The officer in charge of the U.S. Marine Corps detachment stationed at the embassy in Damascus was a square-jawed captain named Bartleby Finch. He’d started to go gray as a young man and now the contrast with his dark skin made him appear much older than he actually was. The illusion of age went well with his general demeanor, which was so cantankerous on the best of days that it seemed only slightly crankier on this, the very worst of days.
“Where do we stand?” Finch asked in his Texas drawl.
Danny looked at him, wondering how the guy stayed so calm. He told himself it was all a front, that inside, Finch was running around in circles, screaming, just like the rest of them.
He flexed the fingers of his new hand, trying it out. Birnbaum had taken it off the robot that North usually piloted, which stood in a corner inside the muster room by the barracks. Of the two techs, Birnbaum seemed the more skilled, and Danny had watched in fascination as she had taken out her tool kit and grafted the hand on for him. It seemed somehow ghoulish.
“We’ve doubled the sentries on the wall and supplemented them with some of the Tin Men,” said Finch’s second, Lieutenant Winslow. “Though after the job the RIC did in dispersing them, further attack seems unlikely.”
“Unless the populace riots,” Captain Finch said thoughtfully.
No one had a response for that. They had gathered in Finch’s office—Trang, Kate, Finch, Winslow, and Danny, whom Kate had dragged along with Trang’s grudging assent. They all stood except for Finch himself.
“Casualties?” Finch asked.
“Three of ours,” Winslow replied. “Seven embassy staff.”
“Five of mine,” Lieutenant Trang said.
“Six,” Kate corrected. “They found Jablonsky’s head.”
Trang gave a curt nod. “Six. With the losses we’d already incurred, the platoon is down to twenty-two, myself included.”
Finch just took it all in. “The ambassador?”
“Wounded,” Winslow said. “He’ll be all right. Just a little glass shrapnel from a Molotov. Stitches in his face and arm, some aspirin. He’d have come himself but he wasn’t ready to leave his daughter’s side.”
For a moment, the curtain over Finch’s eyes rose to reveal an ocean of sadness, but the emotion vanished so quickly that Danny wondered if he’d imagined it.
“I’d forgotten the girl was here,” Finch said. “She’s injured?”
“Just shaken,” Winslow replied.
Finch nodded, stroking his chin. “Recommendations?”
“We wait,” Trang said. “Whatever this is, it can’t last forever. We have our people protected, food enough to sustain them. The army will find a way to reestablish communications. Until then, we wait for orders.”
Danny shot a look at the back of Trang’s head, then glanced at Kate. The guy had been shaken up, but Danny thought he had gotten his shit together. Apparently not.
Finch seemed unsure. “And if no one comes?”
“Someone will come,” Trang announced.
Finch did not seem convinced. It eased Danny’s mind to know that at least one of the officers had not lost his mind.
“The prisoners?” Finch asked.
“We got what we could from the German before he died,” Winslow replied. He nodded at Trang. “The lieutenant recommended one of his men, Private Hawkins, to assist in the questioning and Hawkins turned out to be very persuasive. The intel from this anarchist, Ingo, will prove invaluable—”
“But he’s dead, isn’t he?” Finch asked.
Danny blinked. “Wait, what? His injuries weren’t that severe.”
They all stared at him and he realized he had spoken out of turn.
“They were worse than they looked,” Lieutenant Winslow replied. “And Private Hawkins didn’t hesitate to take advantage of that. The prisoner expired. But now we know their numbers and we know their location. We know they have at least two vehicles—”
“Working vehicles?” Finch asked.
“Yes, sir. This has been in the planning stages a long time. None of these Bot Killers are local and all of them intend to return to their own homes if they survive the chaos. They have Humvee-TSVs whose engines and starters were removed and encased in heavy shielding. By now they’ll have reinstalled those parts.”
Danny thought about that. The Bot Killers had Humvee Troop Support Vehicles. He wondered what else they had shielded from the Pulse.
“Will they bug out, or come for their leader?” Trang asked.
