“Then the old saying is wrong.”
That was when I heard a helicopter approaching. Flipping over the side of my chair, I grabbed the REM-7 pistol hidden underneath and aimed it at them. Lucita flipped over herself and grabbed a composite assault rifle hidden in the sand. Hovering above us was an AR-27 Whisper helicopter whose sides opened before rappelling ropes shot out. It could have wiped us out if its members had planned to do so. Apparently, someone just wanted to make an entrance.
Six individuals wearing tactical body armor with familiar faces descended to the beach. I recognized E, S, W, I, J, and K. They were all the fellow Letters I’d recruited into Task Force-22 and very possibly the last of us since no one had heard from the others in over a year. They also had white berets on, which were just adorable. They looked like the Cub Scouts of the apocalypse.
“Are they here to kill us?” Lucita asked.
“No,” I said, standing up. “We’d already be dead.”
That was when the sunlight started to disappear. I looked up. Something dark raced across the sky, and it didn’t look like clouds. Instead, it was a pure blackness spreading from beyond to devour the light.
“What’s up?” I said, lowering my pistol.
“I take it you haven’t seen the news,” S said.
“No,” I said, looking around. “Although just about everyone was absent from the estate today. I thought it was a holiday.”
S shook her head. “Wyoming is gone.”
I blinked. “What?”
“The Yellowstone volcano Delphi predicted has gone off. The President declared a state of martial law, as have half the other countries on Earth. Civil wars and riots have broken out over the implications. It’s going to be a very long winter for the next few years, and society is going to be defined by who has the most wealth as well as technology.”
I stared at her, cursing God and my luck in equal measure. “What do you want me to do?”
“We want your help in fixing the world. To make amends for the hundreds of people we’ve murdered.”
“And make a lot of money in the process,” E added, as if the two weren’t mutually exclusive.
“I’m in,” Lucita said.
S glared. “You weren’t invited.”
“I’m in,” Lucita said, laughing as if we hadn’t just heard twenty million people had died.
“Fine. I was getting bored of retirement anyway,” I said, lying.
It was a flippant response to the beginning of the Dark Age of Technology. We had all the machines we could want, but no machine could keep the barbarism and ruthlessness at the heart of the human spirit from rising up.
God help us all.
Chapter One
I woke up with a blinding headache, tangled in a silk-sheeted bed in my Los Angeles penthouse. I still dreamed, usually—which answered the question of whether androids did. I dreamed of the past, and my mind was constantly forced to cycle through the various memories I had from living twice my allotted lifespan. I was twenty years old now, two lifetimes for a Letter, and had successfully managed to survive well over a thousand combat engagements. Most of them had been in the first ten years after the Big Smokey Event when my opponents had been starving, desperate, and dying refugees. The last five years had been better. Those were criminals, professionals, politicians, and corporate executives. Killers like myself, paid security guards, mercenaries. People in the Great Game.
“Mmm,” a voice spoke beside me, and I looked down at Heather Rollins. She was a pretty, but not beautiful, young woman with fire-colored hair who was studying at the University of California to be a dentist. She was also my paid mistress.
Prostitution was just one of the things that had been legalized by the State of Emergency Government as part of the efforts to rebuild the United States economy once the Long Winter had ended. Because of the extreme wealth disparity, pretty men and women happily traded themselves for survival as the one percent of one percent doled out a trickle of their money.
I should have been ashamed to be part of the super-rich, who had somehow managed to become even richer after the near end of the world, but I’d suffered enough to know it was better to be the boot than the ant. I’d met Heather online and took her on as an employee before she’d not so subtly suggested she could do more—I’d found out most of her money went to keeping the rest of her family out of the refugee zones that had become America’s version of Brazil’s favelas. I remember what she’d said when I’d pointed out I could just give her a raise: “I’m not a parasite, sir!”
But who was I kidding? I wasn’t straining against the system either.
“Hey, Heather.”
“Bad dreams?” Heather asked, reaching over to get her glasses off the sideboard. She put them on and stared at me, blinking a few times for emphasis.
Heather could get her eyes fixed for 250 credits at the mall but apparently thought the glasses added a bit of distinction to her features. Plastic surgery and body modification were ubiquitous in the new world to the point that even the poor were beautiful. Which meant, ironically, the little flaws were now marks of attraction. I admitted, they were cute on her.
“Are there any other kind?” I asked, shrugging.
“I suppose that’s part of the life of a samurai,” Heather said, giggling.
Heather was referring to a bit of co-opted cyberpunk lingo in corporate samurai culture. It had begun as a joke that the megacorporations—now the Big 200 instead of the Big 100—had enough soldiers to qualify as armed nations. That included troubleshooters who didn’t just do private detective work but also covered assassinations and special operations.
It was a joke that had lost its punch line, since I was an executive at Atlas Security providing troops across the globe to both public as well as private organizations. I also did all the highly illegal wetwork and black ops that I used to do for the International Refugee Society, which was now standard operating procedure for the world’s companies.
Heather seemed to find it dashing.
“Yeah,” I said, joking. “Television on.”
