by D L Young
“Come on,” Maddox cried, grabbing the kid by the arm.
He pulled Tommy into the smoke-filled hallway. Gray dust hung in the air and slowly settled, stinging Maddox’s eyes and burning his throat. He blinked hard and covered his mouth with his sleeve. His shoes kicked small piles of brick and concrete rubble as he ushered the kid toward the light he could barely make out through the thick haze. The light grew brighter as they approached, resolving itself into a view of the world outside the building.
“Jesus Christ,” Tommy gasped. The kid gawked at the enormous jagged hole where a solid wall had been moments before.
A hover van floated just outside, the kind used for deliveries with a roomy storage area in back. The passenger door rose and Beatrice shouted from the driver’s seat, waving Tommy forward.
“Come on, kid,” she shouted. “Jump!”
If the meter of open air between the building’s newest exit and the hover worried the kid, it didn’t show. He leapt without hesitating, landing with an awkward tumble onto the passenger seat.
Maddox readied himself. “Climb in back, kid,” he yelled. Beyond them, the crowded hover lanes pulsed and whined.
“My turfies!” the kid cried.
“There’s no time, kid,” Maddox shouted.
“We can’t leave them!”
Beatrice was already jostling the kid out of the way so Maddox could jump in. Tommy squirmed and kicked uselessly against the mercenary woman’s strength. She tossed him back into the cargo area and waved Maddox across. “Come on!”
The datajacker stood there, his hand against a broken section of the wall. Wind whipped his hair about. Through the narrow pane of the hover’s rear window, he saw Tommy’s face, red and swollen, tears streaming down the kid’s cheeks. He looked down at the key ring still in his hand.
Every job had its complications.
Maddox gave Beatrice a look she instantly understood. She nodded at him.
“Don’t wait too long for me,” he shouted, then turned back into the smoky corridor.
***
The dust had mostly settled, but smoke from the blast still filled the space. Maddox didn’t know what Beatrice had used to blow the wall. Datajackers didn’t deal in explosives. Not on most days, anyway. Whatever she’d used, though, the resulting smoke had an acrid, sulfuric quality he tasted as much as smelled. He moved through it, his eyes stinging, throat burning, mouth pressed against the sleeve of his forearm. The alarm blared on, assaulting his eardrums.
He unlocked door after door, finding nothing but empty rooms. On his fourth try, he heard the tinny amplified voice of a rhino cop’s microphone.
“Hallway B’s filled with smoke,” the voice said. “Can’t see a thing.”
Maddox froze. The disembodied voice was in the corridor with him, but it didn’t sound close. Maybe at the far end of the passageway. Still, with the deafening alarm and blood pumping in his still-ringing ears, Maddox knew better than to trust his hearing.
He opened another door. Nothing. Then another. Empty.
With each door, he told himself this would be the last one, then he’d sprint for the hover. Assuming it was still there, of course.
The smoke had thinned noticeably. He could see a meter in front of him now. Which meant the cop he’d heard could too.
Another door and there they were, four Anarchy Boyz squatting against the far wall. They popped to their feet in unison and started to speak. Maddox hushed them with a quick finger to his lips. He moved closer to the kid with the green mohawk. The boy’s face was beaten and bloody. One eye was completely swollen shut, the lid purple and grotesquely distended.
“Any others?” Maddox asked quietly.
“Two next door,” the kid said, pointing to the wall. “And that’s all of us.”
Maddox nodded, then quickly freed the kids in the adjacent room and herded them all toward the hover. The kids obeyed without speaking, padding down the corridor and disappearing into the smoke.
“Turn that goddamn alarm off,” a second cop barked. This one sounded closer than the first. A moment later, the smoky passage went deathly silent.
Thermal! Christ, he’d almost forgotten his specs had thermal sensors. He toggled over, then immediately wished he hadn’t.
A dozen cops stood in the passage, the heat signatures of their armored hulks crowded together. Given the armor’s bulk and the tight space, they could only creep forward in single file, and the closest was maybe three meters in front of him. By some miracle they hadn’t yet toggled over to thermal and seen him like he was seeing them.
