Revolution: A Red Dog Thriller (The Altered Book 3)

by Blou Bryant

  Teri stroked his arm. “Worry about now, not later.”

  There you go, scaring me again. Wyatt pulled up at the entrance to Rosa Parks Park, and stopped the truck. “Okay, Emm, let’s get this done.”

  Hannah got down and opened the door for him. He climbed out into a party, people swaying to the music. It might be a fake party, created to block the police and Watchers, but the residents of the Zone had crap lives, and any chance for a party was to be taken. He envied their ability to live in the moment, to squeeze joy out of whatever they were given. Pulling Hannah to him, he gave her another long kiss, to hooting and hollering from everyone around them.

  Turning away, he led Emm through the crowd to Seymour’s usual table. Sure enough, he was seated across from Patterson, a chess board and two large coffees between them.

  “God, you’re losing again? Some genius.”

  Seymour didn’t get up, favoring Wyatt with a look. “That truck is a mess, and you’ve got blood trickling down your forehead. Do you think you’re winning?”

  “Yeah, about that. Thanks for booking me into Hotel Jessica.”

  Seymour stood up and shook Wyatt’s hand. “I heard. Emmelyn’s been texting me.”

  “Yeah, she’s good like that. No phone? No problem, she’s a walking, talking cellphone. Now she wants to get me on Facebook.”

  With a grunt, Seymour sat back down. “Blah, nobody uses Facebook for anything. I’ll hook you up with something.”

  On the other end of the park, the helicopter had landed, and was surrounded by police cars. Arresting her, that’d be perfect. Lock her up, put her in a box and throw away the key. But that’s not how it worked, was it? Not for rich people. “Do you have the code?” Wyatt asked.

  “Already uploaded,” said Emm, tapping at her skull.

  “You downloaded it?”

  “I’m your last black box. We figure it’s safer that way.”

  More police cars pulled up, as well as a few unmarked vehicles. Wyatt saw Watchers getting out.

  There might be several hundred people in the impromptu street party, but there were at least fifty officers and Watchers now. All likely armed. We need to hurry.

  “Why’d we come here then? Can’t you just upload it to Mary?”

  “We have to upload behind the firewalls. And as for me, we did it here for the same reason the implant she put in you only works up close. For security.”

  “Okay. Let’s get out of here,” Wyatt said, not at all sure how they were going to make it out. This is the problem, he thought, with plans made at the last minute without forethought. He turned to Hannah. “We need a car. Outside the police ring.”

  “That’ll be rough, there’s….” she said, when a bullhorn interrupted her.

  Jessica’s voice rang out across the park, louder than all the music and the partiers combined. “My name is Jessica Golde. You know me.”

  “We know you’re crooked,” yelled someone.

  “And ugly,” someone else joined in. From across the park, Wyatt saw her standing on a picnic table. Four officers were in front of her with clear body shields, protecting her from gunfire. She’d changed, she was no longer in white, now wearing a long red dress with spaghetti straps. Wyatt wondered if she had different clothing choices based on what crimes she was going to commit.

  “I am rich. If you help me, I can make you rich as well. There is a criminal among you. Wyatt Millar. The person who hands him over to me will get… one million dollars.”

  Wyatt glanced around him, but wasn’t worried. Not too worried.

  Someone shouted out, “Forty million.”

  Jessica hesitated and appeared to glance over the crowd. “What?”

  “I’ll tell you for forty… no, fifty million.”

  Someone else yelled, “Fifty-five million.”

  Patterson was laughing, his large belly jiggling. He stood up and yelled, “Seventy million,” and sat back down. “Always loved a good auction.”

  “He’s over here, give me my money,” someone yelled. They had to be at least twenty yards from Wyatt.

  “No way, he’s with me,” someone yelled from the other side. Others joined in.

  Seymour got up from his seat and yelled, “Here, here, he’s here. Where’s my money?”

  Trix grabbed him by the arm and pushed him down, “What the hell?”

  The chubby little man only smiled and took a sip of his coffee. “If people yell from every area but here… that’ll tell her where he is.”

