A much quicker update! Maybe we can make this a habit…
Full circle.
His descent into madness begins with an interface and ends with one. It's everything he deserved, really. The time between Savior gripping his face and the next moment he could process felt like infinity – time spent not in black or white or colored landscape, but in sheer nothing.
This was death. Paszek felt more than certain in thinking that. Perhaps there was a facsimile of himself guiding Savior through the more visceral and traumatic corners of his unconscious mind right now. Or thirty years ago. Or sometime in the future.
He couldn't find or feel his body. The thought of twitching his leg was meaningless…a nonexistent neuron firing to a nonexistent nerve connected to nonexistent muscle.
Why he was allowed to maintain consciousness, though, was a mystery Paszek had absolutely no headway on solving. It was consequence of punishment or oversight or mercy. One of the three. It felt most like the first option, but it always would to his cynical self.
Oh, no.
Hall. Corvus.
Were they…dead? Was his DNI fried? That's all they had. There was no escape route for them. Their lives, their very being was probably just erased from reality like it was nothing. The universe had no limit to its appetite for silent, silent tragedy. Hall and Corvus were just victims of it. Not like him. He was a perpetrator. An inflictor of tragic circumstances on most everyone he crossed paths with.
Paszek would have traded his life for theirs in an instant. At least Hall had a future. Somewhere to be and somewhere to go after she got out. She could've gotten out and been a museum curator or a professor or some shit. Something real, something useful. Not an imperialist leaf blower like he had been.
That didn't matter. He was dead. They were dead. Gone. Why wasn't he gone yet? He didn't want to be gone, not yet. But he didn't like being in this state either. He just wanted it one way or another.
Gone or not gone.
Full circle, full circle, full circle…comeuppance? Too flippant a term. This was somebody's justice…revenge? This felt personal. He assumed that was kind of the point of the interface.
All he could hope is that his mind seemed like just as much of a hellscape as Hall's when he was there. Maybe it would be even worse. Sarah's was full of imagined horrors…old war stories read in hardcovers. What about real, physical, actual, material pain? Firsthand dismemberment?
Would that be worse? He hoped it would be.
For Savior's sake.
Once again ensuring that there was no video footage of her of Hall anywhere on the hotel premises or somewhere across the street, Kane quietly checked out and drove off before dawn.
The road trip was over. It was only a seven-minute drive from where they had stayed the night to where they would be staying indefinitely. And the location was remote enough that Kane felt comfortable removing Hall from the bodybag and out into the open. Maybe it didn't make a difference – maybe she couldn't feel it. But there was no way to know for sure.
Ever still the cautious one, though, Kane had pulled around her truck to the back, where it would only be visible to someone standing the middle of the desert. She instructed Wes to do the same for his rental car, which he obliged to without question. It was an ugly beige sedan, definitely and older beater, maybe early 2040s? Whatever it was, Kane assumed that it was the cheapest one in the garage.
Kane sent her two-letter text to Wes to ask him to unlock the doors. It was at this point that Kane got her first good look – or any look, really – at her old friend. His hair was a military buzz, not a far cry but still a notable leap from the thicker, curlier hairstyle she remembered him having. Gone too was a clean-shaven face, replaced with an asymmetrical goatee that was probably a bit overgrown.
Wes tore off a pair of surgical gloves after opening the door and tossed them aside. Kane noticed some calloused spots – light standing out against his very dark skin-tone. What they were from, she didn't have a guess.
"Here, let me help you with her," said Wes, offering up both of his hands and taking hold of Hall's calves while Kane supported her from the shoulders, gripping the oxygen tank with her free hand. Entering the doors, propped open by a doorstop, the two of them shuffled through what appeared to be a storage room before placing her down on a table in the next room.
The morgue proper.
Wes scurried back to close the exit door while Kane checked Hall's pulse once more. She had gotten incredibly efficient at finding the younger woman's heartbeat, and the consistency of the pulse gave Kane little reason to worry.
Kane, of course, was waiting for the full explanation as to why the undisclosed site that Wes had sent her to was an abandoned morgue. And as to why it was located in the outskirts of Yuma, Arizona – a place that, to the best of her knowledge, Wes had never spent any significant amount of time living.
Hearing Wes return from the storage room, Kane took a clean sheet from an adjoining table and draped it over Hall. Now that she was secure, she deserved to have a bit more physical dignity than the CIA's hospital gown provided.
Wes seemed to get the hint that Hall's condition was not the topic of discussion for now.
"So, uh…you guys doing okay?" he stammered, at first making eye contact but quickly averting it afterwards.
"I don't know if I can do small talk, Wes," replied Kane, almost wanting to let out a chuckle.
Almost.
"Um…maybe I should tell you why I have this place? And why you shouldn't be concerned about anyone finding us."
"Maybe you should," she said bluntly.
"There's no signs anywhere, you know, on purpose, but…this building is technically the main campus of South Yuma College," said Wes, appropriately waiting for a reaction.
"Not that tough to pull off, really," he added. "Just needed the proper documentation to fool the Department of Education, a low-profile website and a disclaimer that the college is full…no room for new applicants."
"How I can understand, but…why, exactly?" asked Kane.
"Back at Northwestern, way before I started my master's there, the neuroscience department ran a research project involving some late-stage brain cancer patients. It ended…bad for a lot of people. No funding, not for anything."
Kane was starting to get it. "New school, new funding."
"Exactly. There were about a dozen of us in the graduate program. Ponied up the cash to buy this place…cleaned it out ourselves. Real estate is dirt-cheap out here. The leftover money made enough interest in the bank to pay property taxes in perpetuity," said Wes.
