Strangers Among Us

by Kelley Armstrong

  The dark apartment was mercifully cold when Finch let himself inside. Blake said his hardware ran faster near zero, and affinity for low temperatures was one of the reasons they’d got together in the first place. That, and a mutual talent for petty crime.

  At the moment, Blake was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the carpet, surrounded by a maelstrom of biodegradable moving boxes, congealing cartons of Mai Pet Pad Thai, Finch’s magnetic dumbbells, and the remains of the snapped folding chair from earlier that morning. Finch switched on the solar lamp, throwing stark shadows onto the white stucco walls.

  Blake didn’t so much as twitch his close-cropped head, heavy lids half shut, lips half parted. His neural implants gleamed white against black skin, carving channels up his spine and all the way to his temples. Blake looked almost holy when he was sliced in deep. Like a monk, apart from the drool wending down his numb chin and dripping onto his Adidas trackies.

  Finch peeled off his suit, deciding to burn off the last of his fight-or-flight adrenaline on the pull-up bar. Blake had nixed the squat rack due to space concerns. Most of the floor was taken up by their two foam mattresses, currently slung into opposite corners despite their tendency to migrate together in the evening. Blake’s was strewn with the colourful viscera of his half-unpacked wardrobe; Finch’s was bare.

  After fifteen wide-grip pull-ups, Finch dropped to the carpet with the veins across his shoulders blue and bulging. Blake was still sliced in, seeing only code, so Finch used one of the hacker’s many shirts to sop the sweat from his springy red hair, then went to wipe the saliva from his companion’s chin.

  Blake’s teeth snapped together.

  Finch jerked his fingers back, dropping the shirt. “Fucker.”

  Blake’s eyes winched fully open, beetle black. “Unit, you should have messaged me you were home.” He looked down, blinking. “Why’s my shirt wet?”

  “You were drooling again.”

  Blake sniffed at it suspiciously as he stood up, making the implants in his back click and clack. Then he broke into a grin and offered his fist for a congratulatory knock. “Carnivor’s new security consultant,” he said. “I’m so proud of you, Unit. Overcoming your checkered-as-fuck past. Wearing a slick-as-fuck suit. Which you have since discarded.”

  Finch’s hand was a spade compared to Blake’s. “I could have shown up like this and still got the job,” he said, bumping fists and then enveloping Blake’s slender wrist.

  The hacker grinned. “She was a paleochaser, huh?”

  “Big time.” Finch tried to keep his voice light. “You homo sapiens. Trying to breed us out of existence all over again.”

  Blake ran a playful hand down Finch’s arm. “Who can blame her, though, right? Your biceps look cancerous right now.” He plucked at the muscle. “You work out too much, Unit. Self-improvement is a short hop to, you know, self-obsession.”

  “Try a chin-up. Maybe you’ll like it.”

  “I hate sweating,” Blake said, moving to wipe the drool off his pant leg. “Shit’s undignified.” He gave Finch a sly look, then stepped out of the trackies entirely, leaving them pooled on the carpet. He rubbed one slim calf against the other. “You know, neither one of us has a uterus, so breeding you out of existence is pretty improbable. Chance you’re willing to . . . ?”

  Finch cut him off with a bruising kiss before they maneuvered to the floor, managing to miss both mattresses entirely.

  After five days at Carnivor spent standing straight-backed and stern-faced in the entryway, or else circulating the restaurant to search for the early signs of aggressive drinkers, lovers’ spats, and general shitfuckery, Finch would have been ready to quit under normal circumstances. He’d cased out the place as best he could within the first few shifts, meaning most of his mental energy was spent tolerating Carrow’s increasingly unsubtle come-ons and Vick’s increasingly unsubtle jealousy.

  But on the sixth day, when the delivery chime shivered through their implants, Vick’s face turned cagey. “I’ve got this one,” he said. “Remember, you don’t talk to guests unless they talk to you. And don’t call anything . . . kitschy.”

  Finch messaged Blake, a tingle of anticipation finally worming up his spine. Special delivery. Think tonight’s the night.

  The suspicion was all but confirmed when Vick returned in high spirits a half-hour later. “High-end stock fresh out the vat,” he announced. “But now what happens to the older cuts still taking up valuable freezer space?”

