Far From the Light of God
Babylon was the city that never slept. The million eyes of the New Gods were always watching, the million ears always listening. Detaining a prisoner here, without the resources of the government, was suicide.
So they headed north.
North Valley bordered the Babylon Metropolitan Area, distinct from the capital yet entwined with it. It was a bedroom community, just a place to spend the night and prepare for yet another interminable day in the big city. Its proximity to Babylon made it a logical target for annexation—but it wasn’t in Babylon’s sights, not yet, not today. Until that day came, it was isolated from Babylon’s networks, shadowed—but not shielded—from the gaze of gods and monsters.
It was dead quiet. No one had any reason to stay up in the wee hours of the morning, not in North Valley, and most definitely not in the North Valley Industrial Park. Home to light industries and small businesses, the companies here kept regular working hours.
Except for a small warehouse at a quiet corner of the industrial park.
Blackout blinds covered the windows. Epoxy gummed up the sole walk-in door. There was no light, no sound, nothing to suggest it was occupied this time of night.
Until Yuri spoke.
“We are thirty seconds out,” he said.
“Roger,” Peter said.
Heavy shutters steadily rolled up. Bright light spilled from the growing opening. Karim slipped the gravtruck through. The second it was inside, the shutters rolled back down.
Just like that, the warehouse was dark and quiet again.
Inside the building, powerful portable floodlights illuminated the interior. The floor was spotless, the walls blank. Freestanding vinyl curtains demarcated different spaces. Fuel cell stacks stood ready for use. Computers and workbenches waited nearby. Portable hygiene units occupied a discreet corner.
A pair of attractive women stood by the shutters, staring blankly at the gravtruck with empty eyes. In their hands they carried M87 carbines, at their hips they wore holstered pistols. In camouflage uniforms and combat webbing, they might have been mistaken for soldiers.
They weren’t even human.
They were Angels. Gynoids. Once produced by the Singularity Network, these had been scrubbed and reprogrammed to serve a human master. Despite their cutting-edge technology, they were still only capable of performing simple tasks. No matter how loudly and how often the Sinners praised the coming god from the machine, there were still plenty of things only humans could do.
In the middle of the warehouse, surrounded by transparent vinyl curtains, sat a heavy-duty gurney. Neoprene cuffs and straps dangled from the side bars. It smelt faintly of antiseptic.
A bulky headset rested atop the gurney. On first blush it looked like a virtual reality headset, with an enormous eye box and huge earmuffs. However, it also sported a dense forest of wires, running from the crown into a console beside the gurney. More cables connected the console to a massive stack of fuel cells.
By the console sat two men in green overalls. The first was Peter. Yuri was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that the once-scrawny hacker had transformed himself into a gym rat. Where there was once softness and flab, there was now tautness and muscle.
The other man was a ghoul with white skin and dead eyes, his face locked in an expressionless mask.
Yuri knew him only as the Technician. One of Joshua Gregory’s many on-call assets, the only man here qualified to use the machine.
The only man here qualified to run an interrogation.
Under the Angels’ watchful eye, the team dragged the captive out from the gravtruck. The second Finn caught sight of the infernal ensemble, his face paled.
“Let’s talk through this. We can make a deal,” Finn said.
Yuri shook his head.
“Come on. Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it. Triple it!”
Yuri shook his head again.
“Who the hell are you people?”
Yuri leaned in.
“The kind of people you don’t fuck with.”
The team dragged Finn to the gurney. The Technician swept up the headset, his eyes gleaming in anticipation.
“Listen to me! We can talk this through!” Finn shouted.
Kayla and Will grabbed an arm each. James and Karim took his wrists. Yuri and Zen seized his shoulders. In a single swift movement, they spun him around and pushed him down on the gurney.
“You can’t do this to me!” Finn yelled.
James and Karim swiftly transitioned, taking control of his knees. Finn bucked and kicked, but the men smothered his every movement. Yuri grabbed a cuff, tied it around an ankle, and cinched the strap down. Zen did the same on the other side.
“Don’t you know who I am?!”
Kayla and Will pulled Finn upright. James and Karim grabbed his shoulders. Zen compressed his wrists together.
Yuri produced a pair of EMT shears from a pouch.
“Stay still,” Yuri said.
“Motherfuckers!”
Finn twisted and torqued back and forth, fighting uselessly against his restraints. Yuri carefully maneuvered the EMT shears, then snipped the zipties in half.
The operators instantly flowed into action. Kayla and Will pinned his arms down to the side bars. Zen and Yuri assisted. James and Karim strapped on the cuffs.
Finn howled in rage. As the others held him down, Zen and Yuri swiftly buckled up the remaining restraints. Calves, thighs, abdomen, chest, shoulders. There was no way Finn was going to break loose now.
“You’re all going to pay for this!”
