Ghost of the Gods - 02 (8 page)

Mark raced down the emergency staircase at a reckless speed. The elevator had long since been broken. He leaped down flight after flight, gripping the banister at each turn to swing himself around. Three stories to go; he’d never make it. The hybrid would be gone. He had to make it. Mark nearly broke the outside double doors and his arm as he rushed onto the sidewalk. In a parallel train of thought he knew the RFID reader at the door and surveillance cameras outside had just recorded odd behavior and linked it to his account. He desperately searched through the crowds but could not find the man. Mark began half jogging and searching, stopping frequently to look in all directions. People were staring. Mental chatter from annoyed pedestrians filled his mind. At some level he heard the warble of military sirens growing louder and ignored the meaning. An assist warned him to stop drawing attention to himself. He ignored it.

He reached the curb as a pair of law enforcement SUVs screeched to a stop at the opposite side of the intersection. The vehicles were as heavily armor-plated as tanks. Enforcers poured out in combat gear. Mark turned to leave the area but was blocked by a wall of people all crowding in and staring. Rattled, he turned back toward the Enforcers. All of the squad except one were in foot pursuit of someone. The remaining Enforcer was staring directly at him; his helmet mounted video camera was recording everything. Mark forced himself to look away and saw the other Enforcers had cornered the hybrid he’d spotted from the roof. Stray thoughts coming from the Enforcer still staring at him were as clear in Mark’s brain as spoken words.
Are you an accomplice?
Mark had attracted unwanted suspicion.

Sounds of an argument erupted. The Enforcer turned away and hurried to join his squad. Mark saw their detainee was not going quietly. The man was large and powerfully built. He had a serene, almost detached expression that seemed peculiar and out of place. Mark’s medical assist was still operating. At this close proximity the superimposed medical schematics looked like a colored digital fluoroscope. There were numeric readings and callout symbols overlaid on the subject. Mark could now see the COBIC swarm at the base of the skull. A large portion of the brain was a latticework of nanotech hybridized neurons. The affected tissues were color coded in glowing orange to indicate seeds were nested inside the nucleuses of the cells. The assist indicated that 87 percent of the brain was involved. Fanning out from the nanotech processing nexus were orange roots that extended into the remaining unaffected gray matter of the brain and a short distance down the spinal column. Mark had never dared imagine anything this highly evolved could exist so soon. This was not a coincidence. This hybrid had to be connected with the singularity.

All the soldiers had their M16s aimed at point blank range at the hybrid’s chest. One of the soldiers had blood dripping from a damaged nose. The semicircular machine gun firing squad had the hybrid pinned with a storefront window at his back. At a distance of 30 feet, the hybrid’s stare locked onto Mark’s eyes. Something tugged at the back of Mark’s brain like a magnet pulling on another of its kind. The hybrid smiled at him, projecting hostility. He recognized this tugging. It was stronger version of the same effect Sarah’s stare could have on him.

Mark knew from a deeply ingrained instinct something terrible was about to happen. An unformed memory was urging him to run. In unison, the soldiers collapsed as if they had lost every bone in their limbs. With impossible speed, the hybrid snatched one of the Enforcer’s M16s from limp fingers as the body crumpled. Time seemed to slow down for Mark. An assist displayed medical schematics over the Enforcers. He realized they had all died instantly before collapsing to the pavement. The bodies were splayed out in a telltale semi-circle around the hybrid. Mark felt numb, recognizing that he’d just witnessed a small kill-zone. Had the god-machine murdered on its own volition, or did this hybrid have the ability to use the god-machine as a weapon? Someone accidently shoved Mark in one direction, and then someone else jostled him back the other way. He knew he was in the midst of a skittish herd that sensed a top predator and was building to a stampede. Within seconds of grabbing the M16, the hybrid opened up with it into the bodies of the Enforcers. Mark was stunned by the senseless audacity. What was the hybrid doing firing into dead bodies? Blood flowed over the curb like a thick spill of oil. The crowd scattered within a deafening sea of screams, pushing, and shoes scraping on pavement. The hybrid took aim at a harmless looking man standing still in the midst of the chaos. The two seemed to share a silent moment of recognition. In a medical assist
,
Mark saw the extensive orange glowing structures that identified this second man as a highly evolved hybrid. Moments later the man’s head exploded under a stream of bullets. The killer hybrid dropped the M16 and walked away. Mark watched in disbelief as the hybrid merged with the crowd and in seconds had vanished like a ghost. There was no point in trying to run after him, and besides, what would he do even if he could catch him? Sirens were growing in volume from several directions. Mark sensed a terrible insight was within his grasp if he could only open his mind a little wider to accept it. He stood rigidly in place as if trapped in a block of ice. This hybrid was both highly evolved and a premeditated murderer. The kill-zone had been smaller and more precise than anything Mark had witnessed during the plague. The thought of it brought all his deeply entrenched self-doubts to the surface. He wondered if this proved he and Sarah bore some responsibility for the nanotech plague. One way or the other this rogue hybrid had been saved by a highly targeted kill-zone. Equally troubling was the murder of another hybrid. Had that murder been the real motive behind the entire bloody charade? Mark’s block of ice shattered as the first set of flashing red Enforcer lights appeared at the intersection. He turned and hastily retreated into the fleeing crosscurrents of people.

