Gunwitch: Rebirth

by Niall Teasdale

  Annette nodded. ‘Is there any danger of contagion?’

  ‘Yes, but this suit was overkill. We’ve run the air in the room through contaminant analysis and there are no airborne pathogens present. Did the child touch her mother? Did anyone else?’

  ‘No, I asked. And I kept everyone out of the room when I got there. Terri knows not to disturb her mother when Jenny’s sleeping unless it’s an emergency and Terri hadn’t quite got to that stage yet.’

  ‘She seems like a resilient child.’

  Annette gave a half-smile. ‘When you grow up around here, I can’t imagine being soft is a survival characteristic.’

  Mitre was about to answer when a nurse called his name, marching over to him with a data tablet. ‘Doctor Mitre, the lab sent over the initial results on Miss Harker’s blood work.’

  Mitre took the tablet with a smile of thanks, activated the screen, and flicked over it. He frowned, one finger tickling the display, and then sighed. ‘I was hoping they would identify whatever is causing this.’

  ‘They couldn’t find anything?’ Annette asked.

  ‘They found something. What is an entirely different matter. I’ve never seen a virus quite like it.’

  Annette held out a hand. ‘May I? I’ve some training in biochemistry and I’m not local. Perhaps it’s an import from outside the enclave.’

  ‘Almost certainly.’ Mitre handed her the tablet and Annette peered at the micrograph on display. ‘Then we would need to consider how Miss Harker came into contact with it and… You do recognise it.’

  He was probably picking up on the way her face had fallen, but Annette stayed quiet for a second, checking over the chemical analysis. ‘I don’t know what it is, exactly, but I know what it’s not. It isn’t a virus. Not a natural one anyway.’

  ‘It’s engineered?’

  ‘It’s certainly engineered, but not the way you mean. This is a protein-based nanovirus. This is a complex, microscopic machine built out of organic molecules. Your antiviral treatments won’t work.’

  Mitre frowned. ‘You’re sure about this? We can’t make things like that.’

  ‘I’m sure and there are people who can make them, just not here.’ Which was not exactly true because Annette could have made them if she had wanted to put the effort in, though she preferred an inorganic approach for most circumstances. She handed the tablet back to Mitre. ‘I… should tell Terri what’s happening. I’d keep up the transfusions, treat the symptoms, and do more of that praying you mentioned.’

  Turning, Annette started down the corridor to the waiting room where she had left Terri. If there was time, Annette knew she could create something which would seek out and destroy the nanomachines in Jenny’s body, but Jenny did not look like she had the weeks it would take. And Annette would be trying out an untested project on a friend. No, something suitable for this kind of application would go on the list, but rushing into it would not help.

  Terri was sitting right where Annette had left her five minutes earlier. She was a cute child, maybe a little undergrown for her age and still in the large eyes stage. Green eyes and coppery hair: she was going to take after her mother when she grew up. Right now, she was waiting patiently for Annette to return with a plastic cup of hot chocolate in one hand and the leg of a somewhat scruffy teddy bear in the other. She looked up as Annette returned to sit beside her.

  ‘Is Mommy going to be okay?’ Terri asked. She never seemed to raise her voice and took more or less anything in her stride. Maybe she would grow up with more sense than her mother.

  Annette did not believe that lying to children was a good idea. She had had plenty of that from her father and was not going to start doing it to Terri. However, not telling her the whole truth was another matter. ‘Doctor Mitre is doing everything he can to make sure that she will be.’

  Terri took a sip of her drink and then licked her lips. ‘She’s really sick, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, hun, she is. You’re going to have to come stay with me for a little while. Just until she’s better.’

  ‘You and Mickey?’

  ‘Yes, me and Mickey.’

  Terri nodded. ‘That’s okay then. Can we go now? I’m tired.’

