QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted

by Steve Rzasa

  The Zhang-Su was surprisingly well-stocked with sensory gear, Tower was surprised to observe, as Hildy cruised slowly along the Warehouse District airway at low altitude. Of course, it was a police surveillance vehicle, which he’d failed to take into account when dismissing it as a mere civilian var. In fact, it had considerably more sniffers and scanners and various spectrum radars than his Steyrer did. Baby overlay the cam data she’d collected earlier onto the cockpit screen. It ghosted a broad map of the quadrant over the actual view outside. Several amorphous blobs glowed red. Others pulsed white.

  “The red indicates anomalies that were ruled out,” Baby explained. “The white are those I am still observing.”

  “How are you canceling?”

  “If the cam picks up a lifeform and I show a definite mismatch with Mr. St. James’s facial or statistical profile, I rule it out.”

  Two more white dots flashed and turned a steady red as Tower watched. Hildy was driving along slowly, less than 50 kph, with one eye on the airway and another on the mass of readouts on the dashboard and lower section of the heads-up-display.

  She tucked her blond hair behind her ear with her right hand, revealing a simple gold stud in her pierced ear. Her profile was all clean lines and straight edges, Tower observed with the mild pang of a man who knew he could never truly touch the woman he admired.

  “What?” she said, without looking his way.

  “Nothing,” he replied, which was true. What was there to say? “What are you scanning for, body heat signatures?”

  “Among other things. We have penetration to about 50 meters horizontal through brick, up to 100 if it’s that cheap plasmetal they like to use around here. There is also an organic material sniffer, although that’s of limited use since there is so much DNA noise Victor could barely spot a naked man sweating 10 meters away, and a motion detector tied to the heat reader. Nothing yet.”

  “How much vertical range do we have?” Tower thought they might become a little too conspicuous if they had to repeatedly retrace their path at a different altitude.

  “35 meters up and down. Not great, but it could be worse.”

  That explained their present altitude. Tower looked up at the tops of the nearby warehouses. They only ran about 40 stories high, which meant they could cover an area in two passes. Not that he was confident that the sensors would necessarily pick up St. James, even if he was in the vicinity, but it was worth a try.

  “I think I’m beginning to see a pattern here.” Baby sounded pleased with herself. “I tried mapping a pattern of movement throughout the city, connecting the scene of the crown prince’s murder, the known cloaksuit sightings, the cam and traffic anomalies, Mara Tanabera’s apartment, and TPPD HQ.”

  A small holo of the city appeared in the middle of the windshield. It was a crazy mass of white lines that were weighted toward the Warehouse District and looked more like a demented child’s scribbling than any sort of coherent pattern.

  “Um, I’m afraid you’re going to have to make it a little simpler for us, Baby,” Hildy said.

  “Oh, of course, sorry, Detector.” Tower sighed. For an augment, she could be surprisingly petty at times. “Is this simple enough for you?”

  Three bold yellow lines appeared on top of the chaos of the white lines, imposing order. They all pointed to an area in the Warehouse District four blocks down and two blocks to the right.

  “Hey, that’s not far,” Tower commented. “Fourth and Equinox. Worth checking out, anyhow.”

  Hildy boosted their speed and took the next right. She was just turning right again when Baby shouted at them.

  “Stop, stop!”

  Hildy slammed the var into hover while Tower resisted the urge to reach into the back seat for a weapon. “What?”

  “I got a hit! A live hit from a cam! Look!”

  An image of what looked like their immediate locale appeared in front of them. There were a few people walking along the broad sidewalks, most of them were men wearing the sort of apparel that indicated they worked in the area. More than a few were observably augmented, with scanners and keyboards implanted into their wrists, or in one hard-to-miss example, a removable pair of artificial hands sporting a mini-forklift style attachment.

