Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (54 page)

Dead, most likely.

“Who… who are you?”

Bai turned. He was still breathing hard. It was the student. The boy they’d identified as one of the leaders. A high-value target worth protecting. He was looking back and forth between Bai and Liwei.

Bai looked at Liwei, then looked back at the student. He was suddenly aware of phones around them, phones pointed at him, phones recording this.

“We’re brothers,” Bai said.

“Are you… are you with the Army?” the student asked.

Bai felt his breathing slow, finally catching up to the exertion of killing these soldiers before they could kill the protest leaders. He could see the actress watching now. And her partner, Lu Song.

He’d always liked Lu Song’s films.

“We’re Confucian Fist,” Bai said. He paused. “We serve the people.”

Then Bai felt something that shocked him.

A mind. A mind he hadn’t touched for most of a year.

A mind he’d thought was dead.

Here, now.

Very much alive.

M
onday 2041.01.20

John Stockton waited in the President’s Room off the US Senate Chambers.

What a gaudy, tacky place this was. The gold and blue tile-work on the floor. The frescos on the ceiling. It looked more like a church in Italy than something that belonged in the US.

Goddammit, he didn’t want to be here.

He’d made this his first stop
after
his inauguration in ’37, coming here to show the Congress that he was serious about working with them, that he was serious about signing bills right here, like Lincoln had, like Reagan had.

After
the inauguration. Not before.

He hadn’t been back once, until now.

He hated this. Hated having the inauguration indoors for fear of disruption. Hated the mistrust the American people had, when everything he’d done the last four years he’d done to make the country stronger.

Stockton parted a heavy red curtain with his hand. He heard one of his Secret Service detail make a sound behind him. He ignored the man. The glass was bulletproof. If they wanted to fire a rocket at him, they were welcome to try.

Somewhere out there, protesters were gathering. Maybe a million of them. Because they thought he’d lied. Because they thought he was a monster.

I never lied to you, America, Stockton thought at those people. If I’m hard, it’s because you’re soft. It’s because you don’t see the danger.

“Mr President,” he heard from behind him.

He turned. Jerry Aiken, his Chief of Staff, had the door open.

“President Jameson is here, sir.”

Stockton nodded.

They wheeled Jameson in. He was impeccably dressed in a grey suit and red tie, a prominent flag pin on his lapel. A man choosing to sit, not a cripple. Not an invalid. Not a man who’d been through three strokes.

His chair was obviously self-drive, but he still had some aide push it in for him. His own Secret Service detail came in with him.

“John,” Miles Jameson said with a smile. “About to start your second term!” He sounded proud. “And you still made time to chat with me?”

John Stockton met the eyes of the man who’d chosen him as VP eight years ago, who’d all but handed him the White House when health precluded a second run.

He didn’t smile back.

“I need a few minutes with President Jameson,” he said, his eyes still on Jameson’s. “Please leave us.”

Jameson cocked his head quizzically, kept smiling as people filed out.

When they were gone, and the soundproof door was closed, Jameson spoke again.

“John–” he started.

“Tell me it’s not true,” Stockton cut him off.

Jameson frowned. “What’s not true?”

“Don’t play this game with me, Miles,” Stockton said. “The PLF. That we created it. That
you
created it.”

Jameson’s face grew grave. “Oh no. Don’t tell me she’s got you convinced. Carolyn needs help, John. The job’s gotten to her. The woman’s paranoid. She’s clinical.”

“So you deny it?” Stockton asked.

“Every bit of it!” Jameson said. “Did you know she fabricated a story about an attempt to kill her? About some sort of covert escape with stealth gear and a helicopter?”

“Fabricated?” Stockton asked.

Jameson nodded. “She crashed her rental car, barely made it out with her life, made up some alternate story, has been telling people about it, some sort of James Bond story.”

“But it’s not true?” Stockton asked.

Jameson shook his head. “No. She might actually
believe
it, mind you, in some sort of paranoid delusion. But we interviewed the officers on the scene of the car crash. We talked to the flight crew she says flew her. She was in the car. She was driving. There was no helicopter.”

“And these witnesses will swear to this?” Stockton asked.

Jameson shrugged. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t.”

“Because you’re a damn liar!” Stockton yelled, exploding with rage, thrusting an accusing finger at Jameson. “Aiken interviewed those people. Two of them say they were offered
bribes
, in the
millions
to lie!”

