Chromed- Upgrade

by Richard Parry

  “He was attacked.”

  “It’s the Marines. Gonna happen.” Mason gestured around him. “He just got attacked again, after attacking me.”

  “You should read the file.”

  “Pretend I don’t have time for that.” Mason heard something scuttle in the darkness. He spun, pointing the Tenko-Senshin.

  There was nothing there.

  Carter flicked through the file, the discharge papers dropping into Mason’s overlay. “He was trying to performance manage someone and got hit in the head with a chair. He couldn’t walk properly after.”

  “So, I just killed an invalid? Way to make me feel better.”

  “The point is before,” she sounded exasperated, “we thought the rain made you see things.”

  “It does.”

  “Right. But it also makes you see different things. Things that are actually there can appear different. That’s assuming you believe you saw dead people attacking you.”

  “Have you been reading my Psych reports?”

  “I get bored at night.”

  “Most people sleep.”

  “Most people aren’t quite as high-functioning as I am.” She sounded just a little too smug for Mason’s liking. “So. Which is it? Did you just gun down a bunch of homeless guys in cold blood, or did the rain make you think a bunch of homeless guys were actually dead guys?”

  “I need a drink.”

  “Later.” Carter’s tone turned businesslike. “You should finish your sweep.”

  Mason nodded. Then get the hell out of here. He walked toward the center of whatever happened here. The Tenko-Senshin’s beam picked out bits of detritus on the ground. A lump of fallen concrete here, a mouldering box there. He passed another charred support column, this one cracked and broken in the middle, rebar showing through.

  He played light over a smudge on the ground, nothing more than a smear of carbon. “I’m pretty sure that used to be a person. An illegal.”

  “It’s not illegal, Mason—”

  “You know what I mean. There are no implants.”

  “Or the fire was very hot.” She paused. “I think you must be close now. Be careful.”

  Another support beam loomed from the darkness, blasted and twisted, concrete chunks missing. Beyond that, the floor sank into a smooth depression, the curve looking like the bottom half of a sphere. The concrete looked like it had been pushed down, the cracking suggesting something round and tremendously heavy had sat there. The ceiling was broken in a loose ring.

  “There’s no debris.” Mason played the light up to the roof, noting where the top of the object must have punched through to the floor above. Water trickled in over the edge.

  “I see what you mean. Where did the roof go?”

  “I’m guessing this is the center of the blast. Whatever it was.” Mason played his light around the area, picking up the remains of scorched cables. He followed them back to the remains of a reinforced case. The charred and twisted top was about waist height. An Apsel logo was still faintly visible on the leeward side. “What the hell?”

  Carter paused for a couple heartbeats. “Is that the Federate’s logo? Is our logo on that box?”

  Mason grabbed the edges of the lid, pulling hard with augmented strength. With a creak and a flaking of carbon, the box opened. There wasn’t much left inside, melted metals, burnt plastics, and glass.

  “What is it?” Mason let his optics switch to thermal. The innards of the box were cold and lifeless. If it was Apsel tech, it had been burned out by whatever had happened here.

  “I can tell you what it isn’t. It isn’t a reactor.” She hummed again.

  “Sure,” said Mason. “Back to my question: what is it?”

  “See if you can find a serial number.”

  “Come on. Look at it.”

  She sighed. “Fair enough. Wait a moment.”

  Mason started to lift fragments out of the box. His hand came up against a piece of metal, mostly intact. He rubbed his thumb against the carbon scoring on the side. “Check this out.” He held the metal at arm’s length, pointing the beam from the Tenko-Senshin at it. The light showed the Apsel logo, and the words APSEL FEDERATE — ATOMIC ENERGY DIVISION.

  “That’s … us. You came here following a reactor signature, and you found a box of junk. Junk we made.” Carter sounded almost confused.

  “Maybe.” Mason tossed the piece of metal back in the box.

  “We can burn it.” Carter paused briefly. “I’ve got the satellite online.”

  “About time. Can you kick off a strike?” Mason rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the tension there.

