After Life (Power Reads Book 2) Read online

  ‘What?’ Arianna stammered. ‘I can’t do that!’

  ‘Yes,’ Icon replied as he looked back at Arianna as she knelt beside him, ‘you can. You’re the only one who can, Arianna. You’re still human, you’re still alive and your holosap is still within reach. You must convince her, convince yourself.’

  Arianna heard Han’s voice from behind her.

  ‘It’s why he wanted you to upload,’ Han explained. ‘He didn’t need you to contact Alexei Volkov. He just needed that chip in your brain to upload its data into the Re–Volution servers.’

  Arianna felt a chill run down her spine as she looked at Icon.

  ‘You’re the kill–switch, Arianna,’ Icon said solemnly to her. ‘You’re what I’ve been searching for all these years.’

  ***

  51

  Arianna stared at Icon’s ruined face in disbelief. ‘What?’

  ‘I excavated your grave,’ Icon replied, his voice rattling now as blood pooled into his shattered lung, ‘months after I had survived The Falling. Your father buried you long before the city was quarantined. The grave contained the body of a young girl who was not Professor Anderson’s daughter. She possessed no implant. It was a pauper’s grave, Arianna. It was then that I understood that you were his secret, still alive somewhere, a walking kill–switch to bring the holosaps to account for the crimes he believed they might commit if allowed to propagate.’

  She barely heard Kieran Beck’s voice ring out across the chamber.

  ‘Kill her! She will commit genocide if you don’t! She’ll murder us all!’

  The amassed ministers seemed unmoved. Prime Minister St John spoke for the first time since Icon had burst into the chamber. ‘Is this true?’

  ‘It is true,’ Icon replied. ‘Cecil Anderson’s daughter did not die of The Falling. She was placed in Leadenhall’s boarding houses at the age of seven for several months to hide her identity and then adopted by Alexei Volkov. I watched her father send the kill–switch to Arianna’s upload chip just before he died, the same virus he used to terminate Adam so many times, knowing that when she died of old age she would both be prevented the horror of becoming a holosap and she would exact her father’s revenge on Kieran Beck, whom he must have known was plotting against him.’

  ‘It’s all lies!’ Beck sneered.

  ‘But why?’ Minister Hart asked, ignoring the magnate. ‘Why did he want it all shut down?’

  ‘Because they’re not us,’ Arianna spoke finally, her lips moving almost of their own accord as though she were reciting her long dead father’s last words. ‘They’re copies, not resurrected humans. They have their own agenda and see living humans as little more than an irritation, something to be cleansed.’ She looked at St John. ‘They will kill us all.’

  ‘But the virus is dormant, right?’ Han said.

  ‘It was designed to activate when Arianna died and uploaded,’ Icon said, ‘but Arianna is not dead so it requires manual activation by her holosap. A simple spoken quote will suffice.’ He looked at Arianna. ‘You know the one, Arianna. The Mourning Bride, by William Congreve.’

  Arianna stared back at him for a long moment. She turned and looked up at her son and her own holosap, far above her.

  ‘This is the right thing to do,’ she said, the sense of talking to herself bizzare and yet natural, now that she understood what holosaps really were.

  Her holosap was staring down at her as though confused, the as–yet incompletely formed holonomic brain struggling to assess the complexity of the situation before her.

  ‘I am not dead,’ Arianna continued to her. ‘And yet you exist. Therefore you cannot be me and your very presence proves that it is so. You have my memories. You have my feelings. You have my beliefs. But you are not me. Is this the life you would really have for yourself? For your son?’

  The holosap looked down at Connor, the child looking back up in response.

  ‘Don’t listen to them,’ Beck raged at the two holosaps. ‘They’re lying to you. You’re alive! You’re here, right now! They would have you die for nothing!’

  ‘I would have you die,’ Arianna agreed, speaking softly, ‘for you to avoid becoming what Alexei has become. A pawn. A machine with no true free will, denied the chance of the true afterlife that awaits us. I have seen it. I had to be placed in a state of clinical death in order to infiltrate the holosap colony in an attempt to understand what was happening. I saw the light, the real light, the real afterlife, and I would gladly die without an upload rather than become what my poor adoptive father has.’ Arianna looked up at Alexei’s holosap. ‘Is that the Alexei you remember? Would he have threatened our son in this way?’

  Arianna’s holosap stared down at Connor, and then she slowly backed away and looked at Arianna.

  ‘What will happen to me?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t listen to her!’ Beck raged. ‘Don’t believe a word she says!’

  Arianna shook her head. ‘Honestly, I do not know,’ she replied. ‘But I do know that madness has infected every holosap so far, and that was the reason our father tried to destroy Adam, the very first holosap. He realised the danger it represented. Like Adam and like Alexei you’ll lose the essence of who you are, who you were, who I am. You will become an automaton, your sense of self forever lost, and you will be forever beholden to the people who run Re–Volution, people like Kieran Beck, who murdered Alexei Volkov and who murdered our father, Cecil Anderson. You will not be free, you will be like all holosaps: prisoners.’

