pressing buttons. It reminds me of those little birds that land on hippos, cleaning them of parasites.
“C’mon,” Lurker murmurs to Arrtrad. They stride together to the hole in the floor. “Down there is the answer to all our problems.”
But Arrtrad doesn’t respond. He’s already seen it.
Archos.
Silent as the grim reaper, the machine hovers over the hole. It looks like an enormous eye, made of circular rings of shimmering metal. Yellow wires snake away from the edges like a lion’s mane. A flawless glass lens is nestled in the center of the rings, smoky black. It watches without blinking.
And yet it is not Archos. Not fully. Only a part of the intelligence that is Archos has been put inside this menacing machine: a local sub-brain.
Lurker strains against his exoskeleton, but he can’t move his arms or legs. The motors in his suit have frozen up. His face goes pale as he realizes what must have happened.
The exoskeleton has an external communications port.
“Arrtrad, run!” Lurker screams.
Arrtrad. The poor bastard. He’s shaking, trying desperately to yank his arms out of the harness. But he’s got no control either. Both the exoskeletons have been hacked.
Floating above in the harsh fluorescent light, the giant eye watches without any reaction.
Motors grind in Lurker’s suit, and he grunts pitifully with the effort of resisting. But there’s no helping it: He’s a puppet caught in the strings of that hanging monster.
Before Lurker can react, his right arm jerks away and sends a wicked forearm blade singing through the air. The blade sinks through Arrtrad’s chest and into the metal spine of his exoskeleton. Arrtrad gapes at Lurker in surprise. In arterial surges, his blood wicks down the end of the blade and soaks Lurker’s sleeve.
“It’s not me, Arrtrad,” Lurker whispers, voice cracking. “It’s not me. I’m sorry, mate.”
And the blade yanks itself back out. Arrtrad takes one sucking gasp for air and then collapses with a hole in his chest. His exoskeleton protects him as he goes limp, lowering itself gently to the ground. Splayed on the floor, its motors shut down and the machine goes still and silent as a pool of dark blood spreads around it.
“Oh you bastard,” Lurker calls up to the expressionless robot watching from above. The machine noiselessly lowers itself down to where he stands, his arm blade slick with blood. The machine positions itself directly in front of Lurker’s face and a delicate-looking stick—some kind of probe—extends from under its smoky eye. Lurker strains to move away, but his rigid exoskeleton holds him in place.
Then the machine speaks in that strange, familiar child’s voice. From the flash of recognition on his face, I see that Lurker remembers this voice from the phone.
“Lurker?” it asks, an electrical glow spreading through the rings.
In small increments, Lurker begins to wriggle his left hand out of the exoskeleton harness. “Archos,” he says.
“You have changed. You’re not a coward anymore.”
“You’ve changed, too,” Lurker says, watching the concentric rings languidly revolve and counterrevolve. His left hand is almost free. “Funny the difference a year can make.”
“I’m sorry it has to be this way,” says the boy voice.
“And what way is that?” Lurker asks, trying to keep the thing distracted from his squirming left hand.
Then his hand comes free. Lurker thrusts his arm out and grabs hold of the delicate feeler, trying to break it off. The shoulder joint of his right arm pops as he struggles against a sudden push from the exoskeleton. He can only watch as his right arm swings through the air and, in one sharp movement, slices his left hand off at the wrist.
A fan spray of blood spatters across the face of the floating machine.
In shock, Lurker yanks the rest of his body out of the exoskeleton. The empty left arm of the machine tries to slice at him, but the elbow is at an awkward angle and he is able to squirm away. Dodging another forearm blade, he drops to the ground and rolls through Arrtrad’s spreading blood. The exoskeleton is off balance for a split second, missing its human counterweight. It’s just enough time for Lurker to wriggle over the lip of the hole.
A forearm blade bites into the floor inches from Lurker’s face as he shoves himself into the hole, cradling his injured arm to his chest. Half falling, he drops down into the darkness.
The unmanned exoskeleton immediately picks up the fallen exoskeleton with Arrtrad’s corpse inside. Cradling the bleeding pile of metal, the exoskeleton walks and then sprints out the door.
Hanging over the hole, the complex piece of machinery watches patiently. Lights on the equipment racks begin to flicker intensely as a flood of data pours out of the tower. A last-minute backup.
Long moments pass before a hoarse voice echoes up from the dark hole. “Catch you in the funny pages, mate,” says Lurker.
And the world turns white and then to darkest black.
The destruction of the London fiber hub broke the Rob stranglehold on satellite communications long enough to allow humankind to regroup. Lurker never seemed like a very pleasant guy, and I can’t say I would have enjoyed meeting him, but the kid was a hero. I know this because in the moment before the British Telecom Tower exploded, Lurker recorded a fifteen-second message that saved humankind from certain destruction.
PART FOUR
Awakening
1. TRANSHUMAN
It’s dangerous to be people-blind.
A year into the New War, Brightboy squad finally arrived at Gray Horse, Oklahoma. Across the world, billions of people had been eradicated from urban areas, and millions more were trapped in forced-labor camps. Much of the rural population we encountered were locked in isolated, personal battles to survive against the elements.
Information is spotty, but hundreds of small pockets of resistance seemed to have formed worldwide. As
