Soulminder (39 page)

Three days. It would be a little tight. But it would be doable, and that was all that mattered.

Three days from now, on the steps of the courthouse, Dr. Adrian Sommer would die.

At precisely one-forty on Friday afternoon, Jacobi emerged onto his chosen rooftop and began his preparations.

Normally, he would have arrived sooner, or at least have spent the previous day scouting locations and checking ranges and angles. But in this case, all that work had already been done. The courthouse steps really had only two good sites, and he’d checked both of them out thoroughly for the Chernov job.

At the time, he’d more or less flipped a coin to see which site he would use. This time, he’d decided to go with the other option.

In Jacobi’s profession, repeating oneself was never a good idea.

As was hanging around a job site too long, which was why he’d arrived as close to zero hour as he had. Hopefully, Sommer hadn’t decided to beat the traffic and get here early.

He hadn’t. Precisely twelve minutes after Jacobi settled in a convoy of three limos drove up to the courthouse and a dozen men and women climbed out.

In the center of the group was Sommer.

Pressing his cheek against the stock, Jacobi took a deep breath and held it. He thumbed off the safety, rested his finger lightly on the trigger and the crosshairs on Sommer’s chest, and waited for the moment.

The moment came. Sommer paused on the steps, turned to call to someone just leaving the limo.

Gently, Jacobi squeezed the trigger.

He waited just long enough to confirm the death blossom burst from Sommer’s chest. Then, back-crabbing away from the edge of the roof, he swung the rifle around toward its case—

And froze. Standing silently five meters behind him, gun out and ready, was Frank Everly.

Everly didn’t bother to tell Jacobi to freeze. Jacobi didn’t need to be told. “So that’s all this was?” he asked, hearing an unexpected edge of bitterness in his voice. He hadn’t expected his run to last forever, of course. But he’d never actually envisioned it coming to an end, either. Especially not an end like this. “Just a petty little entrapment ploy?”

“I don’t know what it is,” Everly said, his voice the darkness of fresh death. “I don’t know what Dr. Sommer was thinking when he set this up.”

Jacobi frowned. “You
knew
he set this up?”

“Of course I knew,” Everly growled. “You think I’m an idiot? I was listening through the hotel room door.”

“And you didn’t stop me?”

“The doc knows what he’s doing,” Everly said. “At least I hope so. I know he didn’t set this up just so he could die.”

“He can’t die. He’s on Soulminder.”

“Exactly,” Everly agreed. “So the question remains: why?”

“I suggest you ask him.” Jacobi nodded his head toward the edge of the roof. “Though today might not be a good day for that.”

“Actually, I’m thinking
you
might have the answer.”

“Sorry. Not a clue.”

“Don’t think I believe you,” Everly said. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

Jacobi shook his head minutely. “No.”

“No, you don’t have an answer? Or no, we’re not going to talk about it?”

Jacobi gave a small sigh. No, he hadn’t expected this to last forever. He’d also long ago resolved that when the end came, it wouldn’t be at the end of a rope, or an electrode, or a needle. Even more importantly, he wouldn’t be paraded like a prize goose before the lawyers and the press. He would go out on his terms, and no one else’s.

He’d managed to swing his rifle nearly halfway toward Everly when he felt the bullet smash through his chest.

And on
his
terms, and no one else’s, the darkness took him.

Sommer had been in Soulminder only once before, twenty years ago, after that crazy truck driver had run him down. And like any other half-remembered place after so many years, he found that things had changed.

The glowing tunnel was still there. So was the bright yet not hurtful Light in the distance.

But the last time he’d been here he’d been alone. Completely, utterly alone, as if there was no one else in the entire universe.

Now, he seemed to be surrounded by other people.

He couldn’t see them, of course. Not really. Only the tunnel and the Light were actually visible. But he could sense vague shadows, like the underworld shades he’d read about in the old Greek myths when he was a kid. There were no faces or bodies, just the essences of humanity all around him. He could sense them.

But more than that, he could sense their moods. Their thoughts. Their feelings.

Their souls.

For a few of the shades, the predominant emotion was anger. In others, it was fear, or frustration, or even a bleak numbness.

But for most of them, it was hope.

Because though their bodies were injured, sick, or dying, there was still hope. They were still here, and there was still a chance—for many of them, probably, a near-certainty—that they would be made whole again. That they would once again walk the green earth, and smell the air, and hug their loved ones.

Because of
him
. Because of him, and Soulminder.

And as the waves of quiet emotion flowed past him, Sommer realized that, somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten this. He knew on an intellectual level that Soulminder was saving lives, but he’d forgotten what that truly meant.

People weren’t simply numbers in a logbook, or even names and faces. They were more. Far, far more.

And Soulminder had given them hope.

But as he’d already noted, that hope was not for all of them. For some of them, hope had long since crumbled away.

It was time to fix that.

Sommer strengthened himself. And then, as loudly as a soul could shout, he shouted.

May I have your attention, please?

For a long moment he couldn’t tell if anything had happened. The code he’d written
should
allow this kind of communication between all the traps across the world. Possibly it was that code that was also allowing him to sense the other souls’ presence and thoughts.

But there had been no way to test it in advance. If he’d been wrong …

And then, he sensed the minds and hearts and souls turning toward him.
Who are you?
a sense of question flowed across him.
How do you speak thus with us?

I am Adrian Sommer
, he answered.
I created Soulminder to protect you, and to hold you until you could be made whole again.

There was a sort of stirring, and one of the swirling mixtures of anger and hopelessness seemed to come forward.
Yet we are not being protected
, it said.
Not all of us. Some are being held prisoner against our will. Some desire nothing more than to escape, and to move on from this world to the next.

