Ramez Naam - Apex

“COVER!”

Sam pressed herself down over Kade. A deafening boom sounded in the small space.

Echoes filled the silence.

Nothing returned fire.

She rolled onto her back, kept close to Kade, brought her assault rifle up.

The massive doors were still opening wider, as wide as the side of a house.

Revealing nothing. A giant, empty, concrete-and-titanium box.

ISOLATION IN PROGRESS.

She looked over at Feng, saw him glance back in consternation.

WHOOOOOOOMP.

A gale-force wind grabbed her, sucked her towards the open elevator doors where the elevator had been, tumbled her. She caught air above the floor of the computing center, caught a terrifying glimpse of the open maw of the elevator shaft, utterly devoid of an elevator, a giant sucking hole, the house-sized elevator car plunging down it at breakneck speed, creating a temporary vacuum, sucking papers and pencils and bits of detritus ahead of her into that kilometer-long fall.

The fall she was going to take if she went through those doors.

Then her own tumble brought her back towards the floor of the computing center and she slammed her left palm down, flat onto the tiles, completely open, praying the Indian gear had the same safety reflex built in that the US gear did.

“Aaaaah!”

Her left shoulder wrenched hard in pain, as the glove on her left palm shot micro-adhesion hooks into the tile floor, stuck her to it like a gecko, broke her tumble.

Something shot through the air and she reached out with her other hand, her rifle already dropped, and then something hit her and she had a hand around Kade’s wrist, keeping him from being sucked down the hungry shaft.

Something slammed into her, tried to break her hold, bounced off, and a body soared through the air, sucked into the vortex, slamming into the far wall of the elevator shaft, and then disappearing. A chair followed it, another body. Another. Someone screamed, she thought. Maybe. There was so much roaring in her ears. She couldn’t hear herself think.

She held on. Held on. Held on.

Then there was a crash, far away, like the sound of an avalanche.

And it was over.

Sam collapsed to the ground, sweat covering her, her body aching.

Kade was trembling, panting.

She looked over. That was Feng, in the deactivated Indian chameleonware. His face… There was another Fist next to him.

Where was the third?

“Feng?”

He looked over at her.

“He saved me…” Feng said, his eyes wide. “We collided. He… he pushed me away, down, away from the elevator… pushing himself…” Feng shook his head, a look of shock on his face. “Bai!”

Oh god.

They unpacked the gear. Sam kept an eye on Feng. She saw him and Kade have a moment. But the Fist shook it off, shook it off with the attitude she knew so well.

The attitude that said the mission must go on.

Harnesses. Check.

Lights. Check.

Friction-based descenders. Check.

Powered ascenders with extra-large power packs. Check.

Guns. Ammo. Explosives. Check.

Knives. Check.

1.3 kilometer-long reel of micro-jacketed ultra-high-quality fiber optic cable, with broad spectrum, high-bandwidth, Nexus-linked, satellite-capable, internal fuel-cell-powered network access points at each end.

Check.

She checked Feng’s harness.

Feng checked hers.

They both checked Kade’s.

And he checked the networking gear.

“Good to go,” Sam said.

Liwei saluted them. “Stop the madness.”

Then he headed off, with one of the network access points, and one end of the cable.

It was for the best. He was vulnerable. Vulnerable in a way Sam wasn’t.

In a way they hoped Kade and Feng weren’t. Or at least were less so.

They slid down into the darkness, their harnesses holding them to the elevator cable, their descenders gripping just tight enough to slow their fall, their chameleonware active, their radios silent, their light-augmenting visors barely illuminating the enormous smooth-walled pit that descended straight down, down, down into the earth.

It grew colder. The dim light above receded until it was nothing more than a faint, barely seen point, dimmer than a star at night.

Network data was gone. GPS was gone. All contact with the outside world was gone, until Kade fired up that network access point sometime in the future.

Sam looked down.

The bottom could not be seen.

The pit could be infinite for all she knew. It could drop forever.

Down, down they went, into the cold, into the unknown, into the darkness.

Sam was first, in the position at the bottom, with the greatest danger.

She was the one with no technology in her brain. The one who actually had that as an asset this once.

This is the last time, she told herself. The last mission. The last killing.

Home. And then she’d swallow the Nexus again. And touch the minds of the ones she loved.

If she somehow lived through this.

If they ever let her leave this place again.

If there was anywhere left to go home to.

Something changed.

In the abyss below there came a slight lightening, a blackness that was marginally less absolute.

Infrared radiation, rocks a different temperature than the air down here, picked up by her visor, translated to visible frequencies for her eyes.

Sam twisted the tension bar on her descender. It gripped the cable more tightly, graphene and titanium parts applying more friction, slowing her descent. Feng and Kade were spaced ten seconds behind her. There were no laser links, as little data flow as possible, as little chance of detection as possible. She was as invisible to them as she would be to anyone else.

She just had to hope they saw the same, made the same decisions, or keyed off the warm spot made by the friction of her descender against the cable.

The marginally-less-black-than-absolute-blackness below her gained form. Gained structure.

Rubble.

The remains of a house-sized elevator that had plunged a kilometer to its demise.

And bodies.

All growing clearer by the second.

She slowed herself further, landed on the rubble as lightly as she could, unclipped her descender with a practiced motion, stepped away lightly, choosing her steps with care.

It was a jumbled, jagged, nightmarish mess. Broken concrete. Rebar. Shattered titanium alloy spurs.

A deadly minefield, barely visible in the dark, even with the light-augmenting full-face sensors.

She put her descender down silently, near the spot where the cable came down, then pulled her assault rifle around.

Single shot.

Knives ready.

They couldn’t just go in shooting madly. The rules of engagement she’d agreed to were limited, were an incredible handicap.

Were probably going to get her killed.

Feng was down.

Then Kade.

They spread out. Kade moved awkwardly, his knee still a problem, his natural agility never good, the landscape hellish.

Sam watched him nervously.

They spread to opposite corners of the bottom of the shaft, Kade as far back from the massive doors as he could be. Feng in the front towards them.

They were two antennae. Two parts of a compound antenna. Far enough apart they could create an ultra-low-frequency signal. Those extremely low frequencies were shit for bandwidth. They could carry barely any data whatsoever.

But they could penetrate earth and rock.

And the right signal could open this door. Chen Pang had known that signal. He’d touched his wife’s mind. And she’d been backed up, before being restored in India, and had passed that signal on to Kade and Feng.

So they said.

Sam shook her head.

Shitty rules of engagement. Terrible plan. Probable death.

Why the hell did I agree to this? she wondered.