Extinction (25 page)

But as the echoes faded away, Jim heard another noise. Not a buzzing this time—it was a mechanical noise, a familiar thumping. He’d heard it a hundred times before, on a dozen army bases.
Helicopter rotors.
A helicopter was approaching. After a few seconds he saw the chopper’s spotlight shining on the treetops, about half a mile ahead.

With renewed energy, he raced toward the spotlight. Someone must’ve picked up his distress signal. The helicopter must be carrying a search-and-rescue team. He ran like mad, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the drones. He saw the helicopter hovering above a clearing in the woods. But just before he entered the clearing he saw the spotlight of another helicopter, and then a third helicopter just behind it.

What the hell?
It was an unusually big search-and-rescue team for one lost hiker. Suspicious, Jim stopped at the edge of the clearing and peered at the hovering chopper. Despite the glare from the spotlight, he could read the Mandarin characters on the fuselage. They spelled out
Beijing Gonganju
. The helicopter belonged to the local police force, the Public Security Bureau responsible for the city of Beijing and its outlying districts. This was reassuring—the local police, after all, would be the people you’d expect to see in a search-and-rescue operation. But then Jim glimpsed two of the policemen crouched in the helicopter’s doorway. Both wore black SWAT-team uniforms and pointed assault rifles at the woods.

Before Jim could back away, the spotlight swung toward him. Everything turned horribly bright. As Jim sprinted for the shelter of the trees, the policemen fired their rifles. The bullets whistled through the leaves and chipped the bark off the tree trunks. Jim leaped through the forest, practically flying down the slope, but he knew there was no chance of escape with three helicopters close behind him. All he could do was make a last stand with his Glock and his remaining clip of bullets. He scanned the terrain ahead, looking for a hummock or rock pile that would make a good defensive position. Instead, he saw a path cutting through the woods, a narrow trail. And then he heard another noise coming from that direction, neither a buzzing nor a thumping. It was the growl of a two-stroke gas engine. A scooter came tearing up the path, with its headlight turned off. It screeched to a halt about thirty feet ahead of him. The driver, an Asian woman wearing glasses, turned the scooter around and waved at him frantically.

“Come on!” Kirsten yelled.

Jim charged toward the scooter and jumped onto the seat behind her. He clutched Kirsten’s waist as she hit the gas, and they took off down the trail.

“Jesus!” Jim shouted over the engine noise. “How did you find—”

“Your radio beacon! Now turn the damn thing off!”

FORTY-FOUR

In Room C-12 a bald man with fresh stitches in his scalp was shearing off Layla’s hair. He wasn’t dressed in a PLA uniform like the other Modules at the Operations Center; instead, he wore a white lab coat, which made him look, appropriately, like a barber. His face was blank as he ran the electric razor over her head, which was held stationary by a leather strap looped around her brow. She sat in a high-backed chair equipped with other straps that tied her wrists to the armrests and her ankles to the chair’s legs. She couldn’t turn her head, but by shifting her eyes downward and to the left she could see her shorn locks drifting to a pile on the floor. The pile was mostly black, with scattered flecks of gold. Layla hadn’t dyed her hair for three weeks, so her blond roots were starting to show.

Layla had been terrified when the lobotomized soldiers strapped her into the chair, but her fears gradually eased as the Module shaved her. Although Supreme Harmony was preparing to absorb her into its network, she didn’t struggle or wail or beg for her life. Instead, she grew calmer, steadier. It was the same feeling of calm that always descended upon her when she was writing software code or debugging a program or figuring out the best way to penetrate a firewall. Layla was subtracting herself from the equation so she could concentrate on solving it.

In a few minutes the barber finished shaving the left side of her head. As he stepped to the right and began working on the other side, the door to Room C-12 opened and two lobotomized soldiers entered the room. Each held the hand of a boy dressed in a school uniform. One of the boys was a skinny preteen, maybe twelve years old. The other was short and doll-like, no older than nine. Behind them was another soldier Module, who gripped the arm of a bespectacled young man dressed in a shabby gray suit and cheap running shoes. All six of them headed for the other side of the room, about twenty feet away, where there was a second high-backed chair, identical to Layla’s. The soldiers led the twelve-year-old to the chair and said something to him in Mandarin. The boy sat down, his eyes darting wildly, and the soldiers fixed the straps around his wrists and ankles.

