Nexus

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  Max took careful aim, sending one round into the boss’s face. The bullet exited the back of his head, taking a large chunk of skull and a sloppy pile of brains with it.

  “Colby?” called an apprehensive voice.

  Williams. “Is that who you’re working for, or do you just like your cheese mild?” Max taunted, grinning with malice.

  Silence ensued, punctuated with a gurgling grunt that Max assumed came from Parkinson.

  “I give up, I surrender!” Williams proclaimed.

  “Fuck no! That time came and went!” Leet shouted. “You aren’t leaving here alive.”

  Max didn’t need to hear that twice. He slid right back down the narrow aisle he’d just traversed. Exiting the cramped space, he advanced and found a path through more of the junk up there. He followed this little trail best he could before coming to a veritable mausoleum of mothballed, neglected furniture. A lot of cover but also a lot of obstructions.

  “I’ll confess! I’ll tell you everything!” Williams shouted.

  Max paused to listen closely when he heard the first footsteps. He put his left hand to the floor, could feel the vibrations from two pairs of footsteps. Keeping low and silent, he retraced his steps a few feet toward the wider aisle from which he’d entered.

  “No need, you slimy fuckstick. I’m coming for you!” Leet said.

  “Better watch it, Williams,” Max called, voice betraying his amusement. “She’s a real tomcat when she’s pissed.”

  Heavy boots clomped the floor as Williams took off running through the maze toward the staircase. Leet fired twice and then stopped, perhaps to reload. But she remained on the move from the sound of things. Panicked breaths drew closer. Williams grunted, followed by the solid thud of his boots striking the floor after he vaulted over something. Max watched from his dead-end hideaway near the stairs. He had a decent view from here over some of the furniture in case Williams somehow made it into his field of fire, but he quickly realized that the shot would be point blank as he felt and heard Williams coming for him.

  Max pictured his outfit from downstairs. No body armor. At least not when he’d seen him.

  Pounding footsteps ran toward Max’s position. Leet unleashed three quick shots, a couple striking the tall bookcase to Max’s left. Williams cried out, hit, crashing into the bookcase right in front of Max and looming huge in his reflex sight. Dazed, Williams turned and pointed his pistol at Leet, oblivious to Max, who stood not five feet away.

  Leet and Max plugged him over a dozen times, his body dancing to the rapid, offbeat rhythm of their shots like a frog zapped with electrodes. Their storm of lead and fire pinned him to the bookcase for a heartbeat before he crumpled to the floor, his bullet-riddled corpse resembling an Old West outlaw in an undertaker’s window.

  “Shit!” Leet gasped. “Thank God you came back.”

  “I’m stepping out of cover now,” Max announced. The danger might have passed, but adrenaline continued to run hot. Leet might shoot at anything that moved.

  Max spied her about ten feet away through the attic labyrinth. All the enemy were down at the very least, yet the whiteness of her face and the tightness of her mouth betrayed that all was not well.

  “Daniel’s been hit. I think it’s critical this time.”

  “Shit. You take care of Parkinson?”

  “No,” came a feeble gasp from someplace.

  “You’ll be dead soon, you bitch!” Leet sneered as she told Max, “Let her bleed out; we have to get Daniel to a hospital.” She had to be a bit more than hysterical to suggest that; hospitals remained out of the question.

  “Take me to him.” Max hoped his voice exuded calm confidence.

  Leet had made what would have been her last stand from behind a dressing table next to the window in the far wall. Shattered glass covered the floor, mingled with Daniel’s blood as he lay there gasping, the hole in his chest gurgling with every breath. Max knew at a glance that he was lost. Sucking chest wound. He’s got half an hour tops, barring a miracle.

  Shai knelt beside his father, stroking his hair and providing comfort in his final moments. He knows too. Yet he did not cry, despite the look of profound sadness drooping his face. The boy spoke with a quiet calm and presence of mind that betrayed his age. Max had seen unit chaplains less mature and more frazzled in the face of tragedy than this kid.

