Despite receiving a full dose from the electroshock weapon, she quickly twitched back to consciousness. Her breathing changed, became shallower, more rapid.
“Were you aware the average sleeper’s breaths are one hundred and fifty percent slower than a person who is awake? Fascinating.”
Her eyes opened—those piercing black orbs that had so stunned him in the metro. And naturally occurring too. She had not a single enhancement or genetic mutation so en vogue nowadays. No cat’s eyes, no full lips that looked ready to burst, no pointy elf-like ears that he found so unnerving. Not even an implant, usually marked with one of the Grid’s enumeration clinics in a variety of designs chosen by the proud parents—because having their child chipped by a sentient machine had to be the height of any parents’ dreams. Except for the many tattoos and piercings, the young woman had had nothing done that he could see. An anomaly. A freak, just like him. One who had undoubtedly tasted the sting of ostracism and distrust.
She snapped up in bed. Instead of pulling the blanket up to her chest, she chose to swing her legs out. Her fists shook. Ready to fight.
“Where am I?” she demanded. Her T-shirt was on backward and inside out.
It felt strange to hear another person’s voice in his home. These walls had only ever known one.
“In my home.”
“Where’s that?” Her chin rose defiantly.
“I fear I can no more divulge my home’s whereabouts than allow you to identify me.”
“Why didn’t you kill me?” She looked angry more than afraid.
“Do you ask because you would have in my place or because you would rather I kill you?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’m dead either way.”
“Did you steal them?” Dante pointed to her backpack, which he had retrieved from the young woman’s apartment, along with her gun and the only set of clothes she seemed to possess.
She blanched. “I’m not a thief.”
“Is that your answer?”
“I don’t owe you shit.”
“True. What were you planning to do with them? I am sure they would fetch a fair price on the black market. Enhancers are so widespread these days. The choice drug of the rich.”
Dante had expected another sharp riposte, but instead she blushed and dropped her gaze to the backpack resting in the corner of his bedroom. “I didn’t steal them.”
He understood then. Even more dangerous than selling the drugs on the black market, she had been doing a run for someone else.
“They belong to the man on the sky metro?”
“No.”
“He seemed to know you. If not your drug lord, then who was he?” Dante had not linked so many words out loud in years, and certainly not with a woman who stood in his bedroom. To his confusion and annoyance, he rather enjoyed it, even if his interlocutor seemed more inclined to punch him than converse.
“He’s my ex,” she muttered. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“That distasteful brute? He is infinitely beneath you.”
She crossed her arms, looking at everything except him, her clothes most of all, which were neatly draped over the old-fashioned footboard made of genuine wood.
“We are still in the same quadrant. Not that far from your home, which was remarkably well protected, despite the humble means. Your cunning pressure plate was almost undistinguishable from the rest of the planks. Well done.” Dante did not know why he offered information to this dangerous young woman, but he did.
“It didn’t stop you, my ‘cunning pressure plate’, so it wasn’t good enough, was it.”
“When I need to force a welcome, nothing stops me.”
She ran a shaking hand through her asymmetrical hair, which made it stick up in places. Beneath the tattoos, her slender arms looked wiry and pale, like the rest of her. Dante remembered a time when he shared such signs of privations.
“Come with me.” He raised his hand to indicate the door. The old pain in his spine flared. He kept his face expressionless, as he had learned to do. As he had been trained.
“Where?” She crossed her arms even more tightly.
“To the kitchen.”
Dante turned and walked out of the room. The rustle of clothes preceded the smell of fresh soap, and he knew she had dressed and followed. Some progress. Toward what, he did not know and preferred not to ponder.
The abandoned university had proven to be a perfect home for him after his escape from the madness of the Grid’s experimental laboratories. So many years ago. Fifteen? More? Less? The main building sat high above the rest of Quadrant 4, a city formerly called Montreal, in a northern land—when such things existed—known as Canada. No such nations and place names existed anymore. Only humans needed such references as names, and they had stopped being rulers a long while ago. Everything was coordinates now. Ones and zeroes. No more curves, only straight lines, angles everywhere.
Behind him, her presence in the corridor leading to the kitchen at once comforted and unnerved him. Whereas his soft-soled boots made no sound on the old terrazzo floor, hers, black military-style covered in metal accents, dragged at the heel because she had not taken the time to clip them up. Nor had she left the backpack in his room, he noticed, when he turned to hold open the metallic swing door for her. She passed him silently, staring straight ahead, although he knew her attention and reflexes to be firmly planted on him. One false move and she would attack.
She wedged the backpack between her and the stainless-steel counter, turned back and leaned against it with her arms crossed. If body language was any indicator of the young woman’s attitude and outlook, things were not looking good. But then again, what else had he expected? Maybe he should have maintained his usual modus operandi and killed her back in the metro. The thing was, whatever had stayed his hand then still prevented him from doing away with her now. She had done nothing to him except inadvertently see his face, the Cardinal’s face. It was as much his fault as it was hers. More so. Plus, she was a victim of the system as he once had been.
