Daniel Suarez - Influx

He turned right down a branch in the passage. They had to duck under a convergence of pipes. “Watch out for these. They’re hot.”

On the far side she asked, “But why would the BTC cover up new technologies? Money?”

“They don’t need money. Their quantum computers eat the stock market for lunch. No, they think they’re protecting society from disruptions caused by sudden innovations. If somebody somewhere comes up with a technology they think will disrupt the existing order, they grab them. Neutralize them.”

“They actually kidnap them?”

He glanced back at her as they ran. “They made hundreds of clones of this one guy named Morrison—some top Special Forces soldier back in the ’80s.”

“Oh, come on…”

“I’m not joking. Keep an eye out for him. I met the original Morrison—he’s sixty or so, but his clones are much younger. Tall blond guys with thick necks. Like ugly Fabios.”

Davis felt a wave of shock pass over her. “Blond guys?”

“Striking specimens. That’s why Cotton’s followers were always masked. There is no antitechnology movement blowing up research labs. The bombings are just the BTC covering their tracks.”

“But we have body parts of victims.”

“You had body parts for me, right?”

She didn’t have a ready explanation.

“They can grow body parts. Replacement organs, teeth—hell, they can clone whole people if time isn’t a factor. They grab people they want, fake their deaths, then offer them a chance to join the BTC.”

“And if someone refuses?”

“They send him or her where they sent me: a prison called Hibernity. It’s somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. I don’t know where. Very remote. But it’s the reason I contacted you. There are others like me there.”

Grady stopped in the middle of the tunnel and produced a small white plastic device from a chain around his neck. He aimed it at a blank spot in the wall, and suddenly a hyperrealistic holographic image appeared in midair. It showed a balding Indian man in very simple clothes sitting in what looked like a gray circular chamber. Davis was stunned at the image’s clarity—it was as though a three-dimensional sculpture had just materialized from nowhere. She could barely hear the audio amid the steam and exhaust motors in the corridor.

“My name is Archibald Chattopadhyay, nuclear physicist and amateur poet. I have a lovely wife, Amala, who has given me five wonderful children. I led the team that first perfected a sustained fusion reaction, and for this I was imprisoned by the Bureau of Technology Control in April 1985. I am not dead. I live still…”

Grady paused the hologram and pointed. “What you’re looking at is a prison cell in Hibernity, and that man, Archie Chattopadhyay, saved my life. And the lives of many other prisoners. He leads a prison group called the Resistors. There are dozens like me—maybe hundreds, and we need to save them.”

Davis pointed at the device. “Can I hold onto that?”

Grady shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we get access to a serious electronics facility. This device has holographic data from many more disappeared prisoners on it—people abducted from all around the world. It runs on DNA-encoded software, so it contains huge amounts of data—including the complete genomic sequence of each of these prisoners to prove they were the ones who made the recording.” But he held it up. “It also has a nanoscale inertial gyroscope that’s been recording my movements since I left the prison. There are instructions in it for parsing that data. And that will make it possible to lead help back to Hibernity. So I’m not letting this thing out of my sight until we get it to a lab.”

Davis gazed at the first physical evidence she’d seen so far. It was a nearly miraculous device—but then, she was never very technological. Was it miraculous? “Why did the BTC take you, Mr. Grady?”

He turned off the device and slipped it back beneath his shirt. “I invented a gravity mirror.”

“That’s a mirror that reflects—”

“Look, it’s not important. What’s important is that I get this data to people who can help rescue those I left behind. These are people whose innovations will literally transform the world, Agent Davis. Fusion energy, a cure for cancer, quantum computers, immortality, and a lot more. You need to help me find them and free them.”

A booming sound echoed in the steam tunnels.

Davis looked behind them.

“I spent three years in solitary confinement at Hibernity with an AI doing experiments on my mind. It was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.”

She turned back to him. “But why would they mess with the minds of geniuses?”

“Because if you don’t join the BTC, they consider what’s in your head to be a threat. Hibernity is their research center for creation of a biological supercomputer—some sort of organic quantum machine. They’re trying to create consciousness without free will.”

Davis again was speechless.

“I’m just one person who discovered one thing. The men and women in Hibernity have done so much more than me. You need to help me save them. Their prison needs to be revealed to the world.

Davis was still having difficulty wrapping her head around it all. Or even believing it.

Then another loud boom behind them caused them both to turn around.

A hundred feet back the way they came, Davis could see a nightmare—a seething swarm of metal links pouring itself like black nails over hot pipes and then re-forming again into a ball that rolled with the sound of chains tumbling down a staircase.

She froze for a moment, but Grady grabbed her arm, pulling her along.

“Damnit! We shouldn’t have been standing here!”

“What the hell is that thing?”

“Run!”

“What is it?”

“Chain golem. Nanotech machine. Don’t let it catch you.”

She glanced back at the horror that was gaining on them. A black spiked ball three feet in diameter. “Oh, no kidding!”

Davis drew her Glock 17 and aimed behind her.

“Don’t waste your bullets! They won’t do anything.”

She lowered her gun and kept running. “Why not?”

“It’s thousands of interacting metal links. And the shots will help the Morrisons find us.”

“Goddamnit!” Davis holstered her pistol.

“There’s a fire door up ahead. Move!”

She followed Grady as they raced through what looked like a magnetically controlled fire door. As they passed through the doorway, Grady pulled, drawing it off its magnetic plates. The door slammed shut just as the chain golem smashed into it—deforming it visibly.

As Davis watched, she heard metallic rattling sounds like a ghost in chains—and then a massive booming sound as the door started to buckle further and bend in its frame. She turned to run but saw Grady rummaging through his backpack.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He withdrew a plastic tube into which he poured white powder—like a muzzle-loading musket. “We can’t outrun it down here.”

A glance back showed Davis that the monstrous black machine had smashed open the top half of the door and was busy swarming around it—re-assembling on their side.

She started running but slowed when Grady didn’t follow. “Mr. Grady!”

To Davis’s surprise, Grady tossed the backpack aside and raised the tube to his mouth like a blowgun. The chain golem rose to vaguely humanoid form and stomped heavily toward him.

“Mr. Grady!”

As the chain golem rose to engulf Grady, he blew through the tube and a plume of white powder billowed into it. Almost immediately the machine contracted—and in doing so, the grit jammed even further between its links. It collapsed to the floor and started writhing as if in a seizure. The abrasion made a horrible screeching sound—like a million nails across a million blackboards.