Sneak Preview! (Rough Cut of Episode Six: Chapter One)
Maria flinched at the truck’s ear-piercing beeps but remained still, arms crossed, even as the wide vehicle backed toward her without slowing. Her controlled gaze matched both her neat hair and her Chanel suit, pure white with black trim, and nothing about her so much as wavered.
Twelve inches from her face, the truck stopped with a shudder and the rear door rolled back into the ceiling.
Maria scanned the occupants. “Where are Heinrich and Tobias?”
Psyphire cursed in surprise as she hopped down to the loading dock. “Gone. Heinrich is a vegetable. After the Tobias-construct reconnected to the hive, he took his brother’s body and left.”
Maria watched a small group of uniformed men climb into the back to unload the single cargo container inside. “Did it seem suspicious?”
Psyphire thought. “Maybe. A little. Why?”
“The network connection to MODUS was severed nine hours ago. From the other end. It seems the hive mind is no longer honoring our agreement. And now the Wisper is on the loose. Again. Thanks to you. You wanted to be in charge. And you got it. Your ambition, your sense of entitlement, has always surpassed your competence. Just out of curiosity, Veronika, is there any way you could have failed more completely?”
Psyphire pressed her lips together and indulged visions of setting her elder on fire. The woman looked so smug. In her $10,000 Chanel. “We captured one of them.” She motioned to the steel coffin the men were lowering from the back.
“Captured?” Maria let out a laugh. “Open it up,” she ordered. “I want to see him.”
“Here?” Psyphire looked around at the wide-open bay. There were workers everywhere.
Maria waited with arms crossed as the soldiers, mostly local Chinese, turned the heavy contraption with a powered lift and lowered it to the ground.
“You’re good at what you do, Veronika. But you think you’re the best. And you’re not.” But you could be.
“So you have explained, over and over, since I was a teen.”
Maria pointed to the coffin. “You found him idling on an overpass in the middle of rush hour where any of a hundred people in our network easily spotted him. You didn’t capture anyone. Zero. None. This man turned himself in.” Maria turned to the coffin as the last inch-thick screw was removed. “The question is why. I don’t suppose he’s said anything.”
Psyphire, scowling, shook her head.
The men lifted the lid of the coffin and set it aside. Maria looked at the prisoner. Half his body was burned. One arm and both legs were severely atrophied. They had found him in a wheelchair. Barricade had shot it out from under him so he would be trapped and unable to flee. Apparently he couldn’t even walk. Now he was held tight in form-fitting white foam, a new kind of plastic that turned rigid when heated even slightly above room temperature, such as from the warmth of a human body.
But his head was free and was covered in some kind of metal brace, like a helmet of crisscrossing bars. There were electrodes underneath and a clear plastic visor covering his face. He was awake. He looked at her.
He didn’t seem like much. But—amazingly—she recognized him. Maria’s lips pursed. “I know this man.” She scowled. Where was it?
Psyphire looked confused. “You’re joking.”
Maria touched the prisoner’s skin. Her powers had all but faded. She couldn’t sense people like she used to, but sometimes—
Malaysia. She nodded. The soldier from Malaysia. He had touched her. On a plane. When they brought Adevyi. “Once upon a time, this man brought us Deadbolt,” she explained matter-of-factly. “And just like God, what he giveth he also taketh away.”
The prisoner didn’t respond.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me why you turned yourself in?”
The man in the foam-lined coffin just looked at her.
“You should know, there’s a man downstairs. An Armenian, who’s family has been in a very particular business for several hundred years, at least back to Suleiman the Magnificent. Recently he was working for the Syrians. That’s where the CIA got him. He’s on loan to us. He’s supposedly a master with a dentist’s drill. Not someone you want asking you questions.”
Still nothing.
Maria scowled. She nodded to the waiting soldiers, who lifted the lid back onto the coffin and screwed it in place. She watched them haul it away, down to the detention level.
“What’s on his head?”
Psyphire stiffened again. It wasn’t a polite question. It sounded more like an accusation. “Something from Research. We found out the hard way that giving everyone around him a quantum scrambler creates too many points of failure.”
