Isonation

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business,

  events and incidents are the products of the authors’ imaginations.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  or actual events is purely coincidental.

  isonation

  © 2020 In Churl Yo

  All rights reserved.

  Castle Bridge Media

  castlebridgemedia.com

  Denver, Colorado, USA

  Cover photo by CDC/Alissa Eckert, MS, Dan Higgins, MAM

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying,recording, or otherwise, without the prior written

  permission of the author, except as provided by U.S.A. copyright law.

  To my parents, who sacrificed everything for their

  children and the promise of a bold, new world.

  Writing a book is easy.

  Said no one ever.

  I have to thank my wife, Rachel, for allowing me the freedom

  to be creative, for her strength of will keeping things together

  when it could have all easily fallen apart, and for her constant

  love and support. Likewise, I have to thank my kids, Sam and Noah,

  for inspiring me to be more like them every day. I love you all!

  To Jason Henderson, Hannah Robbins, Leah Mathison,

  Christina Procopiou, Drew Wolle and John Clark: Your keen

  insight, grammatical kung fu and all-around awesomeness

  not only made this book better, you also made me a better

  writer. Thank you for your help and your friendship.

  It means more to me than you know!

  CHAPTER 1

  Milton Lee needed to feel the jagged little edges and dust sifting through his hand, even beneath the protective fabric of his glove. A simple act that reminded him every time he stepped outside that consequences mattered now, that the natural order of things applied here. This seemed especially pertinent to a solitary dude standing small atop an office building out in a huge and not too unscary world. He bent down and ran his fingers across the rooftop gravel.

  REMEMBER: no respawns here, champ. No do-overs.

  Then he registered the dark cityscape around him, empty and eroded, abandoned long ago. Despite trying to meet his new reality head on, Milton couldn’t help but think how unreal everything felt out here.

  Artificial. Hollow.

  The irony did not escape him, but he wanted to believe—in fact needed to because his life depended on it. There was nothing virtual about this place. There was only this place.

  “Um, hello, world,” Milton said aloud, an impromptu announcement of his arrival in it.

  No answer. Not that he expected one. He adjusted his headset visor and turned around for the task at hand. The display heightened his visual field, and readouts on either periphery brought relevant data or information retrieved from the global network.

  Scanners locked on to his objective: a line of unmanned drones flying fast in formation below, layered like strata with the largest and heaviest ships zooming at the bottom, cutting a line through the deserted city with machine precision and efficiency.

  Milton laid flat toward the roof’s edge and stretched his head out for a clear view of the traffic below. He skimmed a few drones and noted their ID tags as shipping-manifest information scrolled by, until in the distance a red dot appeared on a ship. He took a deep breath through his facemask and focused on the sound of the air as it passed through two small discs on either side, biological filters that insured each inhalation was clean and safe.

  “Sweet. Nailed it,” he whispered.

  Milton walked back from the edge while counting the paces in his head. It was going to be close. A signal came from his wrist, and the words “Proximity Alert” flashed on his cufflink, a curved display and micro-computer resting on his forearm. A digital countdown ticked off on his visor below his right eye as hundreds of meters dropped to dozens blinking with increased intensity as it continued. It was time.

  Milton bounced on his toes in rhythm with the electronic beeping.

  Ready. Steady.

  When the tone became solid, he sprinted toward the building’s edge.

  It’s real. REMEMBER that.

  He leapt off the roof.

  Arms flailing, Milton glanced hard off the curved top of a cargo drone, just missing the rear spinning blades propelling it forward. Sliding down its side he grabbed the vehicle’s external support structure. His fingers brushed then grasped a bracing bar, but before he could reset his hold, the drone reached the end of the block and took a hard, 90-degree turn to the left.

  It was all he could do to hold on.

  Then the machine took a sharp right, and the strain on his arm intensified. His grip burning, Milton fumbled at his belt with his free hand, produced a carabiner and attached it to the drone. Then he let go.

  “Nailed…it!” he grunted as inertia caught up with the climbing harness around his waist.

  Milton took a moment to catch his breath, dangling beneath the ship from a rope as it continued on with its delivery. That’s when he heard it: the hum of the drone’s four propellers getting higher. And louder.

  They were leaving the city, which he expected. What he didn’t plan on was still being three meters below the damn thing when it got up to speed.

  He was spinning now. The turbulence punched at him, pushing Milton in and out of the slipstream. He climbed slowly, hand over hand, but the strain was increasing. Worse still, the drone was gaining velocity and altitude to join others zooming through the aerial expressway more than 300 meters high.

  The aircraft leveled off. As it reached cruising elevation, Milton saw his lane of traffic moving quicker than the one below it. Dangling now in the middle of the lower lane, he stared at the backend of a large transport drone as it drew near. His body slammed into its rear door, was pulled over and dragged across the ship’s cargo area before swinging free again.

