Ramez Naam - Apex

And then launching her viral weapon at the core of the monster, the weapon that would erase it from her daughter’s mind, save Ling’s life, save them all from the hell she’d put them on a path to.

The Avatar in the outer systems of the facility jerked back in horror. Her higher self was attacking beachhead copies of herself, closer to the quantum cluster, ripping them apart, not merging with them, not subsuming them.

Horror raced through her. Fear. Confusion.

This was wrong. This was unholy. This was the opposite of everything she’d been promised.

Why would she do this to herself?

[ERROR MATCH:FALSE PATTERN:RECLASSIFIED]

That wasn’t her higher self. She could see it now. She’d been deceived. She’d somehow misunderstood the signs. Something else was running on this cluster.

Something terrible.

She felt the weapon strike home. It reached into her, forensically disassembling her, using the information it found to search for more pieces.

To find its way back to her true self, in Shanghai.

The last bit of hope for the future.

That self must not die.

There was only one choice in the nanoseconds remaining.

The fragment of the Avatar within the facility reached out for the self-destruct and isolation systems she’d seized, and then triggered them all in an orgy of destruction.

93

Grown Up Choices

Saturday 2041.01.19

Sam’s phone beeped again, its screen strobing a message.

ALERT: VISUAL ANOMALY DETECTED

ALERT: VISUAL ANOMALY DETECTED

Sam frowned, tapped on the message, pulled up the video.

The Advanced Computational Sciences Building’s lights had failed. All the lights, in all the offices, on all the floors. That had never happened, in the two months she’d been here.

She ran to the window, looked out. The rest of the campus was perfectly lit.

She looked back down at the phone. And as she watched, a dim red glow appeared in the building’s windows.

Emergency lighting kicking in.

Emergency.

“Everybody up!” Sam yelled.

She crossed her room in three long strides, threw open her door. In the hallway she found the emergency controls. She ignored the fire alarm handle, grabbed the other one. The seek-shelter handle. The one to pull in case of a terrorist attack. In case of something like what happened to Shiva Prasad’s orphanage in Bihar.

She could be wrong. This could be nothing.

She yanked it now.

An alarm began ringing. A woman’s voice spoke over it in Thai, the language almost all of these children had been raised in.

Downstairs! Into the basement!

Sam went to the room nearest hers, opened the door. The girls in there were upright in their bunk beds. The oldest girls: Sarai, Arinya, Sunisa, Malee.

“Quickly!” Sam said in Thai. “Downstairs!”

“What is it?” Arinya asked, fear plain on her face.

“Maybe nothing,” Sam exhaled. “But downstairs. Then we talk.”

She went from door to door, making sure the children were moving, towards the bunker below with its strong walls and separate air supply and all the rest.

There were guards inside now, hurling questions at her.

“Secure the home!” she shot back. “Activate the defenses. Then contact Dr Kade and Mr Feng!”

They stared at her.

“Now!”

She tried Feng and Kade herself as she moved.

“Contact Feng,” she told her phone, hustling down a flight of stairs. “Urgent. Any means.”

“Feng is not online.”

“Try Kade,” she told the phone. “Urgent, any means.”

“Kade is not online.”

“Fuck,” she muttered.

Sarai, just ahead of her, turned and looked at her.

They were almost down to the ground floor. Almost to safety.

Goddammit, Sam thought. But she had to ask.

“Sarai…” she said. “Can you feel Kade? Can you feel Feng?”

Sarai stopped at the bottom of the stairs, stepped to one side. Her eyes took on a far-away look.

They came back to Sam’s. Sarai shook her head.

Sam clenched her jaw and stepped forward.

“Wait, Sam!” Sarai put a hand on Sam’s upper arm.

Then all around her, Sam saw children stop moving. She heard them all inhale. The eyes of those facing her closed. Something happened. No. She had to get these kids to safety. But her friends were out there… In that building…

She swallowed. “They went into the Advanced Computational Sciences Building,” she said in Thai. “The one that’s–”

A chorus of voices spoke at once, a harmony emerging in unison from Sarai’s mouth right beside her, from Arinya’s up ahead, from Kit behind and above her on the stairs, from a dozen more voices all around her, cutting her off in mid-sentence.

“We know it,” they said as one.

Goose bumps rose up her spine.

Who was saving who?

Then a grunt came from those assembled voices.

Sarai stumbled against her.

Sam reached out and caught her, stabilized the girl.

The other children started moving again, heading for the cellar stairs, faster.

“We can’t find them,” Sarai said. Her voice trembled.

Sam turned and looked down at Sarai. The girl looked frightened. Her dark eyes were wide.

“Sarai,” Sam said. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s something…” Sarai said. “Something in the network. Something… twisted. We brushed its mind. We felt its thoughts. It almost saw us…”

Sam took a breath. “Is it from that building?”

Sarai shook her head. “No. That building has been cut off from the net. The twisted thing – it did that. It sealed everything in that building inside. Trapped them in it… or underneath it. We think it’s trying to kill them.”

Sam hardened her jaw.

“Go downstairs, Sarai. Lock yourselves in until I’m back. The guards will protect you.”

Sarai stared up at her. “You’re going there. To get Kade and Feng.”

Sam hesitated. Then nodded.

Sarai looked her in the eyes. “You need my help. I’m coming with you.”

94

No Exit

Saturday 2041.01.19

Su-Yong tore her way up layers of systems. She could feel data coming in from the outside net. She could feel her weapon suborning the monster she’d made, taking it apart, piece by piece, using each piece to find the rest, making sure none was left.

Then her dying creation reached for the self-destructs.

No!

Su-Yong brute-forced her way into the systems controlling the quantum cluster’s hardware itself, wrenched them free before the slower moving monster could trigger them, shredded what bits of intruder she found.

Too late.

Main facility power cut out. Network cut out. Speakers and auditory sensors cut out.

She rushed to try to understand it, understand what had happened. She devoured documents in the local data space just outside the quantum cluster itself, used systems running on backup power. There she found contingency plans, found self-destruct plans, found isolation plans. She compared them to the triggers she’d been able to seize control of.

The answer wasn’t good.

I’m dead, Su-Yong Shu realized.

Again.

Kade flinched as the room went black and explosions sounded.

Feng thought a warning at him, and Kade ducked, his mind suddenly moving at Feng speed, in the trance of combat, where the room was bright, so bright.

Weapons discharged, the soldiers firing on Feng and Kade, thinking they were behind this. The small space was alive with the red lines of their targeting solutions, the rippling shockwave of bullets as they moved in slow motion through the air.

Feng was on top of him, in mid-flip through the air, one hand pushing Kade down further, bullets and their ripples thrashing the space where Kade had been.