The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2) Read online

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  © 2018 Matthew S. Cox

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  Cover Art by Eugene Teplitsky

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  ISBN 978-1-94809-972-1 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-1-94809-973-8 (paperback)

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  Author’s note: At times during this story, characters have conversations via cybernetic implants. This form of communication does not project audio to the outside world and can be heard only by the participants. Dialogue indicating conversations over implants are denoted by bracket quotes:

  「This is an example of conversation inside the character’s head over an implant.」

  “This is normal dialogue.”

  The Harmony Paradox

  A Divergent Fates Novel

  Other books set in this universe:

  Virtual Immortality

  The Division Zero series

  Division Zero

  Lex De Mortuis

  Thrall

  Guardian

  The Awakened series

  Prophet of the Badlands

  Archon’s Queen

  Grey Ronin

  Daughter of Ash

  Zero Rogue

  Angel Descended

  The Daughter of Mars series

  The Hand of Raziel

  Araphel

  Ghost Black

  Eight months after the events of Virtual Immortality.

  ethodical as always, Nina thought over the operation backward and forward while observing forty-eight-year-old Jerome Drummond in the green-on-green of a night vision scope. Seventeen days ago, GlobeNet sniffer programs tripped on a communication channel to Europe, a network address belonging to the Allied Corporate Council Citizen Management group―their law enforcement. Contents of multiple successive messages detailed the intent for a UCF corporation to purchase eight prisoners, orphaned children of rebel fighters who’d survived a raid on their resistance cell. The only problem was, no one had yet figured out how they’d been smuggled into West City, or where they were.

  Nina, as well as many of the people working under her on this case, hadn’t slept a full night in seventeen days.

  In her crosshairs, the senior vice president of Osiris Biotechnic―chief of R&D―reclined in a massive black chair behind a desk of chrome and glass. He sported a sculpted flattop, white-collar shirt, thin tie, seventy-five thousand credit emerald cufflinks, and an ‘I own the world’ smile. A holo-panel hovering over his desk bore the image of a stocky, square-jawed man of similar age, though far paler than the dark-skinned Drummond, who shimmered from the light it cast.

  What is it about corporate types? They always leave the lights off when they ignore the law… or human decency.

  For six hours, she lay prone atop the roof of another century tower, one full of office space owned by Halcyon-Ormyr. It took five hours and forty-four minutes of waiting for Drummond to receive the call the network people said he would. The hovercar manufacturer would likely never become aware Division 9 had been there. If anyone happened to notice her, they’d probably decide to mind their own business: her sand brown long coat and clingy black bodysuit screamed government agent. She shifted, attempting to evade an awkward lump pressing into her side. The layer of gel in the ballistic stealth armor could harden in a microsecond to stop bullets, but it didn’t do much to protect against a roof covered in egg-sized ‘decorative stones.’

  Her jet-black bob blew in a wind her body could ignore when she wanted it to; synthetic skin and plastisteel didn’t care about cold. She sometimes missed having her hair long. In this body, it didn’t grow unless she triggered nanobots to make it longer, and so far, she hadn’t seen a reason to beyond sentiment.

  A wire connected a port at the back of her neck to a modified UCF-M22A7 assault rifle, allowing its optics to interface with her eyes. Range and windage information appeared in tiny text at the lower right of her vision above a giant numeral ‘6’ indicating the number of rounds remaining. Optical elements in the rifle’s boxy outer casing projected a pattern matching the multicolored rocks, creating the illusion the weapon had been made of glass. Her mental command extended the motorized barrel out to its full five-foot length. Lime green crosshairs and a hairline trajectory estimation arc centered on the executive’s head as her vision zoomed in enough to perceive particles of dust in the gaps between loaf-shaped segments of cushion behind him. A faint whirr in her right ear announced a caseless round sliding into the chamber by her cheek.

  If the intel’s good, 12.5mm is too quick.

  For more than two weeks, Nina and her team had been staring at ‘arrest photos’ of eight young children who’d probably watched their parents die. Grainy images, wide-eyed expressions of anguish and dread had etched in her memory. She, and everyone at Division 9 who’d gotten wind of this operation, wanted to kick down a door or two, but Osiris had five research facilities, three of which they’d tried to hide from the government. They all feared choosing wrong would spook the VP, and a potential rescue operation would become an eight-count murder investigation―if anyone ever managed to find bodies. Normally, Nina preferred delicate operations… but these were children. The waiting had been the second most unbearable thing she’d ever lived through.

  Division 9 NetOps owned the Osiris Biotechnic network for the past two weeks. The audio feed patched in via her internal uplink brought her ears virtually into the room as though she stood at Drummond’s side.

  “I am glad we could come to an arrangement,” said the man on the holo-panel―Gamedi Zharkov according to her case notes―a director of citizen management in Minsk. The Allied Corporate Council ran everything, even their military, like another part of a corporation. “My associates tell me the merchandise arrived intact, yet we are still waiting for the payment.”

