Chapter 14
Xan had been out of cyberspace for three weeks. It took two weeks for him to come up to full consciousness. Even with the electrodes and passive treatments, he needed a week of physical therapy to regain his strength. His first shower had felt like a re-birth. He had sex with a real woman. He ate a bacon double cheeseburger. And he waited for the Western Curse to hijack O’Hare train station.
From his office (my real office, he thought) he watched the same IP footage as the other three billion voyeurs when the Western Curse took over O’Hare. He waited for the giant. He wanted to see it in action. He had partial schematics and fragments of design taken from his months of hacking and trolling in cyberspace. While it was enough to build a prototype, it was not enough to truly understand how the engineering worked. They knew the American version had drive chains around its waist, but why? They knew the human body was suspended to avoid abrupt G-forces, but how? Guesses had to be made. He didn’t have the technology to gather all he needed. He didn’t have the King Sleeper.
His mouth hung open when he finally saw it. He believed its size, he understood its proportions, but he was amazed at the way it moved. It moved like a man, no reason to over describe it. It moved with the fluidity of a giant man. A perfect engineering accomplishment.
The video was cut before he saw its rampage, but he had enough footage for his engineering team to dissect and reverse engineer their prototype to a point of divergent similarity.
The mission to plant the program in the Tank Major was a success. The Tank Major was on a train currently moving toward Virginia at two hundred and forty-eight miles per hour. It left O’Hare National three hours before. He knew this because the program that was uploaded into Tank Major Janis’s implant was pinging a GPS satellite high in the sky.
The program had many functions. The pinging was the simplest and least likely to be detected. For now, it was all he needed.
On a large monitor he watched a red dot from the GPS move across the U.S. map. Soon it would stop and twelve hours after that, he would initiate the next program. Hopefully within a week of that, then the final one.
A twelve soldier team was training for a very special mission, possibly the most important mission ever conceived. Xan would go, too. It was good to get back in the field. He wouldn’t lead the charge, he was too important, but he didn’t mind wet work. It kept his mind fresh and aware of the real consequences of war, something that men in situation rooms forget when abstract dots represented platoons.
= = =
When Antoine demanded a lawyer and they laughed, he knew he was in a world of shit. The interrogators had beaten him so badly he had pissed himself. Now he was in a jail cell with his back against the wall, whimpering. He understood what it felt like to be on death row. The only difference was that Antoine’s sentence could be short, it could be long, it could go on forever. No one knew where he was, no one was going to save him, and the men who had taken him were certain he had information they needed. A quick jolt of electricity would be welcome. A cocktail of poison in the vein, he would happily administer himself. No luck.
A boy stood outside his cell. Antoine hadn’t noticed him before. He was lanky with dark hair that bordered pale, freckled skin. He watched Antoine without blinking.
“Who let you down here, kid?” Antoine asked. He sat against the wall opposite the bars. He smelled the toilet a few feet away. Over the rim he saw splattered hiccups of dried shit. He felt his urine soaked bottom sticking to his skin.
The boy turned his head like someone was speaking into his ear. For a second, Antoine thought he heard a whisper like a gasp of wind through a tree. It gave him chills. No one else was in the room, but someone was in the room. He knew it.
“What’s going on?” Antoine stood up and walked to the bars. The boy did not move. He stood six inches away from Antoine, well within arms reach. Antoine looked up and down the hallway. There was no one else in the jail cells. He didn’t notice this before, but there were no doors or stairs leading out.
“Hello?” Antoine screamed. He looked at the boy. Once again the boy had his head cocked like someone was speaking to him.
“Who are you talking to? What’s going on?” Antoine said.
The boy’s eyes went dark. Not dilated. They turned completely black, deeper than black. Antoine searched the hallway frantically and then retreated away from the boy. The boy rose into the air and floated as if he had been crucified. And then the room snapped like rubber. Antoine fell to the ground and when he looked up, a purple and white pulsing snake was growing from the boy’s mouth. It slid between the bars toward Antoine. He ran to the back of the cell and scraped at the wall until his fingers bled. And when the amoeba snake attached to his head, he screamed in horror. But no one heard him, because he wasn’t there.
Antoine had been drugged unconscious two minutes after he was put on the train. He was now five miles underground in Virginia, two hundred feet away from the King Sleeper who was now rummaging through his mind, learning everything about him, from his first kiss, to his greatest disappointment, even how he used to kill frogs for fun. The King Sleeper hunted down information on the Western Curse, liquefying Antoine’s synapses as he went. No reason to be gentle, Justin’s father had told him. This man was going to die anyway.
= = =
“Mohammed Jawal,” Lindo said. He was in a virtual situation room with the President, General Boen, multiple military advisors, and an abnormally detached Cynthia Revo. He went through the material he had torn from Antoine, who was now a pile of ash that had been tossed into a field.
