Rupture (12 page)

“I won’t. I promise. The lords are—”

Rigon put a finger to her lips. “Not now. I can’t hear any more of that nonsense.”

Simone nodded. He was about the strongest, toughest, most reliable person she knew. He was the pinnacle of human technological invention. He could do things that would have looked like magic even twenty years ago. He was
Homo cybernetics
, but he was still human. He loved her and gave her warmth and comfort when she needed it, even though she knew he had been on the front lines and stared at the worst the Great Enemies had thrown at humankind. She was proud of her brother for facing them. But I think you’re wrong, Rigon, she thought. You’ve denied the entities inside you. I know you have. I know you chose to become … a cyborg. A machine man. And I know it has to do with the fact Dad is gone and all that happened with Jonen. But what Mom and I can do is real, and it’s important, and you’ll never understand.

The
enemies
, according to him, were the many forms of the Rogue AIs and their human Rogueslaves who did everything in their power to further their masters’ agendas. Simone conceptualized the Rogues as just a mask hiding a larger, more powerful (and less understandable) enemy: the Great Enemies, the Lords of Unreason, the Void Lords, etc. Either way, she knew the Rogues wanted to make humans into vermin so that they could stomp on humanity whenever they wanted. She wondered if her mother was correct that the actual scientific classification of what the Great Enemies were didn’t matter. If more incursions happened, things would be much worse, regardless of what anyone called them. Her mother and brother certainly didn’t agree on that small point. Her mother said all the technology her brother possessed would matter little if the Great Enemies incarnated here in mass. She said the only way to combat them was to be able to move between substrates: the physical and the mental.

“And that is why we use the entities and why your brother doesn’t,” her mother always said.

Simone sighed and tried to quit thinking about these difficult subjects. But the thought of her entities, her Lords of Reason, filled her with peace. She knew all she had to do was begin the mantras her mother had taught her and find a place where she could move through the steps of her psy-katas. Her entities would come like guardian angels. They would fill her with peace and strength so that she could face any difficulty. At least they had always come before ... .

Down the hall, Hutto was doing one-armed handstands and earning raucous encouragement.

“He remind you of anyone?” Rigon asked.

“Except he’s a bonehead, and you’re not,” she said. “Can I ask you something?”

“I don’t have any cash.”

“Were you and Mom always so different?”

“Mom was always like you. I wasn’t.”

“You just knew how to interface with computers?”

“Yes, but she wanted me ... to learn to do what you two do. What Dad did.”

“She’s no Interfacer, like you.”

“She has some rudimentary interfacing skills. But she can’t go anywhere as deep as I can. But Mom has gifts, valuable gifts, as do you. We’re all Wellborns. Remember that.”

“But people accept you. She and I are considered freaks.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that. But some of them down the hall there do have real problems.”

She knew he was talking about Hutto and Beasley, and maybe Kimberlee. “The world thinks we’re monsters.”

“Not at all,” he replied. “The bad things out there that we created, or the RAIs created, or the aliens, whoever, they’re the monsters. And they should be destroyed because they’re dangerous. But you Alters are something else. Mom and you will have to be examples.”

“What about Joss?” Simone asked.

Rigon remained impassive behind his shades. “Who knows what he can do. But I’m sure he’s got potential.”

Simone leaned in. “Kimberlee’s my friend, but she’s so scared of what she is.”

“She should be.”

“What can the Consortium do for a Succubus?”

“Hmm …”

“Isn’t this going to help us control—”

 Now it was his turn to move in. “I want you to understand something. The Consortium has a history of using and tossing people like Kimberlee aside. I’ve seen it happen. It’s not pretty. But some smart people think the Alters can be put to better use. I’m not so sure. All I know is you have to listen to Mom and do what she says and use whatever you can to stay safe. That’s it. Stay safe.”

He looked at her in that still way she knew meant he was scanning her. She knew he could see into her, could read every blood vessel and soft tissue, identify any genetic markers, even though she believed he would find nothing that would reveal the source of her mysterious lords. She wondered what he was looking at, as he lingered longer than normal.

“What?” she asked

He opened his mouth, as if he might say something. “Nothing. Just stay close to Mom in the days ahead.”

