LISTENING
SPEAKING
The LISTENING image showed a great amount of complexity. The line measuring thought as the subject 'listened' was a scrawl of peaks and valleys, representing all the myriad background functions of the mind while listening; unfocused and dissimilar. Here was the bump that could be breathing, here some discomfort in a thigh, perhaps, here visual stimuli, here auditory, here a memory popping up, here another ducking down.
The SPEAKING file was much cleaner. The peaks and valleys of the brainwave were far shallower, with the extremities smoothed out by the conscious act of speaking. It reflected a well-known theory in brain science that a focused mind was easier to 'read' than an unfocused one.
He'd been in his office alone at night when the email came in, and immediately tried to back-trace it, but there was no return address. For a moment he considered notifying SEAL security, then paused. To do that would mean sharing any potential credit. And how could he know, perhaps this email came direct from one of the SEAL's shadowy investors, whom he'd never met. How else could it have cut so completely through the firewall?
Whatever, the intent to report it tapered away as he began to think through the possibilities that the simple message suggested.
Transmit
He'd leaned back in his chair, looking out at the snow through his window walls while Siberian winds rushed by outside, and imagined the clarity a single transmission on the line might produce. If it functioned anything like a mind, which it seemed to, then perhaps an act of 'SPEAKING' would stamp order onto the chaos, allowing him to read the core pattern much faster.
In just one generation, perhaps? Even faster?
The opportunity grew more tantalizing as he chewed on it. He began to plan, and in the days that followed began enacting that plan without a hard decision point standing in the way. At this stage it was only preparation, he told himself; the final decision would be the matter of flicking a switch in the final moments.
He let only as many of his team in on the truth as he had to, and spoofed the rest with dummy controls over their data spines. Everything would go through his desk, so the decision rested solely with him, at the last possible moment.
HELLO.
He would replace the soothing massage in the data spines for that single thought. His Array might get headaches from the intensity, but it shouldn't have any lasting ill effects. One hundred minds all thinking the same thought at once would surely act as a focusing lens for the line. It would make God's Word legible, and the more he thought about it, the more he desperately needed to know what the hell God was saying, right now.
He stared at the screen, and the choice flashing in the corner of his screen as the timer ticked down.
TRANSMIT?
Around Joran the underhall grew still, as all eyes focused on their screens. One hundred green signals blinked before them, like occupied seats on an airliner. Joran counted down the seconds under his breath, from ten to five, from five to one. On two he clicked the Enter key.
Across the underhall his spoofing procedures leaped into place. Soothing data massages were replaced by one single word, pulling the Array into tighter harmony than ever before, pushing his message back onto the line.
For long moments, nothing happened.
The underhall held their collective breath as data rolled in and out through the brains above. Most of them had no idea of the stakes Joran had just put into play, but the atmosphere was electric still. One second to five. Five to ten.
Then the first square on Joran's screen went red.
He leaned in and hit the emergency power kill at once, manually cutting any residual signal running through the spines and skull-caps above, but that didn't stop the second square on the grid turning red, or the third, or the cascade that followed.
Then the screaming began.
Joran rose to his feet as answering shouts rang out. A final glance at his screen told him the power was out, but every square in the Array was flashing red now, signifying severe mental stress.
"Get them out," he called, and the cry was taken up by teams at stations nearest to him. There was no time for panic; they'd drilled for this. It didn't have to be anything catastrophic; a flashing red light could just be the equivalent of a particularly bad dream. It could also signify a drop into coma, or approaching death.
Joran joined a press of bodies racing for the elevator; gathering four paramedics and Sandbrooke to him as the doors opened.
"What the hell's happening, Joran?" Sandbrooke asked.
"We'll find out."
The elevator rose one floor to the hall's access chambers, underneath the second floor walkway, and the screaming grew louder. The doors opened and noise poured into the carriage like a terrible wave, along with a vision Joran could barely make sense of. Through the open arches of the gantry, his Array appeared to be boiling.
