The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  「We will talk about this when you return.」

  Her mother gave her the same stare and tone of voice she’d used on her as a teenager whenever she’d gotten in trouble.

  Her mother’s utter disregard of her position as a Division 9 field operator, or of her abject lethality made her smile. 「Yes, Mother.」

  She dropped the vid call and crossed the roof, up a short stairway with yellow railings, and over the grey landing pad to the side of the whispercraft. As soon as she stepped up and inside, it lifted off. Whirring from the closing side hatch filled the cabin, louder than the sound of the engines, which amounted to a faint howl of moving air. She grabbed a handle on the ceiling and pulled herself around to fall ass-first into a seat mounted to the wall. The electric drone of the motors extending the lower tail fin continued for two more seconds.

  Her ‘special gift’ for the target facility sat in a storage compartment in the rear wall, an olive-drab backpack containing four programmable demo charges. I wonder what made C-Branch punt this one.

  The primary difference between Division 9 and C-Branch consisted of operational theater. For the most part, C-Branch made things happen outside the UCF while Division 9 worked inside the borders. Blowing up a site in ACC territory was the kind of black-ops shit they did all the time. When it came down to the wire, C-Branch had a little more political influence since they wore the label of being ‘officially’ military, whereas Division 9 fell under the auspices of the National Police Force. C-Branch had somewhat better tech as well.

  Heh. Maybe it’s a question of money. Or they didn’t feel like it… or Hardin wanted me to. Maybe his ‘friend across the hall’ called in repayment of his favors by not having this on their budget.

  The sniper boom operators both waved. She returned the greeting, and opened the file Hardin had given her. Her destination sat 784 miles away, and the pilot would likely skim the coast. Only sailors had more superstitions than pilots, and few wanted to go into the Badlands if they weren’t ordered to do so. Whispercraft traded supersonic capability for stealth, so the flight would likely take about an hour and a half, give or take ten minutes, depending on wind.

  She settled into her seat and enlarged her floating virtual screens to block off the plain black nothingness of the whispercraft interior.

  “Lieutenant,” said a voice over a speaker. “We’re fifteen minutes out from the LZ. I’m reading a pickup truck and two small bikes on site.”

  “Any weapons?” Nina shrank the holo-panels before closing them. Not that she had to, but after sitting for almost two hours, she stood and stretched. “Do they look like my resistance friends?”

  “Hard to say. I can tell you they don’t look like ACC. I think that’s an ethanol-burning truck.”

  “Whoa. Internal combustion?” asked a woman.

  Nina walked over to the backpack and lifted it out of the storage compartment. “They say the evil spirit of the Badlands leaves old tech alone. The more modern something is, the more likely it’ll crap out.”

  “That doesn’t bode too well for you,” said a deep-voiced man. The starboard side sniper wobbled with the sound of laughter coming over the speakers.

  “You’re all a bunch of superstitious idiots,” said the woman. “One minute until waypoint.”

  Nina glanced between the hatch and the fast-wire discs in the floor. “Are you planning to put rubber to dirt or am I wire dancing?”

  “Nothing else out there, figured I’d land,” said the woman.

  “Fine by me.” Nina moved to the side hatch and slung the pack over one shoulder.

  “Heh,” said the starboard sniper. “For being ACC territory, this place is fuckin’ empty.”

  “They don’t even wanna be here,” said the portside sniper. “And this ain’t exactly deep in. Another sixty or so miles northeast and you hit Badlands. Border’s not what you could call a clearly-defined line here, yanno?”

  “Are they all that superstitious?” asked a man, likely the electronics officer.

  “Pretty much,” said the portside sniper. “Most of ’em are concentrated deeper south. Probably why the resistance moved their psionics out here. Safer, but even they don’t wanna go into the Badlands. They say you go in, but never get out.”

  Nina glanced left at the passage to the cockpit. “There’s a higher prevalence of religion down here. Most of Mexico still believes in a higher power.”

  “Morons,” muttered the starboard-side sniper.

  If it gives them hope… “There isn’t much else for them here. If it helps them make it to tomorrow, what harm is there?”

