Authors: Riley Barton
“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll have insurance. Trust me. Landers won’t be a problem.”
“For your sake, Agent, you had better be right. Otherwise
you’ll
be the one who is ‘taken care of’.”
“I understand, sir.”
Edgard hung up, and Manning slipped the headset back into his pocket. He cast one more glance at Rosa’s body then left the room, sealing the door behind him.
His plan was simple: First, he would return to the main floor and report to the handful of night staff that he’d had to shoot Agent Hernandez in self-defense.. They would of course question him, and he would explain that he’d returned in order to finish filing some last minute reports. His computer terminal had been acting up, so he’d gone down to the router station where he had discovered Rosa tampering with the files. He had attempted to take her into custody and she’d reached for her weapon, forcing him to shoot her.
He stepped into the elevator, tapping the button that would take him back up to the main office. He would most likely be placed on suspension for a week or two while they sorted through all the evidence. But that was a small price to pay in the long run.
Soon he would be the head of the Agency. From there he would position himself as close to Edgard as he could, and—after a few years of earning his trust—Manning would eliminate Edgard as well. After he’d secured his position as Edgard’s successor, that is.
Everything was going according to plan.
Chapter 41
Luna gasped and opened her eyes, the memories of her ordeal rushing up through the depths of her mind.
She groaned.
Every part of her felt as if it were made of lead. She closed her eyes and breathed in again, her lungs filling easily, painlessly.
Startled, she opened her eyes. Her lungs had actually
filled
?
Her feeling of long-awaited relief was soon overshadowed by her sense of confusion as she realized she was no longer aboard the
Second Wind.
Instead, she was lying on a bed inside a dimly lit and horribly cluttered room.
Ignoring her stiff muscles, she forced herself to sit up and waited for the sudden dizziness to subside. She stared intently at the narrow strip of light seeping under and around the room’s lopsided door. Beyond the door she could hear voices, and she strained to catch what was being said.
“—Sherpa mercenaries? Here?”
She recognized Mark’s voice right away.
“I know, right?” the second speaker said with a dry, gravelly laugh. “I didn’t believe it myself until I started intercepting their comm traffic.”
She heard Mark sigh. “I never thought Edgard would be able to suck so many people into this war.
He’s insane. A genius—but insane.”
“I can’t argue with that. But if he
weren’t
, then we wouldn’t have this opportunity now, would we? Think about it. For the first time in twenty-something years we actually have a chance to shut it down—”
“Gentlemen, if I might interrupt,” Ed’s synthetic voice cut in, “I do believe that Subject Luna is at last awake.”
Realizing that there was no point in eavesdropping any more, Luna stiffly climbed out of bed, walked across the damp, wooden floor, and opened the rickety door.
The adjoining room was barely larger than the previous chamber, though it was just as cluttered and musty—if not more so.
The light of a single battery-powered lantern illuminated the room, casting weird shadows on the mold-covered, concrete walls. Besides these, the only furniture she could see were an antique wooden table, two chairs—which were occupied by Mark and a short, balding man—and a battered washer and dryer stuffed into a corner.
The two men turned to look at her.
“Luna!” Mark exclaimed. Rising from his seat, he hurried over and pulled her into his arms. “How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good actually,” she said, pleasantly surprised by the embrace. “How long was I out?”
Mark stepped back and offered her his chair. “It’s been about four days since … well, since we injected you with the serum. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for most of that time, but I doubt you remember. You were pretty out of it.”
Four days?
Slowly she asked, “Did it work?”
Mark smiled. “Yeah, it worked.”
She could barely contain the joy she felt at hearing those words. It had been so long … she hardly remembered what life was like without the Blister Wart disease. But finally she was free.
“So … what happened to the ship?”
“The ship? I don’t even know where to begin,” Mark muttered.
“How about at the beginning?” she offered sarcastically, “That’s always a good place.”
Mark took a deep breath. “Well, you remember the storm? How I said we could get the
Second Wind
free if it kept up?”
