“I want my father,” she wept. “I want Mike.”
Sabot leaped down to the nineteenth floor and ran down the stairwell before Chao could change his mind. He jumped down, from flight to flight, and on the fifth floor he leapt straight out of an apartment window, plummeting to the ground and rolling to absorb the impact. A Revo stood next to a manhole cover and let him down. Sabot had never hated himself more in his life.
The very nature of war subverts principles. War is an act of survival, not ideals. It’s a frantic struggle against the darkened tide that drags you out from shore. It is a perpetual paradox that saves the world and kills it, that sees us at our best and our most fetid, that is as wired into our brains as the ability to breathe, and simmers in our soul, shoulder to shoulder with love.
Chapter 12
Raimey saw the smoke before he saw Vanessa’s apartment. When he turned the corner, confusion overtook urgency. Hundreds of Tank Minor bodies were scattered everywhere, flattened and pulped as if by a steamroller. A pile of their bodies stood at the front of the building, twitching, and the residents of the building had filtered out into the street, far away from the carnage.
Raimey looked up. The top of the building was gone. Something—probably electrical—had caught on fire.
In a nearby alley, something caught Raimey’s eye: a boy on a green bike. He had an Army bag strapped to his back.
“Hey, kid. Don’t be scared. Do you know what happened?”
The boy twitched like he was about flee.
“Please! My daughter lives here. Do you know what happened here?”
The boy was about to speak when—
“Raimey?” someone called out.
The boy took off. A military transport approached Raimey. Two Tank Major designs he’d never seen before escorted it. One of the giants had a face that was horribly disfigured.
“Raimey!” the uninjured one called out again. The caravan stopped, and the two Tank Majors came over. Up close, Raimey could see that this one was injured too. It moved awkwardly and had a slight tremor.
“You probably don’t remember us. It’s Edward Chao and Alan Kove.”
Raimey remembered. They were the two that had taken him from his bath to become a Tank Major a decade ago.
“How did you get here?” Chao asked. Kove moved over slightly, flanking.
Inside the truck, Vanessa could hear the conversation. Her hands were bound and a soldier covered her mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“I’m looking for my daughter,” Raimey said. “Do you know Vanessa? She worked at the Derik Building.”
“I know who she is,” Chao said. Vanessa could hear the undercurrent of joy in his voice, something Raimey didn’t pick up on. “She helped Kove and me through the culling process.”
“This is her apartment,” Raimey said.
“It is?”
“Yeah.”
“I had no idea. We’re just passing through.”
“Why would there be a battle here?”
“This kind of thing is everywhere. The city is wrecked.”
“But what’s important about this location?”
“I have no idea, John. You can see we’ve both been through the wringer. We’re getting this shipment to the air strip and then going to the base.” A pause. “We could use your help. Cynthia still controls large sections of the city.”
Vanessa heard her father walk away. “Vanessa! Vanessa!” he screamed, his voice amplified. “Vanessa! It’s your father! It’s John!” He must have found someone nearby. “Do you know Vanessa Raimey? Don’t run, I won’t hurt you. Do you know Vanessa Raimey? Don’t ru—Vanessa! It’s your father! Vanessa!”
His footsteps returned. “Why are they scared of us?” he asked. “We aren’t under Cynthia’s control.”
“War, man,” Chao replied. “Whatever happened here, it spooked them out. And I don’t blame them. This whole thing’s fucked. Can you help us get through the city?”
“I’m going back to Wrigley Field to look for her.”
“The airstrip is on the way.”
Raimey nodded. “Okay.”
===
From inside the transport, Vanessa could do no more than listen as her father and the Twins battled through Revos and hijacked Tank Majors, as Cynthia unleashed a flood to try and stop her from getting to the plane. But her father could not be broken. The ground shook from his attacks—and without him, Chao and Kove would have fallen.
She now knew, as painful as it was, that he was loyal. And that even in his folly and his failure, he had traveled halfway across the world to make sure she was okay. He loved her.
