The Dark Intercept

by Julia Keller

  “Now, to me, that machine looked like a big pile of rusty, useless junk—but if Kendall had put it together, I knew it couldn’t be junk. It had to be something really special. Something important.

  “And then he told me to close my eyes. So I did.” Danny took a deep breath. Violet could hear it plainly through her console. The memory before him seemed to be like a beautiful flower, and he wanted to take it in all at once, with a great inhalation of scented air.

  “When I opened them again,” he went on, “Kendall was standing next to the machine. There were these funny little electrodes attached to both sides of his head, with coils running from the electrodes to the machine. And then—rising out of the top of the machine—was a big glass bowl that looked like some kind of weird aquarium. It had gloppy stuff inside it. Pink, red, blue, orange—all swirled together, rotating. Making this humming noise. And the gloppy stuff sort of twisted and … sort of shimmered, too, I guess I’d call it. Like a snow globe somebody shook up and all the little bits are flying around. Only this wasn’t made up of things. It wasn’t objects. It was colors. And energy. And light. It looked like it might become objects at some point—but right now it was just a kind of chaos. You could tell it needed a lot more work to become what it needed to be.”

  “What was it?” Violet said. She was so caught up in his story that she almost whispered it, afraid to break the spell.

  “That’s what I asked Kendall. And he said, ‘Christmas morning, 2280.’” Danny swallowed hard. “Our mom and dad were killed a month later. And as I looked at those colors dancing around inside the glass, and I realized they’d come directly from Kendall’s memory and that somehow he’d transformed the energy of his thoughts into this other kind of energy, which he then would be able to transfer back into his thoughts again—I also realized that that Christmas morning was the last time my brother and I were truly happy.”

  * * *

  Violet leaned back against the headboard of her bed. While listening to Danny she had pulled up her knees to her chin, wrapping her arms around them. She was feeling the force of his story, the texture and density of his recollection from long ago—really, two recollections: the memory of a precious Christmas morning, and the memory of seeing the memory of a precious Christmas morning as it emerged from a ramshackle machine, transformed into pure energy.

  Energy that would soon be repurposed. Reborn as a powerful weapon, against which there was no defense.

  What Kendall had revealed to his brother that day in the lab was the first step toward his destiny. A few steps later, the Intercept was born.

  11

  Division 12

  At night, the streets of New Earth breathed.

  If Violet concentrated on it, she’d swear she could hear the ground inhaling and exhaling. It was a sort of subterranean pulse, a soothing rhythm that created a slight but persistent tremor under her feet.

  The first time Violet felt it, she’d thought: It’s like a heartbeat. But no. Not a heartbeat. It’s like … breathing. Yes.

  It wasn’t steady, like a heartbeat. It was looser, more haphazard, like an on-again, off-again breeze. When she listened hard, it seemed to weave in and out of her consciousness, like something she’d known long ago but thought she’d forgotten—the lyrics of a lullaby, the faint sound of a faraway voice calling her home, a color she couldn’t quite describe—and now it returned to her, as if that’s just what it had planned to do, all along.

  Part of it, she knew, was the vibration from the Intercept, doing its work beneath the surface of New Earth. But part of it was something else. Something magical.

  Violet was walking to the Callahan home for dinner. It was just before dusk. There was a dwindling, butterscotch-colored light in the sky as the sun sagged lower and lower behind the horizon. She loved this time of day. And she loved that tremor. She loved the sensation that New Earth itself was thinking right along with her. Especially when she had a lot to think about.

  Like, for instance, the memory of her mother, which was so intense right now, because of the intervention. And like, for instance, the rumor that wouldn’t go away, the rumor that someone had found a way to breach the Intercept.

  She knew the way to Chief Callahan’s apartment, but she took a few wrong turns on purpose. Violet liked to walk. Running was best of all, but she couldn’t arrive there sweaty and panting, so walking would have to do.