  “Those ones aren’t the problem,” said the starboard-side sniper. “It’s the ones who kill psionic children ’cause they think their superstitious man-in-the-clouds considers them evil.”

  The pilot peered around a bank of equipment to shake her helmet at him. “It’s not all their fault, Sloan. People in charge down here don’t like psionics because they’re paranoid about secrets. It’s hard to bullshit telepaths. Their establishment encourages that bigotry.”

  Sloan’s station rotated as he panned the long boom railgun side to side. “Yeah, still don’t make it smart.”

  Nina bowed her head, thinking about what she’d seen at the swamp. She knew for a fact the ‘Vincent’ who’d visited her at home the other night had been fake, but the apparition she’d witnessed in the bayou… the way he felt unnerved her. If spirits existed, could some manner of higher power be real too?

  “Ten seconds,” said the pilot. “Nine… eight…”

  The whirr of the tail boom retracting vibrated in the floor.

  Nina grasped a handle on the wall and waited. As the pilot said, “two,” the whispercraft decelerated, making her sway toward the front end. Wheels touched down at the count of “one,” and the side hatch opened, letting in a blast of hot, dusty air.

  A battered green pickup truck that looked about twenty years old sat between a pair of patchwork motorcycles with ethanol-burning engines. The truck’s tires seemed too small and too old to go with the somewhat more modern vehicle, the most obvious difference being the lack of e-motors. Did they drive those things out of the Badlands?

  Three men and two women stood in front of the grille, all in the same startled lean away from her. To their perspective, the door in the side of the invisible whispercraft must’ve looked like a magic portal opening into another world. Either that or the sudden appearance of all the dust swirling around got them thinking about evil spirits.

  Nina stepped to the ground and walked the thirty yards over to the people in front of the truck. The locals dressed in a manner similar to her: long-sleeved flannel or plain shirts, jeans or brown fatigue pants, and sneakers. The women both wore boots and had loose black bandanas draped around their necks. Of the lot, only they carried weapons; each had a submachinegun hanging on a strap over their chest. While she had learned basic Spanish in school, she’d installed an intelligence-grade language chip so none of the local slang went over her head. “Guess you’re the welcoming party?”

  The central man, the oldest of the group in his thirties, glanced left and right at the people with him; the men didn’t appear to be armed. “You’re not what we were expecting.”

  She smiled. “What were you expecting? Some six-foot-five knuckle-dragger with a buzz cut?”

  He laughed. “Well, not exactly, but you don’t have the look of a commando.”

  “This woman is too pretty,” said the woman on the left. An inch shorter than Nina, she had a thick, muscular build and suspicious eyes. “And too white. They will know she is from the outside.”

  “There are plenty of Germans, and they are almost as pale,” said the other woman who looked younger, maybe twenty.

  A young man, lanky and teenaged, let out a sudden cry of pain and grabbed his head before crumpling into a heap. He rocked back and forth, making a repetitive “Ay, ay, ay, ay” sound.

  The other two men, who appeared in their later twenties, sta
red at him, but kept shooting wary looks back at Nina. Both women eased their hands up to grasp the submachine guns hanging around their chests.

  “Ramon?” The man who hadn’t said a word yet took a knee, and grasped the boy’s shoulder. When the teen continued rocking and whining, he glared at Nina. “What did you do to Ramon?”

  Nina cringed, her eyebrows edging upward in an expression of sympathy. “Ramon’s a telepath, isn’t he? My intel said you had a number of psionics with you who we’re bringing out after everything’s done.”

  A thin trickle of blood seeped from Ramon’s left nostril. His muttering changed to a constant mouth-closed whine, and his face reddened.

  “You didn’t have to do that to him.” The man leapt up and moved to lunge at her, but the older man caught him. Rather than grab her, he pointed. “You telepaths can block each other out; you didn’t have to hurt him!”

  “Hold on, Javier,” said the older man, eyeing Nina. “We don’t yet understand what happened.”