  “You sell them on MeatSpin,” Finch guessed.

  “I take them home, get out the griller, and feast like a fucking king all week long,” Vick corrected, grinning widely. “Me and the Somalis in the kitchen have a deal all worked out.” His smile shrank a few molars. “But I did let Cuaron cook one up for your supper. To celebrate your first week or some shit. So if you want to go eat, you go now. We’re going to be limelight tonight. Busy-busy.”

  Finch unfurled Blake’s reply in the corner of his eye: Make sure, Unit.

  “Alright,” he said. “Back in twenty.”

  Vick was already back to his customary scowl. Finch split for the kitchens, winding his way through the smartglass tables, slaloming the quivering sculptures, swapping nods or knocks with harried servers. When he pushed his way through the doors with a practiced elbow, he realized he’d got used to the smell. In fact, his stomach was squelching hungrily.

  Finch maneuvered through spurts of steam and bilingual conversation, stopping at a bubbling pot where Cuaron whisked meat stock into briny liquid. She gave a start when she looked up, eyes wide and nervous. Some people never got comfortable around Finch.

  “You just got a delivery, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Yes. Just did.” She chewed at her lip. “Why?”

  “Vick says to double-check the freezer door sealed. Says it’s been finicky.” Finch shrugged. “Last door on the right, isn’t it? I’ll go.”

  “I’ll go,” Cuaron said. “I’ll go. You should eat. Plated you something.” She pointed a pinky finger back toward the battered white counter where a covered dish leaked steam in a long ribbon.

  “Thanks.”

  Cuaron called a sous-chef over to the pot, then darted away toward the freezer alley. Finch followed at a distance, leaning into the chilled corridor long enough to see her go to the one windowless door at the end that none of the staff seemed to ever look at. Then he doubled back to retrieve his supper.

  The cutlet was beautiful, perfectly-seared, and the urge to eat meat had been creeping back to him over the past week. Blake still held that the ideal diet derived protein from almonds and kidney beans, but Finch didn’t have the same digestive equipment, did he?

  Juice seeped from the meat as he cut into it, and Finch felt a responding spray of hot saliva under his tongue. Feeling only slightly guilty, he wolfed it down and headed back to his post.

  It was near midnight when the restaurant expelled its last diners into a chilled evening, and well after by the time the kitchen staff followed. Finch and Vick finished their final sweeps and activated the alarm system. Vick sealed the doors behind them with his thumbprint, then swaggered off to his waiting autocab.

  Once the red tail-lights swished away, Finch buried his hands in his pockets and rounded the corner. Blake was waiting in the alley, geared up, trailing wires from his spinal implants and through his sleeves. He was already wearing a woolly balaclava, with a hole cut at the temple for his one neural plug, but Finch could tell he was grinning underneath.

  “Time to find out what these fuckers are hiding, Unit,” he said, tossing the other mask over.

  Finch rolled the wool beneath his fingertips. “Special sauce recipe, probably.”

  “Ha.” Blake slotted a stray cord into his smartglove, wriggling his fingers experimentally. “My bet’s still on tetrameth. Imagine how much you could fit in a cow carcass.”

  “It’s vat meat. They don’t grow the whole cow.” Finch pulled the mask over his head. “Ready?”

>   Blake solemnly offered his gloved fist, then remembered the delicate circuitry and swapped it for the other. Finch knocked, and they slunk back out of the alley with the static of a hacked police scanner fizzing in their ears.

  Entry was easy. Finch stood watch for less than a minute while Blake, squatting in front of the door, performed a quick viral strike on the alarm system and snuffed the CCTV while he was at it.

  “Some of the footage is encrypted,” he said, touching a finger to his neural plug. “Downloading it now. How much you want to bet they scramble the backdoor cams on delivery day?”

  Then he pushed his smart-glove’s thumb up against the door to trigger the lock reset, and they were in.

  It wasn’t their first break-and-enter, but Finch’s nerves prickled, and his breath came hot and fast inside his hood as he led the way. Through the main dining area, into the metal maze of kitchens, down the row of freezers to the windowless door. It had a physical lock, for which they had a prybar, and it came unsealed with a dull echoing crack. Cold air slithered out from underneath, billowing around their ankles. Finch shoved the door open and the lights flickered on.

