Going Dark (13 page)

I sense a shift. It’s a change in the state of the Universe. I swear my lungs stop, my heart stops, time stops. The vision I’ve manufactured of the skullnet ceases all glittering processes and freezes into bright stillness.

Vaguely, I’m aware of a squad icon in my field of view burning in emergency red, but I feel no concern. I feel nothing—until a loud
bang!
kick-starts time. There’s a scramble of motion: boots on the floor, voices. A shadow falls across my field of view, a face that I can’t focus on. It extinguishes my vision of the skullnet.

“Jesus Christ,” Logan says.

My heart slips out of suspended animation and starts pounding again.

“Pulse!” Dunahee shouts in triumph. “He’s coming back.”

All on their own, my lungs decide to breathe. My body reforms around me, heavy and distant. I let my eyes close like a kid who wants to be somewhere else.

“Shelley, look at me.”

Logan makes it sound like a desperate plea, so I do it. I open my eyes again, conscious of my own deep breathing. Logan is leaning over me, staring into my eyes. Dunahee is right beside him.
“What the fuck?”
I whisper.

“You were
gone
,” Logan says. “Your icon went red. No heartbeat. No respiration. Residual brain function.”

I shut myself down?

I sit up. Logan tries to stop me, but I push him away. “It’s okay. I’m
okay
.” In truth though, I’m not. A cold sweat
slicks my skin and soaks my T-shirt. I peel the shirt off and lean against the wall. “That was a mistake.”

“No kidding, brother! What the hell did you do?”

I hesitate, considering whether or not I should say what was going on in my head. “You thought I was dead?”

“You
were
dead.”

Through the open door comes the sound of running footsteps. We all look up as the base medic bursts in, wide-eyed, hauling a field kit. Confusion slows her down as she surveys the room. “Who’s the emergency?”

“It’s me,” I tell her. “But I’m okay. It was a mistake.”

Kanoa and Fadul come in behind her, and then some of the support personnel from downstairs. As the medic hesitates, unsure what to do, I look at Logan and think,
Secure this floor. No one but us.

He puts his hand out to stop the medic from getting closer.

“Lieutenant,” she says in a timid voice, “you need to let me check on him.”

Logan speaks over her without speaking at all, his artificial voice audible in my ears.
Are we under attack?

No. My fault. Secure the floor.

He locks down his expression, turns to the medic. “I have to ask you to leave, Specialist.”

“Sir—”

Kanoa takes over. “Everyone who is not 7-1, clear this floor and keep in mind that everything occurring on this base is classified and may not be discussed between yourselves or with anyone who is not a superior officer assigned to this facility.”

Within seconds, every outsider is gone. Kanoa gestures at Fadul. “Confirm the floor is clear.”

Logan watches me warily as I get up. “What the hell, Shelley? What was that about?”

“Like I said, it was a mistake.” I grab a bottle of water from the little fridge and drink half of it. “I wanted to see what I could do with the skullnet. It didn’t work out like I thought.”

Kanoa pulls out the desk chair and sits. “You were trying to shut it down, but you shut yourself down instead.”

Logan looks at me like I’m insane.

I shrug and sit on the bed.

Fadul reappears in the doorway looking shaken. “We’re secure and what the fuck, Shelley? Were you trying to check out?”

“No.”
It shocks me she would ask that.

“You were dead,” she insists. Her hands are shaking. I’ve never seen her so rattled before.

“It was an accident.” I turn to Kanoa—at least he looks composed—and I tap my head. “The icon’s supposed to tell me when the skullnet’s active, but it doesn’t. Not all the time. Not anymore. I want to know about the programming, Kanoa. I want to know who’s in control, who sets the baseline, who
resets
it—”

He stops me right there. “No one resets it, and I think that’s part of the problem. You’re not the same person you were two years ago, but you’re running on the same baseline.”

“Well, why doesn’t it get reset?” Logan asks.

Kanoa looks up at him. “Reset to what? How can we tell where the new baseline is, or where it would be if you weren’t using a skullnet?”

Fadul moves closer. Dunahee gets out of her way. “I want to know how Shelley took himself out,” she says. “I want to know why.”

