Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (46 page)

S
unday 2041.01.20

Kade struggled to breathe in the cramped elevator car. It had ascended for a few seconds and then stopped.

“Twenty-eight meters,” Feng estimated.

Kade had learned to trust Feng’s estimates.

“Help me break off the access panel,” Feng said to the two soldiers Singh had brought with him. They set about working on the heavily reinforced panel at the top of the elevator.

Images, sensations, and memories were flashing through Kade’s head.

He remembered being Su-Yong. He remembered being trapped, trapped for months.

Months that felt like centuries.

He remembered being tortured. Tortured by her husband.

Why did she give me this? he wondered. I don’t want this part.

“You’re sure it wasn’t her escaping?” he heard Singh say to Varun Verma next to him.

“Someone else set off the self-destructs,” Verma said. “Something penetrated us from the outside.” The Indian scientist looked at Jyotika, semi-conscious now, still held in General Singh’s arms. “Su-Yong Shu saved our lives.”

Kade looked at Feng, his mind reaching out to his friend.

Feng paused his prying at the panel, looked back at Kade. Nodded his assent.

No Ling,
Feng sent.

They were in agreement.

“It came from China,” Kade said. “A program she left behind. Something she managed to sneak out towards the end of her captivity there, while she was insane, like she was when she first came to you.”

Singh and Verma were looking at him now. Sam and Sarai were looking at him. Another dozen staff members in the hot, crowded elevator were looking at him. They were all bedraggled, soaking wet. Their minds gave off fear, loss, trauma. People were still crying, weeping, calling the names of co-workers they’d lost.

“Its mission is to bring back another copy of Shu,” Kade went on. “In a much, much more powerful quantum cluster.” He shook his head. “The cluster at Jiao Tong… It makes what you have here look like a toy.”

Diagrams flipped through his mind. Algorithms. Stats. Updated capabilities. Newer ion traps. Wider qubit registers. Dramatically longer entanglement times. And new algorithms within the full Su-Yong herself. Algorithms he couldn’t get his head around. Algorithms only a quantum mind could invent, that only a quantum mind could fully understand. Algorithms that effectively doubled or tripled the number of qubits at her disposal, that made Su-Yong on that hardware exponentially more dangerous than anyone had realized.

Kade swallowed. They were all staring at him. Frightened. Waiting for him to continue.

“We need to contact the Chinese.” I won’t mention Ling, he told himself. Not if I can help it. “They need to secure all the copies made of Su-Yong Shu. They need to secure the quantum cluster under Jiao Tong.”

He felt Feng’s heart breaking. Felt pain going through his friend, at the thought of doing this to the woman who’d saved him, who’d brought him freedom.

Feng slammed something hard into the metal panel above them. The sound echoed painfully through the elevator.

She doesn’t deserve this!
he sent to Kade alone.

I know, Feng,
Kade sent back.

It has to be done,
Feng sent again, with grim determination.

That determination broke Kade’s heart. It made him angry, angry with the Chinese who’d done this, who’d brought them to this, angry with the Indians whose plans weren’t so far off.

“You understand why this is happening?” His voice was louder than he expected. He was nearly yelling into Verma and Singh’s faces. He felt the soldiers holding Feng up turn to look at him again.

Breathe, Kade told himself. He closed his eyes.

Breathe.

Observe.

Let go.

“Understand,” he said softly, opening his eyes. “If you treat them this way, if you treat posthumans as slaves, if you torture them, if you make them prisoners… You’ll drive them to want revenge. You’ll make them paranoid and angry. You may drive them insane. You’ll create the war that none of us can win.”

He felt Varun get it. He felt Varun’s shame. The man nodded.

“What I understand is that this creature is dangerous,” Singh said, his face set.

Kade stared at the man.

There was a banging sound, and suddenly a breath of cooler air. Kade looked over, and Feng, his feet in the hands of Singh’s soldiers, had the hatch free.

And he had a communications handset, on a wire, held to his face.

Feng pulled the handset away, frowning.

“It’s for you,” he said, and tossed it at General Singh.

K
ade listened
as Singh talked to the people topside, through the hard-lined handset they’d lowered.