  “I don’t know what you were told, but I work for Division 9. We often handle classified information. I’ve got a cybernetic component that makes it a very bad idea to try and read my mind.” She glanced down at Ramon. “He would have felt resistance, and then he tried to force his way into my mind. The device backfeeds his power at him, amplified. The harder he pushes, the harder it hurts. I didn’t do anything to him. He walked into a wall, backed up, and decided to run headfirst into the same bricks.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said the short, muscular woman. “Cybernetics that react to psionics?

  Nina smiled as her CamNano changed her skin to match the medium brown hue of the oldest man. “I’m full of surprises, but I’m not psionic.” She slipped between the men, grasped the bumper of the pickup truck, and lifted it off its front wheels with one arm.

  “Mother of God,” muttered Javier.

  She set the truck down.

  The oldest man laughed, pointed at her, and winked. “Now that I did not expect. I am Pedro Del Olmo. This is María Isabel”―he nodded sideways at the younger woman―”and Adriana.”

  A howl in the wind gained strength as the whispercraft rose into the air.

  Ramon ceased making noise. Javier helped him sit up, but the boy continued cradling his head. Both nostrils dripped blood.

  Nina checked her bag and found a ten-count box of stimpaks―why they bothered sending any she had no idea, since they did nothing for her. Hooray for standard loadout. She offered one to Javier. “This will help. It’s medicine.”

  “We’re not that primitive.” Javier swiped it from her fingers. “Thanks.”

  “Normally, we are not so quick to trust, but your aircraft is nothing like we have ever seen.” Pedro waved her to follow. “You are clearly not with the Corporates. Come.”

  Nina followed him to the truck and got in the rear bench behind the driver’s seat. Pedro drove, with Ramon in the front seat and Javier in back with her. The women got on the motorbikes, pulled their bandanas up over their faces, and donned helmets.

  The sound of a combustion engine, and the accompanying vibration in the seat, mesmerized her for a few seconds. Fumes invaded the cabin, an eye-watering burn similar to cheap synthetic vodka. Buzzing like giant bees emanated from the bikes. One took off, leaving a wispy dust trail in its wake. Pedro followed, the other woman behind them.

  Desert scrub extended to the horizon as far as she could see. Nina positioned the backpack between her feet, opened it, and pulled out a foam block with the disc-shaped charges. Each eight-inch diameter disk, one inch thick, had a matte-black coating. At the center of an X-shaped reinforcement molded across the top, sat a M3 plug. A miniature satellite communicator remained at the bottom of the bag.

  Javier let out a low whistle. “Damn, girl. Those look serious.”

  She pinged one for wireless, and got a login prompt in a small virtual window. It accepted her Division 9 ID, and shifted to display a status window. One pound of Ne8 explosive. A single charge could vaporize an area equal to the footprint of a high-rise building, and probably one story up and down as well.

  “Shit… do they want me to burn this place out or send it to Mars?”

  “Huh?” asked Javier.

  Nina switched the mode of the charge to accept only a login from her hardware address and to ‘brick’ if anyone else tried to connect, rendering it useless. C-Branch would’ve set it to blow instantly if tampered with. “These things look small, but they’ve got a bit of a punch.”

  “Sounds like their momma,” said Pedro, chuckling.

  Ramon pounded the dashboard and shouted, “Fuck that bitch! Nghhh! What the shit? Imma cut that whore.”

  “Hi.” Nina waved at him. “Right behind you.”

  He whipped his head around to stare at her, his expression froze part-way between embarrassed and angry.

  Javier patted him on the shoulder. “You’re welcome to try, kid, but I wouldn’t suggest it.”

  “Don’t try to read my mind again,” said Nina. “Sorry; I should’ve warned you. I just spent almost two hours reading about the Mexican Resistance, and it did mention you frequently vet new people with a telepath.”

  “Damn, that fucking hurt so much.” Ramon grabbed his head and slouched forward.

  Nina took out the second bomb and logged in. “I assume you have a few psionics hiding out with you. When we get there, please warn the others. This device doesn’t make exception for curious children. And before you ask, I can’t turn it off. I don’t want to be responsible for a child screaming like that.”

  “You did already.” Javier winked. “Ramon’s only eighteen. Still a child.”

  “Your mother,” said Ramon, grabbing his crotch. “Your ass is only two years older. Shut up.”