  “It seems the best way. Let me send this up the line, see if they want to send a recovery team here.”

  “There’s nothing to recover. We’d be better off nuking the site from orbit and finding out which circus division back at the ranch is screwing with us. If I got sent out here to recover a … let’s call it an unauthorized reactor, and we’ve got another team in play, someone in logistics is getting fired.”

  “See, it’s that kind of commentary that keeps you in the field.” Mason could hear the smile in Carter’s voice. “Look, just let me clear it. At least it’ll solve the problem around the paperwork.”

  “Paperwork?”

  “The vagrants.”

  “Right.” Mason started to pick his way back through the basement. “There’s something I don’t get.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The hallucinations? They’re real.”

  Her voice was wry. “They wouldn’t be hallucinations anymore, would they?”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Mason shuddered, thinking about the walking corpses. About a dead man from Nebraska named Smith. “I just blasted a dead man’s corpse to pieces. Or I thought it was a dead man. The only thing left behind was an arm. You saw it on the feed.”

  “Yeah. I saw it.”

  “Here’s the thing. What did Specialist Smith see in me? What made him and his buddies attack a syndicate man? That’s not healthy behavior.”

  “What am I, the Oracle of Delphi? Come back in. We’ll get you in the chair.”

  “I think it’s getting worse. And I think it’s worse here. At the center of whatever this is. Whatever was in this box.”

  “You’ve done your job. I’ll put this in the report.”

  “Good.” He sighed. “We don’t want this getting out.”

  “What getting out?”

  “I don’t know. But you can be damn sure some reporter would have a field day if they found Apsel equipment at the center of…” He trailed off.

  “I know.” She laughed. “That’s lucky.”

  “What’s lucky?”

  “I’ve got the satellite back, and would you look at that, I’m cleared for a strike. Get yourself clear.”

  Mason dragged himself back up the stairs into the foyer, walking through the crumbling entrance to the old hotel. He gave a last look around before walking back out into the rain.

  The Suzuki fired up as he approached, cowl extending from the front. The lights on the dash blinked at the night as the rain fell harder. Mason climbed on, kicking the drive into gear.

  “You ready?”

  “Do it.” Mason twisted the throttle on the big bike, pulling away from the hotel. He felt a pressure building in the air even over the rush of wind and rain.

  Light, bright as a sun, stabbed down through the atmosphere. Clouds peeled apart, boiling and twisting as ionized air burned in a pillar of fire. The beam played across the hotel, fire raging up from the ruins as lightning flickered across the sky. Bits of concrete were flung into the night sky, leaving burning trails across the night. The orbital laser continued firing as Mason pulled further away. He watched in one of the Suzuki’s mirrors as a dust cloud spread out from the sight of the strike, rain already pushing it back to earth.

  It probably wouldn’t even be on the news tomorrow.

  Mason twisted the throttle a bit more, ignoring the
warning flicker of red lights on the dash as the machine compensated for the shockwave. The front of the bike skipped, rearing from the ground as he put on more speed. “Carter?”

  “Yes?”

  He coughed. “I need to get in the chair.”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about the report. I said I’d take care of it. Good night, Mason.”

  “Good night, Carter.”

  Chapter Four

  The Apsel building touched the sky, the silvered glass exterior reflecting clouds blanketing Seattle. The ground, planed clear for a kilometer in every direction, was smooth concrete and neatly trimmed lawns brought into relief by clean white lights scattered across the premises. Flight traffic was steady in and out of the tower, air cars delivering their loads of early morning execs.

  Mason opened a channel when he was five klicks out, still in the streets of the city. It would be bad to get a case of mistaken identity. “Mason Floyd. Specialist Services field operative, requesting clearance for entry.”

  “Copy your ident, Mr. Floyd. We’ve already got you on approach.” The man on the other end of the link sounded bored.

  “Just a courtesy call. You can never be too careful.”

  A pause, then a laugh came down the line. “You know, that’s true. Especially after last week.”

