Ashes of the Fall Read online

  Add another question to the mix. Apparently I, genius programmer and visionary Matthew Stokes, have created something called the HIVE—an evolution to the time-sucking beast that is the HoloNet. What other gremlins will I uncover from the corners of his closet before day’s end?

  The auto-cruiser pulls up to a large solid steel gate. Bogden flashes a card wordlessly—one that resembles mine. Sten does the same.

  I dig into my pockets as the gate guard walks towards the back and the window comes down. This is good—it sells the absent-minded professor thing. I push my card out the door, and I hold my breath, waiting for the official scan. Or for him to tell me to take off my shades.

  But the soldier with the assault rifle doesn’t question it. Just nods and lets us all through.

  And then I’m in the heart of the capital. At the Origin Point. As we pass through the gate, I watch through the rear windshield as a soldier with a bucket and paint roller covers up some graffiti. I can only see one part—hearted, written in a sloppy scrawl.

  But that’s not what bothers me.

  Next to the white paint, there’s a red splatter, from where the would-be artist made his last stand, spray-can in hand.

  And it dawns on me that words alone won’t be enough to save me here.

  I make it through the hallowed, gleaming halls of National Hall—the pièce de résistance of this armored fortress—without a hitch. When I’m asked for a standard scan, the guards perform their duty apologetically, like they’re in the presence of a deity.

  Under normal circumstances, this type of reverence would be intoxicating.

  But surrounded by jeweled chandeliers, plush maroon carpeting and gold-leafed rails which all scream interloper and remind me of my potential impending execution, the feeling of power is a little difficult to enjoy.

  Agents Sten and Bogden abandon me at the twelve elevators. One, I realize, for each member of the Inner Circle.

  “Not coming up,” I say, as I fumble for my keycard. I drop it on the ground on purpose, and Sten hurries to pick it up—perhaps to atone for his forthrightness earlier. I get the distinct impression that the Circle likes its SC Agents much more like Bogden—silent, brutish, borderline robots.

  Sten’s eyes meet mine, and I can see the questions growing. He knows something is up. It’s a problem for him—and he tries to hide it. Compensates by being an excellent soldier, follows orders to a tee. But he can’t tamp down his natural curiosity, his inclination that something about me is off.

  “We don’t have clearance, sir,” Sten says. “We’ll wait in the cruiser, to accompany you back to your residence.”

  Ah, yes. Apparently I need armed guards to shield me from all the terrorists afoot. The ride over was remarkably violence free and peaceful, news reports of the earth literally cracking open notwithstanding.

  “Yeah, right,” I say, “sorry, been coding all night.” I wave my head around like I’m some sort of nut-brained computer geek. Bogden buys it, nodding along all too assiduously. But Sten still has doubts.

  The inside of Matt’s personal elevator is plain, much like his apartment. But there is a symbol I recognize, even from fifteen years ago, carved into the mirrored glass and lit from behind.

  It’s his signature—of sorts. A DNA helix—with three strands, instead of two.

  I take the elevator up to the highest point in the city, exactly one mile above the ground. The ride only lasts a half minute. The Circle has spared no expense for its most valuable members. The mirrored effect on the glass fades like steam as the elevator rockets skyward, revealing a jaw-dropping view. From here, I get a much better indication of the landscape.

  New Manhattan is a skyscraper paradise. But just outside the city, where other parts of the Eastern Stronghold are visible, the tall buildings are crumbling, many unfinished, their bare girders rusting in the midday sun. The contrast is stark, unforgiving.

  It reminds me, in some ways, of home. Although it’d still be nicer.

  I walk out of the elevator, into a reception area. No human being greets me—Chancellor Tanner’s clearly too paranoid to have that kind of weak link in the chain. A secretary could poison the Chancellor’s coffee, if the wrong person got to her.

  I sit down on the plush leather sofa, warily glancing at the oak door like I’m a patient waiting for a psychological appraisal. Or that’s how I imagine it. I’ve only seen that stuff in the movies, streamed off hijacked old school internet connections jerry-rigged in the back of bars and in the basement of clubs.

