by LC Champlin
“No.” In theory, Albin could incapacitate the duo if he used the element of surprise. But his resistance would place him on the sharp end of LOGOS’s defenses. “But I can ease everyone’s efforts. Allow me to use the intercom to instruct my companions to surrender.” The word fairly burned his lips as he spoke it.
“All right, but don’t try to fuck us over.”
Albin accepted the mercenary’s headset. Then he paused. In his glasses, Mr. Serebus rolled onto his back, eyes open. Blood dribbled from his nose.
What now occupied his mind? A man, a wolf, or a devil?
Chapter 95
Deliver Us from Evil
Dead Inside– Muse
Light blazed across Nathan’s consciousness. Flares whiter than magnesium sparks burst.
Then the world began to resolve into . . . walls, white but nowhere near the purity of the tabula rasa in his mind.
He rolled onto his hands and knees. Iron on his tongue. Warmth and wetness slid down from his nose. He snorted, sending a mist of red across the tile. Drops of watery blood—pinkish rather than the dark crimson of a normal nosebleed—pattered onto the floor.
Static roared in his ears like Niagara, or the Pacific Coast in winter. Voices chattered in the auditory snow. Howls and shrieks joined. Images accompanied them. Jumbled and jumpy, like flipping through channels on fifty television screens at once.
Overwhelming.
Throbbing.
Dominating.
He squeezed his eyes closed, pressing his hands over his ears. No way to block the mental deluge. A growl cut through it all. It tore from his own throat.
The howls grew louder than the rest. They united into a thousand-throated cry.
White light exploded. The images evaporated under its heat. Red-gold eyes flared to life at its heart.
Then silence fell.
Chest heaving, muscles aching, bile threatening to rush up his esophagus, Nathan looked up. The old devil Crevan regarded him with a victor’s smile.
A hand holding a pair of glasses emerged in Nathan’s periphery. “Here.” Buck.
He snatched them from her. When he slipped them on, heat burst in his brain on the right side. Shhh—Then the glasses’ images appeared. A status report scrolled, checking systems. It went too quickly for the eye to distinguish words. Only percentages registered, all at one hundred.
“Nathan.” A female voice. Janine!
Still on all fours, Nathan twisted to see the screen. More beautiful than any Valkyrie, she looked down on him. “I did it, Janine.”
“If you can’t learn self-control on your own, you will be instructed,” she related as if explaining why she had selected one brand of copy paper over another. “You’ve always thought you were as clever as Loki, but you’ll bring Ragnarok down on yourself. I wish we could have walked through the doorway into this new world together, but how can I tolerate a man who took power in the way you did?”
Numbness overwhelmed pain. His head hung, blood and possibly cerebrospinal fluid continuing to drip onto the floor.
“Do you understand me?” she pressed. “I can’t forget what you’ve done. It goes back and forth in my mind. Leave it alone, Nathan.”
The red-gold eyes flared and Fenrir snarled. Those words. A beat thudded in his ears. Seven Nation Army by White Stripes. That Seven Nation Army couldn’t hold him back. She wanted him to fight. But why now, after having the lethal injection? What else had she said? Yes! Loki and Ragnarok. That resembled Low-Key and Rag-rock, his Trojan and data hijacking / nuking software. A back door. Had she given him one?
Surely this system must include an escape hatch. The people who designed it would not place themselves in a position where others could control them. Firewalls and safeguards must come into play. But how to activate them?
“Lass,” Crevan drawled, looking up at the screen, “you’re coming around. I wish you would’ve done so several years ago, but better late than never. Seems you’re growing up.”
“But I’ll always be your little girl, eh, Dad?” She cocked a brow to accompany her half smile, yet sadness tinged her words.
“Aye, lass.”
Shaking his head to clear it, Nathan sat back on his heels. Light still flickered along the edges of his vision, but the status report had ceased scrolling on the glasses. A green check mark flashed with the words, All systems connected. After he reached the end of the sentence, it disappeared.
