Dragon's Ark Read online

  It sat there and gathered all the evidence Kong would need to stop them.

  The flaw was in the timing. He had to catch the terrorists almost literally red-handed, otherwise his bosses would bribe, lie, and bully their way out of trouble to try it all again at a later date. He need only wait until a week before the launch date to stop it all.

  Then the rains came, giving him just a day to hurriedly arrange a meeting with a stringer from the Times. The British newspaper was the only western news agency he trusted with something this important, and the only one with an office in Chengdu, the closest major city to headquarters. The base was far enough up in the mountains that getting the evidence to the reporter in time would be tough.

  It wouldn’t happen now. The rain didn’t just make it easier for his bosses to drown millions of innocent people; it made it harder for him to get away with the evidence needed to stop them. The rockslide caught him completely unawares, tumbling his car off the road and down a steep ravine. In the confusion the gearshift rammed into his gut. He was sure it had impaled him, but when it all stopped there was no bleeding. There was pain, though. He could barely walk after climbing from the wreckage.

  Kong still had one very slim chance. There was a monastery nearby, the first Buddhist temple to make an inroad into realmspace. If he could reach them, they might be able to transmit the information to the world and at least bring the murderous bastards to justice.

  He had to keep climbing, but he also had to keep the little model and its precious data stores safe. It was heavy enough to begin with, but the weight grew as time passed. Find the monastery. All this would be for nothing if Kong died at the bottom of the ravine or, worse, was found by soldiers in a ditch. He couldn’t keep his balance, slipping more and more often on the rain-slicked road.

  Suddenly the gateway of the monastery stood in front of him. Kong pounded on the door with what little strength he had left. His fever made him see shapes in the dark, ghosts, demons, things that would devour his soul. He fell through the gate when the monks opened the door.

  They dried him off and gave him a warm place to rest, but it wasn’t a hospital, and they weren’t doctors. Kong had just enough time to get across the importance of what he carried, if not its actual contents. He was so very tired.

  The darkness was vast.

  ***

  Qiáng Shān, at first as fascinated as anyone else over his clarity and ability to speak, grew tired of his family’s questions. Eventually he fell asleep.

  He blinked and startled at the noises at the top of the sphere. A hatch opened, and a man with a uniform and a helmet peered in at them. A soldier. They were pretty cool. For the first time, he let a bit of hope leak through. He was still clear. Sleeping hadn’t changed it. Normal. He was almost normal now.

  Pink fingers of dawn traced the sky behind the soldier. They must have been very far downstream. The soldier commanded them to exit the sphere.

  “Please,” Mother said, “my son has a disability. He can’t be touched. May we go last?”

  In spite of all that’d happened, he still couldn’t get close to her, or anyone else.

  The soldier nodded grimly. “You must not delay.”

  The bright flash of the pod’s emergency beacon reflected off the soldier’s uniform, turning it from dark green to brilliant red. It was a lucky color, at least for the survivors. The same flashing lights were everywhere. There were thousands of spheres, maybe tens of thousands, scattered across the water, an upside-down sky full of blinking red stars. Helicopters thumped and hissed as they circled above. The machines didn’t frighten him anymore; they were marvelous. Then he looked at the sea.

  All around him sad dolls floated facedown, arms flung wide. It reminded him of twigs and grass on water. His confused memories were slowly making sense. The wind had blown grass against the shore of a lake in the middle of a park back home.

  They were all so very still. The grownups behind him sobbed. The soldier did, too. It was so unusual. The dead were strangers, yet the living mourned them.

  He tried to find that place but couldn’t. Maybe it was just too soon.

  Chapter 1: Mike

  Twenty years from now

  May 9, Dulles Airport, 9:00 a.m.

  He’d wasted yet another week giving Kim one more chance, one more opportunity to show a nod at affection. The effort was totally wasted. She hadn’t tried.She shouted Russian into her comm set as dirt and rocks rained down. “Repeat, our laser designator is in-op, I need that unit taken out now! Use the maps, damn you!”

