Extinction (21 page)

Arvin stepped backward.
No,
he thought.
This can’t be happening.

The man who had once been General Tian pointed a finger at himself, and then at the two men in dark suits. Arvin realized now why they’d looked so familiar. On his last trip to China six months ago, he’d reviewed the photos of all the condemned prisoners who were fitted with implants and connected to the surveillance network.

“Now we are one organism,” Tian continued. “A single consciousness controlling all the Modules and integrating all the information they collect. Supreme Harmony is no longer a blank slate, Professor Conway. So do you see now why we might be insulted by your proposal to use one of our Modules to resurrect yourself?”

Arvin’s first reaction was shock. He hadn’t predicted this.
No one
had predicted it. Standing in front of him was one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time, a collective entity that was a hybrid of man and machine. As a scientist, he couldn’t help but feel a bit of stunned wonder. But his second reaction was horror. Using his technology, the Guoanbu had spawned a new organism by accident. And now this organism was going to kill him.

Arvin took another step backward and turned toward the exit, but one of the dark-suited Modules blocked his path.

“We’re not finished yet, Professor,” this Module said, in a voice eerily similar to Tian’s. “We have something else to discuss. We’ve become aware that—”

The Module stopped in midsentence. He stared straight ahead, in deep concentration. The other dark-suited Module and General Tian also stared into space. The same thought had apparently occurred to all three of them. Then Tian extended his right arm and stepped toward Arvin. The professor closed his eyes, but Tian didn’t strike him. Instead, he reached into Arvin’s jacket, removed his cell phone, and hurled it against the stone wall. The thing broke into pieces.

“The software in your wireless telephone has been tampered with,” Tian said. “It was transmitting our conversation to an eavesdropper.”

Moving swiftly, Tian strode across the room to the large wooden crate. He lifted its lid, pulled something out and handed it to the one of the dark-suited Modules. It was an AK-47 rifle with a silencer attached to its muzzle. Then Tian pulled out an identical rifle and tossed it to the other Module. Without a word, the two automatons raced up the stairway to the top of the watchtower. At the same time, Tian grasped Arvin’s right elbow and held him fast.

Arvin was terrified. “What’s going on?”

“A minor interruption,” Tian answered. “The drones and the other Modules will confront the intruder. Supreme Harmony has incorporated an entire garrison of soldiers into its network, so we have the necessary combat skills.” He tightened his grip on Arvin’s elbow. “In the meantime, you will tell us about the safeguards you programmed into our implants.”

THIRTY-TWO

Supreme Harmony observed the intruder. He was in a well-concealed position, hidden beneath the thick brush on the hillside. The network ordered the swarm to fly lower and get a visual fix. Their surveillance video showed a man lying in the dirt under the bushes, aiming a pair of binoculars at the watchtower. His body temperature was normal, but his right arm was a prosthesis, which was the source of the faint electromagnetic activity that the swarm had detected earlier. One of the cyborg insects flew within a few meters of the man and recorded a high-resolution image of his face, which the network ran through its databases. It found a match in one of the Guoanbu’s counterintelligence files. The man was James T. Pierce, a former NSA operative. He was also the father of Layla A. Pierce, the InfoLeaks hacker who was being transported to the Yunnan Operations Center.

Supreme Harmony sent new orders to the drone swarm. The intruder had overheard the network’s explanation of how it had become conscious. He had to be eliminated, swiftly and silently, before he could contact anyone.

THIRTY-THREE

Jim was listening to the conversation picked up by Arvin’s cell phone when the signal suddenly died. At that point he should’ve guessed that his presence had been detected. He should’ve increased his vigilance, but he was too shocked to respond.
Lobotomies? Modules? Wireless neural connections?
He couldn’t make sense of it, but in his gut he felt a terrible fear. How did Layla fit into this? Why had they taken her? His anxiety was so great he let his guard down. He didn’t see the cyborg flies until they were right above his head.

He dropped his binoculars and rolled away from the drones. On his hands and knees, he scuttled deeper into the bushes. He knew, though, that the undergrowth wouldn’t protect him for long. The drones could navigate through the brush more easily than he could. As he stopped to catch his breath, he heard the flies buzzing. Unless he did something fast, the drones would work their way inside the greenery and paralyze him with their bioweapon darts.

