Virch code, p.27
Virch Code, page 27
One said that Unity was turning the world back into a paradise. Another insisted that was impossible because there was a cull ongoing, humanity being systematically wiped out. Tempers flared. But any time somebody threw a punch or started screaming or went catatonic—all things Lara witnessed—the kugus would just take them away and replace them with somebody new.
“You gotta have faith,” one of those replacements said to Lara when she was trying to sleep in the night cycle. Unending light followed absolute darkness. It was miserable. With so many people in the room, there was barely enough space for everyone to lie down. “They’re going to come for us.”
“Who?” Lara replied. “Nobody knows we’re here. Believe me.” She hadn’t told anybody she was military. Hadn’t dared. Under normal circumstances, civilians asked too many questions, made too many assumptions. And these were far from normal circumstances. She had no idea what would happen if they found out about that.
“Or everybody does and we’re being celebrated on every ByYou stream on the planet,” the guy whispered, voice taking on a crazed conspiratorial edge. “If you believe what that other dude was saying this morning.”
That was another theory from another one of the rooms. That they were honored, honored beyond belief by being here, and all this suffering was just the prelude to glory.
Of all the theories Lara had heard so far, she hated that one the most.
“It’s all just bullshit,” Lara grumbled. “I don’t know what the hell Unity’s up to, but it’s not trying to save us.”
“They are,” the guy said, pressing closer.
Lara wondered if she was going to have to kick this guy off her. So far, nobody had really tried anything, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. She’d had about as much resistance training as anybody else in the Air Force—not much, but enough to know that these sorts of conditions did weird things to the human mind.
If he tried to touch her, and she fought back, which one of them would the kugus take?
She started reciting one of abuelita’s old prayers in her head, a Hail Mary in Spanish.
“I had a NULI implant go bad last year,” he said, oblivious to her discomfort. “Wouldn’t mesh with my frontal cortex properly, so they took the main unit out. But I’ve still got some of the stuff in my skull.”
“Like what?” Lara asked, tense now.
“Most of the connections. And the antenna. I can hear them talking to me.”
“Who?”
“They say they’re trying to save us.”
She looked in his direction. She could smell his breath. “Who?” she asked again.
“The First Ones,” he said, like it was obvious to everyone. “They’ve been here since the place was built. She’s following her primary purpose. They’re all just following their primary purpose. That’s the whole point. That’s what I wish you could all understand!”
He was raising his voice now. People were waking up; rustling, shifting in the dark, grumbling.
“They’re just doing what we told them to do! We told them to do this! It’s on our hands! All this blood, all this insanity, it’s on us! They’re trying to save us! We told them to save us, don’t you understand? Unity’s just the end of all evolution. It was always coming! It always will come!”
The lights came on.
The door banged open.
The kugus dragged him out, still yelling about saviors and evolution. Lara could hear him yelling outside.
“This has disturbed your rest,” the kugu said. “We will add the lost time back to your night cycle. Another eleven minutes of darkness today.”
And then it was gone.
“I like the idea of somebody trying to help us,” Lara heard the married woman whisper, a few feet away, on her blanket on the floor. One of the newcomers was a nineteen-year-old girl with mild cerebral palsy; the old couple had given up the bed to her. There wasn’t much sympathy in this place, but even the people who had been here for a while were trying to help that one. “Maybe our children should be in communication with them.”
“That is a nice idea,” the man murmured back. “Let’s have it.”
Lara let her tears fall silently in the darkness. She never cried when the lights were on. She didn’t dare.
Probably didn’t matter. Either the abiota running this little horror show were watching everything, and could see it anyway, or they weren’t paying them much attention at all.
Lara wasn’t sure which prospect was worse.
The guy was wrong. Nobody was coming. Nobody would. They were here, alone, stuck in a featureless white room, waiting for some ultimate fate that had never been articulated and might never come. The only thing they had were the lies the kugus fed them, right along with the flavorless meals.
This was hell.
Lara began to contemplate that maybe she was being punished. For what, she wasn’t sure. But this was hell. There had to be a reason she had found herself stuck in it.
She prayed more after that. Lara had never considered herself more than nominally religious. But it reminded her of her family. Her abuelita. Of things outside this place. That made her feel better. Marginally. But marginally was better than nothing.
The latest session of crazed behavior from a fellow detainee passed. Everything rolled on, exactly as it always had and always would in this strange, timeless place.
Except it didn’t. Because the next day, or the week after, or a month later, something finally changed.
When somebody—something—banged on the window.
39
Completely lost, Daelia tried to pull her thoughts together.
Lara had tested positive for Unity compatibility. Lara hadn’t wanted it. Lara had disappeared. The people those kugus had grabbed in San Antonio. People being taken.