“The million dollar question,” Winslow replied.
“How do we know the other prisoner is their leader?” Finch asked.
“By the smile on his face,” Kate muttered.
“Sergeant?” Finch asked.
“Sorry, sir. His cockiness is…unsettling,” Kate explained. “Whoever he is, I get the feeling he knows a lot more about all this than we do. He’s not just some Bot Killer.”
“All right, then,” Finch said, eyes narrowing. “Good information. Now that you’ve got it, let’s use it against him. Sergeant Wade, you take lead on the interrogation. Without Hawkins. If this man is the leader, I don’t want him expiring as well. But by all means you should feel free to break him.”
Danny smiled. The son of a bitch had targeted him and Kate and they still didn’t know why. The idea of breaking the man appealed to him very much.
Aimee’s security pass unlocked the door to 12, where she found a pair of support specialists babysitting the bodies of Platoon A. The canisters gave off rhythmic beeps, and status lights flickered on their control panels. Other than that, the room had a heavy silence that made her want to hold her breath as she began to weave among the canisters.
Someone else was in the room, had dragged a chair from somewhere and planted himself down among the Remote Combat Units. North glanced up at her approach and exhaled, shaking his head.
“Don’t try to tell me I’ve gotta move,” he said.
“You’re good where you are.”
“Damn right,” he said.
Aimee went from unit to unit, checking vitals. A couple of soldiers inside the canisters looked pale to her; their vitals were low, but within normal parameters. She stole glances at North, the guilt etched into his features making her feel as if she ought to say something. Then again, she didn’t want to alleviate his guilt; North had let down his platoon.
“You going to tell me?” North asked.
Aimee froze, one hand on the smooth lid of Sergeant Morello’s canister. She glanced back at him.
“Tell you what?”
North snorted, as if he might still be drunk and spoiling for a fight. She knew he was sober, but the latter part…she wasn’t sure.
“Why aren’t they awake? If an EMP fried everything—”
“Nineteen EMPs,” she corrected.
His eyes flared. “Jesus,” he said, massaging his temples. “Okay, nineteen EMPs. If comms are down and everything’s fried, they should be regaining consciousness. But the Staging Area’s got a skeleton crew and everyone else is in the control room trying to get something back online.”
She had to look away from the accusation in his eyes.
“The only thing I can think of—and this doesn’t make any sense at all, Aimee—is that nobody’s in here trying to wake them up because every one of you knows that they’re not going to wake up. I mean, otherwise this place would be flooded with techs and med staff, right?”
North got up from his chair, its legs scraping the floor, and approached her. He stood eighteen inches away, close enough to breathe the same air. A small scar ran from just beneath his left nostril to his lip, thin and white, a souvenir from childhood. Once she’d thought it sexy. His eyes were a bright blue, lacking the fear she’d seen in Kenny Wheeler’s gaze. North didn’t look afraid; he looked angry, a little bit crazy.
“Tell me what everyone else here already seems to know,” he demanded.
“God, I hate this,” she sighed, reaching up to tuck a lock of her short hair behind her ear.
“What do you hate?”
Aimee only hesitated for a moment. She had always hated the secrecy of her job and now secrets seemed meaningless. What difference would it make if she told the truth?
“If things ever go back to normal, you’ve got to swear—”
North slammed a palm down on top of Morello’s canister. “Damn it!”
The two support specialists glanced worriedly at them. Aimee held up a hand to let them know she had things under control, though she was far from certain of that.
“Maybe you want to sit back down,” she suggested.
To her surprise, North did. He sat waiting for her to speak like some errant schoolboy wondering how many detentions he would receive. He had always seemed arrogant and irritable to her—which had been sexy before it became infuriating—but for the first time she found herself thinking of him as sad.
This was his platoon. Someone owed this man the truth.
“The Tin Men have never been virtual reality soldiers,” she said. “They aren’t really Remote Infantry at all.”