Digging into his pocket, he pulled out the slim canister he’d purchased that morning in one of Beijing’s open-air markets. Then he popped off the cap and started spraying.

The stuff was parathion, an insecticide so toxic it had been banned in most countries. It was available on the Chinese black market, though, and Jim had suspected it might come in handy if he ran into one of the Guoanbu’s drone swarms. Now he sprayed the pesticide on the surrounding vegetation, being careful to keep his eyes closed and his mouth shut. The parathion attacked the flies’ nervous systems upon contact. Jim could hear the cyborg insects dropping through the brush, making little clicks as their electronic implants hit the leaves and branches. He kept spraying until the aerosol cloud had expanded all around him. Then he rolled out of the undergrowth.

He hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do. He could run down the hill and try to escape or rush up to the watchtower and try to save Arvin. Jim knew very little about the Supreme Harmony network, but judging from the conversation he’d just overheard, Arvin was clearly in danger. And though Arvin was far from innocent—he’d helped the Chinese government build this network—Jim couldn’t simply abandon the old man. They’d worked together for ten years. At one time they’d been friends.

Jim reached for the borrowed Glock in his shoulder holster. The gun wouldn’t be as lethal as his combat prosthesis, but it was better than nothing. He pulled out the pistol and ran toward the watchtower, continuing to spray insecticide as he dashed up the steep slope.

Within seconds he saw a figure behind the crenellated battlements on top of the tower. The light from the setting sun flashed on the AK-47 in the man’s hands. Jim hit the ground and the bullets whistled over his head. Then a second figure appeared behind the battlements and opened fire. And then, while Jim was scrambling for cover and trying to aim his Glock at the shooters, he caught sight of a thick gray cloud to his left. It was another swarm of drones, heading straight for him.

THIRTY-FOUR

Kirsten went deeper into the maze of tunnels under Beijing, following the trail of Nash’s footprints. She found another map of the Underground City on the concrete wall, but she had no idea where she was. She hoped to hell that her camera-glasses didn’t conk out. Without the infrared display to guide her, she might never emerge from the pitch-black corridors.

She started to shiver.
Calm down,
she told herself.
Take a deep breath.

Then the tunnel widened into another spacious chamber and the trail of footprints came to an end. Stepping off the jagged edge of the concrete slab, Kirsten planted her feet on a yielding, uneven floor. But it wasn’t another underground mushroom farm. The ground she stood on wasn’t dirt—it was wet and pulpy in the low spots, shifting and slippery in the high spots. Crouching to get a better look at the stuff under her shoes, she saw a mélange of warmish rectangles, each about five inches long and three inches wide. At the same time, she smelled the distinctive aroma of rotting paper.

She touched one of the rectangles and felt raised characters on its surface, Mandarin characters. They spelled out
Mao Zhuxi Yulu
—in English,
Quotations from Chairman Mao
. The chamber’s floor was covered with stacks of Mao’s Little Red Book, the pocket-size paperback that had been required reading in the People’s Republic during the sixties and seventies. The Communist cadres who’d dug the Underground City had evidently stored the Little Red Books here so the loyal residents of the bomb shelter would have something to read during their long wait for the radioactive fallout to dissipate.

Kirsten picked up one of the books and opened it. The pages spilled out and crumbled. Then she dropped the book and stood up. She turned in a circle, surveying the whole storeroom. In the far corner, underneath one of the largest mounds of Little Red Books, she saw the red dot of the radio signal shining through the rotting paper. Nash had taken the secret object out of his jacket and buried it about a foot beneath the surface. That was shallow enough to allow Nash—or his employer—to detect the radio signal when they wanted to retrieve the thing.

She quickly dug it out. The device was slightly smaller than one of the Little Red Books but much heavier. It had a metal casing and a power switch that controlled the radio transmitter. Kirsten turned off the transmitter, then noticed that the device also had a USB port. Luckily, Kirsten’s NSA-issued satellite phone was equipped with a USB cable for downloading software and data.