“Jesus, that should have been obvious from the beginning, Veronika. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You were overconfident. You got Megan killed, lost our most prized asset, and started a war with the Vorgýrim Supremacy, all at the same time.”
Psyphire swallowed hard.
Bitch.
Maria pictured the man’s helmet in her head. “It keeps him from traveling.”
The firestarter said nothing.
Maria turned. She ignored Psyphire’s red, fuming face. “Well?”
“Da. It monitors his brain waves. If they start to drift toward a meditative state, the device directly stimulates every pain-carrying nerve in his spinal cord. He experiences, literally, the maximum amount of pain possible. I wouldn’t have brought him here without securing him first.” Not five minutes and already she was a teenager again, getting defensive.
“You’re sure it works? Did you even bother to test it?”
“Why do you think he just lies there? Because he’s a nice man?”
Maria looked at the bruises on Psyphire’s face, the ones she was trying to cover with makeup. “Hit you hard, did he? Good. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
Psyphire walked toward the entrance to the dam complex at the back of the long hangar. Thick colored lines painted on the floor directed the workers: green for food and medicine, blue for arms and ammunition, yellow-lined thruways, and red zones to avoid at all costs.
“Where’s Artemis?”
Psyphire turned but didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
“And Scarab?”
Psyphire didn’t have to answer that either.
Maria pressed her lips together. Deadbolt. Brickbat. Malady. Now Barricade. Special Assets, everything she built, was falling apart. Almost as if someone had planned—
There was a ruckus across the open courtyard, at the front gate—some shouting and the growing rumble of a motorcade.
Maria looked at Psyphire. “Make sure the prisoner is secured in the holding facility.” Then she walked to a set of metal stairs in a high wall and ascended to the deck overlooking the courtyard from the upper level. As she emerged from the heavy door, painted yellow, she glanced at the guard tower overhead. The 70mm guns were silent, and that could mean only one thing. The Chairman had arrived for his inspection.
Maria knew it was coming, although it was officially unscheduled. It was supposed to be a surprise. And in a way it was. She thought he would travel with a small retinue, like a business man, to avoid suspicion. But as she watched the front gate slide open and a parade of military vehicles enter the courtyard, her stomach started to sink.
Fast.
Especially since Thierry, the facility’s chief technician, was already waiting on the upper deck. What did he know?
“What is this?” she asked. But she knew exactly what it was. It was an army. Chinese, judging by the uniforms. And not just men, but weapons and ammunition and provisions stacked in boxes in the back of trucks. And she knew exactly what it meant. She forced herself not to look at the man next to her.
She swallowed hard. So it had come to this. A fucking coup.
Maria looked at her watch. Unless she found a way out, she had maybe an hour to live.
Tops.
She was about to turn for the double doors at the back of the deck when a heavy truck pulled through the main gate hauling a flatbed trailer. On the back, a large, oblong machine strobed in irregular pulsing circles. A series of eight vertical rings—giant electromagnets, it seemed—were keeping something contained inside a heavy central chamber. The entire contraption had been spray-painted with a black fiberglass anti-corrosive, and it gave the appearance of a giant dragon, coiled and restrained against its will.
Maria’s mind immediately flashed back to her computer screen and a seemingly innocuous email she had received a couple weeks earlier—one of hundreds she had gotten that day and the fifth that week from a colleague in Research. It was a request. Not all that unusual for the scientists in the organization. They had wanted something. For testing.
As the truck rumbled across the tarmac below and pulled into the wide hangar to her left, Maria could just make out the warning painted in white on the side.
DANGER
300 MEGAVOLTS
They had requested a dead body. One of her team. Technically they didn’t need her permission, but given the subject, they did her the honor of asking. And she gave them Deadbolt’s body.
And now Anders was using it to make his big move. How had she missed it? Had her powers faded completely?
No time for that now. No time for anything but getting out alive.
Start with her advantages. What were they? She had hired most of the senior on-site staff. She knew who would lean when pushed. And who would jump ship.
She turned to Thierry. “See to it they get what they need. I’ll be in the control room preparing for the inspection.” She started walking.
“You’re leaving?”
Maria stopped and turned. “Are you saying you’re not competent to handle”—she waved to the chaos below as the private army settled into the courtyard—“all this?”