“I know him,” General Boen said. He had met Mohammed years ago at the White House.
“Yes, many of you have shaken his hand. My intel didn’t give me all of his motivations, but he is the head of the Western Curse.”
Evan quickly read Mohammed’s bio to the group and then he brought up a current photo on large screen. It was a jigsaw puzzle. His eyes were there, his mouth, his hair, but his forehead and the sides of his face were completely gone, just a low-resolution approximation of his skin tone.
“Why is the photo weird?” one of the advisors asked. Lindo ignored the question. It was “weird” because it had been pulled from Antoine’s mind and people focus on certain parts of another person’s face. Antoine hadn’t really noticed Mohammed’s forehead or cheeks. So it wasn’t there.
“This is as up to date as we have. If we cross reference it with a previous picture.” Lindo did so. It was a full body photo of Mohammed clean cut, standing next to a former President. “We have this.”
The photo was perfect.
“This is our enemy,” Lindo said.
“Where is he?” the President asked.
“Somewhere in New York. We’re searching.”
Online. That’s all the King Sleeper is doing; looking for this motherfucker.
But Lindo kept that to himself. He still had full charge of the King Sleeper. He looked around the room. All of them had the digital worm buried somewhere in their brain, dormant unless Evan wanted it to wake. The folks in this room were on a need-to-know basis and, well, they weren’t important enough.
= = =
Cynthia pulled the Mindlink off her head without saying goodbye. In the situation room, she just vanished. She curled up and sobbed. She couldn’t do it anymore. Sabot was right and her ego had kept her blind to his revelation. She had been on anti-anxiety pills since she had confronted Sabot at his mother’s home.
Afterwards she had searched her soul and instead of her conscience coming clean, it had morphed into a constant critic of her life.
“Loser,” it whispered in her head when she woke up.
“What makes you so special?” her mirrored reflection would suddenly say.
She was losing it and she knew it, but a shrink was out of the question. At her office, she pressed her forehead against the window and peered down. One hundred and fifty stories. Her eyes traced left to where the glass met the fra
me.
One inch glass.
She pictured herself falling, her short hair violently pushed back, her cheeks rippling from the air resistance, the pedestrian’s wide eyes as they scrambled out of the way as she shot toward them at one hundred and twenty-five miles per hour.
Too easy.
She shook her head and snapped back to reality. A depressed laugh escaped her.
“If there’s a heaven, that wouldn’t help me get in,” she said. She felt the empty room. It was too big now. She was imprisoned by her riches. She knew what she had to do to get out of her funk.
“When you’re depressed, clean out your closet,” her grandma once told her when she had been down about a boy.
Keep moving. Be productive. But move in the right direction.
She pushed the bottle of pills off her desk and into the trash.
She hadn’t walked alone in over a decade. It was night in a bitter January that greeted Chicago every New Year. It was ten below with wind chill, and she was wearing a sweater, pants, and light shoes. She didn’t mind. It felt earned, a self-flagellation to absolve her past misdeeds. The cold cut into her, causing her to shiver and her hands to ache. It sobered her from her month long drugging and she felt her mortality.
She walked briskly, her head tucked down, her arms across her chest. He lived four miles away. If she made it, she would plead for her life back. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have to.
Sabot woke to a knock on his door. He flailed until he got his bearings and then he hopped out of bed. He glanced at the clock: 3:43 a.m. He pulled a compact pistol from a nightstand and went to the door.
He didn’t look through the peephole. He knew from a grim memory that if a person wanted you dead, they didn’t need to get inside. Put the muzzle of the gun next to the peephole and wait for the light to go black. Boom.
He positioned himself to the side of the door and opened it quickly. Cynthia stood in front of him, shaking from the cold, the snow melting into her hair and rolling down her cheeks. He dropped the gun and pulled her inside.
“You’re freezing, what’s going on?” He pushed her toward the couch, grabbed a blanket and wrapped her in it. He quickly went to his bedroom and tore all the blankets off the bed. He came in and layered them on top.
“I,” she started to say.
“One second.” Sabot filled a kettle with water and put it on the electric range. He came back rubbing his hands together for warmth, she was that cold. She shivered violently. He sat next to her and warmed her with his body, running his arms up and down her back, trying to get the circulation going.
“I . . . m sor-ry. I sho—ldn’t have co-me,” she said.
“Shhh. It’s cool. Let’s get you warmed up and then I’ll yell at you,” Sabot said. She couldn’t help but smile.
The tea helped. She sipped at it, letting it burn her mouth and tongue. Sabot leaned against a wall across from her.
