Chapter 20
"Vicky! Wake up! Vicky!" A hand was rocking her at the shoulder, shaking her out of deep slumber.
Vicky squinted up in the direction of the voice, her eyes nearly shut against the sudden light in her bedroom. "Leon? What is it?" She rubbed her eyes and sat up.
Leon looked practically terrified. He deposited his phone in her hands, screen towards her. "The Servant just called you, but couldn't get through. She called me next, and said this just got posted online." He pressed play.
It was a recording of the inside of a bar, probably somewhere in the Midwest by the music in the background. The camera was centered on a tall, African-American man at the bar, looking relaxed and chatting with two other people. It was slightly unfocused though, as if the camera was a distance away from the man.
Then a commotion started offscreen. The sound rapidly changed into a fight, and the man turned to look. His friends hurriedly made their way out of the bar. In an instant there was another man right there in front of him, already bloody and looking crazed. He stumbled past the first man initially, but then turned and raised a fist.
He never got to throw his punch. In the blink of an eye the first man jabbed the heel of his palm into his attacker's face, temporarily blinding him and knocking him back. He stumbled briefly, holding his face, and then collapsed.
The video paused right there, and then rewound. A slow-motion replay of the hit followed, and it paused again just after the second man fell. A green circle was drawn over the second man, and a voice provided some context. "This is Billy Marks, resident of Indianapolis, and overall ordinary guy. He had a few too many drinks last night, and got a bit out of hand. He was taken to the hospital after this, and he'll recover, but his nose was broken by that hit. Some bits of bone were even driven up into his sinuses!"
A red circle was drawn around the first man. "This is Terrell Johnson. Former navy seal and decorated combat officer. Or he was, anyway." A tiny circle was drawn inside it, highlighting the unmistakable glint of metal from the top of his head. "Now he's just a coded cyborg zombie, under their control."
The bar vanished, replaced by a hawkish-looking thin white man wearing a brush cut and formal suit. "I'm Dale King, and I put Humanity First. For years we've been warning you that these coded freaks aren't what they say. They claim that their mind-control implants don't let them hurt anyone, but take a look at the tape! That thing put Billy Marks in the hospital, and look at it! Not a trace of emotion on its face. It might as well have been swatting a fly!" A shot of the altercation as it happened was superimposed to the left of King. Terrell's face did look quite calm, despite what he was about to do.
"Now the cops showed up a few minutes later and arrested.. that thing that used to be Terrell Johnson, but the threat isn't over. There are thousands more like them, all over the world! For any of you blind, submissive sheep out there who still think that these monsters are cuddly little-" Leon paused the recording, still looking distressed.
"He goes on like that for a while, but that's the only footage he's got," Leon explained.
Vicky felt a dull ache that had nothing to do with all the walking she'd done yesterday. She pulled out her phone and turned it on. It was a good thing guides and their orientees were supposed to live next door to each other. Leon hadn't needed to run far to get her.
"Is that guy really one of us?" Leon asked, as she dialed Holly.
Vicky shook her head. "He can't be. There's never been any coded person capable of violence before."
Holly answered immediately. "Have you seen the video?"
"Yes. I know you don't keep a record of our patients, but do you know if any of the surgeons can remember his face?"
"I just spoke to them. None of them recognize him, but that's no surprise. They do surgeries like that all day long!" Holly paused for a moment. "We have to confirm this, don't we?"
Vicky grimaced. "Even if it's just to disprove it, yes we do. The video said he was arrested. Do we know where he was taken, and how long ago?"
Another voice cut in over the line. "Vicky, it's Max. Johnson was taken to the nearest police station, just outside Indianapolis. I've already got a boat down at the docks waiting for you, and I'm setting up a private flight from Miami out to Indiana. I've got a lawyer friend up in Cincinnati who will fly over and meet you there before you go in. If Johnson is one of ours, my guy will put the fear of God into those cops."
Vicky almost smiled. As usual, Max wasn't just reacting to the situation, but predicting what they would need to do next. And also as usual, taking it a bit too far in the process.
"I'm sending Dr. Harcourt down to the docks with you," Holly added. "He'll have the equipment you need to examine the code, if it is one. Let's all hope he's just some guy who had a plate put in his head. Or better yet, that this is some kind of setup by Humanity First and he's just a paid actor."
"Yeah, I'm crossing my fingers here," Vicky said earnestly, and hung up. She got out of bed and quickly looked around the room, thinking hard. Harcourt would have to bike down here from uptown to get to the boat, so she had a little time. She had to pack some things though, quickly.
She'd forgotten about Leon! He was still standing there, looking angry now. "Leon, I'm so sorry, but I have to go. If it were anything else-"
"No, I get it," he said understandingly. "Don't worry about it. This is bigger than any one orientation. I'll just.. keep on learning while you're gone. Here, let me help you pack some things," he added as if he could read her mind. He looked at her clothing drawer, and then moved over to her computer instead and started unplugging cords from it.
