Supersymmetry

CHAPTER 20

Sandra and Angel stood on a hillside behind the prison, the quadcopters hovering over their heads like a swarm of large, well-trained insects. It was not yet light. Sandra had hardly slept, but she felt wired, partly from the coffee she’d been drinking, and partly from sheer terror.

The fence blocked their view of most of what was inside. “Once we start this, it’ll be hard to back out,” she said. “You’re sure you want to do this? You’ve never even met Alex.”

“But if we don’t rescue her, who’s going to tell me the embarrassing truths about your childhood?” Angel said. “You’re hardly a trustworthy source.”

“It was her childhood, too.”

“Ah, good point. Let’s leave her in there, then.” Angel cocked his head at her and smiled. “Ready?”

Sandra sighed. “What if we hurt someone?”

“We’re rescuing them, remember? If we do nothing, then the varcolac kills them all.”

“They might not see it that way.”

“Alas, no.” Angel put a solemn palm on his chest. “It is our lot in life to be misunderstood.”

“Okay, joker,” Sandra said. “Let’s do this.”

They had phoned the prison at midnight and told them a bomb had been hidden in the prison and set to go off at 5:46 the next morning. She didn’t know what the prison administration had done in response, but it wasn’t what they had hoped. At least, Sandra and Angel hadn’t observed any activity that looked like large-scale prisoner evacuation.

“Here we go,” Angel said. On the south side of the prison was a field of rocks that had been excavated from the ground when the new prison was built. Angel stretched out his hand (a little overdramatically, Sandra thought), and teleported a large rock into the middle of the prison’s perimeter wall. The wall exploded, shattered concrete flying everywhere in a fountaining cloud of dust. A klaxon began wailing. Sandra was ready with the next rock, and teleported it into the wall of the prison itself. Before the dust had even cleared, a dozen quadcopters were racing across the field and in through the gap.

Now came the hard part. The prison was immense, and they had no idea where Alex was being kept. The copters had cameras and image recognition software, but some of the faces would be hidden, or turned away, or blocked. There would be a percentage that the copters couldn’t eliminate as possibilities, that would require a human to check, and they didn’t know how large that percentage would be. Once they found her, Sandra would teleport in, grab her, and teleport out.

Leaving a pair of copters by the hole to relay the images, the swarm flew into the complex, each of them armed with the blueprints for the prison complex. They had only so much battery power and a lot of area to cover. Angel had written an algorithm to allow the ten remaining copters to visit every cell in the prison as efficiently as possible.

The copters teleported from cell to cell, staying high to avoid collisions with people or furniture, taking pictures and moving on. Images of faces started flicking rapidly into Sandra’s vision. “They’re too fast!” she said. Ten copters, jumping through cell after cell, produced a lot of pictures in short order. Even with the image recognition software eliminating most of them, there were too many to keep up with. And although each copter could recognize a human as an infrared hotspot, it wasn’t good at taking an image at such an angle as to make the person easy to identify. Sandra rejected them as fast as she could, but there were too many maybes—dark-haired, jumpsuit-clad women of about the right age—for comfort.

“Can we send some of the copters back to reimage the maybes?” Sandra asked.

“Not if we want them to cover the prison before running out of juice,” Angel said. “They’re less than ten percent through at this point.”

“Okay. I’m going in,” Sandra said.

The sound of approaching sirens vied with the prison’s klaxon. “Do it quick,” Angel said. “We don’t have much time.”

The copters had recorded the exact locations from which each picture had been taken, so Sandra could use their coordinates to teleport there herself. The shielding didn’t prevent her, because she didn’t need connectivity to find the location. Besides which, as soon as she teleported in, her system connected to the copters inside the prison, maintaining communication with Angel and the outside world through the relay copters. She could use the pictures to minimize the likelihood of a collision.

Sandra materialized in a tiny cell, six feet by nine feet, with bare concrete walls painted a pale green. She also appeared only a few inches away from the cell’s inhabitant. Before Sandra could even get a good look at her, the woman pushed her hard in the chest, sending her crashing backward into the room’s small, metal toilet. She cracked her head against it, making her ears ring. The inmate was Alex’s height, but much wider in the shoulders and hips. She was staring at Sandra with wide, terrified eyes.

