The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  His scream started as she spun with a jujitsu-inspired flip; the maneuver hauled him off his feet by one arm, lifting him up and over the child before slamming him down on his chest in the street. Confident the force of a doll drilling him into the pavement would leave him stunned and disoriented for a few seconds, she let her speedware shut down in order to speak.

  “Are you hurt?” Nina took a knee by the girl, who shook her head. “Go to your teacher.”

  “Are you a demon?” asked the girl.

  “No, sweetie. Demons don’t protect children.”

  “Are you an angel?” She tilted her head, seeming a touch less afraid. “Are you God?”

  “Not even close.” She patted the girl on the shoulder. “I’m somewhere between alive and dead, only trying to do the right thing.”

  “Thank you!” She ran into the pile of students and crawled under the teacher’s arm.

  The woman stared at Nina with shock and distrust.

  “You need to get these children out of here as fast as possible. Do you have a way out the back?” asked Nina.

  The teacher nodded.

  “You’ve got about two minutes before explosives send the ‘police station’ into orbit. I suggest you get moving right now.”

  The woman rounded up the kids and started shoving them into a hallway at the rear of the classroom.

  Nina spun on the groaning man. She dragged him a good bit away from the school doorway and stomped on his forearms one after the other, splintering his armor and breaking bones. “Hiding behind a child? You are the lowest form of shit.” One kick smashed both of his legs at the knee, making him cry out and lose consciousness.

  His helmet rocked in time with the rapport of a gun.

  Nina glanced over her shoulder at Silvia. “Nice shot.”

  “Bastard had us pinned forever… José’s in the truck.” She faced down the street and yelled, “Adriana!”

  The woman lying under the crashed bike groaned.

  “I got her. We need to get out of here.” Nina ran to Adriana. After flinging the bike aside like a toy, she scooped the woman up in both arms. “Roberto! María Isabel! Time to go.”

  They tried to look at her, but incoming fire from the alley across the street made them duck. Nina switched her vision to GhostEye mode, which rendered the houses as transparent wireframe models. Two human figures with rifles showed clear on the other side of the corner. She crouched and rested Adriana on her leg to free her right hand before drawing her pistol and firing one round at each. The 15mm slugs pierced two walls without losing much velocity, struck each man, and continued into the next house before sailing out across open desert.

  Both men collapsed backward.

  María Isabel and Roberto broke cover and ran. María Isabel righted her bike and started it. The other motorbike appeared to have been run over, probably by the burning car, mangling the front wheel.

  “How bad?” Nina put her gun away and lifted Adriana again.

  “Ngh… Left arm’s fucked. Think I took one in the gut, too.”

  Nina rushed her back to the pickup truck. “I’m sorry. I should’ve come in alone.”

  “As long as I get to the UCF―” Adriana grunted and gasped for air. “I don’t care if I lose my arm.”

  “I’ve got a few stimpaks left.” She handed Adriana to the waiting Silvia and José, who pulled her into the back seat. “Be right back.”

  “Where are you going?” yelled Silvia.

  Roberto sprinted past her to the truck and leapt into the bed.

  María Isabel drove off heading northeast. A few people hurled things at her from windows, yelling at her for causing trouble, though nothing came close to hitting her.

  Nina hurried to the wounded DMS man and dragged him to the truck. Roberto gave her an incredulous look as she threw him in the bed.

  “When we’re clear of town, I’ll ask them to stop. When we do, push him out.”

  He shook his head. “You’re a strange woman, whoever you are.”

  Little pieces of my soul are all I have left.

  Nina jumped in the truck. “Where’s Javier?”

  José bowed his head, then shook it. “Under that car.”

  “Bastard sons of whores,” muttered Silvia.

  “How much time?” José slammed the shifter into reverse.

  “Twenty-eight seconds,” said Nina, deadpan. “Javier is dead…”

  Silvia made the sign of the cross.

  José whipped the truck around in a ‘K’ turn and stomped on the gas pedal. Dust sprayed out behind them as acceleration pinned Nina to the seat. She stared past a few trailer homes at the approaching desert while mercy, guilt, and vengeance got into a catfight in her head.

