Necropolis

by Michael Dempsey

  “Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense,” I said wearily. “An international merc puts out a hit on me.”

  “Who would want you dead? I mean, no offense, big daddy, but you’re a nobody.”

  “You’re nobody ’til somebody hates you,” I warbled softly.

  “Could it have been a case you were working in your first life?”

  “I had three open cases when I died. A drive-by, a domestic, and a mob hit. Case one: Jamal Johnson, ‘Firebird,’ to his friends. A stone banger at age thirteen. Died in his front yard as the result of an Uzi on automatic. No suspects. The domestic was Cynthia Bowles. Took a paring knife to her hubby when she discovered three grand in internet porn charges on their VISA bill.”

  Maggie laughed.

  “The hit was Felix somebody. A Gee CI.”

  “A whosit?”

  “FBI confidential informant. Former mob stooge. Death came by way of two taps to the back of the head. A dead canary in his mouth. Along with his penis.”

  “I thought organized crime was the FBI’s turf.”

  I chuckled. “I had a prickly lieutenant. We were still working out jurisdiction.”

  “Could your hit be connected to the mafia?”

  “The familia would definitely not use an Irish shooter.”

  “Then what the hell?”

  My restless hands hardened. “I know. It breaks the rules. Why bother to make this thing look like a botched robbery? And why does a professional assassin, presumably hired by someone, hire someone else to do his wet work?”

  The paroxysm surged suddenly, like it had been lying in wait. I brought my fist down on the dashboard. The glove box fell open. The vehicle swerved and a dash light went on. “Is there a problem?” asked the sedan.

  “Mind your own business,” Maggie said to it. “Just drive.”

  “You don’t have to get snooty,” said the sedan. The light went off.

  “None of it makes any goddamned sense!” she said.

  “And the only person with answers is this McDermott—”

  “Who, dead or alive, is buried so deep we’ll never find him.”

  Maggie tried a smile. “So you’ll take me to the Bahamas now, Daddy?”

  Despite my frustration, I had to laugh. I flicked my cigarette lighter. “Guess I’ll work on the Crandall case.”

  Maggie went ballistic. “Donner, your best friend just got murdered. You just found out you were assassinated by a merc and your cop buddies covered it up. Someone tried to blow you up! Don’t you think you should take time to, I don’t know, regroup?”

  “I was hired to do a job.”

  She regarded me with piteous admiration. “A real old-schooler, aren’t you? Truth, justice and the American way.”

  “That’s me, Super-Corpse,” I growled. “Up, up and decay.” I looked out the window. “Pull over here.”

  The car complied.

  “Download yourself someplace safe.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “First I’m going to get twelve hours’ sleep. Then… I’m going to hack a building.”

  26

  DONNER

  That night, in the seedy hotel room that I’d rented, the dreams found me.

  ***

  She walks across a plain of cracked earth. Purple lightning flashes against a black sky. I can make out her favorite dress, a yellow thing, blowing in the wind, showing off her figure. She waves. But my feet are rooted to the ground. I look down, and they are rooted literally, twisting tendrils of vine wrapped around my ankles, growing into them, the tops of my feet beneath the soil.

  I try to call out, but my tongue is swollen. All I can do is croak.

  Elise stops.

  Insanely, there’s a boom box sitting on a burnt-out stump. “Is there a problem?” it asks. “Don’t get snooty.”

  Its play light comes on. A song starts. Blues. Keb’ Mo’. “Proving You Wrong.”

  It hurts Elise to hear it.

  The wind has vanished. A shadow rises from the ground, an opaque thing with an amorphous body and black, swirling limbs. I try to scream. The phantom limbs wrap around her, and she cries out in panic, her eyes going to me.

  Help me! she cries in terror. For God’s sake, why are you doing this to me?

  But I can’t move. And even as it engulfs her, I recognize this swirling black shape.

  It’s my pain.

