Brazzaville

Kyrie Ntumba’s feet crunched into the gravel, his nanite-infused musculature tensing and rebounding in the blink of an eye. He whipped his head up and backward to check the 10th-story window he’d just leapt from. Still clear.

“I may have lost them,” he said as the honeycomb carbonite lattice built into his ear canal blinked green, “any update on extraction?”

Taking a deep breath, he dashed into an alleyway, ducking and diving between green overgrowth as lattice-hanging ivies, pothos, and ferns brushed against his arms. Just then, the earpiece piped, “Extraction is still compromised. Please hold.”

Hold for fucking what, he thought. For days he’d been tracking a paramilitary group from the former United States plotting to disrupt a landmark international conference that sought to confederate much of the world’s nations under the HIVE network. Kyrie paused at the end of the alleyway. The glint of a solar panel from a passing hovercar flashed his eye, his AI-integrated contacts darkening to lessen the glare.

“HIVE, I really don’t have time to hold. I am compromised.”

HIVE—Holistically Integrated Virtual Ethernet—was the name of the AI assistant he integrated with three years ago, outfitted particularly for his profession and personal goals. Kyrie thumbed the datapad attached to his wrist to check the status of his teammates. All were green, suggesting they were safe.

“I understand, Operative. HIVE Swarm has detected unusual activity two kilometers northwest from your location. Re-routing.”

“The conference?” The international meeting was about two kilometers away at HIVE HQ, and with Brazzaville leading the way in advanced artificial intelligence it was the city best equipped to monitor and keep track of any disturbances. Kyrie looked up, spotting two or three tiny blinking drones far overhead with his enhanced contact lenses. The entire city was covered in a network of them called HIVE Swarm that did everything from manage traffic to monitor crime and provide HIVE Network access to most of the citizenry at no cost.

“Your route is updated. Please be advised hostiles are engaging conference security forces.”

As if on cue, a muffled clack sounded in the distance and staccato pulse fire put Kyrie on high alert. He checked his surroundings for an empty car––he could run fast but not that fast. His lenses identified two––one a beat-up Tesla truck from when the company was still around decades earlier and another one made by a Qatari manufacturer infused with solar-absorbing chloroplasts across its surface. Racing toward it, HIVE unlocked the car for him and started it.

“Get me there.”

“Affirmative.” The car lurched a few feet from the ground as it went into hover mode and artfully swerved in and out of traffic, aided by HIVE Swarm signals forcing other vehicles out of the way.

Another boom echoed, glass and plants along the green-walled thoroughfare of Rue Mbochi visibly rattling. Kyrie’s earpiece piped up.

“Where the hell are you, Ntumba?” Commander Li’s voice strained.

“En route!” He eyed his ETA in the bottom of his virtual HUD. “Thirty seconds out. It seems our cell was a decoy.”

“No shit,” Li replied. “The whole city is lit up. We’re moving dignitaries out and need you to escort POROC.”

Kyrie blanched. He’d never been detailed to the President of the Republic of the Congo. If he was getting this assignment, things had to be a lot worse than he imagined.

“Confirm, Ntumba.”

“Confirmed, approaching now.”

Kyrie could see fires blazing outside the HIVE, the central headquarters of both the AI network and the government of the Congo. The two were virtually inseparable at this stage, a union soon set to become reality across most of the globe.

“Operative, side doors are compromised, and your vehicle is not outfitted for combat. Please proceed on foot after evasive maneuvers.”

The car whined and sped up. Hurtling through the open square now pockmarked by bullets and fire, it careened toward a barricade. “HIVE! Barricade!” Kyrie shouted, but the car had already initiated an evasive maneuver that sent it leapfrogging with a satisfying plomp before it crashed back down and skidded across the remainder of the entranceway to the towering chrysalis-shaped structure.

Kyrie grunted but wasted no time, feeling his ass was surely bruised. Under a flurry of bullets crashing into the car like a hailstorm, he pressed himself flat against the car floor and waited until it stopped. He pushed open the door facing away from battle and walked his elbows forward until his body was fully on the glinting concrete.

Huffing in the acrid air in a pattern that told nanites in his blood to go into overdrive, he bolted for the shattered front doors of the building. Swinging his arms tightly by his side, he forced his legs into a powerful zig-zag sprint. Bullets whizzed by, some thudding into his polycarbonate clothing and head-shield.

He winced at the dagger sensations across his body but at least he wasn’t dead, he thought. He reached the entrance and pulled out his firearm, withdrawing behind a pillar away from the gunfire. “I’m in.”

“Correct. Proceed to the marked location.”

“I was talking to Li.”

“Apologies for the confusion. Please proceed to the marked location.”

Kyrie nodded and saw a schematic of the route he needed to take to the third floor. “Li, can you hear me?”

Li wasn’t responding. Damnit, Kyrie thought. He glanced at his datapad as he quickly made his way through the building, firearm angled to the floor. Li’s status was now yellow, suggesting he was either wounded or in distress. His oldest friend was in trouble.

As he kept sweeping through, approaching the president’s position, he paused. “HIVE, locate Li.”

“Triangulating vitals . . . Commander Li appears to be with POROC. His status is: in distress.”

“Confirm status of POROC.”

“Current status of POROC is: unconscious.” Kyrie stopped and pulled his gun facing forward.

“Can you see anything else?”

HIVE took a beat. Kyrie was now in the hallway outside of the room marked. “Unable to verify current status beyond vitals and their location. Please be advised the building’s internal monitoring went dark at the initiation of hostilities . . . Upon further analysis, Li’s voice may have been a construct designed to pull you from another location. Proceed with extreme caution.”

He quietly whispered, “Just how in the hell do you expect me to do that? And why did you wait to tell me?”

“My apologies, the network is facing overload. Advise calling for backup.” Kyrie’s ears picked up fighting raging outside. Another explosion.

“I don’t think there’s time. Boost me in 3.”

The seconds ticked past like an eternity and Kyrie felt a surge of energy as nanites unleashed an adrenaline cocktail in his system. His foot collided with the door in a furious blow, his hand swinging his gun outward. Almost instantaneously, hypersonic bullets burst from Kyrie’s gun into four assailants, each one’s head snapping back as they crumpled to the floor. He’d gotten hit again, but nowhere exposed.

He saw Li tied on the floor and ran to him. “Where’s the president?”

“There,” Li pointed. The president lay motionless on the floor in a corner but still alive.

Li strained against the carbonite rope. “There’s a bomb in the building, we need to defuse it first.”

“Perfect.” Kyrie helped him out of his bindings and watched as Li moved toward the president. “Get him out, somewhere safe. I’ll locate the explosives. Any detonation parameters you know of?”

“I just know it’s here, Ntumba. Here,” Li said, pressing his finger against a small chip in his temple. He wirelessly transferred his intel over. HIVE integrated it and announced it was running bomb-defusing simulations for Kyrie.

“Thanks, Commander. I’ll get it taken care of.”

Li nodded and made his way to the unconscious president. Kyrie turned back toward the hallway, HIVE now directing him to a location deep in the basement while scanning the building for other explosives.

Here we go, Kyrie thought, racing for the stairway, hoping he would make it in time. The future of a ravaged world depended on it.