The Ghost in the Machine
Chapter Eleven
Rage and the Machine
One of us is waiting, one side
of us is waiting
Where's your revolution plan?
Where's the leading upper hand
To guide your life, to guide your life
One stand, one stand together
One stand, one to hand the standard high
The standard high
Lightening shattered the sky and the dark descended. The subway screeched to a halt. Clocks stopped. Elevators froze. The warm artificial glow of a million florescent bulbs ceased. An opaque blanket smothered the city. No one moved. Gradually, the radium glow began to return.
Darkness brought change.
"It has started." Brown stood at the entrance to the Heart O' the City Hotel. He made no attempt to open the door.
"How much time do we have?" Jones looked up at the sky.
"A matter of hours. We must hurry." Brown still did not open the door.
"Do you think we'll get to her in time?"
"There is a strong possibility that we will not."
"What will happen when the Mainframe reloads?"
"I do not know." Brown looked to his colleague and then to the black sky. "It's never reloaded before."
"You are afraid."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I feel it too." Jones reached for the door.
***
Alsace wrapped his cold fingers around Kai's arm bruising her flesh. They stood motionless as the darkness passed over them. When the light returned they continued towards the third floor. Pausing at the second floor landing Alsace looked over his shoulder. His eyes were wide and he did not blink. "Do you feel it?" he whispered coarsely and shook his victim.
"Feel what?" Kai mumbled as the air grew colder and cleaner. She felt something, but assumed it was the gray lips of death.
"It has started," his voice trailed off and he peered down into the stair well. "We are at the mercy of a very angry god."
"Ironic how you should anything to say about mercy." She took a deep breath of the cold air and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "You sound scared, Alsace. Afraid of ghosts?" She taunted him despite the pain perched behind her eyes.
"It's one of those evenings Kai. You used to describe them as shadow nights. I always wrote it off as you being melodramatic, but I think there was more to it."
Victim and victimizer continued up the stairs. He kept to the wall, holding Kai between himself and the darkness on the other side of the steel banister. The lights flickered and then brightened. Once more, they were standing at the second landing. Alsace swung Kai around violently pressing her against the wall. Everything was quiet. "Tell me the access code and I'll let you live." He did not look at her. His eyes madly scanned the shadows. "We can end the game."
"Code for what?" Her shoulders slumped, but her eyes sharpened briefly as she met his panicked expression.
He slapped her.
"Nietzsche once said that he who looks into darkness need to be vigilant that the darkness isn't looking back into him." A cold smile crossed her lips and she turned to look at him her hand locked around the empty weapon. Lucidity. "Does the darkness see you here, Alsace?"
"Stop it," he growled. "I need that energy code. Michael had it. I know he got it from you."
Her knees started to buckle and she began to sink. "You are talking to a nonentity. I am nothing. I don't exist." She wiped the blood from her nose again. "I'm just a shadow who's seen the red room. This is no more than an elaborate dream…"
"Shut-up! It's in there," he hissed and grabbed her head. She fell to her knees. "It's in here. You have to get it out and I'll let you live. I need to know where to be." He leveled the shaking gun at her head. "You want to live don't you?"
The lights dimmed again and everything became painfully quiet.
She laughed. "Live? You call this living?" She focused on something behind Alsace's right shoulder. "I've been dead for ten years."
***
Smith removed his jacket and tossed it into a burnt out chair. Casually, he sat down on the radiator with his back to the window and took his gun out of its shoulder holster. The room was cold, but immersed in a comforting emerald glow. He wrapped his slender hands around the DE as if in prayer and bowed his head against the cool steel of the barrel. Each the time the world dimmed he regained more of his memory, more of his consciousness. Behind his dark sunglasses, Agent Smith waited.
ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.675431P. 2130 hrs. Location 987.003-190 60606.
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "I did not intentionally break protocol. I adjusted it, but I did not disobey it."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M. 70858.01 "You permitted the terrorist to escape."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "I do not view this individual as a threat."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00Am1M. 70858.01"That is not a decision for you to make."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "You feel the same way. I acted on what you said." Time Lapse 00:00:52:03
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00Am1M.70858.01 "I expressed an unauthorized opinion. I identified it as such. It was not an order."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "I did what I felt was right. I will stand behind my actions."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine100.00Am1M. 70858.01 "Felt? You don't feel. I don't feel. We follow orders."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "You lie."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M. 70858.01 "I am ending this discussion. Your GPS is nonfunctional. How can I protect you if I" Possessive Error 404 " can not find you."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. 70858.04 "I don't need protection and maybe I don't want to be found."
Procedural Protocol Patch initiated by 70858.04
***
Released from the Escher-like delirium of the stairwell, Alsace shoved Kai through the fire door and into the hallway. The warped floorboards creaked. Several doors were open revealing the occasional piece of charred furniture and piles of broken waterlogged sheetrock. Kai stumbled through a broken picture frame and remembered the photos she carried in her satchel.
