Influx (26 page)

Outside, they could see thick roiling fog and soldiers lying motionless on the asphalt. It was suddenly eerily quiet. No aircraft overhead. Not even the sound of crickets.

Davis turned back to see half of the marine captain twitching on the bench. She coughed at the combination of ozone and burned flesh and looked away, drawing her Glock pistol. Falwell and McAllen did likewise. The staff sergeant grabbed an M4 from a weapon rack and aimed it out into the fog.

He shouted toward the driver. “Captain’s down, Ricky!”

“What the hell hit us?”

“I don’t know!”

Davis glanced back to Grady and Cotton, only to see them both staring in horror out into the fog. She turned back again. “Thomas, we have to get Grady and Cotton out of here.”

Falwell shook his head. “This is insane. I don’t understand . . .”

Moments later three negative forms materialized from the fog. They were the darkest black Davis had ever seen. Their outlines swallowed light, as though they were living silhouettes.

Cotton covered his head with hands and cowered in his orange body armor. “Oh God! Morrison, it wasn’t me . . .”

Davis, Falwell, and McAllen opened fire with pistols, while the staff sergeant fired short bursts with his M4. In the confines of the Stryker the gunshots were deafening—spent cartridges bounced all around them—but they fired repeatedly until their clips were empty.

As she reloaded, Davis focused downrange, through the gun smoke into the dark fog. The three negative forms stood unmoving.

Finally a voice like that of God spoke: “Deputy Secretary McAllen. I bring a message from the director of the BTC.”

McAllen scowled as he lowered his gun. “What is it, you bastard?”

A tearing sound ripped the air again, and before Davis’s eyes, a white-hot fire swept from inside the tip of McAllen’s outstretched hand and down within his arm as he screamed in agony. It was as though some chain reaction was turning his body into fire. He started to burn like the glow moving down a cigarette. He barely got a second shriek out before his face and torso were consumed by the wave of glowing embers—the heat bursting forth from him singed Davis on the other side of the cabin. By the time the blinding flash ended, his form had collapsed into ash, his undamaged pistol clattering to the steel deck.

“Oh my God!”

Davis had reloaded, and she and Falwell opened fire at the dark forms again, but to no avail. When their guns were empty, they stared at the figures still standing, unaffected.

And then Davis heard the ripping sound again. Falwell turned back toward her as he burned. “No!” She grabbed his outstretched hand and screamed in agony as her skin burned along with his.

The unnatural fire consumed them both.

J
on Grady stared, unbelieving,
as
Agents Davis and Falwell blew away into ash. He then turned toward the dark silhouettes at the mouth of the wrecked Stryker.

“Aaaahhh!” He charged at them. But one of the forms held up a hand, creating a force that swept over him, Cotton, and the staff sergeant, hurling them against the rear bulkhead. Dazed, Grady felt gravity shift, and they “fell” out to land roughly on the pavement—as if a giant had upended the Stryker and shaken them out like candy. Every loose object in the Stryker came along with them—including the remaining half of the captain, tools, and rucksacks. Grady and Cotton then floated up a couple of feet above the ground. Spent shell casings and trash levitated around them.

Several more dark forms floated down from above to join the first three, and they now stood staring at the floating men.

Grady turned to see that the staff sergeant was still breathing but unconscious. Apparently someone had noxed him—something Grady had seen many times before.

The fog was already dissipating as the summer breeze continued to blow over them, and now Grady could see just how many marines were lying unconscious in the parking lot.

Cotton was babbling toward the jet-black center figure. “Morrison, I wasn’t working with them! Scan me! Go ahead and scan me!”

The same wrath-of-God voice spoke from the ink-black human outline. “How much did you tell them, Cotton? You piece of shit.”

“I didn’t tell them anything!”

As Grady floated in the air, helpless to move, he concentrated on the dark forms. They were menacing in a way he’d never felt before. Like demons from hell.

Morrison aimed his arm. “I don’t feel like scanning you, Cotton.”

A female voice spoke from the sky. “I’ll take the prisoners.”

The BTC warriors looked up to see Alexa descend wearing a black tactical suit of her own—although hers appeared much simpler. It was clearly not assault armor. She had a matching helmet as well with a crystalline visor across her blue eyes. Grady couldn’t help but notice a belt similar to the Morrisons’ woven into her outfit, and he assumed it must be the gravity mirror he’d invented—shrunken to absurdly small size and perfected.

As Alexa descended into Grady and Cotton’s gravity field, they joined her gravitational well, and now seemed to move along with her.

Morrison shouted, “Where the hell do you think you’re going, Alexa?”

“I’m taking these prisoners back to the BTC.”

Cotton looked over at her. “Thank God! Alexa, tell them I haven’t said anything.”

She eyed him. “Perhaps not, but you are going to tell me some things.”

She then glanced at Grady.

Grady looked to her. “They killed Davis. They burned her alive.”