The Technician retrieved a syringe from his workspace and held it up to the light. Satisfied, he took an alcohol swab and wiped down the back of Finn’s neck.
“What the fuck? You’re planning to shoot me up with something?!”
The Technician gestured at the operators. Yuri and Karim held Finn’s head down. The Technician uncapped the syringe, gently positioned the needle, and poked.
And plunged.
The contents of the syringe disappeared in an instant. The Technician withdrew the needle and capped it. The operators let him go.
“What the shit was that?!”
The Technician dropped the needle in a biowaste container, then retrieved the headset. He strapped it on Finn’s head, careful not to disturb the wires as he positioned the earmuffs and visor in place. Finn continued to protest, and the Technician continued to ignore him. With hand signals, the Technician shooed the operators away and returned to his console. The Technician cleared his throat, touched a button, and leaned into a microphone.
“Mr. Finn, can you hear me?” the Technician asked.
Finn replied with a fiery stream of creative invective.
“Wonderful,” the Technician said, completely unperturbed.
More obscenities spewed from his lips.
“We’re going to take a journey, you and I. Together we’ll find the answers to some interesting questions,” the Technician said.
Finn paused to take a breath.
“The sooner you give us these answers, the sooner we’ll let you go,” the Technician said.
“And if I don’t?” Finn demanded.
The Technician grinned, his teeth flashing like knives, his eyes growing wide and bright.
“You will.”
The military-intelligence complex called it Special Interrogation. A bland name for an inhuman procedure.
The syringe contained a solution of nanoparticles. They would gather in his brain, organize into tiny nodes, then read his thoughts and translate them into ultrasound. The headset would capture the signal and translate it into words, images and sound. The system could distinguish between truth, or at least what he thought was the truth, and what he knew were deliberate lies.
Silence was no defense. Merely thinking about the answer to a question would be enough to betray you. A trained operative might keep his mind blank, or bombard the system with a barrage of random thoughts. It wasn’t enough. Sounds piped through the earcups could shake a person’s concentration, images played on the visor could jar his will. Even if the detainee squeezed his eyes shut, he couldn’t so easily ignore sounds.
It was long rumored that Special Interrogation could do more than just read your brain and sift truth from lies. Critics claimed it could forcibly rip answers out of your head. The military-intelligence complex strenuously denied those claims.
Yuri knew the truth.
Using magnetic resonance, the headset could stimulate the nanoparticles, triggering sensations of pain. Knives slicing away the skin layer by layer, needles driven into soft tissue, fires licking across the body, any kind of pain was possible. It was torture that left no trace.
The New Gods had that tech. The Public Security Bureau had vowed never to use it.
Here and now, though, there were no laws governing what they did.
“You should get some rest,” Peter said. “We’ll call you when we have information for you.”
The team filed into a corner of the warehouse. The opaque vinyl sheets concealed two neat rows of cots. Grabbing a cot each, the operators plunked to the floor, stripped off their gear, and wiped them down.
My weapon, my kit, myself. That was the order of priority for maintenance. Though it had been a long day and even longer night, the operators tended to their chores without complaint, without cutting corners. Only after they had finished did they climb into the cot to catch some Zs.
Not Yuri.
He stood by the side of the cot, staring at the vinyl curtains. He couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but breathe.
A soft, warm presence edged up beside him. Kayla.
“Hey,” she said.
Yuri grunted.
“Got a moment?”
Yuri nodded.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“Peter… he’s got guts.”
She chuckled. “Well, it’s not every day you get to return to the scene of your death.”
The job to steal the plans for the VC’s biocomputer had gone awry. The hunters of the Void had found Alex while he was still printing his machine. He’d faked his death by blowing up the warehouse and leaving behind a charred corpse stolen from the city morgue.
That warehouse was just ten minutes away on foot.
“I hope he learned from his mistakes,” Yuri said.
“The operation is entirely off-grid. We’ve got the fuel cells for power, supplies stashed in our vehicles, even hygiene units. There’s no way the New Gods will find us.”
“I hope so.”
“You’re being awfully terse today.”
Yuri sighed.
“Ever since I founded the STS, I’d been preparing for a guerrilla war. The war is here now. I thought I was prepared, but…”
“But you never know until you get into the thick of it.”
“Yup.”
They were deep in the black, far from the light of God. He felt dirty just thinking about Finn’s final fate. But what else was he to do? What else could he do? War had its own rules.
And yet…
And yet, he was walking right up to the line.
And for all he knew, he had already crossed it.
He could always ask for forgiveness later. For now, he had a world to save.
“We need to get some rest,” Yuri said. “It’s gonna be a long day today.”
“See you in the morning,” she said.
Kayla shuffled off to her cot. Yuri lay himself down and closed his eyes.
In the darkness, the screaming began.
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