The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (34 page)

We’re both given crew helmets to wear on the long flight
back to the coast. There’s an intercom, but the flight crew doesn’t speak. Neither do we. The less said the better, because officially, we’re not here and what we did aboard the
Non-Negotiable
never happened. An alternate history will be substituted in which the US Navy, acting on a credible anonymous report, performed an interdiction resulting in the recovery of two INDs.

But unofficially?

An upload icon winks on in my overlay.

Koi Reisman may have another story to tell.

I hope so, only because it might be a solace for Harvey’s mom to know what happened. She was sitting beside my dad during our court-martial. Now her daughter is dead and she won’t have a body to bury, she won’t have an explanation, because we can’t talk about Silent Firebreak—but Koi Reisman can.

•   •   •   •

We’re out of the storm sooner than I expect—or I’m losing track of time. Delphi said I had a bad concussion and I believe her. I’m dizzy and sick and my anxiety is ramping up. I close my eyes, and watch the skullnet icon glow.

I’ve got a bad feeling . . . about what happened to Harvey, about this mission, about what’s to come.

I’m still wearing the audio loop from my squad helmet; the satellite uplink is in the pack under my seat. I use the gear to reach out to Shima. “Anne, you there?”

Nolan is similarly wired. I know because he turns to look at me.

Shima links in. “I’m here, Shelley. Sitrep?”

“Nothing to report. Conditions nominal. Things look okay on your end?”

“Roger that. We’re minutes from takeoff. We’re just waiting for you, Nolan, and Flynn to return.”

“Where the fuck is Flynn?”

“On an errand. Take it easy, Shelley. You’ll be here soon.”

The sun is shining when the navy helicopter sets down. I peer out the window. We’re outside the hangar where our plane is stashed, but no one comes to meet us. The hangar door is closed.

One of the flight crew speaks. “Orders are to keep your crew helmets on. Make sure you’ve got the visors pulled down. Wear them until you’re inside the building. I’ll come behind you to collect them.”

You never know who’s looking, right? I guess Shima is feeling anxious too.

I lower the visor on the helmet and then stand up. Dizziness swamps me; my head hammers worse than before. I get my pack on anyway and sling my HITR over my shoulder. With my broken helmet in one hand and the folded rig of my dead sister in the other, I move out.

Even through the tinted visor, daylight is like a knife in my eyes. The pain leaves me swaying on the tarmac.

Nolan catches my arm. “You doing okay, LT?”

I whisper some obscenity as he steers me toward the hangar. A staff door on the side opens. My rig bangs against the doorframe as Nolan shoves me through. Inside, most of the lights are off and it’s as hot as the Sahel. Two shadowy figures converge on me, backlit by a glow spilling from the open door of the commuter jet. One turns out to be Tuttle. He takes away my dead sister. The other is Moon. He grabs the broken helmet I’ve got clutched under my arm and then deprives me of my HITR. “LT,” he says as I pry the navy’s helmet off my head, “you know we wanted to be there, but the fucking helicopter pilot, he wouldn’t drop us off.”

“I know that. It’s not your fault.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Tuttle adds. “And I’m real, real sorry about Harvey.”

“Yeah.” I turn and hand the navy helmet to the crewman. Silent Firebreak is over. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. Where the hell is Anne?”

“I’m right here,” she says from behind me. I turn, then duck my head against the painful outside glare. Shima closes the door, leaving only a dusky light inside the hangar, spillover from a glass-walled office at the back. Her olive-drab pullover is gone. In the heat, she’s peeled down to a tank top with her gray cargo pants. A sheen of sweat glints on her cheeks beneath the rim of her farsights. “Your last status update indicated a nasty concussion, so we’re keeping the lights low.”

The dim light is easing my headache, but not my anxiety. “Thank you, ma’am, but we need to go.” Anxiety can be a side effect of concussion—but I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s going on inside my head. “What about Jaynie? What’s her status? Are we going to recover her now or later?”

“Vasquez is safe in a hospital and she’ll stay there for now, but her prognosis is good. You can relax about that.”

From outside, I hear the navy helicopter lift off with a roar. “And the prisoner?” I ask.

“Not our concern anymore. He’s been transferred to a more official venue.”

“Then we need to go.”

“Stow your gear and get cleaned up. We’re still waiting on Flynn. She took your package to a courier’s office, but she’ll be back—”

“Are you in touch with her? Anne, she needs to get back
now
. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what. Not for sure. But I can feel it.”

Shima knows my history. She looks at me warily from behind the glimmer of her farsights. “You’re saying the Red wants us to move out ASAP?”