To keep his gaze from her and busy his hands, Dante let her seethe in silence and busily rummaged through the food storage cabinet in search of a second set of utensils and tableware. He poured water in an old-fashioned kettle set on a heating pad, to her obvious astonishment, and struggled to hide his amusement when he pulled out fresh fruit—quite illegally grown in the old science faculty greenhouse—and placed the plate on the counter. Her eyes rounded as she looked at the selection of apples, pears and plums displayed in vibrant colors, so different from the legal and inedible variety most people could not afford anyway. She brushed tentative fingers along the plate’s edge, as if afraid to break the fragile thing.
“Help yourself. The apples are delicious this time of the year. Did you know they used to grow them not far from here, on the south side of the river? The region used to be internationally known for its apples.”
She crossed her arms again and looked away. “I’m not hungry.”
Dante helped himself to an apple. He bit into the fruit, closing his eyes in quiet appreciation as the sweet juices filled his mouth. Simple pleasures. Like those shared with a woman. The kettle’s whistle saved him from further exploration of this unfamiliar chain of thought. He pulled it from the pad, filled two mismatched mugs and put the kettle on the counter.
“You are not hungry, but I am. Please do not think I lack basic manners if I eat alone.”
Despite her claims, her stomach filled the silence with low grumbles as he leaned two packets of dehydrated noodles against the mugs. A blush rose to her cheeks, one which made Dante want to smile. Such a strange woman. Contradictions on feet.
While he ate, she stared at the floor, one hand on the handle of the precious backpack slung to her shoulder, the other tucked into the pocket of threadbare black pants. Tattoos along her neck played as she clenched her jaw repeatedly.
“Where are you from?” she asked without looking up at him. “You don’t
sound local.”
Dante smiled. “I am very local, I assure you. As for my conversation skills, they come from books, most of them older than this building. But come, let me show you my familial home.”
Before they left the kitchen, Dante noticed the second pack of noodles was gone.
He led her to the old observatory that had once graced the university. Only a hollow half dome remained, which would have allowed a perfect view of the stars, in a way, if any could be seen through the thick smog enveloping the city. Dante walked to the middle of the circular room, pointed up and north. The shadow of his former home extended to the university ground, almost reaching him, like a giant hand of darkness that sought to throttle him. No doubt his old masters would love nothing better.
The young woman looked up at what was once known as Mount-Royal, the regal mountain in the middle of Montreal. There was nothing royal about it now, the fortress of steel and tempered glass shrouded in greenish gases that never lifted, no matter the wind, surrounded by security responders both human and cybernetic, and containing the Grid’s one and only flaw.
“The bunker?” She narrowed her eyes up at the monstrous structure sitting atop the mount like a giant bird of prey on a tiny mouse. One of her eyes did not close all the way for the swelling.
Dante caught himself wishing he would have hurt those brutes even worse for treating a woman so badly, for what one of them had been about to do when Dante had intervened. Violence against the vulnerable had forever enraged him. Her swollen eye would soon turn an assortment of colors while her bottom lip had thickened to twice its size. Indeed, he should have made the thugs last, if only to send a message. Another message—the Cardinal did not only go after corrupt politicians and corporations, he could also target the lowly thugs infecting the city.
“You’re from there…?” She took a step back, gaze darting between the citadel, the closest door and him. “You’re one of them.”
“No, I said I would show you my former home. This is where I was reared until I… Until I left.”
“I thought,” she began, setting her gaze to the dark citadel once more. “They say a lot of people tried to get inside at first, when they built the Grid, to try to shut it down. No one saw them again.”
“True. Most of the security is turned outward, and that was how I could escape.” And it was also how he had been born, from would-be freedom fighters turned DNA source for various experiments. A family tradition, it would seem. Following his escape, he had learned much from the old records once kept in the university archives. Someone before him must have wanted to protect the past in an effort to save the future. Although in his case, he just wanted to destroy the Grid, not rehabilitate it or bring it back under human control. Nothing short of seeing the bunker reduced to rubble would satisfy him.
She shivered and turned her back on his old home. Her expression softened, her body language relaxed by the tiniest degree. “When was that?”
“Long ago.”
“What were you doing up there?”
Dante forced the anger down. Emotions meant trouble and lack of control, and someone with his abilities could not afford to lose control. Not ever.
“Now who is asking a lot of questions?”
A shadow of a smile rounded her cheek. She shrugged, fiddling with the dangling backpack straps. Her eyes unexpectedly welled but she snorted, nervously passing her knuckles over her mouth. Perhaps she needed a dose of whatever drug of choice she carried in her bag. It had to be the drugs. Dante refused to entertain the thought she was trying not to cry, refused to think about what—who—was making her feel this way. So much easier not to think about the consequences of his actions, about what he could have been but instead what he had become. He had mourned his potential for good long ago, back when he was still a child who had killed more people than he knew.
“Contrary to popular belief, the place is not a high-security vault nor is it crawling with responders. There are barely a dozen, and most are near the exits.”
“But the Grid, they say something’s up there from when the system was first built.” She squinted as she said this, which crinkled her nose and made the piercings along her eyebrows glisten like silver tears. He resisted the urge to touch the metal beads. Did it not hurt? Perhaps she did not mind the small discomfort compared to the life she seemed to have lived.