At the airstrip, Raimey and the Twins parted ways. Vanessa was too exhausted to cry. Her eyes burned, but the tears no longer came.
“I have to find Vanessa,” Raimey said.
“She’s smart. I’m sure she’s fine,” Chao replied. “Good luck.”
And then Vanessa heard her father walk away.
= = =
In the plane, Vanessa saw what had happened to Mike. He was bound in medical plastic designed to keep the electrostatic tissue from further damage. For the entire flight, he watched her from his bag, unable to speak, his bucktoothed face horribly disfigured without his jaw. An eye for an eye, after all. Even so, she could feel his sorrow. If Mike could cry, his tears would have filled the plane.
There was very little prep for Vanessa when she got to the bunker. She was the Consciousness Module: an unmodified Piece that governed the other Pieces and took command from the Will, Evan Lindo. Evan was now permanently mounted into the base of the Mega Core. Fluids fed his veins and a suction device whisked his waste away. When he greeted her, the whole room shook. Kove brought her in. She didn’t fight. Men in lab coats ignored her quiet pleas. They sedated her, shaved her head, and performed electrolysis over her body. They fitted her with a device for body waste and mounted metal diodes on her skull. They ran tests on her life capsule. They warmed the amnio-antibiotic gel to ninety-eight point six degrees and then placed her inside. They mounted the through-helmet to her head and closed her in.
And then, at Evan’s request, they fired up the last component of the Northern Star.
= = =
In cyberspace, the black pool lurking below the universe collapsed beneath the gravity core—then rose upward in a column, consuming it. The sun’s yellow rays were choked out, and for a moment, the universe was blacker than blindness. The dark orb bulged and collapsed as the Northern Star dismantled Cynthia’s sun.
Suddenly, a piercing light slashed across it and spread, until the entire surface boiled in white. Huge eel-like arms grew out of the nova and the portals and programs shook as the code of the universe shifted—as all the moors were destroyed, except one. Without the Northern Star, this reality would cease to exist.
The Cores around the world turned on, despite the MindCorp Sleepers’ requests, and a massive reverse data push caused the Sleepers to stroke and die, blood streaming out of their noses and ears from the surge. Within a thousandth of a second, Evan had mapped out every Data Core in the country. He quickly ordered all soft soldiers to secure them.
Governments protested, unsure what was going on, but their objections were ignored. Out of the fields of Iowa, and off the decks of submarines scattered throughout the world, nuclear missiles rose into the sky. An example had to be made.
Quietly, Evan ordered Kove and Chao to kill everyone in the Northern Star bunker. The Twins did so without question, rounding them up and pounding them down. The huge blast doors closed and locked for the incoming attack.
Washington, D.C. erupted in nuclear fire. Two hundred megatons turned a chilly fifty-degree day into a dry ten thousand degrees. Those outside were blinded before they were vaporized. A wall of fire spread from ground zero like a tsunami, and buildings vanished for two hundred miles. In thirty seconds, the entire region was a dead zone. And like a sunbeam through mist was God’s promise, Evan offered his own: surrender and there wil
l be peace.
All nations did. Evan tore out their government infrastructure, tore out their ability to communicate. The few that resisted died swiftly.
The Revos were now Lindos. Those that remained migrated to U.S. bases to be refitted and recharged. Parts were harvested and reattached. Guts were drained and removed for good. The Tank Major versions were put back into the field, fully armed.
Sabot tried to disconnect Cynthia, but whenever he would attempt a coup, she would take over his body and sit him down.
“You said there’s another way, and I’m searching for it,” she said.
She fought until the bitter end. She set her thousands of MIMEs on one task: to hack into the Northern Star bunker and shut down Evan’s life support. That failed. She tried to stop the nuclear attack. That failed.
And then Evan turned his attention on her. Cynthia, a formidable opponent who, in a matter of seconds, had become nothing more than a gnat buzzing around his face.
Sabot pulled Cynthia off the bed and held her in his arms. As she seized, he put his finger into her mouth, and she bit down to the bone.
