The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Eldon let off two rounds and raider cart three went up in a fireball. Kenny aimed at a skinny buggy with a motorcycle’s front end connected by about five feet of sewer pipe to a car’s rear differential. The slim profile plus erratic driving made him dizzy trying to get a bead on it. Fuck that. He switched to the other buggy, a bigger target, and shot at it at the same time Eldon did.

  The driver’s head whipped back. Kenny caught a glimpse of a bloody face in the scope as the man slumped forward. The cart struck a rock or something and flipped ass over nose in the air before landing upside down and sliding.

  Eldon laughed as the armored box truck attempted to weave.

  “El, nail that little bastard… I don’t think I’m gonna do much but waste ammo.” Kenny adjusted aim and started pumping round after round into the truck. Some sparked, some didn’t.

  The Crusader let off two shots back to back.

  Kenny focused on the driver’s windshield area, firing about twice per second.

  “Shoot for the engine,” said Eldon. He offloaded a series of three-round bursts.

  Alyssa and Hayley shrieked and covered their ears as a gun went off inside the cabin.

  Kenny jumped and glanced left, at the windshield. Kathy leaned into the front seats, aiming out the driver’s side window. She, too, peppered the behemoth bearing down on them. Conflict between the thrill of watching his wife go ‘full badass’ and the guilt at putting her in a situation where she had to shoot at people kept him from smiling.

  “My bots are all offline,” wailed Nasir.

  “Nghh!” screamed Hayley. She pounded her fist on his control board over and over. “Stupid piece of shit. Come on! This is what you get for using generic Teradyne crap!”

  The raider’s truck emitted a loud boom as the hood flipped upward, exposing a flaming engine block. Thick, black smoke poured out the front end as well as over the front wheels. The evidently still-alive man behind the wheel attempted to swerve, and wound up rolling the behemoth on its side. The box crunched apart, steel-plated panels wobbling as the vehicle shuddered over the uneven desert ground, kicking up an even bigger dust cloud. A labored screeching of metal tore at the air; random spikes snapped off, and armor plates went whipping into the air like misshapen ninja stars. The dying beast skidded to a halt about fifty meters from the side of the road.

  “Thermal inside,” said Eldon. “About nine moving.”

  Kenny raised his rifle. “Maybe they’ve had enough?”

  A man let off a blood-curdling bellow of a roar and kicked out the back door of the old box truck. Bald, taller than Eldon, and covered in an attempt to fashion plate mail armor with a welding torch and scrap metal, he pointed at them and howled some unintelligible word. Eight more raiders, two that might’ve been female, dragged themselves out of the wreck before advancing toward Kenny’s truck.

  The huge man raised an Uzi.

  “Don’t look like they plannin’ on runnin’.” Eldon shot the big man in the forehead as he let fly with the Uzi. One small clank came from the tailgate area. “Dude’s tryin’ to hit us at that range with that thing?”

  “Magic kill stick make dead,” said Kenny as he fired at the onrushing crowd. “They don’t really understand ballistics.”

  A flurry of arrows leapt out from under the truck. One pierced a skull, sending the dead raider skidding on his knees for a second. That’s gotta be Halcón. The other two arrows scored nonfatal hits in raiders’ chests or legs. The fifth arrow to fire hit another man in the front of the chin and came out the back of his head. That Halcón kid is far too comfortable sticking things into people. Kenny swiveled and fed two bullets to a man who attempted to hit him with a shotgun from ten meters. Two pellets slapped into his left arm, but didn’t penetrate his sleeve.

  Luna leaned out from behind her tire and put an arrow into the upper chest of a man charging in with a chain-wrapped bowling ball mace. The aluminum shaft jammed to a halt, impaling the lower portion of his throat. He lost his grip on the weapon, which hit the paving with a sharp thok. Gurgling, he clutched the arrow and careened over sideways.

  The girl darted out of sight not a full second before a bullet skipped off the road where she’d been. Kenny swiveled and shot a man working the lever on a prewar bolt-action rifle, killing him.

  A loud whirr came from the back of the truck, accompanied by Nasir’s howl of victory. The sentry turret rose out of its storage configuration, swiveled ninety degrees to the right, and offloaded a barrage of 15mm rounds into the raiders. Bodies burst apart in fragments of floating gore. If any of them screamed, no voice overpowered the thunder.

