Zero echo shadow prime, p.20
Zero Echo Shadow Prime, page 20
Charlie: You believe everything you hear on the news?
Alan: And second, “who killed him”?
Charlie: Come on, you know he didn’t commit suicide.
Alan: The man’s been through a lot.
Charlie: He’s also the most stubborn person on the planet. He would stay alive just as a fuck you to God. And he didn’t die naturally either. Or else, how do explain the satellite debacle?
Alan: True.
Charlie: So that leaves only one explanation. And I have a pretty good idea who the killers are. The same people who kidnapped ZERO.
Alan: So this is about your sister, not your father.
Charlie: It’s about both. It’s about the Nobunaga family, of which you are a part, like it or not.
Alan: Am I, though?}
The question caught Charlie off guard. Alan was confused about where he stood with her. Understandably so—she had said some hurtful things to him at Rivir Tower, and although much of that anger had since faded, now was not the time for amends.
{Charlie: Just back me on this. We’ll have a good talk later.}
* * *
Charlie didn’t arrive at Control-Z until midafternoon. She rolled the car into a wooded area along the road and walked the final half mile. When she emerged from the trees, she found herself on a hillside above the campus.
Control-Z looked more like a vacation destination than a warehouse for the dead. It stood at the edge of a cliff, enjoying a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. The grounds were expansive, decentralized, and well landscaped, with secluded bungalows dotting them throughout. Charlie assumed the “guests” at Control-Z were stored underground. But the surface still bustled with gardeners, hospitality staff, and armed guards.
{Charlie_Nobunaga:mindspace> Alan: Jude will certainly expect you to come here. Any one of these people could be a Rivir agent. And it would only take one call.
Charlie: I’ll just make myself invisible, like I did at Crissy Field.
Alan: Because that worked out so well. Listen, a few joggers is one thing, but this place is crawling with people. You can’t hack them all.}
Charlie scanned the campus. Her father’s body would be in the same bungalow as Bridget’s, but there were so many, and they all looked the same.
One of the guards turned in Charlie’s direction. She swiveled behind a tree.
{Alan: You don’t remember where to go, do you?
Charlie: I only visited Bridget once. That was hard enough. And I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the scenery.
Alan: Are you starting to see how difficult—?
Charlie: Hold on…I think I got an idea.}
{Mario_Sutton: mindspace>
Mario could feel the energy in the air. Something was going to happen today. Something big. His boss, Jay, had told the security crew to be extra vigilant. Hardly anything ever happened in this glorified graveyard, so the mere suggestion that Mario would see some action lifted his spirits. He also heard rumors that a large shipping container had been buried somewhere on campus in the early hours before dawn. What was inside that container, and where it was buried, nobody could say for sure.
Mario heard footsteps behind him. He put his hand on his rifle and turned around. A nearly nude Asian man stood before him. He wore the signature underwear of a hibernation guest.
“My name is Andrew Nobunaga,” the man said. “I seem to be lost. Can you show me to my bungalow?”
Mario was a bit confused. He had never seen a guest walking about the grounds, though the situation wasn’t completely ludicrous. In theory, revived guests were allowed to use their bungalows as vacation homes. That’s why Control-Z was fashioned as a resort. But until now, none of the guests had ever been revived. “Um, let me call Jay Jenkins, the facility manager,” Mario said.
Mario tried to call Jay, but he couldn’t get a signal. “Damn. Okay, Mr. Nobunaga, was it?”
“Yes.”
“Stay right here, and I’ll get Jay.”}
Charlie crept down the hillside as Mario dashed toward the Control-Z main building. She found a bungalow on campus to hide behind and awaited his return.
Ten minutes later, Mario returned with Jay Jenkins, a chubby man with gray mutton chops resembling a Civil War general. They searched the area for Andrew Nobunaga, but he was nowhere to be found.
“It’s impossible,” Jay told Mario. “I scanned in Mr. Nobunaga yesterday. He was as dead as a doornail.” Mario tried to convince him otherwise. They reached an impasse, at which point Jay said, “I’ll show you,” and they marched in the direction of Andrew’s bungalow.
Charlie pursued them from a safe distance, weaving an elusive path through the bungalows and trees, trying to avoid detection from the groundskeepers. She was successful until they reached Andrew’s bungalow, when she spotted a gardener laying mulch along the front of the building.
{Charlie_Nobunaga:mindspace> Alan: Should we hack the gardener?}
Charlie looked around and saw a circle of white stones lining a nearby tree. She picked one up and chucked it behind the gardener. The gardener turned around to see what had caused the noise. Charlie then slipped into the front door of the bungalow undetected.
{Charlie: Not every solution has to be high-tech.}
The interior of the bungalow was decorated like a luxurious island hotel suite, with two double beds and a full-sized kitchen that overlooked the ocean. The furniture was in pristine condition, having never been used. The whole premise of the place was a farce. Control-Z’s true product was false hope.
Charlie followed the guards’ voices to a spiral staircase that descended into a basement. She closed her eyes and focused on bridging the gap between her mind and Jay Jenkins.
