Black Sun Rising

Chapter Twenty-One

Purdue? He's actually involved with these people? Sam was astonished. Then his astonishment made way for careful scrutiny and he quickly considered that the man was, after all, involved with the Order of the Black Sun. He seemed to have a penchant for clandestine organizations.

He tried not to gape as Purdue introduced himself, but fortunately any amazement that showed on his face could be easily explained when the walls lit up, revealing themselves as plasma screens. Throughout his talk Purdue referred to them frequently. Complicated diagrams drew themselves across the screens at the touch of his fingers as he talked about the world's booming population, the spread of the Internet, the ever-expanding popularity of social media, and people's increasing willingness to run their lives online. An image of the world flashed up, spinning before their eyes, and Purdue caressed the screen to bring them zooming in until they could pick out individuals on a busy street in perfect high resolution.

Sam caught barely a word of Purdue's presentation. He took in enough to know that Purdue had been involved in designing some kind of app that would revolutionize… something — social media, presumably. It was a new kind of app that would not only be found on computers, phones, and tablets, but which would eventually be present in every electronic device one could possibly think of, from sat navs to table lamps. Beyond that, Sam was lost. This was not his area of expertise, and he was still preoccupied with the revelation that Purdue was so closely linked to FireStorm.

In his mind he was busy reviewing every conversation he had had with Purdue since his arrival in Las Vegas, trying to fathom whether there were any clues he had failed to pick up on or whether he had fallen victim once again to one of Purdue's elaborate schemes. Jefferson had been only a puppet in this play, he assumed with an aching feeling of renewed betrayal, the indifference of Dave Purdue still fresh in his mind while he and Nina faced the Aryan's wrath on Deep Sea One.

Nina slowed down as she approached the campsite. Once again she sheltered behind a rock and caught her breath, sobbing gently. It must have been a mountain lion, she told herself. It must have been. Even if someone wanted to kill him, why would they do that? He was barely recognizable. He was barely human… oh, god. What if that was deliberate? It can't have been. It can't. It can't. He must have wandered off and something got him. I knew something had happened, I knew it, I should have listened to my instincts… What if we could have saved him? Maybe if we'd gone out looking for him when I first realized that he was gone…

As hard as Nina tried, she could not convince herself that Hunter's messy fate had been accidental. Those were clean wounds, the kind that came from sharp implements, not teeth and claws. Her experience of looking at mutilated bodies was limited, admittedly, but she was certain that Hunter had not been eaten. No doubt he would be as soon as darkness fell and the nocturnal predators emerged. She tried not to think about it. Indeed, she tried hard to put the image of the sliced-up corpse out of her mind, but every time she so much as blinked she could see it imprinted on the inside of her eyelids.

When she was sure that she was not going to be sick again, she glanced over the top of the rock. In the distance she saw Sam disappearing into their tent. Hot tears of relief flowed down her cheeks, and she began the painful limp toward what she hoped would be safety.

"Ok, Purdue," Sam said, the moment they were both back in their tent. "I'm confused. What the hell's going on? What is this FireStorm thing all about? And I mean the truth, the real purpose, not the marketing blurb."

Purdue removed his glasses, pulled a scrap of microfiber cloth from his pocket and polished them carefully. "I can appreciate that it must be confusing, Sam. But surely you understand that this was simply too rich an opportunity to pass up — and by that I mean both the work itself, which has been fascinating, and revealing my involvement in this way. It was irresistible. My only regret is that Nina was not there to see it."

"You mean she didn't know?" Sam wrestled with the idea. If this was not the reason for her sudden intimacy with Purdue, then what was? And was she even aware that her affections were second to his ambition?

Purdue shook his head. "You know Nina," he said. "As dear as she is to me, keeping secrets is not her strong point. She has too much of a tendency to get over-excited and blurt out whatever she happens to be thinking."

"She's going to be raging when she finds out," said Sam. He would not blame her though. Discounting her innate fury, he would understand completely that she would be insulted to be excluded entirely, and more so because she was deemed untrustworthy.

"I know," Purdue smirked. "But in a way, that's part of the fun."

"Nina! You made it back!"

Cody seemed to appear from out of nowhere. Nina's tears of relief were replaced by a gasp of fear. Although Cody wore his customary friendly smile, she could see the menace behind it. "I've been so worried about you," he grinned, advancing on her.