  I tighten the drawstrings on the hoodie, realizing that I’m channeling Matt more than I could have imagined. He used to do that while he was coding, his face barely peeking out like he was ready to brave a snowstorm. Only his mouth and nose visible.

  My nerves subside when I run the scenarios and realize that this play, as low-probability as it might be, is the only one. I didn’t miss anything—fleeing wasn’t an option. Going underground in a city like this? Yeah, right—like the Lionhearted would let me into their ranks, anyway. The only person who can con a Jesus freak is a preacher.

  Even I’m not that good.

  I’ll be the first to admit that maybe my curiosity is coloring my judgment. Because I need to know who killed Matt more than I need to live. And I need to know what project he needed me for so damn badly.

  That’s not really fall-on-your-own-sword valiant as much as kamikaze stupid.

  The door opens, and I snap to attention. My brain jettisons all these useless thoughts, just the right kind of blank. I’m in the zone, and there’s no way I’ll screw this up.

  With a deliberately nervous, slow gait, sunglassed eyes on the floor, I walk hesitantly through the door. There are no windows in here, just parallel white walls and a giant table that stretches fifty feet from end-to-end.

  A man sits, facing away from me at the other end. A workstation sits there, too. Next to his workstation is a pistol. I notice a computer on my end, along with a chair. There aren’t any others. Guess this is a one-on-one chat.

  “You look like hell, Stokes,” he says, his voice a nasty growl. “You been drinking again?”

  “No, sir,” I say, making the words a rough kind of mumble in my throat. A con is a lot about expectations. There can be red flags out the ass, but if a mark doesn’t expect such shenanigans, you have a lot of leeway, since the mind always sees what it wants, not what is reality.

  I eye the workstation. It has the triple-helix insignia floating on a black background. Deciding it’s Matt’s, and I’m meant to do something with it, I sit down. Hopefully he doesn’t ask me for a password. That’s one thing I can’t trick my way through.

  I purge the thought from my mind and stare at the keyboard.

  “Cut it out with the sir nonsense,” Chancellor Tanner says, “I’m practically your damn father.”

  “Sorry,” I say. I wrack my brain for Tanner’s first name. “Bobby.”

  “Whoa, let’s not get too casual, boy,” Tanner says, “Robert will do. But I like the balls. Speak up now. Can barely hear you.”

  “I didn’t get a lot of sleep,” I say, keeping the muffled scratch in my voice. This guy, speaking to me practically by megaphone over a canyon, wants to talk about balls. But okay, I’ll play. “What’s new Robert?”

  Tanner laughs and stands up, finally turning around. My look of surprise is hidden by my shades. There are official pictures of him, sure—but nothing like this. The man looks like a goddamn relic.

  In his official, supposedly candid shots, he’s black-haired, vibrant, robust. But the gray-haired, thinning man before me, eyes sunken almost into his head, looks more like a heroin addict than the charismatic leader he’s portrayed as.

  “I know you disagree with me on this, son,” Tanner says, “but I’m trying to help these people. HIVE is the future.”

  Another moment of shock. He’s telling
the truth. Either he’s bought his own bullshit—which makes him more dangerous than I thought—or this is an entirely new problem, wherein the most powerful man in what’s left of the world is sitting atop a runaway team of thoroughbred horses.

  If Tanner’s actively trying to fix the world, and failing this badly…well, that doesn’t leave me much hope.

  “You’re not doing much helping,” I say.

  “You forget, back in ’26, when everything was a disaster, how close we were to destruction.” Tanner sighs and slumps back into his chair, exhausted by standing. “They were cheering my name in the streets. Freedom in sacrifice for safety. But I built a monster. As you often point out.”

  “Order has its price,” I say. “But that’s nothing new.” I clear my throat a little. “If you don’t mind, Robert, I got a couple things on the docket today.”

  He coughs and smiles. It’s genuine. This guy, whoever he was, really liked Matt. Did Matt like him? That’s one thing I can’t know.