  “What’s with the extra cargo?” Sweat rolled off José’s face; the effort it took him to drive despite such pain clear in his eyes.

  Nina stared down. “He wasn’t dead. It didn’t feel right leaving him there.”

  “You tore those people up like a scythe on wheat, and you feel guilty about one piece of shit?” Silvia muttered something incomprehensible. “I don’t understand you, girl.”

  “He wasn’t a threat anymore. There’s a fine line between combat and murder. Who knows how many times I’ve tripped over it, but I try not to.” She raised a hand to rub her temple. “If you want to finish him off, I won’t stop you. I only told him I wouldn’t hurt him.”

  Silvia scowled.

  “What do you intend to do with him?” asked José.

  Boom.

  A flash of dark red and smoke flickered in the rearview mirror on the door. The large, fancy house vanished in a spray that resembled a massive shotgun firing into the sky. Glass flew across the street as the windows of adjacent houses shattered from the concussion wave. The building next door collapsed, likely the server room caving in. She stared at where she thought the school should be, but couldn’t see much with all the dust. Seconds after the sound, the truck shuddered from the concussion wave reaching them.

  “Just get him away from the bomb. I told Roberto I’d ask you to stop for a second so he can push the guy out.”

  Adriana gritted her teeth. “Got any more stims?”

  One. Would’ve been two if I didn’t use one on the enemy. “Yeah. Last one.” She fished it out and passed it back.

  José brought the truck to a stop. Roberto grunted and thumped around in the bed.

  “What about those transports?” asked Silvia.

  “We need to clear the area in case more reinforcements roll in.” Nina leaned out of her window to scan the sky. “Don’t see anything yet, but it doesn’t mean they won’t send an air unit.”

  The whumpf of a body hitting the dirt came from the back. José accelerated.

  “So… what about getting us out of here?” Silvia’s voice lost its harsh tone; she sounded more like a pleading child.

  “Can María Isabel drive a BTR?” Nina glanced at José. “I’ll come back here with her once it’s dark.

  They caught up to the techie, who continued to stagger along, too exhausted to run.

  Hmm. He might have useful intel. Nina leaned around to the rear window. “Roberto… Grab this guy. He might have information my people need.”

  José slowed to match the man’s pitiful pace. The techie offered little protest at being dragged into the truck bed. María Isabel on her bike came bouncing out of a depression in the ground and steered toward them. She fell in beside it as they got back up to about sixty mph.

  “It can probably work.” José nodded. “I doubt they will expect another attack so soon.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Nina leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. “If we need to lay low for a few days, I can. I give you my word; I’ll get you and your people out of here.”

  f not for being unable to drive two large armored personnel carriers herself, Nina would’ve walked back to the solar farm alone. She lay on one of the cots, trying not to hear Ramon scream and rage after being told of Javier’
s death. He’d been like an older brother to him for four years; they’d met hiding in the resistance when Ramon had been fourteen, and Javier sixteen. Ramon, the telepath, shouted that he didn’t want to go to the UCF anymore; he wanted to go to Mexico City and ‘kill them all.’

  Nina cringed with guilt, thankful her implant prevented him from reading her mind and seeing that she’d used up a stimpak on one of them.

  Silvia hadn’t said much since they returned, having gone to the last cot in the corner and holding Nicolás, the six-year-old she’d become a fugitive to protect.

  They wanted to kill him for being able to do card tricks.

  Adrianna’s injuries would keep her out of gunfights and off motorbikes for weeks, but Patricia had enough medical supplies to save the arm… providing they made it to the UCF within a few days. José had lucked out, the bullet that hit him hadn’t ruptured anything vital―but it hurt enough to where Patricia had forced him to use a Narcoderm. That effectively removed José from usefulness, as the drugs left him chatting with his wife who’d died two years earlier. Pedro had assumed temporary leadership of the cell, and agreed with Nina’s idea of going in at the wee hours of morning to steal the BTRs.