  He pulled at the rope to slow his spin. He lifted his legs and maneuvered himself for a forward landing on the next vehicle. Once secured, Milton rappelled up the drone as the rope pulled him over again. When he reached the top, he ran almost the entire length of the ship until he reached an access panel.

  Pressing a button on his cufflink, Milton detached his carabiner from the drone above. The line wound its way back to his belt. While he was no longer being dragged through traffic, he’d had to cut himself from the only chance he had of making his objective.

  Milton looked up and watched his ride fly away.

  Quickly now, he kneeled and pried open the larger cargo drone’s access panel that housed its logic center. He pulled a cable from his forearm and connected it to a data port. Milton broke the protocols keeping him from the computer’s command tree.

  “Ditch the cargo,” he said, ordering the ship to slide open the emergency doors beneath its hold. Several large crates and boxes fell from the drone, lightening its load. Then he pulled up the guidance controls on his headset display and, gesturing with his hands, turned the four propellers up to 110 percent of nominal output. Milton felt a slight tug as they increased speed. He pulled the aircraft out of its lane and ascended.

  While no longer being left behind by the original drone, the cargo ship wasn’t closing the gap either. Now for the tricky part.

  “Evade rockets on my mark,” Milton ordered, grasping either side of the open panel with a sure handhold. He took a long breath then said, “Do it.”

  The ship’s two back propellers rotated 90 degrees, then spinners at the center of each caught fire as emergency rockets came to life. The drone lunged for
ward. Milton let go a hand to steer, climbing the ship through two lanes of traffic to a position just above his objective as the engines ran out of fuel. Then his cufflink started flashing another proximity alert.

  A flock of document drones. He had parked the cargo ship in their lane. There was hardly time to see one impact the rear left engine as he jumped for the lower aircraft, the heat from the explosion searing his back as he landed hard, the cargo ship obliterated in the blast.

  Milton rolled over and watched the debris cloud fall into the distance. Luck had brought him this far, but no way would it last. At least he was on the right ship again, and now, after all the time he’d spent planning, he was doing it. He finally was on his way.

  # # #

  Hunched for hours on the drone’s back bumper inside the ship’s draft, Milton attempted to avoid the biting wind with nothing but a million thoughts and worries occupying his mind. Still, it wasn’t enough to distract him from the intense cold, and just as he began to wonder how much longer he could hold out, the aircraft began to slow.

  He stood and stretched his legs, punching his thighs to get the blood flowing again. Beneath him all was inky black, offering nothing in the way of help gathering his bearings. He edged toward the side of the drone to get a look around.

  A glow on the horizon grew as they traveled toward it. Milton flinched as the ship suddenly passed near a tower with a flashing red light on it. Several more blinking towers in the distance formed to what appeared to be a long perimeter of some kind.

  Then the ground beneath lit up, bathed by an array of flood lights, and Milton could make out trees and shrubs swooshing by. He was about 30 meters above ground and closing fast toward a tall barbed-wire fence. Time to ditch.

  He unhooked his carabineer, then fed a line through a flywheel on his harness before reattaching it. The drone was slowing. Now just 10 meters separated him from the dirt. Milton stepped out into the air.

  He watched the earth come at him fast until at the last second twin pulleys engaged the rope and slowed his descent. The carabiner detached, dropping him onto his stomach. The cargo ship continued to fly on without him, eventually landing behind a wall of stacked cargo containers in the distance.

  Milton felt his heart in his throat. He was naked out in the open, exposed. It took a few controlled breaths for him to find his legs and tell them to get going. It took a few more before they responded to his request.

  When he finally reached the containers, Milton fought to control his breath as he squinted beneath his visor to get a lay of the land, dialing the zoom to max, anxious to see what the feed would reveal.

  “No, not possible,” he whispered. “That can’t be right.”

  He panned across the compound and saw teams of workers loading crates, driving carts around, even engaging in conversation. All of which in and of itself was pretty exceptional but not entirely impossible. What Milton couldn’t believe was that none of them had on a breathing mask or protection of any kind, which meant each and every one was a dead person walking, not that any of the workers looked sick. In fact, none of them looked the least bit concerned about being outside at all. From what he could tell, it seemed like just another day in paradise.

  A nearby video screen caught Milton’s eye, and he zeroed in on what appeared to be someone initiating a conference call. He pressed a button on his cufflink and swiped his finger to the right. A series of growing bar graphs leveled up, indicating an increase in volume. The words Audio Enhancement blinked to life in his headset.

  “…(crackle)… might be delayed, but it’ll make it,” said the worker looking up to the display.

  “Delivery time is critical. I can’t stress that enough,” answered the man onscreen at the other end of the call.

  “Ai-goo cham-nah!” sighed the worker facing the screen. Milton knew the expression well. His grandparents used to say it all the time. Nevertheless, a scrawl in his headset read: Korean expression. Translation: Frustration, exhaustion.

  After rubbing his eyes, the worker returned his gaze to the screen and continued. “You guys set these crazy deadlines. It might help if I knew what the heck we were shipping, Dr. Lightsea.”

