Ruins of the Fall (The Remants Trilogy #2) (5 page)

“You’re afraid the AI will take over and go rogue?” I say, my throat burning from the grounds.

Atlas shakes his head. “It still comes down to men. Whoever controls that type of power—they’ll be able to see a hundred moves ahead. A thousand. Imagine having the counsel of Galileo, Newton, Einstein, multiplied a thousand fold.”

My history is a little rusty, but that doesn’t sound like a team you’d want to go to war against.

“Why would Matt even build that,” I finally say, in barely a whisper.

“Think of the possibilities an AI like that could achieve. It could fix the world, in the correct hands. Solve all our problems. Imagine having the intelligence of a thousand Matthew Stokes, all working to benefit humanity.”

I nod, but still say, “But it wasn’t worth the risk.”

“But it was,” Atlas says, “because if his first plan failed, your brother had this failsafe.”

“I’ll be sure to thank him for that.”

Atlas’ face darkens. “I don’t think your brother can help.”

It hasn’t really occurred to me, but I’m not shocked when he says it. No reason to keep his consciousness around. “Yeah, I know, Matt’s gone.”

Which means triggering this failsafe is really up to me. It’s weird, how this ridiculous hallucination I told Jana about is quickly becoming reality.

“I think your brother wanted something more for humanity than just to survive. He wanted us to thrive.” Atlas rises suddenly, startling me enough that I almost drop the mug. At first I think it’s because something is happening outside—Blackstone’s men have tracked us, and we’re about to be lit up.

Instead, he gives me a reassuring nod, then disappears from the room. A creaky door opens and footsteps pad down the basement stairs. I listen to Atlas shuffle around and mutter to himself about where he left everything.

My eyes narrow, focusing on the tiny pill that Atlas retrieved earlier. He still hasn’t mentioned what the hell it’s for.

Atlas returns, bearing a stack of computer printouts. The veins in his sinewy forearms pop out from the weight out of the papers.

“I managed to compile and analyze the part of the HIVE source your brother left,” Atlas says. “Against Vlad’s explicit instructions, but you know.” He shrugs. “You understand.”

He takes the final sheet from the bottom of the stack. Pushing it across the table, he says, “Along the bottom. You see that line of code?”

“I guess,” I say, looking at what amounts to nonsense. Computer programming was never my thing. I always considered myself more of a social engineer. “You mind translating?”

“It’s the final check before the program runs. It’s checking for the HoloBand in your neck—and it looks for either your DNA signature or Matt’s.”

“I already knew I was the key.”

“But underneath it,” Atlas says, his finger tracing to the last line of code, “this is a file that was uploaded on to the band. I think it’s what’s causing your hallucinations. Some of them, at least.”

“What do you mean, some of them?”

“Something this complex, there’s glitches, you know,” Atlas says. “People react in different ways. Some people don’t take to it.”

I feel he’s seeing I have a weak constitution, but I don’t pursue the subject. “Jana has the band,” I say. “I don’t think installing it again is really an option.”

“They’d track us here in minutes if we did that,” Atlas says. He runs his hand through his gray hair. “But I don’t need the HoloBand.” He pushes the pill across the table. “All I need is you and your subconscious.”

“I’m not taking that.” I stare at the crimson tablet. “I don’t know what the hell it is.”

“Think of it as a way to awaken dormant memories,” Atlas says, tapping the side of his temple. “Like the one that Matt’s code downloaded into your head the minute you jacked into HIVE.”

“Look, man, I’m not taking this,” I say. “My head is already fucked up.”

I go to rise from my seat. His fingers clamp down on my wrist—kind of like how a dog lets you know that it can hurt you, if need be. But his threat isn’t one of physical violence.

“From what I hear, Vlad isn’t too fond of you.” Atlas raises an eyebrow, confirming this.

I stare at the pill and a ripple of anxiety washes over me. What if it doesn’t hold the answers? What if I’m just screwed? I grab it and feel it scratch against my dry throat on the way down.

“How long,” I say.

“Not long.”

Thirty seconds later, the kitchen disappears.

Reality is a tenuous notion, one constructed of lies and half-truths. Even the world we see, on a very real level, is a lie. The way our optic nerve functions, there’s actually a massive chasm in our vision. Our mind creates this image of complete reality by filling in the blanks like a coloring book.

This thought, makes me realize that I’m under the influence of Atlas’ pill. Because it’s not so much
my
thought as
Matt
’s—a string of his memories and ideas, compressed into a single montage.

Hopefully it’s a more detailed version of the failsafe that Atlas thinks is real. Otherwise not only am I dead, but humanity will suffer, too. And I’ve had enough flipbook-like hallucinations for one day already.

“You’ve got the fastest tongue I know. Use it to be clever. Defend yourself by outthinking them.” Eight year-old me blinks across the table, grubby from getting beaten up and embarrassed day after day. That moment must have been important to Matt, too. Then the scene shifts, whirling through Matt’s life. Early days at Gifted Minds, some fun experiments with Andrew Marshwood.

