by Barry Kirwan
Gabriel knew her words were a challenge to him to find Sandy, but he said nothing. She seemed about to turn, and then cocked her head at him. "You know where she is, don’t you?"
Gabriel nodded.
Her smile vanished. "The battle we have anticipated for a millennium is almost upon us."
"How close?"
"Maybe a week. We must find the password to open the ships. Then we can destroy them." Her face was grave, the charade suspended. She nodded once and turned, just as another woman entered. For the sake of the show, the two women embraced, languorously. Gabriel, embarrassed, wanted to look away, but that wasn’t possible inside a V-Sex scene. A low shanga beat started up as the platinum blonde let the redhead depart, and slinked over to Gabriel, stripping before him. His crystal had tactile sensory effects disabled – just as well, as she promptly sat on his lap and began to grind to the music, breasts brushing his chest, lascivious lips pouting centimeters from his own. He mentally disconnected from the scene, though it had been a very long time. He voided the thought and decided to end this – it was an illusion after all, like life. Letting his breathing rate increase, he began to moan, and within a minute faked an orgasm. It wasn’t so hard to counterfeit a climax – virtual sex booths enabled mental orgasm without its usual physical messiness – allowing the sex industry to escape certain laws, and sidestep health regulations. The too-perfect blonde stood up and sauntered off into the background. The entire scene faded to black static.
Gabriel slipped off the headpiece, removed the crystal, and put the locket back in his pocket. A week till they arrived; till the end of the world. So his own days, maybe his hours, were numbered. But he would play it out. Hundreds before him had died in the silent war that had endured nine centuries. In the fifteenth century Sentinels had gained the upper hand, but not for long. And now, trained Sentinels were few and far between, living on the run.
Outside, he smoked a cheroot he bought from a street trader in a darkened alleyway, watching the few people who dared the mildly acid shower scurry past. He leaned over a railing, his eyes following the cascade of rain plunging to ground level two hundred meters below. He remembered his real, non-Alician Master teaching him that life was like a drop of water in a waterfall. Each drop felt alone, confused, tumbling in chaos. But when it hit the water below, it rejoined the river and was at peace again. Gabriel let go of the cheroot, and watched its red ember blaze as it fell amongst the drops of rain.
Back in his apartment, he waited until midnight, then opened a psy-locked suitcase – letting the locking mechanism scan his EID signature. He thought of his dead sister, his emotional password. The carbo-titanium composite lock buzzed, then cracked open. He fished out his favored S&W plasma-bullet pistol, night lenses, navcon, and a pulse grenade. He fixed the locket around his neck, tucking it under a tight-fitting Chorazin vest.
Descending from his apartment, he took a service elevator down to ground level, entered a disused building, and forced open the rusted door. Broken glass crunched under his boots, sending several dinner-sized rodents scampering away. He continued down a metal spiral staircase until he reached a lead-lined storm door in the basement. Prying it open, he entered the stinking sewer that ran between the still-radioactive ruins of old Los Angeles, and the rad-free cave cities deeper below ground. He headed for the Eden Mission complex in New LA, five kilometers away. He knew why they couldn’t find Sandy anywhere in the city – she’d never left the Eden Mission building.
Chapter 8
Snow
Micah lay half-awake, half-dreaming that he was on Eden, with something alien crouching over him. He didn’t want to open his eyes. He heard a rustling sound, like sand-paper being crumpled. Inside this grating noise he could hear his name.
"Micah. Micah!"
It shouted his name, shaking him, screaming at him, growing to an ear-splitting roar.
He jerked awake with a gasp, gripping linen sheets. Hospital room, he assessed straight away, from the white everywhere and the sharp smell of disinfectant. A twang of nausea gripped his stomach. A blonde woman leaned over him, emerald green irises reefed with sharp brown borders. The way she studied him reminded him of a bird of prey. After a second he placed her as Louise, the Chorazin agent in his apartment. In the room’s cruel brightness he noticed several lines around the eyes – she was older than he’d first thought. He tried to smile but was overwhelmed by a throbbing that hammered outward from the centre of his brain. His face contorted into an ugly grimace. He rolled to his side, groaning, sure he was going to throw up.