Mark Freedman – Chicago Protectorate – January 30, 0002 A.P.

Mark heard the door lock release and looked up. He’d been shifting through a small, painless data-flood from the god-machine, trying to find safe ways to locate or learn about these other hybrids. Sarah entered the apartment, bringing with her a rush of energy. She immediately launched into stories about her day walking the edge of the singularity’s vortex. She was acting oddly and looked even odder in what she called her “street camouflage”. The clothing made her gray and unmemorable, which was the whole point. She dropped her ragged ankle length coat on the floor. It was so dirty he expected to see bugs fleeing. Underneath the coat she was organized and clean. It was like a butterfly shedding a cocoon. Sarah removed her shoulder holster and backup piece, then shucked her body armor –which ended up as a deadly pile on the couch –while never missing a beat in her recitation. Mark was staring at her more than listening. She was a remarkable sight. Sarah had that quality that drew unabashed stares. She radiated something vital. He found it intriguing that through all her hybrid restructuring, she had not noticeably changed in appearance as he had. Granted, she was young, while he was much older at fifty-one. The effects of the seeds had smoothed his skin along with perfecting every organ and system in his body. He knew he looked no more than his late thirties. Sarah in some ways looked older than her age. Her expression was of a much wiser woman than she could possibly be chronologically. It was mostly in her eyes and how they somehow reflected all the horror they’d seen. It was a very unsettling aspect of her presence.

He watched her walk from the room in a T-shirt and sweat pants. He heard her in the bedroom and then the shower turning on. Her image remained burned into his mind. He walked to the closed bathroom door and leaned his back against the wall. Unsure of what he was doing, he listened to the water changing in tone as it sprayed against the contours of her body. He intimately knew how that body looked. The memories of touching her lifted his hand to the bathroom doorknob and turned it. He stepped into a warm cloud of steam and the smell of soap. He saw her shape moving on the other side of fogged glass as if in a dream.

The next thing he could remember, he was inside the shower and inside her. The memories of a lifetime of failed relationships troubled him as the sounds of water rushing down and Sarah’s soft moans thankfully washed all thoughts away.

The bedroom windows were dark except for a hint of moonlight somewhere in the night. Mark had not immediately told Sarah about the rogue hybrid. He was confused about his reluctance but eventually told her everything by sharing the memory with her.

He looked over at Sarah, sleeping quietly in pools of shadows on her side of the bed. A medial projection came up over her form, then faded. He didn’t know if Sarah loved him and prayed she didn’t. He knew she was attracted to him because they were so alone in this new world. Like Adam and Eve, they had been the only two of their kind, but now they knew there were more. He knew it was a terrible idea to be sleeping with her. Yet his mind was haunted with memories of them having sex. Every day he vowed to stop, and almost every night the vow was broken. It had been going on like this since meeting up with her on the outskirts of St. Louis. The location had been selected as a staging point for the final phase of their hunt. Before then, all that had been on his mind was the singularity. The first time they had sex had been so unexpected and in many ways so long in coming.

Before arriving in St. Louis, Mark had vowed to let nothing interfere with his pursuit of the singularity. Sarah, if anything, was complicated. She was unpredictable, half his age, impulsive, and even dangerous… and she had been one of his volunteer subjects at the BVMC lab. This sexual adventure had already gone too far. When it ultimately ended there would be no escaping the fallout. His original vow had been smart and responsible, but when had he ever been smart when it came to women? The vow had ended without even a moment’s resistance when Sarah had hugged him not so innocently as they’d rendezvoused on that street in St. Louis. At that moment he’d known a fuse had been lit inside them both. That first night they’d wrestled until the sun had risen and left the hotel bed in shambles. Had they used birth control then? He could not remember. How could he not remember? It was all a blur and he knew there was no hope for him. His craving for her warmth grew with the passing of the sun of each new day. Perhaps he needed someone who could understand all he was going through. Before breaking off with Kathy, she had made it clear she would never try to become a hybrid. She feared losing her humanity and the creativity that only mortality could kindle. He replayed memories of Kathy, which were photographically engraved in his nanotech brain as his confused eyes finally closed, accepting sleep.