  “What happened last week?”

  “Someone wasn’t … what was the word you used? Careful. You’re clear to use bay six.” The bike’s HUD, projected against the inside of its cowl, laid a map in green and red iridescent lines. He ignored it in favor of a mirror of the map that snapped into place on his overlay.

  “I got it. Thanks.” Mason kicked the bike up a gear, picking up speed. The reactor was barely working, the drive low and quiet. He opened a different channel. “Carter.”

  “Mason?”

  “Ah, you’re still up.”

  “I live for the job, Mason. You know that.”

  “You should get out some. Put on a dress and some pearls.”

  She snorted. “I’m not a pearls kind of girl, Mason. You know it’s five-thirty in the morning?”

  Mason grinned. His helmet’s noise protection was good enough he didn’t need to raise his voice. “No rest for the wicked. Beds aren’t for people like us.”

  “Not the way you use them.”

  “Which brings me to—”

  “No. No, it doesn’t. I’ve woken up Sasha. She’ll meet you at processing.”

  “She’s going to be grumpy.”

  “Do you want your clean done grumpy or not at all?”

  “I’ll take grumpy.” Mason approached the base of the main tower, bringing the bike into a wide concrete driveway lined by tall barriers. The Apsel falcon spread huge wings on the ground. Big enough to be seen from a distance, Bay 6 was written in red letters above a wide metal door. A mix of other languages jockeyed for position underneath the label. They all said the same thing, more or less — get lost, go away, this is not the door you’re looking for.

  It’d be bad press if Apsel gunned down some throwback who couldn’t read English.

  Automated turrets looked down on him from behind razor wire, tracking his progress. “Those things creep me out. Each one is like its own little eye of Sauron.”

  “The eye of… Oh.” Carter paused. “I didn’t know you read. Fiction, I mean.”

  “Christ, I’m not some kind of barbarian. I read books.”

  “Books without pictures?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Don’t listen to what they say about you. I’ve always said there was more to you than—”

  “Carter!”

  “What? Get out there. Join a book club or something.”

  Mason pulled the bike to a halt in front of the door. Green light washed over him as lasers imaged him. Just a last-minute check, right? He remembered Smith-Benne. The agent came back with a small detonator on his car. They’d relied on perimeter radar back then. Mason was on the investigative crew.

  They hadn’t found all of Smith-Benne’s body. You can never be too careful. “One more thing.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Thanks, Carter. I … appreciate your help.”

  She paused. “Sure thing, Mason. Anytime.” The link clicked out.

  Mason tapped his fingers against the handlebars. With a clank, the doors opened, rotating yellow warning lights licking the walls. When the door was high enough he gave the throttle a small twist, entering the belly of the Apsel building. Even at this hour it was busy, techs moving around, servicing vehicles, loading munitions, and waving tablets at each other. He wove the bike through the people and machines.

  He coasted to a halt, letting a total conversion stamp in front of him. It stopped with a hiss of hydraulics, torso swiveling to face him. He took in the spread wings of the Apsel falcon on its chest, the weapon launchers on its arms, and its face. It was huge, metal and armor stacked over four meters tall. “Harry. How you doing?”

  “Pretty good, Mason.” Harry pivoted, articulated feet clanking against the ground. “Just in for a service.”

  “Rough night?”

  “It’s the rain, man.” Harry’s voice echoed out through the room, and lights flickered up his chest plate. A red one pulsed insistently. “I don’t know how you norms handle it.”

  “I thought you guys weren’t hit by it.”

  “The visions? Yeah, got no problems with the visions. Sealed up nice and tight in here. No, this is plain ol’ acid rain, Mason.”

  “I’ve got a raincoat.” Mason shrugged, and his helmet lapped into his collar. “Still. I’m in for a checkup too. Maybe some sleep, if I can scrape up the time.”

  “Hah.” Harry shrugged, big metal shoulders moving up and down with a whine. “If you’d do the conversion—”

  “Not a chance.” Mason nodded at Harry’s mid-section. “I like eating too much.”

