city blues 01 - dome city blues

by Jeff Edwards

  Surf and his soldiers fired again. The squeals of their weapons were nearly simultaneous. The lights flickered again, and Maggie’s body recoiled, as though she’d been struck full in the chest by a heavy weight.

  She staggered a half-step backwards, swaying gently, like a tree in the breeze. The maniacal tension in her face relaxed slowly, as if the demons that had driven her were exorcised at last. The laser slipped from her fingers, bounced once off the floor, and snapped back to hover near her right ankle, still tethered to the battery pack on her belt by its coiled power cable. Her knees buckled and she collapsed.

  And suddenly, everything was still.

  The silence held for several heartbeats. And then there was a sound. It was extremely faint, a plaintive whimper, like the mewling of a kitten.

  I struggled to get my legs under me. The hole in my thigh was a core of pain, pulsing in time to the nauseous throbbing inside my skull. Somehow, I staggered to my feet and stumbled toward Maggie.

  I knew that it must be some sort of trick, one last chance for the thing that Maggie had become to wreak its vengeance on me. But I couldn’t stop myself.

  I was drawn inexorably to the sound of her quiet whimperings. My knees buckled and I sank to the floor at her side.

  Her eyes were closed, but she seemed to sense my presence. “David?” Her voice was tremulous. A bubble of saliva grew on her lips and burst.

  “Yes, Maggie?”

  Her right hand was cradled against her chest. She shifted her head slightly, as though looking at something through her closed eyelids. “I tested myself this morning. I came out negative again.”

  I stared down at her. What in the hell was she talking about? Was she hallucinating? Had Surf’s strange weapon somehow scrambled the chip in her brain?

  She coughed, and the mewling started again, deep within her throat. She swallowed it with an effort, and spoke again. “The home tests... they aren’t a hundred percent accurate, are they?”

  Her voice seemed different. The hard edge was fading from it, returning some of the quiet serenity that I remembered. She was beginning to sound like the real Maggie.

  “Do you think...” She coughed again. Her voice was even weaker when she spoke again. “Do you think we should go see... a doctor?”

  It hit me suddenly. Surf’s weapon had somehow driven the real Maggie back to the surface, or part of her anyway. She was reliving an old memory. And I knew exactly which memory it was.

  A lump of steel grew in the back of my throat, making it impossible for me to swallow. My voice was a hoarse whisper. “Whatever you say, Magpie. I’ll have House make us an appointment.”

  A smile played across her lips for a second, but was quickly erased by a grimace. Her eyes remained closed. “We’re going to make a baby, David. I promise you we are.” Her right hand fell back from her chest and lay palm up, fingers twitching slightly.

  I took her hand in mine. Her fingers wrapped around my hand. I squeezed my eyes shut in a vain effort to dam a flood of tears. “I know we are, Princess. I know.”

  She drew a sharp breath and released it slowly. Her grip on my hand relaxed, and she was still.

  I squeezed her hand gently. “Good-bye, Maggie.”

  John shrieked, a crazy wordless sound that hung in the air like the cry of a wounded animal.

  He slapped the data-shades down over his eyes; his hands began to flail and weave inside the data-gloves. “Goddamn you! Goddamn you ALL!”

  The hideous spider-queen struck. Two of the big manipulator arms lashed out and snatched one of Surf’s men, lifting him off the ground. A half-dozen smaller arms darted in to attack, stabbing at the man’s face with syringes and scalpels.

  He tried to scream, but one of the scalpels slashed his throat before he got a chance. Another scalpel plunged into his belly just above the groin, and ripped its way upward until it struck his sternum, gutting him, spilling fat loops of intestine all over the floor. The air swelled with the wet copper stink of hot blood and visceral feces.

  John’s hands were dancing now inside their data-gloves; the queen-spider reached for another victim. “You bastards!” he screamed. “You killed her! You fucking killed her!”

