The Complete Karma Trilogy (35 page)

Karma answered for them, inside of Will’s head. “They didn’t.”

“Are you talking to them as well?” Will asked.

“Only you. Don’t tell them.”

Will found Marcus, and told him that it was time to blow the mansion up and move on.

“But we haven’t found anything yet,” Eric objected.

“Then there’s nothing to find.”

“Fine. Give me some of the explosives, and I’ll put them around.”

Will retrieved the bag he had been carrying, from where he left it at the entrance. He gave a few small bundles to each of the others, and they placed them around the house before leaving.

They all got into the Helicar, and when they were a safe distance away, Will pressed a button on a remote that detonated them all. A large, spectral fire consumed everything, lighting up the world below them. When the light faded, there was nothing left. Will was satisfied.

The voice in his head spoke again. “I have the list, of potential suspects. People that have most likely worked for Charles Darcy at some point in their lives. I’m sending it to you now. I’m watching some of these people remove their Karma Chips from their head, as we speak, so I know for a certainty that they are more than suspects, they are criminals. I’m also sending more officers to Evaporate them, but I need you there too.

“The ones that already have their Chip out will be our responsibility, you and I. They will not be on my Map directly, but I can still see them as they pass by others. I will track them as best as I can, and you will find them and kill them. Tell your group you have something else to attend to, when we land.”

As Karma was speaking, the Karma Card of everyone around rang, and they looked at what it had to say. It was all things that Will already knew, but he acted surprised.

“A huge list of people to Evaporate,” Eric said. “All over the city.” They all got out their Karma Maps, to look at where they would be going to find them. Eric asked Will, when he saw him just sitting there watching, “Aren’t you going to look at your Map?”

Will thought about his Map, crushed on the floor of Charles’ bathroom and then incinerated in the bomb blast. “I have other things to attend to,” he said, even using Karma’s phrasing. “We’ll be going our separate ways, when we land.”

“What does Karma have you doing?”

“I can’t say.”

“Well, damn. That’s unfortunate,” Eric said. “I hope we can still celebrate together, as a team, when this is all through. Don’t go dying on us.”

Decay 14

An Angry Cloud

Twenty men in
uniforms, carrying large bags, approached the main gate to a Rehabilitation clinic on the southern side of New York City. One of the guards was yelling down at them from a tower, telling them to back away, when he was shot several times. Another guard, who had been standing right behind him, pulled out his Evaporation Pen and walked to where he could see the approaching group, but before he could do anything he was shot down as well.

The twenty men quickly planted bombs at the base of the two towers adjoining the gate, then one on the gate itself, and backed up to detonate them. In the meantime a small group of guards had arrived on the tower from a staircase behind it, but they arrived only in time to participate in the explosion. The towers were engulfed in an incendiary cloud, the guards dying instantaneously. One of the towers collapsed down into itself, the other fell back into the main building, knocking a hole into the upper portion of the wall. The two pieces of the metal gate were thrown to either side, where they rested on the ground.

“Move in,” their leader said. “Straight ahead.”

They shot more guards that came through the front door of the building, and propped the door open. They had to blow up another door to make it from the front to the holding cells, but hadn’t taken a single casualty until they tried to walk through the smoke of the former door into the room beyond, when two of their men were Evaporated in a single instant, by bright red light cutting through the clouds of smoke.

“Fall back,” the leader said. “Throw the grenades.”

“But that’s where the prisoners are,” one of the uniformed men objected.

“I said throw the grenades.”

Three were thrown in, and a multitude of screams could be heard as they went off. The men poured into the main hall in the wake of the explosions, shooting guards that were lying prostrate on the ground, their bodies riddled with shrapnel. Several of the prison cells that had the misfortune of being close to the front door contained casualties of their own, orange bodies scattered across the floor.

“Find me some keys.”

Several of his men started searching the bodies of the dead guards, until one of them produced a set of keys.

“Open the cells up, open all of them.”

More guards were coming from the opposite end of the hall. They were still out of the range for their Evaporation Pens, but the guards tried to use them anyway, the red beam fading into nothing thirty feet before the group of attackers.

“You, open the cells. The rest of you, take them out.”