  Then, for a moment, the sidewalk was clear except for a single man, of middling height, with short, razor-stubbled hair and a thin, drawn face. It was Nostro St. James, looking a little older, thinner, and less healthy than he had at the time of his arrest, but it was unmistakably him. He was wearing a stained old shirt and a pair of torn pants as he walked toward the cam, then turned right and approached what must have been a door, and pressed his hand against something. Then he entered the building, a nondescript plasmetal row-warehouse attached on either side.

  “That was just twenty seconds ago! He’s there! St. James is there and I found him!”

  “You sure did,” Hildy said admiringly. “Where is it?”

  “I missed by a block. It’s on 5th Street.”

  Hildy hit the accelerator hard enough to first throw Tower back in his seat, then against the passenger door as she arced around the corner and made two lefts. The view in front of them suddenly matched the cam view still being displayed on the heads-up; Tower could see the building that St. James had entered.

  “Did you get a number, Baby?” Hildy demanded.

  “I can’t see it, but I can pull it from the map… 2669 5th Street.”

  As Hildy landed the var hard enough to jolt them both, Tower grabbed her arm. “Hold on there, tiger, what are you doing? Shouldn’t you be calling for that SATT team about now?”

  “We don’t need the team. That would be overkill. He didn’t look armed and he obviously has no idea that we’re here!” Her blue eyes were bright and eager. “Come on, Tower! We go in fast and hard, and we’ll take him down before he even thinks to remember where he put that beamer he used yesterday.”

  “He could have the door wired with explosives,” Tower suggested, realizing even as he said it that it was a lame excuse.

  “No way,” Hildy said, pointing to a console readout that meant nothing to him. “There is no explosive material within 20 meters of that door.”

  “All right,” Tower gave in. It was her case and she obviously wanted to make the arrest. And in truth, St. James didn’t look like he was up to putting up much of a fight. The poor guy’s demons appeared to have devoured him, and that stunt with the powersuit yesterday had probably taken a lot out of him. “But you’re wearing the ablator or we’re not going in.”

  “Fine,” she said, reaching back to hand him his tac-jacket. “You can even bring one of the carbines with you if it will make you feel better. But leave the ASE in the var.”

  “All right.” Tower tilted his head to get a better look at the building. It wasn’t much to look at. White ferroresin faded to a mottled grey. A few windows here and there, the glass reinforced with tri-steel. All of them were opaqued. “Baby, got anything on that building?”

  “The first twenty floors have gone unrented for three months, sir. This is not uncommon for the neighborhood. District records show seventeen mortgages in arrears in a block radius. These floors are scheduled to go into receivership in 37 days. The owner is a Mulo Djada corporate registered as an import-exporter; filed for bankruptcy eighteen rotations ago. The building augment is dormant. I’ll see if I can wake her.”

  “No, leave it alone,” Tower directed. “Cara might be using it as an alarm.”

  “Good place for a homeless drifter to lay low, avoid trouble, and still have access to the aether,” Hildy observed. “He may be crazy, but he isn’t stupid.”

  Once they’d put on their body armor and Hildy dutifully registered a non-warrant forced entry with Victor, they slipped out of the var. Hildy had drawn her shocker, while Tower had the Armada slung around his back and was carrying his Sphinx with the charge dialed down to the setting he thought of as “seriously fry the target’s insides without actually killing him”. Baby ha
d the weapon synced and a target reticule was doing its usual hysteresistic dance over his sight eye.

  The front door was a dull red, with flaking paint that revealed rusted metal underneath. It was sealed shut with an autolock; presumably the one they’d seen him touching. The access plate was black, with scratches all over its surface.

  “You got a delocker?” Tower whispered. “Or shall I blow it?”

  Hildy shook her head and held her badge up to the autolock. There was a faint whirring noise and then, from somewhere behind the door, Tower heard the autolock disengage. She glanced at him and held a finger to her lips. So much for going in hot. That was fine; it was her call. But just in case, he wasn’t going to let her go first. He stepped forward and pushed passed her.

  See if you can find him, he told Baby.

