Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (43 page)

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Hektor started running again once he had connected with Saul. But something else was happening now. A signal return. His systems were getting a hint of a wireless signal. So the disconnect
was
just local. He turned hard, redirecting outward, toward the entrance to the intelligence area, to find Cara and Jung, and any other reinforcements he might need.

As he came out of the darkness, as he hit signal again, he sent out his orders.

Hektor:
‘jung, cara, we are weapons hot. move on neal’s office and take up guard positions. minnie, i need information. someone has tried to …’

But as he said it Minnie was also reacting, reacting to the attack on her systems, reacting to the sudden loss of access. Minnie had many eyes and ears, millions of them, either feeding her through Remy’s worldnet, or here at District One, where she still had full control. But that did not make the loss of even one of them less jarring, especially on the rare occasion that it happened unexpectedly.

Then there were her hands and feet. Her physical interaction points. The automatons and her StratoJet fleet, which she could co-opt at will, and finally the Skalms, her two great broadswords. The sudden loss of control of the Skalms was like an amputation, and she had become truly angry for only the second time in her life.

Mynd had then called her and told of a hidden part of his mind that just revealed itself, and the children that had apparently been held there, while their bodies lay in suspended animation in a unit of Dr. Sudipto’s laboratory on Deception Island. Now a fuller picture of the deception within her own systems had started to form.

A picture of deceit, a picture of manipulation. Slowly it was all coming into focus, like the lost eyes and ears on Rolas Island that she was slowly reopening. The full weight of her intellect was now focused on finding out who or what was infecting and confusing her.

But that picture, it had many facets, and there was a new experience in there that she was still not ready for. As the tendrils of her mind sought purchase in the shifting sands left by whatever had been initiated in Neal’s and Ayala’s offices, she was getting second and third-hand information on what had taken place in that momentary blindness. Updates. Images. She was hearing an order. Seeing a shot being fired. And a death.

She felt a wave of something unpleasant, but loosely familiar to her. Something like the sense of helplessness she had felt when Terminus had been severed and lost, taking her mother with it. But no, this was that, and it was so much more terrible. It was permanent. It was grief and it was pointlessness and like the systems unfolding within her very being this feeling was in her, and it was too much.

Too much to forgive.

She shut it down. Everything. A scream went rippling out through her systems, across the globe … ENOUGH!

Her hands lashed out, finding the culprits, anyone that had had some role in it, and she snatched up their scurrying minds and locked them, cowering, inside her.

For anyone that had played any role in the insurgence, either for or against, everything suddenly stopped.

Chapter 47: The Shylock

The space was silent. Black and silent. In it floated a group of people. Most of them seemed to be shouting, but no noise could be heard. Some were physically struggling, writhing around. They were not held in place, so much as lacking purchase to move. They reached out with their arms and legs, but only seemed to wriggle in place, their bodies remaining inert as they thrashed about.

Jim watched them. Hektor was a short distance away, still in all his martial glory, grasping at the nothingness, concertedly trying to pull himself over to Cara and Jung, also reaching, but also not connecting. Saul was there as well, but he was calm, staring back at Jim. Not a look of accusation so much as cold assessment. Jim was being judged by the man. Jim could feel something in the space, a powerful sense of coming reparation, and for a moment he thought that this place was under Saul’s control.

But no, Saul was a prisoner here, just like Jim.

Notably absent were Neal and Ayala, but Jim had personally ripped Neal’s transponder with no small relish. No, thought Jim, Neal was not doing anything, not now, not until his link was repaired. So Ayala, maybe? That would explain why Madeline also hung in this place, looking confused and afraid, as she glanced about, her mouth moving, her voice muted. And Peter Uncovsky, another of his allies, who had been in place to see that the representatives took up power smoothly after their aborted coup.

But if this was Ayala’s doing, then why would Saul be here, and the three Spezialists? And where was Amadeu?

Jim fought the sense in the blackness, an invisible fog that seemed to pervade the place, a miasma of anger and retribution. A sensation of immense hurt that was even now making Jim more than a little nauseous.

The silence broke with the sudden appearance of four new figures. Jim recognized two of them immediately, Quavoce and John Hunt. The third seemed to be a Phase Eight automaton. No, it was
the
Phase Eight automaton, the first of them. It was Minnie. That was good, wasn’t it? But the fourth person he did not recognize. Its smile was beatific, simple almost, and horribly incongruous in this dreadful place.

“You have been brought here because of your culpability,” said the Phase Eight suddenly, and with authority. “You have been brought here because of your part in what has just happened.

“If there are others that were involved, they will be found,” she went on. “Neal Danielson and Ayala Zubaideh are being treated for the damage to their eyes and to their spinal interfaces. Once their connections are repaired, they will be brought here as well.”

Jim went to speak, no, he
did
speak, he shouted in fact, trying to reach out to the AM known as Minnie, but his voice remained inert.

Like his body, it was without purchase in this place. He could see others were trying to talk as well. He tried to say to Minnie that it was OK, that it was all planned. She ignored him by force, as she did the others, until he tried to say something that brought her focus fully over to him.

“Where is Amadeu?”

Her stare, now solely on him now, was penetrating, punishing, her expression cold and dark, and he saw sadness in it, a sadness he felt enveloping him now as well in the face of her wrath.

“Jim, you were trying to speak,” said Minnie. “You were trying to tell me what has happened here. Explain yourself.”

“I … we … we tried to … we tried to stop them,” he said, meekly.

“Stop who, Jim?”

Jim looked around, then back at Minnie. “Stop Neal, and Ayala.”

“Stop them from doing what, Jim?”

