Crux

25 AMBUSH

Wednesday October 24th

Breece almost died near Austin.

The cemetery was in the hills to the west of the city. He arrived in the afternoon, parked the Lexus, shut off his phones and slate to keep distractions at bay, and hiked up the hill to his parents’ graves.

He could see his dad smiling, hear his mom laughing, their faces full of joy. They’d be in their early sixties now, if they’d lived. Still sharp. Still helping people. Still young enough to have a chance at immortality, to have a hope that uploading or the reversal of biological aging would come along in time. They might have lived to become posthuman. They might have lived forever.

But they hadn’t.

Ten years ago now. Ten years since the war had begun.

He still remembered waking to the news that morning, waking to the videos of people vomiting blood, of bodies piled in the streets of Laramie, Wyoming, of National Guard vehicles surrounding the city, of hazmat-suited early responders trying to make sense of it all. Marburg Red. The virus had killed thirty thousand, wiped out the town, and almost killed millions more.

Then the Aryan Rising clones had been found. The new master race. The sociopathic blond neo-Nazi children. The genetically sculpted children who’d butchered the scientists who’d created them. Who’d released Marburg Red prematurely, eager to see it wipe out the genetically inferior races that populated the planet.

Ten years since the backlash. Since Josiah Shepherd had spoken out, his face, his words broadcast endlessly, burned into Breece’s memories. “Mad scientists warping God’s creation, doing the devil’s work, bringing to life the devil’s children.” Spittle had flown from the televangelist’s lips. “The Lord will surely reward any who send them to hell where they belong.”

Ten years since the firebomb had ripped through his parents’ fertility clinic. Since they’d been murdered for the crime of reversing genetic diseases, of boosting a few points of IQ, of entirely benign actions that had nothing to do with the Aryan Rising.

Ten years since fear had turned America into a police state, since the priests and the politicians had decided that they could control who you were, what you were, what genes you carried, what tech you put in your brain.

Ten years since he’d become a freedom fighter. And now, finally, they were making headway.

Breece crouched beside his parents’ graves, reached out his fingers to brush the cold stone.

“I miss you,” he whispered.

He rose to his feet hours later, as the sun dipped below the plains of central Texas. He dusted himself off and started down the hill, pulling out his phones and turning them on as he did so.

His team phone buzzed angrily the instant he activated it. An urgent message, long delayed. Breece looked at the display. It was from Hiroshi.

[Your up-phone is burned. DHS.]

Breece stared at the phone numbly for a moment, then dropped to the ground behind a headstone.

His up-phone. Fuck. The one that connected to Zarathustra. How’d they know that number? Only he, Zara, and Hiroshi knew. And Hiroshi only because he’d been employed by AmeriCom, had set up the hidden alert that would tell Breece when the Homeland Security backdoors were activated to tap into his data, his location.

They must have taken Zara. Breece pulled out the up-phone. The thing was poison now, reporting his location to DHS. How long did he have until they arrived?

He left the up-phone powered on, tossed it away from him, then reached into his pants pocket and pressed the hidden switch. His shirt, pants, and shoes shifted color to match the grass. From his other pocket he pulled out thin gloves and balaclava which did the same, then pulled them on. His clothing lacked the speed and resolution of true chameleonware. They wouldn’t turn him into a blur when he moved. They wouldn’t mimic a detailed pattern behind him. But if he lay still or moved slowly, they could blend him into the grass and the headstones and trap most of the IR signature of his body.

He slowly belly-crawled away from the phone. At the end of the row was a small family crypt. He got there and lay still against it, his body hidden from the cemetery entrance, at least. He searched the sky. Were there invisible drones up there? Did they have a lock on him already? Had a cordon been pulled around him? His eyes saw nothing.

Breece carefully peeked his head around the crypt. In the twilight he could still clearly make out the Lexus in the parking lot, maybe three hundred yards away. He could make a run for it, leave the phone in the grass, get in the vehicle and get out of here before DHS closed the noose.

His other phone buzzed again. Hiroshi, calling in real time. Good friends, the Japanese. Loyal. Good transhumans, too. Always thinking ahead.

“Breece here,” he replied.

“Breece,” Hiroshi replied. “What’s your status?”

“Nominal,” Breece answered. “No sign of DHS.”

Then he saw the other car inbound. Black SUV. Tinted windows. No insignia of any sort. He couldn’t make out the plates from here. The SUV pulled into the parking lot slowly and came to a stop just by the entrance gate. The doors opened and three men in dark clothing stepped out. They wore light jackets that were totally unnecessary in the warm evening air. Perfect for concealing weapons.

Breece’s own gun was carefully hidden inside the Lexus, a conscious choice that the risk posed by carrying the weapon was greater than the risk of being caught without it.

“Scratch that,” he said into the phone. “Someone’s here.”

Two of the men were coming up the hill now, heading in the direction Breece had thrown the phone. Unremarkable faces. Dark hair. Athletic figures held calm and erect. Eyes calmly scanning to and fro.

Professionals.

Both men coming up the hill had hands in their jacket pockets. Breece imagined their fingers curled around the grips of pistols. The third man stood at alert by the SUV in the parking lot at the foot of the hill, a bundle over his shoulder. A rifle, perhaps.