  Surf and his squad dove for the floor, away from the robot’s grasping arms, but the machine was inhumanly fast. A three-fingered claw snagged the back of the woman’s jacket before she could get out of range. One of the radial bone saws veered in, its spinning blade spraying blood and bits of gray matter as it sliced into the back of the woman’s skull. Her death-cries were nearly drowned out by the sickening dental-drill whine of steel teeth grinding through bone.

  A cluster of robot arms shot toward me, blades slashing and fingers grabbing. My reflexes kicked in, launching me backwards, away from the robot’s attack. One of the scalpels tagged me in mid-flight, slicing diagonally across my chest, laying open the fabric of my jacket just a millimeter short of my flesh. My shoulders hit the floor and I skidded across the tile on my back, sliding safely out of range.

  The robot’s arms windmilled crazily, searching for new targets, but Surf and what was left of his squad were laying on the floor now, below the reach of the deadly machine.

  John disappeared behind one of the equipment consoles.

  Both sides jockeyed for some kind of advantage. Surf’s men tried to shift into positions that would give them an angle-of-fire on John, but the robot’s arms responded instantly, ready to cut down anyone who moved in close enough to get a clean shot. After about twenty seconds of useless maneuvering, Surf’s men settled down to wait, and the queen-spider went still.

  “Looks like we’ve got us a stand-off,” Surf said.

  John’s only answer was the sound of rapid breathing from his hiding place behind the console.

  “Gypsy, are you out there?” Surf called.

  “We’re out here,” said a voice from outside the door.

  “Good,” Surf said. “You and Viper get down to the second-floor and start venting the plasma from the backup power cells.”

  “We’re on it,” the voice said.

  That seemed to catch John’s attention. “Huh? What? No. No, wait. You can’t do that! Those are phased-plasma units. You don’t know what will happen!”

  “I know exactly what they are,” Surf said. “Convair L-Series Phased-plasma cadmium tetra-cores, right? Thirty-two of them, I believe. When we hit that plasma with a spark, this place goes up like a fucking bomb.”

  “You’ll never get out of here,” John said.

  “This is the first big battle of the Convergence,” Surf said. “We’ve been waiting for it for years. Planning for it. If death is the price, we’ll pay it. Every one of us.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” John asked. “Who are you people?”

  “Who we are doesn’t matter,” Surf said. “All that matters is what we do. And tonight, we’re here to make sure that evolution turns right instead of left.”

  One of Surf’s men raised his head enough to spit in John’s direction. “There’s a war on, Asshole. Man against Machine. And you’re on the wrong side.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John said. “But I want out of here, and I’m taking Maggie with me.”

  “You sold out your species,” Surf said. “No way you’re getting out of here alive.”

  John exhaled heavily. “What do you say, Sarge? Do these lunatics speak for you? Are you ready to die for their paranoid fantasies?”

  “I don’t want to die,” I said. “But I agree with Surf on one point. You have to be stopped. And if dying is what it takes...”

  “Is that right?” John asked. “How about your girlfriend here? Did she sign on for the long-haul?”

  Oh god… Sonja. She’d been laying there so quiet amidst all the blood and the screaming that I’d almost forgotten about her.

  I’d come crashing in here to save her, David the Avenging Angel, complete with everything except a flaming sword. And now, unless I could do
something to stop it, she was going to die anyway.

  “Screw... you...” Sonja said.

  Damn it! She was coming around again, and with incredibly bad timing. Go under, I thought. Please, don’t fight it. Just let the drugs take you down. Or at least keep your mouth shut.

  I looked around. My Blackhart was only about two meters away. I started to crawl towards it, every movement bringing a new surge of pain from my wrist and leg.

  “You... killed... my brother,” Sonja mumbled.

  “Ice, Hammerhead, listen up,” Surf said. “Here’s the game plan: crawl to the door and get the hell out of here. Stay flat on your stomachs and don’t raise so much as an eyebrow. That damn thing in the ceiling shouldn’t be able to reach you.”

  “Okay,” one of the men said. “Then what?”

  “Tell Gypsy to set the plasma cells to blow in three minutes. That’ll give you time to get out of the building.”