She’s starting to piss me off, but before I can say anything, Kanoa intercedes. “He told you why. It was an accident. As for how, think about the sleep command. That’s
a physiological cue. It’s the first one you learn. But the AI in your skullnet can learn others. It’s a back-and-forth that you’re probably not even conscious of most of the time.” He turns to me. “You were trying to visualize the skullnet?”

I nod warily. “I was visualizing the processes slowing down.”

“Never think of an AI in human terms. Your embedded AI can oversee complex functions—nothing is more complex than the operations of the brain—but the AI itself is not especially complex. It does what it does and nothing else. It’s not self-aware and it does not contain a model of a skullnet as
hardware
. When you asked it to freeze the processes, you were asking it to effect an action in a dimension it can’t even conceive of. So it did the next best thing. It shut down the processes it can control.”

“You know a lot about it,” Fadul says.

I pick up on her suspicion. “You’ve done it yourself?” I ask him.

His eyes narrow. “We all make mistakes, but we can’t operate without the skullnet.”

“That’s for damn sure,” Fadul says, glaring at me.

“It was just curiosity.”

“And did you learn what you needed to learn?” Kanoa asks.

“Yes, sir. It won’t happen again.”

“If it does,” Fadul says, looking at Logan, at Dunahee, “no one bother waking him up, okay?”

Logan says, “Give it a rest, Fadul.”

She shrugs and walks out. Dunahee waits for the door to close behind her before he says, “I think she means it.”

I know she does.

After a few more minutes they decide it’s safe to leave me alone. I take another shower, and then I sleep for the duration of Christmas.

•  •  •  •

The next morning, I’m feeling better. I check in with Julian and talk to him for a few minutes. He’s healing, but he tells me the physician has advised him he’ll never be one hundred percent again, and he’s distraught at the real possibility that he won’t be with us on any future mission.

“Hey,” I tell him. “You never know. Look at me.”

That makes him laugh, which hurts. I tell him to rest, and we say goodbye.

The news from the Arctic is mixed too. The shooting is on hold, but fighter pilots are still challenging each other, while troops, no doubt poorly equipped, are being moved to encampments. I wonder who’ll get the blame when they start freezing to death.

After breakfast—after walking to and from the Cyber Center, listening to my feet clicking like a slowly shuffled deck of cards—I decide to see what I can do about it. I get out cleaning wipes, cotton swabs, and a can of pressurized air. Then I sit on my bed, detach my right leg, and start hunting in the joints of the foot for dust and debris. But I don’t find much. I think the joints are just misaligned. Joby Nakagawa, the engineer who designed and built my legs, swore I wouldn’t be able to break them, but he never promised I couldn’t wear them out—and the legs have seen a lot of action.

I’ve switched to working on my left leg when an alert pops up in my overlay. An email from Cory, with the report I requested. I fit the leg back into the knee joint and lock it in place. Then I open the report.

It’s daunting—forty thousand words with no summary. Cory must have hired out the research, because there is no
way he could put this much material together so quickly on top of his other tasks.

I push the cleaning supplies out of the way, lie back on the bed, and start skimming.

Over the next half hour, I learn that Jaynie and Delphi invested most of their stolen assets in a holding company they created. Kanoa is right about their association with Yana Semakova. Through the holding company, they have a significant investment in Torzhok NAO, an engineering and supply firm founded by Semakova and operating in the Arctic. My initial suspicion is that Semakova blackmailed them to secure the investment. But the facts dispute that. Torzhok has existed for seven years as a highly profitable company involved in cutting-edge projects in the Russian Arctic. It’s privately owned, much admired, and nowhere can I find any hint that it deals in weapons and armaments. So at least Semakova has not followed in her father’s footsteps.

Jaynie has another significant investment. She’s extended her military experience into the private sector, creating her own legally registered security company. A band of mercenaries, to protect her holdings and maybe her person. I hope they’re loyal.

Larger than either of these investments is a ten-percent share in a company called ShotFusion, Inc.—a privately held corporation created to launch a one-way Martian colonization expedition. They are well on their way to assembling the technology. A massive prototype rocket housed at the spaceport in San Antonio is undergoing extensive testing. The first crew could leave within two years.