The sensation is somewhere between watching a film and experiencing it. The memory reel speeds up, so fast that I can’t make out distinct moments. I see Chancellor Tanner, the Origin Point, Inner Circle meetings. These apparently hold little value in this little memory story. I suspect they are only there for contrast—to remind me of what is at stake should I not fix HIVE.

Nothing stops until close to the end—a week before Matt ultimately died. He’s distributing the HIVE source drives, intent on creating a stalemate that will bring some semblance of equality between the factions—or, if some good-hearted person is clever enough, a better tomorrow on the back of the HIVE mind.

Midway through, after his visit to the Remnants, Matt takes a detour. One not mentioned in his journal, or uncovered by any of those trying to track his movements.

Matthew Stokes travels to the Western Stronghold. A hundred miles south of Seattle, close enough to our old home that it hurts.

He—I—wipes the dust off a sign, the weather-worn letters scraping against my palm. It reads GIFTED MINDS RESEARCH INSTITUTE, WESTERN DIVISION. Just like my hallucination, but this time less disconcerting. More tangible.

It’s proof.

Finally, the memory flashes to a single sheet of paper. I see the hand trace out triple helixes—Matt’s insignia—and then a stream of words flow across the crinkled surface from the fountain pen.

If the wrong person gets HIVE, a good man will know what to do.

Then everything goes black.

I wake up covered in sweat, mumbling to myself. Atlas pats me on the shoulder, and I recoil.

“It confirmed what you thought,” Atlas says. It’s not a question. I assume, somewhere in his streams of data analysis, that he already drew this conclusion long ago. He was simply waiting for me to arrive in order to prove that the failsafe existed.

Some gamble. A million things could’ve gone differently, with me never reaching him. What then? Would he have tried to piece together an image from the code, translate the ones and zeroes into a memory?

No. He didn’t need me to prove its existence.

He needs me to go and find it. Because soon, he will die—and his kids don’t have a mother to look after them while their old man spends his last days sifting through ash.

I breathe heavily, trying to regain my composure. He hands me a cup of iced coffee. I drain it in one gulp and sit upright. The farmhouse’s kitchen comes back into focus. A simple wooden table, the buzz of the decades-old refrigerator.

Through the open door to the hallway, I can see two pairs of eyes peeking out, filled not with fear, but with wonder.

“Your dad has amazing drugs,” I call out.

Atlas slaps me on the ear. “Jana said you were a wise ass.”

“It’s kept me alive.”

“Can’t argue with that.” He helps me to my feet. It takes a minute to get my bearings, but soon the room is just a room. Familiar old reality.

Well, not quite. There’s a dog in the corner panting who looks suspiciously like Ramses. He barks when I look at him.

“You don’t have a dog, do you?”

“No,” Atlas says. “We had to put him down last year.” He turns towards the corner, following my gaze. “The hallucinations are getting worse, aren’t they?”

I stare the smiling dog in the face and say, “Fuck.”

Atlas disappears, leaving me with Ramses. The dog sidles over, and I feel every bit of his hundred-pound frame against my leg.

I find myself whispering, “This isn’t real, this isn’t real.”

Atlas returns, and Ramses even turns to look at the newcomer. Growls at him. I rub my forehead and try to stare at the ceiling. But the endless panting echoes in my ears no matter how much I try to ignore it.

He has a thick red folder filled with printouts. Atlas sifts through them, muttering.

“Yes, I think there’s a glitch in the code,” Atlas says, after what seems like hours. He hands me one of the sheets. “Line 267,762. You see it?”

“Just explain it to me.”

He rubs his gray hair and shrugs. “I understand. It’s been a long day for you.”

Ramses barks, and I jump. “I’m not a computer programmer, so if you could—”

“It’s hard to tell whether your brother meant to do this, or if it was simply a slip,” Atlas says. “Almost every line of the program is flawless.”

“So it’s a feature, not a bug.”

Atlas raises his eyebrow at me. “Thought you said you didn’t code.”

“I lived with someone who did for a long time,” I say, remembering Matt’s nerdy T-shirts. “I heard all about it.”

“I think it’s to remind certain people,” Atlas says. “That the real world is better than HIVE.”

So maybe it’s not that my constitution is weak after all.

In the ultimate ironic twist, I just love authenticity so much that my brain is violently rejecting the pleasantness of a fake existence.

“So it’ll go away?”

“Who knows,” Atlas says. “In the beginning, when they rolled out HIVE, there were quite a few…complications.”

“You mean deaths.”

“Yes,” Atlas says. “It seems some people’s minds just aren’t built for such stimuli. Consider hallucinogens. One man becomes a monk, gaining infinite insight. Another man thinks he’s a glass of orange juice for the rest of his miserable days.”

“Lovely,” I say, as Ramses chases his tail. “And the cure?”

