We hunched down on either side of the windows, peeking out, trying to get a fix on who was out there. Gunfire peppered the building, forcing us back down and away from the windows, but nobody was marching toward us. The whining shriek of another RPG filled the air before crashing into the jeep, leaving it blackened and aflame. The heat touched my face, and I wondered if the boards over the windows would catch fire.
“PRC?” Kaften asked again, wanting an update.
“Nothing yet. This isn’t them. It’s Tongs,” I said.
He glanced back outside. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
The PRC hadn’t arrived. But Alice Xie had. Right down the street. On our side of the street even. Close.
“Boyd,” Kaften said, “take over satellite. I need to know where these gomers shooting at us are. Track their thermals.”
“Your upgrades can’t do it?” I asked.
“If they’re hunkered down inside somewhere, we won’t be able to pick them up. Can’t see through walls. Out in the open, that’s one thing, but I’m not seeing any of them. We use the eyes in the sky, though, maybe we figure out where they are.”
“She’s got them out there to keep us pinned down, to keep us away.”
“I think I got that part, thanks,” he said.
“I need to get to Mesa. I can’t just sit here.”
“So what’re you gonna do? Run down the street, hoping you don’t get your head shot off?”
“I need you guys to cover me.”
“This is some bullshit,” Crassen said.
“Just listen,” I said. “I think I’ve got an idea.”
They got a good laugh out of that. But I gave Kaften a serious look. He quieted Boyd and Crassen then told me to fill him in. When I was finished, his expression was sour, but he said, “Do it.”
Chapter 19
The operator asked me repeatedly to slow down, but I ignored her.
“A UN convoy is under attack on Wilshire,” I shouted, trying to sound panicky, which wasn’t hard with the gunfire hitting so closely. I gave her a hurried and rough estimate of where the action was then begged her to send help.
I was using a choppy VOIP fed through the commNet without visuals. She asked me to repeat, but I disconnected instead.
Crassen had a foul look on his face. We’d argued the merits of blowing their cover to the PRC, and Kaften decided the risk was worth it. Crassen disagreed, but once the order was given, he kept his mouth shut.
I looked at the men around me. Kaften, Crassen, and Boyd. If they wanted to live, they were playing along. They weren’t UN. However, Kaften was working on that, arguing his way up the chain of command through an illegal sat feed, trying to convince his superiors of the direness of his situation. We thought if he persuaded them that his death would be linked to their corporation and that the ensuing scandal and diplomatic problems generated from a group of private military grunts covertly infiltrating a foreign nation on the company dime, they might want to hurry up and buy our way into the UN peacekeepers mission.
A whining shriek pierced the sky again, and this time, the missile struck the floor above us. The whole building shook, dropping sheets of dust from the ceiling. My ears popped, and the smell of burning things fouled the air.
Kaften was shouting, but I couldn’t hear him through the ocean of dead air between us. The explosion had deafened me, and his words were faint echoes. Crassen put his hand on my shoulder and pointed.
Lights flashed outside. PRC. The Tong shooters aimed some of their attention toward them, and one soldier fell back, his hand gripping his throat. Another jerked and spasmed as bullets stitched their way up his chest before he went slack and toppled over. If any of them had harbored any doubts about my emergency call, that was surely over.
My hearing was slowly returning as the gunfire grew from small pops to a full-on assault. The soldiers outside were shouting commands at one another and at the hostiles bunkered in the buildings. The PRC had taken on the full attention of the Tong, and we had been momentarily forgotten.
Kaften was still sparring with whoever was on the other end of his commNet while giving me the middle finger. Crassen punched my shoulder as if to emphasize the disgruntled mood of his commander, then nodded toward the back of the lobby.
Alice was just a few buildings away, in Hashmi’s clinic, and I needed to get out of this building and into hers. I tried the few doors that were left. Most were thin sheets of plywood, the same as the front entrance, and led nowhere. Empty office. Empty storage. I found one that led down a short L-shaped hallway, to the rear entrance of the building. Old, rusted vehicle skeletons, the meat picked from their bones, littered the parking lot.