He blinked. On their beds, strapped to their mattresses and shackled to the floor by the data spines, their bodies were in some kind of flux. Eyes flashed white. Limbs and chests ballooned and rippled beneath flapping white hospital gowns. Heads reared back with jaws stretched impossibly wide. Skin seemed to burn through different colors, like a hundred panicking chameleons. Arms and legs thrashed violently and hospital beds clacked on the grooved floor, while explosive screams filled the air, warping from human to something guttural and monstrous.
The sound of bones cracking made Joran flinch. His eyes watered. He stared along with the paramedics and Sandbrooke, all six of them motionless, while behind them a second load of first-responders pushed out of the elevator, nudging them forward then stopping and staring too.
Beds collapsed as the things that had been men slathered and rolled off them. Something in the middle, burning red and already twice as tall as it should be, kicked out and snapped another creature in two. On the edge near to them a man seemed to be caught up in a kind of yellow fire, reaching out to them with arms that had no hands.
"Good God," somebody whispered.
"We have to help them," one of the paramedics said weakly.
"How?" said Sandbrooke.
"Him," the paramedic pointed weakly at the yellow burning man. "He's in pain."
"I wouldn't-" Joran began, but the paramedic pushed past him and entered the Array. Inches from the burning yellow figure, dropping his stride to set his first aid case down, he erupted in yellow flames too. One of the creatures from a neighboring square stretched over, sending an arm that had become a tuber of black, elastic meat toward him, suckering onto the paramedic's head.
"Oh my God," Sandbrooke whispered.
The arm-tuber jerked and the paramedic's head twisted sharply to the side. The nearby yellow thing took a step closer then threw itself bodily at his chest, where it-
Joran's brain stopped working, as something happened in the air, like a psychotic break. He was watching but not thinking. He saw the yellow thing seem to fold into the paramedic's chest, a man whose name he knew but couldn't recall. The yellow thing bedded in, melding into position, then somehow stood up.
It stuck out sideways from the paramedic, emerging at right angles from his chest, melting along a weld line of yellow flesh and clothing. The paramedic looked down with horror, then up to his team members as if asking for help, but before anyone could move the black tuber pulled again, and the paramedic's head cracked right off.
Someone vomited to Joran's right. Sandbrooke. Joran felt the same urge, but nothing was working as it should. He was frozen in position by a flood of cold and heat, of interference in his head, like someone had programmed an impossible thought into his own parameters and dialed it up to dangerous levels.
"We have to," somebody said nearby, and Joran caught the stench of fresh vomit as Sandbrooke staggered forward against one of the archway pillars. Perhaps he didn't realize how close he was to-
Another break hit him.
The giant red thing was spinning in the middle, lashing at its data spine and others nearby. There
was more than one like it now, batting smaller bodies around like weeds. There was a black and white thing nearby, whose very presence burned against his skin like an electrostatic shock. There was a gray thing with eyes like white halogens, crystalizing the storm outside, reaching out at the full extent of its data spine leash. Someone was laughing, and now Joran's eyes came back and he saw it was Sandbrooke, as a flimsy black thing several rows into the Array pressed its fingers into his head.
Joran felt his jaw drop. Sandbrooke with his bright blue eyes and easy blonde hair was on his knees in the thick of the Array. The other creatures had peeled to the side to let this insubstantial black wraith thing have Sandbrooke to itself; standing over him, pushing its hands deeper into his head.
Sandbrooke laughed but his eyes were terrified. Joran felt his own bladder release, and hot liquid streamed down his thighs and the stink of urine filled the air. The black thing barely seemed real, some kind of evil ghost from a nightmare, but it was right here. There was no blood though, no cracks in Sandbrooke's skull where its hands entered, only another fleshy weld on his forehead where the wraith's wrists merged into his skin.
"Joran!" Sandbrooke called out, his voice half his usual merry self, half utterly terrified. "Joran, I think we should leave now."
The hands sank deeper. Joran thought he saw the shadow of them pass across the inside of Sandbrooke's eyes. Sandbrooke shuddered and laughed and his mouth twitched violently, as if he was talking when he wasn't saying a word.