North scowled. “What are you—”
“It’s called mindcasting. Transmitting consciousness like electrical signals from a human brain to a synthetic one. The robots have biological ganglia that map one-to-one with human brains. Actually, every bot has three brains, each with individualized software that imprints with and then mimics the neural pathways of its—”
His stare stopped her. The panic in his eyes made her think he might scream.
“Don’t fuck with me,” he said, his voice cold but more than a little on the verge.
Aimee’s throat went dry. “Tom, I’m not. I swear. This is all classified. Need to know. They never thought you needed to know—”
“Needed to know? They’ve been…” He glanced at the canisters all around them and began to shake his head. “No.”
“They’re not dead,” she assured him. “They’re not waking up because they’re not in their bodies at all. For all intents and purposes, right now they are the robots. With the shielding on the Tin Men and the atomic power source in every bot, they’re still operational.”
North spun around, growing more frantic. He went to Kate Wade’s canister and looked down through the small viewing window at her face, most of it covered by the headgear all the soldiers wore inside the Remote Combat Units.
“What if they’re attacked?” he asked. He ran his hands through his hair. “Christ, what if the robots are destroyed? What happens to their minds?”
Aimee took a deep breath. She lifted her hand to push her hair back again and saw that her fingers were trembling.
“There’s nothing we can do,” she admitted, hating herself in that moment. None of this had been her doing or her fault, but in that moment she felt the weight of the secret she had been charged with keeping. “They’re on their own.”
North’s eyes widened and he whipped around, staring at the walls as if he could see through them. “Nineteen satellites.”
“Yes.”
He barely seemed to hear her. “It’s not just my platoon. It’s…Jesus, it’s all of them.”
Aimee didn’t reply, but she knew her silence was confirmation enough. North ran a hand along the smooth lid of Wade’s canister, then turned and slammed his fist into Travaglini’s.
“Fuck!” He leaned on top of Travaglini’s canister and buried his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “I should be with you.”
North apologized again, then again. Aimee had a feeling he would be apologizing in his heart forever. She wanted to comfort him, but knew there was nothing she could say. For the moment, deep underground, he was alive and safe and whole—but those were the very facts that were tearing him apart inside.
She left him there, moving from canister to canister, checking vitals and telling herself that there was still hope for the men and women of Platoon A.
A pair of MPs unlocked the metal door that led into the brig. One of them stayed behind while the other accompanied Danny, Kate, and Winslow to the only occupied cell. The anarchist lay on the single cot with his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His upper torso had been tightly wrapped to keep his cracked ribs from moving around much; if he punctured a lung, they’d get no answers.
Danny knocked his metal knuckles against the bars. “Wake up, fuckface.”
Bruised and bloodied, the anarchist did not spare them so much as a glance. “I’m not sleeping.”
“We’re so glad,” Kate said.
As the MP unlocked the cell, the bearded man propped himself up to get a look at them. Danny kept his hand at his side, fingers twitching near the handle of his gun. A strange sensation passed through him; for a moment, he felt almost human, as if that twitch had been in his real fingers.
The anarchist’s curious expression blossomed into something that looked to Danny like real pleasure.
“Private Kelso,” the man said in his clipped accent. Afghani, Danny thought. “Corporal Wade. I’m glad they’ve sent you. Stay close, please. If the opportunity arises, I still intend to kill you.”
“Sergeant Wade,” Danny said, stepping in beside Kate, the two of them creating a kind of wall between the man and his freedom.
The MP stayed in the hall. Winslow moved inside the cell but stayed silent, just observing.
“A battlefield promotion,” the man said, sitting up on the edge of the cot, grim intellect gleaming in his eyes. “Congratulations, Kate.”
The intimacy of her first name set Danny off. He stepped forward, cocked his hand back to strike, but Kate grabbed his wrist.
The bastard’s grin widened. “If we kill a few more robots, you’ll be lieutenant by nightfall.”
Kate grabbed him by the throat, too fast for him to react, and hurled him against the wall. His head thumped concrete and he fell to the cot in a sprawl of limbs, sliding onto the floor, grunting at the pain in his ribs. The devil horns on Kate’s head glinted in the false light of the cell.
