Daniel Suarez - Influx

Grady gripped his temples, distraught. “That data was the only way for me to find my way back to Hibernity—to bring back help.”

Cotton gave him a look. “Don’t be crazy. The BTC knows where Hibernity is.” He turned to Alexa. “You probably know, don’t you?”

She pondered the question. “I don’t, unfortunately. Hedrick has a tight hold on that information. The AIs bring pilots to and from Hibernity with blast shields down, so even they don’t know.” She turned to Grady. “But Cotton’s right, it’s got to be somewhere on the BTC network, and if one of Cotton’s BTC turncoats can get it for us, you should be back in business.”

Grady exhaled and hung the device around his neck again. He cast a dark look Cotton’s way as he left the workshop. “Cotton, if you take anything of mine again without my permission, you will regret it.”

Cotton called after him. “Grumpy before breakfast, I see. Shall I cook up something?”

Grady returned to his bedroom and shut the door. He sat on the floor in the darkest corner and reactivated the video device—fast-forwarding from one prisoner testimonial to another, making sure they were all there.

“…discovered the relationship between protein fifty-three and malignant neoplasm…”

Grady clicked to another.

“I am Petra Klapner. I was imprisoned in 1993…”

There was a sharp knock on the door. Grady ignored it, but then Alexa poked her head in. “You okay?”

Grady nodded as he clicked to the next video.

“I am Anton Bezizlik. In 1998 I was taken by the BTC…”

Alexa entered and closed the door behind her. She studied the holographic person floating before them. “These are the prisoners.”

Grady nodded.

She stood watching. “I remember that man. I lectured him about his selfishness.”

“…please tell my family that I am still alive. It has been so many years.”

Alexa caught herself, feeling the enormity of what she’d done.

Grady spoke without looking at her. “You have to understand. I cannot fail these people. I cannot.”

The middle-aged Russian man on-screen rocked back and forth. “…my daughter…” The man’s face streamed with tears as he struggled to speak. “She will have lived her life, never knowing me. I think of all that I have lost.”

Alexa felt as though the hologram was speaking directly to her—overwhelming her with guilt.

Grady gestured to it. “These are some of the greatest minds that ever lived. There are da Vincis and Galileos in that prison. They could do so much, and instead, they’ve been brutalized.” Grady turned to see Alexa’s distraught face as she watched the man on-screen.

She spoke matter-of-factly. “We need to rescue them.”

“What?”

“We need to rescue them. But we need to do something else first—bring down the BTC.”

Grady looked at her with surprise. “They created you.”

“That doesn’t mean they own me.”

They heard Cotton’s voice shout across the loft. “Hey! Get in here! There’s something you should see!”

They exchanged looks. Grady was still irritated at Cotton, but he stopped the video. They both headed out into the hall, where they could see Cotton waving to them from the far end of the workshop.

“What is it?”

“Just come here!”

As they walked toward him, they could see several holograms of live television. Cotton pointed. “It’s all over the news. I had some AIs scanning for any sign of BTC activity, and boy did they ever find it.”

Grady and Alexa came up alongside him. They were gazing up at horrendous carnage in a downtown area.

“Anything about the deputy secretary’s assassination?”

“No, not a peep about that. What you’re looking at is downtown Detroit.”

On-screen a plume of white smoke towered over the city, and aerial images of the streets showed what could only be described as utter devastation—with twenty-story buildings missing their facades, their interiors open to the air, a broad avenue now a deep trench. Hundreds of emergency vehicles surrounded the scene.

Alexa nodded to herself. “Just a few hundred meters from BTC headquarters.”

Grady studied the images. “What happened?”

“Media’s saying it was a sinkhole that killed a few dozen people—some critical infrastructure collapse due to deferred maintenance. Actually pretty clever.” Cotton pointed with some sort of tool he’d been holding. “I’m guessing somebody tried to kick in Hedrick’s front door. Stupid move.”

“There’s no possibility of a sinkhole anywhere near BTC headquarters.” Alexa’s eyes moved from screen to screen. “Perhaps the government tried to retaliate for the deputy secretary of Homeland Security.”

Cotton shrugged. “Well, where’s the wreckage? For that matter, where’s all the rubble from those collapsed building facades?”

Alexa looked grim. “It’s Kratos.”

“Kratos? Don’t tell me they actually built that thing?”

Grady looked from one to the other. “What’s Kratos?”

She met his gaze. “It’s you, Mr. Grady. Your gravity mirror technology writ large. One of the researchers found a way to project the gravity mirror effect over an arbitrary distance—like you saw Morrison do last night. An extogravis, and they put it into a satellite in a geosynchronous orbit at Lagrange point two—twenty thousand miles up.”

Grady pondered this. “You’re saying they have a satellite-based gravity weapon?”

She nodded and pointed to the screen. “It’s why Hedrick was bringing you back from Hibernity. He needed you to improve it. They can reverse gravity in an area a mile across—narrower if they like.”

“Holy hell…” Cotton turned from examining the carnage on-screen. “That’s some technology you came up with. That’s why there’s no wreckage—it all fell into the sky.”

Alexa nodded.

“Sort of explains the chatter on the Web. Kooks there are saying there was a military force that got sucked up by the hand of God. Folks filmed it on their phones, but there wasn’t any cell service—and during the night somebody reached into their phones and deleted the evidence. Wacky, wacky people on the Web…”

Alexa watched the screens.

Cotton nudged Grady’s arm. “Pretty impressive.”

Grady shook his head. “My God—they have a satellite that can level a city.”

“Suck it into space more like.”

Grady walked away, sobered. “I can’t believe what I’ve done. I’ve given these madmen absolute power over us all. And they’ll only become more powerful over time.”

Alexa turned to him. “You didn’t give them anything. They took it from you, and I’m starting to realize that BTC probability models didn’t include themselves.”

Meanwhile, on television, pundits were discussing the long history of urban decay in Detroit, and an infrastructure bill being introduced in Congress to rush federal aid.

Cotton nodded. “Looks like Washington has backed off. Well, Hedrick won’t hesitate to use this power. I expect our government friends will be licking their wounds for the moment. Which probably means they won’t be of much help in springing the inmates from Hibernity, even if you tell them about it.”

Grady looked up. “We need to locate Hibernity. Rescuing those prisoners and getting them safely to the authorities might be the only chance to level the playing field with Hedrick.”

“But for that you’ll need someone willing to receive them. And with Hedrick playing God, they might not risk it. In fact, the feds might turn you over to him.”

Alexa took a deep breath. “We have to decide what we’re going to do. We can’t stay here forever. Hedrick and Morrison will never stop hunting for us. So we’ll need to deal with them sooner or later.”