Catch and Kill

by J D Lasica

  He raised his left hand high above his head and hoped the AI would understand it was a signal to move to the next part of the simulation. Out of the shadows just ten feet behind them, a small glassed-off booth in a recessed wall began to reveal itself. The modern modular design was wholly out of place in this re-creation of his boyhood haunts, but that did not matter. What mattered was who was inside it.

  As the lights illuminated the interior of the enclosed booth, the figure looked out at Volkov and this young woman with her back turned. The figure yelled and beat his fists against the plexiglass partition. But no sound penetrated the silence.

  Bo Finnerty could not do a thing. He was powerless.

  As the light grew, Bailey drew a frightened breath and turned with a start. She ran to the window and pressed her palms against the glass. “Dad! Dad! Are you okay?”

  “He can’t hear you,” Volkov said. “It’s fitting that your father should see this. You made a grave mistake, and you must pay the consequences.”

  Bailey began to sob. “Don’t hurt my father.”

  “Tonight it’s about you.” Volkov lowered himself into the large antique lounger. “Come, let’s begin your punishment.”

  Bo Finnerty banged his fist against the pane. Volkov couldn’t hear his shouts but the prisoner’s message was clear enough.

  “Now,” Volkov said, “pull down your pants and bend over on my lap.”

  He felt something stir inside. Not sexual arousal. Something else buzzed through him. A feeling of power filled his senses. Control. Domination. It was intoxicating.

  “No!” Bailey pleaded.

  “I promise you’ll remember this birthday for the rest of your life.”

  He looked away toward the exit for just a second. As he did, she grabbed the iron candelabra stand, aflame with candles, and slammed it against the side of his head. “This is for my dad and mom!”

  Volkov blacked out with Bailey’s words still ringing in his ears.

  48

  Samana Cay

  Nico was getting worried. He spent hours last night milling outside the cafe in Samana Village where Kaden told him they’d rendezvous. He sprung for a new phone in a nearby shop, waited until almost midnight, then crashed overnight in one of the town’s handful of Airbnb apartments to avoid being picked up for vagrancy.

  It wasn’t like Kaden not to get in contact or send a distress signal if she was in trouble. But she could have been out of comms range if she was taken into custody in War Games Valley.

  He used his hosts’ Wi-Fi for a smartphone video call with the only Red Team Zero members not on the island, Annika and Sayeed.

  “Nico! Are you and Kaden all right?” Annika looked like she’d just woken up. “We were getting worried after you guys didn’t check in.”

  “I’m okay. Following protocol. Paid the hosts here in cash. Blended in with tourists from the cruise ships in port to minimize suspicions. But Kaden didn’t come back from War Games Valley last night. I’m worried.”

  Sayeed, the head of their B Collective co-working space, popped up on screen and joined the video chat.

  “Sayeed, Nico says Kaden’s missing.” Annika’s voice brimmed with worry.

  “And no sign of Bo and the others?” Sayeed asked.

  “Nothing so far,” Nico reported.

  Annika leaned forward, looking intense. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a lot of weirdness happening back home. Hospitals in major urban centers reporting patients showing up to emergency rooms with similar symptoms. Spikes in blood pressure. Memory loss. Hallucinations. Signs of paranoia. They say it could be an outbreak. A new strain.”

  “And you think it’s related to Project Ezekiel?” Nico had a bad feeling about this, especially after watching the surveillance video from Zug.

  “It tracks with that file Kaden sent us. The outbreak is bad and getting worse.” Annika looked grim. “There’s a big uptick in major traffic accidents in New York, D.C., L.A. Almost overnight, taxi and Uber drivers have gone colorblind. Driving through red lights. It’s a mess. People are getting scared to go outside.”

  “We need to move fast,” Nico said. “Sayeed, you turn up anything about jails on Samana Cay?”

  “You are visiting one weird-ass little island.” Sayeed furrowed his bushy brows. “Officially, there are no jails on the entire island. They use a points system for all their commerce. Most of the residents are on work visas, so if anyone gets out of line, they’re just sent back to their home country. And members of the National Guard are mostly foreign mercenaries.”

