Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (59 page)

He fell short, grabbed the man by one leg instead. They both fell to the stairs. Rangan pushed himself up, ran over the man, up onto the main level of the stage itself.

Stan Kim was standing up, struggling with one of the men. The other was swinging the remnants of a sign at Kim, hitting him across the back.

Rangan ran full bore, charged shoulder-first into the man swinging what remained of a sign, sent him sprawling. He stumbled himself, caught himself on a railing at the edge of the stage, then turned.

The other protester was a big guy, more than six feet tall, muscle-bound. He had Stan Kim bent back over the edge of the rail.

Rangan ran at them, slammed into the man, meaning to knock him down.

The big guy moved maybe a foot, and stayed upright, but he did let go of Kim. Rangan bounced away. The big man turned and snarled at him, his fist drawing back.

Rangan reached in, boosted the Active Countermeasure strength to max.

The man hesitated.

“Someone’s fucking with your head!” Rangan yelled at him.

The man lowered his fist slowly, turned his head to the left, a confused look on his face. Rangan followed it. Stan Kim was up.

“Who the hell are you?” Kim asked.

Rangan was panting. There was a Rangan Shankari mask on his face. He dropped his hands to his knees.

“I’m a friend,” he managed.

Then he turned, and looked out, and saw and heard the chaos.

There were ranks of people at the bottom of the stairs to the stage. People using mesh. Volunteers, who’d come at his call, sealing it off, keeping it safe.

But beyond that…

Clashes everywhere. Clouds of tear gas rising up. Molotov cocktails flying. Riot police struggling with protesters. Screams. Pain.

Oh, Jesus, Rangan thought.

We just have to get their attention,
Angel had said.

Rangan turned back to Stan Kim. “You have a mic?”

Kim shook his head, warily, and pointed. “Just stand on the X.”

An X, made of tape, on the wood of the stage.

Rangan stepped onto it. He turned and faced the crowd. And then he could see the camera drones hovering out there, picking him up. He could see the cunningly hidden directional mics aimed to pick up his voice.

Rangan took a deep breath.

He reached out through the mesh. He could feel the firewalls active, feel the active countermeasures fighting. It was doing some good. They were restraining some of the violence.

But not enough. Not nearly enough.

Rangan lifted up his hands, and yelled, for the cameras, for the microphones, in his ridiculous Rangan Shankari mask.

“Listen to me!” he cried. “Someone’s messing with your heads!”

Holy frack, Axon,
Angel sent.
Is that you on the screens?

Chaos came through. He could tell she was in the thick of it.

He felt Angel’s attention. Tempest’s. Cheyenne was struggling, somewhere, with someone.

Across the mass of minds, he felt barely a flicker of change.

“There are people around you who aren’t angry!” Rangan yelled. “Tune into them!”

Nothing. Hardly any flicker, hardly any change. People barely noticed he was here.

“Thank you,” Stan Kim said from behind him. Rangan felt a hand land on his arm. “Let me try.”

Rangan moved to the side in a daze. Stan Kim stepped back onto the X, his hand outreached.

“Everyone!” the senator said. “This is not the way! You need to–”

A lit Molotov cocktail rose from the crowd hurled straight at them.

“Shit!” Rangan yelled. He grabbed Kim, threw them both to the floor of the stage.

The cocktail kept flying, shattered into flame on the next block of E street behind them.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” Rangan said.

And then, before he could stop himself, he rose, and did what he knew he had to.

“My name,” he yelled, “is Rangan Shankari!”

He felt a flicker of something from the minds down there.

“I am DJ Axon! I helped invent Nexus 5.”

More attention. People were tuning in, looking.

Then Rangan reached up, and pulled the mask off his face, up onto the top of his head.

The crowd gasped. He felt it ripple from mind to mind, a stutter that paused the violence in all but the most intense locations.

“And someone is fucking with your heads!”

C
arolyn Pryce’s
phone buzzed again. The three short sharp buzzes of highest priority.

She looked down from the global calamity all around her, to the message.

[ERD_SECRETS: We’re PLF. The files we leaked are from Barnes’s personal data. That’s how I know. Events in China and the world are your proof. You must relay this upwards. China did not take offensive action against the US.]

