69

Lila Easterlin

October 15, 2047. Washington, D.C.

The morning rush hour pedestrians moved into the street, or pressed against the buildings, to let a defender pass on the sidewalk. It reminded Lila of vehicles clearing out to let an ambulance pass, only people moved more quickly to get out of the way of a defender.

Lila stood in the gutter an extra moment to allow the throngs to unclog, then stepped back into the flow of people on their way to work. She waited for the light and crossed Victory Avenue, which was a hundred feet wide at least, one of the new defender streets. The city was transforming into an enormous visual illusion. On one block everything looked normal; on the next everything was triple in size.

There was a new indoor rifle range on Ichiro Street, bearing the familiar NO HUMANS sign. She’d never seen a NO LUYTEN sign; evidently even while target shooting the defenders needed someone to fetch their iced tea.

She was so tired. Typically her insomnia would get a little worse each night, building to a crescendo where she was too exhausted to think, and that would break the cycle and she would sleep fifteen hours straight. This time it just kept getting worse. She was beyond exhausted, but her thoughts kept spinning, as if they’d discovered their own power source independent of her sleep-deprived brain.

She was so afraid of what might happen if this resistance turned out to be more than a bunch of posturing blowhards. What was it about humanity that always led it right back to killing as the solution to its problems? If someone would just listen, she was sure she could get them out of this mess without firing a shot. The defenders had weaknesses; their ability to respond to a physical attack wasn’t one of them. Why couldn’t other people see that?

If only there was some way to jump-start the process, to get the defenders to see that they’d be better off if humans were in charge, or at least sharing power. That would mean getting them to be less paranoid. Saner. Happier.

Lila laughed out loud. Couldn’t they all use that? She certainly could. The problem with the defenders was that they were engineered to be paranoid and unhappy. The only way to change it was to alter their genetic code.

She slowed her pace. What if she did it now, subtly? There was no one checking the new defenders’ genetic coding at this point. Would the existing defenders notice if the new ones were less disordered? If she could somehow reintroduce serotonin into the design, the new ones would still be violent and have negligible social skills, but they’d be less empty inside.

It would be incredibly risky. Her defender superiors had expressly instructed her to make the new defenders exactly the same as the existing ones. If they caught her messing with the formula, they’d pull her legs off, then stomp her to jelly. But if she made the alterations at the source codes, and no one checked her work, she’d be the only person on Earth who’d know.

Up ahead, the back of a parked semi rolled open, and a Luyten climbed out. Lila stopped walking and waited for it to cross the sidewalk and head down an alley between two shops. She would never get used to them; they would always make her skin crawl …

With a jolt, she realized that if she were to introduce serotonin into the brain chemistry of defenders, the Luyten would be able to read their thoughts. How could she have overlooked that fact, even for a minute? The thought gave her chills. Jesus, what if she’d gone ahead with it, not realizing what she was doing?

“Lila?”

Lila turned to find a beefy guy and a skinny blond woman keeping pace beside her. She didn’t answer, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to confirm her identity to these people. They were clean and relatively well dressed, not the sort of people she associated with the threats and hate messages she occasionally received.

“We need you to come with us, please,” the guy said. He had a heavy New York accent—Brooklyn, or the Bronx. In fact, he was wearing a New York Yankees Windbreaker.

“And why would I want to do that?” Lila shot back. Now Lila wasn’t sure; these people might be a threat after all. She looked around, saw two defenders within earshot. If she screamed for help, would they respond? They might if she made clear who she was.

“We’ve been authorized to speak to you in private, by the president of the United States.”

That got her attention. Usually when people lied, they tried to keep it plausible. “Oh, really? How did you contact him, through a Ouija board?”

“He’s alive. They’re both alive, actually. Anthony Wood is back in charge.” The man stepped in front of her; when she tried to walk around him he stuck out an arm to stop her, but stopped short of grabbing her. “Please, Dr. Easterlin. We need your help. We’re all on the same side here, aren’t we? You’re only helping them because they’re not giving you a choice. Right?”

She knew he was playing on her insecurities, but the words still stung. “What is this about?”

“It’s about exactly what you think it’s about.”

Lila looked at the woman, who had yet to utter a word. She looked to be about Lila’s age, late twenties. “Did you agree ahead of time that he would do all the talking?”

“My work comes later,” she replied. There was something about her, a nervousness, or maybe just too much caffeine.

Lila eyed them both for a moment longer, then shrugged. They’d sparked her curiosity. “Okay. Let’s go.”

The big guy stuck out his hand, introduced himself as Clete. The woman was Danika. As the three of them headed down Monticello Avenue, Lila tried to guess what they wanted. They must need her expertise for some sort of attack they were planning. Wouldn’t it be bizarre if they’d come upon the same idea as she, about altering the newly produced defenders in some way? But what sort of alteration would possibly help them? Whatever it was they wanted, she wasn’t sure she would help. If they were simply planning to blow shit up, kill a few defenders, then no way was she sticking her neck out even an inch.

They led her to the Renaissance Hotel. Lila had had lunch there once, back when it was a four-star gem; now it was in serious decline. The carpet in the lobby was stained and threadbare, the walls in need of a paint job. Few humans traveled for business, none for pleasure, and the place was too small for defenders.

There were no suitcases in Clete and Danika’s room, no indication that anyone was staying there save a briefcase lying closed on the bed. A slimy, unidentifiable lump sat on top of it. Danika went over to the lump, bowed her head as if in prayer. Clete hung back near Lila.

Danika picked up the lump with a quivering hand. She held it high, looked up at it, and stifled a sob. “I used to be a high school teacher. I taught algebra and trig.” Still holding the lump, she looked at Lila. “I don’t know why it’s important to me that you understand, but it is. Maybe it’s because I’m going to be you for a little while.”

