Hammerjack (18 page)

Cray watched the city as it came up through the forward window, distant at first but then growing quickly to fill his entire field of vision: a vast plain of glass, concrete, steel, and halogen light. The horizon fell away as soon as the pulser entered Manhattan airspace and joined the overflight grid, climbing to an altitude of two thousand meters before leveling off and locking into an approach trajectory. Performing a series of programmed maneuvers, the pulser weaved gracefully between the apexes of the tallest buildings, held aloft only by the hazy electrical glow of the conductor beam.

Avalon was seated next to him, coolly observing the inflight data monitors that projected their automated course. She had been pensive ever since they left the Port Authority—more than Cray would have liked.
She’s not used to these kind of games,
Cray thought, savoring the irony but not surprised. In her line of work, there was little need for subterfuge. For a spook, it was a means of survival.

“Something on your mind?” she asked, not glancing up from the monitors.

“What?”

“You’ve been staring at me for the last two and a half minutes.”

“Sorry,” Cray said. “I’m in my own zone right now.”

“Because of what you heard back at the bar? I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it, Dr. Alden. The Ascension is a myth.”

Cray didn’t know why he was surprised that she knew. She could have been standing outside the lounge, listening to every word with her sensuit.

“You hear something enough times,” he said, “it starts to sound real.”

“You’ve been in the street long enough to know what is and what isn’t.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” he pondered.

Avalon wasn’t so easily convinced. “Species use that story on each other the same way they use any other drug,” she said. “It’s a cheap way out. They get high, they get hope. What’s the difference?”

“The difference,” he replied, “is that yesterday I thought bionucleic technology was just a myth.” Cray sank back into his chair, catching a glimpse of his haggard reflection in the pulser’s canopy glass. “I’m beginning to think it isn’t such a crazy idea. If the Collective can synthesize an intelligent computer from biological components, who’s to say the
Inru
couldn’t do the same in reverse?”

“Man becoming machine?” Avalon said, treading lightly. “That doesn’t seem likely.”

“About as likely as a machine becoming man,” Cray said. The tower that housed CSS headquarters loomed large in front of them, roof floods impaling the dark like blades of stealth light. “And yet here we are.”

Avalon didn’t seem in the least interested.

The
Inru
’s line of thinking wasn’t that radical. It had, in fact, been kicked around in one form or another for decades, a response to encroaching technology that increasingly rendered
Homo sapiens
obsolete. Mankind, they maintained, would remain the dominant species on the planet
only
as long as it remained the foremost thinker on the planet. Should the intelligence of the machines eclipse that of the creator, evolution would eventually select the lesser of the two for extinction.

The earliest incarnations of the
Inru
movement sought to prevent this by launching a systematic campaign of terror against the Collective. They sabotaged research facilities, used sympathetic hammerjacks to invade and plunder databases—they even went so far as to kidnap engineers and scientists who worked on various SI projects, convincing some of them to work for the cause, murdering the ones who wouldn’t convert. The Assembly responded in kind, issuing liquidation directives against known members of the
Inru
leadership and turning its free agents loose to carry them out. The result was a bloodbath—a full three years of open warfare, with all the viciousness of a gang jihad.

The Assembly’s strategy worked, after a fashion. With many of its people dead, with most of its resources decimated, the
Inru
was forced into the subculture of the Zone—the one place the Collective couldn’t touch them. Having a legend set firmly in place, the
Inru
then set itself about to operate in the shadows—a brilliant turn that, in time, elevated the movement to a cultlike status. Terrorists became partisans. Partisans became priests. And priests found willing converts in places where the future was, at best, a cold uncertainty. Species took to the message like it had been handed down from God, because it described a world in which they were victims of technology. In time, the message said, they would strike back at the machines that had enslaved them—not through warfare, not through bloodshed, not even through revolution.

Through
evolution
.

The pulser slowed as it flew over the landing pad, coming to a hover. Grapple beams fired from the emitters on the roof, disengaging the conductor and bringing the vehicle down to a landing so precise and soft it barely made a sound.

A uniformed CSS detail was already on the roof, awaiting the pulser’s arrival. They marched over as the canopy opened, snapping to attention when they saw Avalon climbing out. Cray noticed that all of them were visibly armed, dressed in the kind of combat gear he would have expected at a riot. There was only one exception—a civilian who stood at the front of the formation, his gray hair and long overcoat fluttering in the strong wind. His expression was serious, but cordial; and unlike the others, he looked right past the free agent and directly toward Cray.

“Good evening, Dr. Alden,” the man shouted above the wind, striding up the landing ramp to greet them. “My name is Trevor Bostic, district security counsel. Welcome to New York. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

“Thanks,” Cray replied, shaking Bostic’s hand. He motioned toward Avalon, the ever-present shadow standing at his side. “Hope you don’t mind me bringing a date to the party.”

“Not at all,” Bostic said. “Nice to have you back, Avalon.”

She acknowledged him with a single nod.

“CSS has been trying to get a rope around her for years,” the counselor explained, sounding way too chummy for Cray’s taste. “As well as
you,
Dr. Alden—but I’m told GenTec values your services too highly to let us have a crack at you.”

Cray tossed a dubious glance Avalon’s way. “That’s news to me.”

Bostic smiled. “Please,” he offered them, sweeping his arm out toward the landing ramp in a welcoming gesture. The security detail treated it like a command, parting on either side so they could pass. “If you’ll accompany me, I’m sure you have many questions regarding your mission here. Time is of the essence, so we should get started right away.”

