Maybe she should go to the police. However, if she was arrested and her identity was made public for her grand theft of LyfeGen data, Whitney Brayson would no doubt attempt to silence her using any means necessary. Brayson could end it all before Monica even had the opportunity to tell people about the conspiracy she had uncovered.
But what had she really uncovered? Half of her story, her accusations, relied on instinct. Not hard data. Not unimpeachable evidence. She knew she must be right, but who would believe her?
She resolved to first try finding Audrey Cook and disseminating her story that way, hoping that public pressure alone would be enough for someone to act on the information.
If that failed, then Monica was willing to give herself up, tell the police everything, and leave her life behind.
Chapter 37
Cody Warren
December 4, 2063
Moonlight flickered off the rippling surface of the Chicago River as it wound through Homer Park.
The park was officially closed for the night, but that didn’t dissuade him from taking a seat on a bench facing the river. Besides, the disheveled man sleeping on a neighboring bench with a shopping cart carrying two full trash bags signaled to Cody that he was unlikely to be bothered on this particular crisp evening. If the homeless man had taken up residence here, it probably meant that cops weren’t too diligent about probing this part of the park.
Cody trusted the homeless man’s judgment. He needed a place to reflect and be alone.
There had been a time in his life when he would have happily jogged along the gravel paths winding through the park, between the basketball courts and the overgrown baseball fields. He used to yearn for the physical pain of a long run. It could distract him from the emotional scars from growing up under his mother’s care—or lack of it.
Alcohol and cigarettes had been his more recent choice of escape. He pulled out the carton from his coat pocket.
Cigarettes had become ungodly expensive due to excessive taxes designed to stem smoking. When marijuana became federally legalized, the government had decided to ban traditional tobacco products. That was also when Cody had decided to take up smoking. The ban lasted about four ineffectual years, before Congress was replaced and the law was, too.
Cody wondered at the government’s inclination toward prohibition, despite the repeated failure of prohibition policies throughout history. Alcohol, cigarettes, 3D printed weapons, manual car driving (unless for emergency purposes). And, each time, people had clung to arguments of freedom and liberty, more or less referencing the Constitution to support their cause.
He thought back to the day’s bombing. Homemade explosives had always been banned. The only individuals striving for the freedom to manufacture explosives were, for the most part, not the type of people to be trusted with such explosives. Besides, if they wanted to make and use explosives, no law prevented them from doing that. Homegrown terrorists would, and did, find a way.
He lit a cigarette. With a deep breath, he filled his lungs with warm smoke.
“Hey, man. Put that out. I can smell that shit all the way down here.”
For a moment, Cody looked around before realizing that the homeless man downwind from him was awake.
“Come on, asshole. That’s illegal.”
Scolded by a homeless man. Cody flicked the cigarette into the river and stood. “Fuck you.”
He walked along the gravel path, between the bare-limbed trees. The sky glowed a strange bluish purple where buildings rose up, a product of the ever-present light pollution of the city.
Even in the empty park, he couldn’t escape the city or its people. He yearned to leave, but had no means of making that happen. He wanted to get away from the ghost of his mother and the misfortune that had haunted him ever since he had left the humid warmth of Florida for this godforsaken, bone-chilling city.
Cody spat on the dead brown grass at his feet. The taste of pungent smoke clung inside his mouth.
Gods. All of them thought they were gods in this city. Everyone was so self-absorbed and concerned about their own existence. He hated them.
But today he had taken his first step toward escaping those people. Ridding himself of them. It was a small step and it had taken every last penny in his already starved savings account to acquire all the necessary wiring and components that couldn’t be salvaged from the broken repair bot that he had stolen from NanoTech. Hopefully, it was the type of investment that would pay off.
For a while, he walked aimlessly. He pushed through the crowds, taking pleasure in bumping into people and disrupting their jovial moods. He smirked each time his shoulders connected with them. One man in his early twenties teetered over and fell into another. They started to jostle each other with slurred expletives and shoves.
Cody watched for a moment as others joined the fray, physical lunges and punches all resulting from the brief moment of contact he had had with the first slobbering drunk.
He escaped past the clubs and into the seedy streets where establishments like Percy’s Gentlemen’s Club and Leather Horses made their home. Between the eager faces of boys barely old enough to be considered men, there walked other, worn faces. Men who knew no satisfaction in their lives outside of the brief moments that resulted after transferring money through a simple touch on their comm card in exchange for a private dance or an illicit kiss. He felt camaraderie with those men, the hopeless and the lonely.
Without enough money available through his comm card to purchase any services from a live stripper, he continued on. In fact, he no longer possessed enough money to make use of the virtual holostrippers in the cruddy private viewing chambers on Racine Avenue.
Despite his eagerness to leave Chicago, he had no discernible means to accomplish that feat. Tomorrow, he hoped, that might all change. But he had learned not to count on anything as ephemeral as hope and optimism.
