chapter five

Early evening, and Durand sat in the conditioned air of a private, autonomous

comcar as it merged into the close coordination of rush hour. His

daughter’s wrapped birthday gift sat on the seat beside him. He leaned back and

felt the stress of the day leave him.

In the distance he could see the glowing logos of synbio firms on the

Singapore skyline. Licensed AR video ads played across the surfaces of several

skyscrapers—although they were really only being beamed into Durand’s retinas

by his own LFP glasses. The contract for his LFP glasses required exposure to

specific layers of public advertising. At least he’d opted out of the low-end ads,

but opting out of all AR advertising was prohibitively expensive.

Just the same, Durand frowned at the shoddy data management employed by

advertisers. He was clearly not in the target demographic for an ad gliding across

neighboring buildings, alive with images of Jedis, Starfleet officers, and

steampunk characters: “Singapore’s premier Star Wars™, Star Trek™, and

steampunk cosliving communities . . .”

Cosseted young professionals at the big synbio firms were a more likely

demo for their product—single people with a couple million to blow on living in

a theme park.

But by then the ad had shifted to CRISPR Critters. Gigantic, adorable

neotenic cats cavorted from building to building, pursuing a virtual ball of yarn.

Durand decided to close his eyes.

He knew it was extravagant to have his own private comcar, but it was one

of the perks of the job. And in fact, he treasured this time each day. He had never

really had time alone growing up. Not enough space for that. No privacy at the

Naval Academy, either, and certainly not in the service.

Durand considered turning on some music when he heard the car’s familiar

voice.

“Rerouting . . . Revised travel time one hour and six minutes.”

Durand sat up. His commute had suddenly tripled in length. The comcar was

stopped at a traffic light. Hundreds of people passed on the crosswalk in front of

stopped at a traffic light. Hundreds of people passed on the crosswalk in front of

it. He turned around to look through the rear windshield at smaller, older

building facades. The towering buildings of the Central Business District stood

behind him—which meant he wasn’t heading toward the BKE anymore. The car

was taking a new route.

“Shit.”

Traffic must be backed up somewhere. In his LFP glasses he brought up the

car’s virtual map and expanded it. The new route brought him around a line of

red traffic warnings on the expressway.

“Damnit . . .” Durand tapped his LFP glasses to phone home.

In a moment Miyuki’s voice came on the line. “Hi, hon.”

“Hi, Mi.”

“I’m scrambling to get ready. Please tell me you remembered the gift.”

“Yes, got it right here.” He put a hand on the package. “Just wanted to let

you know the comcar is routing around traffic. If it keeps going this way I’m

going to be late.”

“What’s your ETA?”

Durand winced. “Over an hour, but I’m working on it. Just wanted to give

you a heads-up.”

“Okay. Do what you can. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

He clicked off and watched in surprise as the comcar signaled and pulled

slowly over to the left curb. The car’s interior lights illuminated as if he’d

opened the door.

The car’s AI voice said, “This vehicle is experiencing technical difficulties.

Please exit.”

He shouted at the ceiling liner. “Oh, come on!”

“Please exit the vehicle. This vehicle is now out of service.”

“Goddamnit . . .” Durand grabbed Mia’s gift and got out. He glanced around

to get his bearings. He was clearly in an older part of the city. He instantiated the

virtual map again with his LFP glasses and studied it as it floated before him.

He then launched his car-hailing app and noticed that it had terminated his

ride due to an unspecified vehicle malfunction. Oddly, the app had not

summoned a replacement car. He clicked through and was rewarded with an

estimated pickup time of forty-five minutes from now.

“No, no, no.” The car service had just dumped him here, far off the main

expressways. In the middle of rush hour he knew damn well the algorithms were

going to triage him as the odd man out. There was no efficient way to collect

going to triage him as the odd man out. There was no efficient way to collect

him where he was.

“Not today. Goddamnit.” He checked the time. Guests were showing up in

an hour and a half.

Commuters passed him on foot. They, too, were focused on or talking to

their own devices.

Just then the supposedly out-of-service comcar he’d exited closed its doors

and drove away—merging into the traffic.

“Are you shitting me?” Durand ran alongside the car on the sidewalk,

pushing through the foot traffic. “Excuse me. Pardon me.”