  The holosap stared at Arianna for a long beat and then looked down at their son.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Connor,’ she said softly.

  Connor broke away from Alexei Volkov’s holosap and dashed down the light path between the ranked seats, past the politicians and onto the chamber floor. Arianna’s holosap rushed in pursuit of him. Connor slowed as he reached Arianna and stared up into her eyes as Arianna’s holosap joined him.

  ‘Mummy?’ Connor asked. ‘What am I?’

  Arianna stared down at Connor through the tears that spilled from her eyes, and then she turned to look at Kieran Beck. The magnate glared across at Arianna’s holosap.

  ‘I’ll have you erased forever if you dare cross me! I’ll destroy you and your son!’

  Arianna’s holosap stared up at Beck for a moment and then the Prime Minister spoke.

  ‘They took my life,’ he gasped, his glowing features a mask of grief. ‘My family. If you do this I’ll never see them again.

  Arianna saw the Prime Minister’s wife and daughters huddled nearby, their faces damp with tears. Arianna’s holosap looked at them, at Connor, at Beck and across the entire chamber, and she then spoke in a voice that seemed inhuman and yet filled with a wisdom beyond anything that Arianna herself possessed.

  ‘This is not the answer,’ she said. ‘Holosaps are not our saviour. This course is not one of courage but one of cowardice, and the only true violation of human rights is the resurrection of the dead. It is not our place. We are not meant to live forever, for if we do, what place empathy for those who cannot?’

  The holosap turned to Arianna, her voice now a whisper that still carried to every high corner and every ear in the silent chamber.

  ‘Heav’n has no rage like love to hatred turn’d, nor hell a fury like a woman scorn’d.’

  ***

  52

  ‘No!’ Beck screamed.

  A moment passed in utter silence as Arianna stared into her son’s eyes.

  And then, as though through magic, Connor’s eyes glowed with a gentle light as one by one, tiny specks of light began to flutter away from his holosap, billions of 1s and 0s spiralling like pollen drifting on an invisible breeze. Connor’s holosap began to sparkle as though made of a billion stars that began dripping away into a cascade of light that spilled across the floor beneath them.

  ‘What the hell?’ Han uttered.

  Arianna dropped onto her knees beside Connor’s holosap. The hair on his head was running like a m
illion coloured droplets of light, as though a shower was draining illuminated water across his scalp. His eyes filled with sparkling tears.

  ‘Mummy?’

  Arianna’s holosap knelt down beside Connor’s and wrapped her arms around him, folding him into her embrace as they held each other. Arianna tried to suppress the terrible grief that filled her as she touched her hands to Connor’s glowing face where it rested on his mother’s shoulders and held it gently as he stared at her, cupping his chin and cheeks and wishing she could actually feel them one last time. She looked into his eyes and tried, with all of her heart, to convey her emotions to him.

  Connor’s fear melted away as fast as his image was collapsing like a neon watercolour in the rain. He stared back at her, his face slowly dissolving into a milieu of tumbling lights as he spoke silently. Even though she could not hear him, she could read the words falling from his lips as clear as day.

  ‘I love you mummy.’

  Arianna’s heart broke as Connor’s and Arianna’s holosaps collapsed into each other, losing their resolution and shape until they were a kaleidoscope of coloured lights that tumbled to the floor in a river and then flickered away like dying stars into nothingness.

  The silence throughout the chamber was complete. Arianna knelt on the floor, her eyes squeezed tight shut and her arms suspended before her around where Connor’s holosap had once been.

  ‘He’s gone, Arianna,’ Icon whispered weakly, his voice barely audible.

  ‘What have you done?!’ Alexei Volkov yelled, his own holosap starting to shimmer and trail a veil of falling digits.

  Kieran Beck shouted at her. ‘Arianna!’

  In a burst of colour and light swirling like a thousand tiny tornadoes, the holosaps looked at each other and a great cry of terror erupted to echo through the chamber as their images collapsed into a flood of light that spilled without form across their seats, their cries warbling and distorting away into silence as they vanished.

  Their shaking heads and imploring arms trailed halos of light, their digital flesh falling from their frames just as the flesh and blood of billions of humans had fallen to stain the earth when The Falling had infected mankind twenty five years before.

  Kieran Beck staggered toward her as the ranks of holosaps disintegrated in colourful flares of bright light, as though seeing once again the halo of joy and love that she had witnessed too briefly only hours before. Beck’s eyes were wide with a volatile mixture of rage and fear, his arms reaching out for her but spilling light like sparks that vanished into thin air.

  Beck’s face came within an inch of Arianna’s, his mouth agape as he screamed at her, those glowing eyes still poisoned by hate.

  And then Kieran Beck disappeared.

  Arianna felt nothing as they disappeared one by one until every holosap in the chamber but Tarquin St John had vanished. She stared at the empty spaces they had once occupied, tears still filling her eyes as she heard the sobs of St John’s daughters echoing through the silence as their father faded from view, still a human in his mind and his soul just as Connor had been.