"Help," he managed, a wet gulp, as the shade pressed its arms deeper in through his head, pushing impossibly into solid meat and bone, until it was elbow deep, then shoulder deep, and Sandbrooke shook from above like a puppet on a string. He stopped making any human sounds at all and only began to squelch. His mouth opened and sucking wet noises came out.
Sound rushed back in, and Joran became aware of the chaos and confusion all around, with bodies shifting and snatching, yanking at their data spine shackles and transforming, though he only had eyes for Sandbrooke. Now his stomach swelled as the wraith poured more of itself in, stretching outward through his sleek shirt, then his throat bulged and he coughed up something black and lumpy, which ran down his chest, and which Joran dimly recognized as a kidney. A second lump followed, along with a trail of thick black juice. Sandbrooke's eyes jerked and he gave a long loud burp, and-
The pressure in Joran's head tightened and he was yanked forward by invisible hands. Now there was something gray and furious holding onto him, working his arm over with its teeth. In a bloody moment Joran realized he'd been sucked in to the fringe of the Array. Had he stepped in? His left arm was held out like a foreign object, while the gray thing took bites out of it. He felt the pain of each gulp, but distantly.
"I-" he began, then Sandbrooke's body appeared beside him, his shirt marked with a grotesque trail of internal matter, while the black shade moved behind his eyes. It was inside him now, wearing him like a second skin. It opened Sandbrooke's mouth so hard his jaw cracked, then leaned in to clamp down on Joran's left arm too.
It came back with a chunk of skin and muscle. Joran screamed and panicked as the pain finally hit and his blood pumped out. He couldn't move, could barely think for the thickness of cold and heat in his head, electric static and screaming and all he wanted was to die, until-
RATATATATATATAT
Sandbrooke was blown backward, stitched across the torso with a line of bright red stars. The red giant in the middle toppled backward, as did the gray thing holding Joran's arm.
RATATATATATATAT
One of the black and white ones collapsed in a puddle of fizzing static, like a puddle of gooey cola. The yellow thing that had been paddling the paramedic around rolled and sucked itself sideways away from the lines of fire.
RATATATATATATAT
Machine gun fire, he realized. One of their protocols? He veered dizzily, looking for a place to put his bloody arm, something to do. They'd never drilled for this. A circle cleared around him, and overhead on the railing there were stick figures leaning over and shouting.
He wandered deeper into the cleared circle, not knowing why. Perhaps he could get the chunks of his arm back, sew them back into place. He kicked at the gray thing that had bitten him; it lay on the floor like a body bag.
"Hey," he muttered.
He looked at his bitten left arm, like a bloody stick or a movie prop. Someone was shouting, and he turned again.
"What?" he called to the figures up there, uncertain. "Me?"
A rope lashed down and hit him on the head. He watched it snake back upward as another RATATATATATATAT pealed out and scored divots into the cement floor around him, ricocheting out through his Array.
"Don't hurt them," he said, though he didn't know why. They weren't young men any more, their prospects no longer so bright, but-
"I think-" he started to say, but the rope came again, this time looping round his neck and savaged arm like a lasso, which tightened in a second. A second later it swept him up as more bullets strafed the crowd, and he dangled above them with a panoramic view of the chaos.
Sandbrooke was long gone, blasted by bullets. The paramedic was a withered canoe-skin on the floor somewhere, being dragged around by the yellow thing in his chest. The Array was an ocean of multi-hued flesh, writhing amongst itself, lapping with a confluence of different tides.
His Array.
They hauled him up. His shoulder hit the upper railing and they dragged him over. He felt momentarily ashamed that he'd pissed himself and let half of his arm be bitten away, but surely the blood loss was killing him already.
"Jesus, Joran!" said a familiar voice, and he saw skinny Sovoy there, face pale and disbelieving. "What the hell did we do?"
He gave a little, apologetic laugh. Sandbrooke was gone. No more SEAL oversight. His head sagged on his neck and he collapsed in strong arms.
