Daniel Suarez - Influx

Morrison aimed his arm. “I don’t feel like scanning you, Cotton.”

A female voice spoke from the sky. “I’ll take the prisoners.”

The BTC warriors looked up to see Alexa descend wearing a black tactical suit of her own—although hers appeared much simpler. It was clearly not assault armor. She had a matching helmet as well with a crystalline visor across her blue eyes. Grady couldn’t help but notice a belt similar to the Morrisons’ woven into her outfit, and he assumed it must be the gravity mirror he’d invented—shrunken to absurdly small size and perfected.

As Alexa descended into Grady and Cotton’s gravity field, they joined her gravitational well, and now seemed to move along with her.

Morrison shouted, “Where the hell do you think you’re going, Alexa?”

“I’m taking these prisoners back to the BTC.”

Cotton looked over at her. “Thank God! Alexa, tell them I haven’t said anything.”

She eyed him. “Perhaps not, but you are going to tell me some things.”

She then glanced at Grady.

Grady looked to her. “They killed Davis. They burned her alive.”

Alexa looked visibly disturbed by this news, and she turned angrily toward Morrison and his gathered sons. “An XD gun? You didn’t have to kill anyone, let alone split their water.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Sometimes examples need to be made of people.” Morrison made no visible motion, but loose rocks and debris floating around him started to “fall” with him as his “down” edged toward Alexa and her new charges. “You’re not going anywhere. Hedrick ordered me to deal with Cotton just as soon as I learn whether he betrayed us.”

“I’ll handle that.”

Cotton was floating sideways, trying to get his spin under control. “What does he mean ‘deal with’ me?”

Morrison’s armored black oval of a face remained focused on Alexa’s. His voice came across now at a more conversational volume. “This isn’t your field of expertise, Alexa. You should be back at base. Hedrick has been looking for you.”

“I don’t report to you.”

His voice grew impatient again. “Neither do you have the right to come here and interfere with my operation.”

“You’ve already captured the prisoners. I’m taking control of them now. Don’t even think of ordering me around.”

“Ah, I forgot. There’s only one person you report to…” He paused and then looked upward slightly. “Get Director Hedrick on a q-link to me immediately.”

Alexa apparently wasn’t waiting around. She extended her booted feet, and then she, Cotton, and Grady began to fall upward, slowly at first.

Grady felt little acceleration as he rose into the night sky, and now he could see how many marines were lying unconscious all around them in the moonlight—hundreds.

Morrison’s voice shouted after her, louder now. “Alexa, I’m not letting you take those prisoners!”

“Don’t follow me, Morrison. I mean it.”

They ascended faster, rising above the trees, and now Grady could see the vast expanse of farmland stretching beyond. And the fallen army around them.

His synesthesia made even this horrible vista beautiful, as the stars above were wondrous.

Morrison popped his visor with a hiss, revealing his weathered, scarred face. There were now six of his sons around him in full diamondoid armor, and they likewise popped their visors.

“What’s up with Granny?”

Morrison covered his microphone and hissed, “Go after her. Get the prisoners back while I get Hedrick on q-link.”

The sons exchanged worried looks and covered their mikes as well.

“Fuck that…”

“Iota’s right, Dad.”

“I’m not getting in the middle of a fight between Granny and Hedrick.”

“She’s supposed to be ‘priceless intellectual property’ or some shit.”

“She’s his goddamned girlfriend.”

“What if she fights back?”

“That bitch is dangerous.”

Morrison aimed a diamond-hard black finger at them. “Get your asses up there and follow her.”

“She’s on a tracker. We don’t have to follow her.”

Morrison checked in with tactical operations again. “TOC, this is Alpha Dog, do we have the director on q-link yet?”

“The director left the command center when you radioed mission completion. Is this an emergency, Alpha Dog?”

“Yes, it’s a damned emergency. Tell him I found Alexa, and that she left with both prisoners—interfering with my command.”

There was a pause. “Stand by, Alpha Dog.”

Morrison gazed up into the stars and finally pounded the side of the armored Stryker with his diamondoid fist, putting a dent in its armor. “Goddamnit!” With that he ripped out the comm module from his helmet and tossed it to one of his sons—who caught it deftly. “Hold onto that for me.”

“What are you doing?”

“Someday you boys will learn it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.” Morrison’s visor swept across his face with a hiss, and he immediately fell into the sky, followed by a trail of debris.

His sons watched him go and then turned to one another with worried looks.

“To hell with this.”

“Let’s get back to base. I don’t want to be downrange when this shit hits the fan.”

Grady watched the moon’s reflection on a lake below them and stared in wonder at the world from five thousand feet. The tragedy of recent events was flowing through him at the same time the beauty of the natural world flowed over him. It was a beautiful summer night. Turned backward, he wasn’t blinded by the wind. Judging by the stars, he figured they were “falling” to the north—back toward Chicago. It was a miraculous feeling even given his black mood.

He’d invented the gravity mirror, and now, before he died, he could see how marvelous it was.

He was still trying to process all that had happened in the last ten minutes. Davis and Falwell were dead. Killed in a horrible way. So, too, was the deputy secretary of Homeland Security—their bodies incinerated as they shrieked. Grady turned to face Alexa as she guided the three of them in the shade of her gravity mirror. He could see Cotton looking below them, probably warm enough in his protective, orange body armor.

Alexa cast a glance at Grady and shouted, “I owe you an apology.”

He just stared at her.

“I realize how feeble that sounds. Apologizing for destroying your life. I didn’t know.”

“But now you do.”

She nodded. “Your scars… I checked and—”

“Then you really didn’t know, did you?” He could see what looked like true emotional pain in her eyes.

“My God, what you had to go through. I had no idea.”

Grady felt relief wash over him. He strangely felt he could believe her.

But then the flow of air over them stopped. They just hung there, suspended. There was no sensation of deceleration. They just stopped.

Alexa was busy checking her systems and looking up at projected displays in her helmet.

Cotton shouted, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” She was ticking through items: “Third of a g , zero pitch, zero yaw… we should be moving.”

Just then a familiar voice came across the night air to them. “You’re not going anywhere with my prisoners, Alexa.”

They turned to see Morrison floating toward them in the moonlight. He aimed an armored finger at them as he did so, the tip glowing fiercely.

Alexa stopped checking her gear. There was a grim look on her face. “Integrated extogravis. That’s new.”

“I can nullify your gravity mirror. Quite a toy you invented, Mr. Grady. One improvement we were able to make was the ability to instantiate the mirror at an arbitrary distance.”