Digital Plague

XX Day Eight: Ty is Contemplating the End of the World

All I could do for a moment was stare. Ty Kieth looked exactly the same as the last time I’d seen him years ago, when he’d left New York. As always he was bald-either something congenital or a procedure he’d had done, since I’d never seen him shave-and his ridiculous nose quivered in front of him, always a second or two in the future, waiting for Ty to catch up. He was wearing loose-fitting, colorless clothes that were obviously not tailored for him, and, of course, he was living inside a transparent cube.

“Ty,” I said, feeling Happling behind me in the shadows, like an ember in the wind, “there’s a big cop back there who wants very much to shoot you. You’re going to have to give us a good reason not to, and fast.”

Ty’s face was almost comical in the way it collapsed in on itself, folding up into a rictus of horror. “You mean you’re not here to rescue Ty?”

“Well, fuck,” I said, frowning, my voice echoing off the soaring walls, “why in hell would I be here to rescue you?”

“This is him, then?” Happling roared, stepping into the aisle behind me, shredder up and cords on his neck standing out like taut cables. “This is the fantastic genius Ty Kieth who created these goddamn bugs?”

I turned to face him, keeping my gun down but at the ready. Happling wasn’t even looking at me. His bloody eyes were fixed on Kieth, as if trying to make the little man explode just with his mind. “It is,” I said, stepping sideways to block his path. “And I need a moment to talk to him.”

The big cop swung the shredder so it pointed directly at my chest and didn’t slow down. “Step aside, asshole.”

I’d seen shredding rifles cut through cement walls. I’d seen shredding rifles turn dozens of men into cheese. I stepped aside and spun back to face Ty.

“Told you,” I said. “Ty, I’m afraid Captain Happling here doesn’t respect my opinions. He might shoot you.”

Ty reached up and rapped his knuckles against the glass. “Doesn’t matter, Mr. Cates. The cube is bulletproof.” He looked up again. “Did Ty hear you say bug, officer?” He turned his wide eyes on me. “You’re sick?”

Happling had stepped up to the cube and was peering at it carefully, running fingers over its surface, judging the veracity of Kieth’s statement. I looked around. “No,” I said, concentrating to avoid the lisp my broken teeth tried to give me. “Apparently I’m radiating some sort of suppression field. That’s why we’re all still alive.”

Kieth put his hands over his face. “Oh my god,” he moaned. “You’re the fucking originator?”

Happling tapped the muzzle of the shredder against the wall of the cube. “Looks like he’s telling the truth. Hey, Little Man,” he shouted at Kieth. “How’d you even get in there?”

Ty lifted his face from his hands. His eyes were puffy, like he was about to cry. “Ty was sealed in, officer. Ty was entombed.”

There was noise behind us, and Happling and I froze for a moment, cocking our heads, and then both came to the conclusion that the immense noise coming from behind us was Marko, stomping into the church in a lab-bound Techie’s version of stealth. We both relaxed. Then there was movement at my elbow, and I turned and found Hense standing just inches from me. I started and tried to hide it with a shrug.

“This him?” Hense said. “This Ty Kieth?”

I nodded. Marko stampeded past us and walked right up to the cube. He stared at Ty’s crumpled form for a bit. “I’m a huge fan of your work, Mr. Kieth,” he said. “Although illegal, of course. But genius, nonetheless.”

Kieth looked up with blank, red-rimmed eyes. “Ty doesn’t give a shit,” he said. “Ty is contemplating the end of the world.”

I tucked my gun into my belt, carefully-SSF handguns did not come with a safety-and shouldered Marko out of the way. “Ty, are we safe here? Anyone coming to ambush us?”

He shrugged, nose quivering. “Ty doesn’t know, Mr. Cates. Ty hasn’t seen anyone in some time, but Ty cannot be sure.”

I looked around. “All right.”

“Captain,” Hense said briskly, appearing at my side again. “Take up a defensive position and patrol our perimeter.”