Shock registered on Jameson’s face. Disbelief.

“CALVINIST,” Stockton said. “HARBINGER. SENTINEL.”

He threw the names at Jameson like slaps, every one an insult.

Jameson’s face grew enraged.

“You don’t get to lecture me,
John
!” Jameson growled. “You
opted out
of the hard calls.”

“Bullshit!” Stockton said. “I was there! I was ready!”

“No,” Jameson spat. “You weren’t. You’re still not.”

“We don’t fucking lie!” Stockton shot back. “Not like that! Not on that scale!”

“We lie
all the time!
” Jameson leaned forward, staring at Stockton, punctuating each word with a sharp small movement of his head, with an extended finger jabbing down at the floor, like a school master teaching a thick-headed student. “We do
whatever it takes
to keep this country strong. You better fucking learn that, before it’s too late!”

“You can’t build a country on lies,” Stockton said. He strode for the door.

“John!” Jameson reached out, grabbed Stockton’s forearm with one outstretched hand.

Stockton pried it off.

“You’re going down, Miles.”

B
o Jintao looked
up as General Ouyang re-entered the room.

“We were repelled,” Ouyang said. His voice was grave.

Bo Jintao’s eyes grew wide. “At Jiao Tong?”

Ouyang nodded. “They had anti-tank weapons. Cyber weapons.” He paused. “And the clone soldiers were there. I fear the Indians are correct.”

Bo Jintao felt fear crawl up his spine. He was suddenly aware of the other six members of the Politburo Standing Committee staring at him.

He’d warned them of this! He’d come to power on this basis! He’d told them that the progressives would lead them to a catastrophe, a loss of control, even a world where posthumans overturned the rule of humans.

But he hadn’t thought it would happen so soon!

“Hit them harder!” he told Ouyang .

The general nodded. “Already in progress. We’re moving military assets from the assault on People’s Square. Pulling up other resources.” He paused. “If conventional assault should fail…”

“It cannot fail!” Bo Jintao said. “Spare nothing!”

Ouyang bowed his head briefly. Then he looked up again.

“There is another issue. The deadline we gave to the American fleet expires soon. This is now a distraction. We should postpone it, give them another twenty-four hours while we deal with this more pressing domestic issue.”

Across the table he saw Bao Zhuang nod, open his mouth to agree.

Wang Wei spoke faster. “No!” the elder Standing Committee member said. “We don’t know that the Americans aren’t involved! They may be working
with
her! And we’ve told them to vacate our territory. We
must
follow through on our threats or they lose all power!”

Around the table, Bo Jintao saw other Standing Committee members agreeing with Wang Wei. He swiveled his head, and there were near universal nods of enthusiasm. All except Bao Zhuang and Fu Ping. One of whom he’d stripped of all power. The other had been humiliated by failure.

Fine.

Ouyang shook his head. “I strongly urge the Standing Committee to–”

Bo Jintao cut him off. There were only so many fights that could be fought at once. “We’re done. The Standing Committee has decided, General.”

Ouyang scowled.

Bo Jintao pressed on. “The warning shot goes forward,” he said. “But first and foremost, get to that cluster, and destroy it!”

A
t Dachang People’s
Liberation Army Air Force Base, just west of Shanghai, the Avatar’s thoughts touched her servants, and klaxons sounded.

Unmanned Wuzhen-40s ignited their engines, propelled themselves down their runways, and lifted off into the night sky, loaded with ammunitions. Their operators, brains infused with nanites, instructions strongly imprinted on their minds, steered them towards Jiao Tong.

Protect the university campus.

Protect it against the Army.

On the ground, humans and robots fueled more aircraft, prepped them for takeoff.

G
eneral Ouyang sat
in the helicopter he was using as a mobile command center, grounded on the pad at Zhongnanhai, thinking.

He’d given the order for the attack on Jiao Tong.

Beyond that?

“Patch me through to General Quan Huyan,” he told his radio operator. “Strategic Missile Command.”

The radio operator in the co-pilot seat nodded.

An analog radio signal was bounced from the helicopter to an aircraft flying lazy circles above Beijing, from there to a high-altitude aerostat filled with helium, then down a string of similar aircraft, until it reached his destination.

An old friend, now a subordinate.

