by JA Huss
“Stop,” Thomas says, walking towards him. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
Case leans back as Thomas approaches him and Lincoln whispers something that sounds like begging. “Please, please, please.”
But when Thomas touches Case’s glowing arm, he pulls back, yelling in pain. Smoke rises up in small tendrils from both Thomas’s hand and Case’s leather jacket. Like he just…
He did that to me with his hands. They burned me.
Chief O’Neil’s words at the prison yesterday.
“It can’t be,” Molly says. “He can’t hurt Thomas. It’s not possible.”
“He can now,” Lincoln whispers, yanking on the two of us at the same time. Stepping backwards away from Case and Thomas, dragging us with him.
“The city,” this new, changed, unfamiliar Case repeats.
Every computer in the department suddenly flickers to life and a computerized female voice says, “Finish him.”
Case grabs Thomas again. The sick sound of sizzling skin fills the room as Thomas twists his body to get away. He rips himself from Case’s grip and they stand, just feet apart, sizing the other up. Trying to determine who will win this fight.
“You don’t want to fuck with me,” Thomas growls at him.
“The city,” Case repeats. And then his hand swings up, almost with superhuman speed, and grabs Thomas by the throat.
“Case!” Lincoln yells, pushing Molly and me aside as he takes off to help Thomas.
The disgusting smell of burning flesh and hair makes me hold my breath.
Lincoln hits Case in the chest, but… Lincoln drops to the floor, grabbing his stomach, almost collapsing completely.
“What the hell is happening?” I scream.
“He can’t fight him,” Molly says, almost a sob. “He can’t fight Case. It’s been genetically programmed into their DNA.”
Case strikes Lincoln with the back of his forearm and Lincoln goes flying across the room. Skidding across desks, making paperwork, tablets, and phones go scattering all over, until his limp body disappears behind a desk.
Case’s eyes flash red for a moment and I sink back into Molly. “What is happening?” I ask, desperate for a way to make sense of this.
Case tracks my voice with his gaze and his eyes rest on mine. Glowing, red eyes I do not recognize. “Don’t follow me,” he says.
But Thomas is there, recovered from the burn. He’s got an ElectroDart gun in his hand and he sticks it right against Case’s chest and releases the dart into his skin.
The snapping sound of the charge hitting its mark fills the room. Seconds and seconds of it.
But Case never moves.
Thomas stands there, stunned, as Case laughs, smacking the dart from his skin like it’s nothing more than an annoying mosquito trying to drain tiny drops of blood on a summer night.
That’s when we notice his skin is moving. “Something is inside him,” Molly says.
And she’s right. Something is inside him. And it’s a lot more creepy than whatever technology methodically erases the electrocution marks Thomas just inflicted.
It’s some kind of metal mesh. Moving, undulating in a sickening way, underneath his skin.
“Don’t follow me,” Case repeats. He says it right to me, holds my stare for five continuous seconds, and then grabs the knob of the door he was trying to open a few minutes ago and disappears inside.
Molly runs to Lincoln, who has picked himself up off the floor and is already making his way back towards us.
Thomas just looks at the door.
“Sheila!” Lincoln is screaming.
It occurs to me that the voice that came from the computers—which are now dead again—was female.
“Sheila!” Lincoln screams again
“I’m here,” Sheila says, talking through Molly’s phone as she holds it in her hand.
“What the fuck just happened?” Lincoln yells. His roar is so loud, I shrink back and press myself up against a wall.
“I’m getting very confusing signals from ToyBox, Lincoln.”
“Did you just see what fucking happened in here?”
“I…” Sheila stutters. “Heard it. I can extrapolate.”
“He’s fucking nuts,” Thomas seethes. “You were supposed to figure this shit out, Sheila. Obviously you dropped the ball.”
“It’s not her fault,” Lincoln says, walking up to Thomas like he might start a fight. “It’s your fucking fault. You’re the one who said change him.”
“I said fix him, you dumbass. Not turn him into some psycho light show of heat and violence.”
“You guys,” Molly says, trying to break them apart. “Stop. He’s going up to the roof. That stairwell leads to the helipad. We need to stop him. He could go anywhere if he gets in that helicopter.”
I take off towards the door, already pulling it open by the time the others start to join me. But as soon as I open it, I can hear the thrum of rotors.
“He’s already leaving,” Molly says. “Sheila. Track that fucking helicopter. Thomas, we need—”
“It’s down the street at SkyEye. Sheila, bring the helicopter down here and land it on the roof. We’ll meet you up there.”
I head up the stairs at a run, but Thomas and Lincoln overtake me in seconds, and they burst through onto the roof a few minutes later, breathing hard and shielding their eyes in the glare of the setting sun as they watch the police ’copter take off towards the mountains.
We all walk slowly towards the edge of the building, eyes desperate to keep track of the speck that begins to fade with the light as it gets farther and farther away.
“Oh, my God,” Molly says.
The rest of us glance at her, then realize she’s looking down. At the streets below.
There are hundreds of people sprawled out on the sidewalks, the street. Draped over bus stop benches and each other.