Alexa looked visibly disturbed by this news, and she turned angrily toward Morrison and his gathered sons. “An XD gun? You didn’t have to kill anyone, let alone split their water.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Sometimes examples need to be made of people.” Morrison made no visible motion, but loose rocks and debris floating around him started to “fall” with him as his “down” edged toward Alexa and her new charges. “You’re not going anywhere. Hedrick ordered me to deal with Cotton just as soon as I learn whether he betrayed us.”

“I’ll handle that.”

Cotton was floating sideways, trying to get his spin under control. “What does he mean ‘deal with’ me?”

Morrison’s armored black oval of a face remained focused on Alexa’s. His voice came across now at a more conversational volume. “This isn’t your field of expertise, Alexa. You should be back at base. Hedrick has been looking for you.”

“I don’t report to you.”

His voice grew impatient again. “Neither do you have the right to come here and interfere with my operation.”

“You’ve already captured the prisoners. I’m taking control of them now. Don’t even think of ordering me around.”

“Ah, I forgot. There’s only one person you report to . . .” He paused and then looked upward slightly. “Get Director Hedrick on a q-link to me immediately.”

Alexa apparently wasn’t waiting around. She extended her booted feet, and then she, Cotton, and Grady began to fall upward, slowly at first.

Grady felt little acceleration as he rose into the night sky, and now he could see how many marines were lying unconscious all around them in the moonlight—hundreds.

Morrison’s voice shouted after her, louder now. “Alexa, I’m not letting you take those prisoners!”

“Don’t follow me, Morrison. I mean it.”

They ascended faster, rising above the trees, and now Grady could see the vast expanse of farmland stretching beyond. And the fallen army around them.

His synesthesia made even this horrible vista beautiful, as the stars above were wondrous.

 • • • 

Morrison popped his visor with a hiss, revealing his weathered, scarred face. There were now six of his sons around him in full diamondoid armor, and they likewise popped their visors.

“What’s up with Granny?”

Morrison covered his microphone and hissed, “Go after her. Get the prisoners back while I get Hedrick on q-link.”

The sons exchanged worried looks and covered their mikes as well.

“Fuck that . . .”

“Iota’s right, Dad.”

“I’m not getting in the middle of a fight between Granny and Hedrick.”

“She’s supposed to be ‘priceless intellectual property’ or some shit.”

“She’s his goddamned girlfriend.”

“What if she fights back?”

“That bitch is dangerous.”

Morrison aimed a diamond-hard black finger at them. “Get your asses up there and follow her.”

“She’s on a tracker. We don’t have to follow her.”

Morrison checked in with tactical operations again. “TOC, this is Alpha Dog, do we have the director on q-link yet?”

“The director left the command center when you radioed mission completion. Is this an emergency, Alpha Dog?”

“Yes, it’s a damned emergency. Tell him I found Alexa, and that she left with both prisoners—interfering with my command.”

There was a pause.
“Stand by, Alpha Dog.”

Morrison gazed up into the stars and finally pounded the side of the armored Stryker with his diamondoid fist, putting a dent in its armor. “Goddamnit!” With that he ripped out the comm module from his helmet and tossed it to one of his sons—who caught it deftly. “Hold onto that for me.”

“What are you doing?”

“Someday you boys will learn it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.” Morrison’s visor swept across his face with a hiss, and he immediately fell into the sky, followed by a trail of debris.

His sons watched him go and then turned to one another with worried looks.

“To hell with this.”

“Let’s get back to base. I don’t want to be downrange when this shit hits the fan.”

 • • • 

Grady watched the moon’s reflection on a lake below them and stared in wonder at the world from five thousand feet. The tragedy of recent events was flowing through him at the same time the beauty of the natural world flowed over him. It was a beautiful summer night. Turned backward, he wasn’t blinded by the wind. Judging by the stars, he figured they were “falling” to the north—back toward Chicago. It was a miraculous feeling even given his black mood.

He’d invented the gravity mirror, and now, before he died, he could see how marvelous it was.

He was still trying to process all that had happened in the last ten minutes. Davis and Falwell were dead. Killed in a horrible way. So, too, was the deputy secretary of Homeland Security—their bodies incinerated as they shrieked. Grady turned to face Alexa as she guided the three of them in the shade of her gravity mirror. He could see Cotton looking below them, probably warm enough in his protective, orange body armor.

Alexa cast a glance at Grady and shouted, “I owe you an apology.”

He just stared at her.

“I realize how feeble that sounds. Apologizing for destroying your life. I didn’t know.”

“But now you do.”

She nodded. “Your scars . . . I checked and—”

“Then you really didn’t know, did you?” He could see what looked like true emotional pain in her eyes.

“My God, what you had to go through. I had no idea.”

Grady felt relief wash over him. He strangely felt he could believe her.

But then the flow of air over them stopped. They just hung there, suspended. There was no sensation of deceleration. They just stopped.

Alexa was busy checking her systems and looking up at projected displays in her helmet.

Cotton shouted, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” She was ticking through items: “Third of a
g
, zero pitch, zero yaw . . . we should be moving.”