  Mike scuffed his feet across the dusty white floor of the baggage terminal. He refused to pause by the seat she was in. The silence around her was a solid, icy thing. Good. Maybe it would freeze her to death and free them both.

  A toddler raced out of nowhere right in front of him and bounced off his legs. “Whoa there, kiddo,” he said as he caught the boy. “You need to slow down.” He handed the child to his smiling parents. Children were such a strange combination of soft, hard, light, and heavy. And of course all living mammals were warm to the touch, something Mike had only understood on an intellectual level before he came outside into realspace.

  Kim stiffened, and he barely fought off a smile. She took offense at everything he did nowadays but at least this time he both understood and enjoyed it when it happened. She couldn’t touch people, and he could.

  It was exhausting being this mean to each other. Maybe being tired would work; nothing else had.

  Mike flopped heavily into the chair opposite hers. “Goddamn it, Kim. I said I was sorry.” He leaned toward her as she looked away. “I’m still not used to hormones. She was just a checkout girl.”

  Kim speared him with a look, her foot tapping away fiercely. “You touched her.”

  The accusation was ridiculous on so many levels, and nearly the same every time. “She was handing me the receipt. She touched me.” He tried to regain some sort of control. Mike used to shrug it off, but that just made her angrier. It would lead to another shouting match and they were in public now. Probably by design.

  “I’m not doing this again.” He stood and relaxed the bindings that held his consciousness to his realspace body. As he walked away he expanded into the realms surrounding the airport. Being the world’s first human-AI hybrid at least gave him that escape. His threads blasted so much emotion into the local realmspace it rattled the airport’s AIs, making them stutter as they interacted with the people around them. Just as he was about to cast his perception out of the area entirely, Spencer walked out of the terminal’s exit.

  What a difference four months made with humans. Well, teenaged humans, at any rate. The head caught in his bear hug was much higher than it had been before. Spencer’s voice was also at least an octave lower. “Fuck, Mike, God, I’m glad to be here.”

  “Me too, Spence, me too.”

  They opened their embrace, and there was Kim with a smile that could outshine the sun.

  He couldn’t trust her mood, though. He knew that.

  “Spencer. How was your flight?”

  “It was fine.” He stood up straight, now exactly her height. Kim rocked back for just a second, and then glanced at Mike, a slight smile forming.

  He looked away.

  Spencer cleared his throat, straightened his shirt, and then held his hand palm up in front of her.

  She chuckled and looked at the floor. “It’s not that big of a deal, Spencer.”

  “It is to me,” he said, his voice stumbling just a bit at the end.

  She sighed and then put her palm up, not quite touching his, and then their hands described a half circle. An eyebrow shot up when they were done. “You’re here to work, not goof off.”

  “God, Kim, I know.” The baggage carousel behind them squawked. “I bought an air mattress that’ll fit perfectly in Mike’s…” he stumbled to a stop, looking at them both.

  It probably was that obvious, but Mike couldn’t break the news here. “That’s great, Spenc
e!”

  Spencer rolled his eyes. “Now what’s wrong?”

  Kim gestured at the carousel. “Come on, let’s get your bag."

  The silence dragged on. Their fight was still too fresh. He’d explain it all to Spencer when they were back at the hotel.

  “Remember,” Kim said sharply on the Metro platform just outside the airport, “you two need to be ready by one. Do not,” she pointed. They flinched. “Be late.”

  Mike flashed back to a previous time, a different place, a hallway in a hotel when he didn’t know how to talk to her, when she’d said those exact same words. Back when she’d been so fascinating, a completely unexpected person, pushy, vulnerable, smart, funny.

  Too bad it hadn’t lasted.

  Spencer’s laugh broke the tension. “Oh shit, Kim, you have no idea how much I’ve missed all this.”

  Kim grinned as she sheepishly pulled her finger back into her fist. “Yeah, okay.” She looked up at Mike. He desperately wanted to trust her again, trust that she wouldn’t find another new fault, another new mistake, and then cut him to the core just to prove she could.

