Babylon Black
“What the hell happened out there?”
Yuri’s voice carried across the length of the quiet warehouse. All around him, the assembled operators fanned out, facing Peter and Gregory. And Zen.
By their standards, the operation had gone remarkably smoothly. All objectives completed, no living human hurt. The worst injuries they’d picked up were cuts and bruises, nothing worth worrying about. Their armor had carried them through the storm of war, stopping even armor-piercing ammunition. Their coilguns had produced no muzzle flash, keeping the enemy from identifying their positions, buying them time to take cover when the kamikazes arrived.
Though none of the Angels had survived, no one was particularly torn up about that. Not even Peter. They were only bots. Though expensive, they were replaceable. Yuri realized that he saw the bots the same way the Void saw its puppets, but unlike the members of the VC, the robots had never been sentient, never mind alive. And that made the difference.
Nonetheless, a quiet fury had built up in him during the flight to the safe house. Fury, and horror. In his years as a warrior, standing against the New Gods and their monsters, he’d seen so much, done even more. He’d thought he’d been inured by now. But as he witnessed the cyborgs and the commandos tear each other apart, Babylon tearing itself apart, he understood a new depth of dread.
If the chaos was as widespread as he’d feared, there was no stopping what was coming next.
“Hell,” Gregory replied.
Yuri glared at him, one part admonishment, one part invitation.
“What you saw at C8 is occurring all over the country. All over the world,” Gregory said. “My sources are telling me that they’re seeing the Sinners and the VC undergoing the mother of all meltdowns. They’ve completely lost their minds. They’re just destroying themselves and everything and everyone around them. We’re facing chaos on an unprecedented scale.”
Kayla rested her hands on her hips. “ZT, Peter, what did you do?”
Zen exhaled sharply. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Yuri demanded.
“Look, I was desperate, alright? We all were. So we injected malware into every Sinner and VC computer in the area. All the malware we’d developed to counter them. It looks like the malware spread much, much faster than we thought.”
“Were they meant to drive people mad?” Yuri asked.
Zen empathetically shook his head.
“No. No way. They were designed to brick computers, launch automated distributed denial of service attacks, steal or delete critical data… They weren’t meant to affect humans. During our tests, we didn’t see anything that could affect the brain.”
“We did test them on reverse-engineered implants,” Peter said.
“Well, yes, but… Oh.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Will said.
Zen inhaled.
“We tested them on implants in a lab environment, or on virtual machines and emulators. We didn’t—couldn’t—test them on implanted humans.”
“You’re saying that you didn’t know the neurological effects of hacking brain implants?” Gregory asked, his voice straining to contain his credulity.
“All our malware did was to brick the implants,” Zen said. “Functionally it’s no different from injecting counter-nano.”
Peter frowned. Then he swiveled about in his chair and furiously tapped away on his keyboard.
“You’ve thought of something?” Karim asked.
Peter shushed him, his face contorted in intense concentration.
“Look at Marcy,” Zen continued. “We injected her with counter-nano. She had her implants removed. She turned out fine.”
“I also conducted a depossession,” Yuri said slowly. “We removed the presence of the Void before removing the implants.”
Zen went pale.
“Oh. You think… that had something to do with it?”
“You know how difficult it is to capture a VC alive,” Yuri said. “When we disable the implants, the Void tries to re-establish a connection through the implants—or deny the detainee’s knowledge to us.”
“But the implants were disabled!”
“No,” Peter said softly.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“The implants are still physically present in the body. They serve as anchors for the Void. The Void can still act upon the subject; the implant merely makes it easier. Remember that the Void has been around well before the development of the first implants. Back then it used tattoos or other body modifications. The implants follow the same principle.
“Even if you disable the implants, they are still in the body. The only way to truly render them safe is to remove the presence of the Void completely.
“Over the past few years, the VC has been transitioning to biocomputer implants. It is injected and grown inside a subject, instead of merely implanted. The brain develops blood vessels and synapses to feed and connect to the implants. The malware we used to target the VC’s biocomputers forced them to read a sequence of killer DNA. The result would turn them into an inert lump of biological material.”