  Drummond’s eyes flickered with irritation. “There should be no deviation from our deal, Gamedi. Two and a half million per unit. Fifteen percent up front, the rest on delivery. Doctor Rice has yet to confirm that nothing was damaged in transit and none of the petri dishes are contaminated with anything that could render them useless for our purposes. As soon as he tells me everything is as expected, you will get paid.”

  Gamedi’s lips stretched into a wide line, not quite a frown, but not far from it. “We are short seventeen million credits, Mr. Drummond.” His Russian accent thickened. “You are aware these castoffs could have been more easily dealt with locally, especially the ones too young to have adopted their parents’ radical ideologies. It is a risk for both of us.”

  “Oh, come now.” Drummond reached forward, resting his hand on the desk, one finger tapping the glass. “We both know your people have little regard for non-citizens no matter how old they are, and these were part of your little”―the man failed to conceal all of his condescending amusement―”resistance problem? I am curious, Gamedi, if your society is the superior one, why is it that your very own citizens have taken up arms in secret?”

  “Unrest is universal, my friend. Regardless of who is in charge, someone will claim
it unjust.” Gamedi coughed into his fist. “The vermin are as you requested. Their families were criminals. There is no one to ask questions, no trails to cause problems. It is perhaps ironic that your company, within the great and noble UCF, conducts such unseemly business.”

  Jerome turned his hands upward. “If you find our research so distasteful, why then did you sell them to us? Could it be your stake in the research data? Hmm?”

  “Need I remind you the sort of issues you may experience should your, how you say, ‘NewsNet’ receives certain recordings?” Gamedi smiled. “It would be not so pleasant for Osiris’s stock, yes?”

  Drummond flinched. “You should have received the funds by now. Perhaps some of them aren’t quite as healthy and useful as you claimed?” He waved a hand at his desk, summoning another holo-panel. “Give me a minute.”

  Forty-one seconds later, an exasperated middle-aged man with short silvery hair swept back over his head appeared on the second screen. A mixture of wailing children, one screaming in anger, and monkey-like whooping came over the new connection.

  “I’m very busy now, Drummond, dealing with your rush job. We were supposed to have another two weeks to prepare.”

  “Why haven’t I received a message confirming receipt? Our friends in the east are expecting payment.” Drummond had to yell to overpower the noise.

  Doctor Rice’s irritation deepened. “They’re all usable, but it will be a few weeks of waiting for them to get back up to normal weight before we can start any tests. As of now, their systems are too stressed for any useful data collections. The weakest of the samples would likely kill them in hours. However, for purposes of the agreement, they are fine. I sent the confirmation message over twenty minutes ago. Now, if you’ll leave me to my work.”

  「Lieutenant Duchenne, this is DeWinter. Confirm trace on the remote facility. We’re kicking the gates down now and securing their network. Physical location should upload to group Navcon in three seconds.」

  Hardin’s virtual face offered a solemn nod. 「Duchenne, proceed.」

  「Roger, Ops. Net Team, lights out. One ticket to Miami.」 Nina’s voice over the comm channel set off a flurry of activity. Her boss shouted at a field squad to move on the lab where eight foreign children were about to face who-knows-what. The Vidphone calls to both Gamedi and Doctor Rice went dark, and a little red dot winked on beside the door of the VP’s office as the mechanism locked.

  She sent her voice over the GlobeNet to his holo-terminal. “Jerome Drummond, this is Division 9. Have fun in hell.”

  The man opened his mouth to shout; time dragged to a standstill as Nina’s combat boosters kicked in. A handful of electrons raced down the wire into the rifle, setting off the electronic trigger so her finger didn’t have to move. A spark tickled the electrode foil at the back end of a caseless block of propellant. Three relative seconds later, a massive 12.5mm slug came spiraling out of the barrel without a trace of muzzle flare. The projectile cruised across the street ninety-seven stories below and kissed the window of Drummond’s office.

  Bright silver lines raced a zigzag spider web away from the contact point; glittering diamond flakes followed the bullet into the room amid the slow-motion symphony of glass shearing apart. A split second of scream left the VP’s throat, a low demonic sound in Nina’s accelerated time state, as the spinning bullet struck the cheek ridge below Drummond’s right eye.

  The window turned white; long, jagged cracks flashed to a near-opaque crisscross of tiny fragments. Streams of blood squirted out of his ears, expelled by a pressure wave traveling through his brain. The majority of solid material within the man’s head erupted in a blast of gore, which leapt onto the wall. Like snow, the suspension of glass fragments cascaded down, more than half raining along the side of the building toward the distant street.

  She shut off her boosters; time returned to normal.

  Drummond slumped in the chair, two vertebrae and a flap of skin all that remained above his shoulders. A cloud of diamond-like glass bits collapsed on the rug, and the door lock turned green. Hardin would probably grumble about speaking to the target, calling it a warning that could’ve increased the risk of the VP getting away. She didn’t care. He had to know why. The recording of everything she’d seen and heard over the past twenty minutes went out over a shadow VPN few civilians even knew existed, back to the D9 system.

