The light is getting close. I feel bots nearby. Jeff’s bots.
“Noah.”
I hear his voice echoing down the tunnel to me.
WARNING! NOREPINEPHRINE/SEROTONIN LEVELS INDICATE MURDEROUS INTENT! THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU KILL ANYONE!
I force down my rage. I can’t just kill him. Not until I know I can take care of those failsafe devices. Stay calm. Breathe.
“Jeff.”
The word almost sounds right. Hopefully close enough that he doesn’t notice the stroke symptoms. The last thing I need is to project weakness right now.
“As you said, we should talk,” Jeff says. His voice is unnaturally calm, given that he has to know that I’m here to kill him. “Brother.”
“We should,” I reply. It’s close enough. My voice is fine as long as I speak slowly and carefully.
“Indeed. You and I have a great deal to discuss,” Jeff says. His voice, on the other hand, is far from normal, even for him. It’s not just calm, it’s missing the energy and inflection I would expect. It’s not quite mechanical, but it’s not quite human either. “I have information that you will find to be of great importance to you. Please, come into my lab. I mean you no harm.”
I don’t trust Jeff at all, but if all that he wanted was to pull some kind of trap, he had plenty of opportunities while I was walking the tunnel.
“Pull your bots back, if you don’t mind,” I say slowly. “I might have some trust issues right now.”
He complies, and my overlay doesn’t show any bots remaining near the exit from the tunnel. I step into the light, keeping my bots tight around me for both armor and mobility. I take a look around the large space.
I was wrong. This isn’t his escape hatch, this is his workshop. This is where he’s been all these months while I’ve been searching for him.
The air is warm here. I let my bots drink in the ambient heat, charging their depleted energy stores. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the room are made of that same smooth ceramic material that lined the tunnel. I can see now that it’s a pale yellow color. I get a vaguest association with the restrooms at my old high school, a lifetime away. Maybe they were this same color, but I can’t remember.
Along one wall are racks of servers with blinking lights and humming fans. Along another are open shelves. Most of them are piled high with medical supplies. One holds neat stacks of cash, organized by denomination. There’s probably a million dollars there. I’m guessing it’s CPP money, that much cash missing would have made enough news that it would have come up on Lin’s algorithm. The whole place smells like the strong disinfectants they use in hospitals with a stinky, burning smell over the top of it.
Long rows of what look like cots with built in metal ankle and wrist restraints hold his prisoners. I count twenty-four cots, but only thirteen of them are filled with sedated young men in medical gowns. And then there’s one woman, the blonde from the CPP, also sedated and restrained. I guess they’re not on great terms anymore. The rest of the cots are empty. It looks like it’s too late for his other victims, but maybe I can save these.
Spaced just a little way from the rows of prisoners is another cot, this one without restraints. Next to it is the entrance to the bathroom, complete with a little blue plastic man on the door. I wonder for a moment what happened to the other people he kidnapped. There were dozens more. Did he take them back up? Can I at least reclaim the bodies for their families? Then I see what must be his incineration area, an open alcove the size of a coffin cut into the far wall with a closable door that hangs open now. Traces of ash line the surfaces, so he’s already disposed of some bodies. I’m too late for even that small victory.
Fresh air blows in from vents in the ceiling. That and the power outlets along the walls tell me he’s got connections to the outside world. A laptop sits open near the server racks. A browser on the screen open to a standard search engine tells me he’s even got internet access down here.
And there, in the middle of it all, on a swiveling, backless stool, sits Jeff. He looks good, all things considered. The hair on one side of his head is gone, burned down to his scalp. The skin underneath looks red and scorched. The damage is recent. I think that’s the burned odor I’m smelling. Looks like General Whitman’s missile strike this morning had at least a little success, though obviously the defenses the bots put up were strong enough to keep Jeff alive.
Jeff’s right arm is missing too, as is his right leg somewhere above the knee. In their places are metal prostheses. Skeletal lines of what look like steel form the bones, with articulated joints where the knuckles, wrist, elbow, ankle, and knee should be. His left eye is gone, a metallic-looking replacement fills the socket where it used to sit. From the way the skin around the missing limbs and eye has healed, I’d guess the other damage is much older.
Other than that, he seems to be doing better than the last time I saw him when he jumped off that bridge. The frantic, bloodshot look is gone from his one good eye. From the way his clean shirt seems tailored around the shoulder and the way his pant leg tapers between the stump of his human leg and the metal thighbone, it seems he’s been taking better care of himself lately.
He flexes the fingers of his metal hand, picks up an apple from the table in front of him, and brings it to his mouth to take a bite. The motion is familiar, like a stop-motion animated skeleton. My index triggers. Yes. I wrote about this. It’s the same mechanical motions he’d make with his human hands back when he would operate his body like a puppet with his bots.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Care for a bite?” he offers. “I assume you haven’t had time for an evening meal.”
He indicates a small refrigerator with a clear door near the entrance, near the server racks. It’s loaded with apples like the one he’s eating and some other food that requires no preparation. For a moment it’s as if we’re back in the campus cafeteria getting lunch together. Except that he’s actually chewing his own food now instead of having his bots do it.