Thierry was French Algerian, under 30, a gifted network engineer, a competent manager, and a snake.
He didn’t answer. He just looked at her.
Maria kept walking. When she was through the doors and around the corner, she picked up the pace and pulled out her phone. She dialed the control room—one technician in particular.
A young Chinese woman with a round face filled the screen.
“Open a secure channel, please.”
There was a pause.
“Is that a problem?”
“No, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. I mean, we’ve just been ordered to go on security lock down.” The young woman pointed off screen.
Maria looked at the technician’s name tag and pretended like she didn’t know exactly who she was talking to. “Ming, is it?”
“Yes, ma’am. We met at—”
“Who is the director of this facility?”
“You are, ma’am.”
“Don’t you think I know we’re on secure lock down?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So if I’m asking for a secure channel, it must be important, mustn’t it?”
The technician didn’t know what to say.
Maria leaned closer to the screen. She whispered. “Open the fucking channel or I will personally feed you to the creature in Storage Bay 6.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Maria tapped her phone screen, disconnecting the intercom and connecting her phone to the secure port that appeared in her com settings. As she stepped into the central corridor, she routed the connection through her personal server, which would buy her a little more time. Even after her order to open the line was countermanded, they would have to do a little digging to find her. Then she hit the contact entry for
Martin, Justin
Asset Code: PREACHER
Maria looked at the clock on the wall as she flagged a four-wheeled electric people mover. The countdown—the final countdown—was clicking to its conclusion. What was Anders planning? It took all her control not to run.
She shooed the driver and sole passenger out of the mover with a scowl as the phone rang twice. Then she drove down the long, seemingly unending hall as fast as the vehicle would go.
A voice answered. “I thought you might call.”
Justin. Maria sighed. “What’s going on there? Are you okay?”
“My good friend Amir is here.” Justin was sarcastic. “In my office. It seems I’ve been locked out of the prison.”
Amir Rizage. Asset Code: KILOBITE. That was smart. Justin’s voice wouldn’t work on him. Maria could tell the young man was worried. He realized what was happening. “Can you get out of there?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know.”
He couldn’t say with Kilobite close by.
“All I know is, the good people of Mountain Hide have a lot of faith in God. Let’s hope it’s enough.”
He was counting on the townsfolk. He must have prepared a way out. At least he had an exit plan. She had taught him that much.
Maria looked at the clock on her phone and turned a corner as a pair of passing technicians whispered and looked at her. “Take care of yourself.” She crushed the thought that she might never see him again.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about me. I have a few friends left.”
“Come on now. You can’t fake that tone with me. I’m the master of voices, remember?”
When Justin spoke again, Maria’s heart fluttered.
“Mom.” He was calm. Plaintive. “Be careful.”
“I’ll see you soon.” Maria hung up.
She looked at the phone. The secure port was still open. Probably not for long.
“WAIT!” Maria brought the mover to a halt and ran for the closing elevator. One woman inside held the door open for her.
“Out.” Maria ordered.
The woman seemed hurt that her kindness had been repaid so, but she complied, and Maria hit the button for the Rec level. She brought up her contact list and tapped another entry.
MODUS
Encrypted Relay Node
A pull-down menu appeared and offered her a choice of 73 alphanumeric relays. Maria scrolled to the very end and picked ‘Other.’ A box expanded and filled her screen. There was a blinking cursor but no prompt. MODUS had several hidden nodes. To access them, you had first to know they existed, and second, to type the appropriate code. One mistake and your device would be locked out permanently.
Maria hoped Modus hadn’t closed the special port she’d requested when they made their arrangement. She typed the password and, after a brief pause, a second text prompt appeared on her screen—a blinking cursor in front of the greater than sign: a command line. She was in. If the port had been disabled, her phone would have given her an error message. The elevator opened and Maria did her best to type as she walked.
I KNOW YOU CAN SEE THIS
FUCKING ANSWER
A response appeared after a brief pause. That meant the hive mind had had a big discussion with itself whether or not she deserved to be acknowledged.
MARIA. MODUS IS PLEASED TO SEE YOU ARE
STILL ALIVE.
NO THANKS TO YOU. WE HAD AN
AGREEMENT.
