House of Gold, page 29
Four of those static sources are ramped up and alert, but something about that fifth mind is so familiar I immediately know whose it is.
Heart sprinting inside my chest, I crouch behind an abandoned car and activate my earpiece. Adaolisa will have weaponized drones lurking nearby, ready to come to my aid at a moment’s notice. When I address her, she answers almost immediately. “I think this is the place,” I say. “I’m going in.”
A slight pause. “Are you sure that’s wise?” comes her voice into my ear.
“I might have tipped them off already, so it’s better I go in now.”
“I’ll send in the drones.”
I wait until I spot two spherical drones descending from the sky, then spring forward, running for the ramp going up to the ship’s boarded-up entrance.
Gunfire pours out of the darkness as soon as I kick down the boards, a bullet striking my helmet. I duck out of the way and let the drones go in and take the barrage on their armored plating. They return fire with mounted Gatling guns, and both shooters go down.
I move into the ship, my senses alive. There’s someone one deck above me, armed and waiting. Probably the same person who shot my spider. There’s someone else one deck below. Also armed. And there, three decks beneath me, at the very bottom, I suspect: a weak but scattered buzz. For most of my life that buzz was hidden behind a layer of dead space, but there were moments during our ascent from the Habitat when I felt something.
It’s uncovered now. Faint, weak, but there.
This structure was part of a commercial ship; its bulkheads were not designed to resist high-caliber tungsten rounds. Closing my eyes and letting the static guide me, I aim my gun up and fire twice. I aim down and fire again. Twin echoes of heavy objects dropping to the floor reach my ears. I don’t see who it is I’ve just killed, but I feel their minds go dull.
“Search the rest of the ship,” I whisper to Adaolisa. “There’s someone three decks down. I’m going to investigate.”
“Understood.”
The drones zip away in different directions. I find a staircase and descend, my gun still ready in case there are surprises.
The lights here flicker on and off. The ship groans with every step I take, a concert of rusted joints that feels like it might come down around me if I sneeze. I don’t believe there are other enemies nearby, but my steps are measured as I approach a closed door. There are armed drones at my back. I have a gun. I know the person on the other side of this door is unarmed, so why are my hands shaking?
I open the door.
Counselor, once proud and imposing, loved to peer down at us from above the rims of his spectacles. His disapproval could mean death. I remember how afraid I was when he walked into the mech bay in a fury.
Now he sits on a dirty floor with his head bowed between his knees, gaunt and huddled up in the corner like he’s shying away from the bar of sunlight coming in through the single window. His feet are bare and unwashed; his shirt, once white, is tattered and filthy; and his trousers are threadbare. These might be the same clothes he was wearing the day he left us in his apartment.
I don’t see any binds on him, and the door was unlocked, so I’m not certain what has kept him in here. I take a cautious step closer.
“Counselor?” I hear myself say, as if I spoke from outside myself. I can hardly believe this is the same man who was once such a towering figure of my childhood.
He lifts his head, showing the thick and unkempt beard covering his face. His weathered and wrinkled skin has aged him by decades. I find myself dithering between rushing to his aid and keeping my distance. I ultimately decide to stay put.
“Counselor, can you hear me?”
Bloodshot eyes blink at me, at first with empty confusion, then with deepening horror. “Nandipa?”
“He’s alive and lucid,” I inform Adaolisa. “Counselor, can you stand up? I can get you out of here.”
He shrinks away from me, shaking his head forcefully. “No. No! What are you doing here? They’ll find you!”
“Who’ll find us, Counselor?”
Abruptly his face goes blank, his eyes crinkling once more with confusion. “How long has it been? They’ve been trying to get inside my head, but I’ve fought them. They don’t know about you. You have to leave!”
Perhaps I declared him lucid too soon. “Adaolisa, what are your instructions?” Now that I’ve found him, I’m suddenly at a loss.
One of the drones wheezes into the room and hovers next to me. There’s a flash of laser light as the drone begins a holographic recording. My contact lenses flicker, and Adaolisa materializes nearby as an augmented reality hologram. She takes in Counselor’s hunched form expressionlessly. Without lenses or an earpiece, he isn’t able to perceive her presence or see the slight pursing of her lips as she looks him over. I see her lifting a tablet and tapping rapidly on the screen. “I think this is a conversation we all need to be here for.”
“What are you doing?” I ask her.
“What?” Counselor babbles. “No, no, no, you must go! What are you still doing here? Is this a dream?”
“I’m calling a family meeting,” Adaolisa tells me. She appears to wait for something, then says, “Put on your lenses, Jamal. There’s something you need to see.” Another pause. “I hardly have time to play tricks on you. I can always send you a recording later, but I think you’d rather see this in person.” More silence.
I’m starting to get nervous about lingering here. “Are you watching the outside?” I ask Adaolisa.
“Yes. You’ll know long before any danger arrives.”
Jamal’s hologram suddenly pops into being inside the room, wearing his usual cynical grin. By his floral shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, I could believe we interrupted him from sipping cocktails in some distant and sunny island paradise. I feel a sharp pang in my gut at the knowledge that Hondo can’t be far away from him.