***
In his aimless wandering, he unconsciously guided himself home. He surprised himself by walking straight past Kingsley’s. He didn’t even steal a glance through any of the windows.
As he trudged along the sidewalk, a couple of freezing raindrops landed on his face. He smelled the unmistakable presence of an oncoming storm. The electricity in the air made his skin tingle and he looked up at the night sky.
For a moment, the sound of pounding rain sounded distant, slowly approaching on this uncharacteristically warm December night. The slap of raindrops on pavement, concrete, and metal grew to a din while he stared up into the storm. The noise enveloped him as the freezing rain pattered against his coat and face. While the fibers of his coat were covered in a synthetic hydrophobic sealant, the cold water washed over his face and down his neck, seeping over his body.
He clenched his fists and closed his eyes.
The rains would wash everything away.
For this one moment, he forgot his hopelessness, forgot promises made and lost. The rain shielded him from the rest of the city even as he walked, passing others huddled under umbrellas. Cars whirred past, their tires grinding against the street, splashing through growing puddles.
All of it was invisible to him. All of it was just as invisible as the clouds above him. It all existed, but he didn’t care. He could escape and be free.
***
When he arrived home, he threw his coat over a chair. He drew out his comm card and looked up mag lev train tickets to California.
Then he considered leaving the country. He’d never been wealthy enough to consider a trip outside the USA before.
But now, he could leave everything behind. Maybe he’d go to Mexico. The exchange rate for dollars to pesos was still good enough for him to live comfortably when his initial payments came through.
If they came through.
He was being far too optimistic again. Just as quickly as his mood had inflated, it came crashing down. He opened his refrigerator and grabbed a can of High Life.
After clicking the aluminum tab, he took a s
ip. The beer relaxed him. He finished it off and threw the empty can into the sink amongst a scattered pile of other cans. With a flick, he turned on the faucet and watched the water run over the empty aluminum cans, rinsing away the drops of beer that might have escaped him.
Turning back to his card table, he swiped off the tools, wires, and scrap pieces of metal. They scattered across the floor, the jarring noise echoing in his tiny apartment.
After retrieving another beer, he slumped into a chair and stared down at the remnants of an upended maintenance bot. It lay broken on the floor. The bot’s visual sensors looked like beady black pupils on the shell of a massive beetle. When he had thoroughly drained his beer can, he threw it at the bot. He wanted a reaction from it, but it just lay there, staring back at him.
He got up from the table and kicked it. “Fuck you.” He kicked it again. “Fuck you!”
He stomped the bot until its hard shell cracked, then stumbled to his bed and fell into it. When his eyes closed, the world disappeared, but he could still smell the mustiness, the sweat that had settled into his sheets.
A sudden pounding on his door jolted his eyes open.
“Police! Open up!”
Cody shook himself as sober as he could, and stumbled to the door. “What do you want?”
“Open up immediately!”
He reached for the handle.
Before he could open it, the door flew open. He fell back, and his head cracked against the edge of the counter. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”
Hands forced him onto his belly and a knee plunged into his back. His arms were yanked violently backward and harsh metal cuffs secured his wrists, cutting off the circulation to his fingers.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Cody Warren,” a barking voice said. “You are under arrest on charges of terrorism.”
Chapter 38
Preston Carter
December 4, 2063
Preston sifted through news of the LyfeGen bombing on his comm card. His heart raced and his mind whirled. He set down his coffee and stared out the front window of his house.
Desperately, he wanted to do something, anything. But how could he risk the lives of Erik and Kyle?
A ceaseless stream of news bites, videos, and stories spewed from his comm card. Headlines announced death tolls as high as two hundred and fifty. He tried to mitigate some of his fears by reassuring himself that these projections were mere speculations. The media desperately grappled for market share, eschewing journalistic integrity for numbers and ad space. That knowledge didn’t calm the crashing of his heart against his ribcage. He could hardly think clearly.
He had “resigned” from LyfeGen but he couldn’t let go of the nagging obligation embedded within his conscience. Each attempt to ignore the instinct to dash down to LyfeGen only contributed to his mounting guilt.
With a swipe, he closed the news streams. He needed to know something, anything about the company, about the employees. He tried Meredith Saunders’s personal line. The call went straight to her voicemail.
He grappled with the decision of whom to call next. If he could, he would have dialed Shaw or Crane or Gifford. The Board might have answers for him but he didn’t have any of their personal numbers. One by one, he tried their business lines, but had no luck reaching any of them. Currently, all three lines were tied up or completely turned off. Preston suspected the men wanted to avoid the media for as long as possible.
There was one other person he could call. He flicked his finger through his personal contacts and selected the one man he simultaneously yearned and dreaded to talk to: Anil Nayak.
He put the comm card to his ear, listening to the ring and waiting. Maybe Anil didn’t have anything to do with the strokes. Maybe Anil could tell him what had happened and who was really hurt, and would say that no one else had to die. The ringing repeated several times before a tinny voice instructed him to leave a message.
