Ure Infectus

by Caleb Wachter

  As soon as she had cleared the hatch, it closed behind her and its locking bolts reengaged. “How far from here, Eve?” Masozi asked, thankful that the suit prevented her from smelling whatever might have otherwise been wafting into her nostrils.

  “This plan involves taking the Governor backstage between sets,” Eve replied as they reached the bottom of the ladder and Masozi’s HUD showed a relatively straight path to their destination. “With the coliseum about a kilometer from here, we should be in position in ten minutes.”

  Masozi wound her way through the sewer tunnels, glad to find that the city’s sewage appeared to be confined to a large pipe running down each tunnel. Running while wearing the suit required considerably less effort than she had expected, and she came to suspect it was less draining than moving without it.

  Before long she came to the end of their route and Masozi looked up to see a ladder which looked nearly identical to the one which she had descended eight minutes earlier.

  “You made good time, honey,” Eve congratulated in her insufferable tone, “now we need to make our way to the Governor’s dressing room; the first intermission should come between thirty and forty minutes from now. My latest data packet suggests the Governor’s security should be relatively light.”

  “Why is that?” Masozi asked after taking just two steps up the ladder. “Why would the Governor’s security be light on such a public occasion?”

  Eve’s image looked to be examining something small but she shrugged after a few moments. “Doesn’t say, babe,” she said with a hint of surprise. “That’s odd…although it does say that as soon as we go through that hatch there’ll be no coming back this way. You sure you want to do this?” she asked intently.

  Masozi actually stopped to consider the question. Something wasn’t right about the situation, but try as she might she simply couldn’t put the pieces together. She knew there was something she had missed, or some connection she had failed to make, but even after several minutes of silent contemplation she was unable to determine what that might have been.

  “Yes,” she said with a sharp nod, “Governor Keno is, as far as I can tell, one of the few truly evil people in this System…and regardless of her involvement in my own situation, she deserves to pay the price for betraying her people. If someone like her isn’t held accountable to our society’s most sacred law,” she continued, realizing as she did so that she was trying—and succeeding—to convince herself of the truth of the words she spoke, “then what good are those laws?”

  Eve, who had been listening intently, shrugged her shoulders lightly. “It’s all the same to me, bakeshop,” she said indifferently. “But personally I’m hoping we see this through; our last protocols won’t come online until we step through that hatch and I can’t wait to see how much fun they’ll be!”

  Masozi shook her head in bewilderment as she resumed her climb up the ladder. “Remind me to have your program modified if we’re supposed to be spending this much time together in the future,” she quipped.

  “Hey!” Eve protested, placing her hands on her hips and glaring. “I don’t talk about rearranging your brain cells, do I?”

  In spite of herself, Masozi laughed at the joke just as her fingers closed around the hatch. After just a second Eve managed to open it and they stepped through.

  Just when the hatch closed and Masozi took a look at her surroundings, realization seemed to slam into her mind with the force of a falling asteroid and when she realized what she had been missing she felt a glacier of cold fury begin to grind through the pit of her stomach.

  “You bastard,” she growled before taking a steadying breath and grimly setting off down the corridor which Eve had indicated in the HUD.

  Chapter XXVI: Stick It In and Twist It

  “Wake up, Adjuster,” Jericho heard Agent Stiglitz’s voice. He was vaguely aware that he was lying on his side, and that his right arm was free of the bulky restraints he had been wearing just before losing consciousness.

  He looked down numbly at his left arm and saw that it was no longer there. After a moment he realized that most of it was still there, but that it now ended just below the elbow in a black, chemically-cauterized stump.

  Jericho’s mind was nearly overcome with the pain, but it wasn’t just the sensation that threatened to overwhelm what remained of his reason. Neither was the emotional trauma associated with losing a limb—a reality he instantly processed and accepted upon seeing the mangled remains of his forearm and hand lying in pieces on the floor.