“Don’t fucking move,” a cop hissed.
Then again, maybe they had toggled over to thermal.
“On your knees,” the cop ordered. “Hands behind your head.”
Maddox let go of the key ring and it clanked to the floor. He slowly lifted his hands and laced his fingers behind his neck
“DROP, SALARYMAN!”
A grin spread across the datajacker’s face. Beatrice, you beautiful bitch…
He hit his knees and then flattened onto his stomach, knocking the breath from his lungs. Automatic gunfire instantly erupted, its sound amplified by the narrow walls. Maddox covered his head. A mad barrage of noise attacked his ears. The staccato POP POP POP of constant shooting. The metallic THUD of rounds hitting rhino armor. Frantic cop voices shouting, scrambling to organize themselves in the impossibly narrow space.
Staying low, he crawled into the nearest room to get out of the line of fire. As soon as he cleared the doorway, something zipped past him in the corridor, hissing loudly.
A rocket-propelled grenade, he correctly guessed, an instant before the round exploded. The blast felt like the end of the world. A brilliant burst of white and a heavy detonation that sent Maddox tumbling against the wall.
A moment later, he sat up, breathing heavily, his specs on the floor and, amazingly, unbroken. He put them on and stood on shaky legs. A black cloud filled the corridor, tendrils snaking into the room. Maddox stepped out into the smoke-darkened, eerily quiet and empty corridor. The only noise was the steady whine of the hover’s motor.
He moved toward the sound, stumbling through the broken mess of the corridor, vaguely amazed the floor hadn’t collapsed entirely. His specs still on thermal, the heat of the hover’s exhaust appeared as a bright smudge on his lenses. Light at the end of a tunnel. Maddox squinted, the glare of the hover’s motors growing brighter with every step.
“MADDOX!”
The shout came a moment before the shot struck him, spinning him around violently and dropping him. Heat and pain exploded in his shoulder. He’d never been shot before, never felt this kind of debilitating pain. He groaned as blood oozed from the wound, soaking his sleeve. Through the thinning smoke, a figure approached, crouched protectively behind a riot shield. Gideon.
Shots rang out from the hover. The figure crept forward, sparks blooming as rounds ricocheted harmlessly off of the shield.
In agonizing pain, Maddox raced for the hover, crouching low. Seeing him, Beatrice held her fire. Gideon didn’t, firing off several rounds, though none found their target. It had to be the awkward position behind the shield, Maddox managed to ponder as he reached the end of the corridor. Couldn’t be easy to aim like that.
The smoke faded further and the hover was there, its door gaping open, waiting for him to make the leap. Beatrice leaned over the passenger seat, pistol in hand. He caught a glimpse of the Anarchy Boyz cramped together in the hover’s cargo space, peering at him with wide eyes.
Maddox began to jump, then hesitated.
“Jump!” Beatrice shouted.
He didn’t jump. Instead, he dove behind a half-crumbled wall.
“What are you doing?” she shouted over the hover’s turbofans.
In the next moment Gideon was there, at the edge of the corridor. He didn’t turn toward Maddox’s hiding spot, didn’t seem to know where he was. With his lenses toggled to thermal, Gideon would have been nearly blinded b
y the heat from the hover’s engines, just as Maddox had been moments before. His vision impaired, the lieutenant hadn’t seen Maddox duck behind the wall.
Beatrice fired. Crouching behind the shield, Gideon grinned as every shot deflected away and struck what remained of the walls. Maddox had seen that grin, that fiendish smirk countless times. The joy of the fight, the giddy anticipation of a victory at hand.
The firing stopped. Beatrice’s clip was empty. Gideon tossed the shield aside and stood up straight, aiming his pistol squarely at Beatrice. Lunging out from his hiding spot, with his uninjured shoulder Maddox struck the lieutenant in the small of his back. There was a surprised grunt, then a shrieking howl as the blow launched Gideon from the building. Maddox watched him tumble downward, arms and legs scrambling wildly as the man fell through the air. Falling, falling, finally thudding against the walkway with a gruesome bounce. The hard, cruel floor of the City, welcoming him back.
