Nina glanced at Spiky as the virtual face collapsed out of her vision. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. His arms curved into his chest in a pantomime of a chicken hit by a car. Her cybereyes created a wireframe of his skeleton over reality, revealing two broken ribs as well as where the bones in his right arm were reduced to a smear of splinters from wrist to midpoint.
“You’re not going to die.” Nina turned off the medical scan and put a hand on his shoulder.
Spiky tried to lean away, trembling, as she got closer. She wondered if this feeling―eyes staring at her like that―was what drove her attacker to insanity. He did not try to hide his augmentation―he screamed it from the rooftops.
No, that creature was at ease with what he was. He enjoyed it.
“Calm down. You’re a pair of rapists. You should be damn happy I didn’t kill you. A blue and white is on the way to scrape you morons off the sidewalk.”
Spiky gurgled and tried to sit up. Nina’s hand convinced him otherwise.
“Your ribs are broken and your lung’s been torn; stay still.”
His eyes lost focus as he slipped into shock from the pain. She smiled at that, now he would not do anything stupid. Buzzard took the hint and remained motionless. She stood between them, watching the sparse traffic drift overhead until two Division 1 patrol craft approached from the south, bar lights on but no sirens. They came in low and glided overhead at a crawl, flooding the area with a halogen glow. Nina smirked, unimpressed at their cautious approach to a pair of gang thugs. As the cars turned around and came back, she wondered if maybe she was the cause of their wariness.
She held up her ID. Her vision zoomed in on the passenger in the lead car. The patterns of light on his face said he checked her out on scanners, the usual routine. She remembered every key press in the procedure. The image magnified until she made out the terminal reflected on his eyes, inverted by her image processor so the words were not backward. Their tension faded as the ID checked out and the four patrol officers got out of their vehicles and walked over.
“Nice night for a walk?” The driver of the left car looked at the two men on the ground.
“Apparently. These two were looking for some tail and didn’t give a damn if the tail was interested.”
The two from the right car approached Buzzard. One secured what remained of his gun, holding it in two fingers. He looked up at Nina, who just smiled. The partner pointed at his datapad, at her ID. His whisper of explanation that the C3 at the end indicated a class 3 doll did not elude her ears.
“I didn’t want him to hurt himself.” She overacted a demure tone.
“Where’s the vic?” The driver of the other car walked up while his partner checked on Spiky.
Nina just smiled a wry little smile without saying a word.
“Oh you have to be kidding me… wow.” He looked at her sideways and paused for a moment. “Really?”
“Yeah. These two geniuses figured my early morning stroll could use a fuck break.”
“Of all the women…” He laughed. “I love it when the idiots do us favors.”
“Got it from here, then?”
His face shone green in the castoff light from a datapad. “No problem, Lieutenant. Just need the usual statement.”
Nina reached for the device. “I can just give you my log if you want.”
He handed it over. She pulled the wire from the underside, and connected it to a socket in the back of her neck, hidden beneath her hair. Her onboard systems kept a running recording of everything she saw and heard, buffering the most recent hours’ worth of information unless she recorded more on purpose. Rather than give a tedious verbal statement, she uploaded video of the entire event as her eyes recorded it. Nina ejected the plug with a thought and handed it back to him as the wire reeled itself in.
He reviewed the contents while she waited, having little reaction but curt nods until the point where she crushed the pistol. The others crowded around like spectators at a Gee-ball game, grinning at the time-slow point of view.
“You must be havin’ a good day Lieutenant, you went easy on them. Holy shit…” He shook of his head.
I haven’t had a good day in almost a year. Nina sighed. “There’s not a whole lot left of my soul, and these two morons aren’t worth losing another slice.”
