Technosis: The Kensington Virus (18 page)

∞

“Where’s the boom?” Rosen asked as he started to descend through the stadium. It had been a full four seconds since Agent Ganos had said zero.

“I don’t -” Agent Ganos began, only to be interrupted by a blast wave that threw her and the rest of her team off their feet.

Jamie was thrown into the stadium seats below him when the wall of pressure, light and heat blew through the arches and down into the stadium. Blaise and Rosen landed near Agent Ganos on the stairs. Around all of them was a spray of tissue, blood and fluids from the KVBs who were near the arch when the blast occurred.

“You guys look like crap,” Agent Drake told them.

“Thanks,” Rosen said. “What are you doing in here?”

“Your pal Fenwick finally got the transport’s crowd suppression system online so it’s not exactly a good idea to be within fifty meters of it.”

“We’ve got to get to the library,” Jamie said, pulling himself up out of the seats. “I’ve got to transmit that signal to shut this all down.”

“Don’t know if that’s going to happen,” Drake said, stepping over to help Jamie up. “These jokers are seven steps ahead of us. Anything we do next they’ve probably already planned for.”

“Then why do any of this?” Rosen asked, pointing around at the debris field left by the partially vaporized remains of the KVBs.

“I don’t know what the agenda is,” Drake answered. “But there is one. Whether that is the sadistic pleasure of tormenting the prey before you kill them, or if there is another rationale behind this, I don’t know.”

“Do you really think that profiler stuff applies to this type of group?” Jamie inquired.

“Dr. Baxter, I think it applies to this type of group more than it does to individuals.”

“Agent Drake is right,” Agent Ganos agreed.

“I love hearing that.” Drake smiled.

“This group is more like the personality of a psychopath than a single person, because the features of it are broken up into individuals,” Agent Ganos said, stepping down the stairs.

The group followed her as she made her way back to the entrance of the park which they had come in by. Drake noticed it immediately. “There’s no noise,” he observed.

Peering around the corner they saw the transport, surrounded by piles of burning, torn and unidentifiable parts of KVB bodies. The transport was also showing no signs of life. Then they saw a KVB running down the street wielding a section of fence pole. Ten meters out from the transport, there was a crack as an arch of electricity danced through the air and split the KVB through the torso. The creature fell into two pieces where it was struck and its legs continued to kick. The hands and head continued to move, dragging the torn upper torso toward the transport with malevolent intent. This time there was an eruption of gun fire and a line of five shots went from the center mass up to the center of the KVB’s head. The hands continued to wave, but the head ceased to move and the torso made no further progress. There was another arc of electricity and the hands lay on the street, severed at the wrists.

“If you are done having fun in there, we’d really like to leave now!” Agent Drake yelled.

“Roger that,” Fenwick’s voice cracked over the transport system. “I will be ready for you to board in five -”

There was a noise behind them and Drake spun around to see the heat signatures in his sights.

“Hurry up, damn it!” Drake yelled, and opened fire.

The heat signatures were in the low red and clustered together. At the closing distance, he was able to get a head count of at least thirty.

“Clearing from eleven to one,” Rosen yelled.

Rosen was spacing his shots and dropping the leaders.

“I’ve got one to three!” Blaise yelled.

Blaise was moving shot to shot at a one count, and like Rosen he was dropping the leaders. Drake and Jamie were shooting the ones that were trying to flank them.

“Three. Two. One,” Fenwick announced, and the door to the transport flew open. “All aboard that are going aboard!”

“Let’s move out!” Agent Ganos yelled, running forward to secure a position near the gate so that the rest of the team could make it safely to the transport.

“Be with you in just a second,” Blaise said, now shooting faster.

Behind them they heard the sound of a single shot.

“Fenwick, I thought you had that thing turned off!” Rosen yelled.

“Agent Ganos!” Fenwick yelled.

Rosen turned to see Angie Ganos slumped over next to the gate just past the park entrance. He saw Fenwick running out to her. Then up on the roof top he saw the sniper.