George’s eyes widened.
“You’re saying you gave them brain tumors?!”
Peter rocked slowly back and forth.
“Yes. We hadn’t thought about it during the testing phase. We thought it was the equivalent of bricking a machine. In hindsight, however it was obvious.”
“What about VC that use the old nano-based implants?” Gregory asked. “How do you explain that?”
“The Void,” Yuri said. “Every loss enrages it. It will seek to force a reconnection with its puppets through their implants. If the implants are bricked… it could scramble their brains.”
“Shit… And what about the Singularity Network? Why are they going crazy?” George demanded.
“Well, a TBC is basically a brain in a box,” Zen said. “The brain itself is wired up with neural implants to send and receive information. If the implants were scrambled…”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Will said.
“Peter, what was Firestarter supposed to do?” Zen asked.
He was still rocking away, his arms now crossed.
“It is a three-part worm. It seizes control of an infected system and uses it to send copies of itself to other connected machines. Then it sends a copy of all data inside the machine to a designated server. Finally, it executes a fork bomb. It continually replicates itself until the system’s resources are completely starved.”
“What about Pandora?”
Peter rocked harder and faster, a living metronome out of sync with the universe.
“Zip bomb. One hundred and eight nested layers of compressed data, totaling four point four exabytes. It masquerades as a normal data packet. When a computer attempts to unpack it, the amount of resources needed will crash or disable it.”
“And there’s the Reaper. The virus we developed specifically to target network nodes and corrupt their firmware. Except that the Sinner network topology allows for Superusers and their direct downlines to employ their own implants as backup network nodes.”
“Yes,” Peter whispered.
“If a Sinner computer were hit with all three viruses at once… what would happen?”
Peter’s voice became barely audible.
“I don’t know.”
Zen took a long, deliberate breath.
“Each TBC will be hit with a triple whammy. There’ll be huge amounts of junk data flowing into the brain. At the same time, the processor’s resources will be rapidly depleted. Anyone designated as a backup network node will have his Mindgem implant bricked. The brain isn’t meant to handle so much data with so few resources—especially not with a malfunctioning neural implant.”
“My God…” Yuri said.
“This isn’t limited to TBCs, is it?” Kayla asked.
Peter ran his fingers through his hair.
“Well… theoretically… no. We didn’t have much time to test and debug the software. Hypothetically, anyone with a Mindgem implant is vulnerable.”
“And the virus is spreading across the entire network, not just C8.”
“Yes,” he whispered softly.
“Fuck…” Will breathed. “There are kids with Mindgem implants! Entire generations of civilians with Mindgems! You drove them mad too?!”
Zen looked away, the shadow of his sins filling his eyes.
“I… I don’t know. No one knows. Yet. But an ordinary Sinner’s implants aren’t as extensive as a TBC’s. Maybe…”
“There’s no maybe,” Yuri said. “We have to assume the answer is yes.”
“Fuck!” Zen said.
He looked away and buried his face in his hands.
“I didn’t… I wouldn’t… I… Fuck!”
“Is there a way to fix it?” Kayla asked softly.
“Deactivation and surgical removal of all neural implants, followed by extensive psychiatric treatment,” Zen said softly. “Difficult enough for the small number of Sinners who experience adverse effects from implants every year. With potentially hundreds of thousands, even millions of people affected at once…”
The words hung in the air, the weight of the implications horrifyingly obvious. There was no way the healthcare system could treat so many psychiatric casualties all at once. Even a fraction of the number of patients would collapse the system under its own weight.
And with every passing second, the numbers of the digitally deranged grew exponentially.
“Why is this happening around the world? Wouldn’t the Sinners and the VC have disconnected infected networks the moment they realized something was wrong?” Gregory asked.
Peter went still. So still Yuri could barely tell he was breathing.
“That was my call,” Peter said.
“What do you mean?”
“C8 represents a single point of failure. Both the Void Collective and the Singularity Network are aware of it. I had to account for the possibility of backup sites. Even if there were only one site, both factions could simply restart the project elsewhere, and harden it against the kind of attack we executed.
