Mercury Revolts (27 page)

“Miss, please show me your
hands.”

Suzy ignored the officer,
daring neither to look down nor at him. She assumed he was pointing a gun at
her.
So much for her personal safety.
She slowly got
to her feet, with both arms wrapped around the metal column.

“Show me your hands!”
So much for “please.”

The top of the column was
still a good two feet over her head. Suzy felt like crying. There was no way
she could reach.

She turned to the cop, who
did indeed have a gun pointed at her. “Look,” she said, holding out the MEOW
device. “It’s just a metal box. It’s nothing.”

“Miss, set
down the box.”

Suzy sighed. She was becoming
resigned to the fact that she’d have to settle for just flipping the switch and
hoping for the best. The device would still work; it just wouldn’t take very
long for Michelle to get rid of it. Presumably she had at least a few human
agents in the area; all she had to do was pinpoint the location of the device
and dispose of it. Balderhaz had designed it so that the once the device was
turned on, it couldn’t be turned off. It could be destroyed, but it would take
quite an impact—like being hit by a 747, for example.

Of course, first she had to
open the lid of the box and flip the switch.
Which could be
difficult if Officer Public Safety actually intended to shoot her.

“OK,” she said. “I’ll get
down. You can even arrest me, if you want. Or shoot me, whatever you need to
do. But I have to do something first. I have to open this box and flip a
switch.”

“Miss, set
down the box!
Don’t make me shoot
you!”

“I’m not going to
make
you do anything!” shouted Suzy. “If you decide to shoot me because I’m flipping
a switch, that’s on you.”

“I can’t take a chance, Miss.
It could be a bomb. Set it down.”

“It could be anything!” Suzy
yelled. “You have no idea what it is. Why would you assume it’s a bomb? Have
you asked yourself that? Why do you look at a perfectly innocent little metal
box and think ‘yep, probably a bomb.’ Maybe if I open this box and flip the
switch, hundreds of beautiful butterflies will fly out. Maybe it plays Peter
Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey.” Or maybe, just maybe, this little box is the
solution to what’s so fucked up in this country right now.”

She opened the box and
flipped the switch.

In the distance, someone
screamed.

The cop turned, startled, and
in that instant Suzy flipped the box lid closed, gripped the box in both hands,
and jumped as high as she could, slamming the cube through the top of the
column. Then she landed with one foot halfway off the concrete and fell
backwards to the dirt below.

She lay for a few seconds on
the ground in intense pain, unable to move. At first she feared that she’d broken
her back, but when she was able to move her fingers and toes she concluded
she’d merely had the wind knocked out of her. Fortunately she had fallen on the
side of the wall opposite the cop, and he hadn’t made it around to her yet.
Hopefully he was dealing with whoever had screamed. Whoever was
screaming
,
she corrected herself. It was still going on. Every few seconds the person—or
angel, presumably—would pause to take a breath and then resume screaming. The
poor bastard got caught just a few blocks from the MEOW device when Suzy had
turned it on. Either
that,
or he was being stabbed
repeatedly in the kidney.

She got slowly to her feet.
Her back hurt and she was having trouble breathing deeply, but she seemed to
have avoided any broken bones. She hobbled away as quickly as she could manage,
not stopping to look whether the cop was following. Apparently he wasn’t,
because she made it to the next intersection without him threatening to shoot
her again. She flagged down a cab and got in. “Arlington… cemetery,” she
gasped, and lay back against the seat. Every muscle in her back seemed to be
seizing up.

The cab pulled away from the
curb and made its way toward Arlington. They were heading west on Constitution,
not far from the White House, when Suzy heard another scream and the driver
slammed on the brakes. Suzy pitched forward into the seat ahead of her. There
was a thump as the cab hit something.

“What the hell?” Suzy
snapped.

“No, no, no!” cried the
driver, a young Middle Eastern man wearing a turban. He threw open his door and
got out of the cab.

Suzy looked around. She’d
been zoning out, exhausted from her ordeal, but now she was fully alert. The
cab was stopped in the middle of the street. Around them, cars whooshed past,
honking.

Suzy got out and walked to
the front of the cab. The driver was bent over a small figure lying on its back
in the street. “No, no, no!” he cried again, turning desperately to Suzy.
“Help!”

Stepping around the driver,
Suzy gasped as she got a better look at the body: it was a little
African-American girl, no older than fourteen. Suzy couldn’t see any sign of
injury, but the girl appeared to be unconscious.

Now what? She couldn’t leave
the girl in the street, but if she waited around for an ambulance, the police
would figure out who Suzy was. Even if Michelle was no longer in power in
Washington, Suzy would still be on the Most Wanted list. She’d probably rot in
prison for years before anybody figured out that she’d been set up.

Suzy didn’t want to move the
girl in case she had a spinal injury, but when the girl began to stir and try
to sit up, she decided to take the matter into her own hands. She picked the
girl up, carried her to the cab, and
lay
her in the
backseat. Suzy got in and cradled the girl’s head in her lap. The girl was semi-conscious
and kept moaning and shaking her head back and forth as if having a nightmare.

The driver leaned in the door
and raised his hands. “What is the matter?” he asked.

Sirens could be heard in the
distance.

“I don’t know,” Suzy said.
“Head injury, maybe.”
But the girl wasn’t bleeding and Suzy
didn’t feel any bumps or abrasions on her scalp. “Just get us out of here.”

“OK, OK,” said the driver,
closing the door and getting behind the wheel. He slammed his own door and the
cab squealed away. The girl continued to moan and squirm. As they crossed over
Arlington Memorial Bridge, she seemed to relax a bit. The cab pulled up in
front of the cemetery, and there was Mercury, as promised. He was wearing a
ridiculous curly black wig and sunglasses with round lenses, which had the
unfortunate effect of making him look like Howard Stern.

