Child of the Fall Read online

  CHILD OF THE FALL

  D. Scott Johnson

  © 2019 Scott Johnson

  ISBN: 978-0-9863962-9-8 (hardcover)

  978-0-9863962-8-1 (paperback)

  978-0-9863962-7-4 (ebook)

  Cover design by Melissa Lew

  Interior layout by Lighthouse24

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1: Kim

  Chapter 2: Mike

  Chapter 3: June

  Chapter 4: Kim

  Chapter 5: Tonya

  Chapter 6: Mike

  Chapter 7: Kim

  Chapter 8: Edmund

  Chapter 9: June

  Chapter 10: Spencer

  Chapter 11: Tonya

  Chapter 12: Mike

  Chapter 13: June

  Chapter 14: Kim

  Chapter 15: Tonya

  Chapter 16: Spencer

  Chapter 17: Tonya

  Chapter 18: June

  Chapter 19: Mike

  Chapter 20: Spencer

  Chapter 21: Kim

  Chapter 22: June

  Chapter 23: Edmund

  Chapter 24: Kim

  Chapter 25: June

  Chapter 26: Kim

  Chapter 27: Edmund

  Chapter 28: Kim

  Chapter 29: Tonya

  Chapter 30: June

  Chapter 31: Mike

  Chapter 32: Edmund

  Chapter 33: Kim

  Chapter 34: Mike

  Chapter 35: June

  Chapter 36: Kim

  Chapter 37: June

  Chapter 38: Edmund

  Chapter 39: Spencer

  Chapter 40: Kim

  Chapter 41: Mike

  Chapter 42: June

  Chapter 43: Tonya

  Chapter 44: Mike

  Chapter 45: Tonya

  Chapter 46: Kim

  Chapter 47: Spencer

  Chapter 48: Mike

  Chapter 49: Spencer

  Chapter 50: Tonya

  Chapter 51: Spencer

  Chapter 52: June

  Chapter 53: Kim

  Chapter 54: Mike

  Chapter 55: Kim

  Chapter 56: Edmund

  Chapter 57: Kim

  Chapter 58: Mike

  Chapter 59: Kim

  Chapter 60: Mike

  Chapter 61: Kim

  Chapter 62: Mike

  Chapter 63: Tonya

  Chapter 64: Kim

  Epilogue: Anna

  Afterword

  To Olivia, for giving me June.

  “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

  ― Rachel Carson

  Author’s Note

  The first book, Gemini Gambit, is set twenty years from now. The events of the second book, Dragon’s Ark, happen six months after that.

  Who are these people?

  Kimberly Trayne: A computer hacker and cyber thief driven underground by a vicious Bolivian drug cartel. After five years spent in hiding, she is exposed when Mike Sellars attempts to contact her. Eventually they meet and discover they have a common enemy: Matthew Watchtel. While trying to defeat his attempt to take over the Evolved Internet, she is captured and tortured by Watchtell, but eventually prevails.

  Six months later her relationship with Mike has collapsed. In an effort to salvage things, they go on a trip to meet the group of monks who helped raise him in China. There they are trapped in a conspiracy to overthrow the Chinese government. They defeat the architect of the plan, Ozzie, and in the process discover Mike’s sister-in-kind, Helen.

  Mike Sellars: A new kind of life form that emerged in the interstitial spaces of Realmspace, the augmented virtual reality that the Evolved Internet hosts. He discovers a conspiracy to take over his home, destroying him in the process. When he reaches out to the only person he thinks could help, he inadvertently exposes her to dangerous criminals. He acquires a human host—coincidentally the recently-deceased assassin sent to kill Kimberly Trayne—and works with her to stop the madman Matthew Watchtell.

  Six months later his relationship with Kim has collapsed. In an attempt at a fresh start, they travel to China to visit the monks who helped raise him. While there, he discovers another life form like himself has emerged in China’s walled off realmspace, his sister-in-kind, Helen. They work with her to defeat the maniac Ozzie, averting a nuclear exchange with India in the process.

