So I laughed. Which beat the alternative of crying. A rib shifted out of place and I winced. The youngest-looking officer tensed his trigger finger. How much harder would he have to pull to blow me off the roof and out of existence?
Part of me wanted to find out.
"Interlock your fingers behind your head, and slowly step forward," the officer on the far left side of the half-circle barked with a stone-cold indifference.
He'd just as soon shoot us dead as bring us in. It was in his eyes. Probably the only thing holding him back was the amount of paperwork to be filed in the wake of our deaths. We'd be out of his life all the sooner if he kept us alive, made the collar, and passed us to the next squad.
These guys were the Apprehension Unit. Raines and I were destined for greater things.
Well, I was. The genesis of a plan had been percolated, morphing from a splinter of possibility into a full-fledged sliver of hope embedding itself beneath my cerebral cortex.
Ash pinged me a simulation showing that, at least theoretically, the plan could work. It was slim and Raines would be pissed, but we weren't in a position to analyze the quality of choices remaining to us.
Maybe she'd make it out, find a better life off grid with her kids. I thought about Maddie and Morgan. A pang of guilt sucker punched me. Or maybe it was jealousy? Regret?
Diana and I had wanted kids. A family. Diana got to be a mother to an unborn child for two months. It was wrong. Malcolm took more than my wife. He took my family.
I wanted to call a redo, but I suppose that's what all losing teams say when they stand on the cusp of defeat.
The game was only ending for me, though. Raines would make it, or so I told myself. I convinced myself that she'd get out of there with air in her lungs and a soul in her body. She'd have her kids and that would have to be enough. After the day we'd had, I was convinced that's all we could ask for.
Tension arced across the sky as I stepped forward. The air dripped with the unique flavors of sweat, fear, adrenaline, and death all baked into one.
Ash pinged my nanocomp, her reply to a message I'd sent moments earlier: Do it, now.
No time for doubt. The cube had to make it off that roof. Raines had to make it off that roof.
I swiveled, thrust the cube into Raines' startled hand and grabbed her shoulders. Our eyes locked. There were no words, only thoughts.
I wished she could read my mind.
Hoped she'd forgive me.
Hoped she'd outlive this mess, and me.
And then I shoved her off the roof.
She teetered on the brink, arms pin-wheeling in a frantic search for purchase, but there was only me.
For the second time in my life I didn't reach out to save her. I let her fall.
It happened fast. She didn't flail. Resigned to her fate, not bothering to fight the inevitable pull of gravity, she fell with dignity.
I held her hurt-filled stare. I couldn't look away. Not for the world.
A massive displacement of air rippled across the roof, a gentle nudge that almost pushed me over the edge, followed by the booming engines of a Peregrine rounding the corner of the Vault, diving like a bird chasing an insect.
Its engines were the roar of a crumbling mountain.
Everything in me clenched. Watertight. Nothing in. Nothing out. Breathing could wait. The Peregrine dove beneath Raines and matched her rate of descent.
Empty space for the mid-air rescue was running out.
The pilot pitched the Peregrine onto its side, exposing an open door pointed towards the sky, and Raines above.
Raines rotated to approach the vehicle face first. She splayed her arms to create drag as the jet hit the thrusters and rose up to meet her.
She snagged the arm rail when the vehicle came within reach and yanked her body inside the metal beast. The Peregrine flopped onto its belly. With less than two dozen feet before impact, the engines became a symphony of harmonic roars fighting to negate the pull of gravity and inertia. The vehicle rocketed forward, leaving a shower of red-green sparks hissing from the undercarriage as it scraped along the street below.
From my vantage point I couldn't tell whether the pilot had pulled out of the dive in time. There was no explosion of Peregrine shrapnel intermixed with the odd human body part; I took that as a good thing.
For a hundred yards the jet continued its belly slide before it threw off the shackles of its earthly bonds, regained lift, and took to the sky.
The air I'd been holding erupted from my mouth the precise moment the butt of a gun came down on the base of my skull. I dropped to my knees, trying to see through a field of fireflies. Immobilization rings snapped into place around my wrists. Nerve endings in my arm died as if the limb had been severed at the elbow.
Somebody then clamped a sedation collar around my neck. One by one a phantom went through the rooms in my brain and turned out the lights. It locked up the front door on its way out, leaving me alone in the black hole of induced sleep.
***
I came out of hibernation sitting on the wrong side of a familiar room. Electromagnetic bands anchored my legs to the chair, and my hands to the table in front of me.
From this side of the table the interrogation room was not a friendly place to be. In fact, it was designed for maximal discomfort.
Freezing air blasted from a vent in the ceiling, forming ringlets of frost on the gleaming steel table. At those temperatures exposed flesh has a way of sticking to metal. To avoid the unpleasant sensation that comes with prying skin from ice, the best strategy is to keep your arms slightly elevated. But that's only a temporary fix. After a couple minutes, your shoulders start burning with the accumulation of lactic acid.
If they liked you, they wouldn't strap your head to the chair, allowing you to lean forward and use the heat of your breath to warm the table.
They didn't like me.
They were going for a full monty of discomfort.