I stood there for a moment, getting my bearings and wondering if I would get shot. When I didn’t, I decided Alice must have focused the Tongs’ attention on the main strip of Wilshire, or else they’d abandoned their posts to help their comrades against the PRC. Either was fine by me.
I worked my way through the lot then up and over the fence that separated it from the next parking lot. I tripped over something in the dark but quickly picked myself back up. I moved fast, in a half-crouch, taking cover behind the shells of vehicles.
I was about three buildings away from the clinic. Then two. I went up a small grassy embankment, still keeping low enough to touch the ground. The grass was soft against my fingers, and my legs were aching, but I forced myself forward, into the next parking lot. I had to climb a thick, tall concrete riser and drop down into the lot, where I found more cars, if I were still being generous enough to call them that. One was in good shape. I couldn’t tell the make. Some Chinese model—a new one.
I pushed at the makeshift door to the building, but it didn’t give. Something on the other side blocked it. I put my shoulder into it and shoved harder. The door yielded slightly before the barricade reasserted itself. If I pressed hard enough, I could make a small gap between the door and the jamb. I dug my fingers through, feeling for the obstruction, which was cold, solid metal, not a chain. Alice’s men must have put something like a desk or filing cabinet up against the door. I rammed myself into the door with all of my weight. The door cracked under me, as loud as a blast of thunder, then I heard a scraping noise from inside. I pushed again, the palms of my hands flat against the wood, my feet set. Cords in my neck popped out, my temples throbbed, a muscle spasmed between my shoulders, and something snapped painfully deep in my back.
The door opened wide enough for me to slide through. I had to catch my breath. Despite the cold sweat breaking out against my forehead, I had no time to be old and weak. I shimmied past the tall cabinet that’d been blocking the door. The damn thing had barely moved before it had butted up against a desk and stuck.
I heard the soft murmur of voices. The people in the room had to have heard the commotion, I thought, wondering how loud it had really been. The cabinet had slid over ratty old carpet, maybe bumped the desk. It may not have been so loud. Maybe it seemed louder to me because I’d been trying to be quiet.
A dim glow at the end of the hallway offered enough light for me to see. I was in a reception area with a wall of dusty old blue file folders—a few green, a few orange—divided by alphabetical tabs. No one had gone through them in a long time, and I was surprised by this. Social Security numbers were in those files, along with dates of birth and all kinds of private information that could be used to build false identities to get out of California.
Probably nobody had gone in there because the neighborhood was protected by the Tong—and Alice Xie, who could use and sell that kind of information.
Following the light, I moved slowly, afraid of making any further disturbance that would alert them to my presence. A hallway ran the length of the receptionist’s area, forming a T-intersection with the exam rooms off to the left and right. The light I was chasing spilled from a room around the corner. Somebody coughed. I snuck a look and saw an Asian man come out of a room a few doors down and turn right to continue down the
stretch of hall. He carried an assault rifle. In order to get to him, I would have to pass the lit room.
I waited and watched. A shiver ran through me from the sweat puddling under my arms and against my chest, making the shirt tacky against my skin. My nerves were bothering me more than the heat, and I wiped sweat away from my brow. Coming alone had been stupid.
The guard went down to the end of the hall, to a small window that faced the side of the next building. Not much of a view. He started to come back down toward me, and I slunk back toward the opening of the reception area, out of his line of sight. It put him out of my line of sight, too…
I guessed at the amount of time it had taken him to get from one end of the hall to the other. Then I crab-walked back to the intersection and glanced around the corner to the left. He was there, his back turned to me. I checked behind me, saw flittering shadows against the wall, and made my move, fast.
