Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (14 page)

T
uesday 2040.11.06

Pryce smiled and mingled backstage at John Stockton’s re-election party.

She wanted to be anywhere but here.

She was part of the administration, not part of the campaign. But the President had insisted that she travel with him on this trip, as on so many others.

She’d hoped perhaps Miles Jameson would be here, that she could have a word with the ex-President. But the man who’d chosen John Stockton as his VP and effectively handed Stockton his first term as President wasn’t in attendance. And his people weren’t responding to any of her messages.

At least the election was going well. Texas put them over the top. Really, it could have been any of the dozen states whose polls closed at 9pm eastern, but the President chose to call it Texas.

They were here, after all. John Stockton had told his campaign to rejigger everything, to move his election night party to Houston, to be here in solidarity with the city. Pryce imagined the expense was ruinous, that Miami felt snubbed by the abrupt move. But then again, Stockton had steamrolled to victory, and he wasn’t ever planning to run for office again.

“That’s it!” his campaign manager Larry Cline said. “Three hundred and fifty-eight electoral votes! And the whole West Coast isn’t even in yet. It’s a landslide!”

There were cheers among the select staff and family in the private room backstage.

Pryce watched from across the room as the President hugged and kissed his wife; his daughter; his son-in-law, Steve, an Air Force Captain whose career she’d been quietly watching. Even his grandson, Liam, was still awake, and to the small crowd’s apparent approval, the President lifted the one year-old into the sky, and both grandparent and grandchild seemed to take great delight in the many airplane-like flights the President gave the boy through the room.

Pryce asked the waiter for another glass of Perrier.

P
rotocol dictated
that the loser call to concede. Yet pride and the need to make one’s supporters feel that it had been a close race – even if it hadn’t been – meant that the call would usually come well after the outcome was clear.

So they waited. Pryce watched, studied the President as the hours wore on. The west coast results came in. California went for Stockton. Washington went for Stockton. It was officially a landslide. Every network, every blog, every analyst, every expert system, every machine learning system, and every idiot who could count agreed.

And Stan Kim didn’t call.

Stockton’s grandson fell asleep. The President himself mixed with his staff, thanking them, making jokes, smiling, giving hugs and high fives, ticking through his mental list of people who deserved special thanks once the dust settled.

Finally Pryce noticed Larry Cline working his way towards the President, a grin on the Campaign Manager’s face, but that unmistakable look of
you have work to do
buried beneath it.

He said something to the President, and Stockton nodded. She knew what that meant. If Kim wouldn’t call to concede, eventually the President would have to call him.

The two men walked off. And Pryce slipped in behind them.

S
tockton made
the call from an adjoining room of the suite. His campaign manager Cline, his VP Ben Fuhrman, his Press Secretary Greg Chase, and half a dozen others were watching from an adjoining room. He imagined it was the same on the other side.

Stan Kim’s people kept him waiting, purely as posturing, he was sure. Stockton waited, and waited, and waited.

Then the wall screen suddenly came alive, and Stan Kim was there, in black suit and blue tie, an American Flag pin at his lapel. Not looking the slightest bit fatigued, despite the late hour.

“Senator Kim,” Stockton said.

“Mr President,” Kim replied.

They both knew this was being recorded. That this would ultimately go down in history.

“Senator Kim, our campaign’s numbers, as well as those of every major network and independent analyst, show that I’ve won an overwhelming majority of both the electoral and popular vote. I’m calling to commend you for an excellent race, to tell you that I look forward to working with you in your capacity as the senior senator from the great state of California over the next four years, and to ask you to publicly concede the race for President. Will you do that, Senator?”

Stan Kim stared back at him. Then the man said the words Stockton had dreaded.

“Mr President, I do not concede. America wants me as its President. My campaign has filed suit in thirty-seven states on behalf of voters who were illegally and unconstitutionally prevented from voting with the benefit of the most up-to-date knowledge about your true character and criminal, perhaps even
treasonous
, actions. I understand that a number of independent suits have been filed, contesting your fitness for the presidency. I do not concede, Mr President. And on Inauguration Day, I’m fully confident that I’ll be the one entering the White House.”

Stockton kept his face calm. Thirty-seven states? His fitness for the presidency?

He felt his face going hot.

They’re baiting me, he told himself. Ignore it.

“Senator,” he said, his voice under tight control, keeping to the script they’d prepared. “Let’s not tear America apart. I’m sure if we work together, we can find some way–”

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Kim said.

The screen went dead.

“Asshole!” Stockton yelled. His fist crashed into the wall screen.

H
e went
on stage twenty minutes later, after the local anesthetic had time to numb his bruised and maybe broken hand. He wore his biggest grin. The crowd erupted into cheers of “Four more years!”

“Today!” he began, “In the great city of Houston, in the greatest country on Earth!”