  One of the men started crawling for the exit. Several of the robot’s arms swiped at him, but he stayed just out of their reach.

  “What about you?” the other man asked.

  “I’m staying here,” Surf said. “To make sure that Dr. Maniac doesn’t slip out the back way.”

  “Then I’m not leaving either,” the man said.

  “Goddamn it, Hammerhead, there’s no sense in both of us dying,” Surf said. “I’m a casualty of war.”

  “That’s fine,” Hammerhead said. “Then we’re both casualties.”

  “You’re a stubborn bastard,” Surf said.

  “Yeah, well, you’ll forgive me for it in a couple of minutes.”

  I was a half-meter away from the Blackhart. Just a little farther.

  John must have realized from my silence that he’d scored a hit. “How about it, Sarge? Is pretty Ms. Redhead expendable?”

  Movement at the corner of my eye caught my attention. A trio of robotic arms were descending to hover above Sonja’s chest and I realized that the queen-spider was about to feed again.

  “Shall we see if Maggie was right?” John asked. “Would you like for me to open this one up and find out if we can see her soul?”

  “Go ahead...” Sonja said. “Bastard...”

  The fingers of my left hand touched the butt of the Blackhart. I walked my fingers across the top of it and dragged it into my palm. “That doesn’t sound like the John I know,” I said.

  “It frankly isn’t my first choice. But I’m in a corner here, and I’ll do what I have to.”

  I hauled my right hand up and wrapped it around the grip of the Blackhart, gritting my teeth to stifle the whimper that climbed my throat.

  The man called Ice yelled from across the room, “I’m at the door.”

  “Good,” Surf said. “Now get the fuck out. You go too, Hammerhead. There’s still time.”

  “Zero chance,” Hammerhead said.

  “Okay, Sarge, I’m tired of fucking around,” John said. “You’ve got about five seconds to call off your dogs, or Ms. Redhead gets turned into bite-sized chunks.”

  “You’ve seen what they’re like,” I said. “You think they’re going to listen to me?”

  “You’d damn well better hope they do,” John said. “Four seconds.”

  “Screw... you...” Sonja added.

  “These guys don’t work for me,” I said.

  “Three seconds.”

  I took a deep breath and shoved myself sideways as hard as I could, rolling over and over across the floor. Each revolution drove jagged bolts of pain through me like fresh shots from the laser.

  “Two.”

  I took a last tumble and slid to a stop face down, a few meters across from John’s hiding place. Suddenly I was staring at him down the sights of my Blackhart.

  “One.”

  I pulled the trigger. The recoil hit my injured wrist like a sledgehammer. I screamed.

  The steel-jacketed round slammed into the wrap-around data-shades just above the bridge of his nose. The impact knocked him to the floor in a shower of gore and shattered plastic. He twitched once and then lay still at the center of a spreading pool of blood. The robot’s spider-arms quivered in response, and then hung limp.

  Surf stood up and wiped his hands together. “Game over.” He looked around. “Hammerhead, get off your ass and go untie the woman.”

  Hammerhead climbed to his feet and did as he was told, ducking and darting as he moved under the arms of the surgical robot. It was a job that he obviously didn’t want, but he couldn’t figure out how to refuse after having broadcasted his instant willingness to die for the cause.

  “Get a move on,” Surf said. “The clock is ticking.” He reached down and offered me a hand.

  With his help, I managed to struggle to my feet.

  Ten seconds later, when the last of Sonja’s straps had been released, Hammerhead looked up. “This one’s not walking,” he said loudly. “She’s pretty tranked.”

  “I can... walk,” said Sonja.

  “Carry her,” Surf said. The lenses of his electroptic eyes spun and whirred as he gave the room a last sweeping glance. “Let’s go.”

  The stairs nearly killed me; Surf practically had to drag me down them. Each step brought a fresh wave of pain.

  I tried to take my mind off it. “What kind... of gun is that?”

  “It’s an EMP rifle,” Surf said.

  “Imp? Little... demons? Or magical men?”

