Authors: Cam Rogers
“The Christmas lights and espresso machine come standard?”
“That’s all me. You ride with The Prez, you’re VP till you exit.”
The Prez, right. Jack thought he recognized the face. Nick Marsters, aka The Prez, star player for the Riverport Raptors back in the day, headed for the big leagues. Why was he driving a cab?
“This is where she lived?” The question short-circuited the thought.
Jack downed the tiny cup, bitterness stinging behind his eyes, painting warmth through his innards. It had been a while since he’d had coffee without sweet condensed milk.
“Yeah. Took us a couple hours to walk back here from the Overlook,” he said, thinking about that morning six years ago. What had started as Nick’s rundown on how the town had changed led to Jack recounting why he had left. Once started Jack found he hadn’t wanted to stop. Maybe it was the Catholic confessional urge … or maybe he just wanted to delay seeing his brother for as long as he could.
“You know the cops put the Overlook shootings down to some dead man making a play inside Aberfoyle’s organization, right? Open-and-shut, cut-and-dried. Do you think your girl meant for it to play out like that?”
Jack shook his head. “She saw most things as judo. Receive momentum, do what you want with it. I think she was just doing what came naturally.”
“Maybe you should have married her.”
Jack pointed to the corner of the block. “That morning we stood right there. She held on to my jacket … leaned in … and whispered … ‘I could kick you in the face from here.’”
Nick snorted.
“She went inside and I never saw her again.”
Nick turned his dumbstruck expression to the dark house, to Jack, back to the house. “I find that to be a profoundly unsatisfying conclusion.”
“I came round that afternoon and everything she owned was on fire in the back garden. She was gone. Five years I spent looking. Nothing. I thought I picked up a lead in Arizona, but it led nowhere.”
“In the nineties that’d be romantic. These days it’s practically a felony.” Then: “Missing persons report?”
“No file, no paper trail, no name.”
“Maybe Aberfoyle’s guys got to her?”
“They’d have gone for me and Will first. Zed was an unknown, and the only guy who walked away from the Overlook that morning was found in the river a week later. Basically we were never there.” Being there, in that moment, with this stranger, looking at a house that hadn’t known Zed and him for more than half a decade … “Maybe she just wanted out. Maybe I was just being a creep, trying to find her. Jesus.”
“No place like home.”
“If I’m lucky.” He felt self-conscious, confessing like a chump and hungover from it. “Family business. Once that’s done I’m on the first flight … out of…”
Jack never finished the thought. A shape crept to the opposite crossroads, one-inch steel plate doing nothing to mute the low-and-slow chug of 300 horsepower.
“Whoa.”
Seventeen thousand pounds of intimidation rounded the corner on fat, bullet-resistant tires, passenger-side spotlight snapping on like an accusation. The bright eye surveyed them as the armored vehicle took its sweet time rolling past. A Monarch Security logo leaped out through the glare—a segmented, geometric butterfly—hi-vis on matte black ballistic surfacing. Nick straightened, smiled, and nodded.
After a moment of consideration the light clicked off and the BearCat picked up volume, rounding the corner and melting back into the ’burbs.
“What the fuck,” Jack said, “was that? Are we at war?”
“Monarch,” Nick replied, taking Jack’s cup and saucer, depositing it through the passenger window onto the espresso machine’s top-mounted rack. “They moved in about the time you moved out. Shipping: dead. Farming: dead. Construction: dead. Monarch comes in, builds a bunch of stuff, employs a bunch of people. Riverport’s got a pulse again. I like ’em, and their uniforms are frickin’
bangin’.
”
“In Chiang Mai cops roll on tires with Monarch branding.”
“Monarch Industrial, probably. That BearCat was Monarch Security. My sister’s kid’s daycare is Monarch Child. My dad’s meds are Monarch Pharmaceuticals. Monarch’s got this loyalty program, lets you rack up points all over the place, whoever you use. Dad’s meds paid for that coffee you’re drinking. It’s a good deal.” Nick backhanded Jack’s arm, friendly. “Hey, you know Monarch’s hosting a huge gala tomorrow night? A shitload of famous people are gonna be there. I could take you up to the parking garage across the way, give you a great view of the red carpet.”
Jack’s phone vibrated in his jacket. Caller ID came up as Paul Serene. “Uh … I think I fly out before then. Just one second.” He thumbed the call button.