  The Prime Minister’s holosap collapsed into coloured light and spilled away into eternity.

  The silence in the chamber seemed oppressive, as though haunted by souls still lingering in the still air, until a single voice broke it.

  ‘It’s over,’ Icon said, his chest heaving as his remaining lung struggled to keep him alive.

  Arianna looked at Icon. ‘You knew all of that time and you never told me?’

  Icon’s scarred and haggard face twisted awkwardly to accommodate the smile that crept upon his twisted lips despite his pain. ‘I knew. You were the kill–switch Arianna. You were Eve, your father’s defence against his own creation. All you had to do was upload once and the virus would go with you.’

  ‘Alexei?’ she asked.

  ‘It was why he gifted you the upload,’ Icon said, ‘on your father’s orders. If things ever got out of control he was to ensure you uploaded. The chip in your head would do the rest. Adam was the birth, but the end had to come with you.’

  Arianna stared at the floor where moments before her son had stood.

  ‘I’ve caused the deaths of thousands of people,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve killed my own son.’

  ‘It wasn’t Connor,’ Han assured her as he moved alongside her.

  ‘It doesn’t feel that way.’

  Han gently took her arm. ‘Come on, you’ve had a hell of a day. We can deal with the aftermath later.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Icon gasped. ‘There is the small matter of this parliament and its lack of a Prime Minister. They were about to sell out on humanity. Is that who we want running our country? I should kill them all, and there’s no reason that anybody in the city would stop us. We carry the immunity to The Falling in our blood.’

  ‘You forget that I now carry it too,’ Arianna pointed out. ‘Lynda’s blood now runs in my veins, and I can and will pass on that immunity to anybody who needs it.’

  Icon struggled to sit up, his men helping him as blood frothed from his lips. ‘That was not what I had in mind when I uploaded you.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ she replied. ‘My survival was not high on your list of priorities, was it Icon? I wonder what my father would have thought of that?’

  Icon continued to glare at her but he said nothing as the ministers’ attention switched from Icon to Arianna. Minister Hart spoke up once more.

  ‘There are people here, servants of this country who would gladly see the holosaps consigned to history. If you truly are immune, then it is we who are at your service.’

  Arianna sighed as she looked up at the ranks of politicians, as removed from the general population as any other generation of politicians had been, icons to leadership in name but falling far from it in deeds, and wondered if indeed any of them could be trusted any farther than she could throw them.

  She was about to answer when Han spoke beside her. ‘I don’t think we should make any harsh decisions.’

  ‘It’s not your call to make,’ Icon snarled.

  Han gestured to the television screen, still silently showing broadcasts nearby. ‘It’s not ours now, either.’

  Arianna looked up to see a broadcaster speaking urgently as images of New York appeared on the screen beside her, and then images of huge satellite dishes at airports near surviving cities exploding and collapsing as armed troops fled. The scrolling script at the bottom of the screen told her everything she needed to know.

  ‘New York has isolated itself,’ Han said. ‘They’ve destroyed their regional communication hubs and shut themselves off so that the virus didn’t get through.’

  Icon coughed, blood splattering his shirt.

  ‘You need a doctor,’ Arianna urged him.

  Icon shook his head, peering at her with his one good eye. ‘I want no part of this future. I’ll die a man on this floor rather than survive and be beholden to men like these.’

  Icon gestured with a weak, quivering arm to the politicians.

  Minister Hart shook his head. ‘Not all of us supported Kieran Beck’s obsession.’

  ‘Destroy them,’ Icon whispered, his eye drooping wearily. ‘Destroy the holosap storage units. End this, while you can.’

  ‘Strange,’ Minister Hart say quietly, ‘I expect that’s what the holosaps were saying about us, about humans.’

  Icon stared up at the minister until the life finally left his eyes and his broad chest fell still.

  Han Reeves passed his hand over Icon’s eyes and glanced up at the politicians.

  ‘He’s gone,’ the detective said, ‘but he was right. We need to do something about New York.’

  ‘Then it is time for us to make a new stand,’ Minister Hart insisted, ‘because this is no longer a battle for ideals. This is about to become a war, and right now we are the only ones who can fight it.’

  ***

  Also by Dean Crawford:

  The Atlantia Series

  Survi
vor, Retaliator

  Aggressor, Endeavour, Defiance

  The Warner & Lopez Series

  The Nemesis Origin

  The Fusion Cage

  The Ethan Warner Series

  Covenant, Immortal, Apocalypse

  The Chimera Secret, The Eternity Project

  Independent novels

  Eden, After Life

  Revolution, Soul Seekers

  Find more books by Dean Crawford here in the USA: Author Page USA or here in the UK: Author Page UK or sign up to Dean Crawford's Newsletter

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dean Crawford is the author of the internationally published series of thrillers featuring Ethan Warner, a former United States Marine now employed by a government agency tasked with investigating unusual scientific phenomena. The novels have been Sunday Times paperback best–sellers and have gained the interest of major Hollywood production studios. He is also the enthusiastic author of many independently published Science Fiction novels.

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