She shook her head, and snapped out a new message.

[Not good enough. Give me something concrete!]

B
reece narrowed
his eyes at the screen.

Shankari.

He turned to the Nigerian. “Get a shooter in position.”

The Nigerian looked back at him for a moment. “There’s added risk,” he said. “We can let this go. We’ve distracted them. What does it matter?”

Breece slammed his palm onto the table. “It matters!” he yelled.

Then he closed his eyes, and continued, more softly. “Just do it, please.”

“
Y
ou’re being hacked
!” Rangan yelled. “That’s why you’re suddenly so angry! Tune in to the people who aren’t angry! Get close to them! They have an app for you! Install it, everyone!”

There was a commotion below. Rangan looked down, saw armed riot police crash through the wall of mesh-running volunteers at the bottom of the stairs, saw one run full-tilt at him, a truncheon raised.

“Away from the senator!” the cop yelled.

Oh shit, Rangan thought.

Then suddenly Stan Kim was in front of him, an arm outraised.

“This man’s with me, officers!”

“Senator!” one of them yelled. “We’ll get you out of here!”

“I’m staying here!” Kim yelled back. “We’ve got work to do.”

Rangan breathed again. In the corner of his mind’s eye, a counter was moving, it was scrolling, incrementing fast, the last digits changing in a blur.

They’d started the day with a little over fifty-three thousand people running mesh in this protest, out of six or seven hundred thousand people in total.

Now they were at one hundred and twenty thousand and still climbing.

Rangan tapped Stan Kim on the shoulder. Kim turned to look at him.

“You’re blocking my camera, Senator,” Rangan said with a smile.

Kim leaned in close to him. “Kid, you wanna see daylight after today?” he whispered. His eyes searched Rangan’s. “Put that mask back on.”

Then the senator stepped back, out of the line of the cameras, a smile playing at his lips, not even close to reaching his eyes.

Rangan swallowed hard, pulled the mask down over his face, suddenly aware of all the police. And also aware that a majority of those one hundred and twenty thousand… no, wait… one hundred and twenty-five thousand people were tuning in to
him
over the mesh.

He stood up straight, raised his arms, and told them with word and thought.

“We can do this!” he told them, hope and optimism beaming out. “There’s a tipping point ahead! Keep bringing more people in, and we can cancel out the attack.”

There was still so much hate out there. They were still a minority, growing fast but still there were four people
not
running mesh for every one person who was…

Then he felt another mind touch his. A mind he’d brushed in passing that day on the National Mall. The day everything went to shit.

He looked down and there was a bald man in orange robes climbing the stairs, threading his way between the imposing riot police, smiling slightly, his mind giving off tranquility.

This, this is what the crowd needed.

Rangan gestured and the monk came onto the stage without a word.

Rangan reached out and touched his mind to offer him mesh, found that the monk was already running it, and smiled.

“Listen to this man,” Rangan said into the cameras, into the minds of those following him. “He has what we need.”

And then he redirected those minds to the monk, and watched and felt as peace rippled out, as it flowed out of a hundred thousand minds, into all of those around them.

As peace flowed out of them like water, to meet the more numerous hot flames of anger.

K
ate looked
at the message on her terminal.

[Insider: Not good enough. Give me something concrete!]

Then she looked up at the wallscreen. At the chaos. At what Breece had done. At what he’d done to his own people.

He hadn’t listened at all.

“Damn you,” she whispered. “I loved you.”

Then she typed out the message.

[ERD_ SECRETS: The man who killed Barnes goes by the alias “Breece”. His real name is Andrew Marcum. He was behind DC, Chicago, and Houston. He’s in DC now. His current location and full bio follow.]

“
S
hooter’s in position
,” the Nigerian said. “We’ll only get one shot before they triangulate.”

“Take it,” Breece replied.

R
angan watched the numbers climb
.

Two hundred and sixty-three thousand. Two hundred and sixty-seven thousand. More than a third of the crowd running mesh, running firewalls cutting off the hate, broadcasting active countermeasures all around them!

