Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

His locks undone, dead bolt retracted, four-inch gap in the frame. He collapsed his two-handed grip until the 1911’s mainstream housing was against his sternum in the inside position to guard against a gun grab. Then he eased inside, elbowing the door ajar.

A glass of water on the kitchen island, set down with no coaster.

He heard noise in his master suite and jogged toward it, braced for a firefight. Bathroom light on, shower door rolled back, monitor light casting the Vault in a cool blue glow.

He exhaled and sliced the pie with the front sight as he entered the Vault.

Joey sat on the floor, Dog the dog’s head in her lap as she fed him almond butter off a spoon. One of Evan’s spoons. Code wallpapered the OLED screens, more programs running than he could keep track of.

The ARES was aimed directly at Joey’s critical mass, the center line of her torso, six inches down at the sternum.

He exhaled angrily, lowered the gun. “The hell are you doing here, Joey?”

“This mom shit is fucking you up.”

“Language.”

“No.” She untangled herself from the dog and stood. “What is going on with you?”

“I didn’t tell you you could be here,” he said. “Pick your shit off the kitchen counter. And the dog’s shedding everywhere.” He stormed over to the L-shaped desk, where she’d left a coffee mug steaming, and snatched it up. “Is it that hard to not mess everything up everywhere you go?”

Her voice warbled but held its anger. “You don’t talk to me like that.”

Not an admonishment. A wounded observation.

The hurt in her voice halted him on his feet.

“This isn’t you,” she said. “This isn’t us. You’re trying to push me away. But I know that drill. And I know you.” Her chest jerked and her eyes welled, but she wasn’t going to cry, not here, not now. “I don’t care what you say. I do know you. So knock it off, okay?” Her mouth quaked a bit, but she firmed it angrily. “Just knock it off. Right now. Please?”

He stood there holding the coffee mug for a time. Then he set it down. He felt a week’s worth of tension melt out of his shoulders, and he sank into his chair. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t look at anything. He picked at the bandage over his cuticle and then picked at it some more.

When he risked a glance up, Joey was still standing there, shoulders back, spine straight, ready to fight or cry or maybe both. Dog the dog had risen to sit at her side, pressed into her leg. She rested her hand at his scruff, dug in for moral support.

Evan said quietly, “You’re right.”

Her shoulders lowered, almost imperceptibly. “I am?”

More words were there somewhere, but they were words for other people, the kinds of things said by people who weren’t broken.

He rose quietly and headed out. Down the long hall, past the workout stations, the heavy bag hanging from its chain. Past the living wall with its breath of mint and rosemary. Into the vodka room.

Soothing coolness against his cheeks. The bottle of Guillotine rested on its glass shelf. And beyond, the rise of Century City, windows glowing into the night from the pseudo-skyscrapers. He was alone in these four walls with his alcohol and a view of the world.

It struck him just how insulated he’d kept himself.

He sensed movement outside. Joey had emerged and was watching him, Dog snugged up next to her. Evan stayed locked in the glass room, breathing his way back to some kind of sanity.

But responsibility waited out there. To Joey. To himself.

That’s what people did for you, they held you to a standard you had to live up to.

He stepped out of the shell of the vodka room.

He faced Joey. “I’m…” The words were dry and textured, hard to dredge up. “I’m sorry.”

She cleared her throat, blinked a few times. Then she bit her lip and looked away. “Shit, X. You’re making me feel feelings.”

It occurred to him that Joey was the only one who could get in here. Into the penthouse, into his emotions, his life. If something happened to him, it would all fall to her. The floating bed. The Vault. The vodka freezer.

The last thought was worrying. He debated putting a self-destruct mechanism on the alcohol in case the next Hellfire hit its target.

“What happened?” she asked.

Could Evan trust her with this? Could he trust himself to speak the words to someone else? That would make it real, would put it into the world where he’d have to stare it in the face. Dog the dog padded over to him and slurped his hand.

He said, “Andre is my half brother.”

“Oh,” Joey said. And then, “Oh.”

She saw it all. He watched her get it.

He cleared his throat. Looked back at the beckoning vodka. Then gave it up. For the moment. “You said there’s a heightened risk now. To him.”

Joey nodded. It wasn’t back to normal between them, everything still heightened, but they would reach for operational specifics and that would make it safe again.

“Molleken’s putting the finishing touches on a new gen of dragonfly drones,” she said.

Evan thought of those thousands of yellow-green eyes glowing at him from the darkness of the battle lab. The terror of being vastly outnumbered by a swarm of things coldly robotic and yet alive.

“They do more than seems imaginable,” she said, a horrified awe touching her voice. “Once they decide to lock onto you, they’re locked for life. Your face. Your thermal signature. Your electronic records. Everything. If they so much as spot you, they can store your biomarkers to find you later, once they’ve joined up with others. They can read your skin moisture, determine how far you live from the ocean. Assess your shirt and link to places you might have bought it—even trace elements that might show where it was shipped from and where to. They can search for you, neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, looking at faces on the streets, through windows into houses. They hook into whatever databases they want and don’t even report back to leave a record. No oversight. No accountability. They just find you and figure out the best way to kill you, and they do it all on their own.”

Evan nodded. He felt tired, so tired. He wanted to meditate, to sleep, to go back in time and refuse to answer that call from Veronica. But it was too late, and he was in now, and he owed it to himself to finish this.

“What’s our time frame?”

“The swarm is due for delivery to Creech North tomorrow night. Obviously the war capabilities are, like, incredible. But I found an encrypted kill order in the system at Creech, hidden in the list of high-value targets. The rest of them are in the Middle East. But the encrypted kill order is for someone right here at home.”

Evan said, “Andre.”

“He’s the only witness to have seen the program in action illegally on U.S. soil.”

Evan said, “When they got Hargreave.”

“Kill Andre, save the program,” Joey said. “If they launch those things, he will die.”

“Tomorrow night.”

“That’s right. The encrypted kill order is a hack, put in place by one person at the source. Guess who?”

“Molleken.”

Joey dipped her chin in a nod. “The rest of the government doesn’t even know about it, obviously, since you can’t kill a U.S. citizen. Or at least leave a record of it. And the thing is, I can’t lift the kill order from the outside. Someone has to get in there and access the hardware directly.”

Evan grimaced. “If I’m gonna get back in there, I’m gonna need help on the ground.”

Joey took her phone out of her pocket, spun it on her palm, and at last broke a smile. “I was thinking the same thing.”

57Some Kind of Thrill