Kill Switch

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Rudy!” I yelled. “Stop it. What the fuck are you doing?”

  Rudy laughed. A brutal, vicious laugh. It was his face, his voice, but that laugh did not belong to my friend. And it occurred to me that his accent was wrong. American without the cultured edge of the Mexico City in which he was raised.

  “You’re a piece of shit, Ledger,” he said, spitting the words as he fought to push the cart out of the way so he could get to me.

  I was so weak, so clumsy, that I couldn’t rise to fight him. My knees wouldn’t hold me and I collapsed down as I tried to rise, but I used the momentum of that to kick out and ram the table into his thighs. He staggered back and then grabbed at the lip of the table to wrench it out of his way.

  Was this a nightmare? If so, then I was free to act, to fight, to destroy this distorted version of my best friend.

  Or was it real and was Rudy the victim of some kind of psychic fracture? Had he been doped? And … how could I save myself without hurting him?

  I yelled for help as loud as I could.

  The table went crashing onto its side as Rudy forced himself past it to get to me. The cane rose again and this time I had nowhere else to go. There wasn’t enough clearance for me to roll under the cumbersome hospital bed. I was in a narrow chute formed by the bed and the wall, with the night table behind me and nothing to use as a shield.

  “Fucking die!” bellowed Rudy as he brought the cane down again.

  What choice did I have?

  Really, what choice?

  The heavy silver wolf flashed toward me, driven by Rudy’s strength and his rage. And I kicked him in his bad leg.

  I kicked him hard.

  There was a sound like a gunshot. Brittle, huge, terrible.

  His leg buckled backward, folding in a sickening way. The cane cracked me on the bunched muscles of my shoulder. Rudy fell, his face twisted—not with the agony he had to feel, but with hate. Raw, unfiltered hate. He crashed against the window, striking the heavy glass with one elbow and the side of his head. I rose up to one knee and tore the cane out of his hand, flung it across the room, tried to catch him as he fell.

  Rudy lunged forward and tried to bite me.

  Bite. Me.

  His teeth snapped shut an inch from my Adam’s apple as I reeled backward.

  “Stop it,” I begged. He punched me in the chest, the ribs, the face. He grabbed my hair and tried to pull me toward his snapping white teeth.

  I ducked forward, dropping my chin, and head-butted him, smashing his nose, hearing the cartilage snap, feeling blood burst against my skin. Rudy sagged backward and I whipped a flat palm across his jaw that snapped his head around. His eyes flared once as the extreme angle stretched his brain stem and short-circuited the electrical conduction from brain to body. It happens to boxers and martial artists. It happens with whiplash victims. It’s happened to me.

  His body slumped immediately, sagging atop me in a boneless sprawl. I caught him, wrapped my arms around him, hugged him to me to prevent him from forcing this fight any further.

  But he was done.

  Out.

  We lay there in a strange, bloody, awful embrace while I screamed for someone to come help us. I begged to wake up.

  But I was already awake.

  This was a nightmare but it was not a dream.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  SCRIPPS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL LA JOLLA

  9888 GENESEE AVENUE

  LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 6, 9:18 A.M.

  Rudy and I were players in a midnight circus. He was a trained tiger who’d slipped his leash. I was a clown. None of it was real, none of it was funny.

  The nurses and orderlies came running. It was probably only seconds since the fight started, but it seemed like hours. They swarmed into the room, yelling, demanding answers as if I had any. They stabilized Rudy with a neck brace and four of them gingerly lifted him onto a gurney to wheel him down to emergency. I was helped up and back into bed, but then a hospital cop came in and stood there with one hand on his sidearm as a frightened intern tried to make sense of my story. Then the doctors came with harsher questions. Then more cops showed up.