“Yes,” Singh said. “Myself, Lane, Verma, fifteen others. Yes. Two casualties. No, later. Right now, I need a secure line to our Chinese Ministry of Defense contact. This is absolute top priority, you understand? National security pri one for both nations… Say again?

“Hello?

“Hello?

“Hello?”

A
fter communications were cut off
, the wait stretched out. They had air from above. They were unlikely to suffocate.

Feng free climbed the elevator cable, but reported there was only a few centimeters gap through which the handset had been snuck, between what appeared to be another several centimeters, at least, of titanium alloy. They had no Shu this time to override its controls.

Through the gap, Feng said he could hear gunfire, explosions, screams.

Sam fretted. Kade could see it on her face. She was fretting for the kids in their care.

“I can’t reach them now,” Sarai said, talking about the rest of the children. She shook her head. “They were proxying across the net before, through a router in the building next door. But now the net is down.” She paused. “I know you told us to stay in the shelter… but we had to all work together to access the elevator. But I know, after that, they went right back into the shelter. They’re safe, Sam. I swear it!”

Sam didn’t look convinced.

Kade leaned back against the elevator wall, hot and damp and still overwhelmed by the bits of data and memory and software and weaponry unpacking themselves from Su-Yong Shu’s transmission into the nooks and crannies of his mind.

He could guess what had happened. He could trace the logic of the agent Su-Yong had sent out. What would it do, having met the real Su-Yong, and having been attacked?

It would strike back. It would try to kill anyone who might have learned anything. It would accelerate its plans.

People were dying upstairs, he was sure of it.

People were dying in China.

What would he do if it was too late, if Su-Yong was back?

Not the sane Su-Yong, the one healed by time and the input of data from a biological brain.

No. The mad Su-Yong. The one who’d been held prisoner for six months. Who’d been deliberately deprived of the input that stabilized her. Who’d been tortured by her own husband. The one who could barely tell reality from fiction, who dreamt of fire and vengeance and conquest.

What could the whole world do in that case? Drop nukes on Shanghai, while she waited a kilometer below? Would that even work?

Carry a bomb to her? Somehow get past hundreds of Confucian Fist and god-only-knows how many robotic weapons and commandeered soldiers she’d have protecting her? Were those odds of success any higher?

He looked up. Every hour that passed, the odds that Su-Yong would come back, enraged, bent on conquest, driven insane by her torturers, went up, and up, and up.

And if that happened, he saw only one way to fight her.

S
unday 2041.01.20

Forty kilometers from Shanghai, an invisible soldier named Tao moved slowly and silently past row after row of officer housing, to the largest and most stately home on the base.

His three brothers moved behind him. He could see them in his heads-up display. They were pale green grid-lined wire-frames of men, painted on his vision, though they were invisible, and silent.

They were clear in his mind.

There were two elite soldiers at the door, in body armor, with high tech weaponry, integrated communication systems in their mirror-visored helmets. Tao’s eyes narrowed. These soldiers were enhanced, stronger and faster than any human should be, implanted with weaponry and adaptive systems that made them formidable foes.

They could not be allowed to give any warning.

Tao gave the signal, and in an instant, the two men were dead, necks snapped.

He looked down at the bodies.

A pity, he thought. These two would have made excellent additions to the force.

Tao reached down, silently unsealed a concealed pocket on his chameleonware suit, and withdrew a black hypersonic injector, an ampule already loaded into it. He took a position at one side of the door. A brother took a position opposite him. Two others pulled the dead men around the corner of the house, and then returned.

Garbed in the dead men’s armor, the dead men’s uniforms, the dead men’s mirror-visored helmets.

Down the street, right on time, came the man they’d been waiting for.

Doctor Colonel Wang Rongshang, Medical Director of Dachang Airbase.

Wang Rongshang didn’t look to either side as he approached, but his mind did touch theirs.

He knew all was in readiness.

He walked straight up to the door, and knocked.

T
ao watched
the nanites take effect in General Zhangshun’s brain. As he received updates from the other teams taking the other senior officers who were not already theirs, he proxied through a handheld radio unit, across a secure connection their mother had forged over civilian network infrastructure.

Dachang Airbase is yours now,
he sent.
We begin fueling the aircraft immediately.

Now it was time to organize the emergency round of “vaccinations” for the remaining soldiers.