  “So you came up empty?” Nico thought of Kaden and all the times she’d come to his rescue, on missions and in his personal life. He’d turn over every rock on this island to find her if he had to.

  “Who said we came up empty?” Sayeed smiled and put a photo up on screen. “We’ve been in close contact with the Axom team in Miami. They sent us a selfie Alex took at Fantasy Live. Him with two other people.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “It’s better than that,” Annika broke in. “You know the facial recognition program I turn to in emergencies?”

  “The one created by your ex-boyfriend?” Nico had heard the story of Annika’s ill-fated courtship many times.

  “Don’t go there.” Annika shot him her squinty I’ll-strangle-you look. “Here’s the deal. Facebook was in negotiations to buy my ex’s Israeli startup until they got public blowback about invasion of privacy. They bailed on the deal. But Amit still has access to a backdoor for the entire Facebook photo library. You know it’s in the trillions of photos now?”

  “So anyway.” Nico tried to hurry this along.

  “I ran the two faces and finally got hits at twelve-thirty and two a.m. last night. Sending their IDs to you now.”

  He checked the message and saw the names. Maurice Beauchamp and Evelyn Gladstone. “On it.”

  “Send me the video of the drone footage in Zug, too. Might need that.”

  “Roger that. Sent. Before you head out, what are you packing?” Annika asked.

  Nico held up his handgun. “P226 Scorpion. It’ll have to do for now.”

  “You’re gonna need more than that before this is all over,” Sayeed said, as if Nico needed the reminder.

  “See what you can do on your end.”

  “We’re already probing the enemy’s vulnerabilities,” Sayeed said.

  “And I have an idea,” Annika said. “I need all the team members’ fingerprints.”

  “For what?” Nico asked.

  “Trust me.”

  “One last thing,” Sayeed said. “This guy Viper? The husband of Judy Matthews, father of Piper. He’s flying out to Samana Cay this afternoon.”

  Nico winced. “One more wanna-be rescue team member?”

  “You forget. His skills might come in handy,” Annika said. “Former Special Forces.”

  Nico smiled. “Now that’s something.”

  Kaden lost track of how many hours had passed. Savić had checked in on her a dozen times. Did that make six hours? She couldn’t be sure.

  Each drop felt like a small explosion. One relentless, unsparing boom after another. Each one slammed into her very being.

  The meditation exercises had gotten her through the first five hours or so without her losing her mind. But now, in the sixth hour, she was starting to lose control. Her shoulder spasms knifed through her back like a serrated dagger. An icy sweat drenched her body. Breathing came in shorter spurts. She felt her heart thrumming faster in her chest. The room seemed colder, smaller, suffocating.

  Was it because of the waterdrops? Or did she catch a fatal virus at Camp Defiance? Either way, does it matter? This could be the end.

  She found herself immersed in a dark and visceral place. She had never before come to this point, the life-flashing-before-your-eyes moment. Here it was not so much a blinding flash as a clarifying highlight reel in slow motion. Her fake parents forcing her to undergo hormone therapy to make her mor
e “girly.” Her ten months of pure hell at a special ops boot camp. Her ray of light, Gabriel, gone.

  Drip. Drip.

  Some people on their deathbeds report feelings of clarity. Inner peace. Slates wiped clean. Forgiveness of enemies.

  No. Not today. I still have scores to settle.

  She heard the door click open. Out of the corner of her eye she could see them moving into view.

  Savić. And someone I don’t recognize.

  Nico left the tour group milling around Samana Village and hiked down to Fantasy Live Resort on the island’s southwest shore. Annika had located phone numbers for Maurice Beauchamp and Evelyn Gladstone, and Nico left messages for them both. Only one of them answered.

  Evelyn Gladstone emerged from the stylish restaurant, trimmed with silver and black, and approached. She positioned herself just inside the metal gate that barred entrance to the private community. “You said you had something urgent to discuss?”