  María Isabel approached. The girl looked even younger in the dim light of the underground hideaway, maybe sixteen. “Hey. It’s almost dark. You ready?”

  Nina sat up on the cot and looked her over. “You sure you can drive one of those things? Maybe…” She looked at the group. “Someone else should… I don’t want to get a kid hurt.”

  “I’m not a child.” María Isabel folded her arms. “I’m twenty. Just short.”

  Nina burst into laughter, crying at the same time.

  The room got quiet.

  “Okay.” She chuckled. “You must all think I’m crazy now.”

  “Maybe a little.” María Isabel smiled. “But maybe bein’ able to do what you can do would make anyone a little crazy.”

  “Before it… happened, I was like you. Tiny. People always thought I was a kid. Now here I am doing the same thing to someone else.”

  María Isabel flopped on the next cot. They compared ‘short girl problems’ for a little while. A thin, athletic man, Francisco, came by and gave them each a plate of food, a mixture of rice, hunks of pork or something akin to it, and a liberal helping of beans and sauce.

  The resistance cell ate in relative silence.

  “We’re going to make a run on the troop carriers around four in the morning, drive them here to pick everyone up, and go.”

  María Isabel nodded, her mouth full.

  “I am an idiot.” Nina looked around the room. Fifteen people remained, five of them children. “Are there more than what’s in this room?”

  “Yeah,” said Pedro. He got up and walked over. “We’ve got four men in the house.”

  “Nineteen, five of whom are children.” She rubbed her forehead, grumbling.

  Pedro tilted his head at her. “Yes. What’s wrong?”

  “Those BTR-99s can carry twenty troops, plus a driver and a gunner. We only need one.”

  “Ahh. Yes, that would be true.” Pedro exhaled, lips sputtering.

  She stood. “I’ll go alone. I don’t want any more of you getting hurt for me.”

  Ramon pointed at her. “She’s probably just going to leave.”

  “No. I’m not.” She looked at María Isabel. “I will keep our promise.”

  “So what if she is gonna leave?” asked Roberto. “Did you see what she did to those CMO tools? Like we could stop her if we tried.”

  Ramon fumed, stared at her, and promptly dropped in place holding his head and screaming.

  Everyone stared at him.

  “It’s not your fault,” said the fourteen-year-old, Veronica. “He’s angry and hurt.”

  “Vonica’s a empath.” The smallest, a boy of about five, crawled to the edge of his cot and sat back on his heels. “She knows.”

  Nina smiled at him. Don’t need to be telempathic to know that.

  “Look, even if we don’t need two trucks, it’ll be faster for me to drive you.” María Isabel winked. “Even better if I can stay back and hide while you go in.”

  “All right, but be careful.”

  María Isabel grinned. “I’m always careful.”

  At 3:59 a.m., María Isabel nudged Nina, surprising her that she’d managed to drift off to sleep at all. Nina sat up and held her head for a few seconds, waiting for the fog to lift from her mind. María Isabel walked a few cots over and nudged Pedro awake.

  “We’re going,” she whispered. “I’ll radio when we’re on the way back.”

  “Mmm.” Pedro yawned and stretched. He set his walkie-talkie near his head and seemed to sink into sleep again.

  Nina stood. “Let’s do it.”

  María Isabel led the way up the ladder to the barn and removed the tarp from her bike. Nina got on behind her. Being able to see over the woman’s head got her maudlin, thinking of Vincent’s playful comments about her being a kid playing dress up as a cop.

  The bike startled her when it roared to life.

  It bounced quite a bit more than the truck, catching air every so often whenever they hit a depression or berm. María Isabel drove hard, verging on reckless. Nina peered down at the speedometer, raising both eyebrows at the realization they did 102 mph. They took a wide, curving route that would keep them out of sight of the town, in case the authorities had moved more troops in.

  “This is careful?” yelled Nina, over the engine.

  “Yes.” María Isabel laughed. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m… gifted, too. I can make myself faster and stronger, but uhh, nowhere near the kinda shit you’re doing.”

