CHAPTER 24
It was snowing, on the day. The streets had been cleared, and the parking lots, but the snow stood up in banks along the edges of both, where it had been piled by the plows. It continued to fall, big flakes descending slowly, dancing about at random in the calm air. Melody did not look out at it. She sat bundled in a thick coat, inside a warm car, and even so she was shaking.
She had come to know fear during her ordeal, and still nothing could compare to that night on which she had been shot, when she had felt her insides collapse and the breath crushed out of her, and she had seen her death at hand. No other fear held a candle to that one, but today’s fear was of a different sort. Today she was allowing herself to be carried toward death, willingly, in the back of a taxi. The driver had no idea, of course; he had attempted some idle conversation early in the ride but had soon given up, recognizing his passenger as sullen and uninterested. Melody could not think where to fix her eyes. Closing them was useless, entombing her with nothing but her fear for company, but looking out at the wintery world reminded her of her mission. It was hard to breathe, and she could feel, deep inside herself, a little child who would wish to be elsewhere, who would fantasize that none of it was real and would suggest turning and running. Melody never quite gave voice to that child; she knew that given the slightest leave it would take everything, including her honor, in the name of animal fear and cowardice.
All of this left Melody staring blankly at the back of the front passenger’s seat of the taxicab, wishing she had some tool or method by which she could push the fear away, because it was torture. It was like an intense sickness filling her body.
The cab turned, and she looked outside to discover that they were entering into the parking lot of the park. It was essentially as she had surveyed it via satellite views online, except that the trees were bare and the lawns dressed in white. Melody felt a sudden surge of nausea and clenched her eyes shut. A moment later the car stopped. She continued to sit thus, and after a while she heard the cabby say, “Well, we’re here. This is where you wanted to go, right?”
Melody nodded and opened her eyes so that she could fish the necessary cash from her wallet. Cash for everything. Getting off the grid for just a few days was not particularly hard if one paid attention to the details and thought a few steps ahead.
“Let me get your change.”
“Ten, please.” That would leave him a decent tip. A part of her wanted to tell him to keep it all; that was the part of her who regarded this as a suicidal mission and did not expect to see tomorrow.
Once the money had changed hands, she took one more shuddering breath and then opened the door and stepped out. She was dressed for the weather, with a parka, gloves, and warm tights, and she carried her purse, and that was all she had with her—aside from the bullet-proof vest. That had come to her overnight courtesy of Constantine, once she had given him instructions on how to send it. Purchase of such a thing was illegal, and she and Doran had begun to look into the dark web for ways to acquire one illegally, only to discover that there was a great deal about bullet-proof (or “bullet resistant”) vests which they did not know, and that, being contraband, their prices on the black market were considerable. She had asked Constantine for guidance via the anonymous channel she had created between them, and he had replied with an offer to send her one. Now its elastic cummerbund wrapped tightly about her gut, and its heavy plates squeezed her chest front and rear like a clamp, and that slightly uncomfortable feeling was a slight comfort to her soul as she closed the taxi door and began walking toward a snowy pathway into the park.
Their conversation had been short and not hopeful. His last message to her had been a final enjoinder against her foolhardy quest and a statement that he would do what he could in her favor, but that he could promise nothing. Her last message to him had been that she would not turn back, and that any help he could give her beyond the vest she would welcome, and for it she would be grateful. What form would his aid take? What form could it take? How much could one man—even a Special Forces soldier—do against the powers whose anger she now tempted? Constantine’s other message to her, delivered in simple terms, was that they would kill her before they let her broadcast.
They were probably already here.
The path climbed a slight upward slope as it went into the park, and when she approached the crest of it the rest of the park came into view, a lovely winterscape of snowy lawns, snow-covered dormant trees, snow-covered dormant fountains, picnic tables snow-free under simple pavilions, a hutch with a public restroom across the way, and a brook cutting through it all at the bottom of a natural culvert, its waters appearing black where they were not iced over. Melody’s path, visible only as a more uniformly flat strip of snow amidst the snowy fields, wound out across the lawn and joined another near a decorative bridge which arched over the miniature river. It had been tempting to set the meeting place upon the bridge—they might have so done in a movie—but Melody had played enough shooters to know that bridges were places one went to die. Instead, Adam had set up on the lawn near it, as she had directed. She could see him there, with his cameraman, standing in the snow with hands in pockets and looking about, no doubt hoping he had not been played for a fool.
