Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

As Molleken peeled it up gingerly, Evan saw that it was studded with electrodes—hundreds of them. Molleken placed it on his head, making several minute adjustments as if smoothing a swim cap into place.

He looked ridiculous, his round face beaming beneath the apparatus. Sliding open a drawer in the bench, he removed a tiny robotic bee and set it down on the lab bench. A shiny little square of a backpack rose from its thorax. Next he took out a laptop and placed it open beside the torso. Code began to scroll across the screen.

Evan blinked pointedly, initiating the live-feed feature of his contact lenses. A graphic appeared, projected by the left contact and visible only to him. It indicated that there was no signal here; the recording would be saved and dispatched once he returned aboveground.

“I started developing neurofeedback to interface with robotic prosthetic limbs,” Molleken said. “Turns out we can be trained to vary our neuro-wavelengths and use the brain-control interface to manipulate objects external to us.”

He closed his eyes, settled his shoulders, took a breath. The bee hummed to life and rose, flying in circles around his head. Evan focused on the laptop, capturing as much of the code as he could without seeming obvious.

Molleken opened his eyes, his forehead furrowing with focus. The bee buzzed and buzzed overhead. “Would you like to guess the accuracy of bombs during World War II?”

Evan said, “Not good.”

“An understatement. They had a fifty-percent chance of landing within two kilometers of the target.”

A band of perspiration appeared at Molleken’s forehead just below the rim of the cap. The bee zipped off into the darkness behind them, banked, and flew back around toward the posed party scene. It sliced between the peripheral mannequins, cut right, and struck the target painted on the plastic skull with a bang.

A sharp sizzling sound matched by a puff of black powder.

Molleken peeled off the cap and beckoned Evan forward. They reached the target mannequin. It had a quarter-size entry hole directly over the bull’s-eye and a cone blown straight through the solid plastic skull.

“My precision munitions are accurate to within two inches,” Molleken said. “A tiny bang sufficient to breach the skull and incinerate the contents. Think about the reduction in collateral damage. Life, property, infrastructure.”

Evan circled the mannequin, peered back through the exit hole.

Impressive.

The force of the explosion hadn’t even been sufficient to knock the mannequin off its feet.

When he came back around, Molleken was holding another robotic bee between his thumb and forefinger. “Now watch this.” He aimed it at Evan, compressing its wings once, and it made a click like a camera taking a picture.

He threw the bee into the air, and it took flight, buzzing away.

“I’ve locked in your facial features as the target,” he said. “Now it doesn’t need brain waves. It doesn’t need a database or an Internet connection. It does the thinking on its own.”

A bead of sweat tracked down the back of Evan’s neck. He heard the bee in the darkness somewhere, circling.

“Think how tiny it is,” Molleken said. “And how helpless you are.”

The buzzing changed pitch, Evan doing his best to track the noise in the darkness beyond their throw of light, but the echoes of the vast lab made it impossible.

“Call that thing off.” Evan’s voice was firm as he’d intended but a bit strangled, too.

“It’s too late,” Molleken said. “There’s nothing we can do now.”

A flash of movement to Evan’s left. The bee zipping into view.

Evan lunged behind two of the mannequins, the bee whipping past overhead. It circled tightly and headed back. Evan dove and rolled over his shoulder blades, came up in time for the bee to smack him in the forehead and fall harmlessly to the floor.

No explosive charge.

His heart was hammering, his shirt doused in sweat. The metal bee hadn’t broken the skin, but his forehead smarted from the impact.

Already Molleken was walking away.

“Hey.” Evan hurried to catch up to him. “Hey. Doctor .”

Molleken paused. Turned around. “Doctor? The Doctor? From what I hear, that’s someone whose attention you don’t want.”

His eyes glittered flatly. He looked unshaken. They could have been talking about the weather.

Evan tasted the bitter residue of adrenaline at the back of his throat. The air felt suddenly humid. He didn’t dare push the topic further and make the connection overt. He was too vulnerable here, at Molleken’s mercy.

“What the hell was that?” he said. “That stunt with the bee?”

The lights clanked off behind Evan, dousing the posed cocktail party in darkness. Evan spun around, and when he turned back, Molleken was walking away again. Evan pursued him across the battle lab, segments of the space illuminating around them, blackness all around. It felt claustrophobic, a virtual sally port encasing them as they strolled. Molleken ignored him. They both walked swiftly, shy of a jog.

Molleken took a different route back, passing workstations littered with parts and blueprints and hardware. Evan held his stare as long as he could on the passing technology, memorializing as much as he could with his contact lenses.

Molleken sped up until he was a half dozen strides ahead of Evan. He opened up more space yet. It took a moment for Evan to realize that Molleken was trying to leave him behind. He sensed an uptick in his body temperature, felt the heft of the gloves on his hands swinging at his sides. Weighted-knuckle gloves seemed absurdly low-tech for the threats he was facing here.

“Molleken. Molleken. ”

About ten yards ahead, Molleken halted, his back still turned. “You’re not who you say you are.”

Evan paused as well. “Why do you say that?” It felt bizarre talking to the back of Molleken’s head.

“That clip on your shirt. It’s a miniaturized Laser Warning Receiver.”

“You recognized it.”

“I considered acquiring the company.” Still facing away, Molleken reached over, cuffed his sleeve up once, twice. And then the other. “Who are you really?”

“I told you who I am.”

Molleken was lit from above, a perfect silhouette, not an inch of him shadowed. A cardboard cutout of a man. Not being able to see his face felt creepy, discomfort crawling up Evan’s spine, bringing to mind the legion of tiny footsteps that had presaged the arrival of the robotic ants in the study.

Molleken reached into his pocket and removed what appeared to be transparent gloves. He pulled one on, snapping the cuff. Then the other. A surgeon readying to enter the operating theater. Still he kept his back turned.

He lifted one finger and pressed it to the inside of the opposite forearm, which Evan now saw had a shiny clear patch overlaid onto it. Molleken seemed to scroll along the patch as one would on an iPhone. It took Evan a moment to register what it was.

Tommy had told him about electronic skin under development at Langley. Biocompatible silicone rubber embedded with touch-sensitive sensors.

Molleken tapped the wearable screen on his forearm, and then a recording boomed from hidden speakers: “You see this shit?”

It took Evan a moment to recognize his own voice.

“That fucking bitch just keyed my car.”

“So I used a ruse to get in,” Evan said. “So what?”

“That’s a fucking McLaren 570s Spider.”

Molleken’s finger swiped to the side, and the recording cut off abruptly. “Pretty impressive ruse,” he said. “For a tech journalist. Plus, the Medium articles under your name, Archive.org shows different bylines just a few hours before you showed up.” He lifted his gloved hands and held them out, a magician laying on a spell. “Someone’s been giving me trouble lately,” he said. “Working against my interests.”