Daniel Suarez - Influx

“Now try it again.”

Cotton added, “And this time try not to almost kill yourself.”

Grady ran through his knowledge of the controls again and mimed his planned actions. He finally looked up. “All right. I got this.” He looked across the room toward the doorway, then pointed. “I’m heading right over by the entrance.”

“Not too close. The doors might fall through.”

“Okay. I’ll stop ten feet away.”

“You sure you’re ready?”

He clapped his diamondoid-armored gauntlets together. “Hell, yeah!”

Cotton mumbled to Alexa. “I don’t think I can watch this.”

“O ye of little faith, Cotton.”

“You forget who I was until recently.”

Grady took a deep breath and then altered the direction of descent. This time he gradually increased the force with his left toes, pushing forward only slightly. He began to glide above the floor, some of the debris falling along with him, scraping on the concrete as it did.

“Well, now you’re just scattering the mess around.”

Grady concentrated on the door as he maintained a steady five-mile-per-hour pace. He called back, “I can see it now. You’ve got to have a very fine touch in close spaces.”

Alexa nodded. “Right. You’re doing excellent.”

“You really have to be careful what you get near. Otherwise you quickly get a cloud of debris around you.”

In a few moments, Grady eased back on the controller, and this time, he lowered his pitch until he could drag his foot along the floor. In a moment he leveled it out and came to a standing stop almost exactly ten feet away from the doorway. He then put himself into half gravity with down being down. Locking gravity, he turned to face them, arms spread wide. “What do you think?”

Alexa nodded. “Nicely done. I think it’s time we take it up a notch.”

Grady raised his eyebrows. “Meaning?”

Cotton answered for her. “Meaning it’s time for this little birdie to leave the nest.”

Grady stood on the flat silver roof of the Fulton Cold Storage building—the multistory painted sign looming behind him. It was about two in the morning. The lights of downtown Chicago were visible in the distance, but otherwise the streets ten stories below were quiet.

Alexa stood next to him in her formfitting tactical jumpsuit. Her own gravis was integrated into its nanotech fabric, while his looked clunky by comparison. It was a sultry summer night, but he was dressed for wind, with a sleek pair of windsurfing goggles that Cotton had given him.

Alexa walked over to the parapet at the edge of the roof and looked down. “Let’s not stay too close to the ground when we get up there. No sense in calling undue attention to ourselves.” She walked back to him. “Besides, the higher up you are, the more time you have to deal with mistakes.”

Grady nodded. He was actually starting to feel nervous.

“You’ll be fine. I’ll be right there.” She spoke into her microphone, and he heard her voice right in his ear. “I mean it. You’ll do fine.”

She moved about thirty feet away from him. “Now remember that if we get close to each other, our gravity fields will interact. You’re a physicist, so you can probably estimate the interactions better than I can, but just don’t forget it.”

“No. I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

Alexa held up her hand. “Equilibrium.”

Grady made adjustments. “Check.”

“Power up.”

He activated his gravis. “Powered up.” He was suddenly floating in microgravity.

“Push off the roof with your legs. We don’t want those rafters in your gravity well when you fall up.”

Grady bent his legs and pushed off into space. He laughed nervously as he rose ten, twenty, and thirty feet above the roof, seeing more and more of the surrounding city blocks as he did so. He gazed around. “This is beautiful!”

Alexa was quickly up to his height, putting a finger against her lips. “Not until we’re higher. Voices carry in open air.” She pointed upward. “One quarter gravity, twelve o’clock high, please. I’ll meet you at one thousand feet.”

With that Alexa began to fall upward.

Grady nodded to himself and activated his controls. Instantaneously he was falling upward as well. As he did, his view of the surrounding city streets increased. He felt an instinctive fear, but it was counterbalanced by his brain’s full belief that “down” was actually just above him—not below. So when he looked at the cityscape, he felt as though he were examining the sky overhead. He laughed nervously as the view kept expanding.

“Jon!”

Grady looked up to see that he was rising past Alexa. He brought himself back into equilibrium, and she rose to meet him. They were now at eleven hundred feet above the meatpacking district. The view of the Chicago skyline was breathtaking.

“This is really something.”

“Keep an eye out for helicopters. If you get seen, go fast—anywhere but the safe house until you lose them. A typical helicopter can do about a hundred and fifty miles an hour—which is faster than terminal velocity. So your best bet is evasive maneuvers. You’ll find that with the gravis you can change directions much faster than normal aircraft.”

Grady was still gazing all around, a grin on his face. “I can’t believe this. It’s like a dream.”

Alexa nodded. “It is pretty amazing. And I’ve seen some amazing things in my day. Back when I was a field operator in the ’80s…” Her voice trailed off. “Never mind. You ready?”

He nodded.

“Follow me. If we get separated, I’ll find you with my thermals.” She pointed ahead and to the left. “See that tall building over there? John Hancock Center. Let’s head toward it.” She tapped her ear. “Keep in touch by q-link.” She shot him a quick grin as she lowered her visor. “And try to keep up.”

With that she twisted around and fell forward, back first, twisting like a high diver as she disappeared into the night.

Grady felt a thrill unlike anything he’d ever known as he jammed the controller forward and suddenly felt the universe draw him toward the horizon. The wind buffeted him at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. He glanced below, and it was as if this was the BASE jump to end all BASE jumps—with the city of Chicago serving as a jagged cliff-face down which they were both falling. Grady moved his hands as airfoils and adjusted his position with increasing ease. He screamed in joy as he fell across the sky.

“Try to keep the screaming to a minimum. We don’t want to attract attention.”

“Right. Couldn’t help it. Sorry.”

Forty-story condo buildings were gliding by below him—or to the side of him in the current gravitational context. He was passing by a narrow river crisscrossed with bridges. Up ahead he could see Alexa falling with her arms tucked against her sides—aiming like a bird of prey toward her target.

Grady did likewise and instantly felt a speed increase. He could also see below more easily that way. The wind roared past his ears.

In under a minute they starting closing in on the hundred-story Hancock building. Grady eased up on the gravity along with Alexa, and they coasted to a near stop as the wind buffeted them.

She pointed. “See that building there with the four small towers just to the left of Hancock Center?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Let’s see if you can land on top of a tower.”

Grady sucked in a breath. Falling in the open air was fantastic, but he remembered his close shaves in Cotton’s workshop.

Alexa came up within twenty feet of him and spoke directly, instead of over q-link. “You need to be able to do this without hesitation, even in wind.”