“Damn it!” Winslow snapped, pushing up past Danny. “This guy’s our best chance for real answers and you just—”
Danny gave Winslow a light shove, just hard enough to get his attention. He said nothing, letting the stare of robot eyes say everything to silence the lieutenant.
“He’ll live,” Kate said, though Danny wasn’t so sure. The bastard had hit his head pretty hard. “If he doesn’t wake up in the next ten seconds, you can piss on him to bring him around.”
“Or set him on fire,” Danny said.
The anarchist groaned. When he lolled his head to one side and blinked away his disorientation, Danny saw the murder in his eyes.
“You know a lot about us,” Danny said. “Now it’s our turn to get to know you.”
The man climbed back onto the cot and sat on the edge. He grabbed the sides of his head as if he feared it might fall apart, then searched his scalp for damage. When his fingers came away bloody, he gave a humorless laugh.
“What would you like to know?” he asked, glancing up at them. “I have no reason not to answer your questions. The trigger has been pulled. The apocalypse is here.”
Kate slapped the anarchist hard, metal fingers raising red welts.
This time, Winslow said nothing, but Danny saw the guy fidgeting. He wanted to step in, afraid that Kate would kill the bastard or give him brain damage or something. Out in the corridor, the MP watched without any reaction at all. If Danny read his body language correctly, the MP wanted Kate to hit the son of a bitch again.
“You’re going to answer my questions,” Kate instructed.
The anarchist spit blood onto the floor. He did not seem afraid of pain or death, just curious. “I said as much before you hit me.”
“Oh, that?” Kate said. “That was just to stop you smiling.”
“But if the smile comes back,” Danny added, “we can make it so you’re incapable.”
The smile did not return. The anarchist stared at them, then wiped the blood from his mouth. He might not be afraid of pain, but he didn’t seem inclined to ask for more.
“Shall I start with my name?” the man asked. When he spoke, Danny could see blood on his teeth from the blow Kate had given him.
“We know your name,” Danny told him. “Hanif Khan. Your man Ingo shared a lot before he died.”
The stillness that came over Khan’s face with that revelation pleased Danny very much. He hadn’t expected that.
“Your questions, then?” the anarchist said.
“You know who set off the EMP?”
Khan shook his head. “I know the name of the man who gave me my instructions, and I knew the EMP would happen. Not how it was done or who was behind it. As I said, what I know will not help you. My men were only one squad of what you call Bot Killers. There are many more. Everywhere on the planet where American robots are deployed, right now there is a group of anarchists or a jihadist sect risking their lives to destroy those robots.”
“Why?” Danny asked.
At this, Khan’s smile returned, but it was wistful. Actually amused. “Out of hatred, Private Kelso. And a desire to finish the job that the EMP began…the end of Western influence in the Middle East. The end of American influence in the world.” The beaten, bloody man gave a small shrug. “The end of America.”
“This is worldwide,” Kate said.
“Oh, Ingo didn’t tell you that?” Khan mused.
“He didn’t need to confirm it,” Danny quietly replied. “If there were any satellites still in operation, one of them would have come in range of our comms by now.”
Danny and Kate had been hiding from the truth until that moment. Even the dimmest bulbs in Platoon A had to have realized that enough time had passed for another satellite to orbit into range, but they hadn’t faced it until Danny said it aloud. Kate shot him a dark look. She was not happy to have the illusion shattered.
“Who could organize something like that?” she said. “Who would?”
The anarchist scowled. “Those who have spent their lives hating the corrupt, whorish American culture and the past seven years watching the Americans take control of the world—”
“We freed people!” Kate snarled.
Danny put a hand on her arm, quieting her, but he shared her fury. America had gotten tired of waiting for the global bullshit to end and found itself with the tools to do something about it. With the Tin Men, the United States had forced dictators to stop killing, disrupted civil wars, freed up food supplies and medicines…hell, they’d saved a thousand times more lives than they had taken. But he knew that, to many, no good they accomplished would ever be justification enough, and a part of him understood.
