Daniel Suarez - Influx

Alexa frowned. “I don’t want to hurt you, Agent Davis. You seem very dedicated.”

“Good. Don’t move.” Davis knelt quickly to claw a snub-nosed .38 from her ankle holster.

By the time Davis pulled the gun, Alexa was already on her with one hand around Davis’s neck, the other crushing the wrist of her gun hand. It was an insane moment to feel thrilled to be grappling with this woman—thrilling at her touch. It had to be some form of temporary insanity.

Alexa almost broke Davis’s wrist and then batted away the second gun, which flew off into the darkness.

The woman seemed so slim, but her arms felt like they were woven from steel cabling. Their power was terrifying. She then threw Davis ten feet back, where Davis rolled upon the dirty floor—coming back onto her feet again.

Alexa strode forward. “Can we please be done now?”

Davis screamed, rushing in again, and feinted a blow to Alexa’s jaw—but at the last moment tried a vicious punch to her gut. En route Alexa effortlessly countered, then caught Davis’s fist with her open hand, twisting it and sending Davis to the dirt again.

“It pains me to harm you.”

“Fuck you.” Davis rolled free and came up swinging.

Alexa batted aside Davis’s well-aimed blows and shot her hand forward around Davis’s throat—lifting her one-handed completely off the ground. As Davis felt herself being choked out, struggling to pull the rock-hard fingers from around her throat, Alexa’s gorgeous blue eyes stared without anger into hers.

Davis had been a champion female boxer in the army. This baby-doll woman had just defeated her as if she were a five-year-old.

“I really don’t want to harm you, Agent Davis. What we do is for the best. Trust us.”

At that point Davis blacked out.

Grady pulled up his hoodie and slipped on a pair of modified safety goggles. These had near-infrared LEDs punched into their lenses at intervals. He’d cannibalized the LEDs from motion sensors bought at a home improvement store. Grady activated the LEDs from a battery pack, then blended into pedestrian traffic, walking briskly down 120th Street, across Amsterdam. He looked like a paranoid kook to passersby, but in New York that only encouraged people to ignore him—which suited his purposes.

Grady now had to find a safe way back to Chicago, but compared to how things could have gone down, this was a minor problem. And at least he had something to hope for now. He’d convinced someone in law enforcement that he wasn’t insane. Someone honest.

Grady casually glanced back behind him to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

And was amazed to see Alexa about a hundred meters behind, sprinting toward him at an alarming rate.

“Shit!”

Grady pelted down the sidewalk. What the hell happened to Davis? As he ran, he glanced back and saw that Alexa was gaining on him with disconcerting ease. He needed to lose her. Grady dodged among pedestrians, looking for an alley to duck down or a door to enter, but every alley he came across had a tall metal gate with spiked rods above it. Every door was locked. Damn this upscale neighborhood. Everything was battened down tight.

Grady kept running as he stole a glance behind.

Alexa had already closed half the distance between them, and judging by the looks of those who gazed after her, every stranger in the street would be willing to come to her aid.

A hundred feet ahead and across the street, Grady saw a broad alley. He raced toward it, dodging through traffic, and managed to reach the alley mouth before she caught up. He hoped there would be somewhere to hide or a gate he could jump, but to his dismay it was the cleanest alley he’d ever seen in New York—a delivery bay for high-end co-ops to either side and a dead end with a two-story brick building in front of him. There was a surveillance camera and a closed loading dock. He could already hear Alexa’s footsteps coming up behind him.

He turned to face her and held up fists. He’d spent years in Hibernity. He had the video proof that Chattopadhyay had entrusted with him. He wasn’t going quietly. “I won’t let you take me back, Alexa.”

He could see that half a dozen curious people—mostly men—had gathered ten yards behind them at the mouth of the alley.

“Miss, you need help?”

As Alexa came to a stop before him, not even breathing hard, she turned, smiled, and waved. “I’m fine, thanks. Just my brother.” She made a loony gesture with her hand, then turned back to face Grady—the smile disappearing.

Grady could see that none of the men went away.

He lowered his fists. It was a cruel mockery to have her come collect him. It wasn’t fair. He could feel how his legs were trembling. The fear was on him now as he remembered the AI torturing him—stealing his memories. “I won’t go back, Alexa. You’ll have to kill me.”

She stood only a few feet away, arms casually down at her sides. “Why would I kill you, Jon?”

“Because I can’t go back.” He was visibly shaking.

“Of course you will. For your own safety.”

He screamed at her, “How can you be this cruel?”

“It’s not cruel. It’s necessary.”

She moved forward, and Grady just collapsed onto the pavement, curling up—screaming, “No! No!”

“Don’t make me force you.”

He screamed at her—half out of his mind in terror, “How can you sleep at night? How can you be part of this?”

Alexa grabbed his sweatshirt as he tried to curl up in a ball. “Jon, you were placed in Hibernity for your own protection—for everyone’s protection.”

“For my own protection?” He glared at her. “Do you really believe that?” Grady pulled off his sweatshirt and T-shirt to reveal the horrendous scars spread across his back and sides—and then he pulled his LED glasses off to show her the drill marks at intervals at his temples where the AI had held his head in place like a vise.

“Do you see this? Explain to me how being mentally and physically tortured for years in solitary confinement is for my own protection. Explain to me how destroying memories from my childhood is for the ‘greater good.’ Whose good?”

Alexa’s eyes widened in apparent shock at the terrifying scars crisscrossing Grady’s body. Scars that had clearly been made with machine precision. Scars that weren’t there when he’d been sent to Hibernity.

And as Grady watched her closely, Alexa seemed to shut down. The conflict between what she “knew” and the evidence before her seemed to physically stun her.

Grady could see the look of amazement in her staring eyes. “Can Hedrick really be keeping you so in the dark?” He moved toward her. “Hibernity isn’t a prison, Alexa. It’s a research facility. They’re trying to build consciousness without free will. What they’re doing could doom all of us. Everyone. Can you really be so blind?”

Alexa stood frozen—paralyzed. It seemed to Grady that she was suffering some sort of seizure. He waved his hand in front of her face but got no response.

Grady panted in rage and fear, but the sight of his obvious torture apparently had rocked her perception of the world. He knew what it felt like to have one’s beliefs demolished, and his hatred of her relented.

With just a moment’s hesitation Grady then grabbed his sweatshirt and donned his LED glasses. He stared warily back toward her as he walked away, slipping through the crowd of concerned men watching nearby.

He was amazed when Alexa did not follow.

Graham Hedrick stood in hiscavernous office before a video wall. On it was the aging face of U.S. Director of National Intelligence Kaye Monahan. The image was decidedly less crisp than he was used to, but then, with her aging countenance, that was probably a blessing.