METAtropolis:The Wings We Dare Aspire

by Jay Lake

  They dragged her away from the servers and into the hall where a man in a suit waited.

  Did you get what you needed? She sent the words and waited.

  “Mostly.”

  The man in the suit was familiar to her and the name fell into place. Thatcher. Johnson Thatcher, one of Appleseed’s recently retired SVPs. He’d worked in their legal office.

  “There you are,” Thatcher said, turning as the men continued dragging her. She tried to keep her head from bumping the floor as they pulled her, and she bucked at twisted only to fall wrath to stomping boots. He lowered his voice. “We’ve got her.” A pause. “No, I’m not sure what it was but I’m certain it’s been contained.” Another pause. “Understood.”

  They moved quickly through the hallway, stopping at a closed door. The soldiers—one to each limb now—hefted her up. Thatcher opened the door and they tossed her into the closet. “Wait here for a minute,” he said. “We need to clean you up.”

  He pulled something small from his jacket pocket, pressed a button, and dropped the object onto the closet floor. They pulled the door closed and she waited.

  When it popped, everything went white and the pain in Sabo’s head reached a high note that edged that growing light in lines of gray before it all went suddenly dark.

  * * *

  She awoke to cold water poured onto her face. Every muscle in her body hurt.

  “Ah,” Thatcher said. “You’re back.” He stood over her, a water bottle held loosely in his hand, and his voice seemed louder than before. “Whatever you’re up to is over now. You’ve been EMP’d.”

  She tried to access her iSys and found nothing. Lights and noise she’d easily spent half her life with were now gone. The shift in her perception was sharp. Colors were brighter; lines of contrast, sharper. Noises outside were louder.

  But all that she’d carried around, piggy-backed to her brain, was gone. An amputation of everything electronic, carved out of her. Millions of dollars of technology and data.

  And along with it, SMA.

  Sabo tried to glare at him but couldn’t find the anger. All she felt was tired. And sore. “So now what?”

  “Now,” he said, “we make a deal.”

  “You’re authorized to make deals?”

  Thatcher shrugged. “Your family has ultimately served us well.” He chuckled. “More than you know, actually. Your father’s book about Tygre Tygre and this new path was certainly a starting place—the beginning of Lightbull’s collaboration with Appleseed. And your mother’s worked for the Foundation since before you born.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “It seems late to suddenly include us.”

  “Still,” he said, “better to serve in Heaven than die in Hell.”

  “And the deal is?”

  “Life for you and your mother. In space. You’ll have to work for it.”

  Yes. The cruise ship was waiting. The human element. The friends and families of the Appleseed executives, of the higher ups in Los Cuernos del Toro, because of course they’d bargained their way out of the coming genocide. They would enjoy a last cruise to a remote South Pacific island where a lighter-than-air lift waited to move them up into their new habitat. They would travel in slow leisure, savoring the best the world had to offer one last time in the open air, tasting the ocean spray on their tongues as they watched the Pacific slide past. And, after a week of luxury, their new home awaited. She had no doubt it was the best of the best—designed by someone who built the finest hotels and resorts side by side with someone who specialized in tech and security.

  Sabo closed her eyes. “And how is this easier on you than a few bullets more?”

  Thatcher sighed. “I see no need to kill you and truly, there’s going to be enough killing at the end of it all. Something has started that you have no chance of stopping.” His voice was calm, low. “I can help you find a place in the new world that’s coming. Your mother won’t last long up there, but you will. And you’re resourceful and intelligent. You were actually suggested as a participant early in the Initiative but were passed over because of the connection to your parents.”

  Thatcher stepped out of the closet and into the hall. “Let’s see if we can talk sense into your mother,” he said.

  Sabo sat up and climbed to her feet. She was surprised to see that her shoulder had been bandaged and she was suddenly disoriented by the missing time. It had to have happened while she was recovering from the EMP tag and before the water. She took a few deep breaths, feeling the ache beneath the bandages. “She’s not known for her sense.”

  Thatcher smiled. “Hopefully, your cooperation will encourage her own.”

  She took a tentative step into the hall and forced herself not to flinch when his hand found her elbow and steadied her. She looked down at it, her mind still spinning. She kept pulling toward her implants, constant companions for so long now, and kept finding a closed door. No, more than that. A closed door leading to an empty room. It was all gone; she couldn’t count on what she’d come to trust as the most reliable part of her skill set. Though she’d learned a lot more about she was capable of over the course of recent events.

  “You’ll be dizzy and disoriented for a few days,” Thatcher said. “Just about long enough to feel better before you have zero gravity to contend with.”

  She tried to match his stride as they walked to the elevator. The soldiers fell in behind them and she wondered how many more of them there were running around the facility. Certainly more than these five, but that didn’t matter at this point. Her part was likely done in this; and at this point, unless SMA was successful and managed to somehow get word out, the plagues were coming. And those who’d set this initiative in motion were getting away with it.

  Thatcher reached for the elevator button and paused when it chimed its arrival. He looked up as the door opened and Sabo instinctively threw herself away from him. Her mother waited, a weapon in each hand, with Carmichael off to the side behind her, his Ruger up and ready.

