Ramez Naam - Apex

And they were reading her thoughts.

So close. She was so close.

They would come this way. There were things they couldn’t be allowed to discover.

She reached into the Secure Computing Center. There she found Xu Liang, found Li-hua, found all the other staff she’d turned. How they loved her. How they worshipped her. Like puppy dogs. Just her presence in their minds brought them such immediate joy, set their little human tails to wagging.

She stroked them, stroked them one last time.

You know too much, my dears,she sent. The elevator’s on its way up to you… but there isn’t time. They’ll reach you first.

Her little pets sat at their terminals, their faces flush, their chests rising and falling, so gratified by her presence, by her mental touch.

Still not understanding.

Goodbye,the Avatar sent them.

Then she reached into their worshipping minds and stopped their hearts, one by one, as their adoration turned to confusion, to betrayal, to horror.

Sun Liu lay on the cold tile of the Computer Science Building.

Free. He was free. The dead woman was gone from his mind.

He forced himself up onto his feet. He stumbled down the hallway, down stairs, down another flight, down another.

And then out into the square.

“Sun Liu?” he heard someone say.

He turned, and it was no one he knew. Just some student, some student holding a sign. A sign with his name on it.

“Sun Liu!” someone else said. He turned. Another student, with a sign demanding democracy.

And then his name was being taken up, all around him.

“Sun Liu. Sun Liu. Sun Liu! SUN LIU!”

Sam watched, her assault rifle in her hands, safety off, nerves ratcheting up, as the Confucian Fist and the Indian commandos dropped to their knees, as Kade and Feng went eerily silent.

If I have to, I will, she told herself. If I have to, I will.

Then Feng’s eyes opened. Kade’s eyes opened. They were soft, human. Confucian Fist started rising to their knees. Indian commandos groaned.

Sam sighed in relief.

“The Capitol,” Kade said. He was speaking into the air, speaking to himself. “In Sun Liu’s mind… DC… the Capitol.”

Sam cocked her head forward, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

Then a different sound registered with her, at the very edge of her heightened senses.

Her head turned, reflexively. Then she saw Fists turn their heads.

That sound. That whump whump whump.

“INCOMING!” Sam yelled.

Choppers.

Kade ran for the building, one arm over Bai’s shoulder. Sam and Feng ran with them, hauling heavy bags of gear. Another Fist named Liwei brought up the rear. In his mind he could feel the other Confucian Fist spreading out, taking positions as Army choppers moved in, urging the students and protesters to what safety they could find.

He heard a rumble overhead and from Bai’s mind he knew what it was.

Jets. Jets from Dachang.

What would happen now was anyone’s guess.

They came in through a side door to the Computer Science Building, close to the elevator down to the SCC.

He felt something unfold from Feng’s mind, felt through Feng that the elevator was disabled, felt the software Su-Yong had loaded into them streak out into it, cut through the simple locks.

Make it theirs.

The doors opened. The five of them rushed in. Sam and Feng tossed their gear bags in. They and Bai and Liwei lifted weapons up.

Down.

The doors opened again, three levels later.

Onto a scene of death.

Bodies were slumped everywhere, sprawled across consoles, across tables, across the floor.

They walked through the Secure Computing Center, to the massive, house-sized doors at the far end. The doors to the elevator. The elevator that went down.

Everywhere on this floor it was the same.

Dead men and women. No blood. Not a mark on them.

“She did this,” Bai said, looking to his right and left, stepping over the last bodies before the elevator.

Liwei frowned.

“ It did this,” Kade corrected.

“Can we cut off access to the outside world?” Sam asked.

Bai shook his head, looked at the massive doors before them. “They’ve been tunneling for weeks. Since November. Making new connections to all sorts of networks. The systems in this room are just for show now.”

“Can we cut the cables?” Sam asked. “They must run up the tunnel.”

Bai shrugged. “It’s a kilometer straight down. No lights. It just takes a cable a millimeter across. It’ll be shielded if it’s in the main tunnel, hidden and protected. There’s a second tunnel for the counterweights as well. For all we know it’s not even in that one – they had time to lase new tunnels, just millimeters wide.” Bai turned and gestured to the bodies they’d stepped over. “These people knew.”

Kade shook his head. Madness.

“We go to her,” he said, studying the massive elevator doors. “We go down the rabbit hole.”

119

Defcon

Monday 2041.01.20

Colonel Cheung Baili watched as the time ticked away. Nearly midnight.

The deadline was coming fast. Around him his officers sat at their posts, hunched over consoles, ready to do their duty, ready to do what they’d trained to do.

Cheung strode up behind one. “Any update from command?” he asked his comms officer, from over the young man’s shoulder.

The lieutenant shook his head. “No, sir.”

They’d been relaying messages over analog radio via high-flying aircraft. It was a slow, horrid game of telephone. But it worked.

“Try them again,” Cheung said. “Have them reconfirm our most current orders.”

“Yes, sir,” his comms officer replied.

He did not want to launch this missile. He didn’t want that at all.

Carolyn Pryce watched the giant screens mounted on the walls of the vast Pentagon Situation Room, above the heads of the scores of military and intelligence officers at their consoles.

Maps showed the locations of Chinese military installations, highlighted anti-ship missile emplacements down the coast in red. The JAVELIN birds in orbit were primed, armed, ready to fire.

Jesus.

10.48am. Almost midnight in China. And things were going crazy there. Uploaded footage showed moving tanks and machine gun fire at the site of at least one protest. Fire bombs were going off. There were unconfirmed rumors of an ousted Standing Committee Member making a stand, blurry videos of Chinese soldiers fighting each other.

“It looks like a damn revolution,” Admiral Stanley McWilliams said next to her.

Pryce nodded. She had to agree with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. China looked like it was headed for the brink.

“Revolution or no,” Secretary of Defense Bernard Stevens said. “If they launch on our ships, we take those launchers out.”

“We’ve got reports of more violence in Moscow,” the CIA liaison said next to her. “Cairo. Nairobi. Caracas.” He paused, shaking his head. “Protests are heating up everywhere. It’s spreading. Via Nexus.”

Nexus. Pryce gritted her teeth. It was a vector for the violence, letting people spread their rage. Maybe Stockton was right. Maybe she was wrong to downplay the threat.

She looked over at two other screens, showing DC.

One showed the march, moving down 16 th Street. Huge. Angry. Not yet violent. But would it go that way?

The other showed the inside of the Capitol Building. The VIPs were being seated. She frowned as she saw Jameson being wheeled into a handicapped slot in the balcony.

Pryce looked back at the clock.

10.50am. 11.50pm in China.

In just about an hour, Stockton would take the stage, and be sworn in again.