Daemon (47 page)

He knelt down next to Philips and brushed her wet hair away from her face. “Help is coming, Nat.” He felt her trembling. “Are you okay?”

Her lips quivered slightly but she nodded. Her face contorted as she tried to contain tears. “How many do you think we lost?”

He took a deep breath. “Possibly everyone.”

She put a hand to her mouth and started crying.

“It’s not your fault, Natalie.” He put a hand on her arm reassuringly.

“I was in charge!”

“No. You weren’t. We just thought you were.”

She stopped and turned her blindfolded eyes toward him.

“They were never going to let us stop the Daemon, Natalie.”

“You’re talking crazy! The government
created
the Task Force. We were betrayed by private industry.”

“Private industry
is
your government. I thought you knew that.”

“How can you say that to me?”

“Because it’s true. Sobol knew it. The Daemon isn’t attacking us, Nat. This is a struggle between two artificial organisms. The Daemon is just a new species of corporation.”

They sat for a moment listening to the distant sirens.

“The old social order is dissolving, Nat. It happens every few centuries.” He looked out across the burning city, then turned back to her. “I won’t let Loki be our future.”

She was trembling, whether from being wet or scared he couldn’t tell.

He brushed his hand along her cheek and eased toward her blindfolded face. His face was only an inch away from hers. She could sense him there.

“I want you to know, every day my first and last thought is of you.”

He removed his hand from her cheek. She blindly glanced around, listening, feeling forward with her hands. “Jon.” A pause filled with the sound of sirens and approaching tug engines. She no longer felt his presence. “Jon!”

The only reply was an echoing, amplified voice from the water.
“Are you injured?”
A fireboat’s engines throbbed in reverse.

Philips wept on the jetty as the roar of powerful engines drowned out the world.

H
e floated in the darkness of his mind for what seemed decades. Thoughts came to him only as raw concepts—black despair, vertiginous fear. As he began to coalesce from the emptiness, he slowly pieced together scraps of his personality, regaining some measure of self. His mind no longer floated on a sea of nothingness. It was enmeshed in a carnal vessel again. That vessel was named Peter Sebeck.

He wasn’t sure at what point he noticed someone talking—perhaps they had been there all along—but they kept up a persistent chatter while his mind came into focus in the darkness. At first Sebeck couldn’t distinguish individual words, but as he concentrated they became more distinct.

“…Christ figure is a recurring motif in many cultures; death and rebirth; symbolic turning of the seasons, all that crap. Wyle E. Coyote was a fucking Christ figure, man, and Acme Company was Rome, baby.” A pause. “You can find it in Hindu legend, Sumerian mythology. Shit, you find it in modern folklore, like Rip van Winkle.

“Although Rip van Winkle didn’t die. He
slept.
But that’s the damned point: death as sleep. Sleep as death. Isn’t our life a cycle of death and rebirth? Sleep and awakening? The promise of eternal life is a threat unless you get to start over. The mythmakers knew that. They weren’t dummies, man.”

The clattering of metal tools.

“They were the ones who invented rhyme and meter—the programming language for human memory in preliterary civilizations. It was a cultural
checksum
—a mnemonic device. You couldn’t fuck with the code or the rhymes didn’t work; and if the rhymes didn’t work, people noticed. And so the knowledge of a people was passed down intact. It was a shamanic code. If you fucked with the code, then society lost its collective mind. Smell me?”

A pause.

“Hey, I think our boy’s coming around.”

Sebeck opened his eyes and slowly focused on a pasty-faced twenty-something kid sporting a tangled mane of black hair. A few days’ beard shadowed the kid’s neck and climbed higher than usual up his cheeks. This was a hairy guy.

Sebeck blinked at the overhead lights. He coughed and tried to sit up. A rock-hard surface greeted his elbows when he tried to push up. He immediately abandoned the attempt as his head began to swim.

The hairy kid leaned in close. “Hey, bro, sit back for a few. You’re still trying to metabolize the meds.”

Sebeck noticed the kid was wearing a lab coat. He tried to remember where he was. His brain was mashed potatoes.

Sebeck’s voice croaked. “Where is this?”

“Phoenix Mortuary Services. I call it PMS.”

Sebeck tried again to sit up, and he pushed aside the kid’s hands when he tried to help. “Who—” He stopped short; his throat was sore as hell. He put a hand to his larynx. No exterior damage.

Sebeck leaned to one side and looked around. His eyes tried to focus to a greater distance. He was in a long room with several medical examination tables. Oak cabinetry lined the walls. A strong chemical odor assaulted his nose. He’d smelled this before. Formaldehyde.

Sebeck snapped alert; the body of an old man lay naked on a nearby metal table. The old man was definitely dead because his body had the pallor and flattened appearance that comes when blood pressure and breath leave the human frame.

“Where am I?”

“Like I said, my man: funeral home. That’s where they send dead people. It’s the law. And you, my friend, are legally dead. Got the paperwork to prove it.”