“I can’t do it anymore, Sabot,” she said. “The Tank Major killed more than thirty people, more that weren’t accounted for because they were collateral damage.”
“Hostages,” Sabot said. She nodded.
“Janis doesn’t even know. They did DNA testing afterwards.”
“The terrorists deserved it, Cynthia. They murdered innocent people,” Sabot said.
“I’m not saying they didn’t. They did. But saying it is different than seeing it.” She shook her head, remembering.
“We have cameras mounted on the Tank Major. They send video and audio wirelessly to Command. You’d see a man raise his hands to block the Tank Major’s punch. It’d be almost funny if I could get the look of those people out of my head as his fist came down.”
She took a sip of her tea.
“I’ll quit tomorrow, Sabot, if that will get you back. You’re right, I thought the Mindlink and all the good it’s done overshadowed this stuff. But I’m like a doctor that cured someone’s cancer only to give them AIDS,” Cynthia said. “I’ll be remembered, I know that, it’s inevitable, but I want to be remembered for good, for truly being good, not just brilliant.”
“You’re not going to like what I’m going to say,” Sabot said. Without the light in his eyes, she would have thought he was rejecting her again, forever. She waited with one eyebrow raised. “You can’t leave.”
She slapped her hand down on the couch. “Sabot! Quit being a moving target! What the hell do you want?” she said. But she felt good, she felt like they were back.
“Evan—” Sabot began.
“Is frightening,” she finished.
“No shit. I’m a great judge of character. Remember that,” he said. “He has your technology. He can build these things until he runs out of metal.”
“Yes.”
“At this point, it exists with or without you. That ship has sailed. If you hadn’t given it to him this would be a different conversation, but it’s done. But right now, MindCorp supplies the implants and the software.”
“Yes?” Cynthia said. Sabot was surprised she hadn’t gotten it yet. He didn’t know she had been stoned for a month.
“You can control it,” Sabot explained. “Not completely, not in the open, but if things go awry. I don’t trust Lindo, I haven’t trusted anyone less in my life. But we need to be around him.”
“We?” she said.
“Yes, we,” Sabot said.
“We’re the checks and balances,” Cynthia said slowly. The fog evaporated from her mind and she understood what Sabot had spoon fed her: no nation could oppose the U.S. while MindCorp was partnered with them. But MindCorp was more than an equal partner. And instead of being a sheep, it had to be a wolf.
“How long have you been thinking about this?” Cynthia asked. She was impressed with Sabot’s insight.
“When I opened the door and you were there,” he said. “I would love for us to sit on a beach for the rest of our lives, get too tan, too drunk and age poorly. But you’re going to be remembered until the end of civilization, Cynthia. The time is now. This is your legacy. It’s not about the invention or the power. It’s about vigilance.”
He let that settle in. “If I’m wrong about Evan, great. We won’t have to do a thing. But we need to plan for the worst and now, while he needs you, is the time.”
Sabot watched Cynthia as her amazing mind spun into high gear. She focused and the path of MindCorp, the U.S., and the world spun together in front of her like fabric from a loom. Each thread was a pathway and the consequence of each had to be known. There would be untold death if the U.S. went astray. She understood that. If she had to intervene, she would be committing treason and sentenced to death. She understood that too.
The debate could no longer be about nations and borders, it had to be about people and the greater good. Lindo couldn’t be allowed to win. His interests were not the world’s. It was as simple as that. Cynthia understood that all Lindo saw were flames and himself floating above them. She had to make sure that remained only in his dreams.
= = =
The next day, Evan got a call from Kove.
“Sabot’s back,” Kove said. “Cynthia says our services are no longer needed.”
“Hmm,” Evan said. “Okay. Report to the Derik Building.”
“Yes, sir.” Kove hung up.
Sabot and Cynthia had made amends. Evan thought about it for a moment and then pushed it aside. He was testing a new technique. Before, he would connect in as Justin’s father and guide him, but he wasn’t in control. He wanted to feel that power instead of just standing next to it. He wanted to ride the lightning. But Justin was too aware.
Evan acquired ten death row inmates who were now unconscious, shaved bald and strapped to Sleeper chairs around him. His hands were tacky from their blood. He had worked on them all night, installing contact patches into their skulls. The next step was to perform Forced Autism on them. And then he could test his hypothesis.
He looked up from the last inmate and caught his reflection in the shine of his surgic
al tools. His face fragmented across them like a horror filled kaleidoscope. His smile bent around the tray, leaping from blade to blade and he thought what he was seeing was prophetic: it would work.
The big idea was close. Unnecessary, premature right now, but this was the first step. Why be one when you could be ten? Or a hundred? Or a billion?
Why just be one?
He forgot about Sabot and Cynthia and what that could mean, and got lost in his own mind. It was the only place he cared for now.