“Where did you come from?” she shouted.

Rattled, Sandra teleported straight back to Angel without answering.

“Are you okay?” Angel asked.

Sandra shook her head to clear it, but said, “I’m fine. It wasn’t her.”

“Okay. We’ve got some company.” The blue and red flashing lights of multiple police cars and trucks pulled into the prison’s front lot. “Let’s mix things up a little,” Angel said. He chose a section of wall between their hole and the arriving backup and blew another hole in it.

Sandra cringed a little. She should be with the police, driving onto the scene with flashing lights, not setting off explosions and staging a prison break. They would be lucky to get through this without killing someone, and although she knew that if they didn’t, the varcolac might very well kill every person here, that wouldn’t make her feel any better if someone died as a direct result of her actions.

She teleported to the next uncertain identification and quickly eliminated her. Each time she did it, she half-expected to be killed herself, appearing inside a wall or a bed or the inmate herself. It was always a place where the copters themselves had previously been, meaning that it had recently been safe, but things—especially people—had a habit of not staying where they’d been put.

Five minutes later, they found her. Sandra appeared in the room, by this time not expecting to find her at all, and there she was, a mirror of Sandra’s own face looking back at her.

“You did it!” Alex said, standing. “I wasn’t sure… I feel like such an idiot.”

“No time,” Sandra said. “We need to get you out of here.”

“What about Jean?”

“It took long enough to find you.”

“But she’s right here, in a different spoke.”

Sandra remembered how the prison’s cells were arranged like spokes of a wheel, to allow a single guard to see a dozen prisoners from one vantage point. The guard on duty had seen her arrive, and was shouting into a receiver. He was unarmed, but she was sure there would be others coming soon. Sandra grasped her sister’s hand and teleported into the central chamber, behind the guard. Before he could turn around, she had spotted Jean.

“I can only take one at a time,” Sandra said. “I’ve got the coordinates, so I’ll come right back for her.”

She jumped with Alex back to the hillside where Angel still stood. Job complete, the copters had all teleported back to the entrance, and were flying back to Angel. “One more to get,” Sandra said. She teleported back to Jean’s cell. Jean was standing there, waiting. The moment Sandra appeared, Jean grabbed her by the throat and smashed her head against the concrete wall with all her strength. Sparks flashed in Sandra’s vision. She cried out, but she was falling, falling. I’m trying to rescue you, she thought, but before she could say it, the floor jumped up to hit her head again and all thought was gone.

Jean had no reason to want to hurt Alessandra Kelley, not either version of her. If their father had still been alive, the self-righteous prig, she would have torn him apart piece by piece and burned the pieces for good measure. But this girl was just unfortunate collateral damage, a means to an end. Jean pried her thumbs into the girl’s eyes and popped her eyejack lenses free. The Higgs projector was slightly harder to find, a slim, card-sized object that she finally located in the girl’s sock. Jean put the lenses into her own eyes, and the software didn’t know that she wasn’t Alessandra.

For over a decade, Jean had been trapped in this prison by a society that didn’t understand or appreciate what she had done or why. She didn’t owe society anything. Now she was out, and she had power. She was ready to bet that Alessandra and whoever else was involved had no real vision for the kind of raw power a Higgs projector entailed.

Jean brought up the interface. She was afraid it would be unfamiliar, that she wouldn’t know how to use it. When she saw how the options were laid out, however, she laughed out loud. The fool had given them the original software as a starting point, and they had simply migrated it to a modern platform, or at least used the original as a template. This was her technology. She might not know the latest programming techniques, but she knew how to make a Higgs projector work for her.

She teleported away, not to another position on the ground, but high in the air, a mile above the prison, looking down. She fell immediately, the wind buffeting her and roaring in her ears. The earth stretched out before her in a grand vista, no walls or bars or guards or cages, just clear, fresh air to the horizon. She screamed her delight into the rushing wind. Finally. Finally, she was free.

From her vantage point, she could see that large rocks had been placed around the perimeter of the prison, probably for decoration, though possibly also to discourage anyone trying to smash through the fence with a vehicle. Interesting. It gave her an idea.

