B018YDIXDK EBOK Read online

  Solomon paused, sitting back down in his chair. It was another symbol of power — allowing the visitor to feel as though they’d ‘won,’ a false sign of submission. He waited a few seconds, then continued.

  “Myers, this is big. You know it, I know it, and the beta testers know it. It’s going to change the game. You’re running for president next year, and this is going to be your ticket to victory. OneGlobal will streamline every speech you need to write, every email you need to send, and every computer it will come into contact with at every level of government. It’s not subterfuge, but it’s damn close.”

  “It shouldn’t be legal.”

  “It’s legal in every way. Just because you get to be the first to really ‘use’ it doesn’t matter. No one will know, and no one will care anyway, since they’ll have their hands on it shortly after. Remember, this isn’t an edge we’re using to win — it’s an edge we’re using to change the world.”

  Solomon remembered the conversation like it was yesterday. Myers stormed — well, walked intently with his head held perfectly straight, Myers’ version of ‘stormed’ — out of Sol’s office and back to his own. Sol had a moment of passing regret, replaced quickly by the feeling of impossible gains and huge wins for the company imminently awaiting over the horizon.

  And now he was here.

  In a prison cut into the side of a cliff, waiting with a kid half his age to be killed, tortured, or something else.

  Nothing good would come out of this, but Solomon wasn’t one to sulk.

  Ravi had proven himself, even if the kid’s plans were rash and poorly executed. He’d shown himself to be strong, resilient, and mostly trustworthy. The kid wanted to go it alone, but that was hardly a reason to allow him to.

  RAND

  HE WAITED ANOTHER HOUR BEFORE he made his move. Rand rose from the cot, careful to inch off of the stretched nylon in a way that didn’t make the material screech from the man’s shifting weight. He placed his feet on the floor gently, then slowly stood up. It was pitch black in the room, so he wasn’t worried about being seen, at least until he reached the door at the top of the stairs.

  The moment he did, he would have to exit quickly, so as not to let too much light into the room. He didn’t want to wake Diane and Lansing, but knew it was a long shot. Lansing was ex-military, and almost surely a light sleeper. Diane, he knew, would sleep a bit more soundly, but he still needed to be careful.

  The problem was that he didn’t know who — or what — was outside the door. He was positive they were being guarded, but wasn’t able to hear or see anyone outside their underground prison.

  He crept up the stairs and waited for ten seconds at the top. He took a breath, running through the steps of his plan for the hundredth time. When he felt as ready as possible, he swung the door open smoothly and stepped out.

  Rand closed the door behind him immediately, catching it right at the end before it slammed. Only then did he turn to see if they had been under watch.

  Rand flicked his eyes left and right but saw no one. He took a step to the right, inching toward the side wall of their tiny hut, and continued watching for movement against the moonlit backdrop.

  Nothing.

  It was as if the city’s occupants had completely abandoned their homes. No one spoke behind closed doors, no one paced back and forth against a candlelit window, and no guards patrolled the streets. The hard-packed dirt was clean of footprints.

  Weird. Rand took a final glance around and continued sliding toward the side of the building. When he reached it, he peered around it before moving the rest of his body past the front of the house and into the shadows. There he waited for another minute, focusing on any sounds that might alert him to an enemy moving in.

  Satisfied he was alone, Rand continued his short journey to the first hut he thought Myers would be in. He’d hadn’t seen him since their tour of the city earlier, but he’d decided to start his search with the buildings closest to their own.

  Rand knew it was a long shot, but he couldn’t bear the thought of waiting around for Crane and the rest of the Relics to determine their fates. Once they delivered Myers to the Unders, they’d have no need for the rest of them. That was the part Diane and Lansing refused to accept. Diane was a diplomat — a good one — and he knew she’d want to make a deal, or figure out some way to compromise. She was always ready to negotiate; always hoping to work out an arrangement.

  Lansing would go along with her, and not just because she was his boss. She’d recruited him as her personal chauffeur shortly after the fall, and he’d been loyal from day one. Lansing was whip-smart, extremely capable, and the biggest lap dog Rand had ever seen. The man would literally die for her, but Rand thought it was more out of a desire to please than a sense of duty.

  He shook his head at the thought. Lansing was going to get them all killed. He always saw the best in people, to a fault. Tonight he’d argued in favor of allowing them to give Myers away, even though both Diane and Rand thought it was a stupid idea.

  It was really the first time Rand had ever heard Lansing stand up to Diane, even if it was still in a somewhat subordinate way.

  “Out for a walk?”

  Rand whirled around, ready for a fight. He held his fists up around his face as he tried to see who had spoken.

  “Over here, Rand,” the voice said. Rand turned to the right, and saw a silhouette crouching behind an adjacent building.

  Lansing.

  “What are you doing out —“

  “Shh,” Lansing said. “Keep it down, man. You know they’re going to be watching for us.”

  “How did you —“

  “Rand, come on. I watched you leave the room, and snuck out to follow you after I made sure you weren’t going to be attacked.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “I would have helped, but it would have been useless if there were more than a few of them.”