But the car didn’t stop. He glanced at the ride-hailing app again, but no, he’d

definitely lost his link to the vehicle. It drove off with an out-of-service AR sign

rotating above it.

Durand sighed in frustration as other commuters continued to swarm past

him. In a moment it occurred to him that they all seemed to be walking with

purpose. He opened the map again and zoomed in to his current location. He was

close to the new Tekka wet market—and an MRT station. If he couldn’t get a

car, he could take the MRT. He examined the street detail.

There. MRT station two blocks away. Durand oriented himself and now

realized why the passersby were turning down a narrow pedestrian lane between

historic brick buildings of the Little India district. It was the shortest path to the

train station.

The north-south line stopped just a few blocks from his building. This was

salvageable.

He tapped his LFP glasses to make a call as he fell in line with the rest of the

foot traffic.

Miyuki answered. “How’s it looking?”

He laughed. “You’re not gonna believe this. My comcar crapped out.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Stranded me in Little India before it shut down, and it’ll take forty-five

minutes for another car to pick me up.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Don’t worry. There’s an MRT station nearby. I can hop a train. This might

turn out better actually. I might not even be late.”

“Well, make sure they give you a credit.”

“I have to pay attention to where I’m going, though. So I’m going to hang

up. See you soon, hon.”

“Bye.”

He clicked off and followed other commuters down a narrow lane between

He clicked off and followed other commuters down a narrow lane between

old brick buildings. This MRT crowd skewed young—twenties and early

thirties. Lots of expats. Well dressed and all talking to people who weren’t there.

Snatches of conversation floated past him in Hokkien, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil,

English, Russian, Swahili, German, Korean—and more he didn’t recognize.

They’d no doubt come to Singapore to make their killing. To work threads in a

blockchain corporation or license their own cellular machinery. XNA

programmers. Genetic engineers. Entrepreneurs. And they all had to have

impressive CVs to get a work visa in the city.

Looking up, Durand noticed the old Indian and Hokkien storefronts around

them. He wondered how these shops and tiny exporters were hanging on.

Singapore was not a town paralyzed by nostalgia. Durand had never seen poorly

designed public spaces in the city, and that’s what this historic district was. He

got jostled and held tightly on to Mia’s gift as the crowd grew dense. It surged

toward the MRT station entrance. Streams of commuters pushed and shoved.

Carried along with the crowd, Durand suddenly felt a sharp sting at the back

of his right arm.

It took a second or two to pivot around in the crush of people, but all he saw

behind him was a sea of diverse faces wearing LFP glasses, pushing relentlessly

forward and past him, headed toward the station entrance. No one reacted to his

stare.

Durand tugged at the back of his jacket sleeve but could see nothing. The

pain was still there. In fact, it was getting worse.

Shit.

He recalled reading an Interpol report a few months back on jab-stick attacks

in dense crowds—that they could happen right in front of security cameras

without revealing the perpetrator. Psychologists theorized it was a form of

rebellion against ubiquitous surveillance. Durand didn’t recall any of the

incidents occurring in Singapore, though.

He started to doubt himself. But damn, his arm hurt.

Durand struggled across the river of commuters to get to the nearest wall.

Just downstream of a support pillar, he took off his suit jacket and checked the

back of his shirtsleeve.

A spot of blood soaked through the synthetic silk.

He felt adrenaline surge. Shit . . .

Someone in the crowd had stabbed him. An accident? A random psycho?

But then Durand realized he could feel more than just adrenaline. He recalled the

first time he’d experienced a mortar attack in a CLU at Camp Lemonnier.

Alarms wailing as thumps rattled the walls. That was adrenaline.

This was something else.

The urge to vomit. Trembling hands, yes. But something else was coursing

through him, too. A burning sensation. He could feel it spreading. Was it

psychosomatic?

I haven’t been stabbed—I’ve been injected.

An injection under high pressure.

The Huli jing use synbiotoxins.

That’s what Marcotte had said. Wasn’t that what she’d said? He needed to

get help.

Durand tried to tap his LFP glasses to instantiate a phone—but his arm

muscles had begun to spasm. The more he tried to move them, the more

disconnected they seemed to become. And then he noticed his fingers were

swelling.

He tried to speak to his virtual assistant, but his tongue didn’t obey him,

either—it was swelling fast. His throat constricted.