  He pressed the door panel. A green light illuminated his palm and then the door slid open. It hit an obstruction halfway across and stopped; for a moment, his heart nearly stopped too. Sniffers or no sniffers, if that had been a mine he and Hildy would be dead already. Inside the door he could see that the space beyond was nearly pitch black thanks to the opaqued windows. He eased himself inside, and took two sideways steps to let her enter and close the door behind her.

  Why was it so dark? St. James was in here somewhere, and if he was on this level, he must have seen the flash of light when the door opened.

  Give me IR on the contacts, Baby.

  Still nothing. Well, he must be on a different level, or perhaps somewhere two walls deep on this one.

  “Having fun yet?” he whispered to Hildy.

  “Where is he?” she hissed back. Her voice sounded stressed. Tower smiled grimly. It wasn’t so fun to realize that sometimes, you weren’t the hunter you thought you were. Sometimes, you were the hunted.

  “Want to call that SATT team yet?”

  “Yeah, and tell them I need an assault team because I don’t know where he is? That’ll fly! We have to at least pin him down before we can bring them in, Tower!”

  Tower nodded. He didn’t think Major Zeuthen would commit one of MCID’s teams on such an uncertain basis either. “All right, let’s just do this slow and methodical. First we clear this floor. Then we clear the next level. One step at a time. All right?”

  Hildy nodded. She looked a little less upset now.

  “Try to stay behind me and diagonal, so I’m not blocking your shot. Move when I move. And it’s only a shocker, so don’t say anything, just take the shot.”

  They searched the ground floor and found nothing, not even any sign that anyone had ever been here recently. Tower wondered if Baby had perhaps gotten the wrong building, and she angrily insisted that was impossible.

  They carefully moved up to the first floor. A window in an adjoining room was not opaqued, and cast a dim light into the corridor. Tower stepped over the threshold. The sunshine from outside cut a swath of grime-darkened light into the empty room, revealing walls as decrepit and run-down as the exterior of the building. Chipped grey plastic was the décor of choice. Dust covered everything like a thin blanket of dirty snow.

  He turned around and rejoined Hildy in the hall. Despite their best efforts to be quiet, the only sounds echoing off the walls came from their boots. Even the ventilation systems seemed to be inoperative. The building didn’t seem to be dormant, but dead. They stalked through the hall. The doors they passed opened on to rooms as empty as the one with the semi-clear window.

  Toward the end of the hall were two lift doors, sealed shut. The power panel was dark. Baby, are these locked down? Any chance St. James been riding them lately?

  “Negative, Tower. According to the lift, it was last accessed four rotations ago.”

  The door at the end of the hall was wedged open. Tower raised his Sphinx. It was a staircase, a very steep staircase. Emergency access for the building if the lifts were out.

  He led the way up the steps, with Hildy staying a few meters behind him.

  “Tower, I am reading electro-magnetic activity coming from the third floor, in the fifth room on the right side of the hall.”

  Activity consistent with what?

  “Unknown. I need to examine the source more closely.”

  They reached the door Baby was highlighting on the map.

  Lifesigns?

  “Nothing. But this is definitely the source of the electro-magnetic activity.”

  Tower tapped the panel on the wall. The door slid open, almost silently. He went in first, sweeping his Sphinx from side to side while Hildy covered him with the shocker. Nothing. Tower moved swiftly about the room, checking for any motion or signs of life. There were none now, but there were indications that someone had been there previously. St. James, he presumed.

  A simple bunk was pushed up against one wall, a bank of three screens was perched above a pair of holo transmitters and a small control panel, while a wobbly metal chair was placed in front of a table laden with some sort of technical equipment. Wires and a wide variety of chips and other tech trappings littered the table.

  Tower checked in a small restroom set back behind a door near the left corner. “Clear,” he called out.

  “Same here.” Hildy emerged from a closet on the other side of the room. “Nothing but empty boxes. And if he’s not here, where did he go?”

  Tower pointed to the closet. “What was in them?”

