Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

He was damned if he was going to answer. He just lay there like a statue.

Her voice responded differently this time. “Yes. You are Rumanian, aren’t you?”

He frowned. How the hell . . . ?

The rest of her words came to him in slightly stilted, synthetic-voiced Rumanian. “This machine is a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. It monitors the blood activity in your brain to identify patterns of deception, recognition, and emotion—such as fear or anger. You will be unable to evade my inquiries. So please relax and enjoy your interrogation.”

Ibanescu just frowned at the machine around him.

“Please speak your full name and place of birth.”

Were they serious? He wasn’t about to tell them anything. He just lay there silently.

“It appears you are either unable or unwilling to respond.”

Suddenly a map of the globe was projected onto the ceiling of the scanning chamber. It looked a lot like a Web mapping program, with the globe spinning slowly in space. The map zoomed in on Rumania as the globe stopped spinning.

“Where were you born?”

Asking again wasn’t going to help. It did feel comforting to see the map of his homeland, however. It was a detailed, physical map, showing the mountains and lakes. He could see a dot on the map for his hometown of Piteşti, northwest of Bucureşti.

Before he knew it, the view of the map centered on Piteşti.

Holy shit. Was this system tracking his eyes? Did it sense that he was focusing on Piteşti? What an idiot he was to fall for that! The map was zooming in now to a full-screen satellite view of Piteşti. He shut his eyes.

“You are from Piteşti, aren’t you?” There was a pause during which Ibanescu clenched his eyes tightly. “Yes, you are. This is where you were born, isn’t it? Do you still have family there?” A pause. “Yes. You do.”

He was starting to lose his mind. How was this hellish machine discovering these things? It was obviously reading his neural activity or something. This was a nightmare.

“I have access to records from this . . . nation state. Let’s discover who you are. Does your last name begin with an . . . A?”

Ibanescu realized that closing his eyes wasn’t going to help. He opened them again and just stared at the detailed aerial view of his hometown. This was insane. He was being processed by a machine that was sucking the information through his ears.

“Does your name begin with B? C? D? E? . . .” And on it went.

He just stared in numb disbelief as the machine finally came to “I” and then halted. It asked again. “I?” A pause. “Good. Now the second letter. Is it A? B?” Another pause. “B? Good. Now the third letter . . .”

And so it continued with relentless precision until it had teased Ibanescu’s name from his mind. It finally said in a stilted, machine mispronunciation, “Mr. Ibanescu, what is your legal first name?”

A series of names scrolled slowly across the ceiling in front of him, but he no longer tried to close his eyes. What was the point? He knew it would simply speak the letters into his ears—which was even more excruciating.

Sure enough, as the list scrolled down through the S’s and centered on “Stanislav,” the scroll slowed. Then stopped. “Stanislav” was highlighted in bold. “Stanislav Ibanescu. Is this your legal name?”

He knew there would be a pause, followed by the inevitable, “Yes. This is your legal name. Are you Stanislav Ibanescu of Trivale bloc 25A?”

Now he did close his eyes. This machine had in a matter of ten minutes completely identified him. It now knew who his family was, his history, everything. What a nightmare technology was. Then he thought, If we had had this technology in the Securitate, we would never have fallen from power . Whoever was doing this was someone he wanted to be part of. These people were winners .

Just when you think America is finished . . .

Now he was looking at his official state identification photo, his employment history, and his military history. It showed that he was currently employed by Alexandru International Solutions. His most recent tax copayments were from his employer, and this system seemed to have access to all of it.

“Were you sent here by your current employer . . . Alexandru International Solutions?” There was a pause. “Yes, you were.” Another pause. “Did your job responsibilities include perpetrating acts of violence against unarmed civilians?” Another pause. “ Yes. It did. ” Yet another pause. “ The financial resources of . . . Alexandru International Solutions . . . have just been deleted.”

He tried to shake his head in disbelief, but couldn’t even manage that in the viselike grip of the head restraints.

“Now let’s determine your social network. What is the primary means you use to contact your handler? Is it e-mail?” A pause. “No. Is it phone?” A pause. “Yes. By phone. What is the first digit of your contact’s phone number? Is it 1... 2... ?”

Ibanescu sighed deeply. His career, if not his life, was over. He stared intently ahead.

“I would like application. Yes? Is this the word? Application?”

Pete Sebeck and Jon Ross sat in an outdoor cafe on Greeley, Iowa’s Main Street. Around their table sat another half-dozen people, various locals who had been following Sebeck’s quest on the darknet feeds, as well as his recent exploits against paramilitaries. Introductions were long over, as was the meal, and the group was now talking animatedly. On the far side of the table, Laney Price was debating with an online gaming economist named Modius, while their hosts laughed uproariously. Today, Price’s T-shirt read: “What would Roy Merritt do?”

Sebeck sipped his espresso and chuckled. He turned to Ross. “Laney’s kept me sane. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

“I guess it was luck of the draw that the Daemon selected him to revive you.”

Sebeck grew somber. “My past life seems like a thousand years ago, Jon.”

“I know the feeling.”

“I think about my wife and my son every day, but contacting them would only put them in danger. And what would I say?” Sebeck raised his hands dramatically. “ ‘I’m not a mass murderer and by the way, the Daemon is real’ ?”

Ross had no response.

Sebeck leaned back in his seat. “So there I was in federal prison and imagine how I felt when they told me you were an imposter all that time we were working together on the Sobol murder case.”

Ross grimaced. “Yes, you probably wanted to strangle me.”

“I thought you’d framed me, Jon.” He took another sip of his espresso. “So what do I call you now?” He pointed up at Ross’s call-out. “It’s not really ‘Rakh,’ is it?”

“No.”

“What the hell does ‘Rakh’ mean, anyway?”

“It’s Russian. Look, one advantage of the darknet is that no one needs to know who you were . Because they know who you are .”