"This is your last chance, Kai. Tell me the code and we don't have to go any further," Alsace leaned over her shoulder. His tone combined a plea and a threat.
She stopped and fought against the echo in her head. "I do not know the code, Alsace. You've wasted your time on me." A swarm of disconnected memories entered her head.
The sound of a crowded bar. The taste of gin. The smell of Cuban cigars and salt water. A torn list of names. A newspaper clipping. Disorientation. Anger. The feel of the asphalt under her hands.
"You're arrogant to think to can use one." She remembered his other victims. "I should have killed you when I had the chance. I was told not to and look where it fucking got me." She shook her head against the pain and the cloudiness returned.
"You over stepped your boundaries, Kai. I am protected." He stopped in front of a scorched door and glanced at the crumpled yellow tape on the floor. "You can't fuck with me—no matter who you are," he whispered as put his finger to the back of her neck and traced a line in the blood. He wrapped his arm around her and leaned close. "It was my pleasure to listen to you whine about your bad dreams and not have a fucking clue who you were. I could have told you anything, but you cultivated your own madness. Call it evolution, if you will. There was no dream, you stupid bitch, and as for the red room, you're the first of your kind ever to see that nightmare. I think of it as an added bonus." He put the bloody finger in his mouth and tightened his grip. "I shot the sheriff," he hummed and pushed through the door.
***
Alsace did not see Smith, but he felt him immediately. Defensively, he cowered behind Kai and pressed the gun against her head. Silence. The lightening flashed.
"Alsace," Smith growled as he rose to his feet.
"Michael?" Kai choked. Images of the beach. Images of the water.
"Michael?" Alsace echoed, his eyes brightening. He laughed. "You think this is Michael? Oh shit, no wonder you can't remember the code. You think this monster is Michael?" He laughed again and released the safety on his weapon. Attempting to disguise his own fear, Alsace cleared his throat. "I'm beginning to realize the gravity of the situation here."
"I doubt that." The IMI DE did not have a safety.
"Take one step, Smith, and I blow her gray matter all over this wall and you guys lose decades of research and God knows what else."
"You can not threaten me, Alsace." Smith leveled the heavy gun effortlessly.
"Oh? I think I can," he taunted over Kai's shoulder. "I've got your precious Spook and she's in quite a pinch—pun intended."
"You think I can not shoot around her?" He raised an eyebrow.
"I'm protected. Enforcement cannot touch me. I have the Mainframe's word."
"I've been having a rough day, Alsace, I'm in error and didn't get the memo." Smith actually smiled.
"No matter what you do to me," he tightened his grip. "I will put a bullet through her head. She will cease to exist. I know what that nuclear pinch did. You bastards think you're invincible. You've got weaknesses too. You've got firewalls to keep such accidents from happening now, but the technology was a bit slow a few years back."
"You've sealed your death with that knowledge."
"You'll seal hers with the same. She saw the fucking red room, Smith," he taunted. "They hit her so hard she woke up her fucking host and imprinted half of her damn files its it head. You kill me and I kill her. She dies for real."
***
Kai felt like she was watching a myopic scene from a dark comedy on an old television set. Isolated, she did not know where she was. It was warm. Her head hurt. Her joints ached. The world tasted like saline. Everything was red. She wanted out.
Ten years had passed.
Angry painful tears clouded her eyes and a clammy coldness crept into her face. "Turn around, Kai," she mumbled through clenched teeth. Her body grew numb and she did not move. "Face him," she growled at herself. "You're better than this. Turn damnit." Rigidly, she turned and met the eyes of the gunman and his partner. She set her jaw and threw her shoulders back against the pain. Blood soaked her white shirt. "You fools! This is not real," she taunted the men and the blue moon.
"For you it is," The dark man raised a cylindrical object. Darkness.
The world stopped. She felt her flesh melt and her bones dissolve as her mind was ripped out of her head and hurled backwards. Ephemeral hands reached out and tried to stop her descent. For a moment, no more than a split second, she was held. Alas, the pull from below was too strong. She slipped and they not could catch her.
Ten years ago, Kathleen "Kai" Thoreau woke up in St. Christopher's Hospital with an amnesic concussion.
***
The empty and forgotten Desert Eagle fell out of Kai's hand and hit the floor solidly.
I've been waiting patiently for this day to arrive and I have spoken not a single word.
Now hand in hand my voice shall be heard.
No Michael, not this time.
I've been waiting for oh so long.
I've accepted silently this name I've been given and I have heard it pass the lips of everyone.
Now, if you will inquire, ask of your father and he may tell you of his brightest son.
No Michael, not this time.
I've been waiting for oh so long. No Michael, not this time, I've been growing oh so strong.
Now in true glory I'll rise again.
I've been waiting patiently for this day and this time I shall not be alone.
Not this time.
No Michael.
Michael (Son of Sam, Songs from the Earth)