Predator One by Jonathan Maberry
Lydia nodded slowly, then said it aloud. “We’re done with it.”
“Good. And … thank you.”
She pulled Toys off the wall and gently pushed him toward Circe’s room.
Lydia Ruiz stood her ground and watched them go. Then, after a moment, she followed.
Chapter Forty
Tanglewood Island
Pierce County, Washington
March 30, 11:52 A.M.
“You need to rest,” said Pharos as he bent over the bed to check the tubes and wires.
“Leave me alone, damn you,” snapped the Gentleman. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”
“I dare say,” murmured Pharos, “but unless you’d rather that be sooner than later, you’ll rest now.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. This is over for now.”
“Over? Over?” The burned man tried his best to come out of that bed. To grab his doctor by the throat. To throttle the man. Instead, he twitched and wheezed, and his grasping hands closed around nothing. He sagged back, gasping, sweaty, defeated, but still filled with anger. “It’s not fucking over. He’s still alive. Christ, what does it take to kill one man? We’ve killed thousands. Tens of thousands. We brought down the sodding Towers. Why can’t we kill him?”
Pharos pulled his chair close to the bed and sat down. “So we had a little bad luck. Let it go. I mean, look at what you’ve accomplished today. You’ve struck them above the heart. You’ve hurt them so deeply. This is the kind of injury that will never really heal. Do you think there will ever be a ball game, a concert, an event in which the echo of this won’t be felt? Metal detectors, heightened security, paranoia, a loss of fun, a diminution of innocence and cultural arrogance. You’ve carved your mark into them. They will be talking about this day for a hundred years.”
The Gentleman spat. He tried to spit in Pharos’s face, but he lacked the lung capacity for that kind of velocity. The lump of yellow phlegm landed on the Gentleman’s chest.
Pharos sighed, took a tissue from the dispenser on the bedside table, and wiped it up.
“You are going to win,” he said as he crumpled the tissue and dropped it into a waste can. “Don’t you realize that? You’re going to win. That’s your genius, my friend. That’s why we all love you.”
“Win?” the burned man stared at him, half smiling. “I sometimes wonder which of us is more insane. I’ve been through trauma, so at least I have an excuse. What’s yours? Is this some congenital thing or have you been taking some of Doctor Rizzo’s special cocktails?”
“I—”
“How can you think, after all this time, that I give a tinker’s damn about winning? Look at me. What good is winning going to be for me?”
“I—”
“Sure, some of you will win. You’ll stroll off with billions. So will any of the senior management who are still alive when it’s all over. And how bloody nice for you. If that’s what you mean by ‘winning,’ then please have the sense and courtesy not to include me in it. It’s rude, and it’s insensitive to brag to a dying man that you’re going to spend the rest of your life—the years and years you have in front of you—spending all that lovely money. Buying yachts. Getting laid by models and movie stars. Living big. And note that the operative word is living, you miserable prick.” The burned man shook his head. “That’s your victory, and it doesn’t matter one drop to me. How can you not know that? More importantly, how could you have worked for Hugo Vox and the Seven Kings for so many years and not understand what this is?”
Pharos was silent for several moments. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
But the burned man only sneered. “I don’t want your apology, Pharos. And I sure as shit don’t want your pity. All I want from you is understanding.”
Pharos rubbed his eyes and nodded. “I do understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then say it. Tell me what I want from this. Tell me what I need from this. Tell me what I will have from this.” Spit flew from the melted lips with each word. “Say it, goddamn you.”
Pharos said it.
The word.
The single word that meant so much to the Gentleman. A word that had meant nearly as much to Hugo Vox, and to so many of the Kings.
A single word that was the ugliest and most damaging word in the entire dictionary of global politics. A word that must beat like a drum inside the head of creatures like Father Nicodemus. An insane word that held only horrors for Pharos but that meant everything to this dying lump of burned flesh.
He said, “Chaos.”
Chapter Forty-one
UC San Diego Medical Center
200 West Arbor Drive
San Diego, California
March 30, 11:54 A.M.
Toys stood in the corner of Circe’s room and looked at the woman’s chest rising and falling. Her face was totally slack, and if it wasn’t for that subtle movement and the pinging insistence of the machines, he would have thought she was dead. Her olive skin had turned a jaundiced yellow. Pale and papery. Her black curls were disordered into tangles of black wire by sweat and trauma.
Junie Flynn sat holding her hand.
Without turning, she asked, “Earlier, on the phone, you tried to tell me something. What was it?”
“Oh, it’s probably nothing,” said Toys, keeping his voice down to a whisper. Like talking in church. “I should never have called.”
“No, tell me.”
He licked his lips, stalling as he thought it through. “Um … before, when I was with … you know…”
“Before when? When you were working for Sebastian Gault or when you were living with Hugo Vox?”
