Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(78)

“Machine-human integration?” Angela guessed. Or maybe the mind-reading thing he’d tried on her that first day they met. That was certainly fascinating, but she couldn’t think how it would feather into the overall master-race plan.

“No,” Vallejo said, drawing the syllable out as if she were very stupid or very oblivious. “Weather control. Think about it. If you’re planning for a small number of humans to endure forever, you have to deplete the rest of the population, else you get unauthorized inbreeding and other chaos points. Mass populations are impossible to control, so they would definitely need to go or get winnowed down to a manageable number. Phase two.”

Oh. Right. Wow. She’d teased Vallejo’s involvement in weather control to Rafael Castrejon during their live-emote session an eon ago. The day Daniel was killed. But she’d made that up, thought it was bullshit. It hadn’t been. That had actually been someone’s plan.

Not Vallejo’s, though. Zeke’s.

“But you can’t just nuke all the little people,” Kellen interjected. Angela flinched at his voice, glittering over her shoulder, hard and bright and dangerous. Not necessarily the Kellen she remembered; however, strangely, just as comforting. It reminded her of him and his cattle prod, storming the West Spire and cutting down her enemy. Knight in shining armor. Hers.

He swung his long legs over the back of the cushion and sat on the deck next to her shoulder. She could see him in her periphery now. No hiding from him. She still didn’t let go of his hand. She should have. Should have run, gotten small, reduced contagion. Recalculated herself. But she didn’t. She just kept hold of Kellen, ping-ponging her attention back and forth between her lover and her enemy and her past.

“Because yikes radiation,” Vallejo said, referring to the idea of nuking mass populations.

“And you can’t just move your armies in,” Kellen went on.

“Because in a postarmy world, all our soldiers now are drones, and nobody can rig the whole thing at once with enough real-time coordination to make those big genocides work properly. Too much scattering.”

“So you drown them in hurricanes.”

“And crisp them in droughts.”

“And burn them in volcanoes.”

Every scenario spoken aloud was a new image, both bleak and familiar. She had seen these things happen. Mother Nature, acts of God. But the dirtiest secret of all was there was no God; there was no mother’s mercy. There was only the consortium with a horrible plan and too many toys.

“They also play up their rebellions, creating conflict zones,” she added, half turning on her cushion so she could look up at Kellen. “Remember when I told you about the bad shit pattern? How every massive disaster follows the same refugee-relocation, more tragedy, more population-reduction pattern?”

“Yeah.”

She turned back and met Vallejo’s gaze. “That’s phase two. We’re in it. All those drone attacks right now are meant to start a war with Texas. There’s no easier cover than war to hide body count. I ought to know.”

She had never felt more certain about a thing in her life. Phase one, collect the worthy humans. Phase two, destroy the extras. Phase three? She didn’t know that yet, but she felt pretty fucking certain it would suck.

She swallowed, but she was still dizzy and tracing brain paths. None of her usual tricks worked. This gut-sick roil wasn’t something created in her conscious mind. It was brain stem–type stuff, primal and lizardy, and she could not stop it. Couldn’t stop anything. Just a toy. Will live forever. Smile for the camera, Ange.

Kellen squeezed her hand. “Right. War minister. And there you go being all brilliant, as usual.”

She flared her eyes at him, startled. “What? What are you even talking about?”

“I’m talking about stopping this phase two bullshit, right now, before Medina gets sworn in for a third term,” he said. “He’s launching all these attacks and then blaming them on Texas, right? He needs to be stopped, and weren’t you two heartbeats from being the war minister of this continent?”

“Well, yes.” Essentially. Maybe. “But that was before I…before Daniel died.” Before she’d been removed from all her official profiles.

“But you know where the command codes are.”

Fucking hell. He was right. She did. She knew exactly how to get there. Darknet, string of sixteen digits, photographic memory. Oh yeah. Her eyes stretched wide, and she had to bite her bottom lip to keep from either laughing like a loon or doing something else wildly inappropriate.

Maybe kissing the shit out of that man right next to her. Because he so deserved it. And she so wanted to.

“We still have the problem of rigging a vast continental drone army,” Vallejo reminded them.

Good thing he did, too, because Angela had pretty much forgotten he existed and was so very close to climbing onto Kellen’s lap right then. That could have been embarrassing.

“It’s not really that much of a problem,” Kellen said. “Heron can rig your drones, easy. I don’t think there’s a max number on his command-and-control, not anymore. And am I really talking to Damon Fucking Vallejo about this stuff?” He tilted his head and thwapped it, as if he expected loose logic to fall out of an ear.

“Look, trust me or not, I really don’t care,” said Vallejo, “but I’m interested in getting off this boat, and you pair all but promised to release me. I’d help Hitler take over the government if such action guaranteed my freedom.”