The Quantum Price
The Quantum Price
Ethan Price Book One
Malcolm Murdock
Copyright © 2019 by Malcolm Murdock
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-1-7333286-0-9 (E-Book)
ISBN: 978-1-7333286-1-6 (Paperback)
Cover design by Dan Van Oss
www.malcolmmurdock.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
When You’re On His List, You’re Never Safe…
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Acknowledgments
Also by Malcolm Murdock
About the Author
One
Anon_1: What the hell happened?
Anon_2: We don’t know.
Anon_1: Was it one of yours?
Anon_2: That’s never happened before.
Anon_1: Would Fletcher do this on his own?
Anon_2: No. He’s a good boy. Doesn’t have the balls.
Anon_1: So you’ve spoken to him.
Anon_2: No.
Anon_1: Why?
Anon_2: Can’t be sure it wasn’t him. Not without more information.
Anon_1: I thought he was a good boy.
Anon_2: Even good boys sometimes need to be put down.
Two
The body lay facedown on a tangled heap of frayed cabling. A man. Dressed in an expensive suit torn open in the back, just below the shoulder blades. A jagged edge of sunlight was just reaching the rip in the coat as the sun crept higher over the fresh trash heap.
The scavengers hadn’t noticed him yet. But as the sun lit up the splash of red beneath the torn coat, the nearest scavenger paused in its hunt through the trash. Its small head swiveled on rusty bearings. Simple algorithms crunched through the visual data to decide that here was a sudden source of moisture. Biofuel; perhaps the batteries of implants.
Hexapedal legs skittered across old electronics and contaminated plastic. One of the scavenger’s spiked feet punched through an empty bottle and it almost lost its balance. No matter. A quick pause to disentangle the minor obstacle and then the scavenger was at the body. The other bots were starting to notice now. To pause in their own quests through the leavings of society and stare at this unexpected new source of fuel.
The first scavenger was already on the body when it moved. With a desperate gasp, the man pushed to hands and knees. Looked around wild-eyed and disoriented. Undeterred, the scavenger plunged a claw toward the damp red stain, hungry for anything it might find there. Metal pinched onto flesh, only to be torn away as the man scrabbled at his back with both hands, catching hold of one of the scavenger’s legs.
The scavenger calmly processed new accelerometer data as it flew through the air. It smashed against the rusted steel carapace of some old military vehicle and slid to the ground, twitching in a slow electronic death.
Its fellows were not polite enough to wait for it to die before swarming in.
The man stumbled to his feet, swayed, nearly fell, then steadied. Backing away from the feeding frenzy, he froze at another sound behind him. Three more scavengers crouched there, each the size of a small dog, chittering at him and angling their heads first this way, then that, as they soaked in this unexpected sensor data. A few more crept from the crevices of the trash heap. Then a few more. The man fought to stay standing. The sun felt like a jet engine in his brain, rattling against the base of his skull. More scavengers gathered in a semicircle around him. Hardened carbide mandibles chittered and scraped in a hellish buzz.
He ran.
Or tried to. His legs were sluggish. With the first step he nearly face-planted into the jagged edge of an old I-beam. He recovered just in time to yank his foot away from the jaws of the first scavenger, then leapt over another two as they burst out at him from inside the guts of a shattered server rack.
Ahead, he could see a narrow path angling through the mountains of junk. He willed his legs to run faster. They listened to him. The metallic horde fell further behind him.
And then he was falling. Slamming into the side of an old refrigerator. Almost crushed as it nearly toppled over on him. A scavenger had tangled around his leg, pulling him down. He hadn’t seen it. Where had it come from? How were these things so fast? He yanked the scavenger from his leg. Tossed it aside. Tried to stand again. But it was too late. The swarm was rolling toward him, only a few feet away now. The first one leapt for him.
And split apart in midair.
Two halves with red hot edges flew past the man and clattered lifeless to the ground beside him. Before he could process what was happening, three more bots leapt for him. They too were sliced apart midair. Scrambling to his feet, the man looked up to see a large quadcopter hovering about fifty feet above him. As he watched, the telltale flash of a laser blinked and four more of the trash bots fell dead at his feet. A moment later, the rest turned and scattered like so many roaches looking for holes, their simp
le algorithms finally seeming to decide he wasn’t worth the trouble.
Safe for the moment, the man finally had a chance to realize what the drone represented: a camera; an operator; civilization.
“Hey!” He waved his arms and yelled up toward the drone. “Hey, down here! I need help!”
If the drone recognized or understood his plea, it gave no indication. It made no movement toward him, no sudden irregular flight pattern that might indicate an attempt to communicate in the absence of speakers. Nothing. It just continued to hover there, stoic and unmoving.
“Please, I don’t know how I got here! I need—”
The drone began drifting away. Unhurried. Its orientation rotating gently back and forth in what seemed an automated search or patrol pattern.
“Hey! Hey, stop!” He tried to run after it, but the path through the nearest mountain of trash angled off in the wrong direction. Desperately, he tried scrambling up the side, only to slide back down when a bundle of power cables gave way in his hand.
It was too late. The drone was gone.
For the first time since waking, the man felt the tingle of fear. No. He had to stay focused. He had gotten here somehow. That meant he could get out.
But how had he gotten here? He tried to think, to force his mind back. But it was met with only darkness. He could remember the last few minutes. He could remember waking up. But before that… A headache flared suddenly behind his eyes, bright and sharp. He forced himself to breathe. His memory would come back in time.
Lacking any better ideas, he started making his way through the winding passageway between trash heaps. After maybe five minutes, the path widened, then opened up into a small clearing.