  “You were a great father,” said the boy. “You did everything to protect me. Thank you. Don’t worry anymore.”

  Parkinson gagged again, coughed a couple of times.

  “Go finish her off,” Max said. “I don’t want any surprises on the way out. And watch out for the bearded guy from the truck stop; he showed up outside. Ran away before I could drop him. He might be anywhere.”

  “Understood,” Leet said reluctantly. Max got the distinct feeling she wanted Parkinson to suffer more for her treachery. Amateur mistake.

  Max noticed something when he took a knee beside Shai—or more accurately didn’t notice something. “What happened to the briefcase, Shai?”

  He didn’t look up from his father. “The man in the suit took it. Before he tried to kill us.”

  “In the office?”

  “Yes.”

  Dammit! He must have stashed it under the desk or something. Or maybe Max had just missed it, preoccupied as he’d been with the bullet holes in the walls. He heard flesh give beneath a brutal blow, followed by a gasping plea from Parkinson. “Get it over with, Leet! Get the case from the office, and we’ll meet you there.”

  “If you insist,” she growled. A single shot rang out a moment later, followed by footsteps as she hurried to the stairs, her mind hopefully back on business.

  Max knew the fight had seriously fucked with her head, thrown her professional bearing dangerously off. Betrayal does that. Even if you expect it, you never get used to it.

  “I need to carry your father, Shai.” Max went to pick Farber up, stopped when he heard the front door slam through the shot-out window. He stood and looked out.

  Green was sprinting across the lawn for his Honda, Daniel’s briefcase in his left hand. “Fuck no!” Max shouted, drawing his pistol. Green stopped running at the shout but then took off as if fleeing a hungry tiger when he saw Max in the window. He ran in a zig-zag pattern to avoid Max’s shots and make good his getaway.

  Max had expended most of his magazine during the battle, and he hadn’t had a chance to reload. His first shot missed, tearing up turf at Green’s feet, startling him. Shifty little fuck! He squeezed an instant too soon on his next try; the bullet struck the Honda’s roof and ricocheted as Green opened the door to toss the case in. The weasel dropped into the driver’s seat and started the car, slammed it into reverse, and backed onto the lawn to circumvent the Suburban blocking the driveway.

  Max tried to disable the vehicle with his next shot—perhaps his last. He hit the rear tire, which blew with a firecracker pop. The Glock’s slide locked back, and Green drove off as Max reloaded. Spirals of sparks shot from the rim of the blown tire as he departed. He wouldn’t get far, but then he really didn’t have to. All he needed was a couple blocks’ worth of breathing room, and then he’d be in the wind.

  And just like that… Max wanted to punch something as failure began feasting on his conscience like a starving scarab.

  Leet ran onto the lawn in Green’s wake. She threw up her arms in frustration as he drove from sight.

  “He got it,” Max called to her, shaking his head.

  Leet stared up at him for a moment, then directed her dumbstruck look downward to the tire tracks on the front lawn.

  “Snap out of it!” Max barked. “Get up here. We have a man to save.” Fat chance but we can try. To his dismay, Max noticed residents beginning to gather on their lawns, the last thing he needed.

  Leet must have noticed, for she picked up her head and ran to the front door. She arrived on the scene with a first-aid kit from the kitchen. Apparently belonging to
the dirty agents, it contained the proper dressings for a chest wound.

  “Put it on in the car; we need to go,” Max said.

  “Understood.” She seemed to have grounded herself, ready to pick up the pieces in the wake of the fiasco.

  As quickly as they’d appeared, most of the gawkers had fled by the time Max loaded Daniel into the back seat of the Suburban and took off. Someone would call the cops. Eventually. In a suburb we’d be in handcuffs already. But most poor people chose not to deal with the police unless absolutely necessary, knowing damn well that they didn’t fall under the blanket of serve and protect. Max wasn’t about to complain as he took off, wondering what their next move should be, what to do with Daniel, and how they might even begin to atone for losing Nexus.

