by Jim Keen
“Red, we’ve got to move and fast. Keep up.”
She set off, forcing herself along. The space pressed inward, the weight of the structure a physical presence, the scents of hot steel and antifreeze heavy in the dampness. Mars shimmered in her peripheral vision, the edge of panic following as she moved. She had no defenses against her past; the further the red planet receded, the more it remained alive in her mind. She’d tried to shed her memories, thought she had at times, but they returned again and again, waiting until she was asleep or tired and defenseless. Her heart kicked with an unsteady rhythm and sweat ran between her shoulder blades. She smelled herself, a thick animal scent that reeked of fear.
Alice had dominated her past though the simple technique of constant stimuli. Kept her work life filled with crazy hours and the riskiest of patrols, fear and adrenaline used to smother the past. Off duty she drank too much, fucked too much, fried her mind with recreational drugs; when the money ran out, she played chess for quarters in the local park.
Anything not to be alone.
She’d tried the veteran’s center once, but it was full of broken people who wanted to relive the past, not forget it.
“Suck it up, Red, hurry.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he panted.
Martian veterans had twice the suicide rate of Earth’s warfare survivors, and Alice understood why. There were no post-trauma aversion techniques that could overcome the knowledge they had destroyed mankind’s last hope of a new start. Night after night, she awoke covered in sweat, shivering, the shreds of nightmares pulling at her. The dreams made her sick, forced to rewatch the virginal forests burn, the tunnel collapse, the bodies (children) in a circle.
Alice checked again. Red was there at her shoulder, face lined with dirt and sweat. She arrived at a junction, turned sideways, sucked her stomach in, and squeezed herself through. Red followed.
“Alice?” Suit said. Its politeness scared her more than any warning.
“Yes?”
“It’s closing fast, twenty feet. Hurry, hurry.”
She grabbed Red’s arm and dragged him onward; the wet, hot air made her lungs wheeze, broken ribs flaring pain, and she tasted copper and burned rubber.
“Up,” Red panted from behind.
A narrow ventilation grille rattled ten feet overhead and cool air flowed over Alice’s face. She jumped up; her hands brushed the grille but couldn’t hold on. She gestured at Red, then bent and cupped them.
“Get in.”
Red didn’t need a second invitation. He put one huge boot in Alice’s hands and reached for the vent. It rattled as he shook it, but remained in place: four large hex bolts oozed green sealant at each corner.
“Down,” Alice said and dropped him to the floor. She checked her pistol. The shrapnel rounds were designed for widespread organic damage, ricochet for distant deflections. Neither were perfect, but she chambered the shrapnels and aimed at the grille. “Cover your ears.”
The boom crackled from the bare metal walls. The plastic shrapnel rounds splintered upon firing, and the far left bolt shuddered. She fired again, again, concentrating on the left-hand side until the grille sagged.
Six rounds left.
“Suit?” she said and boosted Red back up.
“Progress has slowed. My guess is the tight confines are proving a challenge.”
Alice remained still, cocked her ears, and listened. There—something, a scraping. Way too close.
“Red, hurry.” She tried to keep her voice calm but couldn’t, urgency adding a hard edge to it.
With a squeal of metal Red tore away the grille and Alice lifted his head and shoulders into the duct.
“Got it,” he said, his boots vanishing upward. There was a banging noise, a stream of cussing, then his pale face frowned down at her.
“There is a branch duct here. Tight, but we can—”
A shadow grew on the curved metal wall beside Alice.
“Too late, kid,” she said.
Alice turned to face the chest of the biggest hack-job she’d ever seen. At least seven feet tall, his shaved and tattooed head wedged against the duct’s thin metal ceiling. A blue zip scar connected his head to a pale Caucasian neck, another scar connected his neck to a coffee brown torso. Two wider flesh welds joined the torso to long muscled arms, the left thinner, knuckles silver, while the right looked strong enough to buckle steel. A Colonial Marines tattoo glowed on his right bicep—similar to Alice’s but newer, the ink white, the dates different. He wore standard army pants, thick canvas with adaptive camouflage. As she watched, they blurred to mimic the wall behind. Black combat boots completed the street-punk ensemble.