  Rand didn’t feel reassured. He walked over to the building Lansing was standing behind and joined the man. Lansing was slightly taller than Rand, but was of a thinner build. He had short-cropped blond hair, so light it seemed as though he was bald, but it was always covered by a ratty blue Red Sox hat. He shifted the hat around, moving it one direction then back the other way, so that it was sitting in exactly the same spot as it had before.

  Rand nodded once up at Lansing, then looked back over his shoulder. “They’re going to be out here, somewhere.”

  “Where? I’ve been trained a bit in this type of stuff, and —“

  “You were Air Force, Lansing,” Rand said. He hadn’t meant for it to sound like such a dig, and he regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth.

  Lansing, to his credit, let it slide. He kept his cool as his eyes darted back and forth over the empty city. “Still, we’d be able to see something. There aren’t even any lights on.”

  “They’re probably trying to conserve energy. I’d bet they’re waiting for us in one of those taller buildings, watching. In the dark.”

  “You’ve got a flair for the dramatic, you know that?” Lansing said. He stepped away from the building a few steps to get a wider view, and continued searching. “I don’t see any place to hide that would offer much of a lookout.”

  A gentle buzzing came from Rand’s right. Both men whirled around and stared into the dark abyss behind their building. The buzzing grew louder, and Lansing shoved Rand against the building and crouched.

  “Get down!” He whispered.

  Rand obeyed, stunned. “What is it?”

  “No idea, but —“

  The buzzing sound in front of them was joined by two more, each seeming to appear from the left and right.

  “Now there are —“

  Lansing held up a hand. “It’s those weird devices that incapacitated my Tracer,” he whispered.

  Rand recalled the little objects that had somehow forced their craft safely to the ground in Relica, eliminating Lansing’s control. They had operated as a tiny
team, each object providing some sort of use to the overall mission. He had marveled at the tech for the next day, thinking more and more about how they worked, how they had been designed, and what else they might be able to do.

  They were a perfect example of Rand’s favorite type of AI: sleek, sexy, effective, brutally efficient, and simple. Nothing terrifying about a “weak” AI; an artificial intelligence that was only good at one task.

  But there was something terrifying about this weak AI, and that was what forced Rand to reconsider his opinion.

  There was no way these devices were designed by humans.

  To his knowledge, there was no organization on the planet creating new AI after the laws had been passed and the United States fell apart. Nations were booming economically, but anyone with any computer knowledge that had been left in society had been reassigned — like Rand — to somewhere they couldn’t create anything damaging.

  Anything competitive to the System.

  The truth of it all stung Rand like a physical sensation, but he kept his eyes affixed on the empty sky in front of them, waiting for the three bug-like devices to fly into view.

  “Lansing, you got any ideas?”

  “You mean, ‘how can we outrun and hide from these magical little bugs?’”

  “Fine. Point taken. We should at least try, right?”

  Lansing shrugged, then turned to look at Rand. “Where are we going to go that these things can’t find us? They’ll just do what they did to my Tracer, and we’ll be frozen, suspended in the air until —“

  Rand heard a clicking sound that joined in the cacophony. Lansing heard it, too.

  “What the…”

  The clicking sound was growing in speed and intensity, and Rand suddenly saw tiny flashes of light coming from the direction of the first buzzing machine.

  “Lansing, is that thing —“

  “It’s shooting at us!” Lansing yelled, diving to the left. Sparks of light hit the dirt right where he was standing, and Rand followed suit, wide-eyed, and jumped back. Lansing was on his feet, and Rand had the common sense to keep up.

  They ran through the narrow “streets,” weaving in and out of alleyways that had been formed by the somewhat haphazard placement of the buildings, and ducking beneath clotheslines and low-hanging bridges connecting two upper-level floors in some taller structures.

  The tiny devices tracked them the entire way. They’d buzz in, start clicking, and Rand would hear the pat-pat-pat of hundreds of miniature bullets slamming into dirt, rock, and building walls.

  “Where are we going?” Rand yelled.

  Lansing’s longer legs were an obvious advantage, but Rand was surprised at how spry and nimble the man really was. It was almost like watching a parkour expert every time Lansing sprung himself over a crate, can, or other obstacle. Rand did his best to catch up, but he quickly found out that Lansing was holding himself back so Rand wouldn’t fall behind.

  “No idea,” Lansing yelled, “just trying to get away from them.”

  “Can’t we duck into one of these buildings?”

  “Not if you don’t want to run into a Relic,” Lansing answered.

  Rand considered it. Dying by thousands of microscopic gunshot wounds, or by knife stabbing in a dark alley?

  He tried to find an open door.

  The machines churned onward, now in a side-by-side formation, each of them taking turns firing on the two men.

  One man.

  Rand noticed something odd as he focused in on the rhythmic whirring of gunfire. He watched as the tiny sparks formed when they hit pieces of rock and metal in the walls of the buildings, betraying where the machines were aiming.

  They were firing at Lansing. Not me.

  Rand almost stopped running.

  “Lansing, they’re shooting at you.”

  “Got it, ace. Thanks for the heads up,” Lansing called back over his shoulder.