“Yes, sir,” Happling said, still staring at Kieth. After a moment’s hesitation he turned smartly and marched off.

“Tell him not to go more than fifty feet or so for any extended period of time,” Kieth said quietly, staring down at the floor of his cube. “If Mr. Cates is the originator, that would be the approximate range of his signal.”

“Ty,” I said, “why did you do this?”

He looked up at me, eyes glassy. “Ty was forced, Mr. Cates. Ty was offered a job, very lucrative. Ty was betrayed. Imprisoned. Threatened. Ty is not a brave man, Mr. Cates, and Ty chose to peck out a few more months of existence rather than resist.” He raised one eyebrow and a faint ghost of a smile spread his face out a little. “But Ty is not stupid, Mr. Cates. That is why Ty is still here in front of you, preserved. Ty knew what he was designing, yes, and Ty built in a beacon system. An encrypted signal formed from a readout of Ty’s own vital signs. The nanobots do their job. They manufacture themselves and spread out in several vectors-airborne, fluid transfers-and attack at a cellular level, destroying. A mechanical cancer.”

“It’s an amazing design,” Marko said quietly.

Ty looked at him, frowning. “Ty thinks it may be the greatest work he has ever done, yes.” He looked back at me. “And this is only stage one. Stage two-but Ty knew he would be dead the moment the work was complete-the Droids were designed to be self-replicating, yes? So why need Ty once the plague has been released?” He smiled more fully and tapped his bald pate. “Ty built in the beacon. If Ty dies, or if Ty’s vital signs show any alarming changes, the Droids will shut down en masse and hibernate.” He nodded. “Ty is confident the encryption is unbreakable by any current means. So Ty is necessary, yes? Ty cannot be killed or harmed.”

I cocked my head. “Until everyone else is dead, at least.”

The smile vanished and he ducked his head. “Yes. Ty is not proud, Mr. Cates. Ty fears death.”

“Why is Cates special?” Hense demanded. “Why are the nanobots in his system putting out a special signal? Once the nanobots are in the wild, they will spread on their own, yes?”

Ty shook his head. “Ty does not know. Ty was given specific instructions, and they included an originator, a person to be initially infected, who would be the vector until the Droids inhabited the tipping point of subjects. The originator, it was specified, would not be affected by his own infection or anyone else’s. The suppression signal was a dirty hack, but in the time allowed it was the best Ty could do.” He looked at me. “Ty didn’t know it was going to be you, Mr. Cates, Ty swears.”

I smiled, showing him my bloody, broken grin. “Would it have made any difference, Ty?”

He looked down at the floor again. “No.” He looked up. “They were very angry when my little deception was discovered, Mr. Cates. But they could do nothing to me, you understand, except entomb me here. Fed, watered, and allowed to live. But imprisoned while the world died.”

“Who, Mr. Kieth?” Hense wanted to know. “Who hired- forced you to do this?”

Ty sighed. “The Monks.”

A thrill went through me. “Monks?”

Ty looked up. “Monks. I was offered employment and a hover was supplied to ferry me to my new employers for a meeting. It brought me here, to Paris, and I was met by a group of Monks. Only one spoke to me. He was… most persuasive.”

I thought of the distorted voices in Newark-Newark, another Ghost City ruled by the last dregs of the Monk population that had survived the SSF purge during the Monk Riots. Monks.

Hense looked at me. “Mr. Kieth,” she said, her dark, pupil-less eyes still on me. “Am I to understand that Monks of the former Electric Church forced you to do this? That they were coherent?”

“Yes.”

“Armed?”

Ty nodded, his nose wagging up and down. “Oh, yes.”

“Fuck,” Hense muttered, turning away and starting to pace.

I squinted at Ty, my brain working furiously. “Wait a second. Wait a fucking second.” I stepped forward and pressed my face onto the glass. “Ty, are you telling me that if you die, the whole fucking plague shuts down?”

Ty startled, staring back at me from an inch or two away. I could see the pores on his nose and the tiny, silky hairs growing out of it. “Yes, Mr. Cates.”