Adam Ashiro was his real name. His online video series he called the Lyra Report, which was apparently a reference to a writer who had lived and written a hundred years prior and with whom Melody was entirely unfamiliar. Adam’s theme, though, as he styled it, was truth-hunting, and his style seemed less of conspiracy and more of an intellectual rebel. Most importantly, he had viewers, he could get live viewers, and he had expressed willingness to take a risk. Melody had not been clear with him about the full extent of the risk; she had not mentioned bullet-proof vests to him.
His cameras were already set upon tall tripods and wired into a notebook computer which rested on a large camera case. Adam had positioned everything so that he could interview her with the picturesque bridge in the background, and beyond that the other park-goers visible across the brook.
There was a playground there, and several families had brought their children to play in the fresh snow. That was good; the enemy would be harder pressed to murder her on camera, during a live broadcast, in plain view of families and children.
“Corin?” he called to her, when he saw her approaching. She fit the description he had received in their prior correspondence. In those missives she had used the pseudonym Corin825, an entirely random selection.
“Yeah,” she said, taking a gloved hand from her pocket and extending it to him. He did likewise, and they shook.
“Adam,” he said. “And this is my cameraman, Mez.”
“Hi, Mez,” she said, shaking his hand as well. It was easy to see why Adam had enjoyed success with his online video project. He had sharp, striking good looks and a bright, ready smile, and he had a sense of style. He was dressed well even now, in a suit and a long wool coat. Mez was taller but more plain, an ordinary-looking, even somewhat scruffy man with untidy long blond hair pulled back in a simple ponytail.
“Hey,” he said simply.
“So, here’s what I’m thinking,” said Adam, jumping to business with the vigor for which he was Internet-famous. “We’ve got the system set up so that your face will be blurred as long as you stay on your mark, and we’re going to mic you and me individually, so it’ll be easy to distort your voice. We’ll film it this way, with the bridge and the playground in the background. That work for you?”
“Yes,” she said. She was looking around, but not at his filming arrangements. She was looking for the people who would be coming to murder her.
Melody reminded herself that she could afford to be a little hopeful. She and he had prepared for this as smartly as they could, using anonymous and encrypted methods of communication, never sending twice from the same location nor using any equipment which might be bugged or hacked. The time of the interview, and its themes, they had established well in advance, so that Adam knew what he was buying and could advertise it to his fan-base, but the location she had given him only a day prior, along with an admonition that he keep it secret even from his own crew until they were en route, and that he ensure they were not followed.
“If security is your concern, I took care to do everything like you said,” he added, noting her scanning eyes. “We took a very round-about course to get here. If anyone was following us, we would have seen them. And we have a few lookouts around the park, blending in, to give us the heads-up if anyone suspect shows up. We should be good to go. Are you ready to do this?”
“Yes,” said Melody, focusing on Adam again. His smile was reassuring. Maybe that was itself a ploy, and he would in fact turn out to be a government agent, to have been one the whole time. The past few days had trained her mind to go that far.
“Just stand here, then, and let’s get the blur-filter set up.” He showed her the mark they had made in the snow. “It’s actually pretty cool software,” he continued as he arranged her just so. “Once it locks onto your face, it should track you pretty well as long as you don’t move too much or move out of frame. Mez, how we lookin’?”
“Good,” he said. “Looks good. Lighting’s not the best, but it’s decent.”
“So we’re going to have one camera on you and me, looking past you and focused on me, so hopefully the blurring filter won’t even come into play for the most part on that one. The other one is the wide shot over there.” He gestured toward the more remote camera several yards away. “That one will have a view of your face, but it’s blurred out. Mez, can you show her how it’s going to look?”
Mez pressed a couple of keys and turned the computer around so that she could see. The screen showed a still image frozen from just a moment earlier, and sure enough, there was a blurry patch over her face.
Not that it mattered. Preservation of her anonymity had been part of the initial plan, true, when she had thought the worst of her fate would be to be arrested, prosecuted, and thrown in a Federal dungeon for life. Why had she bothered? Perhaps a part of her was still trying to compromise between her legal obligations and her moral. Perhaps she had yet been seeking a middle road, by which she could retain her normal life while still pointing the people’s attention toward the great forces moving just behind them, changing their lives without their knowledge or consent. In truth, though, she was probably just scared, just trying to “get away with it.” The thought of prison was horrifying.