"So, uh, the place is pretty much ours, then," he continued. "The rest of the folks all have their PhDs or medical degrees now, so they don't need it anymore. Like I mentioned before, all I really need to pay for is the electricity, which is not exactly cheap out here, so…"
"I'll take care of it," replied Kane. Mostly a lie. Someone was going to take of it. But not her. Not directly. She hadn't checked, but she assumed that her main accounts were all frozen by now. Not that she was going to check.
"You have oxygen tanks here?" she asked, mostly to deflect from the money issue.
"Enough to last her at least two weeks. Is that a good ballpark for you?" he asked back.
"Maybe," she quickly replied.
Kane swallowed before she could say anything else. The ice was still very much unbroken between them. She was waiting for Wes to half-sarcastically point it out.
Where do you go after ten-plus years? It was clear to Kane that they had both changed too much to have any common ground, yet at the same time, not enough that they needed to relearn most things about each other.
They weren't really friends. And they weren't strangers. They were just acquaintances standing on uneven ground.
"Are there any friends or family that might come looking for you?' Kane posed.
Wes lightly scoffed. "If my mom calls, I'll let you know."
Kane paused. "You have any luck looking for a new job?"
"No," he responded plainly.
"Someone of your pedigree isn't in demand?"
"Well," he started softly. "Perhaps some, uh, recent events have made working in the field of neurotechnology seem…less than desirable?"
Kane averted her gaze as Wes stared her down. But she needed to start this conversation before he did.
"You read those leaks?" she asked meekly.
"Yeah."
"Heavy stuff, I know…" Kane didn't dare look up.
"Rachel, this isn't going to work unless you stop keeping secrets from me," he responded, kinder than Kane had expected.
"How much did you know?"
Finally, light.
Paszek was relieved to see or feel anything at all, even when it was being damn near blinded by the artificial whiteness of the landscape that engulfed everything. His body still felt just out of reach, but at least he could perceive some amount of distance between it and his mind.
Despite the singular whiteness of his surroundings, Paszek could not help but shake the feeling that he was just a spectator right now – on the wrong side of the glass, looking in. He felt like he had a decent idea of exactly who was sitting on the other side. But what was waiting for him?
It was his own fucking head, and he still couldn't even begin to predict what it would do to him.
After an indeterminate period of just light, Paszek started to hear something for the first time. First, it was just a faint high pitch, like a bowed wind chime. Slowly, the sound grew louder and louder, never uncomfortably loud, but loud, nonetheless. Increasing with the volume, seemingly in proportion, was the clarity of the noise. It went from a sustained tone to more distinct variations in pitch, and eventually to some combination of wind and voice.
His own voice.
They weren't his words. At least, not the words he was thinking, and certainly not words he was currently speaking. Maybe they were real words he had said before. Or thought before. Maybe they were nonsense. Paszek couldn't make out any of it, and judging by his experiences, he doubted that Savior could, either.
Speaking of…
Paszek could relish hearing the most infantile amount of panic in Savior's voice. He was calling out to nothing. Probably trying to find him. But he wasn't going to.
The proverbial glass that Paszek sensed earlier now became somewhat visible. He was positioned a good fifteen feet above what appeared to be the floor – below him, Savior was aimlessly stumbling about.
Paszek figured that Savior had probably interfaced with someone before. The fact that the figure looked to be confused proved that this one was different. Paszek had experienced an interface involving three parties before. How senseless and scrambled would one involving four be?
The trees had started popping up. This was the calm before the storm. In front of Savior, behind him, and at each of his sides they stood. No two the same height, but each one unfathomably tall. It was paradoxical, yes, but somehow still perceptible. Why did it have to make sense? Nothing made sense.
Each tree caused Savior to quickly jolt around and find another one sitting just behind him. Paszek now know for certain that he was in uncharted territory. Not that it mattered. Paszek was still living on borrowed time, more specifically a borrowed nanosecond that lasted however long it needed to.
Now came the bodies buried in snow. Paszek couldn't make out who they were from his vantage point. He has a hard time recalling what they were in Hall's mind…Egyptian? Nazis? Maybe some of both.
The snow that tracked through Savior's boots, though, looked far less pure white than the kind he could recall. It was awfully tainted – dirt brown and ocean blue in a combination that seemed entirely impossible in nature.
Again, not that anything was supposed to make sense.
Paszek could also recall that next came the brief time where he could speak to Hall, and where he could just barely hear the warbled voice of Corvus, and where he picked up a crying baby that disintegrated into digital light. Typical mindfuck material.
Whatever Savior was going through, though, it clearly wasn't that.
The bodies and trees simply kept popping up. Multiplying. Each one getting closer and closer to each other, making the once-boundless landscape seem increasingly claustrophobic. Not for Paszek, of course, as he still had the luxury of viewing from the operating theater, so to speak.
Savior appeared unfettered by this development, though. Seeming to recognize some kind of pattern, or perhaps merely accepting his surroundings, he calmly sat down in the snow and did absolutely nothing. Paszek heard his own voice grow louder, but as this happened it started to loop over itself, making it even less comprehensible.
Gradually, the voices started to come together to some kind of unison, becoming clearer, though louder still as they started to line up more.
"All that remains is…"
Again and again and again.
"All that remains is my sacrifice."
Out of his own voice…his own…mouth?
No, he couldn't be speaking. He would know if he was. No one had spoken those words to him…he had heard them in his own head, right after Pfyffer was killed. But no one had ever said them to him before! Where did they come from in the first place and why were they coming back now?
What was he supposed to give up, and for what purpose?