  Pedro chuckled.

  She programmed the last two charges and put them back in the foam, and the foam back in the bag. “You don’t seem too heavily armed… The briefing made it sound as though your people would assist in taking the facility.”

  “We don’t carry weapons in the open.” Pedro patted a panel on the door. “We are armed, but it is not like the UCF here. It is illegal for people to have weapons if they do not work for the CMO, the DMS, or security. Carrying a weapon can get you shot.”

  Javier grumbled. “It is better in the UCF. They are not afraid of their people. Anyone can have a weapon.”

  Nina offered a wry chuckle. “Sometimes I think they’re just hoping the disenfranchised kill each other as a form of population control. Scraping meat off the road is cheaper than prison or social support services.”

  Pedro shook his head, muttering about God abandoning the Earth.

  The ride continued in relative silence for eighteen minutes until a bright blue one-story ranch house came into view. Eight goats, some chickens, two cows, and a burro wandered around out front. A middle-aged woman in a coral-hued dress hung laundry on a cord strung from the corner of the house to a wooden pole as tall as a man. She eyed the approaching vehicles, but showed little reaction.

  Nina did a double take, staring at live animals. “Are those real?”

  Javier flexed his bicep. “Yes. All natural.”

  She laughed. “I meant the animals.”

  Pedro gave her an incredulous look. “Yes… what else would they be?”

  In the middle of the front yard stood a quaint well with a tiny wooden roof. Two metal pipes rose from the ground behind it, each capped with vent grilles.

  Both bikes circled around the house to a barn, and drove inside. Chickens went running from the approaching truck, which Pedro stopped near the house. Nina pushed her door open and got out, drawn by the glint of metal that shone from the interior of the well. Curious, she approached and peered in. Its rustic exterior concealed a shiny metal cylinder two stories deep, filled to the three-quarter mark with water. At the bottom, a boxy machine emitted a slow stream of bubbles. Faint mechanical noise came from both standing pipes, which drew in air.

  Intere
sting… why make a water extractor look like an old well?

  “Over here,” said Pedro.

  Nina backed away from the ‘well’ and followed him to the barn where Adriana and Maria concealed their bikes under tarps. The heavy scent of animal waste and wet hay hung so thick in the air it settled on her tongue. After three breaths, she tasted moldy wood. Javier went over to a beat up tractor, which at least appeared new enough to be powered by e-motors. He did something at the controls, and a heavy clunk sounded from a machinist’s workbench.

  Ramon and Pedro swung the bench out from the wall, exposing a hole in the floor. Fifteen feet of corrugated metal tube led to an open area below containing light and the murmur of voices. A well-worn ladder of welded rebar extended down to about halfway between ceiling and ground.

  “Let me, uhh, go tell them not to poke you in the brain,” said Ramon.

  She nodded.

  He climbed down.

  “So… can we trust your people?” asked Pedro. “Are they really going to help us get out?”

  Nina looked him in the eye. “I have no reason to doubt they would. Psionics are welcome in the UCF, as is anyone fleeing the Corporates’ oppression. You’ll of course have go to through a bit of processing first.”

  “Like bologna?” asked Javier.

  She laughed. “No… interviews.”

  “I understand. No spies.” Pedro smiled. “Good plan. We will take you at your word.”

  “Okay!” Ramon’s voice echoed up the tube.

  Nina peered over the edge. Once Ramon backed out of the way, she jumped, landing in a deep squat with one hand on the dirt for balance. The room held nine adults (including Javier), a girl on the younger side of teenage, and four children under twelve, the smallest of whom couldn’t have been much past five. Except for one little boy in a bright orange jumpsuit and pink flip-flops, they wore a mismatched collection of tattered clothing, no sense of uniformity or organization among them. The word ‘Psíquico’ adorned the chest of the jumpsuit in black block letters.

  Tables on the right held rifles and pistols, as well as a few hand grenades and some medical supplies. Cots lined the left wall by a short hallway that looked hand-excavated, where a modern portable camp toilet (built around a trash disintegrator) sat behind a plastic tarp curtain.