The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (3 page)

“Why release it at all?” my uncle asks. “You can be damn sure the army and the president were both against it, but someone out there is interested in your story, someone who’s on your side.”

He’s needling me, talking around the subject of the Red, because he can’t argue it directly while Major Ogawa is here.

“You should be happy,” he goes on. “You wanted the eyes of the country on this proceeding. I can’t think of a better way to achieve that than to release that propaganda film on the eve of the trial.”

“What’s going on outside right now is just the beginning,”
Ogawa assures me. “You’ve engineered a media sensation, all right. I’m impressed.”

“I didn’t set this up.”

Ogawa looks skeptical. “We told that to the judge. You’re isolated in here. There’s no way you could have been involved in the release of
First Light
.”

“Of course.” I turn to my uncle. “The policy change you wanted me to see. You meant the Red. This time it’s part of the show.”

He acknowledges this with a nod. “It was never mentioned in episode two. It’s never been publicly discussed—until now.”

It’s true. In episode one, we didn’t even know the Red existed. During the events of episode two, we knew about it, we named it, and it was implied to me that other soldiers had been hacked too—but none of that made it into the show. Now, in episode three, the secrecy is gone. Flashbacks detail the Red’s discovery and the speculation on its intent: that it engineers chance and coincidence in the lives of individuals both to derail and to inspire, with none of us immune. Thelma Sheridan speaks of it, Jaynie and I argue over it, and the case is made that the nuclear terrorism of Coma Day was more than insurrection, that it was aimed at destroying the habitation of the Red.

But this is information already revealed to the court. “This isn’t going to change anything, right?” I ask them. “It’s not going to affect the trial proceedings?”

Ogawa questions me in turn. “Is there any reason to think the decisions you’ve made regarding your defense have been influenced, against your will, by the Red, as an outside agent?”

I turn to my uncle, wanting confirmation that he’s kept our secret. He makes a slight sideways gesture with his head:
Haven’t said a thing.
I look at Ogawa. He’s watching
me closely; I’m sure he’s using his farsights to run his own emotional-analysis app, one that’s measuring the truth of everything I say. “My decisions have not been influenced by an outside agent.”

“The history of the earlier incursions was presented to the prosecution during discovery,” Ogawa tells me. “So they can’t use the past influence of the Red against you. Also included in the pretrial documentation was an affidavit from Guidance asserting your skullnet is locked down.”

I nod. I don’t say anything.

“If that’s not the case,” Ogawa goes on, his gaze never wavering from mine, “as your attorney, I advise you to say so.”

“Yes, sir.”

He waits for me to say more. When I don’t, he nods. “Monday, then.”

We all stand up, shake hands, and then I follow them to the door.

My personal security is not entrusted to civilian guards. The army has executed an agreement with the US Marshals office allowing a special detail of military police to stand watch over the Apocalypse Squad. So two of my regular guards—Sergeant Kerry Omer and Specialist Darren Vitali—are waiting for me in the hall outside the tiny consultation room.

It’s presumed we have a lot of enemies, so watching over us is considered hazardous duty. Omer and Vitali are rigged for it, wearing body armor and the titanium bones of an agile exoskeleton, the same model we use in the linked combat squads, where we’ve nicknamed them “dead sisters.” The gray struts run up the outside of their legs and along their arms, with a back frame linking them together. Our guards also wear the same helmets we use, though their visors are kept transparent, so their faces are easy to see. The US Marshals office permits them to carry
sidearms but no assault rifles, and no grenades or other explosives.

Both salute as we enter the hall. Major Ogawa and I return the courtesy.

I nod to my uncle, salute the major, and turn to Omer.

“Ready, sir?” she asks.

“Ready, Sergeant.” I hold out my wrists for the cuffs I am required to wear when I transition between the cellblock and the court offices. Quickly and professionally, Omer puts them on me. I try not to think about it.

