Empathy

by Ryan A. Span

They wandered on in silence. Gina stayed in the front, occasionally changing direction at Bomber’s say-so. Rat stayed in the back to be alone and as far from Gina as possible. There were Feds all around, their footsteps and muttered voices echoing through the tunnels from all sides. Gina wondered if she could reach out that far and make them take a wrong turn or something like that. And if that were possible, should she?

  Something had gone wrong somewhere along the way. That much was obvious. Spice was a receiver, not a transmitter. It couldn’t... shouldn’t be able to make her do the things she’d done. Onounu had managed some pretty weird things in her day, as did the other old veterans of the Street, but they couldn’t possibly exceed the effects of the drug. Nobody could. Nobody except Gabriel.

  You did this, she thought at him, but got no response.

  They came to a heavy metal door recessed in a block of grey concrete, and Bomber came forward to have a look, beckoning Rat over. Gina was almost heartened by the sight of a wall made of something other than sheet steel or plasterboard. As they crowded in, she noticed the door lock, like something out of ancient times. It was a ten-digit mechanical number pad, the numbers long gone to use and rust. Exposed alarm wires ran from the lock into the door.

  Once Rat had identified the lock, she said, “Tell me we’re not supposed to open that.”

  “Can’t pick it?” asked Bomber, still short of breath.

  “It’s an antique, man. I’d either set off the alarm, cause the door to lock down, or both. No way to get around one of these without the code.”

  “I was afraid of that.” He placed his hand against the bare concrete at the doorframe and ran his fingers lightly down, searching for something. “Don’t know if this code still works. Worth a try.” He seemed to find what he was looking for and, running his fingers over some notches in the concrete, called out a short number sequence.

  Rat gaped at Bomber in shock and awe. “How the hell did you know that was there?”

  “The Emperor told me about it once. This is nearly the same way he escaped from StateSec, long before you were born. And they never found out how.” Bomber stepped back and punched his numbers into the lock. It popped with a loud metal clack, and Bomber allowed himself a smile as he pulled the door open. “The man was a legend, all right.”

  A bullet grazed his cheek and tore a hole through Gina’s loose-fitting top, missing her by millimetres. She dropped to the floor while Bomber slammed the door shut again, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit!”

  “And this is why, in the real world, you don’t go through the fucking air vents!” snarled Rat. “What the hell are we gonna do now?”

  “Gina!” Bomber grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her to get her attention, his own body braced against the door in case anyone tried to break in. “How many are there?”

  “I...” She stopped herself short of telling him she couldn’t do that. This was an emergency, and just because it wasn’t easy didn’t mean it couldn’t be done. She pushed her mind beyond the door, casting herself out like a net, and tried to cover the whole room without scattering her mind into little pieces. The strands of the net kept together by willpower alone. It echoed against other minds in the room and tried to feel their individuality. She counted one, two, three...

  “Three Feds,” she said firmly. “Don’t know about bots. They’ve got backup on the way as well.”

  “Then they’re gonna have to make some room,” Bomber answered, pulling a pair of concealed handguns out of his jumpsuit waistband. Gina recognised them as coming from their equipment bag, but she had no idea when or how he’d gotten his hands on them. “Make no mistake, this job’s been easy so far. That’s over now.” He glanced over his shoulder as if he could see through the door, then continued in a monotone, almost robotic voice. “From here on in there’s gonna be Feds and ‘bots crawlin’ all over the place, and we can’t hesitate.” His eyes focused on Gina. “Quick answer. Can you kill?”

  That, Gina knew immediately, was not the best question to ask someone with a load of Spice raging in her bloodstream. A dark torrent of smells, sounds and images poured through her. She could cope with the old, faded memories of corpses she’d seen on the Street. It was the fresh ones that gave her trouble. There were too many. The Russians in the alley, the duelling gangers, the Triad man hunting for the Emperor, Onounu and Mashei. Each death replayed itself before her eyes and she couldn’t seem to stop.

