Killswitch, page 14
I didn’t know what to say. I knew something was wrong with this discussion. Maybe it was just the way Trino’s emotions seemed just the slightest bit practiced, a little too obvious. Or maybe it was the casually ruthless way he talked about the need for blood.
I suddenly felt cornered. I wanted to bolt out of the cafeteria, but a thought occurred to me.
“Is that what you want me to say to everybody?”
Trino spotted the trap.
“No, of course not,” he said earnestly. “I’m not pulling your strings. I just felt you needed to see that lines are being drawn here. Mavo, I firmly believe this is the best path— the only path, really, if we want to free humanity. It’s our chance.” He quirked his lips. “So, no pressure.”
I looked away. Trino was pressing me, and that meant one of two things: his position was weak and he needed me to tip the balance, or he was going to throw the dice, make his move for power, and he was offering me a chance to be on his side.
I wondered what would happen to the people who were on the other side. Somehow, I didn’t think he’d just let them walk away.
And then I remembered Rin’s streaked face as she accused me of making her a murderer. I knew where she’d stand: Directly in Trino’s line of fire.
I had to warn her.
I looked at Trino. It took all of my willpower to keep my face neutral. It was a skill I was rapidly learning. That, and how to lie with a smile on my lips.
I smiled.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about. It sure seems to make sense, but I’d like to digest it a little more.” I held out my hand. “Thank you.”
Trino looked startled, then a smile creased his lips. He took my hand. “I think we have a good understanding.” He rose. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” He pointed to the book. “I hope you like it,” he said. “Though personally, I’ve never had time for reluctant heroes.”
As he walked away, I rubbed my hand. It felt like he was still gripping it.
Was Trino going to make his same pitch to Rin? If so, I had to get to her before he did. I wished I hadn’t left my comclip in the room, or that this stupid ancient building had more wall screens. I grabbed my book and sprinted for the elevator.
I reached my room and shouted at the screen: “Call Rin!”
The screen blinked green and then went black.
“Call denied.”
I repeated the call six times. I tried to leave messages but they were refused. On the last call, I yelled, “Rin! This is an emergency! Please!” The screen went black again, but this time an image of a skull and crossbones appeared followed by fiery letters that said, “Access denied. I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU!!!”
I was getting a splitting headache. It had been building behind my eyes, a sort of psychic pressure. But I hadn’t been Immersed! It felt like a fierce wind, maybe a hurricane, hammering against a door, and that door was my mind. Also, my left hand was hurting.
I ignored all that. I had to reach Rin. The only way now was to go to her room and hope for the best. I blinked away the pain and went out of my room. I ran to the elevator. By the time I got there, I was staggering. I leaned against the wall.
Somebody was just leaving the elevator and I lurched inside. Only then did I realize it was heading down, not up. I had to wait, my teeth clenched, as it went to the basement. A man with a toolbox got on. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the elevator began to rise.
It seemed to take forever. It seemed to stop at every floor as people came and went. By the time I reached Rin’s floor, I was sweating and shivering with anxiety. The pain behind my eyes had moved to my temples. I felt like my skull would burst. I was having trouble focusing. The edges of my vision were darkening. I heard some kind of weird chittering or buzzing. I shook my head, ignoring it all. The only thing that mattered was reaching Rin.
I barreled out of the elevator, but I couldn’t seem to keep my balance. I staggered toward Rin’s room. I reached it and stood there, panting. I struggled to raise my arm to knock. It felt like raising a block of concrete. Then my vision went gray. All I remember after that was toppling over, and the pain as my forehead smashed into Rin’s door. Then there was blackness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I woke up groggy and disconnected from myself. For a terrifying moment, I thought I might be back in the mind probe and my hands twitched, which is when I realized I wasn’t tied down. I opened my eyes. My forehead felt cold but not painful. The pulsing agony behind my eyes was gone.
Rin was standing over me. She removed an ice pack from my head.
“Rin!” I said. “You’ve got to be careful!”
“Shut up,” she said. “and stop fidgeting.”
“Where are we?” I asked. “Are we alone?”
“We’re in the FreeJack VM suite.”
“The medical suite? Why? What happened?”
“You tried to break down my door with your head.”
Then I remembered. I tried to lift my head, but a firm hand pressed me back down. I realized I was in a body-conforming, padded creche. I smelled disinfectant.
Brian was there. So was a FreeJack tech, a bulky man who looked like he’d seen it all. If he knew who I was, he didn’t let on.
“Easy,” Brian said. “Now that you’re awake, we can run a conscious scan.”
The tech closed the transparent cover, and I felt the sensor pads latch onto my chest and neck. The scans seemed to take only a few moments, but I knew the results were being shared with and evaluated by legions of doctors and medical machines around the world.
The pads retreated and the creche cover came up. The tech leaned over. His eyes unfocused, which I guessed meant he was reading the results in Immersion.
“Well,” he said finally. “The consensus is that there’s nothing seriously wrong with you. You did appear to have a blood pressure spike, but that could be from anxiety. That can happen when you’re under a lot of stress.” He gave me a probing look, but I didn’t respond and he didn’t press. “You can get up,” he said. “You’re good to go. I’ll upload the full diagnosis for you.”