  Spencer McKenzie: A teenager from a small town in Arkansas who is Mike’s best friend. Spencer has known about Mike, what and who he is, for about a year before Mike’s crazy attempt to gain control of a human host. While helping his friend they cross paths with Spencer’s idol, Kimberly Trayne. He works with them to stop Matthew Watchtell.

  Six months later, Spencer visits Mike and Kim in Northern Virginia only to discover them on the point of breaking up. He travels with them to China, inadvertently getting captured by human traffickers after they arrive. He escapes them with the help of Tonya. Eventually they both reunite with Mike and Kim. He helps them defeat Ozzie.

  Tonya Brinks: Kimberly Trayne’s best friend. Tonya is also a registered nurse specializing in limb regrowth. She helps Mike and Kim stop Matthew Watchtell from taking over the Evolved Internet.

  Six months later Tonya flies to China to help Kim salvage her relationship with Mike. In the process she confronts the past of her mentor, Walter. She rescues Spencer and defeats the remnants of Walter’s gang. She then helps Mike and Kim defeat Ozzie, and also meets a mysterious alien creature who calls himself Cyril.

  Matthew Watchtell: A former White House Chief of Staff who uses technologies developed after the capture—and unfortunate escape—of the dangerous cyber criminal Kimberly Trayne to try to take over the Evolved Internet. He fails in this attempt, and in the process various other conspiracies and crimes he’s orchestrated are exposed. He spends the next year in jail.

  Chapter 1

  Kim

  She had a morning routine now, one that didn’t involve breaking into anything, worrying if someone was following her, or moving to a new apartment for no good reason.

  This was normalcy. Well, a kind of normalcy. She still had her disability and a boyfriend who was only technically human. At least he was straight with the IRS now. Kim wouldn’t have to visit him in jail. And wouldn’t that have been ironic? She learned the recipes for prison makeup before she was fourteen, and yet Mike would’ve been the one behind bars.

  Losing the money to taxes and then going deep in debt to cover the penalties seemed to hurt his lawyers more than it did him. Mike was a Buddhist. He treated it as a lesson in impermanence. Seeing all those zeroes on the transfer he’d signed had made her heart skip a beat, but now he was free and clear as long as he stuck to the payment plans. And he would. They had a future together. Kim wouldn’t let that get spoiled by a missed payment.

  Things had been beyond great after the roller coaster of China—so good that the six months since made her think of the longer term. Marriage, a thing Kim never dreamed of, had turned out to be a possibility. Maybe.

  Her mother wanted it, and Mike’s sister Helen wasn’t shy about bringing the subject up either. Kim was more ambivalent, and judging by the awkward feelings when they discussed it together, Mike was too. She would take it a day at a time. If he asked her to marry him tomorrow, the answer would be an obvious yes. She could think of no one else who would ever put up with her the way he did. But if he never asked her at all, that would be fine too. Kim had grown up as the outcast, literally untouchable. Her relationship, this incredible, impossible thing s
he had, was what mattered. Not the ring.

  Well, it didn’t matter much.

  The November morning was beautiful, with a hint of frost on the grass. She drove to her locksmith shop with the heater on and the windows rolled down. Freedom had a smell, and around this time of year it was cold and crisp.

  And it was her shop. She never cared much about having a boss, or being an employee. She was good with her hands, though, and had read a ton of Small Business for Dummies-like books during her five years hiding from all the things her old life had set on her trail. When one of her great uncles casually mentioned his desire to retire and sell his locksmith business at a lunch party five months ago, a silly thought she’d had just after meeting Mike turned into a full-blown, reachable dream. Thieves know locks like farmers know seeds, and Kim had been a very good thief.

  Lacking cash, a house, or a conventional credit rating of any sort had made raising the money a hassle at first, until her mom came forward with her house as collateral. It was another thing Kim was having to get used to: long-term obligations that mattered. A-Trayne Lock and Key would succeed. Kim wouldn’t let it fail. But it was a burden to carry someone else’s trust—a trust so strong they put the house they lived in on the line—along with it. It was much better than worrying whether or not the man walking up behind her was pulling out a knife, but that didn’t make it any easier to fall asleep sometimes.

