Shadow of a Dead Star (The Wonderland Cycle)

by Michael Shean

  The Dolls that Walken had tried to intercept had been prototypes of a new series. The human consciousness had been broken down in a recorded complex by Genefex sciences, encoded into the biological modules of their greatly expanded storage matrix. However, with even this dark miracle there had been issues. Recorded consciousness was just that, a limited copy, enclosed within the sphere of recorded knowledge and experience. The Dolls could learn, but they could not adapt, could not innovate; a fine thing for servitor creatures, but not the right stuff for true immortality. They had been slated to be sold to the president of Yasawa Magnatomics's American division, headquartered there in Seattle, for a sum that made Walken's head swim.

  "I'm as sure as the documents allow me to be," he said, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "It's all there. The signature codes are intact, everything looks authentic. I had a specialist of mine go over the files several times, in fact, to ensure they were the real thing."

  Hunt nodded. A look of savage triumph now manifested on her face and she reached out to give Walken's arm a squeeze. "Thomas," she said, "I could kiss you. This is incredible work you've done." She held out her palm, then. "Do you have the files to give me, then?"

  He paused. His brown eyes studied hers for a moment, studied the gleam that they found there, as he finally reached into his coat pocket and produced the squat memory cell. "Here," he said, pressing the thing into her hand. "Maybe you'll give me a byline, eh?"

  She smiled as she took the cell, then took a few steps back. "Did you get all that, Agent?" she asked to the air.

  "I did." It was a familiar voice. Brighton's voice.

  Walken's face hardened. "You bitch," he hissed, though his eyes bore no hint of surprise.

  "Oh, don't look at me like that." Hunt shook her head. From out of the darkness Brighton's ridiculous mass emerged from behind a pile of blasted pews, his meat-pear body emerging from a dark corner. He held a shotgun in the crook of his arm, a fully-automatic combat model. Its frame was like the skeleton of some long-extinct animal. "You knew that this was coming."

  So he did. Or at least, he should have. The instinctual voice that he had depended on had been silent for so long — he'd fucked up in the desperation of the times. "Well, fuck you anyway," Walken growled. "So what, you get your payoff now? Your story?"

  Hunt shrugged. "Yes and no," she said, "I get to stay out of Federal prison. I do too well for myself to give it all up and spend fifty years in a freezer — the Bureau decided to be lenient with me for my cooperation. Maybe they'll let me cover the fall of Genefex —and Wonderland — when they crush it for producing illegal biotech, but this whole Doll thing..." Another shrug. "Well, that all gets internalized. What the public doesn't know and all that."

  Walken felt the old coal of hate come flaring back into being. He wasn't surprised, not a bit, but that didn't make the betrayal any less cutting. He didn't relish the idea of facing down Brighton and his riot gun, either. "So that's it, then? I get hauled in?"

  Hunt took a deep breath as if collecting herself. "Something like that," she said, looking at him now through veiled lashes. "They're cleaning up all traces of this thing, Agent. That means you, too."

  Where he was not surprised at Hunt's betrayal, this was a new and unexpected wrinkle. Fear, real and pulsing, began to claw its way up his spine. "A termination order," he said dully, trying to keep his face flat. "Lovely. I guess you thought of everything, didn't you?"

  "I can't take all the credit for it, I'm afraid," Hunt said with that same thin, insincere smile. "The Bureau had planned most of it. I just had to play my part to keep out of the freezer." She shrugged again, narrow shoulders lifting, careless. "Not really much choice. But you know, I really did admire the work you'd done up to now, Agent. You were right about all of you Bureau boys not being thugs." She looked back to Brighton, held the cell out to him. "He's all yours."

  Brighton palmed the datacell without a word, put it in his coat pocket and nodded. "Better go on, Miss Hunt," the fat bastard said with a chuckle, lifting the muzzle of the shotgun to track Walken's middle. "You won't want to see this."

  "I'd argue otherwise," she said coolly, "But I guess I'm not in a position to refuse." Hunt looked at Walken with a look of feline satisfaction. "I told you not to fuck with me," she purred as she walked past. "Goodbye, Tom."