"Paszek!" A new voice. He recognized it.
"Hall?!" he shouted back.
"I don't know what's happening! Keep talking! I'll try and find you!"
Paszek could not possibly fathom how Hall knew how to navigate the endless (and to reiterate once more – senseless!) cavern of the DNI, let alone one that was probably collapsing in on itself.
"I was captured, they placed me next to a sustained EMP blast. I don't know if my DNI shut off, but I had no way of using it, even to move. He just interfaced with me…I had no way to stop it!" said Paszek, speaking into the abyss.
He looked back down at Savior, who was now enveloped almost entirely by the snow-capped trees and their many branches. The bodies, running out of room on the surface, now began appearing splayed out in the trees.
"I'm sorry!" Paszek yelled. "This might be it for us, and…and I failed you! I…"
"I'm not dead yet."
Paszek whipped around to see Hall, still clad in her military gear, standing ten feet behind him. Relieved beyond measure, they raced to meet each other.
"Hall, I…" he started.
"Not now, okay?" she said, eyes weary. "You don't owe me an apology. And even if you did, it can wait until we're both back on…solid ground."
Paszek nodded. Clearly, something within him was emotionally compromised. But this needed to be strictly business. Right?
"Where's Corvus?" he asked.
Hall leered down, despondent. "He's…gone. I don't know where but I just…" she trailed off. "I just can't feel him, anywhere…"
Paszek found it tough to swallow. The old soul may not have been able to survive his DNI being shut off for so long. Or for any period at all, even.
"When my DNI was switched off, what happened in here?" he said. "I could hardly think straight the entire time, I…well, I can't imagine what it was like for you."
Hall breathed in. "It was…dark," she responded. "Just like I was sitting…nowhere, going…nowhere. Empty. At first I could still hear Corvus, but after a few hours it was all garbled nonsense. Eventually, I couldn't hear anything at all."
"I…" she trailed off again. "I don't want to assume the worst, but…"
"If he's out there, we'll find him," Paszek interrupted. "In the meantime…" he gestured downwards.
"Oh, my…" said Hall. "Who is that?"
"I wish I could fucking tell you," replied Paszek, frustrated. "He seems to be in charge of a terror cell. They tried to bomb the CDC building and the Pentagon in two days. He may have even framed the second one on me, or on Kane."
"I knew that was her voice!" gasped Hall. "I could have sworn I heard her voice, muttering something. I could feel her carrying me, just barely."
Thank fucking God, Paszek thought. Now he at least knew she had made it out of the Pentagon alive, and not in custody, either. What had happened to her after that was still a mystery, but he could breathe the smallest sigh of relief for the time being.
"She gained another clearance level, just like you said she needed," said Paszek. "Guess she really did believe me…"
Paszek shook himself out of it. "But none of that is going to matter if I don't make it out of this interface with my brain intact, and DNI switched on."
"Of course," Hall responded.
And before either of them could say another word, the invisible glass floor or ceiling or whatever it was, shattered, leaving them to plummet an unknowable distance.
"I was right there," said Kane, believing the short sentence to speak for itself.
"Right…where?" replied Wes.
"I was assigned to watch over two Winslow Accord cyber soldiers on an operation to make contact with a CIA black station in Singapore that had gone dark for an entire week."
"Cyber-Soldiers being…"
"DNI-equipped," she responded, not missing a beat. "We found the staff at the station all dead, and concrete video evidence that four other Cyber-Soldiers had killed them. To make matters worse, these soldiers were all members of the same unit as the two who had been assigned to me."
Wes arched an eyebrow.
"So the blame game started," Kane continued, noting in her head that it never really ended, either. "Those soldiers went rogue because they saw firsthand what went down in the Coalescence HQ."
"Project Corvus. DNI trials. Involuntary human subjects, torture, the works, yeah?" said Wes.
"There's something they never told anyone about Project Corvus, Wes. It wasn't in the leaks and it wasn't even in the fucking CIA files," she said, voice transparently showing her anxiety. "Corvus was more successful than they ever anticipated – it wasn't a vehicle for DNI interface, it was artificial intelligence."
"It almost makes sense…" chimed Wes. "Stick a bunch of human brains in a single pot and let it stew."
"Taylor and his team didn't defect. They all interfaced with the main server at Coalescence and met Corvus head-on. And they lost," spat Kane. "The CIA and the Winslow Accord have a lot to answer for, but Corvus' path of destruction wasn't going to help anyone. We hunted the AWOL soldiers one-by-one. Each of the soldiers under my handle interfaced with one of them…they didn't know it just made them another host for Corvus."
"Jacob Hendricks was one of those, I presume."
Kane nodded.
"Then what happened to the other one?"
Oh, Wes…how to phrase this…
"Hendricks, er…Corvus…killed Sebastian Krueger – the architect of the DNI – and that sated Corvus' lust for vengeance. So it, or he, or…whatever, uh…calmed down, I guess. He relinquished his control over the last remaining host."
Wes slowly nodded his head. "Doing some deductive reasoning here, could I be so bold as to guess that the person under that sheet was that…last remaining host."
Kane almost laughed. "You're…half-right."
"I…what?" Wes' shoulders dropped. "I've got a lot of questions, but no idea which one to ask at this point."
"Unbeknownst to me or anyone else, the CIA preserved the body of one of the rogue soldiers who was the victim of an interface. They kept her alive and monitored her condition inside of the Pentagon. I stole her body from there two days after I called you for the first time."
She paused.
"Her DNI was transmitting literally zero data during her entire stay at the Pentagon, and that's because her consciousness is still trapped inside the DNI of the operative who interfaced with her," said Kane, the whole while watching Wes' face grow more and more confused.
