Data Runner

by Sam A. Patel

  The mischief plant is located about ten miles outside of Brentwood, and I lead the vortex chopper all the way there. Since most of the plant workers are residents of Brentwood and most of them are otherwise occupied this morning, the place is barely in operation.

  The dirt bike putters like it’s almost out of gas when I slide to a halt in the back lot separating the processing plant from the mischief pit. I kill the engine and lower the kickstand. Pull the signal emitter out of my bag and get ready. The vortex chopper that’s been on my tail the entire way swoops over me. A rappelling line hits the ground a few feet away and down comes Bigsby.

  That’s my cue. I don’t even wait for his feet to touch down; I leap off the bike and grab him while he’s still on the rope. Raise my elbow and drive it straight into the wound on the side of his face. Follow it with a punch that disorients him just long enough for me to shove the signal emitter into his vest pocket undetected, then I release. He hits the ground just after I do, but the extra seconds he takes to clear the rope is all I need to get a jump on him.

  I run.

  He chases.

  No matter. I’m just half the distance away from the mischief pit, and there is nothing in between but playground, and I know I’ve got this. All Bigsby has to do now is catch me. And he will catch me, exactly when I want him to. Because this is my run, and I’m the one making the rules.

  I’m not sure how or why, but something had changed. This isn’t like all those other runs when I was tracing to get away. This time there are no Es. I am not running to evade, elude, escape. For the first time ever, since my very first job as a data runner, I don’t feel like I’m trying to get away from the person on my tail. Just the opposite. I want him to catch me.

  Up ahead is a very large dividing wall. I leap. Wall run up the concrete. Arm grab the top and muscle up.

  Ask a hundred different traceurs what they love most about parkour and you’ll get a hundred different answers. But if you distill those answers down to their essence, you will find the same idea at the heart of each and every one. Freedom. The freedom to be, without limits, to the very best of your ability. The freedom to move without fear or reticence and live your life one leap at a time. The freedom to unbind yourself from all those paths that have been constructed for you by society and find your own way through the obstacles. The freedom to write your own physics, accepting nobody’s rules of gravity and space but your own. The freedom, finally, to unshackle your human spirit from the tyranny of grounded steps and let it fly. Freedom—in all its form and function, all its beauty and art, all its magic and allure—parkour is all about freedom.

  Even the freedom to stop running if the time ever comes. Stop thinking about all those half-distances and just enjoy the view standing still. Sometime maybe, but not right now, not for a while.

  Bigsby doesn’t follow me up the wall because he sees the fence fifty yards away, and the giant sign indicating rats, and he just assumes I’m going to come down on his side of it. It’s the wrong assumption. Running along the top of the wall, I let him close the distance between us until he can keep up on his own, and the chase becomes a footrace to the pit. And the closer we get to the pit, the more we start to see the random escapees. On the ground, along the top of the wall, they scurry everywhere.

  Rats. Oversized rats. Farmed for consumption. Harvested for their meat. I nearly gag.

  Bigsby goes for his gun.

  “Go ahead and shoot,” I yell before it’s even out of his vest. “You can’t beat me any other way. You never could and you never will. You will never be half the runner I am.”

  Bigsby growls like a mad dog as he releases the gun and raises his hands like claws to attack the approaching fence. I get there first. Leap off the crest of the wall. Throw a midair 360 as I soar over the top of the fence. Land and roll out. It’s not that hard of a landing but it feels that way without any body armor. Getting used to wearing body armor was easy. Getting used to not wearing it again, that’s harder.

  The mischief pit is just that. A giant pit full of large rodents kept at bay by electronic fencing until they are ready to be processed. Thousands of them. Scrapping around in a pool of dark hair accented by long and leathery tails and the pinks of their feet. A shiver runs up my spine. I hate rats. That’s why I built the repeller in the first place, so I wouldn’t even have to see them. But now it’s like I’m making up for all the rats I’ve avoided at once. I feel them at my feet. Feel their beady little eyes watching me as I run along the embankment, waiting for me to slip. Ready to pounce. It’s nearly enough to make me second-guess my lane, but then I remind myself that I have to do it. I commit, because it’s the only way.

  Dexter could go a different way. He could do it without ever leaving the embankment. He could flip that mental switch from flight to fight and in one instant hit the brakes to take on Bigsby mano-a-mano. Dexter could get Bigsby into the pit without ever having to set foot in it himself. Unfortunately, Dexter’s wheelhouse is not my own, so I have to go another way. I have to go through. There is no way I can wrestle Bigsby into the pit without him breaking my neck first, so I have to run him through it. I have to go through.

  Easy, I remind myself. It’s just like any other obstacle. There is nothing stopping you. These rats are not limits. They’re just a plateau…

  I leap, escaping Bigsby’s fingers by a knuckle as they reach for my back. And now he has no choice. There is enough gravity and momentum between us to pull him forward with me before he even has a chance to think about it—because I’m sure if he did have a chance to think about it, he would never follow me in. But he does. I launch into the pit with all the grace of a bird in flight while he stumbles in after me like a drunken ostrich.

