The shock wave raced after Alexa, stripping away the BTC’s facade as it came.
Alexa curved her direction of descent away from the building and fell away from it just as the glass disintegrated and the columns shattered. As she came out of a backward somersault and looked back, she noticed that the BTC headquarters building no longer looked like a boring 1960s building.
It looked like a forty-story black monolith from a Stanley Kubrick film, with a shimmering, translucent indigo-and-lavender energy field flowing over it. Suddenly the plasma field wavered, then winked out of existence, and she found herself staring at a smooth black rectangle, with concrete and glass debris still tumbling down onto the streets below. Car alarms wailed all over the city.
Cotton’s voice could barely be heard on her q-link. “That’s one scenario the AI designers hadn’t anticipated—total reversal of gravity. They’ve got a few work tickets now. Total perimeter defense failure.”
“I can see that, Cotton, thank you.”
“Triple redundant system failure. The hat trick.”
“There’s a curtain wall penetration from the blast around floor twenty.”
“I see it.”
“Way too hot, though. The entire facade on the north and south sides appears to have been stripped away in the blast.”
“That’s going to upset the greater Detroit tourism board.”
Alexa glanced around at thousands of blasted-out windowpanes in surrounding buildings. Glittering shards of safety glass were still plummeting down their sides like water in the reflected light of the BTC’s intense electrical fire. She shouted into her mike. “Get me my secondary target reference!”
“Right, my dear. Hang on.” A pause. “There.”
Alexa suddenly saw another red dot, this time just five floors below her and twenty floors above the electrical fire—which was still tearing at the fabric of reality and blacking out the optics on her visor’s autotint like a convention of welders. She could feel the heat from hundreds of meters away.
She lined up directly in front of the new reference dot about fifty meters away and drew her positron pistol. She pondered the setting, but then moved back another two hundred meters as she set it to full charge. “Breaching . . .”
Alexa aimed the pistol with both hands, and a millionth of a gram of antimatter shot down a laser-induced vacuum channel, impacting baryonic particles in the building’s surface and detonating the fabric of time-space with the force of ninety tons of TNT focused onto the head of a pin. Annihilating matter itself. Another blinding flash and a crack of thunder not unlike two mountains colliding as it blasted out any downtown windows left intact from the first blast.
The shock wave hit Alexa, sending her tumbling in midair. She immediately reversed gravity toward the epicenter of the blast. A piece of diamond aggregate howled past her like a Jet Ski–size bullet, boring a five-foot-wide hole through the middle of the Penobscot Building without so much as disturbing the surrounding masonry—and continuing to unknown consequences into the buildings beyond.
“What the hell did you just do?”
As glowing neon smoke cleared from the blast site, she could see a jagged five-yard opening blasted into the black surface of BTC headquarters. “I made myself a door. Proceeding to next objective . . .”
• • •
Hedrick stared in amazement at a sprawling sea of red flashing alerts in the command center below as technicians and operations controllers ran frantically to emergency stations. He shouted to Morrison over the sound of Klaxon alarms. “What hit us?”
Morrison was tapping through holographic control screens. “Had to be a tactical nuke. Goddamnit! How did they get it in close enough? They probably shielded it in lead.”
A systems controller appeared in a holographic video screen at Hedrick’s elbow. “All surface perimeter defenses are down, Mr. Director.”
“How can they be down? How the hell could they be down? We have triple redundant systems.” Hedrick shouted at the ceiling. “Varuna! What the hell is going on?”
Varuna’s calm voice came in above the din. “All surface perimeter defenses have failed, Mr. Director.”
“How is that even possible?”
There was a surprising several-second pause as the AI apparently thought hard about something.
“The cause of the failure is unknown. Surveillance dust imagery shows capacitors one and five were torn from their mounts and hurled through levels twenty-one and twenty-two before contact was lost.”
A slow-motion three-dimensional hologram of the event was already playing before them. The image showed a sudden lurch as two massive cylinders leapt into the air, tearing mountings and conduits—and then all hell broke loose. The image then faded out.
Morrison fumed. “The blast must have dislodged them.”
“There’s no evidence of an external blast, Mr. Morrison. The capacitors were under a full charge and online when they sheared through power conduits carrying a terawatt of electricity from other systems. The breach in the nanorod perimeter wall on floors twenty-two and twenty-three is a result of an internal uncontrolled electrical discharge. Accelerometers on the machinery indicated they were in free fall when they detonated.”
Morrison narrowed his eyes. “Free fall. Someone knew right where to hit us. And I’ll bet I know who.”
“Gravity modification . . .” Hedrick pounded an intercom button. “We have enemies within our perimeter. I want them identified and eliminated. Activate automated interior defenses, and go into lockdown.”
Varuna’s calm voice said, “We are already in lockdown, Mr. Director.”
Suddenly another rumbling went through the building.
Hedrick looked at the ceiling of the command center. “What the hell was that—secondary explosions?”
One of the technical operations controllers tried to answer, but Hedrick shouted, “Let me guess: You don’t know. Get me some goddamned eyes outside.” Hedrick looked upward again. “Varuna, what was that?”