“Could you make a printout?” I asked. I remembered my headache all too well.
“A printout? What do you mean?”
“On pages,” I said. “Like a book.”
The tech gave me a puzzled look. “I think we might have a reader around here somewhere,” he said.
“That would be fine.”
The tech looked at Brian and Rin. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” He left the room.
Brian offered me a hand. He helped me out of the creche. I bent close to him.
“Does the tech know who I am?” I said in a low voice.
Brian’s lips twitched. “I think he knows, but he won’t say anything. And we anonymized you for the Immersion probe. We couldn’t risk taking you to a hospital immediately but thankfully, that won’t seem to be necessary.”
I looked at Rin, who stood against the door with her arms crossed. The look she gave me wasn’t friendly. I turned to Brian.
“Look,” I said. “You’ve got to warn Rin! Trino cornered me in the cafeteria. He wanted me to support him.” I paused, then took the plunge. “I... I overheard you two arguing.”
“Did you?” Brian said. “”I wondered why Trino wanted to talk to me in an unsecured room. I should have known.”
“You mean Trino wanted me to overhear?”
“Trino always has a reason for what he does. It makes him useful but dangerous.” Brian took a breath. “So, let me guess. You’re afraid that Rin will come down on the wrong side when he makes his move.”
Brian’s insight impressed me. If she was impressed, she didn’t show it. She glared at me and then turned her face away from us.
I turned back to Brian and said softly, “Can you talk to her? Tell her not to show her hand? She won’t talk to me.”
“I already did,” Brian said. “I had her channel open while I was talking to Trino.” He looked smug. “Two can play that game.”
I glanced at Rin nervously. She made a point of not looking at me.
“What will she do?” I asked.
“She’ll try everything to keep the peace,” Brian said. “More importantly, what about you?”
“I just want to stay out of it,” I said.
“I’m afraid you don’t have that choice,” Brian said. “Mavo, do you realize who you are to these people? The Realists— and the whole world, for that matter— either are going to believe we killed on purpose or it was an accident. If you stand with me, there’s a chance that Trino won’t make his move, at least for now. But if you take his side, it’ll be civil war.”
“And you’d lose?”
Brian didn’t take offense.
“Not me, the Realists. Ruthless people can win, at least in the short term. But I think the cost would be the soul of this organization. Too high a price.” He shook his head. “I hate to push you, but you and Rin will have to give your statements shortly to the Assembly. Are you ready?”
“I guess so. Like you said, what’s my choice?”
“Well,” Brian said, and he lowered his voice so that I had to lean in to hear him. “There is one more option. I know a way to get you out of here without being seen. I can get you on the train and you can go wherever you want.”
I thought about it. I’d been dreaming of escaping since I’d been kidnapped and brought here. Now it was within reach, offered to me on a silver platter. It was so tempting.
But then I looked over at Rin. She was looking up as if she were counting the ceiling tiles.
I couldn’t leave her to face this by herself. I had planned the mission; I was responsible. I was part of this, and it was much bigger than just Rin. It was Brian, it was everybody in this group. It was everybody who might die if the Realists turned to wholesale violence.
It was funny, I thought. Once, I had jumped on a train to escape my childhood. If I took another one now, I’d never stop running. No train could take me far enough to escape myself.
“I’ll go to the Assembly,” I said.
“Thank you,” Brian said softly.
The door opened and the tech returned. He was holding a dusty device. I assumed it was the reader.
“Sorry it took so long,” he said. “I had to find somebody who knew how to work it.” He held it out. “Just press here.”
I took the reader. I pressed my thumb to the screen and it lit up. Words scrolled, tracking my eye movements as I read.
There was a lot of technical jargon about fluid levels and tests with funny acronyms that I ignored. The diagnosis was written in regular language. It started with a paragraph in red that said I had atypical brain architecture and further testing was recommended. Fat chance, I thought. I’d been probed to the brain stem already. The paragraph also said there didn’t appear to be any sign of recent neural damage or disease, so that was good. Whatever was making my headaches worse, it apparently wasn’t because my brain was melting down.
There was a final paragraph. It was a cheery green. But I blinked as I read it:
“Patient appears LET ME IN run down from fatigue and/or emotional distress. Patient should WHEN I KNOCK rest and take fluids. Mood elevators LET or a regimen of ME calming IN sensoria OPEN may be THE of value DOOR.”
I stopped.
“What?” I said. I scrolled it back to the beginning. I read it again:
“Patient appears run down from fatigue and/or emotional distress. Patient should rest and take fluids. Mood elevators or a regimen of calming sensoria may be of value.”
The other words weren’t there. For a second, I wondered if I did have brain damage. But the tests certainly would have detected it. I must have imagined it. I flashed on the strange dream I’d had.
Maybe exhaustion was playing tricks on me. I shook my head at my weird imagination, deleted the record from the reader and handed it back.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Do you want an upload copy?” the tech asked.