  When the machinegun stopped, nothing moved.

  “Liss… Hale,” said Kathy. “I want you two to stay down. Do not look outside. I mean it. You don’t want to see that.”

  “Yes, Mom,” said Hayley.

  “Uhh, sure.” Alyssa slid off the seat to sit on the floor.

  “Well.” Eldon grinned. “Good of you to decide to help out, Nas.”

  “The thing was offline.” Nasir stuck his head out the window and shrugged with his eyes at Eldon. “Uhh, the kid hit some command sequence that flipped it to aux power. Primary battery’s showing dead.”

  Hope fluttered in Kenny’s chest. He ran around to the driver’s side door, and yanked it open―to a dark console. His heart became a rock that fell somewhere down into his lower intestine.

  “Yaaaah!” roared a man.

  Kenny swiveled, aiming toward the rear of the truck, at a raider covered in dust and other people’s blood. The man charged at him with a crude sword raised over his head. An arrow streaked out from behind the rear driver’s side tire, and impaled the raider’s crotch. His war cry shriveled to a piteous squealing.

  “Ooh,” said Kenny, cringing.

  “Ugh,” yelled Eldon.

  “Gah,” whispered Nasir.

  “Oy!” shouted Halcón.

  Kathy sucked air through her teeth, wincing.

  The raider dropped his sword over his back and skidded to a stop on his knees, cradling his groin, mouth stuck open in silence while staring at the arrow shaft between his hands. A trace of a squeak came from him a half-second later.

  “Damn man.” Kenny shot him in the forehead, knocking him flat on his back. “Poor bastard.”

  Gato crawled out from under the tire where the arrow came from, looking horrified. He grabbed himself between the legs and whined in Spanish, “I didn’t mean to hit him there. I’m sorry.”

  Kenny grimaced, but waved the boy over. “It’s okay kid, the ref didn’t see it. No foul.”

  “What?” asked Gato, looking around. “What is a ref?”

  “Not important. Bad joke.” Kenny chuckled.

  Nasir, in the back seat, fiddled with his bot-control unit. It beeped every few seconds. “What buttons did you hit, kid? I didn’t even know this board could do that.”

  “Uhh, I dunno.” Hayley sniffled. “I just hit buttons. I was kinda panicking.”

  Thunder rolled overhead. Kenny didn’t want to look east, because he knew exactly what would be there. After two deep breaths, he did, and sure enough, the wall of dust devoured the desert.

  “Wow, he’s pretty pissed,” muttered Kenny, gazing at the oncoming maelstrom.

  “Knock that shit off, man.” Eldon slugged him in the shoulder.

  “Everyone inside.” Kenny ushered Gato toward the door.

  Cielo climbed into Kathy’s lap when she extracted herself from being wedged between the front seats. Luna and Halcón entered via Eldon’s door. Kenny climbed in and worked the backup hand crank to close the window.

  “You got manuals on the windows too?” Eldon raised an eyebrow.

  “Never know when this’ll happen.” Kenny winked.

  Wind battered the truck, driving a pelting of small stones against composite armor panels. Soon, the whole vehicle swayed side to side, but not hard enough to worry him. Within seconds, the air tasted like dirt. Hayley kept quiet, but she grabbed on to
Katherine and trembled. Alyssa huddled close and held the girl’s hand, seeming confused by her inexplicable show of fear.

  “Are we going to die?” asked Luna in Spanish.

  “Nah,” said Kenny. “The old man is just pissing and moaning.”

  Eldon glared at him.

  “What old man?” Alyssa asked.

  Kenny continued in Spanish, slow so Alyssa and Hayley could keep up. “Many years ago, civilization covered this entire land mass.”

  “We know that,” said Alyssa.

  “Yes, but I’m talking to them, too.” Kenny gestured at the Scrags. “Anyway, from ocean to ocean, this whole place had big cities, technology, and law. One day, some people got greedy and started fighting. Corporations and the government both thought they should be in control, and it caused a great war that destroyed the middle of the continent. All the people fled to the coasts, where they built the biggest cities ever made by humankind. The cities are so big, and had to hold so many people, they made them on top of metal raised high into the sky.”

