Dead Man Dreaming

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  “Fine.” His tone and expression lay devoid of any evidence supporting this assertion. The single uttered syllable merely acknowledged he would not argue the point any further. “How fast will it make you?”

  She shrugged. “It’s only limited by my own brain, so we can’t say for sure. Eight? Nine? Ten times normal? Using it will be the first real stress-test of my mutation since I was a kid.”

  “What did your father have to say about it?”

  “He said it was my body and my call. It shouldn’t hurt my brain to go that fast, but we don’t really know what will happen to my decision-making and personality while it’s working. The firmware resets my clock after ten minutes either way. No matter what happens, the effects will be temporary.”

  “But for that ten minutes, you might end up a reckless, nihilistic, amoral killer moving twice as fast as even I can go?”

  “I’ll still be me, Roland. This—” she shook the boring gray cylinder, “—can’t change who I am.”

  “Just how you act,” he amended. Though he acknowledged his petulance at this point.

  “I will try not to use it.” It was a promise she would at least attempt to keep, and this would have to be enough. “Kick his ass early on and it won’t be an issue.”

  “That’s the plan, all right.” Shoulders sagging, the big cyborg gave up on changing her mind. “Let’s hope Bob and the Corpus Mundi idiots don’t fuck it all up on us.”

  “We’ll put Sam and the good cops on that one. They won’t shoot cops no matter how much they interfere.”

  “Really?” Roland did not sound convinced of this.

  “Really,” she replied with finality. “Shooting cops brings way too much bad publicity. Stock prices would plummet, and that is the only thing corporations truly fear.”

  “As long as that’s true I think the plan should hold up even to Bob’s bullshit.” A big heavy sigh came and sent more pain through his still-healing chest. “Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”

  Lucia linked her arm in his. “Because you are a cynical old grouch?”

  “Do you know what the best part about being a cynic is?” he asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “All your surprises are happy ones.”

  “That is actually rather profound, Corporal. Let’s go get ready for tonight.”

  As the pair of fixers prepared for the first night of their hunt, Robert Robertson was doing his level best to make sure Roland’s worst fears were realized. High above dockside and speeding away in an expensive aerocar, he had been making call after call and sending dozens of electronic communiques. Even as he had slid into the seat, he was dialing up Arthur Inskip.

  “Do you think that will be necessary?” the old man asked when Bob outlined his plan.

  “Absolutely. Tankowicz and his people are committed, and the regular operatives will be outclassed.”

  “But the other prototypes are not up to spec. They never were. What can they do against a Golem?”

  “They can die, Mr. Inskip. And by dying, they will create enough space for us to move on the unit.”

  “Attacking the Golem is a bold plan, Bob.” Arthur seemed almost delighted with the initiative his man showed.

  “I feel it is justified, sir.”

  “Carry on then.” Inskip did not break the connection right away. He had one more question to ask. “Tell me Robert, will you engage Breach?”

  “I’d rather not, sir. If I see an opportunity, I may take it. The goal remains to secure the unit, however.”

  “Ever the pragmatist, Bob.” Inskip half chuckled his reply. “You are nothing if not consistent!”

  “Needs must,” he said. Then he ended the call.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The voices in Chico’s head did not share his enthusiasm for returning to Dockside. Holing up in that sex-bot factory had been a nice break. Well-stocked with power, spare parts, and sophisticated equipment, the old factory made for an excellent hideout. Convincing the owner to cooperate with his demands had been simple enough. The poor fool was already in a wheelchair and Chico excelled at intimidation. Together Chico and Shultz had been able to locate the three transponders and the hidden explosives his masters added to his limbs since his last interlude of freedom. Removing and disabling the devices proved rather simple for the experienced engineer. Chico had even let the man live, anticipating that he may need his services again. That Schultz character was creepy as hell, but he seemed a pragmatic sort once you got past the hard part of the negotiations.

