GSN Labs
Wilson spent a week worrying about the rate of nanite growth before he decided it did not matter. The world was different now. No one cared about anything but food and water at this point and the fact that his building had been mostly spared told him SkyNet’s connection to his research was known and valued. By someone. Baffling orders had begun showing up in his work queue, too. Compile sort and quality control algorithm. Assemble query code for iterative extraction. None of it made much sense. It all read as if it were poorly translated from another language. And it was puzzling how supplies kept showing up in his makeshift room. After the bombs fell and he had gotten used to the fact the outside world was non-existent, Wilson had simply stayed put. There was food, there was electricity and oddly, he was still being given work.
The only other people he had seen recently were the seemingly shell-shocked body-builder types that were taking up residence in the applications wing of the complex. Evidently they were being directed by some nameless company type because they were constantly at work building odd devices that served no discernable purpose. It was as if they were creating poorly defined concrete objects the way he was being asked to perform random, unrelated programming tasks. Early on, he had spoken with a few of the others but they seemed detached in a disquieting way from the destruction of their world. Wilson took this to mean they knew a lot more than he about what had happened and was going to happen. He accepted he was intentionally out of the loop and left well enough alone. This prevented any personal connection and he now tried to avoid the constructors and their confusing projects altogether.
Silence
Kyle became conscious, or at least he thought he was. He could not feel much of anything beyond a sensation of heaviness in his limbs. No pain. Although he couldn’t see, his eyes seemed to be open. When he tried to raise his head, he realized with an icy stab of fear that his head was immobilized in some sort of restraint. His arms and legs also. Not by straps or ropes, but something completely enveloping his body as if he were shrink wrapped. He was aware of his lungs filling with air and his heart beating, but he could hear nothing.
Kyle tried to think where he had been, to remember what last happened. An echoing hallway, John and Triss, an underground concrete corridor not yet filled with human survivors and their makeshift homes; corpses stacked neatly in a stairwell landing, ready for orderly disposal; the woman in the green scrubs.
A voice floated into his head. It was mechanical, a computer generated voice, but its words were chilling. “Where is John?” it asked softly. The sound felt like it was inside his skull. He must be wearing a headset. Another sensation, of cold fluid seeping from an IV needle and he felt a brief rush of euphoria. Now he was losing focus and his thoughts began to slide randomly, out of his control. “Think about John,” the voice said. Kyle now understood perfectly. He was alone with the machines, they knew who he was; they were in his head and they were after John.
Marla Jones
The laser applied barcode had been invaluable in classifying this human. Although there was an error in the time mark, it told the location of acquisition, suggested utilities and scheduled disposal. In the observation room, Marla watched the subject’s vital signs jump. The organic part of her remembered human sensation. The man was probably realizing at least part of his situation and he would be afraid. The heart and breathing rate were 30% above normal, suggesting high amounts of stress. His heart rate increased another 5% as he felt the cold, unknown fluid seep into his vein. The simple EEG showed a great deal of low amplitude Beta wave activity. It all added up to a silent scream.
John and Triss
John was practically flying over the mounds of rubble, Triss’ hand clamped in his. The image of the people on the stairs, if they were people, burned in his thoughts. The shock of watching his dad taken had spurred such a rush of adrenaline; he had almost been carrying Triss at first, but now yanked and dragged her along. “John,” she panted.
“I don’t want to hear it, we have to run.”
“I know. I think I can run faster, if we’re not holding hands.” She stopped suddenly, roughly pulling her hand away. In that instant, before she sprinted ahead, he could see the intensity in her expression and knew that she too had sensed the alien quality of the things in the stairwell. He got moving.
Information
At the very corner of awareness, he felt pressure from the restraint covering his body. It was both elastic and rigid. He experienced its painfully tight embrace if he moved at all, including the unavoidable rising and falling of his chest to breathe, yet if he kept his limbs completely motionless, held his breath, it felt like there was nothing touching his skin. It enveloped him in a creepy way, almost like a live thing, like being consumed.
Marla had the image of Kyle’s thoughts or at least the electrical representation on the screen. Humans had so little shielding of their neural network or their peripheral nervous system, the positron emission and functional magnetic resonance showed every nuance of brain activity and structure. Multiple layers of information were being recorded, the information from the senses which traveled quickly and the deep cognitive activity which depended on blood flow response and was relatively slow. She keyed the sound feed. “Is John here with you?” She observed the flood of brain activity.
“No.” It was the first verbal response, a lie, of course, and of great value as a baseline. She now had a perfect map of his mind as he told a lie. So easy to manipulate human thought patterns with a few chemicals added to their circulatory systems. There was virtually no separation of the many physical processes. Interrupting one had an effect on all. It was just a matter of selecting the most efficient means of access.
Kyle fought panic. How easily he had slipped into a response. Whatever they had pumped into his veins was eliminating his ability to reason. He tried to secure his thoughts down into mission mode. Focused, clear, with sharply defined parameters.
Marla noted the calming of brain function. Excellent. Organized thoughts and memories were optimal for extraction. Panic and confusion merely slowed the process, requiring more emotional trauma for the subject.
Kyle drifted in a slurry of mental images, waiting for the inevitable. He drew comfort from the fact the machines were still looking for John, although it seemed impossible he and Triss had escaped. He did not particularly fear pain. He had experienced so much of it in his life and knew there was only a finite amount of pain that could be suffered before one simply passed out or died. Pain was not an efficient means of coercion but, perhaps the machines did not know this.
Interest
In the mysterious way of animals, the pack approached the building, seeking out that which they feared. The not-man had disappeared inside. Before the great change, the alpha male had served a kind, but damaged master who depended on it a great deal. It had been trained to assist the man and evaluate situations to avoid danger. Now the pack had crossed paths with something unlike any human it had ever encountered, even a malevolent one and it plucked at the dog’s instinct to give chase.