“You forced your will upon the world,” Khan said quietly, his voice the hiss of a cobra. “Forced your culture and your democracy and your beliefs—”
“Your people are the jihadists,” Danny replied.
“Some,” Khan agreed. “At least I admit it. Powerful religious sects, yes, but they aren’t your only enemies here. Government factions and militant groups and ordinary people are desperate to throw off the Western yoke. With the robots, your government made themselves the effective rulers of Earth, and there are many willing to risk anything to see that come to an end.”
Kate picked him up again, slammed him into the wall, and held him there, feet dangling off the ground. One of his shoes fell off and thumped to the floor.
“Follow protocol, Kate!” Danny barked.
She twisted to glare at him, still holding Khan against the wall. The little pitchfork painted on her cheek looked like a scar. For half a second, Danny forgot that this wasn’t Kate, that Kate had purple eyes and smooth brown skin and had lost her legs. He wanted to comfort her but doubted they could give each other any solace while inside these bodies.
“Fuck protocol,” she said, but she let Khan drop to the floor. He staggered a bit before he leaned against the wall. Kate stared at Danny. “We keep him alive while we decide our next move, just in case we need him. And then we—”
“We’ll need him,” Danny said, studying Khan.
“Yeah?” Kate asked. “Why’s that?”
“We know where his people here in Damascus are, but what about all the others he mentioned?” Danny said. “He’s not just some hired gun. You can see that. Whatever this operation is, he knows more than he’s telling. If that intel can save lives down the line and we kill him now…”
Kate gave a slow nod.
She slammed a fist into the wall, stared at Winslow and the MP out in the corridor, and then turned toward the anarchist. The only lead they had to whoever had planned all of this, and whatever else they might have in store.
“These people you’re working for,” she said, “they just sent the whole world back to the Stone Age, and you’re okay with that?”
Khan took a shaky breath and righted himself, pushing off from the wall to stand upright. He had just taken part in the ruination of modern civilization, had contributed to the deaths of who-knew-how-many, and he was proud of himself.
“My people lived in caves in the mountains of Afghanistan,” he said. “Some live in deserts and others in slums. Most of them exist in something like the Stone Age already. Their lives will hardly change. Humanity will return to tribes and small nation-states. Warfare will be local. Savage conquerors will be confined to their own landmasses and the reach of their ground forces. Tell me, why should any of that trouble me?”
A hard rap came on the metal bars of the cell.
“Hey,” Winslow said. “Let’s go. I need to report to the captain.”
Danny and Kate exchanged a glance and she nodded. She exited first and Danny followed, backing out of the cell. Hanif Khan watched them depart, beginning to hunch a little from the pain of the physical punishment he’d taken at the time of his capture and during this visit.
“You didn’t ask the most important question,” he said, attempting to comb the blood-matted parts of his beard with his fingers.
Danny froze. “Why you targeted the two of us, you mean?”
Khan’s eyes darkened. They were a shark’s eyes then. Black and dead, full of hunger and disdain.
“Not the question I had in mind,” Khan replied. “No, I’m just surprised you haven’t asked me why you’re still here, you Tin Men. The so-called Remote Infantry. Still inside your robots.”
“We didn’t ask because we know the answer,” Danny said. “We know.”
Kate shot him a haunted look and Danny glanced away. He couldn’t look at her right now, not when Khan had just confirmed the worst fears that had been niggling at the back of his mind.
Khan spit on the floor again, this time more in commentary than to rid his mouth of blood. “You thought another satellite would pass by, that your minds would transmit then.”
“We hoped, yes,” Kate admitted.
“And now you’re trapped inside those shells forever and you don’t have the first clue how it’s possible,” Khan said, voice full of mocking sympathy. “But that isn’t what would bother me the most, if I were you. No, what would really trouble me was that your superiors kept you in the dark all this time, that you had no idea what was really being done to you…
“But your enemies knew all along.”