“I will.” After a pause, she asked, “What about them? They haven’t learned anything about themselves. Mom has been preparing me all my life.”

“They’ll have to learn quick, won’t they?”

“Why is that?”

Her brother patted her on the arm. “You’ll know soon enough.” He straightened. “I have to go.”

He blew her a kiss, then walked away.

* * *

Simone watched Principal Smalls usher the students away from her mother. Simone assumed it was because of her form-fitting, silver Consortium Bodyglove and metallic Mirrorshades, items most of the students ogled and some even asked to touch. Simone also watched Rigon waiting with his team down by the clinic. Keila and Mr. Vaughn had retreated to faculty housing, where the school always kept a few furnished suites for the Association Council.

Ralph and a few other annoyed maintenance guys walked into the clinic to clean it up. She realized everyone’s Friday night was over. Her mother and brother talked briefly, nodded to each other; then Rigon left without a hug.

Here comes the talk, Simone thought, as her mother approached.

Simone crossed her arms and prepared to dig in, expecting a tongue-lashing over her reckless denunciation of Joss as a child of the Dark Void and all that.

Instead, her mother removed her shades and rubbed her eyes. Simone could see the mirror-like reflection behind her irises that meant her optic nerves and retinas had been upgraded. It didn’t dehumanize her, no, but at odd moments, when the light glimmered just right, you’d see two flashes of solid, flat, golden circles looking back at you. For a moment or two, you’d be confused. Were you looking at a human or a machine, or a hybrid? She knew the answer. Her mother and brother and the fortunate others with intellect packages who’d extended their consciousnesses to merge with intelligent cybernetic data systems were the new power brokers in society. Their enemies called them cyborgs and their friends called them Cybertranshumans. They were on the front lines of every important battle being fought in the name of humanity. And her mother, with her own gifts, was one of the most powerful, if controversial.

Because she’s also an Altertranshuman.

“Sometimes I forget to take these data access shades off,” her mother said. “Let me look at you.”

She bent over, face to face with her daughter. Simone saw what she imagined herself to be one day: attractive enough, smart as can be, and driven. Her mother pulled Simone in and embraced her.

“You didn’t do that to Rigon,” she said. “I bet he still likes hugs.”

Her mother smiled. “He didn’t, either.”

“Why do you guys have to fight?”

“We don’t really fight.” Relenting, she said, “We just stand on different sides of most issues. He’s such a ... charming philistine.”

“He loves you.”

“Of course he does. We’re family.”

“Wellborns.”

“The last of us.”

Simone’s mother referred to her dead brother, Jonen. Simone never knew him; he’d been killed in a glad fight before she was born. Also, Skippard Wellborn, the father she barely remembered and the pioneer in creating the techno Rupture, was gone. And her mother and Rigon never talked about them. Never.

Simone considered stamping her foot and demanding to know everything. Why was she being recruited? How long would it last? What did being an Alter really mean? And why were the others involved?

“Come on,” Yancey said.

They found two empty seats by the administration offices. The hallways were deserted now but the lights remained on, as they would all night. Simone looked back up the hall toward the clinic. “What’s that thing down there that came out of Joss?”

Her mother toyed with her glasses. “Something very unpleasant.” She grasped one of her daughter’s hands in hers. “These types of rapid ... fabricators have been appearing all over the world for the last ten years. They gain entrance to our world through mistakes like Mr. Beckwith’s. I have spent almost every waking hour tracking these things and destroying what comes out of them.”

“You’re always gone. You like to travel—”

“My job is to manage what emerges before it can take root. Rigon’s job has been to handle my failures. His job is much harder. And that’s why he’s so concerned about Sterling. And why I am always gone.”

“What’s going to happen here, Mom? Why don’t we leave?”

“It’s not that simple. You’re part of it, dear.”

“What?”

“When Joss woke up with those brands, everyone here became involved. The Rogues see all.”

“I did talk to him.”

“Sure you did.” Her mother grinned with what looked like pride. “And that’s why I’m here. You’ve become a person of interest, dear.”

Her mother scanned her like Rigon had done, and she knew, just knew, her mother saw something frightening.

