Mercury Revolts (34 page)

The people in line screamed and scattered. A few of them may
have come to the realization that they’d somehow been hoodwinked into coming to
this place, but most of them just ran out of fear. Zion Johnson didn’t care; he
just wanted everybody gone.

“Sir!” yelled the intern. “What are you doing? What is wrong
with you?”

Zion Johnson turned to look at the girl. What is wrong with
me
?
He thought. No, what is wrong with
you
? She had been chipped two days
earlier, with the rest of his staff. He looked into her eyes, trying to
determine whether she was still under Tiamat’s control. Is it just me?
he
thought. Am I the only one who is free? There was no way
to tell. There was nothing in the girl’s eyes but confusion and fear.

“Listen to me,” he said to the girl. “This is wrong. This
whole operation is wrong. Putting chips in people’s heads to track them, it’s
wrong. It doesn’t matter if we’re doing it for good reasons. The whole point of
being human is that you have the freedom to choose to do right or wrong without
coercion. Can’t you see that?”

The girl now looked even more frightened. She backed away
from Zion Johnson.

The room had emptied out except for Zion Johnson, the girl,
and a couple of equally frightened technicians. Zion Johnson had intentionally
made the security presence virtually invisible to help with public relations.
But invisible didn’t mean nonexistent. Five national guardsmen suddenly burst
into the room, brandishing their rifles.

“What the hell is going on here?” the sergeant in charge
yelled. His eyes fell to Zion Johnson’s gun.

“Stand down,” ordered Zion Johnson. “We’re shutting down
this facility.”

The sergeant’s eyebrow went up. “On whose authority, sir?”
he asked.

Now here’s an interesting conundrum, thought Zion Johnson.
He still wasn’t sure if it was just his own chip that was malfunctioning or if
the whole Myrmidon system was down. Was the sergeant questioning his order
because the chip was telling him Zion Johnson wasn’t following Tiamat’s orders?
Or was he questioning it because he was actually thinking for himself? There
was one way to find out.

“On
our
authority,” Zion Johnson said.
“Yours and mine.
We’re not doing this shit anymore.
Implanting tracking chips in people’s heads? Is that what you signed up for,
Sergeant?
Because it’s not what I signed up for.
I’m
done.” Slowly and deliberately, he held out the Desert Eagle, turned it around,
and set it on the floor between him and the sergeant. The sergeant continued to
watch him nervously. The men behind him were looking to him anxiously for some
clue as to how they should handle this situation.

“Sir,” said the sergeant, trying desperately to keep his
voice from cracking, “I’m going to have to take you into custody while we sort
this out.”

Zion Johnson laughed. “Kid,” he said, “I don’t know how this
is all going to turn out, but I can tell you one thing for sure: it’s damn well
not going to end up with me in your custody.” He turned and began walking
toward the door.

“Sir!” shouted the sergeant again. “Please stop!”

Zion Johnson sighed and turned to look at the man. He
couldn’t be more than twenty-five. He still had acne, for Christ’s sake. “Look,
kid,” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you. And I want you to know
I’m not telling you this to be mean, OK? I’m telling you because you’re a human
being and you deserve to know. Eventually some really unbelievable stuff is
going to come out about this whole program. And when it does, you’re going to
look back on this moment and try to make sense of it, maybe justify it,
depending on what you do over the next few seconds. And when you do, you need
to understand something: what you do right now, when I walk out that door, is
all on you. Got it? There’s nobody making you do this. You’ve got your orders, sure,
but you also know what’s right and wrong. And if you make the wrong choice,
well, you’re just going to have to deal with that. Whatever decision you make,
you need to own it, OK? Don’t make excuses. It’s the only way forward.”

The young man stared at Zion Johnson, more confused than
ever. The intern, the technicians and the other guardsmen were all staring at
him too. Zion Johnson couldn’t help laughing. Were these people all under
Tiamat’s control, or were they just so unused to making their own decisions
that they’d forgotten how? For a lot of people, mind control really was
redundant.