  “You’re a biokinetic?”

  “Whatever that means.” María Isabel shrugged. “Someone said I was psionic, but their dog couldn’t confirm it.”

  “Dog?”

  “Some psionics sell out.” María Isabel leaned left while steering the bike around a group of cacti. She flung her slight body to the right to bring the bike level after the maneuver. “They work for the ACC… but they’ve got handlers who’ll kill them if they step out of line. I have no telepathy, which is rare I guess, so they kept me locked up while they tried to figure out a way to prove I was psionic or come up with enough of an excuse to just kill me.”

  “I’m sorry it’s so hard for your kind here.” Nina scowled at the desert. “I don’t understand why people are like that.”

  “Thanks. I guess you sorta know what it’s like. I bet people treat you different for being… whatever you are.”

  Nina chuckled. “People who know what I am, yeah. I try to hide it.” Mostly from myself. “Once they know, it changes everything.”

  “You do know what it’s like.” María Isabel laughed.

  Endless scrubland, a shifting black pattern under the indigo luminescence of the night sky, came at them for twenty-two minutes. Light settled on the horizon like a spill of mercury. Solar panels, flattened for the dark, caught the moonlight in a mesmerizing shimmer. Off to the left, about a third of a mile away, a scattering of LED bulbs over doorways defined Estación Salamanca like a constellation. The lack of activity worried her more than finding it full of soldiers. The DMS having a minimal presence in the little town made sense given that the facility wasn’t supposed to exist, and the ACC overestimated how difficult it would be to find. Seeing the BTR-99s at the solar facility had made her expect a hidden garrison, but those transports had been there for months according to satellite image archives. Still, she’d expected some kind of reaction to the facility’s destruction.

  Maybe they’re arguing which department’s budget gets to cover the cleanup.

  María Isabel cut the engine and the headlamp, allowing the bike to coast.

  Amid the stillness of a desert night, the distant electrical hum of the solar plant provided backup for the chirrup of insects. Nina zoomed in her vision on the facility. A four-story tower stood atop the roof of a long, rectangu
lar building with a pair of garage-style doors on the near side. Windows around the top offered a view of a blinding interior where a woman and a man in white jumpsuits sat at desks in a white room, looking ready to fall asleep at any moment.

  Her eyelids twitched in response to a manufactured sensation of pain from the intense glow. Between the strength of the light and the giant windows on all four sides of the tower, it acted like a giant desk lamp, illuminating the ground for a good distance in all directions.

  Two men in DMS armor stood a short distance from a door leading into the building. Both slouched, and had their rifles slung over their backs. One sipped from a silver canister while the other yawned every few seconds.

  The man with the drink heaved the empty canister onto the roof, and the pair trudged off into the solar fields, on patrol… and seeming not at all happy about it. At the speed they moved, Nina calculated thirty-two minutes before they returned―assuming they would follow a complete circle.

  Four pinpoints of light glided around the solar field. She honed in on one and zoomed more. Away from the tower’s glare, she switched to night vision. An orb bot glided along, making precision course adjustments every few seconds. The rigidity of its motion hinted that it ran a preprogrammed route and didn’t have a live operator controlling it. Nina observed them for a few minutes, until they retraced their earlier path. Their function appeared to be protecting the solar panels from vandals, thieves, and wildlife. The nearest point in their route brought them with sixty meters of the building.

  “We should be able to walk right up to the BTR,” whispered Nina. “The tower won’t see us. It’s too bright in there and it’s pitch dark outside.”

  María Isabel nodded. “They’re stupid.”

  “Or they don’t expect anyone to attack a power facility in the middle of nowhere.” She shrugged. “I wonder what they’re doing with it all.”

  “There are underground cables. A tunnel runs from here all the way to Hermosillo. That’s how some of us got out here, but they have armed bots down there now.” When the bike coasted to a stop, María Isabel put her boots down. “Want me to wait here or follow you in?”

  “We should be clear if we move quick. Come on.” Nina got off the bike, grabbed the rear end, and pushed.