Luca (16 page)

The familiar rhythm of the voice strikes a deep chord in his memory. Focusing on the black climbing shoes, he follows them up to ankles and knees covered in a black bodysuit. Everything black. The latest fashion in the City.

“No problem.” With effort, Jedd pushes himself to his knees, takes in a deep breath and gets to his feet, leaning on the side of the building so he doesn’t topple over. "Didn’t really expect anyone to be out at this time of—”

He stares into the woman’s eyes.

She stares back, mouth open.

Reaching out, she pulls off his fake mustache. “But you’re dead. I saw what Mercer did to your house.”

“And you’re—” Jedd glances straight up to the top of the Genesis building, two kilometers above the street.

“Qaara Kapoor,” the woman says.

“I know, but you’re—”

“Not in my office anymore, where you were spying on me.”

“How did you—” Jedd tries to put it all together, but he’s still woozy from getting knocked down and can't find the words he’s looking for.

“Look, it’s a long story.” Qaara grabs her trek-bag and swings it over her head, threading arms through loops and clicking straps tight across her chest. "One thing’s for sure. Mercer wants us
both
dead. Get as far away from here as you can. Good luck.” Without another word, she turns and sprints across the street.

He watches her go, his arms outstretched.

For an instant, he’s not sure what to do.

Instinct taking over, he grabs his bag, swings it over his shoulder and follows her to the other side of the road, nursing a massive headache, fighting back nausea, stumbling in a zigzag pattern, barely able to keep his balance and hold in the contents of his stomach.

Qaara stops, and Jedd slams into her back.

He falls to the pavement.

“I didn’t ask you to follow me.” She takes a step to the side. “I'm a big girl now. I can take care of myself.”

The world spins around Jedd. He twists to the side. A spasm travels on a straight line between his belly and throat.

Please, not here, not now,
he thinks as he retches a long stream of viscous green goo onto the pavement, then wipes his lips on his arm.

His chest heaves again, but there’s nothing left in his stomach. Trying to pull in a deep breath and recharge, he goes into a coughing fit instead, dropping to all fours on the hot street.

Keep it up
, he thinks
. Barfing hero to the rescue. I’m sure she’s impressed
.

A few feet above them, the buzz of a thumb-sized air-drone floats down. Still unable to speak, Jedd motions to his ear and then the sky.

“I hear it, too. Could be Mercer looking for me. By now, he must know I’m gone.” Qaara turns to leave, then stops. Looking back, her gaze jumps from the drone to Jedd. "Did you come back for me?”

Jedd nods, still unable to find the right words.

“You heard what Mercer told me, about the Cloud that’s going to swallow Earth, right? And the killer molecule that’s going to rain down and consume everything?"

“Yeah.” Jedd suppresses the urge to retch again. “All of it.”

She reaches down and pulls him to his feet, grimacing.

“What’s your name? I forgot.”

“Jedd.”

“Sorry you got involved, Jedd. This isn’t your fight. But I can’t just leave you here to be slaughtered. Come on. Looks like you need saving." Still holding Jedd’s hand, she pulls him into an alley between buildings.

Before he knows what is happening, they are both in a full sprint through the narrow gap.

Qaara is faster. Jedd can barely keep up.

Suddenly, she stops. The trek-bag slips off her body to her feet. She presses herself against the wall under a footbridge between the buildings, pulling Jedd close.

“What have you got?” She isn’t even out of breath. “Anything useful?"

“What do you mean?” Chest heaving from the run, Jedd feels the nausea slowly fade from his body.

“In your backpack. Anything useful?”

Jedd nods. “Pulse rifle. Recently printed from black- market Russian files.”

“Fully loaded?”

“Yeah, I think so. Didn’t have time to check.”

“Give it to me.”

“What?”

Qaara grabs Jedd’s waist and turns him. She zips open his pack and pulls out the two pieces of the rifle.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Jedd says.

“You’re in no condition to use a weapon.” She pulls hard on the zipper, sealing the bag. “Follow me.”

