Ruins of the Fall (The Remants Trilogy #2) (4 page)

I immediately want to snatch the words back from the ether. I’m surprised by how much conviction is behind them. Jana must be, too, because the truck swerves off the road. My head bobs back and forth from the sudden change in terrain before she whips the wheel back on course.

“It’s the only way,” I say. “You know it’s true.”

“I actually believe you,” Jana says. “Not want to believe you. There’s a difference.”

“But?”

“It’s complicated.”

A heavy ball forms in the put of my stomach as I realize that I’ve just made an actual, unspoken promise.

That I’m going to be the one who kills Vlad.

I feel I need to say something else, but nothing follows. For once, I’m at a complete loss, the only sound the bumpy road and my panicked heart pumping blood into my ears.

“Look, if you’re not all in…” I say, feeling the need to hedge my bets a little.

“It needs to happen,” Jana finally says. The truck slows down as we approach the lights in the distance. “But I can’t say it will.”

I change the subject, lest we beat a hasty retreat back towards option one and execution.

“This it,” I say, “The Gunpowder Hills?” She said she wasn’t taking me to Remnant HQ—but again, trust issues. Not that it’ll matter—there’s no place within a hundred miles that I can run to for shelter.

“It’s a waystation,” Jana says. “Along the way to the Hills. We’re gonna stop for the night. Plan B, remember?”

At least we’re still on the same side. On the surface, at least.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” I analyze the desolate landscape, imagine Blackstone’s drones and foot soldiers already mobilizing to recover their prize.
Me
. “Lot of people want my ass dead. Or alive.”

“We’ll see anyone three miles before they see us,” Jana says. We pull up to the chain link fence. The waystation is an old farm. There’s no grass in the ruined soil—just dirt—but the barn and two-story early 20
th
century house give it away.

Some sections of the fence don’t quite match—stretches of six feet tall chain link, interspersed with shorter and vicious looking barbed wire. As the truck pulls up, I swear the headlights glint off a scope in the attic.

Jana rolls down the window and waves her fingers outside. The fence creaks and rattles, our hidden gatekeeper pressing a button from afar.

“Not much of a defense,” I say, as we roll slowly on to the property. Jana parks near a dead tree on the far-end of the two-acre spread.

“You touch that fence, you get fried by half a million volts,” Jana says.

“That on all the time?”

“It’s got a motion sensor,” she says. “Conserves energy.”

She cuts the engine and gestures for me to get out. I take in the night air—clean and empty.  It feels odd, after being in HIVE for so long, where you’re bombarded with sensory overload.  Out here, there’s nothing.

In that way, the unreal is more real. A man isn’t used to an environment stripped of everything. I catch a faint whiff of diesel fuel from the truck’s exhaust. It makes my heart beat slower.

A man carrying a shotgun over one shoulder, a long-barreled rifle on the other, comes down the house’s steps. I see a little boy and girl peeking through the curtains. They disappear when the man whistles.

Jana walks over and gives him a big hug. “Atlas.”

“Well, haven’t you grown,” this man named Atlas says, wrapping her tightly in his sinewy arms. “Didn’t expect to see you come my way, Jana Rose.”

They release, and Atlas looks at her with an approving nod. Then his gaze turns on me.

His eyes narrow across the plains. The green cuts through the blackness of the night like a laser. The other eight Remnants mill around—some of them sit beneath the tree, others tinker with spare bike parts littered around the farm. Mirko smokes a cigarette off by himself. But it’s like Atlas sees none of them.

“So you actually got the son of a bitch,” Atlas says. “Luke Stokes, in the flesh.”

I walk over, gait measured. Extend my hand.

He looks at it, but doesn’t offer his own.

“What they’ve said on the news, the rumors and all that, I know they ain’t true,” Atlas says. “But I also know that every lie starts with a grain of truth. So which part is true?”

“Tell me what you want to know.”

“You steal the drive from us?”

“I’m a liar and a cheat,” I say. “I rip people off to survive.” No use bullshitting. “And the first time I tried to do something decent, I fucked all of you pretty bad.”

There’s a cool pause in the chilly night. He stands bolt still. The receding gray hair makes him look older—fifty or so, which means he’s at the end of his time—but the eyes are those of someone fiercely alive, young with the wisdom that only experience can bring.

Funny to imagine that he’s ancient in Rem years, since he seems so damn virulent.

Atlas gives my hand a vise-grip squeeze.

“I like him, Jana,” he says. “I got your message about the new plan. It’s a good one. We can work with this.”

Without another word, he gestures towards the house and goes up the stairs. Jana doesn’t move for a beat, so I stay with her.

“Wow,” she says.

“Interesting guy.”

“You really passed,” she says.

I don’t know what this means, so I shrug.

“I came out here to see if I could trust you.”

“So Atlas is your human lie detector?”

“Something like that,” she says with a grin. “Let’s go inside.”

I head up the stairs to the old farmhouse and shake my head. Even if I’m not running a con, I gotta be sharper than this. HIVE has made me slow and weak.

And, out here, where every innocuous moment is a test, even the friendly wolves have a nasty bite.

I guess I should be happy that I’m winning Jana over to my side.

But I’m paranoid that, at any moment, she could change her mind. Have a change of heart and realize that fighting an army of two million while searching for a hallucinated research facility is stupid.

It’s gotta be only a matter of time, right?

Jana goes upstairs to rest after talking to Atlas in a hushed voice for a few minutes. He nods, they embrace once again, and then she leaves us alone. I don’t receive any instructions. Maybe this is part two of a larger test to see if I’m trustworthy.

“So, you’ve been asleep for three years,” Atlas says. He slides a cup of coffee across the pockmarked table. His children peek around the corner into the kitchen. I give them a wave and a smile, and they scatter like mice being caught in the open. “They don’t see many strangers.”

