The sun rose over Washington D.C., bathing the National Mall in a soft, deceptive pink light.
It looked beautiful. It smelled like burning ozone and shit.
Jason Underwood stood on the steps of the Smithsonian Castle, his chest heaving. His hands were covered in coal dust and the blue, viscous fluid that had exploded from Gates's biological server.
Beside him, J. Edgar Hoover racked the slide of his shotgun.
The sound was loud in the sudden silence.
Below them, on the grassy lawn, three companies of National Guard soldiers lay in heaps. They weren't dead. They were twitching. Their bodies jerked in rhythmic spasms, like fish thrown onto a dock.
"They're rebooting," Huey Long said. The Senator wiped a smear of blood from his nose with a silk handkerchief. He looked down at the soldiers with a strange, hungry expression. "Or they're dying."
"They're empty," Jason said. His voice rasped. "The logic bomb scrubbed the Focus Protocol. Their brains are trying to remember how to breathe without a command code."
Hoover turned the shotgun toward Jason. He didn't raise it, but the barrel pointed at Jason's knees.
"You should go, Prentice," Hoover said. His eyes were darting around, paranoid. "The spell is broken. But when these men wake up, they're going to want someone to blame. I can't let them blame the Bureau."
"We just saved your ass, J. Edgar," O'Malley growled, stepping in front of Jason. The big Irishman's tuxedo was ripped, revealing the shoulder holster beneath.
"You destroyed federal property and incapacitated the military," Hoover countered. "Technically, I should hang you for treason right here."
"Technically," Jason said, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands, "there is no federal government left to hang me."
He pointed toward the White House. Smoke was curling from the West Wing.
"Wilson is dead. The Vice President is likely lobotomized. The Senate floor is full of drooling vegetables. You aren't the Director of the FBI anymore, Hoover. You're just a man with a gun in a parking lot."
Hoover's face tightened. He knew it was true.
Huey Long laughed. It was a sharp, jagged sound.
"Chaos," Long said, stepping over a twitching soldier. "Pure, beautiful chaos. The machines are broken, gentlemen. That means the people need a voice again."
Long turned to Jason. He offered a hand.
"You cleared the board, Prentice. I won't forget it. But don't come back to D.C. This is my town now."
"It's a graveyard," Jason said, ignoring the hand. "It's all yours."
"Move," Jason signaled to Sarah and O'Malley. "Before the shock wears off."
They ran.
They didn't head for the main roads. They cut across the grass toward Constitution Avenue, aiming for the river where the seaplane waited.
The city was waking up. And it was screaming.
The "Logic Bomb" hadn't just hit the soldiers. It had hit every implanted citizen in the blast radius.
On the sidewalk, a mailman was crawling on his hands and knees, clawing at his ears. Blood leaked from his ear canals, dark and thick. He was making a sound like a wounded animal.
A delivery truck had smashed into a lamppost. The driver was slumped over the wheel, eyes wide open, pupils blown so wide the irises were invisible. He wasn't blinking.
"Don't look," Sarah whispered. She gripped Jason's arm. Her nails dug into his suit jacket.
"I have to look," Jason said. "I did this."
"You stopped Gates," Sarah argued. "You stopped the hive mind."
"I performed a lobotomy on a hundred thousand people with a car battery," Jason corrected. "There's a difference."
They turned the corner near the Lincoln Memorial.
A police officer sat on the curb. He had wet himself. A dark stain spread across his trousers. His revolver lay on the pavement.
A boy, maybe ten years old, was shaking the officer by the shoulders. The kid was wearing knickers and a newsboy cap. He was crying.
"Dad!" the boy screamed. "Dad, get up! We have to go!"
The officer stared at the sun. He drooled. A long, ropy string of saliva hung from his lip. He didn't blink. He didn't recognize the word 'Dad.' The hardware in his brain had fused with the wetware. He was a blank slate.
Jason stopped.
"Boss, keep moving," O'Malley urged. "We hear sirens. The unaffected units are mobilizing."
Jason didn't move. He looked at the boy. He looked at the vegetable that used to be a father.
This wasn't clean corporate warfare. This wasn't a stock chart going down. This was a man's life deleted by a line of code Jason had ordered Sarah to write.
Jason walked over.
The boy looked up, terrified. He saw a man in a ruined pinstripe suit, smelling of coal and violence.
"Fix him," the boy sobbed. "Please, mister. Help him up."
Jason knelt. The pavement was cold.
"I can't fix him, kid," Jason said. His voice felt like gravel in his throat. "Nobody can. His brain is... burned."
The boy wailed. He buried his face in his father's unresponsive chest.
Jason reached into his inner pocket. He pulled out a heavy velvet pouch. It contained twenty solid gold Double Eagle coins—his emergency bribe money.
He grabbed the boy's hand. It was small and sticky. Jason forced the pouch into the kid's grip.