She nodded, and he continued. “Well, it did. In fact it got really heavy there toward the end, which helped a lot. Once we were free, we headed for the nearest settlement.”
“So we’re in a settlement, then?”
“That is correct, Subject Luna,” Ed replied, the blue light in Mark’s chestplate flashing as he spoke.
“So what happened to the ship after that?”
“She got impounded right after you got here,” the other man said, answering before Mark could. “Unitech has imposed an embargo on all non-registered vessels. The whole settlement has been locked down. If you’d gotten here any later, I never would’ve been able to hide you in time. The name’s Paul, by the way,” he said, leaning across the table to extend a surprisingly clean hand to her, “but you can just call me Toad. Most people around here do.”
She smiled and accepted the handshake. “Toad? Why do they call you
Toad
?”
Toad laughed and gestured at his substantial paunch. “Why do you
think
?”
She’d forgotten what it was like to laugh without wheezing. The sensation gladdened her more than the joke itself.
“All right, so that explains what we’re doing here.” she said once her giggling had subsided, “But what’s all this about a war?”
“Edgard declared war on the Swampers,” Mark replied, seating himself on an upturned bucket. “Apparently, he’s using the conflict to cover up what he did to you while creating a global demand for Unitech war materials at the same time.”
“Which is a pretty smart idea, if you think about it,” Toad commented, rocking precariously back in his chair.
“Indeed,” Ed added. “What better way to conceal a crime than to hide it amidst the chaos of war?”
“I was talking about the money-making bit, Ed.”
“Ah,” replied the AI, “I have never fully understood humans and their apparent need to accumulate wealth.”
“Of course not—you’re an AI! You’ve never had to buy anything.”
“Anyway,” Mark cut in, “Edgard and the other world leaders have sent troops into the swamp to put an end to the ‘Swamper radicals’ responsible for your murder.”
“Murder? So everyone thinks I’m dead?”
Mark nodded again.
“Not that being dead is such a bad thing,” Toad said, fiddling with one of the straps of his yellow, rubberized overalls. “I mean, Mark and I have been dead for—what—eighteen … twenty years? Something like that?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Mark replied.
At once overcome by both confusion and curiosity, Luna blurted out, “Twenty years? How exactly do you two know each other?”
The men glanced at each other.
“Does she know?”
“She knows a little,” Mark replied.
“How much is a
little
?”
“She knows who I am. And I told her about my mother.”
Toad frowned. “So she doesn’t know about
that
? Right?”
“I haven’t told her. No.”
“Will someone please tell me what is going on here?” Luna exclaimed.
The two men looked at each other a second time.
Mark leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. “You first.”
Toad frowned and then begrudgingly shifted his gaze to Luna. “All right. What I’m about to tell you is confidential, okay? That means I don’t want you blabbing it to everybody and their dog. Got it?”
She nodded, and he continued. “Back in the day, I used to be a programmer. Graduated at the top of my class and all that. Got a job programming AI units at Unitech back before the Cathedral disaster.”
“So you must have known Jack?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I knew him. And Mark’s mom, too.”
“Yeah, right. If you can call the occasional wave ‘knowing’ someone.” Mark commented dryly.
Toad shot him a stern look. “Hey! I’m telling the story here! Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Back in the good old days.” He paused and scratched his unshaven chin for a moment before resuming his narrative. “Okay, so I was working for Unitech. And everything was great … Then there was the murder and the Cathedral disaster … and pretty much everything went south from there. But something never sat well with me about what happened to Jack. Didn’t sit well with a lot of other people, too. So, naturally, one thing led to another, and before long we started looking into things for ourselves. Then people started
disappearing
.”
He stopped and the expression on his round face became grave. “It was subtle at first. A co-worker would be transferred or promoted, and you wouldn’t think anything of it. But then they’d stop returning your calls—almost like they’d dropped right off the face of the planet. In hindsight, it’s obvious that Edgard was behind it, but we didn’t know that back then. All we knew was that we were most likely on to something. Something big.”
“So you found the data in Alex’s mainframe, too?” Luna asked.