Twenty minutes later, the seizure ended. The right side of her face was slack, her eye canted to the side. Drool leaked from her lips, and her hand cradled her side in a claw.
Sabot wanted to scream for a doctor, but they were all alone.
They were all alone.
Epilogue
Mike Glass awoke in a hospital room. His eyes were closed, but he could feel a presence nearby. He opened his eyes and saw Evan seated, legs crossed, next to his bed.
“You put me in a tough position, Mike,” Evan said. Mike looked around at the windows. It seemed like there was nothing outside. And there were no noises of doctors and nurses going about their rounds.
“I love her,” Glass said.
“I know you do. I was wrong to so quickly dismiss your feelings,” Evan said. “You surprised me. In your shoes, I probably would have done the same.” He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “But I don’t know if I can trust you anymore. I can rebuild you—that’s no problem. Make you better than ever, in fact. And you’re worth it to me. Hell, we’ve been through a lot together, and that matters to me. But how can I trust you?”
“Is Vanessa alive?” Glass asked.
“Yes.”
“She’s with you?”
“Side by side and safe,” Evan replied.
“Then you should kill me,” Mike said. Glass realized he was speaking without his jaw. An electronic voicebox was mounted near him. “I won’t let you live if I know she’s alive and trapped, and you hold the key.”
Evan studied Mike’s eyes. Glass was a man of his word—Evan knew that. He slapped his knees.
“Well, that bums me out. But I can’t kill you, Mike. Your mind is too amazing, too adaptable. It isn’t just smarts with this stuff, it’s aptitude. And you—are—amazing.” Evan stood up. “I got big plans for you.”
“I’ll kill you the first chance I get, Evan,” Mike said.
Evan’s eyes glowed and the room shook. “You won’t know who you are when I’m done with you,” he replied.
Suddenly the walls shot away and Evan and Glass were spinning down a wormhole. And Glass understood: Evan had done it. He had become a god. Their physical bodies were somewhere, maybe next to each other, maybe a continent apart, but none of that mattered now.
“YOU WILL LIVE, MIKE. AND YOU WILL OBEY ME,” Evan said. “YOU WILL ALWAYS BE MINE.”
An orb formed from Evan’s head, amoeba-like, purple and white, dancing like a disco ball. It stretched over to Glass. And even before it touched, Mike could feel it. It was Evan’s will. It wrapped around Glass’s mind and took everything that gave Mike his identity, leaving only his aptitude and his instincts. The Pieces lapped everything up—the images and smells, the observations, the insights—and took them as their own. Good or bad, it made no difference: memories were life, and the Pieces would follow their will to the end of the earth, for just a drop of it on their tongue.
= = =
John Raimey stood over his daughter’s grave at the newly anointed “Derik Memorial.” He had missed the burial. For the last two weeks, like the remaining bionics, he had been ordered to commandeer the MindCorp nodes around the country. They were government-run now.
Evan had broken the news to John. “Rescue crews found her body at the Derik Building. I’m sorry, John. I’m so sorry. I know we’ve had our differences, but Vanessa was special to me. I failed at my promise.”
“Me too,” Raimey had said.
MindCorp had murdered his girl. And then, in a last-ditch salvo, Cynthia had turned Washington, D.C. into nuclear fire. John was more than happy to aid Evan in wiping MindCorp from the earth.
Raimey felt his wife behind him, but she stood far, far away. She was here to bear witness to John’s useless sacrifice. She was here to mourn her daughter.
“I’m sorry,” John said. He felt Tiffany’s eyes bore into the back of his skull.
John stood over Vanessa’s grave for hours before he was called back to base. They were going to repair his body and ship him overseas to a permanent post in Boma, to quell any uprisings near the mines and manage the ports.
He was happy to go. He was done. He was hollow. Every morning he woke was a curse from God.
Evan—or to some, the Northern Star—had requested him specifically.
