Virology

by Ren Warom

  “Oh shit.”

  That’s the difference. Shark is gone, and Puss is locked away. She’s probably going crazy. If she could get to him…

  “Deuce!”

  Reaching out with her foot, Amiga boots her unconscious boyfriend in the back. Once. Twice. Until he’s groaning and shoving her foot away.

  “Geddoff.”

  “Wake up then!”

  He cranks his head up an inch or two, cracks those black eyes open just enough to glare at her. “What the hell, Amiga?”

  “Shock is dying.”

  Deuce springs up like she did. Faster. He gapes at her. “He’s in my drive.”

  “Yes. Do you see? We have to get Puss out. She can keep him alive.”

  He reaches out to touch her cheek, wiping away tears she had no idea were there. “How, Amiga? She’s caged. He can only access her through his drive, and he’d have to pay. Shock can’t pay, he’s out.”

  She growls at him, furious that he’s not thinking. “Deuce, we’re fucking connected. This is the moment I tell you I fucking know you’re a higher percentage than you admit. You’re leet. Are you trying to tell me you can’t jack his drive? Are you going to lie to me now?”

  He sits back on his heels, his face paling. “Right. You guessed. Okay.” His jaw works a little. “It’s not why you think.”

  She grabs his wrist. “I actually don’t give a shit why it is, Deuce. All I want is that you jack his drive right the fuck now and help me get Puss to him!”

  Bless his moral ass, he doesn’t argue, just leaps in. Says as he does, “We’ll need a lot of flim. She can’t just pop out and then pop in again. The tariff for long-term connect is steep, Amiga.”

  After outing his deception over his percents, Amiga feels comfortable outing her own tiny little secret. “And I have a stash that’s pretty deep. You get into his drive, throw me his account deets and I’ll load him with enough flim to keep her out for a year.”

  Deuce huffs out a laugh. “Dark horse. Your only stash?”

  “Yes.”

  He looks up, his gaze frank. “You’d give it all to him? All your security?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  The beautiful smile he seems to save only for her flashes across his face. “There’s that heart,” he says. “Don’t hide it again. I like seeing it on your sleeve.”

  Without warning, he pulls her into the Byzantine convolutions of Shock’s drive, from whispers of connections to shouts; so much of Emblem in it she takes a moment to recognize Shock in the swirling patterns, the vast turning of complex puzzles.

  Quite the key, Deuce says. Lucky I like puzzles.

  He works fast, deep in concentration. Frowning. Only when he begins to smile does she start breathing properly again. As she does, the swirling patterns change direction. They pulse and contract, coalescing for a moment into a vast ball of patterns moving in different directions. The ball slows, clicks around a few times, and stops.

  When the layers move again they shuffle themselves to something less confusing, a glorious multifaceted mandala. Through them, she can see the tariff app glowing. It says “select”.

  Can I?

  Yeah, he says. Go right ahead.

  The total for twelve months, for immersion jobs, is an eye-watering sum. It’s not all she has, but most. She doesn’t care; Shock needs Puss to live, and she needs Shock to live. So here it goes, the one thing she hasn’t done since it all went down five weeks ago, checking in to the account she made last year when she started to genuinely plan escaping from Twist. Theoretically. Every job she did, she threw a percent of flim in. The amount would support the Hornets for at least six months.

  It would give her a means to run if need be. But she doesn’t need one any more.

  The moment she presses the payment button, Puss bursts out beside her, an explosion of gold tentacles and grief.

  Can you keep him alive?

  Only by staying with him. Puss swivels an eye in her direction. How long do I have?

  Rather than replying, Amiga simply shows her. The squeeze of tentacles around her midriff is unexpected. Makes her breath hitch. A moment later it loosens. Falls away. Puss sinks deeper into Shock, half her gold disappearing into his flesh. When she comes out, she seems frantic. Inconsolable. The essence of her churns in Amiga’s drive. So strange to feel this deeply with an avatar not her own.

  What is it?