“Easily,” he said proudly. “The thing with AI units is you can’t actually delete anything from their memory. All you can do is try to block access to those parts of their data core and hope no one finds a back door. Which I did. Unfortunately Edgard was right behind me. The next thing I knew I was being dumped out in the swamp.”
“So, let me get this straight. You’re saying that the Swampers are all people Edgard tried to silence?”
“Not all of them. Some are just people who were too poor to evacuate to the cities. The rest are just your average criminals,” Toad said.
“So I take it that’s when you two met? After Toad was thrown out here?” Luna asked, looking to Mark for an answer.
“Well, sort of,” he replied. “I was still a little kid back then. So it took a few years. But, yeah. That’s when we … got acquainted.”
Toad grinned. “Of course it wasn’t until I met Ed that I figured out you were Jack’s kid.”
“Why did it take you until then?” inquired Luna. “I mean, why Ed? He’s just a personal AI unit.”
The following silence was deafening.
She blinked and looked around the room, shifting her gaze from Toad to Mark then back to Toad. “What? He is, isn’t he?”
Finally Toad spoke. “You don’t know much about AIs, do you?”
Sheepishly she replied, “No … I guess not. I’m a microbiologist, not a programmer.”
“Fear not, Subject Luna. I shall gladly rectify your ignorance,” Ed chimed in.
The AI continued, “I am a unique model of unparalleled sophistication, capable of operating and maintaining a city many times larger than New Denver. In addition, I am also one of
three
Artificial Intelligence units charged with the care and keeping of precisely one third of the master override codes for the Cathedral Reactor.
As such, my primary directive at this time is to work in conjunction with my brothers and fellow custodians, Alexander Graham Bell II and Bishop, in order to undo the catastrophe brought about by the aforesaid reactor. That and maintain a watchful eye on young Master Mark, of course.”
“You’re trying to shut down the reactor …
all of you are.” Luna said, looking from Mark to Toad, realization dawning on her.
“Ah! At last, she understands!” Ed exclaimed triumphantly.
Luna asked, “Wait … if you’ve been trying to shut it down, why haven’t you? I mean, you said yourselves that you’ve been out here for decades. So why is Cathedral still operating?”
This time Toad was the one to answer. “Because we haven’t had an opportunity to do anything about it. Until now, that is.” Seeing her obvious confusion he turned to Mark and said, “Explain it to her, will you?”
“So, you know Cathedral cut itself off from the rest of Unitech, right?”
She nodded, and he continued, “Well, according to you, people seem to think that it was a malfunction—an automated defense against a cyberterrorist attack or something like that. But the truth is, Bishop, Cathedral’s governing AI, found out that Alex had been compromised.”
“By Edgard,” Luna added.
“Right. So in order to keep himself from becoming corrupted, too, Bishop cut off all communications with the outside and sealed the reactor. The only problem is Bishop needs the kill codes from both Alex and Ed in order to shut Cathedral down for good. And since he severed his link with Alex, there’s no way to upload his codes.”
She frowned. “I take it Edgard didn’t know all that when he decided to switch it on, did he?”
Mark nodded. “Cathedral was my dad’s project. He always handled the research and development stuff, and Edgard took care of the financial side of things.”
“Got it. So what’s this
opportunity
you keep talking about?”
“Ironically enough, the war,” said Toad.
“I don’t follow you.”
“Here, let me lay it all out for you,” he said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. “In order for there to be a war, there have to be troops. And troops need to be moved. Sure, Edgard could use boats. But they’re vulnerable and ineffective if you want to cover a large area. So what does he do?”
“He sends in the Stratocruisers,” she answered, beginning to see where he was going.
“Right. And all Stratocruisers have a direct wireless uplink to Alex.”
“You’re planning to steal a Stratocruiser?” she exclaimed in disbelief. “That’s crazy!”
“What are you talking about? We do crazy pretty much every day around here,” Mark said, meriting a chuckle from Toad.
“I’m serious! It’s not like they’ll just let you walk up and take a chopper! They’ll have guards everywhere—you’ll get yourselves killed!”