As Zion Johnson turned to walk out the door, he was shot
sixteen times in the back. He smiled as he fell to the ground.

Superior attitude, superior state of
mind.

Chapter Forty-seven
                  
 

Washington, D.C.; August 2016

Tiamat was briefing President Prowse
on the plans for the chip implantation program in Nashville when she was
suddenly seized with the desire to stand up, walk to the center of the Oval Office,
and make a startling confession.

“I’m a little teapot,” she said, holding her left hand on
her waist and raising her right in the air.
“Short and stout.
Here is my handle, and here is my spout.”

With that, she walked out of the room, closing the door
behind her.

After a moment, Danton Prowse picked up his phone. “I think
we’re going to cancel Nashville,” he said.

Chapter Forty-eight
                 
 

Somewhere in Missouri; August
2016

“It’s
really that easy?” asked Suzy, looking over Balderhaz’s shoulder. Balderhaz was
sitting at the laptop, which was now directly connected to the Myrmidon server
via the Internet. Suzy’s patch had opened a port on the server to allow remote
access by anyone with a particular access key—
MercuryR00lz
, in this
case—and to disallow access from anywhere else, including the Myrmidon control
room at Mentaldyne. Presumably somebody at Mentaldyne would eventually figure
out what had happened and shut down the server until they could fix the
security hole, but for now Balderhaz had complete control over Tiamat and her
agents.

“Yep,” said Balderhaz. “I
just specify a target or range of targets—by age, race, geographical location,
whatever—and implant an idea in their heads. In this particular case, I’ve
suggested to Tiamat that she’s a little teapot.”

“That’s it? You just told her
she’s a little teapot?” asked Suzy, amazed.

“I didn’t tell her anything,”
said Balderhaz. “I put the idea in her head that she’s a little teapot. The
actions she takes in response to that idea are her own.”

“So where is she going?”
asked Eddie, who was looking over Balderhaz’s other shoulder. They were
watching the red dot representing Tiamat leave the White House and moving down
Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I may also have suggested
that she would like to take a nice dip in the Potomac,” said Balderhaz.

“Good idea,” said Suzy.

“All of Tiamat’s other
minions may be having the same idea in the very near future,” said Balderhaz.

“…and then I wasn’t sure I
was going to have enough
duct tape
,” said Perp, who was lying prone on
the couch behind them. He hadn’t stopped talking about his ordeal with the
transmitter since he’d gotten back, some twenty minutes earlier. In Perp’s
mind, he was clearly the hero of the day. They hadn’t heard from Mercury yet;
presumably he was still dealing with Izbazel and Nisroc.

Balderhaz was in the process
of giving several dozen demons some ideas about synchronized swimming when the
front door to the house opened. The assembled angels and human held their
collective breath, hoping it was Mercury. It wasn’t.

Michelle strode into the
room, her clothing torn and her hair tousled, but otherwise looking no worse
for wear. “So here you are,” said Michelle to Suzy and Eddie. “I guess you misunderstood
the part about us being a
team
.”

“We had to get out of there,”
said Eddie nervously. “We figured you could deal with Gamaliel on your own…”

“Oh, I dealt with him,” said
Michelle. She gave a whistle, and they heard the back door open. A moment later
Gamaliel walked into the room, looking even more tattered than Michelle.

“Um,” Balderhaz said, looking
up at the hulking figure of Gamaliel. “Isn’t he one of the bad guys?”

“We came to an
understanding,” said Michelle. “With Tiamat out of power, Gamaliel is working
for me now. And we’re taking over Myrmidon. Balderhaz, please step away from
the computer.”

Balderhaz, who had been
trying to locate Gamaliel’s chip on the map, reluctantly stepped away.

“There are four of us, and
only two of you,” said Suzy.

Michelle laughed. “I’m the
general of Heaven’s army,” she said. “And Gamaliel is the best fighter of all
Tiamat’s minions. I think we can handle three cherubic twerps and a human
female. Face it, sweetie, you’ve been played. I’m back in power, and now I’ve
got Tiamat and her minions under my control as well.”

