Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

In just a few moments, Merritt was back to his maximum two hundred levels.

Merritt stood over Loki. “Sir, we all need help from time to time. That’s why there’s more than one of us. . . .”

Loki stared up at an avatar created out of the popular will of millions of people—programmed to react in times of dire need. It was apparently part of the darknet. And what the darknet was evolving to become.

Loki collapsed onto the ground, silently wracked with sobs, his metallic eyes unable to shed tears or look away. The crowd, no longer hostile, gathered around him. A nearby woman placed her hand on his shoulder.

Merritt turned to the crowd. “Everything’s okay here folks. Nothing to see. . . .”

And suddenly Sebeck heard a chime. He looked to see a gold-colored Thread wind away from him, leading north, toward the distant horizon. “Price!”

“I’m right here , man.”

“We need to find our gear. Now .”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No. We’ve got to leave right away.”

“To where ?”

Sebeck was already pushing through the crowd. “To the Cloud Gate.”

Pete Sebeck’s final Thread led him north to Houston, and then east toward a once bustling container port at Morgan’s Point, Texas. The glowing, golden line ran toward a massive shipping container facility that lay alongside a stretch of shipping channel named Barbour’s Cut.

In recent days the dollar had slowly begun to rise from its historic low—no doubt in large part from Sobol’s vengeance against the plutocrats. But as Sebeck brought their newly assigned Lincoln Town Car through the vast industrial wasteland and utterly subjugated landscape of Morgan’s Point, he wondered if this place would ever thrive again. The days of ten-thousand-mile supply chains might have gone for good.

He turned to see Laney Price sitting in the front seat next to him, wolfing down chicken nuggets and sipping a jumbo soda. Sebeck just laughed and shook his head.

“What?”

“You have no sense of irony, Laney. Do you know that?”

“I told you, I was hungry.”

“Well, I guess you’ve earned the right to eat crap.”

A female voice came from the backseat. “Leave him alone, Sergeant. Each of us celebrates in our own way.”

“She’s right, Pete.”

Philips turned to Jon Ross. Their look lingered longer than necessary.

Price scowled. “What the hell kind of name is ‘Ivan Borovich,’ anyway? I just got used to calling you Jon.”

“Call me whatever you like, Laney. I won’t be listening anyway.”

Philips leaned against Ross. “I like the name Ivan.”

Price chuckled and spoke in a Russian accent. “Yeah, I’m sure the NSA will like Ivan, too.”

Philips waved him off. “Defending the U.S. government against a hostile takeover should be worth a green card.”

“I don’t know. I hear the requirements are getting tougher.” Sebeck slowed the car. “Here we go. . . .”

“We’re there?”

“No, but I think were running out of land pretty quickly on this peninsula.”

They were now heading down along a wide concrete road apparently made to deal with a high volume of container truck traffic. The traffic seemed much reduced. They had the place mostly to themselves—although a veritable skyline of multicolored shipping containers rose to their left across several lanes of highway.

Philips studied them. “What is the Daemon’s fascination with shipping containers?”

Ross looked as well. “They helped spread the consumer culture virus to every corner of the world. It’s no wonder the Daemon found them useful.”

Sebeck slowed the car again as they came alongside a truck yard, and he turned across the highway to a frontage road.

Price nodded. “A container yard. You’re going to open a container that contains something . Something Sobol sent to himself. Or—”

“Price, would you please? I can’t hear myself think.”

“Then think louder , man.”

Sebeck pulled into a driveway that surprised everyone. As he followed the golden Thread down the narrow lane, they all gazed through the windshield.

Ross looked puzzled. “A cemetery ? In the middle of all this ?”

Before them stood a rusted metal sign that read MORGAN’S POINT CEMETERY. The parcel was perhaps a couple of acres in size, and stood at the end of a long drive that placed it in the middle of a massive container yard. It was surrounded on three—and very nearly four—sides by towering container stacks. However, the driveway and the cemetery beyond looked green. Trees and shrubs covered the grounds, and a barbed-wire fence separated it from the surrounding shipyard.

Sebeck sighed. “Well, this is where it’s leading me.” He came to a stop in a small, empty parking lot. Everyone got out and glanced around.

“This place is positively surrounded.” Philips gazed up at all the containers looming above them.

Price pointed at the names on the sides of the center container in each wall. In big blue sans serif letters was the word “HORAE” painted along the corrugated steel. “Sergeant. Just like Riley told us.” He turned to Philips. “Doctor, you’ve read some Greek mythology, yes?”

“Yes, quite a bit. In native Greek.”

“Prove to us you are deadly boring: what are the Horae in Greek mythology?”

She shrugged. “They were the three goddesses who controlled orderly life. Daughters of Themis. The word means ‘the correct moment.’ And the earliest mention is in the Iliad , where they appear as keepers of the cloud gates.”

Price just threw up his hands. “Well that’s pretty damned impressive.”

“Is it a code?”

Ross stood alongside her. “Or an arrangement, perhaps. Like tumblers in a lock.”

“You mean these containers need to be arranged precisely like this to unlock something?”

He shrugged. “You tell me, Doctor. You’re the code breaker.”

Sebeck was already walking forward. “It’s no code. It’s symbolism. And as you know by now, Sobol’s worlds are chock-full of symbols.”

Price followed. Ross waited for Philips, and soon they were all walking down a cracked sidewalk toward an ornate, wrought-iron gate. It, too, was somewhat rusted, but the iconography of the gate was unmistakable—three female guardians holding long spears loomed in bas-relief on either side, wreathed in ironwork clouds. The gate was closed.

As Sebeck approached the gate, D-Space avatars of three towering female forms in robes and enclosed, plumed helms materialized from the shadows, holding tall golden spears.

Philips looked puzzled as all three men in the group backed away from the shadows. “What is it?”

Ross held her hand and tapped his HUD glasses. “Female avatars. The Horae, I gather.”

One of them spoke in a booming female voice. “Only the quest-taker may pass through the gates.”

Price held up his hands. “No problemo.”

Ross nodded. “I guess we’ll wait for you here, Sergeant.”

Sebeck glanced to Price as he stood with his hand on the gate.

“You know, Laney, I don’t think I would have made it here without you.”

Price shrugged. “Well, let’s wait to see if it’s good or bad before you go thanking me.”

Sebeck shook his head and entered the gate. It closed and locked behind him with an audible click .