“Get back in the transport!” he yelled at Fenwick.

Agent Drake turned and saw it now; Rosen was shooting at the roof top. Agent Angie Ganos was bleeding on the sidewalk. Drake looked up through his sight at the roof top. The color was a bright red; it was someone alive. He flipped off the thermal scan and the image resolved into a man in an HDMP uniform with a tripod. Then he saw the face.

“Marshall!” Drake yelled.

Marshall smiled, and Drake fired. His bullets struck inches below the tripod and Marshall ducked his head.

“Get in the transport!” Blaise yelled.

Rosen lifted up Agent Ganos and ran with her to the transport. Blaise and Jamie focused their fire on the roof top trying to pin down the sniper. Behind them, the KVBs were quickly closing the distance. In the middle of this, Drake stood still, holding his aim, waiting for Marshall to raise his head.

CHAPTER 22

AGENT DOWN

E
veryone was in the transport when Drake fired. Marshall hadn’t lifted his head, but Drake could feel the KVBs at his back. He fired one more time and then bolted for the transport. He dove in and the door was closed behind him. The transport made a high pitched whine and sped away.

“Get us to the health campus!” Blaise was yelling.

“Pass me the micromesh,” Jamie said, and Rosen handed him a roll of gray material.

“Shit!” Angie burbled, blood running from her mouth.

Rosen reached over to try and loosen Agent Ganos’ body armor.

“Leave the body armor on!” Jamie ordered, after applying the micromesh to the entrance wound.

“We’re three minutes out,” Fenwick said.

“It’ll be alright,” Drake assured her, sitting down next to her.

Jamie rolled up Agent Ganos’ sleeve and placed a fluid pack with a feeder into her arm. “Angie, I’m starting you on some fluids. We are going to take you straight into the surgical ward and we will have you up and walking in twenty-four hours,” he said, looking her in the eyes.

“Y. .es,” she croaked. Then her eyes were fluttering.

“Stay with me, Angie.” Jamie urged, opening her eyes and looking at the pupils.

“Faster!” Drake yelled.

“Going as fast as I can,” Fenwick said. They were passing from the empty streets near the stadium where all he had to be concerned about was the KVBs who were running at the transport to streets where there was actual traffic. As they neared the healthcare campus the traffic increased. Fenwick wove around the other vehicles and turned a sharp left that would put them three blocks from the healthcare campus. He hit the brakes. The traffic was snarled all the way up to the hospital.

“Why are you stopping?” Drake demanded.

“There is nowhere to go! The traffic is jammed up all the way to the urgent care entrance,” Fenwick said.

“Then drive on the damn sidewalks!” Rosen yelled.

“You think I couldn’t figure that one out? There are no sidewalks to drive on! There are HDMP transports, first responders’ trucks and urgent care transports on the damn sidewalks.”

“Screw this!” Drake snapped, and leapt from the transport with his weapon drawn and his badge in hand.

Then he saw it; hundreds and hundreds of vehicles jammed in and officers, dressed like him, with guns, waving badges and bodies; bodies of the people who’d been downtown when the rockets hit, bodies of children who were burned by fires. Not KVBs, not KVs, but living, breathing human beings who were going to die, right there in that stretch of chaos that Marshall and Cronus had created when they’d shut down the grid response systems and shot up the down town. Drake saw an abandoned ambulance. The stretcher was gone and he guessed that the driver and the attendants had abandoned the vehicle and run with their patient the last three blocks. Drake rifled through the open ambulance and found supplies. He grabbed handfuls of everything he thought Baxter would need and ran back to transport.

“Baxter, we are going to have to do this here, the street is a…” Drake trailed off. He saw Rosen shake his head.

Drake dropped the supplies on the street and climbed into the transport. The vehicle backed up and moved slowly back south away from the health campus.