Most of the time, getting hit in the head dazes a guy. He doesn’t fall unconscious right away, not like in the holovids. I clubbed the man with the butt of the gun, catching him on the side of his face right as he was turning back toward me, maybe sensing I was there. He was off balance and shuffled backward, scrabbling at the walls on either side of him, trying to grab some purchase to prevent himself from falling, but I was on top of him in a hurry. I hammered the gun down onto his face and heard his nose break. I smacked him again, hard against the temple, then he was still. I didn’t care if he was still breathing.
Outside, the gunfire grew louder, sounding closer since I was in the street-facing side in the building. When I turned, Alice Xie stood there, regarding me silently. She carried a gun, but made no move to raise it.
“I wasn’t sure if you would make it,” she said.
She raised the gun, pointing it at my belly, as I stepped forward. I stopped.
“Where’s Mesa?” I asked.
“She’s inside.” She nodded to the door behind her. “Drop your gun.”
I knew I should have raised it as quickly as I could and taken her down right then and there, but instead, I let the gun slip from my numb fingers. I didn’t know if I was fast enough or who else was in the room with Mesa.
“Raise your hands, please, Jonah.” She tipped the barrel of the gun upward. I put my hands up, and she motioned me to walk past her and into the room.
I stopped at the threshold, my breath caught in my lungs. Mesa was naked and laid out on a stretch of white butcher’s paper on the examination table. A host of wires ran from her to a cluster of machines and datapads. A thick group of wires had been fed into the dataport behind her ear. Under the sodium lights set up in the corners of the room, she was ghostly white.
“Don’t do this,” I said.
Sanjar Hashmi stood over Mesa, fiddling with the connections while glancing back and forth from her to the machine readings. He turned toward me, as calm as a still lake. No sympathy. No humor. A visage of medicinal cool.
“It’s already done,” Alice said. “She’s gone.”
I tried to stammer out some objection, but the words were clogged in my throat. My face felt swollen. My eyes and cheeks burned. My hands fell and I took two steps forward. Hashmi thought I was going for him, and darted out of the way. Alice said something in warning, but I didn’t hear her. All I saw was Mesa, and I went to her.
A stray lock of hair stretched over her forehead, lying in her eyes. I brushed it aside, surprised by how warm she was. Her chest rose and fell. No respirator. Her open eyes stared up at the ceiling, lifeless and empty. Her breath was hot against my skin, and when I pulled her close, her arms went slack against her sides.
A strong hand gripped my shoulder, and instinct took over. I lowered Mesa, then turned and launched myself at Hashmi, tackling him. I punched him once, then twice. His broken teeth cut my hand and his lips. A gun barked, loud in the small room, and a bright flare of pain erupted below my rib cage. The taste of copper filled my mouth. Alice kicked at me, forcing me off Hashmi. I didn’t feel anything, but there was blood all over the doctor and the floor. I reached to my side, the contact sending a howl of pain through me, and my hand came away slick with gore.
The medichines should have been pumping painkillers into my system, working overtime to repair the wounds lancing my flank. But they weren’t. Between gasps of pain, it dawned on me how badly I had miscalculated. I shouldn’t have come alone. Not with Alice Xie in so much control over me. She saw the realization had hit and smiled.
I pushed myself up against the cabinet. Alice stood over me, the black bore of her handgun resting casually before my left eye.
“I’ve simply turned them off, Jonah. I could turn them back on if you’d like.”
Her light, lilting tone was almost enough to hide the threat buried in those words. With a flicker of a thought, she could turn them on and turn them against me. The medichines were hers, and they could devour me from the inside. Those little healing machines turned into carnivorous, killing particles.
My hand pressed hard against my ribs, working to staunch the bleeding, but I was feeling lightheaded. I had come to the end of the road. I looked over toward my daughter. The lighting made the ink of her tattoos stand out harshly against her porcelain skin.
“Mesa is gone, Jonah. This is how it has to be.”
Hashmi was on his feet again, using the tail of his shirt to wipe the blood away from his face and mouth. His lips were already swollen. He moved sluggishly but was cogent enough to pick up a scalpel for protection, just in case, while giving me a very cross look. He was leery, afraid of being caught by surprise again, even with Alice and her gun between us. He kept one eye on Alice and me as he studied Mesa’s vitals.