"Stay the fuck away from me," she snarled, dropping into a defensive crouch. "My friends are just over there. If I scream, they'll be right over."

Slowly, deliberately, he took another step toward her. "And what exactly are your friends going to do, Nina? Look at you. You're injured. You're a mess. If I tell them that you're hysterical and I'm trying to restrain you for your own safety, I bet your friends will help me. You need help, Nina. Come on. Let me get you an ice pack for that ankle, at least." He held out a hand in a conciliatory gesture and continued to walk toward her.

"Did I not make myself clear?" Nina asked, lashing out, her fingers hooked into claws. "Stay. The fuck. Away. From me."

"Fine." Cody stepped back, his hands raised. "If that's how you want it, Nina. If you change your mind, you know where to find me. We're going to be out here for a long time, and your ankle's going to need attention sooner or later. How far have you walked on it?"

"None of your business. Why do you care?"

The look of disappointment on Cody's face was almost sincere. "Nina… I care about all of you. It's my job. It's also my privilege and my blessing as a connected human being. I'm just trying to save you from hurting yourself anymore."

"I don't need you to save me." Without turning her back on him, Nina inched closer to the teepee. "And if you think I'm going to be out here for much longer, you're mistaken. Now stay where you are. Don't follow me."

He made no reply but walked away, back toward the connection tent. With as much speed as she could muster, Nina dragged her aching leg toward her destination.

The more Purdue explained about his involvement, the more confused Sam became. It seemed that Purdue had not, in fact, met these people prior to this trip. His entire acquaintance with them had been formed online, and it had all happened fast.

Just a few months earlier, they had contacted him to ask whether he would be capable of creating a new kind of mobile phone for them. They wanted a device that would be designed with FireStorm at its heart, complete with apps that would feed into its social network, establishing a constant flow of information back to the organization from every user on the planet. It had to be user friendly, simple, and cheap both to produce and to sell.

Where most technology was intended to be expensive, to foster an air of exclusivity and a certain amount of geek cred, the FireStorm phone was to be for everybody. Its most basic models needed to be cheap enough to become the most popular phone in the developing world. The advanced models would retail at much higher prices, eventually capturing the market share that currently belonged to Apple, Research in Motion, and Google.

"They told me that they needed the device and its software to be capable of handling vast amounts of information," Purdue said, "because the intention is to collect every possible shred of data about an individual in one place. Imagine, if you will, a social network that handles all aspects of your life. So far no one has managed it. Google has come closest — for many people, Google manages their email accounts, their calendars, their travel plans, and their Internet searches. Facebook has also made a valiant attempt. Either of these services allows you to log-in across multiple websites, collects information from the sites you log onto and the searches you conduct, then uses that information for marketing purposes.

"But imagine that one such service could handle everything—your diary, your formal and informal communications, the thermostat in your home, your dating site profile, your job hunting, your educational records, your medical records, everything! Imagine no longer having to enter anything in your diary, because the device in your pocket listens and makes entries on your behalf. It will tell you when your cat's next check-up at the vet is due, because it will remember what you were told at the last visit. If you use the device to scan an item at the supermarket, it will cross-reference that item with your medical records and warn you if there is a reason you shouldn't have it. It will alert you if there have been any product recalls of which you are not yet aware. It will tell you whether you could get a better deal elsewhere and, if so, how far you would have to go to get it. It would not only record every purchase you ever made, it would also listen in and monitor how you spoke about them to determine what to market next to you.

"Of course, apps already exist that fulfill all of these functions — broadly, at least. However, not only would FireStorm provide something much more specific and individually tailored — it would also provide it all in just one app, on a device that had been created with the intention of ensuring that the FireStorm app ran smoothly on it."

Sam's mind was reeling. He was torn between wishing that he had got on board with modern technology and got a smart phone ages ago so that he might have had some idea what Purdue was talking about, and being extremely glad that all of this made little sense to him. He got the gist — FireStorm wanted to harvest data, but on a massive scale and with the users providing everything freely in exchange for convenience. How they planned to convert technophobes like him, he did not know, but he had little doubt that it would prove extremely popular if they were able to make it work — and with Purdue involved, he was certain there would be a way to make it work.

"It just so happened," Purdue continued, "that I had been working on something rather similar. Not just the device, because that part is comparatively simple — for me, at least. I had also been tinkering with a design for software that would allow for all of these things."