  The moments stretched for what seemed like eons as Walken stood there, staring at Brighton in dull silence. The other man looked back at him, his short dark hair like a bristling crown around his piggy head, his eyes glittering with malice. The buzz of fear and tension distorted things, made the mouth of the shotgun seem wide enough to eat his head.

  "I never liked you, Walken." Brighton finally spoke, sneering. "You're a cock. Better than everyone else — or so you think."

  "Everyone's got problems," Walken grunted. "So you're going to do me right here?" He felt the weight of the C-J in the kangaroo pocket of his suit, heavy and urgent. Begging to be used. Brighton would cut him in half before he could so much as make a move, however.

  The fat man chuckled, a smirk lining his lip. "You've got me all wrong," Brighton said, wrinkling his nose. "There's no termination order against you, Walken! I'm going to bring you in. We are going to bring you in, Ex and I. We're going to serve you to the old man on a silver platter — and believe you me, man, he's going to eat you alive. He wanted you to be his successor, after all." Brighton's smirk twisted then, blossoming into a vicious, toothy smile. Gold glittered in one corner. "You'll be lucky if there's anything left for prosecutors."

  The fear in Walken's breast had begun to subside. Cryogenic imprisonment was hard, but it wasn't a death sentence. Maybe he could pick up after that — not the Bureau, obviously, but somewhere else. A treacherous sliver of hope, a very human hope, began working itself into his brain. "You're really not going to kill me, then?"

  "Oh, no, my friend." Brighton's grin threatened to clamber up the sides of his head. "Don't you know? The Bureau needs a scapegoat. You losing your head and blasting down that little bitch killed any evidence we might have had and set yourself up for the fall all at once. To say nothing about that data archive."

  Walken's body stiffened. "You haven't cracked it?"

  "Not at all." Brighton nudged the mouth of the shotgun forward slightly. "What do you think this is all about, anyway? Kelley's team couldn't crack it and once we found out that you had we closed the net on Hunt and turned her."

  "But how did you know?" Walken knew he was forgetting something, groping through the blurry halls of recent memory.

  Brighton laughed. "Kelley had the node address of that little show she was running, remember? Turns out he's been watching her for some time, the little shit. The moment you disappeared, he handed over the goods — hell, he thought that she might have put the Koreans on you as revenge for taking her story!" Brighton laughed again, a long, hooting sound that made Walken want to leap across the space between them and tear off his face. Instead he stood there, hate welling up past the fear, spreading through his body like some divine infection.

  Maybe Brighton could see it, that sudden and murderous flash, because his laughter died suddenly and he braced the shotgun against his hip. "Anyway," he rumbled, his voice cold now. "Ex is here. We're going to take you in."

  The sound of crunching debris behind him marked the arrival of Brighton's enormous partner. Exley's bulk swung into view to Walken's right, revealing itself like something extruded from the shadows. He wore a heavy black coat, under which the ribbed lines of a sneaking suit could be made out — unlike Walken's sniper suit, the sneak rig only worked for dark environments. On a night like this, however, it would be just fine.

  "Evening, Ex." Brighton nodded toward Walken, the riot gun never leaving its lethal watch on his gut.

  "Evening." Exley had a shotgun too, the Bedley from before. The box mag slung against its belly was definitely not full of jellies as it had been at the foot of the Ballroom. The monstrous shape of his former fellow Agent took i
ts place not far from his partner, the Bedley laid against his shoulder and one hand swallowing its pistol grip. The other was in the pocket of his coat. He didn't look at Walken. "Did he give you any trouble?"

  Brighton shrugged. "He hasn't tried to get away," he said. "Not that this means much with him."

  "Have you checked him for weapons?" Exley looked at Walken with different eyes now, flat silver implants in his mask of a face. Gone was any kind of sympathy, gone was any kind of kindred spirit. Walken was just another perp for him and the realization of that made a fresh wash of cold fear spill down his back.

  Brighton coughed. "That bitch Hunt just left," he said. "Thought I'd wait for you." Even he seemed to shrink a bit beneath the cold fire that Exley was radiating. "He's probably armed, of course, but he's not going anywhere with this badass blaster training on his gut."

  "Mmm." Exley stared coldly at Walken a moment and brought his shotgun down. Walken flinched.

