Daniel Suarez - Influx

A strong hand grabbed his elbow, and he was soon handed off to a new set of Morrisons standing next to the open door of the Escalade. From the door’s thickness he guessed the vehicle was armored—but crudely. Again, early twenty-first-century technology. No doubt this machine was intended for the public streets. To blend in.

He gestured to the aircraft behind him. “You know, my invention made that gravity propulsion possible.”

“Good for you. Now shut up and get in.” The guard shoved Grady into the SUV.

That meant it was showtime. Grady had roughly thirty minutes to escape once they were under way.

There were a total of six guards in the vehicle, only two of them Morrisons—one on either side of Grady in the middle seat. He guessed the BTC didn’t want to have too many Morrisons in one place in public. Twins were one thing—clones something else entirely.

The two guards up front looked beefy, though. As did those in back. No doubt steroids were as crude as leeches to the BTC. They probably had something much better to pump up their soldiers. The security detail wore blue blazers and slacks—no ties. No guns visible. They looked, in fact, just like diplomatic bodyguards.

There was Scotch and wine on the console in front of him, along with what now seemed like an ancient flat-screen LCD television—no holographic units here apparently. He was sorely tempted to have a belt of booze to settle his nerves, but if he could survive Hibernity, this escape should be no big deal. They couldn’t shoot him. Hedrick needed Grady alive. That’s why they were bringing him to headquarters. He just had to make sure they didn’t nox him before he pulled this off.

Grady nodded to the men up front. “So we’re slumming it in the twenty-first century for the last leg, I see.”

The driver gave Grady a dismissive glance in the rearview mirror.

And then they were under way. With a rude jolt of acceleration that now seemed annoying, the vehicle moved through the hangar doors and out into the night. Before long they were rolling through forested countryside. Lots of deciduous trees and lush undergrowth silhouetted against a moonlit sky.

Grady leaned to the side to look for landmarks in the darkness. “Where are we?”

“Earth.”

The guards cracked up. The one to Grady’s right gestured to the television. “This thing get ESPN?”

The driver nodded. “Yeah. Remote’s next to it.”

Moments later the TV came to life.

“What channel?”

“How the hell should I know? I don’t sit back there.”

Grady watched in bewilderment as a commercial for dish soap came on-screen. It was surreal under the circumstances to watch a CGI sponge dancing across a gleaming kitchen countertop. Given everything that had transpired, it all looked so trivial.

The guard started clicking through satellite channels. “Damn, this thing is slow.”

“Welcome to tech level two.”

Grady turned away from the screen. Instead, he gazed out the window. When was he going to do this? Was it better to escape in the countryside or in the city? They were moving through suburbs now.

He guessed he’d have more places to hide in the city. More resources. And he had to get the evidence he was carrying to someone. That was a whole separate challenge.

By now the guard manning the TV remote had navigated past cooking and travel shows. “What channel’s it on?”

Another guard grabbed the remote. “It’s in the two hundreds.”

He clicked onto a cable news station where a mannish woman in a suit stood before a cluster of microphones. The chyron below her read, “Richard Cotton Trial.”

A couple of the guards roared in laughter, “Cotton!”

“My man…”

The woman on TV was in midsentence. “…effort. We’re just glad Richard Cotton will finally face justice.”

A guard yelled, “Put the game on. This shit’s been going on for months.”

Grady watched the screen in fascination.

The news cut to footage of a chained prisoner in bulky body armor and a bulletproof helmet being escorted past a phalanx of riot police. Grady recognized Cotton’s bearded face nodding to the cameras.

Grady struggled to hear the news anchor’s voice over the hoots of his BTC guards. “Captured by FBI agents late last year, Cotton was transferred Thursday under heavy guard to federal district court in Chicago, where he faces trial on thirty-three counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and use of weapons of mass destruction. The leader of an antitechnology domestic terror group known as the Winnowers, Cotton has claimed responsibility for a decadelong string of bombings focused on eliminating scientists whose research he claimed was ‘an affront to God.’ He has been called a martyr by thousands of admirers for whom his antimodernity message resonates.”

One guard scoffed. “Dipshits. It’s almost too easy.”

On-screen Richard Cotton raised his shackled hands as far up as he could in triumph. The Morrison on Grady’s right chuckled. “What a ham.”

Grady looked from guard to guard. “The FBI captured Cotton?”

The guards all laughed.

“You could call it that.”

Grady scowled at the man. “The FBI is part of this?”

“Hey, Ep, he thinks the FBI can keep a secret.”

They all laughed harder.

The screen suddenly changed to a baseball game—the Detroit Tigers against the Cleveland Indians.

“There we go.”

Grady looked from one guard to another, trying to figure out what they had meant. Apparently there was some joke he wasn’t in on—and which the FBI wasn’t in on either.

Grady leaned forward to see a downtown skyline ahead, lights glittering atop lofty towers. There were Michigan plates on the few cars they passed. Signs on businesses and billboards for local radio stations made it clear they were heading into Detroit. Numbers and letters glowed supernaturally all around him now—his synesthesia kicking in, distracting him with its visual lures.

He needed to stay focused. The time on the dashboard read “11:23 PM.” They’d been traveling for nearly fifteen minutes already.

Another glance to either side. They were driving on a nearly deserted multilane highway. It was bridged over at intervals with cross streets and signs for downtown. There were grassy embankments to either side, leading up to bushes and chain-link fences, with houses and buildings beyond. He guessed they were going seventy.

The guards were absorbed in the baseball game. Grady forced himself to ignore the glowing numbers littered across the TV screen. Focus.

When would he do this? He had to act soon, or they might actually arrive at BTC headquarters.

The Escalade signaled and changed to the slow lane. There were no cars around them at the moment.

No time like the present.

Grady casually picked at the “mole” on his neck, removing it. Then he opened his mouth and placed it on his tongue.

The Morrison to his right gave him a disgusted look.

But before the man could even speak, Grady heard a high-frequency sound as a sudden surge of pressure spread away from his own face, enveloping them both in a fog-like, translucent wave. A wave that rapidly expanded in every direction.

He heard someone behind him shout, “What the—?”

Moments later Grady felt as though he’d been encased in nearly transparent foam. It already filled the interior of the armored Escalade, freezing everyone in place like bugs in amber. He could hear his guards’ muffled speech to the left and right.

Grady tried unsuccessfully to turn his head. He was so thoroughly enveloped by the mysterious substance that he couldn’t even wiggle his fingers.

And then he noticed that the SUV was still going seventy miles an hour. Through the frozen smoke, which extended all the way to the front windshield, Grady could see that they were veering off the highway toward a grassy embankment that led up to street level.