Ramez Naam - Apex

The monster responded with billions more phages, new ones, evolved even faster, slaughtering his viruses on the wire.

Then he felt something, something incredible. Inside the mind, he felt a struggle.

Ling!

Sam watched as the unknown Confucian Fist flying through the air brought his rifle around to shoot her.

She pulled her arms in to accelerate the spin, ducked her head to turn it into a half-flip, knowing it was too late.

Feng’s foot collided with his brother’s head in mid-air. Flame burst from the muzzle of the other Fist’s assault rifle. Bullets slammed into the stone centimeters from her, ricocheted through the space.

Sam’s half-flip brought her over closer to the console.

Feng’s attack carried him, and the unknown Fist he’d kicked, out of Sam’s sight.

Where were the other two shooters?

Then a second Fist slammed into her from out of nowhere, his foot colliding with her mid-section.

Pain burst through her. The force of it knocked her off her feet, toppled her back. Her head collided with the polished stone floor as her body slid back. Stars appeared in her vision.

Sam looked up and the Fist was flying through the air, coming down on her with all his momentum led by the heel of one foot, aiming at her chest.

She rolled, brought the assault rifle around and up, pulled the trigger, pulled it again.

The Fist twisted somehow in mid-air, landed sideways, one foot slamming down on her hand that held the assault rifle, brutally pinning it, trapping the arm, sending more pain flaring up through her wrist.

He brought his own fist down in a hammer blow at her head.

Sam blocked with her left arm, barely got it up in time.

The blow slammed down through her block, through the layers of armor built into the visor and the hood, brutally hammered her skull against the hard stone floor.

Pain exploded through her head. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear. He was too strong. Too fast. Not human. She was going to die here.

The Avatar shredded the viral attack to pieces, sent messages to her servants, prepared to pounce on the boy in a new way.

Then she moaned in pain as something reached out through her from below, disrupting her, pushing aside her efforts, interrupting her phage transmission for a millisecond.

More viruses landed in that millisecond, some slipping past firewalls.

AAAAAH!

Ling!

The girl was rising up, into the nanite nodes the Avatar had been forced to cut out of her network, using them to disrupt her mother’s plans!

Viruses were replicating, taking hold, spreading out of control!

She struck out viciously at the child. She’d kill her if she must! This was the most crucial moment!

Kade pushed forward, mutated the attack again, red lights flashing, his head throbbing with pain and heat. Exhaustion pushed through him.

Then something grabbed his head, slammed it against the hard stone of the door, again, again, again.

Thought turned to confusion. He looked up, caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man in a suit, his face enraged.

Chen Pang slammed Kade’s head into the stone of the giant door again.

Ling felt the monster attack her, all out this time, no mercy. She could see the beast’s thoughts. See what it feared.

See Kade. See Feng.

See her father killing Kade.

No!

Ling abandoned all defense, reached out, and slapped at her father’s mind.

The monster struck her hard.

All went black.

Kade reeled, the world spinning, pain filling his head, all attack dropped, only on his feet because the gigantic door supported him.

Gun, he thought. I’ve got a gun…

Then suddenly Chen Pang stopped beating his head against the stone.

Kade blinked, tried to understand the world. Chen Pang was shaking his head, his eyes confused.

Kade reached down, into the thigh pouch of his chameleonware suit, unsnapped it.

Chen Pang’s eyes clarified. His face grew enraged again.

Kade put his hand on the gun, flipped off the safety.

Chen Pang reached forward, put his hands on Kade’s head.

Kade struggled to get the gun up, pointed at Chen.

His head slammed against the wall, painfully.

The gun was somewhere between them, the angle distorted by the press of their bodies against each other.

His head slammed again. He couldn’t see. Couldn’t think.

Kade pulled the trigger. His head slammed again. A deafening boom exploded.

He pulled it again. Another boom.

Chen Pang slumped to the ground, blood leaking from him.

Sam waited for the final blow from the Fist to come down and end her life.

Suddenly he was gone, rising, sprinting away from her.

She rolled to one knee, bleary, world spinning, head aching, wrist throbbing with pain, to try to see.

The Fist was heading for Kade.

Kade watched as Chen Pang crumpled to the ground.

Kade reached out to the monster. He could feel the virus taking hold in its mind, replicating at high speed, colonizing corner after corner, making cauterization impossible. He could feel it working. Ling had opened the door for him, and now he was going to save her.

Bits of the monster’s plan came to him, more details.

Then he saw the blur coming straight at him, beyond Chen Pang’s crumpled body.

He pulled the trigger of his pistol again, knowing it was hopeless.

More shots rang out, from elsewhere, and suddenly the blur stumbled, became a Fist, blood leaking from his chest.

Kade fired with his pistol, again and again.

The Fist punched him.

Kade felt the blow like a sledge hammer to the chest. He felt ribs crushed. Felt pain as bad as any he’d felt, from that single punch. It sent him spinning, toppling through the air, and to the stone floor inside the main chamber, on his back.

Somehow he still had his pistol.

He fired up, missed the bloody blur coming at him.

Then something black collided with it from the side, slammed it into the stone wall, hammered at it in a blur of fists and feet as it hammered back. Muzzle fire erupted at short range.

Kade couldn’t breathe.

And then the Fist was on his back.

And Sam was standing over him.

Feng wept.

He stood over the two brothers he’d killed, tears running down his face.

Chanming.

Aiguo.

Dead.

There. There was Chen Pang. Dead.

There, towards Sam and Kade, was another brother.

Genghis.

Feng laughed through the tears. They’d all thought that was a terrible name to choose.

When Su-Yong had given them the right to names. The freedom to choose their own names.

Names instead of numbers.

Genghis was dead.

Ling lay crumpled on the ground.

Feng pulled off his hood.

“Is she?” he asked.

Ling’s alive,Kade sent. The thing is gone.

Pain came across the link. Feng looked over at Kade in alarm.

Kade was sitting on the ground, propped up against the outer wall of the chamber. Sam was over him. Feng could feel his friend’s difficulty breathing, his pain on every expansion and contraction, now that the Faraday lining of the hood was gone.

“Punctured lung,” Sam said. “Get the first aid kit.”

Then Feng felt something enormous come into the room with them.

Something angry.

Something violently mad.

It crushed him down, overwhelmed him completely, filling him with its rage, with its will for a new order.

He fell, crumpling, to his knees, all thought driven from him.

His defenses were useless.

On a console a message flashed, blinking maddeningly in his eyes.

BOOT SEQUENCE COMPLETE.

Su-Yong Shu had returned.

121

Mere Anarchy

Monday 2041.01.20