Nova slid a gun out of her pocket. “That means stealth suits. Black ops.”
“Ayup. They’re about fifteen seconds behind our friends. This is going to be close.”
Billy mumbled, tapping his fingers over his system’s keyboard. Chicken Fingers and Bob finally appeared in the video feed outside the hidden doorway, and he opened the way. Chicken Fingers entered first, sweat dripping off his nose and chin. Bob jogged in after him, tugging the knot of his tie back into position.
“We got three of them. Well, I got one, he got two. But it’s a whole squad. We thought there were only five, but we were wrong.”
“No time, Chicken Fingers. You came in hot. At least a few of them are right behind you.” Nova wedged a bar between the door handle and the ground. Chicken Fingers immediately started helping her barricade the entry. “Hurry up, Billy!”
“Working … working …” came his reply.
Gyro turned to the latest addition, who smiled at her and waved.
“Hello.” In person, Bob didn’t look all that intimidating. Hardly the sort of man who could dodge whole surveillance networks and elude a stealth strike squad.
“Hiya,” chirped Gyro. “We were looking for you!”
“You shouldn’t have bothered,” Bob said. “I’m never seen until I want to be.”
“How’d you find us?” Nova asked quietly as she shifted more of Billy’s sparse furniture.
“He’s been here the whole time. Here, slide that in this space,” said Chicken Fingers. “He’s been following us since we left your cube, maybe earlier. I knew he was out there; I just wasn’t sure who the hell he was.”
“That’s impossible, sorry,” Billy spoke in that tone Gyro had come to recognize as recitation of fact. “I watched you the whole way in and he never showed up on any of my scanners or cameras.”
“No system is impenetrable, Mr. Black Eyes.” Bob inclined his head in subdued respect. “Do not take it personally. It’s my job to get into places I don’t belong without anyone being the wiser.”
Distant thunder rumbled. The room shook. Gyro eyed the security feeds around whatever it was Billy was doing. Four armored figures had appeared outside the now-locked access point that Nova and Chicken Fingers were still barricading. One of them carried a massive shotgun and aimed it at the sealed door. Another shot boomed through the area. They could see the wall crumbling already.
“They’ll have that door blasted open in a minute or less,” Nova said. “Billy, where’s the escape hatch? Do we go through that panel you opened before? Come on, let’s move.”
“Hatch? Panel?” Billy splayed a hand over his chest. “You think we’re just scampering out a hole in the ground? If you think that’s the grandest spook-sprint I can come up with, you still underestimate me. No, Nova, that panel is a red herring. A distraction for them to find.” He swiped through all the screens, making them vanish, then slammed his hand down on the big button on the side of his desk. “Hang on, kids. We’re going for a ride.”
“Uh …” Gyro whispered in the brief silence. “Was that supposed to happen?”
She winced as lights sprang back on, illuminating the room in full. She glanced around, spotting details hidden among all the gear. The long, narrow room had metal poles screwed into place at regular intervals, and much of the equipment had been set on rows of fiberglass seats.
If anything, it all reminded her of a subway car.
Billy twirled in his chair, grinning big. “Hate to run, but I have to admit, this part’s always fun. Rails clear. Rockets primed. Wheel clamps disengaged. Ladies and gentlemen, we are ready to fly. I suggest you grab hold of something.”
He punched another button. The room lurched, sending several of them stumbling. Gyro hung on to one of the poles as doors slotted into place along the sides, closing off the side rooms and entrance tunnel. A metal wall at one end of the room irised open, revealing a large window. A tunnel with train rails lay out ahead of them, lit by twin headlamps. Amidst a growing roar and rattle, the entire compartment picked up speed for parts unknown.
Within moments, it was all she could do to not be flung into the rear of the cab. The tunnel tube whipped along at a teeth-chattering pace, creaking, groaning, and popping like it might fall apart any second.
The window showed their twisting path. The antique subway car raced over rusted tracks, thumping through dirt piles and scattering brick, rebar, and cinder blocks. They shot along at reckless speed, taking tight turns and careening around corners so fast, the cab swayed and ground against the tunnel walls, throwing up sparks.