“It will be a fresh start,” Evan had said over his comm. “You’ve done enough for your country. You’ve sacrificed more than I can imagine.”
To John, those words meant something. Maybe Evan wasn’t so bad after all.
The world needed CPUs and circuit boards in order to run. CPUs and circuit boards were built from rare, raw materials, and those materials invariably came from volatile regions. Raw materials and volatile regions: fundamental ingredients of even the most advanced civilizations. A + B = C. And Raimey would be the equal sign.
“Everyone you love dies,” Tiffany hissed, snapping John’s eyes from the fresh grave that was now his daughter’s resting place.
Then I will never love again.
The Northern Star
–The End–
Part I
“I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
—Edgar Allan Poe
Prologue
-The Middle East. 2093-
I
Against all things natural in this region of the world, a low, thick fog clouded this borough day and night. It wet the entire city like the inside of a lung.
It was dusk and the streets were empty. A boy in a hunter orange wetsuit ran down a narrow alley, trying doors. He was barefoot and his head was shaved, with metal contact patches the size of quarters surrounding it in a crown. They reflected the dying light like tiny moons.
He tried another door. It was locked. He moved on, hugging the side of the street, always looking back. Still another door failed him, but he heard motion inside.
“Help,” the boy whispered in Arabic. Inside, the movement stopped. “Please help me,” he pleaded again, his voice breaking.
The woman—silent on the other side of the door—knew very well the consequences of helping: she lit a candle every night in her husband’s memory. He had been a kind man, and it had served him poorly. She slid her feet along the floor and soundlessly moved away. It was past curfew; it was dark now. The giant was out.
The last of the sunlight winked away and welcomed the black. The boy heard a faint noise behind him and immediately looked to the rooftops. Two hundred yards away, two green dots cut through the dark and fog.
The boy ran.
A fist-sized chunk of wall exploded behind him. He cried out but kept his legs pumping. As his footsteps passed by outside, families huddled into corners or stared off vacantly. They had heard this before: the cries of children, the dul
l sound of a bullet’s impact. What children remained they pulled closer. This borough was ravaged.
The boy weaved through the alleys. A cart exploded next to him. He felt the Eskimo kiss of a bullet pass near his temple. He heard the faint sound of flowing water ahead. The aqueducts.
Built by the Coalition—the U.S., China, and the European Union, who together now controlled the region—the aqueducts connected the thirty boroughs to each other. They could be used as an offsite control; in the early times of unrest, the Coalition cut off the aqueducts’ flow to force the rebels into submission. Now they ran freely.
And they were his only way out. The boy ran toward the sound, his heart racing, his legs like pistons, moving as fast as they could. Along the rooftops, the figure with the green eyes leapt from building to building, gaining ground.
The boy didn’t know why they had chosen him. He didn’t remember much of anything, except the vacuum of space and decisions, strings of zeros and ones that made no sense. But there were some memories. He pictured a beautiful black woman with long curly hair, tucking him into bed. She was always sad, even when she smiled.
“You did well,” she would say. “The key to keeping them on task is to make them feel special.”
“But I’m not special,” the boy replied.
The woman’s smile vanished. “Yes, you are. That’s why you’re here.”
She wished him goodnight, then walked out through a door that the boy knew led to nowhere.
And then the darkness came. And the Man who was everywhere at once.
The Man was the woman’s master. He was not kind, nor was he mean. But he was cold. As cold as the deepest space. And ancient. And when the Man came, the boy would cease remembering or thinking anything. It was as if his consciousness had been put on pause.
How had the boy escaped? He didn’t know. But he knew that going back was death—and worse, darkness.
The boy entered a clearing and saw the man-made river ahead. The earth shook as he sprinted toward his exit. To the right, along the aqueduct, a huge shadow appeared and disappeared in the fog, as if the fog itself pushed and pulled the object into existence. The boy thought it was a truck until it walked toward him—then he saw that it was a man. A filthy giant as tall as the buildings the boy had raced between. It lumbered along the aqueduct, attempting to cut the boy off from the river.
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