“Where’s their mother?” I say. From the pained expression that creases his lips, the answer is self-evident. I don’t push the line of questioning further.

“It’s tough surviving out here,” Atlas says. “Sometimes you don’t.”

I avert my eyes and sip the coffee. To my surprise, it’s real. The kitchen is surprisingly well-stocked for being in the middle of the empty plains. A cut of meat cures from a hook over the sink, the faint aroma of cooked onions hangs over the small room. The thin sound of a radio filters in from the den.

“You know you got a hell of a bounty on your head,” Atlas says.

I didn’t know that, no. “Not surprising,” I say with carefree nonchalance. I stir the coffee with the pewter spoon. “What am I worth?”

“Whoever catches you gets full HIVE amenities for life,” Atlas says. “The platinum package. Movie star, rock god, President—you get to be whatever you want.”

“Sounds like a good deal.”

“And you get to bring your friends along too,” Atlas says.

“I thought the key would be worth more.”

“I don’t think they want you back for your HoloBand,” Atlas says. “They’ve probably reverse engineered HIVE to function without you. Almost, at least.”

“Good to know my services are no longer necessary.” Then the bounty makes no sense, unless Blackstone is merely trying to make a statement. But he’s not the same iron-fisted,
security is everything
demigod that Tanner was. Blackstone doesn’t rule through control, but by manipulation and indifference.

“You’ve been having hallucinations, yes?”

I open my mouth, but find there’s not much to say. So we sit in the silence, sipping our coffee, listening to the fridge buzz lightly in the background. Atlas gets up and refills his cup. Rummages around in a few drawers before returning with a small pill.

He places it on the table.

“What’s that,” I say.

He takes a sip of coffee.

“I studied that drive your brother left behind,” Atlas says. “Along with the journal. I understood his plan. It wasn’t a bad one. Give each faction a piece of HIVE. Like handing everyone a nuke. Mutually assured destruction keeps everyone in check.”

“It didn’t work out so well.”

“Best solution out of a number of bad ones,” Atlas says, stirring a sugar cube into his steaming mug. “You’re a gambler. You understand risk.”

I consider the destruction left in the wake of my failure and close my eyes. It’s tough work, this hero business. Saving the world always has a cost.

“HIVE’s worse than even I thought,” Atlas says, weariness starting to show in his face. His eyes remain vigilant, but this talk about gambles has the doubts in his mind churning.

“It doesn’t really affect you,” I say. “I don’t think Blackstone’s trying to get the Remnants to join.”

“You remember the HoloNet?” Atlas says. “Amazing technology. Basically a second brain attached to your own—every piece of information, music, picture you could imagine, at immediate recall.”

I recall the sensation of booting it up for the first time and shiver, wrapping my hands around the mug to steady them. A human being wasn’t designed to harness all that power. Wasn’t meant to know so much at once.

“I used it once or twice,” I say. “Not my thing.”

Atlas grins at this, like he’s found a like-minded soul in a sea of darkness. “Smart man. Now consider if that were a two-way street.”

“I don’t understand.”

Atlas traces his finger along the worn table, outlining as he speaks. “The HoloNet is pretty much one-way. The information downloads into your brain, or you could choose to upload what you wanted to save. Record stuff. But essentially it was a big hard drive repository—lightning fast search and retrieval. Like the old internet, integrated with your mind.”

“Right.”

“But HIVE built on that. Everyone is still connected—but the information flow is constant, immediate. Imagine a real-time, dynamic conversation where a series of monologues once existed. Every thought, every single action, it’s all shared in real-time.”

I finally suck in my breath and ask the question I want to. “What does this have to do with my hallucinations?”

Atlas gives me a small grin. “I think your brother was smart. Three steps ahead of everyone. No plan is foolproof, but unlike you, he wasn’t a gambler. Contingencies upon contingencies. If they ever forced him or you to activate the system, a special program would run.”

“And you know this based on what?”

“Analysis of the drive,” Atlas says. “I can show you the places in the source code—”

“I’ll pass,” I say, draining the rest of my coffee. I stand up and refill it on the stove. By the sound of it, it’s gonna be a long night. “What’s this special program do?”

“I think, eventually, it lets the user know that they’re in a simulation. And it burns information—memories—into their subconscious that could be used to find a way to shut the whole thing down.” He pauses. “Certain users, at least. Not everyone.”

“And why’s it even matter,” I say. The coffee burns my tongue when I bring the steaming mug up to my lips. “It just sounds like you’re afraid Blackstone is spying on everyone via HIVE. So what.”

“That’s one scenario,” Atlas says. “The ultimate surveillance mechanism. But no, the Circle had that down pretty well even before HIVE. Ran a tight ship, as they say. HIVE is overkill for that.”

“What then?”

“I think the HIVE infrastructure acts as a conduit to a central mainframe. Imagine a half million or a million brains linked together, all running in parallel. You’re not so much jacking into the HIVE as becoming part of it—a worker bee in a massive brain. Or a single neuron, if you prefer.”

“A literal hive mind.”

“The smartest computer ever created,” Atlas says, his finger finally stopping. “A sentient, superhuman AI.”

“But it was just a VR program,” I say, somewhat confused. “Hell of a trick, but it’s more…relaxing than dangerous.”

“I think the simulation is to pacify people,” Atlas says. “Save their high-level brainpower for the mainframe. Think about it—all your problems were basically solved, right?”

Life was begrudgingly good in HIVE. I tip back the coffee and cough on the dregs.

“Look, reality is uncomfortable as hell,” Atlas says. “Trust me, I know. I’m out here in the frozen winter, miles from civilization, and I’m still shitting my pants about it.”