“Hey buddy.” The voice was as familiar as his own. “Six years away and the first thing you do is go and pine outside her house?”
Jack glanced toward the disappeared armored vehicle. “The BearCat.”
Paul laughed. “I requested an alert on your arrival. The BearCat scanned the plate of the museum piece you’re leaning against. Monarch Security network cross-referenced with the RPD database, checked the photobank of the driver-cam that takes a shot each time Nick needs to blow-start the engine. Facial recog grabbed you in the backseat, the entry was logged into Monarch’s system, Monarch’s system texted me, I called you.”
“Cause and effect.” All of a sudden Jack wanted to be on a plane, headed to someplace even he didn’t know. Someplace that didn’t have loyalty programs. He thought of Zed and her zero footprint.
“Perks of working for Monarch.”
“Which Monarch would that be?”
“Monarch Innovations. Subsidiary of Developments.”
“It’s like you’re here with me, buddy.”
“The info stays on Monarch servers, but we make it available to law enforcement upon request. Part of our community policing initiative. Some reservations from rights activists, but mostly the town’s on board.”
Yeah. Leaving. First chance he got. Maybe never coming back.
“You’re still meeting me on campus, correct?”
“I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
“Jack? Thank you for making it. This is important to me. You’ll be glad you came, I promise.” The call disconnected.
“You said something about a Monarch gala?”
“The buzz is they’re revealing a new product line. They say it’ll ‘reinvent life as we live it.’ Probably just another game console. You want another espresso?” Nick asked.
“No. Actually, yeah. Can I get it rolling?”
“You’re the VP.” Nick opened the door for him. “I’ll have to take a less-short way around. Big protest at the university today. Thought it’d be over by now or I’d have mentioned it. Students pissed off about the city tearing down some old library. You know how it is.”
Jack checked his phone, giving Nick a little privacy to huff-start the car. “Says here Monarch’s the one tearing it down, not the city.”
The engine kicked over, purring like it had been put together yesterday. “Same thing,” Nick said.
* * *
Jack stared out the window of the Charger as it pulled up outside the main walk of Riverport University. “It’s all gone.”
Gone were the few square blocks of lawn dotted with Colonial Revival–style wood buildings, interstitial spaces crowded with maple and birch. This was a modern, high-tech campus. Founders’ Walk remained in place, a token gesture to tradition, next to which a slab of locally quarried marble bore, in gold Sabon font:
Riverport University—Innovations Campus.
Someone had slapped a
HISTORY NOT PROFITS
! sticker on it. A sticker slapped over that one read:
NINJAS ARE COOL
!
A small black-and-gold plaque announced that the Quantum Research Laboratory was the winner of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize. The manicured lawn behind that—a perfect green flattop through which Founders’ Walk cut—was strewn with traveler cups, sodden flyers, beer cans, and the occasional abandoned sign requesting those participating in the sit-in to not litter the area. A tent city was in place, forming a frail protective barrier between the old library—a bright-red Gothic Revival anachronism amid a herd of glass and steel—and the outside world. Jack flashed back to an incident on the New York subway a few years back: a group of thirteen-year-old girls shielding an old lady from some crazy dude with a screwdriver.
He opened the car door, got out. “What the hell happened?”
Nick stepped out of the driver’s door and sprawled his arms across the car’s roof, pleased at Jack’s reaction. “Impressive, huh?”
“It’s like a moon base designed by French aliens. All this in six years?”
“We live in an age of great change.” Nick had the tone of cartoon millionaire. “Something I heard on a podcast.”
Jack peeled a wet flyer off the sidewalk. The date of the library’s execution was set for tomorrow. Right now the tent city was mostly quiet, some of the residents laid out where they’d passed out. He thought about the BearCat, all those
frickin’ bangin’
uniforms Nick liked so much, the tower overlooking the entire city, the 2013 Pritzker Prize—and he didn’t like the old lady’s chances.
“Where are you meeting your friend?”
Jack pointed to the plaque. “Quantum Research Lab.”
“Your brother … that all gonna be cool? I have some experience with wards. If you need me to place a call—”
Jack waved the offer away. “Nah, whatever it is it won’t be anything I haven’t dealt with a dozen times before.”