“What do you mean, you’re going to be me? I haven’t agreed to go along with anything yet, and given how weird this is beginning to look, I doubt I’m going to.”

Clete took a step back, placing himself between Lila and the door. Suddenly Danika was the chatty one, and he was the introvert.

“I had a child, just like you. She and her father were killed when the defenders invaded Los Angeles. When I found out, I promised myself I’d join them in heaven as soon as I could. But I wanted my death to count for something first.”

Danika lowered the lump toward her face. She opened her mouth, pushed the lump between her lips.

“Wait. What is that?” Lila asked. Lila thought Danika must be eating poison, but how would that make her death count? The lump was slick on the outside, like it was sheathed in stretched plastic—a deflated balloon, or a condom.

Danika slid it farther, into her throat. She gagged, pulled it out. Whatever it was, she was trying to swallow it.

“If someone doesn’t tell me what’s going on right now, I’m leaving.” She turned toward Clete. “And if you try to stop me, I’m going to scream like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Take your time,” Clete said to Danika. “Relax. Relax your throat. Let gravity do the work.”

Lila spun toward Danika in time to see the lump disappear. Danika made a terrible choking sound; her eyes grew huge as she pressed her hand to her bulging throat.

“There you go. That’s it,” Clete said softly.

When it was down, Danika cried out in a mix of horror and relief. “It was bigger than the ones I practiced on. Much bigger.”

“Maybe they didn’t want to risk you choking in practice. Or maybe your throat is tighter because you’re tense.”

“You’re damned right I’m tense.” Danika was on the verge of hysteria.

“For God’s sake, what did you just swallow?” Lila asked.

“A bomb,” Clete said. “Now she’s going to walk into the heart of the production facility and detonate it.”

For a moment Lila was speechless. When she finally regained her voice, she shouted, “Are you out of your fucking minds? There are people in there. Some of them are my friends. Besides that, there are eight other facilities. They’ll just divert production to the others.”

“No they won’t,” Clete said, “because we’re hitting all of them at once.”

“How are you bombing the Easter Island facility?”

“All but that one,” Clete allowed. “It will still cripple their production capability.”

Lila’s head was spinning. She wasn’t sure she was on the same side as these people. She should be, but they were talking about bombing her facility. She’d designed it, she ran it, and some of her friends were in it. And this woman, this math teacher, was about to kill herself.

“Wait a minute—you don’t look like me. They’re not going to let you waltz into the lab just because you have my ID.”

“She’s the same height and weight as you, the same hair color,” Clete said. “That’s all defenders use. They can’t tell one face from another. We’re counting on the human workers to instinctively keep their mouths shut.”

“So you can blow them up. How nice.” He was right about the defenders not being able to distinguish human faces, though. Erik had told Lila as much. Still, this was insane.

Danika stood. “I need your ID.”

“You also need the pass code,” Lila said, not sure she was going to give it to her.

“We have the pass code.” Danika reached to check Lila’s pockets.

Lila slapped her hand away. Danika reached again, drew Lila’s ID out of her breast pocket.

“I’m sorry if you don’t agree with this,” Danika said, “but the president does. His people do.”

Lila didn’t see how this would bring down the defenders. Unless … “There’s more to the plan. More to come.” Lila said it aloud, but mainly for her own benefit. Clete and Danika already knew it.

At the door, Clete and Danika clasped hands. Maybe hugging risked detonating the explosive, or maybe they didn’t know each other well enough to hug. Danika was clutching a thin satchel, which Lila guessed held the igniting agent—something Danika would inject to induce a chemical reaction.

Then Danika was gone, and it was just Lila and Clete. Lila wasn’t sure if she wanted to stop them or not. She hovered in the middle of the room, deciding whether to scream, try to get past Clete, or do nothing. In the end, she took a seat in a stuffed chair by the window.

“How will you know if she’s successful?”

“We’re close enough that we should hear the blast.” Clete pulled the briefcase off the bed, took it to the little hotel desk, and pulled out a laptop.

Curious, Lila leaned in to see what he was doing. Clete opened Earth2 and got an avatar up and running.

“Is that your means of relaxing during stressful situations?” Lila asked, knowing full well what he was doing.

Clete looked up from the screen, said nothing. Lila moved closer to the computer so she could read what Clete was typing.

It was nothing surprising or enlightening. He was communicating with an avatar named Sandovar, saying all had gone well so far. He was keeping the message intentionally vague.

After a few minutes he signed off and closed the computer. He stood, sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Now comes the hard part.”

“The hard part? We haven’t gotten to the hard part yet?”

He gave Lila a hard, direct look. “We have to make it look like this happened against your will.”

That had crossed her mind. After the explosion the defenders would assume she was the one who bombed the facility. When they found her alive, she’d be a prime suspect, and they weren’t ones to wait for a trial, or even facts, before they started meting out punishment.

“And how do we do that?”

Clete looked at the floor, like he was suddenly feeling terribly sad, or ashamed. “It has to be immediately obvious to them.”

Then she understood, and felt a sinking in the pit of her stomach. It had to be immediately obvious, as in, she had to sport the bleeding, swollen face of someone who’d put up a fight. She wasn’t convinced their plot would do any good in the long run, yet they had dragged her into it, risked her life, and now they needed to kick the shit out of her so the defenders wouldn’t kill her. She was supposed to stand there while this asshole beat her.

She looked up, returned Clete’s level stare for a moment, then punched him in the face.

Teary-eyed with pain, Clete clutched his nose. His fingers came away bloody. “Why did you do that?”

Lila punched him again, in the eye this time. The blow landed with a satisfying smack.

Clete started to fight back. His first punch felt like a hammer blow to Lila’s cheek.