The world shrank. I was helpless to stop it. Malcolm had planted a seed of despair in my gut that had taken root. Its tendrils snaked through my innards, coiling, squeezing, and choking like a garrote wire across my stomach.
My skin shriveled. The folds of my throat constricted, pulling taut across tendon and vein. My own flesh became a prison suffocating in its embrace.
I shook my head and struggled to find words. There was nothing to say.
Malcolm stepped closer to me and placed an icy hand on my shoulder. The nanobots simulated the pressure of touch and I recoiled.
"Please, stop," I said, feeling the strength in my legs ebb. "I give up. Is that what you want?"
"No." Malcolm laughed. A cruel sound. Akin to a puppy's whimper, designed to grate the nerves and chafe for attention. "That is the last thing I want."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Flying Jalopy
It's hard to look a gift horse in the mouth. They get squirrelly when you try pulling back their lips. I kept this in mind when we arrived at the Dragonfly left for us by Captain Nash.
The term hover-car applied to the vehicle in question by only the strictest of definitions. It hovered and you could drive it, so a hover-car? Sure.
In my opinion it would be more accurate to call it an impending disaster with the high potential of becoming a flaming ball of wreckage raining down over Terminus. I didn't fancy being part of that burning melee, but it beat walking.
Raines trailed a hand along the back end of the vehicle. Her fingers surfed the time-worn grooves, pockets, and ripples that had slowly reshaped the vehicle's exterior. She looked dubious.
The inside was an improvement, but only because the damages were cosmetic by comparison to the structural deficiencies of the outside. The passenger seat was padded with bricks that did nothing to absorb my weight. Raines, consumed by her seat cushion, suffered from the opposite problem.
We'd be traveling, but not in style.
Raines fired up the engine, which thrummed with a deceptively strong pulse. We sat inside the Frankenstein made from piecemeal parts that somehow ran strong where it mattered. A moment later, Raines had us skimming the outer sprawl of the Terminus skyline.
Rising towards the ElMag Low, Raines broke the silence that had followed us since the forest. "You gonna tell me what's eating you, or do I have to guess?"
Through the window I watched the city pass by. Squat buildings on the fringe grew in predictable increments as we approached the city center sparkling hundreds of miles in the distance.
Malcolm's words had been edged with a poison meant to undermine my armor of self-delusion. The delusion being the belief that, in the end, good would win over evil.
I clung to the idea that I fought on the side of good, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
But it wouldn't play out that way. Not in the real world. I'd learned that lesson before, but I was back in the classroom learning all the terrible ways man has devised to hurt one another.
Raines stood on the front line in a way that left her without any kind of control.
Malcolm held a gun to her head, slowly applying pressure to a squeaky trigger. Soon it would catch, the shot would come, and it'd be over.
Raines wouldn't see it coming.
I could, but I was equally helpless to stop it. Maybe more so.
The buildings shifted, stretching for the heavens and whatever God hid from us up there.
"This would be your time to talk," Raines said, sensing my apprehension.
We banked right, lining up our approach with the Electromagnetic Lowroad steaming the air into heat vapor. It sucked us in before rocketing us towards the city center.
"Malcolm's hacked the nanocomps."
Raines gave a sidelong glance that spoke of her confusion. "We talking personal comps?"
"Yeah."
She sighed and rubbed her cheek. She didn't bother arguing. After the morning we'd had, there was no point in maintaining classifications of possible or impossible anymore. The world was changing. It'd been years in the making, but today it was coming to fruition. For us, at least.
"Well, you're the Intuit," she said, going into problem-solving mode, "how do we stop him?"
I shrugged.
Nanocomps ranked alongside Intuits as one of the great mysteries of Unity. They'd been a gift from the Japanese, along with the infrastructure that gave life to the Stream, shortly before they closed their borders and disappeared. The nanocomp came at a pivotal moment in the history of the North American Union's blossoming youth, allowing its people to rise from the ashes left in the wake of the Dissolution.
The rest of the world hadn't been so fortunate.
The device, attached to the brain stem at birth, synchronized minds across Unity with the trillions of nanobots floating in the atmosphere. It made the shared cognitive network of the Stream possible. A collective consciousness; a collaboration of all human knowledge and experience. Even with centuries of study Unity scientists could only reproduce the nanocomp according to Japanese design. Unable to reverse engineer the damned thing, we remained shackled to our ignorance.
From what we did understand, the nanocomp functioned like a technological stem cell. A blank slate that bonded, restructured, and transformed the neural network of its host brain. A process that made it impossible for that host to survive without the comp overseeing its base operations.
The nanocomp becomes a crutch. Without it the brain simply can't survive.
Not for any useful period of time at least.
With this in mind, I spitballed a solution with zero viability. "Turn them off?"
"Real helpful."
"What do you want from me?" I said the words more forcefully than intended.
The agitation creeping into my voice was spillover from the morning's escapades in conjunction with the fact I was going on twelve hours clear of the Quick. I massaged my temple with the backside of a bony knuckle, digging into the tender spot where a tangled orgy of nerve endings slept. Shocks of electricity zapped down my cheek with an odd mixture of pain and relief.
