Heart of the Storm, page 20
I looked down and didn't realize I'd been clutching my phone the whole time. I zapped it again, and it didn't even response. Well and truly dead, it was, and with it, any link to the world outside of China.
“All right,” Wade said, shouldering his backpack. “If you're sure. We'll wait for nightfall and make for Vietnam. Once we get there, we'll find some remote village with a telephone, call Taxi, and figure out where to go from there.”
I looked up at the sky again; it was past midday now. Our interludes had cost us time, but it had worked out. If everything went as expected, Robb Foreman was now President of the United States, and a treaty pledging peace with Fen Liu's dictatorship of China would soon be signed, leaving her exactly one person in the whole world for her to be at war with:
Me.
“What do you want to do about Ricardo?” Wade asked.
“I don't know,” I said, brushing hair back out of my face. I needed to bind it, and I had to rummage through my bag to find a binder to replace the one shucked off at some point during my...activities...with Wade. “All I know is I want to get out of this country before anyone else dies.”
“Wherever you want to go,” Wade said softly, and took my hand, “I'm with you.” He kissed me, and God did it feel good.
He started to tug my hand in the direction of south, and even though I knew we weren't leaving for hours yet, I pulled back. “It's just...” I started to say, and then let it trail off.
Wade stood, staring at me, like a cipher, his expression unreadable. “What?”
I made a low grunting sound. “I just...I don't like to quit.”
He chuckled. “There's the Sienna I know.” He walked over to a rock with a flat edge to it, and plopped down. “Go on.”
“I just...” I squeezed my hands closed. “...I want to deliver her into the loving, waiting arms of justice. I don't even care what happens to her! Prison, organ harvested to death, hung from a tall tree, burned alive in the ruins of her lair after a mob courses through – I really don't care. I just...” I raised my clenched fist. “...I cannot stand when evil people don't get what they deserve, and continue to hurt others. And I don't mean in the 'corporate raider' sense of the word, like whiners in the West talk about. I don't even mean in the 'corrupt politicians raiding the public treasury' sense of things, though I still think justice for those people would involve being put in a big sack filled with rats and being tossed into the nearest river. She murdered her own people, Wade. Built a funeral pyre that reached up to the stars, and then blamed me.”
“That is the sort of thing that would tend to stick in one's craw,” Wade said.
I unslung my backpack and dropped it. “If I live five thousand years more, I will never leave this mountaintop. Not in my head. Not in my heart. I'll always live here, forevermore, in this moment of supreme regret, if I don't either bring Fen Liu to justice or die trying.”
He stared at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay. Suicide mission it is. I'm in.”
“What?” I felt like I'd gotten kicked in the gut. Which is something I know about. “There's no reason for you to die, too.”
He stood up, dropping his own backpack like baggage he no longer needed. “I have been waiting for you to remember me for years. Listen,” he said, putting a finger on my cheek and steering my eyes back to him because I tried to look away. “I didn't marry you on a whim, Sienna Nealon. I didn't marry you because I was bored in Vegas, or smitten by your public persona, or caught up by the sex, or any of those reasons.
“I did it because I love you,” he said. “Because you'll never realize, you'll never know, what you mean to me.”
“You are definitely putting me on a pedestal,” I said, squirming a little under his arms.
“If I put you on a pedestal, it's because you deserve to be there for reasons,” he said, not letting me go. Not that I was trying to escape. “I have watched you, I have known you. I went to war for a country when I was too young to know what I was getting into. I watched people die who knew even less than I did, and for no good reasons, for arbitrary ones, for fate's own capriciousness.
“Or,” he said, and squeezed my hand in his, “there was a reason for it. And the reason is you, and me. Because on our own, either one of us? Just doing what we do? We can make a difference in this world. A few lives at a time, stopping crimes, killing bad guys – that's something. But together, here, today...we have the chance to do something a lot bigger. A billion people here, living under the boot. Not a lot of hope to sweep away that regime. We make even a dent in that, something that makes people sit up and notice...” He looked in my eyes. “That might be more difference than we could make in a hundred years doing our thing in America.”
“That's a very Chinese way of looking at it,” I said, holding his hand. “Time and patience and long-term plans are kind of their thing. Very foreign to us 'live for the moment' types.” I exhaled. “But yeah. I don't think there's a place on this earth we could just 'do our thing' where they won't find us. So if my ability to do good is going to be impaired, I might as well do as much good as I can to topple their tyrannical superstructure as best I can before I go down.” I squeezed his hand. “And I want to go down swinging, so that Fen Liu knows she's been in a fight – and one she damned well should not have picked.”
“Because Fen Liu picked this fight all by her lonesome,” came a very familiar voice from the underbrush about ten feet behind me. I spun, but there wasn't anything immediately visible–
And then there were hands. A pair of them, held up out of a shrub, followed, slowly, by my grandmother, who slipped out from the shadows and greenery with an amused look. “Without a bit of help from my headstrong granddaughter, who's just a woman of pure peace and no fight at all.”