"That operative has been my…partner since the Zurich incident. After being placed into a medical coma himself, he was able to communicate with…her," she gestured over to Hall. "…as well as Corvus, who, apparently, is decidedly reformed and wants to help."
Wes started taking controlled, deep breaths. This was clearly overwhelming information to him. As it would be to just about anyone.
"Where is he right now, Rachel? Can he help us out with this?"
It was once again that the circumstances of conversation and situation left Kane's voice to crack, something she hated, hated, hated with an intense, logical passion. Logical! She had emotions and that was fine, but they were hers and hers alone. No one needed to see them, and no one should under almost any circumstances. But Paszek…
"I…I don't know where he is. And…it's tearing me apart from the inside."
The snow that littered the invisible ground of Paszek's mind was, thankfully, unpacked enough so not be quite so painful to land on. Still painful, though, and Paszek did not take such information lightly – at least he still could feel pain.
A quick look to his left seemed to confirm that Hall had felt a similar pain. Once again, a small positive, all things considered. A glance upward revealed that the tree branches had also partially broken his fall, though before his eyes could linger anywhere, the trees and the bodies that hung on them began rapidly sinking into the ground, swallowed whole by localized vortexes. Paszek had to dive out of the way to avoid being clipped by a thick branch.
Savior picked himself up off the floor. "No two minds are alike, Captain. This is a unique window into your soul, and I welcome each experience, no matter how…vapid," he said, giving a light kick to a corpse near his foot.
Paszek stood up and stared Savior down as the masked man approached him.
"That said, though…" remarked Savior, now a foot away from Paszek. "I'd very much like the keys to the castle now."
Reaching out his hand towards Paszek's head, Savior was interrupted by a charging Hall, who tackled him to the floor and pinned him.
At least, that's what Paszek is pretty sure would have happened if Hall hadn't passed through Savior like he was a hologram.
Hall grunted as she hit the floor, now almost entirely devoid of snow. It must have felt like concrete. Was Savior invincible? Untouchable? That's not how it was supposed to work. Paszek was supposed to be in control.
Those assumptions shattered as Savior's hand made momentary contact with his forehead. Not wanting to suffer a similar fate to when he was tied up, he grabbed Savior's wrist with one hand and twisted it, eliciting a shocked gasp from Savior.
"What?!" he cried. "You…no, this isn't…"
Paszek gave Savior's wrist a harsher turn in the same direction, causing it to awkwardly crack, before using his other arm to strike Savior hard in the chest, sending him back a few feet and onto the ground once more.
Still reeling on the ground, Hall picked herself up and swerved back towards Savior. "What the fuck was that?" she said.
"I have no idea," replied Paszek, rubbing his hand.
"Hey!" Hall shouted, now closer to Savior. He didn't even cock his head a little bit. "Hey, asshole! Look at me!" she grew even more furious. "You just killed my friend! Look me in my fucking eyes!"
No response, no movement.
Paszek swallowed slowly. "I don't think that he can."
"And who exactly are you talking to, Captain?" said Savior, still in the process of getting up once more. "Are you so deluded that you, ah…" he paused to clutch his chest. "…that you think there could be someone else here?"
Paszek exchanged an uneasy glance with Hall. He would have appreciated another person to help wail on the masked man, but he'd settle for an invisible ace in the hole.
"You can ditch the Shakespearean confidence. I can tell by how you're holding your chest that this isn't going the way you intended," said Paszek, now making his own approach towards Savior. "I don't know what your interfaces have looked like, but the only one I ever did was pure hell. No medkits, no evac, and no bombs that you had one of your blackmailed schmucks place in advance. You sure you don't just want to give up?"
"I, ugh…" Savior exhaled as he stood. "I should ask the same thing of you. You're dead already! Why prolong the process?"
Hall, now positioned behind Savior, caught Paszek's eye. "Paszek…this is as in control as you're ever going to be. I don't know what's coming next, but whatever it is you can do…do it. The longer we spend here, the worse it will get."
"You don't have to tell me twice," he replied, violently grabbing Savior's vest with both hands and leaning in close.
"Welcome to my world."
Kane waited by the phone for about four hours. Wes was smart enough to excuse himself to the storage area some time ago, which gave her plenty of time to process and not process whatever it was that she was feeling.
She was feeling more and more anxious and less and less secure about hearing from Winslow again. The younger agent had more than enough reason not to help – more so now that Kane had reflected upon the ties between Savior's first broadcast and the Zurich incident, which Winslow knows damn well she was involved with. Who's to say Kane wasn't a part of a global cabal intent on destroying Coalescence, and by extension, the CIA? Catch her in the right mood and you might just be able to convince her to join such a thing.
The favor, of course, that Kane was hoping to call in, was a truckload of untraceable crypto. There was more than enough to go around at the CIA, but even someone of her skillset couldn't remotely access those accounts, let alone transfer them elsewhere without being caught.
She needed the money to keep the lights on, yes, and to compensate Wes for his time. More than that, though she also needed reinforcements. Wes' job was to get Hall back in action, back on planet Earth. And that was important, of course.
But Paszek was still stuck somewhere. "Or dead," a voice in her head seemed to say. Not that it was likely, seeing how interested Savior was in him, but still…
Irrelevant information. She would continue to work under the assumption that Paszek was alive and that was final. But working towards finding himself was not a one-woman job, no matter how much she wanted it to be.
How many friends did she really have?
She could only think of one person to call that she knew would pick up.
"Hello?"
"Aart," said Kane.