S
tan Kim stepped
out onto his own stage at the Moscone center in San Francisco, to equally thunderous applause, his hands outstretched.

He waited, and waited, and waited for them to stop, these people who’d stuck with him through thick and thin, who’d supported him when he’d taken unpopular positions, when he’d stood up for a restoration of civil rights, even when a frightened populace was ready to constrict them even further, when he’d fought for an America that looked to the future instead of being mired in the past.

They thought they were cheering him for a noble effort. For the old college try. They thought they were buoying his spirits in the face of defeat.

He loved them for it.

He waited until the crowd quieted, and then he trumpeted out three words, his voice amplified across the space.

“WE. FIGHT. ON.”

The crowd cheered their approval, whistling, waving their banners, hooting and hollering, most of them still not really understanding.

He bellowed out across the crowd, his hands held out to them.

“We
fight
for a land where every woman and man among us can choose our
own
fates for our
own
minds and bodies!”

The crowd roared its approval.

“We
fight
for a nation that is founded on the
freedom
of individuals as its fundamental,
bedrock
principle.”

The crowd cheered uproariously.

“We
fight
for a country where
lying
to the citizens,
manipulating
them,
torturing
them, and
murdering
them is a
crime
!”

The crowd roared.

“Where no matter how
high
and
mighty
they may be, the
perpetrators
of those crimes are brought to
justice
!”

“Jus-tice!” The crowd started chanting. “Jus-tice! Jus-tice!”

“We fight for a land where the government is more frightened of its citizens than its citizens are of the government!”

The crowd roared. Pumped up now.

“WE. FIGHT. ON.”

Flashbulbs burst across the space. The confetti and balloons stored above were set free, raining down on the thousands assembled there. The giant screens behind him came alive,

ELECTORAL MAP – INCLUDING UPDATED VOTES

Showing large swaths of blue down the west coast, across the mid-west, down the north east, in Florida.

The crowd went wild, screaming, getting it now.

“More than eleven million voters attempted to switch their votes to us in the last forty-eight hours! When those voters have their votes counted correctly, as is their constitutional right, as we’re asking the Supreme Court to uphold: WE HAVE WON!”

T
uesday 2040.11.06

“Oh, Jesus,” Oscar said. “It’s a fucking riot.”

“What?” Rangan exclaimed.

“People everywhere,” Oscar said. “Oh hell…”

Rangan pulled himself upright, felt a stab of pain from his rib as he did, and then he saw.

Beyond the windshield the street was full of people, angry people, some waving signs, some chanting or raising fists into the air, others…

Rangan watched a man rise into the air, hanging limply by his neck from a rope dangling from a long pole. His mouth gaped in horror. They were murdering people. And the man’s face looked familiar…

“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” he heard Oscar say.

The car lurched into reverse, throwing Rangan forward, into the gap between the front seats.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Oscar yelled, seeing Rangan, turning to berate him. “If you can see the windshield–”

The collision alarm cut him off, blaring through the car. The brakes slammed on of their own accord and the car came to a screeching halt, throwing Rangan backwards into the rear seat.

Pain burst through him. He groaned out loud with it. The whole world shrank to the agony in his guts as the deceleration pressed him into the car’s seat.

When he faded back into reality, the first thing he saw was the man they’d hung.

No. Not a man. Something about the way the figure swung back and forth was wrong. The weight was all wrong. The pole hardly bent.

Not a man.

A caricature.

An effigy.

Of John Stockton.

Someone held a flame to its foot as he watched, and the figure lit, fast and bright. The flames spread up the foot, the leg, to the figure’s torso, its head, its arms, engulfing it in seconds.

“Not real,” Rangan croaked in relief. “It’s not real.”

“Fucking real enough,” Oscar replied. He was almost horizontal in the front, his hands buried under the dashboard, digging for something.

Jesus, Rangan thought, he’s got a gun.

Oscar came up with a data fob instead, the kind that went into a car’s nav system.

“We gotta go,” he said. “Get outta the car.”

“What?” Rangan yelled in alarm. Out of the car? “Just drive back the way we came!”

“Look around, asshole! There is no way we came!”

Rangan looked. The riot had engulfed them. He turned left and saw a woman waving a DOWN WITH THE FASCISTS sign. He turned right in time to see a brick fly through a shop window. Rangan craned around backwards and saw… oh fuck.

There was another car behind them. That’s what had set off the collision alarm. A car that had been flipped over onto its back by the mob, who were now slamming bricks and boards and pieces of signs against its windows, trying to batter their way through the Gorilla Glass. In the windshield he saw a terrified face, a middle-aged man in a suit, huddled on what had been the ceiling of his car, his phone in his hand, his face lit by the glow of it. He’d probably been taking his own route around the accident on the freeway. Fuck, maybe he’d even voted for Stan Kim.

