On the Run

By Nathan Conlon

Neon lights. Scores of people. A quick glance over her shoulder. She popped the collar of her leather coat and hurried along the market street. How long would it take them to find her?

A kiosk to her right showed the Washington Post. She’d made the front page:

DOCTOR CYBER HAS VANISHED

She came to a halt and scanned the vicinity. No pursuers, she hoped. Her shaking hands grabbed the paper, and she read…

Robyn Randal, better known as Doctor Cyber, has disconnected from cyberspace and vanished. The 27-year-old, who became a national hero after helping the U.S. win the Third Cyber War, is the only human to have achieved wireless biotechnological symbiosis with cyberspace. Pentagon officials say—

“Hello, Robyn.”

Distant thunder. Icy shock. Her head whipped round in a flash.

Garcia. Her boss. He stood like a pillar in the middle of the street as the crowd filtered around him. “Why’d you run from us?”

Her gaze flickered into the distance.

“Don’t try it,” said Garcia. He pulled back his coat to reveal a holstered gun. She trembled at the sight of it. At the violence it implied. “Just wanna talk, Robyn. Put things right. There’s a café on fifth street—nice n’ quiet. Let’s go.”

The crowds dwindled to the beat of their nervous footsteps as Garcia guided her to a quieter part of town. They came to the empty café. Robyn folded herself into a cramped booth. Wooden walls towered above her on three sides, Garcia on the fourth. He sat down opposite her, his cold eyes bathed in dim light.

“I…”  Robyn quivered, her eyes locked to the table. “The Pentagon… It’s not right… It’s unethical. Population control is one thing, but the Darwin Project? That’s murder.”

Garcia chuckled. “It’s natural selection. For every trap set by the Darwin Project—cigarettes, junk food, smartphones—there’s a ton of literature warning against it. People choose to ignore that literature, that’s their fault. Too many people on this planet, Robyn. We need to thin the numbers.”

A chill rushed through her body as she pictured her frail grandmother, riddled with cancer, living out her final days in a hospital bed. “I won’t be a part of it.”

“What choice do you have?” snapped Garcia. “You really think we’ll let Doctor Cyber just run off? You know too much, and you’re too powerful.”

Robyn felt as though she were drowning at sea. She just wanted it to end. “Maybe you’re right.” She sighed and looked up into Garcia’s eyes. “If I returned, what would happen?”

“Then we go back to work and forget this ever happened.”

Robyn nodded, unsure of anything. Disturbed by the thoughts racing through her head. “Mind if I visit the ladies’ room before we go?”

He eyed her. “Be quick.”

Robyn got up and made her way to the ladies’ room. She was halfway through the door when, from the corner of her eye, she saw that Garcia had gotten to his feet and was watching her.

The ladies’ room was simple—a dirty linoleum floor with cubicles on one side and sinks on the other. Robyn leaned against the sink, staring into the mirror, her heart beating like a bass drum.

What am I doing? she thought. I’m not a violent person. This isn’t me.

She swept her hand under the dryer, hoping it was loud.

It was.

As the dryer moaned, she took a deep breath and swung her elbow at the mirror. It cracked. A sharp pain ran through her arm. She swung again. And again. It was agony, but on the fourth swing, the mirror fractured.

The shards lay scattered in and around the sink. She grabbed one of them as blood trickled down her arm.

That’s when the door swung open. Garcia.

His eyes narrowed. His jaw tensed as he clenched his teeth.

The door shut. She watched him reach for the gun.

“Don’t… do anything… stupid,” he seethed.

Her fingers tensed around the glass shard.

She closed her eyes. Her flow of time slowed to a trickle as she reconnected with cyberspace. She found herself on a neon-red information highway. It branched into infinity. Millions of pathways in every direction. Huge towers of data. Shapes of every size and color.

Robyn reached out with her mind and found the local power grid. Black security ice surrounded it, which she dissolved with ease. Seconds later, she was at the control panel. She found the switch she was looking for. When she flipped it, the lights went out in every building in Downtown D.C.

Snapping back to reality, she found the ladies’ room shrouded in darkness—just as she’d expected. She burst forward until she collided with Garcia and thrust the shard like a dagger.

Torn flesh. A blood-curdling yell. As Garcia writhed on the dirty floor, Robyn bolted for the street outside.

The neon lights outside had faded to black. That was just as well, because Doctor Cyber was covered in blood.

Ice-cold shock flowed through her chest, making her breathless as she hurried along the darkened street.

But something else was growing inside her—something she’d never felt: a fiery rage… a lust for vengeance. Her fear melted before it.

And now she had a gun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nathan Conlon is a 27-year-old Irishman currently teaching in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. His hobbies include football, pool, snowboarding, traveling and of course, reading! He reads a wide variety of books, from science to politics. His favorite authors include George MacDonald Fraser, James S. A. Corey, Noam Chomsky and Michio Kaku.

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