Vicky looked at the back of his head sadly. Leon was making progress, but he didn't deserve to be adrift, alone like this. She would have to call Holly from the plane, and make sure he had a temporary guide. "Of all the things to happen," she grumbled as she started gathering some clothes. "Fifty-eight percent of the island wanted me to be their ambassador."
"I was one of them," Leon said wryly from his side of the room. He paused suddenly. "You be careful out there, ok? Those Humanity First hate-peddlers know what you look like for sure. For all we know, they're expecting you to show up!"
"I know. Max is sure to hook us up with some security when we get there, but an ambassador's job isn't always safe." She sighed after a moment. Like it or not, she was doing the job. "It looks like I'm being pressed into service."
-.-
The boat and plane ride were both frustrating and uneventful. Terrell Johnson hadn't made (or perhaps hadn't been able to make) his phone call yet, so they had no way of verifying if he was coded yet. He was a black man, in a very white state, in a very white city, and in a police station on violent charges. Vicky wondered if the poor man was even still alive to examine.
During the flight, Dale King's video went viral. Despite the early hour, hundreds of thousands of people viewed it in just a few minutes. Other Humanity First spokesmen- and so far they were all men- began uploading their own excoriating takes on coded people. Vicky tried not to feel depressed about that. They had been hating her for a while now, she reminded herself. This wasn't anything new.
King's real name was Simon Beloka, but he'd really doubled down on his stage name and audience. He'd put out literally hundreds of videos, going back almost twenty years- long before coded people had been around. Just like Tom had said in his latest interview, it seemed that most hate-peddlers were able to switch targets for their hatred as easily as pressing a tv remote.
Max's lawyer friend Keith called them during the flight, and she instructed him not to wait for them to get there. Even if Terrell wasn't coded, he deserved some good representation. As if that wasn't irony, given her new job. Keith called back shortly, saying that Terrell was all right, and that he claimed to be one of them. After that, it was just a waiting game.
When they finally got to the police station at about seven am local time, there was a small group of protesters already present at the main entrance. From the signs and chants, they were definitely here because of Terrell. When they saw her the chants got louder, but there weren't enough of them yet to be a real threat.
The cops let them in to see Terrell and Andy (or Dr. Harcourt as he preferred to be called here) got to work.
His team had made a lot of progress with coding people. Not only had they reduced the side effects and risks of complications, they could now examine the codes without sedating someone first. Andy opened up the plate and read off the serial number inside into Vicky's phone. On the other end, Holly verified that it was one of theirs, and forwarded the medical data surrounding that particular surgery back to Vicky.
"I still don't know how it happened," Terrell said shakily, after Andy had downloaded the code's event history and closed him up again. Apparently, the code was working perfectly right now, and had been for a while. "I wasn't afraid or anything when the fight started. I knew my code would keep me from hurting anyone, but then I did! I remember it clearly!" He raised his right palm, still traced with dry blood. "I still can't believe I hit him like that!"
"Take it easy, Terrell," she said calmly. "We're just trying to figure this out. Now, when was the last time your code went off?"
"Yesterday morning, I think? I have a sodium problem, and I put a little too much salt on my burger. The code wouldn't let me eat it. My girlfriend is coded too, and it would hurt her."
"And you don't remember it going off at any time during the fight? For that matter, did you have anything to drink last night?" People in Scheria didn't really drink at all anymore, but some coded people elsewhere still did. Tests had been done on the effect of alcohol on the code, but so far all had concluded it didn't have any influence at all. But there could always be a first time.
"No, and no! I don't drink anymore; I was clearheaded the whole time. I even tried to help the guy after I knocked him down."
"Of course they wouldn't include that in the video," Vicky reflected darkly. "Ok. Thank you, Terrell. Keith here will see that you get out soon, but could you tell us where you live, and stay there for the time being? I don't want to put you at any more risk, and we may need to examine your code again."
Terrell nodded and gave them an address before they left him in Keith's rather zealous care.
Back on the plane, Andy displayed the results downloaded from Terrell's code. It had been online for nearly two years, and recorded a bunch of activations, especially early on, which had leveled out over the past year or so. It had never been deactivated, even for an instant. His code was normal. The admittedly hasty brain scans Andy had conducted also showed that Terrell didn't have any brain damage or trauma that might have affected his lateral frontal pole. He was clean, too.
"What does that mean for us?" Andy asked after they'd confirmed his readings.
"If it's not a problem with Terrell's code or his brain, then it has to be a design flaw in the codes themselves," Vicky reasoned out loud. "Something that allows us to hurt people in order to defend ourselves."
"But we tested for that. Before my time and after I joined. We have tens of thousands of coded people. If there were violent incidents, we would know about it by now!"
"Tens of thousands of normal coded people, yes." Vicky pulled out her phone and called Holly. "But how many of them have recent military combat training and the muscle memory to react instantly?"