Summoning what little strength he had left, Maddox dove into the hover. Pain bloomed from his shoulder, radiating through his neck and chest as Beatrice closed the door and hit the accelerator. They sped away, engine screaming.
A minute later, buried within the crowded snaking river of the lower transit lanes, Maddox asked through gritted teeth, “Are we away? Anyone following us?”
Beatrice studied the dash scanner, then visually checked their surroundings. No sirens, no blue and red lights.
“Doesn’t look like we have a tail,” she said.
“Good,” Maddox said, grimacing. He called up a custom app in his lens. Struggling to stay conscious, but determined not to miss this crucial final step in his plan, he kicked off the program, then collapsed into the chair and passed out.
Twenty blocks away, the fire alarm in Lora’s building began to wail.
21 - Deck of Cards
During the week that followed, as Maddox coalesced in Beatrice’s roomy, well-appointed condo, something of a miracle occurred. All charges against Tommy and the Anarchy Boyz were dropped. New evidence had apparently surfaced implicating a foreign terrorist group. Maddox found the story buried in the media feeds, next to a short piece about a small explosion on the twenty-eighth floor of the police precinct building. A broken gas line was found to be the cause, and the blast had claimed a single victim: a decorated lieutenant named Naz Gideon.
The T-Chen bombing, it appeared, was yesterday’s news, all but forgotten by a general public with a short, fickle attention span. Breaking stories about a bribery scandal in English soccer and the sexual deviances of some movie star now dominated the blinking, large-fonted headlines.
Maddox was sure the nameless AI had been the miracle worker behind the dropped charges and the gas explosion cover story, though how exactly she’d pulled it off wasn’t apparent from the scant collection of news stories he’d read and reread. Maybe she’d sent the police irrefutable proof of Gideon’s guilt, leaving them no choice but to come up with a plausible story for the press while they buried the truth as deeply as they could. Avoid the scandal and move on, as Beatrice had predicted.
He wanted to plug in and find some answers, but he resisted. For now anyway. He needed to recover first. He felt like he’d been put through a meat grinder, and he knew it would be a while longer before he’d feel steady enough in body and mind to plug in.
Beatrice entered the room, wearing a black cotton shirt and underwear. His worries faded at the sight of her. He liked the outfit, or rather, the lack of outfit. Her bare, muscled arms and legs. The shirt snug over the contours of her breasts and abs. The contrast of dark clothing against her pale skin. Nice.
“What?” she asked, and he realized he’d been staring.
“Nothing.” He shifted his gaze to the large holo display at the foot of the bed. Footage of the deviant movie star checking into a rehab facility for sexual addiction. Predictable, Maddox thought. A few weeks later, he’d make the talk show rounds, teary-eyed and apologizing to those he’d hurt, warning kids about the dangers of holo porn. Then, if he was lucky, if his carefully planned PR campaign worked, his career might be saved. The public loved redemption stories even more than they loved fall-from-grace stories.
Maddox swiped through the feeds, finally settling on a cricket match. Beatrice sat on the bed, placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Think you could get used to this?” she asked.
The words hit him like a splash of cold water. “Used to what?”
“You know what I mean.”
He did know what she meant. What he didn’t know was what to say, how to respond. She continued before he could think of something.
“Might be less dangerous for you in Canada,” she suggested. “What do you say?”
A datajacker and a mercenary. Not exactly a match made in heaven, but then he didn’t believe in heaven.
It was one hell of an unexpected offer. Maybe the best offer a washed-up datajacker like him might ever get. And he couldn’t deny he’d been thinking along the same lines these last few days. He’d left his datajacking life behind once before, for a corporate gig. Doing it a second time, for a far better reason, definitely had its appeal.
Still, he couldn’t leave with her.
“I think I’ll stay here,” he said. There was probably some better way to say it. Some softer, less assholey-sounding words he could have used, but he wasn’t good at this sort of thing.
She didn’t seem pissed at his poorly worded response, though. Disappointed, yes, which felt even worse. She nodded, removing her hand from his shoulder.