CHAPTER 23

FRB ACADEMIC PLAZA AND FREE SPEECH ZONE

B
axter had secured Agent Angie Ganos’ body in one of the HDMP body bags and placed it in one of the transport unit’s honor chambers. Normally these were for “citizen resistors” which was the term for bodies that weren’t to go to health campus but were to be signed off on by one of HDMP’s own medics. Despite this, because they occasionally - during riots - served to transport fallen officers, they were called honor chambers, which looked better on the department budget reports.

“The last hub is still functioning,” Fenwick reported.

“How many terminals are there in a three block radius?” Blaise asked.

“Forty seven,” Fenwick reported.

“Okay. We need to get that number down to eleven,” Blaise announced.

“Why?” Rosen asked.

“Fenwick worked it out and the summation wave is formed when you have over twelve terminals near a hub experience a synchronized disruption. If we get it to eleven or lower, the hub can’t be blown out by the near terminals. The wave dissipates if it’s any further out. We blow out the terminals on our own and we do it in an asynchronous pattern then the hub should remain stable,” Blaise said. “We’ve got 36 targets to hit and we have to do it before Cronus knows what’s going on.”

“What are we looking at?” Drake asked.

“Thirteen on Cass Avenue, between West Palmer and West Kirby. Twelve on Woodward from West Ferry to East Kirby. Then we have eleven around the intersection of Gullen Mall and Williams Mall,” Fenwick replied, putting up a mission map in the transport.

“We are going into high population areas and blowing up terminals?” Rosen asked.

“Yes, I believe we are dressed for it.”

“Drake and Rosen, you will take Cass Avenue,” Fenwick informed them. “Baxter and Blaise, you will take Woodward. Then when Drake and Rosen have cleared Cass, they will clear the mall intersection and we will rendezvous back at the library.”

Baxter and Blaise were dropped out on Woodward, and Fenwick drove on to Cass where Drake and Baxter deployed. The area, which had been part of the pre-reorganization Michigan college campuses, had continued to operate as a university system, after a fashion. Despite the missile attacks on the downtown and the general chaos of the grid lock of the security system, classes were still in session.

Drake signaled to Baxter that their first target was twenty meters ahead on the right. On the sidewalk Jamie saw a small steel cage, with a padlock and a platform. It was one of the original “free speech” zones established by the university prior to Michigan’s collapse. It was not unique to this campus system. The solution had started in California, and like all bad academic ideas had spread coast to coast after a number of academic conferences. The old steel cage, with lock and key, had been meant to proscribe an area of free speech, and the lock – the students were told – was meant to avoid the speaker being physically interfered with by listeners. Over time the “free speech” zones became alternative forms of incarceration, as was seen in the 2020 presidential conventions where police arrested protesters outside the Democratic and Republican conventions and locked them in “free speech” compounds several miles away from the actual events. No charges were brought against the interned protesters. When lawsuits were brought to challenge this, the Supreme Court ruled that the police had not actually arrested the protesters but were simply engaging in the same activities that traffic officers and wildlife services served, which was the safe containment, management of and prudent relocation of people (wildlife) to areas where they could more safely express their views.

What was surprising about this free speech zone was it was in use and a student had people actually listening to him. “We are slaves of a violent state! Our government hides the violence behind words, in budgets and in organizations that we are told exist to help us. But they don’t help us. They oppress us!” a young man yelled from inside the cage.

Around him, a group of students were snapping their fingers and dancing. “This what it was like when you were in school?” Drake asked.

Jamie shook his head. “No. We had our share of idiots, but most of them became orthopedic surgeons or flesh enhancement specialists.”

“When I was a kid,” Drake began, “there were campus riots.”

“The 2040s?”

“Yes, the tech rebels, anarchists and crypto communists. We had them all. I was in the service at the time, reserves, and doing my masters,” Drake said as they approached the cage.

“What happened to them?”

“The Tech Rebels that weren’t arrested or killed became crony capitalist barons in the 2050s. The anarchists all went into the civil service, and the crypto communists became politicians and formed a conservative party,” Drake informed him, passing the cage.

“Technology is the tool of the oppressor of the masses!” the young man yelled at Drake and Baxter.

“You mean like this here?” Drake asked the young man, and pointed at a street terminal.