  Sometimes, when she walked, she let herself be lulled into a sort of fugue-like state that was like dreaming while you were still awake. On she would go, led forward by the quiet breathing of these streets, the soft incessant quiver.

  I wish Mom had lived long enough to meet Danny.

  That was how her grief for her mother struck her sometimes. It had gone from the sweepingly general—Mom, oh my God, I can’t believe you’re not here anymore, I miss you so much that I don’t think I can’t stand it even one more second—to the small and specific, the particular:

  I just wish I could talk to you about Coffee Cart Guy. Or how much Rez loves code. Or about how much I don’t love David Copperfield. Or the rumors about the Intercept breach. Or about … Danny.

  Her mother would understand. Violet was certain of that.

  If you’d ever had a chance to meet him, Mom, you’d know why I fell in love with him. And you could’ve helped me explain it to Dad. He’d listen to you.

  She walked on. The streets breathed in and out.

  * * *

  Michelle Callahan was old. She was almost as old as Violet’s father, and he was really old. She had gray hair that she tied back into a small knob. Her eyes were gray, too. And yet there was a lightness to her, a nimbleness, that had somehow survived the pileup of all those years.

  She had yet to change out of her police tunic. Violet figured that probably meant she’d had a very long day and had just arrived home. Callahan, like her dad, spent more time at work than anywhere else.

  “Hi, Violet. Come on in,” Callahan said. “Sorry your father couldn’t make it, but we’re really glad to have you join us tonight.”

  She took Violet’s jacket and led her into the living room. Paul Stark, Callahan’s husband, was sitting in an easy chair. Violet had always found him vaguely creepy, and she hoped it wasn’t because of the HoverUp and its incessant whish-whoosh sound—which would make her a very bad person, of course. Someone who couldn’t get past the superficial.

  The apartment looked a lot like the one in which Violet and her father lived. It was square and beige, with pieces of furniture occupying the spots you would expect them to. New Earth was a place of careful ratios and balance and proportionality. The sole exception to that rule, Violet thought with pleasure, was her father’s library; it was a beautiful mess. It was also the only room she had ever known that could surprise her.

  Stark directed his HoverUp closer to Violet in order to shake her hand. The whish-whoosh sound intensified as he did so. Newer models of the HoverUp were completely silent, but the originals made that distinctive sound, the sound of air rushing through hundreds of millions of tiny silicon coils as the device propelled itself. Stark had been one of the first to use one.

  Violet’s father had told her Paul Stark’s story. He had once been a hotshot cop, young and brash and fearless, a legend on Old Earth. Marked for great things. Headstrong. Rebellious. The way her father described him, he sounded a bit like Danny Mayhew.

  No, Violet had corrected herself. A lot like Danny Mayhew.

  “When it came time to install Intercept chips in the population of Old Earth,” Ogden had said, continuing the tale, “I assumed we would meet strong resistance. The people down there just don’t know what’s good for them. So I sent the toughest cop I knew to head up the unit—Paul Stark. He’d worked a lot of years on Old Earth before New Earth was constructed. And that’s when it happened.”

  “What?” Violet had asked.

  “He was chasing down a man who’d refused the chip insertion. Paul had just caught up with him when the
man pulled out a slab gun. One shot. That’s all it took. The lower half of Paul’s spinal cord instantly melted. His legs—” Ogden had paused, as the memory of the horror overtook him. He shook his head and continued. “He died at the scene.”

  “Died?” Violet had said. “But—”

  “He was revived in seconds by his partner. He hadn’t been dead long enough for any brain damage and thus he was fully able to comprehend—even as he lay there, writhing in silent agony, once his breathing resumed—that his life was irreparably altered now. He was half of what he’d been. Half of him still had skin and bone and muscle. Half of him still responded to his will. The other half was a gelatinous mass, a boiling puddle that spread across that dirty pavement. I’m sorry to be so graphic, Violet, but you need to know what a slab gun can do. You need to know why the Intercept is worth it—so that in the future, a good man like Paul Stark won’t have to go through that kind of hell. Ever, ever again.”