She said it bluntly, and it let him know two things about her. First, that she knew a lot about his past, which didn’t surprise him. Church had to have told her his background before asking her to take him on in FreeTech. Fair enough. The second thing, though, was how matter-of-fact she was. She stated facts but didn’t front-load them with judgment. He couldn’t build a list of people in his life who were able to speak to him without judgment. Certainly no one in the DMS. Even Violin, who liaised with FreeTech, treated him as if he were a hairy little bug. And that was fair enough, too.
Not Junie, though.
She was different.
Though Toys couldn’t tell if it was compassion or simply a mind that ran on pragmatism rather than bias.
“Tell me,” she urged.
Toys opened his mouth to tell her all of it, but at that moment the bedside phone rang. Junie picked it up, listened, said, “Thank God!”
“What is it?” asked Toys.
Junie put the handset down. “That was Sam Imura down in the lobby. Rudy just got here. He’s on his way up.”
Part Three
Deus ex Machina
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
Interlude Eleven
Princess Hands Nail Salon
South Grand Boulevard
Saint Louis, Missouri
Ten Months Ago
Caren Fallowfield was texting and parking, but she wasn’t driving.
The car was doing that for her.
She typed furiously to her best friend, Meka, who was already inside Princess Hands having French tips put on. Caren’s car was working its way into a slot outside. The senior dance was tonight. Both girls had devastating dresses. Meka had one in electric blue with a hint of sparkles that made it shimmer when she turned. There was a tulle sheathing that turned the blue magic of it into smoky mystery. Caren, who had the better figure and they both knew it, went with a red that was so dark it looked black except where it stretched over bust line and hips. And the neckline plunged so far down that she was going to have to use a lot of tape to keep from giving everyone a show. The dress was show enough, thank you very much.
MEKA: I CAN SEE U! U GOT UR CAR WASHED. SO PRETTY!
MEKA: YOU GOT THE HOTS FOR A TRANSFORMER
CAREN: :P
The onboard system did not require anything from her. The sensors judged the distance to the cars in front and back, to the curb, and to the traffic whipping past. It made all the necessary calculations in a microsecond and began shifting gears and turning the silver machine at a sedate rate of speed. It was a tight spot that Caren would never have attempted without Optimus Prime, which is what she called it.
MEKA: HURRY UP. SAVED U A CHAIR.
CAREN: OP IS GOING AS FAST AS HE CAN.
MEKA: SLOW BUT RELIABLE. UNLIKE SOMEONE I COULD NAME.
CAREN: DON’T START. JACEN’S GETTING BETTER.
MEKA: HE’S A HORNDOG.
CAREN: SO?
MEKA: :)
The car stopped.
Suddenly and with a jolt. The cell phone fell from Caren’s hand, and for a moment she was torn between looking to see what was wrong and grabbing for her phone. She looked around. The car was stopped halfway into the spot. Caren checked the car in front. Still parked, no one in it. She looked in the rearview to see if Optimus had stopped to let the car behind pull out. But it was empty, too.
She tapped the button for the voice controls.
“Continue parking.”
“I will continue to park,” replied the silky female machine voice.
The car did not move.
Caren snatched her phone up and waited. Nothing.
Another tap on the button. “Continue parking,” she said again. With irritation, spacing each syllable.
“I will continue to park.”
Nothing happened.
Caren’s phone tinkled, indicating a new text.
MEKA:???
CAREN: STUPID CAR
The car suddenly moved.
Caren huffed out a breath that was half relief and half lingering annoyance.
The car changed its angle to the curb, picking one that much sharper. Caren frowned but did not interfere. She was, she knew, a terrible parker. She could drive as well as anyone, she believed, but parking was not her thing. And not in spots this tight. Optimus was always good at it, so she trusted him. If he needed a different angle, even one that didn’t make sense to her, then that was fine. Everything was fine if she could get out of the damn car and inside to get her nails done. They had a dark red polish that would go perfectly with the vampire-red dress. The polish shade was called Secret Passion.
That was fine, because maybe tonight Jacen was going where no man had gone before. The Victoria’s Secret thong she had in a bag in the backseat might see the light of—well, night—if everything went well. Jacen wasn’t the sharpest or most reliable guy in the world, but he looked like Theo James and she’d seen him in his gymnastic tights, so there was that. Those tights left nothing to the imagination. She was pretty sure the reason he was called the Hammer had nothing to do with what he did on the rings or uneven bars.
The rear wheel tapped the curb and the car rocked gently. That deepened Caren’s frown. The auto-park system wasn’t supposed to hit curbs. Ever. That was one of the selling points. She’d read the brochure before she talked her dad into buying it for her. Safer parking. No tire damage. All that.
CAREN: OP’S GETTING WEIRD ON ME.
MEKA: MEN. WHAT CAN I SAY?
Then something happened that shifted Caren from doubt and annoyance to nervousness.
The engine revved.
Like hitting the curb, it should never do that.
Except that it did. She saw the little needle that indicated RPMs swing way up and then drop down. Up and down. Then up and farther up. The engine roar filled the cabin.
“Stop,” she commanded. Nothing happened.
Then she remembered that she had to hit the button. She punched it.
“Stop.”
“Stopping.”
