The silence was heavier than the noise.
Ten minutes ago, the canyon had been a blender of screaming metal and exploding drones. Now, it was a tomb. The wind had died. The drones lay in heaps of smoking scrap. The War Rig sat motionless in the center of the kill box, a dead whale beached on the rocks.
Jason leaned against the hood, wiping grit from his eyes. His hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from the adrenaline crash.
It hit him like a physical weight. His knees felt like water.
"Status," Jason croaked. His throat was full of dust.
"Critical," Hughes muttered from under the dashboard. He held up a fried circuit board. It smelled like burning hair. "The main capacitor bank is fused. We have no torque. No AC. No turret."
"Can we move?"
"I can bypass the safety on the reserve cells," Hughes said, stripping a wire with his teeth. "It gives us maybe... five miles? At ten miles an hour. If we push it, the battery catches fire."
"Five miles," Jason looked at the map. "Nearest water is forty."
"Then we walk," Hemingway said, checking the action on his shotgun. "Better to die moving than sit in this tin can."
"We won't make it," Jason said. "Look at O'Malley."
The big Irishman was standing ten yards away. He had dropped his rifle in the dirt.
He wasn't looking at the truck. He wasn't looking at his friends.
He was staring at the Tower.
The massive steel structure dominated the horizon. It was no longer pulsing red. It was glowing with a steady, blinding white light.
And it was humming.
A low frequency. Hmmmmmm. It vibrated in the chest cavity. It felt warm. Soft.
"Pat?" Jason called out.
O'Malley didn't blink. His shoulders were slumped. The tension of the battle had vanished from his posture. He looked relaxed.
Too relaxed.
"Pat!" Jason barked.
O'Malley took a step toward the Tower. Then another.
"It's nice," O'Malley mumbled. His voice was thick, like he was drunk. "So quiet over there. No more noise. No more fighting."
"Oh, hell," Hemingway growled.
O'Malley started walking faster. He stumbled over a rock and didn't even put his hands out to break the fall. He hit the ground face-first, scrambled up, and kept walking.
He was a moth flying into a bug zapper.
"Tackle him!" Jason yelled.
He and Hemingway hit O'Malley at the same time.
It was like tackling a statue. O'Malley didn't fight back. He didn't swing his fists. He just kept trying to walk, dragging them through the dirt.
"Let me go, Boss," O'Malley slurred, a blissful smile on his bloody face. "I just want to lay down. The light says it's okay to sleep."
"Don't look at it!" Jason shoved O'Malley's face into the dust. "Close your eyes!"
Hemingway sat on O'Malley's legs. Jason pinned his arms.
The big man went limp, sobbing softly.
"I'm so tired, Jason," O'Malley wept. "I'm just so tired."
Jason looked up at the Tower. The white light burned his retinas. He felt a tug in the back of his own skull. A gentle, insistent whisper.
Rest. Give up. It's over.
He bit his tongue. Hard. The copper taste of blood snapped him back.
"What is that?" Jason hissed. "That's not a radio signal."
"It's a Pacification Wave."
Amelia was standing by the open door of the truck. She was holding the door frame to stay upright. Her face was pale, veins pulsing black against her skin.
"Ezra's masterpiece," she said. Her voice was devoid of emotion. Robotic. "Subliminal neuro-programming. It targets the amygdala. It suppresses the flight-or-fight response."
She looked at O'Malley, writhing in the dirt.
"It rewrites the brain chemistry," she continued. "It converts aggression into dopamine. The closer you get, the better you feel. Until you just... stop. You sit down. You forget to eat. You forget to breathe. You die of thirst with a smile on your face."
Jason felt a chill that had nothing to do with the desert night.
This wasn't war. This was extermination by apathy.
"He's lobotomizing the wasteland," Hemingway spat, looking down at O'Malley. "He's turning men into cattle."
"Efficiency," Amelia said. "Cattle don't rebel."
Jason looked at the Tower. It was five miles away. Exactly the range of their dying battery.
He looked at the satellite dish at the top of the structure. It was massive. Industrial grade. Aimed at the ionosphere.
"That dish," Jason said, pointing. "Is it just for the wave?"
"No," Amelia said. "It's a transceiver. It connects the Sawmill to the orbital grid. It's how Ezra talks to the other nodes."
Jason's eyes narrowed.
"Orbit," Jason whispered. "That means it can reach the East Coast."
He looked at the dead radio in the War Rig. Then at the Tower.
"We aren't walking away," Jason said.
He stood up, dusting off his knees.
"We're driving to the Tower," Jason announced.
Hughes stuck his head out the window. "Are you insane? Did you not hear the 'die of thirst' part? If we get closer, we'll turn into vegetables!"
"Not if we bring our own noise," Jason said.
He turned to Hughes.