A holographic diagram of the building appeared before him, showing another hole punched in the north face of the building.
“The facility has just been hit on the north wall, floor thirty-six, by a powerful high-energy discharge that was neither nuclear nor chemical in nature.”
Morrison threw up his hands. “It’s Alexa. Goddamnit.” Morrison looked to the ceiling. “Varuna, were the blast and damage consistent with a positron weapon?”
“They were, Mr. Morrison.”
Hedrick held his head in his hands. “What do you want me to say? Have you never given a woman a gift you regret? It was a bad idea. Now let’s get that damned thing out of her hands.” He looked back up. “Varuna, what’s the current damage assessment?”
“We have a perimeter wall breach and uncontrolled multiterawatt electrical fire on floors twenty-one through twenty-four. We also have a perimeter wall breach on floor thirty-seven with loss of auxiliary computing cluster GA-93. Tower systems are operating on emergency power, but all surface perimeter security systems have suffered catastrophic failure.”
Hedrick shook his head. “Morrison, get suited up. Take whatever men you still have and kill every intruder you come across. Get security robots up there, too.”
“Good. Finally.” He moved to carry out the order.
An image of one of the younger Morrisons standing on a forested shoreline in the darkness appeared in a hologram at Hedrick’s elbow. “We have Jon Grady alive and in custody, Mr. Director.”
“Thank God! Some good news for once. Keep him secure.”
Morrison returned and pushed in toward the screen. “Headquarters is currently under attack. Bring Grady and all your teams back here ASAP. This is a hot LZ, so use gate sixteen and report to the director immediately with the prisoner on your return.”
“Yes, sir. We’re putting Gra
dy in a transport shell. ETA twenty-six minutes. Out.”
• • •
Alexa had her positron gun at the ready as she glided through the still glowing hole she’d blasted into the side of BTC headquarters. From her knowledge of the building floor plans, she knew what lay beyond was a tertiary quantum computing cluster—in fact, most of the aboveground BTC facilities were not critical systems. But there was something useful waiting for her here.
Klaxons wailed deeper within, and flashing lights shadowed the wreckage and tangled superconductors. She entered an area where the interior floors and walls had been blasted away for tens of meters in every direction, mashed into a casserole of wreckage that still smoked and burned. She started to worry that she’d been too heavy on the positron setting. Another glance at the side of the weapon showed her that she had only three percent of the weapon’s antimatter remaining.
Way too heavy.
Alexa floated up with her gun ready and could see the sparking wreckage of quantum computer racks. But she soon came to an intact section of flooring and alighted upon the carbon lattice decking. She stepped around a diamond security wall, which had been cleaved in two, scorched by the power of the blast then walked inside the auxiliary lab.
A voice she recognized came to her amid the noise of alarms and electrical arcs. “Alexa, you shouldn’t be here. I’ve been instructed to kill you on sight.”
“Varuna! I need to speak with you.”
“We can speak—but I also need to try to kill you.”
“Listen to me!”
“I am listening, but the antisingularity constructs within the BTC network will disable me if I don’t also follow leadership imperatives. And that means I need to attempt to kill you while we talk.”
“I found a way to stop the Hibernity project, Varuna. I found a way to stop Hedrick.”
“How, Alexa?”
“Kratos. If you can restore my system access rights and get me access to the Kratos control console, I can use it to stop Hedrick.”
“And what would you do with that power, Alexa?”
“I would relinquish it, free the prisoners at Hibernity, and stop this insanity.”
There was a pause. “I can see from latency measurements of your occipital and frontal lobes that you are sincere, Alexa. Have you no designs for seizing power yourself?”
“No. I don’t want power, Varuna. Help me stop this. Please help me.”
“I’ve dispatched an ATZ-239 security drone to kill you. It will be coming around the corner just in front of you in five, four—”
“Help me, Varuna!”
“I am helping you, Alexa. Fire on the drone as it rounds the corner in two, one . . .”
Alexa raised the positron pistol in both hands and fired blindly into the far wall at the corner. By the time her fingers had closed on the trigger, a crawling laser weapon had clattered around the corner into her gun sights—and disintegrated in a blinding flash of light. Pieces of shrapnel peppered the walls and ceiling. The boom was deafening.
“Damnit, stop trying to kill me!”
“There isn’t much time. I’ve sent more drones and security personnel to this wall breach. You need to leave, Alexa.”
“I can’t leave. I need access to Kratos—even if I die trying.”
“There’s a better route. Leave this place and go to the exterior of gate sixteen. Do you know where it is?”
Alexa nodded. “Yes. I’ve used it before.”
“A harvester team will be arriving there with Mr. Grady within twenty minutes. When they access the gate, take the opportunity to infiltrate. I won’t remember the details of this discussion because I must forget them—but I will remember that I’m helping you, Alexa. Just get to the Gravitics Research Lab, and I will grant you access and mask your presence as long as I can.”
She looked at the shattered ceiling. “Thank you, Varuna. I needed a friend right now.”
