by P. R. Adams
Time spent in the garage was productive. It seemed to fly by with the same sort of speed as sleep. The first thing Rimes did was to extract the corpse. He stole a section of tarp, some tools, and a battered pair of work gloves from a nearby abandoned worksite. At the garage, he cut away enough of the tarp to hold the corpse, then wrapped the corpse and carefully carried the bundle to an alleyway a few kilometers distant and dumped it.
With the corpse removed, Rimes focused on getting rid of the stench as best he could. He left the building’s doors open throughout the night while he was there. The next morning, using his Credence Concepts technician identification, he helped himself to cleaning supplies and tools from the O’Hara Towers building. The cleaning chemicals were used undiluted. He let them soak into the concrete before coming through with a mop. There was a merciful wind, and in the early hours of the morning, a heavy rain. He replaced the doorknobs next, staying with purely physical locks and checking that each one worked as expected before securing a copy of the keys beneath a head-sized rock resting at the corner of the yard.
Once the building was secure and capable of housing people, Rimes turned his attention to his next objective. He expanded his jogs and walks to encompass a greater area. On the third day, he nearly ran into what he was looking for.
Although Atlanta had grown over the decades, the growth had not been organic or consistent. Waves of immigrants became waves of global citizens relocating to a new home closer to opportunity, opportunity that quickly faded. What had once been a desirable segment of youthful urbanites evaporated, sometimes displaced by the new citizenry, usually leaving behind empty buildings and jettisoning things they no longer needed—clothes, storage bins, even tools.
It was in an abandoned section of the city that Rimes found an oversized construction hauler: a simple flatbed and cab. The vehicle had no power. What could easily be scavenged had been, but it still had its tires and transmission, and the motor was still in place.
Rimes let himself into the office at work and began researching solutions for the vehicle’s problem. The work was slow going, the grid unreliable even in a building as nice as the O’Hara Towers. With no one committed to the hard work of operational maintenance, things were slowly sliding into disrepair. It took an entire evening of research to finally find an obscure solution.
After checking out one of the building’s maintenance vehicles, Rimes headed outside of the city, eventually locating a dump site. He easily penetrated the site’s security, working his way through nearly thirty vehicles before finding the components he needed. Dawn found Rimes backing the hauler into one of the building’s maintenance bays. He jogged back to his apartment in time to shower and slip into the coveralls he wore for work.
The day seemed to drag on forever. Rimes split his time between work around the office and trips to the basement. When he was safely out of sight, he used building systems to research possible weapons caches—armories, closed police stations, even micro-manufacturing shops. The device’s influence hadn’t managed to eliminate the city’s criminal element, but it was almost certainly a shell of what it had once been. Despite the device’s ubiquitous message that everyone was where they were destined to be, there was still a lust in some people for what others had. The device simply ensured the lust wasn’t backed up with sufficient will to turn it into action. The end result was the occasional random violence and acting out, nothing more.
Eventually, Rimes settled on a store south of the city, one of the TotalMarket retail outlets that still carried weapons, something the parent ADMP metacorporation wouldn’t dream of allowing in its own orbitals and planetary holdings. Many of the stores were open around the clock, a legacy from the time in which TotalMarket was focused on eliminating its competitors. The store he was interested in was open only eighteen hours a day. It was remote enough that police wouldn’t be able to respond in a timely manner. ADMP’s private security provided something of a challenge, but not enough to frighten him away.
He staked the store out, recording its entry points, security, and how the weapons were put away. He walked through his planned break-in, mentally timing how long it would take from penetration to weapons acquisition to escape. It would be an uncomfortably tight timeline with no room for error.
When he was ready, he retreated to the maintenance building, now stocked with water, food, crude medical supplies, and clothes. He was running up debt with the purchases, which didn’t trouble him in the least.