  But all of them were just a build-up to the most vivid scene, the most horrible memory in her head. Her stomach heaved at the feeling of her finger squeezing the trigger. The gun kicking back into the heel of her hand. Blood spattering across her clothes, dripping from her hands. A curl of smoke pouring out the barrel. The dead thug lying on the cold concrete floor front of her, blood and brains seeping out of him.

  Acid burned at the back of her throat and her eyes filled with moisture as she stammered, “I-- I--”

  “Can you kill?”

  “No!” she cried out. Tears stung her eyes and she turned away, sobbing silently, wet droplets slowly washing away the flashbacks. Even with her back to him she could feel Bomber’s eyes on her. They didn’t judge or disapprove, but they were... disappointed.

  “I can,” Rat said into the silence. She took one of the guns from Bomber, a small pistol with a bright red fire/safe switch on the side. She looked Bomber squarely in the eye, doing her best to ignore Gina shuddering beside her.

  “Good,” Bomber answered, checking Rat’s gun for her. Then he turned back to Gina and rested a sympathetic hand on her arm. “Don’t worry. Keep that taser of yours handy, it might save the day, and nobody’s gotta die. Yeah?”

  Gina nodded and scrubbed angrily at her eyes. She was more upset with herself for breaking down than for her inability to kill another human being. But she had her Mk5, and its warmth in her hand was like a ten-thousand-volt security blanket.

  “On three,” said Bomber, and she watched as he counted down on his fingers.

  The next few minutes were a confused blur of activity, and Gina couldn’t figure out what was happening and what they’d already done.

  The door swung open. Bomber moved as if he felt no pain. Gunshots. A mad dash across a room crowded with storage pallets and forklift trucks. That gave them some good cover against the automatic fire pouring from the Feds. At one point Gina remembered zapping the machine gun emplacement with her Mk5, welding the gunner’s hands to his weapon.

  She didn’t know how they made it into the other room. Her next clear memory was of helping Bomber slam the big metal locking bar across the warehouse door. Little dents appeared in the wall where bullets rammed into the corrugated steel. They scrambled away from it in case the steel gave way, but it never did, and the hail of bullets soon stopped.

  Panting, Gina gradually came down from the rush of their flight, and got her head back under control. Her heartbeat slowed as she glanced around.

  The ceiling disappeared so far up into the darkness that Gina couldn’t make it out. The only light came from large spots erected along the walls, pointed at each of the vehicles in the warehouse, all arranged in separate parking lots. There were town cars, jeeps, lorries, armoured cars, tanks. This had to be the motor pool.

  Rat immediately went over to one of the tanks to check it out, but Bomber trudged on ahead to a bunch of storage bays at the far end, all covered by a big blue tarpaulin.

  “Help me get this off,” he rasped. A trail of blood drops followed at his heels and pooled wherever he stopped. His face was white and drawn, his eyes unfocused. He spat blood-stained phlegm onto the flat concrete floor.

  Gina had no time or desire to argue. Bit by bit the tarpaulin came off, and revealed a slender black helicopter the likes of which she’d never seen. It was low and wide in the middle, and tapered to a sharp point at the front around the large cockpit. A bunch of exposed electrical wires hung under the cockpit to mark what had once been a weapon mount. At the back the copter had an aeroplane tail instead o
f a tail rotor. The canopy stood open, and inside were two big bucket seats waiting for a pilot and a gunner.

  “Wow,” said Rat, having lost all interest in the tanks. “Now that is slick.”

  “Get in. I need to start up the reactor.” A harsh, rasping cough rocked through him. He seemed somehow smaller when he straightened himself out again, only to find the others still staring at him dumbly. “Move! Anyone still out here without a radsuit in ten seconds is gonna have a real bad day!”

  That spurred Gina and Rat into action quickly enough. They scrambled up the pilot steps as fast as they could and squeezed the both of them into the gunner’s seat, leaving the walled-off pilot’s chair free for Bomber. Olive drab bulkheads surrounded Gina, all covered with black computer screens and manual safety switches. Instead of a set of main controls, however, the only thing in front of Gina was a small niche containing a primitive VR crown resting calmly in its cradle.