  CHAPTER 15

  A tempest of dilemma and doubt whirled about in Max’s brain as he drove, scattering his thoughts into incoherent mental debris. What the fuck do we do now?

  The bandage Leet applied had stopped Daniel’s chest wound from bleeding externally, yet he continued to bleed internally, blood leaking from his mouth in fits and starts. We can’t do anything further. He might survive if we get him to a surgeon in time, but it’s a crapshoot. Max had seen men die of lesser wounds than Daniel’s.

  Technically speaking, like it or not, their objective was to secure the Nexus project, not rescue the man who created it. It had been drilled into Max’s brain during his days as a Marine officer that mission accomplishment always came first, troop welfare second. All fine and dandy when leading a platoon of combat-ready men who knew and accepted the risks inherent in their profession but a lot less clear when it came to civilians in tow. It seemed barbaric to search for a briefcase with a man dying in the back seat.

  But where do we take him?

  “The closest ER is about six miles away,” Leet said from the backseat as she consulted her phone, her fingers tacky with blood.

  “We can’t go there,” Max responded. “That’s the first place they’ll look for us.”

  Leet unleashed one hysterical cackle. “Will they? They got what they wanted. I’d say they’re through with us now.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. We’ve seen too much. They won’t let us walk away from this.”

  “Well, we can’t just let him die! I know another safehouse in Maryland; we’ll take him there and call Ben, have him send a doctor over.”

  Max snorted with incredulous mirth. “No way. I’ve seen enough FBI safehouses for now. The only agent we can trust is you.”

  “What about Ben?”

  “The guy whose people are all crooks, present company excepted? I’m not so sure about Ben anymore. We solve this ourselves.”

  “Then fucking solve it already!”

  Good point. It always fell on Max to solve the unsolvable.

  DC wasn’t his town, however. He knew no back-alley doctors here nor places where they might hole up, other than in his storage unit. His few remaining contacts from the Agency were either out of the country or out of the game.

  Marklin. He’ll be able to help us. Max opened the contacts folder on his phone, bringing up Marklin’s name. His thumb hovered over the screen, awaiting the command to press the call prompt. No. Max returned to the home screen and slid the phone into his pocket. He couldn’t go to Marklin on this one. Chances were good that the general wouldn’t want to get involved. Even if he did, DC was a small town in many respects, and no matter whom Marklin called in for assistance, they may have ties that lead back to the rogue agents.

  Max knew he could probably cajole Marklin into action, but the cost would be great with the stakes so high. I’ll only wind up owing him again. That was unacceptable. He’d done enough weird, scary shit for one lifetime. If he was ever to find Swift and the other killers, Max needed Marklin to owe him favors, not the other way around.

  “Give me the directions for the ER,” Max said.

  He didn’t inform her that he planned to leave Daniel on the hospital’s doorstep like a common junkie. She would have protested and rightly so. The decision sickened him, but he could think of no other option. To make matters worse, they would have to take Shai along with them to ensure his safety, separate him from his father when the two should be together. There’s no other way.

  “Thanks for seeing things my way. Make the next left.”

  Max dropped his foot a bit yet kept his speed reasonably sane as he navigated the stop-and-go traffic. They traveled a couple of miles, the Suburban silent but for Shai whispering to his father in Hebrew, likely praying for his survival. Max had heard the Kaddish a couple times, and that wasn’t what Shai was reciting. Shai might well have thought his father still had a chance, and that destroyed Max. He couldn’t have felt any more rotten. How would he explain to a child that they had to abandon his wounded father?

  A faint, rattling utterance came from the back seat.

  “Try not to speak, Daniel,” Leet said. “We’ll be at the hospital soon.”

  “No,” Max heard Daniel say, though his next words came softly, unintelligible.

  “Pull over,” Leet said. “That industrial park right there.”

  Max didn’t question her. Daniel’s time was at hand; Leet wouldn’t have ordered the stop otherwise. Max turned into the park, drove past warehouses and businesses until he reached the rear of the complex, where he parked beneath an overhanging tree in a corner of the lot, far from other vehicles. He shut off the Suburban and turned around to better hear Daniel’s final words.