Hours went into planning and practicing the break-in. Using the recordings on his earpiece, he turned the maintenance bay into an imaginary store, walking out the aisles and turns, marking the cameras and merchandise racks. He did seven imaginary walkthroughs before considering himself ready.
Shortly after midnight on the day of the robbery, he slipped out of the building with a plain travel bag. Stuffed inside was an all-black set of coveralls, a ski mask, a pair of athletic gloves, the last of the tarp, and the crowbar taken from the corpse. He had fashioned the mask from material stolen from an abandoned office at work. The work gloves he’d taken from the construction site were too thick for what he had in mind, so he’d replaced them with athletic gloves purchased from a different TotalMarket during one of his early morning walks.
Rimes checked out a maintenance vehicle from the O’Hara Towers, driving it to the city’s edge before parking it in an upscale garage. He walked two kilometers from the parking garage to another garage, changing into his coveralls and donning his mask and gloves in the darkness of one of the exterior walls. Certain that he couldn’t be identified he ran into the garage. He settled on a crawler parked near the exit. It was a common model, functional and forgettable. A few seconds of work, and he had overridden the crawler’s security. The motor hummed to life, and he drove it out of the garage.
It was nearing three in the morning when he came to a stop. The TotalMarket building sat about two-thirds of the way inside the parking lot—black, bulky, the exterior dimly lit by LED lamps. There were no security vehicles in sight. No police would be on duty, and the only way they’d send someone to investigate something so remote would be if there were money involved. He hoped not to provoke ADMP enough for them to hire the police.
At a quarter after the hour, he pulled the tarp from the travel bag and draped it over his shoulders and the steering wheel. He put the crawler in gear and headed for the entry to the parking lot. He kept the lights off until he reached the entry point. Once he was past the defense barriers—vestigial cement slabs meant to diminish the effectiveness of terrorist bombs—he accelerated. The parking lot was an open sea of gray before him, lined with meaningless fluorescent paths and warnings.
Cameras would have captured the crawler’s entry into the parking lot. Security would be en route. Rimes focused on his schedule. The speediest means of entry was to use the crawler itself. He floored the accelerator, ducking and covering himself with the tarp at the last moment.
The crawler crashed into the main entry door, buckling the frame and shattering the glass. The crawler’s window exploded and rained fragments down on the tarp. His collar ached from the seatbelt’s pull, but nothing broke. Wincing against the din of the siren’s roar, he threw the tarp aside and fought through the airbag. The crawler’s motor was silent. He’d expected that. He fished the crowbar from the travel bag, then pulled the bag from the passenger seat. Glass scraped and popped beneath his boots, and cool, air-conditioned air washed over him.
Jogging through the darkened store was easy enough. Emergency lights provided sufficient illumination, and he was running a wireframe overlay from his earlier visits. He reached the weapons section a few seconds behind schedule. He tried to make up for the lost time by really throwing himself into the crowbar swings. It worked.
Time ticked by as he shoved loot into the bag. It was time he’d factored into his plan. Three shotguns, five pistols, and several cases of shells and bullets; the haul was complete.
He jogged for the b
ack of the store, stopping as motion from the storefront caught his eye. He paused, watching the parking lot through the shattered entry. One of the black vans with bug-eyed windows was making its way through the entry barrier.
How did they get here so soon? Why would they even come?
Rather than waste time trying to figure out answers he dropped the bag and squatted next to it, then fished out one of the shotguns and a box of shells. He loaded the weapon, chambered a shell, then scooped up the bag. He stayed low as he jogged toward the storefront, doing what he could to hide from the security cameras. He stopped and pressed against the base of a clothing display.
The van came to a stop a meter from the ruined crawler, then three men exited. Their security gear, night-vision goggles, and bulky pistols marked them as metacorporate security. They moved through the entry with strange pistols held at the ready, then jogged through the checkout lanes and made a beeline for the weapons section. They passed Rimes’s position, oblivious to the threat he posed.
He let them go.