  The urge to remain in hiding and consolidate his position was strong, yet unfamiliar. He had never been the type to take a measured approach to anything. He supposed this was his life now. Unfamiliar urges and phantom bits of helpful information sat just fine with him so long as they helped get the jobs done. He would listen and obey these new voices because they were good at the things he was bad at. With one exception, of course. Where Kitty was concerned, he would not compromise. The two of them had unfinished business. She was his girl, and even when she pissed him off he could not stop loving her.

  Sure, Kitty could get weird sometimes. She would get all mad at him and tell him to leave her alone, or say she hated him. She even sicced that big asshole, Barney, on him once. That one still stung. After that incident he had to stay away from her a long while, just to cool things off and keep The Dwarf happy.

  Still, even with all that, Chico knew she did not really mean any of it. He accepted his own role in their problems and acknowledged he was no saint, either. Sometimes he would get pissed at her when she acted really bitchy and sure, he might have to put his hands on her when she got like that. A guy had his pride, after all. Sometimes a chick needed to know when she had gone too far. Setting those kinds of boundaries was part of being a man.

  Nonna had often told him you were supposed to take the good with the bad in a relationship. Because he loved her, it was only natural to forgive Kitty for being a bitch to him. Deep in his heart he knew she loved him, too. Relationships were hard work.

  Broads are just crazy sometimes. It was Chico’s thought, but it rippled across his headmates’ impressions to a mixed response. His dogged pursuit of one pink-haired bartender did not sit well with them. He understood their aversion. The obsession exposed him to a lot of risk at a time when they would be better served to avoid it. Unfortunately for the lot of them, Chico did not care. As much as he valued insights from his chorus of ghosts he refused to move on this point. He had to assume his phantoms had never been in love. Otherwise they would understand why a man had to do the things he did for his woman. Thinking about how she was probably hanging out with Tank helped quiet their ire. They all shared the same burning hatred for the fixer.

  The next evening, being recharged and repaired, Chico set out toward Dockside. The click-clack of his metal feet was muted by the thin-soled shoes he had found. His bionics were concealed by dungarees and his cloaked overcoat. His hair was still growing back in, and an inch of ugly black scruff wreathed the dome of his head. He had no hat though his shirt bore a loose hood, which he used to cover his scalp and shadow the dark emptiness of his dead mechanical eyes.

  The lone pistol thumped against his armpit with each long step. Without its twin to balance the harness, the whole rig felt awkward. The weapon’s magazine held the last of his custom penetrators. It seemed prudent as he anticipated bumping into Tank at some point.

  This was the lie he told himself, anyway. The more educated voices in his head knew it to be far stronger than mere anticipation. There lived an element of desire, will, and a need to face the big man again. It seemed fitting that someone with the means to kill that monster had come along so the source of all their woes would meet the end he so richly deserved.

  At Schultz’s factory, Chico had charged his remaining weapon to its maximum capacity. Now he walked with an easy confidence, secure in the knowledge that any one of those eight-millimeter spikes nestled in his gun might be the one to end the era
of ‘The Fixer’ in Dockside. Then an idea came into his head, a thought both subtle and seductive.

  Why stop there?

  He could kill The Dwarf, too. Subconsciously, Chico planned as he walked. McGinty, Ribiero, the blond chick with the knockers will also need to go, too. Why these ideas entered his head he could not say, and even more followed. I’ll set up shop and start to push the other crews out. No one will be able to stop me after all. He had the potential to be the biggest boss in Dockside before long. Then the era of Chico Garibaldi would begin.

  It was not the plan that surprised Chico. It was the fact he was making such bold plans at all that took him aback. He had never been ambitious on this level, and the audacity of his new vision thrilled him. If he paid attention, it might occur to him that this newfound drive had not come from him at all. As was often the case with Chico, he remained oblivious to such things. A world of incredible opportunities lay open before him, and it never once dawned on the killer that he viewed it through the veil of another person’s desires. Such insight would be wasted on the man. Even if he knew how much Laura Schneider craved power and control, he would not have cared.