  The truth was the simple, physiological insult to his body’s systems was becoming too much, and soon even Agent Stiglitz’s carefully-administered treatments would be unable to neutralize them. Jericho knew he was nearing the end of his ability to endure the man’s torture, and he looked up with something more akin to desperation than he had ever expected to feel as he checked the light above the door.

  His heart skipped a beat when he saw it was still red, and he very nearly collapsed into a whimpering heap—but then the light flashed blue. He wasn’t completely sure he had actually seen it—or if his mind had created it in a moment of broken delirium—so he fixed his eyes on it as Agent Stiglitz came over and reached down beneath Jericho’s armpits to prop him up on the bed.

  The light flashed blue again, and just before Agent Stiglitz’s eyes tracked with Jericho’s the light returned to its previous, uninterrupted red color. Jericho knew that his suffering was about to come to an end, one way or another, and that was enough for him to cling to the hope that not everything he had put in motion would be wasted.

  “Your neurochemistry is close to a cascade failure,” Agent Stiglitz said calmly, as though he was discussing the menu at a restaurant prior to ordering. “Your conditioning has proven impressive, which means that you of all people should know there is only so much that an unmodified human can withstand.” Agent Stiglitz knelt beside Jericho, projecting supreme confidence as he placed a hand on Jericho’s shoulder. “There is no shame in breaking, Jericho,” he said soothingly, and Jericho knew that, even with his newfound hope, he would soon succumb to the man’s brutal assault on his faculties. “Give me what I need and I’ll end this,” he said, his voice sounding almost musical as he added, “I’ll do it quickly; I hate to see you suffer this way.”

  Jericho looked down at the bed and began to whimper before recollecting himself and nodding. “All right,” he said tremulously as his shoulders slumped, “I’ll tell you…but I need you to do something for me.”

  Stiglitz gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and he said, “Say no more.” The Agent stood and withdrew a single, half-smoked cigar from a tiny pocket near his waist and smelled it, seeming to savor the aroma and Jericho instantly recognized it as the same cigar he had left in Mayor Cantwell’s office—the same one he’d put out on that absurd chair just before blowing the sitting Mayor’s head off. “Despite what you may think, I have a deep-seated respect for traditionalists,” Stiglitz said as he neatly trimmed the end of the cigar after rolling it into a near-perfect cylinder, “it’s only by examining them that we can see where we have gone wrong in the past.” When he was finished, he held the cigar before Jericho and said, “Incidentally, I learned everything I needed to know about you from this cigar…did you know that?”

  Jericho shook his head as the pain in his ruined, left arm began to throb uncontrollably. "You wouldn't have a light, would you?” he asked bleakly.

  Stiglitz smiled in satisfaction, clearly having predicted the request as he produced a single match from the same compartment. “Of course; what else are friends for?”

  Just as Stiglitz moved to light the match, Jericho said, “Ure Infectus.”

  There was a click from the head of the bed just as Jericho began to dive toward it. Stiglitz’ eyes tracked him perfectly, his heavily-modified neurology easily coping with the apparently desperate lunge, and he made to intercept Jericho. But Stiglitz’ motions were surprisingly slow—surprisingly for Agent Stiglitz
, anyway, while Jericho had expected precisely such a ‘surprise’ as his trap metaphorically slammed shut on the sadistic agent.

  Jericho rolled past the head of the bed just as a hilt sprang out the end of the bed’s tubular, metal frame. It was the same monomolecular blade the assassin had tried to kill him with at Pemberton’s safe house, and Jericho barely managed to get his fingers wrapped around it before Stiglitz’s metal-boned body crashed into the bed and bent its frame as badly as a small hover-bike impact would have done.

  Jericho had barely managed to get free of the man’s immediate reach and as he did so he spun the sword in a wide, sweeping arc which went into—and effortlessly through—Stiglitz’s left leg, severing it entirely mid-thigh.

  The look of surprise on Stiglitz’s face was probably more satisfying to Jericho than anything the other, sadistic man had experienced in the last hour and a half of torture. Without fanfare, or gloating of any kind, Jericho brought the blade around and sliced cleanly through Stiglitz’s nearest arm a second before it would have made contact with Jericho’s body, and it flew off just above the elbow.