"Listen to me," Jason said sharply.
The boy sniffled, looking at the heavy sack.
"Your dad isn't coming back," Jason said brutally. "Take this money. It's gold. Don't trade it for paper dollars. Paper is worthless now."
Sarah gasped behind him. She knew what that money was for. It was their escape fund.
"Get your mom," Jason continued. "Buy a wagon. Go west. Get away from the cities. The cities are going to burn. Do you understand?"
The boy nodded, stunned.
"Go," Jason shoved him gently.
The boy scrambled up, clutching the gold, and ran toward the row houses. He didn't look back at his father.
Jason stood up. He felt sick.
"That was five grand," O'Malley noted. "We might need that."
"We can steal more," Jason spat. "Let's go."
They reached the Potomac River docks.
The fog was lifting. The water was gray and choppy. The small seaplane bobbed by the pier, its propeller idling.
But they weren't alone.
A mob had gathered.
Fifty or sixty people. Dockworkers, clerks, pedestrians. People who hadn't been implanted. They were confused, terrified, and angry. They saw a plane. They saw rich people in suits.
"Hey!" a man shouted. He held a crowbar. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Take us with you!" a woman screamed. She held a baby. "The hospitals are closed! My husband is seizing!"
"Back off!" O'Malley shouted. He drew his twin 1911 pistols.
The crowd didn't back off. Panic overrides fear. They surged forward.
"They're leaving us!" the man with the crowbar yelled. "Kill them!"
"Start the engine!" Jason yelled to Sarah.
He pushed Sarah toward the cockpit. She scrambled onto the pontoon.
O'Malley fired a warning shot into the air. BANG.
The crowd flinched, then surged again. A brick flew through the air. It clipped Jason's shoulder. Pain exploded down his arm.
He stumbled.
A dockworker lunged, grabbing Jason's jacket.
"You rich bastard!" the man screamed, spitting in Jason's face. "You did this! I saw the light from the castle!"
Jason didn't argue. He didn't try to explain geopolitics.
He drove his knee into the man's groin. Hard.
The man folded.
Jason grabbed the man's collar and threw him into the water.
"Get in!" O'Malley roared. He kicked a teenager in the chest who tried to jump on the pontoon.
Jason scrambled into the rear seat of the plane. O'Malley dove in behind him, slamming the flimsy door.
"Go! Go! Go!"
Sarah slammed the throttle forward.
The engine roared. The propeller blurred.
The plane lurched forward, cutting through the water.
Bullets pinged off the fuselage. Someone in the crowd had a gun.
Thwack. Thwack.
"Keep your heads down!" Jason yelled.
The plane bounced once, twice, and then lifted.
The mob shrank beneath them. The shouting faded, replaced by the drone of the engine.
Jason leaned back against the seat. He was sweating profusely. His shoulder throbbed where the brick had hit him.
He looked out the window.
Washington D.C. lay below. Columns of smoke were rising from five different locations. The traffic grid was locked. It looked like a model city that someone had stepped on.
"We did it," Sarah said over the headset. Her voice sounded hollow. "We decapitated the government."
"Yeah," Jason muttered. "Now watch the body thrash."
He reached into his pocket to check the time.
He pulled out the iPhone.
It was hot. Burning hot.
"Ow," Jason hissed, dropping it onto the metal floor of the plane.
The screen was black. A hairline fracture ran down the center of the glass.
"The battery," Jason realized. "The surge from the console. It backfed."
He picked it up gingerly with his sleeve.
He pressed the power button. Nothing.
He held the volume down and power buttons. Nothing.
The black mirror remained black.
"Come on," Jason whispered. "Don't do this to me. Not now."
He needed that phone. It had the schematics for the centrifugal pumps. It had the formula for mass-producing penicillin. It had the history of the stock market crashes of the 1920s.
It was his grimoire. His magic book.
It was dead.
"Jason?" Sarah asked, turning around. "What is it?"
Jason stared at the cracked device.
He was a time traveler without a map. He was a 2025 hedge fund manager trapped in 1920 with no data.
He felt a cold pit open in his stomach.
"It's gone," Jason said softly. "The library is closed."
He looked at the Potomac River far below.
He opened the small window vent. The wind howled into the cabin.
He held the phone over the gap.
"What are you doing?" O'Malley asked.
"Cutting losses," Jason said.
He let go.
The iPhone tumbled down, a tiny black speck falling toward the muddy water. It disappeared instantly.
Jason closed the vent. He smoothed his ruined suit jacket. He adjusted his tie.
His hands were still shaking, but he forced them to stop.
"Set a course for the Icarus," Jason ordered. "We have a business to run."
"Business?" O'Malley scoffed, reloading his magazines. "Boss, we're fugitives. We're broke. And the world is on fire."
Jason looked straight ahead. His eyes were cold.
"Exactly," Jason said. "Buy when there's blood in the streets. Even if the blood is ours."