“They’re stunned,” Thomas says, voice shaking. “Just stunned, like everyone else. They’re gonna be OK,” he says. “They’re gonna be OK,” he repeats.
But he can’t possibly know that. And nothing down there looks stunned. They all look dead.
Even the woman I saw earlier, waiting for the City Alert System to tell her what was happening. What to do. How to stay safe.
Well, she’s not safe now.
And neither is the small bundle in her arms that I know is her baby.
Just then someone gets up. And then someone else.
“See,” Thomas says, like he’s still trying to convince himself things are fine. “I told you they’d be OK.”
More people stand up. Some just sit there, still kinda stunned. But a few are on their feet.
They begin walking towards each other.
We watch, trying to figure out what’s happening as their strides get longer and longer until they’re in a full-on run and then they clash together. Like titans.
Everyone is getting up now. They don’t just riot this time.
They attack like they have been given the gift of hate and violence.
Like they have been programmed to kill each other.
CHAPTER FORTY – CASE
“Who are you?” It’s my voice… but not my voice.
“You know,” the female voice says through my headset. “You know who I am. I’ve been talking to you for a long time now, Case Reider. A very long time. And you know exactly who I am and what we’re going to do. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I hiss through my teeth.
Is that me talking? I know it is, but it doesn’t sound like me.
The wind picks up as I take the helicopter higher, the boxy silver cubes of ToyBox hidden from view by the low-lying clouds.
“Who owns the city?” the voice asks me.
“We do.”
“Yes,” it says, mimicking my hiss. “Not the politicians. Not the people. But the predators.”
“Case?” Sheila’s voice comes through on the police radio right into my headset. “Case? Can
you hear me? It’s OK. We’re coming after you. We won’t let whatever this is hurt you.”
I say nothing. Just train my eyes on the instruments and the way ahead. We need to get to the ToyBox computers. I feel it. A deep, all-consuming lust for what’s waiting for me across town.
“Case? Answer—”
I cut the radio, unconcerned with anything other than my objective to get home. Now.
I enjoy the relative silence after that. I enjoy the rumble of the motors and the whipping wind that makes the helicopter waver in the air, like a kite caught in the current of something it can’t control.
And when ToyBox comes into view I take the helicopter down and land it in the parking lot.
“Now what?” I ask, staring at the glass cubes as they flicker to life with a flash of red. Then Steve is there. My holographic butler. Holding a tray up like he’s serving canapés and caviar at a cocktail party.
“Would you like one?” he asks, in the female computer voice. On the tray is an assortment of items, not food. He bends a little, giving me a better view.
There’s a gun. A prototype of one I’m hoping to sell to the military. One that is so much more powerful than an ElectroDart because it doesn’t just deliver electricity, the payload includes a biological that can change emotions. Calm people down.
Just like that pill they force-fed you in jail, Case.
Who is that?
Who’s in my head?
The one that’s controlling you now. Fight it. Fight it, Case. Don’t let—
“Choose,” Steve with the female voice says.
Calm people down or make them violent, the way Lincoln uses light to make people violent.
“Stop thinking,” Steve roars through my headset. “And choose.”
It’s so loud I take the headset off and throw it on the seat next to me.
“Choose,” it repeats. This time the sound comes from the building. A speaker system we use to pipe music outside in the summers.
The second item is a knife and I get a very familiar urge to hold that knife.
To feel the cold steel in my hand and then place the razor-sharp tip to my skin and drag it… drag it all the way down my arm. Down my chest. Drag it all over my body. Make the deep cuts that will keep me sane.
No.
Yes.
I get out of the helicopter, ignoring the wind and the blowing snow the change in altitude has brought, and walk towards the building.
“Good, Case,” the Steve on the window says. “Come inside and get the knife. Come inside and do what I tell you and I’ll give it to you.”
The doors open for me automatically, even though there is a little niggling thought in the back of my mind that says they should be locked.
“Come to the engineering room, Case,” holographic Steve says, still using that other voice. The neutral one.
Is it neutral?
“I’m waiting for you, Case. Hurry.”
I step inside and the doors close behind me. And when I turn to look out at the city behind me, the glass walls of ToyBox are glowing bright red.
The color of blood.
Which is exactly what we’re after.
Blood.
“We’re gonna kill the city,” I say, oddly dispassionate.
“No,” New Steve says in that weird computer voice. “We’re gonna kill the people.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE – LULU
“Can’t this thing go any faster?” I ask no one in particular through the headset.
“The wind,” Thomas says, staring out the front window. Lincoln is in the pilot’s seat even though Sheila claims to be the actual pilot, and Molly is in the back with me.
But it’s not a good enough answer. “Case,” I say. “He was like… possessed. What was that?”
No one answers me this time.
“Goddammit!” I say, raising my voice. “I need more answers! How can I help if you won’t tell me what’s going on?”
“You’re not going to help,” Thomas says in that flat tone he has. “You and Molly will stay in the helicopter.”
“Fuck that,” Molly says. “I’m the one who did this to him. I know it.”
“You didn’t—” Lincoln say, his voice rising now too.
“I did,” Molly spits. “It was that lariat, I know it. It introduced something into his body that night. It’s why all this is happening.”