“General Ouyang,” came the brisk voice. “What are your orders?”

Ouyang took a breath. “Quan,” he said, addressing the man as a friend. “My orders are quite irregular. But they may be vital to our future. Cut your base off from all digital input, immediately. Activate electronic warfare defense protocols. Assume all digital signals are attacks. Then place two Dongfeng-6s on standby. Target them for the following coordinates…”

There was silence after he’d read off the coordinates. He could see the tension in the postures of his pilot, his radio-man, his aide. He could hear the shock in Quan Huyan’s breathing.

“General,” Quan Huyan said. Ouyang heard his old friend swallow. “Those coordinates appear to be–”

“Shanghai,” Ouyang said. “Jiao Tong University. Ten megatons.”

Ouyang could hear Quan Huyan breathing heavily on the other side, in disbelief.

“General,” Quan said. “I cannot fire these missiles without authorization from–”

“Old friend,” Ouyang interrupted. “I hope I never get that authorization.”

M
onday 2041.01.20

Kade lay on his belly in the darkness, atop the roof, his visor illuminating and magnifying the scene in Jiao Tong’s central square.

The scene of bloodshed.

Around him were Feng and Sam and the Indian Commandos. Getting here had been a grueling ordeal. The streets were a nightmare of angry citizens and nervous, twitchy soldiers. They’d traveled cloaked in chameleonware, winding their way between and through crowds where possible, being stalled more than once by impossible throngs, pushing their way through at times, creating distractions where they could, backtracking when necessary.

All the while their body heat was building up, being trapped in the suits’ heat capacitors very finite capacity.

Three times Kade had been forced to talk Captain Garud down via satellite from trying to slip into the Secure Computing Center without him.

“You’ll need my help or Feng’s to operate the elevator. You’ll need the tools Shu gave us.”

“We’re here now!” Garud had sent back. “Transfer the tools to us!”

“No,” Kade refused.

The truth was, he didn’t trust the commandos to go in without him. Not one bit.

Now, Kade and Sam and Feng were re-united with the Indian team. Minus one. A commando named Srini hadn’t made it. The one who’d collided with the flock of birds ahead of Kade.

The remaining eleven were spread out on this rooftop, chameleonware active, visible to Kade only via the green wire-frames painted into his mind of each figure and the impressive array of gear with them.

Kade had dropped with almost nothing. The rest had dropped with thirty to forty kilo loads of weapons, comms gear, and emergency supplies. The visor used its link to his Nexus OS to fill his mind’s eye with the outlines of guns and grenades and micromissile launchers, of rappelling gear and climbing gear, of backpacks on all the commandos, laden with more.

Somewhere in that gear, Kade imagined, there were two very special packages hidden. Packages they didn’t want him to know about.

“At least a hundred Confucian Fist out in the open,” Garud whispered over their suit-to-suit laser links. “A handful visible guarding the building itself. Now is our best chance to enter.”

“No,” Feng transmitted. “At least thirty, forty of my brothers not accounted for. Could be inside. No way to fight through that.”

“We attack with missiles and grenades then,” Aarthi transmitted.

“No,” Feng repeated.

Captain Garud replied, his voice annoyed. “What do you suggest then?”

“We surrender,” Kade said softly.

Feng rose from his prone position and stepped forward, to the edge of the roof.

“Stop!” Garud yelled across the link.

Feng stepped again, and dropped out of sight.

“What are you doing?” Garud yelled again, outrage in his voice.

Feng reappeared a moment later, down below them, at ground level, his chameleonware deactivated, the hood pulled off his head, walking past the abandoned army lines, towards the mass of protesters in the square.

Garud raised his rifle. “Stop!” he transmitted again. “That’s an order. I
will
shoot you.”

“No,” Sam said. “You won’t.” Her voice was resigned.

Kade looked over, found her crouched above Captain Garud, her pistol drawn, jammed into the back of his helmet.

“Put down the gun, Samantha!” Aarthi said.

She was up on her feet, her own rifle pointed at Sam.

Kade turned back to watch Feng.

“Put away your guns,” he transmitted. “All of you. If you shoot, we all die. This is the only way.”

B
ai pushed through the crowds
, rushing, dodging, until he came to a throng of his brothers.

And there, in the middle. There he was.

The prodigal.

“Feng!” Bai said.