All of that sentiment passed with the message that they were bent not for her arrest and incarceration but her interment. If they had thrown aside the law, then she would not concern herself with it either. Let them see her. If her rebellion succeeded, let it wear her face. She found herself considering telling him to remove the filter altogether. And then she decided.
“You know what? Nevermind that,” she said. “Let them see my face. I’m breaking the law to be here, and they’ll break the law to stop me, so whatever. Let people see who I am.”
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Mez raised his eyebrows and then looked over at Adam. Adam returned Mez’s glance and then asked, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. And my name is Melody. Melody Anne Ritter, and I’m here to talk about a things I found by accident and was almost killed over. The government wants it hidden, but they’re wrong. People need to know about this. They can’t live real lives without knowing the truth about this stuff.”
“Wow. Okay, that’s perfect. Can I get you to say that again, on camera? Mez, are we good to go?”
“We’re a few minutes early, but the stream is up and we’ve already got viewers. A couple thousand and climbing.”
“All right, send it.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Turn it all on. Co—Melody—”
“Which camera do I look at?”
“This one!” he said, leading her eye to the nearer camera and not quite able to contain the excitement in his voice.
“Okay, we’re going out live,” said Mez.
“Melody, you want to tell the world what you just told me?”
“Yes,” she said, and she looked into the camera.
It was strange, looking into a professional camera lens. It was like looking into a single great, black eye with no pupil (or perhaps all pupil), a depthless glass void. There was something uncanny about it, and she found it difficult to imagine such an eye as a portal to thousands of people.
“My name is Melody Ritter, and I’m here to talk about the AI and the other things I discovered, which almost got me killed and may get me killed soon, because the government is covering them up. They say it’s for national security, but it’s not. They’re giving away our national security because they’re scared, and they want to control how things go, but they can’t. And they want to keep it a secret from you because they think you can’t handle it, that you’ll go crazy or riot or something. But people need to know about this, because if you don’t know the truth, then none of your choices matter.”
She looked to Adam then, but he did not miss a beat. “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, stepping forward to join her. “Welcome to a special live edition of the Lyra report. If what you just heard sounds a bit crazy—” Melody pulled her phone from her pocket and loaded the stream for the broadcast. “—and you’re thinking, ‘Oh no, Adam, you’re going down the kooky conspiracy squirrel hole like a nut!’ then I ask you to just hold on a few minutes and listen to what this lady has to say. I’ve already seen some of the evidence she has to offer, and it’s compelling.”
“Yeah, you’re not broadcasting,” said Melody.
“What?”
“What?” echoed Mez. “We’ve got over four thousand viewers, now.”
“No, the stream is down,” she said, tossing her phone to Mez.
“What the F?” he said, as he looked at the “content violates terms of service” notice and scrolled through the chat history of viewers complaining about the failed stream.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Melody. “Just do like we talked about.”
“Yeah, I’m working on it.”
Melody was looking around again with hunting eyes. “It” was happening. “They” were here. But where? There were people around, but which were enemies and which were just people? Adam was looking down at his phone, typing a text message. Mez had knelt in the snow and was working furiously at his computer. The children were still at play in the playground on the far side of the brook. On the near side, away to the left, a man walked a dog, and away to the right a woman jogged with hers. An elderly couple strolled the perimeter path near another parking lot.
It would be one of the dog-walkers. That was the way it went in the movies. The man or the woman? The woman, assuredly, or both.
“Our cell service is down,” Mez was saying. “We’re completely offline.”
“Yeah, same,” said Adam.
“What the hell is going on here?”
“You should run,” said Melody. She had fixed her eyes on the woman, and the woman had met her glance and given a cheerful if minimal wave while continuing to jog along the path, the path which would carry her to the junction near the bridge and very near to the filming location.
The hairs on the back of Melody’s neck were on end, and a prickling cold sensation had swept down her shoulders and back. What strange mechanism, what unconscious processor inside her, had put what subliminal pieces together and pulled an alarm handle, she could not say, but she was not inclined to doubt it. “The woman with the dog. She’s one of them.”
“What?”
The woman maintained her cheerful expression, and perhaps to anyone else’s eyes it would have looked completely warm, natural, and genuine, but to Melody in her paranoia it looked like a mask worn by an alien, so deep in the uncanny valley that Melody felt an urge—or at least a willingness—to kill the woman then and there.
