SINdrome Page 13

  “And we figure,” I said, playing off Tia as naturally as if we’d been interrogating perps together for years, “that there’s no way Walton Biogenics lets their killer synths walk around susceptible to this plague they’ve released. Which means that, somewhere, there’s a facility where these soldiers are being created, and that facility may well have the cure…or at least some sort of vaccine.”

  Larkin was looking more than a little shell shocked, and who could blame her? She’d barely come to terms with the fact that she’d been working for the gold standard of evil for god alone knew how long. Throwing killer synthetic assassins and potentially world-ending plagues on top of that had sent her into full landed fish mode. She lay there, mouth opening and closing as if trying to talk, but no words came out. This went on for a full thirty seconds. If she hadn’t been laid up with a bullet wound, I may have smacked her, just to bring her back to her senses. But, again, I couldn’t be that big of an asshole, and besides, I doubted that slapping was a doctor-approved method of dealing with shock.

  Tia leaned in and said, “Ms. Larkin. You need to answer our questions. I understand you’ve had a lot of new and painful information dumped on you, but we don’t have time for you to adjust to it. Countless lives are at stake. If you know anything that can help us, anything at all, then you need to pull it together and start talking.” She kept her voice calm, professional. There wasn’t a whole lot of emotion in it, though I could hear the faintest hint of anger beneath her words. It seemed to do the trick, because Larkin’s mouth snapped closed and stayed that way. Then she drew a long breath.

  “The lab where I worked, the one you broke into, that’s where Walton Biogenics does a lot of biological research. If there is a virus…” Tia started shaking her head, and I felt my teeth grinding at that partial denial, but Larkin plowed on. “If there is a virus, it was probably developed there. But there’s no way that they’re growing synthetics there. And even if they were, there’s no way you’re getting back in. Security has been tripled, and at least a third of it is dedicated to just looking out for you, specifically, Mr. Campbell, since your escape.”

  Tia looked at me and I shrugged. “We weren’t planning on trying to break in there,” I said. “There may be something that we could use to help, maybe even good data on the virus, but trying to infiltrate the same site twice…it’s problematic. We’ll do it if we have to, but it will be a hell of a lot harder.” Then I turned my attention back to Larkin. “Where are the synthetics grown?” I asked.

  She threw up her hands helplessly, then winced as the motion tugged at something in her leg. “Dammit,” she muttered. “That hurt. To answer your question, they’re grown…everywhere. I mean, all over the world. There are facilities in the United States, in Mexico, Brazil, several European countries, China… There’s dozens of them.”

  “Shit,” Tia whispered, and I saw the hope draining from her.

  “It wouldn’t be a regular site,” I pressed. “They’re not going to be growing and training their super soldiers at the same place they’re growing Toys and Domestics. No chance in hell. And it’s not something that’s going to be well known. It’s going to be a rumor. A myth. The Area 51 or Bermuda Triangle of Walton Biogenics. And no matter how tightly held the secret, it’s going to have spread. The only thing that travels faster than light is gossip through a government or corporation. You know something, even if you don’t know that you know it.”

  I was reaching, grasping at straws, but I couldn’t let Larkin, or Tia, know that. The logic tracked. Even when it was better to do your business out in the open, and mask it as part of your legitimate operations, people seemed to have an almost pathological need to hide their secrets. Hernandez could wax eloquent on all the gang operations they never would have busted if the bad guys had just made a little less effort to hide what they were doing. And the only force I’d found more powerful than the need to hide secrets was the need to tell them. If there was a black site, Larkin had heard of it. If she could only remember…

  Larkin, for her part, appeared to be trying. Her face had gone slack, her eyes half-lidded. She was drawing deep, slow breaths, almost as if in meditation. Her hands were more active. She kept reaching toward her leg, as if wanting to massage the wound, then snatching her hand away. She settled on clasping them, then wringing them. Worrying at them as she thought. Tia held her silence, and she kept that calm, bedside manner expression glued to her face. For my part, it took every ounce of interrogation-room-built poker face and willpower not to let my frustration show.