Sebeck looked around for a few moments more, then brought his gaze back to the kid. “Who are
you
?”

The kid wiped his hand on his lab coat, then extended it. “Laney Price. Body prep. I take out the pacemakers and shit like that. That stuff’ll blow up if it goes in the furnace.”

Sebeck ignored Price’s hand and tried to shake his head clear. He glanced down, then swung his legs over the edge of the table and sat up.

Price rushed to hold him steady, but Sebeck pushed him back. He glanced down at his own body. He was wearing casual slacks and a pullover shirt. Next to him on the table lay his crumpled prison khakis. He picked them up, balling them up in his fists.
That’s right.
He remembered now. He had just been executed for murdering federal officers. He was the most hated man in America.

He dropped the khakis and sat motionless, staring at his own hands. A wave of emotion overcame him, and he started to breathe in fits.

He was alive.

Price clapped a hand around his shoulder. “Hey, Sergeant, you’re not dead, man. Relax.”

Sebeck threw off Price’s arm and grabbed him by the throat. “What the fuck is going on!”

Price extricated himself as Sebeck nearly swooned from the effort. “You tell
me.
You brought me here.”

Sebeck was still trying to clear his head. God, his throat hurt. “What are you talking about?”

“Look…” Price stomped off and tore a newspaper clipping from its place on a nearby bulletin board. He came back to the examining table and pointed at the clipping—a file picture of Sebeck below the headline
Sebeck’s Macabre Message.

“Message received, compadre.”

Sebeck grabbed the article. It was months old. His head started to clear as the adrenaline kicked in.
It worked.
The Daemon had saved him.

But why?

Before he could ask another question, Price tossed him a plastic water bottle. “Electrolytes. Better drink up.”

Sebeck realized just how thirsty he was. He cracked open the water and drank deeply. His throat throbbed.

Price continued. “Ol’ One-eye’s been asking for ya. He’s all up in my grill, an I’m like, yo, back off, Methuselah. That sprite is a screen saver from hell, I swear it, man. He’s a fourth-dimensional stain.”

Sebeck finished the bottle. “You want to say that again in English?”

“For being in charge, you seem woefully uninformed.”

“What do you mean, ‘in charge’?”

Price threw up his hands. “See, you gotta talk to One-eye. Hang on a sec.” Price headed over to a locked cabinet, pulled out a choked key ring, and started cycling through the keys. He talked while he searched. “You know, it’s an honor to finally meet you. You drew a lot of ink. Most of it said you were evil incarnate, but we all know that’s horseshit. That Anji Anderson chick is out to get you, but evil or not, that bitch is fuckin’ hot. I’d do her. Evil Daemon bitch. Laney likes the bad girls….”

Sebeck was looking around the room again. “You were talking to someone earlier. Something about myths and rhyme.”

Price paused. “You heard that?”

“Is someone else here?” Sebeck glanced around cautiously.

Price just snickered to himself. “Yeah, bad habit from working with dead people.” He stuck a key in the lock. “They’re good listeners, though. Haven’t heard a complaint yet.”

He rummaged around in the cabinet and came out with a sealed plastic box. Price walked back to the examining table, struggling to open the seal. “Damned things. It’s the Asians that do this.” He fished around among the scalpels on his worktable, near the body of the old man. “You know, the average Chinese factory worker must think Americans are insane. Picture this: you work at a plant that makes Halloween stuff—you know, like, rubber severed heads. And you’re all like: Americans decorate their homes with severed heads? These fuckers are savages, man.”

Sebeck slowly leaned forward and tried to stand. He still felt woozy.

“I wouldn’t do that yet if I were you.”

“You’re not me.” Sebeck managed to stand, still holding the table to steady himself. “So, you say I created this place?” He glanced around. “By sending that message to the Daemon?”

Price got the box open. “All will become clear, young grasshopper, when you talk to One-eye. Then maybe he’ll get off my ass.” Price pulled an intricate and expensive-looking pair of sports sunglasses from the box. It was sealed in yet another plastic bag. “Why do they do this shit?” He started biting into the plastic and twisting.

“One-eye?”

Price gave him a look. “Do you have several one-eyed undead freaks stalking you, Sergeant? Should I be more specific?”

Sobol.

Price now pulled the glasses out of the bag. They were stylish, with yellow-tinted lenses and hip frames, but the posts were unusually thick. Price also pulled a thick beltlike device from the box. He glanced at Sebeck and started adjusting a strap. “Just take me a sec. You’re a what, size thirty-eight?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Damn. I’ve gotta lose about forty pounds myself. But then again, you were on the”—air quotes here—“Lompoc prison diet.”

Sebeck just pointed at the glasses.

“Oh, HUD—heads-up display. It’s an interface to the Daemon network. Check this shit out.”

“The Daemon network?”

“Can’t see the TOP without the HUD.”