An awkward silence followed, finally interrupted by the door chime. Moments later, Tommy entered the bedroom, carrying a plastic bag in either hand.
The kid raised the bags and grinned. “I got Thai,” he said, though the announcement was unnecessary. The aroma of green curry and fried rice had already filled the apartment. The kid’s face was no longer swollen, and the bruising had gone from purple to a dull yellow.
“Kid,” Beatrice scolded, “what did I tell you about bringing that stinking crap in here?”
Tommy shrugged off the reprimand. “Don’t be such a hardass, mama. This is the best chicken curry in Midtown. Can’t let the legend live on raw carrots or whatever veggie junk you’ve got around here.” He shot Maddox a knowing look. “Street food for street folk, am I right?”
The kid started to place the grease-stained bags on the bedsheet, but Beatrice grabbed his wrists. “Plates are in the kitchen,” she said.
Tommy shrugged again and exited the room. From the kitchen, plates clattered and silverware rattled. The kid couldn’t do anything quietly.
Beatrice shook her head. “The legend,” she scoffed.
“That’s right,” Tommy called from the kitchen. “You should hear what they’re saying on the street. The most wanted man in the City walks straight into the precinct building and busts his boys out of jail. Everybody’s talking about it. Hell, whatever cred you had before, Maddox, you just built it up ten times over. You got God cred, bruh.”
Beatrice frowned. “What the hell have you been saying?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Tommy called back. “I swear, I didn’t say a word. People talk. Stuff gets out. You know how it is.”
She gave Maddox a skeptical look.
“He’s right,” Maddox said. The kid and his turfies grew up on the floor of the City. They weren’t the kind to talk. They knew bragging about crimes more often than not got you busted. “A lot of people in that building know what happened. There’s footage of me walking around, plenty of it.” He glanced at the specs on the nightstand. They’d worked flawlessly in the moment, the sheep’s clothing hiding his wolf’s identity. But by now the cops would have cleaned up the footage as much as possible and cross-referenced it through countless archives. He had little doubt they had already IDed him.
“A lot of cops might know,” Beatrice said, then asked pointedly, “But how would the street know?”
“The street knows,” Maddox said. “The stre
et always knows.”
“The more talk there is,” she pointed out, “the more they’ll want to come after you.”
He didn’t disagree. The less talk there was, the better, no doubt about it. Street gossip often became a news story. And news stories often pressured the cops into action. The truth was he didn’t know what the score was. Didn’t know if he was free or hunted. Even with the charges dropped, he couldn’t be sure. Yes, Gideon was out of the picture, but there was a building full of cops he’d made fools of, and the street was laughing its ass off at them. Cops hated that kind of thing, and cops held grudges. Long grudges.
They moved to the small kitchen table, where Tommy and Maddox divvied up the Thai. Wrinkling her nose at the kid’s purchase, Beatrice removed a portion of vegetarian curry from the fridge.
When he’d emptied his takeout box, Tommy placed his chopsticks on the table and rose. “Gotta go,” he announced. “Stuff to do.”
Beatrice held up a paper napkin. “Grease on your face, gangster.”
He looked at her crossly, then took the napkin and wiped the wrong side of his face.
“You and your boys keeping your heads down like I told you?” Maddox asked.
“Hundred percent off the grid,” the kid said.
Maddox wasn’t sure he believed him. Going cold turkey when you spent hours every day gaming and watching holo porn couldn’t be easy for restless kids.
“Another month,” Maddox told him, “at least.”
The kid deflated. “A whole month? Bruh, what am I supposed to do with myself?”
Maddox reached over to the counter, grabbed the shrink-wrapped deck of cards he’d picked up at the corner store, and tossed it to the kid. Tommy stood there, staring at the deck in his hands like it was some alien artifact fallen from the sky. Beatrice laughed at the kid’s confusion. So did Maddox.
Tommy shot the pair a part-angry, part-hurt look. “The hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“You know how to play poker?” Maddox asked.
“No,” Tommy answered sheepishly.