When the last one was out of sight he ran for the entry, still staying low. At the van he stopped, checked to make sure it was clear, then tossed the travel bag inside. He considered simply driving away with the van. A quick look at the interior—monitoring equipment glowed from every millimeter of the wall—and he tossed the idea. Instead, he climbed in and moved to the rear, squatting tight against the wall the side door had opened from.
Minutes crawled by. He watched the security team on the monitors. They moved through the building methodically before abandoning the search. A readout indicated they were returning to base. He twitched as the same readout showed an update on his record, listing him as a possible grade-two suspect.
They’ve been following me.
The store’s siren stopped. The night was silent.
Glass crunched, voices called. The security team exchanged accusations. Rimes tightened his grip on the shotgun. The van’s front doors opened, and a form filled the side door entry. The driver shouted. The man in the back of the van turned his back on Rimes.
Rimes moved, firing into the closest man’s back. The man screamed and fell. Rimes chambered another shell and shot the driver in the face, point blank. The headgear absorbed some of the impact, minimizing the gore sprayed onto the window. Another quick chambering, and Rimes swung the gun at the passenger seat occupant, knocking the man’s bulky pistol off target. A loud, piercing sound echoed in the van’s confines. Rimes growled and fired. The passenger slammed into his door, dead.
Gasping and cursing came from outside the vehicle. The third man was still alive. Rimes chambered another shell. The third man froze.
“Don’t shoot! Please!”
Rimes noticed a flash on the display. He was no longer considered a suspect by HQ. They had issued orders to bring him in for questioning. Failing that, there was blanket authorization to terminate him.
Rimes fired into the third man’s armor again.
He dragged the bodies to the back of the van and removed their weapons, then closed the doors and climbed into the driver’s seat. Rather than waste time cleaning the gore from the driver’s side window he brought up a video overlay. He backed up and turned the van around, getting a feel for its controls. Then, he gunned the engine and let its power vibrate up his arms.
It was time to wake Credence from her dream.
38
14 June, 2174. Atlanta, Georgia.
* * *
Rimes watched Leigh Boulevard from the shadows of an alley. His back was pressed against the outer wall of a Chinese restaurant. Opposite the restaurant, the Brendan Heights Apartments rose into the late afternoon sky, a grim and dirty edifice among a sea of dispirited and broken buildings. Sweat trickled down his back as the minutes passed. It was hot, and the stench of grease and spoiled food clung to the alley walls.
The Johnson District covered a serpentine strip on the eastern side of the city, running nearly ten kilometers west to east without ever encompassing anything greater than five kilometers north to south. The district had once been home to several technology firms, but aggressive metacorporate acquisitions wiped out most of them. After the high-rise buildings had laid empty for years, landlords finally converted many of them into apartments. In no time what had been prime, upscale real estate became home to thousands of laborers. Real estate values plummeted, and the last few businesses that had survived the rapacious acquisitions abandoned the district entirely.
Now, it was failing, spent.
Rimes shifted from foot to foot, doing his best to keep his legs loose, listening to the scraping shuffle of pedestrians. He had just shifted when he spotted Meyers.
Same as Credence, Meyers was apparently living in a dream. Tattered clothing and scuffed shoes—a thrift store ensemble—contrasted with a successful professional’s swagger. Rimes tracked Meyers to a building that once employed seven thousand ADMP contractors. It was now home to fewer than one hundred.
They dreamed of success and happiness, I dreamed of getting by. No wonder it was easier for me to snap out of the dream.
As Meyers crossed Leigh Boulevard, Rimes exited the alley. Meyers headed for the entry to Brendan Heights, nodding cordially at a homeless man. No doubt Meyers saw the man as the doorman to what Rimes imagined appeared to Meyers to be a gleaming spire of steel and glass. That was the dream Credence had lived.
Rimes caught the door before it closed and followed Meyers inside, then hung back, waiting until Meyers entered the stairwell. Once again, Rimes caught the door before it closed. After several heartbeats, he took the stairs.
