right—before, Oliver had had very little hope. There had seemed no reason for hope. Humanity had been whittled from seven billion to under four in a matter of three years. They were surrounded by the Luyten, crowded into the cities, starved of food and resources. All that seemed left was for the Luyten to wipe out the cities.

  “Dr. Bowen.” It was Wiewall, on the comm he’d been provided.

  “Yes, ma’am?” he replied, then winced as he heard how stupid he sounded calling her ma’am. His attempts at levity usually fell flat.

  “You’d better start heading back. They’re bringing the Luyten down in a few minutes.”

  “On my way.”

  Oliver took one last look at the Moai, and realized some were the same height as the defenders.

  Wiewall and a CIA security guy who’d introduced himself as Ski led Oliver into what looked to be a medical bay where a lone defender waited, sitting against the wall, one of its three legs canted. The defender watched them enter but otherwise didn’t acknowledge them. Oliver wondered if it had a name, if it would know what to do if Oliver went over and introduced himself. Its expression was as unreadable as the Moai.

  As they waited, others filed into the room, including the commander of the operation, Colonel Willis. Oliver had met him earlier, thought he seemed like a bright, decent guy.