Chapter 22
Margo sprinted right through the lobby, ignoring all calls to stop. One of the security guards was close enough to try to grab her, but she narrowly got past him and into the hallway headed north. The cops were barely two steps behind her. Thanks to Connor, there were at least twenty patrol cars storming into the parking lot, and SWAT couldn't be far behind. The ordinary security guards weren't armed, and wouldn't want to risk facing off against cops, but Goswin had an ex-military detail on staff, and he'd certainly ordered them to keep people away from his home and office. Even law enforcement.
Shouts rang out behind her, as she wrenched the stairway door open and ran through it. More voices followed them, when the police got into the lobby. Sadly, gunfire followed that.
She had more immediate concerns, though. The guard chasing her was easily dealt with, but much more dangerous men were upstairs. There was no using the elevators, either. One push of a button could immobilize her, and then all of this would have been for nothing.
The building was sixty-three stories, and she had to climb them all. Grateful for once that she'd spent some time chasing people down for a living, Margo got to work. She worried the whole way up.
Her own phone and gun were still in some police evidence locker somewhere, but she still had Connor's weapon. And there had been a phone lying on the dash in the patrol car she'd stolen. On the way, she'd used it to dial Beb. She didn't remember Tin's temporary number off the top of her head. Beb hadn't responded. Maybe she was too busy reprogramming the transmitter, or maybe she was dead. Most likely, Tin had gotten to her.
Margo was cursing herself during the climb. She should have seen Tin's duplicity beforehand. For all the mysteries he'd shrouded around himself, and all the casual lines he'd been willing to cross during his search for revenge, he'd never killed anyone. She'd just not been able to bring herself to think that he ever could.
But Jia had been everything to him. It was her wish that the world know what she knew, and deep down Margo was certain Tin would honor her wishes.
As she rounded the curve on the sixty-third floor, Margo glanced at her watch. Two minutes to midnight. Worst case scenario, she could let the delay signal go out, buying her time to explain everything to the cops, and eventually she was sure, the federal government. They would probably jail her, but it was better than the alternative.
The access door to the roof had been busted open. At least Beb had gotten this far. Margo ran upstairs, and burst out onto the roof.
She took in the situation immediately. There was a tall antenna structure in the middle of the roof—the transmitter, she assumed. Beb's laptop was resting on a concrete ledge next to it, and Beb was lying on the ground about twenty feet away from the antenna. Margo pulled out Connor's gun, wishing fervently that she had a flashlight, and began sweeping the area as she got closer to Beb.
Tin stepped out from behind the transmitter, with something in his right hand. Margo aimed right at his chest instantly. "Don't move, Tin! Put your hands up!"
He slowly shook his head, keeping his other hand at his side. He was carrying a remote detonator, but was being careful to keep it as still as possible. "It's fitting that you're here, Margo. Full circle and all that. I think she'd want you to be a part of this moment."
"What did you do?"
"Nothing that special. I disabled Beb's program, and then I put a charge on the side of the transmitter. If I hit this thumb trigger, this whole thing gets turned into scrap metal. No transmitter, no signal. No signal, no problem." He paused. "Well, no problem for me. I'm well within the blast radius. You and Beb should be ok, though. She'll be fine, by the way. Tell her I'm sorry it had to be this way, would you?"
Faintly, far below, Margo could hear gunshots from the ground level. "The cops will be up here soon. I told them everything. Don't do anything, all right? Just let the delay signal go out, Tin. It will give us time to figure things out."
"Time to cover everything up, you mean," he said, still not moving. His hand was remarkably still given the situation. "The police will run this up the chain, and the government will swoop in here and take control. Eberhard Goswin is dead, but I won't let him be replaced by a thousand more just like him. I think four years of waiting for the truth is long enough, don't you?"
"You got your revenge, then! Don't add the deaths of so many to your conscience! If you let the word get out, it could end the world!"
He smiled sadly. "Maybe you're right, but maybe the world that we know should end. At least this way there's a chance a better world will rise from the ashes. You know what I'm talking about, Margo. You know that people are always on their best behavior when they know they're being watched, so this could force the world to improve! She was willing to risk her life to pursue that possibility. So am I."
Margo tightened her grip on the gun. "Don't make me do this. I won't miss this time."
His eyes flicked to the gun in her hand, and then back to her eyes. "Do what you have to, my friend." His hand twitched, and Margo fired.
Or tried to. The gun clicked in her hands; empty.
Tin blinked in surprise as well, and then took another ragged breath. Just as he had back in that shack in the forest. "Not your gun, I take it?"
"Damn, I was in such a hurry to get out here, I forgot to check if it was loaded!" She shook her head. "This is so like Connor. He knew it wasn't loaded, but he let me go anyway. He's always been soft-hearted."
Tin grabbed Beb's laptop and moved away from the antenna purposefully. Margo considered trying to tackle him and take the remote detonator, but it was a foolish notion. His arm was bloodied, but he didn't look seriously injured otherwise. Even if she was close enough to jump him, he was far more skilled in hand-to-hand. "Well, I guess we both get to see the aftermath, then," he said conversationally, and hit the trigger.
