“Sucker’s bet.”
We lay prone under cover of a gorse bush. Violin set down her scope and turned to rest on her elbow, looking at me. “If I was one of your team members, this is where I would ask about the rules of engagement.”
“We need to walk out of there with hard drives, research data, and any biological samples we can carry.”
“You’re only talking about physical assets. What about the staff?”
“This science is used in over ninety sweatshops and fifty brothels in Southeast Asia and the poorer parts of Africa. These pricks have girls as young as nine on their backs and on their knees twenty hours a day, servicing anywhere up to forty johns every day of the hell that is their life. The people—and I use that word loosely—who work in the lab make the stuff that keeps those girls going like sex robots. They make the stuff that keeps thousands of slaves on the job round the clock, day in and day out, making phones, sneakers, and high-end electronics. These people will keep working until they die. The rest of the family usually works in the same factories or whorehouses, Violin. You tell me how many prisoners we want to take? Personally, I’m feeling moderately Old Testament right about now.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek. “That’s the Joseph I remember.”
It was fully dark when we approached the west gate.
The two guards in the booth were big, and tough-looking. I didn’t know a thing about them, or why they were there. Or even how much they knew about the kind of horrors they were protecting. Maybe they were just hired muscle and had no clue about the atrocities their employers were inflicting on the world. Didn’t know, didn’t care. Violin and I circled the booth and then went through the door in a fast one-two. We gave the guards no chance at all. Violin rose up, as silent and unseen as a midnight wind, and cut one man’s throat. Before his blood could even splash the second man, I had a hand over his mouth and was using my rapid-release knife to screw a hole in his kidney.
They had key cards, so we took those and moved off, keeping out of sight of the rotating cameras, slipping in during split seconds of misaligned video sweeps. I removed a small device from my pocket and plugged it into the security-booth computer.
Violin nodded toward the device. “My mother says that MindReader is getting old. It’s been hacked too many times.”
“You have something better?” I countered. “Don’t forget, sweetie, but your Oracle system is based on MindReader.”
She shrugged. “Mother has played with it a bit since.”
Her mother was Lilith. No known last name, no known date of birth or place of origin. Not much in the way of human emotions, either. She was a survivor of a particularly brutal harem of sex slaves run by the Red Knights. Violin was born as part of a truly horrific breeding program. Lilith led a revolt that left the halls of that prison painted with the blood of her captors. I’ve heard some rumors of the things Lilith did to the ones she didn’t kill outright, and I’ve since seen evidence of her handiwork. She runs Arklight, the militant arm of the Mothers of the Fallen, the group of refugees who escaped with her. Arklight is on a par with the DMS when the DMS is at its very best. Its members are vicious, uncompromising, and unflinching in their war against men who do this kind of thing to women. Lilith has killed more ISIL and Boko Haram fighters than any single person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met all the top fighters. Do I agree with her methods? Tough question. Let’s just say that she makes a compelling argument, and I am neither fool enough, brave enough, nor chauvinistic enough to want to ever—ever—get in her way.
Oh, and she and Church apparently had a fling once upon a time. Not that this matters in relation to her combat work, but it somehow makes her even scarier.
“Since when is your mother a computer expert?” I asked.
“Since it became useful to be,” said Violin, and allowed me to interpret that however I chose.
I sniffed petulantly and pressed the button to activate the computer connection. The little green light flashed, then went dark. I tapped it, but it stayed dead.
“Not a word from you,” I warned Violin, and she held up both hands in a “no comment” gesture.
I removed the device, blew on the jack to make sure there was no pocket lint on it, and tried again. It flashed red, and then the light turned a steady green. MindReader walked in and owned their whole network. So there.
“Oh, bravo,” said Violin dryly. I scratched my nose with my forefinger.
We crouched in the booth until the security cameras had done a full cycle of back-and-forth sweeps, during which MindReader recorded a loop. Then it fed that loop back to the system so that anyone watching would see only the same darkened parking lot. I tapped Violin and we left the booth and drifted toward the wall, used the key card, and slipped inside. As we’d predicted, this entrance was dedicated to the target lab. These people probably thought this setup gave them increased protection. They were wrong.
Violin drew her two knives. Lately she’s been partial to a custom pair of curved kukri knives, the weapons favored by the fearsome Gurkhas. Her blades were blackened, and she held them with the loose circle grip of a serious professional. I’d seen those blades in action before, and it was a nightmare sight. I had my Wilson tactical combat knife. Short-bladed, light, but eloquent.
The foyer of the Podnik Ŕešení complex was simple, with pegs for coats, two administrative offices, and four labs on either side of a wide hallway. All the lights were on, but the switches were on a panel right inside the front door. Tsk-tsk. I swept my hand down and plunged the whole place into darkness. We put on our night-vision goggles and went hunting in the dark.
There were cries of alarm. Then there were screams of fear. Then shrieks of pain. One voice begged for mercy, but he was asking the wrong people. It was ugly. So were we. And it was all over very fast. Fighting takes time. Killing doesn’t. From the time we approached the guard booth to the time we fled into the night with backpacks filled with hard drives, our mission clocks hadn’t even ticked off seven minutes.
