Daniel Suarez - Influx

The men regarded one another.

Hedrick shook his head sadly. “We have indeed seen your type before, Jon. The idealist. You call us megalomaniacal, and yet you’re the one not cooperating with others. As for ‘burning’ your work—we already have it. All of it. And I think you’ll find that the BTC has many smart people who can start where you left off. It’ll just take us a little longer without your peculiar mode of thought.”

“What you’re doing is criminal.”

“I know you believe that. You feel violated. But ask yourself whether it’s not your wounded pride that’s made you dislike us. With time, perhaps you’ll come to realize that the BTC is humanity’s greatest hope for an enduring future, and that we as individuals have no right to alter society to suit our personal visions.”

“You’re the one with a personal vision of society, not me.”

“It’s not personal at all. We’ve been given a legal mandate to protect society. National Security Council memorandums 10/2 of 1948 and number sixty-eight of 1950 empower us to deceive the public for the greater good. What’s known as the necessary lie. ” Hedrick pressed his thumbprint to a digital document that had materialized on the tabletop in front of him. “And it’s for the greater good that I’m remanding you to our Hibernity facility.”

“Hibernity. What is that?”

“A safe place for brilliant people who nonetheless fail to see reason.”

“You mean a prison.”

Hedrick pursed his lips. “I suppose it is a prison. A humane prison designed to protect the public from dangerous ideas.”

Morrison let a crooked smile spread across his face. “I’ll take it from here, Mr. Hedrick.”

“Thank you, Mr. Morrison.”

Doors behind and to either side opened, and Grady turned to see a dozen swarthy, young, perfectly fit men enter in gray uniforms with inscrutable insignia at their shoulders. The men were identical in every way—with blond crew cuts, square jaws, thick necks, and broad shoulders, though not particularly handsome. They looked, in fact, exactly like a younger version of Mr. Morrison.

The realization dawned on Grady as the men approached calmly. “Oh my God…”

Morrison chuckled. “You’ll be seeing a lot more of me in the future, Mr. Grady… but then, so will everyone.”

Grady turned in all directions as the men surrounded him. They held up devices that looked no more threatening than a TV remote.

“My apologies about the use of physical force earlier, but we can’t use psychotronics in public; technology greater than level four seldom leaves the office. You’re going to feel very sleepy in a moment. Don’t fight it. Just lie down, or you’ll fall down.” Morrison nodded to his younger doppelgängers.

Several of the men aimed their devices and red laser dots found Grady’s scalp. Suddenly he was overcome with drowsiness.

“Sit down right there, Mr. Grady.” Morrison pointed.

Grady felt so sleepy he barely made it to the chair before he blacked out. By the time he came to again, there was a tight collar clamped around his neck—and more importantly he could no longer feel anything below his shoulders. He was suddenly paralyzed.

And yet he was still standing. And somehow breathing.

“What’s happening?”

Morrison was clicking through screens on a holographic display hovering above his wrist. “Nothing to worry about. A modest dose of microwaves to the diencephalons can synchronize your brain’s electrical activity to an external source. We just amplified the delta waves in your brain to put you to sleep.”

“I can’t feel my body!”

Morrison nodded as he continued tapping buttons. “Corticospinal collar. Overrides the signals your brain sends to the muscles. Let’s us send some signals of our own. And it beats having to carry you around.” He closed the virtual screen and focused his gaze on Grady. “You’re just a head on a pole now. So I’d start acting more courteous if I were you.” Morrison raised his hand toward Grady and made a gesture of walking with two fingers.

Grady’s body started walking away.

“Oh God!” It was a horrifying feeling—his body was suddenly lost to him. A traitor. Grady was helpless as his own body carried him off.

He craned his neck back behind him. “People will come looking for me, Mr. Hedrick! I have family. Colleagues. You can’t just make me disappear!”

Hedrick motioned for the guards to stop. Grady’s own body slowly turned around like a zombie to face the BTC director again. “But you’re not disappearing, Jon. Everyone knows where you are. Here…”

Hedrick waved his arms and high-definition video images filled the nearby walls. A wave of his hand split the imagery into a dozen live news feeds—a patchwork of overproduced disaster porn depicting a blazing industrial fire. The chyron at the foot of one screen declaring , “Scientists slain by antitech terror group.”

A reporter in one inset provided voice-over to an aerial image of Grady’s destroyed industrial lab: “In a video posted online, rabid antitechnology terrorists the Winnowers claimed responsibility for a bombing that left six researchers dead in Edison, New Jersey, overnight.”

In another video inset a male reporter on the scene intoned, “…fanatical religious group determined to ‘return mankind to the Iron Age’ has struck again—this time destroying a start-up semiconductor lab in…”

Another video inset showing an old photo of Grady and a black-and-white photo of a younger Alcot: “Among the dead: Chirality Labs cofounders Jonathan Grady and Bertrand Alcot as well as venture capitalists Albert Marrano and Sloan Johnson…”

Another video inset: “…the Winnowers have carried out half a dozen deadly bombings over a decade—at times waiting years between attacks…”

Grady watched in horror as images of rescue workers accompanied the newscaster’s narration. Gurneys bearing body bags from the scene. Corpse-sniffing dogs searching through ruins.

Hedrick focused on Grady. “Growing teeth, bones, and body parts from DNA is trivial to us. Your remains in the explosion will leave no doubt that you and your whole team are dead. You see, even if you had accepted a role among us, Jon, you were never going back. You can never live among normal people again. Your mind is just too dangerous.”

A white AS350 Eurocopter descendedfrom a cloudy winter sky. It rotated windward before setting down near a vast array of flashing police and fire truck lights in the parking lot of an industrial zone in Edison, New Jersey. The vehicles were clustered around a massive blast crater centered on the smoking shell of an industrial building. Firefighters hosed down the periphery, while dozens of emergency responders stood by. FBI investigators in hazmat suits combed through the wreckage.

As the chopper rotors wound down, FBI Special Agent Denise Davis exited and at a crouch approached two waiting men wearing winter parkas marked “FBI,” front and back. She zipped her own parka against the frigid chopper wash as she cleared the rotors, glad (as always) that her hair was still in a military buzz cut.

She nodded to the two men—neither of whom looked particularly pleased to see her. This had to be handled carefully. And immediately.

“Wasn’t my idea, Thomas.”

Agent Thomas Falwell, a lean, balding man in his forties looked nonplussed. “Does it matter?”

“For the record, I think it was a shitty thing to do.”

He turned to look at the massive crime scene behind them.

“Are we good? Do you want reassignment?”

He shook his head. “I just wish you didn’t have the résumé you do. But I would have made the same decision if I were them.”