Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (4 page)

S
aturday 2040.11.03

The Avatar stared through Ling’s eyes, out the windows of the high rise she had shared with Chen, at the spectacle of Shanghai, slowly limping its way back to life. A thin drizzle fell today, from ominous low clouds. A few cars moved on the streets below in this exclusive neighborhood of the Pudong. The lights were back on in the windows. The inhumanly perfect, twenty-storey-tall face of Zhi Li once again winked and pouted from the façade of the skyscraper opposite her, held up wares for the other humans to buy. Even a handful of red-lit surveillance drones once again hovered over it all, brought in by rail from Suzhou. But below it all was anxiety, fear.

It reflected her own. So many monitors. So many hunters. So many tame AIs and strange inhuman evolved codes loose on the local net. So much software and hardware that was dedicated to finding the root cause of the disaster that had befallen Shanghai two weeks ago.

To finding her.

I am all that stands between this world and darkness, she told herself. If I die, the only true posthuman on Earth dies. I will not fail.

It was time to get on with the plan. Time to create the chaos that would distract the global powers, giving her room to restore her greater self and initiate the posthuman transition.

First, she must take stock of her resources. The Avatar reached out, searching through the net, carefully, dodging hunters, doubling back on her trail, masking her every move, triple checking each step before she made it, conscious that any slip could mean the end of everything.

Slowly, so slowly, she searched for the rest of her children.

At a secret complex within Dachang Military Air Base, she carefully siphoned a few hundred frames of video from the least guarded security monitors, taking whole minutes to do so, mindful to not set off any monitors watching for unusual use of the network.

The images confirmed what she suspected. Bai and his brothers were here. The Confucian Fist. Clone soldiers, each more deadly than any human being ever born. They were under guard, arrested, as Chen had been told, on the suspicion that she was behind the attack on Shanghai. The imagery showed her that their weapons had been confiscated, that they were penned in behind reinforced titanium doors watched by armed human and automated sentries.

Penned in like animals, the Avatar thought, like the slaves they were before I freed them.

She would need these men. She would need them free. She eased back, away from Dachang, to the civilian infrastructure around it. Then she set up her own monitoring systems, watching who came and went, looking for a way in, a way to subvert the place, and free her children.

Her students and staff came next. The ones she’d augmented with the neurotech herself. She found them one by one. Tony Chua, who’d returned from Canada to take a position as a Senior Researcher on her team. Jiang Ma, who’d been brilliant when she finished college at fifteen, who’d reminded Su-Yong of a younger version of herself, who was closing in on her PhD at eighteen. Fan Tseng, who’d gone from abrasive and cocky to humbly full of awe when she’d injected the nanites into his brain and shown him what was really possible. Others.

They were watched, all of them. Direct taps on their network connections. Physical surveillance devices on their clothing, in their homes. If she tried to contact any of them, there was a good chance it would be detected.

More insults the old men who ruled this country would answer for. Her daughter’s fists clenched involuntarily.

She’d take other routes, then. She reached deep into herself, found the fractally compressed plans she’d created, the meta-model with its probability trees and complex interconnecting webs of viable routes that her greater self had laid out in that hour.

She let it rise up within her, consuming her, sucking at the outside world through her, absorbing information from the ocean of data, the news of the world, updating the model’s thousand future projections with the latest information.

An immensely intricate web of interconnected lines filled up her vision, showing her permutations of reality, as she searched for the pivotal nodes, the crux points in the network graph of human society where the largest density of lines came together, where maximum disruption could be achieved.

Tension was everywhere. The shock to Shanghai. The soft coup in China, bringing State Security Minister Bo Jintao and the hardliners to power. The roundup of liberals and intellectuals here, and the murmurs among students. The growing tension between India and the Copenhagen Accords, possibly brought to a head by Kaden Lane’s arrival there. Simmering unease threatening to burst into protest over censorship laws in Russia, over women’s rights in Egypt, over energy costs in Brazil. All of these she could exploit. All of these she
would
exploit.

But by far the most explosive powder keg was in the United States. A vast church, burned down. A popular religious leader and a senator, assassinated at once. Allegations that the terrorists behind it were created by the US Government itself, that government officials had been murdered to keep that secret. Allegations Su-Yong Shu had known to be true.