  Violet nodded. The words indeed had been hard to hear. But she was glad her father had trusted her with the story. She wasn’t a child anymore. He was right: She needed to know.

  “It kind of makes you wonder,” she had said to her father that day, thinking aloud, “if the partner who brought him back to life really did him a favor, after all.”

  Ogden nodded. “That partner was his wife. It was Chief Callahan.”

  * * *

  “Paul made his specialty for us tonight,” Callahan said. “Tomato basil soup. Right, dear?”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Yeah,” Stark finally said.

  Violet realized, with the kind of intuition that came naturally to her, that both of them were lying. Stark had not made the soup. He was supposed to have, but he hadn’t gotten around to it, and when Violet rang the doorbell, they were probably arguing fiercely about it.

  “I’m going back in the kitchen to finish up some things,” Callahan said. “Paul, I’ll let you entertain Violet for a few minutes.”

  Um, thanks, Violet thought. Great. She wondered if the Intercept had a special category for sarcasm-fueled feelings. She’d never checked.

  “Have a seat,” Stark said. His sour tone didn’t match the welcome of his words.

  Violet gave him her best fake smile as she sat.

  “Michelle’s mad at me because I didn’t cook dinner,” Stark said casually. “I told her I would.”

  “Oh.” Violet didn’t know what to say. Was she supposed to be on his side? Tell him it was okay? It wasn’t okay. Based on what her father told her, Chief Callahan worked tremendously hard. The least her husband could do was cook a meal for company.

  “I got busy,” Stark said, as if she’d asked the question out loud. There was petulance, not apology, in his tone.

  “Okay.”

  The only sound in the room for a long time was the whish-whoosh of his HoverUp. Violet had never really looked at him before. Now she did. His hair was gray, like his wife’s hair, but he wore it so short that the color was only visible in a series of dots covering his scalp. A cop’s hairstyle, blunt and simple. Only he wasn’t a cop.

  Not anymore.

  He was still a relatively handsome man—before his accident, he was everybody’s pick for Sexiest Cop in Division 12 on Old Earth—but the years of dealing with pain and frustration had carved deep grooves on his face and left a kind of hollowness around his eyes. Those eyes were cloudy now. The chiseled chin sagged, having collapsed without a fight into the flesh of his neck. It was the dull gray stamp of despondency.

  A HoverUp looked like a small shoebox on which Stark stood while millions of powerful air jets directed his artificial legs and his arms and his torso, pushing them, lifting them, arranging them, enabling his body to move on its own in response to his silent mental commands. Sometimes Violet could completely miss the fact that the person was hurt at all—that’s how smoothly a HoverUp did what it did. She sort of forgot about the small humming rectangle attached to the bottom of the feet. All she saw was fleetness and freedom. The HoverUp meant that somebody like Stark wasn’t stuck in a wheelchair—yet from the way he acted, Violet thought, he must still feel stuck. Only now he was stuck in his life. And it showed on his face.

  She knew other people who used HoverUps as a result of injuries and they weren’t like Paul Stark. They weren’t bitter. They didn’t think of their lives as something lesser, something different and inferior. It made her realize that his real problem, whatever it was, had nothing to do with the HoverUp.

  She wondered what Stark had been like back when he was a rugged young cop like Danny. Back when he saw himself as whole. Back when he could run. Back when he had hope.

  A few days after her father told her about Stark’s accident, he had told her the rest of the story.

  “On Old Earth,” Ogden said, “cops are all that stand between the people and total chaos.” He was sitting in his armchair that night, a stack of reports on his lap. He had looked up from his work when Violet came home from Protocol Hall and asked her to draw up a chair next to him.

