23 — Resolved

Every failing system eventually reveals what it truly values. Strip away ceremony, rhetoric, and law, and the answer is always the same: what will it kill to preserve, and what will it sacrifice without regret? In moments of open crisis, economics loses its abstractions. It becomes a visible contest over whose lives count as necessary and whose are treated as cost.

—Naomi Feld, Interdependency: A New Economic Model

Alene anchored herself in the centre of the Francis Crick Institute lab, her fractured ribs and wounded thigh hiding under the veneer of her uniform. Near the door, Hatch stood with his hand hovering too close to his holster, a tremor in his fingers. His eyes darted to the chrono on the wall every few seconds. She mentally adjusted her tactical calculus, widening the margin for error to account for his potential failure. Sharon worked at a terminal across the lab. Her back was rigid, her fingers moving with a staccato rhythm.

The filtration system’s industrial thrum provided a constant bass note overlaid by the whir of cooling fans and the cycling of a sequencer. The air was aggressively scrubbed, stripped of every wandering particle like a vacuum waiting to be breached. Polycarbonate walls diffused the cool blue light from three dozen holo displays, submerging the gleaming steel workbenches in an aquatic glow.

Alene’s thumb brushed the safety of her holstered sidearm. A mindless tic against the cold metal.

0200. The main lab doors hissed open, admitting a cold draught from the corridor. Justice William Baron glided in flanked by four men in tactical gear. Baron brought the scent of the old world with him, peaty Scotch and expensive worsted that had the slightest earthy smell from the rain. In the hermetically sealed lab, it arrived as a contaminant.

A wiry man, a half-step behind Baron, was electric with coiled arrogance. His look dismissed Hatch immediately and locked onto Sharon Feld. A grin spread across his face.

Sharon caught the man’s reflection in her monitor, stopped typing, and held his gaze. Alene registered the move. Sharon possessed the same stubborn stillness Ari had.

“Justice Baron,” Alene said with a rasp, the bruising on her larynx turning the words into gravel. “Right on time.”

She held out the silver data card between her thumb and forefinger. “Req-Logistics-774 from Herbert’s server,” she said, pitching her tone perfectly, the ambitious operative delivering the kill shot.

Baron’s smile deepened, carving lines of triumph into his face. He reached out, taking the card, weighing it in his palm.

“Excellent, DCI Ardone. Truly excellent. And for the rest of our arrangement?” Baron nodded towards Sharon, who still had her back to him.

“In a moment. First, I need to know the board is clear.” She pivoted towards the wiry man, who was preening himself in the periphery. “My constable confirmed the data plants were injected by Ari Feld’s supervisor, Adebayo. My investigation flagged him weeks ago. He was your man, wasn’t he?”

Baron waved a hand dismissively. “Adebayo served his function. He has been decommissioned.”

“Prudent.” Alene smiled and nodded approval. She needed to get more out of him. “But he was sloppy. All that evidence pointing to Francis, it was a bit too convenient. The transmission was too clean, the file too easy to find. Don’t worry, we can make it stick, but it felt amateur.”

The wiry man bristled and snapped, “amateur? It was perfect! I profiled Feld. I programmed him! I knew his history with Francis. I knew he was the ideal, arrogant sod to chase the crumbs I left for him.”

“Sure, okay,” Alene said. She flicked her fingers at the wiry man, a sharp motion dismissing a nuisance. Baron emitted a small chuckle.

“To business,” Alene continued, turning back to Baron. “Dr Feld’s research.” She motioned to Sharon. “Doctor. Explain.”

Sharon turned. Her face was pale, but her voice was precise. “I’ve devised a hybrid solution designed to circumvent the prion-induced tachycardia. A biological dampener to surgically isolate the sinoatrial node, paired with an implanted pacemaker to restore a baseline rhythm. It works.”

Baron’s eyes lit with zealous fire. “A cure,” he breathed. “Magnificent. When this world is ashes, we won’t just control the market, we will be the market.”

As Baron stepped towards the terminal, hungry for the data, Sharon reached out and killed the display. The blue light vanished, plunging that corner into shadow.

Baron’s smile twitched. “Come now. There will be plenty for all of us. I take care of those who get things done, don’t I, DCI Ardone?”

The conference room door on the far side of the lab hissed open. Francis Herbert stepped out. “Do you, William?” she said.

Charles followed her out with the tectonics of Timmy, and the twitching, volatile energy of Dax at his side. The whine of Dax’s plasma cutter hit a frequency that set teeth on edge. The mercenary on the far right flinched, his head jerking towards the sound. Alene tensed. The room was full of gas, and Dax was a sparking wire. She had seen what he could do and hoped she wouldn’t need it, but Baron had come with a lot of firepower.

Francis reached Baron and stood in front of him, but Baron was staring at Alene, one fist clenched. Slowly, he turned to Francis, one eyebrow raised.

