The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  “I’ll go downstairs and wait.”

  Frank got out of bed and got ready. When he came down, Justin had packed their lunch and coffee was brewing. Charlene choked up. Frank put his arm around her.

  “What?” Justin said. His voice was back to flat, a tell of Asperger’s.

  “Nothing, Justin. Are you excited?” Frank asked.

  The flatness vanished. He looked directly at them. “Did you know that MindCorp is not only the tallest skyscraper in Chicago, but it is over three times as large, in cubic volume, as the Sears Tower? Cynthia started MindCorp ten years ago, she said the Mindlink was like a photographic negative in her mind that never let her . . .”

  He rattled off facts and Frank and his wife bathed in them.

  The sky was clear and Frank watched Justin as he stared out the window and the landscape changed from field after field, to abandoned suburbs, to the dermis of the city—the ghettos—to the gigantic cement and steel tentacles that reached up into the sky. Before the Great Migration, DeKalb had been sixty miles outside of Chicago. Now it was just forty. From the silo on the farm, the wall of skyscrapers looked like a tsunami coming to shore. And now they were there.

  It was dark in the city, something Frank hadn’t expected. It didn’t register right away. The hour trip in and the rapid change of the landscape, made him feel like he had traveled further and longer than he actually had. The thousands of skyscrapers acted like ivy encroaching a window, choking out the light.

  “How’re you doing?” Frank asked Justin. His son smiled up at him.

  The train slowed down on its way to O’Hare National Train Station. From that hub they would go into the city. Frank furrowed his brow looking at the train schedule monitor on the wall of the car. With the Great Migration, Chicago had bloated to four times its previous size. There were hundreds of train and ‘L’ schedules.

  “The 7:00 a.m. train gets in at 8:30 a.m.” Justin looked at a clock on the wall. “We’re arriving on time.”

  He scanned the schedule, it flickered different routes like a stock ticker. “The 8:50 a.m. train on Ramp 14 arrives at Ogilvy Transportation Center at 9:25. From there we take the Blue to the Red to the M, which will take us directly to MindCorp.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then you’re in charge. You can handle it, right?”

  Justin squeezed his dad’s hand.

  They left O’Hare National and the ground dropped below Justin as the train track rose and they entered the city. They glided twenty stories above the streets. Above and below them, dozens of tracks and trains crisscrossed, servicing different parts of the city, now no longer downtown centric. During the day they were gliding caskets, homes for bums, derelicts, and drunks who never left them as they spun around their tracks like perpetual motion machines. During mealtimes and at night, the trains would be flooded with the bed-headed masses taking a break from their online jobs, networked interests and social clubs. Taking a break to breathe air that didn’t smell like them, walking in the park to get the tingling out of their feet.

  The Mindlink had turned the city into a dorm. There were stores and restaurants, centers to congregate, but most services provided home delivery. The roads were empty except for government subsidized service vehicles, police, and electric delivery trucks. It was walk or rail. Bike tires were too expensive.

  The Mindlink (and Mindlink accessories!) were sold throughout the city, but the only place that could fill a child with wonder was located at the building where Cynthia sat at that very moment, one hundred and fifty stories up. Justin and Frank got on the M rail and it quickly separated from the tangle of tracks around it. It had one stop on its monitor and they were just a mile away.

  The train slowed like a rollercoaster at the end of its ride as they approached MindCorp. Frank looked around. There were no other trains. There were few paths to MindCorp and this was one of them. The negative space between MindCorp and the other buildings made it feel surreal, as if it was a portal into another dimension. And then Frank realized that this was true, and probably intentional. This was science fiction. MindCorp did create another world.

  The building occupied four city blocks and it looked like a gun pointed at God. It was black and clean without a hint of rust or neglect. In fact, it was one of the few buildings in the city that still maintained the air of prosperity.