“I hear that. Have a good morning Lieutenant.”
ina walked away, heading in the same direction she had been going before the interruption. A MedVan nosed around a corner and flew over her on its way to the scene. She looked up, dragging her perception of time to a near standstill. She squinted at the boxy craft, aglow with a bevy of emergency lights and ground illuminating lamps; the four ion focusers at its corners created five-meter wide starbursts. She cut the reflex booster and it zoomed off, a fly freed from honey.
Head down, she trudged along wondering why a MedVan came this fast for a piece of street trash but when Vincent needed one, it arrived late. Her attempt to wallow in misery dried up as her rational side countered with an appraisal of elapsed time. If Spiky suffered the same kind of full body crushing injuries that Vincent had, the MedVan would have been too late for him as well.
Well, this was a total waste of time.
Nina turned, heading home at a brisk walk. The folly of expecting to stumble across that thing so close to her apartment mixed with her memory of charging at him that night, a nagging reminder that haunted her with the pointlessness of rash decisions.
Maybe I just wanted some air. It’s not like I’m losing sleep.
Some comfort came with the thought that she spared some innocent woman a life-ruining night.
Maybe mom was right about destiny.
Hair fluttering in the wind, she glanced up at the sky and searched for any break in the endless pattern of indigo. Mother said that some higher power had chosen her for this change; that her new body with all its abilities was a blessing. Nina did not put any stock in the concept of a supreme being and only recently even accepted the truth about psionics. Ten months ago, she thought it little more than a pile of warm horseshit cooked up over an open fire of fear and sprinkled with paranoia by conspiracy theorists.
A gap in the smog opened for a fleeting moment, offering a clear view of a patch of starry sky―quite a rare sight in the city. The ever-present layer of vapor and pollution seldom yielded a view of anything but grey that sometimes turned purple during twilight. In the south, where Nina lived, the smog was at its thickest, forty miles north of what people called Los Angeles four hundred years ago.
She got through the door a few minutes shy of 5:30 a.m., thinking that Dale would be there in about a half an hour. Blood remained on her face from the fight and she wondered if a shower might relax her. Even if it did not, it could make thirty minutes pass.
Her bathroom felt cramped despite the place being considered at the high end of middle class. A clear tube in the corner stretched from floor to ceiling between metal platforms. She stepped up into the device and the tube door slid closed behind her with a faint squeak. Along a metal ring at the center above the handrail, the autoshower’s control terminal painted her with pink light. She once liked the girly theme she set on it, and still did not care enough to expend the effort necessary to change it. With a jab of her finger, it came to life and water jets spun around, soaking her in soothing warmth. She let her head sag forward as she stood in the spray, lost in her thoughts. Nina stared at the droplets beading on the screen, distorting the pink into individual pixels.
They mocked her inability to have an honest cry since Vincent died.
She peered down through a short tunnel of hanging hair as the water ran over her stomach and down her legs, swirling into the oblivion of the drain between her toes. She wanted to fall in a heap and sob it all out―but for a reason she could not fathom, she just stood there in stone-faced silence. A deep breath filled her synthetic lungs, inflating her chest like any ordinary person. The ghost of her former life, plus four inches, haunted her
from the blurry reflection on the tube wall amid thousands of droplets.
She touched her fingertips to her reflected face. The idea that her life may not be ruined teased at the edges of her mind. If she could stop feeling sorry for herself, she could embrace the illusion. This body did most of the work. All she had to do was accept that Vincent would want her to be happy, and work for Division 9. It was not her dream, but at least she no longer feared death.
The sudden intrusion of an incoming phone call interrupted her with Dale’s face.
“Morning Lieutenant. I just pulled up outside.” Dale smiled.
I knew it. “Fifteen minutes early.” Nina closed her eyes out of reflex as the shower sprayed her with foam, not that soap would sting mechanical eyes.
“You know… that whole can’t sleep thing. I brought coffee.” A cup slid into view on the image, waving as if teasing a dog with a treat.
“I need a few minutes, come on up. No need to sit there in the truck.”
“Right. Okay, which apartment is it?” Dale fidgeted with his hair.