  “It’s not that bad. You never have to wonder whether your diet’s low-carb or not.”

  Mason snorted. “Sure, whatever. Take it easy, hey?”

  “You got it. Have a better one.” With a hiss Harry swiveled away, clanking across the bay. Mason nudged the bike into gear and let it purr toward a park.

  He dismounted. “Open up. Service mode.” A brief flash came from the instrumentation on the dash, then the bike eased down, the rimless hubs pulling in towards the chassis. Mason grinned to himself — no matter how many times he saw it, it reminded him of an animal stretching, his bike doing yoga’s downward dog. The armored fairing flared wide, exposing the fusion drive, other mechanical components opening like a metal flower. Mason turned away and walked toward an elevator. A tech would be along shortly to look after it.

  Something ghostly flitted at the edge of his vision but was gone when he looked. God damn the rain.

  He’d best get himself to that med tech. The elevator doors opened silently in front of him. Mason stepped inside. “Medical.”

  “Medical, confirmed.” The elevator spoke with a British accent.

  A German company in America with a British butler? Now that’s globalization.

  The chair waited in the middle of the room. Cold white leather, like a dentist’s without the happiness.

  At least it’s padded.

  Also waiting in the room was Sasha Coburn, looking like she wanted to murder someone. She wasn’t a morning person. Despite that, her uniform was crisp. This wasn’t some hick Apsel outpost. This was the Federate Tower, and you dressed like it mattered, whatever time it was.

  Consoles and medical equipment were in neat, ordered racks against the walls. Sasha sat in front of a console, the display bright with diagnostic information.

  “Hey, doc.” Mason took off his jacket, dropping it into a bin by the door. “Sorry to get you up so early.”

  Sasha looked over at him, giving him a quick glance up and down. He returned the favor. She had clinic-blue eyes, straight hair, and a mouth that liked to smile. Despite Carter yanking her from sleep, Sasha turned her bed
side manner to eleven. A hint of that smile played on her lips. “You know it’s never too early, Mason.”

  Mason grinned back at her. “Don’t be like that. You’re married.”

  She waved her ring at him. “A rock you can see from space and all that. What of it?”

  Mason pulled his shirt off over his head, dropping it in the bin after the jacket. “You shouldn’t tease a man.”

  She stood, walking to the chair. Sasha patted the seat, her ebony fingers contrasting with the white leather. Mason hadn’t been able to work out if the black of her skin or the blue of her eyes were genetics or cosmetics. Not that it mattered, but he figured if it was cosmetics he should get the name of her clinic. It was top-shelf work. She raised an eyebrow. “C’mon. You know I don’t get many kicks in this job. Do a girl a favor. Hop in the chair.”

  Mason sighed, mock-serious. His pants and underwear dropped in the bin. “This is harassment.”

  “I know. Get in the damn chair.” Her eyes didn’t leave him as he walked to the chair, settling in.

  Mason coughed as his skin touched leather. “Jesus. Isn’t there something in the hippo oath—”

  “Hippocratic. You make it sound like I got my degree on safari.”

  “Sure. Isn’t there something in your oath about doing no harm?”

  “Yeah. It’s not the top of the list, but it’s in there. Why do you ask?”

  “This chair. It’s cold.” Mason shivered.

  “You big baby. I’ll prep you a nice, warm cup of harden up when we’re done.” Sasha frowned, finger on her lips. “You want me to get you a blanket? Maybe a teddy bear?”

  Mason bit back a reply. She got up early so you wouldn’t see dead men trying to kill you. “We’re good.”

  “It’s just plasmapheresis.”

  “Remind me again why the bionics can’t do this.”

  “Your nanotech needs something to fight.” Sasha frowned. “We still haven’t isolated what it is in the rain that makes you sick.”

  “You okay, doc?” Mason leaned forward. “You pull another all-nighter on this?”

  Sasha clenched her fists. She shook her head. “It’s just … nothing’s working anymore.”