We step out together, one MP on either side of me. Our route is through a restricted corridor, with the offices of the federal judges on one side, and on the other, the courtrooms—four on this floor alone. Secretaries and assistants step aside for us. One woman ducks into a judge’s office. As I pass the partly open door, I glimpse a tall window on the other side of the room, and beyond it, a vista that looks out across the Capitol Reflecting Pool. To the left, skirted with trees in early-spring green and a pink glaze of cherry blossoms, is the dome-crowned edifice of the Capitol Building. There is no one on its marble stairs or on the lawn in front of it, and no tourists wandering around the Grant Memorial, because security concerns have made this forbidden ground. But on the other side of the reflecting pool, where the vast lawn of the National Mall begins, I see in real time the packed human mass of protesters that I saw on video just a few minutes ago.

The door swings shut. We walk on to the end of the corridor, where an elevator stands open, waiting for us. We step aboard, about-face the way we were taught in boot, and face the doors. Omer touches the back of her left wrist to a sensor plate that reads an embedded chip. With her identity confirmed, the doors close.

The federal judges and their staffs use this elevator to
reach the underground parking garage. We use it to reach the underground passage to the courthouse cellblock.

As the elevator descends, Omer says quietly, “We saw episode three last night, sir. I just wanted to tell you, a lot of us think you did the right thing.”

“Don’t tell your CO that, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir.”

And hope like hell this conversation doesn’t show up on episode four.

We reach the basement. The doors open.

“Dead zone,” Specialist Vitali reports. “The relay must be out again.”

It’s an ongoing problem. There are supposed to be network nodes throughout the building, but in this corridor the nodes aren’t working at least half the time we come through—and post–Coma Day, no one expects replacement parts anytime soon. A working network would let Omer and Vitali get an all clear from their handlers. Instead, they have to confirm the safety of the corridor on their own.

So I stay in the elevator while Vitali steps out to survey the corridor. This requires more than a quick glance. The space is poorly designed from a security perspective. Square support pillars protrude into the corridor, breaking up the monotony of the walls but providing cover for possible assailants. Omer holds the elevator while Vitali confirms that the staff door to the parking garage is locked, before walking the corridor. We listen to his footsteps recede. After several seconds he calls back to us, “Contact established. All clear.”

I look to Omer. She nods permission to proceed and we follow Vitali into the corridor, passing the staff door and, farther on, the prisoner-intake door. Just beyond that is the first set of gray steel doors that secure the jail. Bolts
cycle as we approach. An alert buzzes, the doors swing open, and we walk inside to a secure foyer, and wait. The doors behind us close and lock, and then a second set opens in front of us. On the other side are offices, consultation rooms, and a control room. I’ve been told a side passage leads to a bunk room and a kitchen for the guards. We walk on, to a junction at the end of the corridor where there are three more doors, each opening onto a parallel cellblock.

Generally, only prisoners actually undergoing trial are housed overnight at the courthouse, and given the current state of emergency, most trial proceedings have been postponed. So the inmate population is low, which made it possible for the army to lease cellblock B, the current home of the Apocalypse Squad. The center door buzzes open and we step through into a corridor with glass-fronted cells, six on one side, five on the other. My cell is the first on the right. We stop in front of it. Vitali opens the door.

Across from my cell is the shower, and next to the shower is an empty cell. Sergeant Nolan is housed in the cell next to mine, but the sidewalls are concrete, so I can’t see him—not from inside my cell, and not from where I’m standing. I can’t see any of my squad. Tuttle and Moon should be in the middle of the cellblock, with the women at the end, but I have no way to tell if they’re actually there or not. I’d do a roll call, but sound suppression prevents us from talking to one another. We can converse with someone outside the cell only if they are standing directly in front of the glass wall.

“Sir,” Omer says. “Please face the cell door.”

I don’t move. “Is everybody here?” I ask her.

“All present, sir.”

In the oppressive silence, where every faint squeak and groan of the MPs’ exoskeletons calls attention to itself, it’s
easy to believe the opposite. I know that if I don’t confirm for myself the presence of my squad, doubt will eat at me all evening. “May I walk the cellblock, Sergeant?”

Omer consults her handler. Then she tells me, “You are not allowed to speak to or otherwise interact with the prisoners, sir.”

“Understood.”

“You may walk to the end of the cellblock and return.”