With a frustrated grunt, he flung the comm card. The effort was wasted, as the card flipped in the air and fluttered to the ground less than ten feet away, where the kitchen tiles met the hardwood floor of the living room.
He retrieved the card and tried to calm himself. The news streams reported that the LyfeGen building had been evacuated due to a gas scare. After the explosion, everyone who hadn’t been injured had most certainly been sent home for the day. There would be no use calling company headquarters.
But he needed to do something.
Cooped up at home, he couldn’t stand to just eat dinner and lose himself in a good book later that evening. Faces and names from LyfeGen swirled through his mind, asking why he hadn’t done anything, why he hadn’t told anyone about Anil.
Preston flew down the stairs to the basement. Erik was focused on his clay sculpting, his raucous music blasting throughout the small room.
A quick anger rose up in Preston. How could Erik go on like this when so many people had been the victims of a terrorist attack? Preston terminated the music with a flick of his hand over the stereo control screen.
“I don’t know how you can do this right now.”
Erik looked up. His smock was smeared in splotches of wet and dry clay, and a smudge graced his cheek where he had negligently wiped his face with one of his clay-covered hands. “How can I do what?”
“People died today.”
“I know.” Erik’s face scrunched in a pained expression. “You know how I deal with this kind of thing.”
Preston turned away to collect himself. The misplaced anger began to subside.
“It’s just sinking in now, isn’t it?”
Preston said nothing.
Erik wiped his hands on a soiled towel, then took a couple of slow steps forward. “It’s okay. You’ve been so wrapped up in the news today. You just need a few minutes to let it all sink in.”
With deliberate slowness, Erik grabbed Preston’s hand and began to massage it.
Preston pulled Erik into his arms. He squeezed his eyes closed.
Erik returned the hug. Preston felt the cool wetness of the clay that remained on Erik’s hands and now crept into the back of his white Oxford shirt. He didn’t care, though. Erik’s embrace surpassed the value of any cotton-blend fabric.
“I can’t just stay here,” Preston said into Erik’s shoulder.
“I know.”
He pulled his face back, but his grasp remained tight around Erik. “I need to do something.”
“They fired you, you know.”
“But Joel didn’t. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s got to be stopped.”
Erik nodded. “I understand.”
“You and Kyle should leave the city.”
“I’ll call Elizabeth and Franklin. We’ll go over to their house for the night.”
Elizabeth, Erik’s cousin, lived an hour’s train ride away, in Downer’s Grove.
“You should come with us. Let them deal with their mess.”
Preston pulled away and rubbed his face with his sleeves. “I can’t. You know that.”
“Somebody’s got to do something and I know how much you want to be that someone. You don’t have to do anything, though. You aren’t responsible.”
“I feel responsible. I need to do this.”
Erik shook his head slowly. “I know I can’t convince you otherwise, but you have to remember you’re also responsible for your family.”
“I have a strong feeling that whoever sabotaged the Sustains and whoever’s responsible for the bombs are one and the same. I’ve got to stop them, whoever they are.”
“And you don’t think the police can do that?”
“I’m sure the police are doing what they can. But they’re too slow to act. They didn’t believe me when I told them I thought the Sustain updates had been tampered with. They thought I was trying to cover up my own mistakes, clean up my own record. And when I called today, trying to convince them that the bombing was connected to the othe
r deaths, they brushed me off like a boy crying wolf.”
“What about Audrey?” But Erik didn’t look convinced by his own suggestion.
“The press is too slow, too.” Never before would he have considered that statement. Not when the press had clamped down on Joel’s death and on Preston’s resignation. But, now, it was true.
Preston said goodbye with a quick kiss, then sprinted upstairs to Kyle’s room. His son was reading something from his comm card with a wild-eyed expression.
“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping now?”
“I’m just reading.”
Preston frowned, fearing that Kyle had become morbidly interested in the news about the LyfeGen attacks. He didn’t want Kyle to be ignorant of the problems in the world, but he also wanted the boy to have a normal childhood. He wanted him to be able to grow up without unreasonable fear. For a fleeting moment, he scolded himself for ever trying to raise the boy in the middle of a corrupt and crowded city like Chicago.
Kyle tapped the comm card. The projected words dimmed and he looked up at Preston. “It’s a book about a group of kids stuck on an island. They go really bad and pretty much kill each other. Have you read it?”
“Yes.” Preston approached Kyle’s bed. He supposed that Chicago wasn’t the only means by which Kyle would discover the darker side of humanity. “It’s kind of a depressing book.”
“I don’t think that’s the way things really work, though.”
Preston smiled. “Good.”
“You’re going to go out and fix this, aren’t you?”
“I’m going to try.”
“Good.”
He crouched beside Kyle’s bed and hugged him, drawing him in close. Kyle squirmed but wrapped his arms around his father, and Preston wondered how long it would be before the boy would stop hugging him. For now, he would treasure his son’s embrace.
“I love you,” Preston said.
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