One Man's War

by Steven Savile

  Mel Kamahi had hidden it well enough, but not too well, all it needed was for him to find the first dossier sanctioning the payments for Sleeper Zero—his file—and it would all start to unravel. A couple of layers down he’d find the termination order. When the corporations wanted you dead, you were dead. No amount of money could save you. And that was the hurrah. Think about it, why would they need the unpredictable, uncontrollable original out there destabilizing their investment when they had everything they needed to make the perfect fighting machine a thousand times over? Ten thousand. An army of Fate’s.

  As of now, he was replaceable.

  That was the truth he hadn’t thought of. He’d made himself obsolete. That was the spanner in the works moment when he realized they’d got his brain patterns in storage and he’d seen with his own two eyes just how easily they could re-pattern anyone to give them his unique skillset.

  Why would the corporation want to keep him alive?

  Then it was just a short hop skip and a jump to realizing just how much trouble he was in, us to the left, the corporations to the right, nowhere to run except back to the Gene Sculpt Clinic in Dubai where he thought his brain images were in storage, playing right into my hands.

  God, I’m good.

  I am.

  All humility aside, he was dancing to my tune.

  I wanted him frightened.

  Frightened men make mistakes.

  I wanted to enjoy this.

  It was a once in a lifetime chance to savor revenge.

  Fate was a dead man walking.

  He just didn’t know it yet.

  But he would, any second now.

  I am a very bad man.

  I am.

  “Time to have some fun,” I said, and triggered the first explosion.

  The shockwaves rocked the building.

  We could see the way the walls bowed outwards, barely contained by the tolerances of glass, iron, and steel, stretched to the limits all carefully calculated to add to the illusion of an attack, and watched intently as Fate’s team took up defensive stations as they waited for the smoke to clear. They couldn’t see us because we weren’t there, but they didn’t know that. I triggered the first audio, which sounded like a barrage of gunfire and ran a brief sequence that let off some of the squibs. If it looks like a fish and sounds like a fish, it’s a fish. This looked like an attack, sounded like an attack, so to the guys in there this was an attack.

  Another controlled detonation shook the foundations.

  The explosions were important. We hadn’t had time to rig hydraulics to fake the aftershocks, so we needed the next best thing, real honest to god damage. The majority of tricks we’d employ in the fake attack were digital though, and far less spectacular. They would, of course, look very, very real on Fate’s screens, which was the important thing. Mel had created a layer of damage simulations she’d lay across the feeds from Fate’s cameras to make it look as though the corridors leading up to their redoubt were in ruin, lots of smoke, debris, twisted metal, a few screaming people. I’d seen it before. He’d buy it. She was that good. Half the time, I think she could have actually pulled the whole con off without us, and just liked to let me feel useful.

  I watched Fate on a dozen screens.

  That meant I had twelve different views of that glorious moment when he first saw my hologram out in the plaza.

  They’re right, you really do turn white when you see a ghost.

  He stared, and he stared.

  Then, as far as he was concerned, my ghost stepped back into the shadows. The guttersnipe had killed the hologram.

  He knew I was coming for him.

  I’d emerge later, inside, from a different projector, cementing the illusion. I wanted Fate to feel the noose tightening around his neck. It needed to feel remorseless. No matter how he countered, no matter what tricks he tried, I wanted him to know that nothing he did was working. And I knew how he would respond to most eventualities—we’d fought side-by-side through fifty conflicts. You learned a lot about a man in that time.

  I’d planted several remote-triggered holographic projectors inside the compound.

  He could blow three of them sky high, the fourth would still come online no matter how much damage was done, how many hollow points ripped into the walls, how many detonations went off or supporting walls came down, the sheer relentless progress of my ghost would appear inevitable. One by one those holographic projections would come online always a little closer to where Fate was dug in until there was nowhere left to run.

  Then Fate would use whatever he could get his hands on to bargain for his life.

  Which was exactly what I wanted.

  It worked like a charm.

  The final hologram flickered into life no more than thirty feet from his door.

  I spoke to Fate through his wireless comms link. I could have used the hidden speakers, but the idea of being right there inside his head just appealed too much.

  I could see him trying to work out what trickery I was employing, how we’d hijacked his radio, and come to the realization that he was working on the same frequency we’d always operated on. Old habits die hard. Bleeders die harder. The projection was far enough away—and thus small enough on the screen—that he couldn’t see that its lips weren’t moving as I said, “I only want the files, Fate. That’s it. I couldn’t give a shit about you. What happened between us, that’s the past. I’m a big boy, I’ll get over it. But you need to know I don’t particularly want to kill you, you have options. You don’t have to die here. Just give me what I want, and I’ll forget you ever existed.”

  That was so close to the truth it hurt.

