around at me and Jabali, who glanced at his gun. I shook my head slightly, watching the good doctor walk unsteadily toward the table and pick up the bottle. He tipped it back and drank steadily for a few swallows, then put the bottle unsteadily back onto the table.
“Your nanobots are different, Mr. Cates. They are the originators. The builders. They do not attack your body, they simply build drones that are excreted through your pores to seek out hosts to infect. They are broadcasting a weak suppression field which keeps the drones dormant until they have exited your body, otherwise you would already be dead. If you died too soon, you might not infect enough people to achieve the tipping point, so the suppression field guaranteed that you would wander around for days, infecting as you went. Since the field actually has a range of a few feet—perhaps ten, at most—it also means that anyone near you for any length of time sees their own infection go dormant.”
He started walking past the table, turning to look at me over his shoulder, smiling, grandfatherly. He was probably only five or ten years older than me. “You’re the only reason I haven’t started dying yet, Mr. Cates.” He turned away and kept walking, gesturing blindly back toward Jabali. “Him, too! But if you move out of range, the nanobots inside me stop receiving the field and wake up —and start work.”
I should have been paying attention to the older man, but my mind had gone blank. I pictured myself walking through the city, inches from people. Standing next to Gleason, next to Wa, shaking Pick’s hand. Pick, who’d lived forever and might have lived another eternity, until I’d come along. I saw Glee, grinning at me. Ooh, Avery’s a father figure. I swallowed something thick that had lodged in my throat. “You said,” I managed to croak, “you said something about a second signal?”
I imagined a cloud of death around me.
“Yes!” Terries shouted from the other end of the lab, where he was rooting around in a cart of discarded equipment, cables, and mysterious black boxes. “It looks like a beacon signal, pinging a location in Europe, probably Paris by the looks of the EIP address, but I’d have to dig a little deeper to confirm that. I don’t know what it could be for. We saw that in the other nanobots, the regular ones that all the victims to date have had. Same name embedded in it, too.”
I nodded absently, my mind a second or two behind each word, trying to catch up. It was as if I was translating each word as I heard it, looking them up one at a time, everything coming to me in slow, lazy waves. Then I focused, staring at the doctor’s back. “A name?”
“In cleartext no less! Taking credit for the work.” He paused and looked over his shoulder at us, smiling, his teeth white and straight and perfect. “Taking credit for killing us all.”
From outside and above us, there was a burst of deep, pounding static, and then a mellow, golden tone, the sound of all the Vid screens clearing their throats. Normally silent, with text crawls, all the newer Vids were equipped for sound and erupted into booming stereo whenever there was an important announcement.
“ Attention, ” boomed a generic male voice, pleasant and controlled. It reminded me of the Monks. “ By Emergency Decree under Charter regulation Six-six-ten, the System Security Force has declared a state of general emergency. All citizens are requested to remain inside their homes until further notice. Noncompliance will be met with force. Attention: By Emergency Decree under Charter Regulation Six-six …”
The message repeated again and again, and we just stared at each other. A trickle of sweat made its way down my back, slow and itchy.
“This shit,” Jabali said deliberately, “is beyond me.”
I kept my eyes on Terries’ back as he continued to rummage. “What was the name, Doc?” I wanted to know who’d done this to me. I remembered being on my
“Your nanobots are different, Mr. Cates. They are the originators. The builders. They do not attack your body, they simply build drones that are excreted through your pores to seek out hosts to infect. They are broadcasting a weak suppression field which keeps the drones dormant until they have exited your body, otherwise you would already be dead. If you died too soon, you might not infect enough people to achieve the tipping point, so the suppression field guaranteed that you would wander around for days, infecting as you went. Since the field actually has a range of a few feet—perhaps ten, at most—it also means that anyone near you for any length of time sees their own infection go dormant.”
He started walking past the table, turning to look at me over his shoulder, smiling, grandfatherly. He was probably only five or ten years older than me. “You’re the only reason I haven’t started dying yet, Mr. Cates.” He turned away and kept walking, gesturing blindly back toward Jabali. “Him, too! But if you move out of range, the nanobots inside me stop receiving the field and wake up —and start work.”
I should have been paying attention to the older man, but my mind had gone blank. I pictured myself walking through the city, inches from people. Standing next to Gleason, next to Wa, shaking Pick’s hand. Pick, who’d lived forever and might have lived another eternity, until I’d come along. I saw Glee, grinning at me. Ooh, Avery’s a father figure. I swallowed something thick that had lodged in my throat. “You said,” I managed to croak, “you said something about a second signal?”
I imagined a cloud of death around me.
“Yes!” Terries shouted from the other end of the lab, where he was rooting around in a cart of discarded equipment, cables, and mysterious black boxes. “It looks like a beacon signal, pinging a location in Europe, probably Paris by the looks of the EIP address, but I’d have to dig a little deeper to confirm that. I don’t know what it could be for. We saw that in the other nanobots, the regular ones that all the victims to date have had. Same name embedded in it, too.”
I nodded absently, my mind a second or two behind each word, trying to catch up. It was as if I was translating each word as I heard it, looking them up one at a time, everything coming to me in slow, lazy waves. Then I focused, staring at the doctor’s back. “A name?”
“In cleartext no less! Taking credit for the work.” He paused and looked over his shoulder at us, smiling, his teeth white and straight and perfect. “Taking credit for killing us all.”
From outside and above us, there was a burst of deep, pounding static, and then a mellow, golden tone, the sound of all the Vid screens clearing their throats. Normally silent, with text crawls, all the newer Vids were equipped for sound and erupted into booming stereo whenever there was an important announcement.
“ Attention, ” boomed a generic male voice, pleasant and controlled. It reminded me of the Monks. “ By Emergency Decree under Charter regulation Six-six-ten, the System Security Force has declared a state of general emergency. All citizens are requested to remain inside their homes until further notice. Noncompliance will be met with force. Attention: By Emergency Decree under Charter Regulation Six-six …”
The message repeated again and again, and we just stared at each other. A trickle of sweat made its way down my back, slow and itchy.
“This shit,” Jabali said deliberately, “is beyond me.”
I kept my eyes on Terries’ back as he continued to rummage. “What was the name, Doc?” I wanted to know who’d done this to me. I remembered being on my
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