{Jay_Jenkins: mindspace>
Jay hated coming down to these basements. Each one had the same design, a circular floor plan with walls covered in timepieces from every era. All the ticks and tocks and clicks and clocks and beeps and bongs—it was enough to drive a person crazy. If he were a Control-Z guest, stuck in a hibernation chamber for years, this was the last thing he’d want to wake up to—an obnoxious reminder of lost time.
Jay typed his security code into the console, which stood in the center of the room at the base of the spiral staircase. The timepieces disappeared—ahhhhh, quiet—and the wall turned transparent, revealing the ring of hibernation chambers. Nineteen lifeless, seminude bodies faced into the room. Their eyes were closed, but Jay still couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.
Of course, Mr. Nobunaga was still in his hibernation chamber. “See? The man is right there,” Jay told his guard.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Mario said. “I saw this exact same guy—aack!”
Suddenly, Mario’s head was jerked backward by some invisible force. His pistol flew out of his holster, levitated in midair, and then aimed itself at his temple.
An Asian girl materialized behind Mario. Her slender arm was wrapped around his neck, and her other hand was holding the gun. Jay recognized her instantly: Charlie Nobunaga.}
“Do as I say or I will shoot this man!” Charlie commanded.
“Now let me see,” Jay said, “are you the robot or the girl? Either way, you should have made an appointment.”
“You know why I couldn’t.”
“So, what’s the plan? Are you just going to kill us?”
{Charlie_Nobunaga:mindspace> Charlie: What is the plan?
Alan: You can try to render them unconscious.
Charlie: Are you making fun of me?}
Charlie pointed the gun at Jay and said, “Remove my father from the hibernation chamber.”
Jay grumbled and approached the central console.
While he swiped through pictures of Control-Z guests, Charlie studied the ring of hibernation chambers. So many lost souls. She focused on the three chambers of the Nobunaga family. Andrew stood in the center. To the right of him was her own chamber. Empty, of course.
She braced herself for the third chamber. She had to force herself to look at it. The sight of Bridget, cold and lifeless, shook Charlie’s core with a furious longing. Bridget’s case was more hopeless than many of the tenants at Control-Z. She died right before the advent of universal antinecro scripts. Her body had been clinically dead for a full fifteen minutes before the hibernation bots took hold. All of that brain decay. Science would have to find a cure for that in addition to the cancer if Bridget were to ever walk the Earth again.
Charlie pushed the painful thought from her mind.
A vertical section of the glass wall opened, and Andrew’s hibernation chamber extended into the room. “Okay, there he is,” Jay said.
“Take him out,” Charlie demanded.
Her gun followed Jay as he approached the chamber, opened the door, and unfastened the interior straps. Andrew’s body slumped into his arms. “He’s heavy. What should I do with him?”
“Put him on the floor.”
Jay complied.
Charlie pushed Mario into his boss and trained her gun on both of them. “Now you two are going in the chambers. Mario, you’ll go in this one. Jay, you can have mine.”
Mario looked horror-stricken. “I’m claustrophobic,” he protested.
“We will die of starvation in there,” Jay said. “Our bodies have not been prepped for hibernation.”
“As soon as I leave this place, I will notify reception that you are here,” Charlie said.
Mario and Jay glared at her with deep skepticism, but Charlie had the gun, so they were forced to comply. After the guards were sealed behind the wall, she restored the room’s AR theme, obscuring their panicked eyes and muffled screams behind the cacophony of timepieces.
Alan spun into the room, all business. “We should not linger. How do you want to proceed?”
Charlie didn’t respond. She was preoccupied with her father’s lifeless body, lying on the floor. She knelt down and brushed her trembling hand against his cheek. His skin was warm from the hibernation bots inside. Charlie found herself more shocked than sad. She never expected to see her father this way. “I will find the people who did this to you,” she whispered and softly kissed his forehead.
Charlie climbed to her feet. “Let’s try the front door first,” she told Alan. “See how far it gets us. Make a Shadow-to-Shadow call to whomever’s inside.”
Alan pointed to his ear. “Calling…”
A few seconds later, a nineteenth-century nurse spun into the room. Florence Nightingale. “Hello, Charlie Nobunaga,” she said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Can you tell me anything about how my father died?” Charlie asked.
“Your father’s heart stopped…heart stopped…heart stopped…heart stopped…” The nurse flickered uncontrollably and her voice devolved into a staccato tone. She shrank into the floor and was replaced by Johannes Kepler.
Charlie turned to Alan, but he looked just as surprised as she was.
“I have a message, Charlie,” Kepler said. “A memlog from your father, for your eyes only. Would you like to receive the transfer?”
“I don’t like this,” Alan said.
Charlie silently noted Alan’s objection, but she was intrigued. “How are you here?” Charlie asked Kepler. “I thought my father’s smart cells had been wiped.”
“Most were,” Kepler said. “Only a few remained, hidden in your father’s retinas, awaiting your visit.”
“Can you tell me what the memlog is about?”
“I cannot. I am not a full-featured Shadow. I am only a messenger with limited information.”