Just then a familiar voice came across the night air to them. “You’re not going anywhere with my prisoners, Alexa.”

They turned to see Morrison floating toward them in the moonlight. He aimed an armored finger at them as he did so, the tip glowing fiercely.

Alexa stopped checking her gear. There was a grim look on her face. “Integrated extogravis. That’s new.”

“I can nullify your gravity mirror. Quite a toy you invented, Mr. Grady. One improvement we were able to make was the ability to instantiate the mirror at an arbitrary distance.”

Grady’s eyes widened, and he couldn’t help but feel amazed even as he was horrified. “But . . . how . . .”

Alexa now floated alongside them, just as helpless as they were. Like a fly in a spiderweb. “I didn’t know they’d built projectors small enough to mount in assault armor.”

“Not that big really. Just requires lots of power. Certainly doesn’t fit in a flight suit like yours. So I guess Hedrick doesn’t give you all of his toys. He’s that smart at least.”

They all four hung there silently in midair, five thousand feet above rural Illinois in a cloudless night sky.

“Let us leave, Morrison.”

He shook his head at her. “You’re free to go once you turn over my prisoners.”

“Hedrick lied to me. You all lied to me. Why?”

“You’re in your fifties, Alexa. It’s time to grow up.”

“You knew what was going on at Hibernity.”

“I’m so sick of your sustained innocence. You get to waltz around and have everyone love you. You’re the future of humanity, while my project gets canceled and I become a genetic punch line. Well, I’m a survivor. I do the dirty work that no one knows about. When things need to get done, the director counts on me and my sons to do them. The outside world is a ruthless, shitty place. At least Grady and Cotton here actually have a purpose—what’s your purpose? Other than being a genetic library for when they finally figure out how to transfer minds from one body to another?”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Oh, you didn’t know about that project either? Well, we don’t tell you everything.”

Alexa stared at him, her jaw clenching.

“Now push Grady and Cotton over here.” He aimed a gloved finger on his other hand, apparently a weapon integrated into the suit.

Cotton tried to swim through the air to get behind her. “Alexa, you know they forced me to do this. I haven’t harmed a soul, I swear it.”

Morrison laughed. “You’re no saint, Cotton. Did Cotton ever tell you where we found him—a master thief trying to break into BTC headquarters? Bit off more than you could chew, eh?”

“Alexa, don’t let him do this.”

“Your ten years is just about up, anyway, Cotton.”

Alexa drew a black spikelike device from her belt. Its tip glowed with an intense indigo light.

Morrison lowered his weapon arm. “A positron gun? That’s a killing weapon, Alexa. Where did you get that?”

“You know damn well.”

Morrison’s ink-black armored face was inscrutable, but he nodded slowly to himself. “He’s weak.”

“Let us go, Morrison.”

“Listen to yourself, Alexa. You’re breaking bureau regulations. Ignoring rules about tech level exposure. Chain of command.”

Cotton shouted, “He’s going to kill us—split our water like that Davis woman.”

Morrison nodded toward her raised weapon. “How much antimatter do you have in that thing?”

“A billionth of a gram. So don’t toy with me.”

“You’re not a killer, Alexa. And you know that Grady and Cotton must come with me. Civilian government knows who Cotton is now. They’ll interrogate him—torture him if necessary—to get information out of him.”

She didn’t lower the weapon, although Grady could see she was unsure of what to do. “Don’t test me, Morrison. Just leave. And tell Graham to back off while I sort this out.”

Morrison slowly reached toward his harness. “See this? I’m getting a psychotronic weapon—nonlethal—and that’s all there is to it. I’m not going to harm you or anyone. Ask yourself: Are you going to kill me, Alexa? Are you going to kill me to stop me from using a nonlethal weapon against—”

He fast-drew the weapon, but Alexa’s reflexes were faster. A blinding flash and crack of thunder, and the front of Morrison’s suit burst apart in weirdly intricate sparks and whirling vortexes of energy—hurling him backward and then downward.

But on his way down Morrison zapped Alexa with the psychotronic gun as well. She spun out of control, causing Grady and Cotton to fall out of her local gravity field—and into free fall from the night sky.

 • • • 

Alexa almost immediately regained her senses and found herself free of Morrison’s projected gravity field. She scanned the sky below her with thermal imaging. Cotton was falling below her, screaming, while Grady descended farther off—probably impossible to reach at terminal velocity. However, Morrison appeared to be moving to intercept Grady—sparks issuing from his combat assault armor.

“Damnit!” Alexa soared down to try to catch up with Cotton before he hit the forest thousands of feet below. She tucked her arms onto her thighs to streamline her aerodynamic profile and descended at much more than a hundred miles an hour.

 • • • 

Grady’s heart pounded in his chest as the rushing air buffeted him. His watering eyes saw the dark forest racing up to meet him, and he realized that these were his final seconds of life. He glanced up at the stars above him. The beauty was heartbreaking. However, his time in Hibernity had taught him how to manage fear, and he turned toward the approaching trees—determined to see his life right up to the very end.