05 - Changeling

by Chris Kubasik - (ebook by Undead)

  “He might become a troll someday,” he finished.

  “Of course, Peter.” She sighed. “Peter, this isn’t about you. It’s about my son.”

  But since he was a troll, it was about him.

  “We better get some food. Some clothes,” Peter said, and stood up.

  “No, wait….”

  “Please, Kathryn. Let’s leave it for now. The whole thing just has me confused right now.”

  * * *

  They remained silent for most of the shopping expedition, speaking only when they had to confer about what to buy, how much of it to buy, where they should but it from.

  They returned to the apartment with cheap clothes that would keep them warm, food to stock the refrigerator for a week, and enough bug spray and roach traps to believe they could make headway against the cockroaches.

  They had just set up the traps and put away the groceries when a knock sounded at the door.

  21

  Both Peter and Kathryn froze and looked at one another. Then Kathryn ducked around a corner and Peter pulled out a gun. Not a word was spoken, not a signal given. They moved quickly and quietly. Getting into a good team pattern, Peter thought.

  “Yeah,” he said from one side of the doorway.

  “It’s me!” It was the voice of the girl they’d met the other night.

  Peter undid the bolts on the door and opened it. “Wow, big gun,” she said and slipped past him into the apartment.

  He could see her much better than the last time, and decided his estimates of her age had been off. She was about eighteen, but a short eighteen. She was dressed in layers, her garments all overlapped at different angles and all of different colors. It was something like a harlequin outfit, but without any sense of restraint or order. Over her shoulder was slung a backpack.

  Out in the hall waited Breena, the mage, slightly taller, but only a few centimeters. Peter guessed her age as the same as Liaison’s, but her face was set and grave and a bit angry, making her look older. She wore a black jacket tied with a large belt, heavy black stockings, and black boots. The shoulders of her jacket were so large that they distorted her body into something too muscular-looking for her small frame. She had pinned silver and gold brooches to the lapel of her jacket. Fetishes, Peter guessed, to help her with her magic.

  “Come in,” Peter said, stepping aside to let Breena enter. Then he leaned though the door and looked up and down the hall. “We weren’t followed,” the mage said. “It’s all clean.”

  “Just making sure.”

  “Fine. Just don’t do it at the expense of my professional pride.”

  During the whole exchange Breena had not looked at Peter, but eyed the apartment instead. “Drekky place.”

  “We like to think so,” said Kathryn, her tone sardonically chipper.

  Breena next eyed Kathryn up and down. “You hanging with him?” she said, jerking her thumb at Peter.

  “Yes. For now,” Kathryn said with a laugh. Peter got a bit worried. He’d dealt with people like Breena before. If you couldn’t take their self-important strutting seriously, it was better not to let them know it.

  “You’re rich, aren’t you?”

  Kathryn’s amusement dissolved into the floor. “Until yesterday,” she said, then added hastily, “I’ve still got some money. I’ll be able to pay.”

  “Frag, Zoze wouldn’t have sent us here if you couldn’t pay. I just was curious. Your clothes, your hair. You look rich.” She wandered over to a chair and flopped into it, slinging her legs up over the arm rest. Closing her eyes, she looked as if about to fall asleep. Then she stretched out and asked casually, “So what’s the run?”

  “She’s not just hanging with me. I’m working the run, too.”

  “Yeah. So Zoze said. So anyway, what’s the gig.”

  “I need you to find someone,” said Kathryn.

  “Who?”

  “Dr. William Clarris.”

  Liaison and Breena looked to each other to see if either knew anything about Clarris. Both shrugged.

  “He’s top in his field of bioresearch. He recently worked for Cell Works. He released himself from his contract, and went to work for another company.”

  “So we have to find him and bring him back to Cell Works.”

  “No,” said Peter. “We just find him. Then the job’s done.”

  Breena raised an eyebrow. Liaison said, “Sounds great to me. What have we got?”