The sixteen men that weren’t trying to frantically open prison cells spread out across the width of the hall, and opened fire on the opposite end of the hallway. A single beam caught the left shoulder of one of them, and he screamed as his body quickly became a cloud. Eventually the beams stopped, and all that could be heard at the other end of the hall were the screams of prisoners.

The leader split the group into two halves, to guard either end of the hallway as they finished releasing prisoners. When all of the cells had been unlocked, he said to everyone in a booming voice, “Feel free to stay here, if you’re enjoying yourself. But everyone that is inclined to join us will be given a gun, and we’ll be going to another Rehabilitation clinic just a few kilometers away, to free them too.”

There were mutterings all up and down the hall. One prisoner said aloud, “They’ll just kill us, there’s no point.”

“We’ve got a plan,” the leader responded, but directed it to everyone. “The more people we have, the more likely we are to succeed. But we have to leave right now.”

He didn’t even wait for a response, he gestured for his men to rejoin him from down the hall, and they went back out the way they came. Already Helicars were hovering in the air, and police officers were repelling down with their Grappling Chains. He instructed his men to fire up at them as they ran. Behind them, a crowd of prisoners spilled out the building, frantic and orange.

“They shot Peril, they shot him. Evaporated. He’s dead.”

“You’re going to have to calm down, Brother Charles. You knew the risks, and so did he. You shouldn’t have called here. This conversation is being recorded.” Vincent was sitting at the control station, back at the Monastery, watching over all of the monks that were out in the city. Charles was on the other end of the line, panting.

“This is an emergency. Doesn’t it sound like an emergency? They’re onto me, or they wouldn’t have shot at me. They came in with a bunch of Helicars and shot at us with those Pens.”

“I know, I saw it all.”

“What do you mean you saw it? We were in the Park.”

“I’m telling you I saw it. I was watching through Peril, and the feed never cut when he walked into the Park. The Privacy Room there isn’t working.”

“You take every single one of our monks, and get those Chips out of their heads, right this instant.”

“That’s insane. We wouldn’t be able to keep track of any of them, and we still have until tomorrow. And there’s no way they won’t notice a hundred people disappearing simultaneously. Chances are they were just after you, they saw you walk into the Park, they turned the Room off, and now they think you’re dead. So we’re in the clear. That is, until they listen to this conversation and realize that they have to kill you again.”

“I’m not taking any chances. If they can turn off one Privacy Room, they can turn them all off. They saw me with a group of people, so they’ll be looking for more of us. We both know how good they are at finding people that are on the Map. Do it.” Charles was concerned that if any of his monks were found, they would be interrogated, and say too much.

“If the Privacy Rooms really are down, they’ll see us taking them out.”

“I said do it. And get everyone and everything out of the Monastery, and on its way for tomorrow. We can’t mess up the timing.”

“Alright. But if this goes to hell, I just want you to remember that I think you’re overreacting.”

Charles handed back the phone to the woman he had taken it from, thanked her politely, and ran.

Vincent sounded the alarm from the temple. All of the people that had been training with weapons, and all of the people that had been working on the farm, gathered in front of the door to the control station, where he addressed them. There were a little over a hundred present, all told.

“I hate to say it,” Vincent started, “but I think it’s become time to say goodbye to our Monastery. Brother Charles is under the impression that the police are on their way here now.”

Everyone began to panic, and a few began to run away.

“Whoa, hold it. I’ve got more things to say here, I promise I’ll keep it short, okay? We need to get all of our equipment from over there, and get it to the old subway station. Checkpoint gamma. And each of you will be given one of the weapons you’ve been training with for a while now, just in case we get spotted. That’s all I’ve got, so let’s get going. Stay focused.”

They moved in a mass to where a lot of boxes were being stored behind the temple, which was also where they had been keeping all of the reverse-engineered Evaporation Pens and Grappling Chains. Vincent helped to pass them all out, before having everyone take some of the boxes and follow him along a desolate road towards an abandoned subway station.

One of the monks was walking alongside Damon, who had only been at the farm for about an hour before the alarm had been rung and everyone was called to the temple. The monk could see the fresh cut along the outside of the man’s ear, and the bewilderment in his face. He said to Damon, “You just have bad timing, man. It’s not always like this. It’s usually pretty relaxing, really. You just have bad timing. How long ago did they take out your Chip?”

