Upgrade(34)

The DOJ’s wiretapping and surveillance program, while not necessarily a state secret, had never been publicly confirmed. And while most Americans thought they knew the full extent of the surveillance state they lived in, they had no idea of its full power and insidious integration into our daily lives. For every one hundred people in the United States, there were 48.7 surveillance cameras, and behind them a government network of AI-driven facial-recognition search engines, paired with deeply eroded privacy laws.

After what had happened last night, Edwin would be out of his mind to find me, though I doubted he’d put out an APB to other law enforcement agencies. What would he say? A GPA agent I was illegally holding in a black site escaped. By the way, he’s extensively genetically upgraded, and, oh, his last name is Ramsay.

No, this would be handled in-house.

But it would only take one hit on a sliver of my face for some algorithm to issue an alert on my location.

The room had two double beds. Small table by the window. Old heat pump droning away. A décor of warring flower prints.

I used one of Kara’s laptops to order dermal fillers, paying a small fortune for drone delivery within twenty-four hours.

Then I collapsed onto one of the beds. It was a lumpy mattress, but after three weeks in the vivarium, it felt like resting on a cloud.

“What you did back at the farm was incredible,” I said. “Always been that good or is this a new development?”

“Always been a badass.” Kara laughed, and for a split second she sounded like her old self. “Whatever upgrade I was given just ramped up my abilities.”

“What’s it like?” I asked. “Fighting like that.”

“Ever been in one?”

“Two in prison.”

“How’d you fare?”

“Got my ass kicked.”

“Happened fast, right?”

“So fast. My body froze up. I felt paralyzed.”

“Now, when my adrenaline levels reach a threshold, the opposite happens. Time slows toward a standstill. I notice every detail of my surroundings. I saw those men coming at me at half speed. My ability to read body movements has been enhanced. The tiniest muscle twitches telegraphed their every intention. Putting them down took almost no effort.”

Of course, I’d experienced the same thing.

The idea that the brain speeds up during stressful situations is a myth. When a person is afraid, their amygdala becomes more active, laying down extra memories that coincide with the normal memories of everyday life. It’s the richer, additional memories that give the illusion of time slowing down. But I suspected that, like me, Kara’s sense of time dilation was more than an illusion brought on by a fear reaction. With our sensory gating downgraded, stimuli would come flooding in during moments of intense focus. So long as our brains weren’t overwhelmed by the onslaught, this genuinely would allow us to anticipate and react at superhuman speed.

“They’re not going to let what happened go,” I said. “You know that, right?”

She shrugged. “I know we aren’t close, but you’re my brother. I’d kill an army for you.”

“Is my family okay?”

“Yes. But they think you’re dead.”

I knew that already, but still my eyes welled up.

I couldn’t call Beth. Couldn’t reach out in any way or I’d be opening her and Ava up to charges of aiding and abetting, and pulling them deeper into this mess than they already were by virtue of knowing me.

For the time being, it was safer to let them continue to believe that I was gone.

Two hundred million people dead because of the work I’d been involved with, my time in prison, the death of my parents, the loss of my twin—it all paled in comparison to this, the hardest thing I’d ever faced.

“Now what?” Kara asked.

I quickly appraised our situation—we had both been targeted, ostensibly by our mother, and for reasons unknown. Not a whole lot to work with.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But whatever Mom’s planning, we have to stop it.”

And then I closed my eyes and slept.



* * *



—

When I woke, the light coming through the curtains had dimmed and the shower was running in the bathroom. I got up, went to the window, peered outside into a snowy, blue dusk.

The cars in the motel parking lot were covered.

The roads covered.

The buildings across the street obscured by falling snow.

Kara’s black duffel bag was sitting on the table.

The shower was still running.

I unzipped it, looked inside.

Four guns, including a CheyTac M200 sniper rifle. Boxes of ammunition. Flash-bangs. Zip ties. Several laptops. Surveillance equipment. Two wads of cash. Three passports, each in a different name. Five non-GPS phones.

I picked up one of the phones and stared at it, the urge to message Beth and tell her I was alive nearly overpowering. I couldn’t fathom the pain she and Ava must be experiencing.

And then an odd thing happened.

I turned my feelings down.

Maybe it was a new ability, maybe it had always been there—finally unlocked by my upgrade—but I found that I could take the emotion and empathy I felt toward my family and set them aside.

It was like putting them in a Faraday cage except, instead of shielding me from electromagnetic fields, when my emotion was inside it, I was shielded from my own sentiment. Or, rather, from its controlling effect.