An idiot might have teleported straight to the ground, forgetting that the momentum she had built up by falling would still be in effect, and would kill her by smashing her body straight into the ground. But Jean was no idiot. She teleported to a new orientation that was rotated 180 degrees, and instead of falling she was suddenly shooting up like a rocket, thrown against gravity by the kinetic energy of her free fall. Gravity gradually took hold again, slowing her and bleeding away her momentum.

When she reached the peak, she teleported to the ground close to one of the rocks. It wasn’t perfect. She lost her balance and fell but was unharmed. Grinning, she wrapped her arms around the rock. It was the size of a refrigerator, easily a hundred times her weight.

The visual interface for the Higgs projector had an object edge recognition algorithm built in, indicating what would come along when she teleported. This appeared in her view as a greenish highlight, and automatically included her clothing and any small items she was holding. She adjusted the controls until the highlight snapped out to include the rock as well. Time to see what this technology could do.

She teleported again, back to a point a mile above the prison. The rock, despite its size, came with her. Almost immediately, before she could build up much momentum, she teleported back again, leaving the rock behind in free fall. She was pretty certain the effects of wind at that height would be negligible, but just to be sure, she did it again with one of the other rocks. And again. Seventeen seconds later, the first rock struck the roof of the prison complex traveling over four hundred miles an hour and packing the punch of a truck full of dynamite. It hit dead center, driving straight through the building and into the ground like a meteor.

Debris catapulted into the air as the foundation buckled, tearing the building apart. Then the second rock hit, and the third. Watching from nearby, Jean felt the ground lurch with each impact as if from an earthquake. Sirens blared. With an ironic, parting salute at the building that had stolen the last fifteen years of her life, Jean Massey disappeared.

It only took a few moments for Angel to realize that something was wrong. It should have taken no time at all for Sandra to teleport back with Jean Massey, but she hadn’t returned. “I’m going in,” he said. He thought of just following her last coordinates, but that seemed foolish. Something had happened at those coordinates to prevent her return, and it wouldn’t help her to get himself caught in the same trap.

“I can help. I need a Higgs projector,” Alex said.

“No time,” Angel said. “Just stay here.” He strode across the field toward the prison, calling his quadcopters to him. He was nervous about sending a quadcopter after Sandra, because of the risk of killing her, but he settled for sending it in several feet above her last location, near the ceiling. It arrived and spun, and Angel saw her, lying on the floor, her head bright with blood. No!

He teleported into the cell just as the first explosion hit. It was like having his ears boxed by a giant. The concussion knocked him down, and he couldn’t hear, couldn’t tell for a moment which way was up. He thought at first he had made a mistake and materialized inside a wall, that this was what it was like to die. But no, his body was whole. Something had happened.

Ears ringing, he got his bearings and saw Sandra, unconscious. He was no doctor, but it looked bad. There was blood everywhere. It made his head spin and his vision narrow. He had to get her out of here. He put his arms around her and teleported, just as a second blast went off, throwing them through the air. They appeared back on the hillside just as another sound like an explosion went off behind him.

Angel looked back at the prison. It was as if a bomb had gone off. Large portions of the structure had collapsed, including one whole wall of the original limestone building. Police were rushing toward it, guns drawn, calling for backup.

Alex rushed over. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” Angel didn’t understand it. Oronzi had predicted a varcolac attack, but this destruction didn’t seem anything like what had happened at the baseball stadium. There was no time to figure it out. Angel summoned the quadcopters back to their case. Two of them didn’t return, presumably destroyed in the prison. Sandra needed to get to a hospital. He held out a hand to Alex. “We need to go.” She took his hand. He sat on the quadcopter case, gripping it with his knees, and grasped Sandra’s with his other hand, hoping he could bring them all at once.

He closed his eyes and teleported. When he opened them, however, he was not back in his lab, as he had intended. He looked around in confusion. He was in a large open space: the central yard of the prison complex. The building and walls around them were demolished, and debris blocked any easy exit. “What did you do?” Alex shouted. “Get us away from here!”

Angel closed his eyes and tried again, double-checking the coordinates for his lab. They didn’t move. He tried the top of Hawk Mountain; again with no result.

“Oh, no,” Alex said.