  Passing through the more densely populated areas of Big Woo could be rather depressing. Chico hated the dirty slum with its dead-eyed residents and the permanent stink of trash and squalor. He supposed it looked better these days, but nothing this McGinty character could do would change the people here. The Woo existed for drug fiends and losers, and just because they were in better financial shape did not mean they were not still drug fiends and losers.

  Chico decided to hop an aerocar from the Green and ride into Dockside. He was not sure where to go looking for Kitty right off the bat, but he was certain it would be in Dockside and he did not want to walk all the way there. With the high probability of a fight with Tank and his groupies in the forefront of his mind, he yielded to prudence and prioritized energy conservation. His bionics might run on battery for a long time at normal usage, but banging it out with a monster like Tank burned through a lot of juice. A thrill ran down his spine at the thought of fighting Tankowicz again.

  Relax.

  The word meandered to the front of his mind, a missive from one of his ghosts, no doubt. It was good advice. There was no point in getting worked up over a fight that had yet to start.

  When the car arrived, he hopped in and dialed in the first place he thought of. He did not know if Kitty would be tending bar tonight, but somebody at Hideaway would know where to find her. He spent a long and luxurious moment fantasizing about beating the information out of that oversized asshole, Barney. This daydream warmed his mood and turned the corners of his mouth into a malicious smirk. The injuries he had once sustained at the hands of Rodney’s bouncer had not healed quickly. He vowed to return the favor tonight.

  Should I kill The Dwarf tonight, or hold off?

  Most of the voices in his head agreed that putting it off served no purpose, and so he added that to his list of tasks for the evening. As he worked out the logistics of a Dockside takeover in his head, it became apparent he would need to kill a lot of people before the sun came up. He accepted this with a tradesman’s indifference. Chico had never been afraid of a hard night’s work.

  The car set down about a half a block away from Hideaway. The killer had nearly exited the vehicle before he realized he had no money. Absently, he punched in a corporate code dredged from somewhere in the depths of his subconscious. The screen lit up green and thanked him for riding with City Cab. The dim memory of an old forgotten expense account flitted though his mind and he cracked an oily grin.

  Guess I’m not so broke after all.

  He took a moment to scan Hideaway from across the street before going over. The Dwarf had enough scrambling gear to confuse cop drones, but it was no trouble at all for his new eyes to sort out some details from the noise. The bar thumped with the raucous thrashing of Dockside’s dirtiest nightspot in full rage. Crowded tables and booths sat jammed with men and women drinking too much and talking too loudly. There was no band, but a sea of bodies lurched to the music from the sound system. Teeth-shattering noise from whatever talentless punk band the kids were into this week blared through the walls in a tuneless rhythmic thumping that made his eye lenses vibrate in time.

  There was too much noise, both sonic and electromagnetic, for Chico to pick out specific individuals or weapons. He had been to Hideaway enough times to assume most everyone in there carried a weapon of some kind though. Sweeping his scanners to the back, he saw The Dwarf sitting in his office, as usual. That particular heat signature was unmistakable. Tank did not appear to be inside. Chico imagined he would be comparatively easy to spot and there were no giant hyper-dense men in his scans. This made sense, as Tank’s dislike for Hideaway was common knowledge.

  Satisfied with his recon, Chico realized he had a problem. He had been banned from Hideaway for any hours Kitty was working. The Dwarf had made that quite clear after the last time he tried to get her to see things right. Then Barney had enhanced the lesson with a category-five ass-whupping.

  Chico was sure this time he could handle Barney. That was not the problem. The problem was that forcing his way through the door felt like it might lead to a massacre he was sure would piss Kitty off. In the old days, he would kick the door in and shoot his way to the target. The part of him that was not entirely clueless seemed to recognize that instigating a slaughter at her place of work might not be the best path to securing the affections of his lady love. He was quite sure that women wanted to be talked to, not shot at.