  Nothing out of the ordinary met them. The walls were furred with frost, and dark stains had seeped into the concrete floor. Six porpoise-sized slabs of pure vat meat, covered in filmy membrane, dangled from ceiling hooks. Finch sealed the door behind them, relishing the rush of cold.

  “This must be the right freezer,” Blake said. “It’s the only one with a Faraday mesh.” He shook his head like a wet dog. “Fucking feels like someone stuffed steel wool in my implants. Can’t touch my cloud. Whatever’s in here, they don’t want anyone transmitting camfeed of it.” He folded his arms across his chest and shivered, breath coming out in a puff of steam.

  “Guess we start opening them up until the candy falls out.” Finch stepped in close to the first slab, spun the prybar in his hand, and swung. Instead of cracking against frozen meat, the prybar sank several inches deeper into the gluey membrane than seemed possible. Finch yanked the tool free with a sucking noise and let it clatter to the floor. Then, digging into the top of the membrane with both hands, he peeled it away in sticky ammonia-smelling ropes.

  “Bust it, Unit,” Blake said through chattering teeth. “Dig that shit.”

  Finch grunted in reply, working himself into a rhythm, breathing clean cold air. A shape was emerging beneath, something vaguely familiar, and then—

  The lights flicked out.

  Blake turned his yelp into a nervous laugh. “Oh, fuck, Unit, that scared me,” he said. Finch heard his hand scrape against the wall, and a second later the fluorescents sputtered back on. “Someone put the timer to five minutes. I’ll dial it back . . .”

  Finch blinked. Hanging from the hook in front of him, with the last shreds of membrane dangling off it like tentacles, was a plastic-wrapped human body.

  Blake fell silent for a second, then put both hands on his head. “Fuck me,” he muttered. “So she’s doing mob work. Shit, Unit, this is bad shit. Maybe we should gut check. Maybe we don’t want to blackmail someone who does disposal for a family.”

  Finch barely heard him. There was something unnervingly familiar about the slope of the shoulders, the shape of the skull. He only had to peel a corner, letting a tuft of red hair escape, to know. But he kept peeling until the face came clear. A wider nose, a thinner brow, maybe. More or less, it was what he’d seen in a mirror at fourteen, back in the biolabs where he’d played host to all the viral and pharmaceutical trials that would have been illegal to perform on a full human. The clones who died and were sent for dissection looked an awful lot like this on the gurney.

  Finch thought back to the black-shrouded alcove. The restaurant business was all about novelty, Carrow had said. She loved her little ironies, Vick had said.

  “The cameras.” Finch swallowed. “Is there any footage from the private dining?”

  Blake blinked stupidly, still staring at the hanging Neanderthal. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, it’s that encrypted shit. I’m just putting it . . . together.” He squeezed his eyes shut, working his neural plug. His mouth wrenched downward. “Unit, I don’t think you want to see this.”

  “Show me.” Finch’s voice came in a rasp he barely recognized as his own.

  Blake wordlessly spread the fingers of his smart-glove and set a flickering projection against the blood-stained floor. Finch found himself looking down at a half-dozen diners wearing designer fashions and party masks, most of them drinking too quickly from their flutes, laughing nervously. The smartglass table, unwatched, was playing out a snowy scene with small black figures.

  All the masked heads turned as two white-clad servers wheeled in the naked upright corpse of a neo, limbs spread like the Vitruvian Man, muscles waxed and airbrushed. They’d used a nerve clamp on his face, giving him wide eyes and a feral grin. The recording was soundless, but Finch could imagine what the server was saying as she highlighted a pectoral, a thick thigh, a denuded cock. All excellent cuts. Finch realized he already knew what it would taste like when cooked.

  He managed to yank the balaclava off before bile spilled up his throat and sinuses and out, searing hot. Blake hopped backward to avoid the splatter. When it was over, Finch breathed in. Deep. Blew a clotted chunk out of his stinging nostril.

  “Unit, you alright?” Blake’s voice was wavery as he switched off the projection. “That’s so fucked. So pure fucked. You eat something with cheese today? That’s probably why you hurled so hard. Fuck.”

  Finch clutched at his abdomen like he might be able to claw it out entirely. He spat again and again, but supper’s aftertaste kept coming back.