  Wyatt smiled, and said, “Okay, perhaps you’re a bit genius.”

  “A bit? Be nice, I got gifts.”

  “We need to go,” said Teri. “Before violence,” she signed.

  But I don’t even know where we’re going or how we’re getting there. “You’re right,” he said. “What’s the gift?”

  “Another Patterson and Seymour special,” he said, and pulled a phone and two earbuds out of his pocket. “Get going.”

  Wyatt put one in his ear and looked at the other. “What’s the…” he asked, when Emm took it and put it in her ear.

  “I need to be able to connect without zoning out. We’re going for a run.”

  Wyatt nodded, then considered Teri. “I suppose you need to come.”

  “Yes,” she signed.

  “Because, tickle?”

  Click, click, she said, grinning.

  Mary’s voice came over the earbud. “Proceed down Bronson at a normal pace.”

  Here we go again, Wyatt thought, and turned, the two women following.

  Chapter 34

  “Where are we going?” he asked, taking a couple high fives from Zone inhabitants as they passed through.

  “The AIs have discussed it, any central server. We’ve picked one, the most central, and the one that’s the most connected.” Emm walked ahead of him and danced at times with partiers. A block up, the crowd thinned, and Mary directed them west.

  “How far?”

  “Far isn’t the issue,” replied Emm.

  “Oh?” asked Wyatt, sensing hesitation in her voice. “And the issue is?”

  “The best server is Jessica’s. And, well, it’s only a few miles from here.”

  Wyatt stopped. “You’ve got to be kidding.” Glancing back at the crowds, he considered immediately turning around for reinforcements.

  “She’s right,” said Mary into his ear. “Because it runs security on those other servers, it’s able to bypass normal safeguards. That server has direct connections to hundreds of others, unfettered access we can’t find anywhere else, not outside New York.”

  “Sure, but the flip side is the security.”

  “Emmelyn will be able to bypass it, if she’s at the source.”

  “She’s got to get there, and armed men and women are a hell of a lot harder to bypass than a machine, especially if it’s just her, me and a teenager to take them on.”

  “Hey,” objected Teri.

  Frustrated, he asked, “What, are you practiced in martial arts? Do you have a lightsaber? I’m supposed to protect you… and instead, I’m dragging you to an armed camp?”

  Teri reached out and took his hand, “We’ll be fine.”

  “Another premonition?”

  “Faith,” she replied, and gave him a yank to keep going.

  With a heavy sigh, he followed. There weren’t a lot of choices. He’d made his plan, and it was to trust them. To do what wasn’t expected, wasn’t what he was comfortable with. This fit the bill.

  They continued another block west and someone waved from the porch of a beaten down house. “Hey, over here.”

  Wyatt recognized the voice and smiled. “Rich?” he shouted and jogged up to greet his friend. Andy was sitting on a chair, a phone glowing in his lap.

  “Hey,” he said, and took a swig of a beer. Nothing new there. “I’d offer you a cold one, but the text said you gotta get in the house.”

  Rich took a key from his track pants and unlocked the front door. “Shall we?”

&
nbsp; “What text?” asked Wyatt.

  “I sent it,” said Mary over the earbud. “You have five seconds, get in the house.”

  Wyatt held the door and let the others in, and then stepped into the darkness, just as a police car drifted by, its lights flashing. He kept his hand on the doorknob. “What now?”

  “Wait….”

  “For what? What’s the plan?” he asked, angry at being kept in the dark. Perhaps the computer knew what she was doing… but perhaps she didn’t, and he trusted his own intuition more than her knowledge.

  He reached out to the door, and Emm put her hand on his. “Wait.”

  Seconds later, a second patrol car swung by, briefly illuminating the neighborhood. It paused out front but continued on its way, leaving only darkness in its wake.

  Without missing a beat, Mary said, “Return to the street and go back two houses, and then turn through the yards.”

  Rich raised an eyebrow. “So, what’s up? We were at the party and got a text telling us to come here.”

  “How long ago… did you get the text, that is?”

  Andy checked his phone. “Ten minutes ago? Why?”