"Nobody expects you to shit a miracle," Raines said, "but you know Malcolm. Think from his perspective. What's his next move?"
Police work is about asking the right question at the right time, which is more instinct than science. Predicting what Malcolm would do next wasn't half as hard as guessing the how. He wanted to make the world suffer. How he would do so remained a mystery.
"He said, 'We don't bite the hand that feeds us until we can feed ourselves.'"
"Malcolm?" Raines asked.
"Yeah."
"He's not the type to play well with others."
"That's what I said. So now you see it doesn't matter how well I know Malcolm, he's just the gun. We need the guy holding the gun."
Raines nodded and said, "Any theories on who that might be?"
"Somebody with a big hand...and a long reach."
"So, who has a reach long enough to wipe the Pause mainframe?"
"Besides the President?" I asked. "God?"
"Somehow I doubt Malcolm is God's divine vessel."
"You never know."
"Alright, well disregarding the possibility of divine retribution, that leaves us with President Jennings." Raines tucked a rogue strand of hair behind her ear. "I just can't wrap my head around the level of sophistication required for an operation of this magnitude. The number of moving parts is staggering..."
"Which is to say nothing of the Safeguard override or nanocomp hack," I said, tossing more kindling on the flame burning in Raines' mind.
"Actually, the Safeguard override wouldn't be difficult if you were the guardian of the protocol."
"All roads lead to the President," I said, not entirely sure how I felt about where our deductive process had taken us.
"It's something at least."
Not a very good something in my estimation. Whether we were following the theories suggested by the clues or merely interpret
ing the clues to fit our own theories was anybody's guess. I hoped for the first, but feared for the second.
Rising out of the modern jungle of cement, smart-metal, and bustling humanity, the glass pyramid of the Time Bank appeared on the rim of the world where the planet curved off the horizon and into infinity. Despite our distance from the building, its immutable design issued a wordless declaration, a challenge that said, "I was here before you; I will be here after you."
A sunburst of light winked off the smooth onyx glass of the Time Bank, forcing me to shield my eyes. The light rummaged through my mind and scrounged up a headache buried beneath.
Throbbing against the inside of my skull, the sensitive portion of my frontal lobe pulsed in time with the humming engine. I closed my eyes and took a breath, filling my lungs with more air than they could comfortably hold before letting it spill out my nostrils. The Quick Sliver nanites were beginning to change. It wouldn't be long before they reduced me to a hallucinating sack of human bio-waste.
I'd rationed my stash of Quick on the assumption I'd be dead soon, so the question of where I'd be getting the next hit wasn't trivial. I rolled back my jacket sleeve and watched the bars shrinking with every second, hoping they'd offer some insight.
They proffered nothing but a glimpse of my mortality. A needless reminder.
Beads of sweat traced a path across my cheek and down my neck. The task at hand required focus, but my mind was split.
Something touched my hand. I jerked away.
My eyes snapped open to see Raines' hand inches above mine. She wore that unreadable mask of emotions I'd found typical of the female gender.
She held my stare and gently placed her hand atop mine. It was warm in a way that went beyond body temperature. The heat spread up my arm and into my shoulder, pausing at my throat as if deciding which direction to go before settling on the all-encompassing answer of both.
It descended into my chest while bubbling up into my nose. My cranium tingled in time with my toes.
She'd connected us in what felt to be the empathic equivalent of syncing minds in the Stream. We weren't sharing the same mental space, no free exchange of thought, but something else was transferred—emotion.
My doubt and frustration melted into her. In return I received something I hadn't allowed myself to feel since Diana's death.
Hope.
She filled me with the belief that somehow everything would work out, that there was more to life and death than suffering and pain. That something in between made it all worthwhile.
Something I couldn't immediately place.
Love.
Though her love for me was tainted, broken and jagged from the suffering I'd inflicted upon her.
Raines pulled her hand away as if she'd shared too much. The warmth lingered, the aftertaste of a dream still fresh. I wanted to reach out and grab her hand, to relive those feelings.
To feel connected.
But I didn't.
The hope and love she'd given me faded alongside the memory of her touch.
The moment was lost, as if it'd never existed.
And maybe it hadn't.
The Quick might have been tinkering with my wires, inducing mini-hallucinations and delusions. The Sliver would pursue increasingly complex punishments until I succumbed to its command.
I was riding that thin line between reality and fantasy, wondering how I'd ever distinguish the two again.
***
"If you don't know the how or the why," Raines said, her attention fixed on the fast approaching Time Bank, "maybe you can figure out the when?"
"Sometime before I die?"
"That's assuming this has anything to do with you. I can't imagine whoever broke Malcolm out of prison did so because they wanted to torture you. No offense."
Raines' sharp words popped my narcissistic bubble. She might be right. There had to be more at play than simple revenge, but the timing between Malcolm's escape and my impending death was too coincidental.
Perhaps I was a pawn, but then what was the game?