Alice spent a year in rehab after Mars—half on the way back, half on Earth, her damage as much mental as physical. During the return flight a combat psychiatrist proposed getting her scanned and reprinted. He said a new body would skip the months of rehab she needed, saving further emotional trauma. Then a United Nations Organized Crime team arrived. Turned out most of the ship’s doctors were owned by the Russian mob. They were scanning Marines—the truly messed up dead-heads—and using their recordings as part of print-to-order kill teams.
The man in front of her was a product of a similar process. He was a Klichka, a construct built from the best spare parts available. Not subtle, not able to hide in a crowd and kill with a knife, Klichkas were the blunt-force approach to modern warfare. Cheap, reliable, disposable.
The man forced himself past the power conduit, lights flickering. Alice went for her gun, her draw oil smooth, pistol up in a perfect arc until she sighted on his torso. The weapon kicked, and the man’s chest sparkled with damage, but it was like throwing rice at an elephant. Thick green gel oozed from the cuts as he smiled at her with pointed white teeth.
Alice ejected the empty clip and stepped backward, fumbling for the ricochet cartridge. The hack-job forced himself toward her. She didn’t have time to get a defensive block up, and he punched her in the middle of her chest. The blow was like an exploding grenade; air blew out of her as she flew backward, arms out, trying to keep her balance. Her boot caught a loose cable and the floor and ceiling swapped places. The impact was hard, breath forced from her in a scream. Hands against the cold floor, she tried to push up, her boots scrambling for friction.
The Klichka loomed over her, his huge body creaking forward like a rusted piece of industrial equipment. A fist grabbed Alice’s jacket and lifted her to his eye level, boots two feet clear of the floor. Alice slumped in his grip, eyes closed, then brought her right arm up and around in a perfect blow. She put everything she had into it, angled her body weight, shifted back so his chin was at arm’s length. Her fist exploded in pain as his head shuddered. He smiled, teeth bloody, then slapped her face.
Her head rocked back, vision sparkling with pain, neck rubbery and loose. She didn’t have time to pull herself upright before he slapped her again, on the other cheek, her head snapping the other way. Blood and grit filled her mouth, ears whining, skull throbbing.
She laughed, a bloodied gurgle that made the Klichka smile. With the ease of a hydraulic press he lifted and squashed her against the ceiling. The air was driven from her lungs, she couldn’t breathe, vision fading in and out.
“You be so lucky fellow officer want you not dead.” His voice was light and effeminate, with an odd accent, like Russian garbled by a broken translator.
Fellow officer? Did he mean Mike?
“Hey boyfriend,” Alice said, voice slurred, “I don’t need any favors.” She made her fingers into a point and drove them into his eye. She’d meant to blind him, but the blow was too weak; he shouted, staggered backward and tossed her away, hand to his face.
Alice tried to control her fall, but was too battered to know which way was up; she landed on her side beneath the open air duct. She rolled onto her back, attempted to drag air into her lungs, find some last shred of energy. The floor shook; the killer was returning, and this time he wouldn’t follow orders. Alice scrabb
led backward, boots slipping across the oily floor. She looked up, hoping that Red had been smart and fled.
He hadn’t. His pale face glimmered back at her from the vent. He was doing something, the white text from his jacket visible, then obscured by a bunch of cables. There was a blue flash, then the Klichka blocked her view, his mouth a thin line. His right eye was shut, purple swelling obscuring the pupil. He would kill her now, apologize later. Alice still had the knife in her left arm scabbard; if he got close, she—
Then the Russian was jittering out of control, body spasming, the stench of seared meat filling the duct. Blue electrical fire arced between the walls, as the red emergency lights exploded like firecrackers. The Klichka gave a gargled choke and fell onto Alice, torso shuddering.