“Holy shit,” Rangan breathed.

“Can you run?” Oscar asked.

Rangan waved his arms at the man, trying to catch his attention, saw him take notice.

“Can you RUN?” Oscar yelled.

He pantomimed taking something off, a jacket, off one shoulder, off one sleeve, then the other. Take off the jacket, man. Take off the fucking suit!

The man stared at him blankly. Rangan heard a sound behind him, suddenly found the car more full of light.

Then he realized he was wearing a prop.

He pointed at the man, then pointed at himself, and started pulling off his own hoodie in an exaggerated show. He had the left arm off when the car door to his right opened, Oscar reached in, and grabbed him by the sleeve.

“RUN!!” Oscar yelled, pulling hard on Rangan’s sleeve. His eyes were huge, focused on something beyond Rangan.

Everything happened too fast, then, and too slowly.

Oscar pulled.

Rangan turned, to see what Oscar was staring at, and saw the black-masked figures crouched at the other side of the car, about to lift it up and over. His heart pounded.

Rangan felt the other sleeve of his hoodie yanked off his right arm. He turned back, saw Oscar crash backwards to the ground just outside the car, Rangan’s hoodie in his hands. He saw confusion in Oscar’s eyes, then fear.

Then Rangan felt the car tip up, the other side, the side away from Oscar, rising higher and higher. His open door was suddenly
down
and it was full of the street and Oscar’s legs and Rangan was sliding towards it. He threw out his own legs and caught himself against the frame of the door.

Oscar screamed, loudly and clearly. Rangan heard it above all the other noise, above the pain in his own guts, above his own fear. He saw the younger man’s legs, mangled as the now half-open car door came down over them.

Rangan threw himself backwards, against the car’s seat, what had once been down, trying to tip it back the way it had come.

Instead he bounced off, came forward onto his face onto the ceiling of the car, as it became the new down, as the vehicle kept rotating, kept fucking rolling.

Oscar screamed, “FUUUUUUUCK.”

And then the scream ended as the car came crashing down to a new horizontal.

Rangan found himself sobbing, sobbing, crawling, knowing he had to move, sobbing, reaching for the door, trying to pull himself out.

Hands grabbed him, hauled him out roughly. His head banged into something as they did. Pain burst through his ribs. The world swam. He heard voices.

“…fucking dead…”

“…accident…”

“…oh shit…”

“…he’s a witness…”

“…just fucking scatter…”

He heard something clatter to the ground next to him.

Consciousness receded.

R
angan opened his eyes
, found himself on his back, still here, still where he had been, just seconds before.

Not in heaven, then.

Still in hell.

There was smoke coming from the effigy of John Stockton. Glowing red embers were rising into the night.

They’re beautiful, he thought. A beautiful sight.

Around him, somewhere, there was chaos, distant, horrid, chaos. He didn’t want to go there. He shut it out.

He focused on the sky above, instead. He stared transfixed as the glowing embers rose, higher, higher still, lofted by the warmth of the smoke and fire below them.

Then one by one, as he watched, they died out in the cold air above.

Like Oscar.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.

Auuuuuugggggghhhh.

A sound louder, deeper, and more painful than any Rangan had ever heard pounded through him, resonating through his bones, his teeth, his bowels. It was like every bass bin of every system he’d ever DJed had been piled atop him, turned up to twenty, and blasted on the same bass line all at once.

Oh fuck that was motivating in the worst fucking way.

He rolled onto his side, curling into a ball, his stomach heaving. Someone fell to the pavement just feet from his face. He barely noticed as his stomach heaved again. He rolled all the way over, just in time, as the lunch he’d eaten hours ago with the boys emptied itself out of him onto the pavement.

Then the sirens came. WAWAWAWAWAWAWA.

He looked up and there were spinning lights out there in the distance, over the heads of the crowd, many of whom were now on their knees. Spinning lights in the direction they’d been driving. Spinning lights in the direction they’d come from. Buildings in the other two directions.

“YOU ARE ORDERED TO DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY,” boomed across the crowd. “YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS. ALL WHO DO NOT DISPERSE WILL BE ARRESTED.”

Disperse? How could they disperse? They were penned in by the cops and the buildings.

He pushed himself up to one knee. God, he hurt. A stranger in a mask – maybe one of the men who’d rolled their car – was on the ground, groaning. A piece of wood lay nearby, maybe part of a sign, just beyond his outstretched hand. Rangan grabbed the board from the ground, used it like a cane to come to standing.

He looked up and, not twenty feet away, a protester had a brick in his hand, cocked back to throw, and then it was flying through the air, towards the flashing lights.

“Oh shit,” Rangan heard himself say.