“Federal agent!” roared a voice behind her. Melody looked, and the man with the other dog has loosed it and drawn a gun and a badge. His dog’s claws tore into the snow and the black earth beneath, kicking up little showers of dirt, and it accelerated into a brown streak which hit Mez so hard that it spun him around, pulling him down by his arm. Melody shrieked in horror, and Adam shouted, “Mez!” while starting forward.
“Gun!” cried a female voice to the right.
A blow to the chest rocked Melody, sending her flying onto her back, and shots rang out, fast and close by. The speed, the tempo of them, was what Melody noticed, what surprised her. Not “bang, bang,” but “poppoppoppop.” She landed hard on the snow, struggling to breathe, and panic swarmed through her. Only peripherally did she note the roar of engines and the clatter of vehicles bouncing over obstacles.
“Get down! Get down! Drop your weapons!” Melody rolled onto her side, wheezing, and tried to see. Sport utility vehicles were pulling up around them. One had already stopped, and men in full military garb, wearing helmets and even night vision goggles, were stepping out with rifles and shouting.
“Federal agents!”
“Drop your weapons! Get down on the ground!”
Somewhere, there was another burst of gunfire—it sounded to Melody like a mechanical belch, but it seemed to be far away—and then the air was filled with a strange sound that Melody had never heard nor imagined: a high flurry of terrifying snaps that seemed to come from nowhere. That was accompanied by the clatter of bullets on metal, which was unmistakable to her after so many years spent playing combat videogames that prided themselves on high-fidelity audio, and she realized that the soldiers were shooting. This was the sound of many suppressed rifles all letting forth at once in fusillade at another vehicle which had just arrived. Melody also realized she was pushing herself to her feet, and that her breath was returning. Not yet returned was any part of her brain which might think of what to do next.
“Cease fire!” a voice was shouting. “Drop your weapons! Net call, cease fire!”
Melody could see the latest vehicle, now come to a stop and all full of holes. A body lay in the snow by it, with red blood splashed about. Soldiers were sweeping around the far side of the car with rifles at the ready, shouting for weapons to be dropped and for survivors to lay themselves face-down down on the ground, arms out, palms up. Several more men in plain clothes had approached from the periphery, loosely surrounding the scene but too few to fight against so many fully equipped soldiers.
“Federal agents!” they were shouting in return. “This is a federal law enforcement matter! Drop your weapons!”
For a moment there was a great deal of shouting, but no gunfire. Melody remembered Adam and Mez. She found Adam lying on his back, and Mez over him. The dog lay dead in the snow. The man who had been walking the dog was on his back as well, but he seemed to be moving. The woman who had been walking the other dog was also on the ground, trying to hold up herself with one arm and her pistol with the other, so that she might point it at the armored, rifle-wielding soldiers swarming around them.
“He’s been shot!” Mez shouted amid the irate exchange between the two forces. “Adam, come on, man! Hold on!”
“Put your fucking guns down! Put ‘em down and let us treat the wounded!” roared one of the soldiers.
“Don’t fucking do it!” one of the men in plain clothes shouted at his own, and then at the soldiers: “You people are off the fucking farm, here!”
“Will everyone just stop shouting?” shouted Melody, aware of the irony but relieved to have regained her breath and determined to use it. She pushed forward, into the midst of them. It was very strange to see so many guns pointed at her and around her. “Shut up!”
“Melody!” a familiar voice barked. It was Mr. Constantine, approaching from vehicle they had shot to pieces. “What the fuck are you doing? Get down!”
“Fucking Constantine!” said the other, the apparent leader of the ones in plain clothes. “Do you know what the hell you’ve done? You’re finished! You’re a fucking dead man.”
“Hey, Joe,” said Constantine, turning and walking toward the man who had spoken. “Federal agents my ass.” He squeezed something on his kit and said, “These people are Agency. Fuckin’ TF Royal kill squad.” Then he raised his rifle and pointed it at the man’s—Joe’s—face. “Fuckin’ order your guys to stand down, and maybe we’ll patch ‘em up. Otherwise, we kill all you mother-fuckers.”
“Mr. Constantine, don’t,” said Melody.
“Melody, not now!” he snapped.
“No, you’re on camera.”