“Stop with the acronyms.”

“I’ve got acronyms for my acronyms.” He held up the belt and clicked a battery into place. “Ready. Here, put this on.” He handed it to Sebeck.

Sebeck took it warily. It was like a thick money belt and was made of black, stretchable nylonlike material with a sleek titanium buckle.

Price was fiddling with the glasses. “The belt’s a combination satellite phone, GPS, and wearable computer. Methane-oxide fuel cell battery’ll last for about three days. Works in conjunction with the glasses. Be careful with it. It’s ruggedized and water-resistant, but don’t go driving nails with it. The glasses alone cost about fifty thousand dollars.”

Sebeck was taken aback. “What, are you joking? Who paid for them?”

“Daemon’s got cash, bro. Hell, you ain’t seen nothing.”

“Why’s it giving them to me? I want to
destroy
the Daemon.”

“Because it wants to have a word with you.”

Sebeck considered this for a few moments. Then he fastened the belt around his waist. It fit well and felt like a lifting belt.

Price slid the HUD glasses onto Sebeck’s face.

Sebeck wrapped the band around his head. “Nice fit.”

“Should be a perfect fit. They scanned your head.”

“They? Who’s they?”

Price shrugged. “Fabricators. Micro-manufacturers. Hell, who knows? The Daemon shipped it to me.”

Sebeck noticed the lens flicker momentarily, then return to normal.

“It’s got a retinal scanner and a heart pulse sensor. If you’re a member of the network and still alive, it knows who you are and what your rights are. It senses the moment you take them off. Put ’em on, you just logged on. Take ’em off, you just logged off.”

Price walked briskly over to a cluttered desk nearby. “Wait a sec.” He grabbed another pair of glasses sitting there and put them on.

They looked at each other.

Suddenly, Sebeck’s lenses blinked, then information appeared at the top and bottom of the “screen.” He focused on Price and was surprised to see a name call-out box hovering over Price—just like in the game
The Gate.
Price’s screen name was apparently ChunkyMonkey.

“You gotta be shitting me….”

“No, man. Check this out.” He pointed at Sebeck’s glasses. “See the green bar-stack next to my name? That’s my network power relative to you. That number seven—that’s my skill level.”

Price appeared to have seven bars.

“Network power?”

“It’s a point system. I see no bars—that means you’re a wuss compared to me. How many bars do you see?”

“Seven.”

“That means I’m nominally seven times as powerful as you. It has to do with the
Shamanic Interface,
but we’ll cover that later. Right now, we gotta see One-eye before he goes into a loop. He must know you’re awake by now, since you just logged on.”

Sebeck was having difficulty absorbing the reality of it all.

Price approached him. “Here…” He adjusted one side of the glasses, lowering a short piece of metal. “Sound boom. Gives you audio by vibrating the bones in your head. Works as a microphone the same way.” Price motioned for Sebeck to hurry. “You good to walk, or should I get a wheelchair?”

“I can walk.”

Price came up alongside and helped to steady him. “This way.”

Price brought them toward an alcove into which was set a pair of imposing oak doors about nine feet tall. Sebeck still felt dizzy and the glasses weren’t helping. Inexplicable information kept flashing and winking at him. “God, it’s like walking with sports scores flashing before my eyes.”

“Never mind that. You can customize it later. If you want to see without the glasses, flip the lenses up—they’re on a hinge. Don’t take the glasses off, or you’ll log off the system—and it’ll take a few seconds to get logged back on. You’ll get used to it.”

They reached the door. Price motioned for Sebeck to stay put, then he grabbed the door handles. He glanced back. “Sergeant, welcome to the Daemon’s darknet.” He opened the doors.

They swung inward, revealing a plushly appointed but rather stodgy office with stuffed leather chairs and thick carven furniture. It looked like the office of an eighteenth-century natural philosopher. Bookcases and curio cabinets filled with insect and rock specimens lined the windowless walls. There was dust everywhere.

But what riveted Sebeck’s gaze was the translucent apparition of Matthew Sobol sitting behind the big mahogany desk, hands folded, as if waiting patiently. It was post-surgery Sobol, with his open eye socket, hollow cheeks, and bald head—a shriveled wreckage of a man ravaged by chemotherapy and cancer. He was wearing the same suit he wore at his funeral.

His spectre nodded in somber greeting. “Detective Sebeck. I’ve been waiting for you.” He motioned for Sebeck to come forward. “Please, have a seat.”

Sebeck looked to Price.

Price nodded in commiseration. “I know. It’s freaky, but don’t worry. You’re not Hamlet. This is a
Temporal Offset Projection,
Sergeant—it’s an interactive 3-D avatar projected over the GPS grid. It’s only visible and audible in your HUD glasses.”

Sebeck studied the spectre. He flipped up his glass lenses. Sobol disappeared. He flipped them back down again and Sobol’s spectre returned. “It’s a private dimension.”