THE FUGITIVE’S ESCAPE IN NEW YORK ALTERED
THE PROBABILITY FUNCTION IN UNEXPECTED
WAYS.
IS THAT YOUR WAY OF SAYING
YOU GOT CAUGHT WITH YOUR
PANTS DOWN LIKE THE REST OF
US?
There was another pause.
THE WISPER CONFOUNDED US ALL. WE CURRENTLY
ESTIMATE THERE IS LESS THAN A 12% PROBABILITY
THAT VERONIKA AND HER TEAM WILL SURVIVE.
AND YOU DIDN’T THINK TO WARN
ME??? WE HAD A DEAL. NOT WITH
THE ORGANIZATION. WITH ME.
AND WE HONORED IT.
YOU WILL RECALL OUR DEAL WAS CONTINGENT
ON 17 EXPLICIT EXCEPTIONS, SECOND OF WHICH
WAS THAT MODUS ITSELF WOULD NOT BE IN
MORTAL DANGER.
WHEN
THE PRISONERS ESCAPED, THE PROBABILITY
FUNCTION ALTERED AND IT BECAME LIKELY
THAT FACTIONS WITHIN YOUR ORGANIZATION
WOULD USE THE FAILURE AS A WEDGE TO
GAIN CONTROL. AS THEY HAD BEFORE.
FOR SUCH A COUP TO SUCCEED, OPPOSITION
MUST BE ELIMINATED. OUR ALLIANCE WITH
YOU THUS PUT MODUS IN DANGER AND THE
AGREEMENT WAS IMMEDIATELY ABROGATED.
ALL TIES TO YOUR ORGANIZATION HAVE BEEN
SEVERED.
THEN WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO
ME?
THIS LINE IS SECURE. AND
There was nothing.
AND????
SENTIMENT. PURE HUMAN SENTIMENT. MUCH
OF MODUS WAS UNEXPECTEDLY PLEASED TO
HEAR FROM YOU.
They thought she was already dead.
I NEED A WAY OUT OF HERE.
ALPHA SITE WAS BUILT TO BE IMPREGNABLE
TO ALL KNOWN FORMS OF INTRUSION AND
WARFARE, INCLUDING NUCLEAR ATTACK.
Maria had worked with the hive mind for many years, and although its personality had often shifted slightly, presumably as component-members died or new ones were brought on, one thing was always constant.
ARE YOU SAYING MODUS ISN’T CLEVER
ENOUGH TO DISCERN A DESIGN FLAW?
Another pause.
THERE ARE FOUR EXITS. THE FIRST IS
THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR.
ANDERS HAS AN ARMY OUT FRONT.
WE ARE AWARE. THE SECOND IS THROUGH THE
DAM SLUICEWAYS. THE PRESSURE WOULD CRUSH
YOUR BODY, AND EVEN IF YOU SURVIVED, YOU
WOULD HIT THE RIVER AT 16 m/sec AND DROWN
ON IMPACT.
FINE. SO NOT THAT.
ONE MOMENT
Maria stopped walking. MODUS might have discerned a threat. She stood behind a corner and fretted through four seconds of silence.
YOUR ORGANIZATION IS ATTEMPTING TO CLOSE
THIS LINE. MODUS IS KEEPING IT OPEN.
TO CONTINUE:
THERE IS A VERTICAL MAINTENANCE DUCT IN
THE ROOF OF THE PARTICLE GENERATOR,
BUT IT EXITS DIRECTLY ABOVE, ON THE
PLATFORM AT THE END OF THE CONCRETE
PIER. ABOVE THE PARTICLE GENERATOR.
IN THE LAKE.
I KNOW IT
THE ROOF OF THE DAM IS BARREN. THERE IS NO
COVER. YOU WOULD BE TRAPPED BETWEEN THE
LAKE AND THE SPILLWAY.
WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST GO RIGHT
TO THE FOURTH???
BECAUSE MODUS WILL LET YOU CHOOSE
YOUR OWN DESTINY. THE FINAL EXIT IS
FROM THE ARMORY.
