Ramez Naam - Apex

Oh shit, he thought.

Rangan forced himself up. His lungs hurt, he could barely see through the smoke and the stinging in his eyes. He had to get to Angel. Move east. Move south. Move. Move. Move. He stumbled, crawled, stood, fell, stood. He remembered his scarf, pulled it up over his nose and mouth. He tried to yell out to the others with his mind, heard nothing back, and then he realized his hat was gone too. The hat with the hidden antenna that boosted his range. Shit.

He felt something change then, and he turned, looked. Through the smoke he saw a deeper yellow: Saffron robes, a shaved head, moving in the opposite direction. He felt the hate push back, felt something else touch him, a touch of that tranquility.

Then in a disorienting flash everything changed. He was outside the crowd, outside the Mall, looking down onto a hundred thousand people, not as individuals, but as a whole, a single being, a single mind.

Like Ilya would have seen it, he realized.

For that instant his own mind was clear, at peace. And in that clarity, the mind he looked down on…

That mind of a hundred thousand people was mentally ill. Insane. Drugged or diseased. Raging with a sickness.

Something else passed through him then. A feeling of being recognized .

Then it was gone – the perspective, the clarity, the peace. He was back in his body, the hate pressing in on him, the smoke all around him, screams and the sound of clashes, and the acrid sting of tear gas. There were no yellow robes.

Did I fucking hallucinate that? Rangan wondered.

He coughed and turned, stumbled on towards 7 th Street. He was almost there when a figure loomed out of the smoke. Rangan moved to go around him, but the man moved too, and then a fist rammed the breath out of him. Rangan doubled over in pain and shock. Then something swept his feet out from under him. He landed on his back, slamming his spine into the backpack containing the NANCie below him, in more pain, gasping. Then there was a hand on his throat, a bearded, scarred face inches from his own, dreadlocks falling around him, intense blue eyes staring down into his.

The man whispered hoarsely at him, “Who are you, compadre? And how are you causing the interference?”

The voice was rough, husky.

Rangan stared up at the man. This was the one. This was the one behind the hate, the rage, the amplification of the riot.

Then he felt his assailant’s hand close tighter around his throat.

“Who?” the man repeated. “And how?”

Then something slammed into the man above Rangan, knocking him away in a rolling blur of black and white checks and jester bells.

Rangan rolled to the side, coughing, his eyes burning, filled with tears.

Yards away from him, Cheyenne was on top of the scarred and bearded man, her muscled arms around his neck in a headlock.

Rangan pushed himself up to one knee.

That’s him,he sent to Cheyenne. He’s the one behind…

The scarred man reached back with one arm and flipped Cheyenne over his back, sending her flying through the air. Other people around them yelled in fear.

Rangan felt fear surge through him. He pushed up to standing, wobbling on his feet. He saw the scarred man come up to standing now.

Except the dreadlocks were askew. The beard and scar were half ripped off. They were fake, a disguise, like Rangan’s.

Rangan tried to turn, but his feet tangled on something, and suddenly he was down on the ground. He rolled, and he was facing up, and the man with the scar that wasn’t a scar and the beard that wasn’t a beard was standing above him, something in his hand, pointed down at Rangan, a roll of paper.

No. A gun, wrapped in a roll of paper.

“Last chance,” the man said. “Who are you?” The scar was half off, dangling from the top. Beneath it, Rangan saw there was another face.

He opened his mouth, to say something, to stay alive.

The blur came out of nowhere, hugely muscled limbs atop a torso moving like a locomotive. But this time the man moved faster, spun, did something. Rangan heard a crack. Then he saw the man, with Cheyenne’s arm trapped, lifted up to bear her bodyweight, and twisted in an unnatural angle.

Cheyenne screamed.

The man dropped her to the ground.

She kept screaming.

Rangan was crawling backwards as the man turned, took another step towards him.

“Three,” the man said. “Two.”

“I’m–” Rangan started.

“That’s enough,” another voice said.

Rangan looked over, and there was another figure there, a woman, blonde, tanned, in an oversized overcoat, just paces away. She held one arm towards the man above him, the overly long sleeve covering her hand and whatever was in it.

“This isn’t any of your business,” the man said. He was looking at the woman now, not at Rangan. In profile from this side, the dreadlock wig was askew, the beard was gone, revealing the man’s jawline.

“Safety the gun,” she said. “Then put it on the ground, still covered.”

Cheyenne was groaning beyond them, writhing in pain at whatever he’d done to her arm. Smoke filled the air. Rangan coughed, his eyes burning.

“You won’t shoot,” the man replied.

“You know I will,” the blonde woman said.

“Fine,” the man above Rangan said. There was a click, and then the man crouched down, placed a bundle at Rangan’s feet, and rose again.

“Now the transmitter,” the woman said.

The man shrugged. He reached his hand into a pocket, and very slowly pulled it out, a flat black rectangle he held in two fingers. He gestured with it at the woman. “You see what happened here? You see how they fought? You see how they were about to just walk away?”

“I see how many people you killed. People who agreed with you. Give it to me.”

People who agreed with you, Rangan thought. Who the fuck were these people?

The man who’d almost killed him tossed the transmitter at the woman’s feet. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What’s done is done.”

“You, on the ground,” the woman said. “Get your friend and get out of here.”

Oh fuck yes, Rangan thought.

Rangan half-carried Cheyenne through a world gone haywire, looking for Angel and Tempest. There were flames everywhere. Signs were burning. Stages were burning. Trees were burning. Buildings were burning. The tear gas and the acrid smoke from the fires were filling his lungs. Tears and snot were running from his inflamed face. Sirens were wailing. Molotovs were still hurling through the air. The sound of clashes between police and rioters came from all directions, the sounds of truncheons being brought down onto bone, of rubber bullets slamming into bodies, of the rage-filled screams of tens of thousands of humans gone mad, ripping at the better armed and trained police forces trying to quell their eruption. Above it all, Cheyenne’s pain was overwhelming across their Nexus link, her right arm and shoulder sending out waves and waves of agony. They passed people lying prone on the ground, and Rangan just hoped they weren’t dead.

Then the hate flipped off, like a switch. He almost missed a step, even buffered as he was by his NANCie, then caught himself and Cheyenne. She’d turned it off. Whoever that woman was.

Cheyenne groaned in pain. More smoke rose into the sky. More screams came from somewhere off to his left, mixed with the dull crack of breaking bones. A crash and whoosh came as another Molotov struck home somewhere else. Rangan coughed again, and harder, as the burning penetrated deeper into his lungs.

That woman had turned off the hate machine.

But it was too little, too late.

54

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