“That’s a good position for you,” the old monster remarked, beginning to saunter around Nathan: the orbit of a superior toying with his slave. “On your knees, just as those unclean wretches outside.”
“We are all unclean.”
“Speak for yourself. Soon I will be able to dispense with the manual control altogether.” Humming, Crevan let his head fall back as if in ecstasy. Apparently this beat an orgasm. Power usually did. “I can feel the system’s reach expanding.”
“How long before your power is fully evolved?”
“We stopped the trial in the test subjects before it reached its zenith. That honor I reserved for myself,” he explained as he pressed his hand over his heart.
Using the desk for support, Nathan eased to his feet. “What now?”
“You’ll see.” He motioned to the glasses. They hosted several news footage feeds, as well as satellite views.
Eyes half glazing, Crevan stretched his arm forth like a wizard summoning a wave from the depths. Or a necromancer calling the undead hordes. The door slid open.
Sssssaaaahhhh.
Peace Monitors. They marched in, their tinted tactical visors hiding their eyes. At the center of their contingent came Albin with the Musters, Bridges, and Behrmann. Judge strained at her leash, snarling, but the economist put his weight into belaying her. If the Dalits slipped the surly bonds of Crevan’s control, they would tear the group to pieces.
“You see?” Turning lazily to the horde, Neil smiled. “Cooperation at its best. Eventually we’ll reach global saturation. Even now, those in the upper echelons of power have accepted the elixir of life. No more anxiety or depression. It sharpens focus. It improves reasoning.”
“And it allows you to alter their perceptions and decisions?”
“I’ll show you.” A yellow-toothed grin split the demon’s face.
It came, the moment for which Crevan had waited since Nathan had first crossed him. Well, not without a fight. If a back door existed, Fenrir would sniff it out. He must learn how to control this neural network. It took hours to days for the infected victims to work with the system—or for the system to work with them. But if he carried the refined version, it should count as a significant upgrade from the common Dalit contagion. Like upgrading from a flip phone to an iPhone SE.
Nathan’s attention locked on Albin. A confused mass of anger, jealousy, and revulsion gripped Nathan’s mind. What the—Ah, the mind control. Crevan wanted to turn the friends against each other again. Why? To show Janine that he couldn’t be trusted? Or perhaps Crevan thought Albin required convincing.
Nathan’s knees bent slightly, his shoulders dropped back. He looked through his brows. The predator stance. No! His legs stopped carrying him forward. Not Albin.
Quickly, find the opposite of the emotions. Take control before the contagion reached its full strength in his mind. He didn’t rage against Albin; he trusted him. He didn’t feel jealousy; he felt admiration at the man’s ability to forgive. Rather than revulsion, he felt sorrow for how he had abused his adviser and relative.
Fenrir’s eyes glowed like twin beacons of sanity.
Chapter 96
Mind Games
Blood // Water – Grandson
O God, keep me from the snares which they have laid for me. Let the wicked fall into their own nets. Nathan’s knees gave out and he dropped to all fours. Warm liquid ran down his lip from his nose to splash red on the tile again. Pain raged behind his eyes.
Think. Ken’s system worked by vo
ice recognition. Perhaps the neural network worked the same way but with his mind. What keyword might register? Escape, release, fail safe, kill switch, disengage, open sesame? Never a thesaurus around when you needed one. He looked back at the screen. Crevan’s daughter looked back. Janine Aife Crevan. A doorway icon popped into the glasses in the upper right. His mind flashed with a pulse of light. A door opened, but not on the screen. This one lay in his brain itself, in his thoughts. He did not see as much as he sensed an opening.
Options appeared, but he understood them by . . . feel rather than sight: hard, soft, jagged, smooth, round, angular. When his consciousness touched one, colors arced across his vision. Brushing another elicited ringing in his ears. A third brought bitterness like coffee on his tongue.