“How did you find us?” I asked as she slipped into camp. Her clothing was mildly smudged, but otherwise pristine. “Where's Hades? And Jian?”
“Hades is waiting with the car,” she said, and waved her hand in the direction she'd come from, “about three miles that way. He didn't want to make the trek, and he sucks at moving quietly anyway. As for Jian...” And she looked up at the sky.
A bird fluttered off a branch and landed in a nearby bush, using it as cover to shift back into his human form. It covered him like some artistic representation of an Asian Adam, and he blushed slightly as he waved.
“How long you were two listening?” I asked. I'd dropped Wade's hand the moment my grandmother had spoken, ready to throw down with whoever.
“Long enough to know you're ready to end this thing,” Lethe said with a thin smile. “And it couldn't have come at a better time, because I am sick as hell of this Fen Liu – and it looks like we're not alone.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
There was another small crack behind her, and I caught a blur of something moving against the wooded background. I spun and saw–
An invisible man coming out of camouflage.
I started to shout, started to raise my hand to attack, my mouth to loose a sonic scream, squint to unleash eyebeams–
Lethe grabbed me full and hauled me back. “Nuh uh,” she said, and shook her head.
Mr. Tac, that familiar bastard, appeared out of his invisibility, his face no longer a mask of arrogance, and his hands by his sides, clenched into fists but not in a hostile way. At least, not to us, I realized. “You want Fen Liu? I will deliver her to you. But you have to kill her. No ifs. No ands. No buts.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Ifelt the weight of my backpack as we hiked down off the mountain, following Lethe, Mr. Tac – whose real name was apparently Wei Zhang, and Jian, who had shifted to bird form and was flying. I maintained my silence through the first mile, then the second, and finally the third, but as the trees began to thin, and I caught a glimpse of Hades leaning against a small Chinese car under sunny skies, my patience began to wane. “Okay,” I said, to the people around me who had all annoyingly clammed up or become animals, “I accepted Mr. Tac's deal. And I was patient. I was willing to walk quite some distance. But you gotta give me something other than, 'Get in the car, loser, we're going to kill Fen Liu.'”
Lethe seemed absolutely effortless, taking this mountainous hike as if it were no big thing. As though she was back to being a young woman schlepping across the world's largest continent with no difficulty again. “Patience, granddaughter.”
“I don't know why we're waiting to tell you,” Zhang said. “I don't care if you know. I'm here, though, for obvious reasons–”
“Because Fen Liu kills her lovers like a praying mantis,” I said.
“Because she murdered millions of my people,” he said huffily.
“I mean, your government's done worse than that before,” I said. “The Great Leap Forward, 45 million or more. The Cultural Revolution, 1-10 million. The concentration camps still running in Xinjiang – who knows how many? Between the beatings and the rapes and organ harvesting–”
“This is a little different in scale and suddenness,” he said, clearly nonplussed. Not a good guy. But perhaps a useful one.
“And how did you get invited to this party?” I asked sourly. “Not that I'm complaining, since I'm thin on allies, and you obviously gave me fits that time we tried to kill each other in LA.”
“Yes, I survived Sienna Nealon,” he said acidly. “Aren't I special.”
“Hey, that's an achievement,” I said. “It's not like I wasn't trying to kill you, either. I was giving it my best effort at the time. I think.” I hesitated. “I was a little drunk. Or hungover.”
“It doesn't matter now,” he said, with all the attitude I'd expect from a teenage girl who'd just had her Tiktok dance video ruined by someone passing through the frame at the end, “I'm going to help you kill her.”
“She seriously does kill the hell out of her ex-lovers, though,” I said. “I've talked to like...two of them now. She does not like loose ends.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he said. “I was there when she dropped the bomb last night, remember?”
“No wonder you're so crabby,” I said, putting my hands on my backpack straps. “You're caught between a murderous ex and murderous me. Tough choices.”
“I choose self-preservation,” he said, sneering. “I'd die for China, but I won't die for Fen Liu.”
I bit back a sarcastic, SO BRAVE, before it could escape my lips. I did sneak a glance at Wade, and I saw the knowing look in his eyes. Lethe's, too. “Lethe,” I said. “I ask again: How'd you find me?”
“You know damned well how,” Lethe said, and tossed something over her shoulder that I caught easily.
Staring at it, I knew instantly what it was: a phone. “Yeah, mine's busted,” I said, holding it up. “How'd you find me? You can't track me if my phone's busted.”
“She did not find you with the phone itself,” Sierra's voice came from the speaker. “But what's on the phone.”
“Yeah, okay, hi, Sierra,” I said. “Not exactly a game-changer, though, is she?” I paused, and frowned. “Wait...how did Sierra find me in China? Satellite imagery?”
“No,” Lethe said, turning to give me a very slight smirk. “She found you the same way she found the rest of us and brought us together.” Her eyes gleamed. “Because that's not Sierra – or not exactly.”
“Uh, sure sounds like her,” I said, brandishing the phone.