I realized the tears were falling from my face when I tasted their salt. “Why?”
“I’m leaving California,” she said. “Maybe the country. But I can’t do it looking like this. I need a clean start, something more than a false identity and some forged documents.”
I coughed up a thick wad of phlegm. “People would be looking for you.”
“Exactly. I have enemies, and they could track me down. I have what you call distinguishing features. A new body, though… that could really get me places. I could start over, be somebody new. How many people have the opportunity to do something like this?”
“You killed my daughter…”
“You could have left well enough alone. I could have come back to you, in her body, and we could have left together. You could have had the best of both worlds. You could have had the chance to be a real father to her.”
“To you, you mean.”
“For a time. And then when I finally left you, it would have been par for the course, right? That’s how Mesa always repaid you, isn’t it? By leaving you. We could have been happy for a time, though.”
“You are one fucked-up little bitch. You know that?” Not my words. Kaften.
Alice was surprised to see him. I was, too. So was the doctor, who took a few steps forward, the scalpel raised before him, either as a sword or a shield, but it made no difference. Kaften raised the gun, shot Hashmi point-blank. No questions asked, Kaften blew the man’s brains out in a heap of gore splattering the white flesh of my daughter’s body.
Alice was fast. Very fast. She spun, bobbed away before Kaften could get a bead on her, and opened fire. Two rounds hit him center mass, knocking him off his feet. I knew he was wearing a vest, but the impact still had to have hurt and had probably cracked a few ribs.
She turned back toward me, seemingly surprised to see me back on my feet. Hell, I was surprised I was on my feet, but the adrenaline rush compelled me. I lunged toward her quickly, and she shot again, hitting me in the chest. But momentum and hate drove me forward. A solitary purpose propelled me through the blistering, white-hot pain: I wanted to kill her.
I slapped her across the face and knocked her gun away. Her fingernails raked at my face, trying to go for my eyes, but then she grabbed my ears and head-butted me. My nose shattered,
and stars floated between us. I ignored the pain, nausea, and waves of dizziness, and I grabbed her hair, wrapping it around my fingers, pulled her head back harshly, and rammed my palm up into her jaw. I heard the satisfying rattle of her teeth cracking. I outweighed her easily, so I turned her around as she took another swipe at my face, her nails ripping away a long strip of flesh.
I shoved her down onto the examination table, close to Mesa’s face. I grabbed a handful of wires, tore them loose from Mesa’s chest and abdomen, and smashed Alice’s face down against the edge of the table, working to get the length of cord around her neck.
Her fingers tried to worm through the wires, to get a grip and pull them away, but I was pulling too tightly. Her foot crashed down into my instep, and then she hammered an elbow into my side, where she had shot me. My vision dimmed to a faint, small tunnel of black, and I nearly passed out because it hurt so much. I fell backward, taking her with me, and she hit hard, knocking the wind out of me, but I didn’t let go. I let her struggle. I closed my eyes and thought of Mesa.
Then a new pain erupted deep in my core. The medichines went rogue, slithering through my system, organizing into a starving beast. Metal teeth tore into my muscles from the inside of my body, my arms cramped, and my stomach twisted into aching knots. My breathing turned ragged and painful as clusters of nanomachines clogged my bronchi.
The world went gray as gut-twisting spasms shook through me, and my throat burned from coughing. I forced myself to endure the stress, promising myself I wouldn’t let go. Alice’s body squirmed against mine. Her fingernails groped at my face, which I twisted away from her, so all she could scrape at was my ear, but at an angle that was too awkward for her to find any purchase. A sharp pain exploded behind my navel, and the surprised gasp lodged in my throat, choking me to death while the medichines furthered their creation of a hernia, twisting my intestines and setting my entire torso ablaze with agony.
Convergence Page 24