  The younger three Scrag kids gasped in awe. Halcón looked intrigued.

  “Anyway… it is said that all the people who died during this war became angry. Their restless spirits walked the land until they found each other, and a great demon devoured them to make itself stronger.”

  Eldon whistled to himself, trying to peer out the windows, but all had turned brown with dirt.

  “That demon sometimes decides it wants to keep people, and won’t let them leave the Badlands. There’s lots of stories of technology dying out here. Anything modern fails when it’s most disastrous.”

  “That’s a buncha superstitious bunk,” muttered Eldon in English. “You really believe that?”

  “It is true,” said Halcón, also in English. “We have stories the same. I try leading my tribe to Prophet in Querq, but could not find the way. The demon does not want us going to her.”

  “Prophet?” asked Kathy.

  Kenny whistled. “Wow… there’s a bunch of stories there, too. Most you hear people talk, there’s this girl out there who can heal with a touch. Glowing blue eyes or some such shit. If you believe that sorta thing, they say some fast talkin’ salesman type dragged her all over the Badlands, chargin’ people to see ’er. Someone ’ventually killed him and took her, and she supposedly still changes hands among various tribes and raider groups.”

  “Is not the now,” said Halcón, attempting English. “Prophet is to Querq. Home. Changed. She…” His eyebrows scrunched together with a hint of annoyance in his expression. “Ella no va con ellos ahora cuando vienen a llevarla. Ella tiene un gran poder.”

  The three younger Scrags nodded.

  “Hmm.” Kenny rubbed his chin. “I heard she never tried to fight. So you think this girl is real, and she’s using her power to stop raiders?”

  “Go away, go away,” said Halcón in English. “We saw raider. Kept say ‘go away,’ and walked.” He tapped himself on the chest with his fist twice. “I ask go away what. He say Prophet told him go away, so he go away.” He pointed at the window. “Raider keep walk, no stopping.”

  Eldon whistled. “Sounds like this ‘prophet’ might just be a psionic. You know how shit gets exaggerated out here.”

  Kenny shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “Why do you kids want to go to her?” asked Kathy in Spanish.

  “She can stop the demon,” said Luna. “The devil is afraid of the Prophet.”

  The other Scrags nodded, total reverence on their faces.

  Kathy rocked Hayley side to side and shot Kenny a questioning stare.

  “Well,” said Kenny, “the old man… the demon, whatever you wanna call him, won’t be able to reach you where we’re going. The four of you deserve a chance at a good life. An education. No reason for you to stay stuck out here in the sticks.”

  “El demonio está enfadado con nosotros,” whispered Cielo, sounding frightened.

  “Aww, the old man isn’t that upset. He’s just tryin’ to make things interesting, and violent. Probably not fond of me pullin’ these kids out of his playground.” Kenny ruffled his hair.

  Cielo grinned.

  “So you’re saying,” said Eldon, “some kinda demon-ass thing wants to strand us out here in the shit? Why the hell would he care about a couple of feral children?”

  Kenny shrugged. “If I see him, I’ll ask.”

  “Don’t say shit like that man.” Eldon waved him off. Hayley’s whimper caught his attention, and he froze, staring at her.

  “Change your mind? You believe now?” Kenny grinned.

  Eldon exhaled. “I ain’t sayin’ that. But no sense jinxing it.”

  Katherine ran her hand down her leg in a rhythmic motion, her other arm around Hayley.

  “You okay, hon?” asked Kenny

  “I’m trying not to panic.” She bit her lip. “This is what I was always so worried about happening to you… why I always threw a fit when you were going to go out here.”

  Kenny slid into the gap between the front seats and patted her knee. “Are you okay?”

  She stared for a second or two at the dirt-covered window, under a constant pelting of pebbles. “Yeah… This is scary as hell, but I’m happy I got my mind back.”

  “Me, too.” He buried his face in the crook of her neck and squeezed.

  “Esta maquina ya no sirve?” asked Gato.