  “Is it as big as you pictured?” Frank asked Justin. Justin didn’t respond. His face was pressed against the window taking it all in. The building looked magical, it looked powerful. It looked like it ruled the world. They entered a tunnel halfway up MindCorp and in that momentary darkness, Frank blinked his eyes, turned around, and realized they were the only two people on the train.

  Of course. Everyone else already owns a Mindlink.

  But it made him shiver. It didn’t feel right. Surely in a city of fifteen million, someone else would have to stop by.

  The train came to a halt and the door whooshed open. They stepped out to no one. On the far end, a line of twenty unmanned kiosks had countless Mindlinks (and Mindlink accessories!) queued up behind glass on mechanical arms. They heard a clatter from far below, followed by another, but it was nearly drowned out from the automated monitors that welcomed them to MindCorp.

  “No one’s here,” Justin said.

  He looked up and down the two hundred yard hallway. There were a couple of trashcans, but no janitor. At the kiosk there was a help button, but no one that smiled and said ‘hello.’ At the far end was a store with its security gate rolled down. The lights were out. It felt deserted.

  “I think we’re late to the party,” Frank said. “Let’s go ahead and buy one and get some lunch before we head home.”

  Unceremoniously, Frank and Justin walked over. They looked at the machine, shrugged, and then Frank swiped his credit card. A box big enough to hold a bicycle helmet slid off its rack and fell to the bottom of the kiosk. The door opened, Justin picked it up, and that was that.

  “Hey!” someone hissed. It came from the store. Frank searched the darkness for the voice. A young, round, black woman appeared at the gate fumbling with her keys. “Don’t you know?”

  “Know what?” Frank said. They walked toward her.

  “We’re under attack!”

  Just then a flashing light spun and a siren bellowed. Chatter echoed up from below. Gunfire.

  = = =

  Raimey had been back in Chicago for two days and already the shit was heating up. Nostradamus had pinged the potential attack just minutes before. The team was so caught off guard, they had to change into their gear on the way. They were en route to a Data Node north of the city to intercept a potential terrorist threat.

  “I thought we were on leave,” Janis said as he stripped down to nothing and put on his black Kevlar suit.

  “Dammit, Janis. You don’t wear underwear?” one of the soldiers barked after getting an eyeful of his undercarriage.

  “Not when I’m just walking around,” Janis said, like it was obvious. He slapped a cup on and punched it. “But I protect them when it counts.”

  Raimey viewed the information that Nostradamus had sent his HUD comm, a transparent monitor just off his line of sight that showed real-time information. A mile out from the Data Node, they heard the explosion. The aftershock ricocheted through the close-cropped high rises, raining glass on the dazed citizens below. They heard it clang against the truck’s armored roof.

  “Sounds big,” a soldier said.

  “Call fire,” Raimey said into the comm; it was linked to Headquarters.

  “Already did, they will wait for your word,” an operator replied. The operator flew a drone ahead of them, circling the scene. It flashed from infrared to HD, searching for hostiles. “We see no action at the Node. The bomb has gone off, but no action.”

  They got to the Data Node. Just like the one in New York, the office building was destroyed and there was damage to surrounding buildings, but the terror
ists had made no attempt to enter the Data Core where the bulk of the operation occurred.

  Strange. Raimey thought. They set up a perimeter and searched through the surrounding buildings.

  “What was the delivery device?” Raimey asked.

  “Hold,” the operator said. She reviewed the footage frame-by-frame. “It looks like a truck, maybe a garbage truck. The drone was too far away when the bomb detonated to have a 100% ID.”

  He had seen this. He had done this in battle. This was a diversion.

  “Check other Cores and transportation centers,” Raimey said. He mirrored the channel frequency to his team. “Everyone pull in. Let SWAT handle this. This doesn’t feel right.”

  “Diversion?” Janis said. Raimey could hear that he was jogging back.

  “Yep.”

  “It’s a good one.”

  “Yeah. We’re the only anti-terrorist team here.”

  Just then the operator wired them into a police band. Shots had been fired at MindCorp Headquarters.

  “I have another drone flying that way,” the operator said. “It’ll be less than five minutes.”

