Prologue

237 mph.

That’s what the dial, glowing softly blue, proclaimed to the darkness. And by the way the tires howled against the asphalt and the crisp wind ripped at his suit, the autonomous motorcycle’s hostage believed it. He squeezed the handlebars tighter and gritted his teeth into the chinrest, cursing the thick straps that bound his wrists in place.

It was a clear April night in 2056, and whatever countryside through which the motorcycle raced, it did so like a loon diving into the dark depths of one of the many lakes that blinked past, its headlight off and its engine a mere hum. Its wake was the roar of the tires and the gust that shook the moon-tipped, barely budding branches into nervous applause. If anyone were awake enough to witness its passage, they only heard it long after it had become the ghost of the night once more.

It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, waking to find himself stretched out on his stomach with a throbbing headache and no guess as to where he was being sent. The motorcycle, of course, knew, but he’d been blocked from interfacing with its controls to either find out or change course. He’d considered leaning to at least control the direction in which he was headed, but even without the chalk scrawled across his helmet visor, and even with his enhanced sight, navigating a road in this darkness at this speed would have been suicidal.

Most vehicles were autonomous, but motorcycles were not among them—at least not legally. They had been risky back in the day when it was solely up to the driver to discern danger and react—or not—but take away even that and expect a computer to keep it upright? And this was at sane speeds of 80 mph or less… Whoever had done this to him had known that the risk, simply from the technological capability of the vehicle, would contain him until he arrived at the mysterious destination.

Or die in transit, he thought mirthlessly.

The only other option he could think of was transforming his way out of this mess—that would surely break his restraints—but he’d only just done it successfully for the first time the week prior, and it hadn’t been a quick, graceful, or painless ordeal. And if he were honest with himself, he wasn’t exactly eager to try again. Regardless, all the willpower he possessed would not help him do it now without exceeding the motorcycle’s ability to counterbalance him, and it was no stretch to imagine it sending him careening to his death.

He suspected Goufan had had something to do with this, as their relationship had always erred on the side of hostility, but beyond that, he couldn’t think of why he’d do such a thing. And for the life of him, he couldn’t remember how he’d come to be in this situation at all. The last thing he remembered… he thought back, hard, having trouble sifting through his muddied thoughts. The last thing he remembered before waking up on this statistically probable death machine was training, cleaning up after training… But it was so cloudy that he didn’t trust what his brain was reluctantly proffering. It seemed likely he’d been drugged, or knocked out, or both.

But why? What had he done to deserve this?

Whatever the case, there was nothing he could do about it now, so he would have to resign himself to waiting until his arrival. He wished he could fall back into unconsciousness, but by now, his stomach was too knotted with stress, his mind too present, for that to happen. His grip on the handlebars tightened even more. As the motorcycle straightened from a rare curve, the dials lit up red and the alarms briefly stung the hum that had become his silence. That’s all there was time for before the vehicle beneath him shattered and he felt his body launched into the darkness. He remembered his training just in time to curl up into a ball before impact.

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“Jim, you hear that?”

 

The alarm was beeping again.

 

“That’s the alarm, George,” Jim grunted.

 

George sat up with a slight groan, swinging his feet over the edge of the old duck-patterned couch. He squinted at the blur that was his brother, who was settling back into the reclining chair, then felt for his glasses. He squinted through the lenses, and this time he could see the deep lines in his brother’s face contrasted in the moonlight. Above Jim’s head, across the room, the security box blinked red and an irritating buzzer reverberated in the stillness.

 

George snorted. “I can hear that, you old geezer. I was talking about the thunder.”

 

“What thunder?” Jim cracked a skeptical eye open. “You’re going senile.”

 

George looked over his shoulder, out the window, and observed that the only cloud in the sky was rising vertically towards the moon. He pushed himself to his feet and stared at the cloud that wasn’t a cloud at all. It was smoke.

 

He stooped and stood against the wall next to the window, glaring down at his unconcerned brother. “Jim!” he hissed. “Our drone hit something!”

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Jim’s eyes snapped open, but he didn’t move except to dig his fingers into the armrests. “Wasn’t a raccoon?” he breathed.

 

George shook his head.

 

Keeping his body low, Jim crawled out of the recliner and sidled up next to George. He handed George the handgun sitting on the side table, then crept across the room to the dining room table. He knew where the creaky spots were, so like a cat, he danced over the floor without breaking the silence. He felt a bit better once his rifle was in his hands and the alarm was silent.