They were doing it. Out there, he could see violence subsiding with his own eyes. They were approaching a tipping point.

He heard Stan Kim next to him, yelling to one of the cops.

“Get on the horn to your commander,” Kim was saying. “Tell him he needs to cease fire! The crowd’s calming down!”

“Senator, we have orders to clear the protest and get you out of here,” the cop replied.

“Officer, that crowd is being pacified by this young man right here! Shooting more tear gas and rubber bullets is just going to make it harder. Now goddammit, put
me
in touch with your commander.”

Rangan just closed his eyes, tuned in to the peace coming off this monk, this man he didn’t even know.

Two hundred and ninety thousand.

Two hundred and ninety-five thousand.

Someone jostled him, and he opened his eyes. He looked over and the monk was half-collapsed on him, still smiling, still serene, his mind still giving off a deep tranquility.

There was red all over his robes.

“He’s been shot!” Rangan said.

Suddenly there were riot cops all around him, shields held high. Radios were crackling.

He felt other minds, protesters all around, climbing onto the stage from the sides, crowding around, shielding him with their bodies.

And this man. Rangan lowered him to the wood floor of the stage, surrounded by cops and protesters both.

The monk was still smiling, eyes closed.

A cop pushed Rangan out of the way, ripped at the monk’s robes. There was bright arterial red in the center of his chest. Rangan stared in horror.

The monk still smiled. His mind reached out. The tranquility was changing somehow. The peace growing more ethereal.

Turning to white.

Everything turning to white.

Beautiful, beautiful white.

It took Rangan’s breath away.

He felt hundreds of thousands of people gasp with it. Felt them all lose themselves in the complete absorption of this man’s mind.

Everything was this. This moment. This breath. There was no past. No future. Complete Samadhi. Complete absorption.

All white.

All peace.

All compassion.

Rangan lost himself in it. He wasn’t even sure how long it lasted.

And then it was fading.

And fading.

Dissipating.

Gone.

And all around him he felt stillness. Stillness everywhere.

Peace.

He opened his eyes, stood upright, craned his head over the forest of police shields and protesters who’d climbed up here to protect him, and looked out over the crowd.

Everywhere, people had stopped. The protesters had stopped. The cops had stopped.

They’d won. The riot was over.

Stan Kim put a hand on Rangan’s shoulder.

“Well done,” the senator said quietly. “Now, get the hell out of here.”

Rangan nodded.

Time to get the hell out. Before the cops realized who they had here.

Then he heard a radio crackle, saw a police officer’s eyes go wide, the cop step back to create room, his gun fly out of its holster, aimed straight at Rangan.

“Down on the ground!”

C
arolyn Pryce stared
at the message, at the data in the attached file.

She couldn’t breathe. A fake? So detailed.

“Dr Pryce,” someone was saying. “Dr Pryce!”

She looked up. People were staring at her. She focused on Admiral McWilliams, ignored everyone else.

“I need a secure line to the National Terror Response Center.”

McWilliams stared at her, like he didn’t understand what language she was speaking.

“Now!”

M
onday 2041.01.20

John Stockton watched as Ben Fuhrman finished the Oath of Office as Vice President. Fuhrman looked over at him, his hand still on the Bible, and gave him a tight grin.

It was amazing they’d made it this far.

Stockton responded with a proud nod.

Ben Fuhrman stepped away from the podium, and so did Justice Rodriguez.

The musicians played. Musicians he loved. The program said five minutes. It lasted forever.

Then they were done, and it was his turn.

Chief Justice Aaron Klein stepped forward, with the Bible that George Washington had sworn his oath on.

Stockton stepped up in front of the Chief Justice, and put one hand on George Washington’s Bible.

And suddenly he was aware of the silence of the vast House Chamber all around and above him, of him nearly alone here in the center and the bottom of it, of the hundreds of representatives, senators, cabinet members, family, friends, and guests crammed into this place to watch. Of the cameras all around. Of the millions who might be watching.

Suddenly this wasn’t just a formality. Suddenly this wasn’t just another public event.