“Yes.”

“Lieutenant, are you asking me to leave Flynn behind?”

“No, ma’am. But you could tell her to hurry.”

“I will do that. Now stow your gear. Nolan, you too!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“But keep your weapons with you,” she adds as she strides toward the plane.

Moon’s got my HITR. I shrug out of my pack and go after it. As he hands me the weapon, an upload link winks on in my overlay. It’s Joby’s program, sending out the daily report on my robot legs. My gaze causes a status tag to slide out, telling me:
Upload complete
. But the link doesn’t close. Instead, the tag updates, informing me,
Download in
progress
.

That’s never happened before.

“You okay, LT?” Moon asks.

“No. Something’s going on. Get your weapon.”

Moon is right beside me. Tuttle is a few steps away. Nolan is already beside the jet, loading his dead sister into the cargo compartment. Shima is halfway up the stairs, but she hesitates, turning back to look at me like she’s worried about what I’m going to do.

She should be worried.

“Get on the plane!” I shout at her. “
Now!
Before it’s too late!”

Maybe it was always too late.

INTERIM

DIVINE FAVOR

S
OMETHING HAPPENED—

What?

—and now everything is wrong, broken.

I don’t know where I am.

I can’t see anything around me.

I can’t move—not even to lift a finger. I can feel the presence of my body, its mass, the sensation of breathing, but it’s a one-way flow of information, incoming only. Signals aren’t getting out, and I can’t move.

This should frighten me, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel much of anything. I think my eyes are closed, because the only things in my field of view are icons, and there are only two of them, so I know my overlay is broken too. One icon tells me I’m linked to an irregular network. I stare at it, willing a menu to appear. Nothing happens.

The other icon is my familiar skullnet icon. It’s glowing brightly in the corner of my vision, its steady luminosity a measure of the massive, real-time interference presently occurring in my brain.

Someone on the irregular network is fucking around in there and it’s not the Red. I’m certain of that, even if I don’t
know why. And it’s not the army. They never dug this deep.

Someone else. Someone clever. I decide what I’m experiencing right now is something like sleep paralysis—my brain cut off from my motor nerves. The army didn’t know how to do that . . . or if they did, they never did it to me. Then I remember what we did to Carl Vanda, what Delphi helped to do, and my anesthetized emotions start to twitch, and I get scared.

Where the fuck is my squad?

I think maybe they’re dead.

Are they dead?

I stare at the glow of the skullnet icon and I try to remember what happened, why I’m here, why I have this feeling my squad is dead. Nothing comes.

But I don’t need to rely on organic memory. I’ve got a digital memory too that contains video of everything I witnessed on the mission. I shift my gaze, seeking a menu. I wait for it to surface.

There’s nothing.

Is this a dream?

I grope for a recollection, anything. I remember being aboard the navy helicopter. I clearly remember that. I think I fell asleep on the flight back, but later . . . I saw Shima. I know I saw her. I wanted her to get on the jet—unless that was a dream?

I remember thin shafts of sunlight piercing the shadows of the hangar, and the thick, sticky smell of blood.

Why can’t I remember more?

The glowing skullnet icon is my clue. They’re fucking with my short-term memory. They don’t want me to remember what they did to my squad.

They?

Not the army, not the Red. I’ve established that. And not Uther-Fen, because if the mercs were inside my head
they’d make it hurt worse. They’d make sure I remembered exactly what went down. They’d burn it into my brain in high-def detail.

Who then?

I think I know. My long-term memory is still in good shape. I have a clear recollection of the kidnap attempt in the basement of the DC federal courthouse. I think these are the same people. On that first try, they used nonlethal ammo. We speculated it was because they wanted my cooperation. I think they still do, and that’s why they’re trying to ensure I don’t remember what happened to my squad. Another miscalculation on their part. I remember enough.

•   •   •   •

Twenty or thirty minutes go by. Maybe an hour. With no time display on my overlay, I don’t really know, but things change. First, the skullnet icon winks out. Brain metabolism is fast, so in only a few seconds I’m in communication with my body again. I’ve been slumped in a cushioned seat, but now I try to straighten up. My hands and feet are all asleep, my side aches where I’ve been leaning. Everything hurts, especially my head, and I still can’t see anything, though I can blink my eyes—so I know they’re open. The air I’m breathing is hot and stale. My guess is there’s a hood over my head. I try to lift my hands to test this theory, and discover my wrists are loosely bound behind my back.