Constantine did not take his eyes away from Joe. “Your cameras are down, Melody. Whatever you had going, they took care of that before it ever went live.”
“No, I mean our backup camera,” she said. “The drone.” That drew a few looks, which pleased her. “We’re live, right now,” she explained, “on multiple mirror streams. Everybody’s watching this.”
“Bullshit,” said Joe.
“It’s not. My boyfriend is flying it. This whole thing was recorded. Everyone’s going to know what happened here. Everyone already does. Hashtag LyraReport. Check it.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ move,” said Constantine to Joe, and he held his rifle with one hand while he fished out his cell phone. “What site do I go to?”
Melody rolled her eyes, walked over, and took his phone from him. A moment later she handed it back. A video was buffering. When it loaded, he could see an overhead camera feed of a group of figures pointing guns at one another on a snowy lawn. It zoomed in as one of them, a female, approached two others, took a small object from the one with the rifle, fiddled with it, and handed it back.
Constantine grunted and showed it to Joe.
While Joe watched the feed in obvious disbelief, Constantine pressed that button on his chest again, which Melody took to be a transmitter for his radio. “Medics, get to work on the wounded.” Several soldiers began approaching, carefully, those who had fallen, including Adam and several of the supposed Federal agents. The rest even now refused to lower their weapons, but they allowed the medics to ply their craft. “So,” he said to Joe. “What’s it going to be?”
Joe lowered his weapon. He was obviously considering his options. They could hear sirens in the distance. Melody frowned. What would the police do? These people might be fake agents, but they had badges. If this was not resolved by the time the local cops arrived, what would Constantine and his soldiers do? They would surely have to surrender then.
Melody saw a sly look come onto Joe’s face, and he said something which she could not hear. Whatever his words, they enraged Constantine, who turned his rifle around and struck Joe hard in the face with the butt of it. Joe fell to his knees, dripping blood from his nose. There was a sudden resurgence of shouting and threats, and Melody found herself shouting as well, a pointless objection. “No!” said her voice. “Stop!” So cliché.
There was also a swelling sound in the air, a hollow shrill howl, and Melody became aware of it about then, along with the others, as it grew just a little too loud to ignore.
“What the fuck is that?” asked Joe of no one particularly, as he held his nose with one hand. He was looking up over Melody’s shoulder. Constantine side-stepped so that he could look without relinquishing sight of Joe. Melody turned.
It was a drone, but not her drone. It was a small ghost of an aircraft, with a mirror-like exterior that made it almost impossible to see, hovering in the air, moving about, looking at them. As they watched, its mirror-like surface faded to a dull gray, and they could see it better. It was shaped like a small, squat jet fighter, and it held itself up by means they could not discern but which made plenty of noise. It was not deafeningly loud, but it was loud to be sure.
“Son of a bitch,” muttered Constantine.
“Movement,” said one of the soldiers, lifting his rifle.
Melody saw it even as he pointed, a phantom shape coming up out of the little gully of the brook, near the bridge. It looked like the world behind it, the snowy lawn and trees, only not quite as bright. It looked like a dull shadow, only not projected on any surface but detached and walking through the world. The effect of it now was nothing like its appearance in darkness, but its shape was unmistakable. This was the phantom which had appeared on her parents’ property and terrified them, and later had killed her would-be assassin in the rain. Its footsteps kicked up small puffs of snow and made distinct, large prints, but it was not as though the thing was quite invisible, just footprints out of nowhere. Rather, the play of light and shadow where its feet met the ground was complex and a little difficult for the eye to understand.
As it approached, the effect of its camouflage faded suddenly to a dull gray, and before them it came to a stop, just a few yards away. It was tall, taller than the tallest man, and it was big, bulkier than it had seemed in prior encounters, its figure suggesting extreme but organic musculature, especially in the upper body. It had a hulking, almost hunched-back shape, like a beast. More than that, though, its proportions were spooky, with arms just a little too long, and strange corners and edges like horns protruding from its head, shoulders, and elbows, and a sharpness to its fingertips, all of which gave it a horrid, demon-like profile, and at the same time left an impression of sleekness. For all of this, though, there was no denying now that it was a suit in fact, a full body covering, complete with a blank, gray face.
Everyone stared. Everyone was silent. Only the medics remembered their work, and only after a moment. Then it moved its hands—and several more guns trained on it—but it only reached up and, with care, removed its helmet.