“Are you trying to get us killed?” Nova shouted over the racket. “Why aren’t you steering?”
Billy flashed a manic grin as he held onto his chair arms, knuckles white. “On autopilot now, babe! We aren’t stopping till we hit the next abandoned platform!”
Chapter Thirty-five
Anansi
The world crumbled around Anansi. It refused to steady, bucking and striking him all over until his whole body felt like nothing but an enormous bruise. Metal screeched, glass shattered, and loud voices pitched back and forth over him throughout it all, adding to the disorienting madness. Charon attacked mercilessly.
Then a larger smash rippled through him. Hard edges struck his forearms and shins, and the whole mess of existence slammed to a halt. He shut down everything he could internally, pushing GENIE as far away as he could. Someone hollered endlessly, hurting his ears.
“Would someone shut him up?” came a rough voice. “I’m trying to get my bearings and that noise isn’t helping me focus.”
A calloused hand clamped down over Anansi’s mouth. He tried to pull away but had such little strength left. Sucking through his nose, he screwed his eyes up and waited for more pain, more torture.
“Easy,” came a woman’s voice. “Let him breathe.”
The hand withdrew from his mouth and Anansi dared to open his eyes.
A girl’s head, cheeks smudged but eyes bright, popped into view.“Hello!”
Anansi struggled up and pushed himself backward, away from the girl. His back bumped a wall. He still sat in the coffee shop, but he was now surrounded by other people. Five of them, to be precise. He rubbed at his eyes.
The people around him looked familiar, which steadied him just enough for his mind to stop trying to shake itself apart.
He studied the five people that stood and sat in the shop around him. One was a hooknosed man whose jacket had numerous bullet holes tearing up the edges. The front of his shirt was torn to shreds, and there was an armored vest exposed in the hole. The name Chicken Fingers sprang to mind.
Another man wore a fancy, if dirty, suit—minus the jacket—and stood with hands clasped, face bland. Bob Jenkins. Two women sat in front of him. One, around his age with fine features and dark blue eyes and a fairly heavy bandage covering one calf. Nova. The other, a slip of a girl with snarled hair and a ratty backpack. Gyro. Off to the side, a stocky man hunched over a bunch of dark screens, flicking his multi-colored lenses on and off.
“Who are you?” Anansi croaked at the person he didn’t recognize.
Nova smiled gently. “His name is Billy Black Eyes. He’s not in Prophet’s file, but he’s been helping us.”
He worked to swallow the dryness in the back of his throat. “Right. Sorry. I’ve just had my TAP ripped apart by what I can only call an evil fucking monster. Give me a moment, please. I need a cup of coffee.”
Billy perked up, “Good call. Make two?”
Anansi stopped and swiveled, staring at Billy. He was angry that Charon had broken into his head. He was angry at the pain throbbing through his brain. He was angry that the world had melted and was getting more fucked by the minute, and it finally spilled out. “What? Why is your ass so helpless? Make it your damnself.”
Billy’s eyes went wide and he held up his hands. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
Anansi shook his head and walked to the back of the shop. They followed him to the
counter as he went back to the espresso machine. “Hey. That’s not for you.”
Chicken Fingers guiltily pulled his hand out of the tip jar and dropped the credits back into it. “Sorry. Didn’t know it was a thing, leaving money out in the open after the apocalypse hits. I’ll be good.”
Anansi shook his head again, which was pounding, and focused. A couple times the people around him tried to talk to him, but he shushed them. When the first cup was done, he took a sip and his head immediately started to clear.
The little girl, Gyro, she was maybe thirteen, was raiding the pastry case, just as he had. Anansi felt guilty about his earlier outburst, so, while the others were talking quietly about what to do, he made half a dozen cups of coffee.
The woman walked over first and grabbed one. “I’m Nova. This is my little sister, Gyro.”