A feeling of security came. He knew. He knew what to do. If the system communicated with the network, the network had to communicate with the system. Like a phone or data network, it could only handle so many calls. Channeling enough calls to the receiver would create a distributed denial-of-service attack—a DDoS—with the zombie terminals sending so many signals that they overwhelmed the server.
Nathan struggled to stand, head up. He did not bow to Crevan or LOGOS. Panting, coughing, he came to his feet. “You wanted power. Power corrupts.”
His subconscious worked to unravel the codes. Its subroutines sought to connect with the cannibals. The Dalits. The unclean. His brethren now.
A click, then a sense of a wider awareness awoke. Across the glasses scrolled numbers and sectors, evidently corresponding to what Dalit networks he reached. However, controlling them remained off-limits. No matter. He reached out to each Dalit at the speed of thought, a blanket call to action.
Now to switch the recipient of their calls before his plan backfired and they shut down his neural net. But how? He didn’t have Crevan’s username. Wait—Change the permission level so they sought to contact the power in charge. The Dalits would escalate their response to the highest level of authority.
The Dalits would pray to their god.
“You wanted to be God?” Nathan rasped. He sniffed, then spat a clot of blood.
Crevan chuckled at his rival’s state. “If mind control is not a godlike power, I don’t know what it is.”
“Can you answer the cries of your believers? That’s the mark of a true god.”
Neil’s casual posture straightened, on guard. “What are you talking about?”
Nathan’s laugh devolved into a hacking cough. One hand wiping blood from his lips, he caught the desk for support with the other.
Crevan looked to the side as if listening to a voice in his ear. Voices muttered. As Albin and the others failed to react, the susurration must reside only in the mind.
The Peace Monitors began to hiss. They shook their heads like horses longing to charge into battle. Their faces turned to Crevan as their stances shifted to predatory crouches. Black oil drooled from the corners of their mouths.
Crevan motioned for Albin. “Come. Bring your pets.” They obeyed, hurrying from the Dalits’ presence.
Neil closed his eyes and pressed his palm to his right temple. The flies buzzed in Baal-zebub’s ears.
“Migraine?” Nathan wheezed. His lungs rattled and itched.
“Get. Out.” The wannabe god waved his free hand at the Peace Monitors, dismissing them. They shifted their weight and stamped their feet. The hissing grew.
Buck, however, took the order to heart. She dodged around the Dalits to disappear down the corridor to the great hall.
With Crevan and his minions distracted, Nathan could reach the manual control room. Blueprint, layout. It appeared on his glasses. There, another door off this chamber, leading to a circular room. Bingo. The door on the other side of the room slid open.
“Go!” He jerked his head in its direction. Albin and Josephine converged on him. They half carried, half dragged him to the new exit as Marvin ushered the Musters out.
When they reached the hall—“Wait.” He motioned for them to halt. No more leaving enemies. With Albin supporting him, his back against the wall, he turned. Colors radiated across Nathan’s vision like an LSD trip. Or so he assumed from TV.
The Dalits closed in around Neil. The muttering turned to distant screaming. For Nathan, at least. Crevan clapped his hands over his ears as he dropped to his knees. A shriek tore from him. “Get back!” He tried to struggle from their center, but they crowded about him the more.
On the screen, Janine watched with sadness. “Nathan, go. He’s brought this on himself for what he’s done.”
But Nathan couldn’t move. Not from the neural net, but from morbid fascination. What did he feel? Not anger, not triumph, not even regret. Only a sense of . . . finality. Like closing the cover after finishing a textbook on a subject he would never understand. “I tried pragmatism, I tried power, I even tried goodness. But in the end, justice finds its own way. It’s not black and white.” Now he needed to control the semi-parasitic organisms inside his skull. On a normal day, microorganisms outnumbered his cells ten to one. But they did not transgress the sanctity of his thoughts.
“Neil,” Nathan called before a coughing fit seized him. “Give . . . me . . . control. Even half. You can’t handle the burden.”