  I can’t hold him. I haven’t got enough to shore him up. He isn’t finished. If she’s not all gone…

  Amiga and Deuce exchange a heavy glance. Asking and responding. It’s weird to know somehow who sees what she wants without having to tease it out of her, or ask. All he needs is to look and he understands what she’s thinking. And the best bit? The motherfucking jackpot? He’s in sync. Absolute accord. Neither of them is willing to let Shock die. Neither will suffer Zenada to live, especially not in the shell of Shock’s body.

  What do you need? he says to Puss. Us? Our avis? Would they help?

  Avis. I need avis. Energy.

  “How much of that stash do you have left?”

  “Enough. How do we do everyone at once?”

  Deuce indicates Puss. “She can help me. Like she helps Shock.”

  “But she’s not your avi.”

  He smiles. “Shock’s in our drives. At the moment, she’s just enough of my avi for it to work. Right?” He turns to Puss.

  Right.

  Then let’s do this.

  Puss’s tentacle going into Deuce’s drive is surreal. Gold flares in his eyes, a state so similar to Shock Slipping IRL that it stuns Amiga to witness it. Holy shit, her boy is passing strange. Puss narrows her pupils at him. Speculative.

  He’s bigger in here than I thought, she says.

  Yeah, he’s been hiding his light.

  Interesting.

  Isn’t it?

  The first avi they go for is Leopard Seal. Talk about going for the slay. Her heart’s on the floor, bruised and battered, but it’s so fucking good. Different. Less somehow thanks to the way Disconnect still holds them apart. But still good. Leopard Seal comes to float beside her, tucked up to her side, to watch Deuce and Puss work as if they’ve cooperated in this way forever, moving drive to drive, jacking and paying, letting the avis loose one by one.

  This sudden temporary waiver of avi prison terms wakes all but the most damaged of the Hornets, and Ravi’s no sooner awake than scrambling over to Shock to work on his head. His hands are trembling. She thinks he’s suffering the effects of the EMP, until she sees the tears in his eyes.

  “He’s such a mess, Amiga.” He wipes his eyes. “I’m not sure I can fix it. Too much damage.”

  “Don’t let me down, Rav. Try.”

  The nod she receives is more of a spasm. She trusts though, despite his uncertainty. Ravi’s better than he knows. He’s saved Shock once; she believes absolutely that he can do it again. Even if only some of Shock is left, he’ll save it. And some is better than none.

  Finally drained to near enough nil, the amount Amiga had left bought one hundred and fifty avatars for ten minutes and ten avis for five. And Deuce being Deuce he gets his avi last, when there’s barely enough left to pay for it. Puss makes the most of every second she’s gifted. Gathering the avis, she creates, with their help, a glistening sheet of what looks like avi-stuff, molecule fine. Sinking it down into Shock, she weaves it with painstaking care, creating a barrier of sorts, a separation—something to stop him from disappearing. It’s so tightly woven only a very few minute scraps of him manage to escape through.

  Polar Bear only has paws left at this point. Incongruously fluffy.

  Watching them disentangle and fade away, Amiga suffers a pang, too similar to grief to call anything else. That’s the last of Bear. Something so beautiful, gone forever. It’s unjust. Shouldn’t have to happen. Because of that, she forces herself to witness until the last tips of claws fade into embers and dissipate. The avis have long since begun to unwind back to the cages at th
is point.

  Amiga wants to reach out and hold them here, just in case. But there’s no more flim. No more time. Finally, Leopard Seal starts to unwind. She moves to brush past Amiga’s cheek as she goes. One last warm tickle of whiskers.

  He’s still there, she says. And so am I. We’ll wait. It’s…

  And then she’s gone, the emptiness too much. Numb to her core, Amiga sits and watches Shock’s chest rise and fall. There’s enough of him to breathe. To pull air into his lungs. Is there enough of her to do that? There’ll be sirens soon. Guns. Always more guns. She has to breathe enough to help get them all out of here.

  And where will they go?

  At the moment, all she can think is that there’s no going home. Home isn’t there any more. As long as they’re in the crosshairs, they can never have a home. If she had the energy she’d sink into bitterness again, railing at the unfairness of it all, but honestly, all she wants to do right now is get her family to safety.

