by Kyle Mills
He pulled up an innocuous prompt, typing what looked like a nonsensical line of code into it. His finger hesitated over the return button for a moment, but then dropped obediently onto it.
This time, there were no alarms or flashing lights. A couple of seconds passed and Smith started to wonder if the system really didn’t do anything when Whitfield suddenly grabbed his right arm and grimaced in pain. A moment later, he had collapsed to the floor.
“Shut it off!” Smith shouted, dropping to his knees beside the man.
“I can’t. Once it’s triggered, it runs off the internal battery.”
Randi devised a typically inelegant but effective solution — grabbing a wrench and attacking the individual parts of the Merge on the table.
Smith ignored the men guarding them and felt Whitfield’s neck for a pulse. Nothing. Based on everything Smith knew about the Merge technology, it was impossible. But impossible or not, the man was dead.
65
Near Washington Circle, District of Columbia
USA
Christian Dresner sat watching a massive computer monitor on the wall. It was an irritatingly archaic technology, but transmitting a feed from someone else’s Merge directly to the mind of another had turned out to be problematic. The complexities were slowly being ironed out but for now it did little more than create confusion as the brain struggled to differentiate its own experiences from the experiences of the person at the other end of the connection.
The image of Jon Smith performing CPR on Whitfield was coming in real time from Deuce Brennan and Dresner leaned forward, watching carefully. Russell was looking around, undoubtedly for a weapon, but her expression suggested she knew she’d be dead before she could use it. Zellerbach — a man whose genius he’d managed to completely overlook — was panicking, knocking things off his desk and tripping over them as he backed away.
The sweat was hot and slick in his palms, but Dresner forced himself to remain calm. While the discovery of his subsystem so soon was a potential disaster, it appeared that control could be regained. In fact, he might one day look back at this moment as the day his mounting problems were resolved.
Dresner glanced at an icon hovering in his peripheral vision but instead of activating it, he stood and walked closer to the monitor. He’d experimented extensively with the effect of shutting down his subsystem after four seconds in order to simulate the experience of headsets being knocked off. The survival rate was twelve percent with no intervention and forty-nine percent with immediately administered CPR.
With implants and the full eighteen-second cycle, though, fatalities were nearly one hundred percent, even with medical intervention. Whitfield’s situation — a shutdown halfway through the cycle — was something he hadn’t considered. Could he be revived?
“You told me this couldn’t hurt anyone,” Randi Russell said over the speakers. “That even with a full battery discharge, it would only give you a little shock.”
“It can’t,” Smith responded, sounding understandably perplexed as he continued to hammer the motionless man’s chest. “I don’t understand it. There’s just not enough power.”
While extremely intelligent — perhaps even borderline brilliant — Smith’s thinking was too linear. A common failing of men who spent their lives in the confines of the military.
Dresner’s curiosity was satisfied a moment later when Whitfield’s eyes opened and he grabbed Smith’s arm. Similar to the Koreans who were brought back, he seemed to suffer few ill effects. Not surprising. There had been nothing wrong with his heart.
Smith helped him to his feet and he managed to stand on his own, blinking at the people around him for a moment before speaking. “What happened?”
“It looks like it stopped your heart,” Smith said.
Whitfield remained silent for a moment, but when he spoke again he had shaken off his confusion. “Deuce. Give the colonel back his phone. Jon, use it to tell your people what happened. We need to call a meeting with the president and the Joint Chiefs.”
It was precisely what Dresner had wanted to hear. The implication was clear: All the people who knew of Zellerbach’s discovery were in that room. What had been a potentially insurmountable problem now looked like a permanent solution.
There would be questions about their deaths, of course, but it was hard to imagine that they would lead to the rediscovery of his subsystem — particularly with the further precautions he intended to put in place. Once again, Castilla would want this to simply go away. To propagate his own power and the power of his country.
“Lieutenant. Did you hear me? Give Smith his phone back,” Whitfield said.
So arrogant. So foolish to believe that he was in command.
Dresner activated an icon in his peripheral vision, opening a direct link to Deuce Brennan’s Merge. “I think it’s time we took control of this situation, Lieutenant.”
66
Near Washington Circle, District of Columbia
USA
By the time Smith had helped a shaky James Whitfield to his feet, both of the men guarding them had lowered their weapons. The red-haired one Randi had called Deuce reached toward his chest pocket — to retrieve the phone he’d been ordered to return, Smith assumed — but instead shot the man next to him in the side.
Smith froze at the quiet crack of the silenced pistol, unable to immediately process what had just happened. Randi was quicker and she lunged toward him with the wrench still in her hand.
“Not today, Randi,” he said, swinging the pistol in her direction before she even got close. “Now back off, bitch.”
She did as she was told, dropping the wrench while he followed her with his weapon, eyes sweeping smoothly around the room. Randi’s deference appeared to be well founded. He was fast as hell and apparently completely unaffected by the fact that he’d just gunned down his teammate in cold blood. Not a man to roll the dice with.