The International News Network showed an image of a visibly aged and corpse-like Karl Trust delivering a half-hearted speech in Washington, DC for the new Smithsonian dedication. Trust had been a puppet for the State of Emergency Government (SOEG) for years now, after a massive stroke a good eight or nine years ago left him all but brain dead. His son and associates had kept him going with cybernetics, allowing the country to slip firmly out of democracy into dictatorship. As far as I knew, no one cared but a handful of radicals who had no answers about how to fix the continuing disasters that afflicted the country. I’d been one of those idiots with HOPE, the big bad resistance to the corporations, but had pulled away when they’d become more about crushing the corporations than saving the planet.
“Nothing ever interesting happens in the news,” Heather said, sliding out of bed. “I don’t know why you bother.”
I shrugged. “I like to know what is being fed to the masses.”
Atlas Industries was the smallest of the Big 200 Corporations, but was in preparation for a merger with Madison Electronics and Global Construction. It was part of my efforts here in Los Angeles to do some aggressive negotiation to make it and Chicago part of the “revitalized” cities that would help restore the United States to its former first-world status.
It was all very beyond me as I was more a professional killer than a negotiator, but apparently, that was my role to play in the discussions. So far, the Ishikawa-Kazagumo Combine had agreed to our every demand since I’d sat down in the meetings.
“How dramatic,” Heather said.
“Not really,” I said. “Same shit, different toilet.”
Heather and I took a shower together before I changed into a black suit identical to virtually every piece of clothing I wore. I hadn’t been to the beach in years, and what was the point, really? Almost all were owned by the government now. It had been snowing last time I took a dri
ve there in July, anyway. Heather slipped on a pair of panties and a University of California sweatshirt, doing her best to be attractive while casual. I could sense her fear, from the way she moved to the smell of pheromones in the air. The fear of losing her patron and being totally at the mercy of a society that would consider her washed up at 30. Her hope of finishing a degree and finding employment also depended on my patronage. As part of my paranoia, I’d read her letters to her mom, and she was desperately hoping to get a job at Atlas before I got bored.
This was the world she lived in.
We lived in.
Heather took my arm as we entered the lounge of my penthouse, which occupied the entire upper floor of the building. It was full of lush shag carpet, metal furniture, and portraits on the wall designed to maximize my sensory intake. Andrew was in the kitchen, a blandly pretty man in his twenties who served as my butler and housekeeper. Heather was sleeping with him, and he was also sleeping with the paid boy toy of the man who owned the apartment beneath me.
It wasn’t so much that the number of heterosexuals, bisexuals, and homosexuals had changed, but that people were far more flexible as to what qualified as such nowadays. It was fascinating, watching the changing nature of human culture while being out of its reach. None of that was my business, as far as I was concerned.
“Good evening, sir,” Andrew said, his expression empty but pleasant. It was a sign he was taking Lethe and using his overly generous payment to stay high as a kite. The drug dramatically reduced the lifespan of its users, but with the general hopelessness of the New World, I didn’t blame its users. I considered confronting him about it, but the advantage of Lethe was it never interfered in your work—indeed, you could work yourself to death using the stuff without ever feeling a moment of boredom.
Did I have the right to try and clean him up? Did I care? I wasn’t a white knight, and it wasn’t any of my business. I could pay for his rehab, but he wasn’t my friend; he was my employee, and I’d long since passed the point of redemption. I was part of the system that made everyone in this country desperate and willing to beg for scraps from the uber-rich.
“Is it evening?” I asked, looking out the windows. It was hard to tell with the change in climate thanks to the Big Smokey.
“Seven p.m., sir,” Andrew said. “Shall I prepare you something?”
“Just order out,” I said simply. “Ask for Daphne.”
Daphne was Heather’s best friend and from the Los Angeles refugee zone. Daphne was a crude, angry, and hateful woman who despised the rich with the passion of someone who saw them living like kings while the rest of the world starved. I liked her a lot. She’d also robbed me several times, and I’d ignored it.
“Sure,” Andrew said. “Hey, sir, random question, but are you bulletproof?”
I paused and looked at him. “Excuse me?”
Heather blinked.
I wondered if Andrew had been replaced by a Shell. After a second’s pause, when I realized he could have gunned me down if he’d been armed, I realized that it was just him coming off the Lethe and asking stupid questions.
“Bullet-resistant. Depends on the caliber, really.”
“Know how many people you’ve killed?” Andrew asked.
“Andy!” Heather asked.
“Is that a bad thing to ask?” Andrew asked, blinking rapidly.
I walked over to my liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of scotch and a glass. “I don’t keep score.”
“Ah,” Andrew said, going over to the household terminal and starting to type. “Your usual?”
“Yeah,” I said, pouring myself a drink. “Chinese food. Get something for yourselves.”
“Cloned swan?” Heather asked, perking up.
“Yeah, if you like.” I looked up from my drink. “Want one?”
“No thank you,” Heather said, nervous.
Heather been taking alcohol from my cabinet and watering it down for her friends when I wasn’t inside the penthouse. It was cute the way they kept thinking themselves criminal masterminds. Then again, I supposed they had every reason to since I didn’t bother to punish them for what they did. Honestly, what did I care about a few trinkets and watered-down liquor? People were dying outside.