“Yeah,” Anansi said. “I have the file too. I know your names.” He stopped. “I think I’m cursed to sound like an asshole. Look, Billy, here’s a cup of coffee. I’m sorry about earlier, man. I’m getting my head back on straight though. You’re a legend. I’m happy to share a cuppa with you.”
The hacker perked up. “You’ve heard of me?”
“Of course, man. One of my bandmates does a bit of code jockeying on the side and is a real conspiracy nut. Believes in everything from aliens to the afterlife. Get her going and she won’t shut up about you, like you’re some kind of conspiracy hero.”
“Always nice to be recognized for the effort I make.” Billy preened and accepted the cup of coffee.
Nova scoffed. “Please don’t get him started. We’ll be here all week.”
“Speaking of time,” said Bob, “we need to be moving ahead. Let’s get going before the CHIMERA team tracks our location and moves to detain us here as well, please.”
“Can they do that?” Gyro asked around a mouthful of coffee cake. “I thought we escaped. So long as we don’t plug into anything connected, we should be good.”
“We bought ourselves some time,” Billy said. “Our bug out collapsed several portions of the tunnel behind us, so they won’t be following us that way. But if Charon is monitoring the whole city, then I can bet we triggered a few alarms along the way that he’ll be able to use to track us down again. We have to assume we’re running the clock down here.”
Chicken Fingers eyed the shop around him. “Which part of town are we in? I don’t recognize the area.”
“South Side warehouse district.” Billy licked his lips as he squinted at a feed on his handheld.
“So, what’s our next step then?” Nova asked.
Gyro wiped at her mouth with her sleeve. “We’re almost there. The recompile hardware is near here.”
Anansi looked between them all, utterly bewildered. “What’re you all talking about?”
“Oh, right,” said Gyro. “You’re still outta the loop. Guess we oughta fix that.”
For five minutes straight, the teen laid out a story that sounded torn straight from the drama feeds. Solar flares and artificial intelligences and a city … no, a whole world gone mad. Parts of it Anansi recognized, like Charon. Prophet. But the way she phrased it … five people chosen to carry special code through the storm in hopes of resurrecting an inhuman power? It sounded surreal.
He sat taking it all in, meshing it with everything that had been happening and his own conversations with Prophet. The corporations had an inkling this sort of event was on the way; the security measures at the CHIMERA arcology showed that. They’d been prepared. They’d had bolstered filters of their own in place, while they let the city’s bad neighborhoods and the residents in them burn.
All for what? A few credits that they would get by controlling this AI, Charon? A little more power than they already possessed? And they had failed, according to Prophet. Charon was under no one’s control. Anansi worked through it all in his mind. He didn’t really know these people, but what Prophet had shown him … tonight he was going to be a wizard. That was a destiny he could embrace, a choice he could make.
At last, he raised his head. “So … shouldn’t we be moving on then?”
Billy eyed him over the top of his lenses. “You’re taking this all reasonably well.”
“That friend of mine who worships your tag?” Anansi shrugged. “She comes up with way weirder theories about what’s going on behind the scenes. Besides, I never really thought I was important enough for a full ops team to come after, but if a global AI is wanting me—or some code I’m carrying—out of the picture, that explains a few things. And I … I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. My gut just says ‘yes, this needs to happen.’”
Chicken Fingers hacked and spat. “We have all five of us together. So why’s the Prophet a no-show?”
Gyro rolled her eyes. “Duh. It’s not like the code is just going to reassemble in midair. It needs a receptacle, a system that can hold it all in one spot.”
“But where do we do that?” asked Nova.
“When I was jacked in looking for Anansi, I spotted a place on the shoreline that resonated something fierce.”
Nova frowned. “Resonated?”
“Yeah. Like it was calling to me … or the part of Prophet stuck in my head. I think that’s where we have to go to finish this off. Prophet’s got a place all prepped and pretty for us.”
“Nortec Simulacra Production Centre.”
They all looked at Bob, who smiled mildly back.
“How do you know that?” Nova asked.
“It was part of my mission briefing. Once everyone had been gathered, I can get you access to the Centre, where this can all be resolved.”