Feng stopped in mid-sentence, turned, grinned.

“Bai!”

They rushed towards each other, embraced. They’d spent quite a bit of time together those last two years, when Feng drove Su-Yong, while Bai was assigned to drive her husband.

“We thought you were dead, Feng! We thought the Americans killed you in Thailand!”

He could feel Feng’s mind. This was him, undoubtedly, not like that pale imitation of Su-Yong down below. This was the real Feng.

Feng feigned the look of one insulted. “What?” he said, his tone outraged. “Just a few helicopters, some explosions, one international incident, and you think I’m dead?”

Laughter rippled from the brothers gathered round.

Same old Feng. Bai grinned. So many dead. But this one regained.

“Did Su-Yong send for you?” Bai asked. Then his smile faded. His tone grew more serious. “Brother, there are some things you should know.”

Feng’s smile dropped also. His mind grew focused. “I know, Bai,” he said quietly. “That’s why we’re here.”

“We?” Bai asked.

S
un Liu watched
the scene outside from a third floor window of the now-deserted Computer Science Building. More and more of the Confucian Fist were gathering in a single location. And there was some other force. Some force that had arrived in stealth gear, and were now de-activating it. Armed men and women, not Chinese.

What was going on?

Then he felt something rise through him. The evil thing. The dead woman come back to life. She invaded his mind, seized his senses, looked out through his eyes into the world. Her mind stretched out through the nanotechnology infused in his brain, surfing the thoughts of the clones down below, listening to what they were thinking.

And what she heard…

Sun Liu gasped at the rage she felt, as it coursed through his own mind and body.

The creature that had enslaved him was not amused.

“
H
ow far is
she in the process?” Feng asked.

Kade and Sam were with them now, chameleonware deactivated, hoods off. The Indians were here, chameleonware down also, but hoods still up, minds masked behind them, their faraday lining a shield against neural attacks.

As if that would stop Su-Yong.

Tao spoke. “Hours. Possibly minutes. We delivered the backup cube this morning. It could be any time.”

Feng felt Kade’s mental intake of breath. It was down to the wire.

“We have to move fast, then,” Feng said. “The insanity must be stopped, brothers.” He looked around. He could feel their minds. He could feel their understanding, snippets of their experience. They’d seen it, little bits of it. “If she’s restored, in those first few moments, hours, days… she’d be even more insane than the fragment you’ve seen inside of Ling.”

Feng paused. “And much more powerful.” He looked around at all of them, meeting eyes of his brothers, the men he’d known his entire life. Bai. Tao. Peng. Liwei. Quang. Li-Jiang. Lao.

“I love Su-Yong,” Feng said. “We all do. The insanity must be stopped.”

“And you can do this?” It was Bai, his head turned, addressing Kade.

Feng turned also, watched his friend.

Kade said nothing for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Not alone,” he said. “I’m only human. But together? All of us?” He nodded slowly. “We have a chance.”

Feng turned back to his brothers, watched as they looked at each other, as Bai and Tao and Peng and all the rest exchanged thoughts.

And then he felt their minds reach out to him. Reach out to him and to Kade.

Show us,
Bai sent.
Show us everything.

K
ade opened
himself to Feng’s brothers, let them see it all.

Su-Yong’s death at Ananda’s monastery. His responsibility for it. The Indian copy of Shu. The way they’d trapped her. How she’d reacted. Her battle with the warped fragment she’d stuffed in Ling’s mind in her insanity.

The plans she’d shown him. The plans forged in madness. The plans for conquest.

His fears for the outcome. For the world’s response. For the consequences should she fail or succeed.

The tools the sane Su-Yong had given him and Feng.

The way she’d renounced her hate, renounced the path she’d started down in the midst of torture and delirium.

The pleas she’d sent them with.

Save Ling. Save the world.

And most of all. What they could hope to do. The thin strand of hope that extended into the future, that broke the cycle, that didn’t lead to war between human and posthuman.

They pulled back from him, pulled back from what they’d seen from Feng.

Kade opened his eyes and found a massive crowd of identical faces, a throng of them in a circle around him. Faces just like Feng’s.

He shivered, remembering how alien the idea of these clones had seemed just a year ago.

Now… Now they felt like old friends.

He felt a wave go through them, a wave of consensus. They’d seen it. They’d seen the truth of insanity themselves. This plan, with all its risks, made sense to them.