"Miss Kane?" responded De Klerk. "Is that you? Are you alright? I'm sorry, but I could have sworn I saved your phone number." Kane could faintly hear him writing something down on a pen and pad.
"I hope I am not crossing any boundaries, but, em…" De Klerk started. "I have heard that there may have been an incident at your headquarters. This is not fact I hear, but, er…how to say…on the berry's vine?"
He sounded incredibly nervous.
"Aart, is it safe for me to discuss sensitive information through this phone?"
He sharply exhaled. "Nein," he said, typing with excessive force as he paused. "Check your messages. No patterns, yes? Look for shapes."
And then he hung up on her.
Kane wiped the shocked expression off of her face quickly and checked her burner email.
The one that she'd never told De Klerk about.
But there it was, a wall of text characters greeting her in a message from "PLUS9znkda ," two miles long. Thirty seconds of scrolling on her phone couldn't place the smallest dent in the tiny progress bar on the right-hand side of the screen.
What the hell was this? And how did he even send this to her?
Kane's immediate assumption was that the end result of her decoding this would be a phone number. Unless she was supposed to find pairs of numbers…meaning an alphanumeric…another email address? A web address?
Maybe she was thinking too hard already. No patterns, De Klerk had said. Just shapes.
Kane quickly noticed that the block of numbers was asymmetrical, just barely. An extra number on top of either side of the top row. An extra column? She skipped directly to the bottom – same thing going on beneath. Those were numbers of interest, she supposed.
Her quick scroll also revealed two more outliers; each one an extra number at the beginning or end of a row. They seemed to be placed randomly as well – not equidistant from one another or split in any proportion to the whole block.
As far as shapes went, she had a large square formed by the extras. Four numbers could be the last string of a phone number. But with only two more numbers of interest, that didn't leave her with enough to complete it.
There was no way it was going to be much more complicated than she had envisioned in her head. Perhaps there was more to De Klerk than she previously thought, but he wasn't a genius codebreaker. He was just a guy.
Two points can't form a shape. That would just be a line. But three points…that's a triangle.
A triangle easily formed by the outlier on the edge, and the two numbers nearest to it. Do that twice and suddenly you have six numbers – three to form an area code and three more to form the inside trio. Combine that with the numbers from the large square and it was a complete phone number.
Naturally, of course, she added in the country code, which De Klerk had not so subtly included in his own email address.
"Ready to talk, Miss Kane," chimed De Klerk. "I knew it wouldn't take you long at all."
"May I ask how you had my unofficial address?"
"Ignacio gave it to me just over a week ago," he responded. "I, er…wasn't aware it was a secret."
Kane lightly scoffed. "Very few people know about it. I guess he really trusts you."
"I imagine you will ask next why I have secret communications of my own, yes?" he said. "It is a fair question. I have small…business of sorts, selling medical supplies that are no longer needed here."
Now this was an interesting development. Kane was only calling to have another set of eyes on Paszek's disappearance. But if she could kill two birds with one stone…
"You always seemed like a nice guy. Why not just donate them?" she asked.
"Donations…will not pay the bills for family back home," he replied, solemnly. "I am no conman. My prices are more than reasonable. Discounted, even."
"I have no doubt," said Kane. "You divulged something to me. I'll return the favor. The same man who killed General Pfyffer kidnapped Paszek during the commotion at the Pentagon. He also killed the Director of the CIA, and tried to detonate a nuclear warhead at the headquarters of the CDC."
De Klerk swallowed. "That…that, well…is a lot of information to process, Miss Kane."
"If you're on a first name basis with Ignacio, then the same goes for me, Aart," she replied.
"If the goal of this man is to expose a coverup of the Zurich attacks, I suppose Captain Paszek would be a prime target, but…" De Klerk trailed off. "What use is it to destroy a building unaffiliated with the CIA? Do you even know who this person is?"
"No," she said bluntly. "Frankly, I don't even know what his true goals are. He speaks almost entirely in these weird riddles. That said, the CDC building did have a connection – Coalescence still has a residency there."
"I see…" he stated. "Is this why Ignacio called me to ask if I had a DNI?"
"I'm afraid so," she responded matter-of-factly. "We couldn't be sure about literally anyone."
De Klerk didn't falter. "No offense taken. I would have done the same thing, I imagine," he stated plainly. "But…must I ask why you are telling me all of this?"
"When I first called you, I was hoping you could use some ZSF satellite imagery to try and find Paszek, but…" she trailed off.
"It looks like you could use another customer."
A headache. Inside his own fucking head. Paszek almost wanted to break out in a fit of mad laughter.
He supposed it was preferable to one of the countless other manic things that could be occurring while attempting to visually and aurally process the contents of a rapidly decaying brain. But irony was in no short supply, it seemed. So, a headache would persist.
Hall seemed to be unaffected. "This will take a little bit," she said.
"This," of course, referring to the fact that their surroundings seemed to be rendering in real time, like blank computer screens lighting up with an image. It was uneven. Chaotic.
Savior was nowhere to be seen.
"Where are you taking us?" Hall asked.
"Ethiopia. Easy choice," Paszek responded.
"You know, I…" she started. "I thought about taking you there, too. I think Corvus, or…whoever Corvus was, was…trying to push me there. I was barely in control of anything. But I knew I couldn't do that to you."
Paszek stayed solemn. "You were vulnerable. It wouldn't have been your fault if you had."
Hall wiped her eyes quickly. "We don't…agh…" she choked. "Let's not linger on this. He'll be here soon."
The last few pieces of the landscape starting to find their way into being as Savior himself plummeted to the concrete from the sky, seemingly unharmed.