Turning to jog away, she rams the two pieces of the rifle together and twists hard until they click. Green telltales light up on the barrel. Ready to fire.

“Where are you going?” Jedd falls in place behind her. “You could get hurt with that thing.”

“Just stay close.”

Twenty feet ahead of them, a small cylinder slides out of the wall. In mid-stride, Qaara takes aim with the pulse rifle and fires. The cylinder explodes into sparks. She twists and hits another one on the other side of the building.

“Where’d you learn to shoot?” Jedd says.

“Mesh-vids.” Qaara looks back over her shoulder. “And genmods don’t hurt either.”

“What kind of genetic modifications?”

“Too many.” Qaara stops at the end of the walkway, just before it emerges out onto a wide street, and presses her back into the building. “My parents were rich. They gave me the best.”

“Too many cameras to shoot them all. Mercer is probably tracking us right now.”

“How are you feeling?” Qaara says.

“A little better. Still foggy.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“For what?”

Qaara turns to stare at Jedd. “I thought you came to rescue me.”

“I did, but—”

“If you have a plan of escape, now would be a good time to share it.” She looks up through long eyelashes.

Jedd can’t help but stare back. Her eyes pull him closer. He moves in, hands reaching for her waist, imagining the touch of her soft lips on his.

So perfect.

With both hands on his chest, she pushes him away. “Strictly business, OK?”

Nodding, Jed’s face burns scarlet. “My plan was simple. Break into Genesis. Find you. Run away. Slip into the Tube and ride out past the Fringe.”

“Well, we’re already to the
run
part. But I don’t think the Tube is our best option. Nowhere to escape if they find us.” Qaara gazes at the sky. “I don’t see any drones or airships. Maybe that wasn't Mercer looking for us after all. Could just be a routine police surveillance unit that flew by. Come on.”

She grabs Jedd’s hand and pulls him onto the street.

“Where we going?”

“In the opposite direction of your plan. To the Wall.”

21

FUKUSHIMA

Mercer paces the room, hands behind his back, slowly eating a lemon slice, eyes bathed in darkness. “Are you sure?”

“No question. Facial and body analysis is conclusive. Qaara’s with the same
guy
.” The woman in the holo, wearing black leather as usual, swipes her hands across a bluescreen with a map of the City, video footage and bio-data. “Jedd Dexter, employee of Genesis.”

“
Former
employee.” Mercer spits a seed onto the floor. “How could he have escaped
two
attacks by our security forces?”

“Dumb luck.”

“
Dumb
I can understand but not
luck
. There’s no such thing as consistent luck." The lemon peel drops from his fingers. “You have them both on video?”

“Yes, for the moment.”

“Send the feed to my quarters. I’m looking forward to watching them die.”

A paper-thin glass screen floats down from the ceiling. Lines divide it into six sections, each with a different view of Qaara and Jedd running through the streets and narrow walkways of the City.

“Looks like they’re heading for the Wall.” The woman drops a finger onto the bluescreen where it glows red under her touch. "I’m calculating the rendezvous point now.”

“Why would she be trying to get to the Wall?” Mercer cocks his head to the side and narrows his eyes. “I would have guessed the Fringe. If she's bent on escape, the Wall should be the last place in the world she’s trying to get to right now.”

“Maybe she’s
not
trying to escape,” the woman says. "Maybe she has another plan. One more destructive.”

“And I thought she was a smart girl.”

“Maybe she already realizes she’s going to die.”

“It
is
a fitting place for a public execution.” Mercer bites into another lemon and grinds it between his molars. “Let’s get it over quickly, before the Mesh wakes up. And be certain it looks like a random crime. Bad elements from the Fringe wandering into the City, killing one of our brightest in a thoughtless act of violence. There will be a funeral in a few days, for Qaara at least. The world will be distraught over her loss. I can see the headlines now.
Inventor of Graff Meets Untimely End Near Wall She Designed
. Or maybe
Young Genius Slain by Scum from the Fringe.
The perfect distraction before the coming storm.”

“The Peruvian Mafia are very reliable.” The woman in the holo nods in Mercer’s direction as she exits. “They always get the job done.”