  And as I watch, she is drawn down, down, until earth fills her screaming mouth.

  ***

  I woke to someone banging on the wall behind my headboard.

  “Shut up, shut up! Stop screaming or I’ll call the cops!”

  I put my face in my hands.

  “Crazy motherfucker!”

  Toward morning, I managed a couple sweaty, half-conscious hours, then gave up.

  The dream came back to me.

  There’d been a day when Elise had ordered me out. A separation. We reconciled eventually. But on that day, I’d left a boom box on a chair with a “play me” note, some kind of stupid dramatic statement. The song had been the song in the dream, “Prove You Wrong.” “I’ll prove you wrong,” the refrain went. Elise thought it’d been left to hurt her. That it meant I’d prove her wrong about kicking me out. But it hadn’t been. Of course in my stupidity, I hadn’t thought that she wouldn’t exactly be in the frame of mind to listen through all the lyrics. They’d actually meant I’ll prove you wrong in thinking that I can’t change. I’ll change and be the man we both deserve.

  Like many of my well-intentioned gestures, it had ended up hurting instead of helping.

  Was Maggie right? Did people never truly see each other? Did they never really know who the other person was? I’d seen Elise through the veil of my needs, but now I realized that she’d already changed. I’d already broken us.

  Too hard to think about.

  So I spent the day nursing a shot glass and smoking and watching crap on the tiny display that some genius had epoxied to the wall. Entertainment programming hadn’t improved in forty years.

  When the clock read 1:10 AM, I got dressed.

  ***

  The Chelsea lab was wrapped three-sided around a courtyard, used for exercising the employees when they weren’t pulling overtime. Picnic tables and a white gazebo. In the summer, brass bands in gartered sleeves and boater hats played “Sentimental Journey” and there was free lemonade spiked with endorphin productivity enhancers.

  I stood beneath a lamp post and fired a wooden match with a thumbnail, just a guy making his way home, pausing to light an illegal smoke. I let my disinterested gaze wander into the courtyard. Lights and security eyes everywhere. Crossing the space would be like walking a prison yard. I exhaled smoke and started moving. People didn’t stroll at 2 AM. Anyone not moving with a purpose would be a subject of interest to police and predators alike.

  I didn’t like it. A pro would’ve cased this building for weeks, getting the routines down pat. They’d know every alarm system, air duct and firewall, know when the cleaning service worked and what access they had. How many security rounds were made, when, and by whom. Which guard was on what floor, whether he was lazy or alert, how long he’d worked there, when he got coffee, took a pee, whether he had any vices to distract him. They’d have ID good enough to pass a once-over and serious firepower if that failed. Multiple exit strategies. And they’d have a crew. Nobody was insane enough to take a building like this solo. Too many variables, too many special skills needed.

  And I was about to try it all on my lonesome.

  I remembered a seasoned old burglar, one of the last of the true career artists, before the smash-and-grab meth-heads changed the scene forever. The Dean, they’d called him. He’d worked the city for twenty-seven years without taking one prison jolt. We’d known he existed, but only as a shadow, an urban legend. He had a jacket three inches thick, over sixty unsolved but suspected cases, but not one arrest. He’d finally gone down at age fifty-eight not because of a mistake, but because of frai
lty: a heart attack in the middle of a job. The mark came home from his business trip and found the Dean lying beside the cracked safe in the bedroom, gasping for air. After he got out of the hospital and was brought into Booking, we were all there. Everybody wanted a look. He was royalty.

  I could feel him looking down on me in disgust.

  2:09.

  The metal wall was behind a grove of cherry trees. It would have been the corner if this building had corners. The area, only about two feet square, appeared to have contracted beyond the lights and cameras, just like Armitage had said.

  Only one way to find out. I slid fast and direct off the pavement to a spot behind the trees. No way to hide the detour.

  I waited to see if I’d caused a reaction.

  The neighborhood stayed asleep.

  2:14.