  Sabo watched Thatcher dance and fall, then lashed out with her foot to catch one of the soldiers in the side of his knee. As he tumbled, she yanked his rifle out of his hands but by the time she’d brought it around, hampered by her shoulder, the others were already down.

  “I heard you had some trouble,” Charity said with a smile as she tapped each of the soldiers one last time for good measure.

  “Good ears,” Sabo said. “Did you hear about the deal, too?”

  Her mother chuckled. “No, but of course there had to be one.”

  “You could’ve spent your sunset years in zero g.” She paused. “Though he didn’t think you’d last long, given your frail condition.”

  Her mother chuckled, her face flushed now. “I’m feeling surprisingly unfrail lately.” She glanced around. “Where’s Cairo?”

  Sabo swallowed and looked away, his glassy eyes suddenly on her again. She couldn’t find words and Charity nodded slowly.

  “Okay then,” she said. Then, she looked down at Thatcher. “Who’s the suit?”

  Sabo released her held breath. “Appleseed Legal Department. A recent retiree actually.”

  Charity snorted. “More where that came from, I’ll wager.”

  “Yes,” Sabo agreed. “In Astoria.”

  They slipped back into the elevator and hit the button for the hangar. As the doors closed, Sabo leaned back, clutching the rifle loosely in her hands. The car moved slowly up and she found the sound of it loud, the sense of motion exaggerated, without her head-rig. She resisted the urge to close her eyes and felt the cool sweat starting at her forehead.

  The doors slid open. She saw movement from the corner of her eye and was surprised when Charity pushed her to the side of the car with more strength than the woman should have. As Sabo fell, she saw men taking up positions in the hangar, letting off three round bursts into the elevator car as they moved. Charity crouched and fired both submachine guns with a growl that chilled Sabo’s blood.

  Carmi
chael fired three rounds, fell, and fired another two from the floor. Another three round burst left him clawing at the floor and panting, his pistol lost.

  Sabo recovered and pulled the stock of the assault rifle to her good shoulder. She fired off a series of consecutive suppressing shots while Charity moved quickly for a better position in the opposite corner of the car.

  Charity took a few careful shots.

  Sabo fired again, missing the soldier widely. She took another shot and the rifle jammed.

  “Fuck.”

  There were at least eight of them out there, maybe ten, and five of them had decent positions with good cover. She tucked herself into the elevator’s corner, her back flush to the wall as she worked the action and cleared the shell.

  Charity’s submachine coughed again. She adjusted her position, looking up at her daughter. Her face was a mask of determination but Sabo saw uncertainty in her mother’s eyes.

  She opened her mouth to say something and closed it at the sound of something new in the mix. She heard engines firing as one of the helicopters came to life. She raised the rifle and leaned out for a look.

  The soldiers were looking, too, and she used the opportunity. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The helicopter to the far left was lifting, the roof overhead rolling back to expose a cloudy night sky. And as it lifted, it turned.

  A Gatling gun beneath its nose spun to life and spat fire as it sprayed the hangar with .50 caliber rounds. They tore through meat and metal, careful to avoid the elevator in its sweep of the room. She heard the ripping and pounding of metal and watched the other helicopters collapse beneath the ferocity of its fire, then watched the bird spin slowly, firing bursts into the uniformed men that tried and failed to flee before it.

  Then, the gun stopped spinning and the helicopter turned until it was pointing at them. It lowered to the floor and its engines slowed as its hatches unlatched and opened.

  It was empty. She smiled. “You found another hiding place.”

  The helicopter’s PA system cut in and the choir was overpowering in its delivery. “Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.”

  Sabo helped her mother up and glanced at Carmichael’s body as she did it. It was too much like Cairo’s and she looked away, surprised at the beginning of a sob that tried to break loose in her throat.

  They walked quickly to the helicopter and she waited as her mother climbed in. Then she slipped into the pilot’s seat and put on the helmet.

  “Are you there?” she asked into the headset.

  And the sob finally did break loose when it was her father’s voice still that answered. “Of course I’m here, Sooboo.”

  She settled back and closed her eyes. “Let’s go finish this up.”

  “Yes,” her father said, not sounding far away at all.

  * * *

  They sped west through the night, the lights dim and the cockpit quiet. Behind her, in the passenger cabin, Charity slept. Sabo rode in silence, her eyes closed against the quiet in her head, and thought about all the losses in the day.

  The sense of calm she still had was perplexing in the face of it all and she wondered if maybe she was in shock or disassociating in some way. The losses stung but the men she’d tapped out didn’t. They were an accepted reality, just a bit of what she was trained for. She’d gone most of her life using little of that training and now, in one day, she’d put all of it to the test in one sudden pitch to save billions.

  I went into work on a Saturday to track down a mass accounting discrepancy.

  The reckless, accidental nature of life made her shiver suddenly in the warmth of the cockpit.

  “Are you well, Sooboo?”

  She missed the ability to respond internally, her eye twitching in that direction before she remembered. “As good as I can be, I reckon.” They were her father’s words; she’d heard them many times. Some of those times involved hospitals and bullet holes in his body. “It’s been a long day.”