“No!” Rage contorted Crevan’s face more than the pain and the sanity-shredding cries.
“Let’s go.” Nathan flicked his fingers toward the control room.
His friends helped him stagger to the door. It opened as they approached. When they entered, a woman turned from a console and bank of screens that dominated one wall. Lexa Birk.
Nathan coughed, then swallowed blood. “Lexa. I wish I was surprised.”
“I’m certainly not surprised to see you either. Nor am I surprised to see you defeated that old man. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“What?”
She smirked. “Oh, don’t worry, you played your invaluable part, but I was the one who made certain you had the right serum and the right protocol. Now you’re going to stay there until I’m finished.”
Hissing sounded down the hallway. The door slid open.
“Do you have the brain worms too?” Nathan chuckled, or attempted to. A cough came instead. His chest ached. “You can’t . . . control . . . me.”
Amanda pushed past the others. “Lexa Birk. I used to work for you. I was in Human Resources. I unwittingly helped pick scientists to further your unspeakably evil cause. I don’t care what your initial intention was, or how you wanted to save us from ourselves, or save the Earth from us. I am finished.” She raised one of the Peace Monitors’ short, weighted bats. When had she pick pocketed that?
“What are you thinking?” Lexa began, disdainful.
Amanda sprang, bat raised. It hissed through the air, missing the enemy by an inch.
“Get her!” Lexa yelled as she stumbled back.
The Peace Monitors surged forward, their bared teeth black with oil.
“No!” Nathan threw himself in front of the charging pack.
Chapter 97
Gain the Whole World
In the Dark – Fight Like Sin
The Peace Monitors paused before Mr. Serebus. Then they began to spread out. Not passing him, but almost attempting to evade his aura.
Amanda’s second swing caught the distracted Lexa on the forearm that she raised to shield herself. Bones snapped like soggy sticks. Lexa cried out, clutching her arm to her chest.
The bat rose for a third and fatal strike.
“Amanda, no.” Albin barked as he caught her arm, stopping the attack and pulling her offline from her target.
“Let me do it,” Amanda snarled as she struggled against his restraint. “She’s a murderer. She did this!”
“I know.” He wrapped his arms around her as he pulled her in, taking full control of her center of gravity. “She knows about LOGOS. We need her alive, just as we need her brother. Perhaps more so.”
Amanda rem
ained tense, her glare riveted to the enemy.
Lexa drew a breath through clenched teeth as she remained doubled over her fractured arm. Blood seeped between her fingers.
Behind them, Mr. Serebus stood between the squad of cannibals and his companions. Hands out in the universal sign for Halt, he backed toward the computer console. He glanced over his shoulder at the controls. The cannibals watched. Seizing the mouse, he began clicking through screens.
Meanwhile, Taylor, Denver, Bridges, and Behrmann stood with bats ready to engage the threat. Judge growled as she strained at her leash.
Amanda attempted to shake Albin off. “Be still, Amanda,” he murmured in her ear.
With a growl on par with Judge’s, she relaxed a fraction. Acceptable. He released her.
On his glasses, security footage clicked through its rotation. Guards charged along hallways, likely heading for the escapees. As for the cannibals, two more squads of ten Peace Monitors clawed at the doors of their respective holding pens.
Bridges shifted back a step as the cannibals pressed forward. “Any time now, Nathan.”
They hissed, black oil gurgling in their mouths. Several of the lead monsters spat. It did not travel as far as the projectile vomit of earlier, but it would still infect anyone it touched.
Mr. Serebus’s clicking ceased. He went still, eyes on the screen. Evidently he recognized a danger they did not.
++++++++++++
The power to control the Dalits belongs to me. After so much struggle, so much suffering, so much death. He committed deeds he had thought himself incapable of, all for power. This power.
The neural network stretched its tendrils through his brain like the hyphae of a fungus and connected him more closely with the computer system and the Dalits. He could feel it—could feel them. They craved instruction.