  This building topped off at ten stories, thank God. A smaller, three story section faced me. I pulled the grappling pistol from the valise, aimed and fired. A filament cable hissed up and out. The fusion piton melted into the concrete just below the lower roof. I checked the tension, hung the bag around my neck, and hit “rewind” on the side of the gun.

  It hauled me up so fast that I had a blast of vertigo. I could only close my eyes and hang on while I rocketed upward. Then I was swinging myself over the lip of the roof and retracting the cable, wondering at what floor I’d left my stomach.

  The access grill was reinforced steel, bolts and straps. I passed the palm-sized device Armitage gave me over the thing. Two metal tendrils shot out and insinuated themselves into the output nodes of the panel.

  “Hacking building AI,” the device said. “Please wait.” A couple beeps later, the access grill’s locks detached with a muted thunk. “Security overridden,” it said. “Have a nice crime.”

  I consulted a GPS router loaded with the building’s schematics. I lowered myself through the hole. A maintenance shaft. A couple twists and turns later, I found the connection to a ventilation duct. It ran over the main hallway. The duct’s aluminum grill had screws, so I cut through them with a tiny laser torch. I dropped down into the corridor.

  Now it would get tricky.

  I edged down the hall. The proximity unit strapped to my thigh would alert me before I tripped any security sensor, and before any human guards got too close.

  I turned the corner and ran smack into Maggie.

  She shimmered at the contact. I fell back into a defensive position.

  “Plasmagram,” she said nasally.

  I put a hand over my heart. “I youthed a year! What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I can run interference.”

  No time for a debate. I pointed a gloved finger at her, letting her see in my eyes just how serious I was. “You’re going. Now. I don’t need your help.”

  “Then you know that a guard is about to turn the corner.”

  Sure enough, footsteps could be heard, getting louder, and my thigh was vibrating urgently. I spotted a utility closet, and pulled Maggie in behind me.

  It was tight. We found ourselves body to “body” amidst the brooms, buckets and shelves of toilet paper. I could feel her trim form pressed against me.

  Her eyes wandered my face. “Wish I could smell.”

  “Dummy up,” I said.

  “Bet you smell good. Musk, clean sweat, lingering soap…”

  “Will you be quiet?”

  Then we heard the guard approach outside.

  The door handle jiggled. Shit. I closed my eyes, a statue. The guard tried the door again, testing the lock. If it opened, I’d have to move on him. Come at him low, take him off his feet, then finish him. Knocking someone out in real life was messier than the movies. Causing enough trauma to shut down a brain risked a concussion, a fractured skull, or outright death.

  Maggie brought her hands to my face, touched my skin. Her fingers pulsed as plasma met flesh. They roamed the curves of my face. The danger of the situation, combined with her touch, was suddenly and intensely erotic.

  Finally, the guard’s footsteps diminished down the hall. I exhaled, sweat beading my brow. Maggie was still touching my face, cheeks, lips.

  “What does this feel like?” she asked.

  “Okay, c’mon. Stop it.”

  Her tone hardened. “What’s wrong, tough guy? Afraid to get turned on by an artificial girl?”

  Christ. Her timing was amazing.

  I slid past her, opening the door.

  ***

  There were two sets of main doors to the genetics lab with a sterile foyer between. Each had its own security apparatus, a redundant set-up to annoy staff and burglars alike. Both sets were constructed of industrial security glass, framed in metal Xs that allowed a view of the lab beyond.

  As we approached the outer doors, my leg sensor vibrated again. I put a hand up and we froze. I clicked my flashlight to infrared and cursed under my breath. Laser beams crisscrossed the hallway a meter in front of us, floor to ceiling. An impenetrable web of light.

  “I thought I already overrode security.”

  “Must be a dedicated program,” she replied.

  “What is it? Motion detector?”

  “Worse. It’s a DNA alarm. Those lasers analyze any organic material above a certain weight. They’ll ignore a mouse or a dust bunny but a human will instantly set it off.”