Mark Freedman – Chicago Protectorate – January 31, 0002 A.P.

Mark was walking rapidly down the sidewalk, brusquely passing people who kept getting in his way. Sarah was moving just as fast through the crowds. He was alive with energy. The solution had come to him in a lucid dream in which he was fully conscious but not in control. In the dream he had found the singularity using an assist. He knew the solution would work the same way in waking reality. Over the past two years he had learned there was little difference between being fully aware in dreams and the awareness called reality. The key difference was that in dreams objects were not anchored by dense physical matter and as a result could easily morph. A house could change colors or writing in a book could alter itself. He had grown to consider dreams powerful allies and consensual
reality not so consensual. Even in grave situations, witnesses often saw and reported very different things in consensual
reality.

Mark was feeling the strain in his legs from keeping up the rapid pace. The sun was just rising, filling in the gray shadows between buildings. He recognized the block he’d just turned down. Elevated train tracks crossed the street at the end of the block. The steel girders of the elevated track had streaks of rust running down them and around the rivets. Several parts had been covered with Day-Glo graffiti. There were shops on both sides of the street. He stared for a moment at a tavern named McGees that seemed oddly out of place because it was teeming with customers. In a city known for its great food, most of the bars and restaurants were out of business. Nearly all the rest had been converted into the government run cafeterias that fed the citizens of the protectorate for free.

“Tell me!” demanded Sarah.

“When we get there,” said Mark.

“Why the secrecy?”

“What if they’re spying on us through the god-machine?”

“They? What
they
?”

“The tribe of hybrids. What if they don’t want to be found?”

Mark could feel himself nearing the vortex, the wall of the cyber hurricane. He stopped walking and examined the ordinary looking street. He could feel the vortex a few yards in front of him, pulling on his thoughts. A heat wave or mirage or something  should have marked the boundary, but there was nothing. People on the street were walking right through it as if it was not there. Mark concentrated on the n-web surrounding him. In response, a three dimensional assist was constructed around him showing the network pathways of the n-web. Same as before, the computer rendering was noisy like a bad television signal. On the other side of the vortex the pathways became distorted, eventually fading out. Just as he had done in the dream, Mark walked backward until the noise was gone from the geo-projected rendering. He stared at the vortex’s boundary and was excited that he now had enough resolution to clearly see the pathways fading out. The tendrils of the distorted fadeouts were all pulled in the same direction toward the singularity, like smoke trails in the wind. Using a GPS compass app in his Droid, he noted the direction in which the smoke trails were pointing.

They hiked a few blocks over and repeated the same procedure. After an hour of walking the edge of the vortex, Mark had identified on a mental map a spot where all the lines intersected.

“Got you!” he said as he sent a memory of the map to Sarah.

“That’s a residential block. What now? Do we go knock on their door?”

“We go slow. You saw my memories of that psychopathic hybrid. That might be who answers the door.”

“He knew you were a hybrid and didn’t shoot,” said Sarah.

“I feel better already.”

They soon reached the block that contained the singularity. Deep inside the vortex, they had lost all ability to use memory capsules and most other networked functions. It was lunch hour and the streets carried a steady stream of people. They were in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods of Chicago, the Gold Coast. Lake Michigan was less than two blocks east. Mark took in a deep breath of cold lake air and felt momentarily refreshed. One side of the street of historic multimillion dollar townhouses had been wrecked during the plague fueled riots. Fire and small explosions had reduced some of the priceless real estate to vacant lots of charred brick and unrecognizable debris. The other side was mostly unscathed. As they slowly walked amid the small clusters of people, Mark picked out the ever present surveillance cameras with their directional microphones. At any moment one could be aimed toward them. The message from the USAG was clear. The Enforcers were always watching and listening. He’d tried to act as inconspicuous as possible, but without memory capsules they had to whisper to avoid being overheard by Enforcer surveillance. They had already passed through dozens of RFID checkpoints on their way to this block. Each checkpoint had invisibly reached out and touched their bracelets. In some gigantic computer database resided this entire peculiar walk from start to finish of two newcomer counterfeit doctors.