“Floor 62, room 407.”
Dale blushed. “Understood, Lieutenant. I’m on my way.”
The image collapsed into a point and the shower mechanism wrapped her in a warm rinse. Whirling around her in spirals, the streams soon freed her of the soapy shroud. She tried to hurry the process along with her hands. The water stopped as the shower kicked into its drying cycle. Jets of hot air came up from the floor as well as the rotating side sprayer.
The overpowered airstream no longer blew her about. She lifted her arms over her head and basked in the hot air. With the machine winding down, the sound of a ringing doorbell drowned out the fans. She opened it with a wireless command to her apartment’s control system, patching her voice through to a panel on the wall out front.
“I’m almost done. Come in, I’ll be right out.”
It took a moment for the autoshower to shut down and release the safety interlock on the door. She slipped out into the chill of normal temperature air and ran her fingers through her hair a few times in the mirror before wandering without a word into the hall. A shadow of a man shifted on the wall as she padded down the short corridor to the main room. She paused at the door, amused by his muttering about how the place looked unlived in, clean and perfect like a model apartment―except for the pile of clothing on the Comforgel pad.
Dale was glancing around the place, fidgeting and picking at self-warming coffee cups. Nina kept walking, right past him as casually as if clothed.
He all but dropped the coffee.
He steered the coffee’s fall into a lean on the table, turning his back on her as fast as he could without causing further damage.
“Lieutenant! You’re―”
“Naked. Yes, Dale, I noticed. I’ve tried showering in my armor and it doesn’t work as well.” She leaned past him and grabbed a cup.
He shied away. “But aren’t you―”
“Embarrassed?” She took a sip. “No. This is just a machine, it’s not me.” I’m just a brain in a jar now.
Her shower rumination left her wondering if she still felt that way, but it seemed like the perfect thing to say to keep Dale at arm’s length.
He risked a look, stammering for a second. “Sir… Lieutenant… Ma’am… You look… um… You… you should be embarrassed.”
Nina turned to face him full on; he flinched away as if she slapped him.
“Dale?”
“Yeah?”
“Speaking as a man, purely in a clinical sense, what do you think?” Nina put a hand on her hip and twisted a bit to the side as she modeled for him.
Dale did not look. “You’re my superior. This is just not right, why do I feel like I’m about to get an email from HR?”
Nina chuckled. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I”―her voice softened, she stopped smiling―“you’re right. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I needed to know if I’m still a person, or something… else.”
With a hesitant turn, he looked at her feet. His eyes met hers, and then slid back down before he spun away.
“If no one told me you were a doll, I couldn’t to tell. Isn’t that the whole point of the Division 9 mods on the Class 3 body? All the military power crammed into a Maya 6?” He picked at the valve on his coffee. “You’re supposed to be able to infiltrate places undetected. It wouldn’t do any good if you thumped around like a combat cyborg.”
A giant swig of coffee reddened his face from the heat.
Nina smiled despite Dale not seeing it. Hearing that made her feel a little more human, and the extreme awkwardness that drenched him amused her.
“Thanks Dale. You can look now.” She chuckled, not remembering the last time she had done so.
He hazarded a peek, relaxing when he saw her dressed.
“Wow they even gave you a um…” His speech stalled with the thought that his attempt at an icebreaker might have just been the most incorrect thing he could have said at that moment.
Nina laughed with a genuine escape of levity. “Yes Dale, they did, and that’s as far as we are going with that topic.” Vincent would have asked for a closer look.
Now crimson, he couldn’t look at her. “Yes Ma’am.”
The awkwardness of the preceding moment kept a pall of silence over them until they exited the lobby and strode across the courtyard in front of the building. A bronze statue ringed with curved benches occupied the center of a sunken square in the open expanse of metal, a human figure approximated by a series of elongated pyramids, rectangles, and spheres welded together. Several thin sweeping arcs jutted out in the artist’s attempt to suggest motion. A little boy no older than eight sat upon the bench, bouncing and catching a flashing green ball. He smiled at her as they walked by, unafraid. She waved.