“Unlike our own Genesis security forces.” Mercer’s eyes narrow as his gaze fixes on Qaara, hand in hand with Jedd, the filth from the Fringe.

He relaxes into the leather sofa in the dark room, alone, eyes on the screen. His fingers find a thin glass of blue liquid on the side table and bring it to his lips. Warmth floods his nervous system, bringing a sense of expansive clarity.

In the moments before Qaara and Jedd die, Mercer lets his mind wander.

Evolution.

An inexorable force. Unstoppable. Relentless. Nature in pursuit of complexity. A way forward for life.

In a few days, as life is destroyed, the process of evolution for the entire planet will finally be wrested from nature and come under Mercer’s direct control.

He is the product of genetic engineering. Evolving from pond scum, Homo sapiens have reached the point where they have stolen the reins of evolution from the blind forces of nature and now directly determine their own genetic future.

Mercer will soon take the logical next step: direct human control of evolution.

After the Cloud hits, all life outside his bunkers will cease to exist, extinguished by a flood of acid. In its wake, only he and a group of carefully chosen humans will remain. But instead of the blind forces of evolution taking over this time, Mercer himself will be in charge. Like Noah’s Ark, his bunkers are already stocked with the basic plant and animal species to reboot life on an accelerated schedule.

With a cutting edge genetics laboratory as part of the bunker infrastructure, they will take experimentation on human subjects far beyond anything that has been done so far.

All of it under his control.

By the time the Cloud swings through the solar system in another 3.5 billion years for its periodic cleansing of Earth’s life, humans will have banished death and evolved beyond recognition. They will have learned to harness the power of the Cloud for themselves.

All thanks to Mercer.

It’s tempting to think evolution has chosen him for this destiny, but he knows better. He owes his position to no one and no thing. He chose himself. With all the resources of Genesis at his fingertips, he’s been preparing in secret for years, ever since his father was eliminated.

Perfection is Mercer’s goal, and perfection he shall have.

Scouring the world, he carefully looked for the perfect place to build his network of bunkers, the kernel of a new civilization. And then, after exhaustive research, he found it.

Fukushima, Japan.

Forgotten by the world since the nuclear accident that saturated its land and water with radiation nearly a century before, it had become a wilderness of abandoned towns. Fields that once blossomed with buckwheat were taken from the families that had worked them for more than a thousand years. The fields were buried under three meters of dirt dug up from the old reactor site, all part of the Japanese government’s attempt at cleanup.

But the cleanup effort was soon abandoned.

Like every other country, the economy fell into ruins when the rains stopped. The unemployed soon outnumbered those with jobs. Riots took over Tokyo. The government fell.

And China stepped into the vacuum.

Corruption became rampant. Fukushima turned into an international toxic dump, nominally administered by a new Japanese government under the control of the Chinese. In exchange for huge payoffs, government officials allowed anyone to unload industrial refuse at will on the once pristine countryside. There was no longer any need to process toxic waste. Corporate profits, including those of Genesis, soared.

Nobody lived in Fukushima but a generation of squatters who’d left the chaos and upheaval of Tokyo and its unemployed masses in the wake of the Chinese takeover. They sought a new life of freedom and solitude. Thousands had flocked to the area, encouraged by the new government, told it was safe after almost a hundred years without inhabitants. Communities sprang up overnight, living a life of subsistence agriculture and complete freedom.

Mercer smiles to himself.

It was a good way to dispose of the undesirable elements of society. Easy and entirely legal.

Within a decade, the squatters discovered the devastating truth. The radiation was still there, burning in the water and soil on which they grew crops. Most of them perished from cancer and internal organ failure.

But there was one fascinating fact that Mercer found in his research.

Many of the children born in Fukushima, a whole generation, were strangely healthy, exhibiting no ill effects other than an unusual form of schizophrenia, an artifact of radiation-induced genetic mutation.

Shunned and feared by the rest of the country, constantly bombarded by
voices
, the children were unable to live in normal society. The government abandoned them to institutions where they could be studied and, ultimately, forgotten and discarded.