  It is without question the strangest landing I have ever made. Everything moves. Everything squeals. The squirm of the pack makes me stumble, but I manage to stay on my feet as the rats come rushing past me like a raging river. One on top of the other, running like every one of them is clawing for the last piece of cheese in the maze. That’s the work of the signal in Bigsby’s vest. It isn’t just attracting them, it’s inciting them to attack. That wasn’t my intent, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a happy accident.

  Bigsby screams in horror. It’s like nothing I have ever heard before. I’m sure a soldier like Bigsby who’s been inside the Caliphate has heard it many times, but never like this, never from his own lips. I mean he really screams in horror.

  As hordes of rodents continue to wash past my ankles, I turn in time to see him fire his gun wildly into the air. And when a trio of rats dig their claws and teeth into his hand and wrist, the gun goes off again. The empty shell casing arcs out of the ejection port in a drift of smoke and lands in the mischief of rats. Disappears. A rat digs its teeth into the soft web of his thumb and forces him to drop the gun. That too disappears.

  Rats. Claw past Bigsby’s waist and up his torso.

  Rats. Up his arms and across his shoulders.

  Rats upon rats. Climb across each other when there is no more surface on Bigsby to climb, when even his face is covered and all that is left of him is a mound of vermin that takes two steps in no particular direction and drops. And somewhere in that mound of vermin, through the din of squeals echoing across the concrete walls of the pit, I swear I hear him scream one last time.

  36

  I have to buy some gas off the plant manager before I can get back. The tank capacity is just under two gallons, so I toss him twenty bucks to make it square and then take the main road back to the smoldering remains of Brentwood. It’s twice the distance as cutting through the woods, but it’s a straight shot in fifth gear so I actually get back in half the time. Just in time to join the confusion.

  The vortex chopper from before, and two others just like it, are being forced out of the sky by something I have never seen before. Something that looks like it should still be a concept on paper, not a physical craft zipping around before my ey
es. It isn’t just a newer and better vortex chopper; it’s the next step in the evolution of military aircraft.

  But whose military? Certainly not Blackburn’s.

  The mystery craft fires electromagnetic pulses at all three of Blackburn’s vortex choppers, forcing each one of them to land in a storm of sparks. Land, not crash.

  “How are they still able to fly?” I ask Snake, who is the only one left at the nursing home after Dexter and Red Tail left to help out at the hospital.

  “It’s a brand new form of targeted EMP called the smart pulse,” he says. “The mechanism can differentiate between various types of circuits, giving you the ability to fire a targeted pulse that can shut down the weapons and navigational systems but still leave the craft operational enough to land safely.”

  “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “No, it’s not something you would ever read about in a white paper. That logic is still supposed to be at the drawing board. There are only a few people in the world who have the resources to build something like that in complete secrecy, not to mention the craft itself.” Snake turns to face me. “Bigsby?”

  “With his own kind.”

  Snake understands exactly what I mean. “Good. I never liked that kid.”

  I am so focused on the aerial show that I haven’t even noticed all the soldiers who have crept in around us. Soldiers everywhere, almost as if the entire town is under martial law. Only their gear isn’t Blackburn gear. This gear is lighter and slimmer, more compact, and I’d be willing to bet even tougher. Something tells me I am looking at the next step in that as well.

  It isn’t until a few of them run past us to secure the Blackburn soldiers climbing out of the vortex choppers that I see the unmistakable G on their uniform. “Grumwell?”

  “Jesus,” says Snake. “They did it. They really did it.”

  “When did Grumwell get into the paramilitary security business?”

  “That was always the next step in the doctrine, but no one ever thought they’d do it. And even if they did, we always figured we’d be right on top of it. Damn!”

  “On top of what…what doctrine? Snake?!?”

  But Snake’s attention is not on me, and when I look up at the Grumwell aircraft and see the one solitary soldier rappelling down, neither is my own. A woman. That much is unmistakable. She doesn’t come down haphazardly like Bigsby; this one lowers herself slowly, giving herself time to observe her surroundings and take it all in. It isn’t trepidation, it’s discretion.

  She touches ground and removes her helmet to reveal the long dark hair braided underneath. More troops in the fancy new gear seem to emerge from out of nowhere, and now many of Blackburn’s troops have turned their guns against their own, like they were sleepers for Grumwell the entire time. One Blackburn soldier puts his back to the grounded vortex chopper and fires a short burst of gunfire at Grumwell until a sonic burst drops not only him to the ground, but also the two soldiers on either side of him who had already surrendered.

  That is the first and last of any resistance. Grumwell’s troops now way outnumber Blackburn’s. Blackburn has no choice but to surrender. But it’s more than that. As I watch the others carefully, I realize it isn’t just because they’re outmanned and they know it. Judging by the actions of the ranking officers who have just gotten off their radios, it seems like they are under company orders to surrender.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “You know, Carrion, I think we’re about to find out.”

  “Carrion?” The woman from Grumwell is about thirty meters away from Snake’s whisper, but she hears us like she’s standing right next to us. She turns to me. “Monsieur Nill,” she says in an accent worthy of the words crème brûlée. “My name is Sandrine.”

