Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

He put the car in neutral, turned off the dome light, then took off his shoes and got out. He removed his jacket and began wiping down the car and the guns for fingerprints. It was a bit late, since he was certain he’d left prints all over the place behind him, but it couldn’t hurt. He’d still need to get ahold of any surveillance video. He started thinking of the names of operators who could manage that.

The Major found a toolbox in the Camaro’s trunk. He put the car in gear, then eased out of the driver’s seat as he released the clutch and lowered the toolbox onto the gas pedal—the car roared off into the inlet and soon splashed through the water, eventually stalling and rolling away as it began to sink.

The Major grabbed his shoes, tied them together and hung them over his neck, wrapped the guns inside of his jacket, and started swimming for the far bank, through bubbles still coming up from the car. The water was shockingly cold, but he didn’t think hypothermia would be an issue across this distance.

The Major swam with calm determination toward the far shore. About halfway across he dumped both guns and kept going. A few minutes later he climbed over a low jetty of rocks on the far side. He lay resting on the rocks in the darkness, listening to the waves wash against the stones.

He stared up at the starry night sky from his place in the shadows. Some of his contractors were dead. They would have to be replaced. Some generalized plans had fallen into the hands of the enemy, but it could have been worse. Yes, the enemy would now know they were up to something in the Midwest, but it couldn’t be news to them, could it?

But he was alive. In fact, The Major hadn’t felt this alive in years. He thought back to nights spent in South American jungles. They were some of the most vivid memories he had. That was truly living.

He stared up at the field of stars above him.

And suddenly he saw a dark, wing-shaped object noiselessly gliding across the blue-black field. They’ve got surveillance drones. He snapped alert and grabbed his things. He ran barefoot across the beach toward a pier that jutted out over the water. The Major ran inland beneath it, the wood planks coming closer and closer overhead, until finally he was crawling up to the very beams themselves, pushing sand away to get deeper in, climbing under the boardwalk. He smelled the tar, discarded cigarettes, and dog shit, but he kept digging.

He heard powerful motorcycle engines and diesel trucks approaching. The Major started to push sand back behind him with his feet, hiding his presence. He was sweating profusely, blocking himself in. Then heard steel-shod boots approaching on the boardwalk. Dozens of others were racing over the asphalt to either side. Motorcycle engines throbbed in the background.

The footsteps stopped near The Major’s hiding place. He could see shadows nearby between the planks and the voices of men.

“The car is in the water on the far side. He crossed here.”

“Looks like the shortest swim.”

“How did they find him?”

“Fingerprint scanners on the room locks. Loki released the biometric database from Building Twenty-Nine to the darknet. People have been inserting software bots into all sorts of systems for months.”

A chuckle.

“We’ll get him. There’s nowhere in the world he can hide now.” Loki walked through the shattered bungalow door wearing his black helmet and riding suit. He wasn’t too concerned about his safety. As a fifty-sixth-level darknet Sorcerer, he had the best gear credits could buy. His black riding suit resembled leather inlaid with titanium wire, but it was actually composed of flexible polymer fibers lined with sheer thickening liquid—a mixture of polyethylene glycol and particles of silica whose chemical structure stiffened instantly into a solid under rapid compression. In technical terms the gel displayed a highly nonlinear rate-dependent sheer resistance—which in layman’s terms meant it could stop a bullet or a knife while still being comfortable to wear. However, Loki also had pieces of ceramic composite trauma plate in critical areas, and on the backs of his gloves, as much for looks as protection. This was his faction battle armor, and he seldom moved about without it. Especially in these troubled times.

His hands were clad in gel armor gloves as well, with fiber-optic lines running like veins along the backs of his hands and along his body, leading to a wearable computer on his belt at the small of his back. Two of the fiber lines also ran to lenses contained in engraved, titanium enclosures at the ends of his index fingers to accommodate his LIPC weaponry. His belt buckle bore the symbol of the Stormbringer faction—twin lightning bolts with skulls in each quadrant. Such was the culture of the darknet—manga come to life.

Through the sensors in his outfit, Loki could “feel” the world immediately around him, in a complete sphere. Next to his skin he wore a haptic shirt that pulsed electronic signals like pixels on a screen, to give him a sensory impression of the area all around him. He could “feel” the walls and shapes of obstacles ahead of him in darkness or smoke.

Loki linked more than nearby geometry to his vest. He also reserved several areas of his skin for more powerful electrical pulses—alerts from his pack of razorbacks, darknet news, or news about The Major, or mentions of Loki’s real-life name anywhere on the Web. Loki was intimately connected to the world around him—both the real one and the numberless dimensions of D-Space.

He surveyed the blood-spattered furniture and scattered body parts of dead military contractors. His air filtration system kept most of the intestinal stench out of his nostrils. Blood was still dripping down the walls and off the ceiling. There was a shattered razorback giving off smoke in the corner, but the piercing shriek of the smoke detector made no impression on Loki in his insulated motorcycle helmet.

A glance around the room confirmed what he already knew. The Major wasn’t among the dead. Loki had remotely piloted the lead razorback and slaved the others to it. Perhaps the frontal assault had been a mistake. The Major was a veteran operator, after all.

But there might still be useful intelligence here. The “Cult of Efficiency” was meeting here for a reason. With several other razorbacks patrolling the perimeter, Loki figured he had a while before local police had the courage to move past the carnage at the front gate.

He kicked over the butchered corpse of a husky Latin American man in an expensive suit. The man had been slashed open neck to groin, spine deep—then hip to shoulder. Beneath him on the floor was a blood-soaked map. Loki kicked the carcass aside and overturned a dining room table to reveal a topographical map. He started to notice a collection of large-format survey maps of the Midwestern United States spread about the room. They were torn and stained with blood.

What are you planning, Major?

He snapped several high-definition photos with his HUD display. Loki then reached a black-gloved hand out to turn on a layer of D-Space—one that revealed all wireless consumer electronics data emitted in his vicinity. With it, he immediately saw the mobile equipment identifiers (MEIDs) of several phones floating above the dead men in D-Space, as well as Bluetooth IDs to various headsets and wireless devices around the bungalow. He could also see SSIDs for nearby Wi-Fi access points—floating in three-dimensional space as call-outs.

Loki activated a darknet telecommunications search portal, which appeared as a single orange ring of light floating in space a foot or so in front of him. It was a digital receptacle into which he swept each of the MEIDs of the dead men’s phones with a wave of his gloved hand. The orange circle flashed and in a moment shrank, transforming into a series of six names associated with those handsets. Aliases, of course, but Loki wasn’t looking for their names. He wanted their social network.