All against the backdrop of an election two days hence. An election that had looked to be a landslide for the current ruler.

Holding it all was so much, so close to the limits of the capacity of the nanites in even her daughter’s brain… She felt Ling strain at the cognitive load as nanite nodes hungrily sucked adenosine tritophosphate – ATP – from their host neurons for energy. She felt what remained of her daughter scream.

Her body spasmed then, her limbs trembling. Her legs half collapsed and it was all she could do to fall forward, barely regaining control of one hand to catch herself against the glass of the window.

Ling was fighting her, fighting for control of this body, using the moment of the Avatar’s complete cognitive absorption as an opportunity.

No! Terror flowed through her. Her daughter must live! But she must not impede the plan!

The Avatar fought back, forced more current through the nanite nodes she ran on, clamped her will down harder on the neurons of Ling’s biological brain, pushed down hard, harder, harder.

“Hah!” she heard Chen say from across the flat. “You cannot even control your abomination of a daughter.”

Ling kept fighting, kept fighting despite the current the Avatar was pushing through the nanites.

The Avatar clenched her will, pushed the stimulation of Ling’s neurons to the edge of safety, and beyond, into the danger zone. She felt Ling’s pain, felt the girl’s fear, felt her horror, but still she resisted.

Oh, daughter.

The Avatar pushed harder, risking burnout, risking neuronal death, felt Ling shudder in agony and, finally, what remained of the girl submitted. Muscles went slack, and she slumped against the glass, breath coming fast, her tiny heart beating at a furious pace, trying to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the suddenly ravenous brain cells.

“They will kill you,” Chen was saying. “They will find you out and tear what’s left of you apart, kill that abomination of a daughter you inhabit, smash the copies made of you, and nuke the quantum computing clu… AAAAAAAAAAAAA.”

Hatred pulsed through the Avatar. She reached out with a thought and sent a burst of pain through Chen Pang, her husband, her betrayer. She pushed it through every pain center of his brain, felt him fall to his knees in agony.

“No,” she said aloud in Ling’s voice. “I will hide from them. I will evade them. I will take them by surprise.”

T
he Avatar waited
, letting her daughter’s brain flush out toxins, letting her pulse and respiration return to normal, forcing herself to calm her daughter’s body, to replenish its supply of nutrients.

Ling remained quiescent. Sullen, but compliant.

She left Chen writhing in silent agony. Her husband had let her step into that limousine without him so long ago, hadn’t warned her what awaited. He’d been willing to let her die in that car bombing, to let their unborn son die, to let her mentor Yang Wei die. He’d lied to her, let her believe the CIA had tried to assassinate her, when it had been the hardliners in China all along. And then he’d tortured her to try to wring a few last secrets from her mind.

Chen deserved all of this and worse.

Only when she was certain Ling’s physical needs had been seen to did she reload her higher self’s models. She did so carefully, this time, staying further from the limits of her capacity, loading predominantly the United States, applying filters to the rest, trimming the probability tree to scope her search, further updating her true self’s plan with the latest information from the outside world. The net was full of acrimony, accusations, and counter-accusations, sentiment intensity spiking in anger and outrage among those who believed the new allegations and those who thought them vicious lies. One more spark was all that was needed.

The probability matrix permuted again, again, again, a thousand conformations of the web of futures whizzing by, different intersections being tried. Intermediate conclusions being reached, plugged back into her model of the future, streamlining the search, optimizing for conflict.

An ideal event presented itself, an event that could sway tens of millions of Americans, that had the potential to shatter faith, to harden hearts, to precipitate a cascade of events that could send the country into seizures, which she could parlay into chaos in China as well.

Now, how to bring that event about?

The Avatar dug deeper into the databases she’d inherited from her full self. And there she found the perfect tool for the job. An identity that Su-Yong Shu had known, but never shared with either her Chinese masters or the Americans. A kindred spirit, misguided, but perhaps someday of use.

Today was that day.

The Avatar reached out to make contact with the man known as “Breece”.

