Something beeps and flashes red on the dash. “That’s it,” the pilot says. “We don’t drop him here, we don’t get home. I’ll go low as I can, but we’re down to fumes.”
Back down to the tail. Barclay’s ahead of me, slaps a button: the tailgate folds down like a drawbridge in front of me. Streamers of fire dance in and out of view to my left, blown back from the burning engine.
“Good luck, marine. Watch your ass.”
The East River rolls by a few meters below—black and oily in visible, a deep peaceful blue on thermal—and for a second I think it’s taking heavy fire. But no: Those are only raindrops.
The VTOL’s already banking back to shore by the time I jump.
I hit the surface straight vertical, perfect entry. The river closes over my head with barely a splash. Dead of night, pitch-black water, viz so low I can’t even see my own hand unless I push it right up against the helmet, and you know what?—
It doesn’t bother me a bit. No sign of the fear that’s plagued me ever since I was eight years old. Not a twinge.
Maybe I’m just getting used to it. Or maybe it’s a fringe benefit, courtesy of SECOND and the N2.
For a second that almost scares me more than water used to. Because I’ve been inside this beast for, what—twelve hours, now? Fifteen? And if it’s already got its tentacles buried so deep that it can edit out my phobias, what the hell will it have done after a day or two? After a week? I mean, what are we, what makes us unique, if not for our own personal fears and quirks? What if some mission algorithm decides that my personality’s an operational liability? How many more of these background edits does it take before I don’t wake up tomorrow, before something else wakes up that just happens to have my memories?
I’m not used to being such an existentialist wanker, you know. But all of this passes through my mind in the two seconds between the time I hit the water and the time I stop sinking. I hang there in that muddy black current for just a moment. Physics weighs buoyancy and momentum and gravity, and as I start to rise the dread just—drains out of me, somehow. The thoughts remain, that scary conclusion is still front and center, but it’s colorless. I can look at the prospect of being edited out of my own head and it really should scare the shit out of me, but it doesn’t anymore. I’m not even scared by the obvious reason why it doesn’t.
Because after all, I’ve got a mission to complete. And by the time I break the surface—ten, twelve seconds after splashdown—that’s really all I’m focused on.
To: Site Commander D. Lockhart. Manhattan Crisis Zone
From: Jacob Hargreave
Date: [header corrupted]
(See attached.)
Did you really think I wouldn’t find out about this, Lockhart?! Did you really think you could undermine me with the board that easily?!
Your days are numbered, son!
Archive: 28th March 2021
From: CryNet Executive Board
To: Lieutenant Commander D. Lockhart, Seattle Deployment Team
Lt. Cmdr. Lockhart,
We are in receipt of your opinions in this matter and have weighed them carefully.
We are also aware of the deeply personal nature of your grievance against the nano-suit program. We have no wish to re-open old wounds for you, but must point out that this personal element forces us to consider the possibility of your having a “vendetta mentality” where the new technology is concerned.
At present, although the US military has formally withdrawn from the N2 program, Pentagon funding for our research continues in force, and forms part of a substantial revenue stream for the company. Our client relationship with the Pentagon remains a cordial one and in these turbulent times, that is not something we take lightly. Your concerns notwithstanding, the N2 program will therefore advance (under close security supervision, you may rest assured) to Stages Seven and Eight.
We will inform you if this situation changes. Until then, you will please consider the matter closed.
Archive: 22nd March 2021
From: Lieutenant Commander D. Lockhart, Seattle Deployment Team
To: CryNet Executive Board
Sirs,
I refer you to my previous correspondence regarding CryNet’s Nanosuit program, and specifically the continuance of research and funding under the new N2 protocol (Stage Six).
If early reservations among myself and other experienced military personnel on the original program were not previously sufficient, then I would have hoped that the debacle at Ling Shan would prove the validity of our case. Hargreave-Rasch’s proprietary nanotech has failed so many legal safety requirements now and so badly that the US military has withdrawn its personnel from all testing in protest. And our company’s success in acquiring new test subjects for N2 from among the US Supermax prison population and the troops of our developing world allies should be no cause for rejoicing.
Sirs, I am an American patriot, and a shareholding supporter of our corporate values. But what this country needs (and this company needs to support logistically) is a culture of well-trained and well-equipped modern soldiers we can be proud of—not a Frankenstein parade of psychopaths and dead men walking in tin suits whose technical systems apparently remain a mystery even to those who build them.
I respectfully reiterate my request that the N2 program be formally terminated.
Prism
Rain hammers across my helmet. Lightning strobes on the horizon. Off in the middle distance a bright light turns in the sky like the eye of Sauron, sweeping land and sea: lighthouse.
I’m a hundred meters off the southern tip of Roosevelt Island. GPS puts Prism in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. A little over one klick northeast.
Hargreave’s back in my ear before I even make it ashore. “It’s good of you to come for me like this, Alcatraz, but you will need to proceed with caution. Lockhart has deployed his elite forces across the island. I’ll guide you as best I can, but my view from here is, shall we say, severely limited.”
The lighthouse rises in my sights like a terraced stone birthday cake: wide first layer with guardrail icing; narrower second; one big honking candle rising from the center. A wide stone stairway curves around the outer wall but even before I hit the shore I can see heat prints in the shadows of the first landing. I make three, line of sight; probably more inside the structure itself.
SECOND samples the airwaves: “You see that fly-by? Thought they were going to come in and strafe us.”
“Nah. Too shot up. Didn’t you see the flames? Be lucky if they manage five more minutes in the air.”
“Saffron Three and Eight, keep your comms clear. Run silent, perimeter sweep again—that tin fuck is coming, I can feel it.”
Daddy Lockhart, breaking in and squelching the signal.
“Yes, sir.”
I’m on the stairs now, flattened against the brickwork as Three and Eight clatter innocently past on their perimeter sweep, swinging their dicks. They hope I do show up. One of them had friends in Cobalt.