“Francis, I must admit I’m perplexed. You, the architect of our shining utopia, standing shoulder to shoulder with these rats? Is this desperation, or perhaps you have finally realised that your perfect world requires a little filth to function?”

Francis surveyed the mercenaries, then looked back at Baron. She stood there—the stillness of a woman who had once signed an order that killed her best friends to save a system.

“Rats? Filth? Dehumanising people does not make you powerful, William,” she said. “These people survived the collapse of the Capo world and have endured ever since. I respect their competence. You fear it. They are a proven, high-value asset. And I am done wasting assets to feed your ego.”

Baron and the wiry man froze. Baron’s smile calcified, his face hardening.

“Santo?” Charles said. His gaze was locked onto the wiry man in the pristine tactical vest. “We mourned you. We drank to your memory.”

“I heard,” Santo sneered, adjusting his collar. “Thanks for turning my room into a pub. I thought it fitting, really, for a bunch of squatters playing at society.”

Alene’s mind raced, the pieces snapping together. The wiry man was Santo. The name Ari had whispered in the safe house. He wasn’t dead. He was Baron’s architect. Ari’s grief, the guilt that had nearly broken him, it was all manufactured. This man who had framed Francis had done it by emotionally vivisecting his own friend.

“Five years,” Charles said, his voice trembling. “You ate at my table. You led our security. My son trusted you.”

“Five sodding years,” Santo spat, “of pretending that living in the muck was noble. I wasn’t living with you, I was undercover in a sodding zoo.” He turned his sneer on Dax. “And you. You were the easiest of all to herd. An impulsive idiot with a plasma cutter.”

Dax lunged at Santo, but he didn’t get two steps before Timmy’s arm shot out and grabbed his shoulder, a steel bar across his chest. The impact stopped the younger man cold, nearly lifting him off his feet.

“You bloody traitor!” Dax thrashed, spitting fury, but Timmy held him effortlessly.

Timmy didn’t look at Dax. His unblinking eyes were on Santo. When Dax settled, Timmy took a heavy step forward, a localised earth tremor. Santo’s smirk faltered. He took a small step back and broke eye contact.

Baron chuckled. “A touching reunion. But I have a schedule.”

Charles placed a hand on Dax’s shoulder. “Save the charge, Dax.” He looked at Santo, not with anger, but with the disappointment one might show a rusted bolt. “He is unsalvageable. We do not waste good tools on bad scrap.”

Santo winced.

Charles scrutinised Baron’s security detail. “Volgograd mercenaries,” he noted to Timmy. “Hired discipline. Brittle.” Timmy shifted his weight, a mountain preparing to slide.

Alene shifted her stance, bladed her body, and dropped her hand to her hip. With a flick of her thumb, she disengaged the retention lock on her holster. The mechanical click was surgically loud in the silent lab.

“Justice William Baron, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit global genocide, treason against the Council of Global Stability, and the murder of two men in my custody.”

Baron scoffed. It sounded dry, like parchment tearing. “Genocide? I’m as perplexed as everyone else about this pandemic. All I’m guilty of is seizing an opportunity. Hardly an arrestable offence.”

“As for you.” Baron turned to Francis, his jaw thrust forward, his nostrils flared. “How many did you kill to build your uniform, grey utopia? And once it was built, did you stop? I found my son with slit wrists in a warm bath because he couldn’t feel anything in your padded cell of a world. You’re the reason he opted out. He had nothing to strive for. I watched the life drain out of him and I swore I would bring down the CGS and restore the natural order.”

Francis lifted her chin. “What happened to your son is tragic, but you’re mistaking arson for architecture, William. It takes centuries to build a civilisation and seconds for a fool to burn it down. You can tell yourself that you’re a revolutionary, but you’re nothing more than a crude vandal.”

He gave Francis a pitying look. “You’re deluding yourself. The CGS is an evolutionary dead end, an academic experiment applied at scale. There’s nothing civilised about it. It was doomed to fail whether I brought it down or not, though I’ll admit—” Baron waved a lazy hand, “—I do take particular pleasure in the irony of how it will fall. Naomi Feld’s own grandson, your foster son, tearing down both your legacies.”

Francis went still. Alene watched her process the cruelty, but the Councillor didn’t break. Instead, a smile stretched her lips, the look of a prosecutor who spotted a testimonial inconsistency.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “You tried to weaponise a man whose nature is to mend, not break. You believe you used him as a lever to topple me, but all you did was use a screwdriver as a hammer. It didn’t work, William.”

“Yet here we are,” Baron sneered. He spread his hands, as if encompassing the violent tension in the lab. “And this is where the fate of our world will be decided. No laws or councils, just the people in this room.” His faced Alene. “Whoever comes out of here alive will be the one who writes the future.”