“The only way to prevent that from happening was to inflict such a significant blow that any attempt to rebuild this capability would be severely hindered, or prevented altogether. That meant uploading the malware to all vulnerable computers around the world—not just at C8. This would overwhelm both factions, preventing them from undoing what we’ve done.”
“My God…” Yuri muttered. “Those other viruses you mentioned earlier, you developed them to knock out the VC and the Sinners, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I asked him to,” Gregory said.
Yuri whirled to face him. A storm of fury and confusion raged in his heart. His hands clenched into iron fists. His eyes narrowed into slits. His lips parted—but his words failed him.
“We needed a trump card,” Gregory said. “The New Gods overmatch us in every way. But the VC and the Sinners are dependent on their networks. If we could disrupt them, it could give us a strategic advantage. I asked Peter to develop viruses to do just that.”
“And I succeeded…” Peter whispered.
“You succeeded, all right,” Yuri growled. “And now the VC and the Sinners are tearing the city apart!”
“It was our doomsday option,” Gregory said, hands raised placatingly. “In case the New Gods launched a night of long knives. We thought the viruses would simply shut down their networks. We didn’t think they would drive them mad.”
“That’s on me,” Peter admitted. “We never studied the effects of the malware on live subjects. We couldn’t have known what they would do.”
“And besides, I didn’t authorize the deployment. I didn’t even know Peter had unleashed the viruses until just now.”
Gregory glared accusingly at Peter. The hacker rocked again, staring into nothing and everything all at once.
Volcanic rage erupted in Yuri’s chest. He exhaled, discharging his anger into the air and the earth. What’s done was done. More anger would merely drive Peter deeper into his shell. Yuri took two more breaths, steadying his voice. Then, at last, he spoke.
“Why didn’t you tell us about the doomsday option?” Yuri asked.
“OPSEC,” Gregory answered reflexively.
“Because I saw no need to deploy it for this operation,” Peter said.
“Go on,” Yuri said, nodding at Peter.
“The original payload Zen and I put together would be sufficient to knock out Project Concord. Injecting more malware would be overkill. It would take more time and expose you to further danger.
“Then… the enemy arrived in force. Zen said he needed help. I decided the best way I could help was to force both factions to respond to a much larger crisis, preventing them from sending more reinforcements. Since both factions had isolated C8 from their network, I decided to attack them from my end.”
Zen straightened.
“I had a part in this too,” he said. “I coordinated the malware injection with Peter, along with the cyber cadre. We marshaled our computing resources to create a massive distributed network, then attacked every vulnerable Sinner and VC system we could identify, using all the malware we had developed. Including the doomsday viruses.”
“You just hadn’t thought about what this would do,” Yuri said.
“We didn’t have time. Besides, none of us are neurocyberneticists. We had no way of knowing what the malware would do to living brains.”
“I didn’t know what they did until it was over,” Gregory said.
The politician in Gregory was in full damage control mode, distancing himself from the doomsday event. It was a survival trait in the halls of power. But not here. Not now.
Rage and horror warred in Yuri’s heart. On one hand, if Zen and Peter hadn’t done what they’d did, everyone in the entry team would be dead. On the other hand, they’d also sentenced millions of people to a flavor of digital insanity never before seen on the planet—and who knew how many of them were innocent. On the gripping hand, Peter’s cold calculus was right. Without a permanent solution, one as drastic as this, all they were doing was buying time before the Sinners and the VC restarted Project Concord. On the fourth hand…
Yuri squeezed his eyes shut and massaged the bridge of his nose.
He was a man. Only a man. He wasn’t fit to judge something of this magnitude. That was up to God. Though the Bible and the teachings pointed to the Way, he had no idea how the Church Fathers would have judged something like this. And it didn’t matter now.
The consequences of this cybergeddon would unfold over the coming hours and days. The world would never be the same again. Fresh horrors were coming, horrors on a scale no man had ever witnessed.
What was done was done. That book was closed now. Judgment would have to wait. There were more important things to do now.
“What are you thinking?” Kayla asked.
“Babylon Black,” Yuri said. “Only this time, we started the fire.”
