heets of fake brick fell from the Prince Harrington like urban dandruff. The once-hotel succumbed to the creep of urban decline some decades ago when it the planners transitioned it to low-income housing. The ninth and tenth floor windows were gone; replaced with temporary plastisteel panels clamped down over scorch marks. Nina moved past dying hedges and up the sharp curve of grassy berm that framed off a large parking area with only two battered vehicles in it. She avoided stepping on anything that would make noise as she moved to the side of the building and into the alley beyond it.
The fire escape ended at the second story, a simple jump up and grab. The higher she went, the louder the music inside became. At the tenth floor, the driving bass line of Z-bone’s music pounded dust through the gaps between the metal plates and the bricks. Persistent sonic vibration animated dirt on the metal walkway into a shimmering haze. Edging up to one, she opened the cover protecting its control pad, and keyed in the police override. It flashed acceptance and the bracing struts retracted, freeing it from the building. Repositioning one of these panels required two or three workers, but Nina moved it to the side without a sound, using one arm. The music intensified; a tangible force moved through the open window in time with it.
She stepped into a dark, debris-packed room, focusing her attention on the corner where light pulsated around columns, and fragments of plaster danced on the vibrating floor. The entire tenth story had been gutted; what had once been individual apartments reduced to one large area separated only by the supports and piles of old furniture. Trails of small arms fire dotted the walls behind her, threading among scorch marks that appeared to be the aftermath of small rockets. A few scattered and charred bits of cyberware hinted that something heavy happened here. Creeping towards the source of the sound, she followed the darkest shadows on her way toward the activity.
The smell of a number of synthetic drugs hung in the air, soaking out of the simulated wooden furniture piled like gathered leaves. Cold dampness pervaded the room and the music was loud enough to make her brain throb in time with it. Through a gap in a pile of old tables, she could make out a large purple couch on the far side of a curtain of holographic light. The intangible display was set to maximum size, reaching from floor to ceiling and almost twelve feet wide. Some manner of concert flashed about, absorbing the attention of three men. The one in the middle resembled Z Bone’s ID photo.
He had short black hair and a thin beard, little more than an inch wide line of hair around the profile of his chin, connected to his sideburns. He looked Hispanic, and wore shimmering purple clothing and enough gold rings to make her wonder if he could even lift his hands. A faint blue box traced itself around his face in Nina’s vision, and she ran his image against the police database.
She intended to perform a summary execution on this Z Bone, and wanted to make sure she got the right man. Division 9 seldom bothered with a piece of gang trash like this, but Carl Davies did not deserve to wait until Division 1 got tired of re-arresting him.
The other two had the imperious presence of men used to doing whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted without repercussion. They both wore the yellow and green of the South Fork Crew, and nodded their heads in time with the music. An array of guns lay scattered around a table amidst a plethora of narcotics injectors. Two young women sprawled on the couch, one on either side of Z Bone.
The girl on the left appeared Hispanic as well, the one on the right an exotic mix. All either of them wore were crude collars made of bent rebar, connected by chain to a heavy ring in the floor. They stared into space, high on some unknown chem, and completely unaware. The sight of them chased away the last of her doubts about Z Bone’s fate.
The image search came back with a positive match and an impressive record. She eased her sidearm out of its holster and her vision filled with combat assistants. Targeting crosshair, ammo counter, safety status, and a micro-zoom picture-in-picture of the target area; all transmitted wirelessly from the gun with 1024-bit encryption.
The holographic screen vanished as her eyes filtered it out. She whirled around the column and swept her arm from right to left as fast as a punch. The gun fired by mental command as the crosshair passed over each of the lieutenants’ faces. Two shots so rapid it sounded like her pistol had fired once. Bullets came through the gyrating singer, killing both men before Z Bone’s conscious mind could process the sound of the gunshots.
Gore showered Z Bone and the two women. Blood spurted upward as the bodies fell away to either side. The massive handgun left little remaining of their heads. The women did not react, though Z Bone screamed. He had not seen where the shots came from, as far as he knew, their heads exploded for no reason. He lunged for the table and grabbed a rifle. Nina sailed through the image of a near-naked dancer and landed on the table, one boot pinning the weapon in place. He looked up, still screaming. At the sight of Nina’s head superimposed over a topless dancer, his face turned red.
“Who the fu―”
Nina’s hand on the back of his head drove the rest of his outburst into the table. He bounced up with a bloody nose. She flung him around and away from the couch into a pile of stacked chairs. A torrent of dust billowed out as the human projectile crashed, sending splinters of wood and bits of cushion in all directions. Z Bone rolled into a crawl and struggled to get to his feet despite the pain. She walked towards him, pausing to turn off the throbbing holovid. The punishing music gave way to the gang lord’s phlegmatic wheeze.
A half dozen other members of the South Fork Crew burst through a steel door at the edge of the room in reaction to the sounds of gunfire. Nina stalked Z Bone as he crawled away; her arm extended to the right, firing into the group of gangers without turning her head. The small targeting window flashed red as one 15mm projectile after another went through several bodies each before stopping. The bullets aimed at the last two had enough spare energy to create spots of daylight on the wall behind them. Only one of the gangers had managed to fire, but succeeded only in spraying the man in front of him, the wall, and the ceiling on his spiral to the ground.