“Ladies. It’s been a while,” he says. “Now what was so important you needed . . .” Jamal trails off when he finally sees Counselor’s huddled form. Lips parting in disbelief, he moves to get a closer look, crouching to bring himself almost face to face with the other man. He breathes out a curse as he straightens back up, eyes wide as he looks at Adaolisa. “What the hell happened to him? And how did you find him?” Jamal looks around the room; then his eyes flick to me. “Where is this, Nandipa?”
“What’s important right now is that we’re here,” Adaolisa interjects before I can answer. “He can finally answer our questions. I thought you’d want to hear them yourself.”
“I do,” Jamal says, and something cryptic enters his voice. “In fact, I think there’s someone else who should be here too. Hang on.”
He vanishes, and I hold my breath, expecting to see him rematerialize with Hondo standing next to him. I almost choke on that breath when instead of Hondo, the ghost of someone I thought long dead pixelates into view. That face.
I’ll never forget the hate I saw on that face the day we forced him to betray his friend. I suffer a residual flicker of guilt at seeing him standing there next to Jamal, alive, but also an unexpected joy that not everything from that old life was destroyed.
Adaolisa touches the tanzanite stones of her necklace, her shock plain even through the hologram. “David,” she whispers.
Unlike Jamal, David is wearing sleek ballistic armor adorned with a drape of patterned yellow-and-green cloth. He stands proudly with his hands behind his back, his smile neither venomous nor friendly. “Adaolisa. Nandipa. It’s been a while.” When Adaolisa and I fail to speak, he lifts an eyebrow. “Benjamin and I are fine. Thanks for asking.”
Jamal snickers, clearly enjoying our shock.
Benjamin is alive. Ancestors. My eyes begin to burn with the promise of tears.
“I . . . forgive me.” Adaolisa attempts to shake herself out of it. “I’m just . . . surprised. It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise, I suppose,” David allows. He seems to dismiss the matter altogether, turning his attention to Counselor’s still-cowering form. “So the bastard is alive, is he? Go on then, Nandipa. I’m impatient to hear what he has to say.”
Since I’m the only one actually present in the room, the three Primes look to me expectantly, and I have to force myself to get over my shock at David’s sudden aliveness. Right. Interrogate Counselor.
He’s muttering things I can’t quite catch and shaking his head. He recoils into himself when I come closer. “No! Go away! Please! Don’t let them see you here!”
I crouch so that I’m level with him. “Counselor, if you want me to leave, there are questions you need to answer. I need to know who you are, who we are, and why you created us.”
He lifts his eyes and blinks at me consideringly, and I see the remains of his sanity rising to the surface. He breathes out, his shoulders relaxing, and his next words are spoken with lucid calm. “Yes. I recall I promised you answers once.”
“You did,” I say. “And now’s as good a time as any.” I nod at the drone. “The others are listening.”
Counselor’s eyes widen slightly as he glances at the hovering drone, and then he coughs out an unexpected chuckle. “I knew you’d survive. Of course you did. I should have never doubted you.”
“Counselor, we don’t have much time. Who are you, and what was the Habitat? Who are the people who took you?”
He lowers his gaze and breathes out again, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “In the beginning, I suppose we were idealists. A group of scientists who fancied ourselves the custodians of Old Africa’s genetic legacy. We were determined to build a new Africa on the foundations of a healthy and prosperous population, so we delved into our genetic history for traits we thought were desirable and attempted to build new genomes around those traits.”
“They were eugenicists,” Jamal puts in with a note of disgust, but Counselor doesn’t hear him and continues.
“At first the changes we made were minimal. We selected for good health and longer life, weeded out genetic disorders. Gradually, though, our work took on a life of its own. Why not make them smarter? Stronger? Why not splice this in, add a new lobe here, a new pathway there? And later, why not test our changes on real subjects and then refine?”
“Bastards,” David mutters.
“My great-grandfather was the one who started the Program,” Counselor says, oblivious to his invisible audience. “By then, we’d already strayed far from our original goal. We now existed solely to build and refine the perfect humans. Even as the world changed around us, we cared only for the work, which we funded by commercializing some of our successes, like bodymods and life-extension therapies.”
My stomach roils. I feel dizzy. How many of us were created and recycled to achieve such successes? I want to throw up, but I keep listening.
“We weren’t the only ones trying to shape the world’s future, though.” Counselor rubs the back of his neck again, eyes looking haunted and far away. “There’d been a schism in the beginning, a splinter faction who changed their minds about pursuing genetic perfection and decided it would be better to merge the human body with machines instead.” Counselor sneers. “They called themselves Stewards because we called ourselves Custodians. If we were for it, they were against it. They wanted a more democratic and inclusive method of human improvement, they argued, not the creation of unequal castes. Hypocrites.”
Counselor snorts like he’s said something funny, but his haggard sorrow returns. “We coexisted in peace at first, though our progress was rapid where theirs was slow. We were making groundbreaking discoveries about the human mind while they were still trying to figure out how to keep their implants from killing their hosts. They knew it was only a matter of time before our creations surpassed theirs.