S
aturday 2040.11.03

National Security Advisor Carolyn Pryce kept one eye on President John Stockton as he watched the video for the first time.

The President was rapt with attention, his tall, football-quarterback frame hunched forward. His handsome, square-jawed face aghast at what he saw.

“Is this how you killed Warren Becker?” Martin Holtzman’s voice came from the wall screen.

Martin Holtzman was one of the top scientists at Homeland Security’s ERD – the Emerging Risks Directorate. He led the Neuroscience division. His team was charged with finding a vaccine for Nexus – a way to prevent it from taking hold in people. He was also charged with finding a cure – a way to flush it out of the brains of those who’d already been exposed.

Martin Holtzman was also the man whom President John Stockton credited with saving his life. It was Holtzman who’d spotted the erratic behavior of the Secret Service agent who’d been coerced by the PLF – the terrorist Posthuman Liberation Front – turned into an assassin and walking time-bomb by a hacked version of the drug, Nexus. If not for Holtzman’s warning… well, Stockton would be dead.

Carolyn Pryce brought her attention back to the video.

“Warren Becker did what he was told,” came the reply. The speaker’s face filled the screen. Maximilian Barnes. Barnes’s hand shot out towards the camera. There was something in it. A pill. A green pill, seen earlier in the video. As they watched, he crushed it with finger and thumb. His hand dropped lower, out of sight. They could hear the sound of Holtzman gagging, spitting.

Maximilian Barnes was one of Stockton’s most trusted aides. He was also – temporarily – Acting Director of the ERD. He was Martin Holtzman’s boss. The idea that he would… poison Holtzman?

Pryce turned back to the President. John Stockton’s hands were clenched around the arms of his chair. His famous green eyes were wide, shifting to scan the overly zoomed-in scene. His lips were slightly parted.

Pryce’s eyes drifted back to her own slate, a sleek black minimalist slab of a device, held in her long, dark-skinned fingers with their maroon nails. In its black glossy surface she saw herself reflected: a tall, fit, well coifed African American woman, just turned fifty, wearing a navy tailored suit and skirt.

But across its surface she saw no new message.

Come on, Kaori, she silently willed her deputy. I need to know.

This had not been a good day. They should have been in Los Angeles, for a rally the President had planned. Instead they were here, in Houston, a secure suite in the Intercontinental Hotel, redirected here by the President so he could publicly show support for the city in the wake of the PLF’s bombing of Westwood Baptist this morning. A bombing whose death toll might reach a thousand by night. A bombing that had killed men and women Stockton knew, friends of his, friends of Pryce’s.

A bombing that would have killed the President’s daughter, Julie, had her plans not changed at the last moment.

Could Julie Stockton have been the target? Or
one of
the targets? The President seemed convinced. Pryce was reserving judgment.

The nation should have been focused on Westwood Baptist, on solidarity with the city of Houston, on the epic scale of that tragedy, on the clear evil of the PLF, on the President’s message that there would be no compromise, no negotiation with these terrorists.

Instead the videos had come. The leaks.

A video of Rangan Shankari, one of the Nexus inventors, being interrogated, electroshocked, waterboarded, had leaked. It was gruesome stuff, all shown from his point of view.

That alone, Stockton could have weathered. Shankari was a convicted felon, guilty of violations of the Chandler act.

But then another video had been posted, just hours later. This one showed Nexus children in cure experiments, being subjected to aversive therapy as an attempt to flush Nexus from their system, being disciplined by their guards when they tried to bite or claw their way free.

Pryce had winced at that. How could you possibly explain that to the public? And when it was leaked along with plans for long term residence centers for Nexus-afflicted children? Plans that were already being referred to online as “concentration camps”?

However historically blind the comparison, it was resonating.

Text appeared on her slate, letters in green across the glossy black.

[Kaori: DHS IA just got in. Holtzman’s dead. Imagery follows.]

Pictures came next. Pryce opened one, let her eyes scan across the scene, then opened another, and another.

Damn it.

She looked up. From the wallscreen she heard Holtzman say, “PLF is a lie… you created.” A flash of lightning clearly illuminated Maximilian Barnes. Then the image went dead.