  But he wouldn’t do that. There would be no more second chances.

  Kim shook her head. “Christ, all your best clothes are still at our…” She stopped and then tried again. “My house.”

  Spencer blinked and stared at him.

  Mike nodded. This still wasn’t the place to explain. “I was going to pick it all up later…” He couldn’t finish the thought.

  He was leaving her. Had left her. Repeating it made it real. He had to make it real.

  Spencer jumped into the gap. “Hey, Kim. I have a real driver’s license now.”

  “And that’s supposed to mean?”

  “I can drive halfway across the country legally!”

  He’d called Spencer the night he decided to take that last step, to stop being just a virtual person living in realmspace and become something more, an AI-human hybrid that lived in the realms but also owned a realspace body. He’d done that to make sure Kim was safe.

  He still needed to keep her safe. It was something he’d have to learn to forget.

  He’d have to forget caring about her.

  The subway pulled into the station with the strange shrilling sound it always made. Emergent sound, noises that happened just because, were another thing that probably would always fascinate him about realspace. In the realms, where most of his consciousness lived, everything happened by design. Well, except for him.

  The doors opened but nobody moved.

  He’d give her one last chance, for Spencer’s sake. One more foolish try. Maybe now that Spencer was here it would force her to be nice.

  “Oh, come on,” Kim sighed as she turned toward the exit. She looked at Spencer. “But if you think for a second I’m going to let you drive…”

  Chapter 2: Kim

  She concentrated on the image in the mirror as she carefully reapplied her eyeliner. It was even money whether having Mike and Spencer in the main room was going to drive her nuts or keep her mind off her building panic. “Yasa.”

  “Yasa,” two tired voices said in unison, echoing into her bathroom. “Hello.”

  “Andio,” Kim said as she continued working on her makeup.

  “Andio,” they replied. “Goodbye.”

  “How do I ask for a beer in Greek?” Spencer shouted.

  “Thelo ena byra,” she called back. “But don’t worry, Uncle Kostas always brings kegs to these things. He loves playing bartender. You won’t need to ask more than once.” She straightened, pulled her face down, and then scrunched it back up in the mirror. “And don’t be an idiot about it. You’re old enough in my family’s book, but if you get them in trouble for contributing, there will be hell to pay.” Drinking laws were more suggestions than commandments in her family. Especially around Uncle Kostas.

  She hadn’t seen any of them in years. Half of that time had been spent hiding from Bolivians, feds, and well, most of the world. Back then she was Angel Rage, the legendary cyber-thief driven underground by a drug cartel that eventually killed the rest of the people who made up Rage + The Machine. Kim only survived by luck and her wits.

  But there was no reason to hide anymore. The Bolivians’ vendetta was over. The information she’d stolen from Matthew Watchtell, a megalomaniac who’d once been the White House Chief of Staff, had seen to that.

  Kim gripped the corner of the countertop tightly. Just thinking his name made the terror, the pain, come back in a rush. He’d stripped her half naked, and then tortured her in front of Mike…

  Kim stopped and waited for her breathing to go back to normal. Forced physical contact to the point of permanent injury happened to women all the time. They survived it, and so would she. It wasn’t actual sex, although that had probably been on the way if the FBI hadn’t freed Mike and Tonya to stop Watchtell. It didn’t make much of a difference as far as she was concerned. He’d taken something from her, something she never gave anyone, couldn’t give anyone. A simple touch. And he did it over and over and over.

  It was a gift that kept on giving. The few occasions she’d decided that this time she’d make Mike happy for real, this time she’d pull him into a realm and at least give him a good show, the memories would come rushing back and ruin it all. Kim couldn’t explain why, to herself or Mike.

  The anger, the constant need to lash out at someone, something, was harder to control than the shame. Maybe having Spencer as a roommate would help her finally get a handle on it and stop using Mike as a punching bag.

  She would have the time now. She had a full pardon, and that evil bastard would be in prison for the rest of his life.