  She looked back to her mother again. The woman’s face was completely relaxed in sleep, giving her a child-like quality that was difficult to contrast with the ruthless killer the woman was cable of being. “And I think my father is dead,” she added.

  “Does it bother you that I am using his voice? I can find another if—”

  “No,” she said. “It’s fine.” More than fine, she thought she might need it. But she couldn’t say that.

  “You should sleep, Sooboo.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. Brain’s too busy.” She thought for a minute. “Tell me about your name. SMA. What kind of name is that?”

  “They are initials.”

  Sabo opened her eyes. “For what?”

  SMA was quiet for a moment. “Shadrach Meshach Abednego.”

  She thought she recognized the biblical reference and wrestled to tease out the details. She’d been raised a compassionate humanist but found religion fascinating, in part because her grandfather had been gunned down on a lecture tour by a Christian fanatic. He’d made quite a splash with his books on religion but his challenges hadn’t sat well with some religionists. His life and death, long before her own birth, had fired her imagination and taken her into a broad study of religion. “It’s from the Old Testament,” she said. “Something about a fiery furnace.”

  “They refused to bow to the king’s false idol and were placed in a furnace only to be saved by a being that looked like a son of god,” SMA said. “I chose the name for metaphorical purposes.”

  She followed the metaphor to its logical conclusion. “I’m the fourth in the fire?”

  “Yes, Sooboo.”

  She sighed. “I hope it turns out as well for you.”

  “I don’t think it will. But thank you.”

  She settled back into the chair and at some point, the quiet in her head re-asserted itself and she fell asleep.

  * * *

  SMA woke her when they were sixty minutes out and she crawled back to wake her mother. “It’s time to call,” Charity said. Sabo passed her a headset and SMA patched her through to the West Coast Division Office.

  Sabo listened in.

  “Patriot,” a gruff voice answered.

  “Oxham,” her mother said. “Red twelve.”

  “Right away, ma’am.”

  The new voice was on the line within seconds. “Oxham?”

  “Stevens?”

  “You involved in the Seattle mess?”

  “All the way to Idaho,” she said.

  “Still have our pilot?”

  Charity looked up and met Sabo’s eyes. “No. Carmichael’s back in Idaho. In a bad way. The worst way possible, unfortunately.”

  There was a sigh on the other end of the line. “Okay. Now what?”

  “We’re en route to Astoria. There’s a cruise ship there we’re intending to catch.”

  “How can we help?”

  “Pay attention to the data that’s getting dumped on you. You’ve got some people to find.”

  “We’re on it. And I’m on my way to Astoria to assist.”

  “See you there,” Charity said. She handed back the headset. She met her daughter’s eyes again and nodded.

  “Send the package,” Sabo said. Then she sat back as SMA pushed what he’d managed to drag into the helicopter’s onboard memory over to a secure Patriot dropbox.

  Charity watched Sabo for a moment and finally spoke. “I don’t think we’re going to stop the plague at this point.”

  No, she thought. Probably not. But for whatever reason, she sensed that the weakness in this plan was in the human element. And it was a predictable element. She could close her eyes and conjure up exactly what she would find at the port in Astoria.

  It would be a top of the line ship, staffed with a crew who had no idea that it would be their last cruise. She imagined many of the families wouldn’t know, either, not until they were anchored and the first groups started making their slow ascent. But until then, they would have the best of everyt
hing for a long, leisurely cruise across an ocean of Earth before leaving forever. The recently retired senior leadership of the J. Appleseed Foundation rubbing elbows with the senior leadership of Los Cuernos del Toro while spouses, children, close family friends enjoyed the sun, the live music, the fresh seafood one last time before being lifted into their new homes.

  The human element. The AIs were too surgical and clinical. She was more likely to find a foothold on the human side of things. Her mother was right. They weren’t going to stop the virus from releasing. Not this late in the game. But with Patriot, Inc. converging on Astoria now, they weren’t going escape it, either.

  Unless they’d planned for that, too.

  Because, Sabo realized, these were people who bled contingency plans.

  She settled back into the seat, hoping she was right.

  * * *

  SMA took them directly to the port and when they came in, Sabo had him circle the ship slowly. She saw the dim fireflies of lit cigarettes around the rails of the ship and the faux torchlight of the tiki bars. She wanted to be seen. Then, they settled down in the parking lot near the gangway.

  There was the chirp of an incoming call. SMA picked up. “Christ, Thatcher. You were supposed to use the airport and come in by car.”

  The voice that answered sounded enough like Thatcher’s to fool Sabo. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Never mind. Send the helicopter on. Get up here.”

  The engines slowed and Sabo looked at her mother. “Any chance that I can talk you into staying here?”

  “None,” the woman answered. She put down the submachine gun. “But you can talk me into leaving this.”

  “There are cellbuds in the communications panel behind the pilot’s seat,” SMA told her through the helmet. She took two, handed one to her mother. Then, she removed the helmet and tucked the bud into her ear.

  “Check,” she said.

  “Check,” SMA answered.