  I had no answers that made any sense and it was abundantly clear that no one believed a word I said. The cops wanted to put me in four-point restraints. I told them to contact someone at my office. They produced a set of handcuffs and decided that, at the very least, I should be cuffed to the bed rails. I made it clear that I would shove those cuffs up someone’s ass so far they’d chip molars on the way out. Two of the cops drew Tasers and it took the direct intervention of the hospital administrator to keep my room from turning into an MMA pay-per-view brawl.

  Then Sam Imura arrived.

  He is the sniper on Echo Team and one of my most reliable operators. Cool, calm, intelligent, and authoritative. He flashed impressive credentials that identified him as a special agent of the National Security Agency. He isn’t, but the DMS doesn’t have badges. We’re allowed to borrow what we need.

  Sam is a hard guy to stare down. He looks every bit like one of his Samurai ancestors—and that’s no joke, the Imuras were Samurai going back nine hundred years. He had that flat stare that lets you know nothing about him except that he was in charge. Sam also brought two junior DMS security people with him and positioned them outside my door. Another two were sent down to the emergency room to keep an eye on Rudy.

  When we were finally alone, Sam turned to me and his poker face dropped like a brick. “What,” he said, “in the hell happened?”

  I told him.

  He called it in to Mr. Church, explained it, then handed the phone to me. I went through it again. Church said next to nothing and I couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. Rudy is, after all, Church’s son-in-law and the father of the big man’s only grandson. So, there’s that.

  “Keep me posted,” said Church, and disconnected the call. I stared numbly at the phone, then handed it to Sam.

  “That was helpful,” I said.

  Sam pulled a chair close to the bed and sat there while we picked through it moment by moment. Even after careful, considered analysis it made no frigging sense. Then he left for almost an hour. When he came back he resumed his seat. His poker face was back in place.

  “How’s Rudy?” I asked.

  He took so long in answering it was clear he didn’t want to tell me, but I pressed him. “You broke his leg, shattered his nose, and sprained his neck. He’s in surgery.”

  I closed my eyes. “Has anyone called Circe?”

  “No. Mr. Church doesn’t want her to know until we have some answers.” He sat back and folded his hands on his lap. “Do we have any answers, Boss? You come up with anything while I was out?”

  “Not a goddamned thing.”

  We sat with that for a while.

  “Poor Rudy,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  It was a long night.

  INTERLUDE EIGHTEEN

  BALLARD MILITARY BOARDING SCHOOL

  POLAND, MAINE

  WHEN PROSPERO WAS SEVENTEEN

  Prospero’s birthday was tomorrow. He would be eighteen, and by law that would mean he should be able to walk out of Ballard without Commander Stark or any of his goon squad saying a word.

  Should.

  Not would.

  Stark had made it very clear that he would not be leaving Ballard anytime soon.

  “Sorry,” replied Prospero, “but in sixteen hours your tenure as my keeper ends. If you want to get in a few last cheap shots, go right ahead. And tomorrow, when I take possession of my trust fund, I will bring ten kinds of lawsuits down on your head. And I’ll be filing legal charges for child abuse, physical abuse, assault and battery, and a few dozen other things. If you think my father will step to your defense, then you are sadly mistaken. I’ll have you and the rest of the Ballard Neanderthals in prison within a week, see if I don’t.”

  Stark, however, kept smiling. They were in the commander’
s office. Alone, though there were two sergeants outside, ready to step in if needed.

  “Tell me, Prospero,” said Stark, “aren’t you even a little curious as to why I am not shivering with fear right now?”

  “I already know. It’s because you’re too stupid to know when you’re beat. I’m holding all the aces, motherfucker.”

  “Such language,” said Stark. “However, I like a challenge. You have aces, you say? Hmm, let me see what kind of hand I can play.” The commander opened the top drawer of his desk and removed a folded sheet of paper. He waggled it between his fingers for a moment, then handed it across to Prospero. “Read it.”

  Prospero hesitated, not liking this at all. But he plucked the letter away and opened it. He read it through. Then read it again. His hands were shaking by the time he finished the second pass.

  “This is bullshit,” he said, slapping it down on the desk. “No way this is legal.”