"He’s awake," Louise said. "I’m out of here."
Despite the churning in his stomach he rolled back so he could see her. She reached over his head to do something he couldn’t see. However, he got a ring-side seat, observing the honed contours of her torso as it stretched within the narrow confines of her black tunic; all sinews and taut flesh. He heard something mechanical twist, and a flood of cooling rain burst in his head, drowning the pounding that had been there moments before.
"Trimorph, Micah," she said. "Pleasure and pain, never that far apart, really."
She left his field of vision, stiletto heels clacking her way out of the room. She paused at the doorway. "Later?" she asked, clearly not talking to him. Micah didn’t hear a reply, but the door swished behind her a little harsher than necessary. He listened to the dull susurration of the aircon, and the distant gurgling of assorted liquids invading his body via catheters in his wrists and neck. His eyes glazed toward the tiled ceiling, but despite the gentle warmth flushing through his body, as if he’d slipped into a foaming bath, he didn’t relax. He’d already guessed who else was in the room.
"Welcome back from the dead, Micah."
The crisp, word-perfect enunciated speech-pattern was still fresh in his mind, from just before whatever had happened to him. He scrunched his face, trying to remember. He’d been at home, in the lounge with two Chorazin agents, Vince and Louise, questioning him; Mom with the bread-knife; and he’d just decided to tell Vince why he’d gone to see the Project Manager… who was dead! Then that sound – a micro-lite. And then – here.
His speech came out like little black slugs. "Er…Vinz? S’at you?" He coughed, trying to get his larynx to work properly. Some spittle dislodged, and he swallowed, which took some effort, making him gag into the bargain. He was glad Louise had already left. "What happened? Where’s my Mom? Is she okay?" He tried to sit up but nothing happened. His heart accelerated – was he paralyzed? Whatever it was had hit him in the back, he recalled. He saw a black sleeved arm reach above him, and he felt the upper part of the bed inclining slowly, accompanied by a low motorized hum. As his viewpoint shifted, he recognized that he was indeed in a small private hospital room, one bed, a single window to his left, a couple of meters away, and an opaque sliding door directly ahead of him. Two uncomfortable-looking chrome chairs, one on each side of the bed, were the only other furniture. But it was suspiciously quiet for a hospital – at least any he’d been in before. No muffled sounds or cries of infants, or even creaking trolleys. He guessed he was in a Chorazin medical facility.
"That’s better," Vince said, in such a clipped fashion that Micah wasn’t sure who it was meant to be better for. His uncertainty didn’t last long.
"Now we can see each other. We have a few important issues to discuss."
He cast an eye over Vince: gun metal grey uniform, the vermillion Chorazin crest on the left breast, showing an eagle, one claw clasped around the blade of a dagger. Micah had read somewhere that no one outside the Chorazin knew what it signified. He watched Vince stalk over to the window. Every step measured. Micah presumed it was a holo-window, since it had a pre-War view – nowhere in this State had that kind of sunshine and blue sky anymore. And birdsong, that was too much. No birds lived in the cities anymore, or anywhere near them, especially as there was no longer any grass to give rise to the insects they’d eat.
The holo-window meant they could be anywhere, even un
derground. Vince turned to face him, hands behind his back, still standing bolt upright, not bothering to lean on the window ledge. This guy is all about control, tightly wrapped.
"You were shot with a voltage compression charge – a bullet big enough to cause massive organ damage and death, and an electrical charge high enough to fry your heart and engrams at the same time." He smiled thinly. "Best of both worlds. They wanted you dead – twice – first the bomb under your apartment, and then very quickly afterwards with a reliably terminal weapon. Some consolation for you is that the assassin is probably experiencing difficulties for failing twice to claim his or her target."