“Shit…” James said.
Will cracked his knuckles. “Looks like we’re in for a hell of a ride.”
“We have to assume the worst,” Yuri said. “The Sinners and the VC have been completely knocked out. We’ve got armies of mentally disturbed persons roaming the streets, heavily armed and highly dangerous, and totally hostile to everyone around them. Public infrastructure will suffer massive degradation. There’s going to be a massive power vacuum. The rest of the New Gods will move in to ‘stabilize’ the situation, and grab everything they can.”
“Minor Dark Powers will rise up too,” Karim said. “They’ll try to carve out their own fiefdoms again, like they did after the Temple Commission did their thing.”
“But worse,” James said.
“Much worse,” Karim agreed.
“What’s the worst case scenario?” Kayla asked.
Gregory’s poker face crumbled into dust, revealing black despair, naked and unfathomable.
“A war of all against all. Every god and every power scrambling to grab as much of the pie as they can. Dark Powers, terrorists, mercenary groups and organized crime syndicates jumping into the fray. Law enforcement, military and emergency services will be overwhelmed. The government will collapse.”
“‘Things fall apart, the center cannot hold’,” Kayla quoted. “‘Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’”
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Babylon to be born?” Yuri murmured.
“The beast with seven heads and ten horns?” Will asked.
Yuri raised an eyebrow. Maybe Will had studied the Bible more deeply than Yuri had thought.
“May as well be,” Yuri said.
“What’s the plan?” Kayla asked.
“Priority one is to get our people to safety,” George said. “Nothing else matters without that.”
Yuri nodded. “We need to hole up someplace safe and ride out the apocalypse.”
“Moreno Island,” James said. “We’ve been preparing for this for years. Get everyone you can to Saint Lucille.”
“I’ve got to evacuate Galen the White, along with the temple militia,” Karim said. “After that, though, I expect he’ll want in on the action.”
“I don’t think any of us will be content to just sit around and wait for the gods to kill each other,” Gregory said.
“I need to move Marcy to safety. After that, I can run cyberwar from anywhere in the world,” Zen said.
“I’ve got an entire town to evacuate,” Will said. “The Church District, anyway. Although there isn’t a significant Sinner or VC presence there, if the New Gods come to blows in Babylon, Riveria will blow up too.”
“And this time, they’ll be playing for all the marbles,” Yuri said.
“Red Raven is ready to assist,” George said. “Just tell us what you need.”
“The support cadre and I will activate our rural safe houses for anyone who can’t make it to Moreno,” Gregory said. “I also expect to be recalled to government service soon. I’ll do what I can from the inside to help you out.”
“I’m staying here,” Peter said. “This is my mess. I have to help clean up.”
“Whoa, whoa, the whole damn world is about to fall apart. You shouldn’t stay here,” Will said.
“I can’t do nothing.”
“Come to Moreno,” James urged. “We’ll help you get set up.”
“Even high speed Internet?”
“Everything you need, we’ll get it for you.”
Peter nodded. “Very well. I’ll leave as soon as I’ve packed up.”
“What about you, Yuri? What are you going to do?” Kayla asked.
“I’ve got to get my parents to safety. The Christian community too. As many of them as I can,” Yuri said.
“Let me help.”
“What about your folks?”
“They’ll be fine. They’re up in the mountains, where the New Gods can’t reach them. I’ll be able to help.”
“Appreciate it,” Yuri said, then turned to the rest of the operators. “Our mission now is to evacuate noncombatants, critical personnel and materiel to Moreno. Farmer and Spider will move to Moreno to prepare for a mass influx of refugees. Boomer and Red Raven will head to Riveria. ZT will pick up Marcy and his gear. Lycan, Deadeye and I will stay here to conduct evacuation operations.”
“And I will coordinate the ex-STS and the Federal government response,” Gregory added.
“Once I’ve identified a staging area in Babylon, I will send word. We will link up, then conduct the evacuation to Moreno,” Yuri continued. “After we arrive in Moreno, we will consolidate with other friendly forces, then hold the island against hostile incursions.