  "Well, Tom?" Exley's voice was a plane of lead skimming off his tongue.

  Walken blinked at him. "Well what?"

  Exley's eyes shone like glass in his skull, gleaming and lifeless. "Are you armed?"

  Walken looked down at his hands, ensuring that — at least for the moment — they were well at his sides. Brighton might stumble if he tried something, but Exley would take him apart without a blink if he so much as twitched. His mouth was dry as he tried to formulate a suitable reply. "Yeah, Ex," he finally said. It wouldn't help him to lie. They'd expect it.

  "I see." Exley reached his arm out, holding the shotgun like some ridiculously long and bulky target pistol and squeezed the trigger. Flames and thunder roared through the space between them as a trio of shots were belched from the Bedley's jaws, as recoil shuddered through Exley's massive arm. What had been Brighton's head and the better part of his upper torso but a moment before was now blown across the nearest pew, rendered into bloody paste and giblets. Walken stared, frozen in abject horror and surprise, as the fat man fell in a gory heap before him.

  Blood spread in parallel with the silence between them, glittering in the dark as the roar of Exley's shotgun echoed and faded off the walls of the blasted church. Walken stared at the cratered remains, at the white bone that jutted out from the ruins of his ribs. Mingled pink and yellow, the mosaic of fat and ruptured muscle. One meaty arm, divorced from its shoulder, hung in the envelope of shredded shirt and jacket like a joint of beef. Such was Brighton's mountainous bulk that even reduced and ventilated, his body completely obscured the riot gun beneath it. Despite himself, Walken took a step back from the tide of dark blood that slowly crept toward him.

  "Look at me." Exley's voice, now strange. Mechanical. Walken was reminded of the voice chip in the computer he had growing up, already ten years antiquated. Stilted. Walken tore his eyes from the ruin that lay before him and turned them toward its killer.

  Exley stared at him. His eyes were almost completely swallowed by darkness, immense pits of his pupils rimmed with but a millimeter of silver. "Run," he commanded, his voice still ringing with that terrible mode. "Now."

  It was as if Walken's body had turned itself around and moved on its own accord. His vision swam with terror as he ran, somehow stripping off his coat as he sprinted behind the nearest pile of debris. Walken heard the Bedley roar again, heard the seismic thump of impact, felt splinters of wood and plastic spray across the back of his neck. White waves of adrenaline surged through his body as he skittered behind the heap. He tore the C-J from his pocket, racked its slide and leaned around low to take a shot — and was rewarded by another explosion of wood-grained plastic as Exley fired again.

  Blood and adrenaline thundered in Walken's ears as he reached into the kangaroo pocket of his camo suit, found the camo module and thumbed its switch. Instantly the suit engaged and he was a disembodied head, floating along with the C-J; without the hood it wasn't perfect cover, but it was far better being a gray blob in low light than a full-body target.

  "I told you to run, Agent," Exley said in that bizarre chip-voice. "You aren't running."

  Walken pressed himself up close against the blasted pews; he tried to listen for Exley's footsteps through the ringing in his ears, heard nothing. "Kinda hard when you're trying to put a fuckin' hole through me, Ex," he called out and tried to figure out just how the bastard was spotting his position.

  He heard the ground crunch under Exley's heavy feet, unable to gauge his direction. Walken tried to catch a glimpse of Exley as he began to slowly duck-walk around the base of the pile in the opposite direction. One step, then two — and then he bolted, sprinting between the piles of flotsam toward the door. He did not see Exley and so he didn't see the shotgun — but his sneakers rattled with the impact of its slugs as they rocked the ruined floor behind him. This isn't right, he thought as he slid into a crouch behind a tangle of pews. He pressed himself hard against them, letting the C-J roar in answer as he squeezed a burst into the darkness behind him. He's a much better shot than this. Exley's playing with me.

  "I wish to discover something." The voice was farther away this time, to his left.

  Walken slowly began to creep right to see if he could catch a glimpse of Exley. He led with the pistol and his thumb stroked gently the switch of the tactical module; the laser would do Walken no good, but maybe the flash...