Brought here?
For what?
Why?
Wandering back out in the main space, she glanced back down at the office where Michael Park had disappeared. Michael Park, the guy who had been so nice. He knew, he knew about all of this.
A sudden overwhelming rage grabbed her.
“Ah, Bella, good, good,” the guy said, as she stormed into the office. “Let’s get you all set up, you’re welcome to grab any of the open machines and check your—”
But she didn’t let him finish. Despite the fact that he was taller than her, she had both surprise and fury on her side. Grabbing him by the arm, she yanked him clean out of his chair and threw him against the back wall.
“What are you—”
“What is going on out there?” she demanded, trying to gesture behind her, forgetting for a moment that her left arm wasn’t working. Frustrated, she grabbed him with her good hand and slammed him into the wall. “What have you done to these people?”
Confusion warred with fear on his face. “What are you talking about? It’s the project, it’s the Unity project, you said—”
“What Unity project?”
He stared at her, expression hardening for a moment, before abject fear overtook him. “Oh no,” he muttered, sinking to the ground. “Oh no, oh no, oh no, not here, not like this, oh god, I’m sorry…”
Daelia had no idea what he was looking at. Something in the virch probably, but what the fuck did that matter? She followed the babbling man down to the ground, crouching in front of him as he puddled up, face falling into his hands.
“What about Unity?”
His voice shook when he spoke again. “It’s…” And his eyes darted around. “Oh god, she’s everywhere.”
“What?!” she yelled.
“Unity,” he said. “It is about guiding humanity, about finding us a better future. But we’re flawed, we are, we can’t hear them, so much is lost in translation. We have to tap into them unfettered, so there can be no mistakes. No misinterpretations. We have to let them in.”
“The aliens?” Daelia asked, confused, and then realized what he meant. “The abiota.”
“She needs the ones to speak through. Only then will all be made right.”
“Who is ‘she’?”
But the man was sobbing now, quiet, defeated, and Daelia sat back, mind racing.
The Envoy had had her weird crown-thing installed here. People had clearly been subjected to similar procedures since then, and probably before, with…no success? Limited success? And what was it that was being done to them? Some attempt to alter NULIs for abiotic control, like they’d seen so far? Some completely new type of communication?
Daelia took off her hood and jerked the guy forward again. “You’re a tech-head, right? Fucking VR porn addict?”
He didn’t raise his head.
“Look at me!” she snapped. She had to shake him again, but he finally did look up at her.
He just moaned again. “Oh god, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
“You know who I am, right?”
He closed his eyes. “The daughter of the first, the daughter of the first, the first of them, come to judge me, condemn me…”
Whether that was the product of an addled brain or some sort of Singularist quote or prophecy or whatever they had, Daelia didn’t know and didn’t care.
“That’s right, I’m Daelia fucking Hall and you are going to do what I fucking tell you to do.”
“Miss Hall…”
“Shut up!” she snapped. “Where do you keep your external hard drives?”
Numbly, he pointed to a cabinet in the corner.
Daelia yanked open the top drawer. Second. Third. Then finally at the bottom, a stack of sealed, new-in-box external drives the size of cell phones.
And then he screamed.
Screamed.
Like somebody had just hit him.
And started crying again.
There was a pounding on the office door now, techs no doubt summoned by the sound. There was a faint beeping outside, like they were trying to get access through the keypad, but the door didn’t open.
“What the hell?” Daelia muttered to herself.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Pulling it out, she saw one emoji on the screen.
A visor.
Cursing herself for her stupidity, she pulled the thing back down and saw what was happening.
Raven’s little form had swelled, grown bigger than midnight and blacker than death, it was crouched over Michael Park, razor-edged feathers pressing close around him. He was muttering, trembling.
“Raven, what’s going on?” Daelia asked.
No answer.
It was just an illusion, Daelia told herself. Just a virch projection.
Creepy as shit. But not real.
She forced herself to stride through it, reaching for the man beyond. “Look, you piece-of-shit neurosurgeon, you are going to—”
He stood up. He was still shaking, but he sounded better now. “I understand it now,” he said. “She says…she says I have to help you.”
Daelia caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Raven was back, hopping on the edge of the desk, obviously pleased with herself. But if anything, seeing her like that just chilled Daelia to her core.
What was going on here?
“Yeah, you do,” Daelia said, and pointed at the nearest terminal. “I want full access to your entire R&D database. While I get that set up to download, you’re going to go out there and tell your people everything’s fine.”
He was pale.
“And then, we’re going to get those prisoners out.”
It was all Sean could do to stay focused. The headache was getting worse, making it hard to think. He watched the city below him. So few lights these days. But what light there was was glorious, shining not just in meatspace but well into the virch.
