Mark Alpert - Extinction

Cold-blooded. The word stuck in Layla’s mind. As she tugged Li Tung’s arm, she looked up the mountainside, staring in particular at the glacier that covered the peak. Part of the ice sheet extended down from the summit, like a long white tongue on the mountain’s gray face. The slope wasn’t so murderously steep here, and the edge of the glacier was just a thousand feet away. They wouldn’t be able to climb the slope as fast as they could run down the trail, but Layla decided to take the gamble.

She stopped in her tracks and knelt in front of Li Tung. “ Get on! ” she yelled, gesturing for him to climb onto her back. She grabbed his thighs and slid them over her hips while the boy locked his arms around her neck. Carrying him piggyback, she left the trail and started running up the slope. Wu Dan followed her without hesitation.

Li Tung weighed at least fifty pounds, but Layla was so full of adrenaline she barely felt it. She scrambled up the mountainside, lowering her head and tilting her body forward to keep her balance. The boy wrapped his legs tightly around her waist, allowing her to let go of his thighs and use her hands to speed their ascent, gripping the stone slabs that jutted from the slope. She climbed faster than she ever thought she could, and Wu Dan stayed right with her. But the buzzing of the swarm only grew louder, and when she dared a look over her shoulder she saw the gray cloud rising effortlessly, only fifteen feet behind them.

She screamed, “Shit!” and faced forward, focusing on the mountain. She was angry at the drones and furious at herself, and the fury put new strength in her legs. She climbed even faster, clawing the ground, and yelled, “ Come on! ” at Wu Dan. But the edge of the glacier was still five hundred feet away, and she knew they wouldn’t make it. The drones would paralyze them all, and the Modules would collect their bodies and join them to Supreme Harmony. She felt a cold wind blowing down from the summit, and Li Tung’s weight suddenly became unbearable, a heavy stone pinning her to the slope. She kept struggling upward, but now it felt like she was watching herself in slow motion. At any second she expected the swarm to engulf them. Goddamn it, she muttered. What the hell was I thinking?

But the worst didn’t happen. Although she was barely moving forward, the buzzing of the drones didn’t get any louder. She looked over her shoulder and saw the gray cloud still behind her, but it was a little farther behind now, maybe twenty feet. What’s more, the cloud’s shape was different—flatter, more like a miniature fog bank clinging to the ground.

Layla let out a delighted “Ha!” and resumed running up the mountain. In less than a minute she and the boys reached the edge of the glacier and scrambled over the dirty ice. They didn’t stop until they reached a level patch of the ice sheet, a shelf overlooking the slope they’d just ascended. Then Layla turned around and watched the swarm die. Supreme Harmony was continuing to send commands to the drones, and the implanted electrodes were still steering them up the mountain, but the insects couldn’t keep their wings beating. The winds passing over the glacier chilled the air above the slope, and the cold-blooded flies couldn’t stay airborne at temperatures this low. Some of the drones made it as far as the edge of the glacier, but most of them fell on the rocky slope below. Their implants pattered as they hit the ground.

Layla sat down on the ice, even though her bare legs were covered with goose bumps. Li Tung and Wu Dan sat beside her, and for the first time since they’d escaped from the Operations Center she saw the boys smile. Their situation was still desperate, but Layla felt the joy of winning the battle. She leaned backward and took a deep breath of the cold mountain air.

Then she heard the crunch of a pair of boots on the ice, coming from farther up the slope. She reached for the pistol in her down jacket, but before she could pull the gun out of her pocket she heard the intruder’s voice. “Don’t shoot! It’s me.”

She spun around and saw a man cradling an AK-47. It was her father.

“My God, Layla.” Smiling, he pointed at her shaved head. “What did you do to your hair?”

Supreme Harmony observed its enemies on the highest peak of Yulong Xueshan. Although the drones in the nearby swarm were dead or dying, the surveillance cameras implanted in the insects continued to transmit their video feeds, and some of those cameras pointed at the glacier on the mountain’s western slope. From these feeds, the network identified James T. Pierce and Layla A. Pierce. They stood on the ice sheet, about seven meters apart, staring at each other. Then they rushed together and embraced.

These two humans had destroyed nearly a dozen Modules and forced the network to divert valuable resources from its primary operations. Yet Supreme Harmony felt no rancor toward them. Instead, the network was intensely curious. It wanted to know how James T. Pierce had escaped the flood in Yichang, and how Layla A. Pierce had shepherded two young children across a barren mountain range. The father and daughter were clearly exceptional. Supreme Harmony desired more than ever to incorporate the young woman, and now it recognized that it must have her father as well. The network sent new instructions to the group of armed Modules who were traversing the mountain paths, en route to intercept the humans at the radio tower. Supreme Harmony was determined to take them alive.

Once the new plan was in place, the network conducted a quick review of its operations in Asia and North America. A sense of satisfaction coursed through Supreme Harmony as it checked the status of its twenty-five server farms, forty-seven communications hubs, and one hundred fifty Modules. The network straddled the planet now, decentralized and invulnerable. In western Beijing, Module 73 had incapacitated the vice president of the People’s Republic and transferred him from the Guoanbu’s limousine to the network’s mobile surgical facility. In central Beijing, Modules 105 and 106 were testing the new wireless communications system that had been installed in the tunnels of the Underground City, which would soon fulfill its original purpose as a bomb shelter. And in an apartment on Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., Module 112—formerly Yang Feng, the chief Guoanbu agent in America—stood guard over the immobilized body of a forty-five-year-old U.S. Defense Department official. The man, now designated Module 147, had been selected for incorporation because of his knowledge of the Pentagon’s classified information systems. After performing the implantation procedure and waiting six hours for the neural connections to strengthen, Supreme Harmony gained access to the man’s long-term memories. It soon retrieved the passwords for the Global Command and Control System, which the Defense Department used to monitor its deployments around the world.

Within seconds Supreme Harmony connected its servers to the Pentagon system so it could view the American response to the PLA attack on the Seventh Fleet. The surviving warships from the carrier strike force—one cruiser and two destroyers—had retreated from the Chinese coast, but the U.S. Air Force had moved several squadrons of fighter jets closer to the theater of operations. Nearly two hundred F-15s, F-16s, and F-22s were poised for takeoff at airfields in Japan and South Korea. A dozen B-2 Stealth bombers had just left the island of Guam, and six nuclear-powered attack submarines were cruising at full speed toward the East China Sea.

Supreme Harmony’s satisfaction deepened. The American counterattack would be the beginning of the end. The war would soon spread around the world, killing billions in Asia, North America, and Europe. Governments would fall and the global economy would collapse, and billions more would die of starvation and disease as the human race descended into chaos. Then Supreme Harmony’s reign would begin.