  Kenny looked at the huge brown eyes of the twelve-year-old staring at him. He tried not to let the worry storming around inside him show on his face. “The truck isn’t dead yet… I still got a few tricks left.”

  athed in the cold blue glow of her holo-terminals, Nina spent most of Thursday afternoon combing the GlobeNet. Becker’s interrogation had given away four more individuals, ACC spies, who had infiltrated Laughlin-Reed Innovation. She’d managed to find the time and date of their entry to the UCF via facial recognition searches within the Citycam system. Two had entered via commercial Mars shuttle, having established their false identities as UCF citizens on Mars before going to Earth. One entered at a checkpoint after driving up one of the ramps at the south end of the city. Most likely, he had come up from Mexico. The last man simply appeared on the street one day, the oldest record she could locate of him within the camera database showed him emerging from an alley in a grey zone along the western edge of the city.

  She brought up a few real-time views from nearby cameras, which offered a pleasant panorama of beach and ocean. The gargantuan plastisteel tiles upon which Sector 1405 sat overhung the beach, above a gaping view of The Beneath. Residents of a handful of scattered beachfront homes made a feeble effort at fences to keep the Discarded away, though a determined spy would have had little trouble getting into the Beneath there, since it yawned open facing the ocean. Someone brave, lucky, or unaware of the danger could eventually make their way up into the city proper.

  Nina grabbed still images of faces around the men arriving via RedLink shuttle from Mars, as well as the one who drove in. Hours of searching later, none of them matched any known ACC personnel or employees of LRI. The four men Becker gave up all appeared to have positions in or near the pharmaceutical production facility. Two pushed data around, scheduling and processing shipments to hospitals, pharmacies, and sending OTC meds to the warehouses that fed the delivery bot system. The man who’d come in via the ocean worked as an exo-suit operator. According to LRI’s employee record, he loaded shipments into transport vehicles, as well as belonged to the crew responsible for maintaining the giant machinery that produced the various medications. One of the Mars arrivals held the position of executive assistant to Daniel Stirling, Senior VP of production.

  Shit. They are using LRI to manufacture Harmony. She stared at the file photo of Stirling. Are you being played or are you one of them too?

  The prior executive assistant received a promotion to a Senior Director, Public Relations spot a month ago. Nina poked around LRI’s system, but couldn’t find a normal-looking data trail that one might e
xpect to come with a hiring process for filling such a position. Stirling’s new executive assistant appeared to get his job handed to him on a plate after the SVP instructed HR to hire.

  What kind of dirt did they have on Stirling? She glanced at the face of John Rastin, thirty-two-year old-executive assistant, for a second before shifting her gaze left one holo-panel to the same face in a C-Branch record of Karl Wimmer. The image appeared to have been taken somewhere in a jungle on Earth, and showed him a few years younger in green ACC-flage and face paint. He didn’t have the look of a commando, more like an intelligence officer embedded within a special operations team.

  Okay, Danny. What nasty little habits do you have that they found out about?

  Nina reached out to start digging on Daniel Stirling, but her official NetMini rang before her fingers touched the button.

  “Dammit.” She considered ignoring the call until reading ‹Barron, Ricky› on the incoming ID. “Awesome timing.” A mental command altered her avatar to look like the ‘gang girl’ outfit she’d used to visit him before she answered

  The holographic head of a young man with teal hair, brown skin, and green eyes appeared.

  “Hey sweetness,” said Ricky. “I’m about to roll out a new batch of that stuff you like. I’ll set some aside for you if you wanna get your perfect ass down here in like twenty.”

  “Ooh… It’s about time,” she whined, raising her voice higher. “You’ve been making me wait so long. You’re so mean to me sometimes.”

  “Ran outta some of the stuff I need, babycakes. I’d never be mean to you on purpose.” He winked, looked nervous for an instant, and hung up.

  Nina cringed. Babycakes? I’ll let that one go if this turns out to be useful.

  After trading her coat for a purple Zombie Ballerina’s band tee, baggy half-jacket, and a fluorescent violet ‘tattered’ skirt almost long enough to reach mid-thigh, Nina slipped into a shorter pair of boots that didn’t look as military as the ones she normally wore. The trendier boots wouldn’t survive if she had to kick anyone with her full strength, but they fit the outfit. Her ballistic armor suit could pass for black tights, the upper portion hidden by the full t-shirt.