Micah stared at Vince, mouth open. Why kill me? He didn’t say it out loud, it seemed so ludicrous. He was just a systems analyst, a telemetry expert for heaven’s sake. But then why was he still alive? That question seemed less preposterous, somehow.
"Then, how come…?" he tried to gesture with his right arm, but a thunderbolt of pain stopped him dead within a centimeter. "Fuck!" Panting, he experimented, very slowly, and some movement returned. He placed his arm back on the bed. He closed his eyes momentarily, the pillow supporting the back of his head. Not paralyzed, then.
"The jacket you were wearing, Micah. You told me the nannites were inactive, as per the law."
Micah raised his eyelids to see Vince walk towards one of two metallic chairs, laying a hand on one, but remained standing, looking down on him.
He concentrated, with difficulty. He knew about the nannite-embedded jackets, worn by high-ranking military commanders in the last war. The nannites could react unbelievably fast, in picoseconds, changing the composition of the jacket to become a momentary barrier, protecting the wearer from harm, or at least usually from death. He couldn’t recall his mother ever saying it was inactive – he’d just assumed it was. Nor had she ever explained how his father had come to own one, since he wasn’t high-ranking, although he’d died with honours. Micah had never studied the medals that closely. They were gaudy reminders to Micah of where his father’s priorities had always lain, away from his family.
He knew, as everyone did, of the infamous Nannite Catastrophe which in only a month morphed fifty million people into muddy mush, and came close to infecting the whole planet. Since then it was highly illegal to own active nannites, in any form. Even in the War they were only brought out in limited supply after too many generals were assassinated by DNA-homing darts.
The risks of nannites mutating were deemed so high that possession alone carried the death penalty. Ignorance might commute the death sentence to life, but was difficult to prove in a court of law. He had to tread very carefully.
"So, it was active? I guess that means I’m in big trouble with the NRC?"
Vince walked over to Micah, very close, so that Vince’s head filled Micah’s whole field of vision. He had the type of streamlined baldness that zeroed you in on its owners’ eyes. Micah felt cornered by a cobra.
"Micah, it means three things. First, your mother has confessed to knowledge of the nannites and stated that you knew nothing. You should be proud, particularly in an era when most parents these days take out indemnity covenants in case their offspring decide to sue them later on in life. Second, it means that if we go to the public authorities, she will be executed, or with leniency, serve her remaining days in the state penitentiary." He strode to the window, turning his back.
Micah made to clench his fists, but his hands failed pathetically. His instinct was to find something spiked to throw at Vince’s back. But he was in no condition to attempt any such thing, and suspected in any case that Vince would dodge it or, worse, catch it in mid air. This is what Chorazin do. Keep you off-balance. I must play this out at his level. Remain calm. He spoke, his voice not as steady as he’d hoped.
"That jacket saved my life. From some terrorist murderer, most likely. She saved my life. How could you let her be prosecuted? What possible good would that serve?" He tried to think Chorazin. He knew that compassion wasn’t in the Chorazin lexicon.
Vince stared outwards, as if he hadn’t heard Micah’s outburst. Micah tried to think. What did Vince want? And then it struck home. Micah had to acknowledge he was caught, to submit, to surrender. He thought of his mother, and his father, the big hero to others, no longer round to protect her. So be it. He decided to try and gain some kind of concession, though. He’d seen enough vids…
"Alright, you said three things. What’s the third?"
Vince spun around, fixing his eyes on Micah’s; no emotion.
"Third – you go back to the Eden Mission, but you work for me. We root out – then neutralize – the Alician threat. Afterwards, the jacket ends up an anonymous donation to the Memorial Military Museum, you never see me again, your mother is released, and she bakes you apple pies." He flashed a pencil-line smile.
Micah scowled. He felt like a rodent half-inside the mouth of a snake. He needed to find an edge, some act of defiance, no matter how small.
"And if you die, Vince, before it’s over? Do my Mom and I go down with you?" On instinct, he added, "Would you leave me in the hands of Louise?"