  Hildy grabbed one of the boxes, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, and tossed it to him. Tower caught it in his left hand and activated the LED on his Sphinx. Bright light blazed over a gaudy red and yellow label: KoreTek LLC. “Hmmm. Power cells.”

  “There are twelve, thirteen, fourteen of them.”

  “I have a feeling they go with the Mosin-Nyarlas your uniforms found in the park.”

  “Confirmed, Tower. TPPD shows one KoreTek cell in its inventory of evidence in the embassy attack.”

  “Well, that’s good news,” Tower said. At Hildy’s puzzled expression, he explained. “That means the disruptor that Milazzo used was the same one that killed Prince Arpad. Which means St. James doesn’t still have one.”

  “Oh, right, that is good.” She frowned again. “What does he want with all the cells then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” Baby said. “You can make a really big bomb with them.”

  How big? Varbomb big or skytower demolition big.

  “More the latter than the former.”

  Tower groaned. As if St. James and his augment weren’t dangerous enough. Did St. James have part of this building wired to blow? Or was he stock-piling explosives for something more sinister. Was it significant that the building was so close to the orbital shuttle station? Was it possible that the shuttle accident had given the unbalanced St. James some sort of obsession with exploding space vehicles?

  As he was wondering how to break the news to Hildy that they should probably tuck their tails between their legs and flee, a screen suddenly came to life behind him. He jumped, startled. Hildy jumped even higher, shrieked and dropped her shocker. Video windows were appearing on the screen. Six of them. They cycled through different views of Trans Paradis. Tower recognized main thoroughfares, shopping areas, even parks. He scrolled through the images.

  Baby, you getting this?

  “Yeah. These are streams from public sensors scattered all over Trans Paradis.” She paused. “Ah, Tower, are you noticing this?

  Hildy gasped. Tower gritted his teeth. There was Hardwig Dunn, bound and bleeding in Entwine Park. There was he and Hildy walking toward Kotant and two of the Morchardese security guards in front of the building that contained the embassy. And there was Tower, diving to the ground and rolling behind a car in the TPPD platform lot.

  “He’s gained access to the TPPD security cams!” Hildy said, shocked.

  Tower shook his head. “No, that looks like something zoomed in from above, maybe even taken from the var he used as a sniper’s platform.”

  “Tower, be advised: I count a
dozen images of yourself and Detector Hildreth at various stages of the investigation. At least. The most recent… oh no!”

  All the screens went blank. The same image appeared on all three.

  It was a visual from behind. It was Tower and Hildy standing in front of the building they were now in, taken from the same cam Baby had used to spot St. James.

  “We have to get out of here!” Tower whirled around. “Come on, Hildy!”

  But before either of them could take more than a step toward the door, it slid shut as quietly as it had opened. There was an audible click as it locked.

  Hildy slapped the access panel. It went dark. The door did not move.

  “Oh my God, it won’t open! Victor!” she cried. “Victor? Victor!”

  Tower reached around her and pounded the panel, but nothing happened. He put his arm around Hildy to try to calm her down; her eyes were wide with panic at her inability to communicate with her augment.

  Baby, what’s going on here? Can you pop this thing open?

  “Tower…I can’t… There is something…” Her voice trailed out for a moment. “She’s here, Tower, she’s—”

  Her voice vanished without warning. From behind him, Tower heard another female voice chuckling with malicious amusement.

  He whirled around and saw a model of a young woman’s head filling all three screens. He knew it was only a computer rendition because there was no body attached to it. The sculpted face was beautiful, but cold and arrogant, with long, flowing jet-black hair, bone-white skin, blood-red lips, and pupilless eyes that glowed iridescent blue. She stared at him with the very slightest of smiles on her lips. Then she spoke. Her voice was a rich and pleasant contralto, with just the hint of an Ascendancy accent.

  “What a pleasure to meet you at last, Chief Tower.”

  “Hello, Cara,” he replied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  In company with most other planetary governments in the subsector, the Seventeenth Duke’s administration was a signatory to the Third Human-Machine Concordance of 3326.