I notice the vibration of an engine only when it stops. I hear a rustle of movement. Then a woman speaks. “Crow, be careful. He’s a dangerous man.”

American accent. Southern. Georgia, probably. A voice of authority.

Crow answers, a deep male voice, also American, but not regionally specific. Crow sounds annoyed. “Why don’t you wait outside?”

She doesn’t answer, but I think she leaves. Several seconds later, there’s a grunt behind me. Hands close around my upper arms and I’m lifted to my feet. I try a head butt just for the hell of it. This effort earns me a muscular arm around my throat. I try to kick, only to discover my robot legs are shackled. The arm around my throat squeezes until I pass out.

•   •   •   •

Thin shafts of sunlight stab through my shadowy dreams, each bright ray the diameter of a
7
.
62
-millimeter round. When I smell blood, I jerk awake and find myself in near darkness—but at least the hood is off my head and I can see again, by the dim red glow of round ceiling lights recessed behind thick glass faces. I sit up slowly, my skull pounding and my throat so dry it’s hard to swallow. I swear every muscle in my body hurts.

I’m in a windowless concrete room furnished in a familiar fashion, with a prison-style toilet and sink combo in one corner, and a narrow bunk covered in a soft flannel blanket against the opposite wall. I’m sitting on the bunk, still dressed in the trousers of my combat uniform, along with my T-shirt which reeks of stale sweat, the stench more noticeable because my surroundings are pristine. I look down, and confirm the bed frame is bolted to the floor. I also notice my robot feet are bare. The boots I wore during Silent Firebreak are gone. So are the leg shackles and wrist cuffs I remember from before. I eye the door. It’s steel, with no door handle and no hinges showing.

I return my gaze to the ceiling. Fresh air is flowing from a central vent surrounded by the dim night-lights.

I check my overlay and realize with surprise that most of my missing icons are restored—the time display, the emotional-analysis app, even the communications apps—though
when I dive into the menus, I find there’s no data and no history. My e-mail, texts, phone log, videos—all of it is gone.

The encyclopedia is still there, though. I pop it open, just to be sure, confirming that its local library of hundreds of thousands of articles is still intact.

The standard network icon has also been restored. It displays as a red circle with an X in it, meaning there’s no connection available, but I’m not locked down. They can’t lock me down because they need access to my overlay to manipulate my skullnet. So I’m linked to a nonstandard network, one with no outside connections. Realistically, I’ll probably never have an outside connection again. I’m like Carl Vanda in that basement. Once Anne Shima sent him down there, we all knew he’d never see the light of day again.

Despite this certain knowledge, I’m hungry. I can’t remember the last time I ate, and I hope my captors will consider a final meal.

I swing my bare titanium feet to the floor. The skullnet icon is invisible, indicating my skullnet is quiescent, but it doesn’t matter. The damage is done. They’ve been inside my head deleting organic memories, and they’ve emptied my overlay of digital memories too.

The skullnet icon revives with these thoughts, flickering faintly as the embedded AI launches an automatic routine, ensuring I won’t feel too bad.

Jaynie warned me I needed to get rid of the skullnet. Guess I should have listened.

I look again at the time on my overlay. Assuming they haven’t fucked with my internal clock, assuming I remember right, nine hours and maybe twelve minutes have passed since the US Navy returned me and Nolan to the Brunswick airfield. Something happened after that. I don’t remember what it was, I just know my squad is dead.

I heave myself up with a groan. The lights respond to my movement, brightening slowly, revealing the glassy glint of camera buttons in the four corners of my cell.

I piss, wash my face, drink water, swear vengeance.

First step, I want to start my overlay recording—but that turns out to be a no-go. Though I can see the video icon, there’s nothing behind it. The program that handles videos has been wiped. Determined to make something happen anyway, I move to the center of the room and address the walls. “I’m awake. So let’s get on with it.”

Someone is paying attention, because less than a minute later, the door opens, revealing two guards on the other side. Dressed in dark-blue uniforms without insignia, rigged in dead sisters, wearing chest armor and helmets with black visors, they are anonymous. They’re not carrying any firearms that I can see, but then they don’t need to, not while they’re powered by exoskeletons.

“You going to be stupid?” one of them asks me. “Or are you going to cooperate?”

I recognize the voice. It’s Crow. The one who had his arm around my throat.

“Cooperate with what?” I ask him.

“Whatever you’re told. Right now she wants you cleaned up and fed.”

“She? The woman with the Southern accent?”

“You going to make a fight out of it?”

It’s a temptation. “Who the fuck are you people?”