  “Sure, kid,” Tanner says. “But you scheduled the meeting.”

  “I know.”

  “So tell me about progress on HIVE,” Tanner says. He drinks from a glass of water. “You said something about the demo results. Needing direct access to the server farm.”

  Right. Sten’s kid was a big fan of HIVE. What’s he say? It sounded like an evolution of the HoloNet. Being a real world guy rather than a computer nerd, I’m not sure what that entails.

  “Yeah,” I say, still running through the car ride conversation. No publicly available information that I’m aware of. Easy enough for a kid to use, if Agent Sten’s boy likes it. Probably only available to Circle members, which would explain why I hadn’t heard of it before fifteen minutes ago. “I need to take a look.”

  “The terminal you’re sitting at has direct administrative access,” Tanner says. “Why not take a look there?”

  “That’s not direct access,” I say.

  “You can upload any revisions to the source code on that terminal. They’ll be checked by the firewall systems and vetted.” He smiles. “What’d you expect, exactly, Matthew? There’s fifty feet separating us, boy. You think I’m giving anyone direct access to what’s gonna save humanity besides me?”

  “I don’t know if save is the right word, Robert,” I say.

  “This technology will change the world,” he says. A coughing fit follows, lasting over a minute. When it’s over, his pallid face is shaded an anemic kind of red. Almost as if his body can’t even muster up the trouble to be bothered with a response. “It will save mankind.”

  “I’ll get that direct access,” I say. It comes off as more of a threat than I’d like, but it doesn’t bother Chancellor Tanner at all.

  He shrugs, like people have been gunning for him his whole life. “That’s why I picked you out of all the others Matthew,” he says. “Took you from your bedroom and gave you a life. The biggest success our Gifted Minds Program ever had. Your determination and will were peerless. And there were some impressive students, lest you forget.”

  My blood pressure shoots through the roof and my neck pulses. I want to jump the table and run down the center, choke Tanner until his eyes pop out of his skull.

  But I look at the pistol from behind the dim grayness of the shades, and instead jab my finger into the terminal’s touchscreen. It links up with my HoloBand, confirms that I’m Matthew Stokes—and then I’m staring at a directory full of files related to HIVE.

  “Why was I the most impressive to you,” I say, scanning the endless reams of folders. Most of them are code.

  “Because, beneath the nervous strangeness, you had the power to change the world,” he says, with smug satisfaction from apparently being the first to recognize this greatness, “and sometimes you even realize it.”

  I know he’s not talking about me, but it feels like the latter part is true. Which is the key element of all cons: you wrap a grain of truth in a larger, more insidious lie. Either to yourself or someone else. Tanner isn’t lying about my brother.

  But I am deceiving myself if I believe I have the power to change the world. Which is why, after this play runs its course—and I can figure out a way to set things right without a bounty being placed on my head—I’m going to get the hell out of New Manhattan. Special projects be damned.

  I scroll through the files silently until I find a document. It’s only one page, and gives me no details on HIVE’s purpose or where it might be located—just a list of key developmental hardware and software engineers. I upload it to my HoloBand, and then sign off.

  “It’ll be ready in a week,” I say, rising from my chair.

  “A week?” Tanner’s eyes grow greedy for the first time, and I realize, that whatever HIVE is, it’s linked not only to his legacy but his life.

  “Forty-eight hours,” I say, revising my estimate, and then I throw into the wind, “for an almost complete beta.”

  “I’m glad you’ve seen the necessity of this technology,” Tanner says. “I wasn’t sure you’d deliver.”

  “Progress waits for no man.”

  “Most will survive,” Tanner says, “in the end, it will be good for them all.”

  And you, I think, not waving goodbye as I walk out the door. I wait for the elevator, hoodie still drawn around my cheeks like I’m battling a windstorm, listening as the door to Chancellor Tanner’s office shuts automatically with a quiet whir.