No, not a clearing, a compression. The refuse was still thick beneath his feet, ripe with the scent of decay. Electronics, rusted-out fencing, bags of old diapers. And all the other detritus of society. But it had been compressed here. Compacted by something heavy. Very heavy. In fact, if anything, the clearing appeared to be part of a long, winding corridor of compressed trash. As far as the man could see, which admittedly wasn’t far, there seemed to be a broad pathway carved away through the heaps into the distance, and he had just stumbled into the edge.
Surely a pathway meant humans. And humans meant rescue. After all, how large could this place be?
Three
He walked for hours. Stumbling along, the cuff of his suit pants growing filthy and frayed. Nausea, dizziness growing. He needed water. He needed a break. He needed rest. How long had he been going now? How long since he’d awoken?
The sun had long since passed overhead and settled in to view ahead of him. So he knew he was going roughly west. But the shadows were growing long now and he knew he couldn’t continue overnight. The footing was too treacherous.
After a brief search, the man found a small alcove in the edge of the trash wall where something large had fallen out or been carried away. It was hours since he’d seen any more scavenger bots, but he had no interest in spending the night in this place without a wall at his back.
Darkness came suddenly. More suddenly than he expected it to. Was that a clue? Did he come from somewhere the night fell more slowly? A city, then. The suit certainly suggested as much. Well, at the very least he could say he sure as hell didn’t come from a dump. He pressed his back against the wall of the alcove and stared out into the deepening black. He was glad to find that he wasn’t tired. At least not sleepy. A general weariness but no immediate need for sleep. That was good. Who knew what crept out here under the cover of night.
The bots found him eventually.
He couldn’t have said how long it had been. He didn’t think he’d slept. Maybe he had. Time flowed into itself in the total darkness of this wasteland. The noises had started soon after dark. The skittering of small insects. Then the slightly louder, more prominent starts and stops of larger creatures. Perhaps organic, perhaps not. There were other sounds in the darkness, too. Sounds he couldn’t identify. Strange creaks and low, tortured groans. He consoled himself with the thought that it was simply the heaps of refuse settling under their own weight. He didn’t care to consider the alternatives.
Then the bots were there. He heard them approach slowly. A metallic scampering, less concerned with being heard than the creatures whose flesh was so much softer, so much less resilient. And then he saw the eyes. The dim crimson glow of infrared sensors. Sensors that could see in the dark. Could see him.
They gathered out there. First one. Then several. Then dozens. Watching him. Moving about without moving nearer. Size was impossible to discern in the dark. It depended on how close-set the eyes were. If the bots were small, then they were closer to him. If the bots were large, then perhaps they were farther away.
It didn’t matter.
He had found a jagged length of metal wedged into the hill beside him during the hours of waiting. He wielded it now, squatting in a patient crouch. Waiting for them to make their move. Time passed. One of the bots crept cautiously toward him. Then closer. He leapt forward and crushed it with an upward-sweeping blow. He might have been golfing in another life. Golfing… Was that something he did?
He didn’t know.
The bots backed off after that. But only for a time. Gradually, something shifted within their autonomous minds. They decided he was worth the risk. Or perhaps they decided that he was less a threat than they feared. Or perhaps it was something else. Some inscrutable shred of logic buried in long-abandoned programming that simply decided now.
They came for him then.
The narrow gap of the alcove allowed him to fight the bots a few at a time. That’s all that kept him alive. These ones were smaller than the ones that had attacked him when he’d awoken. Smaller and less intelligent. There was none of the rudimentary dodging or maneuvering that the earlier bots had shown. These ones simply came for him.
But there were more of them. Many more. And as they swarmed in he bashed and batted and kept them at bay. But always there were more. Where had they come from? Why were they out here?
It didn’t matter. He could feel himself tiring. It wasn’t painful. There was no burning of muscles. Just a dull fatigue that started in his spine and spread outward. A slowing of his reaction time.
The first one broke through like a piranha through a net, leapt for his leg and clamped on just above his knee. He shook it off and stabbed it through its thin metal carapace. It wriggled on the end of his makeshift sword like a freshly-caught crab. But in the moment he’d been distracted, three more leapt to the wall of dead bots encircling his alcove. Leapt for him.
One landed on his head. Metal mandibles sank through scalp into skull, sent a piercing warning through his brain. He dropped the club and pried desperately at the bot, trying to stop it from burrowing into his brain, as he was sure it would do any moment now.
And then it dropped off. Scurried away.
And in its wake, other bots began to do the same. Like a strange synthetic wave, as each bot turned to scamper off, others nearby began to do likewise, until the entire horde—hundreds of them—was flowing away across the corridor and dispersing back into the secret places from which they had come. Why?
The man slumped backward in the alcove, the lifeless husks around him now the only evidence of the carnage. He sat there for a long time.
Soon it was quiet again. Just the strange, low noises of the dump. Distant, comforting groans in the dark.
He didn’t sleep. He was sure of that this time. Gradually the darkness took on form. Outlines crept back into the world. The edges of the hills slowly resolved around him.
And then a voice.
“Now where in the mighty hell did you come from?”
Four
Three figures stood before him. An early morning steam was rising from the ground and swirling about their legs, making it look as though they had been conjured out of the filth. The speaker was a middle-aged man with a close-cropped grey beard and a belt of shotgun shells slung ac
ross his chest. The butt of the weapon itself was sticking up behind his left shoulder.
“Well, I’ve been wrong before. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you don’t rightly belong here,” the graybeard said.
The woman beside him pulled an unlit cigar from her mouth and stared around pointedly at all the shells of dead bots from the night before. “Sure look to have had a hell of a night, though.”
The man carefully got to his feet to face the newcomers, acutely aware that this little alcove that had meant his protection the night before now meant he was hemmed in by three armed strangers with no way of escaping. “Yeah,” he said. “It was certainly an interesting one.”