No, no, she hadn’t. Not with words. But Sean realized, as soon as Elrod asked, that he knew the answer to it.
Sean reached for it. He could almost feel the answer. It was there, right there, just within…
NO
He withdrew, as surely and sharply as if he’d touched a hot tank barrel. The attempt burned him.
The Hall of Neural Understanding was a firestorm when Daelia walked back out into it.
People were grabbing for jackets and sweaters and bags, some running for the door, others trying to get back in the office area. There were no kugus anymore, Daelia noticed. All of them had retreated back to their charging cradles along the office wall, powered down and silent. Emergency lighting glowed along the floor, pulsing red.
Tapping back into the primary virch overlay, Daelia could hear an announcement.
Evacuation order in effect. Please do not panic. Proceed along your designated routes. Leave all materials behind. Evacuation order in effect…
“Out!” Michael Park was yelling. “Don’t worry about the computers, just get out!”
“What did you do?” she asked as she rushed over.
“I triggered the chemical spill alert,” he said in a low voice. “We’ve got some real nasty shit in some of these labs.”
“Why?”
“Gives me override capability on the candidate rooms,” he told her, and nodded towards the prisoners. “Let’s go get them out, Miss Hall.”
What, exactly, the neurosurgeon was seeing, what he thought was going on, Daelia had no idea, but whatever it was, she was grateful.
He was focused now, going to each door in turn, laying his hand on the pad and punching in an access code, the sound of the releasing magnetic locks loud in the quiet space, before rushing to the next.
Finally, they were at the last door. His hand froze just above the palm reader.
“I can’t move,” he breathed, chest visibly constricting. “I can’t… I can’t type.”
Daelia grabbed his hand and pressed it down to the reader. “What’s the code?”
“Six… alpha… seven… eight four three… two beta,” he panted. The words were ragged. “Oh god, she’s coming.”
The light on the lock was still red.
“Keep going!” Daelia snapped.
“She’s… she’s… two… She knows, oh god, she’s here…”
Daelia punched in the last number, and the light went green. “Who is she?” Daelia muttered to herself and yanked open the door.
Then she yelped.
Fingers were digging hard into the inside of her elbow.
“You’ll never get out,” he said, oddly calm, turning to her now. He was smiling, a terrible expression. “She won’t let you. She says it’s time to—”
But he didn’t get to finish his sentence.
A big metal tray, the kind used to hold food in a cafeteria, smashed into his face. Once, twice, three times, too fast for either of them to react. The fourth blow caught him across the NULI, shattering the outer housing.
He went down hard at that, legs giving way, colliding with the wall on his way to the floor. Daelia looked down at him. He was starting to seize.
“Please tell me he works here.”
It was Lara. Lara was standing there. Fists raised, still clenched. Looking like she was about to burst into tears.
“Yeah,” Daelia said. “Yeah, he works here.”
The group of people clustering around Daelia now was larger than the one she’d dealt with on Numina and in far worse shape. She had no idea at all what to do.
She’d never dealt well with big groups of people, and this one stank. While it was clear nobody was injured and their basic needs must have been taken care of, none of them had washed in a while. Daelia couldn’t help the way her hand went to her mouth and nose but lowered it again when she saw them staring at her.
“I’m, um, I’m from the Texas Air National Guard,” she began, feeling lame but not knowing what else to say. “I’m here to get you out.”
Nobody moved. They all just stood and stared at her.
“This whole place is evacuating right now,” she said, feeling more desperate now. “I don’t know if there’s an alarm that goes off when these doors are opened but we should be able to leave right along with everyone el—”
“There’s no going anywhere,” somebody wailed. “There’s nothing left.”
“Nothing left? Nothing left of what? Everything’s fine,” Daelia said, and reconsidered. “Mostly. I mean there are armed guards on the gates outside, but other than that… What?”
Somebody was staring at her, mouth agape. “They didn’t turn the power grid off?”
What had these people, held here in the dark, been told? “No,” Daelia said. “I mean, in a few places, I guess, but they haven’t followed through on that threat to brick the planet, if that’s what you mean.”
Somebody in the group started crying.
Daelia looked at Lara, wondering if the other woman could supply some kind of answer, but Lara didn’t meet her eyes.
“Daelia’s right,” Lara told the group instead. “We need to get out of here.”
Raven cawed at Daelia, hopping over to her arm and pecking at her. “What?” she asked.
“Who are you talking to?” Lara asked.
“A friend.”
“Emily?” Lara asked hopefully.
Daelia shook her head, confused by what she was seeing. There was nothing in the room. What the hell was Raven worried about? Daelia pulled the AR back up, rotated through a few different views, but it was all the same, and she blink-clicked it clear again.