  She had to keep expenses to an absolute minimum and so only had a single real employee. It wasn’t Mike. He’d rented the office space above the shop for Warhawk and was more of a tenant with benefits. Her real employee was part of the purchase agreement, the first in what Kim knew would be a long line of Greek cousins coming to the US for college who needed help covering expenses. Basil was decent, but he didn’t know how to open the store yet. He’d roll in around ten. Mike taught at a dojo on Tuesdays, so she was opening alone.

  Which meant it was time to have fun with her special guests.

  Being pardoned for her crimes didn’t mean the Powers That Be had forgotten about Kim. The FBI kept an eye on her. They always would. Her freedom hadn’t been earned; it’d been purchased. The price was silence about the much worse crimes more powerful people had been getting away with for decades. That was why they watched her. If she ever faltered, made a mistake, or gave a hint that she was about to expose anyone, they’d be right there to snatch her up. Kim had played that game, with much higher stakes, for five years. She liked her odds.

  The feds learned that bugging the shop resulted in a box full of burned-out electronics mailed to them every few weeks. Spying on Angel Rage would never be that easy. It was simpler—and cheaper—to observe her directly. They made sure she wasn’t selling dirty laundry to the highest bidder, and she got professional security for the shop.

  The opportunity to play a bit of cat-and-mouse once a month or so was a bonus. It safely kept the more useful of her old skills sharp.

  This time it was a broken-down blue van parked a block away. A few weeks ago, it’d been a Fed/UPS truck, and before that a GooglePlex SUV with a broken AI. Every one of them was stuffed to the gills with listening equipment. Since they weren’t on her property, it was illegal for her to do anything drastic about them. Being a law-abiding citizen did have its occasional downside.

  She parked around the corner so they wouldn’t see her coming. This early in the day she could wear a jacket and hat without attracting attention. That hid her body outline and face. The rest she called the dance. When it came to ultimate stealth, there would never be anyone close to Mike, but what Kim lacked in skill, she made up for in focus. She’d practiced walking down the street without attracting any attention her whole life. People didn’t touch what they didn’t notice.

  That got her up to the van. The next step required what only she could do.

  There were lines of potential, and she couldn’t remember how to breathe. This key not this key all keys no keys raise wave lower wave spin fast and absolute stillness believe this authorization collapse and now.

  Hacking the quantum fabric left her ears ringing like a gunshot in her head. It hurt, but only for a moment. The sound of the door rolling open made the pain worth it.

  The chaos that ensued made it fun.

  There were three of them, two women and a man, all done up in pin-neat suits. One of the women tossed the tablet she held straight up, then swore a very colorful stream of LA-accented Spanish trying to catch it. The expressions on the other two agents went from the monster’s got us! to Mom caught us! in less than a second.

  Winning always put her in a great mood. “Good morning, agents! Doughnuts?”

  The older agent carefully set the tablet down. “Ms. Trayne, you’re not supposed to do that. We’re armed.”

  She put on an innocent face. “Me? I happened to walk by with some doughnuts when your door opened. I didn’t do anything, and you’re too well trained to draw on someone who’s unarmed.” Kim pushed the box forward to waft the smell inside. “They’re fresh. Oh,” she held out her other hand, brandishing a box with a spigot on one end, “and fresh coffee.” She climbed into a free seat.

  Kim watched as they stared at her. New agents were always tense when they started their rotation. She had a bit of a reputation.

  She laughed. “It’s okay. Your van will be fine once it’s rebooted. Your phones still work, right? Let headquarters know you’re okay. These older neighborhoods make electronics glitch all the time. They’ll understand. HQ can’t see in here until the van is back online.”

  It was the smell of fresh coffee that did the trick. Aaron taught her about that. Which reminded her. “Is Agent Levine back from his honeymoon yet?”