There was a subtle shift in those eyes, something small. The analyst part of Micah’s mind jumped to a conclusion that there was tension between Vince and Louise. He clung to it, some small reaction at least. Reluctantly, he considered what his father would have said. Why not try it?
"I want my mother released unconditionally. I’ll work for you, you have my word."
Vince nodded. Micah calmed down a little, though it had seemed too easy. Vince touched a panel and the door swished open, revealing an empty white corridor. Micah thought he heard a distant cry, or was it an adult scream?
"Wait," Micah said. "What happens next? I can hardly move for the pain. What am I supposed to do like this? And where’s my Mom now – is she okay?"
"Your mother was released two hours ago."
Micah’s relief at this news barely compensated for the instant humiliation he felt.
"You can call her before you leave. The doctor will give you something for the pain. We call it a booster. They were used in the War to keep people going when they should have really been in hospital in a coma. The pain will disappear. You’ll actually feel very good, for at least seventy-two hours. In an hour you go back to work. You act as if nothing has happened to you because no one knows it has, except us and the Alicians. However, you’ve lost thirty-six hours, so we called in sick for you – you had a random rad-check at your local clinic, according to the records." Vince’s smile radiated ice. "You do your job for now, Micah, and your job is to re-establish the real link to the Ulysses."
Micah couldn’t disguise his surprise.
"We found out why you went to see the Project Manager. While you’ve been out cold, we’ve been busy. Mr. Kane got a message out before he was killed, but our man didn’t arrive in time."
Vince’s brow furrowed for a moment, as he appeared to weigh something up in his mind. His face smoothed again, as he touched the panel, sealing the door closed again.
"Micah – I’m going to give you some information, because it’s important you understand the gravity of the situation. You also appear to put things together pretty fast – that’s your training as an analyst, I assume." He interlaced his fingers and then pushed them outwards, cracking the knuckles.
"Bad for the joints," Micah offered.
"Unfortunately, the Alicians have also been busy. Fifteen key Chorazin operatives worldwide were assassinated early this morning in various cities around the world. My own network – aside from Louise – was eradicated. We don’t yet know why, or whether it’s connected with the Eden Mission. But we believe the Alicians are accelerating their operations. Again, we don’t know why."
Micah still found it all surreal. How could he be mixed up in this? He’d often fantasized about being involved in some grand plot, but – fifteen people dead! His new-found tough self-image that he’d been basing on vid characters had to hit the slope sprinting. A
nd it wasn’t a vid – real people’s lives had just… stopped. And he’d nearly been one of them.
"But am I meant to do things, you know, covertly? My colleagues, especially Rudi, will know if I start checking into the transmission source."
Vince cocked an eyebrow.
Micah tried to sit up, to think straighter, but couldn’t. Then he understood. "Bait! You’re using me as bait!"
"Your analytic training wasn’t a complete waste of money. Yes, the Alicians will try again. They never leave loose ends. You might as well be performing a useful function. And we’ll be watching your back."
"The jacket saved me last time, not you." He felt a welling-up of anger – at being shot, at suddenly being thrust into all of this; anger about his job, his life, Antonia, his father; at being coerced into a probably fatal role in some game he neither understood nor cared about. He began to fear he’d be overcome by this sudden torrent of emotion, even though he realized it must be at least partly related to the drugs coursing through him.
Vince gave a small shrug. "Fair point," he said. "This is a war, Micah. You and I aren’t each other’s enemies. The enemy is out there. They want you dead. They also want Sandy dead."
He’d forgotten about Sandy, and although his last encounter with her had been abrasive, she was like him now, a pawn caught up in something neither of them had volunteered for.
"She’s still missing. Louise is trying to find her before they do."
He knew Vince was right, but despite himself, he launched a fresh attack.
"But why are we at war, Vince, eh? Why are the Alicians here? Does it ever occur to you that they only exist, only thrive, because of the Chorazin and its excessive measures?"