  There sounded a clear, metallic click, and the world started to rumble. Backlights behind the safety switches sprang on. The screens came to life, ticking off diagnostic information. Lists of text and little green bars scrolled down them, although occasionally a yellow bar would stick at the top of the screen while the checks continued. The violent pumping of coolant liquid bubbled everywhere around Gina.

  Suddenly she saw Bomber, toppling over the edge of the cockpit into the pilot’s chair. She tried to get up to see if he was all right, but the canopy swung closed before she could do anything.

  “Bomber?” she asked nervously, squirming under the weight of a seventeen-year-old girl squeezed into her lap.

  “I can hear you,” he breathed, and she instantly knew he was dying. Intense pain radiated through the walls and into her third eye. She heard him swallowing something, and he headed her off before she could ask her next question. “Anti-rads, just in case I make it. This thing was meant to have a full crew with hazard suits. It’s got a nasty output.”

  All her questions seemed inappropriate just then. Instead she simply said, “You’ve done this before.”

  “I was a test pilot in the old US Army Aviation Branch. Top secret stuff. Last project before the Federation took over, we were workin’ on nuclear copters with integrated energy weapons, VR controls, nano-maintenance, really advanced stuff.” His breathing seemed to steady out a bit as he talked. “Mini-reactors, lightweight and low-output, but with plenty of power for the main gun. Good for at least fifty years without refuelling. We had five prototypes, one for each stage of development, all working. And then we woke up one morning and there wasn’t any United States anymore.”

  Meanwhile he put the copter through its pre-flight procedures. Gina saw the yellow-marked systems flashing with the words, ‘Self-repair initiated’, and they turned green one by one, while the warehouse doors buckled under the Feds’ brute-force assault.

  “When the Feds came to take over our base, a couple of the pilots in my squadron decided they didn’t really like the idea of them bein’ in power. They made a break for it with four of the birds and blew the base behind ‘em. One and Two used their birds to start a pretty short-lived guerilla war against the Federation. Three was never heard from again. Number Four, though, he had the bright idea of takin’ his all the way to Hong Kong, maybe hire himself out as a merc to StateSec. Only the Feds got there before he did. Caught him, threw him in a cell to rot, ripped all the best tech out of his bird, and then forgot about it in storage.” He flipped a loud mechanical switch. “Still workin’, though.”

  The last yellow marks disappeared, and the rotors came on like the beating of mighty wings. They started to turn lethargically, as if they were all rusted up, and something nasty rattled in the mechanism. But in a matter of moments the rattling died away and the rotors really cut loose.

  The copter lurched off the ground, turning around inside the tall warehouse, looking for a way out. There was none. They’d forgotten to unbolt one of the vehicle doors, and Gina felt her heart sink.

  “There may be a slight bump,” Bomber said, and plunged the copter directly into the wall.

   It tore through the half-inch of corrugated steel like a brick through a car windscreen. Bomber grunted at the controls, fighting for altitude with most of his rotor blades torn to pieces, and turned the motor to its maximum output. He was starting to pull away from the Fed building when a missile slammed into the side of the copter. The impact sent it lurching sideways, G-forces slamming Gina into her seatbelt straps. The last vestiges of rotor shattered themselves against the ground as the copter ploughed end over end through the car park. Great chunks of asphalt whirled through the air in a frenzy of devastation. Gina would’ve thrown up, but the Gs weighing in on her sucked the gorge right back into her stomach.

  When they finally came to rest, Gina struggled to undo the belt, wrapped tight around her and Rat. The button wouldn’t depress at first, but with some pushing and pulling it finally popped loose. She scrambled to open the cockpit canopy and get the hell out while they still had time.

  She looked up into the glare of streetlights, their escape route only a stone’s throw away, partly blocked the inexpressive face of a Fed battle helmet. It echoed with a deep commanding voice, “I suggest you stay still and offer no resistance.”

  Gina went numb inside. Metal hands tore her out of the copter and bundled her into a tough plastic sack. She screamed and clawed uselessly at the inside of the bag, needing to know what was happening, but she couldn’t even make out the words from the shouting voices outside. The only emotions left to her were frustration and terror.