  After a quick ride, I exit on to the immaculate ground floor. And who do I see, striding up to her own elevator, but the long-haired woman from next door. The one who wouldn’t talk to me before. Without a second glance, she gets into her own private transport to the top of the world.

  Now, more than ever, I realize there’s only one fundamental truth about human beings.

  No one is ever quite who you think.

  There are long cons and short cons. It occurs to me, walking into a street guarded by soldiers in sniper’s nests, that this particular grift has a short expiration date. Like milk left on the counter in the middle of a heatwave.

  Agent Sten and Agent Bodgen greet me with perfunctory nods when I climb into the back of the waiting cruiser. I don’t try to engage in conversation. The vehicle doesn’t move, and I stare out the window, at the gleaming, ivory skyscraper where Chancellor Tanner hides out in the dark.

  I’ve avoided immediate detection. Hell, I can even lie to myself, say that I’ve tried to follow-up on Matt’s project as best I can. But now, if I clean up the apartment, get out of town…maybe it’ll be like he just disappeared. Ditch the HoloBand when I’m outside the city limits.

  Poof. Like smoke.

  Chancellor Tanner will come looking. Matt was the lead on this HIVE project, which is crucial to Tanner in a personal way I can’t quite place my finger on. Which means I need to be careful how I plan my escape—a wrong move and the noose gets tight in a hurry.

  “Sir?” Agent Sten’s voice is small, almost inaudible. “Do you have a destination, Mr. Stokes.?”

  I think for a moment. The con will continue. But this time it’s with an eye towards an exit strategy. For the time being, there’s still no play here, except to be Matt Stokes.

  “Take me back to my apartment,” I say. “And then you’re dismissed.”

  “Dismissed? Sir?” Sten sounds like I’ve told him he’s done something wrong.

  “I need a drink. Alone,” I say, then add shyly, “with a lady friend.”

  All of this is true. Our eyes meet, and I think that he can see that. Sten nods, presses a few buttons up front—to save me the trouble of doing it myself, back here in the luxurious leather confines—and the auto-cruiser rolls onwards, dropping me at Matt’s apartment.

  I pause for a second to look at the Gifted Minds Institute. This must be where Matt grew up after he left. Where he springboarded to the head of an impressive class. The guards mi
ll around the entrance. Whatever’s inside, I’m not going to investigate.

  I head up the building’s elevator and push inside the apartment. I take off my shades and throw them on the granite island. Loosen the drawstrings of the hoodie and find that I’m sticky with a cool sweat. It’s about three in the afternoon and the sun is shining brightly through the untinted windows. I instruct the shades to drop, and the room plunges into a cool darkness. Enough light to see where I’m going, not enough for the grizzly details.

  Matt’s body is cool when I touch his neck. Stiff, lifeless. He’s really and truly dead—gone for good. I would sit and mourn, say a prayer or whatever you’re supposed to do, but the only thing I’m good at is moving forward, solving problems.

  Taking his legs and closing my eyes, I drag the body across the cherry floors towards the bedroom. I haven’t been around many bodies, but from limited experience, I know that the stink will out me before anything else.

  His closed eyes face up at the blank ceiling, his mouth slightly open. I rip the sheet off the bed and wrap him in the soft cotton. It’s not much, but it’s the best I can do until I come up with a solution.

  Dragging him into the elevator is a non-starter, so moving the body anywhere outside of this apartment is impossible. As far as I can tell, this might be the only place in New Manhattan that doesn’t have a camera on it. Perks of the Inner Circle, I suppose.

  After I’m done with the body, I clean up the tacky pool of blood in the kitchen and the streaks along the floor. The water at my feet pools in a pinkish-red mist as I scrub my fingertips raw in the shower afterwards.

  When I’m finished I go through his closet methodically, searching for anything I missed in the first round. But it’s perfectly utilitarian—the box of old clothes the only link to the past or a semblance of individuality. There are no photographs on the walls, no pictures, no art, no tchotchkes. Nothing to indicate that a man, nearly thirty years of age on the day he died, once lived and breathed here. More of an upscale hotel than a living quarters.