  Of course it is. Who else would it be?

  “I was hoping to meet you at the gaming parlor, but you slipped away from our mutual friend before I could get there.”

  “What can I say? I’m not a fan of unauthorized detention.”

  Sandrine smiles. “From the son of Martin Baxter?” She pronounces his name Mar-teen. “I would expect nothing less.”

  All around us guns are dropped as Blackburn’s soldiers get zip-cuffed.

  “We’d like to thank you for your services,” she says.

  “My services?”

  Sandrine removes a device from her vest, something small like the size of those old serial-bus flash drives. “With all that’s happened here, you haven’t had the chance to check the news stream lately.”

  Sandrine taps the device, and even Snake is taken aback by what we see.

  An impossible burst of light shoots, nay fires from the tip and projects a flawless, cinema-sized hologram of the Grumwell logo into the air above the grounded vortex choppers. And I do mean flawless. The image density is as good as anything you’d see in a commercial theater, only this image isn’t coming from a roomful of projecting equipment.

  “Wow, I had no idea you could lens something so small!”

  “Forget the optics,” says Snake. “How in the hell do you power something like that?”

  At that moment, Snake and I are thinking the exact same thing. We want one. Not to use—we want one to rip apart so we can see what’s going on inside.

  “Free City news stream,” Sandrine instructs the device. She doesn’t even have to tell it where to route the audio. The device does that automatically. All of a sudden every speaker on every device within earshot delivers it. From the thin screens in people’s hands to the PA systems on the vortex choppers, the sound comes from everywhere at once.

  Now everyone’s eyes are on the massively projected Free City news stream.

  The first streamlet shows the very thing I never thought would ever happen—Christopher Blackburn wriggling his shoulders and shouting obscenities as he is hauled away in handcuffs. Likewise for the CEO of TerraAqua in the second streamlet, who is escorted from his office with his suit jacket over his head. The third streamlet covers what looks to be an emergency session of the Senate Subcommittee on Alliance Security, even though it’s clear by the empty room that that meeting has ended. After that are several more streamlets covering the global takeover of Blackburn by the new Alliance security initiative known as Grumwell Liberty. All at once, all around the world, everything that previously belonged to Blackburn Limited is instantly acquired by Grumwell Liberty in what can only be called the ultimate hostile takeover.

  “Is this us?” I ask. “Did we do this?”

  “No,” Snake replies. “You don’t build something like that overnight. This has been in the works for some time.”

  “So you didn’t know about it either?”

  Snake shakes his head with equal parts amazement and disbelief. “We were so focused on staying one step ahead of Blackburn. Grumwell was ten steps ahead of us the entire time.”

  It reminds me of chess. The player who thinks two moves ahead will often believe he’s pulling ahead on material even as he walks a slow road to the inevitable checkmate. That player is us. We thought we were pulling ahead by getting this cargo to the Alliance Senate, but Grumwell had already captured the Senate from the inside.

  Another streamlet pops up of Miles Tolan giving a press conference. Sandrine reaches into the light and swipes her fingers across the projection to expand the Tolan streamlet to full size.

  “Integrated active motion sensor,” mutters Snake. “Light Projecting Display in an ultraportable form. You’re basically looking at a giant transparent screen without the physical layer.”

  Giant is an understatement. There is no question about it. This LPD technology will make all t-screens go the way of LCDs, and the CRTs before them. Even if it is just a prototype, just knowing it exists suddenly makes the thin screen in my backpack feel like a hunk of junk.

  Miles Tolan. A graying gentleman in his late forties with eyes like black dots from a felt-tip marker. Hair slicked back. Beard trimmed close. Pin
stripe suit pressed to perfection. The audio kicks in mid-sentence. “—that we are all infuriated by the egregious and unconscionable actions of Blackburn Limited and TerraAqua. I am as angered as anyone by these deplorable actions. Blackburn, acting in collusion with TerraAqua, has not simply conspired to burn down North American suburbs to steal the water rights; they have conspired to commit acts of domestic terrorism against the citizens of this great Alliance. That means all citizens—not just the citizens living in these towns, but all of us. All of you and even myself. They have launched an all-out assault on the very citizens who form the backbone of this great continent.” Miles Tolan stops to shake his head no. “This cannot abide. Not now. Not ever. These actions must be answered for. There must be accountability.”

  “Watch. He’s about to paint Grumwell as the hero in all of this,” says Snake.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Just watch.”

  Tolan continues. “I’m sure many of you, like myself, have watched with disgust as the allegations against Blackburn have amassed. Of late and for many years now. Allegations that Christopher Blackburn has, both personally and through his company, engaged in dealings that are in direct conflict with the best interests of the Alliance. Allegations that Blackburn has dealt with the Caliphate. Allegations that the very army contracted to defend this great Alliance has been selling its services to those who would do us harm. And I’m sure that many of you, like myself, have watched these scandals with a feeling of helplessness and despair, because what other choice did we have? Well, my fellow citizens, I am a very fortunate man. Fortunate enough to have the resources at my disposal that I could do something about it. Fortunate enough that I could build the solution. Fortunate enough that I can now offer you the choice we never had before.