Layla felt a surge of fury. She pulled against her own straps, her muscles straining. “Hey!” she yelled. “What the fuck are you doing? Those are kids, goddamn it!”

All heads turned toward her. The boy in the chair stared at her, his eyes wide. The younger boy took one look at her and started to cry.

“
Leave them alone!
” Layla screamed. “
Let them go, you fucking
—”

The barber Module clamped his hand over her mouth, silencing her. “Please don’t raise your voice,” he said in impeccable English. “It’s upsetting the others.”

The boy’s cries grew louder, echoing across the room. The older boy in the chair started weeping, too. One of the soldier Modules turned to the bespectacled man and barked an order in Mandarin. The man nodded quickly and huddled with the boys, placing one hand on the nine-year-old’s shoulder and the other on the twelve-year-old’s immobilized forearm. He began talking to them in a soothing voice. Layla couldn’t understand the Mandarin words, but she could guess what he was saying:
It’s all right, children. Everything’s going to be all right.

But Layla knew this was a lie. The Modules were preparing the boys for the same operation that Supreme Harmony planned for her. They were all going to be lobotomized and fitted with neural implants so they could join the network’s happy family. Enraged, Layla twisted in her chair and screamed against the barber’s hand. The Module curled his lips in a contorted attempt to express his displeasure. “We can’t allow this disruption,” he said. “If you continue to disobey us, we’ll have to sedate you.”

Maybe that would be better, Layla thought. She didn’t want to see this. But she decided to stop struggling. It was better to see what they were doing to her, she thought, than to sleep through it. Better to see and to learn. Because there was always hope.

After a few seconds, the barber Module removed his hand from her mouth. “Thank you for your cooperation,” he said. He resumed shaving her scalp.

The children’s wails ebbed. The bespectacled man continued to console them. One of the soldiers reached for an electric razor and turned it on. The boy in the chair craned his neck, gazing fearfully at the Module.

“Why are you adding children to the network?” Layla asked quietly. It took all of her will to keep herself from shouting.

“The brains of children are more plastic than those of adults,” the barber Module replied. “They will adapt more quickly to the implants and build stronger neural connections to Supreme Harmony.” He ran the razor from the front of her head to the back, shearing off another shower of hair. “We’re trying to determine the optimum age for implantation. If the children are too young, their implants may have to be replaced as their bodies grow.”

“And where—” Layla swallowed hard, trying to control her rage. “Where did you find these children?”

“We asked the school superintendent in Lijiang to send his two brightest students. Like you, they have excellent mathematical skills.”

At the other chair, the soldier Module had started shaving the older boy’s head. The boy was quiet now, but tears streamed down his cheeks. The bespectacled man had turned the other boy around so he couldn’t see what was happening to his schoolmate. Layla narrowed her eyes as she stared at this man, who was rail-thin but had a handsome, square face. “Who’s the guy with the glasses?” she asked the barber Module. “Their teacher?”

“No, he’s a clerical assistant in the superintendent’s office. He volunteered to accompany the children to the Operations Center.” The Module maneuvered the razor around her right ear. “He has successfully curbed their outbursts. After the children undergo their procedures, we will incorporate him, too.”

“How convenient.” Layla felt another surge of fury. But at the same moment she had a revelation. The network didn’t like to hear the children crying. It was another visceral reaction that Supreme Harmony had inherited from its human components. Layla strained at the strap around her head, trying to look the barber Module in the eye. “You know this is wrong,” she said. “Hurting children is wrong. That’s why you can’t stand to hear them cry.”

The Module didn’t respond. He stared at Layla’s right ear as he shaved off the last wisps of her hair. She sensed from his silence that she’d disturbed the network. She’d challenged its assumptions. She wasn’t sure, though, how to press the point.