Shit. Of course. The Armory was built to house all the strange and unusual weapons the organization manufactured or collected, many of which were unsafe or simply unstable. The whole room was a thick was a metal cube on gear-tracks. It could be ejected into the river and carried downstream with the push of a button.
But the Armory was back the other way.
CAN YOU SEVER THE CONNECTION TO
THE CONTROL ROOM? PUT IT ON
LOCAL CONTROL?
IT IS ALREADY DONE. MODUS CAN DO NO
MORE. YOU WILL NOT HEAR FROM US AGAIN.
The text box disappeared, along with the secure connection.
She was on her own.
“Nice talking to you, too.” Maria looked up to a squad of three guard approaching from the end of the hall. They pointed as she ducked into the stairwell. The last thing she saw before she scampered down the metal staircase was the men drawing their sidearms, which answered the biggest question on her mind: whether or not the kill order had already been given.
Except for a handful of people, Maria couldn’t be sure who would remain loyal to her. But then, neither could the other side. They would move as quickly as possible, but they would be cautious. And methodical. The lack of exist meant it was better for them to proceed slowly, room-by-room, lest she slip through their net. That gave her a little time. And Maria had the home field advantage. She had spent the last several years chairing the planning committee that oversaw the design and construction of Alpha Site. More than that, she had spent the last several months in a direct management role, gradually becoming familiar with every detail of the facility, every unexpected difficulty, every compromise solution. And a construction project of this scale had plenty of those.
She knew, for example, that there had been a minor explosion in the early stages of construction that damaged one of the interior retaining walls, and that in the interests of staying on schedule, since the damage was structurally negligible, one corner of it—that facing a men’s room on the Rec level—was covered by nothing but drywall.
Maria exited the stairwell and pulled the fire alarm. It wouldn’t be global. The entire compound had been built in sealable sections to prevent global catastrophe. It also wouldn’t last long since every system was connected to the control room, who could shut it down. And pulling it gave her exact location away.
But in the half-minute or so it was active, it did it’s job. Workers cleared the hall and headed for the exits, which would slow her pursuers down. Maria moved from a storage closet into the men’s room, now vacant. She entered the last stall, took off her heels, and used the point of her shoes to hack through the dry wall at the back. She was in the crawlspaces—largely void of cameras—before the guards could complete their room-by-room sweep of the gym, locker rooms, and spacious pool and court facilities.
Maria looked up at the narrow, dim space above her. Tubes and piping ran in every direction. And it was a loooong climb. The Armory was in Section Two, Level 12, roughly a third of the way back toward the front. There was a security camera at a T-junction several floors up, and Maria made sure she was seen ripping it from the wall. That, plus MODUS’s meddling with the Armory subsystems—assuming Thierry and his team were smart enough to check for intrusions once they realized she had opened the port—would establish that as her presumed exit point. With any luck, that would keep her adversaries focused on Section Two as she made the long trek along the particle array to the as-yet inoperable generator deep under the lake.
Somewhere, deep under all that water, was the quantum particle generator—the key to the Founders’ plan. In a matter of days, after numerous tests, the massive arms would finally begin spinning for good. But now they were silent as Maria worked her way between the spherical subterranean chamber and the facility’s heavy outer wall, built to withstand an attack from both above and below—even from everyone’s favorite tunneling bloodsuckers.
Maria opened the hatch and looked up the vertical shaft. It went on further than she could see, straight up through the lake to a platform at the surface.
She sighed.
She climbed in and sealed the hatch behind her, and as she ascended the ladder, hand over hand, she wondered again why this tube had even been built. It had been added late, ostensibly to stabilize the generator room—a shielded, vacuum-filled spherical chamber—in case of seismic activity. But the tube was hollow. And one of the junior architects had mentioned that in any earthquake large enough to shake the complex, such a hollow tube wouldn’t offer much additional stability.
She stopped to tear the skirt of her suit. After several tugs, it split along the black hem, making it easier for her to move her legs. Then she resumed the long climb. She chipped a nail, then two. Not that it mattered. It just highlighted for her how much easier everything would be if she weren’t burdened with such ridiculous, impractical clothing.
