“Yeah. I mean, it’s happened once before. But I thought that was it, never again. I’m pretty much all fucked to hell and back, you know. Emotionally retarded and all that. Psych-ward material. But whatever. I’m fucking nuts about you. Suddenly, I don’t care anymore about all that shit, all these damn plans our stupid groups have been putting together. I don’t care. Right now, I realized all I want to do is just take off with you. Disappear. Live in some trailer somewhere and forget the goddamned world.”
She moved toward him with her hand extended, but he stood and turned away from her, slipping tight underpants on, grabbing a t-shirt from the floor.
“It came into focus and explained so much. Why I couldn’t concentrate. Why I was losing motivation.”
Her hand dropped to the side, her smile fading.
“And then I realized what I had to do.”
He turned toward her, the shirt pulled down over his thin frame, yanking on a pair of jeans.
“So what do you have to do?”
He sighed, snapping his fly closed. “It’s over, Poison. I’m leaving and not coming back. It’s been fun.” He held her eyes.
“I don’t understand. Her tone rose, the pitch quavering, her eyes large. “Why?”
“Don’t make it any harder. For either of us. Just let it hurt and die.” He threw things into a duffle bag. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Then why are you doing it?” she shouted, tears in her eyes.
“Because it is so hard! Because I know! I know that all our feelings, this love and joy and soaring hope and wonder is all a lie!” He looked at her as some despised thing. “Bubbling broth of chemicals in our minds that will lead us astray. That will end in hurt.” He zipped the bag and walked to the door as she stood rooted, turning her head stiffly to follow his motions. “Worse. It’ll wreck my plans, erase my desire to achieve my goals, to impact a lasting change. And why? For love. For limbic lies. I will destroy everything I’ve worked so hard on, only to lie dazed and happy with you under some tree somewhere. Justice demands so much more.”
“Justice?” her face was a mask of confusion.
“It will not be stopped. Not even by you, Poison. I will go, our love will die, and I can finish what I started. I’m sorry for the pain. But it’s just withdrawal. Just your brain missing its biochemical fix. It’ll be over soon.”
With that he stormed out of the room, leaving Poison to sit on the bedside, her eyes red and wet, a snarl on her lips.
MILLER Deposition 4
CBD: So then, these fugitives were sent to rescue the nation’s president?
MR. MILLER: Which they did. Poke any holes in your dumbfuck theory?
CBD: And what were you doing during these hours of chaos in Washington?
MR. MILLER: If only it was just Washington! You seem to be forgetting the hand basket Europe went to hell in.
CBD: Yes, the nuclear plants.
MR. MILLER: You want chaos? There you go! Chinese party leaders blasted, too. When the TV news wasn’t streaming video of DC on fire, it was showing ten different reactors smoldering in France. All from aerial reconnaissance photographs, of course, because it was a radioactive clusterfuck on the ground. Did you know that the Germans were nearly nuclear free?
CBD: I’m sorry, I don’t see the relevance of—
MR. MILLER: They had made it a fucking law that they’d end nuclear power in Germany by 2020 or something. You know those Krauts, damned if they didn’t figure out how to do it! Nuclear free. Fossil fuel free. Sustainable energy. In five years they’d be there. No worries for meltdowns. Unless, of course, some psychopath flies a bunch of drones into your neighboring country’s reactors, blowing that shit into the atmosphere. Ain’t nuclear free no more.
CBD: Mr. Miller, let’s get back to—
MR. MILLER: So, when you say ‘what were you doing?’, try to remember that first of all we were all trying to stay sane. Stay focused. On task. Every single one of us was struggling not to lose his shit as the world literally burned right in front of our eyes.
CBD: Yes, as I said, it was chaotic.
MR. MILLER: And in our own backyard. The food riots were spreading. No deliveries into or out of the city for days. Even if the worm hadn’t FUBARed the distribution economy, the lockdown of the city made things ten thousand times slower. People were hungry. What’s that saying, even a good man is nine meals away from murder? It was getting scary just to go outside. Everyone was panicking about a blackout like in DC. But we didn’t have time for that shit. John’s plan. That’s what was on our minds. We spent sleepless nights setting it up. Filming interrogation scenes worthy of a goddamned Oscar. Feeding it out through Angel’s digital feints.
CBD: I thought her system had been sabotaged by Anonymous.
MR. MILLER: Yeah, that set us back. She quarantined the computers from the internet and wiped them to make sure all traces of the worm were gone.
CBD: How?
MR. MILLER: I don’t know. She’s the code-head. I just shoot stuff.
CBD: Her system was brought back online?
MR. MILLER: A part of it. Enough to hook back up to the net. By then John had gotten some of the code for the firewall from NSA, and Angel fortified our position, whatever that means. She had more space now to breathe, but we didn’t seem to have much time.
CBD: These feints?
MR. MILLER: Right. So, she put the interrogation videos on some unsecured boxes, other shit. To piss Fawkes off. The idea was to find a location offsite that looked vulnerable, move the girl there, leak that we moved the girl there, then wait with the bait for that fuck to show up.
CBD: Sounds like a good plan.
MR. MILLER: Yeah, you try to find a way to net that ghost in a few days while everything went to shit. But it was a good plan. The only problem was that Fawkes had his own plans. And we hadn’t anticipated them.
49
The elevator opened and Savas saw the broad form of Frank Miller filling the space between the doors. The ex-marine’s suit bulged on each side and his shirt strained from the pressure of body armor underneath.
“Suiting up for a rough game, Frank?”
"Time to move," Miller said.
Savas stood beside Cohen and the woman who called herself Poison. No one moved for a moment, the air charged with the potential of what was to come. They were crossing a threshold, setting events into motion that could not be recalled.
"FEDs first," said Poison, grasping a USB disk hanging around her neck like a talisman.
Savas followed as Cohen limped into the car and turned around, watching the hacker intently. Poison continued to face them as Miller pressed a button to hold the doors open.
"It has to be done," said Cohen. "You know that."
Poison nodded, looking sideways around the room as if for an escape. "Yeah, but when it comes to it, leading the prick to the net seems low even for slamming your ex." She looked at them harshly. "Try not to hurt him."