"Ah…" said Savior, dusting himself off as he stood up. "I think I'd recognize this place anywhere."
"Would you?" Paszek stepped forward. "This is all the way at the east airstrip. Pretty far away from the prison. The NRC didn't give you a tour of the place, did they?"
"My lips are, agh…sealed," Savior grunted.
"Well, you can either choose to help me out…" Paszek started, glancing over at the NRC technicals in the distance, entirely stuck in time. "…or you can fight."
"You fool…" said Savior.
That sounded like an answer to Paszek. With a single thought, he lifted himself into the air, and with a second he violently transported Savior all the way across the airstrip to the bottom of the hangar elevator in less than three seconds.
He deposited Savior on the elevator floor, where an unmodified KN-44 and an MR6 sat dormant.
"You want to see what happened next?" Paszek said nonchalantly. "Earn it."
Using his third or fourth thought of the moment, Paszek found himself in the same invisible attic as before, looking down on Savior from above. Hall apparated next to him.
"Smart play," she quipped. "Now we get to see if he's a Cyber-Soldier, or just…cyber."
Based on the manner by which Savior picked up his weapons and inspected them, Paszek had more or less made that determination already. But this would still be a worthwhile test.
Hall cocked her head. "You're not giving him backup, are you? You had backup. Damn good backup," she said, referring to herself and the rest of Taylor's original team.
"If he gets through, then it'll be a lot easier to figure out who the fuck he is," Paszek replied. "And if not, I send him through again. Keep hurting him."
"What?" she asked. "Torture him until he gives up? I…don't feel confident in that strategy. Not to mention…"
"He stuck a fucking drill-bit in my pelvis," said Paszek, gritting his teeth as he watched Savior gun down a few NRC soldiers. He neglected to mention the unspeakable night terrors, but those were just that for the moment – unspeakable. "I'll happily let him get digitally blown to bits, thanks."
Hall shook her head. "Not talking about the ethics of this. If he kills you in here, the interface is over, and you'll be brain dead."
"I assumed that much, Sarah," said Paszek, sounding snarkier than he intended to.
"But if he knows how, he can shut down the interface before that happens. None of the data will transfer. It's a secret abort button that they never taught us about," stated Hall. "Corvus and I had to dig to find it, but it's there."
"Isn't that what we want to happen?" Paszek responded.
"Yes, but…" Hall stalled. "Keep beating him to hell and he'll know there's nothing worth stealing from your head. Then he'll probably just kill you. You have to give him enough leeway that he feels like he's got a chance. Make him take some time, recoup, come back and try again. We'll both be more prepared."
"Strike a balance," started Paszek, once again directing his attention down to Savior, who had made his way through the entire hangar without a scratch. "Any suggestions?"
"Lie," she said sternly. "For as long as you can."
Now finding themselves outside of the hangar and onto the airstrip, the two watched in muffled shock as Savior bounded around like a seasoned and well-trained machine, tearing off a tactical rover's door and using it as mobile cover while he trained fire on the incoming NRC reinforcements.
"He's good," Paszek muttered.
Hall jogged over to stand beside him. "There were, what…5 other cyber units? Outside of our team, there's only another…30 or so people this could be."
"Assuming he's Winslow Accord, yeah," Paszek responded.
"Coalescence is the CIA. I don't exactly think they're exporting," said Hall.
"I mean…they could have reverse-engineered it, right? Somehow?"
Hall shook her head. "Paszek, you are grasping at straws. This guy was one of us."
He had a rumbling deep within him that Hall might be entirely right, but there were still a great number of mental obstacles he had to clear to actually agree with that conclusion. Even without any legitimate evidence of who Savior was, it felt wrong to immediately throw out virtually suspect he had in his head, and focus on an incredibly narrow list of soldiers, most of whom were already dead.
"Or…" Paszek began, pacing ahead on the invisible floor to see Savior tear an NRC private in two. "…he could have gotten an DNI for some other reason, and interfaced with a Cyber-Soldier."
"No, no…" Hall caught up to him again. "If he got a prototype or commercial DNI, those don't come equipped with the proper software to interface. That was reserved for military use."
"Those documents that Diaz leaked, they contained all the DNI specs," said Paszek. "The interface is hardwired. Someone would just need the drivers to unlock it."
"We would have heard about it if those made their way out of the CIA. They would have sent us to kill those people," she replied. "You know that would've happened."
Again, she was entirely right. But the entire premise of the situation they found themselves in was based on the fact that there was some amount of missing information – some key piece of information that neither he nor Hall nor Kane or anyone else in his small, small circle really knew. His speculation would continue, yes, but it would not have more or less accuracy to it than it did yesterday or the day before.
By this point, Savior had now crossed the entire airstrip, a wake of dead soldiers and blown-out vehicles left behind.
"Damn," was all Hall could muster.
Paszek didn't respond. He knew what to throw at him now.
Wes hadn't tried to speak with Kane in the hours after her conversation with De Klerk. She certainly didn't mind not having spend more time explaining to him the rather arduous details of how and why they had arrived in this situation. Yet Kane also could not shake the feeling that Wes was more appalled by the person she was today than he was willing to say to her face. Not that he would ever admit it.
Her phone rang again. She recognized the number from earlier.
"Come to your senses?" she said sarcastically.
Winslow didn't skip a beat. "Is Dara Mills with you right now?"
"No," Kane answered. "But if I knew where they were, I wouldn't tell you."
"Fair play. But I don't want to kill them. I'd like to buy them a beer. They at least saved the two assets from Russel Pond. And I get why you two ran now. Looks like Teele was planning on icing Paszek…er, didn't mean it like that." said Winslow. "I've been…"
"You've been what?" Kane interrupted.
