The Beam: Season Two (59 page)

Trying to regain her composure, Natasha struggled to finish the song. Singing became difficult. She saw black-clad, black-helmeted men gathering at the room’s edges. They placed themselves at regular intervals like good soldiers, large black guns in their hands.
 

Guns. Fucking guns!
 

Natasha fought a knot, gnarled and wanting to swell inside her. She had to find Jane, wrap her delicate, manicured nails around her tour manager’s throat, and squeeze until the woman couldn’t breathe. She had to…

All at once, Jane’s security force broke ranks and surged forward. Their black visors shimmered and became holo projections of Guy Fawkes masks.
 

They weren’t security after all. They were Beamers…or worse.

One of the men in black rushed into the room’s center while the others pressed the crowd inward. Natasha had stopped singing and stared moving backward onstage, gape-mouthed. After a moment, she looked back, fighting déjà vu as she waited for Jane to summon her to a hover. But as the curtains parted, she didn’t see Jane or James. Instead, she saw another of the men in black, his holo-projected Fawkes mask smiling its idiot smile. In his hands was a large black slumbergun. He wasn’t pointing it at her, but his meaning was clear:
Stay where you are, and watch what happens
.
 

The first man in black had reached the room’s approximate center. He threw something hard at the floor, and there was a flash not unlike an ancient magician’s incendiary. Rather than simply exploding into flash and smoke, a concussive wave knocked a circle of concertgoers to the floor, each falling back into unconsciousness. Or death.
 

When the smoke cleared, the man in black was still standing in the area he’d cleared, somehow protected from his own device. He held one hand aloft on a stiff, straight arm. There was something in his black-gloved hand. It was a stunner. If he activated it and set it off, half the crowd would paint the walls in crimson.

“Listen up!” said the man, shouting from behind his visor, his mask’s eyes pointed toward the Beam camera parked in the room’s corner. His voice had the curious electronic affect that all Beamers shared, amplified by the helmet’s speakers so he wouldn’t sound muffled. “Null has tired of the posturing surrounding the sham of Shift! We represent the faceless millions! You are fed a ceaseless stream of propaganda from both parties, and The Beam tells you this is reality. But it is not! It is contrived! Enterprise does not matter! Directorate does not matter! Null knows, and we are legion! You do not see it because he who controls the feed controls the world! But we will no longer be held down! It is not a matter of numbers! You are shammed by a few, but they are almost none and we are many!”
 

The crowd — beyond the unconscious circle surrounding the terrorist — seemed to be terrified into paralysis. Women were clutching their husbands. A few of the husbands (and this made Natasha think of Isaac) were clinging to their wives for support. Everyone in the crowd was trying to become invisible. Natasha, who’d so recently wanted to be open and raw, found herself standing exposed without any skin.
 

The man in the mask looked at the camera then pointed back toward Natasha.
 

“Manipulation!
You think this is about charity? It’s about changing minds!
Your
minds, out there across the NAU! Natasha Ryan is Directorate, and is richer than you could ever dream. After Shift, she will be Enterprise, and she will
still
be richer than you could ever dream! Your actions choose your masters, and this bitch is nothing but a piece on
their
board!”

Natasha felt herself wanting to protest. He’d turned to face her, but if he was a Beamer, he’d been able to see her even when his head was turned. Beamers didn’t believe in the real world. They believed in The Beam and trusted it to show them what was most important.
 

“Stand up!” the man shouted. “Wake up, and fight for what’s yours!”
 

He wasn’t talking to Natasha or to the people around him, still unconscious and unable to stand. It was metaphorical, and for some reason made Natasha furious.
She
was posturing? What about them, speaking in revolutionary metaphors?
 

She looked back. The Beamer behind her had lowered his gun’s muzzle and was pointing it at her. There were two more Beamers at the stage’s sides. She was pinned. Trapped onstage, in the open, like a sacrifice.
 

The man on the floor pointed at her then moved closer. In a lower voice, he said, “Come over here.”
 

“No.”
 

“Come over here,” he repeated.
 

Natasha backed up a half step. High heels clacked on wood. “No.”
 

A gun at Natasha’s back shoved her from the rear.

“Come forward now,” said the first man, “or I detonate this.”
 

“You wouldn’t dare.” Natasha felt insane with bravado. Her heart was triphammering in her chest, but by West, she felt
alive
.
 

“I would. I will.”
 

“You’ll never get out alive. Police are outside.”
 

“Police with scrambled feeds. We will get away clean, I assure you. Now come the fuck over here before we have to cut you in half.”
 

“You need me. You won’t kill me.”
 

“How exactly do we
need
you?” said the Beamer, his voice disbelieving. Watching his holo mask was surreal. The goggling Guy Fawkes mouth didn’t move, but Natasha couldn’t help but imagine the mustachio’d symbol of anonymity mouthing the words.
 

“You want me to come over. You’re going to make a spectacle of me. If you wanted me dead or down, you’d have shot me already. Or you’d have ignored me. I won’t play your game.” She shook her head. She was no one’s puppet. Not anymore. She was Natasha Ryan, reborn.

The Beamer at the foot of the stage, hand still high and clutching the stunner, shook his head in an exasperated gesture she could see in the turn of his neck below the mask. Behind his helmet, he’d almost certainly just rolled his eyes.
 

“Kick her over here,” he said to the man behind Natasha.