"But why?" Sam asked. "Why would you do that if it wasn't for anything specific?" Or was it? Judging by the sort of company Purdue had kept before, most notably organizations set on ruling the world from a minority, his question was mostly out of interest for Purdue's point of view. He had decided his own opinion on it.

"Why not?" Purdue looked genuinely perplexed by the question. "It was something to keep my mind occupied — a thought experiment, if you will. I needed something to take my mind off the misadventures in the Antarctic, and subsequently the unforeseen perils on Deep Sea One that resulted in unfavorable light with powerful people. So I opened my folder of unfinished thoughts and selected one to work on. I've played with this idea on and off for years, which meant that Sara and her companions were able to bring forward the date of this Mind Meld by nearly two years. I think they were quite pleased about that."

"Right. Yeah. I'm sure they were… " Sam trailed off, his head too full of new information to offer more of a contribution. Surely there were ethical and legal considerations that would prevent any organization from ever accomplishing this kind of world domination? Surely they couldn't pull things together so quickly, or if they could, why would they require the smoke screen that was the Vision Quest? Still he was desperate to follow up on the details he recorded for Purdue's quest for the Spear of Destiny and when he was planning to pursue that devastating revelation to the world. Question after question lined up in his head, all equally eager to be asked, but as he opened his mouth to speak, Nina nearly collapsed into the tent.

"Nina!" Purdue reached her first. She fell into his arms and he helped her down onto the floor. Her tank top was torn and smudged with dirt, and there was a long streak of brownish-red where she had wiped her hand after touching the partly-congealed blood. Her face was dirty and tear-stained, and most of her dark hair had escaped from its stubby ponytail and now hung in matted tendrils around her face. The pale skin of her arms and legs was covered in insect bites and scratches, and her left ankle was puffy and violently pink.

"Get her some water," Purdue took command, settling her on a blanket and dropping to his knees to examine the damage to her ankle. Sam grabbed a waterskin and pulled out the stopper, then held it to Nina's lips and helped her to take a sip. As he slipped an arm around her shoulders he could feel her trembling. He longed to ask her what had happened and to ascertain that she was unharmed, but evidently that would have to wait. Before anything else could happen, they would have to get her calmed down.

Only seconds behind Nina, the two acolytes burst into the tent. Without a word they pushed Sam and Purdue aside and began dragging Nina to her feet. Sam kicked out at the legs of the male, knocking him off balance, while Purdue leaped up behind the female and attempted to pry her off. The duo had their hands full with Nina, who was lashing out in all directions, but reinforcements were on their way. Cody was right behind them, ready to take the struggling Nina off their hands and leave the acolytes to deal with Sam and Purdue.

"Freeze." They had not reckoned on Kai, always a strategic distance from Purdue. He materialized right behind Cody, and in a flash the barrel of his gun was pressed against the back of the young man's neck.

Cody relaxed his grip on Nina, but did not release her. "This is for her own good," he gasped, as he felt the cold metal on his skin. "She's a danger to herself. Let me go, and we can resolve this without getting our security involved."

To Sam's surprise, Purdue made a quick gesture at Kai and Cody was released. I haven't seen any security, Sam thought, but whatever they have, it's enough to worry Purdue. That's not good.

"Thanks," said Cody, as Kai holstered his weapon. "I'm sorry to have to do this, but I'm worried about Nina. During our one-to-one session she attacked me and ran off into the desert. Who knows where she went? It's dangerous out there, and I think she's having some trouble staying stable. It happens sometimes. We do intense work with people, and it's too much for them. They struggle for a while. They need help. Especially considering what the poor woman had had to endure after almost losing her life on the North Sea."

"Fuck you!" Nina yelled. "I don't need your help."

Purdue and Sam both seemed perplexed by Cody's last statement. What did Nina endure after Deep Sea One? Why did neither of them know about it?

"Cody, if Nina says she doesn't need—"

"Sorry, Sam," Cody blocked Sam's attempted intervention, "but my options are limited. Nina physically attacked me. Either you let her come quietly with me, and we'll get her some help, or I call in our security team and then radio for the police. What do you think, Nina? Which is it to be?"

For a long moment, Nina looked at Purdue. Suddenly, as if someone had simply let the air out of her, she deflated. "I'll go," she said. As the acolytes led her away, she shot Sam and Purdue an imploring look.