  Milton felt his neck stiffen. Wait, did he say Lightsea?

  His fingers danced across his cufflink while a screen capture of the face in question was being compared to dozens of headshots as they blinked in and out searching for a match. When the facial rec was found, it was a 100-percent match. Milton stared at the results then whispered, “Whoa. Zoah’s gonna to go ballistic.”

  He’d have to figure out how to tell her later.

  Right now, Milton was locking onto this facility’s wireless signal, attempting to ram his way into the network and gain access to any system he could find. He usually preferred more elegant hacks, something with a little flair, but time was not on his side. This had brute-force snatch and grab written all over it.

  “…bottom line, it doesn’t matter,” Dr. Lightsea continued. Milton had left the feed to their conversation open. “You’re better off not knowing anyway, Kim. Trust me.”

  “Ne, araso…” the worker named Kim replied. Yes, I understand.

  “Good! Good. So, how’s the family?” Dr. Lightsea asked.

  “My oldest made first team debate. He’s…”

  Warning lights came on everywhere—in the warehouse, in Milton’s headset. A siren roared to life, the wail echoing hard between the metal storage containers he’d been hiding behind. Milton executed one last command then lifted his eyes from the blinking cursor back to the worker named Kim still at his desk who was now looking back at him.

  Milton widened the camera’s view. Most of the workers were scrambling, but he could see several men running full sprint toward his position. A spotlight hit him from above, the light attached to a small drone that had parked itself overhead.

  “Um, running now!” Milton exclaimed, heading further into the maze of containers around him.

  He reached into a pouch on his belt and produced a large marble that he threw up into the air. The sphere blinked with several light pulses, then at its apex flashed. Milton’s visor now transmitted a complete 3D rendering of the area around him. He could see the drone, the pattern of stacked containers around him, and the current position of several men converging upon him. The rendering continued to refresh with updated estimates of locations every five seconds, showing his own actual spot in real time as he ran.

  “Faster, Milton,” he said to himself. “Left…no, your other left!”

  He used some of the large metal containers to his advantage, causing his pursuers to double back, but Milton knew he was only delaying the inevitable. Where was he going to go?

  “Crap! No, no, no!” Milton cried, running himself into a dead end. He managed to check his visor, send out a ping and pull a handgun from his pack as his pursuers caught up to him, blocking his escape. He spun, leveling his gun at the security detail.

  “Drop it, Kiter! You’ve got nowhere to run,” a guard barked.

  Milton used his free hand to peel back his visor and breather mask to reveal his face to the outside world, unobstructed for the first time in his entire life, ever. He took a long, clean breath and couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  He turned his eyes skyward. “Yeah, I don’t think so,” he answered, then shot his pistol into the air. A second later, he was gone.

  The grappling gun had fixed its hook to a passing cargo drone Milton had summoned before being caught, lifting him to safety. It took another long minute to override the vessel’s recall command and gain full control of the ship, but by then his escape was assured.

  Milton had no time to enjoy any of it. There were plans to be made, people he needed to contact. Hopefully, they’d be impressed by what he learned.

  The world, it seemed, was not at all what Milton expected. In fact, it was a good deal better, which in the grand scheme of things meant it was far, far worse.

  Go figure.

  CHAPTE
R 2

  It had started in a coffee shop—or anywhere, really.

  The subject, Susan Miller, had just returned from a two-week volunteer trip to Indonesia to help with relief efforts after a recent earthquake left living conditions there substandard for many.

  Her church had arranged everything. She hoped the work she did for those in need might alleviate some of that first-world guilt she carried around whenever she went to, say, the grocery store just for a pint of gelato or the mall to find the perfect blouse. Instead the experience only served to make her feel worse about her life, seeing how much better she had it than most of the poor souls in the world, and to top it all off, now she was starting to get sick.

  Taking even more time off from work right after her trip would make a dent in her savings, but she supposed that was the price of altruism. Money wasn’t everything.

  I’ll just finish making this latte, she thought, then ask Rick if I can go home.

  The latte went to a yoga instructor, who had six classes to teach over the next two days, each at capacity because of some online coupon deal. Rick had a crush on Susan, so of course he let her go home, but not before sneaking in a long, meaningful hug. Then Rick went to the movies with some friends on opening night of the latest summer blockbuster.

  It only took a few days for the virus Susan carried to cripple the country, weeks to devastate the world.

  “This is Susan Miller shortly after the first tell-tale iatrotropic signs brought her into an emergency room,” said Professor Belham. He stood next to her in the isolation ward of an ICU. A plastic tent covered her bed. Belham unzipped its front and pulled the protective covering over, ignoring the biological hazard warnings so that his students could get a better look.

  “Symptomatic 96 hours after exposure. Dead shortly thereafter,” he said. “Come closer, please. Don’t be shy.” Twelve college students congregated at the foot of Susan’s bed.