"Ma'am, I've been looking for an excuse to leave this damn place ever since I got here. I don't like it," said Winslow. "I'm not proud of the things I've done, things other people've done just 'cause it was their damn job, alright!"
Kane hesitated, hearing Winslow's exasperated breath through the phone. "Why should I believe you?"
"You are…something else…" she sputtered. "I thought having my finger on the pulse of the world meant I could help people, not watch as they get screwed over and over again, okay? Maybe I've watched too many stupid movies…"
Kane genuinely did believe the younger woman, but it didn't mean that she shouldn't press a little harder.
"Why'd you get yourself assigned to me?"
"I read everything," Winslow stated. "I read it all, you and Paszek saw some nasty stuff, stuff that made lots of people turn heel. I figured…there's only two possible reasons you didn't do the same; either you were practically brainwashed by this organization, or you knew something that I didn't. Second one seemed a more likely, I reckon."
"Winslow, I very much want to believe everything you're saying, but you know what kind of situation I'm in," Kane said. "I need a show of good faith."
"Name it, and I'll do it. I f I can."
"$10 million in crypto. Wire it to the account number I just texted you. If it's legit, I'll wire half of it back."
She could barely hear Winslow clacking on a keyboard. "I don't know of any banks on Easter Island, ma'am. But the money should be there now."
Kane checked her tablet, which was resting on the table, and saw the amount change. The ten million was there. She wasn't going to send it back just yet.
First, she pulled up the address of three separate corner stores, each between two and four miles from the Pentagon, placing a prepaid order for a single item at each one, each order coming from a different bank account that she'd split the crypto into. Different items, of course, one bag of chips, one candy bar, and one bottle of water. Kane had picked these stores far in advance, already having remotely accessed their security systems, viewing both inside and outside cameras at every store.
And now she waited.
"So, what is it that you know…that the rest of us don't?" Winslow posed.
"The Zurich HQ, you know they have an AI running most of their surgery prep, right?" said Kane.
"I…think I remember something like that in a file, somewhere," Winslow responded, hesitantly.
"That AI came direct from their DNI trials, the successful ones," Kane said confidently, already anticipating Winslow's next words. "Two wonders for the price of one. Take a guess as to what happened in Singapore?"
"Oh, God…there was another AI just sitting there?"
Kane kept her eyes focused on the tablet, where she noticed absolutely no change. This was good. She needed to make sure that no one was keeping track. That Winslow wasn't a rat.
"It's what drove John Taylor's team to go rouge. The AI made its way from their DNI straight to their higher brain functions and manipulated them. They couldn't control it, they were just puppets," said Kane, pulling strings of her own in D.C as she spoke.
"Jacob Hendricks caught it too, didn't he? Explains just about everything. Almost makes too much sense…damn…" Winslow trailed off. "Paszek and you never came into contact, agh…makes too much sense…"
Kane continued to play this talking and stalling game with Winslow for another five minutes, still noticing no significantly different activity inside or outside the stores. That was enough for her.
"Your half of the crypto is back," said Kane, hitting the final stroke to complete the transaction. Whether Winslow pocketed that cash or put it back in the CIA was hardly a concern.
"What else do you need me to do?" Winslow asked. "I've started pulling up satellite imagery to see if I can find Paszek. Any place I should start?"
"Honestly, I have no idea," Kane grumbled. "Try the Americas…North before South. More importantly, keep your ear to the ground over. Sift through any communications involving Teele and Curran you can get your hands on. If there's a new director soon…get friendly."
"I was hoping to hand in my resignation, ma'am," Winslow stated.
"Negative," replied Kane. "Admin is not going to forgive me to stealing Hall, even if I do ever get cleared of the other charges. You need plausible deniability that you ever helped me. Not for the sake of your freedom, Winslow. For your own life."
"Fine," she relented. "But once Paszek is accounted for, I'm gone. This'll be one hell of an article…"
Telling Winslow that writing an exposé on the CIA was a terrible, terrible idea would be a smaller bridge to cross much, much later. Again, assuming she wasn't going to rat her out. Kane was not going to ignore the fact that three separate people had all apparently agreed to help in her highly, highly illegal activities.
Wes was firmly on her side. She felt confident enough to saying that. But she had no intention of letting Winslow know where she was, at least not until she'd made good on her promises to help find Paszek, and not sic the CIA dogs on him when she did.
And as for the third…
"Zolpidem and IV fluids…that's it?" said De Klerk, somewhat puzzled.
"Sanitizer too, if you've got it," instructed Kane. "I'll message the info of the flights you should be booking. Are those going to be a problem?"
"No, no…" he brushed it off. "Er, quite the opposite. I expect something more…complicated from you."
"Trust me," Kane zipped. "It's complicated."
She gave a pregnant pause upon realizing how fast her heart had been beating for the last half-hour. Normally slowing this down was second nature, but something was wrong, something was shifted inside her head or her muscles and she just couldn't.
Yes, it was her head. Of course it was. Clouded in on the corners and focused on the center. Tunnel vision in the wrong tunnel. Wrong room, wrong place.
"Miss Kane…er, Rachel?" echoed De Klerk. "Are you still there?"
Back to reality. "Yeah…sorry," she muttered.
"On second thought…" she added. "…bring some beta blockers, too."
"I've run your gauntlet, Captain!" shouted Savior, voice dispersing out across the empty airstrip.
"Think that makes you better than me?" boomed Paszek, who appeared into view about ten yards in front of Savior.