  “EMP,” Surf said. “E. M. P. Electromagnetic Pulse.”

  “How does it work?”

  “A strong enough electromagnetic pulse will slick a microchip. We actually brought them in case the AI was still kicking. They just happened to come in handy for Zombie Woman.”

  One of Surf’s soldiers met us at the second-floor landing. “Fifty seconds,” he said.

  “All right!” Surf said. “You heard him. We’ve gotta move!”

  The man fell into step on my right side and shouldered part of my weight. We started to move a little faster.

  “So your EMP rifle wouldn’t hurt a normal person?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Surf said. “Unless it slicked your digital watch, you’d never even know you’d been pulsed.”

  “Then how did you know it would work on Maggie?”

  We made the last turn before the first-floor landing.

  “We knew about the chip in her head,” Surf said. “And about the one in your friend John’s head.”

  “You’ve been tracking John all along?” I asked. “You already had him figured into your Convergence predictions?”

  “Uh-uh,” Surf said. “We found out about him the easy way. We bugged you.”

  “You bugged me?”

  “Yeah,” Surf said. “We slipped a micro-bug into the collar of your jacket. No offense, but we weren’t going to come charging in just because you had a hard-on. So we listened for a while. When we knew for sure that this was the real deal, we grabbed our torches and pitchforks, and marched on the castle.”

  We were half-way across the parking lot and still moving when the first explosion hit. It sounded more like a gunshot than anything, but the secondary that followed about three seconds later had a bass rumble to it that nearly deafened me.

  The windows were bulletproof polycarbon. They didn’t shatter; instead, they bulged and split like overripe fruit, belching streamers of fire and gouts of black smoke. The shock wave blew us off our feet and sent us skidding across the pavement. A fireball boiled out of the front door and climbed the face of the building.

  A second later, we were on our feet again and doing our best imitation of a run.

  Surf’s Focke-Wulf hover-sedan swerved to a halt at the far side of the parking lot. The driver was an Iron Betty Disciple that I’d never met.

  Surf and his soldier were easing me into the back seat when someone screamed, “Look! Up there! On the roof!”

  All eyes turned to the top of the burning Neuro-Tech Building.

  Up there, silhouetted against the rising flames, stood Ma
ggie. She shouldn’t have been alive, but somehow she was. Maybe Surf’s EMP-gun had only damaged her chips instead of slicking them completely.

  She had something slung across her shoulder. It took me a half-second to realize that it was a body. John’s body.

  Maggie looked around frantically, and then spotted the fire escape on the north face of the building. She took off towards it at the closest thing to a full run she could manage.

  In their last seconds, the plasma power cores must have sent a final surge of energy coursing through the building’s wiring grid. The holo-projectors flickered to life, and for the space of perhaps two seconds, Maggie ran with her burden along the battlements at the top of a haunted castle wall. Then, the last of the power died, and the illusion faded from existence.

  “She’s going to make it!” I whispered.

  I didn’t know which personality had the upper hand: the psycho-killer, or the old Maggie that had reappeared for those few seconds on the floor of John’s lab. And suddenly, despite everything that had happened, despite everything that she had done, I found myself praying that she would make it.

  Tears welled up to blur my vision. “Come on, Magpie!” I whispered. “Come on!”

  She was just a few meters short of the fire escape when she stumbled. John’s body slipped from her arms and fell to the roof. She paused for a second, torn between her reluctance to leave John and the beckoning safety of the fire escape.

  “Go!” I whispered. “Leave him. Save yourself!”

  Maggie bent over and grabbed John’s lifeless body. She struggled back to her feet and started toward the fire escape. Just before she reached it, the roof erupted in flame. For the tiniest fraction of a second, Maggie and John’s silhouettes flared like magnesium and they were painted in liquid fire.

  A millisecond later, the entire top of the building was vaporized by another explosion, and Maggie and John’s atoms climbed toward the dome on a column of burning plasma. A hundred brilliant reflections blossomed in the faceted polycarbon panels overhead, repeating the fiery images of Maggie and John a hundred times across the dome.