  Kathryn said, “We know he’s working for a very low-profile company doing research on a project of genetic manipulation…”

  “Great,” said Breena.

  Peter stepped forward. “The project is to prevent people with the metahuman genes from becoming metahuman.”

  “You’re kidding,” Breena said, anger in her voice.

  “No.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Liaison. “Too many cells. No one can manipulate the body that way.”

  “You can if you’ve got nanotechnology.”

  “Doesn’t exist,” said Liaison.

  “They’re working on it. And I think this project will use the technology. I’ve got the name of a corp in France that might be the source of the nanotech.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Breena.

  “Why not? It’s been theorized for years…”

  “Not the nano-whatever. This business about taking the magic out of people.”

  Liaison looked around sheepishly as if she wanted to avoid a fight. “Phone jack?” she said. Kathryn looked around, spotted a phoneless jack by the window, and pointed to it. Liaison crossed the room and pulled gear out of her backpack.

  “It’s not removing the magic from someone—,” said Peter.

  “Sure as hell is,” Breena said, and stood. “They tried it in London, in one of the slums, and turned out babies who could barely breathe.”

  “That was a farce,” Kathryn interjected. “It was done without authorization. …”

  “Who cares. The kids died. Or were killed by their parents when they saw they’d produced children even more ‘nightmarish’ than metahumans are supposed to be. Look, chummer, I don’t know what your stake is in this. You don’t want to be a troll, that’s your hangup. But you, lady, fragging with your unborn kid. He’s got no voice in this.”

  Kathryn’s jaw dropped.

  “Astral, rich lady,” Breena said, and pointed to her eyes. “I checked you both out a minute ago.” Peter mentally kicked himself for not realizing what the mage was doing when she’d closed her eyes in the chair. “You’ve got a little aura glowing inside the big aura that’s you. And the little aura doesn’t know jack about your plans for him.”

  “He’s my child.”

  “Fine. Whatever. Liaison?”

  “Wait a minute!” Kathryn said and stalked over to Breena. “You can’t just start accusing me of doing something wrong, and men drop it, just like that!”

  “Sure I can.”

  Peter looked over at Liaison, who returned the look with a shrug.

  “No you can’t. You’re just a child. You haven’t had to make the decisions… the worries that come from being a parent…”

  The girl jerked her arm just enough to suggest she might hit Kathryn.

  “Lady, I was pregnant once. Raped at fourteen. I carried the fetus for four months before I even knew it was there. I was so hungry and cold and strung-out at the time that I didn’t know the symptoms were the signs of life in me, not oncoming death. When I finally figured it out, I had to decide what to do. I mean, I’m a kid, living out on the streets. I didn’t have magic then to get me through it all. Didn’t even know Liaison yet. Had nothing. And I’m going to bring this baby into the world. When I’m out there stealing sandwiches from businessmen down in the Elevated, and I got to be able to run like Coyote just to stay alive, I’m going to be toting this belly with a baby in it? I can barely protect myself, I’m fourteen. No way I can handle another person.

  “And I’m this kid that has to deci
de to end the life of a child? I’ve got to get myself scraped by some gutter slag in a basement because you rich bitches have decided that the sanctity of human life allows the Feds to outlaw abortions, but you’ve all got med-clinics in the corps to give you what you want!

  “And you’re going to stand there and tell me I don’t know nothing about the hard choices? That was me getting pulled out, ruined, in that basement. Not just attached to me—but me. I was only fourteen years older than the fetus. As it was being destroyed, I’m thinking, this is what the world is doing to me. And I’m doing this to my child.”

  The room fell silent. Kathryn stood half a head taller than Breena, but the girl dominated her.

  “I’m sorry,” Kathryn said, so softly Peter barely heard the words. She looked deep into Breena’s eyes.

  Breena whirled around. “Don’t be. Don’t be sorry for me. Be sorry for your kid.” She turned to Liaison. “You ready?”