The fires didn’t start until we were halfway back to the car.
INTERLUDE ONE
STANFORD CANCER CENTER SOUTH BAY
2589 SAMARITAN DRIVE
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA
ELEVEN WEEKS AGO
Zephyr Bain sat on the edge of the examination table, slowly buttoning her blouse, staring at the wall, seeing nothing. The doctor was still talking, but Zephyr had long since tuned him out. She’d stopped listening when he reached a certain point, and a single word hung burning in the darkening sky over the landscape of her mind.
Metastasized.
As words go, it was a monster. It was a bully, a brute.
Tears burned themselves dry in her unblinking eyes.
She didn’t bother asking how long. She already knew the answer to that question. Not long enough. Never long enough. She was nearly as old as she would ever get. There would be no more birthdays, no more Christmases. No New Year midnight kiss. No winter snows. None of that. Not for her. Never again for her.
All that was left was the bad parts. The process of getting sicker, of learning how deep the well of pain could go. From here on she would lose herself in increments—first her energy, then her strength, then control over bodily functions, then her mind. Her beautiful mind. It would all go away, like mourners leaving a graveside, until only she remained, cold and gone.
It wasn’t fair, but then life was never fair.
It wasn’t right, but then life was seldom right.
And it was inevitable, because the important things are.
She thought about that night twenty-eight years ago when John the Revelator had first come to her when she thought all the time had leaked out of her life. He said he’d filled her back up, but he had never promised that she would live forever.
Twenty-eight years, though.
Fuck.
It was twenty-eight more than she should have had. Even at six Zephyr knew that she was dying, that she would soo
n be dead. John had given her time. All this time.
Not enough time.
“Goddammit, John,” she said quietly, spitting the words out in a fierce whisper. “God damn you for doing this to me.”
“I’m sorry.…” said the doctor, confused, but she waved it away. After a moment, the doctor waded back in. “Our focus now will be on pain management. We can keep you comfortable and—”
She tuned him out again. Pain wasn’t something she wanted to manage. Pain could be useful to her, and managing it meant drugs. That would shut her mind down even before the cancer took away her ability to think. No. There would be no management of the pain; there would be no willing participation in a conspiracy to numb her mind. No thanks.
Zephyr wished John were there with her right at that moment. She wanted to smash his head in with a chair. She also wanted him to hold her and say that everything was going to be all right, and tell her that he would fill her back up again. She wanted both things with equal fervor. She wasn’t grateful for the extra time. She felt cheated by it because it made her understand what she was losing, and it was a much sharper and clearer understanding than a child could ever have.
John, she thought, please do something.
But John wasn’t there, and even if he were she knew that he wouldn’t do what she wanted. Even if he could. That time had passed, and he’d given her those twenty-eight years.
Zephyr slid off the table and landed flat on her feet, swayed, darted out a hand to catch the edge of the bed, waved off the doctor as he reached to help. Without saying a word to him, she walked out of the examination room, into the hall, through the waiting room, down in the elevator, and out to the curb, where her driver waited. There was concern and inquiry on the big man’s hard face, and when he looked at her and saw the truth in the stiffness of her posture the driver’s eyes grew moist. She marveled at that. Campion was an employee, a worker bee who had talent with automobiles and could stand in as a bodyguard if necessary, but he wasn’t family and he wasn’t a friend. Why should he care? she wondered. Was he afraid for his job? It had to be that, Zephyr thought as she climbed into the back seat of the Lexus SUV. He couldn’t care for her any more than she cared for him. He was paid enough to be good at his job, but she didn’t pay him enough to actually care. It made her angry. Fuck him and his emotions. Fuck him for whatever he was feeling, whether it was self-interest or compassion. She didn’t need that from him or anyone.
Campion closed the door and hurried around to climb in beside the wheel. “Home, Miss Bain?”
“No,” she said. “The office.”
He frowned. “The office? Are you sure that’s best, considering—?”
“Considering what?” she snapped. “Take me to my damn office.”
He winced as if he’d been slapped, and nodded. As he turned away, though, Zephyr saw the complex flicker of emotions in his eyes. He was stung, sure, but there was also evident tolerance and more of the same wet-eyed compassion. Christ. The asshole thought that she was being snappish because she was in pain and afraid. Like most of them, he had no clue what went on in the minds of his betters. Zephyr wanted to stab him. No, she wanted to give him her cancer and take his vitality. It was so wasted on people like him. When the change happened, when everything John the Revelator predicted came true, this oaf wouldn’t be worth keeping around to grease the engines. Maybe—just a slim maybe—he might be useful in a factory during the transition to full self-driven automation. Maybe, but she doubted it.
Campion squared his shoulders, put the car in gear, and drove away without another word.
She settled back in the seat and pressed the button that closed and sealed the pane of soundproof security glass between her and the driver. Then she took her cell phone out of her purse and made a call to the man who had been both friend and occasional lover for years now. On the lecture circuit and on TV, he called himself John the Revelator. His real name was buried in the past, and the fake one on his impeccable set of official documents was John St. John. Only Zephyr and one other person knew who and what he really was.