  “And yet it is,” said Stark pleasantly. “Signed by two psychiatrists and countersigned by the judge.”

  “What doctors? I haven’t had any fucking psychiatric evaluations.”

  “No?” said Stark with mock alarm. “But it says so right here, right above where it says that Judge Bernstein has remanded you to my custody until further notice.”

  Prospero shot to his feet. “No! I’m leaving tomorrow and you can’t stop me. This is bullshit. This is my asshole father and you involved in criminal conspiracy.”

  “This,” said Stark, reaching to take the paper back, “is legal.”

  Prospero sat there, frozen, unable to think. “Why…?”

  “Ah, a fair question. Let me tell you how this works,” said Stark. “And understand, this comes straight from your father, so if you need to hate someone, hate him. He has been remarkably frank with me because, you see, he trusts me. He knows that I can get results. Your father is very generous with people who are able to get him what he needs.”

  “My … research…,” whispered the boy.

  “Of course. From what I gather, your father obtained something very important from you a few years ago. The God Machine, I believe it’s called. That made him very happy. You were sent to me, however, because you tried to sabotage his work and punish him for taking your little toy. Even though as your father he had every right to anything of yours. Every right.”

  “No,” said Prospero, but Stark ignored him.

  “Your father needed you to be somewhere safe. In a place where you could continue your little science projects, but well away from him. He loves your mind, Cadet, but I fear he does not love you. So sad. Understandable, of course, because apart from your knack for science you are a psychotic, worthless pile of cold shit.”

  “Go to hell,” said Prospero, but without emphasis. He felt like he was dying inside.

  “As long as you continued to do research, your father was happy with the arrangement. But then you had to go and screw up the arrangement. Maybe it’s true that genius has a short shelf life, or maybe you just don’t have what it takes to be a superstar, but you seem to have peaked. Your father has become more and more disenchanted with the work you’ve done. He’s even gone so far as to speculate that you might be deliberately sabotaging your own progress so you’d burn off your last few months until you turned eighteen. And then you’d be out of here, thumbing your nose at your father and all of your friends here at Ballard.”

  Prospero said nothing. They both knew it was true.

  Stark nodded, however. “You are not, as it turns out, as smart as you seem to think you are. No, Mr. Bell, not by a long mile.” He tapped the sheet of paper. “This is proof. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you, my young Einstein? Bet you never even considered that there was a card we could play that would trump anything in your hand. Oooo, it must sting to be out-thought by the Neanderthals. Now, the way this works is that you will continue your research but you will light a fire under your own ass. You will no longer drag your feet, and you will produce whatever it is your father wants. You will do this as quickly as humanly possible and you will make sure that everything you do is exactly to your father’s specs. He will have his people test it. Then, and only then, will he consider having the doctors and the judge reexamine your court-mandated commitment.” Stark leaned forward. “Screw with me, Cadet, or make me look bad in front of your father, and I can promise you that there are things we can do to you that will make you believe that you are not in a nice, comfortable military academy but are, in fact, in one of the inner rings of hell itself. Have I made myself absolutely clear?”

  That’s when Prospero bolted from the room, blew past the two sergeants, and tried to lock himself inside his lab. He hadn’t even managed to inflict any significant damage to the mainframe when the sergeants broke through the door and fell on him.

  * * *

  He barely remembered the beating.

  All he knew was that Stark and the two sergeants seemed to enjoy it. He did not remember when it ended. Maybe they got tired. He had no recollection of how he got out of the lab. There was a tiny fragment of a memory of being dragged.

  His next fully conscious moment was the water.

  Shower water falling on the side of his face, and a familiar voice saying, “Jesus,” over and over again. Which was strange because that wasn’t his name. Or even the name of his god.

  Darkness again.

  The sound of dripping water found him in the dark. He was wet, he knew that much. But there was something around him keeping him warm. A towel. Several towels.