“Exactly like that!” the young man snarled.

Drake shrugged and placed his gun against the terminal’s base and fired. The explosion was a short burst followed by smoke, the snapping of arcing electricity, and then a flash of light.

“One oppressor down, millions to go,” Drake said to the young man, and then ambled off down the street to the next terminal location.

∞

On Woodward, Blaise and Rosen were finding it hard going, as many of the terminals were behind locked and secured doors. Blaise, on one occasion, waved his warrant before a monitor only to be informed that he had no jurisdiction, as this was a federal research facility. Blaise waved another document that the system reviewed and was not able to process. Rosen was beginning to think they would have to punch a hole in the side of the building when an officer came to the door and opened it to ask, “Who exactly are you with? Your documents aren’t HDMP issue.”

Blaise struck the officer on the side of the head and muttered “officious little twerp,” then stepped over him, pumped a round into the terminal and stepped back out.

“Nine more to go,” Rosen said.

∞

By the time that Drake and Baxter had cleared Cass, they had a following of students, including the young man from the “free speech” zone cage following them. The young man was yelling, “It’s finally happened, the revolution has come!”

“Don’t you think you are overdoing this a bit?” Jamie asked Drake.

“Power to the people!” Drake yelled, and fired up a large terminal at a corner information kiosk.

“The oppressed workers are joining with the intelligentsia to overthrow the entrenched ruling class!” someone else yelled.

“Death to anyone that can count!” Drake yelled, and shot the next terminal.

“He is taking us to…” another student said and stopped. “What does that mean?”

Drake, in his full HDMP black body armor, with matching helmet and black rifle, stopped in front of the assembled students. “This is basic. The ruling class uses its superior knowledge of math and economics to make profitable transactions that would otherwise be unprofitable and disadvantageous, were an educated proletariat to identify it as such. Marx posited that the additive nature of labor was directly proportional to the final value of the end product. So in essence, if those with the tools of production can achieve a profit through the sale of the product that is improved by the application of labor and superior systems, there is essentially a net theft. So, since we can’t seem to get an educated proletariat, the only solution is a world without intelligent people, starting with everyone that can count over three.”

Drake raised one of his shoulder. “Five minus one! What’s it equal?”

Several people stammered. One seemed to know the answer but was fighting to not blurt it out. The slightly smarter students fled from the scene.

“After them!” Drake yelled. “They are lap dogs of the ruling class and can count to ten!”

Some of the group took the signal as their opportunity to affect their own escape. Some, in youthful ideological rage, gave chase in a way that they would fondly remember years later as members of congress.

“That was pretty cynical,” Jamie said.

Drake shrugged and walked on down to the next terminal.

“Was that stuff you said about Marx true?” Jamie asked.

“More or less.”

“How do you know it?” Jamie asked.

“I wrote my graduate thesis on economics and game theory. I had two professors sponsoring my thesis because of the subject matter. One professor was a devout communist and the other was a committed Randian,” Drake said, and kicked open the door of a building.

“How did you end up in the FBI?”

“Simple. Someone read my thesis, realized I’d managed to write it in a way that satisfied two department advisors and defended it in two different arenas.” Drake set a percussion grenade in place and retreated.

There was a deafening explosion and the terminal seemed to implode.

“That’s how they recruited you?”

“Military background and the ability to shovel bullshit double time, all pre-requisites for advancement in the bureau.”

“Looks like you have some new followers,” Jamie said as they stepped out of the building to see a group of what appeared to be students less than a block away.

“Check thermal signatures,” Drake told him, engaging his scope.

“Damn,” Jamie swore, seeing the fading red. “KVs.”

“Check again. They’re armed. KVBs.” Drake fired.

The KVBs that had guns were now returning fire.

∞

“Cleared Woodward,” Blaise reported, climbing into the van.

“Baxter and Drake cleared all but two of the terminals from Cass and the mall intersection,” Fenwick reported.

“Well, all of ours were behind locked doors,” Rosen said.