After a small eternity, a nearly-sprained back, and calloused hands that would soon sprout blisters, Maria opened the hatch at the top, barely an inch, and peered out. There was nothing—just the drab concrete “pier” a few feet above the water that connected the platform at the top of the tube with the wall of the dam ahead. She could hear the roar of the water in the distance.
Maria climbed out. The sun was shining. It was hot, but not oppressively so. All in all, a beautiful day.
It wasn’t until she turned and dropped the hatch that she saw Anders standing behind her.
She jumped and the hatch fell shut with a clang.
He was alone. But he was . . .
A monster. Scarred. Hairless. And wearing some kind of dark maroon bodysuit.
Maria’s head dropped. She put a hand to her face. Dammit.
“The Armory would have been a better choice,” he explained in a low voice. “But then, you always were very clever.”
Apparently not enough, she thought. “You look different.” The bodysuit left only his head exposed and was composed of multiple layers of interlocking hexagons. Bulletproof, she figured. And only God knew what else.
But the strangest part was his skin. It was red, mottled, and swollen with scar tissue, as if he’d recently taken a bath in acid.
Maybe he had.
“Thank you. I feel different.”
Whatever it was, it had changed his voice as well.
“I no longer have any hair. Or fingerprints. And I no longer feel any pain.”
“Anders—” she began.
“Anders Benet is dead. I killed him. Just as I have killed so many others.” He stepped forward. “You may call me The Red King.”
Maria scowled. The Red King? Had he gone insane? She almost couldn’t believe it. Asset codes and funny names were what they gave the foot soldiers to hide their identities and make them feel special. It was kindergarten stuff. Juvenile.
“Is that what you’ll ask the Founders to call you during their next wake cycle?”
“I have unplugged the Founders.”
Maria’s stumbled back again and fell to her ass. She lost breath. Her skin tingled. She tried to repeat the word “unplugged” but barely the first syllable made it from her lips.
A dozen thoughts raced through her mind.
The man once called Anders Benet simply waited for it to sink in.
Maria forced herself to breathe. She inhaled deeply and let it out slow. She made fists on the concrete. At once, everything she had believed about the world was a confusion, like turning your head to realize the person you thought was next to you the whole time, the one you’d been talking to for twenty minutes, wasn’t there. Like the instant of waking from a too-real dream.
Only it was her entire life.
The Founders had established their organization on a series of principles that dictated no one faction could gain the upper hand. It constrained all actors to work in concert toward a common goal. A brilliant organizational design, a masterpiece of human engineering.
When Anders absorbed Special Assets into Control, the other department heads should have objected. It was a violation of the charter and a single objection would have been sufficient. Any one of them could have stopped it. A secret ballot could have been called. Instead the fools stayed silent. Each of them. Not willing to risk anything to defend her. Waiting to make their own play for power. Worried that calling for a vote would summon a reprisal.
Worried more about themselves than the vision.
The central committee was supposed to be staffed with true believers. The Founders took rigorous steps to see that it was so. But in the end, she realized in a gasping epiphany, her organization was made of exactly the same thing as every other: humans. Those who rose through its ranks to fill the seats on the council were not necessarily those most competent, but those minimally competent who also could play the game. Be popular. Forge alliances. Speak in euphemisms. Swallow their pride. Hide their ambition. And in that way, the council was no different than any corporate board on the planet.
However effective it was in theory, in simulation after simulation, the Founders’ great formula—the plan to save mankind—turned out to be a fraud. And the reason was ridiculously simple. Almost obvious, in hindsight. It could never predict its own demise. Logically, it couldn’t speak to itself. Maybe in the hands of an alien race, it could yet implemented. But in the hands of the very hunter-gatherer species it was designed to supplant, it could never engineer a different future.
A social ape raises social climbers to the top and then watches from the shadows as they dance round the fire, leaving the rest of us cold.
Maybe we were beyond saving.
Or maybe we just weren’t clever enough yet to figure it out.
Maria gripped her fists in frustration. Everything. Everything she worked for her entire life, the sacrifices, the lies, the killing . . . It was all for nothing.