He looked to the side, and there in the front row was Cindy. She was smiling at him, her eyes full of love. She was smiling and crying, crying just as hard as she had the first time he was inaugurated. And next to her was Julie, his gorgeous daughter, his grandson Liam on her lap, her husband at her side.

Julie grinned widely at him, flashed him a covert thumbs up.

And then Stockton smiled, and knew everything was going to be OK.

Aaron Klein spoke.

“Mr President, please repeat after me.”

John Stockton looked the Chief Justice in the eye, and repeated the words of the Presidential Oath of Office, written into the Constitution two and a half centuries ago.

“I, John Harrison Stockton,” he said. “Do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States.”

Stockton took a breath, and repeated the next line. “… And will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Aaron Klein stopped.

Stockton looked the Chief Justice in the eye and added the words not in the oath, not in the Constitution. “So help me God.”

The Chief Justice smiled at him.

Applause rose from the crammed-in House Chamber.

M
iles Jameson stared
down from the gallery as John Stockton was sworn in.

I made this man, Jameson thought. And now he betrays me.

Good luck, John, he thought bitterly.

Jameson reached into a pocket, and pulled out a tiny pill case. He held it in his lap, shielded from view by both hands, and opened it as quietly as he could.

His fingers felt for the right pill. There.

He looked down to be sure he had it.

Yes. The green one.

Jameson brought it to his mouth, swallowed it dry.

Good luck, Johnny boy.

“
M
issed
,” the Nigerian said. “Got the wrong guy.”

“Damn it,” Breece cursed.

“Doesn’t matter,” the Nigerian said. “T-minus five minutes.”

K
ate looked at the clock
. 12.01pm. Four minutes.

On the wallscreen, John Stockton was talking, giving his post-inauguration address.

She had to time this just right. But there were so many unknowns.

Kate typed another message out to this insider.

[ERD_SECRETS: China isn’t behind what’s about to happen inside the Capitol either.]

12.02pm.

SEND.

“
D
C rapid response
team is en route, Dr Pryce,” the DHS response desk said over Pryce’s headset, plugged into the Pentagon terminal. “The lead looks strong, ma’am.”

“It could be a trap,” Pryce said. “Be careful.”

She looked up, was keenly aware of eyes on her, watching her here in the Pentagon Situation Room as she touched this issue well outside her nominal remit.

“We know, Dr,” the response desk replied. “They’re ready.”

“Keep me informed,” Pryce said. “I need to know right away when you get there if this is legit or not.”

“Yes, Dr.”

Her personal phone buzzed again, the three sharp buzz pattern. It was sitting atop the table. She looked at it and saw the message.

Pryce’s heart dropped.

She whirled. There, against a far wall of the Situation Room, her new Secret Service detail, the one she’d resisted for so long, were standing, waiting for her.

They saw her turn, saw her look at them, and she saw something coil up inside them.

“The Capitol!” she yelled across the room. “The President! Something’s about to happen!”

She saw fingers go to ear buds, lips start moving as they hit the radio to their command, the fastest way to reach the President’s detail.

Then she was turning, looking for the screen showing the inauguration. There. There was John Stockton, at the bottom of the House Chamber, talking, passion on his face.

A bogus threat, Pryce thought. Just a bogus threat. Come on. Come on.

J
ohn Stockton took
the podium to address the assembled audience.

To address America.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he started. “Abraham Lincoln said those words. They’re as true now as they were then.”

His eyes searched the crowd. Some Democrats had chosen not to be here today. He had to accept that. He had to reach out to the whole country, regardless.

“A nation divided is a weakened nation. In America, we’ve been divided. Our trust has been undermined, dividing us.”

He lingered on those members of the opposing party who
had
come, today, rather than boycott his inauguration. He met their eyes as he spoke.

“This isn’t an accident. We’ve been attacked. Our trust has been
intentionally
weakened. It’s been undermined by those who want to divide us and conquer us. That attack has been successful. And if we remain so divided as we are now,” Stockton shook his head. “We cannot stand.”

He turned his head again, scanning right to left, taking in everyone he could. “Let me say what all of us should be willing to say. I trust the intentions of
every
American, until and unless they prove differently. I trust that we all want a better life for ourselves, our neighbors, our children.”