My gaze sweeps over a list of twenty-four names: all those who presently hold a seat among the first three crews. Right away, I find the names that matter to me:
Larsen, Karin
and
Vasquez, Jayne
. So there’s no doubt. Jaynie and Delphi both are planning to leave.

But at least now I know—and in time to do something about it.

I go over the list in more detail, looking for familiar names, the names of dragons, but I don’t see any. I don’t see Yana Semakova’s name. But then I spot a name I never expected:
Flynn, Mandy
. My temper spikes. Private Mandy Flynn is no dragon. She’s still a kid, just twenty. Too young to throw her life away on a one-way venture to a dead planet.

I search for Aaron Nolan’s name—he’s the only other surviving member of the Apocalypse Squad—but to my relief, he’s not on the list.

At least one of us has some sense.

•  •  •  •

I go again to visit Cory in his office. This time he’s expecting me. He probably set up an alert to warn if I’m around. “Was there a problem with the report?” he asks when I walk in.

“No problem, but I’d like to expand on one aspect of it. I need a detailed assessment of security at ShotFusion’s facility in San Antonio.”

“Physical security?”

“Yes. Security at the physical location where the prototype rocket is housed. What would it take to run a mission there? One with a viable exit strategy?”

He looks perplexed. “We haven’t received orders for a mission like that.”

“Not yet,” I concede.

“Then why—”

“Look, you know the Red isn’t straightforward. It’s like some fucking oracle, hinting at this, warning at that. That’s why I’ve learned to trust my feelings—and I’ve got a bad feeling about this Mars colonization project.”

He’s looking worried. “What kind of a bad feeling? Are they under threat?”

“No. But the more I learn about the Mars project, the more I think they
are
a threat. It’s a matter of time before the order comes through. So I want you to work up a plan in-house—don’t contract it out—on the easiest, safest way to end development.”

“No. I . . . I can’t do that.” He starts to stand up, changes his mind, and sits back down again. “The Mars projects are not an existential threat.”

“I think they are.”

“Why?”

I don’t tell him my reasons. Instead, I explain it to him in a way I know he’ll understand. “Everyone visible, everyone accountable. Right?”

He gives me a reluctant nod.

“The only reason Jayne Vasquez is invested in this is because she wants to be invisible—out from under the influence of the Red—and that’s not acceptable.”

This time, he stands up. He takes three steps across the room. “Mars is the future,” he says, turning back.

“Maybe. But we need to secure this planet first.”

“If you think we’re going to get official orders—”

“I think we are. Orders will come through and then you’ll be ready. I’m just asking you to do the research. I’m not asking for support. Look at ShotFusion’s security. Find me a way in. You don’t need to do more than that. Not until it’s official.”

He’s worried and unhappy. “I’ll talk to Kanoa about it.”

I nod. “No secrets here.”

It’s a simple mission. No reason Kanoa wouldn’t approve.

•  •  •  •

Twenty minutes later, I’m in Kanoa’s office.

“Sit,” he says, glaring from behind his desk: government-issue gray steel with a paper map of North America on the top, pressed under a plastic panel.

I sit.

“You’ve let the incident at Tuvalu Station get under your skin.”

“What happened up there happened for a reason.”

“We had this discussion the night you got back. And you do
not
get to decide what Vasquez does with her money or her time. You do not get to develop your own missions. And you do not get to utilize 7-1’s analysts for your personal research. Is that understood?”

“So just do as I’m told and nothing more?”

“Come on, Shelley.”

“I need this. Karin Larsen’s name is on the crew list—”

“Your ex?”

“Yes. And there is no way I am letting her go.”

He leans back in his chair, crosses his arms, and in a clinical voice he asks, “Are you fucking crazy?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, I
am
fucking crazy. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t fucking crazy. I’d be with her.”

“Tuvalu really shook you up, didn’t it? You need to remember that
you
left her. You made that choice.”

“Was it a choice?”

“Don’t play that game now, Shelley. Not after all this time. No one forced you into this organization. You knew what was required of you from day one, and you made the choice. I don’t remember that it took a lot of persuasion.”