John and Triss
They had stopped to eat and rest, crawling under a picnic table near the ruins of some nameless former business park. The girders lay blasted apart: some still standing, most twisted and folded against the ground. John was exhausted; they had been running for four days now with very little food or water and almost no rest. He looked over at Triss. With no imminent threat and feeling relatively safe in their makeshift shelter, she was already asleep. She was filthy, her hair tangled and matted. His own hands had touched such foulness he regretted having to eat with them.
With Kyle as their protective escort, after seeing hundreds of human remains, some truly horrifically preserved in the instant of death, Triss and John had become immune to the scale of destruction and the number of dead. John was appalled at how little time it took to become numb to such soul-crushing devastation. But now they were running and alone, and the horror of their surroundings became freshly painful, a malignant beast constantly snapping at their heels.
Twice during this nightmare an H-K, the first they had seen, had come within range and they had hidden under piles of debris. Kyle had drilled them over and over about how much and what type of materials provided the best protection from the infrared. So far, following his instructions had worked.
As he stared up at the underside of the concrete table, John replayed the scene in the stairwell. His father was dead. In an instant, after all their planning and training, the situation had changed and the unexpected loss was paralyzing. Get it together, soldier! he thought bitterly. School is out.
Triss woke first. Sleep as usual had been shear surrender to stress and fatigue. No dreams. No relief. Just simple, direct shut-down of consciousness. At least the first thing she saw was John’s face, peaceful and sweet in repose. His eyes opened and focused on her. She could not help smiling, thinking about all the times those eyes had held nothing but trouble and teasing.
Waking to Triss’ smiling face, inches away, he kissed her forehead without even thinking about it. Her skin tasted salty-smoky.
Triss was comforted by his quiet gesture. His lips were soft and warm and it felt completely natural to turn her mouth up to meet his. She sensed the momentary shock radiate through him before he began to kiss her hungrily.
Warm contentment washed over his mind and body as he felt her respond, blotting out the horrific post war nightmare. For a time they were lost in each other, a little world of arms and tangled legs as he held her, tasting the sweet mouth that until now had kept him at arm’s length, cutting him down to size when he tried to make her life difficult. That same sharp-tongued mouth was now open against his, eagerly exploring and caressing.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, they’re just kids. Get ‘em.” A man’s hand snaked under the bench on Triss’s side, grabbing her ankle, jerking hard to drag her out and smacking her face against the concrete. Her head swam. There were faces peering at them from both sides now. John clawed his automatic out of its holster and fired over Triss into the space between the table and bench as a female scav clamped a hand on his wrist. The man let go of Triss, the top of his head spurting blood as he collapsed.
Triss scrambled to her feet and John twisted, but before he could aim at the second scav, a third grabbed a handful of John’s jacket. He felt himself being lifted as the three of them thrashed and fought for the automatic. Triss flinched as several wild rounds hit nearby.
It seemed like a long time before she had her own weapon ready and Triss’ hands were shaking so fiercely, the first bullet simply skipped off the top of the slab of concrete. The two scavs looked up, surprised. Triss fired again, catching the woman in the forehead, and then jumping up on the table as the man ducked. She aimed down, the bullet punching between his shoulder blades. He grunted, but his fingers remained wrapped around the gun in John’s hand. Triss shot him again and his body jerked, and then slumped between the bench and the table edge. The bullet casing chinked on the concrete.
In the sudden quiet, Triss closed her eyes, trying to process what they had just done. She concentrated on the sound of their breathing, their minds and bodies once again slammed into high tension by the charge of adrenaline. John shoved past the first scav and slowly rolled out from under the table. His mind was reeling as he looked at Triss. His lips were still wet from kissing her. He had killed someone. Tenderness and violence, fear and comfort were all jumbled together.
“Are you all right?” At first she seemed to be moving in slow motion, leaning forward to touch foreheads in a pose of relief as if this were normal life. But then her head bumped roughly against his cheek and her arms squeezed tightly around him in an awkward rush.
“Ow!” She realized her head was bleeding from hitting the bench and pulled back. “Oh, ugh,” Triss could see the smear of blood she’d left on John’s face. “Sorry. Gross,” she said, as if she had dropped food on someone’s carpet. He wondered if she was going into shock.
“It’s ok. Let me see.” He carefully lifted a lock of hair away from her face and grimaced.
“What?”
“It’s just a really bad bruise.” He retrieved their packs, led Triss a comfortable distance away and opened the medical kit. Triss winced as he touched the sterile wipe to her skin. “Great. More battle scars for me,” she said and he smiled at her. A little more of the tension eased away.
“Yeah, you just get uglier and uglier, Beatriz,” he teased. She stretched out the edge of her sleeve and cleaned the bit of blood off his face while he applied the small band aid. There was an awkward pause then as they both remembered the moments before the scavs. Before he lost his nerve, John leaned in and brushed his lips across the corner of her mouth. He could see an amused smile forming in her eyes even before it spread over her face. “Don’t say anything,” he warned, and so whatever she was thinking remained unspoken.
They gathered up the backpacks and started walking again, each alone in their thoughts. John could still hear his father’s voice. Everyone and everything is a potential threat. Keep track of what is going on around you. Always be on guard. Always. Silently, John berated himself for once again, not reacting in time, first with the pirates, then at the loss of his father and now these scavs. Too slow was not good enough. He should have instantly jumped into combat mode. Never lose focus. Never let your guard down. The words pounded through his head as he walked.
It was dusk, then dark for several hours before they stopped, this time crawling into a blasted out car. There were rows and rows of them. Perhaps this had been a car dealership. They took turns watching as the other slept, but neither got much rest, too exhausted to stay alert and too scared to sleep.