  If Larkin couldn’t come up with a lead worth following, we’d have to break into her old job. There was a chance at that, before Walton Biogenics sent a hit squad to remove her. If we could have used her credentials, or even got her to act as an inside man, we may have been able to get what we needed from the virus development site. But it looked like Walton was too smart for that. They must have been watching Larkin like a hawk, and sent teams the minute we’d made contact. Now, they’d probably added her name to whatever short list their security had to actively watch for. Watch for, and shoot on sight.

  “The Potato Farm.”

  The non sequitur broke me from my reverie. “Come again?” I asked.

  Larkin was staring at me, brown eyes wide, as if she’d just come to some realization. “The Potato Farm,” she said again. “It’s a synthetic growth facility located in the middle of nowhere in Idaho. It’s a normal site, for the most part, focusing on the growth of Laborers.”

  “For the most part?” Tia asked.

  “It’s like Mr. Campbell said. There’s always been rumors about it. It’s part of why it got its nickname. I mean, we joke…” She paused, and winced as if in pain. “We joked,” she corrected, “about how all of the synthetic growth sites were vegetable farms. Because as soon as the synthetics reached the proper age, they are…harvested. And sent off to the conditioning centers.”

  “Harvested,” Tia said. There was a tone in her voice that I could only call loathing. I looked at her and the mask of professionalism was gone and she was staring at Larkin with a seething anger. I think, in that moment and for the first time in her journey to become a doctor, Tia was regretting saving someone.

  Larkin, for her part, refused to meet Tia’s eyes. “Yes,” she said softly. “Harvested.” She looked down at her leg once more, maybe feeling the same thing from Tia that I had and wondering how near a thing her survival had been. “And taken off for programming.”

  “Indoctrination,” Tia snapped. “Brainwashing.”

  “As you say,” Larkin agreed.

  “The Potato Farm?” I asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.

  “Right,” Larkin said with a sigh. “It’s called that because there have been rumors for a long time that there’s more going on at the facility than the norm. That the real work is being done underground, both figuratively and literally. It’s one of those things that started as a joke, but became so common that I’ve heard senior executives referring to the site as the Potato Farm. Most think it’s some sort of underground lab. I always kind of laughed at that, since we did that kind of work right here in the city proper. But the rumors persisted.”

  “Idaho,” I sighed. It had to be somewhere thousands of miles away. And somewhere where the conditions on the ground in the middle of February would probably be best described as arctic. “Do you know where?”

  “Yes,” Larkin said. “The main site has never been hidden from anyone. I’ve even worked on projects with some of the staff there. I’m sure I have the address in my contacts.”

  Which may or may not have been purged by Walton. But hopefully they missed that little detail. My mind had already flipped into planning mode, categorizing what we would need. Getting out of the city would be a problem, but Silas or one of the synthetics who worked the sewers could probably find a path around the checkpoints. It would require switching vehic
les a lot and spending a considerable amount of time walking through the sewers, but that was manageable. The team we put together would have to include me, Al’awwal. Hernandez if she was willing. Probably Tia, though I hated to risk her. They needed her at the makeshift hospital, but I was afraid we needed her more. She might be able to make the dying more comfortable, but for us to have a chance we needed every person capable of fighting. We just didn’t have enough trigger pullers.

  A sound reached the recovery room. A sound that had me dropping my hand to the pistol that was no longer in the pocket of the pants I was wearing.

  Chapter 14

  “What is that?” Tia demanded, as the tinny sound of…screaming? Shouting? Something. Reached our ears. To penetrate the steel-walled ballasts… It had to be nearly every synthetic in our makeshift headquarters.

  “Stay here,” I said. “We may have been found out. If you hear gunshots…try to get out.” I realized we’d never done any sort of evacuation drill, maybe the first oversight in Silas’s master plan. Or, maybe, we’d been driven to his last refuge and there was nowhere else to go. Either way, we were on an island, so unless the albino had boats waiting, we were probably fucked.