“Hey Alice,” Red shouted. “You okay?”
The Klichka weighed a half ton, and she couldn’t breathe, her chest throbbing with the pain of his weight on her bruised and broken body. She tried to push him off, failed. She looked past his bulk to see Red haul up a thick black cable, sparks hissing from its torn end; he’d dropped it onto the hack-job’s naked torso. Alice’s jacket had saved her, its spider-silk layers nonconductive. Suit had crashed, its embedded lights flickering a digital snow storm.
There was one final bitter arc of light, a bang, then complete darkness. The reek of cordite made Alice gag as she spat blood onto the floor.
“Suit?” she gasped, hoping it could provide illumination, but only strangled feedback came from the collar speaker.
The floor shuddered as Red dropped from the vent and kneeled with a grunt to rock the huge body sideways. After a few attempts, Alice slid free.
In the pitch dark she grabbed his hand. Her legs shook. All she could hear was Red’s panicked breathing and the thump of her heart.
It was hotter in the duct than before, the air tropical.
“Red, the conduit—is it big enough for me to fit through?”
“It’s tight at first, doglegs right and opens up. I didn’t go in very far.”
“What did you do?”
“There’s a bunch of power relays up there. My boots are rubber so I squeezed past, then kicked a cable free. Looks like it blew whatever grid ran through here.”
“You know this stuff, huh?”
His thin shoulders shrugged.
“You did real good, Red. Now I’m going to boost you back up, okay?”
Alice’s head throbbed as she stood, then lifted Red into the duct. She used the Klichka’s hard torso as a step, found the lip of the opening, and followed him inside.
Red was partially correct, the duct widened out, but only enough to allow her to inch along, shoulders wedged against the tight steel confines, Red’s shoes in front of her face. The walls glimmered with a faint light. The metal creaked and flexed with every movement, breath echoing from the walls.
Paralyzing claustrophobia lurked, but the primal instinct to survive held it off while years of training kept her moving. That and Red. He was just a street kid, like any of the thousands she ignored every day but, accident or not, he’d saved her life and she owed him.
Her suit crackled as a systems crash flashed interference patterns across its surface lights. It sparked blue, went dark. “What happened?” it said after a moment.
“We’re in a duct,” Alice said.
“Thank you for clarifying such painfully obvious details.”
“You’re welcome. How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been electrocuted.”
“Specifics?”
“Some core component damage, battery depletion, and general need for a vacation.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re back.”
“Thank you, Alice.”
“Any tracking intel on the second target you picked up?”
“None. It seems your friend with the high-voltage cable has melted some of my sensors. I feel like your face looks. Lighting, however, is something I can provide.” The spider silk glowed a soft red, enough so they could see without harming their night vision.
A moment later Suit said, “That’s interesting.”
“Suit—less theatrics. Just tell me.” Alice inched her way forward. The air was stifling now, sweat dripping into her eyes. Unable to wipe it away, she shook her head, then winced as her bruised face throbbed.
“There is a large amount of internal radio chatter. Not wide band but localized. It’s encrypted, of course, but some people are using older walkie-talkies with low-level capabilities, and I’ve hacked those. It seems Red’s fun with the power conduit has caused quite the stink. There have been reports of cascading power outages to a lot of the cooling systems.”
“That explains the heat,” Alice said.
“Quite. Mr. Bank is rather upset; he’s taken a personal interest in you.”
“Awesome. How close are we to Mike?”
“Are you paying attention? I lost the ability to trace him when I was electrocuted.”
“Hey, do you feel that?” Red said and stopped.
Alice was too slow and bumped into his boots. She tasted fresh blood in her mouth. “What?”
Then she felt it: a rhythmic vibration in the walls. With every passing second it intensified, stopped, then intensified again, the rhythm accelerating.
“Red, something’s coming up behind. You’ve got to speed up.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Red. Go, now, hurry.”
