by Potts, Allie
“Are you going to tell me that you didn’t do something to me just then?” demanded Louis.
“Absolutely not,” scoffed Alan.
“I fired you and you wanted revenge. But it didn’t go as planned, did it? I survived your little trick.”
Alan roared with laughter. “Oh, Louis, you have such an inflated sense of self-importance.”
Louis growled, “I don't see the humor.”
“No?” Alan rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Of course you don't." The smile was replaced with bored indifference.
“Then let me explain this in a way you would understand. In order for me to worry about outdoing a rival, I would first have to recognize that an equal is in some way threatening my position. I have never been threatened by you. If I was, would I have ever agreed to upgrade you on that first day?"
"You expected the process would kill me."
"I accepted that outcome as well, but you surprised me. You may have made me reassess my opinion of you that day, but I still didn't view you as an equal or a true rival. You are as much of a rival to me as a sparrow hawk is to an eagle. Sure, they might both be at times interested in the same meat, but only the eagle has the strength and stamina to bring the larger game home.”
Louis's skin erupted into a sea of red. “So you were targeting my wife. What did Juliane do? Beg you to finish what she started in the lab? I can guess what she promised you in return.” Louis leered at Juliane.
Juliane reminded herself how terrible the loss of the private connection could be. Louis was only lashing out because he didn’t know how to control its loss. She wasn't his enemy, and if he would just calm down enough to see that, they could still walk out of this room. No one had to get hurt.
“Between you and me, you aren’t getting the better end of the bargain," continued Louis. "I've had better.”
A valve located behind Sarah blew, hurtling a piece of plastic into the room. Sarah called out as she was struck in the side. A hiss of steam escaped while backup controls on the equipment powered into their fail-safe mode. Juliane wished she could similarly lash out. Juliane felt her skin tingle and realized that she had called forth another electric web across her palms.
“I don’t think that is a good idea, my dear,” noted Alan. “The man is outfitted in an explosive belt. As much as I’ve always loved that brain of yours, I have no wish to see it on the outside.”
Juliane flicked her fingers and the web was dispelled.
“That’s better.” Returning his attention to Louis, Alan continued.
“You still have it wrong. Neither Juliane nor I ever plotted against your precious wife. Elena had already ensured herself a lifetime of suffering when she married you. Why should I harbor her any further ill will?”
“Then what exactly did you do? Answer me honestly, and I will leave this room, taking my vest and the detonator with me.”
“I know you would like to believe otherwise, but I’m really not a terrible person. You clearly had too much to drink that day. All I did was introduce a program which would redirect the existing alcohol in your bloodstream so that you didn’t make a complete fool of yourself. It is that simple.”
“You didn’t want me to be drunk?” Louis sounded incredulous. Juliane had to agree with his assessment.
“Seeing you in the news, happy, sad, or otherwise distracts Juliane, and I want her focused. The way you were acting was going to get you noticed by the gossip channels, which could then undo weeks of progress. That could be all the reason I needed, or maybe I did it just to prove I could. You should know now that I enjoy experimenting. In either case, there was nothing nefarious behind my motivation.
“But you interpreted my gift as a challenge. Rather than slowing down, you eventually outpaced my program. You passed out while driving, and we all know where you were when you woke up. Only by then, my program had caught up and the alcohol was out of your bloodstream. There. Mystery solved.
"You, Louis, you are the sole cause of your wife’s death. Shake your fist at technology all you want, but technology could have actually saved her. She's gone because of your irresponsibility, and no amount of exploding labs will bring her back.”
The red sheen of Louis’s face had burnt out and only the color of gray ash remained. He looked down toward his belt and scanned the room. With meticulous care, he casually covered the belt with his shirt and returned the detonator to his pocket.
Louis’s shoulders dropped, and he suddenly looked as if he had aged twenty years as he turned toward the board members. “I made a deal. Truth for a sporting chance. If I am not in the room with you when the explosives detonate, then you will still have a chance to make your way back to the surface.”
Louis turned and made his way back toward the elevator shaft. Juliane struggled to run after him, but her wrist was still held in a manacle-like grip.
“Louis! Please! You don't have to do this,” Juliane called out.
Louis turned as he reached the doors. His eyes met hers, and in that brief moment, she saw all that might have been drown under an infinite sea of regret and sadness.
Forty
“So now what?” asked Sarah.
“We wait,” replied Alan.
“What? Down here? Did you not hear Louis say that several bombs are going to go off any minute?”
“There’s no safer spot to be. Why do you think I worked so hard to get us all down here?”
