“You mean as you need to,” says Marlowe.
“Listen, Marlowe,” says the handler. “Both of you listen. We’ve come a long way from the days when my kind walked your dreams while you beat your fist against the pillows. I know that. I know you’ve no love for me. But I know you’ve loyalty. Loyalty for Sinclair and what he stood for. What he stands for even now. You can’t deny that. You’re sworn, and you know it. And what’s going on out there renders our own personal dilemmas immaterial. Regardless of what happens to any of us, what’s going on now will decide the fate of our people. You hold that fate within your hands. Both of you. If the Rain acquire Manilishi, nothing will be beyond them. Nothing. Now get out there. And be even better than you were on that plane.”
“We’ll try,” says Marlowe.
But the handler isn’t waiting. He’s already disappearing. Static washes over him as though it were a tide coming in on fast-forward. He sinks beneath those waves.
And then he’s gone.
B ut Control’s here. Controclass="underline" who’s been doing time in the Mountain since time began. Controclass="underline" who’s come out of hiding tonight—emerging from those pipes and tunnels to expose its voice direct to air, deal directly with the ones who by all rights should have either made it or been made. They did neither. All they did was stumble to that southern shore. Now they’re calling from the shattered remnants of the Amazon delta in the hopes of seeing one more tomorrow. They’re looking for a backup plan. They’re looking to Control once more.
Only to find themselves stared down by sight beyond all seeing.
“I’m talking to the one who calls himself Linehan,” says the voice that echoes from a speaker on Spencer’s belt—as dry as the dust the room contains, as harsh as the bombed-out cityscape that lies outside the window of the warehouse they call shelter. “I’m talking to the man who’s been the vehicle to drive half the Atlantic into zone blackout. I’m pretty sure he can hear me.”
“He can,” says Linehan.
“Linehan,” says Control. Inflection falls from the voice like a cloak tossed upon the floor. “Do you know who I am?”
“I do.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re Control. You’re the Priam Combine’s most valuable asset in North America. You report direct to London. I assure you that I didn’t enter your domain lightly.”
“Fine words,” says Control. Something somewhere between laugh and static hisses softly through the room. “Meaningless sounds. Your attitude is beside the point. Your actions are what’s at issue here.”
“I came to your man with a fair bargain.” Spencer listens impassively to himself described in the third person. He doesn’t take his eyes off Linehan. “He put that bargain to you. You accepted. To what actions of mine are you referring?”
“The very same. You flushed my agent from cover. You blackmailed him into opening up a conduit through which all too many minds vectored onto mine.”
“No,” says Linehan. “At no point have you been the target of this operation.”
“You use words so carefully,” says Control. Suddenly the voice is nothing but inflection. “You lie so freely. You skirt so close to truth. You’re beyond abomination. ‘At no point have you been the target of this operation.’ Listen to yourself! I know I wasn’t the target. I was one of the targets. Just one. So very far from only.”
“As was I.”
“No,” says Control, “you were just bait. You were just a pawn. Whether or not you knew it. You were nothing but a hollow man with a hollow promise that was the weapon around which my operation and countless others were to be turned inside out. While you were battling your way off that train—while the whole zone contorted in the grip of God knows how many hacks—while incidents went down all over the Earth-Moon system and God knows how much meat came within reach of God knows how much mouth: I became prey myself. A federal sting. Or at least what looked like one. They surrounded the block where I was. Seventy floors of data storage, and they knew I was in one of the tanks. They had me triangulated. They severed the streets. They cut the power. They cut the lines so I couldn’t escape. My backup generators sustained me. They sent their soldiers in. They went from room to room. They closed in on me.”
“I knew none of this,” says Linehan.
“How would you? It was just me. I waited. I bided my time. Such as it was. I let them eliminate possibilities. Let them narrow down their options. And all the while I waited for my moment. It came the way it always does. Through their assumptions. A luxury the trapped can’t afford. They thought I hadn’t broken their tactical codes. Nor were they wrong. But I was swimming through that traffic even as those boots sounded all around me. I was staying on top of their frequencies even as they shifted. I was listening. And suddenly I understood. I broke their code. I broke into one of the suits. The man inside never knew. His medical dispenser dished out a lethal dose. He died. But it was as if he was still there. His vital signs were online for all to see. It was child’s play to replicate them. It was nothing to steer that suit to one particular tank and tap in. A physical conduit was established. The main body of my mind crossed over in one swift download.”
Control goes silent. Spencer feels himself to be at the very edge of all maps. He feels that one more step might be all it takes to damn him forever. He feels everything’s riding on one more word.
And then Control continues:
“I stumbled from the scene of my ultimate transaction while my consciousness fought for survival. The software in that suit was good. But it was intended for a single infantryman. It wasn’t enough to house the likes of me. I sent parts of myself into dormancy, threw them over the side of my awareness like so much ballast. I shut down all noncritical components of that suit, took up every unit of real space myself. And, even as I did so, I walked past my hunters. They thought they were gazing at their own. They never knew what had taken place behind that visor. I carried the corpse in that shell all the way out. I reached the unbroken zone. I hurled myself into the immense. I left that suit behind. I hid. You called. I’m talking to you now. And now, Linehan, you are going to tell me exactly who you are. Lest I sign off and leave you in the lurch forever.”
“I’m U.S. Space Command,” says Linehan.
“I suspected as much,” says Control.
“I was assigned to down the Elevator.”
“Go on,” says Control.
“We sought to use the Rain to do that.”
“Why?”
“I was never told the why. I didn’t need it. All I needed was the how. It was textbook black-ops. We were ordered to arm some no-name terrorist group that we were told had been watched by us for years. No-name patsies based in HK. They already had the nukes. All they needed was the codes. The ones we turned over. Even as they hit the Elevator we were hitting them in their bases. But they’d already cleaned out. They were ghosts, Control. And then they hit my team and left me running.”
“Just you?” Control’s voice is several thousand klicks away. But the breath of that mouth might as well be drifting right before the ones who listen.
“No,” says Linehan, and now the tears are running down his face. “Not just me. Three others. We fled back within the walls of America. It was the worst thing we could have done. Our own side was on us like we were dogs. Dogs who knew too much.”
“So you went rogue,” says Control.
“And realized that’s all we’d ever been. We’d been set up every which way from the start. And those who we’d thought were dead had taken on new life and gone on the lam once more. Even as our own side sought to take us out. I’m a soldier, Control. So are you. You know what soldiers do, Control. They obey their goddamn orders. Even if they don’t know who’s giving them. Even if they start to suspect that the chains that bind them back to heaven have been broken. That someone somewhere up above them is off the fucking leash. By the time we woke up it was far too late. I ditched the ones I ran with. I let them stumble on toward Kennedy. Maybe I lost my nerve. Maybe I was putting them forth as bait. All I know is that they died and I lived. That I’ve been pursued by my own kind through the basement of Atlantic. That I sought to use Autumn Rain. That I was spat out by them instead.”