I know that now,
Sommer said
. Please believe that I never intended this to happen. Without my consent or knowledge, my creation has been turned to evil.

Your words bring no comfort
, the voice said, turning accusing and bitter
. If you did not intend this, why do you not open our prison and let us go?

Sommer braced himself.
I have,
he said.
Your prison is now open. You may leave whenever you wish.

A ripple of fresh emotion passed through the shades.
We may leave?

Yes,
Sommer said.
I have added a provision to the traps in which you reside that will allow you to depart whenever you choose. You must push toward the Light, and keep on pushing. When you reach it, you will be free.

It is difficult,
the voice said doubtfully.

That is by design,
Sommer assured him.
I do not want anyone to leave accidentally or merely on a sudden whim. The door is only for those who truly have no more interest in the hope that Soulminder was meant to give the sick and the injured.

The voice fell silent. All the voices did. A sense of anticipation flowed over the assembled shades.

And then, slowly, the exodus began.

The first was one of the political prisoners who was being endlessly tortured. Sommer didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. The second was another prisoner, as was the third, the fourth, and the fifth. The sixth was an old woman whose family had forced her to continue living, despite her desire to die, so that the family business would stay in her sons’ hands instead of being transferred to the stockholders. The seventh was a man on death row who’d been stabbed by another inmate and just wanted it all to be over.

One by one, they left. Dozens, then hundreds. Sommer watched each of them pass by, feeling a deepening sense of guilt as he saw how many of them were prisoners. He’d known that Soulminder was being abused, but he’d never dreamed that the abuse was so widespread.

Still, most of the shades, over three hundred thousand of them, remained with him, watching the departures but making no attempt to join with them.

And with that realization, some of Sommer’s guilt began to ease. For the vast majority, Soulminder was still a source of hope.

As for the tyrants, they would quickly realize that their schemes had become useless. It was the tormented prisoner who now held the final card, not those who sought confession or information or even just revenge.

And with the exit door buried within five billion lines of Soulminder code, it might never be found.

Sommer had succeeded. His plan, and his code, had worked.

Not just for this moment, but forever. Now that people were moving along the path, the rest of the code had activated, permanently marking the way. From this time onward, anyone who wanted or needed to make that ultimate escape would be able to do so.

But there was still one more thing that had to be done.

Because the tyrants might not care that a few of their victims had escaped them. The relative handful of others who chose to leave might be chalked up to isolated glitches in the system. Certainly Jessica Sands and the Soulminder board would attempt to downplay the losses.

Sommer couldn’t risk that happening. The tyrants had to realize that Soulminder was no longer a one-hundred-percent guarantee that a prisoner casually tortured to death would not slip forever beyond their grasp. The casual body-borrowers who played with other people’s lives, dropping in and out of addicts or skydivers like they were putting on a suit of clothes, needed to believe that such a game might unexpectedly lead to their own deaths.

Prisoner deaths could be hushed up. Malcontent deaths could be rationalized away.

But there would be no rationalizing away the death of Dr. Adrian Sommer. Not after such a public attack. Not when everyone knew he’d already been into and come out of Soulminder once before.

And if Soulminder’s own creator wasn’t safe from accidental death, who else would ever be?

The Light looked like it was a long way away. But it wasn’t, really. Sommer pushed his way toward it, feeling like he was slogging through ankle-deep mud.

And then, suddenly, the Light was all around him. Bracing himself, wishing fleetingly that he’d had the chance to say goodbye to Everly and Sands and Blanchard, he threw off the last tenuous hold of the trap around him and gave himself into the Light.

And died.

… only, somehow, he didn’t.

He puzzled about it for a long time, floating there in the tunnel with the distant light and the isolation.

The
complete
isolation, and that was even more puzzling. Had everyone in Soulminder suddenly and irrationally decided to leave? Had his trap somehow become isolated from all the others? Had the techs tried to fix the perceived problem and accidentally dumped everyone from their traps?

Or, most horrifying of all, had Sommer’s code somehow crashed the system?

Time ran differently in Soulminder, so he had no idea how long he spent there. Mostly he used the quiet and isolation to run the code through his mind, tracing it line by line, character by character, searching for a flaw or unintended side effect.

He had tracked through it three times, and was in the middle of a fourth, when he finally figured it out.

It was therefore no surprise when he noticed that he was moving slowly backward, away from the Light. The Light faded away, and the world seemed to fade in around him.

He was back.

The first thing he saw as he blinked his eyes open were that there were three people facing him: Frank Everly, Carolyn Blanchard, and Jessica Sands. Their expressions were all alike, a mix of relief and seriousness.

The second thing he saw, what he’d deduced he
would
see, were the walls that surrounded all of them. The very recognizable walls of his own basement.

He took a deep breath, feeling his lungs and the surrounding muscle and bone cracking a little with the unaccustomed effort. “So,” he said. “The damn thing still works.”

“Of course the damn thing still works,” Sands said. Her voice was the same mix of emotions he’d already seen on her face. “You build things to last, Adrian. You always have.”

Sommer nodded, craning his neck to look behind him. A definite trip down memory lane: his first, original prototype Soulminder equipment. Gathering dust for two decades, but still clearly functional, and still programmed with his Mullner trace. All Sands and the others had had to do was turn it on, and he’d come straight here when he escaped from his trap in the main Soulminder system.

And isolated as it had always been from that system, the prototype hadn’t downloaded his new back-door exit programming. Once it had grabbed him, he’d been there for keeps.

And now the three most important people in his life were standing in front of him. No doubt expecting an explanation.

He’d never expected to have to put his reasons into words. Now, he was going to have to.

He focused on Sands. “You’re angry with me,” he said.

“I was,” she said evenly. “You cost us a lot of money, Adrian. A
lot
of money.”