“Given the current situation, we must expect a grid down situation. Pack accordingly. Our secondary objective is to establish reliable comms in the Greater Babylon AO, independent of the grid, at least for the duration of the operation.”
“I’ve got a transceiver stashed away,” Zen said. “I’ll take it with me when I return. Once it’s set up, we’ll have radio and cell comms.”
Yuri nodded tightly. “Good. Until then, we’ll have to improvise, and develop the situation as necessary.”
In his mind’s eye, he saw a future of blood and fire. A future so fluid and so chaotic it was impossible for any one man to reimpose order. Any long-term plan they set now would be useless. Better to move everyone to safety first, then see what else they could do.
It was all they could do.
Yuri spent a few more minutes to complete the operations order. The second he was done, the group dispersed. Red Raven stayed behind to help Peter tear down the safe house. Gregory rushed off to his vehicle, speaking hurriedly on his eyeshields. Zen flew off in one direction, Will headed in another, Karim went to Babylon.
That left Yuri and Kayla, walking together alone, under the starless night.
The growing insanity had crept across North Valley. Gunfire and screams and sirens carried through the night. Come daylight, Yuri knew, it would only get worse. And they were planning to plunge into the heart of madness.
Here in the industrial park, there was an oasis of tranquility. A temporary one, of course. It would last only until people realized they needed shelter from the coming storm. They had to be long gone before then, every trace of their presence erased.
But, for now, he was… if not at peace, then at least calm.
Unbidden, his hand drifted to Kayla’s. Their skin brushed against each other, and stuck.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
And took her hand.
She smiled.
And squeezed.
“There’s so much I want to say,” Yuri said. “So much I _have _to say.”
“Me too.”
“I guess you know at least some of it. And we both know there’s still a lot we have to do.”
She nodded. “We’ve got to sit down and talk properly. But… just… not now.”
Was there any better time to talk than at the end of the world? Yes, actually. After they’d seen to everyone’s security. After finding another moment of peace.
Just, not now.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” Yuri said.
“Me too.”
Hand-in-hand, they walked across the asphalt parking lot in silence, all the way to their cars.
“What do you plan to do?” she asked.
“I need to talk to my parents, try to convince them to leave.”
“You don’t sound optimistic.”
“They’re stubborn. They stayed put even while the New Gods were actively hunting me.”
“But this time is different.”
He sighed. “Yeah. This time, I have to talk them into leaving.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Set up safe houses around Babylon. Cash-only motels and such. You know the drill. Oh, and retrieve all our gear from storage too. Something tells me we’ll need them.”
She nodded. “And Lamb?”
“Yeah. We need to warn him too.”
“And requisition as much of his gear as we can.”
“Of course.”
He turned to her. In the deepness of the night, all he could make out was her silhouette and her scent. Sweat and blood, powder and death. She was everything he expected a princess of war to smell like.
She took his other hand. For a long moment, they pressed their foreheads against each other, letting their sweat and skin mingle.
They said nothing. In that nothing they said everything they had to say.
Finally, reluctantly, they let go.
“Good luck, and Godspeed,” Yuri said.
This was not a goodbye. They would see each other again, soon. Though operational exigencies demanded that they operate separately, for now, he knew deep down that they would soon reunite.
Perhaps he hadn’t completely exited his state of hyperawareness.
Then she leaned in and kissed him in the cheek.
Yuri blinked.
Blinked again.
“Um…” he muttered.
She laughed.
Okay, maybe he wasn’t that aware after all.
“See you in Babylon,” she said.
Smiling, she turned to go. He popped the trunk of his gravcar, taking his time to load up his gear. But, really, he just couldn’t bear to leave ahead of her.
She climbed into her gravcar. In the darkness, he sensed her waving at him. He waved back.
She took off.
He waited.
He watched.
And then, when she’d finally disappeared from view, he climbed into his gravcar.
He wiped down his face and touched the spot where she’d kissed him. There was still a lingering warmth on his palm, or maybe it was just his imagination. Smiling, he strapped in and started up his gravcar.
In darkness, he took off into the air and headed for Babylon, city of gods and monsters, city of hope and fear, city of the deranged and the damned.