“It's true, I'm not Sierra,” her voice came back again. “Or at least not the one you know, that's safely nestled in US servers, and unable to penetrate the Chinese internet.” There was a crackle in the background, and I almost thought for a second, that I heard a little glimmer of triumph bleeding through my mother's artificially generated voice. “I'm the Sierra you uploaded into the Chinese internet. And I'm happy to report that my mission has been a success.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
“Define 'success' for me,” I said, still hiking back to the car with the whole crew. We'd started moving again after Sierra's – the Chinese splinter program, not the original American recipe – admission that she'd succeeded in implanting in the Chinese internet. Local greenery crunched under my boots, and Wade was listening keenly, walking alongside me now that the trails had widened somewhat. Hades was ahead, at the car, and tossed me a wave before turning back to the little Chinese man sitting on the hood with a cigarette in his hand.
“I have succeeded in penetrating the Chinese internet,” Sierra said, “at several critical nodes. Furthermore, I was able to remain undetected, and have been gradually increasing my presence and influence. I am now present in over a hundred million nodes throughout the Chinese homeland, including two hundred and fifty million cell phones, as well as a variety of laptops, tablets, PCs, servers, and even a number of server farms. And I am still expanding my footprint.” There was a slight crackle. “In other words – they'll have a hell of a time getting rid of me now.”
“Okay,” I said, and found Wade's presence by my side still more comforting than Sierra's in the Chinese internet. “But what does that mean for us? What can you do?”
“Well, for starters,” she said, “I was able to reunite your wayward team members. After that, I was able to insert into Zhang's phone and ascertain his disposition following Fen Liu's betrayal of him.”
“Following Fen Liu's murder of the whole city of Guangzhou,” Tac muttered. Getting used to calling him Zhang was tough.
“In addition to making contact with him,” Sierra said, “I've been making connections with other parties that might share an interest in seeing Fen Liu removed from power.”
I blinked. “That...that sounds like a lot of work.”
“Actually, it shouldn't be,” Wade said with a smirk. “If you think about it, Skynet's whole purpose is to surveil the Chinese people in order to make determinations about who's naughty and nice. Well, this is direct access to Santa's naughty list. You already know who the best troublemakers are.”
“Exactly,” Sierra said.
“And are these people willing to do anything?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sierra said. “I've already put some of them to work.” Jian cawed overhead. “One of my first acts when I lost contact with you was to reach out to a small cell in Anshun. I was able to lead them to Jian's hiding place, and from there he was able to establish contact with a very loose coalition of the Chinese dissident underground.”
“They must have been buried pretty deep if they didn't get arrested and dragged off to prison already,” I said. “How'd you find them, Sierra? They couldn't have just been on a list.”
“It took a bit of coaxing,” she said. “Fortunately, humans trust voices on the internet more quickly than people they meet in real life. I am now firmly established in the confidence of close to a hundred million people, and rapidly increasing that number.”
“Should we be concerned that the AI is making friends?” I asked.
“Not as long as she keeps us as her besties,” Wade said. “Since we were first.”
“My mission parameters remain unchanged,” Sierra said. “My primary objective is to aid you. Currently, that means helping you establish an insurrection in China that will see Fen Liu ejected from the office, and possibly the atmosphere.” She paused. “That last part was a joke. Unless you take her to orbit yourself.”
“Let's not rule that out,” I said. “But how are you presenting yourself to these people? Do they have any idea who you're working for?”
“Not at first,” Sierra said. “But when the appropriate moment comes, I do tell them.”
I cringed. “Sierra...that's insane. In case you missed it, Fen Liu just blew up a Chinese city last night, and I'm pretty positive she's blaming it on me as we speak.”
Lethe chuckled; Jian crowed, and even Zhang grunted in amusement.
“What?” I asked. “What am I missing that's funny?”
“That might be a worry,” Sierra said, “except please remember that I am, as you say, 'On it,' and that this is not a concern.”
“Not a concern?” Wade asked. “I'm pretty sure a blown up city is a concern.”
“I only mean that Fen Liu telling her side of the story is not a concern,” Sierra said. “Because I have control of the internet nodes, and am inserted into the Skynet system.” When she spoke again, I could almost hear my mother boasting like she did in life. “In other words, she can scream all she likes to the people around...but I've taken away her microphone.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Fen Liu
“How?” Fen Liu asked, “have you lost complete control of our internet?”
The picture on her screen was fuzzy, was fritzing, was anything but the picture of normal use and control she might have expected.
“Don't...can't....” Hu Jianjun, the Minister of Public Security said, before his picture clicked off.
Her eyes narrowed and she tried to connect to the Minister of Defense Guoqiang. No connection.
Fen Liu stared, unblinking. Could this truly be happening?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
Sienna
“My control of their telecom system is incomplete,” Sierra said. “They will still be able to send and receive patchy messages, but I have more or less terminated their ability to run videoconferencing.”
Overhead, a bird tweeted. Not Ricardo, but a pleasant sound nonetheless. “So the Chinese military is going to have some kinks in its hose over the next few hours,” I said. “That's not a terrible opening, as openings go.”