  I cursed colorfully. “I can’t exactly hide my DNA.”

  Maggie nodded. She was chewing her lip.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There’s that inept lying again.”

  Maggie looked at the floor a moment. “There may be a way, but I’m not sure I like it.”

  I opened my palms. Try me.

  “You wondered before how I become physical, right? Well, the short version is that I download myself into a small receptacle… call it my heart, whatever. This device projects the plasma and nanobits which collectively form my body.”

  “This receptacle actually rides around inside its own projected body?”

  “Right. If I were to dematerialize, my software construct would return to the device or be transferred to another unit, another computer. The particles would be re-absorbed into the device.”

  “How does this help us?”

  She hesitated. “If you hold my heart close against your body,” she said, “I might be able to reset my physical parameters to rematerialize around you. Sort of like a second skin.”

  “Around me? You mean I’d be inside you?”

  “I’d be like a shield around you.”

  “Would I be able to breathe?”

  “That’s exactly what we don’t want—no flow of molecules across the membrane that could trigger the sensors. You’d have to hold your breath.”

  “Have you ever done this?”

  “Are you kidding? How would you like someone to have your living heart, your very life, in their hands?”

  “Don’t you have a backup file somewhere?”

  “Would you want a backup of you stored somewhere? Some clone? So if you died, an exact copy, but not really YOU, could be put in your place? When are you going to get it?”

  “Yell at me later.”

  Her resolution dimmed a moment. “So are we doing this? That guard’ll be back soon.”

  “Okay, what do I—”

  “Hold your hands out, palms up.”

  I did. She stepped toward me, so the tips of my fingers were pressing against her abdomen just below her breasts. We locked eyes for a moment, and I realized how afraid she was.

  She trusts me, I thought. With her very existence.

  Then she became less solid and stepped forward. My hands slipped into her. I felt tingling. I could still see them within her sparkling iridescent form. Above floated a grapefruit-sized globe. It was silver, a giant ball bearing. It settled gently into my palms. I took a breath and pulled my arms back towards myself and cradled her heart against my chest.

  The lights went out.

  Suddenly my body w
as moving. My legs lifted, went down, ambulating by remote control. I felt smothered and for a moment bucked inside her. She fought for dominance. It took enormous will to relax and let her move me.

  Time slowed. I felt strange, dislocated. I imagined that I could hear her thoughts, below the level of consciousness. They were shimmers of electricity, whispers in a grove of cypresses, the knowledge of circuit and sky. I didn’t know if it was real or not. But they danced around me, fireflies of thought, and I was delighted to find that there was much in her that was made of joy and kindness. I wondered how I could have suspected her of throwing Hector out the window, and my hardness made me want to cry.

  I came back to myself a little. The heart felt delicate in my grasp. I could crush it, and that would be it, no more Maggie. Despite how Elise and I had loved, neither would have permitted such a vulnerable moment, so complete a surrender. Survival instinct, maybe. Or the calluses of city life. This was as intimate with someone as I’d ever been.

  The realization was like ice water. Guilt streaked through my head. But the whispers continued. I wanted suddenly to truly abandoned myself to them, give up my pain and simply merge into…

  And then, like that, we were beyond the laser web, and I was myself again. I looked down at my own body, surprised to be separate. We glanced shyly at each other, and I felt absurdly like a kid who had just stolen his first kiss.

  “Guess we didn’t set off the alarm,” I said.

  “Guess not.”

  A silent moment. “That was… wild.”

  She nodded. “I felt you. Were you saying things?”

  I didn’t answer. I stepped forward and the outer doors hissed open. We entered the foyer, and they smacked closed behind us. No way back to the hall. Our choice was to satisfy the second lock and continue into the lab or be trapped here.

  I examined the inner lock. A gene sampler. There was a button below three small icons: a drop of blood, a strand of hair, a bit of saliva.