  “You never were that forgiving in life, Marco,” Fate said, grimly. “Why should I think you’ll be that forgiving in death?” He seemed to be looking directly at me. It was unnerving. His gaze stripped away the levels of anonymity and distance between us. Mel had rigged the webcam in his screen to relay its video feed back to us. He didn’t even know it was on, never mind broadcasting. It was an old hack. Anything more sophisticated, I’m almost sure he’d have spotted. Sometimes the old ways are the best. He stared at the grainy image of my hologram out in the corridor beyond the room he was holed up in, waiting for me to answer him.

  “I’m a new man,” I said.

  “Suppose I believe you,” Fate said, tentatively. “What’s so important about this information? What is it I’m letting you get your hands on? Are we talking nuclear winter level shit here, or just menopausal-bitch-intent-on-making-things-bad-for-you kind of thing?”

  “It’s private,” I said. It was.

  “Oh come, come, you don’t expect me to put out and not get something in return?”

  “I’m not in the mood to bargain or make deals.”

  “Pity,” Fate said. “It’d be like old times, you whining, me making you my bitch.”

  I let him have his moment.

  Well, I gave him maybe ten seconds to enjoy it then dropped the hammer. I killed the remote hologram, counted to ten, and triggered the last one, which came to life in the corner of the room, just on the periphery of Fate’s vision. He turned his head, doing an almost comic double take, then just muttered, “Oh, you clever, clever fucker, Marco.” He didn’t waste any ammo. He saw through the illusion. He was meant to. The whole point was that I wanted him to know I’d been in there already, that I’d breached their security, and that I could have had whatever it was I wanted and disappeared without ever facing off with him.

  I hadn’t intended on activating this last hologram. I don’t know why I did. Fate, I guess. Just seeing him in there riled me. Stripped me of my calm, calculating edge. If it had been Gant or Tenebrae that had pulled a stunt like this right at the end, I’d have gone off my fucking nut and torn a strip off them, left Gant hobbling around gelded, and I don’t even want to admit where my mind just went to with her. It was a dark, dark place. I’d blown my load.

  “Surprise,” I said, wishing I’d shown a l
ittle more restraint instead of being hungry to show Fate who was in charge. It’s arrogance. I know it is. What’s the point of being the cleverest person in the room if no one else knows you are?

  “What’s your game?”

  I thought about saying nothing, but I’d already played my cards. He wasn’t going to go rooting through the n-server if he thought I’d already been in there and got whatever it was I was after. I needed to think on my feet, find some way to recover the situation.

  I hate doing stupid things.

  I tried to think, but only ended up speaking before I’d thought it through. “What if I told you two days ago I’d stood exactly where you are right this second, hands braced on the same dumb terminal, and rigged a bomb that is counting down as we speak, ticking out the last seconds of your life?”

  “I’d say well played,” Fate said. “But I don’t think you’d do that. Not your style. Women poison, fanatics bomb, I think you’d want to be up close when you stuck the knife in, nice and personal, looking me in the eye and coming out with some pithy line because that’s the kind of bastard you have always been.”

  “People change.”

  “Are you talking about you or me?”

  “Maybe both of us.”

  “Serious question,” Fate said, looking straight at me through the monitor. “What’s your win here, Marco? What will make you happy? What result has both of us walking away from this mess in one piece to play again another day?”

  It was the million dollar question. What would make me happy? It wasn’t just about killing Fate. If it had been, I’d have done that days ago.

  “I want to break you,” I said. It was the first truthful thing I’d said to him in a long time. “I don’t mean kill you. I’ve got absolutely no interest in you being dead, or in you bleeding, Randall. I want to break you. I want to leave you so emotionally shattered you curl up in a corner, just rocking back and forth in your own shit wishing it was all over.”

  “Well, I’ll be honest,” Fate said. “I’m not sure I can work with that. What’s in it for me?”

  “Nothing. But you asked what would make me happy.”

  “Good point. Okay, let’s revise that, what’s the least you’d consider a win? Maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle, beat the Corps for once?”

  “I want what’s on the n-server,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you, Marco. You never were a very good liar,” oh if only you knew, my friend, if only you knew. “I don’t think there’s anything on there—or if there is, you’ve already been in and got it. Despite what you said, this is all about us. You and me.”

  I smiled a ‘fuck you’ smile.

  “Look for yourself.” It took a moment for what I was saying to sink in, like a dare. “If you doubt me, look for yourself. You’re in there. The system is wide open to you. Look. And then when you know what it is they’ve got you defending, maybe you’ll change your mind?”

  Do it, I urged silently. It was a bloody good job he couldn’t see my face.

  “Is this your great plan? You want me to fuck around inside my employer’s system, get caught, and end up in corporate jail? It’s not exactly audacious, Marco.”

  “Just do it,” I said. “I won’t tell if you don’t. Or are you frightened you can’t pull it off with me watching? Never had you pegged for performance anxiety?”

  His fingers moved involuntarily, and I realized he was triggering a command to take the terminal down into root mode and start digging around in the n-server. Without knowing what he was looking for it could take a while, even if Mel had planted a few nice juicy breadcrumbs for him to follow.