  "What's that?" Walken called as he peered around the pile into the rain-veiled shadows. "How long I live?"

  "No," replied Exley's phantom voice. "I want to see how long it takes for you to find out the truth."

  Walken's world swam with red as the distant flower of a muzzle flash bloomed across the church floor and the bench before his eyes shattered. Pain seared his face as splinters dug themselves into his flesh. Blood poured from a cut in his forehead. Half-blind, he tried hard to wipe the blood from his face while firing another burst of uranium slugs into the direction of the Bedley's roar. Concrete and plastic spalled in a cloud where the dense rounds hit, but there was no sound in answer but the ringing echoes of impact.

  Playing with him. Exley was playing with him. He felt, in that moment, very small. He felt no power within him save for what the adrenaline afforded him, a paper blade before Exley's gleaming sword. In a few moments, however, he realized he was alone.

  He pulled on the suit's cowl and went out, bloody and terrified, into the uncaring night.

  Walken now knew what it was to crawl under a rock and hide there.

  For two weeks he had lived in Bobbi's place, attempting escape from the world, while the two of them tried to make sense of the matter before them. Bobbi rode the networks as she always did, performing the art of the Zen hack cross-legged and naked in the chair before her altar. They both knew that they had to be careful; she had to work, but she also spent a great deal of time trying to learn more about what had happened that night. She spent a lot of time with Lionel and Pierre, though she tried hard not to involve the latter much. The Frenchman was too much of a spider.

  Bobbi did biz as normal for clients and there was plenty of it these days. Two days after his escape from First Ebenezer, Bobbi had alerted him to a buzz spreading through the underground she frequented. The word on the line was that some net-porn diva had engineered what was either a tremendous hoax or the most intimately public piece of snuff known.

  Walken had watched the replay circulating around the chat nodes. There, in the midst of performing a bath show for the slavering throngs, the hard-bodied Hunt in her guise as Candy Alpha — wearing the face of Danna-Kai's newest furry playmate — arched herself like a drawn bow in the depths of her marble tub. Rose-colored nipples facing the camera, gold glinting there. Muscular belly taut, the mutable face of the mascot mask shifting into a perversely stylized image of cartoon pleasure. Posing for her adoring public. There was no sound, merely the gentle pulse of the ambient music that served as the show's audio backdrop.

  And then the siren found herself surprised by a trio of assailants, bursting in through the bathroom door
. Three figures, tall and masculine, anonymous in black overalls and faceless industrial masks. Sledgehammers in hand.

  Before Hunt could so much as scream the three killers had set upon her. Walken watched as they circled the tub and beat her into its bottom; every stroke precise, blood and red water splashing out across naked white porcelain. It took very little time. Though their bodies obscured the carnage as it happened, Hunt's body lay twisted and broken in the gory water, the helmet still stuck halfway on. Walken could not help but notice that the face on that cartoon head, splattered with blood as it was, still bore that ridiculous rictus of erotic pleasure.

  Hunt being snuffed out at the hands of her attackers had been the best show of her alter-ego's career. Candy Alpha was an overnight sensation. This celebrity had not abated when CivPro got involved and the true identity of the dead woman was released. Her double life had launched Hunt's star into far orbit overnight.

  Her passing had the effect of dynamite detonated underwater and all the dead fish were surfacing. Local politicos, corporate officials, celebrities and socialites — with her gone, details Hunt had apparently kept under wraps were revealing themselves. The city's social switchboard was on fire with rumors and revelation and while it made times very lucrative for people like Bobbi who made a living digging up data, it wasn't very easy to go for anything outside of that kind of dirt without someone sniffing after your trail. The Bureau, of course, had blamed it all on Walken. He had no doubt filled the top five spots on Wolsey's shitlist.

  As for Walken, he had spent most of his time in recovery. Two days after that last visit to Lionel's clinic, when they were reasonably sure that they weren't going to be hunted down and killed by the phantom Exley, they had decided to get him a new face. They had gone back to the smiling not-Rasta and he'd given them a referral, a black-market face doc by the name of Sammy Lo. Lo's work was very quick, very expensive. At the cost of a good chunk of Bobbi's personal bankroll he had rebuilt Walken's face in just a day.