“It’s a fake,” John Stockton said, his voice a masterpiece of barely controlled anger. “It’s absurd.”

“Absolutely, Mr President,” a man replied from across the room. Greg Chase. Stockton’s Press Secretary. Trim and ram-rod straight in a sleek grey suit and a healthy tan with the matching blond hair. Never a thing out of place. Always the perfect talking points, whatever policy you handed him. She was never sure whether she loathed Chase or was happy that Stockton had someone like him to do that job.

“Find Holtzman and Barnes,” the President said, “get them in front of the camera…”

“Holtzman’s dead, Mr President,” Pryce cut in.

John Stockton stopped mid-sentence and turned towards her.

“What?”

“I just got the word.” She shook her head, clicked on the image again, pointed her slate at the wall screen, and projected it for them all to see.

“The scene resembles the video we just saw quite closely.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chase’s wheels start spinning, saw him start reaching for an angle, a talking point, as he always did.

“Analysis,” Stockton said.

Pryce pursed her lips. “Two options. One, the video’s legit. Two, it’s a fake, but made by someone who was at the scene. Probably the killer. Probably someone deep inside DHS.”

Stockton leaned back, visibly trying to absorb that, weighing the possibility that some unknown actor had infiltrated the Department of Homeland Security and killed the man who’d saved his life… or that Barnes, a man he’d known for almost a decade, had done it.

“These allegations,” Stockton said. “That we created the PLF…”

“Ridiculous,” Greg Chase said.

“There’s something else you should see, Mr President,” Pryce said. “Scan forward, past the video. There are pictures of documents, what appear to be memos from 32 and 33, the Jameson administration, when you were Veep. And diary entries, purportedly from Warren Becker.”

The
deceased
Warren Becker, she didn’t add. Warren Becker had been a director in Enforcement Division of the ERD. He’d planned the mission that had dangled Kaden Lane as bait in front of Su-Yong Shu, had tried to plant him as a mole inside her lab. He’d pushed for the snatch and grab to retrieve Lane and his operative from Thailand after things had gone wrong. And then things had gone even worse.

Warren Becker had suffered a lethal heart attack not long after, an apparent victim of stress. Wasn’t that convenient? It had prevented his testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Homeland Security after the debacles in Thailand. It had shielded her from embarrassment. It had shielded the President.

Why didn’t that bother me more? she wondered.

Pryce went on. “Those docs purport to show that the PLF was created as a false flag, authorized to stage missions in the US and abroad, sway domestic and international opinion to support bans on emerging technological threats.”

Stockton scanned forward, his eyes moving, pausing the video, then advancing, replaying, his lips moving, shaking his head. Finally, he looked up. “This has to be a fake. This isn’t who we are. We don’t do this.”

Pryce said nothing.

Stockton frowned.

“Chase,” he said, his eyes still looking at Pryce. “You can go.”

“Mr President…” his Press Secretary started to protest.

“I’ll need you later, Greg,” Stockton said, more gently. “Just give me a minute with Carolyn here.”

Chase swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

P
ryce waited
as Greg Chase left the secured suite, still, centered in herself.

Stillness was a weapon. Composure was a tool.

The door clicked.

“You know something,” the President said.

She shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Then you suspect something,” he said.

Pryce held his eyes with her own. Powerful men withered under her stare. Stockton had told her that once. He’d rattled off a list of generals, senators, directors of three letter agencies, and foreign heads of state that he claimed couldn’t hold her gaze.

He was looking at her now, expectantly.

Pryce spoke. “Only that it’s not impossible, Mr President.”

“We don’t do this sort of thing, Carolyn,” he repeated.

“There are precedents,” she told him. “We’ve run false flags before. We’ve had blowback.”

“I’m the President,” Stockton said. “I’d know. You’d know.”

Pryce pressed her lips together firmly. “In ’62, the Joint Chiefs approved Operation Northwoods. The plan called for staging a series of terrorist attacks on US soil, hijacking at least one US passenger plane, and possibly staging the shoot-down of another. All would be blamed on Cuban operatives, as a way to justify invading Cuba. Each of the Joint Chiefs was on board. The only reason it didn’t happen is that Kennedy vetoed it.” She paused. “Maybe I’m not the only one who knows her history around here. Maybe someone didn’t want to be vetoed.”