  “What am I looking for?” He asked.

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” I said. I wasn’t giving him any more than that.

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “Never a truer word, eh?” Fate said.

  Beside him the other Bleeders he’d brought in were milling around aimless and obviously more than a little anxious, not enjoying our reunion. They didn’t know how to react. It was throwing them off their game. They expected to fight. They were prepared for it. When you go into a combat situation a lot of the time, you are psyching yourself up, getting the blood and adrenalin pumping. When you stand around doing nothing, not even waiting—where at least you are tense, on edge—then you climb down. It’s just natural. You can’t be on indefinitely. It just doesn’t work that way. We were denying them the chance to do what they were good at: bleeding.

  This whole barter-taunt thing we’d got going on was out of their comfort zone.

  A lot of what happened next would be down to their inexperience.

  The shooting would start soon enough. Fate and I both knew that. The standoff was purely temporary. The one thing Fate hadn’t realized was that I’d already decided exactly how it would begin, not just when and where.

  “You can turn that stupid thing off, you know?” Fate said, meaning the hologram.

  “I can,” I agreed. “But I rather like how uncomfortable it is making you.”

  “Of course you do.”

  I couldn’t see what was happening on the screen, so had no real way of knowing how close Fate was to the Sleeper Zero file. The only thing I knew for sure was that he hadn’t found it yet.

  That changed a minute later.

  It was the rhythm of his typing that gave it away—it quickened and became just that little bit more erratic than it had been a few seconds earlier, and then stopped dead.

  I waited, watching his face, waiting for the truth about Sleeper Zero to sink in.

  There was no mistaking it then.

  I resisted the temptation to think my job here was done. It wasn’t. Things were just starting to get interesting.

  These are the little victories you have to savor.

  Another string of commands, another twist of the face. Mel’s gingerbread trail was tantalizing. Deliberately so. I knew there was an image of the meat factory we’d stumbled into on our penultimate gig, that was the hook along with the promise of Sleeper Zero’s identity. He didn’t look at me. He kept executing commands, ignoring everything around him. Finally, he looked up and said simply, “Was this your doing, Marco?”

  He could have meant it two ways: one did I plant the material, or two did I engineer the whole thing that would end ultimately in his replacement and death. It was a good thing he couldn’t see my face.

  “It’s too big a coincidence,” he continued. “You’re after some buried files in the n-server, and I just happen to be the subject of them. You really must try harder next time,” Fate mocked.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” I lied. “You’re not the subject of anything. I was paid to retrieve information that proves collusion between two of the major corps, GenX and Warwulf-Blaze, we are talking massive manipulation, including the deliberate production of genetically enhanced foodstuff containing rapid carcinogens in an attempt to regulate population control. They are deliberately killing non-profitable people, Randall. I couldn’t give a fuck about you. This is bigger than you.” And if it had been true, it would have been. The important thing was Mel Kamahi had buried the right ‘proofs’ for that story right alongside the whole Sleeper Zero reveal.

  I knew he’d found them when Fate muttered a guttural, “Fuck.”

  I didn’t push it. I waited for him to make the first move.

  “Marco?”

  “What?”

  “We need to call a truce. Like you said, this thing is bigger than me, bigger than you. I can help you. I’m on the inside. I can get this stuff out for you and make it look like I did my job here at the same time. We can both be winners here.” And there was the Randall Fate I knew and loved, always looking for the angle.

  “And I should just trust you? After what happened?”

  “I’m trusting you, dude,” he said, bluntly. “Pick a rendezvous, pick the meet time, control everything. I’ll turn up, and we can tra
de off the intel. You get exactly what you need, I get to pay you back for before, and we draw a line under it. Shit… I might even need to hire you myself, bro, the way things are going. You’re the best Bleeder out there. What do you say?”

  “We’d need to sell it,” I said. “They’ve got cameras everywhere, all angles covered. We’d need to make it believable. I can’t just turn my crew around and walk away. No one is gullible enough to buy that.”

  “So that’s exactly what we do,” Fate said. “We put on a fireworks display.”

  “Even so… I don’t know,” I said, trying not to sound too eager to bite his hand off.

  “I know you’ve got eyes in here, watch me,” Fate said, and I saw him draw a small thumb-drive from one of the pockets of his suit and slip it into the interface. “I’m downloading everything you need right now. You can watch me carry it out of here. I can’t do more than that.”

  He was downloading more than that, of course. He was pulling everything he could find about Sleeper Zero from the n-server, too and using the pretense of downloading my files as cover.

  I’m glad that my old mentor is as predictably clever and devious as ever.

  He pocketed the drive. “I’ve got it. Everything. Now let’s make this exciting for the folks at home, shall we?”

  “One thing,” I said.

  “Name it,” Fate said, a little too readily. He still had that habit of letting his mouth make promises his ass couldn’t keep.

  “Someone has to die. There’s no way your paymasters would believe we walked away without casualties.”