Angel looked. Out of the wreckage, a jumpsuited figure was crawling. She hauled herself to her feet and walked unsteadily toward them. She had no eyes.

“Get us out of here!” Alex shouted.

“I can’t. It’s not working.”

They backed away from the approaching varcolac, but more prisoners were coming from the other direction, all of them without eyes. Some of them were clearly injured, blood streaming from injuries, or with an arm hanging limply. They pressed on, closing in from all directions. There was no escape.

“You’d better fix it quick,” Alex said.

“I think the varcolac is blocking it somehow.”

Angel flipped open the box, and his quadcopters lifted buzzing into the air. He controlled them through his eyejack interface, indicating places in space where they should hover, forming a circle around the humans. The varcolac-controlled prisoners raised their hands, sending out pulses of heart-stopping energy, but the quadcopters reflexively shielded against it, causing flashes of silver light.

The prisoners, now several dozen strong, bellowed at the same instant, shouting the varcolac’s frustration. It attacked again and again, but the quadcopters swerved and blocked. Fortunately, the energy to create the shield was being drawn from the fabric of the universe itself, but the energy to keep each copter flying was a standard chemical battery. And Angel knew they couldn’t have much power left.

Not only that, but the clock display in the corner of his vision read 05:43, only three minutes before the time Oronzi had predicted the varcolac would completely obliterate the prison. Whatever they did, they would have to do it fast.

“Give me control,” Alex said.

“What? No.”

“I won’t be able to explain in time. Just give me some eyejacks.”

Angel had never met this woman before, and now she wanted him to hand over his only possible weapon? But she was on his side, and she apparently knew more about how all this crazy physics worked than he did. Besides, she looked like Sandra. Angel dug out the extra pair of contacts they had brought for Alex and handed them over. The copters flashed again as the prisoners drew closer. Two of them were starting to sag in the air, their movements growing sluggish. Angel handed over his phone and sent the signal to synch it to the second pair of contacts.

“Two and a half minutes,” he said.

“Just hold on to both of us and keep trying to teleport,” Alex said.

Suddenly, instead of ten quadcopters, there were twenty. Then forty. The air was full of them, their buzzing grown to a roar. The copters surged forward, light flashing around them like a lightning storm. “This worked in the funeral home,” she said. “Let’s hope it works here.”

Angel held Alex and Sandra’s hands and closed his eyes. It was better not to look. He could still see all of his eyejack controls, and so he tried to teleport to the lab, just like she said. Nothing. Their coordinates didn’t change. Two minutes left.

A loud crash made him open his eyes despite himself, and he saw one of his copters burning on the ground. Several of the prisoners were motionless on the ground, however. The copters were everywhere at once, reacting to any attack by splitting and covering all possibilities. That didn’t stop a number of them from being destroyed. But when they managed to surround a varcolac-controlled individual with their energy shields, it would drive the varcolac out, leaving the human shell lifeless.

The copters were effectively holding back the prisoners, but that didn’t help them teleport out of there. “What now?” Angel shouted over the buzz. “We need to get out of here!”

“You have any ideas?” Alex shouted back.

He didn’t. Running was out of the question, not with Sandra unconscious on the ground next to him. Alex was improving her technique, knocking them down faster, but it didn’t matter if the varcolac was just going to destroy the whole prison complex.

He had to do something. It seemed futile, but Angel wasn’t going to spend the last minute of his life feeling sorry for himself. He brought up the teleportation module and opened the source code. There were thousands of lines of software, none of them familiar. He hadn’t written this code. But he didn’t need to read it all. Instead, he tried to teleport again, executing the module in a debugging mode, which allowed him to see each line of software as it executed. It was a common strategy for finding a coding bug, since it sometimes demonstrated that the software was executing different lines, or with different values, than the programmer expected.

With only one minute left before annihilation, Angel didn’t expect to find anything, but he did. He saw it almost immediately. There was a line in there, an impossible line. It was a simple if-check that had no earthly business in this piece of code. And it wasn’t a bug. The line couldn’t have been put there by mistake. It was sabotage.

He removed the line and recompiled the module. Thirty seconds to go. It was time for goodbye, one way or another. Angel closed his eyes and focused on his lab.