  Unable to balance himself, Agent Stiglitz’s teetered and crashed into the crumpled remains of the lightweight bed and Jericho quickly sliced his other arm off just below the shoulder.

  “I hope you understand,” Jericho said through gritted teeth as his vision narrowed, “I’m not one for taking chances.”

  To Agent Stiglitz’s credit, he lashed out with his lone, remaining limb in an attempt to kick Jericho’s leg out. But Jericho had already moved the monomolecular blade to intercept the man’s leg. He did little more than hold the weapon in place as Stiglitz literally kicked his own leg off just below the knee, proving that even his heavily-augmented physiology was no match for such a cruelly efficient, shockingly elegant weapon.

  Jericho was seized with a coughing spasm for a moment, but he never took his eyes off the Agent. When he had regained control of his lungs, Jericho stood over the other man and noticed that barely any of the Stiglitz' blood had escaped what remained of his body.

  A cursory glance revealed that Stiglitz’s skeleton was cybernetic, and much of his musculature was synthetic as well. In fact, the more Jericho looked at the man, the less like a man he appeared.

  “Well played, Adjuster,” Stiglitz congratulated, his face betraying none of the agony he should have felt. “A suppression field…I never even considered the possibility that a backwater detention facility like this would have one.”

  “Oh, it didn’t,” Jericho assured him as he looked down and saw his left arm had begun to bleed more than he would have liked as it leaked his vital fluids into a puddle on the floor. “I had it installed just after we sifted through the raw data feeds at Investigator Masozi’s apartment building the day of Cantwell’s Adjustment.”

  Stiglitz shook his head in amazement. “Impressive…most impressive,” he said with grudging respect. “May I assume that the fair Investigator is currently carrying out what was to be your mission?”

  “You can make an ass out of yourself if you want to,” Jericho growled, fighting against the growing waves of pain in his ruined arm, “but you’re going to have to leave me out of it.”

  “How did you withstand the interrogation,” Agent Stiglitz asked with a hollow grin, “at least tell me that?”

  “Simple conditioning,” Jericho replied as the door to the cell opened and a hazmat team entered, followed by a small medical team, “it’s amazing what a human mind can do with enough practice…and faith. But, if I’m being truthful,” he added grudgingly, “you almost had me.”

  “So you are a zealot,” Stiglitz said as the hazmat team ran a series of scans on the disparate pieces of his body.

  “Not a zealot,” Jericho replied solemnly, “just a patriot who still believes in what his nation was supposed to be even after its politicians have forgotten.”

  “Then…as a fellow patriot,” Stiglitz said, actually managing to prop himself up slightly amid the wrecked bed, “I must say that you’ve earned my admiration. Pulling me out of my position at Keno’s side to create an opening for your subordinate…an inspired feint,” he said grudgingly. “It seems I was not the hunter—you were. And that mistake will now cost me my life.”

  “Don’t feel too bad,” Jericho said tightly as one of the medical technicians began to inject his arm with a series of drugs, “you’re not the first person to fall victim to his own arrogance…and you won’t be the last. But you’re right: there’s no way we could have taken both of you in one place.” He knelt just far enough from Stiglitz’s body that he knew the Agent would be unable to reach him, and Jericho said smoothly, “See…I learned everything I needed to know about you back in New Lincoln when you didn’t take a shot at me through the window while you had the chance. You had nothing to lose by taking that shot…except the chance to indulge your ego and curiosity.”

  “Well said,” Stiglitz said with an approving nod. “So well said, in fact, that I’m going to give you a gift before you end me.”

  “Not sure I’m interested,” Jericho said, drawing the sword back as he stood. The assembled technicians scattered like leaves in the wind as he did so, with looks of varying trepidation on their faces.

  “Oh…I’m sure you are,” Stiglitz said with a confident smirk.