Baron nodded to Santo. “Clean this up.”

Santo fired.

In the acoustically sealed environment, the gunshot was a thunderclap trapped in a box. The primary display erupted into a blooming spread of shards.

“Cover!” Alene yelled.

Polycarbonate exploded. Centrifuges and spectrophotometers died in showers of sparks. Alene, Francis, Charles, Timmy, and Dax dived for the first row of central lab tables. Baron, Santo, and their mercenaries took the second.

Baron’s mercenaries laid down suppression fire, pinning Alene and the others. The air filled with the smell of ozone and the sting of cordite.

Charles roared a command. “Timmy! Suppress left flank! Dax, utility!”

Timmy rose, braced his heavy pulse rifle on the lab table, and unleashed a torrent of energy. The weapon, loud and crude compared to the mercenaries’ sidearms, tore chunks out of the opposing cover. Dax rolled, a dark streak against the white floor, his plasma cutter spitting a high-frequency whine. He slashed the conduit powering Baron’s cover.

The lab lights flickered and died on that side of the room. The sudden drop in the hum of the equipment was jarring, creating a void of sound that made the gunfire seem even louder. Sparks showered up from the severed cable, blinding the mercenaries on the right flank with strobe-light intensity, the smell of frying insulation choking the air.

Dax took a bullet to the side of his head and collapsed.

Alene rose to fire, but a volley from the mercenaries forced her down. Steel shrapnel stung her cheek. They were hopelessly pinned down.

---

Outside in the corridor, Ari Feld leaned against the wall. Drenched from the rain and his own sweat, his skin had a waxy sheen. He could hear the muffled roar of the firefight through the reinforced door. His body was failing, burning up like a data server running without coolant. Every instinct screamed at him to lie down, to let the darkness take him. But Sharon was in there.

He pushed off the wall, keyed the door, and lumbered into the over-saturated lab. The blue emergency lights burned his retinas, leaving tracers in his vision when he turned his head. The acoustic violence of the gunfire vibrated in his teeth.

Santo, reloading, saw him and froze, the magazine halfway into his weapon. “Impossible,” Santo hissed, his voice cracking. “I flushed you.”

Ari didn’t look at him. His vision was tunnelling, peripheral data corrupted. He instantly read the geometry of the fight. Two lines in trench warfare—a stalemate.

Unless you changed the parameters.

He lurched for the glass-walled conference room, surrendering to momentum. He crashed through the doorway and rolled under the long table.

“He’s in the conference room!” Santo roared.

Bullets stitched the room, blowing the glass panels into crystalline fragments that hailed down on the table.

Ari was already working. With his useless hands, he keyed the terminal.

ACCESS USER PROFILE: FELD A.

CLOUD LIBRARY > WWI IMAGER PROGRAMS > THE SOMME

OVERLAY FULL SENSORY

The lab’s primary holo projectors, designed for detailed molecular modelling, flared to life.

The floor vanished, consumed by a phantom deluge of churning mud and rusted barbed wire. The suffocating despair of the Somme—wet earth, rot, and mustard gas—melded with the ozone and gunpowder-filled air of the lab. The taste of iron. Bone-rattling roars of artillery subsumed the sounds of gunfire.

A dozen holo soldiers, caked in filth and screaming in terror, charged from the walls, their boots splashing in holo puddles that phased through the lab’s workbenches. They mounted a full bayonet charge on the mercenaries.

Baron’s men turned their backs to engage the phantoms erupting from the rear walls. They fired wildly at the charging soldiers, their discipline shattering against the impossible. Each holo that was hit fell with fully detailed gunshot wounds, screaming if injured, still if dead.

“They’re holos, you idiots!” Santo screamed.

Alene rose and fired twice. A mercenary dropped.

Charles vaulted a workbench, a feral roar tearing from his throat. He tackled a guard, plunging his knife into his throat. Charles rolled off him and took cover beside a bench at the end of the row where Baron’s remaining men hid.

Timmy laid down a wall of suppression fire. DC Leo Hatch, terror and determination on his face, sprinted from cover, passed Charles, and tackled Justice Baron. He slammed the older man against the back wall, his service weapon pressed hard against the Justice’s temple.

“Stay where you are!” Hatch screamed, the gun shaking in his grip. “I said stay where you are! You’re under arrest! Don’t you move!”

Pinned, Baron looked at the constable with chilling contempt, but the barrel jammed against his skin kept him still.

The gunfire stuttered out in a ragged halting. Ari peeked over the table. The remaining mercenaries were subdued. He shut down the Imager program. The dead and dying soldiers flickered and vanished, the mud retreating into the white floor. The artillery fire was replaced with a high-pitched ringing in his ears, the sawing sound of his own breathing, and the tink of hot brass casings rolling on the floor.