“Mission briefing?” Nova’s hand went to the pistol on her hip. “Exactly who hired you to follow us?”
“Prophet, of course. She’s my client. Besides holding on to a portion of her code, I was also given the location for the recompilation.”
“Why didn’t it just tell me that?” Gyro asked in a whining tone. “Wait a minute. Her? Not it?”
“She definitely used female pronouns in her communications.” Bob nodded. “As well, she and I have developed a rapport.”
“Huh. Seriously. You’re friends?”
Anansi noted that the kid never seemed to stop asking questions.
“Indeed. Opposites attract, and you can get no further apart than we are,” Bob answered Gyro patiently.
“What’s that supposed to mean? And why didn’t any of us get the location then?”
“Prophet didn’t want to risk the enemy learning where the final stage would take place. Charon could have, indeed would have, set a trap.”
“But he could’ve taken it from you too, just like any of us,” Nova said.
Bob shook his head back and forth, a faint smile touching his lips. “I’ve certain safeguards none of you do. Trust me when I say there’s no way Charon’s agents can get the info out of me.”
Billy had a city map glowing on his handheld. “Can’t say I’d argue with the location. If you’re looking for someplace that has plenty to do with creating bio-bins for brain downloads, you’d be looking here.” He jabbed a finger and they clustered behind him for a closer look. “Nortec’s factories are where almost the whole city gets its simulacra supply from, but if you want a specialty gene-job, you go to the Production Centre. Specialized work for specific bodies that clients can dub in whatever mental engrams they want.”
“Primo!” Gyro pumped a fist. “Let’s go!” She paused and looked earnestly at each of them. “You guys just have no idea how cool this is, do you?”
“We will depart momentarily, Gyro. I wouldn’t recommend taking too much of an overt route,” Bob said. “The streets are practically war zones at this point. If it’s not the civilians trying to kill each other, there are enough corporate squads in action, we’re going to have a rough time picking any sort of safe path through the mix. From what I’ve seen, the crowds aren’t as murderous as before, but they still react violently to anything that disturbs them too much. We don�
�t want to get caught out in the open with scopes at our backs and civilians in front.”
“But if we take it too slow,” said Nova, “Charon’s squad will catch up with us and wipe us out. Right? We can’t afford to waste any time.”
“I can get you partway using the underground, but the tunnels only make it to the I-88 underpasses on the edge of the warehouse district.”
Tugging on his chin, Anansi mused out loud, “What if we had a way to hide within Hyper Reality? A way to use it to work the crowds to our advantage and give ourselves faster access? Yeah … I can get us the rest of the way.”
“You can do that?” Bob asked.
Anansi smiled at them all and pulled out his airbrushes. “Just get us to the streets and then prepare for a show. You won’t even have to buy tickets.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Nova
They emerged from a set of loading docks under one of the I-88 overhangs, and Nova had to admit Billy impressed her. He was a lot more focused than he used to be back when she occasionally hooked up with him. There was purpose to his step as he guided them through the tunnels below the city.
The warehouse district reared over them with storage facilities ranging from single-story complexes spanning a city block to skyscraper-tall silver columns without a single window or door in sight. Many of the warehouses ran on full automation, with drones and bots forming assembly and transport lines across the sector, transferring goods of all shapes and sizes while conferring on secure wavelengths, running with brisk efficiency. This didn’t mean the whole place remained empty, though. Enough systems required oversight and maintenance that at least half a million strong worked there at all hours, monitoring Chicago’s commercial exchange. Plenty of buildings had landing pads on their roofs where aircraft could haul in cargo from the lakeside docks as well.
Despite the high activity, spray-painted tags and street art adorned the surrounding walls. It got in everywhere. With human overseers on the fritz, much of the district had fallen dormant. Drones sat in their bays, waiting for new pickup and drop-off orders. Transports lay idle, and the main motion came from those people who remained in the area. Day laborers, night watch, and engineering teams continued to mill through the streets, fighting or fleeing those they came near. Some people were just curled up against walls, tucked away and sleeping it off. Even so, there were a fraction of the people you would normally see here.
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