  ‘We can go. To be honest, this place is making me feel tired too.’

  ~~~

  Annette opened her apartment door and immediately placed a finger over her lips before turning and pointing at the bed. Sarah, who was standing in the doorway, peered around to see Terri, asleep, with Mickey curled up beside her. Sarah just about melted.

  ‘That’s so cute,’ Sarah whispered and almost tip-toed into the room.

  ‘Mickey’s not allowed on the bed,’ Annette replied, ‘except in dire circumstances. I figure this counts. Terri’s… coping. Way better than I think she should be, but she’s coping. She’s worried though, and I don’t want her alone tonight.’

  ‘Okay. Is that why you said I should come over? Are you going out?’

  ‘I’m going out,’ Annette replied, shutting the door.

  ‘Got a late job?’

  Annette did not answer immediately. Instead, she walked over to a case she had pulled out from under the bed before Terri had fallen asleep. She opened it, reached in, and pulled out a black, full-body suit. Sarah could see what looked like armour plates in the case now that the suit was removed. ‘I have some work I need to do, sure,’ Annette said.

  Greenland District.

  Taxi cabs came in two forms in the enclave: with a human driver and without. The latter tended to be more trustworthy, but you paid for it and getting one to come out to Brooklyn was an absolute no-go. Cab drivers might inflate their prices, or take a ‘shortcut’ that was actually longer, or they might attempt something more serious if they thought they could get away with it… Or they could be good, honest people just out to make a living, and Annette happened to know one of those.

  ‘Okay, George,’ she said when her navigation app indicated she was in the right general area, ‘just drop me anywhere around here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’

  George was in his forties and showing significant signs of male pattern baldness, and he would probably have been handsome except for an unfortunately bulbous nose. He had been a cop in Brooklyn and Queens, which had resulted in the other reason he visited Industrial Avenue for some friendly entertainment: George’s right hand was a reasonably good but metal-skinned cybernetic replacement. Finding a girl who wanted that touching her could be difficult.

  His former profession also meant that he was inclined to assist when Annette had told him that she was looking into Kerry Clement’s death and needed to get out to a place in Greenland as quietly as possible. ‘You sure about this, Louise? I can get closer. I can come with you if you want the backup.’

  ‘You stay out of this,’ Annette replied, smiling. ‘You head home and pretend you never took a hooker in an armoured bodysuit to Greenland, okay?’

  George pulled his cab over to the side of the road. More of a track really, but it had tarmac laid down. ‘I haven’t seen you. Neither of us were here. Cop killers deserve whatever happens to them.’

  ‘I think this one’s more than just a cop killer, but he’ll get what’s coming to him sure enough. And remember, next time you visit is a freebee, okay?’

  ‘Damn, girl. Do you think I could forget an offer like that?’

  Annette opened the passenger door and slipped out. ‘See you soon, George.’ Then she set off across the fields toward her target.

  ~~~

  The car Kerry had traced for Annette belonged to one Joseph Brian Marlow who lived in a large house in Greenland. Kerry had gone a little further than Annette had asked and done a more thorough search on Marlow. The man had been an epidemiologist, but he was retired. Exactly where he got his money from was an unknown, but he seemed to have plenty of it. The enclave’s taxation bureau had investigated him, but they had found nothing wrong, or they had said they had found nothing wrong. Annette had come to realise that mon
ey could help you get away with just about anything in the enclave.

  Marlow’s slice of Greenland heaven was a walled estate with a house at the centre and landscaped grounds. The south side of those grounds was treed, perfect for Annette to move in closer under cover. She was watchful, taking it easy and scanning for any signs of security systems, but the closer she got to the house, the more she began to realise that she was probably wasting her time.

  It was party night at the Marlow mansion. Maybe every night was party night, but it was certainly swinging now. Annette heard the music, dark with a throbbing backbeat, before she saw anything. The house was large and appeared to be all on one level. The windows were large, but Annette could see heavy blinds over some of them. Through the others, she could see people drinking, a few dancing, others engaged in more intimate forms of couple-based entertainment. There was a pool on one side of the building and there were people in that. The March night air was cool, but the pool had been heated enough to show up on Annette’s thermal imaging; the people in the water were skinny-dipping.

  And then there was the couple, both women, sitting on the edge of the hot tub. At first, Annette thought they were simply necking, but then one of them moved back to pick up a glass of wine and the other’s head rolled back, the blood flowing down over her left breast from a wound on her neck. Annette froze, her vision zooming in to confirm what she was seeing. The wound was short and sharp, a knife wound, not a bite, but the girl’s skin was becoming pallid, her lips were turning blue, and her arms hung limply at her sides. She was dying, and all her companion did was lean in to drink more of the red liquid pumping out of her.

  ‘There’s no such thing as vampires,’ Annette said, quietly, to herself. ‘Vampires are a myth with added gloss from old authors who’d never got laid once in their lives.’ Mind you, the ‘vampire’ she was looking at had pale skin… ‘Don’t be stupid. Aside from that, she’s got nothing.’ Body temperature was normal, clearly there were no fangs. There was a delusion and maybe a trigger. Annette had been thinking that Marlow was experimenting with nanoviral weapons, but maybe this was something else.

  For now, there was work to be done. Annette reached back for one of her pistols, locked a target marker on the vampire girl’s head, and fired. There was a soft hiss, lost in the music, a sickening crunch, and the woman arched backward onto the decking, dropping her victim as she fell. No one else seemed to notice and Annette advanced up the steps to check on both of them. Neither had a pulse.

  ‘Bastard’s gonna pay,’ Annette muttered and looked out from the raised decking area into the house where the guests, or whoever they were, were still partying away as though nothing had happened. She located what looked like the entertainment system set against one wall and locked in her target, and then scanned across to find an open section of the windows. She aimed toward the open window and fired, the bullet veering into the house and slamming into the cabinet of electronics. There were sparks and a couple of startled shrieks, and the music died, which was a huge improvement as far as Annette was concerned. Annette got up from her crouch and headed for the short flight of steps which led down to the pool area.

  She spotted Marlow as soon as he walked out the door. He looked just like his driving licence photo, except maybe a little balder. He still had quite a full head of black hair with no grey in it, but he was thinning over the temples to give a pronounced widow’s peak. He was handsome enough: chiselled features, blue eyes, high cheekbones. When he smiled at her, he made sure his fangs showed.

  ‘You must be Louise,’ Marlow said. He had a good, strong, resonant voice too. ‘Jenny mentioned you. The girl with the guns.’