My nanocomp dusted the cobwebs of sedation from my mind, which served only to remind me of my bodily aches. I distracted myself with thoughts of Raines. Hoping she had the good sense to get out of the fight. We were pawns in a game being played over our heads, and any pawn with aspirations of making it through the end game knows to stay out of the fight when the big pieces come out to play.
The big pieces were out. It was time to hide.
God, I hoped she was hiding.
The door to the interrogation room swung open and an absurdly average-looking man stepped inside. An average nose came to an indefinite point above an average layer of lips that looked to have been painted the perfect hue of pink by an artist honing his craft. The fact that his face held no memorable feature was, in and of itself, almost memorable.
He wore a neat three-piece suit of a style that bordered on unfashionable. A gold chain dangled from the side pocket of a silky blue vest hidden beneath his outer coat.
"May I?" he asked, placing a file on the table and gesturing towards the open chair across from me.
"I'm saving it for someone else, but you're welcome to keep it warm for now."
"I'll do my best." He smiled, exposing an average row of off-white teeth. "Well, Mr. Tom Mandel, you've had quite the day."
"Just your typical Tuesday."
"It's Saturday."
"Is it? Damn. Okay, well...for a weekend, you're right. It's been a big day."
"We'll begin by you telling me everything you know about Malcolm Wolfe's escape."
"Sorry, Boss. Not feeling particularly chatty on that front."
Something about authority always brings out the best in me. Being back at the Precinct conjured memories of a different life. One where I had never been any good at playing the usual reindeer games of nose to ass.
Those memories turned to ash in my mouth, leaving me to swallow the bitter remains of that broken man.
"Let me cut through this tough-guy act. I'm here for one purpose. Assist me in achieving that purpose and I'll make accommodat
ions on your behalf to assure the final hours of your life pass as inconsequentially as all the hours that came before. However…" I think he paused for dramatic effect, but I was barely riding the current of his words. "If you prove unwilling, or simply unable, to help, then I shall see to it that these final hours are the longest any man has been made to endure. And I assure you, I have ways of making that seem a very long time."
The air conditioner hummed, an insect flying out of sight—never seen but always there. All the more annoying for that simple reason.
I wondered if that qualified as one of the unique methods of torture he had in mind.
"I'd love to help, but here we are on our first date and I don't even know your name."
"Daniel Brandt," he said, looking up from the desk, his eyes filled with the most chilling brand of indifference; the kind that will slit your throat for a paycheck.
"Oh?" I said, masking the surprise churning my insides at seeing Emilio Castille's specter in the flesh. "And what branch of Division are you with?"
"Security."
"Security? That's it?"
"That's it."
"Awfully broad."
"I have my specialties."
The Warden had given enough details to fill in the blanks of those specialties. That Brandt had come to the Time Vice Precinct suggested he didn't fear the Peacekeepers. A fact which made him a truly terrifying captor.
"So, what're you looking to hear, Dan?"
"Everything."
"Awfully broad."
"I'll leave you to fill in the details."
"You're not a very good interrogator, ya know that?"
"I don't need to be." He pulled a silver vial from the inside breast pocket of his jacket and placed it on the table. His stare was intense and unwavering. "As the cliché goes, there is an easy way to do this, and a hard way." At that he gestured to the tube full of nanites. "It's your choice."
"Nothing worth doing is easy, right?" I said, clenching my jaw so the combination of ice and dread creeping through me wouldn't show in my chattering teeth.
"They must train insolence into the officers at this Precinct," Brandt mumbled under his breath as he flipped the page on the file before him.
"Insolence 101," I said. "It's required learning."
"I would advise a change in strategy." Brandt looked up with a flat, unreadable expression. His fingers flitted across the file and the table's smart screen illuminated with a warm, wet light. Brandt tapped again, filling the screen with a picture of an old man lying in bed, eyes closed with the kind of relaxation reserved for the dead. "He died in his sleep, or so the story goes."
Recognition came in a slow drizzle. I knew the face, the sweep of his hair across a broad forehead. The deep ravines crisscrossing time-hardened cheeks. But the juxtaposition of a man I'd only ever known as living made him something alien. Death makes us unrecognizable.
Captain Michael Joseph Nash had put his trust in Raines and me. Believed in the intent, if not the recklessness, of our mission. He'd been rewarded for that trust with what I hoped had been a peaceful death.
My hands trembled against their restraints. Emotions boiled inside me, but were denied any sort of physical release. I could do nothing but breathe. I gathered what I could of my self-control and by force of will subdued those parts of my mind and body that Brandt could compromise. He'd done this to rattle me.
I wouldn't give him that pleasure.
Brandt gave the closest approximation of a smile I think he ever gave. "Before you make any decisions to be uncooperative, I want you to know what lies ahead for your friends foolish enough to have helped you. Answer my questions and I'll let your partner live."
Raines.
They'd killed the Captain of the largest Time Vice squad in the world. There would be no consequences, no punishment, for their actions. Nothing stopping Brandt from breaking his word. There could be no pact between monsters and men.
I summoned what confidence I could, but so little remained. Slumped in my chair, staring at Captain Nash's unmoving body, I said, "No."