  The team converged from various alleys and buildings and they headed to MindCorp.

  = = =

  Sabot didn’t bother with an explanation. Cynthia was online in a sea of data, building the final report for WarDon on China and the EU, and then in a flash she was over his shoulder. For a split second, she thought he wanted to fuck, until he ignored her playful banter.

  “You’re not going to believe what China has!”

  “No talking,” Sabot said.

  She knew there was trouble. Sabot kept a 10mm Glock on him, but he went to a hidden compartment in her office and pulled out a massive, 10 gauge shotgun that had a twenty round drum magazine.

  “Stay behind me.”

  “What about the cameras?”

  “They shut them down.”

  “The elevators?”

  “They’re gone too. But one stopped at the 145th floor. Be quiet.”

  The 145th floor and higher were executive offices and also Cynthia’s home. Immediately she understood the ramification: they knew her home was on these floors, they just didn’t know which one. They were searching floor-by-floor.

  Muted automatic fire came from below. Sabot turned back to Cynthia and put his hand to her mouth. She started to cry. He stared directly into her eyes. “This is why I’m here.” He put his hand to her face. “We’re going up top.”

  She knew to say no more. He opened the door to the stairway and another burst of machine gun chatter was louder, but still a floor or two down. They heard people screaming.

  Sabot saw movement a flight up from him and he didn’t hesitate. Sabot blocked Cynthia from view and fired his shotgun. The ten gauge buckshot ripped through the shadow and a man riddled with wounds tumbled down to their feet.

  “Don’t look,” Sabot said as he pulled Cynthia past the man. His chest and face were ruined. Sabot quickly checked: the radio they used was open. His team would have heard the gunfire. Below, a stairwell door slammed open and a herd of footsteps made their way toward them.

  He grabbed Cynthia and took her up to the roof. The frigid, whipping wind greeted them. Sabot flanked the door and pointed out a huge air conditioner twenty yards away.

  “Get behind that. Don’t come out no matter what.”

  She didn’t object. She ran.

  Sabot lay prone, off center from the door, and waited with three pounds of pull on a four-pound trigger. No one was going to take his girl.

  = = =

  Raimey counted four bodies as they entered MindCorp headquarters. A woman without a face and three sprawled security guards. The terrorists weren’t taking hostages. When they arrived, employees were fleeing from the building. Raimey kept ten of the team back to watch everyone go, just in case the terrorists used the outrush as cover. They had already proven clever.

  The elevators were shut down.

  “We got to go up the stairs,” Raimey said.

  “This place is like a mile tall,” Janis complained. They jogged to the stairwell and quickly entered, sweeping the immediate area. Police followed behind them to maintain the cleared floors.

  “You always pride yourself on your body,” Raimey said as they ascended.

  “My body, not my cardio. You ever see me on a treadmill?” Janis replied. Both had their submachine guns tucked to their cheek, its red dot sight a part of their vision.

  “We have action on the roof,” the operation said in their comm. “Early report from the employees is that the terrorists went directly to the elevator.”

  “They’re going for Cynthia Revo,” Raimey said.

  “Yes, that’s what we believe,” the operator said. “No employees—aside from those on the ground floor—said they saw the terrorists.”

  “Ok. Keep the cops coming, filling in behind us.”

  “Yes. Sending schematic of top floors.”

  In their HUD comm a map popped up, pinging their location in the building.

  It took them thirty minutes to run up the entire flight of stairs. The main stairwell ended in a vault-like door to the executive suites. It had been blown open and the door hung like a hangnail.

  “Careful.”

  They got in and found bodies, quickly clearing the space, calling out to the comm operator.

  They found a body in the stairwell that had been shot at close range with a shotgun. The face looked like it had been fed through a meat grinder. They continued up the stairs and a smell they were all familiar with, the smell of open wounds, filled the air. When they got to the roof entrance, a pile of bodies greeted them. Quickly they checked. They were terrorists. Some with dark skin, others as white as can be. All walks of life together, with guns and bad intentions.