They passed on either side of the abstract man; Nina looked at the pattern of corrosion, green over dark bronze. It traced a path to the ground, driven by rainfall, where it stained the marble base green.
In her imagination, the statue changed into her body, devoid of skin as well as clothes. A deteriorating plastisteel skeleton posed like an athlete, staring out from its own oblivion. A metal husk propped up on display that no one even glanced at twice.
Is that what awaits me when my time runs out?
ale’s voice distracted from her gloomy stare; he had rounded to the front of the statue and looked back at her with an expectant raised brow.
“All postings and references to the seminar are updated to the new presenter name, everything looks squared away.”
She turned away from the bronze, catching up. “Good. What kind of idiot came up with I.M. Boring? They might as well have labeled it a seminar on clandestine government operations.”
“I figure it’s one of two possibilities.” His blush receded. “One, an idiot was trying to make people not want to go. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would enjoy a seminar on basket weaving…” His chuckle died at her lack of response. “Second thought is that command wanted to see how you would react. If this is a low importance job, they may have done some things wrong on purpose to see if you’d catch it.”
Nina scowled at the white van with the logo of Floyd’s Bakery on it. “My credits are on the second option, and that’s just me hoping against hope that we don’t employ anyone that stupid.” She shook her head at the slogan on the side of the vehicle. “The most mediocre bagels you’ve ever had? The moron theory is picking up credibility.”
“Yeah.” Dale slid open the driver side door and climbed in. “We’ve been using Floyd’s for a while now; they didn’t want a lot of foot traffic at the store, so they tried to make an unappealing slogan.”
“The average idiot probably won’t think about it―but operatives would see that stick out like a red flag. Who would ever advertise in a way that would reduce business? That will need to be changed too.”
“It might not be worth it, the Floyd’s cover is going to be reti
red after this op anyway. We’ve had it for six months and it was due to end in two more. Warner’s been the most interesting thing to happen in a little over a year.”
“We should still conceal that slogan. I don’t want our cover blown at the wrong moment by something so foolish.”
She came through the armored door from the back, and sat in the passenger seat. “At least the electronics suite works.”
“Have surveillance teams one or two reported any unusual activity?” Nina glanced over the files.
“Nothing. Karl Warner is still at his residence, no sign of any outside contact. No sign of Nemsky or Korin.”
“It’s German,” corrected Nina. “Pronounce the W like a V. Var-ner, not War-ner. Anyway, it looks like the network team came up empty handed too. Neither one of them have left much of a trace in the net since their shuttle passes came through at Edmondson Memorial Starport.”
“It’s sad that it’s easier to get into the UCF through Mars than just crossing the ocean.”
He eased the van around a corner, turning north towards Sector 86 and the Imperial Hotel. “There’s something that’s just not making sense about this.”
“There you go again, stating the obvious.” Nina looked over.
“Well, think about it. You have two foreign nationals, Itai Korin and Anatoly Nemsky, who are at best mercenaries and at worst clandestine operatives. Both of them turn into ghosts as soon as they land. The files don’t say anything about either one of them being skilled hackers. Hell, Nemsky looks like he’d just as likely eat a deck than plug into it.”
“Yeah…” She wanted to punch the dashboard but held back.
The pair had been almost impossible to trace save for a fleeting glimpse of a credit transaction here and there. The most credible evidence came from a few surveillance camera recordings that put them near Karl Warner’s diplomatic residence. Of two possibilities, both of them smelled like rotten potatoes.
“Either they’re both exceptional spies that are masters at covering their tracks in the real world or they have a hacker working with them that’s good enough for us not to know about him… or her.” She grumbled. “Either way, it points to something larger here than a playboy diplomat from Germany.”
Virtual Immortality Page 9