  Before Liaison could answer, Kathryn cut in. “And you’re going to blame me for wanting what’s best for my child. For wanting to ensure that he won’t be disadvantaged because of an accident of genetics?”

  “No. I’m going to fault you for being intolerant.”

  “It’s not my intolerance,” Kathryn said hopelessly. “I don’t want him to suffer the intolerance of the world. I need to know he’ll be all right.”

  “You’re playing their game. Same thing, same thing.” Breena turned back to Liaison, but Kathryn touched her arm. The girl whirled again and held up a finger to Kathryn’s face. “Don’t touch.”

  Peter looked to Liaison for a gauge of how dangerous the situation had become. Her eyes showed no concern, only pain that Breena hurt so much.

  “All right, let’s try this one,” said Breena tersely. “For generations, even up to today, many men have viewed women as a kind of aberration. Men view themselves as the standard of a ‘normal’ human. Women are less than men, and thus less than fully human. They are objects to be owned, workers who should be paid less money.

  “Now, let’s say someone, undoubtedly a man, came up to you and said, ‘We can fix you. We can make you a man. In fact, with the technology we possess today, we don’t need women for procreation anymore. We’re going to wipe the disease of women away. Finally, we can have a pure human race—a race of all men.’ What would your reaction be?”

  “I’m all set over here,” Liaison said weakly.

  “But that’s not the same thing.”

  “Yes it is. Because they’ll tell you that the reason all the problems exist is because we’re all so different. If men didn’t feel threatened by women”—here Breena cast a disparaging glance at Peter—“or whatever, these problems wouldn’t exist. We make everyone the same, no differences, no problems. By refusing, you’re making things worse. And what’s it matter? Man, woman, same thing. You’re alive, right?”

  “But we’re talking about metahumans.”

  “Women used to be locked up because of menstruation. Men created separate places for them to go because of their menstruation. They were shunned. They were monstrous. It was considered unnatural. That’s the key. Menstruation was something that normal people didn’t do. Normal people being men.”

  “That’s not true. Or if it is, it was a long time ago.”

  “But the patterns stay. Of course you don’t know about it. They’re so busy shoving facts—one fact after another—into your head at those damn schools you went to that you didn’t have any chance to get context. To see how the patterns all fit into place. No perspective. You know so much stuff. But you don’t know how it works! Somebody is always being defined as unnatural. But that doesn’t make it so.”

  Another silence fell over the room. Peter decided to seize everyone’s attention before the quiet could take root and blossom into another attack on Kathryn.

  “Well, all right. Kathryn, I guess you might have some things to think about. Breena, you’ve made some good points.” She narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “But I think we should get to work now.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Liaison brightly.

  Whether she was forcing the good nature or not, Peter wasn’t sure. But when she picked up her deck and carried it over to the table, everyone gave her their attention. A cord ran from the deck to the phone jack. The deck resembled his portable, but it was just the keyboard—no screen.

  “Isn’t it a beauty?” Liaison said proudly. “Slapped it together myself.” She sat down and touched a red button on the side of the deck. The button lit up. Then she picked up the jack that ran from a cord in the deck and slipped it into a plug built into her temple.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “A corp in France. Geneering.”

  “Do you know their LTG number?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll find it. And what am I looking for inside their data banks?”

  “Information about Dr. William Clarris. Um, any research projects they’re sharing with a corp in Chicago. Genetic manipulations involving nanotech…. It’s pretty vague, I know.”

  “Wiz,” Liaison said and shrugged. “I’ll do my best. Could you spell that last name?” Peter did, and she typed it into the keyboard. “Bye.” She winked at Breena, tapped a few more keys, men her body went slack, as if she’d suddenly fallen asleep.

  “Strange,” said Kathryn.

  “Yes,” said Breena. “When I close my eyes and view astral space, I see the true nature of living things. When she jacks into the Matrix, she sees false images of communication lines and three-dimensional images representing data.” When Breena spoke of the Matrix, her tone changed, and it was as if she considered it an unnatural opposite to astral space. Peter thought he might call her on a bit of hypocrisy, but thought the better of it.