“Lieutenant…” Whitfield said, not yet fully recovered from being dead a few moments before. “What are you doing? You’re a soldier. You—”
“No sir. The day I went to work for you, I left my oath of loyalty behind. I became a mercenary.”
Whitfield continued to gain strength. “What the hell are you talking about? We do what we do to protect our country. To save the lives of the people you work with. How is that a mercenary?”
“Yeah, maybe I’m just rationalizing,” he said, adjusting his aim to Whitfield. “And if Dresner had offered me a couple hundred grand, I’d have probably told him to screw off and reported it to you five minutes later. But he doesn’t work in those kinds of numbers. So, while I regret having to kill all of you — and I really do — it might make you feel better to know I’m getting Learjet- and private-island-money to do it.”
The quiet crack sounded again and Whitfield crumpled to the floor. This time, though, he wouldn’t be getting back up.
Smith looked down at the bleeding hole in the man’s chest, blinking hard as his focus seemed to waver. When he turned back toward Deuce, the gun was moving back to Randi, creating a colorful trail through the air that looked a little like a rainbow. Randi went for the soldier again, refusing to go down without a fight, but tripped over her own feet and sprawled on the floor.
* * *
“Jon! Wake up now. Come on. Jon!”
Smith opened his eyes slowly, seeing nothing but a halo of light around something hovering over him. The image began to sharpen and he finally recognized it as Marty wearing a respirator with “Home Depot” stenciled on the side.
“What…What happened?” Smith said, the muffled sound of his voice suggesting that he was wearing a similar mask, which his numb face didn’t register.
“The house’s defenses don’t end at my front door.”
Smith managed to prop himself up on his elbows and Zellerbach grabbed him under the arm, dragging him to his feet. Once he’d regained enough balance to stand on his own, he looked over at Randi, who was lying partially on top of
Deuce. No blood in evidence.
“Is she—”
“She’s fine. He didn’t have time to get off a shot.”
“Didn’t have time to get off a shot? Whitfield’s dead. Why didn’t you—”
“The gas is activated by my remote. I couldn’t get to it until that Deuce jerk stopped paying attention to me. Now let’s get out of here before he wakes up or those other people come back.”
Smith staggered over to the two men and collected his phone and their guns, stuffing a Sig Sauer and Randi’s Beretta down the back of his pants before handing the others to Marty.
“What do you want me to do with these?” he said as Smith struggled to get Randi into a fireman’s carry. Zellerbach always had exactly one backup for everything — thus the fact that they were both wearing masks and she wasn’t.
“Get rid of them,” Smith said, inadvertently slamming Randi’s head into the wall as he started toward the bathroom.
Zellerbach rushed to a massive metal cabinet and locked the guns in it before speed-walking awkwardly past him in the hall.
By the time Smith got to the bathroom, the tub was already on its edge and the trapdoor was sliding back.
“Does the tunnel get gased, too?” Smith said, remembering the man Whitfield had posted in it.
“Not just the tunnel. The house we come out in, too. I’m very thorough, you know. Very thorough.”
It took some effort, but he managed to get Randi down the ladder without dropping her. She was starting to stir, which was good. What wasn’t so good, was that so was the man Whitfield had left behind.
In fact, he was up on all fours by the time they reached him, shaking his head violently to clear the cobwebs. He made a move for his gun, but Smith swung a leg back and kicked him in the face hard enough to flip him on his back and send him sliding into the wall. He wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon, if at all. But there was no telling how many more of them were out there.
Randi started to squirm and then struggle. He set her down and propped her near the ladder leading into Zellerbach’s other house — grabbing her wrists so she couldn’t attack him. “Randi! It’s me, Jon.”
Recognition came quickly and when it did, the adrenaline-fueled strength seemed to drain from her. He barely managed to catch her before she fell.
“What happened?”
“Not important. We’re going up this ladder and then we’re going to get the hell out of Dodge. Do you understand?”
A weak nod.
“I’ll go first. Can you make it up on your own?”
Another nod — this one a bit less convincing.
He looked at Zellerbach. “Come up last. Make sure she doesn’t fall.”
“Okay. No problem. No problem. I can do that.”
Smith ascended, feeling more steady every second. He opted for speed over subtlety, throwing open the trapdoor and going out gun-first.
The room was empty.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re clear.”
Once they were all safely up, he ran from the room and found a window, opening it a crack as Randi stumbled up behind him. She gulped at the fresh air while he surveyed the dark street beyond. After only a few seconds, her eyes started to sharpen.
“Watch her,” he whispered to Zellerbach and then pulled out his phone and initiated an encrypted call to Klein.
“Jon?” he said, answering on the first ring despite the late hour. “Are you all right?”
“No. Marty found something hidden in Dresner’s system. Whitfield’s dead. It—”
The unmistakable crash of a door being kicked in reverberated from the front of the house and Smith swore quietly.
“Jon?” Klein said. “What just—”
“Call you back.”
He severed the connection and gave Randi back her Beretta before throwing the window fully open and shoving her through it. Apparently, it was higher than he thought, and he winced at the dull thud of her back hitting the ground. Zellerbach went out next and he followed, grabbing Randi by the arm.