I get enough bots focusing on him that I can get a pulse read. Unless he’s made dramatic improvements in his ability to deceive, his biometrics indicate that his offer is sincere. I realize that I’m starving. Yeah, why not? There’s nothing he can try to do to me with an apple in my hand that he couldn’t do anyway, and the longer I delay, the more charge I’ll have on my cloud when it comes time to end this. I step over to the fridge, pop it open, and take a shiny red one. Jeff motions to another stool like his on my side of the room. I take a seat, retract the facemask of the armor, and take a bite. The bots in my jaw help me to chew. It’s juicy and delicious.
“Good apples,” I say slowly. The bots supporting my jaw are definitely working. I don’t think the slur is noticeable at all anymore.
“Indeed they are,” he says in that same emotionless voice. “I obtain them at an organic retailer a few miles from here. They are my favorite.”
“I see you have a new arm there,” I say. “And a new leg. Are those a recent thing?”
He nods slowly.
“The fall into the river broke the bones in several places the last time I saw you. By the time I had the implant working and enough nanobots to do anything effective, infection had set in and amputation was the only option. Do not worry. I do not miss the original parts. The replacements are more than adequate. Superior in many ways. I am tempted sometimes to reach symmetry by removing the other side, but I never seem to find the time. If they make you uncomfortable, I can enable my concealment for them.”
His bots swarm around his fingers and something close to flesh in color and shape forms around the mechanical hand. Somehow that looks creepier than just the metal bones.
“No, that’s not necessary.”
The fleshy covering dissolves and he waves the skeletal hand in a dismissive gesture.
“And the eye?” I ask.
“Unfortunately, the installation of the optical interface proved too difficult to manage on my own. I had to employ a workaround. The artificial eye substitutes effectively enough.”
“Painful?”
“Terribly,” Jeff answers, still without emotion. “But as you well know, pain can often be a price well worth paying to achieve a desired end. And you? Have you taken to wearing an exoskeleton regularly? Or is that just for this occasion?”
“It’s just for today. How about your new friends here?” I gesture to the row of victims. “How are your plans coming along? Any significant breakthroughs?”
“Noah, Noah,” Jeff says. “We have just reconnected after so long and already you want to get down to business?”
I’m not sure how to respond to that. Does he just want to hang out like brothers for a while? Like we sometimes used to do in the common room of the dorms?
“We could just skip to the part where we negotiate my life against your sixteen failsafes. I think that’s probably where this is going based on your messages.”
He shakes his head.
“It does not need to be that way.” He forces his mouth into a smile without changing his tone at all. “We have combined our efforts in the past to significant success. I acknowledge that I have wronged you, just as you must acknowledge that you have wronged me. I propose that we put our differences aside and work together once more. The greater good is more important than our petty personal issues.”
“So, no grudges about letting you take the fall for killing Father, then?” I ask. “For preying on your mental illness? For the river? For any of it?”
“I have had ample time to process your betrayal both while I was at Wallace and since that time. I understand that from your perspective, it was the only viable path to a goal that we shared. I applaud your creativity and innovation in finding a solution to our common problem. With significant reflection, I came to agree that it was indeed the only solution that would have worked. Ultimately, I thank you for helping me to gain a deeper understanding of humanity with its corresponding weaknesses and failings. It was a necessary learning experience for me.”
All sincere, according to my polygraph functions. I don’t know what I expected, but this isn’t it. He seems to be in a mood for sharing, though. I’m tempted to ask if he’s so willing to collaborate then why didn’t he ever call off the hitmen watching the Wallace Hospital, but I don’t think taking the conversation in that direction would be helpful. Better to let him think that we can work together on the human hive. Maybe that way I can get him to give up the deadman switch contingencies he’s got waiting.
“What about the attack on my grandparents?” I ask. The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. Another unhelpful line of questioning, but it’s too late now. “What did they have to do with anything?”
“Oh, yes. I imagined that you would be curious about that. The whole affair was Smith’s idea. A price he demanded for his assistance both to me and to our mutual benefactor. He and Dorothy James were lovers, did you know? He was quite obsessed with extracting revenge for both his humiliation and her death. He knew it was you and the others that had killed her, of course, though the ruse with the earthquake was very clever. I quite expected that you would survive the event in Denver. I even considered contacting you once that was over, but I wanted us to meet again on a more equal footing. And on a one-on-one basis.”
“Is there some reason you needed me alone for this?”
“Indeed.” He smiles his gruesome grimace. “I do not believe that the others would understand my proposal. Or even give it proper consideration. Evan is only able to see in black and white, only able to accept what he already believes to be the proper course. Louise is too enamored with preserving humanity in its present state. Her faith in the primacy of the human mind echoes Father’s. Chad was never more than a lackey. I was pleased to hear of his demise. Your doing, I assume?”
“Actually, no,” I reply. “That one was on Dorothy. We were on surprisingly good terms when he died.”
“Interesting.” Jeff nods. “Back to our siblings. Marc is a fool not worth discussing. And Andrea—while she will certainly bring beauty to the world whatever the state of things—could not be entrusted to make any significant decisions about the correct path to improve humanity.”
“But you can? You’re the one who should be making that call?”
“I am open to input,” Jeff says in his most magnanimous monotone, “but I have a rough plan in place. Yes.”
“The human hive.”
He nods.
“Tell me all about it then.”
“Good,” he says. I wouldn’t know it from his tone or body language, but his vitals show that he just relaxed quite a bit. “I knew you had the moral flexibility and pragmatic nature required for this kind of work. Please, make yourself comfortable while I explain.”