“Wait it out,” Atlas says. “I wish I had something else to offer.” He reaches over the stack of papers and extracts a single sheet. Hands it to me. “Keep this safe. And get to the Gray Desert as quickly as you can.” He points upstairs. “Get some rest. You’ll need it.”

I don’t protest. I fold the paper into a rectangle and then slide it into my back pocket. As I trudge wearily up the stairs, eyes beginning to grow heavy, I do wonder about one thing.

Atlas’ tone when he said
you’ll need it
.

What’s coming next that requires me to be well-rested?

My question is answered the next morning when I wake up handcuffed in a swamp of my own sweat.

“You can’t be serious,” I say, twisting to evade Jana’s grasp. But she wordlessly drags me out of bed and down to the truck. We’re on the road before the sun even comes up. It feels a little unfair, being had in my sleep.

“You’re not going to say anything?” I shake my hands after five minutes of silence pass. “So that’s how it’s gonna be? Come on, we don’t have to kill the old man. You can just let me go.”

I’m also a little annoyed at Atlas for not giving me more warning. I thought we’d bonded. Not that I could’ve stopped her. All that military engineering would crush me. But not even giving me a chance feels a little unsporting.

Plus, when it’s necessary, I can run pretty damn fast.

So now I’m chained to the truck’s glovebox at a rather uncomfortable angle. One that doesn’t even allow me the luxury of leaning back into the seat.

“We talked about this,” I say, rattling the cuffs. They clink against the plastic. Jana shoots me a look that tells me if I try anything, she’s going to put my head through the window. “I thought you trusted me.”

“I believe you,” she says. “Trust is another matter entirely.”

“You talked with Atlas, right? You know I’m not leading you on.”

“So he says.” There’s a long pause. “He also mentioned you’re seeing things.”

“Fuck you,” I say, and put my both of feet against the plastic dashboard, using them as leverage to pull backwards. The front heaves and cracks, threatening to come off. I feel the truck swerve off road slightly as Jana reaches over to stop me.

I struggle against her hand, but she’s too strong. Goddamn science experiments. “This how you treat all your partners?”

“The ones I can’t trust, yeah.”

“We had a deal.”

“I don’t know about that,” she says. “But you’re the one who says we needed to gather an army. And this is the way to do it.”

I don’t see how putting me in handcuffs makes that task any easier. The only good thing about this situation is that no imaginary dogs or memory snippets are encroaching on my tenuous grip on reality.

“Don’t tell me you’re—”

“I’m taking you to Vlad. For your trial.”

“If you want to kill me, then do it now,” I say.

“Our people have a process,” she says, not bothering to explain further. “If I disappear, they’ll follow. I must face them. Him.”

“Cool,” I say. “We’ll face him together. Uncuffed.” My feet slide off the dash. Her grip relaxes, and an uneasy calm settles over the cab.

“I’ve already delayed your trial enough,” Jana says. “I can’t put it off any more.”

“Try harder.”

“There wasn’t going to be one at all. I got word last night that Vlad had accepted my compromise. Even getting him to entertain the idea of—what, an implanted memory—was almost impossible. He just wanted to execute you. Seeing as how you’re not worth much any more.”

“Check the news,” I say. “There’s a big bounty on me.”

“Not one that can help us, Luke,” she says. “It is what it is.”

“How refreshing,” I say. “Remind me why I’m trying to help you miserable assholes at all.”

“Because it’s the only way you can save yourself.”

I run my tongue over my teeth and shut my mouth. The truck bumps and grinds over the pitted road, each pothole making the cuffs cut into my wrists. Most people spend their entire lives searching for someone who sees straight through them. What they don’t realize, though, is it’s not quite what you expect it to be.

“Relax, Luke.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not about to die.”

“I’ll make Vlad understand.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Then you better think of a contingency,” she says, catching my eye in the rearview. “But you’re already working on that, right?”

I don’t answer, just try to tune out the groan of the engine by looking out the window and thinking happy thoughts. Only problem is, in a life filled with very few, the darkness seeps in pretty quick.

“Can I trust you to make him understand?” I say. “Tell me you’ll do what we discussed earlier.”

There’s a long, still silence, punctuated only by the rusty gears and punch of the truck’s old diesel engine. I desperately want to close my eyes, but the fragmentary hallucinations have me paranoid. Reality is a frightening enough proposition for the human animal without seeing things that aren’t there.

“However bad you thought your life was,” Jana says, with a quiet grit, “It’s nothing like ours.”

Fucking solidarity.

She’s going to stick with her people.

When you live day-by-day, life is but a series of temporary ordeals. Nasty, brutish and short. A permanent cure to extend the pain is neither desirable or even within the capacity of understanding.

I curl up against the window and close my eyes. No visions come.

I think about trust, and how relying on others always bites me in the ass.

And I decide that Jana Rose is right.

I’ll just have to make Vlad understand myself.

One way or another.