"If I'm not part of their grand design, then why would they allow him to torment me when I still have obvious connections to Time Vice?"
"Those aren't strong connections anymore."
"No, but they're something. And the thing with clandestine government organizations is that they do well because of slinking in dark shadows with the element of surprise," I said. "Put them in the light and they're as ineffectual as any other arm of the government."
Raines was unsatisfied by that conclusion, but we were operating with too few facts to compose good working theories. Until then, we'd simply have to follow our gut.
Raines dipped out of the ElMag Low towards a line of Dragonflys filing into the Time Bank garage. A half mile out, the monolithic pyramid's powerful grav-beam snared our vehicle and guided us towards a reflective panel shimmering with the flat glare of black ice. The Time Bank, the backbone of the Life Tracker system, stared back unwinking, uncaring.
That building was the reason I was going to die in the next twenty-four hours. It monitored the software, firewalls, and encryptions that tracked the flow of time in and out of the billions of Life Trackers spread across Unity. When the final second blipped off my forearm, and my account hit zero, it would issue the command for my nanocomp to self-destruct.
"I hate that building." I pointed it out.
Raines smirked. "Can't imagine why."
"It's an oppressive triangle."
"Technically it's a pyramid. A triangle only has two dimens—"
"Whatever," I interrupted. "Point is, some guy with a math degree decides Earth can only sustain seven billion people and next thing you know Unity's rolling out the Life Tracker."
"Seventy years ain't long enough for you?"
"It's too long if you ask me, but that's not the point."
"Then what is?"
"Government shouldn't be making that decision for us. It's unnatural."
"Yeah, 'cause human nature is really something we should let go unregulated."
"Beats slavery," I muttered.
"Nobody's stopping you from getting a job and buying some more time."
"Yeah?" I tapped on the window pane. "Tell that to the people living in the Lowers with no job skills and outdated tech. How much time you think they can buy?"
"I admit it's not a perfect system."
"Shit, it's not even a good system."
"Maybe," Raines conceded.
People living north of the Middles liked to believe we were all playing the same game, same rules. It's a lie. Malcolm had proven that when he pulled off the greatest time heist in history. He'd shown just how vulnerable the system, and we, really were.
Sixty-two million years, gone in a heartbeat. One million people with only a single, tiny bar left on their forearms. Ten seconds.
Nanocomps across Unity betrayed their hosts and dumped truckloads of dopamine and serotonin into their bodies. Chemicals that would ease the transition into the afterlife took hold, and ten seconds later, one million people dropped dead.
To me, the most offensive part wasn't that they'd been robbed of their lives, but that they'd been denied the right to be upset about it.
They died happy because their bodies told them too. Not with a panicked scream, but with a sigh.
A whimper that changed the world.
That was nine years ago. People are quick to forget. It's easier than remembering. Forgetting helps us sleep at night.
But I hadn't forgotten. Those lives, Diana's included, were on my shoulders 'cause I'd failed to stop Malcolm. I wouldn't let it happen again.
The Dragonfly decelerated as we drew within spitting distance of the Time Bank. The city skyline reflected in the pyramid's unblemished glass sides. No opening had appeared. No door, just wall.
The rational part of me knew we'd pass harmlessly through, a ship in the night, but the Quick fed the lizard part of my brain, the part which couldn't be reasoned with. My he
art rate spiked with each panicked message of fight or flight that made it to my muscles.
I tightened my grip on the armrest to appease those requests for action, however minute.
The nose of our jalopy smashed into our reflection before disappearing through the barrier. Slowly, we were dragged inside the belly of the monster.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Breaking and Entering
The faded yellow sun tap dancing on my sensitive photo-receptors dimmed as we entered the parking garage. We glided past endless rows of vehicles stacked neatly atop one another until we reached a wall of double-doored elevators near the heart of the building.
"So, we're in the building, great, but..." I visualized the Time Bank's security measures, "how are we gonna get to the President again?"
"Leave that to me."
"What's that even mean?"
"It means, leave that to me." Raines was out of the Fly and standing at the elevator before I'd even managed to dislodge myself from the vehicle.
My system hadn't recovered from my high dive into the ocean; a reminder of that fact shot through my body as I stood up. Dying takes a lot out of a man.
A bell chimed and the elevator door opened. A woman in her mid-thirties dressed business casual stepped out. She gave Raines a courtesy nod, but looked straight through me as if staring into the wind.
I still had that look of a Lower about me, I suppose.
We stepped inside and the elevator chirped. Raines thumbed a glassy button on the wall that scanned her fingerprint with a glowing green light. My expectations for what would happen next were low. But when the elevator began moving towards the three hundred and ninety-fifth floor—five shy of the apex—I was a bit surprised.
Raines breathed quietly beside me. She held her shoulders high and tight. I watched the muscles in her forearm flex and release in the reflective side of the elevator.
"You know where you're going?" I asked.
She grunted.
"I'm taking that as—"
"Shut up, Tom," she said, with visible tension lines etched across her cheeks.
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