  Peter had seen deckers at work before, and had used his stupid-troll persona to pump people for details. Although Liaison seemed oblivious to the world, he knew that right now she perceived herself to be in an immense, false, computer-generated environment called the Matrix. CPUs, datastores, datalines, all existed as three-dimensional constructs she could touch and enter.

  First she floated up to the Chicago Regional Telecommunications Grid and popped through to Europe. And then she started searching for Geneering’s Matrix address. And she traveled just as fast as Peter was thinking about it. Once she got into the Geneering files—if she got in—if she wasn’t stopped by intrusion countermeasures—she’d have to start rummaging through innumerable files but she wouldn’t have to read them all. Peter knew Liaison had programs that would read the data for her, scan it quickly, and give her fast reports.

  Nearly a half-hour passed, and the sun’s light was fading. Kathryn wandered away from the table and sat off by herself in a chair across the room. Peter continued to set out roach traps.

  “Strange,” Breena said, watching him. “We keep coming up with ways to kill them, and they keep changing to stay one step ahead of us. All the magic, all the tech, but cockroaches, they’re still with us.”

  Liaison’s hand suddenly came to life as she frantically slapped a red button on her deck. Her eyes popped open and she ripped the jack out of her head. “Now!” she hissed. “We’re out of here now!”

  22

  Breena shot across the room and began to shove Liaison’s gear back into her knapsack.

  “What?” Kathryn and Peter asked in unison.

  “Found Geneering,” Liaison said in a staccato voice, grabbing the knapsack from Breena and putting the deck inside. “But the port was too obvious. Looked some more for a back door. Found it. Ran some browse programs.” She went over to the window, looked outside, seemed satisfied, and crossed to the door. “Found a data file with the doc’s name on it. Very cold. Looked good. I opened it and found another big file about nanotech protos being loaned out for a bioresearch job in Chicago. Before I could read it, a home-court decker showed up. He stalled me while the system launched a White Wolf….”

  “Wh
ite Wolf?” asked Peter.

  “Trace program. They’re onto us,” said Kathryn.

  “They’re in France,” said Peter.

  “But they’ve got a deal with a corp in town,” Kathryn told him.

  Peter shot a quick look around the room. So much for the cockroaches.

  Then came the unmistakable sound of chopper blades in the distance.

  He jumped for the window and pulled the shade back. “There’s a Stallion heading this way.”

  “Metro?” asked Liaison.

  “Yup.”

  “Okay. That’s okay. We can avoid them.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. Outside he saw another chopper coming from the south. “Crusader Security is on the way, too.”

  “Metro will sign the job over to them,” Kathryn said.

  “Yeah. They’re going to make a stink,” said Peter. “We’d better move now.”

  Liaison pulled a Scorpion machine pistol from out of the backpack.

  Peter opened the door, and everyone streamed from the apartment toward a stairway at the back of the building.

  “We’ve got to get out of this area fast. I don’t want a repeat of the last C raid on a project,” said Peter.

  “What…?” said Kathryn.

  “Not now,” Peter said.

  They hit the door to the stairs and Liaison started down. “No. Up, for now,” Peter said. Liaison looked to Breena, who nodded. The sound of a door being smashed open echoed up the bare cinder-block stairwell.

  Liaison led the group, then came Breena and Kathryn. Peter held back, making sure everyone was all right.

  Suddenly he heard a child say, “Hey, what are you pinks doing here?” He looked up and saw a nine-year-old troll looking down the stairs at them. Then the child spotted the guns, and screamed as he ran off through the landing door.

  From below, Peter heard several pairs of boot-clad feet running up the stairs.

  “Frag,” he sighed.

  Liaison set herself against the central banister, her Scorpion pointed down the stairs. Kathryn stopped, but Breena said, “Come on. Just keep moving until you’re near me door up mere. If filings hose up, just run.” Then Breena took a step back and waited for the guards.