"Howard, that feedback loop Amelia created. The screech. Can you replicate it?"
"Without melting Amelia's brain?" Hughes rubbed his chin. "Maybe. I can hardwire the comms dish to loop the interference pattern. Just a localized field. Five hundred yards max."
"Do it," Jason ordered. "Create a bubble around the truck. Inside the bubble, we hear the screech. Outside, the wave hits us."
"It'll be agonizing," Amelia warned. "The screech disrupts neural activity. It causes migraines. Nausea. Hallucinations."
"I'd rather have a headache than a lobotomy," Jason said.
He hauled O'Malley up. The big man was dead weight, eyes rolling back in his head.
"Tie him to the seat," Jason told Hemingway. "Gag him if you have to. He doesn't leave the truck."
Ten minutes later, the War Rig groaned to life.
It didn't roar. It wheezed. The electric motors whined pitifully, dragging the heavy chassis over the rocks.
"Loop engaged!" Hughes yelled, flipping a toggle switch.
SCREEEEEEEEE.
The sound erupted from the external speakers. It wasn't as loud as before, but it was constant. A high-pitched, grinding digital shriek.
Jason flinched. It felt like someone was driving a nail into his ear canal.
"Holy hell!" Hemingway shouted over the noise. "That's awful!"
"Drive!" Jason yelled, clutching his head.
The truck lurched forward. Five miles an hour. A funeral procession.
They rolled toward the white light.
The closer they got, the brighter it became. The world outside the windows washed out into a blinding, milky haze.
The pressure built.
Even with the screech protecting them, Jason could feel the Tower pushing against his mind. It was a physical weight on his chest.
Sleep. Stop. Surrender.
He gripped his rifle until his knuckles turned white. His nose started to bleed.
"Two miles!" Hughes screamed. He was weeping openly, tears streaming down his face from the pain of the noise.
Amelia was curled in the passenger seat, rocking back and forth. She was muttering binary code. Zero one one. Zero one one.
"Hold it together!" Jason roared. "Don't look at the light!"
They passed the outer perimeter. A chain-link fence torn open by wind and sand.
Signs were posted every fifty feet.
CITIZEN ZONE. COMPLIANCE MANDATORY.
Beyond the fence, the desert floor was littered with... shapes.
"Are those rocks?" Hemingway squinted through the windshield.
Jason looked closer.
They weren't rocks.
They were vehicles. Rusting trucks. Motorcycles. Scavenger buggies. Dozens of them, parked haphazardly in the sand.
And beside them... people.
Skeletons.
Hundreds of them. Picked clean by vultures.
They were sitting in lawn chairs. Leaning against tires. Lying on blankets.
They had driven here, parked, and just... sat down. They had starved to death while staring at the light.
"God in heaven," Hemingway whispered. He crossed himself.
"Don't look!" Jason shouted. "Keep driving!"
The War Rig rolled past the graveyard. The screeching bubble pushed the silence away.
"One mile!" Hughes yelled. "Battery at 2%!"
The Tower loomed over them now. A skeleton of steel reaching into the stars.
At the base, there was a concrete bunker. The control room.
And guarding it were the Timber Barons.
Jason saw them through the haze. Six massive figures standing by the bunker door.
They were cyborgs. Their arms were hydraulic chainsaws. Their legs were pistons.
But they weren't moving.
They stood perfectly still, like statues in a garden. Their heads were tilted up, staring at the transmitter dish. Their jaws hung slack. Oil dripped from their mouths like drool.
They were pacified. Stoned on the signal.
"They're asleep!" Hughes laughed hysterically. "We're going to drive right past them!"
"Get ready!" Jason racked his rifle. "We crash the gate!"
The War Rig hit the bunker's perimeter barrier.
CRASH.
The metal gate crumpled. The truck groaned and died. The battery finally hit zero.
The War Rig stopped twenty feet from the cyborg guards.
Silence returned... except for the screech.
The feedback loop was still running on the truck's speakers, powered by the last dregs of the capacitor.
SCREEEEEE.
The noise washed over the cyborg guards.
The bubble of interference hit them.
It severed their connection to the Tower.
Instantly, the white light in their eyes flickered and died.
The Timber Barons blinked. They shook their heads, like men waking up from a deep coma.
They looked at the truck. They looked at the crashed gate.
The confusion on their faces vanished.
Replaced by rage.
VRRRRRRRR.
Six chainsaws revved to life at once.
"They're waking up!" Hemingway shouted.
"And they have a hangover!" Jason kicked the door open. "Out! Go for the bunker! Move!"
The lead cyborg roared—a sound of pure mechanical fury—and charged the truck. His saw sparked against the pavement.
Jason jumped from the cab, hitting the ground running.
The peace was over.
The noise was back.