  Nico was making a leap of faith he could appeal to this millionaire stranger and her sense of decency. If he failed, she could report him and the Guardians would be on top of him in minutes.

  “Not something. Someone.” Nico drew out his phone and showed her the photo of Alex Wyatt with her and Maurice.

  “That’s Andrew. Are you saying he’s in trouble?”

  “He’s gone missing. And the rescue party sent to bring him back has gone missing.”

  Evelyn considered this. Nico figured she’s probably thinking, How is this my problem?

  “There’s more.” Nico found the drone surveillance video and played the part where Incognito boasted about infiltrating the water supplies of major cities and planning a biological attack on the United States and western Europe. ”This is the head of Samana Cay. Chairman Incognito.”

  Evelyn remained silent, but her mouth tugged up, showing she knew the guy. She gripped the metal gate with both hands. Her eyes moved from the video to find his name. “What’s your name?”

  “Nico. Nico Johnson.”

  “Nico, tell me what’s happening here.” She pushed open the gate and emerged onto the street. “Let’s walk.”

  49

  Samana Cay

  Volkov was in a murderous frame of mind after Bailey Finnerty’s rash assault last night. Security tracked her down, running along the beachfront in her ghostlike nightgown under a waxing moon, tugging at the safety necklace that revealed her exact location. She was escorted to a solitary holding facility at Immersion Bay. During his fitful sleep, he weighed the appropriate penalty for her crime.

  Today I will dispense justice for all the prisoners, he thought as he swung his Harley-Davidson FXDR 114 onto Columbus Highway and led a caravan of SUVs carrying Kasparian and his guards to Immersion Bay.

  He needed to put the girl out of his mind and focus on his special guest. Kasparian was flying back this morning. Before leaving, he wanted a tour of Immersion Bay to hear more about Volkov’s plans for the Reset.

  “Kasparian, are you there?” Volkov tested the comm system his people had rigged up.

  On the screen built into his motorcycle helmet, he saw the video feed of the Armenian in the third SUV behind him. “Incognito, that was glorious last night! My desires were more than satiated. I’m sure those girls will long remember it, too.”

  As usual with his video chats, Volkov selected an avatar as his stand-in. Today he chose a burning bush. It seemed fitting for the epic subject matter at hand and for his white-hot mood. There’s a purity in fire. Elemental, cleansing.

  “Lust is an uncomplicated thing,” Volkov said as he sank lower onto the powerful engine beneath him and opened up the throttle. “We forget. Every cell in your body has been trained by millions of years of evolution. Fantasy Live and the Reset are based on the idea that modern cultures have lost touch with our primal needs. Passion, desire, lust—they all spring from the life force. ”

  Kasparian lowered his window and let his eyes run over the early morning mist drifting over the tropical hillside. “Man, woman. Desire, purpose. It doesn’t get more basic. Tell me more about what comes next.”

  Volkov sketched out his vision in broad strokes. “Project Ezekiel outlines our plan to take down the great Western powers. But it’s not just about vanquishing the West. What comes next? I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the new era.”

  “The era after the Transition. The Reset, you call it.”

  “Yes, the Reset. Civilization 2.0.”

  Volkov had altered his thinking over the past year. Lucid and his transhumanism were one approach, the idea of merging man and machine in something called the Singularity. But there was a certain soullessness to the whole notion.

  What if he took the opposite route? What if society were stripped down its essence—to humanity’s most primal needs and base instincts? What would that look like? Is there not something purer in the idea of embracing our true nature and building on that? A second chance, a clean slate.

  He tried to articulate this for Kasparian. “Here’s how I see the new world of the Seven Spheres. Everything from religion to moral codes to politics, civic life, technology—all of it will need a rethinking. We have a historic chance to wipe the slate clean and begin anew. To create a better version of humanity. A version that embraces basic human nature.”

  “And how do you propose we do that? Summon Zeus from on high?”

