The Unseen (18 page)

“So you’re not going to kill me? How romantic.”

“I didn’t say that,” Joseth said. “How about you look at the front of your little drone.” Kari focused on the front of her drone and saw it start to melt into tiny threads of metallic dust. Already the drone was starting to sputter and shake.

“You’re going to kill me!” Kari shouted.

“I tried to warn you,” Joseth said. Kari ordered the drone to the ground, which caused it to start sinking at a frightening pace. A chunk of the drone fell off, and one of the rotors died with a high-pitched squeal. Kari screamed as the drone tilted to its left and accelerated to the ground. Lars’s barks were the last thing she could comprehend before what was left of the drone smashed into the ground with Kari on its back.

The ringing in her ears was deafening. But it was impossible to focus on it as she tried to find her breath. Something smelled like smoke. Or dust. Or blood. She wasn’t sure. Kari tried to find something to push up on, but that only resulted in her sticking her hand on something that felt like it was burning.

“Lars?” Kari was pretty sure she said it, but she couldn’t hear herself over the ringing. So she shouted it again
. Oh no. No! No! No!
“Lars!”

Kari felt something move on top of her, and a second later she felt him lick the back of her neck.
Oh thank God!
Kari relaxed. She closed her eyes, too relieved and frustrated to try to get up.

“You have a visitor,” the doctor said as she left Kari’s small hospital room. It hadn’t taken long for the doctor and one of her assistants to make it out to where Kari had crash-landed. They had loaded her onto a fancy stretcher and carried her back to a part of Valhalla that she had never been in before, the infirmary. It was located next to the garage and consisted of only an office and a couple of rooms, but Kari was glad that Joseth had included a health care facility in his plans.
At least we can agree on that being a good idea.

“I’m glad you’re doing so well,” Joseth said. He closed the door behind him and took a seat in the guest chair next to her bed. Kari looked down to her bandaged arm, which had an IV running from her veins. Her head hurt, and it was painful to breathe. She wanted to laugh at him, but that would have hurt too much.

“No thanks to you.”

“You can blame me if you’d like, but I wasn’t the one who climbed on the back of a hand-built drone.”

“I will blame you.”
If you want me to think that this is my fault, you’re crazy.

“It’s becoming a full-time job to keep an eye on you.”

“Well, I guess that’s the good news,” Kari said. “You can’t be murdering people if you’re busy watching me.”

“You’d be surprised at my ability to multitask. And please don’t call the sacrifices I have had to make murdering. It’s unrepresentative of my ideals and the unfortunate price they paid for a better future.”

“I see. They’re martyrs for a cause they don’t know about.”

“Better,” Joseth said, ignoring her sarcasm. “Now, we need to have a serious discussion about your future here.”

“I don’t have a future here,” Kari said. Her body hurt, but it didn’t keep her from speaking her mind.

“I surely hope you do. Like I said, you’ve seen Valhalla, and we wish to remain the Unseen.”

“So I’m here for the rest of my life?”

“Of course not,” Joseth said. “Only until I’ve accomplished everything that I believe is necessary.”

“You’re insane,” Kari said.

“Not as much as you’d think. If you’d open your mind and think about what is best, not just for us, but also for everyone out there, you’d understand. And we’re close already. With your help, I imagine you’d be free to leave within the next year.”

“So all I have to do is help overthrow two governments and install a new tyrant, and I’ll be free to leave?”

Joseth slammed his hands on the bedside table.

“Try to think!” Joseth yelled, and Kari inched away from him. “This isn’t a game! People are dying out there every day for no reason, throwing their lives away, and we’re the people who can make it better!” Joseth stopped and audibly breathed in.

“Look at me,” Kari said, gesturing to her wounds, “I don’t think this is a game. But it’s people like you who go down in the history books as villains, and I don’t want to have my name listed next to yours.”

“When we’re successful we’ll rewrite the history books. We’ll be the new founding fathers of the greatest nation the world has ever seen. The villains will be the ones who held this country back for so long.”

It’s true—history is written by the victors. And what the government has done is pretty horrible. Villainous even. That’s the worst part about this situation; everything Joseth says is true in some way. But what he’s doing can’t be right . . .

“I’ve never been so disappointed by someone in my entire life,” Kari said, despite questioning herself
.
Even if some of his ideas tempted her, she was still in the small hospital room because he had almost killed her.

Joseth growled and squeezed his fists tightly together.

“You’re going to help me one way or another. If you don’t care for your own life, at least find it in you to care for the lives of the innocents. Your hacking drones can speed this process more than anything else. If you can swallow your pride and do what is best for humanity that would be exceptional.” It was obvious that Joseth chose his words carefully and that he was under considerable strain in trying not to lose his temper again.

“I can’t.”
She wanted to. She wanted to give Joseth her drones and have him end the suffering. She wanted to save lives, but she just couldn’t bring herself to help Oedipus conquer the country.
Joseth stood up and left the room without a word, and Kari breathed a sigh of relief at being left alone. Lars wasn’t in the room, which bothered her, but at least her body wasn’t hurting as much as she had expected it to.
Maybe I’m just getting used to taking a beating.

At least Henderson never thought he was the savior of humankind. But Henderson was a fool, not a genius like Joseth.
Kari was sitting in one of the oversized chairs in the great room. It was early in the morning, but the fire was still going strong. A robot with long arms attended to it constantly.

The human workers at Valhalla all wore a relaxed uniform of a collared green shirt and whatever pants they felt like wearing. Most of the workers were young, but they ranged in age depending on their specialty. From what Kari could tell, there were about fifty members of the Unseen at Valhalla, with a staff at least twice that size. The boy who had stopped by to offer to bring her something for breakfast was someone who Aubrey probably would have enjoyed flirting with.
The food and service are undeniably better here, though.