  「I’m done here. Tell the site team I’m on the way.」

  Drummond’s call to Doctor Rice had been like a bright neon roadmap through the darkness of the GlobeNet, leading the Division 9 NetOps team straight to an unregistered R&D facility in Sector 7904, near the south edge of what had once been called Oregon. The lower-middle-class residential district sat one alley away from the wall on the inland edge of West City, seventy-five meters over an area known four centuries ago as Ashland, according to the archives. It surprised her they hadn’t put a project like this out in the Badlands, and she wondered if educated people actually believed in all the stories about technology mysteriously failing out there.

  She flicked her thumb at the hovercar’s control stick, entertaining an idle memory of Shabundo Ghede moving souls between humans and machines. I suppose stranger things have been true.

  Her unmarked black patrol craft rounded the corner of a steel-and-glass residence tower; the flight south from the Osiris Biotechnic corporate office had taken nineteen minutes at 618 mph. Sometimes, having a Class 3 doll body and far-beyond-human reflexes came in handy.

  Already, a scattering of nondescript black hovercars, two vans, and four blue-and-white Division 1 patrol craft collected around the front.

  「Network is clear. No automated defenses. Initiating file lockdown,」 said DeWinter on a voice-only link.

  A virtual holo-panel opened, bearing the face of a woman with short black hair and brown skin in a black Division 9 operator’s suit, rubbery material straight up to her jawline. The ID widget under the panel read: Operative [O1] Padilla, R.

  「Lieutenant. The facility is located two levels below street. The super says he had no idea it was there. All four elevators reach it, but only with a specific code and ID. You should be able to walk right in. Sanchez must’ve been sleeping in training. It took him fifteen minutes to get the damn front door open.」

  Seconds later, Sergeant Sanchez appeared on a separate virtual window, holding up a middle finger.

  Nina eyed the ground; the closest clear landing area offered a longer walk than she wanted to waste time on. 「I’m here. Is the site secure?」

  「Yes, lieutenant. No hostiles, but…」 Operative Padilla looked off to the side, somewhere between wanting to cry and scream in rage. A shrieking child and a repetitive bang, bang, bang echoed in the background. 「They’re… these people. They’re not even human.」

  Nina’s mental impulse caused her virtual avatar to nod. She hurried into a reckless landing between the building and a pair of tech vans, with less than two inches of clearance on all sides. Nothing an unaugmented person would’ve dared to try. The rapid descent made two Division 1 patrol officers scream and dive for cover, evidently expecting a crash.

  She got out and stormed through the building’s entrance, six feet from her car. A small group of civilians loitered about, curious at the police presence, but seeming clueless as to the reason for it. Ignoring the questions shouted over the helmets of more patrol officers, Nina headed for the elevator.

  NetOps had hacked the touchscreen, adding a destination labeled ‘Secret Illegal Research Facility’ below the basement. That’s got ‘Joey’ written all over it. She whirled to face the door and jabbed a finger into the screen, barely holding back enough not to shatter the glass.

  Soon, the elevator doors opened to a lounge-like room with two purple couches, four vendomats, and a wall-mounted holo-screen showing a Gee-ball match. Two mirror-finished disc bots as big as dinner plates scooted back and forth over pristine white tiles, cleaning the floor. The same repetitive bang, bang, bang noise she’d
heard over the comm link grew louder the farther she walked. She followed the sound of activity into a hallway leading out from the front right corner and strode past five offices and a conference room to a pinned-open double glass sliding security door.

  She stopped short at the sight waiting for her.

  Four Division 9 field operatives stood around a large room with medium-sized primate cages, four-foot cubes built into the left and right walls, stacked two rows high like tiny jail cells. Rhesus monkeys occupied four of them, as well as a lone black chimpanzee. The remaining non-empty cages contained dirt-smeared human children, ranging in age from around five to maybe ten, all of whom looked malnourished. A plastiboard box on a silver table at the center of the room held a mound of stained, ratty clothing that stank to the point a street vagrant would scoff at it. Next to it sat a pile of police-style zip cuffs, all cut open.

  Myofiber muscles in Nina’s arms shivered with imperceptible trembles of anger as she imagined the children being carried in, cut free, stripped, and stuffed into cages one after the next like goddamned research monkeys.

  In the first cage, left wall top row, a tiny blonde girl of about six lay on her back, stomping both feet against the bars of her cube-shaped prison, while screeching like the animal they’d treated her as. The cage had little reaction to her assault, though a hanging water bottle had already been shaken halfway empty. Next to her in the adjacent enclosure, a girl a year or two older with dark hair cowered, trembling, against the inner wall, back to the room and trying to cover herself as much as she could. The remaining six children were all boys. Some sat like lumps where they’d been dropped, morose expressions of acceptance on their faces; the youngest sobbed, but tried to stay quiet. The oldest, a sandy-brown haired boy of about ten, knelt in the center of his cage, both hands covering his crotch, and stared at the Division 9 team with a look of guarded hostility.

  A cabinet on the wall to the left of the kicking girl’s cage held sedative autoinjectors and a five-foot pole mount. The scientists likely used it to spear the larger primates in their cages without having to open them, but the mere thought that some labcoat might use that stick to tranquilize a trapped child fighting against whatever they’d try to do to them made her knuckles creak.