“I haven’t really woken up yet,” Damon said, and looked around the large box he was carrying, down at the Evaporation Pen and Grappling Chain that were hanging at his sides.

“Yeah, bad timing man. Well good luck.” He immediately hurried off ahead, because he felt that even though he was just trying to be polite, the conversation had become awkward and he didn’t want to hang around. Damon just kept plodding forward, one foot after the other. He was going back the direction he had come from only an hour before, when he had arrived, the only difference being the box in his hands and the weapons he didn’t understand.

“Aren’t those Helicars?” one of the monks said, pointing off into the distance. The group was going through a neighborhood of rundown houses, walking down the middle of the road.

“Damn, they are,” Vincent said. “Everyone, get behind one of those houses. We can’t let them see us.” Quickly they scattered, and Vincent watched from around a corner as the Helicars made their way towards the mansion. “Okay, let’s keep going.”

Eventually they reached the old subway station. It had been deemed obsolete when the newer subway system had been installed ten years before, but it still connected to one of the lines, two kilometers down its tracks. They broke the chains that were around the door, and entered the empty building. Down the stairs was a dark, graffiti-filled platform. All of the benches were broken, and the electronic fixtures had all fallen down.

Vincent was talking to everyone again. “We’re going to go about two kilometers down these tracks, and we’re going to stay there for the night. We’re going to take shifts, guarding both sides. They’re probably not going to find us here, but if they do we’re going to have to put up a fight. Now let’s go, let’s get all these boxes off the platform and onto the tracks.”

While the monks were doing that, Vincent walked back to the door of the station, and looked in the direction of the mansion. He could have sworn he could see a glow in the distance, as if they had set the place on fire. He sighed, and shut the door.

Charles had to find a place to stay for the night, without using a Karma Card and without being seen by anyone. He wasn’t looking forward to it. No matter where he slept, there was the possibility that he would never wake up, that he would just be Evaporated and that would be the end of it. It struck him as ironic that ‘the man who never slept’ was having such a problem. Maybe, for just that night, he would live up to his reputation.

He ran his hand along his newly shaved head. He’d never had a shaved head before. There was something that felt fresh about it, although he felt that it probably didn’t suit his face very well. He didn’t even know—he had taken all the mirrors out of his life, so long ago that he wouldn’t have even remembered what he looked like had he not seen the newspaper articles, and for Peril. For the first time since it was given to him when he was fourteen, he could feel the scar of where they’d put his Karma Chip, a little square patch behind his left ear. It was an interesting reminder to have, so close in time to what he intended to do.

He would destroy Karma. He was still terribly shaken by the loss of Peril. He had been standing right next to the man, when the beam cut through him. And then he had just run away, as fast as he could. They had repelled down from the Helicars and chased them all, but Charles had been able to lose his pursuers in an alleyway. It was entirely his own fault that Peril had died. He had been unable to deal with the burden of being himself all of the time, so he had ordered someone to share it with him. And because he was in a position of power, no one had questioned the order. And this was what it had led to.

He’d seen a lot of people die, yet Peril’s death had affected him the most. It was probably because, in a strange way, he watched himself die. The man had his clothes, his hair, even his face. Inside of his head, he was carrying around his Karma Chip, his moral obligation to the world. And he had watched it all disintegrate, turn into a cloud and disappear, as simple as that. The image was haunting him, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

He would be killed twice before the end of the next day, he knew. It wasn’t the plan, but it was going to happen. But he would destroy Karma before that, no matter what. If he became a cloud of a person overnight, he would be a thundercloud, he would gather electricity and strike Karma from above before he ever gave up.

The most unfortunate part about his plan was that he couldn’t afford to die. He was absolutely willing to die, in the name of the cause, but he couldn’t. So he searched around for a safe place to stay the night, so that he would make it to the next day.

“I bet they wouldn’t expect me to go back to the Park,” he thought to himself. “To the place we were discovered, to the place I died. I’ll be one of the homeless tonight, the kind that sleep on the benches, underneath the pollution, underneath the Solar Kite, underneath the stars. Usually they come around and clear them out, the police, but I imagine they will be busy tonight, chasing ghosts.

“That will be the full circle. Yesterday, I was the richest citizen in the world, tonight I will be the poorest. And tomorrow what will I be?”

He laughed to himself, and said aloud, “A king or a cloud. There is no in between.”