  “I mean, all the old labs got shut down, right, but that genome’s still floating around, right? That company in Sao Paulo, must be a front for some scuzzy black market operation, some warehouse thing.” Blake had pulled off his own mask, was running an anxious finger around his plugs. “Sticks them into the system as medical cadavers, ships them up here. Neo a la carte, right? Brazil hasn’t done up Referendum 88 yet. It might even be legal there.”

  Finch gathered himself, looking from the steaming puddle to the hanging body to Blake, who was shifting foot to foot, clutching himself against the cold. For a moment, the air seemed to shiver and warp.

  “I’ve got the snaps.” Blake tapped his temple. “Recorded you being sick, too, just because, you know, it makes it seem more real. This is so fucked, Unit. So, so fucked.”

  Finch slowly nodded. His head was coming clear, the heat in his stomach replaced by a ball of black ice. He was going to murder Vick. He was going to murder Carrow, too.

  Blake’s next words jarred him out of the revenge fantasy. “Unit, think how much Carrow will pay to keep this quiet.”

  “What do you mean, keep this quiet?” Finch croaked. “This isn’t some money laundering thing. She’s butchering them. Us. For meat.”

  Blake put his ungloved hand on Finch’s midsection, knowing better than to try for the out-of-reach shoulder. “Finch. Unit. I didn’t see this coming. I swear.” His voice turned wheedling. “But we have to remember the plan, Unit. This is ideal blackmail material. This could be a kingmaker.”

  Finch jerked him toward the open freezer, harder than he’d meant to. “Look at him, would you?”

  “It looks like you,” Blake conceded, wresting his gooseflesh arm away. “But it’s not you. Hundreds of people look like you, Finch. They’re not you. For all we know, this one had its brains blunted as soon as it came out of the exo-womb. It could be a frozen fucking vegetable.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Finch said. “Doesn’t matter. Carrow’s getting fucked for this.”

  Blake moaned. Stamped his foot against the concrete. “Unit, you don’t care about politics. You care about your gravity gym, and your beard, and getting laid, and getting paid. Right? That’s what we’re getting out of this. Paid. She’ll cough up a fortune to make this go away. A fortune.”

  Before Finch could form his slip-sliding th
oughts into a reply, a voice came from the door.

  “Bullets are actually pretty fucking cheap.” Vick had managed to stuff his Mohawk into the camosuit, but it flopped limply across his scalp as he pulled off the hood. His head floated over a vaguely man-sized shimmer in the air. A handgun hung suspended in front of it. “Supper didn’t agree with you, Finch? Can’t believe you actually ate it.”

  Finch was halfway to his throat before Blake wrapped around his arm from behind, clinging like a bird.

  Vick grinned. His lips were tinged purple. “This your little fucktoy? No wonder Ms. Carrow couldn’t get a rise out of you. Maybe that’s the real reason Neanderthals went extinct, huh?” He drifted the gun from Finch to Blake and back. “Personally, I think we just hunted you all down like animals.”

  Finch swallowed. “Your boss loves neos so much she could just eat one up, is that it?”

  “She’s a fucked-up woman,” Vick admitted. “And too trusting when it comes to knuckle-draggers. I knew you were shifty from day one. Hands on the wall, both of you.”

  Finch’s swirling head was finally beginning to crystallize. Things seemed clear and bitingly sharp as he crossed to the wall and pushed his palms up against it. The cold stung his hands red. Beside him, Blake followed suit. He was shaking.

  “I’d put that gun down if I was you,” Blake barked. “Everything in here is uploaded to my cloud. Soon as you pull that trigger, it’s everywhere.”

  Finch didn’t have time to warn him before Vick smashed his face into the wall. When Blake brought his head back upright, his eyes were cloudy and blood bloomed from his nose.

  “Faraday mesh,” Vick said. “You can’t send shit from in here. Now, in Ms. Carrow’s absence, I’m going to make an executive decision and pulp the two of you.”

  “You really just camped out here in camo on the off-chance I was planning a robbery?” Finch asked. He saw Vick’s handgun wobble slightly in his peripherals.

  “I told her you were shifty.” The handgun steadied, but Vick’s teeth were half-chattering when he spoke. “Told her you were from some radical fucking Neo Rights paramilitary. Told her someone must have tipped you off about Carnivor.”