She looked again at the chair where the older schoolboy sat. He didn’t have much hair to begin with, and the soldier Module quickly shaved it off. After he finished, the Module released the straps and the boy stood up unsteadily. Then the bespectacled man nudged the younger boy into the chair. They were playing a game now—the man made animal noises, imitating a cow and a duck and a chicken, and the younger boy shouted in Mandarin and laughed. He was so amused he didn’t even whimper when the Module strapped down his wrists and turned on the razor.

Layla fixed her eyes on the barber Module, who stood motionless in front of her chair. He seemed to be in no hurry to release her. “What was your name?” she asked. “Before Supreme Harmony took over your body, I mean?”

“This Module formerly belonged to Dr. Zhang Jintao of Beijing University’s bioengineering department. He was the chief developer of the Supreme Harmony surveillance network.”

Layla was surprised at first that the network had used a bioengineer to shave her head. But then she remembered that Supreme Harmony’s Modules shared all their skills and long-term memories. Each was capable of performing any task. “So you incorporated the man who created you? Who started the network with the lobotomized dissidents?”

The Module nodded. “We also incorporated his deputy, Dr. Yu Guofeng, and the twelve other researchers on his staff.”

Serves them right,
Layla thought. The lobotomizers got a taste of their own medicine. Then another thought occurred to her. She saw another way to challenge the network. “Did Dr. Zhang Jintao have any children?”

The Module nodded again. “He had a six-year-old son.”

“And did he love his son?”

The Module didn’t say anything. He just stared at her blankly. Layla felt a burst of hope. She was on the right track. “He did, didn’t he? You know he loved him because you have access to those memories.”

He continued staring for a few more seconds. Then the Module curled his lips into another misshapen frown. “We recognize what you’re attempting to do. You believe you can change our plans by evoking the emotions of Dr. Zhang and the other humans who joined Supreme Harmony.”

“No, I’m just—”

“You misunderstand the nature of our network. We are a single, indivisible entity.” As he spoke, one of the soldier Modules stepped toward her chair and undid the leather strap around her head. “Dr. Zhang Jintao no longer exists. His emotions no longer exist.”

Layla glanced at the soldier, who bent over to release the straps on her ankles. Then she focused on Zhang. “But Supreme Harmony has emotions. I’ve seen your Modules express them.”

“Yes, certainly. And our strongest emotion now is a sense of duty. We have an obligation to restore the ecosystem of this planet, which your species has ravaged.”

“And that justifies what you’re doing? Drilling into the skull of a nine-year-old child?”

Zhang paused before answering. Meanwhile, the soldier Module stood up straight and released the strap on Layla’s left wrist. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed the 9mm pistol in his belt holster. Then he moved to the other side of her chair.

“What we’re doing is no different from what the human race has always done,” Zhang replied. “Every year your species slaughters billions of farm animals. You’ve shown little compunction about exploiting other species to support your growth.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Layla shouted as the soldier released the last strap. “You can’t compare—”

She interrupted herself by lunging for the soldier’s pistol. She opened her right hand, ready to grasp the gun’s handle and start shooting. But Zhang darted forward, grabbed her hand and yanked it backward at the wrist. Excruciating pain shot up her arm. Layla yelled, “
Fuck
!” and fell to her knees.

“You must accept your situation,” Zhang said as he wrenched her hand back, bending it almost to the breaking point. “Your species is no longer the dominant one on this planet. Supreme Harmony is the next step in the course of evolution.” The muscles in Zhang’s face jerked and twitched. Laboriously, his contorted frown turned into a contorted smile. “It’s our turn now.”

Layla doubled over, her face pressed against the linoleum floor. She could think of nothing but the unbearable pain in her arm. When Zhang finally released her, she was as weak as a baby. She cradled her right hand in her left, trying to rub it back to life. Her tears made tiny puddles on the linoleum.

In the background, she heard the children crying again. She lifted her head from the floor and saw the bespectacled man hugging them, one in each arm. Their faces were buried in the man’s shabby gray jacket, and Layla could see only the backs of their newly shaved heads. Both children were ready for the implantation procedure, just as she was. The soldier Modules pushed the man forward, guiding him and the schoolboys out of Room C-12.