Brandt reached for the nanotube and said, "I thought you might say that."
***
I sang like a canary, tweeting my little song until I was blue in the face. The nanites Brandt injected me with were sledgehammer blows against the dam of my internal filter, shattering the wall between thought and speech, spilling everything.
My mouth betrayed me, but I wasn't completely without my tricks. I managed to gloss over certain topics by giving painfully detailed accounts of others. It would be safe to assume Daniel Brandt now knew more about Quick fits and lying in puddles of drool than he'd ever wanted.
But I managed to conceal the parts that dealt with Castle, my wife and her involvement with the system Malcolm was using to murder the world, and how I'd been involved with said organization up to the point where Malcolm deleted chunks of my memory with a sniper-roofie.
Brandt managed to show a negative output of interest in everything I said.
Things truly got interesting in that refrigerator box of questions when Brandt pulled from his pocket the glass pyramid Felix Cross had given me.
The Hive Mind.
The truth-nanites Brandt had unceremoniously injected into my throat had the unforeseen consequence of unlocking a rogue squadron of nanites lurking in my frontal lobe.
Felix Cross hadn't gotten around to explaining what the Hive Mind did before Division soldiers busted down Lucky Lou's door, so I used a sophisticated experimental process called guess-and-check to probe the piece of technology. Following in the tradition of most great eureka moments throughout history, I did something completely by accident that changed everything.
I knew I'd discovered something important when a railroad spike of data was driven through my skull like an unseen force laying tracks for an eventual train to follow. Sure enough, that train lagged only a second behind. When it hit it turned my lungs to a gelatinous puddle incapable of taking another breath.
My neural implant squawked like a drunk crawling out of the gutter. Neurons, lying dormant since the day I was born, lit me up.
Blood rushed to my cheeks along with a sudden boost in processing power I'd never experienced before. Forgotten were the numb arms dangling limp on the table before me.
The increased computing capacity came from linking systems with the four individuals the Hive Mind nanites had infected. Like a technological poltergeist, the Hive Mind had infiltrated the bodies of those who'd touched the pyramid: an invisible cloud of nanites infesting their nanocomps, wrestling control away from the primary user, and delivering it to me.
The nanites attached at the base of their occipital lobes communicated with my nanocomp, allowing me a view of the world as seen through the eyes of my new drones. The simplicity of the process was astonishing. Similar to hacking and enslaving a computer network. The difference being that, in this case, the network was a human mind.
Using that technology put me in a class of criminal closer to Malcolm Wolfe, who'd discovered his own method of hacking the system remotely, but there wasn't time to question the ethical implications of this advancement—only time for action.
This was my chance to get back into the game.
My escape route.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We're All Of One Mind
Brandt patiently awaited an answer to a question I'd long since forgotten. Something having to do with the pyramid sitting between us. He'd be waiting a while for a response on that one; I had no intention of giving up my ace in the hole.
Of the four slave programs I had running, only two would be of any help. Two officers from the Apprehension Unit had touched the device, but only one was still in the Precinct. That man, a young officer named Kellogg, was currently chatting up the clerk working the drunk tank.
It took some fiddling, but eventually I grabbed control of Kellogg and redirected him to my holding cell, leaving the clerk in the middle of a sentence with an awkwa
rd amount of social indifference.
I sifted through the other two drones. One was a lab technician probably tasked with determining the pyramid's functionality. Apparently he'd failed on that account.
The fourth individual was Brandt.
A golden opportunity, if not for the massive interference radiating from his nanocomp's firewall. The next-generation nanobots guarding his mind effectively put him out of my reach.
By the time I'd maneuvered my drone, Officer Derek Kellogg, to the interrogation room, I'd become proficient enough at controlling him to imitate something approximating a normal walk.
At the door I raised his fist, and, afraid of knocking too softly, I overcompensated.
Brandt stood slowly. "If you're not goin—" His words were cut off by the pounding at the door.
Startled, Brandt spun towards the door faster than I'd seen anybody, save Ash, move.
The door crept open and Kellogg, the kid with a twitchy trigger finger from the Vault, stepped inside.
The officer stared at me. I stared back. Both perspectives played in my mind's eye. A weird infinite loop of looking into a mirror through a mirror.
I wanted to close out the officer's visual cue to terminate the cycle, but the system was clunky, and I was afraid I'd lose control if I got too fancy too soon.
"Yes?" Brandt asked, his voice professional but laced with a side of you better have a damn good reason for interrupting me.
An awkward amount of time passed as I fiddled with the officer’s vocal cords. Finally I made him say, "Sir, the lab has something for you."
Kellogg's voice, a butter-smooth tenor modulated by nanobots in his throat, resonated on the perfect frequency to promote feelings of calm and wellbeing. This was an immensely popular upgrade on the force, where sometimes your voice is the only weapon you have. Couldn't fault him for wanting every advantage he could muster, but honestly, I hate the audacity of it.
Alterations designed with the express purpose of manipulating other people's brainwaves felt wrong. My conscience pointed to the hypocrisy of that perspective in light of the brain-jacking I was currently conducting. Even in my own mind I couldn't take a turn riding the high horse.
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