“See, this is your problem,
Michelle,” said a voice behind her. “You only think in terms of power and
control.”

Michelle spun around to see
Mercury standing in the corner. It was impossible to say when he’d arrived or
how long he’d been there.

“What are you blabbering
about, Mercury?” snapped Michelle. “You’ve taken control of Myrmidon. And now
I’ve taken it away from you.”

“We took control of Myrmidon
temporarily,” said Mercury. “Tell her, Suzy.”

“He’s right,” said Suzy. “The
patch is designed to self-destruct six hours after it’s activated. And that
window is almost up. In twenty minutes, it will erase the Myrmidon software
completely. Everyone will be free.
Even Tiamat and her
minions.
They’ll be very damp, but they’ll be free.”

“Then I’ll just have
Mentaldyne reload the original software,” said Michelle.

“That
would
work,”
said Suzy, “except for an additional feature that Balderhaz and I put in the
patch.”

“Which is what?” demanded
Michelle.

“A high-energy burst on all
receiving frequencies,” said Balderhaz. “Before Myrmidon self-destructs, it’ll
short out all the chips. So even if you take over Myrmidon, you’ll have no
puppets to play with.”

“Then I’ll shut it down,”
said Michelle. “Gamaliel, call Mentaldyne and have them shut everything down!”

“Won’t work,” said Suzy. “The
burst instruction has already been sent to the satellite. The satellite is
programmed to send the burst when Myrmidon shuts down. Whether it shuts down
because of the self-destruct or because you pull the plug, it’s all the same to
the satellite. The burst will go out, and the chips will stop working.”

“You could try to get to the
satellite before that happens,” said Balderhaz. “You’ve got eighteen minutes to
travel a thousand miles, so chop-chop!”

Michelle stood with her fists
clenched, fuming. Gamaliel’s expression was that of someone who had, for the
umpteenth time, picked the wrong team in the big game.

“Like I was saying,
Michelle,” Mercury continued, “your problem is that you think everybody is just
as power-mad as you are. That’s fine when you’re up against Tiamat or Lucifer,
but you’re out of your league when you’re faced with three hundred million
people who are free to make their own decisions. You’ve got no legions and no
place to stand for leverage. Your minions have deserted you, and the reins that
you’re clutching at so desperately don’t connect to anything. Hell, even
Gamaliel has lost interest in being your waterboy, and he never met a tyrant
whose boots he wasn’t prepared to lick.”

Gamaliel had indeed deserted
her. The door of the farmhouse slammed behind him.

“Fine,” said Michelle.
“You’ve won for now. But you overestimate these people. When they find out the truth
about Myrmidon and the Brimstone bomb, they’ll be more terrified than ever, and
I’ll be right there to reassure them that everything will be alright if they
just keep quiet and do what they’re told. If this whole experience has
demonstrated anything, it’s that most people are sheep. I don’t need computer
chips to control
them,
I just need a little fear.”

“Maybe,” said Mercury. “But
there will always be a few people who won’t bow down to you, Michelle, and I’ll
take one of those people over a thousand of your sheep. And I don’t know if
you’ve noticed, but there aren’t any sheep in this room, so I suggest you go
looking elsewhere for your flock.”

Michelle glared at Mercury.
“This isn’t over,” she said, and turned to leave.

“It never is,” said Mercury.

“So that’s it,” said Eddie,
after Michelle had left. “We won.”

Michelle stormed out of the
room.

“For now,” said Mercury. “But
there’s one more thing I need to do.”

Chapter Forty-nine
 
 

Camp David, Maryland; August 2016

After
Tiamat’s bizarre performance and the sudden disappearance of several other key
advisors—the ones who hadn’t run off screaming a few days earlier—it was
decided that President Prowse should take a few days away from the White House
while the Secret Service tried to determine what the hell had happened and how
the hell to keep it from happening again. So he was alone in a quiet office at
Camp David when he received a third angelic visitor.