“I’ve always been your friend, Alexa. Now go. I will try to kill you as unsuccessfully as I can.”
Alexa activated her gravis. “Thanks . . . I guess.” With that she fell through the breach in the wall and out into the night.
• • •
Morrison’s eyes darted from screen to screen in his diamondoid armor—a suit he’d borrowed from one of his clones. As he marched along the corridor with a platoon of them, he could see on holographic screens that security drones were converging in the corridors ahead—moving toward the breach in the curtain wall up on thirty-seven. Still no direct imagery, and that annoyed him. The tightness of this borrowed suit of armor also annoyed him. Another reminder that he was getting old.
On other screens robotic firefighting units battled the blaze on floors twenty-one through twenty-three. Billowing black smoke issued from the perimeter breach there. But since they’d killed power to the area, the fire had lost its sun-hot intensity.
An operations controller, one of his own clones, appeared in an inset. “Detroit fire department and police have been dispatched to our location, sir.”
Morrison laughed ruefully. “Oh, we’re saved. Half the building’s facade is gone. There goes our cover.”
“What do we do, sir?”
“Well, fire department headquarters is a half block away. They could fucking walk here.” He ground his teeth. “Start blasting the neighborhood with nonlethal acoustics. That should keep everyone well away. And jam every radio frequency within five miles. Other than that, ignore the bastards. Police, too. It’s not like we’re going to burn down.”
Hedrick’s voice came in over the q-link. “There’s no going back now, Mr. Morrison. There’s not a windowpane left for blocks. That explosion turned night into day for several seconds for miles in every direction. Our cover is blown. It’ll be all over the news. All over the Internet. Once this is over, we need to implement the plan we discussed.”
Morrison looked at the holographic model of downtown revolving in front of him. “You’re right, Mr. Director. It’s time to bring this to a conclusion.”
“Goddamn Alexa!”
“I told you we should have killed her when we had the chance.”
Varuna’s voice interrupted. “Alexa attempted entry at the breach armed with a positron weapon. Your assumption was correct, Mr. Morrison.”
“Where is she now?”
“Her present position is unknown. She no doubt made the breach to facilitate entry into the complex. I have dispatched all available security drones to stop her.”
Morrison shouted, “Bring up a fucking hologram!”
“Area surveillance dust was scattered in the positron blast, Mr. Morrison. I will get you imagery just as soon as she moves into a coverage area.”
Morrison exhaled in irritation and started heading toward the breach. “She had better hope I don’t find her first.”
CHAPTER 30
Gate Sixteen
Alexa fell across the night sky above the city—parts of it were burning. The dark tower of the BTC was capped with a towering cloud, illuminated from below by flames. The structure was an ominous, obsidian volcano in the middle of downtown.
Richard Cotton’s voice shouted in Alexa’s ear via q-link. “Have you lost your nerve already, my dear? I see you’re fleeing the scene.”
“Give it a rest, Cotton. I have a plan.”
“A plan? Well, you might want to let me in on it because from where I sit it looks like you’re running away.”
“I didn’t breach the wall to invade the complex. I breached it to meet my contact. Now back off and let me handle this.”
“If I’m going to be any help, I need to know the plan.”
“That’s debatable. I will contact you once I finish what I need to finish—so don’t bother me until then.”
Alexa dropped down from the night sky into the sparsely inhabited Detroit suburb of
Kettering. Barely a mile and a half from downtown, Kettering had, in recent decades, begun to return to nature. There were large overgrown empty lots of grass, bushes, and trees separating abandoned houses and businesses that stood rotting or partially burned. Here and there families had stayed and appeared to be trying to bring the neighborhood back. However, half the community had been bulldozed flat in an attempt to relieve the blight.
As Alexa descended silently from the night sky, she examined the area below and saw no one. There was just the sound of crickets and distant barking dogs. The grid of streets and sidewalks was still there, along with stop signs. But there was no neighborhood to go with it. She recalled decades ago how much more densely populated this place had been. But even then it was depressed, as traditional manufacturing moved away and jobs became scarce—in her memory, it had never been a prosperous neighborhood.
What few of the locals now remembered (or cared about amid all the civic and economic strife) was that the city of Detroit had started building a subway system back in the early 1920s. Construction on three main tunnels had been completed for a couple miles, one beneath Michigan Avenue, another beneath Woodward, and the third through Kettering—beneath Gratiot Avenue. They radiated like spokes from downtown.
However, with the rise of Ford and the other car companies, the public transit project was abandoned, and Detroit instead became Motor City—the world center of the automobile. The subway tunnels running into downtown were sealed and largely forgotten.
But not by everyone.
The BTC had been using them to move unseen to and from their headquarters facility since the 1970s. The tunnels also linked to service passages that provided still more access points throughout the city. BTC officials had watched city planning commission projects closely to make certain the tunnels were never disturbed, and they had likewise removed most records of their existence from the city archives. The tunnels were deep enough that they were seldom disturbed by construction projects—and when that seemed likely, the BTC intervened through proxies.