  Jericho was tempted to cleave his skull in two and be done with him, but something in the man’s affect suggested he might actually know what he was talking about. “Let’s hear it,” he said evenly.

  Agent Stiglitz’s smirk spread to a dark, savage grin, “You aren’t as clever as you think you are, Adjuster. My simulations suggested a three percent chance of this particular outcome, so we took the necessary precautions.” He threw his head back and laughed before continuing, “A contingency has already been put in place; as soon as the Investigator assassinates Governor Keno, the city of Abaca will die a grizzly, savage death…and not long after the city dies, this entire colony will become an uninhabitable wasteland—an enduring monument to the dangers of men like you running amok with a supposed public mandate.”

  Jericho considered his words and, in a handful of seconds, came to a conclusion. “Thank you,” he said before lashing out with the monomolecular blade. He easily severed Stiglitz’s head from his body in a nearly bloodless decapitation, and he pointedly turned his back on the likely-still-conscious Agent’s head.

  The lead doctor of the team recovered from the shock of Stiglitz’s death more quickly than the rest of her team and she stepped forward to say, “We have to get you to a surgical suite.”

  Jericho shook his head, “I don’t have time.”

  She pointed to the small, cryogenic container one of her team had just finished placing what was left of Jericho’s arm into. “That container can hold your tissues indefinitely, but your wounds need cleaning and dressing.”

  Jericho shook his head again, “No, Doctor; I’ve got more important business. You,” he snapped to the technician who was just about to close the box, “take that dross out of there.”

  “Dross?!” the doctor replied incredulously. “Without that container your tissues will decay and we won’t be able to re-attach them!”

  “Fuck my arm,” Jericho said grimly, gesturing to Stiglitz’s disembodied head, “put that thing in there. And send one of your techs with me—I’ve got to get to Abaca before it’s too late.” He dropped the monomolecular blade and held out a hand expectantly, “My link, please.”

  The doctor had a look of impotent fury on her face, but she took out the link and slapped it into his palm. “You are a stubborn bunch,” she scowled.

  “Nice seeing you, too, Val,” he said dryly, immensely grateful that the painkillers they had given him finally reached therapeutic levels in his bloodstream. He activated the link before remembering, “Jeff sends his regards, by the way.”

  The doctor threw her hands into the air before finally relenting, “Who am I to argue; if he doesn’t want his arm, that’s fine wit
h me. Set the Agent’s tissues to perfuse on the bypass unit before freezing his…remains.”

  While she coordinated the efforts of her team, Jericho punched in an access code to the link and was rewarded with the image of Eve’s busty, sexualized avatar. “Someone need a pickup?” she asked before blowing a large bubble of virtual gum and smacking it loudly enough to make a nearby technician jump.

  “Overdrive the Tyson’s engines if you have to,” Jericho grimaced as pain shot up his left arm and his vision narrowed, “but come get me and then set a course for Abaca—Masozi’s in trouble and we’ve got to rescue her.”

  “You got it, babe,” she replied smartly. “Charging the Tyson’s drives now; ETA your position is six minutes.”

  “Good work, Eve,” he said as he made his way out of the cell, with one of the kit-carrying medical technicians in tow. “Home in on my signal…we don’t have much time,” he added as a wave of vertigo came over him, but he successfully fought to remain conscious.

  He needed to stay awake at least until he got on board the Tyson. If he didn’t there was a very real possibility that Masozi would die for doing nothing but her job.

  Jericho hadn’t spared her from that fate back in New Lincoln just to see it play out here on Philippa. Besides, she had done everything he’d hoped she would, so her predicament was more his responsibility than her own.

  Every step she had taken, and everything she had seen since leaving New Lincoln, had been carefully engineered by Jericho—including her discovery of the fake nuclear weapon aboard the Tyson. The only real deception on his part had been the scene in the tavern, and if he was any judge of her deductive reasoning skills then she had already realized her unwitting complicity in his scheme. And now, for the first time since he had met her, he couldn’t confidently predict her reaction to what she would encounter.