  ‘Well, Jenny’s in the hospital now. I’m guessing she’s suffering from something you infected her with.’

  ‘I gave her a gift. A gift I have given to many. And guns are of little use against vampires.’

  ‘Tell that to the girl by the pool. You aren’t a vampire, Marlow.’

  Marlow was still smiling. ‘We see better in the dark, we burn in sunlight, we heal quickly, we drink blood. We know that–’

  ‘Vampires don’t need to have their teeth capped to give them fangs, idiot. The natural enamel looks different under ultraviolet light. You contracted a type of disease, Marlow. Instead of a typical virus, this is spread by nanomachines. You’re not a vampire – you’re just delusional.’

  The knowing smile faded a little, draining from Marlow’s eyes. ‘Kill her,’ he said. No one moved and he raised his voice. ‘Kill her! Now!’

  ‘You might as well try,’ Annette said. ‘I can’t let any of you get out of here to infect anyone else.’

  One of the men, naked from the pool, began to rush forward and Annette put a bullet through the bridge of his nose. She raised her left-hand pistol and swept it in an arc. Glass shattered, people screamed and fell.

  ‘Get her!’ Marlow shrieked, but instead of rushing forward, he bolted into the house.

  For now, Annette ignored him, focusing on finishing off his panicked acolytes. She suspected that was a good word for them: Marlow had made a cult out of an infectious disease with him as the high priest. Real vampires might have been a challenge, but these were rich, mostly middle-aged fools, no more dangerous than a typical overfed civilian.

  ‘Vampires,’ Annette muttered as she stepped over a body and into the house, ‘should be cooler than this.’

  The house was more of a challenge. Marlow had run into the corridors behind his lounge and, for now, was shielded from Annette’s thermal vision. She was going to have to move in and hunt him down, but there would be opportunities for him to turn the tables. She swept her weapons back for her pod to reload and then followed the wannabe vampire.

  Internally, the house appeared to have been laid out along only a couple of corridors. One long one ran from side to side, the axis of the building with doors leading off it, but Annette could see a T-junction ahead of her, likely leading to the front of the building. Marlow could have decided to make a run for it, but somehow she doubted it. To run a vampire cult, you had to have an ego…

  ‘Marlow? Come on out. I’ve got something special for you.’ No response. ‘At least you can tell me why you killed Kerry Clement. You found out he ran that search for your car, right? You’ve got someone in the LIPD computer centre and they told you.’

  Marlow stepped out of a door maybe ten metres down the corridor. ‘I have people everywhere,’ he said. Then he raised the pistol he was holding and fired. Something like lightning danced in the air between his gun and Annette’s chest. She felt the charge tickle her skin.

  ‘You are going to have to do so much better than that,’ Annette said and fired a round into the floor at Marlow’s feet. The explosion buffeted his legs, but it was the burning phosphor which made him shriek. He fell, vanishing out of sight into the room he had stepped out of. Annette rushed after him, arriving in time to see him crawling into the cover of a large bed. She stepped around it and aimed one of her pistols at him.

  ‘No!’ Marlow said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve got money, power, I can–’

  ‘You killed one of my few friends, maybe two. If it’s two, you’ve orphaned a little girl and I have no idea what state her mother’s going to be in even if she survives.’

  ‘You can’t kill me, I’m–’

  ‘You’re so wrong.’ Annette put an incendiary round into his chest, blowing his ribcage apart like a piñata, and followed it with a second round to his head. Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the room. The carpet and bedding were starting to smoulder and she wanted a little time to check out the building before the fire caught and the LIPD came to investigate. That was if anyone noticed: the nearest neighbour was over a kilometre away and it was not far from midnight. Maybe she had longer than she was estimating, but there was no sense in taking excessive chances.

  She looked up and down the axial corridor. ‘Now, if I were a rich guy with a safe, where would I hide it…’

  Q
ueens District, 10/3/2117.

  Annette was not entirely surprised to see Bradley and Melch walking down the avenue toward her. In fact, she had expected them earlier, but at least they were paying her a visit.

  ‘Detectives,’ Annette said, nodding to the pair. ‘What brings you to this neighbourhood on such a fine morning?’

  ‘We thought you might like to know that we closed the case on Officer Clement’s murder,’ Bradley replied.

  ‘You got whoever did it?’

  ‘Someone did,’ Melch said, managing to make it sound a lot like an accusation.

  ‘LIPD responded to a report of a fire in Greenland,’ Bradley went on. ‘It looks like someone took out the killer with extreme prejudice, but we found an electrolaser, half melted, beside the body and evidence on the house’s computers that linked this man with Clement. We’ve enough to say we found the guy so we’re closing the case.’

  ‘At least Kerry got some justice,’ Annette said. ‘He was a good cop. A good man.’

  ‘Yes, he was. It may not be the kind of justice I’d have liked to give him, but it’s one sort.’

  ‘Around here, it’s sometimes the best we can get.’

  Bradley opened her mouth, faltered, and then said, ‘That’s not how it’s supposed to work.’

  Annette shrugged. ‘Could be worse. We could be having this conversation in Brooklyn.’