They followed Bostic into the building, boarding a magnetic lift that took them down twenty floors and deposited them on one of the office levels. Stepping out into the corridor, Cray saw the security there was also very tight. Outside of every elevator and stairwell stood two guards—faces concealed beneath helmets, bodies decked out in the same kind of armor as the roof detail. They stood perfectly still, hands within easy reach of their sidearms.

“It’s company orders,” Bostic said, reading Cray’s observations as they walked down the hall together. “All Collective installations are on the highest state of alert. I don’t care for it much, but what can I say? Some crazy things have been happening lately.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Not too much, I hope,” the counselor added. “We’ve been trying to keep our problems under wraps.”

“No need to worry,” Cray assured him. “The Assembly was as vague as it could be.”

Bostic chuckled knowingly. “Around here, that’s just standard operating procedure.” They arrived at the floor’s main conference room, the entrance secured by a pair of brushed-steel doors and two more guards. Bostic flashed them an ID badge, waving them aside and placing his palm on an access panel to verify his identity. The doors opened automatically, and Bostic showed his two guests inside.

The lights only came up slightly as they entered, lending a reverent and somewhat sinister atmosphere to the chamber. Most impressive was an oval table that dominated the center of the room, a magnificent piece hewn from a gigantic slab of petrified wood. The center had been hollowed out to make room for a virtual imaging disk, which was already active and pulsating with a pale blue radiance. Completing the modernist perfection was a long bank of windows along the far wall, through which downtown Manhattan put on a brilliant display.

Bostic took a seat at the head of the table, inviting Cray and Avalon to join him. The free agent elected to stand, but Cray didn’t even pretend to be that strong. He deposited himself into one of the wraparound chairs, feeling the contours as they molded themselves to the shape of his body. The opulence on display would have been appalling, had it not been so comfortable.

“First of all,” Bostic announced, “I cannot overemphasize the sensitive nature of what you are about to see. Outside the Assembly, only a few key people in CSS know the full extent of what has happened. It is vital that you not discuss this matter with each other outside the confines of a secured facility.
Any
kind of a leak could be devastating to the future of Collective operations.”

Cray thought of Heretic, of how much the hammerjack already knew. That was why he left his infected MFI with his bags back on the pulser. Whatever his doubts about the Assembly’s motives, Cray couldn’t risk Heretic learning more—not until he was sure of what he was dealing with.

Bostic continued by punching up a high-res simulacrum on the imaging disk. Floating above the center of the conference room table, rising up to the ceiling, was a photorealistic model of the Works building. It rotated to provide a view of all sides, responding to the commands Bostic delivered via his control panel.

“Five days ago,” the counselor explained, “we suffered what appeared to be a critical malfunction at the Combined Centers for Scientific Research and Development. At precisely 0115 hours EST, security monitors detected an intrusion of unknown origin—automatically initiating a series of countermeasures that included sealing off all entry and exit points in the building.” Bostic illustrated his presentation by rendering the image of the building transparent, then zooming in and highlighting the areas he was talking about. “A thorough search was initiated, but failed to turn up evidence of a penetration. Assuming it was a false alarm, the security staff then attempted to reset the system and open up the doors. Their efforts, however, were unsuccessful. All the access codes had been nullified, blocking all users from the system. When they attempted a manual override,” he said, trailing off into a long silence before picking up again, “it triggered what we thought was impossible.”

A red zone appeared on one of the floors. “Fire alarms sounded on one hundred,” Bostic said, as the color spread throughout the rest of the building. “From there, alarms started going off throughout the facility. Thermal sensors tracked a massive inferno, even though the cameras couldn’t see a single puff of smoke. As far as the automated systems were concerned, the Works was burning to the ground.”

Cray winced, knowing what was coming.

“The evacuation fail-safe should have overridden security at that point and opened all the doors,” Bostic went on. “But it didn’t. All the exits remained sealed—trapping everyone inside the building when the fire control systems engaged.”

“Krylon mist?”

It was Avalon who asked, her tone even more clinical than Bostic’s.

The counselor nodded. “Consumes all available oxygen to smother a fire,” he said. “Since every floor was saturated at the same time, nobody could hide. They asphyxiated inside of two minutes—all except for two survivors. One was Joshua Holcomb, who died trying to crawl his way out.” Bostic punched up a recorded video feed of a man in a white coat, pacing back and forth across what appeared to be a computer lab. There was no audio with the feed, but the picture clearly showed he was talking—to himself, or to someone beyond the range of the camera. “The other was Daryl Venture, chief software engineer on the bionucleics project. He was in the Tank when it happened.”

Cray frowned curiously. “The Tank?”

“It’s what the designers call the area where the bionucleic unit is housed.”

“You mean Lyssa.”

Bostic seemed uncomfortable with the use of that word. “That’s how the unit refers to itself,” he said, without elaborating further. “For whatever reason, the fire control system didn’t come on in there. It saved Venture’s life—at least for the time being.”

The feed continued for a while longer. Venture became more and more agitated as the seconds passed, pulling at his hair and lashing out against thin air, reacting to some unseen torment—but never was there any sign of panic. No pounding on the doors, no expressions of mortal fear—only anger, building frustration. When Venture turned toward the camera, Cray could see it in the man’s eyes. The man was quite insane, capable of anything.

And he was speaking, the same thing over and over again.

“What’s he saying?” Cray asked.

Bostic shrugged. “‘Thy will be done,’ or something to that effect. It’s gibberish—crazy talk.”

Lyssa,
Cray thought.
Thy will be done
. . .

“What happened?”

“That’s where things get a little fuzzy,” the counselor said. “Venture destroyed all the cameras on that level, so we lost video right after this was shot. What we
do
know is that the intruder countermeasures deactivated themselves after everyone was dead. This is what happened.”