He raised a hand, took in the crowd gathered here. “I trust that every member of Congress wants what’s best for this nation as a whole. We may differ on what best
means
. We may differ on
how to get there
.” He paused. “But I trust that you come to this place with the most sincere convictions, as I do.

“In the first hundred days of my next administration, I’m going to do everything in my power to increase our mutual trust. I’m going to do everything in my power to explain to you, America, the roots of my convictions. I’m going to do that by being more transparent with you than ever before. We’ve faced grave threats over the last decade and more. Many of them Americans and the world don’t know about, or don’t know the full details of. We’re going to share those details.”

Stockton scanned again, looking, making eye contact with the men and women here, letting the cameras fend for themselves. “When you see those details, when you see that evidence, when you see the things we faced down, and beat, sometimes by the skin of our teeth, then I think you’ll reach many of the conclusions that I reached. You’ll share many of the convictions that I have. And you’ll see that the hard decisions that we’ve made, and that we have to
continue
to make, are made with the best of intentions for this nation, for our neighbors, for our loved ones…”

His eyes found Cindy in the front row.

“For our children.”

And there was Julie next to Cindy, beaming up at him.

“For our grandchildren,” he said, and Liam was looking up at him, standing up in Julie’s lap, his eyes wide open, his mouth hanging open.

Stockton smiled, and looked back up at the crowd.

“And for all the generations to come!”

He took a breath. Time to move on to jobs and taxes.

I
n a secure room
beneath the warren of tunnels that connected the buildings of Capitol Hill, behind a door that proclaimed FIRE PROTECTION EQUIPMENT – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, a piece of code came alive.

Dozens of electronic sensors suddenly lit up with digital inputs of heat and smoke.

There was a fire.

It must be suppressed.

Fire suppression systems went live.

Electronically-controlled solenoids moved. Valves turned.

Banks of man-tall, high-pressure tanks released their contents into specially designed pipes. Electronic valve control routed the liquid, rapidly expanding into gas, to fire suppression nozzles at the location of the fire.

The United States Capitol Building, House Chamber.

T
ime to move
on to jobs and taxes, John Stockton thought.

Then a storm hit. A hurricane blasted him in the face, full of stinging rain. There was a roaring in his ears, a high pitched whistle somewhere above it. The air went cloudy, roiled by incredible turbulence. He’d closed his eyes reflexively, without even knowing it, flinching back from whatever was happening. Those eyes were burning now. There was a taste of metal in his mouth. More burning in his lungs.

Alarms were going off. Fire alarms.

“MR PRESIDENT!” Someone had his arm. Secret Service. “THIS WAY!”

“My family!” he yelled.

“WE’VE GOT THEM!”

“Dad!” It was Julie’s voice. He tried to open his eyes but he couldn’t see. He reached out and found his daughter, grabbed her hand. He heard crying. Liam’s cries.

“WE’VE GOT TO RUN!” the Secret Service man said.

Stockton held on to his daughter and ran.

“
I
ncident at the Capitol
! Fire detected!”

“Christ,” the Secretary of Defense said.

Pryce looked over at the screen, her heart pounding. She couldn’t see anything, just distortion, just clouds of moving air.

“That’s the fire suppression gas,” an analyst said from one of the scores of consoles, tension in her voice. “It should clear shortly.”

“Massive network event in China!” NSA yelled. “We have something off-the-scales going on. Origin Shanghai. Network requests saturating all the pipes in and out. Exabyte bombardment of our systems. NAES firewall is crumbling.”

“That’s it,” Secretary Stevens said. “This is a Chinese attack. Set DEFCON 2. Prepare to take out those missile launchers.”

“Wait!” Pryce said. “We don’t know that! That could have been PLF!” She held her phone up towards them.

“Gas is clearing, sirs,” a voice said.

Pryce looked at the screen, prepared to see fire, dead men and women, horror like that day in DC…

She saw a mob, alive, on their feet, pressing for the too few exits.

No fire.

No bodies.

What the hell?

She turned her phone back to her, and typed a message out frantically.

[What the hell was that?]