  Volkov swerved right to avoid a dead dog on the road. “We experiment. We create new cultural norms. We question. What is actually hard-wired in our genome? And what is the product of hundreds of years of cultural poisoning? Things had gotten wildly out of hand over the past century. Society is coming apart. Women no longer know their place.”

  Weren’t Bailey’s actions last night more proof of this? He saw it more clearly now. A new order. One in which women respected men. One in which women embraced their historic, traditional roles before modern culture upended things.

  “It’s true,” Kasparian agreed. “And not just in the West.”

  “Ah, here we are.”

  After eight miles of driving, they reached the turnoff for Immersion Bay. Volkov led them a hundred yards down the unmarked road to a military checkpoint that blocked passage with a formidable metal boom gate. A uniformed member of the National Guard emerged from the guardhouse with a semi-automatic weapon across his chest.

  “This area is off-limits to visitors—oh, sorry, Chairman! We received word you might be coming. Haven’t seen you here before.”

  “Now you have.” Volkov peered behind him. “And these are my guests.”

  “Right away, sir.” The guard circled his finger high in the air and the boom gate rose.

  Volkov led the caravan to the visitors parking lot. He slid up his visor partway and walked over to escort Kasparian on a quick tour of the grounds. Volkov had never been to Immersion Bay, but he’d seen the construction diagrams—and he’d paid for all this. I built this.

  The Armenian emerged from the SUV and craned his neck upward at the translucent covering high above. “Sky dome?”

  “Made of lightweight metals and natural materials to blend in with the landscaping.”

  “Impressive. I can see the need.”

  Volkov gave a walking tour of the grounds, modulating his voice so only Kasparian could hear him. He showed off the sports fields, the large vegetable gardens, the main multimedia stage, the food commons, and the housing units, some with guards posted at the doors. More than 600 girls milled around, playing soccer or broken into acting workshops. They paid the visitors no heed, as they’d been instructed to do. Few would guess the man in their midst was responsible for their stay.

  “These girls are lovely,” Kasparian said. “I may extend my stay.”

  “No need for that. They’ll be here when you return.” Volkov had no immediate further need of the Armenian now that he’d committed his men to executing parts of Phase Two for Project Ezekiel.

  Finally Kasparian turned to the question Volkov had been da
ncing around. “This camp. You say it’s a prototype for the Reset? How so?”

  Volkov led the men to a cluster of picnic tables in the Commons below a leafy elephant-ear tree. “I think of it less of a camp and more of a construct.”

  “A construct?” Kasparian looked puzzled as they settled into their seats.

  “Look around.” Volkov swept his hand across the plaza with its simple benches, fountains, gym weights, and amphitheater stage. “We’ve created a new reality, one that aligns with the coming age of disruption. Here, it’s grow your own food. Hand wash your own clothes. Low energy use. Travel by foot. Get plenty of exercise. We emphasize experiences instead of things.”

  The Armenian smiled wryly. “Except the experience of freedom.”

  “True enough. But you can say the same thing about half the population of Earth. More than half, in a few weeks. We provide food, shelter, safety, free health care. Life here is simple but sustainable.”

  “I don’t see the girls carrying any digital devices. Are you saying there would be no technology in this new agrarian utopia?”

  “The girls are wearing the technology. Which we control.”

  Kasparian nodded. “I still don’t get ‘construct.’ Dumb it down for me.”

  “A great many people believe the world around us is a simulation, that we’re simply bit players in a reality created by superior beings. Elon Musk said he believed it. Two tech billionaires have gone so far as to employ scientists to work out how to break us out of the simulation.”

  “Do you believe it?” Kasparian closed one eye and scowled.

  “No, I think it’s science fiction. But we’re experimenting with the idea of creating a permanent artificial reality for all Opt-Ins. A place of beauty and harmony. A literal nirvana on earth, designed by man, powered by artificial intelligence. A construct.”

  A staff person, no doubt made aware of the Chairman’s presence, came by their table to offer refreshments to the group and pour glasses of water for Volkov and his guests.