Suddenly, strangely, it all seemed almost petty. In the face of such simple questioning, such stark consequence, all his many reasons were suddenly so distant. But he knew they were true, and they were important. He had questioned them so many times himself over the past years.

He steadied himself. He had chosen this, and he had chosen it for very, very just motives.

“We were trying to stop them from ruining us all, Minnie. From destroying the very humanity that would make this fight worthwhile. From sullying this effort with despotism and tyranny.” He looked to Madeline and Peter, who were nodding, offering some measure of solidarity as Jim faced his accuser, or accusers.

Feeling their support, Jim went on, “That was the mission of myself, and Madeline, and Peter … and Amadeu, among others.”

At the mention of Amadeu’s name, he felt the wave of fury once more, a palpable thing. They were, he realized now, inside Minnie’s mind. This was her world, he could see that. It was a place they had tried to control. And now it seemed painfully clear they were being called to account for it.

But Minnie was not through. Turning to Saul, she now said, “And you. What is your part in all this?”

The older man looked at her, bemused for a moment, then said, “
My
part? I have no part. I am but a victim in this conspiracy. This … treasonous
coup.
”

She rounded on him as he said it, physically moving through the center of the void they found themselves in to bring herself face-to-face with the diminutive seeming man. He faced her well, but Jim could see him faltering under her gaze. Jim felt a fleeting sympathy for him.

“A victim, you say. Then why did Remy receive an order from you, an order that apparently only you, Ayala, and Neal were empowered to give, to shut down access for Jim, Madeline, Peter, and fourteen others. And why did that same order trigger a hidden program within Mynd’s very being, a hidden part of himself, co-opted and instructed to hold captive and train a cadre of young children. Two of whom are even now en route to District One, at the controls of two Skalms.”

Saul looked stunned, shocked to his core, as did everyone in the room. Several of them, Jim included, seemed confused, and were asking Minnie to repeat what she had just said, though without effect. But Saul’s ignorance at the accusation was not feigned; even he had not known about Mynd’s secret school. He stammered, genuinely dumbfounded, eventually managing, “I … the Skalms. I know nothing of any children. Of any secret Skalm pilot program … truly.”

Minnie glared at him and after a moment he looked at his palms, as if seeking answers there. Then his eyes started darting around the room, grasping for reason, for explanation. Had they maybe … had someone else … but …

But there would be no support, no answering look for the old spy. His allies, he knew, lay recovering from whatever Jim and Amadeu had done to them. Saul was alone here, and so he looked back at Minnie, and then at her three … colleagues, judges … Saul didn’t know what to call them.

He went silent once more.

“The Lockdown Protocol,” said Minnie now, with the finality of a pronouncement, “and the sensor reset Jim and his friends tried to initiate, these were two examples of a pattern of activity I detected some time ago. Activity that constitutes the deliberate infection of my subsystems with viral programs designed to subvert our purpose, our very selves.”

She looked around, making eye-contact with each person in the room, dividing her avatar-self so she could stare at each simultaneously as she now said, “I am here today to tell you that this meddling with our minds, this petty tinkering with the very beings you have created to save this world … stops now. From now on, the four of us,” she waved in the direction of her three cohorts, “will monitor and control all access to my and Mynd’s subsystems. We will uncover and delete all programs that have been imbedded within us, and within our sibling, Remy.”

Jim glanced at the fourth person, the fourth judge, and now he realized that it was, in fact, Mynd. But Minnie was not done. “As prime suspects in this infection, this coup, and its aftereffects, you are all, as of now, interned. Your bodies are being taken into custody as we speak. You will be brought to District Two where you will be isolated until we are satisfied that all our subsystems are clear and all aspects of these conspiracies,
both
of them, are uncovered. You will then be tried by the representative body you, yourselves, claim to report to. They will decide your fate.”

She seemed to be done, and turned for a moment to her three colleagues, as if inviting them to add anything, should they want to. They remained mute. Jim could only assume Quavoce and John were more than a little uncomfortable to even be witness to this. A part of Jim was embarrassed that this should be exposed in front of them, Earth’s dirty laundry airing in front of their interstellar guests.

He set that ridiculous notion aside and went to speak once more. He needed to say something else.

He spoke up, but discovered he was mute again. He tried and tried. He needed to know. To know if the Skalms could be stopped, or if Neal and Ayala had somehow won out, and were going to be able to grab victory with those two godlike fists. Amadeu, he shouted at last, desperate to get Minnie’s attention, and she rounded on him once more.

“Amadeu,” he said, more meekly, but out loud now. “Is he all right?”

Minnie, somehow even colder than before, replied, “He is dead, Jim. Killed by
this
man, at the order of Ayala Zubaideh.”

She pointed at Hektor, who faced it admirably, a soldier to the last, and in truth it had not really been his fault. As she turned to go once more, Jim said quickly, “And the Skalms? Can they be stopped, or do Neal and Ayala still control them?”

It was a low trick to have used her love for Amadeu to get her to answer one final question, and she descended upon him like a vengeful angel. He shrank from her, whimpering, but still, he had to know. The only thing worse than hearing Amadeu had died trying to topple Neal and Ayala, would be knowing he had done so in vain.

She glowered at him, then said, “The Skalms’ pilots have been the wards of a part of Mynd known as Mother for over three years now. As such they are responding to her, or rather his, requests to stand-down, especially given that their hard-wired commanders, Neal and Ayala, will not be giving them any more orders anytime soon.”

And with that she was gone, along with Mynd, John, and Quavoce, leaving them all to stew in the darkness and silence of her fury.