Then the rubber bullets – he
hoped
they were rubber – converged on the protester, picked him up and threw him back.

There was a crash and a change in one of the siren tones as the brick made lucky contact with the top of a police cruiser, and then the air was thick with projectiles flying back in towards the protest – canisters, thick ones, spraying gas, tear gas – and within seconds Rangan’s eyes were burning and he was coughing and the coughs were wracking his broken ribs and oh holy fucking god he didn’t know what to do anymore.

He dropped back to one knee, half blind, barely able to breathe, barely able to think. Next to him he saw a flicker of red in a protester’s hand. A bottle, a rag stuffed in one end like a wick. The rag came alive with flame, and the man hurled it towards the police lines.

Oh my fucking god, Rangan thought.

Around him he saw more Molotov cocktails lit and hurled into the sky at the police vehicles, saw more tear gas canisters land, the clouds of gas grow thicker.

Gas, he thought, fucking gas.

The protesters around him had bandanas, he saw. He ripped off his tee shirt, leaving himself bare-chested in the night, and tied it around his nose and mouth and let the rest hang down.

Maybe, he thought, that’ll help.

Then more gas wafted into his lungs and made him hack and hack and hack.

Maybe not.

A phalanx of riot police in armor, with tall transparent shields, anonymizing reflective masks, and long electrified truncheons, marched forward out of the smoke. He crouched lower at the corner of the overturned car and watched as they reached a smattering of disorganized protesters, and brought their truncheons down viciously, again, and again, long after their targets were prone.

A riot cop turned and looked right at him, and Rangan hid his face, and cowered, and just hoped he looked as miserable and harmless as he was.

Holy fuck, he thought, how the hell am I going to get out of here?

Something tickled at his mind.

A thought.

Someone else’s thought.

Someone else’s
mind
.

And then it was gone.

He turned, searching.

Tear gas ripped a cough from him, bringing agony to his ribs.

Oh god, he realized. I’m so fucking out of practice.

He closed his eyes.

Please, please, please.

Open. Max sensitivity. Directional search.

Please, please, please.

An explosion boomed somewhere, close enough that he felt heat against his face.

Someone screamed, and he heard the sickening crunch of bones breaking, and then the gurgling end of the scream. An image of a police truncheon crushing a protestor’s skull came unbidden into his mind.

Please, please, please.

Tears were rolling down his face, from the tear gas, or for Oscar, or because he was well and truly fucked.

THERE.

THERE, MOTHERFUCKER.

A mind.

Two minds! Maybe more.

They were that way, to his left, inside the building, moving, talking to each other, not to Rangan. He was picking up their leakage. They were just barely at the limit of his range, honestly they should be
beyond
his range, way beyond his range, and they were moving far faster than he could right now.

He threw everything he had into one mental yell of longing at them.

HELP!!!!!

He sent them a sense of himself, hurt, nearly blind from the tear gas, wanted by the cops, trapped by the police lines, needing them.

PLEASE!!!!

He felt them hesitate. They stopped moving. Data flowed fast and fierce between them, disagreement, argument.

Then they were moving back towards him. One stopped inside one of the buildings, and two of them dashed out. They were dressed in drab colors, with industrial-looking boots on their feet; round black goggles over their eyes; respirators whose vents moved back and forth over their mouths and noses; and headbands with what seemed to be antennae, among other things, projecting from them. A mass of black dreadlocks sprawled out above one headband. Short, spiky blue locks projected above the other.

They each got under an arm and took some of his weight. The one with black dreadlocks was solidly built, muscular. The other was shorter than he was, and slighter of build.

A teenager?

MOVE, ASSHOLE!
the big one sent him.

Rangan grunted, put everything he had into hauling forward, and suddenly they were moving at something close to a jog. Another explosion went off behind them. Another scream. Another sound of broken bone.

Off to the side Rangan caught a glimpse of more police vehicles arriving. Armored vehicles now, not just ordinary cruisers. Another tear gas canister erupted before them, obscuring the view and forcing corrosive gas into his eyes and lungs. Rangan coughed, stumbled, but by then they were almost to the building, and then they were pushing in through the shattered glass that was once a store front, and he thought surely they could stop here, but instead they kept moving, kept penetrating deeper into the shop, and then through a door, and out of the shop, and into a darkened inner hallway, and then through another door, and into an elevator that took them down.

The elevator opened into a cellar, and then his two saviors dragged him out to where the third, dressed a lot like them, was waiting. Rangan could definitely feel all three of them now.

The two holding him slowly lowered him to the concrete floor, and Rangan caught himself on his knees, still gasping.

“Thank you,” he said, when he could catch his breath.

The third figure, the one who hadn’t come out to him, shorter than he was, with a mass of red curls above his headband, reached forward and stuck a small rectangular object against the side of Rangan’s neck.