He moved, but not much faster than before. Alice struggled to follow, breath hitching in her chest. Screams rose in her, she wanted to shout at Red, kick him, anything to speed him up.
The vibrations grew.
“Suit?” she said.
“Hard to tell. The pattern suggests a human approach, but it’s moving at a velocity far in excess of a biological entity.”
“Roid?”
“I very much doubt Fourth Ward have any androids able to fit into this duct and chase you down. That would require a spec system, and it’s far cheaper to use reprints. No, this is something I haven’t seen before.”
Alice stopped and tried to look back by raising her torso and bending her head down. At first there was nothing, then thirty feet behind her blinked two points of light. Eyes, looking at her.
She redoubled her efforts, gave up on politeness and shoved Red forward, arms and legs squashed together, haunted by the chasing vibrations.
Closer, closer.
Red shouted and Alice realized she could see at last, Suit’s glow overwhelmed by a dull gray wash. Red was pulling at a grille in the floor.
He looked up at her, eyes white with fear. “It’s stuck,” he cried, beating his hands against it.
Then he was gone, falling through head first. Alice didn’t pause to see what was below, just grabbed the edge of the grille and pulled herself out and down.
She landed on a hard concrete floor, rolled, and came up in a crouch. Stark white walls glowed beneath radiation markers and environmental graphics. Red lay spread-eagled near her, rubbing his head. Alice caught his collar and dragged him away from the opening, at the same time fumbling for her sidearm.
They were halfway along the corridor when something exploded from the duct, moving so fast it was hard to track. It looked part human, part machine, and moved with oiled precision. Alice fired from the hip, the shots wide, the creature too fast. She dropped Red and took aim: no good. It skipped from the floor to the walls, sparks tracking its progress.
“Suit, help,” she screamed and slapped in her last clip of ricochet rounds.
“Firing solutions,” Suit shouted and projected a series of red lights onto the wall.
Alice aimed at the closest; the creature was almost upon her, its blur vibrating in her peripheral vision. She fired as fast as she could, emptying the clip in seconds, then drew her knife, the last weapon she had.
The composite rounds bounced across the corridor to hit the creature with a cloud of projectiles. Sparks flared like fireflies from its head; it roared and power
ed forward, but the ricochets had damaged it somehow. As Alice ducked left, it couldn’t follow, barreling straight past her. She slashed out with her knife, the white fractal blade slicing deep. There was the odor of engine oil and dirt as thick green liquid arced over the opposite wall. The knife caught on something and the blade snapped with a dry crack that wrenched her sideways.
The creature flew past to collide headfirst with the far wall. It screamed and Alice realized this was another Klichka variant, a woman, more machine than the earlier version, body mutated into a human pit bull. The woman jerked, out of control, feet slapping the floor, arms pounding the wall. The crescendo grew, panels buckling to reveal more knotted black cabling.
“Alice, do something,” Red shouted.
The Klichka blew, some overloaded central battery releasing a grenade-level explosion. Alice was tossed backward, the shockwave rolling over her like a steam train. A blizzard of orange sparks set fire to the rubber floor, the material sizzling as it poured smoke into the space. She tried to move but her body was offline; nothing worked. The smoldering wall belched gray clouds that filled the corridor with choking bitterness. More conduits popped in a deafening sequence that ran toward her.
“The power circuits are fried,” Red screamed at her. “It’s falling over, one relay at a time.” He crawled across, grabbed the front of her jacket, and pulled. He was shouting, louder, but his words were lost in the maelstrom.
With a groan Alice rolled onto her knees and followed him along the corridor, past the dead woman, and through a circular steel door. Thick metal clanged behind them, and the roar fell away, leaving a brittle silence broken only by their gasped breaths.
“Well, this is turning out to be quite the day,” Suit said.
Alice lay against the curved wall and watched Red strip a wire from an overhead conduit.
“Gonna run power to the door, let anyone the other side get a nice shock,” he said.