We looked at each other through the glass for a moment. I’d never particularly liked Ty Kieth-he was irritating and had never taken orders well-but he was very good at what he did and had always done his job. As far as I knew he had never betrayed me. I brought the gun up near my cheek. “Then I’m sorry, Ty,” I said slowly, something unfamiliar forming in my belly, acidic and heavy. “But I think we’re going to have to kill you. Fucking immediately.”

For a moment there was an almost perfect silence in the church as we all remained frozen, holding our breath. Inside me, the acid pellet burst and I felt tired and beaten. I didn’t want to kill Ty. Ty was harmless, under normal circumstances. The universe had made Ty a threat, and now I was supposed to just execute him? I was disgusted with everything-the cops, the world, even myself.

Ty’s eyes widened, and he tried to scamper back from the cube wall, tripping over himself and falling onto his ass, his skinny arms and legs moving anyway. He crawled in place for a moment and finally got some traction, pushing himself backward and knocking over some of his equipment. “Mr. Cates!” he sputtered. “Ty must protest!”

I looked away, ashamed. “Marko,” I said quietly. “Think you can cut into that cube?”

Marko blinked rapidly and turned to look at me. “Kill Ty Kieth? The man’s a genius. Are you, like, going to kill every genius you come across, Mr. Cates?”

I grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him in close, buttons popping. He let out a pained little grunt as I slammed him into my body, yanking him up so I could stare directly into his face. I put my gun to his temple, which was probably overkill for someone like Marko but I was in an overkill mood. I saw Gleason breathing in invisible monsters that set to work tearing and slicing at every cell of her body. I saw her burning. “Avery Cates, Genius Killer doesn’t have much a ring, Mr. Marko,” I said. “Can you get into that cube or not? Because if not, I don’t have much use for you.”

This time Marko’s eyes, buried in the midst of his hairy, sweaty face, went wide. I felt the breeze of Hense moving and spun and ducked in time to evade her hand. I moved Marko roughly around between the colonel and me. She still managed to get in close, her piece jabbed into my stomach.

“Mr. Marko is SSF, Mr. Cates,” she said evenly. “Release him.”

I didn’t move. If Ty’s death meant the end of the plague, I was suddenly no longer necessary to Colonel Hense, and that meant it was more than likely that Happling’s boots were going to be the last things I ever saw. “Colonel Hense, we have a deal, yes?”

She stared back for a moment. I knew she was thinking through the implications just as I had. Finally, she nodded curtly. “We have a deal, Mr. Cates.” Her eyes shifted to Marko, who was vibrating in my arms, putting out sweat like someone was pumping water into him and it was coming out his pores. “Can you get into that cube?”

“F-f-fucking hell,” Marko stuttered. “Maybe.”

“Try.” Hense looked at me again. “Let him go, Mr. Cates.”

I waited another second and then nodded, springing back from Marko, who almost fell on his ass, staggering to regain his balance. He stood for a moment rubbing his chest, and Hense swept her gun toward the cube in invitation. “Try, Mr. Marko. People are dying.”

“Get it open, Marko,” I said, “so we can kill him.”

Ty swept his bugged eyes from me to Hense to Marko and back again, his mouth open. Even in the darkness, I could tell he was about to say something to me, and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at Ty, even for Glee. I knew Ty. I’d killed people I’d known before, but I couldn’t look at him. Ty was fucking harmless. This wasn’t fair. This was against the rules. I was supposed to break the only rule everyone in my world respected: you don’t kill people who don’t deserve it. Most of the people I’d known stretched the definition of deserve until you could barely recognize it, but I didn’t. It was clear to me, and Ty simply didn’t deserve to die.

“I’m afraid I can’t let that happen, Avery.”

It wasn’t Ty’s voice, and it came from behind us. Both Hense and I whirled and crouched down, guns in our hands. I stared through the gloom and for a second I couldn’t move.

Standing just inside the rear of the church, his nickel-plated Roons in each hand, was Wa Belling.