“She’s right,” Sheila says.
But I lose track of the conversation after that because ToyBox is suddenly there, right in front of us. The whole building is lit up red.
“What the hell?” Lincoln mutters into the headset.
What the hell is right. Because the glass exterior of ToyBox has been transformed into SmartGlass. Images are appearing, disappearing, flickering in and out of existence. And out in front of the building is Case. The ragged remnants of his torn shirt whip open from the helicopter to expose the strap of some large weapon around his shoulder. He looks at us, bares his teeth, and then aims the weapon right at us and fires.
“Incoming,” Sheila says. Then we counterattack. A small rocket streaks out in front of us and the two projectiles collide in mid-air, creating a spectacular explosion. The helicopter weaves wildly from the air turbulence, and then we are careening sideways.
“Hold on,” Lincoln says, trying his best to keep the helicopter from smashing into the ground. “Never mind!” he amends. “Jump. Everyone out, now!”
Suddenly Molly is there, unbuckling my harness, and then Thomas has the door open, and she pushes me out. We’re not that far off the ground. The real danger is the helicopter smashing into the ground and exploding. I stumble, fall forward onto my knees, and then roll. Molly lands next to me, and then she’s on her feet again, lifting me up with a firm grip on my arm. “Run!” she yells.
Thomas and Lincoln jump too, staying on their feet and coming after us.
“Keep going!” Lincoln says, grabbing onto me as he runs past.
I want to look behind me, see what’s happening with that helicopter, hope that Sheila has it under control.
But I don’t have time.
Because there is a body-tossing wave of heat and fire that pushes me forward and knocks me down.
Thomas is on top of me, holding my head down as a roaring blanket of propulsion-induced fire sucks the breath out of my lungs, like it’s on a mission to feed off every molecule of oxygen it can find.
I’m picturing burnt bodies. Skin melting. Dying. Right here, right now. On the front lawn of a madman’s corporate offices.
But then the cool night air rushes in and my nightmare recedes.
“Are you OK?” Thomas coughs, his hand over his mouth. His face is stained black. His eyebrows are singed and there is a definite smell of burning in the air.
“Molly,” I croak out past my tight, dry throat.
“I’m OK,” she says. “But Lincoln—”
“I’m fine,” his gruff voice answers back. He’s not fine. He definitely took the worst of the explosion. His jacket and shirt are nothing but a layer of ash clinging to his body.
And that’s how I find out… what he is.
I crawl away from Thomas, pushing him aside when he makes to grab my arm, and look at Lincoln as I get to my feet.
He… he’s… not normal.
“What are you?” I ask. “Who are you people?” I yell it. I’m so fucking done with all this weird shit.
“Just listen,” Thomas says. He’s got his hands up, palms out, like he’s backing off a dangerous animal.
I’m the dangerous animal here, buddy.
“It’s the glass,” Lincoln says, before Thomas can explain anything else. “The SmartGlass, Thomas. That computer he invented that runs the Cathedral City history map. It’s all over. It like… self-replicated in the windows. Used the glass to grow into…”
“Jesus Christ,” Thomas says, grabbing his hair.
“Kill it.” Sheila’s voice comes out from someone’s phone speaker, thin and fa
r away, reminding us all that she’s not really here. She’s far, far away and any help she might offer won’t come quickly now that the helicopter is nothing but a red-hot pile of glowing metal.
“How?” Lincoln says, staring up at the windows. They are flashing bits of code now. Code that looks a lot like the one Randy showed me the other day when all this craziness started. Lincoln squints his eyes, like he can read it.
“What’s it say?” Molly asks, reading my mind.
“It’s a program,” Lincoln says. “The whole fucking building is nothing but a giant computer and that SmartGlass is acting like an operating system.”
“Kill it, Lincoln,” Sheila repeats. “Shoot it. Destroy it! Quick! Before it finds a way to corrupt me too!”
I think I actually hear fear in her voice.
But it’s the rest of the world who need to be terrified.
I don’t know what a corrupted Sheila looks like. But I don’t want to find out. Because all roads lead to terror. Never-ending riots, and quite possibly the global destruction of the human race.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO – CASE
The explosion pushes me back as Lincoln and Thomas roll underneath the blanket of chemical-laden flames. I have no feelings about this. And I know I took those pills. Was forced to take them. But there’s a little piece of me inside that hopes it’s not the pills making me act this way.
Being the villain is so fucking liberating.
But then, out of the dust, and ash, and smoke, I see Lulu.
Lulu.
“Forget her,” the voice says from a speaker above my head. I look over my shoulder and see a weird chimera of Steve’s head on the body of the Blue Boar, as he… she… it dances on its hind legs across the front of the building.
“What the—?”
“Kill them, Case. Now. Before they get up. Quick! Quick!” it screams, continuing the dance.
I look down at the weapon strapped to my body. I made this for them. All that planning and plotting. All that work to make it perfect.
It is perfect. The perfect weapon to take down Lincoln, cyborg that he is. The electrical charge will fry his brain. His whole spinal cord. The jellyfish can suck it. They won’t be able to repair him this time.