There was a group of the Unseen at Valhalla made up of early morning people; luckily, those in Kari’s small circle of friends were not among them. The injuries to her ribs made it hard to sleep, so she had spent the past few mornings in one of these chairs.

A handful of hackers walked by, laughing, and they drew Kari’s attention away from her thoughts. They looked sweaty, as if they had just been in one of the fully immersive virtual reality rooms. There were several rooms at Valhalla that had moving floors and special suits you wore that made playing in simulations just as physically demanding as real life. It was older tech by now, but it was still a favorite of people who liked to exercise.

“Can I bring you a drink?”

“No, thank you,” Kari said. The young waiter nodded and moved on to another guest to see if there was anything he could do for him.
There are people out there dying because of Joseth, and we’re all sitting up here living a life of luxury. It’s not right. None of this is right.
She felt sick for not thinking about that before she knew the truth about Joseth, but she felt like he and the glamour of Valhalla had blinded her to reality.

Kari heard some quick-moving feet behind her and turned around to see that MagicWaffles was hustling down toward the basement.
Now why would someone need to run to the basement?

Getting out of the chair was a slow and painful experience, but she got through it. Kari struck out at a casual pace for the basement. She paused at the top of the stairs to see if she could hear anyone below, but all she could hear was the sound of hundreds of printers working. She had been to the basement numerous times, but she had never been down there when all the printers were being used at once. In fact, she had questioned why Joseth had set up so many printers in the first place.
What’s the worst that could happen—they kick me out of here?

Kari hobbled down the steps. She didn’t have any injuries that would cause long-term problems, but she had many that were making her life painful at the moment. She felt better every day, but her body was still stiff and recovering.

The bottom of the stairs opened up into the large basement factory. Kari stood on the bottom step and looked out at the printers, which were all furiously printing EMP guns. Workers ran up and down the aisles, gathering the finished product into containers and wheeling those containers toward the large bay doors on the far side of the room.

Kari’s first reaction was that Joseth should have spent more time on automating the process if he wanted to have large-scale production capacity, and the second was complete bafflement.

Why would he be printing thousands of EMP guns? Joseth is ambitious, but he couldn’t have his own army that he’s supplying . . . could he?
The thought was terrifying.
He did say he was getting close.
Kari felt ill just thinking about it, but she began to feel better as she processed the new information.
There’s too many logistics. He’s good, but he can’t be hiding an army big enough to be taken seriously in the mountains.

The printers started to slow down. One by one they finished the guns they were printing. Most printers had a post-printing routine they would run through to keep themselves clean and in good condition
.
The workers still dashed around the room, gathering the final round of EMP guns.
But if he were doing this just to arm a rebellion that would take place in a year, why the need for so much urgency? No. These guns are for someone.

It had been a long time since inventors printed their own designs for clients. That was the old way of doing business; now designers just completed the designs and passed the responsibility for printing on to their client.
Unless you don’t want your clients to be able to print their own!

Kari couldn’t see what was happening by the far side of the basement behind all the printers, so she decided to move in for a better view. She knew the workers would see her if she did that, but she felt a need to know as much about this situation as possible.
Besides, Joseth probably has cameras everywhere. How else would he keep catching me?
Several workers moved out of her way as she walked by, standing at attention while she passed them before continuing with their work
. It’s like I’m sort of general or something. They think I’m part of Joseth’s regime.

At the back of the room, containers were being programmed with their delivery instructions and slid out the back of the basement onto a large concrete landing pad. Commercial-grade shipping drones were waiting to scan the containers and carry them away to their destination.
Kari was entranced by the large drones swooping down to magnetically pick up the containers and whisk them away the second workers were out of the way.

Trucks driven by humans used to be the dominant mode of transportation, but Kari could hardly imagine it. That process seemed so slow and error prone. Kari didn’t understand how people had ever got along in the past. Now, if there was something that couldn’t be printed locally, it would simply be delivered anywhere on the planet within a matter of hours.
That meant that the shipment of guns in front of her could be theoretically destined for anywhere or anyone, although the practical number of buyers for thousands of EMP guns was a short list.

MagicWaffles stood in the corner of the room, talking with people whom Kari didn’t recognize. They were wrapping up their conversations, so Kari ducked behind the printers and out of sight.
She wanted to get close enough to the containers to try to discover exactly where they were headed, but she decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

Joseth is selling physical copies of the guns to the governments—probably keeping both sides equally equipped with his weapons and charging them both a premium. Then, when things get serious, he’ll just cut them off and use the weapons exclusively for his own purposes. Maybe he is going to be able to pull this off . . .

So how do I make it out of here without fighting my way out? That’s what I thought the most important question was for the past few days, but it’s not. How do I stop Joseth? That’s the most important question
. After seeing the EMP guns packaged up in the basement, Kari realized just how perilous the situation was.

Joseth was crazy, but he was also extraordinarily capable. It didn’t take her long to figure out that a future in which Joseth was in charge of one of the world’s superpowers was bleak.
She wasn’t happy with the current leadership either, but people who killed as easily as Joseth didn’t just stop. Her freedom paled in comparison to the fate that the country might suffer if someone didn’t get in his way.

Even if he’s not successful, he’ll be able to do so much damage that the world might never be able to recover. Isn’t stopping that worth fighting for? But, didn’t I think it was also worth it to fight to free David and my parents?

Kari took a sip of the mango smoothie that she had accepted from the worker after she had made it back to her chair in the great room. She had felt bad for turning him down so many times, and the smoothie hadn’t sounded awful.
Maybe I am a fighter and should just accept that. Maybe it’s the only way I know how to solve problems.
Kari went to take another sip just as she heard a noise from the great entrance behind her. She tried to drink and look over her shoulder at the same time, which resulted in spilling mango smoothie down her shirt.