  Mary spoke again through the earbud. “You need to keep on schedule.”

  Andy’s phone buzzed. He read it out. “Say goodbye?”

  Wyatt cursed under his breath, but shook Rich and Andy’s hands. “I’ll explain later. Thanks guys,” he said and left them behind in the house.

  “How’d she know the police cars would be there, exactly at that moment?” he asked Emm.

  Mary replied. “They follow a routine.”

  “I didn’t ask you.”

  “But I knew the answer,” she said.

  “Nobody likes a know-it-all,” he grumbled as they reached the second house and turned through an overgrown lawn. The Zone had improved, but the crews that were cleaning up hadn’t got to even a tenth of the buildings. He stepped lightly, trying not to think of abandoned needles or anything else in the undergrowth. “What’s the route we’re going to take?”

  “Go through two yards, cross a street and enter 532 Walker.”

  “And from there?” They reached the second yard. He scanned the yard, but there was nothing to see, darkness had fully set in.

  “There are three options. You wait at 532 Walker and are picked up by Ahmed Zhario. Option two, you exit the back door, cross another road and are picked up by Ahmed Zhario. Option three, you stay in 532 Walker for between four and six minutes and exit through the back, go three blocks and board the number 42 bus, headed east.”

  As they crossed the road, Wyatt briefly paused, wanting to stop and confront Mary, but of course that was foolish, she wasn’t with him. Instead, he took Emm by an elbow. “What does she mean three options? What do we do after that? How do we get to Jessica?”

  Mary replied again. “After that, there are one hundred and twenty-three options. Each of those leads to between two and thirteen options of their own.”

  Emm opened the door and waved him through. “She means that she doesn’t know the future. She knows probability, and the further she gets from the immediate moment, the less accurate she is.”

  “Oh, that’s great. We don’t have a clue where we are going,” he said, despite knowing that he was only being petulant. He played enough chess to know how complex the future could be. Four hundred possible positions after the first two moves. Seventy thousand after the first four moves. Millions and billions of possibilities soon followed.

  What troubled him, he realized as they waited out the minutes… two minutes, then three, then four… then six and seven… was that he didn’t know if he was a pawn, a speedy rook, or the king, waiting to be captured. And that he couldn’t see what pieces black was moving. “We’re at eight minutes,” he said, not having to check his watch.

  “You’ll be leaving through the back door in thirty seconds,” Mary answered.

  “Does it bother you to not hear her talk?” Wyatt asked Teri. “Do you even know we’re talking to her?”

  “I do know, and no, it doesn’t bother me. I trust you,” she signed.

  Wyatt grumbled at her equanimity as he counted down the last seconds. “Can we go now?”

  Emm was already opening the door when Mary confirmed that they could.

  “So, have we missed the bus?” he asked, deliberately snarky. “I thought we had six minutes?”

  “I’ve had to recalculate,” Mary said. “Go through the yards and then turn right on Gilmour.”

  Gilmour was a main street, bounding the east side of the Zone. Traffic flowed sedately by and there wasn’t a police car in sight. Wyatt looked left and then right. “We should go left,” he said, spotting a taxi company. “Enough of this sneaking around. She won’t expect us to take a cab.”

  “Go right.”

  He turned left and started walking.

  Emm caught up and grabbed him by the arm. “You have to trust her.”

  “No, I don’t,” he replied, not stopping. The best way to confuse an AI was by doing the unexpected, and that’s exactly what he planned to do. It was only a half block to the taxi stand.

  “You’re being an idiot,” Emm protested.

  “Turn left, go between the houses. Immediately,” said Mary.

  “What happened to going up Gilmour,” Wyatt asked, enjoying her confusion.

  “Run, now, run between the houses.”

  Wyatt paused at this. There wasn’t any urgency to her tone, but the words told a different tale. “Why?” he asked, pausing. The three cabs at the stand all pulled away as he watched, making U-turn’s and heading in the opposite direction. “What’s going on?” he asked, suddenly feeling very stupid, with a glance to the left and the darkness between houses.

  “Calculating,” said Mary. “Calculating.”