  Special Agent Aaron Levine had been inadvertently put in charge of trying to catch, and then trying to rescue, her when she’d run afoul of Matthew Watchtell. Aaron was now in charge of the FBI’s elite cybercrimes division. After she and Mike had gotten back from China, he reached out to her for assistance with a lock box only Kim could open. He had been a good friend ever since. The holos Aaron had posted from their honeymoon in Israel had been beautiful.

  “He gets back next week,” the younger woman said. “Emilio…hasn’t been behaving well in his absence.”

  “I’ll bet.” The tech genius at the heart of Aaron’s squad was both vital and infamous. She’d never met the guy—Aaron made sure of that. It was for the best, since to this day Emilio insisted she—well, Angel Rage—didn’t exist.

  The van’s AI snorted back to life. “What was that? I told you that person was dangerous. Is everyone okay? Why can’t I see anything? Hello? Is anyone there?”

  Kim silently mouthed, “I’ll go.”

  They all nodded. The male agent tried to shake her hand.

  Sorry, that didn’t work with her. Kim stifled a laugh when the older agent batted his arm away.

  She stopped after unlocking the shop’s front door. She’d laughed off someone who didn’t know about her disability. Kimberly Trayne, the woman who well and truly earned the nickname Angel Rage, let it go. Normal had its advantages.

  The morning passed with a combination of helping customers and restoring a beautiful set of eighteenth-century door locks for a local developer. The clockwork mechanisms were marvelous once she’d cleaned away the centuries of grime and corrosion. Designing replacement keys required realm work and a 3-D printed mold, but she always went old school when it came to fabrication. Her foundry was small, but she could cast iron with the best of them.

  Mike suggested Bilbo Baggins for lunch, which meant something was up. It was where they’d gone on their first date, even though neither of them knew that’s what it was at the time. The memories still made her warm and—now that most of a year had passed—the terror of the subsequent motorcycle chase had lost its edge. Romance with Mike would always be an adventure, which she knew now was fear divided by time.

  But then Tonya met them at the door.

  “Hi, guys!”

  She wore aubur
n highlights in her straight hair to match the season, but the smile wasn’t quite right.

  “Hi, Tonya,” Kim said as her sense that something was up went into overdrive. “Mike didn’t mention you’d be coming by.”

  He blew a breath out. “I’m sorry, I forgot.”

  Right.

  Tonya had changed jobs and moved to Alexandria to be closer to everyone, so dropping by for lunch was a little more likely than when she worked in Maryland. But only a little. Mike was a human-AI hybrid; Kim wasn’t sure he could forget.

  He smiled, and her cheeks warmed a little.

  “Human hormones caught me out again,” he said. “Chemical memories are still tricky.”

  Well that was more believable. At least half of him existed in the spaces between realms, a construct of digital threads Kim could barely visualize.

  He cleared his throat. “She called just after ten last night.”

  That brought full heat to her cheeks. Kim couldn’t be touched in realspace. The pain was indescribable; the madness it brought had nearly killed her once. But this was the twenty-first century. A couple didn’t have to touch to be intimate with each other, and they’d gotten quite good at doing without. She’d been proud when he admitted it took a few hours before he could think straight when she was done with him. It seemed that had a slight downside.

  And it made his story believable. “Well okay then.” Kim held the door open. “After you.”

  Everything was normal until their food arrived.

  “Did you tell her about my findings yet?” Tonya asked.

  She’d told them both to never mention this, so of course they did it while she had a fork full of food halfway to her mouth. “Findings?”

  Mike got that sheepish look that was cute when her blood wasn’t suddenly boiling.

  “Tonya figured out a new extension to our theorem. We’ve had an idea.”

  “An idea?”

  Tonya and Mike had been doing research ever since they got back from China. They’d filled virtual chalkboards with equations that had so many letters they used more than one alphabet. The gist of it was that in certain circumstances, in places that were hard to describe even if you knew the math, Kim transformed. She stopped being an avatar in a realm and…changed. It’d happened twice now, both times when she or someone she loved was in a life-threatening situation. The aftermath of the first transformation took months in a mental hospital to recover from. The second time wasn’t so bad, except for literally being in more than one place at once, and then having a dam blown up in her face.