“We hung out for a few days, and during a hike together in the jungle, she finally told me what had really happened to you. I thought you were dead.”
“Weren’t you—”
“Confused. Furious. Scared. She told me she had broken you out of a GPA black site. She told me your mother had upgraded both of you. She told me about your fight in New Mexico. And then she made her pitch for what she wanted to accomplish. And why. And how.”
“She convinced you?”
“I couldn’t deny her logic. When I worked at UNESCO, my job was expanding environmental education. We’re in trouble. That night, she gave me the upgrade in my hotel room. How did you know?”
“Without MYSTIC, it would be risky, time-consuming, and practically impossible to find an army of willing super-spreaders. And Kara needed them to be willing. In light of the security measures in place, even super-upgraded Kara couldn’t have accessed MYSTIC by herself.
“I was sure she had someone on the inside. Someone pulling candidates for her. I didn’t know if it was you or Edwin, or someone else. I suspected you. Edwin’s a true believer. But you feel the same way about the gene act as I do. And when we were in Montana with her that night, you talked about your job at UNESCO. You spoke passionately about it. And…you were my friend. You know my wife, my daughter. Kara would’ve known you’d be furious once she told you what the GPA did to me.
“Then tonight your body language was weird when I first saw you. So I ran one more test. When I came out of that office and Edwin asked where this raid was happening, I said Miami. He flashed surprise. You flashed relief.”
Nadine reached for the touchscreen, undimmed the smart glass. We stared out the illusory window as the rolling countryside of Maryland slid past with a swift elegance at 760 mph. Everything brilliant under the moon.
“A billion people, Nadine. Any person who catches the upgrade virus and dies—that’ll be on you. People you know and love will die.”
“If you stop this,” she said, “you may well be responsible for the extinction of Homo sapiens. That’ll be on you.”
“Consider this. For a time, Kara and I were the only upgraded humans on this planet. And what did we do? Immediately tried to kill each other over differences in belief. You got the upgrade and decided to help Kara release a virus that will lead to mass suffering and death. Doesn’t feel like intelligence itself is the answer. It terrifies me to think of a world where we have all the same problems, a billion less friends, and everyone thinks they’re smart enough to be infallible.”
“So you’d rather have no world at all?”
“That’s a false binary. We are in trouble, but that doesn’t mean this is the only solution. Rejecting something that involves killing a billion people isn’t the same thing as sticking my head in the sand while the world burns.”
“What happens now?”
“You’ll be taken into custody at Grand Central.” I tapped the touchscreen, glanced at our trip monitor. “In seventeen minutes. What happens after that, you actually have some control over.”
“I won’t tell you where she is. You may know the general area. You don’t know the building. And there are a lot of buildings in Lower Manhattan.”
My phone lit up—Edwin messaging me the results of the Lower Manhattan building query I’d asked him to submit to MYSTIC. It was a list of thirty-seven predictively ranked companies that were candidates for Kara’s lab. Too many.
I texted him back:
Cull that list down to buildings that are 500 feet or higher.
Nadine glanced down at her handbag, her pulse rate accelerating. I could smell her beginning to sweat.
We hadn’t taken any government-issue firearms through security. But if she knew there was a chance I could return, would she have made advance preparations?
A capsule in her mouth she could crush to release a lethal vapor? Some other method of poisoning contained in that handbag?
She was reaching for the metal clasp that opened it.
I released my three-point harness, lunged across the pod, snatched her handbag.
“What the fuck, Logan?”
“What’s in here?”
“Girl shit. Give it back.”
For your own safety, please refasten your seatbelt.
I twisted the metal clasp, opening the bag. Nadine watched me closely.
When I saw the black-and-orange bands emerge from inside, my lizard brain took over. I flung the handbag to the other side of the pod.
Shit.
Nadine had brought a weapon.
The ultimate weapon.
She reached for the touchscreen, killed the lights.
I registered a hardy 6kHz whine.
“I’m sorry,” Nadine said. “I hate this. You’re my friend, you were my partner, but I can’t allow you to interfere.”
I could see a shape hovering between us now. I had experienced fear since receiving my mother’s upgrade, but I hadn’t come anywhere close to the terror of staring into the two sets of eyes—one compound, one ocelli—of the massive Asian giant hornet that hovered six inches from my face.
Please fasten your seatbelt immediately.
A second buzzed behind my right ear. I could feel the soft eddies from its powerful wings.
Nadine said, “Kara got your DNA from your mother’s lodge in Colorado. She hacked these hornets, programmed them to seek out your unique genetic fingerprint by targeting the pheromones in your axillary sweat.”
“What did she replace their venom with?”
“The inland taipan’s.”
I remembered a nature show I’d watched when I was fourteen. The inland taipan snake, endemic to Australia, carries the most potent venom in the world. One bite’s worth is sufficient to kill a hundred grown men. It contains neurotoxins, hemotoxins, mycotoxins, nephrotoxins, and hemorrhagins.
The sound of a hornet at my right ear was getting louder.
The other one was drifting closer as well.
They had target-locked me.
Their stingers looked like they could punch through steel.
I saw Nadine’s plan—it was a good one. Once the hornets had stung me, she would pull the emergency brake, bringing the pod to a halt under one of the exit platforms. She would escape through the ceiling hatch, leaving me here to die.
I sidelined the fear, dividing my consciousness four ways: hornet one, hornet two, Nadine, and the lights of the Philadelphia suburbs that were racing toward us.
The hornets were moving in to attack, and I was decelerating my perception of time, seeing everything now.
Speed: 589 mph.
Time to destination: 15 minutes.
Racing across pastureland, an old farmhouse glowing in the distance.
Nadine, wide-eyed, in the throes of eight conflicting emotions, but mainly fear and guilt.
Thinking I had nothing to swat the hornets with, and if those stingers nailed me—just one of them, anywhere—I was done. They were a half-inch long, and would easily penetrate my clothing.
I became very still.
If you do not fasten your seatbelt, you will be fined five hundred dollars and barred from future travel on a Virgin hyperloop.
I slowly raised my arms now, the hornets two inches from my skin, their stingers arcing toward my face and neck.
I watched my thumbs and forefingers gently close around their abdomens.