She couldn’t face him. She wouldn’t let him see her face. “You never believed in any of it, did you? The vision. The formula. The plan to save us. From ourselves. To save everything. The species. The planet.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Nothing has changed. It will happen. I will see to it. I will make sure everything we have dreamed will come to pass. Just as we planned. And you will be a hero, Maria. I will see to that as well. People need heroes. They need to know such things exist. For if there are heroes in the world, then there is hope. And it is only when all hope is gone that people will stand up for themselves. If there are heroes, then they’re yet free. They can go back to doing”—he shrugged—“whatever it is they waste their lives on. They don’t have to concern themselves with our messy, morally ambiguous world. They don’t have to worry about making things better. For themselves. For their children. Because there are heroes. Out there. Fighting the good fight for them.
“And that’s what I’ll make you. We’re going to build a statue garden. Just there.” He pointed to the distant shore, past an impossible run along the length of the massive dam. “You’ll live forever in eight meters of marble. People will come and wander around and see your face and read a little plaque that says you are the mother of this place. Because you are. More than anyone, you brought it to bear.
“Just as you did with Special Assets. Back when our organization had more dreams than promise. You showed us the way. Recruit extraordinary people, like yourself. Do more with less. Leave no trace.
“There were mistakes, to be sure. If not for Havek’s havok, there would have been no need for the Founders to bring me aboard, and it would be you standing here.” He pointed to his feet resting on the strange platform in the water. “But I recognize that progress doesn’t come without risks. And you were never afraid to take risks.”
“It sounds like you’re practicing my eulogy.” Maria wondered what he was waiting for. Why he was stalling? Why not just kill her and be done with it?
And then she saw.
A lone figure approached along the barren concrete of the dam, then turned to follow the pier, dressed in unmistakable blue.
Psyphire.
The women met each other’s gaze. Maria’s graying hair had come free in the climb, and the gentle breeze blew it in front of her face.
They both knew what was coming. Both flinched ever-so-slightly all the same. A tiny twitch behind the eyes.
The Red King, standing in his strange bodysuit, simply waited.
Maria knew Psyphire all too well. She looked down. “Jesus, Veronika, don’t let him win.”
The firestarter stiffened. Maria was always keeping her in check. Always the disappointed parent. “Who says he’ll win?”
Maria shook her head. Arrogant girl. “You have a choice. You always had a choice.”
“What choice?” Psyphire scoffed in her Russian accent. “His suit is impenetrable.” She turned her eyes to the scarred man in the dark red suit. “And it does something. If he touches you. I saw it. It sucks the life right out of people. The woman Ming just . . . disappeared.”
Maria turned to look at the suit. Then she turned to the concrete beneath her. If Psyphire didn’t kill her, Anders would kill them both.
She looked around. She had played right into his hands. And on such a beautiful day.
The Red King saw her gaze. “Nothing but concrete and water up here.” He raised open palms.
Maria wiped her hands together. Small pebbles and bits of dirt fell. Up there, on the top of the dam, Psyphire’s power was just about useless. In fact, the only thing flammable for a thousand yards in any direction . . . was Maria herself. Her Chanel suit. The product in her hair. Her makeup. Maria knew Psyphire could sense flammability the way a thirsty animal could sense distant water in the desert. It pulled at her.
Maria looked at the man once called Anders Benet. No emotion. She looked to Veronika. “I was wondering why we built this pier.” She stood. She felt the cool dam under her stocking-covered feet. “The designs suggested it was to stabilize the particle chamber in case of seismic activity. But the architects mentioned it would never do much. I knew there had to be a reason. But of all the things to worry about—the countdown, the schedule, labor shortages, your shenanigans on the council . . . I never gave it much thought. Not that it would have mattered if I did. I never would have guessed the truth.” She looked The Red King in the eye again. “This where the throne will go. Isn’t it?”
Psyphire turned to the man, who revealed nothing.
The high dam was vaguely hockey stick-shaped. The first section ran out from shore at a 30-degree angle with the river. Then it turned and cut perpendicular across the flow, creating the primary obstruction and so the lake. Sitting on the circular platform at the end of the pier, Anders would be visible to the crowd on three sides.
Both women knew it was no accident the platform sat directly above the particle chamber, the source of his power. From there—once the tube was converted to its true purpose, an elevator—the man could rise up through the water, like Moses parting the Red Sea, to greet the throngs gathered to worship at his feet, to beg for favors and trinkets.