  Prospero was afraid to open his eyes. He’d never been beaten this badly before. Never. Not by his father and not by anyone at Ballard. This time, though, they’d kept at it. Hitting him with telephone books because that wouldn’t leave marks. The damage was all shock wave, all internal. Slapping his testicles with loose hands. No bruises there, either. Just pain and sickness.

  Other stuff. His rectum hurt again. Another kick? Something worse? There were sadists among the sergeants. Artists at pain and humiliation.

  It felt to Prospero like all of it had been done. Like Stark and his Gestapo no longer cared what they did.

  It took a long time before the lights came back on inside his head. He was not in the infirmary, not in a local hospital. He was in one of the big communal showers. Fully dressed, soaked, wrapped in those towels.

  “Jeezz-us,” said a voice. “I thought I was going to lose you for a while. You look like shit.”

  Prospero turned his head very slowly and carefully. The lights were low and the locker room was empty except for him and Leviticus King. The other boy sat cross-legged on the floor beside him, elbows propped on his knees, the neck of a Coke bottle dangling from between his index and forefinger.

  “How … how bad is it?” asked Prospero, his voice thick with pain and shock.

  “Your face is still pretty, if that matters,” said King.

  “It hurts,” moaned Prospero. “You got anything?”

  King held out the Coke bottle. “It’s high octane.”

  He helped Prospero sit up and steadied the bottle while his friend sipped. Prospero gagged at first. It had to be at least three-quarters vodka. But he took a breath and took a second sip. And then a couple of gulps.

  King sat back and took a pull, too.

  “El Comandante told me that you won’t be leaving us tomorrow,” he said. “I think he had a boner when he said it. Your dad must have written him another check.”

  Prospero nodded.

  They passed the bottle back and forth.

  King sipped some booze. “What exactly is the God Machine anyway? You said it was some kind of EMP thing?”

  “That’s only part of it. It’s not an EMP, it’s a null field. It interrupts electrical conductivity above a certain level. Anything stronger than the central nervous system of a person. Machines.”

  “He already has that, though. I mean … isn’t that what he took when you were a kid?”

  Prospero nodded again.
He felt like something was broken inside and could not tell if that was true or not. It felt like he was dying.

  “He stole a prototype. It was the best I could do at the time, but it wasn’t right. I’ve … learned so much since then.”

  “And—?”

  “And it doesn’t work. There is a brief null field when you switch it on, but the core processors melt down. It’s useless. I’ve been working on fixing it, and I’ve been giving him bits and pieces of it. What I really need are the last of the Unlearnable Truths. There’s a code hidden in some of the books. I think I’ve figured out how to find it, but I don’t have all the right books.”

  “A code for what?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Tell me anyway,” said King.

  Prospero wiped a trickle of blood from his ear. “The God Machine is built like a particle accelerator, only instead of colliding particles it superaccelerates them to open a doorway.”

  “To—?”

  “Another world,” said Prospero. “If I’m right, then maybe to an infinite number of other worlds.”

  “You lost me. You talking like Mars and Jupiter and shit?”

  “No. I said it wrong. Imagine that there are an infinite number of worlds. Each is almost identical to Earth except in one little way. Like in one world I have blue eyes instead of green. Like that. Some of the differences would be so subtle that you could never tell. You might never see where the difference is. But some would be radically different because of cause and effect. If the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs had hit another chunk of space rock first it might have broken up and been smaller, which wouldn’t have killed all the dinosaurs. Or it might have been bigger and destroyed the world. Or it could have hit later in the day and because of planetary rotation hit a different part of the world. You see how many possibilities there are? It’s chaos theory applied to interdimensional physics.” Prospero took a ragged breath. Talking was helping him regain control. His knowledge was the level place on which he could find balance. “Now, imagine the possibilities. If we can access all these worlds, we can find worlds where, for whatever reason, humans never evolved. Those worlds would have no pollution and all of the natural resources would be untouched. You could mine them for minerals or you could move there. Or just let humanity expand outward through an infinite number of worlds.”