FORTY-NINE
Supreme Harmony observed the bed where Franklin B. Nash’s mangled body lay. The sheets were dark red, soaked with his blood. Before revealing the location of Arvin Conway’s flash drive, Nash had endured forty- seven minutes of interrogation, which was far longer than the network had predicted. Given that Nash was merely Conway’s employee, Supreme Harmony hadn’t expected him to show such loyalty. Had Nash realized, perhaps, that the network would kill him anyway as soon as he gave up his secret? So he’d resisted the questions and endured the torture simply to stay alive for a few minutes longer? It was impossible to know. In some cases, Supreme Harmony acknowledged, human behavior was inexplicable.
Modules 64 and 65 had already inspected the chamber in the Underground City where Nash said he’d hidden the flash drive. Although they didn’t find the device, the Modules detected trace evidence—human hairs, clothing fibers, and footprints in the dust—indicating recent activity in that chamber and the nearby tunnels. Expanding their search, the Modules discovered tire tracks in the tunnels leading to the Changping and Fangshan districts. What’s more, the width of the tracks matched the width of the tires on the Baotian scooter pushed by Kirsten W. Chan in the surveillance video from Xidamo Hutong. The evidence suggested a solution to a puzzle that had been plaguing Supreme Harmony—how did James T. Pierce escape from the police helicopters searching for him in Changping? Now the network knew the answer.
Unfortunately, there was little information about the Underground City on the government’s servers. The digital archives held no maps of the abandoned tunnels, so Supreme Harmony had to rely on the surveillance of its Modules and drones. Over the past hour, the network had dispatched seventeen Modules to the Underground City, but their operations were slowed by the difficulty of establishing radio links in the tunnels. The Modules needed to install radio repeaters in the Fangshan tunnel before they could pursue Pierce and Chan. But the drones were capable of autonomous navigation. They could fly out of radio range and carry out preprogrammed instructions.
Supreme Harmony ordered a swarm of two thousand drones to fly to the end of the Fangshan tunnel. Their cameras were tuned to the infrared frequency band, and they were programmed to lock onto any target with a heat signature of 37 degrees Celsius—human body temperature. Given the average speed of the drones, they would reach their targets very soon.
FIFTY
Jim grabbed Kirsten by the waist and hoisted her up to the hole he’d dug in the earthen wall. She stretched her arms into the gap and struggled to get a handhold. Jim wished he’d widened the hole a few inches more, but it was too late for that now. He gave Kirsten a boost, planting his hands on her butt and literally shoving her into the wall. After a couple of seconds she managed to wriggle her head and shoulders into the gap. Then he grabbed her feet and positioned her heels on his shoulders so she could use her leg muscles to push herself forward. The buzzing of the drones grew louder and closer. The noise filled the tunnel, echoing off the concrete walls.
With a terrific grunt Kirsten slid through the gap. Then Jim reached for his canister of parathion and sprayed the last of the insecticide at the drones. It ran out after six seconds. The poison in the air was so diffuse he could barely smell its rotten-egg odor. He heard some scattered clicks, the sound of a few dozen drones hitting the tunnel’s floor, but most of the flies kept coming.
“
Another thought occurred to him. He threw away the canister and pulled out his satellite phone, clicking on the file he’d downloaded from Avin’s flash drive. The image of Medusa reappeared on the screen. But even as he held the phone in the air, with the screen turned toward the approaching swarm, he knew this wasn’t going to work. The electronics in the cyborg flies were simple brain electrodes, not retinal implants, and they’d been designed by Chinese scientists, not Arvin Conway. The buzzing intensified, coming from all sides now.
Out of options, he pocketed the phone, extended the knife from his prosthetic hand, and clambered up the wall again. Groping blindly, he used his prosthesis as a pivot and turned himself around so he could thrust his feet into the hole. Then he slid backward into the gap, frantically squirming. But, as he’d feared, the gap wasn’t wide enough. His feet kicked through to the other side of the wall, but his hips wedged into the dirt. He was stuck, and the drones were swarming toward him. Their infrared cameras had triangulated his position, and their implanted electrodes were steering the insects straight to his head.
Reflexively, he waved his prosthesis in front of his face. His mechanical hand swatted away one of the drones, and the pressure sensors under his palm detected a sudden, sharp sting. It was the drone’s bioweapon, the paralyzing dart. An instant later, he batted two more drones with the back of his hand and three more with his palm. Their darts couldn’t penetrate the hand’s polyimide skin, but the drones were coming in fast, too fast for Jim to swat them all. He tried to push himself backward with his left hand, but his body wouldn’t budge. The buzzing was in his ears now, a high-pitched grinding, horribly close.
Then he felt Kirsten’s hands around his ankles. She gave them a tremendous yank and pulled Jim through the gap. They both tumbled backward onto a mound of dirt on the other side of the wall.
Jim lifted his head, dizzy and disoriented. He turned on the flashlight function in his phone, and in the glow from the screen he saw the hole he’d just slid through. For a moment he considered trying to plug it, but there was no time. The first drones were already pouring through the gap.
Kirsten jumped to her feet and pulled him up. “Come on! Let’s go!”
They sprinted down the tunnel. Kirsten led the way, keeping a tight grip on Jim’s hand. This section of the tunnel was in a state of general collapse; the concrete walls had buckled in dozens of places, and mounds of dirt covered most of the floor. The footing was treacherous, but they ran like mad and managed to pull ahead of the drones. The buzzing grew fainter. But it didn’t disappear.
After about ten minutes, Kirsten stopped running. She halted so abruptly that Jim nearly bowled into her. Both of them were too winded to talk, so Jim simply raised his sat phone in the air. Just ahead was a stairway leading upward.
“Hallelujah!” Jim shouted. “Let’s get out of here!”
They raced up a flight of steps, then two more. At the top of the third flight was a cramped crawl space, ten feet wide and less than three feet high. The walls and floor were concrete, but the ceiling was a patchwork of wooden boards. Jim slid along the floor and inspected the low ceiling, shining the light from his sat phone all over the boards, but he didn’t spot any handles or hinges. All he saw were the rusted ends of nails that had been hammered from above. “Shit!” he cried. “They sealed off this exit!”
“Okay, calm down,” Kirsten said, although she sounded just as frantic. “Maybe the boards aren’t so strong. Try punching them with your prosthesis.”
Jim studied the ceiling for a moment. The boards were rectangular and nailed at the corners, so the weak spots should be midway along the edges. Jim lay with his back on the floor and positioned himself under one of the weak spots. Then he closed his prosthetic hand into a fist and slammed it against the ceiling.
The impact jarred his whole body, but the boards didn’t budge. In fact, they hardly vibrated. The sound of the punch was a dead, flat thump. He slammed the board again, but the result was no different. The ceiling felt thick and solid. In all likelihood, there was another layer of boards on top of this one. “Damn,” he muttered. “This is bad.”
“Try a different spot,” Kirsten urged.
He slid to another weak spot, this one a little closer to the center of the ceiling, and positioned his fist under it. But again the boards didn’t budge, and the dead thump echoed in the crawl space. As it faded away, Jim could