“I’m—”

“Have the lords spoken to you since you visited that boy?”

Simone thought back to the last time she’d been in the ball. They’d said nothing. A moment of panic seized her. She grabbed her belly, as if she’d eaten too much ice cream, the anxiety that her lords had abandoned her too much to bear. Her mother saw it and put an arm around her daughter.

“I didn’t think so,” her mother said.

“But I ... just went to talk to him.”

Her mother released her. Simone recognized the posture of tough love her mother seemed to always adopt. “What have I always told you?”

“When in the presence of the irrational, use the mantras and katas.”

“They provide bulwarks against the seen—”

“—and unseen.”

“But first?”

“Avoid contact.”

Simone realized her mistake: She’d assumed she’d had protection when talking to Joss. “What about everyone else who talked to him?”

“Oh, all of Sterling is in danger as well, but it doesn’t matter for them like it does for our Alters, for you. We’ll have to watch them. But an Alter of your caliber … well, the Rogues are salivating to get their fangs in you. You’re a Wellborn, dear.”

Simone’s breath caught in her chest at the look her mother gave her.
I’m a target.
The tears welled from the frustration of not communing with the lords, of her mother’s arrival and announcement, of what she’d just learned.

“It gets worse, dear,” her mother said. “You might want to save those tears for when you really need them.”

Simone looked up at the cruelest person in the world. “Worse?”

“Yes, dear. I’m pretty sure they’ll come for you tonight.”

* * *

Yancey knew she was pushing her daughter, and pushing hard, because Little-Miss-Know-It-All and all-around terror Simone Wellborn thought she was a princess but had no idea she had been marked by the Rogues. Rigon had verified it, and even with Yancey’s limited interfacing abilities, she could still see the imprimaturs the nanobots had left on her daughter. All the trouble she’d caused in the last few years boiled down to this night-of-nights when her daughter would learn why her mother had been so hard on her and why she’d followed her husband down this thorny path. But her daughter looked like she might crack.

“I’m here with you, Simone, but you need to see what it is you were born to do.” Yancey wiped the tears from her daughter’s face. Those ridiculous pigtails sticking out of her head at the sides would have to go. But she kept that to herself, although she thought her daughter did look like a squaw with an attitude, and she did like that. “Tonight, I’ll be by your side, and you’ll see what must happen for you to learn to summon.”

“I get to summon tonight? How do you know?”

“It’s time—”

“No, that something will happen tonight.”

Yancey released her and looked up the hall where a Rogue Maker sat waiting to release its ... information. She had seen almost one hundred of these in the last few years, each one bearing a sigil. The man with his head in his ass meant something very human and something very personal. They want us to think we’re stupid, she thought. They want to degrade us. This’ll be a domination contest as a prelude to something bigger. 

She watched her daughter, who no longer shivered but who looked like she needed a good bedtime story to scare away her fear. 
No bedtime story for you tonight, dear. Sorry.

Yancey Wellborn had known from the first moment that her daughter showed signs she wasn’t just a Transhuman that she would do great things. An Altertranshuman psy-sorceress like her mother. And now it was time to grow up.

“There are a few things, dear, you need to know before they come. First, the Rogues are ugly, very ugly.”

* * *

The first time Yancey Stinchcomb Wellborn saw an RAI incursion, she’d been newly recruited to battle the RAIs by the U.S. government branch of the International Consortium Cybercorps Defense Force. She was a woman just out of graduate school with a special talent. However, the tough Special Services military personnel she’d been teamed up with didn’t give her a second look. These were ex-U.S. Deltas and British S.A.S. There was even a Russian Spetsnaz and two German Commandos. The flight in the fuselage of a Lockheed Hercules cargo plane from Bolling in Washington to a small town of Farmington, Ohio, passed without a single word from any of them.

She was just a green intelligence agent forced on them in these dangerous, unknown circumstances. When they stormed into a barn on a quarantined farm, she followed in the back of the line as fast as she could. They all wore top-of-the-line storm cy-gear and weaponry. They fanned out and formed a semicircle around a twisted brownish stone. This one, her first Rogue Maker, also had the same sigil she’d later come to see at her daughter’s new school.