  The world had quickly moved on from the has-been hacker and her rich tormentor. She could now walk freely, forgotten and anonymous. Her family, though, was another story.

  Every single one of them would be at this lunch party. It would not surprise her at all if Kim’s yiayiá, her grandmother, managed to fly all the way from Athens. It would mean an additional aunt, because wherever Yiayiá went, Aunt Voleta was required to follow. Yiayiá didn’t do well with authorities, and security procedures were things that happened to other people. Aunt Voleta would make sure she didn’t assault any hapless TSA agents.

  “Katalaveno,” Kim said, discarding her third outfit choice.

  “Katalaveno,” they replied, “I understand.”

  “Kim,” Mike called out, “I thought you said we had to be ready by one?”

  “You did,” she called back. The pale-blue blouse should work, especially with the slacks she'd found at ninety percent off last week. They were sweet. “I didn’t. We’d show up too early if we were a half hour late. Dhen katalaveno.”

  “Dhen katalaveno. I don’t understand.”

  “And I don’t understand,” Spencer said. “How do you expect us to remember all this?”

  She buckled the thin belt around her waist, then smoothed her clothes, checking it all out in her bedroom mirror. “I don’t. You’re supposed to be helping NeuroTrans pick up on the words. You both knew that, right?” The silence from the main room extended. Yeah, thought so.

  “NeuroTrans,” Mike coughed out, “right. Yasa. Hello.”

  Tonya hadn’t gotten the word about arriving late either, so Kim had to help her deal with three dozen boisterous Greek strangers via remote while Mike drove. Tonya lived in Maryland, so she’d traveled to Arlington on her own.

  “How many cousins do you have, Kim?” she asked over their private line.

  “I told you not to let them know you were single.” The extended Athanasiadis clan was modern enough to recognize the value of a young, successful, intelligent, and most importantly single adult woman, no matter how dark her skin was. “Just enjoy the attention. But go easy on the ouzo.”

  “They keep handing it to me! I think your uncle Kostas started two hours ago. How do you all stay alive drinking this much?”

  Kim had forgotten just how Greek her family actually w
as. “Practice, Tonya, lots of practice.”

  Tonya gulped and gasped. After a quick cough she asked, “Where are you?”

  The car gently stopped. When she looked up, her heart almost did the same thing. “We’re here.” She ended the call.

  The low, ranch-style house hadn’t changed a bit since she last saw it. Hadn’t changed a bit for as long as she could remember. It was set on the back of an old cul-de-sac in a quiet, shaded neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia. The street was full of cars, many with out-of-state license plates, so many Mike had to park a block away. The decorations in the yard extended over to the garden lot next door.

  Mike asked, “Are you okay, Kim?”

  There were so many of them, and she’d been away for so long. “I can’t hide forever.” No matter how much I want to.

  Aunt Rea was in charge of the minigolf course set up around the house. She efficiently herded a dozen children through hole nine as Kim slowly walked forward. Her aunt looked up and their eyes locked.

  Here we go.

  “Kim’s here, everyone! She’s here!” Aunt Rea then shouted it out again in English. The children broke into a run, and Mike stepped in front of her.

  “Stop!” Kim hadn’t heard that powerful voice in so long, but there was no mistaking it. The older children put the brakes on quickly. A few even stumbled. They grabbed any younger ones who didn’t hear the command.

  In the silence that fell, Malinda Trayne, the most commanding, endearing, lovely woman Kim would ever know, walked around the corner of the house.

  She’d grown a bit grayer since Kim had last seen her, and perhaps she had put on a few pounds, but her stride was just as confident and her eyes were still as gorgeous, now filled to overflowing.

  It was hard for Kim to get her legs to move, but once she did there was no stopping.

  A shell she’d long forgotten about shattered in an instant while she ran, arms wide. They both fell to their knees on the grass just inches apart, arms held high. Sobbing, their hands nearly touched as Kim held her head just over her mother’s shoulder, relishing the smell of her perfume. It had been so very long since she’d been this close.