Durand staggered out into the flood of passing commuters. He stepped in

front of them, pleading wordlessly. Workers pushed past him as he howled at

them for help, raising a swelling hand. He began to drool uncontrollably, his face

suddenly numb. His muscles began to clench in excruciating spasms, causing

him to call out in pain.

The commuters looked away—intent on their own lives and virtual

interactions. Not wanting to get involved in his reality.

Durand looked up at the ceiling and parapets around and above him—where

he knew security cameras would be. But in this precise spot, he could see none.

That’s not a coincidence.

Only then did he realize just how well planned this had been.

Durand pitched forward and collapsed onto the concrete floor. He rolled

onto his back, staring upward at the graceful, arched ceiling of the wet market.

Passing commuters finally reacted, shouting in several languages, edging

around him, some holding the crowd back so he didn’t get trampled.

Durand’s throat continued to constrict. He struggled for air. Looking up at

the concerned faces all around him, he could tell by their expressions that he was

in trouble. He could feel the skin of his face tightening.

Someone had intentionally injected him. The Huli jing use synbiotoxins. He

recalled the gallery of dead.

Still clutching his daughter’s gift with a paralyzed arm, he struggled to raise

Still clutching his daughter’s gift with a paralyzed arm, he struggled to raise

his free hand. His fingers were now so badly swollen that his wedding ring had

become a tourniquet.

A group of commuters cleared space around Durand, shouting. Curious

onlookers knotted around the scene.

“Call ambulance, lah!”

“Serangan jantung?”

“Mite, sugoku hareteiru!”

“Stay back! He looks contagious!”

Durand stared at people’s feet. So many expensive shoes. Sneakers were not

popular in Singapore. His breathing became more and more labored. Men knelt

close to him, loosening his tie, unbuttoning his shirt.

“Usake paas se door hato!”

Durand soon became aware of uniformed paramedics arriving. They wore

visored helmets. One of them leaned in close, checking Durand’s vitals.

Durand tried to speak, but his swollen tongue and constricted throat rendered

him mute.

Mia and Miyuki would be so disappointed. His mother, too. She’d never

wanted him to travel here. Durand also realized how disappointed he was. He

closed his eyes and concentrated.

Please, not this way. Not now.

Radio chatter in an unknown language. The whole world was looking and

sounding strange now. Distorted. Leering faces of professional men and women.

He couldn’t move. His entire body was swollen in a violent reaction to

something. His shirtsleeves and shoes squeezed him mercilessly. Unbearable

muscle spasms increased. He groaned.

One paramedic pried the birthday gift from Durand’s frozen arm. Durand’s

eyes tried to follow it, only to see the other paramedic lift metal clippers to

Durand’s hand—and snip the wedding band off of Durand’s swollen index

finger, leaving a red indentation where it had been choking off blood flow.

A toy poodle in the arms of a nearby elderly Chinese man started barking

madly—and then struggled to escape as if in terror. It hopped out of the man’s

hands and fled between the feet of onlookers. The man shouted after it.

Durand watched reality with increasing detachment, his eyes wandering

across the faces in the crowd above him. Then his eyes focused on one face just

now leaning in close to his own—a handsome young Eurasian man. He wore a

fine suit and had midlength black hair. He knelt just two feet away, gazing

down, with both hands leaning on the engraved ivory handle of a full-length

black umbrella. The double-Windsor knot of the man’s pale yellow silk tie was

perfect.

Durand stared into the young man’s gray eyes.

They stared back with unflinching intensity.

Even though Durand struggled for air, his entire focus held on the young

man. Though every way normal in appearance—refined even—an uncannyvalley effect pervaded him. The young man did not seem real. Some instinct

screamed to Durand that the eyes regarding him were empty.

He felt growing terror as the man leaned even closer now, reaching across

Durand. Every cell in Durand’s body recoiled.

The young man picked up Mia’s gift and tucked it underneath his own arm.

With that, he drew back again to stare once more into Durand’s eyes.

Durand could not turn away. Those cold gray eyes held him. He couldn’t

recall ever having seen eyes like that before. Unliving eyes. They watched as

Durand’s vision faded into darkness as an internal fire consumed him.

He could not even gather the breath to scream.