Mercury walked up to the cab
and opened the door. “Took you long enough,” he said. “I was starting to think
you… holy shit!” He was looking at the girl resting on Suzy’s lap.

“I know,” said Suzy. “It
couldn’t be helped. She just ran out in front of the cab, and I couldn’t leave
her there…”

“The hell you couldn’t!”
cried Mercury. “Do you know who that is? It’s Michelle!”

Suzy looked from Mercury to
the girl and back again, unable to follow what Mercury was saying. “Wait, what?
You mean Michelle…”

“The
archangel, yes.
The
one who tried to nuke Grand Rapids.
The one who had
you thrown in prison.”

Suzy stared aghast at the young
girl lying in her lap. She looked perfectly innocent, with soft brown skin and
beautiful long chestnut hair.

“You didn’t tell me Michelle
was a little black girl,” Suzy said, in a slightly accusatory tone.

“It didn’t seem relevant!”
cried Mercury. “Just get her out of here. Drop her off at the cemetery and
let’s get the hell out of here before she wakes up!”

“Tiamat,” Michelle murmured.
“Running… D.C.”

“What does that mean?” asked
Suzy.

“She’s delirious,” answered
Mercury.
“Having a nightmare about running from Tiamat or
something.
Just—”

“What… have you done?”
Michelle said, her eyes fluttering open and affixing on Mercury.

“What have
I
done?”
asked Mercury. “You’re one to talk. All I did was—”

“Put Tiamat in charge of
Washington,” said Michelle, sitting up. She held her hands to her ears as if
trying to block out a noise. “Driver,” she barked. “Get us out of here. Head
west.”

Without a moment’s
hesitation, the driver threw the car in gear and began pulling away from the
curb. Suzy didn’t blame him. There was something in Michelle’s voice that
communicated that very bad things would happen to those who disobeyed her.

“Wait!” yelled Mercury, who
was still standing outside. The driver hit the brakes long enough for him to
catch up and jump in the front seat, then peeled away.

“Whatever game you’re
playing, Michelle,” said Mercury, “it’s not going to work. The jig is up. We’ve
flushed out all your agents in D.C.”

Michelle sighed. “All
my
agents, yes,” she replied.
“But not Tiamat’s.
Did you
really think she was going to let you activate another MEOW device if she
didn’t have a way around it? You’ve just given her the keys to the kingdom.”

Chapter Thirty-six
        
 

Washington,
D.C.; August 2016

“Thank
God you’re here,” said President Danton Prowse as the door to the Oval Office
opened. “Something very strange is… oh.”

“Expecting someone else?”
asked Tiamat sweetly as she entered the room.

“Who the hell are you?”
demanded the president. “How did you get past the—”

“Save the hysterics, Prowse.
My name is Tiamat. I’m Michelle’s replacement. The organization is undergoing a
bit of a restructuring at present.”

Prowse frowned. “I… see,” he
said at last.

“Don’t act so put out,” said
Tiamat. “Nothing has changed, as far as you’re concerned. You remain the leader
of the free world. I’m merely filling in for Michelle as your advisor.”

“What happened to her?” asked
Prowse. “She ran out of here screaming. It was… disturbing. And my press
secretary and several advisors seem to have disappeared as well.”

“St. Patrick drove the snakes
out of Ireland,” replied Tiamat. “I drove the weasels out of Washington, D.C.
It’s true that we’ve lost some manpower, but I think you’ll find that the D.C.
shadow government is now a much more streamlined and efficient organization.”

“Um,” said Prowse. “What do
you mean by ‘efficient’?”

“What I mean,” replied
Tiamat,
“is that there will be no more half-measures. No
more of this gradual, halting progress toward fascism. From here on, we’re
going all out. Tell me, Mr.
President,
are you familiar
with a company called Mentaldyne?”

“Hmm,” said Prowse.
“Sounds familiar.”

“It should,” said Tiamat.
“They make the RFID chips that federal prisons have been implanting in
convicted felons since 2013.”

“Ah!” said Prowse. “That’s
it.
The Federal Felon Tracking Program.
One of my most popular initiatives.
I’ve been meaning to buy
stock in that company.”

“It’s privately owned,” said
Tiamat. “I should know, since I own it. Mentaldyne is the sole provider of
implantable RFID chips for the federal government. Do you know how that
happened?”

Prowse shrugged.

“Mentaldyne underbid every
other company by at least seventy-five percent. We lose nearly three hundred
dollars on every chip we sell.”

Prowse frowned. “That
doesn’t, um, sound like very good business.”

“It isn’t. We did it to get a
monopoly on the market. And do you know why?”

“I have no idea.”

“The Mentaldyne chips have an
undocumented feature. They can receive radio signals and convert them into
neural impulses.”

“Neural
impulses?
You mean, like…?”

“Mind
control.
I can manipulate the
thoughts and actions of anyone with one of those chips implanted, with radio
signals.
Remote control human beings.”

“What?” cried Danton
Prowse.
“That’s horrific! And why would you want to have an
army of remotely controlled felons anyway?”

“The prisoners were just a
trial run, to get used to the idea of implanting chips in people. Nobody
complains about the government violating the rights of criminals. Who gives a
shit, right? They’re criminals. They
should
be tracked. It only makes
sense. You put a chip in them while they’re in prison and justify it as a
security measure, and then you leave it in after they get out as a concession
to ‘public safety.’ After all, we already strip felons of the right to vote and
the right to own firearms, so why not track them while we’re at it? But I don’t
need to tell you this. The tracking program was part of your big ‘tough on
crime’ agenda.”