“Their last two are behind KVBs at this point. We need to give them support,” Fenwick said, turning the transport around.

∞

Bullets were cracking overhead near Jamie as the KVBs fired on their position in the doorway they had retreated to. “Which way do we do this?” he asked. “Above, around or under?”

Drake looked at the roof line and the other side of the street. He pulled a grenade from his vest. “Through,” he said, and flung the grenade into the approaching KVBs.

∞

Blaise jumped from the transport and ran into a store front. A man stood with an ice cream cone in his hand, looking blank. Blaise saw the dead food service employee behind the counter. The man brought up his other hand with a gun, but before he could take a bead on Blaise he was shot square through the head. The KVB fell, but the hand still held the gun and now it was twitching and squeezing; bullets were burying themselves into the ceiling. The gun was one of the old eighteen shot clip pistols. Blaise kicked it away and went back to the freezer with his rifle in front of him. A hand grabbed at the barrel of Blaise’s rifle. He opened fire, letting it rip through the assailant who made no noise, but instead continued to try and wrestle the rifle away from him until Blaise brought it to eye level and the KVB’s head burst. Blaise found the terminal and destroyed it with a single shot into a junction point.

∞

Several torn KVBs were on the street, still trying to find a way to kill Jamie and Agent Drake as they made their way up the walk.

“He has got to be near here,” Drake said, retreating into a doorway.

“He?” Jamie asked, stepping out to fire at running KVBs while Drake reloaded.

“Marshall. He’ll be up ahead. Somewhere on the rooftops,” Drake predicted.

Jamie looked through his scope at the roof line and saw a figure running along the roof on the opposite side of the street. “I don’t know if it was him, I saw somebody. They were heading up the street away from us.”

Drake edged out and looked up at the roof line and saw a figure moving further away down the street. “Damn. He’s either setting up to ambush us or…”

“Or what?” Jamie asked.

“Or he’s got a target he wants to take out further up the street,” Drake finished. “I’m going to cross over and get topside while you get on to the next terminal.”

“Got it,” Jamie said, taking a grenade from his vest.

He flung it down the street ahead of crowd of KVBs who were charging toward their position.

“See you down the block,” Drake called, and ran across the street.

The grenade went off and KVBs were torn open and thrown by the force of the explosion.

∞

Blaise worked his way toward where Drake and Jamie would be coming from. He saw someone come out of a building. They took a call as they stepped on the street, seeming unaware of what was going on around them. Then they dropped their tech and started running at Blaise.

Blaise took the man down with a single head shot and scanned the area. There were, of course, cameras that he was being monitored by. But he suspected that Cronus was nearby. He looked to the rooftop and saw a figure dropping into position. Blaise sighted in, let out his breath and pulled the trigger.

∞

Drake ran up the ancient flights of stairs and found the access to the roof open. He swept the entrance for possible ambush, maneuvering his rifle side to side. Once he was convinced that it was clear, he made his way out on the roof top and saw the distance ahead. “Screw me,” he muttered, and then started the long run that would take him over firewalls and further up into the rooftops.

∞

Jamie strapped the grenade to the access scanner and stepped around the corner. Four seconds later the scanner and the entrance were both smoking holes in the side of the building. Jamie checked the entrance and then ran into the building. Like several of the buildings along Gullen Mall, this one appeared to be an old residence hall from the pre-reorganization era when Michigan was in its ignominious decline into a bankrupt, lawless and ungovernable state whose own representatives and senators were unwilling to return to it once elected to office. Running up a flight of steps, Jamie could see that there were signs that the building was presently in use. The stairwell lights were working. There was the sound of people, above and below him. When he opened the second floor fire door, he saw that the lights were operating on this floor, as were the basic systems, and he noted that several doors were open along the hallway. As he ran it became clear to him that this building was being used as offices. A head poked out into the hallway and looked at him. The head was holding a phone. The individual said. “Uh huh. Yes, I see him. HDMP uniform, running with rifle and looking very threatening. What was that? I don’t understand. You…”