“Your new owners.” He gestures to his silent companion— a shorter figure, by a good eight inches—but man or woman? Beneath the rig, I can’t tell.

Both the Silent One and Crow take a step back, leaving the doorway clear.

“Into the hall,” Crow orders.

I consider making a show of resistance. They could either
come after me and haul me into the hallway, or close the door and leave me to starve for another twelve hours.

My head still hurts. I don’t want to aggravate my concussion by getting my skull slammed against the wall and I don’t want to starve. So I do as I’m told and step into the hall. The passage is short, barely twenty-five feet in length. On my left are two doors facing each other, before the hallway dead-ends. On my right, the hallway is closed off by a steel door with no handle. Directly across from me is an open doorway into a brightly lit shower room.

Crow gestures at it. “You’ve got three minutes to shower and change. Clean clothes are hanging on the wall. If you get done in time, you get to eat.
Go.
”

I decide I don’t like Crow. Despite my recent resolve, I play out in my mind what would happen if I went for him.

“You’re thinking too hard, Shelley.”

My gaze shifts to Crow’s silent companion. “Was that your operation in the basement of the DC courthouse?”

“That fiasco?” Crow asks. “Shit, no. That was hers. I just signed on. You’ve got two and a half minutes.”

Even if a miracle came to pass and I managed to kill both Crow and the Silent One, I’d still have to get past a locked door. So I give it up and do what Crow wants, stripping off my reeking clothes, and washing away the salt spray and the sweat in a blissfully hot shower. There’s no razor or depilatory, so I’m stuck with the stubble of my beard. After I towel off, I step into a loose-fitting pair of electric-green canvas pants, and then pull on a matching T-shirt. I feel like a lime glow stick. “Afraid you’re going to lose me?” I ask.

“Can’t be too careful. I hear God’s on your side.”

Is that why I’m here? Is that why I’m alive and my squad is dead? Bitterness slams me. The Red let this happen. Why? Because it doesn’t see everything? Because it’s not always
there? Because there’s room for chance? Or because this is a necessary part of the story?

It dismays me to think that’s what it might be.

“Step into the hall,” Crow says, “and present your hands.”

I’m well practiced at the prison routine. Handcuffs go on my wrists and we march to the steel door at the end of the hall. It opens for us with an electronic buzz. The hallway continues beyond it, but instead of being sealed off with another imposing steel door, there’s an elevator, and an ordinary fire door marked with an exit sign.

“In here,” Crow says, his hand on my arm as he steers me into a side room.

The room is furnished with a plastic table and two chairs. On the table is Greek takeout, for fuck’s sake. The food is barely warm—it’s probably been forty minutes or more since it was picked up—but now I know I’m still in North America. While Crow watches from the door, I eat—gyros, spanakopita, salad, and even an order of fries. I eat everything, despite my headache; the handcuffs don’t slow me down at all. Afterward, I’m marched back to my cell.

“Don’t I get to see the Southern woman?”

“Her name’s Shiloh. You’ll get to see her later.”

The truth is, I’m exhausted. I lie down on the bunk, the lights dim to faint red, and I sleep.

•   •   •   •

The pattern repeats—a shower, food, and then sleep. My beard grows and my body heals. Exhaustion recedes until sleep doesn’t come so easily anymore. I lie in my bunk and think about Delphi, wondering if she’s safe, if she knows what happened to me. I wonder if the organization has any plans to retrieve me or if they’ll just assume I’m dead. It’s not like I know enough to compromise them.

After three days, Crow brings news: “Shiloh is ready to see you.”

Per usual, my hands are shackled, and then Crow and the Silent One escort me to the room where my fast-food meals are delivered. This time the table is empty. Crow sits me down at one end, taking up a position behind me while the Silent One stands just to the side of the door.

In less than a minute the door opens. A woman comes in dressed in brown slacks and a black, long-sleeved shirt. Her Caucasian skin is tanned golden, with a scattering of faint freckles on her nose, her hair is trimmed in a brown-velvet buzz cut, and she’s used brown eyeliner to emphasize her brown eyes. Physically, she looks soft, a little pudgy. Not an athlete.

Shiloh is not her name of course, any more than Crow is the name of my warden.

As she sits at the opposite end of the table, my encyclopedia posts the results of its automatic facial-recognition routine. It’s identified her from its local library of articles. Her real name is Jasmine Harris. She’s thirty-four years old, an acclaimed specialist in adaptive artificial intelligence and a major stockholder in Exalt Communications—the same company I researched after seeing their aerial network nodes along Interstate
80
.