  Deuces Are Wild

  Getting back to the shuttle activates old-school Hornet skills Deuce thought he’d never need again. Funny how life takes such trouble to roll you backwards, remind you who you were. How it grabs at your coat tails and tries to yank you down. Hold you there. Make you act your worst self. He does what he’s always done at these times, gives life a middle finger and does whatever it takes to do what needs doing without ever compromising his personal code.

  It’s a hell of a tough call to sneak back through a hub where your face is on a million streams, and several outstanding warrants for destruction of public property, disruption of public life, terrorist activity and murder are riding your back. Especially when many of your number are wounded. But they do it. All together. All safe. Although there’s really no safe here any more, and they’re all wrecked in one way or another.

  Heading straight for the cockpit, trying not to look at Tracker because he’ll want to fucking punch something, Deuce fires up the shuttle, wondering where on Earth or hubs that he can take them. Where they might hide long enough to heal.

  The Hornets are his life’s work. His family. He has no idea how to deal with this situation. What to do. It’s not a state Deuce is familiar with. He was born capable. Trained from birth by his father to adapt to every situation life might throw at him. Hiro was afraid of how high Deuce’s percents were. He was afraid Corps might warp him. Use him. That’s not what Hiro wanted for his son.

  To Hiro, what mattered was not status or wealth, or power, what mattered was how you make it through a day, the small things, the worthy things. Who you matter to. Who matters to you. His code is Deuce’s code. And Camille, Deuce’s mother, who’s made it her life’s work to build things that help people, is his biggest inspiration. He’s never once managed to disappoint them. Not even when he Failed. But he thinks he might now. Look at this mess. Look at this awful mess.

  He’s not capable of fixing it.

  So many Hornets are down for the count. So many people infected with the virads. Zen took out thousands when she let loose. He felt it through Shock, can still feel it— the resonance of virad chatter roiling in thousands of minds. Zenada’s connection to them is gone, but all that’s changed is the frequency of their confusion. Without order, they are unravelling to chaos, and taking the minds they fill with them. They’re another thing he can’t fix. Mollie, Maggie and EVaC too. There’s so much fallout. So much devastation.

  It’s making him re-evaluate his beliefs. His convictions.

  Making him wonder if his code can stretch to accommodate new ways of thinking. Of acting.

  The fear he held on to after Fulcrum, the insanity of living with an eye over their shoulders, ready to scram at a moment’s notice, that’s never going to change now. Running never helped. Nothing seems to help. Frying pan to house on fire to volcano to the heart of the fucking sun. Only so much you can do, only so far you can go, always running. Jacking like crazy to try and keep a shield over the heads of the people you love. Always worried it will fall apart and they’ll be seen. And what of the avatars and their safety? What if they free them?

  Guaranteeing them a world with no threat of cages can’t be done. Not with the world as it is.

  There’ll always be another Evelyn Tsai. The inevitability of it happening again and again. People scared and reacting. The cruelty of those reactions. The consequences. What avis might become if pushed too hard, hurt too much, and what that might mean for their human counterparts. It’s not their place to police the world. Not his place. But what about protecting it? Surely that’s acceptable.

  Reaching out, he nudges Puss.

  Can we talk?

  You want to rewrite the world, don’t you?

  How does she do that? Does she do that with Shock? I’ve had a minor epiphany. Or a breakdown. I dunno what the fuck it is. I only know I can’t tolerate this any more. Not for my family, not for anything that matters.

  Shock calls me his conscience. Do you want me to be yours?

  To his surprise, he doesn’t. I want you to be my gestalt. Like you were earlier.

  And if I disagree?

  Then we’ll run. Hide. Forever if need be. It’ll be harder, they have all our faces now, but we can do it. We’ll have to. Need is a great driver.

  How will you live?

  He laughs. What a question. Are you kidding? We’re Hornets. We’ve worked from nothing before. We can do it again.

  Her gaze is so heavy he can feel it rested on the back of his head. Ask the others. If they say yes, then we’ll do it. I won’t act without their agreement.