  I rushed out of the room, cursing under my breath for ditching the pistol. It was a dumb call made on comfort, and now I was paying the price. No time to try to get to my room to retrieve it. I’d have to hope that if Al or Hernandez were putting up a fight, they had a spare piece.

  As I tore up a ladder, moving toward higher levels of the Ballast, working my way ever closer to the noise, it started to become clearer. I’d been on a raid or two, and they were normally prefaced with explosions—flashbangs in the NLPD, more serious ordinance in the Army. I hadn’t heard any explosions, or gun shots for that matter. The sound of a terrified crowd was to be expected, at least when you were hitting a large group. But while I definitely heard the sounds of a crowd, what I was hearing lacked the panicked note of terror. In fact, it sounded like…celebration.

  I entered another cell of the honeycomb of chambers that made up the Ballasts and stopped dead. Or was stopped. There was simply no way to move through the press of bodies before me. The room might be called a lounge, or recreation room, if one was very generous with either term. It was little more than a few large screens, salvaged from god alone knew where, and mounted on the walls. A scattering of tables and chairs—always at a premium in revolution central—normally filled the space.

  Normally, because through the press of bodies, I couldn’t tell what had been done with the tables or chairs. There must have been fifty synthetics crammed into a space that could accommodate half that number. The proximity of so many bodies only minutes after watching the first synthetic succumb to the effects of the Walton plague made me itch. Still, as shocking as seeing that many synthetics gathered despite the warnings we’d circulated, it was more shocking to see them so excited.

  And they were excited. Like, yelling and screaming and jumping up and down excited. It was more emotion than I had witnessed from synthetics… ever. Even the birth of Evelyn’s child paled in comparison.

  “What the hell is going on?” I demanded, grabbing the nearest synthetic.

  She was beautiful, dark skinned and slimly athletic. Almost certainly a Toy before escaping. Her teeth gleamed perfectly white as she shouted something in return, but her words were lost beneath the general tumult. I couldn’t miss her outthrust hand, pointing toward the screens.

  The mass of synthetics had thrown me for a big enough loop that I hadn’t really registered what was happening on the screens. Now, though, it was clear that the synthetics—those who weren’t jumping and shouting and carrying on—were all fixed in the direction of the nearest screen. All the screens showed the same thing: a nondescript female politician standing before a podium somewhere sunny and warm looking. The info-banners on the screens differed from one another, telling me that, whoever the politico was, she was being broadcast simultaneously across multiple sites.

  I didn’t recognize her. If she was a major player, I would have. At least at our state or the national level, anyway. I tried to tune out the screaming and yelling and focus in on the info-crawl, trying to read what I couldn’t hear. The woman was, apparently, Abigail Clark, Assistant Director of Homeland Security. Except, last I knew, which wasn’t all that long ago, the AD of Homeland was a guy. Maybe Silas had dirt on him, and maybe his campaign of kicking skeletons out of closets had already reached into the stratosphere of Homeland Security’s muckety-mucks. Oh, how quickly things change, in the mist of revolution. I kept reading. Understood the cause for celebration.

  The info-crawl was terse. Clipped. “Newly appointed Assistant Director, Homeland Security addresses press. Status of synthetics called into review. General order to all manufacturers to cease and desist operations. Owners of synthetics to be warned that, during this inquiry, temporary rights are conferred to synthetics. Criminal charges against those violating these rights might be possible.”

  Holy shit.

  There was a lot of equivocation in those words. A lot of “temporary” and “might” and “possible.” Nothing that conveyed the iron-clad resolve of a people in agreement that a terrible wrong needed righting. But fuck me if it wasn’t a start. I just stared at the screen, reading the words again and again as they continued their stately march. The assistant director appeared to be taking questions, now, with screens cutting to reporters and back to the AD. I still couldn’t hear what was being asked, not over the roars of the synthetics. I could imagine the questions, though. They had to boil down to just a few things. When had this been decided and when would full implementation begin? Who had made the call? Why? And, most importantly, how was it going to be enforced?