With the threat from the stairs reduced to a sliding pile of bodies, she put her sidearm away and the virtual readouts vanished from sight. She pounced on Z, grabbed his shoulders, and threw him to the side. His body spun through the air, coming to an abrupt halt chest first against one of the concrete columns in a cloud of dust and fragments.
He staggered to his feet, hand raised towards her.
“Wait…” He coughed up blood. “I can pay you… I can pay you more than whoever hired you.”
“There are only two reasons you’re still alive right now, Z Bone.”
“Who are you, what do you want?”
The brothers’ holographic faces appeared the air over her hand. “Coe and Arlon Davies.”
“What about them little bitches?”
“I want to know why they’re dead.”
Z Bone made a dismissive wave. “They was rats gonna snitch for the cops. I don’t abide snitches in my crew.”
She circled him. “You know what’s funny?”
“What…” A trail of thick blood drained from his lip.
“You killed them to keep the police away, but that is why I’m here.”
“You?” He touched his fingertips to his chest. “You’re here to fuckin’ arrest me? What the fuck do I pay for?”
“My apologies, am I impinging upon an arrangement of yours?”
He shook a finger at her. “Damn straight, Collins makes sure we have no problems. You ain’t arrestin’ shit.”
“Arrest? No. You’re not worth tax credits. Do you like palm trees?”
He made an incredulous face. “Palm trees? Bitch, you craz―”
Nina leapt into a kick.
Her shin broke through his right arm first, severing it at the elbow before crushing its way through his chest. The combination of strength and speed in her leg tore him in half. Blood went everywhere, including all over her. She stared at
the floor as warm fluid dripped off her, shaking her head.
I should have just shot him.
She had never before kicked an unaugmented human with her full power, and had not anticipated the gruesome details of the result. After opening a comm channel back to ops, she requested a cleanup crew and a MedVan. While relaying the details, she snapped the collars off the women, who remained oblivious to her presence, so high they simply stared into space. She wanted to cover them, but all the clothing in easy reach, including her own coat, was soaked crimson.
Within minutes, a shouting match erupted downstairs. The remnants of the South Fork Crew had been waiting at the bottom of the stairs for whoever attacked them to walk down into their line of fire. The absence of gunfire gave Nina a little of her faith in humanity back, they did not seem interested in a shooting match with the police.
Four sweeping cones of glowing dust swept into the room, cast by tactical lights carried by patrol officers in blue armor. They paid Nina little mind until they called the all-clear. Their sergeant approached her while two medics, a dark skinned man and an Asian woman pulling a hover-stretcher, entered.
Nina pointed at the stash of drugs on the table. “The two victims are on so many different chems I can’t tell what.”
“What the fuck happened to this guy?” One of the Division 1 officers looked up from Z Bone, backing away from the pool of blood expanding across the floor.
“He exercised poor judgment.”
The cop cringed at the coating of blood on her. He declined to push the issue, knowing she had the authority to terminate just about anyone―regardless of social status. The only question was how much paperwork it generated.
Another of the officers walked over and saluted, having noticed her rank from the dispatch call. “Evening Lieutenant. For the report, is this an op you can talk about?”
“Nothing secretive, just doing Division 1’s job for them. Z Bone killed a couple of innocent boys that tried to join this gang. I’m doing a favor for their old man on my own time.”
The officer cringed. “I don’t get what makes people fall in to these crowds.”
“Afraid of being shipped off to colonies from the work aptitude program, probably.” Nina watched the medics load one of the women onto the gurney and head for the stairs. “Maybe it’s some kind of search for a sense of control over one’s destiny.” She walked over to the other and looked back at the officer. “I guess we gave up trying to understand that a long time ago.”
A moan came from the pile of bodies in the stairs.
The other three officers swarmed over them, kicking weapons to the side as they dragged one living man out of the group and pumped a few stimpaks into him. He emerged part way out of his stupor and struggled, fighting as much as possible for a semiconscious man to fight. The cops rolled him over and restrained him as Nina carried the other limp woman down the stairs. She followed the medics to the waiting van and lowered her onto an open berth.
“You okay?” The female medic looked at Nina.
She smirked. “Aside from being covered in Z Bone, just peachy. Div 1 has this under control, I’m going to go clean up.”
ight smeared past on both sides as Nina drove. She ignored the advert bots and other cars as everything blurred together into a singular mass that was the city. Her mind drifted through memories: a tea party with Nix, laughing with her grandmother, the first nervous day of university, and the first time she set foot on the police weapons training course. Everyone had hit the floor as soon as she touched a gun for the first time.
She imagined Nix the rabbit shaking his stuffed head and clucking his fabric tongue at the thought of the casual way in which she had just killed ten people. Somewhere in the back of her soul, old Nina cried at the sight of what she had done―of what she had become. Stoic to the world, she drove in silence. Her intellectual side said Z Bone and his inner circle brought harm to many, at the same time her mother called out into the dark asking if she was still Nina.