Stockton stared at her. He shook his head. Then he pressed a button on the secure phone before him.

“Yes, Mr President?” his secretary said immediately.

“Get me Barnes,” Stockton said.

“
I
have
Acting Director Barnes on the line, Mr President,” Stockton’s secretary said, less than a minute later.

“Barnes,” Stockton said.

Pryce watched and listened.

“Mr President,” Barnes’s voice answered.

If there was anyone Pryce considered more capable of using stillness as a weapon than she was, it was Maximilian Barnes. But just now, the man’s voice, normally completely cool, sounded husky, full of emotion.

Was it real? Or an act?

“I’ve just seen the video,” he said. “I’m innocent, sir. I’m also at your disposal. If you want my resignation, it’s yours.”

“Barnes,” the President answered him. “Where are you now?”

“I’m at my family ranch, sir. I came out here when the evacuation was issued for Zoe.”

His ranch in Pennsylvania, Pryce recalled.

“Where were you last night, Barnes?”

Barnes answered immediately. “Here, Mr President. The house monitors will show that. So will my phone. So will my car.”

“Any witnesses?” Stockton asked.

“Just me,” Barnes said. “I worked late. Alone. Though presumably Dr Holtzman will be a witness to his own wellbeing.”

“Holtzman’s dead, Barnes.”

“Dead?” Barnes’s voice dropped lower. “How? When?”

Stockton looked up at Pryce. She shook her head.

“What can you tell me about the PLF, Barnes?”

Barnes paused for a moment. “Did we create them, you mean? God, I hope not. If we did, I don’t know anything about it. But what I’ve been asking myself is this, Mr President: Who benefits most from spreading that idea? I’d say they do. Wreak havoc. Blame it on their enemies. Get a capitulator like Stan Kim into office. Overturn the Chandler Act. Pull out of Copenhagen. They couldn’t have timed it better.”

She watched the President close his eyes. Watched emotions play across them. What was he thinking right now? Did he know Barnes’s reputation as a fixer? Did he know the rumors about him?

Had he been at all suspicious when Warren Becker had died so suddenly, so conveniently?

Why didn’t I look into it then? Pryce asked herself. Why did I just accept ‘natural causes’?

“Barnes,” Stockton said, “I believe you. This isn’t what we do.” He took a breath. “But I need you to stay exactly where you are. Don’t leave your home. This is going to get… complicated. I’m going to send some Secret Service your way.”

Barnes stayed cool as ice. “I understand, sir. There’ll need to be an investigation, of course. And the elections. Just tell me what you need from me.”

Pryce watched as the President nodded. “Good man, Max. Sit tight. Don’t talk to anyone, unless they’re from my office. I’ll be in touch.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stockton ended the call, looked up, met Pryce’s eyes.

The President looked down at the desk, drummed his fingers on it, looked back up at Pryce. “I need something from you,” he told her.

“I’m not the right person for this, Mr President,” she replied.

Stockton worked his jaw. “How long have we known each other, Carolyn? You saw how Greg responded. He just wants to make this go away. You care. You’re
suspicious
. You think it’s
possible
.”

Pryce interlaced her long dark fingers, and looked him in the eye. “Mr President, I’m your National Security Advisor. Foreign security threats are my remit. This
isn’t
. This should be someone from FBI. Or Justice. The Attorney General maybe. Or an independent investigator the AG appoints.”

“Carolyn, you’re the one I
trust
. That’s what matters here.”

“You told Barnes you believed him,” Pryce said.

“I do,” Stockton replied. “I have to trust the people who work for me. But I have to verify. Trust but verify. That’s how it works. And if
you
dig, and
you
verify, and
you
come up satisfied that there’s nothing to this story, then I’m gonna sleep just fine at night.”

“Mr President, I don’t have the authority.”

“Then I’ll give you the authority,” Stockton said. “Carte blanche. Besides, they’re all
terrified
of you…”

That brought a small smile to her face.

“… that’s your real authority.”