The Red King raised his arms and turned. “Isn’t it beautiful? You did such a wonderful job. Larger than all the great pyramids combined. Such a wonder.”
Maria shook her head. He’d planned this. All along. His coup. And the evidence had been right under her nose the whole time. They never should have built it, this impregnable monster.
For now there was no one to stop him.
No one.
“They will come from all over. They will line up in great throngs. There will be banners.” He pointed. “All along causeway. And a red carpet. And they will line up for the chance to walk, timidly, across the pier and kneel. Before their king. Everyone. Everywhere.”
Maria looked at Psyphire.
Psyphire looked back.
Maria could see the struggle. And the faintest hint of shame.
So. She had fucked him. Jesus, Veronika, Maria cursed to herself. You think the honeypot routine works on a man like him? Reward him with sex and he’d fall at your feet? You were supposed to be better. My best student. It was supposed to be you and I.
It was no mistake, of course, that it was the two of them up there on the dam. Two women. Anders had to prove himself dominant. He had to be the alpha fucking male.
“Good luck, Veronika,” Maria said softly.
Psyphire’s eyes welled. There was no going back now.
Was there?
She shut her eyes.
And for the first time in her life, Veronika Molotov didn’t want to see the flame she started.
She covered her ears. She didn’t want to hear the screams. The screams of her little sister. Trapped in that burning bed. So long ago.
Moments passed.
The Red King walked over and nudged Maria’s still burning body with his dark boot. He inhaled deeply, drawing the scent of her charred flesh through his scarred nose, like a chemical burn. And when he was certain she was gone, he pushed her body over the side of the pier, and it sank into the lake.
Psyphire turned and walked to the dam. Such a splendid view of the river winding through the valley below. It was empty. Everything as far as she could see. Out of fear of a reactor meltdown that never happened.
The Red King walked up behind her. “Do you know why her powers failed her?”
Psyphire didn’t answer. Her hands were wrapped around her chest. Even from this height, she could feel the power of the water erupting from the dam far below. She could feel the mist.
The Red King stood next to her and stared over the edge. “She could sense so much. She found you. And your colleagues. She was like a mother to you, I know. So empathic. Sensing not only your abilities, but your anxieties and how to overcome them. Giving you strength.”
He turned to face the firestarter. Psyphire was grim. She wanted to kill him. She would kill him.
One day.
“I was poisoning her. Slowly. It was in her makeup, you see.”
Psyphire reached up and touched her own made-up face.
“Just a little bit. Every time. Absorbed through the skin. As she got older, she used more, and the effect quickened. As her powers faded, her anxieties grew. As her anxieties grew, she relied more on her appearance. And on and on. It happens to all women, I suppose.
“I couldn’t risk her sensing my true intentions. Every interaction with Maria pushed me to the limits of my restraint. She was twice the adversary you are.” He stepped closer to the woman in blue. “I wanted you to know,” he whispered, “because I want you to understand how completely she was beaten. How she never saw it coming. How very patient I am. And that it should be a comfort knowing that you didn’t have a choice.
“You’re a survivor, Veronika. And now you exist for one reason and one reason only: because you just murdered the closest thing to a mother you ever had. So I yet have hopes you can become something more than the failure you are.”
The Red King turned his eyes over the edge of the dam. Then he walked toward the front.
Psyphire kept her eyes on the white water. The din was louder there, standing just at the edge. “Someone should tell Justin,” she said.
The emperor of the world stopped. “Preacher died ten minutes ago.”
Psyphire didn’t look. “Who was it?”
“Amir.”
The firestarter nodded. That was smart. Preacher’s voice wouldn’t work on Kilobite.
“Scarab has Artemis. I’m giving him to the Vorgýrim. As a peace offering. To offset your failure and buy us some time until the machine goes live.”
Psyphire didn’t move. There was hardly anyone left. He’d given her enough rope to destroy her own team.
“I’m going to meet our esteemed prisoner. And let him know he has friends on the way. You will remain on the upper levels, far from me. See that our army is installed.”
But Psyphire didn’t acknowledge.
She simply stared at the churning river below.
top image: “Fortress Neo Tokyo V” by Markus Vogt