  “No, Lansing. They’re only firing at you!”

  At this, Lansing visibly slowed to a jog, then turned quickly around a corner. Rand dove sideways into a crevice he’d seen on his left, and watched as the three machines flew directly by his location. They completely ignored me.

  He was sure he hadn’t gone unnoticed, either. They were targeting Lansing.

  But why?

  “Lansing, you okay?”

  No answer.

  Rand got back up, suddenly feeling the soreness of a twisted ankle. He forced his mind to ignore the pain and began running again. When he came to Lansing’s detour, he turned and saw the machines from the back.

  They were flying in the same side-by-side line, and Rand could see a set of lights on the rear of the devices. Blue, green, and two red dots. He knew the red dots were redundant power and location signals — a way to communicate with each other — but he wasn’t sure what the blue and green lights were for.

  He could see the silhouette of Lansing, still running from the machines down the long, straight stretch of alleyway. It didn’t look like there was anywhere else for the man to go but straight, and the machines only needed to —

  The machines sped up, quickly catching up to Lansing.

  “Lansing!” Rand shouted.

  The machines all opened fire at the same time, releasing an impressive array of light and sound as the buzzing, whirring, and churning of the miniature bullets crescendoed to a noisy harmony. He watched, helpless, as the bullets found their target.

  The lights on the backs of the devices sparkled in the moonlight, suddenly exploding in color as each of the four lights on each of the machines started blinking in unison.

  They’re talking to each other, he realized. They’re sharing information. Rand knew what the “information” was, too.

  Target acquired.

  They were communicating with each other about where, exactly, they should aim to take down —

  Lansing groaned and fell forward. He hit the ground face-first, and his hat popped off and away, rolling to a stop a few feet from the man’s body.

  Rand rushed in, ignoring the machines that were still firing downward from directly above Lansing.

  “No, no, no —“ Rand ran up behind one of the devices and swatted at it with his right hand. The machine anticipated the attack perfectly, gently dipping out of the way and doing a full spin in midair, as if threatening him. It turned back to Lansing, but didn’t fire.

  The two other machines stopped firing as well, and each hovered in the air for another few seconds then buzzed off, gaining altitude quickly until Rand couldn’t see their black outline against the night sky.

  “Lansing,” Rand said, stepping forward. There was blood around the man’s body, and Rand could see his left arm reaching out in front of him.

  “Lansing,” Rand said again. “Don’t move, buddy. Just stay there.”

  Lansing pulled himself forward on the ground, groaning the entire time, and grabbed his hat. He placed it on top of his head, but didn’t wiggle it down. It rested on the back of his head and upper back, swaying slightly.

  Rand kneeled down next to Lansing and took in the scene. The blood was still pouring out of the man, and it was now pooling around Rand’s feet. Lansing was breathing slowly, a slight wheeze in his lungs.

  “R — Rand…”

  “Don’t talk, man. Don’t talk. You’re fine. We’re gonna get you —“

  “Rand, no. Go. Get out of here.” Lansing painstakingly turned his head sideways, the stress of it causing more blood to gather around Rand’s feet, and looked up at him.

  Rand saw a calm resolution in the man’s eyes. He was dying — already dead — and he was okay with that. He wasn’t scared; wasn’t regretful.

  “Rand, go.”

  Lansing lifted his head slightly off the ground in a final goodbye, then dropped it back to the earth. Rand swallowed, then reached over and affixed the hat onto the dead man’s head. He made sure the Red Sox logo was pointing out, just to the left, just the way he’d liked it, then he stood.
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br />   He brushed off his knees, pushing dirt and blood into stains on his pant legs, and looked down once again at Lansing’s prone body.

  When he looked up, Josiah Crane was staring back at him from farther down the street.

  SOL

  “WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT, old man?”

  Ravi was talking to the back of his head, sitting against the wall farther back in the cave.

  “Nothing — just trying to figure out what they want with us.”

  “You said they want to find Myers.”

  “The Unders do, certainly. I just don’t know if we’re dealing with Unders or not.”

  “Ary was with Unders, and she set us up. They have to be Unders.”

  Solomon shot him a glance over his shoulder that said, you’ve been wrong before, kid. “True. Maybe.”

  “Who else could it be?”

  “Anyone, really, but Unders are the only organized group of people I know about. Hunters operate alone, and they wouldn’t go to these lengths just to trade us on the Boards.”

  “Relics?”

  Solomon shook his head. “There aren’t groups of Relics alive. Once they get released, they get hunted. I should know.”

  “Yeah, you should,” Ravi muttered. “I’ve been dodging guys like you for four years. Why’d you become a Hunter?”

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Solomon turned and sat down again, facing Ravi. The light from the entrance to the cave illuminated Ravi’s face, but a dark circle from the shadow of Sol’s own head covered up his nose and mouth. It made him look like the cave was concealing his identity.

  Protecting him. Or protecting Ravi.

  “I left EHM after the System took over,” Sol continued, “and I pretty much had to keep my head down to stay out of its way. Someone like me — basically running the company that created it — I was a prime scrape candidate.”

  Ravi smiled. “You still are, I’d guess.”