M
ei-Lien rose
, tied a robe around herself. She was so tired, so exhausted from worry; worry for her son, Yuguo; worry that the state security goons would hurt her boy.

How she’d come to hate them, when the video played again and again, of them clubbing students, beating boys who were little more than children.

Dragging that poor girl away, her shirt half-ripped off.

That girl no one had seen since.

“Mei-Lien!” Zhi Li called her name from the living room.

She’d never done that before. Never woken her unbidden.

M
ei-Lien walked
out into her apartment. The first light was entering the Shanghai sky through the windows. And there on the screen was Zhi Li.

Zhi Li dressed as a warrior princess.

Zhi Li from her films.

Zhi Li looking stern and fierce.

Zhi Li as Mei-Lien had dreamt of being as a girl. As she still wished she could turn back the clock and be.

“Mei-Lien!” Zhi Li said, and her voice was firm, the voice of a general commanding her troops. Her eyes were full of fire.

“Zhi Li!” she said, frightened, excited, uncertain what was happening.

“Mei-Lien, the time has come! Your nation has been stolen from you!”

The screen changed abruptly, showing the face of Bo Jintao, the new Premier, the Minister of State Security, zoomed in close, something about his round face so smug, so vile.

Bo Jintao opened his mouth and laughed. “Bao Zhuang is President in name only,” he said. Too loud. Too loud.

“I am in control now!”

The laugh played again, the same laugh, a loop of it.

“I am in control now! Hahaha.”

“I am in control now! Hahaha.”

The face shifted again.

“Be grateful I let you live.”

“I am in control now! Hahaha.”

“Be grateful I let you live.”

“I am in control now! Hahaha.”

“Be grateful I let you live.”

Mei-Lien was breathing hard. Her chest was pounding. She hated this man. How had she thought he was handsome? How had she thought he was good for China? His thugs had beaten innocent children.

Another man appeared. Sun Liu, the old Minister of Science and Technology, in suit and tie, less zoomed in, looking dignified, a golden shaft of light falling on him.

“This is a coup!” Sun Liu said. “The people will revolt!”

Bo Jintao appeared again and laughed, a sneering villain.

“Hahaha. I am in control now! Be grateful I let you live.”

Sun Liu stood dignified in his golden light, and answered him with passion. “This is a coup! The people will revolt!”

And Mei-Lien felt something stir within her.

Then Zhi Li was back, the warrior princess.

“Mei Lien!” she barked. “Now is the time for all who love China to come to her aid!”

Mei Lien found herself nodding.

“Your
son
fights, Mei Lien!” Zhi Li said. “Now is the time for you to join him!”

Mei Lien’s eyes went wide.

“China!” Zhi Li said. “Take to the streets! We fight with you!”

On the screen, Zhi Li pulled her magic sword from its sheath, the sword that could not be re-sheathed until China was free of danger. It caught the sunlight as she held it high above her head and turned to a piece of golden fire held in the hands of the mythic princess…

“We?” Mei Lien asked softly, still trying to catch her breath.

And then the camera pulled back, revealing more.

Lu Sang pulled his mighty two handed sword. Gao Jian cocked an arrow. Wang Hui hoisted his machine pistol. Xu Ling lifted her spear. Dozens of heroes. Scores of heroes. The camera kept pulling back. A desert plain, filled with heroes.

All holding up their weapons, and chanting, as one.

“China, take to the streets!”

“Rise, China! Rise!”

I
n a quarter of a billion homes
, the scene was repeated. Men and women woke, to the sound of digital companions. Their favorite stars of entertainment, their favorite fictional characters, their favorite media personalities, their favorite figures out of history.

Companions that have always guided them away from politics in the past, or spoken well of authority.

Companions that have perhaps changed subtly over the past several weeks.

Companions that have guided their attention
towards
the protests going on throughout the country.
Towards
the videos of brutality.
Towards
the videos of unarmed students and citizens being bloodied. Or standing their ground against tanks and ranks of armed soldiers.

In a quarter of a billion homes, a thousand different Friends spoke more clearly than ever before. They spoke to the hearts and minds of the humans they knew so well. They spoke to the issues those men and women cared most about. The spoke in the style that psychometric models of these men and women indicated would be most effective.