 

“What are you doing?” George asked as Jim cracked the front door.

 

Through the open door, Jim could see the smoke for himself. It rose from several heaps stretched just down the road. They were on fire, but the flames were all that moved. By this time, the smoke not only blocked out the southern stars but had also begun to haze out the moon. Jim opened the door wider.

 

“Jim!”

 

He stepped through and paused to suck in the crisp spring night air. Above, the drone lazily circled the property, its LED blinking green every few seconds.

 

A moment later, George was at his side, rubbing his handgun. “We can get to the shelter through the back door, remember?”

 

“Nothin’s gonna hurt us.” Jim took up a confident pace towards the wreckage. “Our drone’s still flying around, and whatever was hit is most certainly dead now.”

 

When they reached the highway, they had to pick their way around pieces of metal and several streaks of oil burning out. Chunks of the engine billowed smoke, and something soft burned. Jim bent to examine these soft things, and after some consideration, decided they weren’t flesh.

 

“We hit some sort of vehicle, but it wasn’t auto.”

 

“Autos don’t go fast enough,” George agreed.

 

“That, and all this,” Jim gestured to the wreckage, “isn’t large enough to be auto.”

 

“Where’s the driver, then?”

 

Jim scanned the road. Most of the flames had died out by this point, and with the smoke floating above, he felt that he was experiencing a hazy dream. Looking in the direction of the farmhouse, he realized that the wreckage tended toward it, to the right of the road. He moved to the edge of the pavement and saw that several pieces of the decimated vehicle had rolled into the flooded ditch.

 

Jim, without saying anything, set his gun on the road and skidded down the slope.

 

“You think he’s in there?” George called over Jim’s splash into the murky water.

 

“Could be a she,” Jim said. With each step, he kicked, the water swirling around his careful movements. He held his arms up above the water and pivoted from footstep to footstep. His concentration was only broken by the dousing wave from George’s ungraceful descent into the ditch. Jim spluttered a few vile names at his brother, but otherwise they waded in silence.

 

“I found something,” George’s voice sliced through the silence. He dove down, and Jim sloshed to the spot where, a moment later, George broke the surface of the ditchwater with a body draped in the crook of his arm. Jim grabbed the sagging side, and scrabbling up the muddy embankment, they dragged the body up to the road.

 

“He ain’t a she,” George panted as they let the body sag onto the asphalt.

 

“Shut up, George.”

 

The brothers looked to each other, gasping, then studied the body. It wore a thick black military-style suit with the silhouette of a dragon in flight on the front. The Sigma crest decorated the left shoulder. 

 

“Drone came in handy, huh?” George said softly, but then clamped up and stared at Jim. To their astonishment, the body shifted a little, coughing.

 

“He should be dead,” Jim breathed.

 

“He’s been submerged, what… five minutes? More?”

 

They didn’t move for a long moment.

 

George shook his head. “What do we do with him?”

 

Jim knelt and attempted to pull the helmet off. When it didn’t budge, he grunted, feeling that it was continuous under the chin.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“Gimme a second.” His fingers brushed over the smooth surface until they slipped into a groove in the back. A lever. He flicked it upwards with his fingernails, and with an indiscernible click! the helmet fell to pieces to reveal the face of a young teenaged boy.

 

“Jim, I can’t shoot a kid,” George said, his voice wavering.

 

Jim wiped a hand down his face, holding it over his mouth as he sighed. The air hissed through his fingers just the same as the willpower to pick up his gun flew from his mind. “He can’t have been alone.”

 

“How did he find us?”

 

Jim squeezed his eyes shut.

 

“What do we do?”

 

He reopened his eyes and stood. “We hide out in the shelter. They won’t be able to find us, and hopefully after a week or two, they’ll give up. Then we leave.”

 

“What about the kid?”

 

“The kid comes with us.”

 

George didn’t argue. Instead, he squatted down and picked up the boy, slinging him over his shoulder. A groan, and he stood straight again.

 

“You got him?”

 

George nodded. “He’s light. Otherwise, I wouldn’t.”

 

Jim retrieved his rifle, and with George carrying the unconscious stranger, the brothers staggered back to their stolen farmhouse.