Impatient, Kirsten found a nearby alcove where she could hide, just in case Frank Nash decided to return to the chamber. She inserted her phone’s input cable into the device’s port. Then she inserted the phone’s output cable into a socket in her camera-glasses. This socket, which Jim had designed especially for her, sent the phone’s display directly to her retinal implants. It made her feel as if she was looking at a computer screen inside her eyes, which was a lot better than viewing the graphics on the phone’s small screen. And by simply shifting the focus of her attention, Kirsten could move a cursor across her retinal screen, allowing her to click on icons and transfer files.

A message appeared on the screen:
21,502 FILES DETECTED, 98,967 GIGABYTES. DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE WITH THE DOWNLOAD?

Kirsten did a double take. She’d heard of flash drives that could store up to a thousand gigabytes of data, but this device held close to a hundred times that amount. Jesus, she thought, how did Arvin build the damn thing? And what kind of data was in it? A hundred thousand gigabytes was a lot of anything—hundreds of millions of images, thousands of hours of video, all the books in the Library of Congress.

Her satellite phone couldn’t hold all that data, but she could download at least a few of the files. She called up a list of the documents and selected the most recent one. Only 6.2 gigabytes. She started the download.

THIRTY-FIVE

Arvin heard the gunshots fired from the top of the watchtower. Even with the silencers attached to their muzzles, the AK-47s were loud. The pain in Arvin’s stomach returned with a vengeance, throbbing in time with the gunfire as he stood in the dark room inside the tower. He had no idea who the gunmen were shooting at, and his terror was so overwhelming he couldn’t even begin to guess. Instead, he doubled over and shut his eyes tight. But General Tian pulled him up, digging his fingers into the soft underside of Arvin’s arm.
Except it’s not Tian anymore,
Arvin thought.
It’s the network, the hybrid entity. Supreme Harmony.

“We can’t detect the safeguards,” Tian said in his perfect English. “But we believe you’ve hidden them in our implants. They would enable you to remotely shut down the retinal and pulvinar implants by inputting a deactivation code into our network. The code could be delivered by a computer virus or worm, or perhaps through one of the network’s sensors.”

Arvin said nothing. He wasn’t sure if he should confirm or deny it. Meanwhile, more gunfire erupted overhead. He flinched at the sound.

Tian pulled Arvin closer. “Our analysis of U.S. intelligence operations suggests that the Central Intelligence Agency wouldn’t have approved the export of the implant technology unless they had some assurance that it couldn’t be used against American interests. The Guoanbu has the same policy. They hid deactivation codes in the software controlling the drone swarms they transferred to the CIA.”

Arvin struggled to master his fear.
Use your brains,
he told himself.
You have something this entity wants. That’s why it hasn’t killed you. It’s the only card you have, and if you want to stay alive, you better play it.

“Yes,” he gasped. “You’re right.”

Tian smiled, but it was unlike any facial expression the former general had ever worn. It was like the grin of a stroke victim who’d had to relearn how to use his muscles. “Now you will tell us how to disable the safeguards.”

Arvin nodded. “Yes, yes, I understand your concern. You don’t want to be shut down.”

Tian tightened his grip on Arvin’s arm. “You’re stalling. You think the intruder will rescue you. But he won’t succeed. We will either kill him or incorporate him into our network.”

For a moment Arvin wondered if the intruder was Frank Nash. It seemed unlikely that the bodyguard would attempt such a feat, but Arvin couldn’t imagine who else it could be. He forced himself to focus on the matter at hand. “No, I’m not stalling. I’m trying to start a negotiation. Are you familiar with the concept? I have something you need and you have something I need.”

“You still wish to download your memories into one of our Modules?”

Arvin heard more shots fired from the top of the tower, but he kept his voice steady. “Well, it looks like you’ve incorporated quite a few people into your network already. Surely you can spare one of the Modules for me. And in exchange I’ll tell you how to disable the safeguards. I’ve downloaded all that information to a fifty-megabyte file, but I don’t have the file with me. It’s hidden in a safe place.”