Ramez Naam - Apex

Yingjie was a spy, of that she was certain. The Marine driver was a mortal threat to her. If he noticed the wrong thing, he could start a cascade that would lead to her discovery and death. In the worst case, he could snap this body’s neck in an instant, ending all her hopes, cementing barbaric humanity’s victory, ensuring darkness snuffed out the last spark of light.

She couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t let ignorance and xenophobia win out over progress.

Chen made the call down to his driver. “Yingjie,” he said into his phone. “Jiao Tong. Yes. I have some heavy equipment to move. Can you come assist me?”

The Avatar waited in the sealed toilet compartment of the washroom of her bedroom suite, each of the three doors closed and locked, each a bulwark against the enhanced soldier, and watched with her mind and the house monitors.

Yingjie couldn’t simply be sedated at a dinner party. He was too fast, too strong, too resilient, too capable. In the moments before a sedative took full effect (if it even would affect him), he could kick down the front door, send a message to his superiors, bring scrutiny down on her. Or snap Chen’s neck in half. And she needed Chen.

Another approach was needed. And that approach would let her test a new means of spreading nanites.

“In here,” Chen said, dressed in full suit and tie. He led Yingjie in and pointed through the door. “The large metal box in the closet. Be careful with it. I’ll go fetch my briefcase.”

Yingjie nodded his assent, his face expressionless, and strode into the room, even as Chen turned and walked briskly towards his own bedroom.

The Avatar switched perspectives, watched from a camera behind Yingjie as the soldier crouched down to pick up the object, nearly a meter in every dimension.

His hands reached around it, finding handles on the sides, closed around them to get a grip.

Data feeds from sensors in the handles confirmed a solid contact.

Now.

Her mind sent a trio of instructions in parallel.

Electricity coursed through the metal handles Yingjie held. The muscles of his hands and forearms involuntarily contracted, clenching his grip even more tightly around them.

Yingjie yelled in surprise and pain, opening his mouth, his eyes bulging, air forcing itself out of his lungs.

Behind the box, deeper in the closet, two metal cylinders opened their digital valves, forcing twin high pressure, high velocity sprays of an aerosolized molecular cocktail at Yingjie’s face, at his open mouth, his exposed eyes, his uncovered nostrils.

The heavy security door to Chen’s office slammed shut, bolts shooting out to lock it in place.

Yingjie turned his face to the right, closing his eyes, letting the continued spray hit the left side of his face and neck now.

The Avatar watched in fascination. This was the test. His eyes would be burning, as the aerosolized nanoparticles were being carried along his mucus membranes, into his blood stream, towards his brain.

Had any reached his lungs? Was there a metallic taste in his mouth from what had struck him there?

Even on the tough skin of his face, the organic solvent of DMSO that the nanoparticles were suspended in would be carrying it through his skin, penetrating tissue, till the particles found their way to capillaries.

Yingjie’s muscles strained, his hands still gripped to the handles by the current. Then suddenly his feet were pressed against the surface of the metal box, and with a scream he pushed back, ripping the metal handles off it, trailing wires behind them.

The Avatar felt a jolt of fear rip through her.

He wasn’t supposed to be that strong.

He was on his feet now, out of the pressurized stream from the tanks.

The Avatar felt radio signals blare out from him as he subvocalized a panic code. She slapped them down with her mind and the radio-shaping tools spread throughout the flat.

He turned, raising his hand to his blinking, tearing eyes, wiping at them, then orienting himself on the door.

Her models showed a sixty percent chance that the door would hold him, a median of five efforts to break free if he could at all.

Yingjie cocked one foot back, then shot it forward, following it through with his body.

The door burst open on his first kick, splinters flying.

Fear seized the Avatar.

Yingjie surged into the living room, rage written across the soldier’s face.

61

Next Steps

Wednesday 2040.12.12

Lisa Brandt checked her messages on her phone as soon as they returned it to her.

“Sorry you’re sick today, Professor. I’ll cancel your appointments. Hope you’re feeling better tomorrow.”

There were responses to messages she hadn’t sent. There were messages from her she hadn’t sent.

Rage surged through her. She wanted to smash the phone to bits, crush it, scream!

But she couldn’t.

She’d been gag-ordered. Forbidden to ever tell anyone of the interrogation she’d been through, the information she’d divulged.

And that order was backed up. Backed up by a neutered version of Nexus running in her brain. A version of Nexus that couldn’t communicate with the outside world, but that could very well constrain her. Its nanites took hold of her now, kept her walking smoothly, guided her hands to unruffle her slacks, put a smile on her face, slowed her respiration, guided her through the lobby of her building, up the lift, and into the flat she shared with her wife and infant son.

“Alice, I’m home!” Lisa Brandt said brightly, the rage seething inside. “How’re my two favorite people?”

Carolyn Pryce looked over the report from Lisa Brandt’s interrogation.

The woman knew nothing about the PLF herself, nothing that she hadn’t learned from the memos.

And she wasn’t ERD_Secrets. She wasn’t the one who’d leaked the information about the ERD’s assassinations of the foreign scientists in ’33–35. Holtzman hadn’t sent her those files.

That was puzzling.

Brandt had been wired into a network helping to smuggle Nexus-dosed children and their parents out of the country. A network that had used Holtzman to break Shankari and a group of children out of ERD custody during Zoe.

No names, though. And the woman had been smart enough to realize she’d be marked as soon as Holtzman died. She’d burned herself out of the network more than a month ago.

It was just as well. For all Homeland Security’s protestations, Shankari wasn’t someone she viewed as any sort of national security threat. And imprisoning children… that was damaging the nation’s security.

The real prizes were the rest of what had come from Holtzman. Not the ERD assassination records, but other data that was better, far more useful.

Pryce had the original video from Holtzman’s eyes as Brandt had received it, now. It was shaky, raw, distorted. It was either the real thing or a brilliant fake.

It was real, her gut told her. That was Barnes, coming into Holtzman’s office, admitting to being behind the PLF, all but admitting to being behind the assassination attempt on the President, the Chicago bombing, Warren Becker’s death. That was Barnes, forcing a pill onto Holtzman, a pill that resulted in a death from myocardial infarction that a coroner couldn’t differentiate from natural causes. A death that resembled Warren Becker’s death all too closely. Both deaths that every security and tracking system at ERD and on Barnes’s phone and car swore he could not have been present for.

I’ve been so blind, Pryce told herself. I chose to be.

The only question now was how high it went. Did Miles Jameson know, when he was President?

Did John Stockton know?