With my hands still cuffed in front of me, I move past my own cell. Two steps until I can see into the next one. Nolan is there, just like he’s supposed to be. He’s down on the floor doing push-ups. He looks up, watching me with a tense gaze as I pass. Tuttle is in the next cell, asleep. Directly across the corridor from Tuttle is Moon’s cell. He’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, reading a paper book. When he notices me, he looks up with a startled expression. The next cells on either side are empty. Then I reach Jaynie. She sees me and gets up from where she is sitting on the bed, stepping right up to the glass partition. I want to tell her we start on Monday, but I can’t betray my promise to Omer. Flynn comes to the partition too, and so does Harvey. Harvey tells me, “Nobody changed their mind, sir.”

I nod, turn around, and return to my keepers, presenting my wrists to Omer so she can remove the handcuffs. “Sergeant, would you make sure all the prisoners know that the court-martial is scheduled to start on Monday.”

“I will do that, sir.”

The cuffs come off and I step into my cell. Vitali closes the door behind me. I turn, watching through the glass partition as Omer moves out of sight down the cellblock to deliver my message. When she comes back, she stops in front of my cell and, facing me, she salutes. I return the courtesy and then she and Vitali leave. The steel door closes behind them, and I am alone.

I can see no one, hear no one.

It’s going to be one hell of a long weekend.

•   •   •   •

The cell is six by eight feet, with three walls of solid concrete and one of glass. It’s furnished with a narrow bed and an aluminum toilet/sink combo in the back corner. Meals are brought to us, and we eat alone. There is no exercise yard, no library, because this is a courthouse jail, meant for stays of a few hours to a few days. We have been here for five months. The MPs do what they can, bringing paper books if we ask for them, and we exercise in our cells.

I have my own unique routine.

An air-conditioning vent is embedded in the center of the concrete ceiling. It’s eighteen inches square, a tempered steel honeycomb bolted into place. I imagine the prisoners housed here before me, lying in bed, staring up at that vent and wondering at the possibility of escape through the air ducts. Hell, I’ve wondered about it myself, but when I jump up and hook my fingers in the steel mesh, I’m not trying to escape.

It hurts like hell to hold on with just my fingertips, so as quickly as I can, I swing my robot feet up to the grille and latch on. The prosthetics hurt too—that’s how I know they’re there—but the skullnet helps me regulate the level of pain, and keep it at a minimum.

My titanium toes curl in a secure grip around the steel grille. My fingers slip free and, slowly, I let my body uncurl until I’m hanging upside down like a bat, gazing out the glass door at the empty shower facility on the other side of the corridor. Weaving my fingers behind my head, I curl my body up again until my nose almost touches my trouser legs in the vicinity of my mechanical knees. And then, slowly, I let my body uncurl again. Down and up, down
and up, in a regimen of suspended sit-ups, followed by work to both sides and to the back.

As always, I’m getting a headache, so I kick loose, execute a half somersault, and land with a thump against the concrete floor. Aerobic sets come next: intense bursts of stationary running, jacks, and push-ups, until I can’t do any more, and then I move on to tai chi or yoga, anything I can think of to keep my body—what’s left of it—from degenerating. I’ve issued orders to the squad to work out at least sixty minutes a day, so that’s how long I keep going.

I lead by example, even if no one can see me. It’s boring as hell, but the skullnet helps me stay focused.

Tomorrow I’ll get to take a shower.

At
1900
, Vitali brings dinner: a microwaved pasta thing with vegetables on the side. Honestly, it’s not bad. It’s one of a series of contractor-supplied meals, the same that we consumed at Fort Dassari and at C-FHEIT. A little bit of home.

During my idle time in prison I’ve worked to improve my cyber-integration. FaceValue is part of the software package for a new overlay I had installed right before First Light. Since then, using the app to get an unbiased read on the emotional state of people around me has become second nature. When there are no people around me, when I’m alone in my cell, I work with my skullnet, training it to better integrate with my overlay.

I use a trained response now, focusing on the word
encyclo
pedia
. The skullnet picks up the command and signals my overlay to launch the program, faster than I could trigger it with my gaze. I read for a while, all nonfiction.