Alan approached Charlie, settling mere inches from her face. His sharp, almost paternal glare contrasted with her glossy yearning. “Tell me you’re not considering—”
“I need this, Alan,” Charlie pleaded. “I need to see. I just—”
“I understand,” Alan said. “But the whole thing is just too neat. If your father was indeed murdered, how could he have made this message?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he set it up in advance.”
“And why should we trust Kepler? We already know he’s lied to the police.”
“That’s true, but—”
“I’ve let you come down here, against my better judgment—”
Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘let’?”
“Poor choice of words. I’m just asking you to think this through. We really don’t know anything about this ‘message.’”
Charlie exhaled heavily under the weight of Alan’s objections. She turned to her father’s body. What would he do if the situation were reverse? If Charlie had died mysteriously and he had to figure out why? She already knew the answer.
“I’m sorry, Alan,” she said. She turned to Kepler. “I’ll accept the transfer.”
Kepler nodded. “Transferring in three…two…one.”
{Andrew_Nobunaga: memlog 707562347>
Charlie snapped into Andrew’s memory. She was paralyzed, unable to do anything but observe through her father’s eyes and ears.
The first thing Charlie noticed was the pain. She could feel a throbbing pain in her father’s jaw and a stabbing pain in his chest, signaling a possible broken rib or two. He was held against his will—confined to a chair—and his wrists felt raw from the rope that tied him to the armrests.
The scene of the crime was her father’s third-floor observatory. It was packed with people Charlie didn’t recognize. They were all roughly her age or a little bit older. ZERO was also in the room and also confined to a chair. That person used to be me, Charlie mused. And now she is someone else.
A mustached man pointed to Andrew and said, “We also need to take care of him.” This announcement made ZERO very upset. A scar-faced girl called for “Liam” and Liam carried ZERO out of the room.
The terrorists went back to business after she left. They sat in a semicircle formation with thinking caps on their heads, which they used to steer Andrew’s Lotus fleet. Charlie could see their handiwork projected onto the dome. They cheered each time they rammed a ship into a Polly Support Satellite. During the attacks, Andrew was largely ignored. All he could do was watch helplessly as his cherished fleet was destroyed, one by one.
When the mission was over, Scarface Girl ordered everyone but Mustache Man to leave the room. Mustache Man unzipped a fabric case full of several multicolored syringes. He pulled out the purple one and tapped the pin.
Scarface Girl interrupted Andrew’s gaze by poking his forehead. His eyes met hers. “I want to talk to the robot directly,” she told him.
This got Charlie’s attention…and Andrew’s. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.
“The robot you helped bring into this world—the one who calls herself Charlie, who is most likely sitting in a Control-Z basement watching your memory. I am speaking directly to you.”
Charlie felt her heart beat faster. Or was it her father’s heart? She couldn’t tell.
Scarface Girl continued, “I’m so glad you escaped Rivir Tower. That makes what I’m about to do much easier. You are a usurper, an abomination, a zombie surrogate, and you don’t deserve to exist.”
“Fuck you!” Andrew snapped.
“Yuri?” the girl beckoned.
Mustache Man, the one named Yuri, punched Andrew across the face. Both father and daughter felt the sting.
“I didn’t want to kill your father,” Scarface Girl said. “He’s not really your father, but I’m guessing you think of him as such…that is, if you think at all. For whatever it’s worth, I didn’t want to do it. I, more than anyone, value human life—especially the life of a parent. But I could think of no other way to deliver the special gift that I’m about to give you.”
Yuri jabbed the purple syringe into Andrew’s neck. His teeth gnashed to fight the rushing seizure.}
Charlie was catapulted out of her father’s memory and back into her own body. She punched and clawed at Yuri, but he was no longer there. She staggered to her feet.
“What did she mean ‘special gift’?” Charlie called out. She gripped her head to prevent the room from spinning.
“I don’t know,” Alan said, “but something is wrong with your brain.” He spun back into the floor.
No matter how Charlie positioned her feet, she couldn’t shake the overwhelming sensation of falling. She braced herself against a wall. That’s when she noticed something even more peculiar. All the dials, the hands, the pendulums, the sands—they stopped moving. Actually, they were moving, just not continuously. One second, the grandfather clock’s pendulum hung left. The next, it hung right. It jerked left, right, left, right, with no fluid motion in between.
{Charlie_Nobunaga:mindspace> Alan: You’ve somehow lost your proprioception…and the dorsal stream of your visual cortex, which allows you to see motion.}
Charlie waved her hand before her eyes—it seemed to move as a series of still images. Then the room went dark.
{Alan: Now you’ve lost the entire visual cortex.
Charlie: No shit. What’s happening?
Alan: It seems the ‘special gift’ is a Trojan horse virus. It’s taking over.}
Charlie lost control of her legs. She slid down the wall and smacked her butt on the floor. It hurt a little, until that, too, fell numb.
{Charlie: Can you stop it?
Alan: Too widespread. We’ll lose most of your brain. But I’m transferring your vital data into a safe zone.