"Get us out!" Sovoy barked, not waiting for him to answer. "Out, out, out!"
They ran with Joran down the gantry, his body juggling in their arms, so he could no longer see the bloody arena of the Array, but instead saw through the glass wall to the parking lot outside. Already a flood of people ill-dressed for the Siberian weather were streaming for the cars, coaches, and helicopters. One was taking off. The snow swirled over it all.
So this was the message, he wondered, before unconsciousness took him. This was God's message to humanity, his greatest creation, his holy Word.
5. INCHCOMBE
It was quieter and darker when Anna came round. Her head throbbed and her throat stung, her eyes were gummed together and didn't want to open, but she forced them to, though the world was bleary. Voices spoke nearby, then for a moment went silent.
"She's waking up."
"Send for Inchcombe."
Anna took stock of her position, trying to be ready for what was coming. Her arms were bound at her sides, but she didn't have the strength to fight anyway. She blinked furiously, cleared her throat with a cough that hurt deep inside. She remembered where she was and what she'd been doing.
Where were Peters and the others?
Inchcombe, they'd said. Anna remembered the name; she'd come to know many of Istanbul bunker's personnel while hashing out the finer points of the treaty with them. Inchcombe was in the upper tier of management, in charge of bunker logistics, as best she could discern their hierarchical structure. Her authority lay beneath both Geoffrey Marshall and Steven Reddich, in military and command, and probably on a par with Tanya Morse in their equivalent of HR.
That it was Inchcombe coming led Anna to believe that the others were dead. She'd seen Geoffrey Marshall's body in Istanbul. She tried to summon everything that she knew about Inchcombe, but it was hardly worth it; there was nothing.
Inchcombe came. At first Anna felt her as a presence at her side, like the skinless man in the dark lab, obscured by the grit in her eyes. She twisted her neck and saw the pink oval of a face, dark blurry currants for eyes, and a sharp slash of mouth. Prett
y, perhaps.
"Give me one good reason I don't kill you right now, Anna," Inchcombe said. There wasn't an inch of give in her voice. "You and all your people."
Anna tried to speak, but only managed to cough up black phlegm that burned and trickled slimily down her cheek.
"Give her some water, dammit," Inchcombe said. "I haven't got time for this. Clean her up."
Rough hands rubbed her eyes with an alcohol wipe. A bottle appeared at her lips and she managed to swallow a little. It helped. She could see a little; Inchcombe was an angry face.
"I'm waiting."
Anna swallowed back a cough and managed a few croaking words. "You need me."
Inchcombe laughed with no humor. "Prove it."
"I know things," Anna added weakly. "I can-"
"She's a terrorist," said another voice, an angry man that Anna couldn't see. "We don't have time for it. Look at her, she set the bomb. We need to kill her and move on."
Inchcombe inclined her head, then leaned closer in so her dark eyes resolved through the fog. She had short-cropped black hair. "Last chance, Anna. I'm dealing with a humanitarian crisis here, hundreds dead, hundreds sick and getting sicker up here with the signal gone, and it's because of you. Think of this as a negotiation. Have you got something to offer me or not? What's your life worth?"
Anna cleared her throat and tried again. "I've got the cure. I can save your people. I know where your monsters are."
That gave Inchcombe pause, while in back some of her people scoffed. "Monsters?"
"The black and white ones," Anna said, then paused to gasp a breath. "That blew up Istanbul."
Inchcombe waved a hand. "The lepers? We know about that. They're the least of our concerns. Where's Amo, that's what I want to know. He blew up our shield. We need to secure him."
"I have the cure," Anna repeated, feeling the moment slipping away. "I'm pregnant, I have-"
Somebody laughed, somebody repeated "Pregnant?", somebody slapped her face. Not Inchcombe. She just sighed.
"Amo, Anna. That's the deal, that's what I need. Give him over and you have a chance, because he's the threat. Your people may survive. I can't promise you will."
The Lies (Zombie Ocean Book 8) Page 5