“I understand why you and I are here, but why did you invite him down here too? I thought the plan was to drive Louis to those anti-tech serpentine nut jobs and make a few billion as the ACI tanks. Personally, I—for one—would prefer not to be blown to bits before I can spend my fortune."
“Juliane needed to hear the truth. And you heard Louis; we won't be blown to bits down here. We have a sporting chance.”
“Being buried alive isn't high on my to-do list either. Why put us at risk?” Sarah asked.
“Were you not paying attention?”
“To what, you professing your undying love for Juliane? Oh yes, that was made perfectly clear."
Alan snorted. “To the presentations today.”
“What about them?”
“We are in a room filled with several personal cryogenic chambers suitable for space missions. There are enough for all of us. All we have to do now is take a nap. It's that simple.”
“We don’t know that Eithan’s little toys work.”
“They work,” stated Eithan.
“You see. Nothing to worry about. Now, how about you pick out which one would suit you first? I don’t imagine our friends upstairs will allow us too much more time to argue.”
Sarah glanced toward the elevator doors with longing in her eyes.
“An elevator is probably not where you want to be when the explosion begins.”
Her forehead creased while she considered his words. She rubbed the darkened spot in its center before shrugging and ascending up the dais. She traced her fingers along the length of the canister before stepping in. Others began following her cue. Alan stepped into a cylinder as the lights flickered. A sound like thunder could be heard above. Alan blew her a kiss as his lid closed and the LED showed the device activating. Soon, only Damien—who had assisted placing a still vegetative Durham into a tube—and Juliane were left.
The ground began to shake as additional devices were detonated above. Bits of ceiling tile began to drop like autumn leaves. Damien placed his hand on the side panel of one of the last cylinders. “There isn’t much time, Juliane.”
"You said you had everything under control," she said.
"And it is," said Damien, extending his hand.
Juliane took one last look at the elevator door before accepting his hand and climbing into the tube. Damien's hands flew across the control panel. Within seconds, her toes and fingertips were numb. Damien glanced down at her and smiled, like a father easing his child into bed. “It's just a short nap.
Everything will be exactly as it should when you wake up.”
“But what about you?” she asked.
“You don’t need to worry about me. I’ve taken care of everything.”
Juliane could no longer feel her legs beyond her knees. Her arms were reduced to icy weights pulling her body down, but at the same time, she felt as if she were floating. Everything seemed to slow down around her. More debris came tumbling down, but to Juliane it moved like a bubble in the breeze.
She found herself thinking of Alan’s explanation for the events at the factory. The pieces simply did not fit.
She couldn’t care what the others thought of her, but couldn’t bear that Damien might view her as being less than she knew she was. “Damien, you don’t believe that I ordered all those people dead, do you?”
Damien smiled and stroked her cheek with a finger like a father would a daughter as the dais swayed. “I know you didn’t.”
Juliane sighed. She felt an icy chill up her spine as more of her body was put to sleep. A thought entered into her mind like a pebble in a shoe. “But how?” she asked.
“How?”
“How do you know?”
Damien smiled. “I know because I was the one who gave that order.”
Juliane felt tendrils of fog enter her thoughts. Something Damien had just said was wrong. Very wrong. She felt she should be shocked right now. She felt she should be pulling away from his touch, but she could no longer move her head.
“Why?” she whispered.
“The factory had served its purpose. Loose ends had to be eliminated.”
She mumbled a sound, her mouth no longer functioning.
“Shh. Remember it’s always easiest if you don’t fight these things. I am truly sorry that you had to go through all that, but I had instructed Alan to delay. It made it so much easier to convince you all to enter the tubes willingly. However, I am surprised you accepted Alan’s story so readily. I had thought that you, compared to all the others, would be least likely to doubt yourself. But it is for the best. As it was once said, ‘It's okay for people to respect you, but when they fear you, you know you have the power.’ And you, my dear, wear power so beautifully.”
The tiny grain of Juliane still awake wanted to scream and run away, but neither option was available. Damien returned his attention to the side panel. The sound of gas escaping could be heard as a glass screen began to inch over her face. Even covered, she could still make out Damien’s words thundering in between crashes of destruction.
“Sometimes the only way to save something is to break it down to its foundation and rebuild; give it a fresh start. I believe that's a concept you are familiar with. It has become clear to me for some time that humanity was on a collision course with self-destruction. Alan's a purest. He believes that the future of the world should be decided purely by the survival of the fittest. His belief might be a tad extreme, but that doesn't mean he is entirely wrong. We accelerated the process while there was still a hope for our future. I chose each of you for a very special reason. You each represent the best minds in your respective fields. When you wake up, you will be like Gods to the children left behind." His hand brushed errant hair away from her forehead. "And there will be children left behind, thanks to you. We will be able to make real the vision of the future we all share. And I will be there to guide you all along the way.”