Natasha looked back, ready to tell the encroaching soldiers to fuck themselves, but then she heard a slumping noise as her head turned. By the time she was looking fully backward, the Beamer had fallen into an untidy pile, his Fawkes mask flickering away, turning back to the shiny black of his helmet visor. A moment later, the same happened to the Beamers flanking the stage.

Natasha looked forward. The man at the foot of the stage seemed unsettled. The hand holding the stunner started to shake. If it was already activated and he dropped it, half of the room would be dead. Luck of the drop would decide which half.
 

“What did you do?” said the man. His smooth manner was buckling. His hand shook. His hold on the stunner started to falter. Natasha found her mind filled with an insane thought: Could she grab the stunner from his hand? And if she could, was there anywhere safe that she could throw it in time?
 

Around the room’s edges, Beamers’ knees unlocked and sent them sliding to the floor. Soon, the man in the middle was the only intruder still standing.

“What did you do?”
he yelled.

Before Natasha could answer, his grip failed, and his hand opened. The stunner’s dead man’s switch opened, and the device’s live half — currently facing away from Natasha — started to flash.
 

The crowd screamed.

Natasha lunged. Her heel caught, and she tripped. She struck the floor then looked up, trying to right herself. Her mind began counting. How many seconds before a stunner blew? They were designed to be held, not thrown, fired off in just one direction. It might not have long of a fuse.
 

Two seconds. Three.
 

But before she could so much as prop herself up to reach for it, the perfectly circular haze of a police containment force field shimmered into existence around the stunner. The field’s operator had either poor or excellent aim because he made the field too large. It encapsulated the stunner and most of the Beamer’s arm, but it swallowed three quarters of his head as well. When the field formed, it was as if someone had severed the Beamer at the boundary with one quick slice. His one-armed, quarter-headed body spasmed then folded to the floor and poured blood as if from a spigot.
 

Fascinated, Natasha watched the head, arm, and weapon inside the floating field as it hovered in front of her. The surprised-looking head, its visor askew, lolled to the side. She could see where the man’s jawbone had been molecularly separated from its remainder. The surreal sight lasted only a second, and the stunner blew. There was a soundless flash as the field was bathed in a perfectly circular black char. Then the thing popped like a bubble, and there was rain of coal-colored dust that had once been flesh and bone.

“Clear!” shouted a voice.
 

Natasha suddenly realized she was very, very tired. The crowd seemed equally exhausted. Everyone in the room began falling unconscious to the floor.
 

Gas,
she thought.
They hit the Beamers with nano soldiers then gassed the room to be sure.
 

It had to be the police. Directorate, savior police. And then, sure enough, the far doors burst open, and a line of riot officers wearing gas masks stormed the room, guns up and waving.

In her final conscious moments, Natasha realized that someone was touching her hair. She tried to look up but couldn’t lift her head. The hair-toucher seemed to realize this and bowed into her line of sight.
 

It was Isaac, wearing a small mask and a riot vest.
 

“Good morning, baby,” he said.
 

But it was nighttime.
 

And with that thought, Natasha did the only sensible thing and fell asleep.

Chapter 6

Leo practically grabbed Leah by the arm and dragged her into his house. She was walking by, and he’d been waiting for her. He felt relatively sharp after having dosed, but also foggy. That was good. As recently as just a few days ago, he hadn’t felt any clouding effects, but that was because the dust had its claws in him. Now, with his head clearer, he could see the addiction — and the mental addling — for what it truly was.
 

“Leah,” said Leo.
 

“In a minute, Leo.”

“Leah,” he repeated, as if she hadn’t replied.
 

“Literally one minute,” she said.

Leah was still trying to walk, tapping madly on her mobile, as Leo held her forearm. Leo, calm but simultaneously frazzled by what Dominic had told him and what might be coming, felt infuriated looking at the device. She was in an Organa village, for shit’s sake.
 

Leo reached out and slapped her mobile. It dropped into the dirt.
 

“What the fuck?” she said.
 

Feeling a quarter of his age (apparently, dust put a weight on your shoulders that you didn’t feel until it was gone; who knew), Leo bent down and snatched the mobile before Leah could. He turned to his house and tossed it inside.
 

“Fetch.”
 

“What the hell, Leo?”
 

He was already behind her, pushing. He realized he was somewhat manic, but he had an excuse. Leo was detoxing, and his village was about to descend into violent anarchy. Mania was the least of his worries.

Once inside, Leah retrieved the mobile, inspected it for damage, and dusted it off on her sarong. Then she resumed looking up at Leo like he was insane.
 

“I stand by my ‘What the hell.’”
 

“This is an Organa village, and you’re walking around like someone in DZ, picking at your goddamned handheld. Do you have any idea how that looks?”
 

“Noah West, Leo. Dominic was just doing it. And Crumb.”
 

“You mean York.”
 

“Yes, whatever. York.”
 

“Dominic isn’t Organa, and Crumb — I mean York — isn’t himself. Or I guess he finally
is
himself. People look at Dominic the way Amish people would look at a yuppie — baffled but tolerant. And they look at York like…well, like Crumb.”
 

“What’s a mish?”

“Amish,” Leo corrected.

“That’s what I said. Mish. And what’s a yuppie?”
 

Leo shook his head, still feeling himself slipping too close to mania. His movements were too speedy, overly eager. He’d pay for this tomorrow, when his old bones and muscles caught up.
 

“Look,” said Leah. “I just need to answer some mail. Or
watch
for mail. It’s stuff you’d approve of. You of all people, Leo.”
 

“You can’t walk around with a fucking handheld, Leah. People are on-edge already.”