John answered on the fifth ring. “How’d it go?” he asked.
“We’re moving the timetable up,” she said.
A pause. “That badly?”
“Fuck it, and fuck you.”
Another, longer pause. “I’m sorry, my love. You deserve better.”
“I deserve to live long enough to see it work, goddammit. But—” She paused. “Look, I at least want to see it start, okay? I want to watch it catch fire. Is that too much to ask? After everything I’ve done, is that too much?”
“No,” said John in a soft and gentle voice. “It’s not.”
The car drove two blocks before she spoke again. “There’s no more time, is there?”
“For you, my sweet? No. I gave you what I could.”
“How?” she begged. “How did you do it?”
“Does it really matter?”
“I need to know.”
“You don’t,” he said. “You were a candle in a strong breeze and your light was going out. I kindled a flame and you have burned so very brightly. You will flare like the sun when you go. Isn’t that enough?”
She said nothing. Tears burned like acid on her face.
“When you go there will be nothing—not one person, not one inch of ground on this earth—that won’t remember you, Zephyr. You are about to become the most famous person in history. No, let me say it with more precision and truth. You are about to become the most important person who has ever lived. You will do this world more genuine and lasting good than Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, or anyone else. None of those pretenders have ever had your courage; none of them have ever had your genius. They are failures, because they had the same vision. They knew what had to be done, but they were weak men and you are a strong woman, and it is you, Zephyr Bain, my own beloved, who will give birth to a new world. You. No one else. You alone. Magnificent, beautiful you.”
She caved forward for a long moment, her face buried in her palms, and shook with silent tears.
“I … I can’t do it alone, John,” she mumbled through her tears. Agony of heart and body painted her words with loss, with fear.
“You’re not alone. I will never leave you,” he promised. “I’ll be with you to the very end.”
“There’s not enough of me left. I’m so sick … God, I can barely walk.”
“You don’t need to walk. You don’t need strength of limb anymore. Your mind, your will, your certainty of what needs to be done is all that matters. Zephyr, believe me when I say that if I have to I’ll hold your hand while you strike the match.”
It was that, those words, that hit her, and a sob broke in her chest that hurt every bit as much as if someone had punched her. It made her heart hurt, too. But it also made her smile.
“Thank you,” she said, and realized that she meant it. Her face scrunched up as sobs sought to bully their way out of her, but Zephyr forced it all back, stuffed it inside. She took a long breath. “Thank you for everything.”
“Of course, my love,” he purred. “Anything for you. Everything for you.”
“Can we move up the timetable?”
“We can, but there will be risks. Several aspects of Havoc will have to be rolled out at the same time. That will be noticed. Our enemies look for patterns, my dear.”
“Because of MindReader?”
“Because of that, yes, and because they have become habituated to a certain kind of useful paranoia.”
“Useful?”
“To them,” said John. “The nature of our troubled world has trained them to jump, and to jump very quickly. And experience with some of our old friends has engendered within them a tendency toward focused aggression. Mr. Church loves a scorched-earth scenario. The tidiness of it suits his insect mind.”
Zephyr chewed on that for a moment. “What if we cut the whole process down and launch most of it at the same time in eleven or twelve weeks?”
&nb
sp; “The Deacon and his people would see it.”
“Would that matter by then?” she asked. “If it all happens at once, wouldn’t the DMS and all the other agencies be overwhelmed? Once Havoc starts moving—and I mean the whole thing—how would they be able to stop it?”
John made a soft humming sound as he thought it through. “Hmm … you may be right, but don’t underestimate the DMS. The Deacon is remarkably dangerous.”
“So you keep saying. God, John, you talk about him like he has superpowers or something. He’s just another government flunky. He’s a nothing, a piece of shit to avoid stepping in. We can—”
“No,” he said sharply, the reproof thick in his voice. “The Deacon is your enemy, but it is not for you to disparage him. Not ever, and certainly not to me.”
“Why not? I thought you hated him.”
“Hate him? No. I would gladly cut his heart out and offer it to the midnight stars, but hate him? How could I?”
Zephyr exhaled slowly. “You say things like that as if I’m supposed to understand what you mean.” When he made no comment, she said, “I want to move the timetable up. What is the absolute soonest we could launch Havoc with a high degree of probable success?”
“Eleven weeks,” he said at once.
“Then let’s do it. And if you’re afraid the Deacon and his goon squad will be a problem, then maybe we should ask the Concierge to see what he can do to spice things up. That little French psychopath always has some nasty ideas.”
“He is deliciously creative,” John agreed, “and he likes a challenge. Perhaps it would work best for us to get the DMS involved rather than try to do this completely off the radar.”
“How?”
“Oh … something will occur to us, and certainly to the Concierge.”
“Good. Give the Concierge the go-ahead. Let him deal the DMS in, if that will help. Make sure he understands that money is no object. Not anymore. Not for me. Tell him about what my doctor said.”
“I will,” he assured her. “But tell me, Zephyr my sweet, is this what you truly want? There is no coming back from this. If this fire is lit, it will rage out of control almost at once.”