Brian stepped up. “No, delete everything,” he said. “We were never here.”
“No, you weren’t,” the tech said. “Thanks for using FreeJack.” And without another word, he left the room.
Brian turned to me. “Unity normally accesses all medical records, even anonymized ones, so it can track epidemiological patterns,” he said. “We can’t have it known that you were incapacitated. Now, if you’re ready, the Assembly is waiting.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The room was packed, as before. Brian replayed the scenes of the blast at the cow factory, still without any sign of the blackout, and then the news reports of the second blast. He then asked Rin and me to report on our mission. I didn’t lie, exactly. I just didn’t mention the blackout, and I also failed to specify that before the explosion, I hadn’t actually triggered the detonator. Nobody noticed. Rin’s report matched mine. Her voice was dry and factual. There was no hint of the pride and excitement I’d seen earlier. All those deaths had bled it out of her.
After that, Brian mentioned something that I hadn’t known: Unity analysts had found that the unfinished meat factory had tied its security systems to the existing cow factory. The methane sensors, the mixers, air scrubbers, everything that had a monitoring system was temporarily operating on a feed from the working factory. Unity’s working hypothesis was that our destruction of that plant had somehow resulted in the second deadly explosion.
“Clearly, Unity wants to tar us with this,” Brian said. “Which brings us to the next order of business. We must put out a message. We either say the disaster was an accident, or pretend—” He looked at Trino. “—that we meant to commit murder.”
There were a few gasps. Trino gave Brian a dark look.
Brian stepped forward and calmly laid out his case. It didn’t take long. There was a lot of chattering and debate when he stopped, but I couldn’t tell if he’d won anybody over.
It was Trino’s turn. He spoke quietly but forcefully. He ended with a ringing tone in his voice: “We can turn their tricks against the machines! They want to paint us as dangerous, as lethal. Well, hell yes! It’s about time!”
When he stopped, the same chattering filled the room. Trino let it rise for a few moments, then raised his hands for silence.
“I’d like to say one more thing,” he began. “There’s something that may not have occurred to you. Instead of wondering whether we Realists did this on purpose or by accident, I submit that we ask ourselves: ‘Who benefits?’”
He paused. There were cries of dismay.
“I mean,” Trino said. “What if we were set up? What if that tie-in between factories wasn’t some construction shortcut but a deliberate act? Unity, after all, doesn’t blink an eye when two million people die; the machines hold a party! They declare a day of celebration! So why should they balk at killing a couple hundred humans to take out a foe like us?”
“Doesn’t matter if they did!” someone yelled. “We’re being blamed anyway!”
“Yes, but you’re missing the point!” Trino said. “The timing of the second explosion. It means somebody must have known about our plans in advance. Somebody tipped off Unity, by accident or on purpose. I won’t say which, but it means this: We’ve got either a dupe or a traitor among us.”
Trino slowly and deliberately turned his head to me. “Mavo,” he said. “I believe you wanted to say something.”
It wasn’t subtle. Trino was threatening to paint me as the mole if I didn’t back him. I could picture these people turning on me and literally tearing me apart. I’d read about mobs and how easy it was to create them and throw them against an enemy. What had Trino said? You only needed five percent of a population to start a revolution. Did he have them in this room?
My mouth was dry as I stepped forward. I can’t remember what I said, but it was short and Trino didn’t like it. I felt his eyes boring into the back of my head, but he said nothing.
Then Rin came forward. I silently urged her to be careful.
“You don’t need my opinion on what we tell the world,” she said. “Trino and Brian have laid out the choices. All I can say is that whatever we decide, the important thing is that we do it peacefully and we speak with one voice. I know many of us will disagree with whatever decision is made. But the future of Realism depends on us working together. Please. That’s all I have to say.” She stepped back.
Rin’s magic seemed to work again. The hostile edge of the arguments seemed to vanish. It was replaced by a low, intense murmur. And when Brian called for the vote, it was overwhelming. The Realists were going to take the blame either way, but we would say we blundered and we never meant to kill anyone.
Surprisingly, Trino didn’t look upset. In fact, he looked a little smug as he shook hands with Brian and stepped down from the dais, with Leon and a handful of others surrounding him.
Brian watched him go, then came over to me. He was frowning.
“You have to go,” he said urgently.
“Go where?” I asked.
“To your room. You and Rin should pack,” he said. “Get all your things together and be ready to move instantly when you hear from me.”
“But,” I said, confused. “What’s wrong? We won. There’s not going to be a civil war. Trino lost.”
“Did he?” Brian said and turned away.
I WENT BACK TO MY ROOM. I grabbed my few clothes and other belongings and was about to stuff them into the backpack when I saw my sister’s doll lying at the bottom. I took it out. It was sadly club-footed and scuffed, and one of the eyes had forgotten how to blink. But it didn’t judge me. It had never lost its latex smell. I took a deep breath and my heart leapt. In some weird, psychic way, it smelled of home. I had so wanted to see the big wide world, and now here I was, and the world was not just wider than I’d ever believed; it was darker and twistier, and colder, and not a single other living thing in it wanted me.