The engine revved even louder. The whole car was vibrating with the power. Smoke plumed up from the tailpipe. Caren saw people stopping to stare at her. She flushed with embarrassed anger.
Caren punched the button again. “Stop auto-park.”
“Auto-park disengaged,” said the silky voice. Pleasant. Always pleasant.
The engine roar increased.
“Stop!” yelled Caren, banging on the button. “Stop auto-park.”
“Auto-park disengaged.”
The radio suddenly switched up. It began cycling through the preset channels as the volume rose from her usual setting of sixteen to twenty-five, to forty-five, to a screaming and intolerable maximum that blasted everything from her except a shriek.
The steering wheel turned sharply to the left, pointing the wheels away from the curb.
The engine roared.
The radio was a sonic wail so loud that it was no longer music.
Caren’s scream was buried inside that cacophony.
Then the autonomous system released the brakes, and the car shot away from the curb and into a narrow gap between the Toyota Camry that had just passed and the UPS truck that was following at forty miles an hour.
Caren tried to hit the brakes.
The brake functions had been disabled by the onboard computer.
There was no time for the truck to stop.
The right front bumper of the truck hit the driver’s door at full speed. All those tons of metal punched the door inward against Caren. The airbag did not deploy, its circuits having been switched off by the computer. The seat belt held Caren in place, so all the colliding steel, aluminum, fiberglass, and safety glass had nowhere else to go.
In the same instant across America, twenty-three thousand vehicles with autonomous systems malfunctioned. Parked cars started in lots and garages and slammed into walls and other cars. Vehicles on streets and highways accelerated or simply switched to park while traveling at road speed. Scores of them hurtled at other cars as if the machines themselves had suddenly gone into a suicidal frenzy.
Chapter Forty-two
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Philadelphia
March 30, 4:18 P.M.
“Hey, Boss,” said a voice. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
I heard him before I saw a face. But I knew who it was.
I pried open one eye.
The man seated in the visitors’ chair looked like a taller, broader, more muscular version of Thor from the comic-book movies. He wore black BDU pants, boots, and a charcoal-gray T-shirt that was a size too small for his bulk. The slogan on the shirt read STERCUS FIT. Latin for “Shit Happens.” He had a pair of wayfarers pushed up on his blond hair. His youthful face was creased with concern and offset by a smile that was one part stress, one part exhaustion, and two parts false good humor. He’d been eating Chinese noodles from a white cardboard takeout container. He lowered his chopsticks and smiled at me.
“Bunny…” I croaked. Even to my own ears, my voice sounded like an old man’s. “Where—?”
“Jefferson Hospital in Philly,” said Bunny. “It’s tomorrow.”
“Huh?”
“That shitstorm at the ballpark? That was yesterday.” He looked at his watch. “It’s four eighteen in the afternoon of the thirtieth. You’ve been out for about a full day.”
He jabbed the chopsticks deep into the container and set it on the night table.
“Glad to see you awake, though. Been sweating large-caliber bullets waiting to see if you were going to wake up.”
“How bad am I?”
“Probably not as bad as you’re gonna feel, Boss. Mild concussion, but your skull isn’t cracked. I could make a joke about hard heads.”
“But you won’t ’cause you don’t want to die young.”
“Which is my point,” he said, nodding. “Let’s see what else. You have about a zillion small cuts. Thirty stitches here and there. Mostly those faggy little butterfly stitches except for the ones on your forearm. All the rest is bruising. The doctor said he had never seen someone with a bruised li
“Lucky me.”
“Yeah,” said Bunny, this time with no trace of humor. “Lucky you. Lot of people weren’t so lucky.”
It took me a few seconds to understand what that meant. I had been going on the assumption that I’d been hurt on a mission, but the jumbled pieces of memory began falling back into place a piece at a time.
The ballpark.
The drones.
The bombs.
“Jesus Christ, Bunny,” I said, and tried to sit up, to get out of bed, to find clothes.
He got up and body-blocked me. Not that it took a lot. I was empty. No strength at all. I sagged back.
“The bomb?” I asked.
Bunny raised his eyebrows. “Which one?”
“The last one. The timer.”
“Oh,” he said tiredly, and there was such deep bitterness in his voice. “Yeah. It wasn’t one bomb. It was seven of them. In trash cans in different places. Near the exits that the EMTs and emergency trucks were using.”
“God.”
“Forty-three dead. The bombs were there to hit the emergency responders. Tack those deaths on to what the drones did … shit … it’s so goddam awful.”
“How … how many all told?” I asked.
He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Two hundred and thirty-four dead. At least thirty-eight of them were people who got trampled to death trying to get away from the drones. They’re still sifting through rubble. There are a bunch unaccounted for, but we don’t yet know if they’re buried or just haven’t reported in with anyone if they got out. Eight hundred and sixty hospitalized. Fifty on the critical list. Another thousand or so treated and released. Every hospital in the region is jammed.
If he’d grabbed me by the front of my hospital gown and punched me with all of his strength, it wouldn’t have hit as hard or hurt me as much. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself back into unconsciousness.