  “They had to keep the peace in a place where the criminals had nothing to lose—and still don’t,” Ogden went on. “That’s what made Stark and Callahan so special. They stayed above the fray. They didn’t let that stinking, dangerous world down there ever get to them. Old Earth people—they’re like feral cats. When strangers come along they instantly scatter and hiss, escaping into cracks and crevices. They can disappear in seconds. And then all you hear is the wind moaning through those cold streets.” Violet thought she spotted a small shiver in her father’s shoulders after he said that.

  “But no matter how bad it was down there,” he went on, “I knew Callahan and Stark would get the job done. They’d get a chip inserted in every last person. It was our only hope of retaining some small bit of control over that place. So the two of them poked through piles of garbage and turned giant spotlights into the narrow passageways leading to attics and basements and caves. They stormed every potential hideout. They rounded up a great many citizens of Old Earth. They sedated them and implanted them with chips. And then they let them go.

  “They could let them go because there was no longer any need to detain their physical bodies in order to correct bad behavior. We had their minds. We certainly weren’t going to waste our time monitoring Old Earth all the time, but when we needed to—we were firmly in control.” At that point Ogden had given Violet a satisfied smile. The smile faded again. “Then came the terrible day when Stark and Callahan were chasing one of the last holdouts. A man who’d refused his chip. I have watched that particular feed myself, many times. Stark was in the lead. The man suddenly stopped, twisted around, and pulled out a slab gun, aiming for Stark’s lower torso. There was a flash of light. A crisp sizzling sound.”

  Now it was Violet’s turn to shiver.

  “Too much?” her father had said. He reached out his gnarled hand.

  “No. I want to know about it, Dad.” She held his hand while he continued.

  “If Stark had had another partner, if it had been anybody other than Michelle Callahan with him that day, he surely would’ve died,” Ogden declared. “Another cop would have been frozen with horror. But Callahan can compartmentalize. And she was able to cordon off the part of her mind that was reeling from the shock of seeing him that way—fallen, totally helpless, the bottom half of his body a hot gurgling mess—and to save his life.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “Callahan told me herself. And I’m telling you so that you’ll know what Old Earth is really like. And maybe you’ll stop asking me to go.”

  Nice try, Dad, Violet had thought. I think they call that a scare tactic. And it won’t work. I’ll see it one day. Just you wait.

  * * *

  The dinner was turning out to be so dull that Violet thought she might scream, just to liven things up.

  She didn’t. Instead she smiled a polite, practiced, this-is-me-smiling smile and watched as Callahan ladled red
soup into three white bowls. The large pot was placed on a square ceramic tile; the tile was placed in the center of the round table. As Callahan finished filling a bowl, she passed it on. Violet was impressed: The chief didn’t spill a drop.

  Stark sat across the table from his wife. Violet was on Callahan’s left. As Stark had joined them at the table, Violet watched him with grudging admiration. Sitting down was one of the most challenging maneuvers of all to learn in a HoverUp—the transfer from standing upright to bending the body at the waist and the artificial knees so that you could slide into a chair. Stark made it look easy.

  “So I wanted to ask you about Danny Mayhew,” Callahan said. “I know you two are good friends.”

  Smooth, Violet thought. Real subtle. She hadn’t even had time to take her first sip of soup.

  “What about him?”

  Callahan picked up on the defensiveness in her tone. “Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to tell me any secrets about your friend.”

  Good. Because I won’t. Violet tasted the soup. It was actually pretty good, a fact that she found annoying. It would’ve been easier to keep her resentment going if the soup was gross.

  “I’d just like to know if you have any idea,” Callahan said, “why he keeps going down to Old Earth.”

  “No.”

  “As I’m sure you’ve heard, we’re at a critical point right now. You know what we’re facing—a group of traitors who are trying to take down the Intercept. I need all of my officers to be focused on the crisis at hand.”

  Before Violet could think of a good nonanswer answer, Callahan abruptly addressed her husband: “Paul, is the soup too hot?”

  He seemed startled. He’d probably zoned out when his wife had begun interrogating Violet—that was the verb Violet chose for it, because she felt as if she might as well be down at the station—and apparently didn’t realize he would be forced to express an opinion.