By the time she parked, the guilt she lamented not having felt earlier had come. She contemplated if taking him in alive would have made any difference, but the sad truth was that men like Z Bone knew how to game the system. If left to the Division 1 process, he would have been back in his throne room before the concert ended, probably with two new women.
She sent a feeler to Ops as she got out of the car, requesting an internal investigation of an officer Collins, attaching her recording of Z Bone’s accusation.
Someone else can deal with that.
Pale green light saturated the interior of Andy’s Dry Cleaning with a surreal glow that made her feel as though she stepped into a strange dream. Four old ceiling fans chopped the air, filling the room with a steady thrumming. A checkerboard of forest green and white tiles spread out in front of her. A middle-aged man with features mixed of white and Asian ancestry snored behind the counter. To his right, a huge room full of credit-operated machines. Murmured voices and echoing noises told her that someone used the facility.
Walking up to the counter, she knocked twice near the man’s head. Andy flew to his feet with such a shock that he almost fell backwards into a rack of plastic-wrapped garments on a track that snaked its way into the room through clear plastic slats.
“Hello!” He tried to sound awake and happy. “What can I help you with?” The squeaking of swaying clothing behind him accented his voice.
“Hi Andy. I need to clean this.” Nina pulled off her coat.
Dark red lines streaked across the white counter when it landed.
The sight of it scared the man pale. “No trouble!”
Nina showed her ID. “No trouble.”
His fear vanished into a broad smile. “You taller than I remember.”
“Must just be the light in here.” Her boots landed atop the coat. “And those.”
The ballistic suit did not leave her contours to the imagination; painting every curve with gloss black except for her head, hands, and feet. Eddie stared at his reflection in the material, mesmerized.
“Do you have a sink I can use?” Nina smiled at him.
Crimson spots formed one after the other upon the counter, falling out of her hair.
“In back, through that arch…” He pointed at a doorway and gathered what she had put on the counter. “Rush job?”
“Please.” She turned for the door.
“That’s ten credits more.”
“Fine.”
Andy’s eyes lingered on her until she closed the door of the tiny bathroom. The space felt cramped, even for someone Nina’s size, but it had a sink. The cold tile floor surprised her with its cleanliness. She wiped the blood from her face and dumped water over her head. The first cup ran into the sink as though she had poured blood over her head.
The process continued until the runoff was clear, barring a few threads of red in the water swirling down the drain. She snapped her head up and flung her hair back, launching droplets, and glanced in the mirror. She looked soaked and freezing, but bloodless―an improvement. A proper shower could wait a little longer. The suit kept the blood off her skin and came clean at the urging of some microfiber towels.
She tracked wet footprints as she went out front, sat on one of the benches and crossed her legs. The lobby, colder than the back room, tempted her to turn off her sensitivity to the environment. The front wall reminded her of home, floor to ceiling glass, only this place was at ground level. Huge holographic signs flashed to the left of the door; the source of the eerie light that turned her ashen skin a light shade of emerald.
Water dripped from her hair, leaving beaded trails along the black material. She studied her foot, hanging in the air. It looked so real; a tendon line rose out of her instep as she curled her toes and shapes hinting at blood vessels seemed to move under the skin.
This body felt strange. For one thing, her nails did not grow. They remained the same perfect length; long enough to be a little feminine but not enough to get in the way of
what she had to do.
She thought about what Dr. Khan said.
Did it really matter what her body was made out of? She still had her mind; the department shrink kept saying that. The mind and soul defines a person, and she still had those. Sensing a stare, she glanced at the archway past the desk. A tall, dark-haired man hovered in the door to the self-service machines, evidently checking her out since she’d sat down. The way he looked at her said he had no idea what she was.
Nina closed her eyes and tried to sense her falseness. By mind alone, she could not. She squeezed her arm, feeling the rigid plates. The synthetic skin felt natural, warm to the touch and soft. It offered a little give when she pushed. Below the skin, independent panels ‘floated’ on top of Myofiber muscles, shaped to resemble natural bundles. She inhabited a fair approximation of humanity, a hard athletic body far removed from the soft, delicate Nina Duchenne that dreamed of becoming a forensic technician.
Maybe it isn’t that obvious. She bent forward with folded arms, looking up at the man. Maybe I am still alive.
He still stared, smiling. Just as she got it in her head to test the limits of her realness, a woman appeared at his side to ask him something. She tracked his stare to Nina and fumed, pulling him behind the wall into an argument. Nina flashed a guilty smile at the front windows, feeling human in spite of the argument she caused just by sitting there. Old Nina would have been mortified wearing such a tight thing in public; now it made her feel genuine.
Andy waved. “Miss?”
She turned her head, still smiling.
“Your order is ready.”
She walked over and leaned on the counter. “That was fast.”
“Special run… for police.”
She caught him staring, and let him. “Thanks.”
Back in the car, she placed a vid call to Carl Davies. A few beeps later, his hologram bust floated before her. A young girl’s voice murmured from the background asking about homework.
Virtual Immortality Page 27