Savior chuckled.
"Well…" Paszek sneered. "There was one little difference when I was here…"
Within an instant, Paszek evaporated out of sight without a trace.
First came the sound. Mechanical feet marching arrhythmically, pistons firing with such excessive volume – it had to be designed that way, right? The pistons must have been made louder. It would instill even more dread.
Then the sight. Ominous red blinking lights and shadows of the footsteps, barely visible through dense fog. Was that there a moment ago? It couldn't have been.
Paszek knew better. He put the fog there. He'd also placed himself and Hall about ten yards behind Savior, knowing full well he wouldn't be turning around to face the bare cliff, especially with an endless army of grunts slowly marching upon him.
Sensing danger, Savior began firing wildly into the crowd of bots. Paszek wasn't in a rush to reveal his hand just yet – he let the bots continue to march at their steady and relatively slow pace.
Running dry quickly, Savior grabbed a spare clip from his belt and reloading his rifle, firing once more with reckless abandon. It would only be another seven or so seconds until he had consumed all of his ammunition once again.
Paszek had made sure that it was his very last clip. He noticed Savior's hand twitch as he reached back to grab nothing but the wet air. The first sign of desperation.
Savior pulled out his sidearm and expended his twelve rounds in less than two seconds. Tossing the pistol aside, he bent his knees and readied himself to leap high in the air, likely equipped with some kind of Cyber-Core that would create a shockwave upon landing. Smart thinking.
But Paszek thought smarter.
Placing his foot down, Paszek unleashed an EMP, entirely silent and harmless to him, but equally deafening to Savior as it was for himself just earlier today. Of course, it had no affect on the grunts, who continued to advance closer and closer.
"No, no, no!" Savior cursed, still able to move his body, but unable to move any differently than a normal human being. He was a just a lone pin sitting in front of a thousand bowling balls.
Savior peered to his left – cliff. To his right – cliff. Behind him, he must have already known it was cliff. Paszek watched on with an intense expression on his face, just south of stoic. He turned to Hall; she seemed more concerned than anything.
The lead grunt in the amorphous formation was now within spitting distance of Savior. He charged forward and struck its torso with a punch – it had the same lack of effect as a flesh fist would.
Savior dodged a left hook from the grunt, before being caught by a swift quick to his side. He crumpled, grunted in pain. The grunt wasted no time and shoved him to the dirt, stomping on his chest to stop Savior from sitting up.
Paszek started to approach Savior.
"You want out now?!" Paszek shouted.
Savior groaned as the bot stomped on his chest, harder this time. "You…do not…know pain…like I do…"
Another grunt found its way over to Savior's left side, taking hold of his arm. Paszek could practically smell the desperation as Savior shook his head violently, doing anything he could think of to protest.
The two grunts worked into unison, one stomping down as the other one yanked, first bending the metal arm like an aluminum can before snapping it off entirely.
Savior howled. Paszek made the rules here. It felt like the real thing, like real flesh and real bone.
"You want it stop!? Huh!" Paszek said once more, kicking the stump where Savior's arm was once more.
"No…no…no…" Savior moaned. The two grunts continued stomping relentlessly, with a third now approaching.
The new contender took hold of Savior's right leg just below the knee, with another bot coming by and taking hold of his thigh. It only took one tough pull to tear the limb clean off. Hall let out a reflexive gasp as it happened.
"Two for four, buddy!" Paszek shouted. "This can stop anytime you want!"
Savior roared in agony. He was well past the point of forming words.
Paszek called off the grunts momentarily, stepping onto Savior's chest himself with one foot before planting both feet on the ground in-between Savior's legs.
"You want this to stop?" Paszek said, a bit calmer.
No response.
Paszek stepped on the exposed wire that lay crudely out of his left leg. Savior winced once more.
"This all stops!" Paszek yelled. "This all stops if you take off the mask!"
Savior gritted his teeth. "No!"
"You're my prisoner until you do," said Paszek, lightly kicking the wire again. "You can't stall for time…there is no time. Not here."
Savior exhaled sharply, not saying anything.
"Your choice…" Paszek said eerily, calling the grunts back to their positions. "I learned from…personal experience that the left leg and the right arm are the two worst…anything else is overkill. Hardly even hurts. So…"
Paszek snapped his fingers and watched time reverse itself locally, repairing Savior's limbs but leaving everything else in the world intact.
"We can do this forever," declared Paszek. "I can think of worse things to do. I've lived it."
Savior shook his head. "No, no…"
Paszek cocked his own head sideways and stepped aside, re-igniting the grunts' fury as they began pounding on Savior's entire body.
This cracked the shell. Savior cried out in unfettered, unfiltered, pure tortured pain. The beating continued for another half-minute before the grunts took hold of Savior's left leg once again.
"Please! No, no, no…" he whimpered.
"Take! Off! Your! Mask!" Paszek roared.
"Stop this! Please, I can-"
"Who! Are! You?!" Paszek interrupted, vocal chords strained beyond measure.
Noticing Savior's right arm raising slowly, Paszek called off the assault again, closely watching the figure's movement.
"Take off that fucking mask!" Hall shouted. Savior couldn't hear her, but clearly it didn't matter to her.
As Savior hand shakily started pulling his mask, Paszek dissipated the grunts entirely. This was the moment of truth, of clarity. This would answer things, this would unravel the conspiracy, and this would make everything make sense. It would make sense.
It had to make sense.
And yet, as Paszek continuing repeated this to himself, seeing Savior's jaw and mouth already left him more confused than he already was.
Because he knew exactly who Savior was. And it didn't make any fucking sense.
See you next time!