Scores of weapons came up, pointed inwards.

“Drop your weapons,” a hundred voices said.

T
he Avatar reached
out through Sun Liu’s mind, through equipment the SCC staff had installed in the Computer Science building.

That was the Lane boy. The transhuman who’d brought her to this state. And Feng, her favorite. Her Fist were conspiring with them.

They were conspiring against her.

Rage rose through her. These were her children. These were her blessed. These were the ones she’d given everything for. This was the boy she’d sacrificed a body for!

She proxied through Sun Liu. She amplified his signal via the repeaters around her.

And then she reached out to her errant children, to impose discipline.

“
D
rop your weapons
!” came the chorus from the Confucian Fist. “Remove your hoods!”

“Do it,” Kade said. “If you cloak, they’ll kill you.”

The Indian Commandos were frozen, their guns pointed down, outnumbered by the Confucian Fist. No one moved.

Then one by one they dropped their guns, reached up, peeled off their hoods.

“You’ve betrayed us!” Captain Garud yelled aloud, looking at Kade, his face livid.

“You brought backpack nukes,” Kade said coldly. “Don’t deny it.”

“Damn you!” Garud said. “That thing down there is a threat!” He pointed a finger down, through the earth. “We have to destroy it! We can detonate the devices down below and eliminate the threat with no other casualties!”

Kade stared at the man. “What would that tell the next one?” he asked.

Garud yelled back. “That’s not the point!”

Confucian Fist were moving forward now, separating the commandos, removing their gear, fastening restraints around them.

Kade shook his head. “It would be tomorrow, Captain. Prisoner’s dilemma is
always
iterated in the real world. Defection is a sound strategy when you’re playing against defectors.”

Garud just stared at him.

Kade tried again. “Posthumans are coming, Captain Garud. There’ll be one after this. And another. And another. And more after that. Humans
drove this woman crazy
. You nuke her for it? The next posthuman will decide to nuke
you
first. You want them to treat you well? Then give them a reason. Treat
them
well.”

Garud leaned forward, a Confucian Fist holding his hands behind his back, and spat at the ground.

Then something epic descended on all their minds, something huge, something raving, something utterly without mercy.

B
ai groaned
and fell to his knees. He could feel her pushing into his mind, feel
it
pushing into his mind, pushing into his brothers’ minds. The thing he’d thought was Su-Yong.

No.

It put its mental fist around his will and squeezed, crushed, making way for
its
will. He felt it reach in and impose its order, its discipline, its desires on him.

He’d thought he’d been a slave before, degraded by pain, controlled by the virtual lash.

No.

He’d been free. Infinitely free compared to this.

Bai pushed back up to one knee, his hand on his weapon, his eyes alive and searching for his targets.

His soul dying as he fought with every ounce of his being against the invader.

And lost.

This was slavery.

This was hell.

K
ade felt
the attack as Su-Yong’s mad program attempted to impose its will on them all.

Weapons came alive inside him. Information constructs Su-Yong had passed on unfolded within him, expanded like origami into new shapes, vast and intricate.

His mind became a weapon.

Beside him he felt Feng’s mind unfold into complementary structures.

Viral weapons lanced from both of them, synergistic things, expanding into nearby minds, replicating, hunting out parts of her errant monster’s mind, creations that bore her errant monster’s telltale signature, carving them up, slicing them into billions of tiny fragments, forensically dissecting them, analyzing their contents and structure, following them back to where they originated from.

He felt minds around him snap free as the viral weapons sliced through tendrils of the monster’s thought. He felt the monster itself recoil, reel itself back, fleeing this unexpected attack, leaving behind telltales of its mental state, of its plans, of what it knew and intended.

The viral copies in the minds all around them shot tendrils out to each other, linked up, formed a compound structure, a new, larger entity, with a wider scope, a higher gain, a greater sensitivity, a higher signal strength.

Up above, in the building. There was the monster’s proximal route.

They shot copies of the virus by the million at the mind there.

Firewalls and hastily invoked anti-virals shot them down, scrambled the viral structures on the wire before they could penetrate, destroyed millions.

A handful got through, snuck into the human mind in the chaos, found it fertile, began replicating again, carrying Kade/Feng into it, into the mind of this man called Sun Liu.