All was still for a fleeting moment. Then Santo moved. He seized Sharon, yanking her back, his arm locking around her throat, his gun pressed into her temple.

“Back! Or she dies!” he shouted, dragging her towards the far wall.

Ari stood in the shattered frame of the conference room. He was swaying, the fever pulsing behind his temples like a second heart.

“Santo,” he choked out. “Let her go.”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Santo’s eyes were wild, darting between the exits. “I still win, Fixit Kid! I’m walking out of here!”

“She can save billions of people,” Ari gasped, lurching forward, bracing himself on a workbench to keep his legs from folding. “Don’t add this to the ledger.”

“You care about a ledger? You had everything given to you. I’m just taking the only sodding thing I was ever given. My own life.”

Sharon shifted her eyes to her right. She did it again. She was telling him something. What? Think.

Input—Santo’s self-preservation.

Variable—Sharon signalling to a door behind him.

Output—A specification for saving Sharon.

Ari pointed with a shaking hand towards the heavy steel door behind Santo. Above it, a green status light blinked rhythmically.

“The lift,” Ari wheezed. “Take it.”

Francis stepped forward, reading the play instantly. “Go. It’s a viable exit. The CGS won’t hunt you if you leave Dr Feld.”

Santo’s gaze darted to the light. Green. He shoved Sharon hard to the floor and lunged for the door. He yanked the heavy handle, threw himself inside, and slammed the door shut. The latch engaged with a hermetic thud.

Santo pawed the smooth walls, finding no interface, no buttons. He screamed, raised his weapon, and fired at the observation port.

Crack.

The reinforced shielding didn’t shatter, but a spiderweb fracture bloomed at eye level. Then another.

Ari looked at Sharon. She was on the floor, exposed. He looked at the terminal beside him. The cycle command was waiting. It wasn’t poetic, or revenge. If he didn’t act, the threat would breach. It was a necessary patch. He mashed his trembling finger on the panel.

A flash of blue-white light erupted from the alcove. A vibration drove up through the floor and into his bones. Then, nothing. Santo was gone, scrubbed from existence by the particle disintegrator, sterilised like Level-4 clinical waste.

Ari hunched over the table. He caught voxelated snatches—Hatch securing Baron, cuffing him while the older man looked on with superior disbelief. Alene cuffed the remaining mercenaries while Timmy loomed over them. Charles rushed over to tend to Dax.

Something was leaking. Ari touched his abdomen. It was him that was leaking. Santo had shot him. The current holding his frame together dissipated. Gravity reclaimed him and he slumped to the floor. The schematic of the room became corrupted, seeping into a greyscale tunnel. Peripheral vision narrowed to a pinhole. Audio inputs de-synced, the voices around him slowing to a low, underwater hum.

His body was racked with a violent tremor that felt like it dislodged a critical component. The floor was mercifully cold against his cheek, a massive heat-sink drawing the fever from his bones. The vibration of the lab’s equipment hummed against his ear, a lullaby of functioning hardware.

Sharon, frantic, tore open a med-kit. “I can fix this! Ari, the pacemaker! The dampener! I can still—”

She froze. Her hands, covered in his blood, hovered over the dark, spreading stain on his abdomen.

“Hatch, get an ambulance!” She pulled medi-foam out of the med-kit and sealed the wound. She gripped his hand.

He fumbled in his pocket, pulling out the broken circuit board. He pressed it into her palm. “From the scope,” he breathed. “I wish I had fixed me before I broke us.”

Sharon looked from the board to him, her eyes widening with understanding. She squeezed his hand hard, anchoring him. “I know,” she sobbed, pressing her forehead against his knuckles. “I never stopped loving you.”

Alene knelt beside him. Ari turned his head to her. “So brave. I wish I… I had learned from you sooner.”

Alene squeezed his hand, hard. “You saw me, Ari. When no one else did. You saw me.”

“Right as rain,” he whispered.

Alene let out a shaky breath, a smile breaking through her tears. “Thank you.”

The pain in his chest was immense, a stabbing sensation that rippled outwards like waves through still water.

Francis stood at his feet, gripping her crossed arms with desperate force. “Ari, my sweet Narinder. I’m so sorry. I tried to—”

Ari found her eyes. The stern politician wasn’t there. She was the woman who had sat by his bed and soothed him when he had nightmares.

“It’s okay,” he said, with a ragged breath. “You kept me safe. You were there when I needed you.” He gave her a sliver of a smile. “I’m not afraid… Mum.”

Francis crumpled. She opened her mouth to speak. But no sound came, only a silent sob that shook her entire frame.

Ari rolled his head back to Sharon. Everything blurred except her brown eyes. She still clenched his hand. He had done it. He had executed the connection protocol he had blocked for most of his life, the new signal washing away the static.

His heart stopped. The tension left his body. His hands stilled.

Ari went offline.