Nick thought about that. “Listen, I’m gonna take a break and hang around for a while. Here’s my card; you need an escape, call me.”
Nick had an actual business card, the central feature being the presidential seal, with the eagle holding two hockey sticks.
“Will do. What are your hours?”
Jack’s phone rumbled in his jacket pocket: Will. He wasn’t ready for a brotherly reunion just yet. Best to get a coherent answer from Paul first. He let it ring out. A text message flashed up:
I’m at our house. Where are you?
“Between meds and errands and where’s-the-remote, Dad keeps me going all hours,” Nick said. “That espresso machine isn’t just for the customers.”
Jack watched Nick pull away, then turned his attention to the university. He hoped Paul had answers.
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 3:45
A
.
M
. Monarch Tower, Riverport, Massachusetts.
On the twenty-ninth floor of Monarch Tower Beth Wilder watched a two-year-old girl take a short staggering run and head butt the palm of her father’s hand. Full of beans and still on Kyoto time. Her mother looked like she needed a drink, but happy to be in America and reunited with her husband.
Lorelei Gibson was the unofficial mascot of Chronon-1, Monarch Special Project’s pride and joy. The 1 percent. The nine operatives out of 112 candidates who had the experience, adaptability, and mental fortitude to get through basic and advanced chronon training without losing their shit and washing out.
Chronon-1 wasn’t the only squad of chronon-enabled operatives. Technicians were trained for lightweight short-term operations. Strikers were heftier, flashier. Juggernauts … well, Juggernauts were still in the test phase. They were scary as shit, but overdesigned in Beth’s opinion.
Randall Gibson’s crew was different. Trained to adapt, survive, and operate at peak efficiency within prolonged zero-state exposure were using minimal gear, with negligible psychological impact. They were rock stars and they were concrete.
Gibson, his second-in-command Donny, then Irene, Reeves, Dominguez, Voss, Mully, Bristol, and Chaffey. Chronon-1—the jewel in Special Project’s shiny crown. Proof of what was possible.
Question was, why were they gathered here?
Beth watched as Gibson hunkered down in front of his daughter and held up his palm again.
“What does the billy goat do?” he drawled, thick as molasses. “C’mon now, show me whatcha got.”
Beth knew he was playing up to the crowd that had gathered on the mezzanine, groupies from admin, Industrial, Pharma, and all the rest.
Lorelei giggled, toddled at her dad, and flumphed her head into his hand. Onlookers cheered. Lorelei plopped her hands over her face, embarrassed.
Her mother swept her up, blew a raspberry on Lorelei’s fat little cheek. Lorelei reached for her dad, grasping inexpertly, all big brown eyes and “Hug Dada!”
Gibson took her, Lorelei pressing to his fatigues, arms clamped around his neck.
“I gotcha punkin’ butter, I gotcha.”
Yeah, the Gibsons have it all.
Beth envied Lorelei’s ability to love like that. Beth barely remembered her own father’s face.
Horatio nudged her. “Don’t feel bad.”
Horatio was a white dude in his thirties, handlebar moustache, wearing a theater sports T-shirt.
DON
’
T SHOOT
,
I
’
M A PLOT DEVICE
!
Hilarious.
“Do I look like I feel bad?” Beth wasn’t super tight with most of the other Monarch Security personnel, but the guys over in Innovations liked her just fine.
“Cheer up, dude. Better people than you washed out of the C-1 program.”
Beth blinked. “‘Better people’?”
Horatio backpedaled. “I mean … you know what I mean. Shit.”
“Yeah I know what you meant. Do you know what’s going on?”
Beth had made it a good way through the tryouts. Further than most. Flaked at the last hurdle. Now she was mid-level Monarch Security. Stable. Vanilla. Unremarkable.
Just how she liked it.
Horatio shook his head. “Nah. I’ve spent half of today trying to get our product demos into a showable state for the gala tomorrow night, so I haven’t been poking around as much. I was banking on Will Joyce helping me to get the platform stable but he totally flaked out on me. Hey, are you free? I need a newbie to run through our flow, see what you get snagged on.”
“Sorry. Plans.”
“Yeah, right.”
The mood on the mezzanine changed, the crowd dispersed. Gibson’s smile vanished. He handed his kid back to his wife without even looking at them. Which meant Martin Hatch had just made an appearance.