  Two cars coming up the street picked up speed and then pulled off the road, directly in front of the small group, one blocking them from the safety of the houses. Men and women climbed out, weapons in hand.

  “That’s him,” someone yelled.

  “Get him,” another said.

  A short man put up a hand. “He’s mine.” He brushed long hair back from his face and put his gun in the back of his pants, a grin on his face that said he knew he was fully in charge.

  Wyatt stood silent, like the idiot he was suddenly sure he was.

  “Mary isn’t the only AI in play,” whispered Emm.

  Joe was out there was well, moving his pieces. “Hey, my name is Wyatt. What’s the problem?”

  “Nice,” said the short one. “That’s how it’s going to be?”

  “What is?” asked Wyatt, trying to keep any snark out of his voice. The little man had a face that wanted to be punched. And, after the day he’d had, Wyatt would be pleased to punch someone.

  “You’re chatting up my girl? Taking pics and sharing them?”

  Wyatt spread his arms wide. “Man, I don’t know your girl, I got one of my own, and if you met her, you’d understand, I’m not looking for more.”

  “My name is Jacko, I’m Lynn’s man. I’m the guy you’ve been screwing around on.”

  Not saying anything—it didn’t seem the right time for snark—he waited for the guy to get closer. Perhaps he could grab him, hold him… if he was the leader, they wouldn’t shoot, right?

  Wyatt took a step back. Six against three… well, really, one, unless Teri could pull some magic out her rump or Emm could… well, whatever she could do. Behind him, more cars arrived, doors opened and closed.

  The reaction of the men at the first bangers car said the people behind him weren’t their friends. Guns were raised, and the group ducked back, taking cover. Wyatt instinctively grabbed at Teri and pulled her down next to him crouch close to the ground, but stayed on his feet so he could move fast if needed. One arm went around her waist, so he was ready to carry her away from whatever was about to happen.

  “Guns down,” yelled someone. Wyatt recognized the voice, and when gunfire didn’t erupt
around him, looked up. Ahmed leaned over the hood of a car, a semi-automatic in hand. “Hey Wyatt,” he shouted.

  “Don’t fire, nobody fire,” Wyatt yelled in return.

  “Guns down,” someone else responded. Nobody complied.

  “Stay down,” Wyatt said to Teri, and stood back up, his body itching at the knowledge that he stood between a dozen heavily armed men and women. “No shooting, there doesn’t need to be any shooting.”

  Jacko had disappeared behind one of the two cars and was out of sight.

  “Jacko, let’s talk,” Wyatt shouted.

  “What, so you can disrespect me more?”

  “We can talk this out.”

  “You text pictures of my woman to everyone in town, you wanna talk? Gonna burn you, white boy.”

  “You wanna try that, you piece of street garbage? I got some lead for ya,” shouted Ahmed in return. Never one for subtlety, Ahmed.

  “Can’t we talk this out? There’s been a mistake made.”

  “The only mistake,” said Jacko, “was when you got with my woman.”

  How the hell do I end this? It’s impossible to prove a negative. I can’t give him pictures that show me not texting pictures of his girl. We’re going to have to fight it out. Realizing this would get everyone killed, Wyatt tried to focus on his ability to control electricity. There was a world out there beyond his five senses, and he needed to connect with it. He closed his eyes and tried to sense it.

  “What are you doing?” asked Jacko. “What’s he doing?”

  It’s not there. It’s there, but I can’t connect to it, my batteries are depleted? Do I just not know how to do it right? Wyatt thought back to the chair, to the feelings he’d experienced while drugged and tied down. Come on, I know it’s there. Let me shock them. Or Jedi-mind-trick them, like Teri. Or an explosion. Anything. He wanted to cry out with frustration, knowing there were abilities that he had, but couldn’t tap.

  Someone else laughed. “What’s he doing?”

  “Um, Wyatt?” said Ahmed. “What....”

  Wyatt realized he had his arms out like he was on the cross and dropped them to his sides.

  A quiet, high voice from next to him said, “He didn’t do it.” Teri reached into his back pocket and took the phone out.