Zellerbach managed to outpace them, which suggested that the gas was affecting him more than he’d thought. Smith pulled off his gas mask and tried to call him back but got no reaction. Either he hadn’t heard or he was starting to panic. Probably the latter.
There was a flash about fifty meters to Smith’s left accompanied by the bark of an unsilenced weapon. Zellerbach pitched forward into the street and Smith used the Sig Sauer he’d taken to fire a couple of rounds in the general direction of the shooter before shoving Randi into a clump of bushes.
“Stay!” he said before breaking out into the open and sprinting toward his old friend squirming in the street.
The shooter got off a burst on full automatic but the rounds went well behind him. The chance that he was just a lousy shot or didn’t have a Merge to compensate for the darkness was fairly remote and when he looked back he saw exactly what he knew he would: Randi coming after him at about half her normal speed.
There was nothing he could do about her now, though, and he threw himself to the asphalt behind Zellerbach, pulling him closer to the curb. Randi landed a meter away, flattening herself on the ground as another volley chipped away at the edge of the concrete sidewalk.
“You think that’s the only guy they have left?” she said, sounding like she was thinking clearly again.
“We’re not that lucky. And unless I miss my guess, your friend Deuce is already back on his feet and looking for a weapon.”
The next shot was followed by a scream from Marty. “I’m hit! I’m shot! Oh, my God, I’m shot.”
While the curb was high enough to just cover Smith and Randi, Zellerbach’s bulbous behind was sticking up just enough for the shooter to graze it.
He looked like he was going to bolt and Smith grabbed his ankles while Randi held his shoulders and whispered soothingly to him.
Another shot created a second tear in the back of his pants and he screeched even louder this time. Neither wound was much more than a scratch, but they couldn’t just lie there while Zellerbach was whittled down inch by inch. The curb they were pressed against would only protect them from a fairly distant attacker to the east. From any other sidewalk, street, yard, or driveway, they were sitting ducks.
A siren became audible, approaching fast from the north. Either the neighbors had finally convinced the police to come or they’d heard the shots themselves. Either way, it was looking like their only chance.
“Start scooting back, Randi,” Smith said, flicking his gun out and shooting in the general direction of the man undoubtedly closing on them.
She did, dragging the whimpering hacker along with her. Smith slithered along behind, staying focused on the tall hedge they were closing on. It was thick enough to hide them even from a Merged-up soldier, but it didn’t leave a lot of options for which direction to run.
When they got to cover, he pulled Zellerbach to his feet and held on to him as they crashed gracelessly through the hedge. It put them in the backyard of a modern home built almost entirely of glass. A light went on inside just as Randi was starting to climb the fence on the north side.
“You’re next, Marty. Come on!”
“I’ve…I’ve lost too much blood, Jon. Just leave me. Just leave me here to die.”
“Shut up,” Smith said, wrapping his arms around the man’s thighs and lifting him chest-high against the fence. Zellerbach had just gotten his hands on the top rail when someone behind them spoke.
“Stop! I have a gun.”
Fortunately, it wasn’t the confident demand of one of Whitfield’s special forces men. It was the quavering voice of a homeowner who had heard the shots and seen three people run across his backyard. Smith glanced back and saw that the man was wearing a pink robe and speaking through a tiny gap in the bottom of one of the house’s windows. Not someone looking for a fight.
Randi’s hand appeared over the fence and grabbed Zellerbach by the collar as Smith vaulted over next to him. He tucke
d the Sig Sauer in the back of his pants and started immediately in the direction of the siren.
A swirling red-and-blue light became visible as they angled through an empty lot and ran out into the center of the road, waving desperately in the illumination of the cruiser’s headlights.
It skidded to a stop and the driver threw open his door, ducking behind it for cover.
“They’re shooting!” Randi yelled in a panicked voice. “Someone back there’s shooting at people!”
Smith confirmed that the cop didn’t have a partner in the car and followed her around to the side of it.
“Calm down, ma’am,” the man said. “How many are—”
He fell silent when Smith put a gun to the side of his head and Randi deftly relieved him of his weapon.
“Marty, get in the passenger seat,” Smith ordered as Randi forced the cop into the back and slid in next to him.
Zellerbach did as he was told but squealed in pain from his injured butt when Smith floored the car up the dark street.
“Are you crazy!” the policeman said while his cruiser crept up to eighty in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone. “You’re never—”
“Shut up,” Randi said. “We just saved your ass. If you’d come up against that shooter he’d have killed you. And now, instead of making your wife a widow, he’s just going to disappear back into the woodwork.”
“I’m dying, Jon,” Zellerbach said. “I don’t have much more time. I want you to know how much our friendship has meant—”
“You’re not dying, Marty.”
“This is your fault,” he said, his mild schizophrenia flipping the switch from melodrama to anger. “Every time we get together something like this happens.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I never want to see you again.”
“Who the hell are you people?” the cop interjected.
Smith ignored him and dialed Klein again.
“Jon! Are you all right? What happened?”