“The Grid was once a network built by humans to communicate through images and sounds, share ideas, information. I do not know when specifically, but at some point around the twenty-third century, the network began to filter the data coursing through its conduits, its veins. It learned on its own, connected into separate systems, built security protocols around its servers so no one could access them, slowly cutting their numbers until there remained only one. It then destroyed any reference to such machines. People do not even know that there used to be such devices with access to this network in almost every house.”
“Yeah, talking to someone without having to go see them. That’d be nice. So what does it have to do with the bunker?”
“That place you call the bunker is like our spinal cord. One small injury is enough to doom the host.” Dante looked up at the dark and silent fortress. Not for long. Soon, the place would go up in multicolored bits of debris and light. Then it would grow dark again, but this time for good. “Did you know there used to be a metro line that passed directly over the bunker? The Grid shut it down because it did not trust a flying train weighing thousands of tons flying directly over its head. Especially since it could not access the train’s communication system because of the height.”
“Yeah, the old monorail. The tracks are still there, though.”
Dante smiled. “Not only the tracks. The train itself is still docked at its station on the other side of the river. And electricity still feeds its batteries. The Grid does not know the monorail can still fly over its head. Should something happen…”
As though she had understood the layered meaning, she turned, mouth opened in a silent O. Shaking her head incredulously, she breathed, “Fuck me.”
The woman had a way with words.
Dante sighed as he considered his options. She had seen his face, where he lived. He had basically shared his plan to blow up the Grid. And how. Yet he still could not bring himself to turn to his old ways and dispose of her. For the first time in his life, he wanted someone to know what had been done to him, yearned to share his story so that at least one person would know why the Cardinal had decided to drop a train on top of the Grid’s head, potentially killing innocent bystanders. His coup would be recorded and cast on the sides of buildings and on the giant screens of hovercraft. Everyone would know what he did, but not why. Dante looked at her then, his unlikely chronicler of a memoir still to come. After his death, she would remain, she would know.
But did she even want to know? So many questions, so few answers.
“I will take you back to your room,” he murmured. “I need to think.”
She did not ask about what, and he thanked her for it. He was going to think about what to do with her, and perhaps his pragmatic side, the one that had kept him alive and hidden in plain sight right below the Grid’s nose, would take over. If it did, what was left of his humanity would not be able to stop it. The young woman would go to sleep. And she would not wake again.
Chapter Three
A man in blood-red robes leaped from the roof of a nearby building. It was too crooked to stand. How the hell did it stay upright? Everything was distorted, gritty yet vague. The sound of fabric flapping in the wind preceded the man landing barely a pace from her. Steel tried to take a step back but couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, call for help or even curse him out. All she could do was watch as he grew closer, near enough to touch. A blond man with a lean physique and long, graceful hands. Somehow, she knew those hands. He proffered something he held in his palm.
Steel looked down at the gloved hand. A key, metal, old-fashioned, like those she’d seen in vid
s, rested in his hand.
What is that? she wanted to ask but couldn’t.
As if the man had understood her thought, he cocked his head to the side. “The key,” he whispered. She knew that voice too. “Your key.”
She took it. As soon as their fingers touched, a jolt snapped her hand back. The man smiled. He had nice teeth, even and clean, and a peculiar arch to his eyebrows that she found cute.
“What does it open?”
“You already know.”
Steel sat up in bed. Sweat covered her back and nape. She looked around. No blond man in red robes. Why was she searching for a blond man anyway? Where was she? Then she remembered.
“Shit.”
She swung her legs out of the bed and stood. She was in that man’s home, the one who’d killed Six’s thugs. The Cardinal. The man who’d told her he wanted to take the Grid down by dropping a train on it. Completely insane.
Quickly pulling on her clothes and precious backpack, Steel noticed a mug of steaming water on the night table, and by its side a spoon and a packet of noodles like the one she’d pilfered earlier in the kitchen. She hadn’t expected that.
Why the hell was he being nice to her? What did he want?
Eyeing the door, she prepared the quick meal and ate it while pacing back and forth. As she passed the door again, a small sound caught her attention. Water. Rain? Spoon in hand, she ventured a bit outside of the bedroom, which was unlocked, to her complete shock. She wouldn’t have left the door unlocked if their roles had been reversed. She made it to the empty kitchen, where she pocketed another packet of dehydrated noodles. Guilt reared its head, but she ignored it. She had to eat.
Farther down the hall, which was lined on both sides by ancient frames of long-dead people in black robes, she heard the sound more clearly. Not rain, something else, indoors, concentrated. Steel pocketed the spoon and made sure the backpack fit snuggly on her shoulders. She may have to fight her way out of the strange man’s home. If she’d slept through the night, it meant she had less than twenty-four hours to reach the bridge to make her drop. The bridge wasn’t that far from the man’s home—somewhere at the foot of the bunker—but walking across town took time and was dangerous. Corrupt patrols, territorial thugs, the sheer mass of people crammed in the old quadrant beneath the newer city being built on top. She’d need those hours to scope the place then wait for her contact to offer her a drink. Leech had said she’d be paid right away, through that same contact.
Gridlock: A Cybershock Story Page 3