At the tenth floor, he entered the hallway once he was sure Meyers was out of sight. Rimes listened for the opening and closing of a door. When he heard it he walked to Meyers’s door and counted to ten, then knocked.
Muted calls leaked through the door. A moment passed, then the door opened, loosely secured by a chain and latch. The woman Meyers lived with stood in the doorway. She was a somewhat attractive brunette, athletic and thin with an edge to her that recalled Kara Irvin. She wore flimsy shorts that were torn along the hems and a halter top and kept her hair up in a frizzy bun to deal with the heat. She gave Rimes an annoyed glare.
“Yeah?”
“I have a priority package for Mr. Lonny Meyers.” Rimes pulled an envelope from his coveralls. “We’ll need to authenticate, please.”
The woman rolled her eyes and shouted back down the darkened hallway behind her. “Lonny! You’ve got to authenticate for this package!” She turned and frowned at Rimes. “He’ll be a second.”
The door shut.
Rimes counted the seconds and gauged the size of the apartment. It had probably been a small business office similar to Credence’s, although almost certainly single story. By modern standards it was large, probably three or four bedrooms. It was the sort of place most folks were forced to share with multiple generations of family. Even if the neighborhood was rough, it would be a significant sign of status if it was home to just Lonny and his girlfriend.
The door opened, and Meyers appeared at the crack, unlocking the door. He wore a tattered and stained T-shirt and shorts sporting the Jinhae premium label, a label retired more than two decades ago. Meyers had gone soft, losing definition in his arms and shoulders. His face was fuller, and puffy bags had developed beneath his eyes. It looked like he’d aged several years, the illusion accentuated by the start of jowls where he’d once had thick cheeks.
“Can I see it?” Meyers didn’t even bother to make eye contact with Rimes.
Only a messenger. Not worth the trouble. Rimes passed the package to Meyers. “We’ll need you to authent—”
Meyers reached his left hand out absently, fingers waving impatiently. “Sure. This isn’t who I thought it’d be from.”
“It is,” Rimes said. “MetaConceptual.”
A second passed, then another as Meyers read the return address again, slowly mouthing the word: MetaConceptual. Rimes pushed the door open
wider and let himself in. He closed the door and gently walked Meyers down the hall. Meyers moved shakily, unbalanced.
“MetaConceptual.” Meyers’s voice was a whisper, the sound of a man rising unwillingly from the loving embrace of a dream he’d been denied.
“Tell me what you remember, Lonny.”
Rimes watched the bank of security displays he’d stolen from the black van. In one display, Banh and Dunne chatted inside Firmly Grounded, a coffee shop. In two others, Trang and Gwambe rode in separate tube cars. The entry to the Sutton District Hospital’s ER showed in a fourth display, the PeachTree Services building in a fifth display.
“Why is he different?” Credence stood in the doorway to the maintenance bay, eyeing Meyers as he paced in the building’s entry area, his movements slowly gaining confidence. “Jack?”
Rimes looked up momentarily, glanced down the hall at Meyers. “Lonny was living in denial.”
“Huh?”
“When he lost Kara on Plymouth, he somehow managed to convince himself what they had wasn’t real. In his dream state, he thought Kara was still alive and that he’d found her here. He’d never met the young lady he was living with in that apartment building before coming back to Earth, but they were arguing over wedding arrangements when I finally got through to him.”
Credence frowned. “That’s terrible.”
Rimes looked back at the displays. “The dream, or waking from it?”
“I’m not sure. Why is he going on about making sure we make MetaConceptual a success? I thought we were here to rescue Scott.”
Rimes scratched at the scar on his temple. “I’m not sure what’s going on in his mind. I remember Imogen saying she would give us the keyword to snap us out of the device’s control. Maybe she programmed each of us differently? Maybe Lonny needs a different objective to find motivation?”