A roar of flame came from the other side of the transmitter tower, blasting out into open air. A split-second later, the rush of a concussion wave passed through her, staggering Margo and threatening her balance briefly. Even Tin seemed to stagger for a few moments. The shrieking noise of metal scraping on metal compounded the blast, as the transmitter fell like a cut tree. It wasn't quite tall enough to lean over the edge of the building, but it did flatten the guardrails as it came down. Tin had placed the explosive to make it fall away from the exit.
Margo's watch beeped at her. Midnight. Beb's laptop lit up at the same time, as her program tried to transmit a self-destruct code through the ruined transmitter.
-.-
All around the world, people stopped what they were doing to watch the sudden message. Not everyone of course, but those who had benefited from the exciters, or who feared them, paid special attention to the middle-aged woman in the lab coat who had just appeared next to each exciter. The automatic translation program on the exciters made sure that Jia's image spoke in the local language for each area.
"Hello, world," she began simply. "I'm Jia Haldar. I'm one of the scientists who discovered the exciter particle field, and helped build and distribute those devices you're carrying now. I recorded this message in secret, to play for everyone at the same time. I did this so that it could never be covered up, even by the most powerful people in the world."
She smiled at the crowds. "We were working inside a dam when we discovered the particle field by accident. We were suddenly looking at flowing water, in the air! One of us saw a fish swimming through the air, right in front of him. Later, we assumed that we'd accidentally recorded some of the water on the other side of the dam, and replayed those fish without intending to. What I discovered much later on, was that the images we'd recorded had actually been of the inside of the dam. Only what we'd recorded had happened before the dam had even been built!"
Jia gave everyone a few moments to think about it. "The particle field the exciters use is like the rings of a tree. We can make etchings on the bark, like we do every time we use an exciter to record and replay what's going on around us. Or... we can look inside the tree. We can use the exciters to replay events that have happened in the past!"
"That's right. Everything that everyone has done, everywhere, at every time!, has been recorded by the particle field. With the exciters, we can access those recordings. With that little device in your hand, you can see what anyone has done in the area around you. At any time in history."
She gestured towards the exciter—she was facing the device in all cases. "You'll see a timer there now. It looks like a clock, but it's not. You can rewind it by minutes, or hours, or even centuries, and find out what happened in your location back then. Everyone can, now. That's why I worked so hard to make sure that everyone had an exciter."
"How many spouses have secretly wondered if the person they married has been faithful to them? Now they can just go to the place in question, pull up the time in question, and find out for themselves. How many people groups have suffered at the hands of other people groups, with words like 'war' being used to cover up what were actual mass murders? With the exciters, we can now see for ourselves what happened there! How many leaders have ordered terrible things to be done, and then denied it publicly later? With these, we can lay bare their crimes! The exciters aren't just observers of current events anymore—now, they can be witnesses to the past!"
Jia spread her hands to the sides. "I wish I could say that this technology could eliminate lying altogether. It can't. I could still tell someone that I believe something when I really don't. But at least now if I do something against my stated beliefs, everyone can find out, literally with the push of a button! We've all been on camera, for our entire lives, and now everyone can look at the feeds."
She sighed, looking down. "For years, I put up with my husband's abuse because I was afraid. It took a leap of faith to get away from him. For centuries, we've put up with our governments' abuses of power for the same reason. We were afraid! We have to make a similar leap of faith now, but we don't have to do it alone. We have each other, and we have the right tools to take away their power. With that little device in your hands, you can make sure that the only people who are in charge of you, are the people who actually deserve to be in charge of you!"
-.-
Her hands still clenched, Margo watched the image of Jia disappear for a second time. Feeling twice as defeated, she glared up at Tin. "You have no idea what you've set in motion here. How many gears are turning, and how quickly they could grind the world we know into dust!"
He shrugged in response. "No one knows what the future will bring, Margo. All we can do is study the past to try and make our futures better. Now we can do that more easily than ever before." He leaned down and scooped up his bag. "I'm heading out now. The cops should be up here shortly. I'd surrender to them, but when governments face upheaval like what's about to happen here, they like to execute scapegoats."
He gestured to where Jia had stood a moment ago. "They can't kill someone who's already dead, but I bet they'd be happy to string me up in her place. I'm not worried about you or Beb, though. Now that the exciters can show what happened here, people will see that you both wanted to stop this. You won't get into too much trouble."
"They'll use the exciters to track you down, you know," Beb said feebly, from the ground. Her voice was thick with emotion. Anger, Margo hoped, at being stunned and lied to like that. Margo moved over to her quickly, supporting her head and lifting her up into a sitting position. "No matter where you go, they'll find you."
Tin glanced over at the flashing police lights reflecting up even this far into the sky. "Maybe. They'll have a revolution on their hands, though. A ton of civil unrest at least, when people find out just how many lies our countries are all built on. If I can make it hard enough to find me, they might decide that bringing me in is more trouble than it's worth. Besides, I'm sure a lot of governments will just outlaw exciters to try and stay in control. I can help the people living there. If I'm going to be on the run, I might as well be doing something helpful in the process."
He paused at the door leading down. "I hope I get the chance to see you both again sometime. I understand if you don't feel the same. Good luck either way."