“So they tried to destroy us,” Counselor says, “and they almost succeeded. In the aftermath, we vanished from the surface and retreated to the Habitat. We started recruiting staff from prisons. We sowed rumors that we were hiding somewhere in the North Pole, and for many years, we continued our work in peace.”
“Until they found you,” Jamal says.
“Until they found us,” Counselor echoes as if in agreement.
Silence falls over the room like a heavy drape. Even after all the evidence I’ve seen testifying to the lies we were told, to hear the truth spoken so plainly still takes my breath away. The games we were forced to play in the Habitat were never about survival, not really, because we weren’t actually ever supposed to leave that place.
“What happened to those of us who survived your games?” I ask. I don’t think I want to know, but I need to know. When he doesn’t answer, I prod him. “Counselor, you owe us the truth.”
“No one ever left the Habitat,” he confesses in a broken voice. “We’d gas them all on the night before they were supposed to leave and recycle them. Then we’d begin the experiment again, hoping the new batch would be better than the last.”
I detach myself from my emotions the same way I do when I have to kill.
It was all for nothing.
All the plots and betrayals, the games, the hope for a future on the surface.
We were pigs in a pen, bred for slaughter.
David has been watching Counselor with an unforgiving glower. “Put a bullet between his eyes. He can’t walk free after all the things he did to us.”
“You might actually be doing him a favor,” Jamal intones. “I think he deserves much worse than a quick death. Leave him to rot.”
“That’s not your decision,” I say, looking to Adaolisa and awaiting her instructions. She chews her lower lip in thought.
“Are you talking to them now?” Counselor says, looking at the drone.
“Yes.”
“What are they saying?”
“Deciding what to do with you.”
I don’t miss the grimace that briefly touches Counselor’s face, the lines of regret that add half a century to his age. “Then let me make it simple for you,” he says. “You need to kill me.”
“Even he agrees,” David points out.
I ignore that comment, watching Counselor. “Why are you in here?” I ask him. “You’re not bound. Why can’t you simply walk out of here?”
He shakes his head slowly. “I can’t leave. They put something inside me.” I note the way he rubs the back of his neck again. “It hurts if I disobey. Please. I’ve tried so hard to keep you a secret. I don’t know how much longer I can last.”
“They already know about us,” I reveal to him.
“Oh.” He hangs his head, his shoulders sagging. “Then I’ve failed.” Abruptly he looks back up, his eyes misting over with a mad light. “Please, kill me before they find out more. There are other secrets. Other things I shouldn’t say. You have to kill me now.”
I look at Adaolisa, still waiting for her to tell me what to do. Conflicting emotions show on her face. I don’t need to be near her to know what she’s feeling. She hates Counselor. But he’s the closest thing to a parent any of us have ever had.
“Give him what he wants,” she says at last. “But let him do it himself.”
I did not expect to be relieved, but a knot that had tied itself up in my stomach loosens. I guess I don’t want Counselor’s blood on my hands.
I offer him my pistol. “You’ll have to do it yourself.”
He eyes it for a second, then slowly reaches for it with a shaking hand. I back away, my heart growing heavy inside my chest.
He lied to me all my life. He killed so many others like me in service to his ambitions. I should feel nothing for him. I shouldn’t want to take back the gun and drag him out of here.
He raises the barrel to his lips. A tear escapes from one eye and disappears into his beard. “We lit a fire in your hearts,” he says. “And in our fear, we tried to extinguish it. You deserved better. I’m sorry.”
The barrel enters his mouth. The longest second of my life passes. I don’t look away when he pulls the trigger.
I’m in my car five minutes later, flying back toward Int-Sec HQ. Adaolisa ended the conversation with the boys immediately after Counselor’s death and wiped every Nzuko-linked camera in the vicinity while I made my escape.
I drum my fingers on the silver steering wheel, pondering what it means that Jamal and David are somehow in the same place. Together. It can’t be a coincidence. “Do you think Jamal knew David was alive all along?”
“I don’t know,” Adaolisa says into my earpiece. “Either way, they’re working together now. It’ll be a complication, but it might also be an opportunity.”
“What are you thinking?”
“They’ll do something extreme, no doubt. Create chaos and scare people, as Jamal is wont to do. And when they do, we’ll be there to offer the world a more agreeable alternative.”
It’s what she did with ZimbaTech, I realize. Jamal started a war between the city and the skelems and then left—he has always been good at destroying things. But it was up to Adaolisa to turn that war into an opportunity.
There’ll be a prodemocracy march later today in the Jondolos, the second one just this week, watched over and protected by members of all three skelems. Many low-tier jazz clubs are now hot spots of political discourse that would have been criminal just a few months ago, and the authorities don’t dare to crack down on them lest they inspire another rebellion.
Things are beginning to change. Slowly, perhaps. But I think this is better than setting the world on fire and hoping for the best, as is Jamal’s modus operandi.
“What are we going to do about the Stewards?” I ask. “Fillemon Petrus and his people are still out there. We now know for sure they’re the people who attacked the Habitat, and now they know about us. We have to do something.”
“I agree, and they might have inadvertently given us the key to their own destruction.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve figured out what the briefcase does.”