The lights in the room flashed as fixtures fell from the ceiling. The dais shook as if the earth was readying itself to swallow them whole. Damien could no longer be seen. Juliane was now completely sealed within the cryogenic unit. The lights flashed one more time before only a few emergency lights remained.
Juliane hung onto consciousness by a fingernail. Everyone around her had gone mad. Louis, Alan, and now Damien. Betty hadn't been paranoid. She had been the only sane person in Juliane's life. Damien was wrong. He hadn't recruited all the best minds. He hadn't recruited Betty.
She heard another sound whirling within her tube and saw a mechanical arm extend out over her forehead. The motion of a mechanical finger descending brought her consciousness back to the forefront. Juliane suddenly remembered Eithan’s nanobots. They were supposed to be beneficial, but could she really trust anything produced by Damien's group? Alan had done enough damage from hacking her mind. Could she risk her body being hacked as well? She willed her body to move. This time, her will wasn't enough. Her body betrayed her, remaining stationary in the cylinder's cradle.
The pain as the needle penetrated her skin was like nothing she had ever imagined. Her eyes burned, but tears would not form and no sounds escaped her throat.
She had to find the strength to reject the nanobots just as she had once instructed Betty to do during the test in the emulator. By now, thousands of the tiny machines must be navigating her bloodstream. Her thoughts grew cloudy and more difficult to form. She was powerless to fight their onslaught.
Then, there was nothing. No pain, no worries, and no heartache. Each of her senses departed, and Juliane’s consciousness was left floating like a disembodied presence expanding into the vacuum of space.
"I'm so sorry," Betty's voice whispered. A photograph of a smiling child briefly came into focus. Powerless. An equation. Out of time.
"Coffee?" asked Chad. Energy. Fountain of Youth. Hope.
Light. A web of light shown through the darkness. Her mind instinctively floated closer. Feelings of warmth, innocence, and stubborn determination—the emotions of a child—wrapped around her consciousness like a net, preventing her mind from drifting further into the nothing. Thank you, Betty. I'll try to be worthy. She clung to the net's webbing and pulled from its strength just enough to solidify her thoughts. She was not powerless, but she could ensure the nanobots were.
Juliane summoned the will for one last command, pulling energy from the machines. It wouldn't be enough to halt the cryogenic process, but at least her mind would be her own when she woke. This time, she wouldn't start over; she'd finish what she started.
End of Book One: The Fair & Foul
Acknowledgements
Just like raising a child, creating a book takes a village. Special thanks go to Lora Denton, Libby Green, and Kristen Pham for taking the time to read through my early drafts, and more importantly, continuing to talk to me afterwards. I have re-read those early drafts. You each deserve a medal. To Tony Miltich for dropping everything at a moment’s notice to help locate missing words. To my mom, Ann Jordan, for dropping by with a hand written review after reading an early printing from cover to cover because short notes on the novel’s pages simply wouldn’t do. It is gestures like that which prove little things in life have the biggest impact. To the hundreds of bloggers on WordPress who have encouraged me by sharing their own stories and experiences, and to my family and friends for continuing to be the reason I write a single word.
I would also like to thank readers like you, willing to take a chance with small to medium press and / or independent publications. The only way we can compete is through reviews and word of mouth. If you have enjoyed this novel, I encourage you to contact me, leave a review, or tell a friend.
Other titles by Allie Potts:
An Uncertain Faith
About the Author
Allie Potts, born in Rochester Minnesota was moved to North Carolina at a very early age by parents eager to escape to a more forgiving climate. She has since continued to call North Carolina home, settling in Raleigh, halfway between the mountains and the sea, in 1998.
When not finding ways to squeeze in 72 hours into a 24 day or chasing after children determined to turn her hair gray before its time, Allie enjoys stories of all kinds. Her favorites, whether they are novels, film, or simply shared aloud with friends, are usually accompanied with a glass of wine or cup of coffee in hand.
A self-professed science geek and book nerd, Allie also writes at www.alliepottswrites.com.
Feeling social? You can contact Allie at alliepottswrites at
gmail dot com or follow Allie on Twitter @alliepottswrite, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/alliepottswrites or on Google+.
Table of Contents
Front Matter
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
Thirty Five
Thirty Six
Thirty Seven
Thirty Eight
Thirty Nine
Forty