  “U.S. special forces!” Raimey called out through the door. They’d have to drag bodies aside to get out.

  “This is Jeremiah Sabot, Cynthia Revo’s bodyguard. Come out slow with your guns down.”

  “Could be a trap,” Janis said.

  “Could be.”

  “You go out first.”

  = = =

  Frank carried Justin out of MindCorp like an infant. In one hand Justin held the Mindlink. He sucked his thumb with the other. After two hours of hiding in a store, the cops had come out to the ‘L’ landing. In those two hours they heard gun fire above them and at one point a window crashed outward and a flailing body zipped past, hitting the rail and tumbling away.

  One of the cops tried to help with Justin.

  “I got him,” Frank said. The look in his eye caused the cop to retreat.

  The elevators were turned back on and they and others left the building in an orderly fashion.

  Walking out, they saw a large black soldier with a hooked scar around his right eye. He was searching the crowd. His gray eyes found them.

  “Is your son alright?” Raimey asked.

  “No,” Frank said. Raimey looked at the boy, he was shaking, nearly catatonic.

  “He has Asperger’s. He can’t handle these kind of things.”

  Raimey gave a warm smile. “No one can handle these kind of things. Do you need a paramedic?”

  “No, we just need to get home.”

  Raimey called over a cop. “Can you drive these two home?”

  The young cop nodded and led them to his car. When he found out where they lived, he dropped them off at the most outward train station to O’Hare.

  “I need special approval to drive out that far,” the cop had said.

  Frank nodded, exhausted. Whatever.

  They got back to DeKalb at midnight. Charlene greeted them at the door with concern on her face. Justin had not spoken since the incident. His thumb was chapped from sucking it. He gripped the Mindlink like it was a teddy bear.

  “What happened?” Charlene asked. Frank handed Justin to Charlene and he quietly wrapped himself around her.

  “We’re never going back to the city,” Fran
k said. “Ever.”

  = = =

  Cynthia was in similar duress. Her hands shook so violently she couldn’t light her joint. She reached for pills and Sabot stopped her. He was eerily calm.

  She had not seen the shootout, but she had heard everything. The sounds and cries were almost worse in her mind. Men pleaded for mercy and her lover gave them none. One sounded like a kid. Sabot used the shotgun to maim and if that didn’t do the entire work, the pistol to finish. It was twenty minutes of hell and afterwards Sabot carried her past the bodies so she wouldn’t see.

  “It’s not worth it,” he had said.

  They were back in her home. After special forces—and then the police—took their statements and they were all alone, Sabot took off his vest, put away the guns, and poured a tall glass of whiskey, ignoring the ice.

  He lit the joint for her and held it for her to puff. On a whim he sucked on it too. She couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Life’s short,” he said.

  He took her to the bath and got the water running. He took off her clothes and put her in, massaging her shoulders, the heat and his hands combining to bleed away her tension.

  “How do you do it?” Cynthia asked. His hands felt like steel bars breaking away the knots.

  “I won’t let anyone hurt you,” Sabot said. His voice was hitched. She turned and saw two tear lines down his cheeks. She pulled against him and felt protected. He could do it because he had to.

  = = =

  About the time the hijacked garbage truck pulled in front of the northern Data Node, Evan called WarDon and told him that Nostradamus had picked up a pattern. He watched the rest of the night unfold via Mindlink: news feeds, police scanners, military comms he had access to because of his position. He waited for the call and it came at 3:00 a.m.

  He faked groggy. “Hello?”

  “The bionic would stop them?” Cynthia asked.

  Evan smiled and quickly pulled it back. A person could hear smile over the phone. “Are you ok?”

  “I’m fine, but it was close. Nostradamus and the bionic, that would stop them?” Cynthia asked again. “Could you protect MindCorp?”

  “Nostradamus can be tailored for any search criteria,” Evan offered. “We plan on having the bionics on ready in every city like SWAT.”