“Harriett, any messages from Atlas?” I asked the interior computer.
“Yes, sir,” a female synthesized voice spoke. Harriett was a dummy AI for my apartment building. Delphi and others like her had global citizenship and massive financial resources of their own but the majority of gruntwork was still done by glorified Siris and Cortanas.
“Great. How many?” I asked.
“You have a priority one e-mail from the Atlas Corporation’s CEO, sir,” Harriett said. “It was sent twenty minutes ago.”
I mentally cursed. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Harriett said.
I shook my head. “I’ll take the call in my private room. You guys, do whatever it is you want to do. I’ll probably be gone for a while. Also, everyone should just call me Case. No more of this sir stuff.”
“Yes, sir,” Andrew said.
“Of course, sir,” Harriett said.
“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “Everyone is a comedian.”
“Mmm hmm.” Heather nodded, eating a piece of insta-toast from the fridge. It was warm straight out of the package. I walked past the lounge to a side room, which contained a biometric lock built into the wall that scanned me and my voice. The door slid open to reveal a personal chamber filled with guns, swords, and books—my private collection. There was an electric sheep toy sitting in the oversized comfy chair facing the vid wall. It was a gift from Lucita, and one I recognized the symbolism of.
My weapons were kept from the rest of my live-in servants even when I was away, since the devices were capable of tearing through a small army. I disliked the fact that I could name every single element of every single weapon inside this room as well as their combat capabilities. After I’d released Black Technology into the world, I’d thought I could live without being a professional murderer and spy, but I’d ended up falling back on my old habits. I’d never learned to be anything else than what I’d been created to be.
The world hadn’t wanted me to be anything else.
I picked up a carbon-fiber katana designed for the purpose of slicing through cybernetically enhanced synthmuscle and fiberbones. It wasn’t a practical weapon, but I’d seen it used by the Yakuza (who’d given it to me), who had sacrificed their bodies for the chance to experience life as nearly unkillable machines.
“Contact S,” I told Harriett. “I want to see what she thinks is so damned important.”
“Yes…Case,” Harriett replied.
“I’m genuinely confused by the fact you added an annoyed pause.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
The west side of the wall turned black as an Atlas logo appeared on it along with S’s chosen name, Samantha Sanders. I gave my sword a few practice swings before sheathing it. My body seized up and my head twitched before I clasped the sides of my face. I was having a flashback, another sign the quantum computer inside my brain was suffering glitches.
“Dammit,” I said, sitting down. “Just ride it out, Case.”
I was chasing a cybernetically enhanced police officer across a rooftop. It was another memory that told me my IRD implant, the quantum computer that made me as ensouled as a human, was starting to break down. Rain poured down on us, and I had orders to kill him.
The man, Thompson Wilkins, had collected damning evidence against Atlas and had also killed two of our operatives. He thought he was the big hero and was exposing corporate corruption that would save lives in the long run. The irony was he’d been funded by Karma Corp, who wanted to steal Atlas’ security contract with Los Angeles. Karma Corp wanted to be the one to have Rent-A-Cops and soldiers on the ground rather than us. The sad fact was that if Thompson succeeded in exposing our bribes and eliminations then nothing would chan
ge.
A few hundred more people would die due to gang violence while the city settled out which firm to hire, but in the end, it would be business as usual. The only thing different would be the color of the mercenaries’ armor. The lost of the world may have increased in number but they were still the same people the rich sacrificed to their gods of wealth and apathy. He was chasing windmills in pursuit of a justice that just didn’t exist.
Thompson fired at me as the rain poured down on us both. The bullets from his gun buried themselves in my suit’s reinforced plate interior. It hurt like hell, but I pushed forward, raising my gun.
“You don’t have to die, Thompson! We can end this peacefully!” I shouted, not even breathing hard. Outdated as my technology may be, it was still superior to any natural human being’s speed and stamina. I could chase him all night and was doing my best just to wear him down. I wanted to take Thompson alive. You needed those little moments of mercy to keep yourself sane in the frozen hell the world had become.
“Fuck you, assassin!” Thompson said, reaching the edge of the building. We were forty stories up. “I remember what the United States used to be like! We used to have rights! You can’t replace real cops with thugs!”
“The city replaced the cops,” I said coldly. “The Emergency Government approved it.”
“You’ve killed people!” Thompson said, raising up an infodisc, which had replaced flash drives. I knew it was a distraction because he had a memory CRD implant. “The file they gave me told me just what kind of monster you are! You’re not even a person!”
“I’m jamming the frequency of your implant,” I said softly. I wasn’t going to dispute what he said. “I’ve been doing it all night. You can’t distribute the information to who you want. It’s over.”
“Nothing is over,” Thompson said, staring at me and realizing that his gun was probably useless.
Also, that I wasn’t firing.
“Life will go on,” I said, meeting his gaze. “But this isn’t the past. This is the future. You have to live here now.”
Agent G: Assassin Page 2