“We’re inbound to you,” Hiroshi said. “Forty minutes out.”

“Don’t think I have forty, Hiroshi. Gotta go now. Call you back.” He cut the connection.

Who were these men? No uniforms. Unmarked vehicle. Hidden weapons. Where was the SWAT team? Where were the snipers? The drones and choppers? This didn’t smell like the law.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that these men were here for him. To capture him or kill him. And that wasn’t going to happen.

He was sweating now. The active camo he’d turned on was trapping his body heat, not letting it escape into the air around him where an infrared scope could pick it up. Without a thermal capacitor to suck that heat up, he was going to get warmer and warmer until he cooked.

Breece eased back behind the crypt, slowly, no sudden moves. Then he went Inside, launched a bootleg app.

[remote_driver -boot -silent]

The app reached through the net connection of his phone, connected to the Lexus’s sleeping auto computer, and booted the car up in silent mode, no lights, no sound, all electric. A window came alive in his mind’s eye, and he pushed it full screen, complete immersion. He could see out of the car’s cameras now. Status panels showed battery charge, GPS, engine temperature down the side of his vision. Front and center, through the car’s cameras, he could see the man standing against the SUV. The plates were Texas, standard civilian, no government endorsement of any sort. He couldn’t be sure, but inside the tinted windows the vehicle looked empty.

The man by the SUV was looking the other way, up towards the cemetery and his colleagues. The man held onto the bundle over his shoulder like a rifle. Breece used his mental finger to click on the screen, drag it to one side. Down below, the Lexus panned its cameras slowly. Through its eyes he watched the two others ascending the hill. They were almost to his discarded phone.

He’d only get one shot at this. He tapped commands into the app running on his Nexus OS for a moment. Then he reached down with his right hand and pulled the ceramic blade from his calf holster. He peered one last time around the crypt wall, then back into his inner eye and the feed from the Lexus’s cameras again.

Now.

Breece closed his eyes and tapped a mental button. The Lexus surged forward at the man by the SUV. Breece opened his eyes immediately, bringing them back to the two men here on the hill with him.

He heard the crash of metal on metal, saw a flash of something across the window in his mind. The men turned, startled, and then Breece was up and the ceramic blade was whistling through the air between them, thrown with superhuman force. The knife turned end over end, then lodged itself in the neck of the closest one with a meaty thunk. By then Breece was hot on its trail, sprinting at breakneck speed.

The one he’d hit staggered and fell into his colleague. The second man struggled to shake off the body and pull the gun from his pocket. Then Breece was on him. He grabbed the assassin’s wrist, stepped inside the man’s reach, and punched him in the solar plexus. The man dropped and Breece wrenched the gun from his hand.

Something bit into his arm and he dropped to one knee on instinct, thinking he’d been hit. An instant later the sound registered – a bullet shattering stone. It came again and again. Someone was shooting in his direction, hitting gravestones, sending stone chips flying.

He closed his eyes and looked out of the Lexus’s cams again. The third man was pinned, his lower body crushed between the Lexus and the SUV, but somehow the man had a silenced rifle in his hands and was shooting up the hill. Breece felt a flash of admiration for the man. A real trooper. True grit.

Breece grabbed the mental shifter of the car, threw the Lexus into reverse, tapped the accelerator. On screen, the man collapsed to his hands and knees as the Lexus backed away from the SUV. Breece braked, shifted gears, then jammed the Lexus forward again. The man’s face snapped up, loomed in the cameras, eyes wide in shock and horror, and then all went black as the Lexus crushed what remained of the would-be assassin against the SUV.

Breece opened his eyes again, still down on one knee. The world was quiet suddenly. Breece’s breath came fast and his heart was trying to pound its way out of his chest. He was drenched in sweat and burning hot. Were there any others out there?

The man he’d punched stirred on the ground next to him, and Breece grabbed him by the hair, and held the man’s own silenced pistol to his face.

“How many of you?”

The man coughed. “Three.”

“Who sent you? What was your mission?”

The man said nothing.

“Who sent you?” Breece raised his voice.

The man shook his head. “They’ll kill me.”

Breece clamped his hand over the man’s mouth, lowered the gun, and obliterated the man’s knee cap with a single shot.

The man screamed into his hand.

“I’m going to kill you,” Breece whispered to him. “The only question is whether you want to die fast or slow.”

He waited for the man’s muffled screams to subside, then put the tip of the silencer against his other knee.

“Ready to talk?”

The man nodded miserably, tears flowing down his face.

“Who sent you?” Breece asked again, pulling his hand off the man’s mouth.

The man closed his eyes and panted for a moment, and Breece thought he’d have to shoot the other knee. Then the assassin opened his eyes. “Zarathustra,” he said. “I’m PLF.”

Well, well, well. He hadn’t thought the old man had it in him.

He got the rest of the assassin’s story, and then it was time to go.

He put the silencer tip against the downed man’s forehead. “Any last message you want me to deliver?” he asked his would-be killer.

“Please,” the man pleaded, eyes locking with Breece’s in fear. “I’m PLF, like you. Let me live. You’ll never see me again. Please, man. I wanna live forever!”

Breece thought of his parents, their bodies decomposing just yards from here. “We don’t all get what we want,” he told the man. And then he pulled the trigger.