  Chico had come all this way and only at the threshold did he realize he had no clue as to how he wanted to proceed. Collecting Kitty was his main goal, and killing Rodney certainly remained a strong secondary objective. A shootout at the entry felt ill-advised under these conditions.

  He considered running a macro before going inside, then dismissed each in turn. The Gunslinger was only helpful if he intended to immediately kill everyone, and he had just decided this was a non-starter. The Wraith would help him sneak past The Dwarf’s electronic security, but he was not sure why he would want to do that either. The Medic was just a life-support sub-routine to keep him alive and control pain, the Bat helped him navigate under electromagnetic blackout, and the Brute would override the safety features in his prosthetics. All his high-end hardware and firmware was going to be useless for the simple task of wooing his woman.

  “Damn it all,” he grumbled under his breath and began to cross the street. He would just have to hope that nobody recognized him. He certainly looked very different, and if the hood stayed low and the doorman was not given a reason to look too closely, he had a chance to slip inside without incident. The viewing panel slid open at his sharp knock, and the beady eyes of Barney squinted down at the figure.

  “Let me in, man.” Chico pitched his voice off its usual note and added, “I’m new in town and I heard that this is the place to go for work.” The lapel of his coat slid back at a touch, revealing the telltale strap of his shoulder holster. Hideaway was the only place Chico knew of where slinging iron made it easier to get inside.

  “Gotcha,” Barney huffed. “Sure thing. Keep that hog leg in its saddle if you want to go home with all your pieces, though.” Chico heard the door locks clacking and beeping. It slid back to reveal the dim red haze of Hideaway in full roar. The hulking doorman blocked much of the scene, but no mere man could hold back the pure visceral hedonism on display just beyond that imposing bulk.

  “Count on it,” Chico whispered from under his hood and stepped past Barney. His eyes immediately picked out faces and assigned reticles to targets they had marked from across the street. Data scrolled in neat lines along his field of vision as weapons were located, known felons identified, and other relevant tidbits were gleaned from his surroundings. A strange feeling of sad nostalgia tugged at the edge of his subconscious. He had been a regular here for a long time, and he could still remember why. The noise, the drugs, the wom
en and the fights all came back to him now. This had been a place of great comfort to him in his previous life. Then his gaze swept of its own accord over to the spot where Nico had died, and those warm memories turned to acid in his blood.

  Focus!

  The word echoed in his head, and he winced at a rebuke felt rather than heard. Sharp and disapproving, it carried the impression of a schoolteacher snapping a ruler against the desk to startle a drowsy child. That sent an angry mental slap back to whichever ghost had directed the reprimand. Chico Garibaldi was no child to be chastised, not even by his own demons.

  His pride assuaged, the killer immediately set himself back to the task at hand. That this had been the point all along was an irony lost to him. Once he had scanned most of the patrons, he began a measured stalk toward the bar. Cavorting bodies undulated around him as he knifed through the swarming dance floor. Sweat-slick and hot to the touch, a hundred half-clad youths of all genders and configurations presented a moving forest of swaying bodies that Chico had to pick through just to cross the room. The sounds and smells of it all assaulted his enhanced senses. The stench of alcohol breath burned his throat and the pulsing and gyrating of the interior lights drove his optics crazy. He kept shifting the filters in an attempt to cancel some of the interference. Whoever was working the lights seemed bound and determined to give the dancing drug addicts seizures.

  Blaze-brains are a fucked-up bunch. The light show probably makes the high more intense. It was certainly giving his optical hardware the fits.

  He found his way to the bar and elbowed up to the rail. He saw Kitty there, twirling two booze bottles at once. Her shorts were short, her shirt two sizes too small. Chico had to smile back at the mere sight of her. Manly pride swelled deep in his heart and something else swelled deep in his pants. A chorus of cheers erupted as a deft sweep of her slender arms filled a line of shot glasses with practiced speed and her face beamed a dazzling smile to her fans. It was a smile that broke the hearts of a dozen hardened thugs at once and guaranteed a thirty percent tip every time.