  Neither will I.

  Opening his IM out to embrace the minds on the shuttle, Deuce lays it all out there. What he wants to do. The moral implications of it. Why he’s even thinking like this, let alone willing to act upon it.

  Deuce is a math whiz, but no way he can figure the odds on what way the dice will fall from here. What’s more of a surprise? Their agreement? Or the vehemence with which it’s given? But then the Hornets have lost so many friends, taken so many hits and kept standing for what’s right, nonetheless. They’re tired of unwarranted blame. Uncalled-for hatred. They’re all burdened with a weariness of being targeted for nothing. Ravi pretty much sums it up.

  “Fix the fucking world,” he says. “Make it a lie. We’ll bear it with you, no questions asked. We’re fucking family. All in, all the time. And god damnit are we fucking done with being pissed on. And I know you, we know you. No way you’ll do anything more than need be. It’s not in you.”

  “Is it in you to do enough?” Amiga. Giving him a frank sort of appraisal he’s not experienced from her before. He’s being re-assessed. If he had any, he’d pay good flim to hear her conclusions.

  “What do you think?”

  Her eyes spark a little, fire and ice, heart and viscera. “Yeah,” she says. “I think you might just pull it off. But not alone, leet or not.”

  “I have Puss,” he says. “I won’t be doing it alone.”

  Puss, in fact, does pretty much all the grunt work. By necessity more than anything else, her not being his avi but only faintly linked to him through Shock. Throwing him into full submersion, she hovers him near the surface of Slip, that illusion of the breach between air and water, floating in rippling fingers of sunlight.

  It’s an eye-opener to see how Shock might see. And absolutely astounding how much Slip has grown. How much it’s changed even since the avatars were caged.

  Between vast new worlds, the roll of hills, the sleek rise of towers and muddled mass of towns and cities cast in gold, masses roam, slow-moving as cattle: some of the masses float, others crawl the bottom, slide between the info-shoots. Aimless at first glance, it takes moments to see the patterns in them, to sense the purpose within the masses. The slow thought unlike anything he’s encountered before.

  He thinks they might be some attempt at new avis. Reaching out to them, amazed by how far he can go with Puss guiding him, he brushes the surface of one as it floats past. Has to chec
k twice to be sure of what he’s seeing, what he’s experiencing. No way.

  These masses are Slip. Slip moving. Slip thinking. Slip learning.

  How the fuck?

  Puss shrugs. How does anything happen? By chance, by accident, by design perhaps. It must have begun with all this change. Look at how much they’ve done. Taken an ocean and made it into a universe. I suspect the impact will resonate for decades. We haven’t yet begun to see what might become of it all.

  Stretching a little, she opens to Slip, letting it flow through her into him. All of Slip resounds with change. Water becoming architecture, becoming worlds. This place belongs to everyone now, but it also belongs to itself, and there’s no way people aren’t going to notice. Doubtless they’re already looking at those masses and wondering.

  It hits like lightning: whatever he puts in place for the Hornets, the avatars, needs to expand to cover Slip. And the Zeros. The virads. He should have a closer look at them too. Zen forced them to life. Evolved them to infect thousands more. Without her to drive them, they’ve lost all direction. They’re sinking into a form of dementia, and taking those they’ve infected with them.

  The sickness, Puss says softly. It can’t go on.

  I know. I don’t know what to do.

  You have to decide if virads are allowed to think. To be what she made them. They’re only scraps of viral code. You could shut them down. It wouldn’t matter in the scheme of things.

  Her saying it kind of makes it matter, which was maybe the point, her being a conscience of sorts and all. He’s not one bit fooled by her apparent nonchalance.

  So let’s do it. Can we do it here?

  The Zeros? No. We’ll have to start with the source. The patient zero of the virad infection as it were. I believe Maggie and Mollie have him in their care.

  Okay. So we’ll do this, then we’ll go to the Gung.

  She extends a tentacle to him. What shall we make them believe?

  Deuce squares his shoulders, feeling the heavy press of water, the heat of false sunlight, the weight of real responsibility.