  Some of the screens started to change, keeping a window open with the assistant director and her press conference. Other windows opened showing reaction shots—scenes of streets across the United States, across the globe. Times Square in New York, filled with either a riot or a celebration. Hard enough to tell that on a normal day, but the giant, building-wide screens were all showing the news and the crowds were certainly responding. The Mall in D.C. Easier, and sadder, to know what was going on there. Violence being played out on the grassy divide between the Lincoln and Washington memorials. Bodies in the reflecting pool, and riot cops and National Guard already starting to move in. Full-blown chaos in the streets in downtown L.A. Even worse than D.C. I’d been in wars that looked less violent than the drone shots of the streets. New Lyons. Where it had started. Where Walton Biogenics had their headquarters. Two mobs facing off across an asphalt divide, a thin blue line of law enforcement standing between them. If those crowds lost it, the officers were toast. They knew it. They did the job, anyway, trying to keep protestors and counter-protestors, celebrants and assholes from killing each other for the pure, savage joy of it.

  More shots. Paris. London. I couldn’t tell if their governments were acting in accord with the U.S., or if their citizens were reacting to the efforts of our government. I felt a bitter little surge of spite at the thought of the oh-so-refined Europeans, always quick to point out the barbaric ways of their less-cultured colonial cousins, waking up to discover that we were suddenly ahead on the social curve.

  The synthetics were swirling around me, a churning stream of eddies and currents. I couldn’t tell if everyone was here, but I could tell that the celebration was spreading. That the general din was leaking through the Ballasts, bubbling upwards and dripping downward, flowing out in all directions. Someone, I realized, should tell Silas. But no. He’d know already. Probably knew before anyone else in the room, and let them discover it for themselves. Let them find the joy of it. That was Silas.

  Then LaSorte was in front of me. His face was lit up like Christmas, and tears poured openly from his eyes. Without a word, he grabbed me by the back of the head and kissed me full on the lips. I blinked in surprise as he laughed at my poleaxed
expression. LaSorte was a handsome man by any reckoning, but my proclivities lay in other directions. Still, I couldn’t deny the happiness on his face, and my laughter joined his as the surging crowds swept him away. Somewhere, someone had started playing the drums. It was an urgent, rapid beat, and, though I never was one for dancing, I felt my feet starting to tap along.

  The synthetics were less restrained, throwing themselves into the music with abandon. The chaotic maelstrom of bodies became something else, something that pulsed in time to the music. Tia was swept into my view, being spun by a burly synthetic who probably started life as a laborer. Her hair streamed behind her like a banner, and her face glowed with exertion and emotion. The laborer nodded to me as he spun by, somehow twirling Tia so that she ended up collapsing in my arms, gasping and giggling.

  I held her for a moment, reveling in the feel of her, the warmth of her body against mine. Then, as if by some arcane female power, I found myself dancing. Thoroughly against my will. But I was powerless against the combined might of the feel of her in my arms and the terrible weight of her smile. “Isn’t it amazing,” she shouted. Had to shout, to be heard over the tumult. Someone had found…a violin? A fiddle? Something stringed that was adding a little melody to the driving beat of the drums.

  “Amazing,” I echoed. It truly was. No promises, no concrete gains. But acknowledgement. Acknowledgement on the international level that what we were doing was not for naught. But most of my amazement at that moment was that I was holding a beautiful woman in my arms and sharing a dance. Something that, after Annabelle, I didn’t think would exist for me.

  Annabelle. I could think of her name now and not cringe. Not feel the stabbing spike of pain that had shattered my life for a couple of decades. Why was that? Was it Silas and his revolution? The fact that, after so many years of complacency, I had started to do something about the problem? Or was it Tia? Was it finding a woman who had, against all my better judgement and irrespective of the years between us, managed to find fertile soil in my heart, a place I’d long thought barren and salted so that nothing could grow? Or was it even simpler than that? Was it finding friends, a family? Hernandez and I had been friends, sure. But not tight. Not like we were since things started unfolding. Hernandez. Tia. Al. Silas. Even LaSorte. It was the largest friend group I’d had…certainly since the Army. Maybe ever.