  Blood flowed freely from Daniel’s mouth, dribbled down his chin, soaking into his shirt. His stained lips moved. “The case… holds nothing important.” His words bubbled forth in a halting, tubercular rattle.

  After a moment of stunned silence, Leet turned to him, baffled. “But how can that be? Where is the Nexus project, all of your research?”

  “It is with us. I will die, but Nexus will survive, God willing.”

  “It’s with us?” Max asked, not sure he’d heard right. “How is that?”

  Daniel smiled through the blood, a crimson rictus, and gazed over at his son. “Shai… is Nexus.”

  Max sat dumbfounded for several moments as he tried to process this revelation. He glanced at Leet, whose shocked expression bordered on angry. She’d gone through hell to protect a case that had never really mattered. She had read Peter Rabbit to a science experiment.

  But Max grasped Daniel’s statement soon enough. “Shai is… an android?”

  He hated to use the word, appropriate though it was. It reminded him that he was a man in a crazy world full of crazy things he couldn’t unsee. He couldn’t think of Shai as anything other than a boy. But his unshakeable demeanor, even at present as he watched his “father” die, left Max without a doubt.

  “Yes,” Daniel said. “The case, just a ruse. I filled it with… Monopoly money.” He grinned again. “Shai’s body is synthetic, his skin a material of my design. I implanted his… intelligence. But he learns!” Daniel coughed violently for several seconds, droplets of blood spattering Shai, who did not flinch away. “He learns like a boy… only he absorbs everything. He has what one might call rudimentary emotions…” He gazed up into Shai’s eyes. “He is my masterpiece but more so, he is my son.”

  Shai squeezed his hand. “Yes, Papa. Always. I won’t let your dream die.”

  “Shai…” His voice trailed off; he remained silent for several seconds. Max would have thought him dead had he not heard him breathing. “I am so sorry. Had I known… your creation would have wrought such violence… would have hidden you.”

  “Have no regrets, Papa. You have always done right, by myself and the world.”

  Daniel smiled. “I wish it were so simple… and true. And now I cannot atone.” Again he fell silent as moments passed, his eyes now closed. “You stay with Margaret… and Max. They will see you to safety.”

  “We will,” Leet vowed.

  “Absolutely,” said Max, who now
completely understood why the government had taken such extreme measures to acquire Nexus—the artificial intelligence it represented could permanently tip the balance of power in their favor. And they’ll know soon enough that Shai is Nexus. “I won’t allow anyone to harm your son.”

  “I could not receive any truer… assurance.” Daniel broke down into another coughing fit, gasped for breath. “I love you, Shai.” He raised his arms to embrace his boy one final time.

  “Papa!” Shai lay upon his father, breathing heavily, crying without shedding any tears.

  Daniel smiled, at peace now. His blood-choked breaths ceased a few moments later. Max had witnessed the final moments of many dying men, had listened to their last words. Though he barely knew Daniel Farber, the man’s death—and the graceful way Daniel accepted his fate—hit him like few others had. Max’s life often made him forget there were men like Daniel Farber.

  Max caught Leet’s eye, motioned for them to step outside. She nodded. Shai needed to be alone with his father for a while.

  “I don’t know what the hell to say.” Tears came to Leet’s eyes as she stared at the asphalt. “How could I have been so blind not to pick up on it?”

  “Don’t beat yourself up; you weren’t the only one fooled. But we have the facts now. We need to get Shai to safety, see this through to the end. If anyone tries to harm him, they’d better make sure I’m good and dead first.”

  Leet sighed heavily, looked up, and stared at the sky as she wiped her tears away. Smears of blood streaked her face like war paint. “I’m with you. Let’s finish this.”

  “Good enough. I’ll call Ben, set up a meeting with him. I won’t be dealing with any more of his people.”

  “Amen to that.”

  Max took out his phone and wondered if even Ben could be trusted.