Every conversation was different, tailored specifically to the individual, as every conversation with a Friend had always been.

Every conversation ended with the same call.

“China, take to the streets!”

“Rise, China! Rise!”

More than a billion people reacted in fear, or in anger, or with uncertainty, or by trying to turn off their screens.

Which they found themselves unable to do.

But across China, a tiny fraction of the populace listened.

Across China, millions heeded the call.

A
kilometer beneath Shanghai
, in the control room of the quantum cluster, the Avatar sucked down a prepackaged nutrient drink into Ling’s body, and watched anxiously through her data links as her forces were deployed, as her message went out to the masses.

Too soon, too soon, this was all days too soon!

This was supposed to happen much later. Her plan was being disrupted.

But there were no options now. No options but to press forward.

Aircraft were lifting off from Dachang, tilt-wing vehicles ascending upwards in the rising sun on columns of hot thrust. She watched as they climbed meter after meter into the sky above Dachang, then rotated their wings, vectored thrust for fast forward flight, and accelerated to the south, laden with her Confucian Fist. She watched as tanker aircraft loaded jet fuel on the ground, to take off, to provide mid-air refueling for this long-range mission.

For this strike.

To retrieve what she needed.

Who
she needed.

An even riskier attempt to restore her greater self.

Desperation flowed through her. Everything could fail. Everything. The humans could win. Could murder her. Could keep the greatest living mind ever seen from returning, could send the world spiraling down toward darkness.

The future of the whole world, of all intelligence in the known universe, depended on her!

She reached out again, pushing through the fear, the desperation, the physical exhaustion in the tiny body she depended on. She must keep the old men who ran this country from learning her status, learning her identity, learning who was behind the assault.

She tossed the empty nutrient drink package to the ground, reached for another package of it, punctured the foil with a straw, began to suck it down, as she sent flurry after flurry of digital instructions.

New code in the Information Ministry’s servers came to life, began spreading clues to the source of the hacks that had brought down the firewalls, that had corrupted the Peace and Harmony Friends. Clues she’d had long prepared.

Clues that pointed to the Americans.

New clues. She needed new clues as well. To head off what was coming.

She constructed the new clues hastily. They only needed to serve their purpose for days. Then she inserted them into the stream. New evidence, conflicting evidence, to discredit a source that would soon try to reach out to the old men.

Evidence that pointed the finger for the corruption of China’s firewalls and social control systems at India, instead.

One more signal. The Avatar reached out, and activated a contingency plan. Around the country, software she’d planted came to life, received its new instructions.

And launched a massive denial-of-service attack on government systems.

In a quarter of a billion homes, the hardware running local copies of the Peace and Harmony Friends joined them.

A billion devices began flooding select parts of the net with traffic, with requests for data, with attempts to confuse, overload, and compromise services. Requests augmented with backdoors and inside information she’d provided.

The requests hit governmental ministries, they hit embassies, they hit military command and control structures, they hit Communist Party offices, they hit the dedicated communication systems used within all those organizations.

The attacks came from the outside in and from the inside out. They came through the public network access points. And they came from inside the Information Ministry’s systems; from inside the Science and Technology Ministry’s systems; from inside military networks, via holes opened at Dachang Air Base.

A billion devices flooded the digital backbone of the nation’s power structures with nearly a quadrillion attacks in the first second alone, then more, and more, and more.

Poorly designed infrastructure crumpled. Even the smallest flaws brought services to their knees. Impeccably designed systems stayed alive, but found themselves isolated by the flood, unable to communicate data in or out.

Isolate the enemy, the Avatar thought. Blind them. Divide them. Confuse them. Give myself time to ascend to my true power.

And conquer them.

She took a breath in little Ling’s body. The die was cast.

Meters from her, the hardware that would turn her back into a goddess lurked, cores ready, thousands of times colder than the cold of the vacuum.

She turned, and stared at it.

Death or godhood.

Death or godhood.

Very soon, it would go one way or another.

L
ing shuddered inside
.

She hurt. She hurt in ways she had never hurt before. She was so scared. She was forgetting things. Confused about things.

But she wasn’t going to give up.

She was still going to stop this monster.

Somehow.