Anno Dracula 1999

by Kim Newman

  No one volunteered, not because they were afraid to be flash-fried minutes before they would be blown up but because no one was big-headed enough to claim they were innocent (or worthy) enough to pass.

  Jun Zero scored low on the worthiness scale so Hal ruled himself out of the running.

  ‘You two,’ he said. ‘Nezumi and Mr Jeperson. It has to be you. I’ve seen what you’re like.’

  ‘Being insufferable might not be disqualification,’ the CVL said, sharply.

  There wasn’t time to protest.

  ‘Likelihood of successful passage ninet—’

  ‘Mute, Lefty.’

  ‘It was going to say “nineteen”,’ said Kuchisake, voice a wobble as if her tongue were slit like her cheeks.

  ‘Ninety-nine,’ Hal corrected her. ‘Point nine, probably.’

  Richard and Nezumi were already decided. Pure of heart.

  Nezumi gave Suzan Good Night Kiss and asked her to look after it.

  ‘User Harold Takahama is also required,’ said Lefty, giving him a little shock.

  ‘But I’m awful,’ he blurted. ‘Ask my Dad. And Cousin Helen.’

  ‘Knowledge of computer systems essential,’ prompted Lefty.

  Hal knew it. His hand wanted to kill him.

  Though the slyboots had covered up his true identity. If he’d tagged Hal as ‘user Jun Zero’, Molinar would want to cut him on the spot.

  Nezumi protected him with her silence. She took him for the reasonable Hal he was now rather than the awful person he’d been before Karl the Chiropterid sucked the worst of Jun Zero out of his brain.

  ‘You don’t have to come, Hal,’ said Nezumi’s boss.

  But, of course, he did.

  The three of them stepped into the light.

  DETECTIVE AZUMA

  Every window had a light behind it. The mechanical monster’s hide was speckled with a thousand glints.

  The eyes shone with life.

  A tail that had been the lower end of an elevator shaft swept over the heads of people in the Plaza. The Daikaiju Building turned and looked out to sea.

  Something was out there, high up – swooping through cloud. Something with a wingspan. And eyelights of its own.

  One of the EarthGuard men stood by the hearse, with a noppera-bō. He looked up, glasses gleaming.

  That guy was a likely perp. Azuma raised his gun.

  Asato laid a hand on his sleeve. She had a way of seeing into souls.

  ‘He’s not one of them,’ she said. ‘Nor is his friend. The faceless one.’

  The pair – Derek and Dr Something, he remembered – hadn’t been with Golgotha in the torture shed. They might not be part of the attack. The doctor had changed a lot in the last few hours.

  Azuma no longer knew who was attacking whom and where he stood.

  Asato, admirably, was focused.

  She still had killers to kill.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘there, by the Sprünt stand. The commander… and Fujiwara.’ Golgotha had made it out of the Daikaiju. He had a lock-box and a machine gun.

  Mitsuru Fujiwara, the inside man, crouched by him.

  Their plan must have gone tits-up along with everyone else’s.

  No one could have foreseen the Great Awakening Dragon.

  Asato racked her automatic and walked towards the killers.

  ‘Fujiwa-aa-ra,’ she wailed, a siren calling sailors to doom.

  The IT bastard heard his name and looked round so fast he whipped his stupid pompadour out of shape. Golgotha levelled his gun at Asato.

  Fujiwara gestured at the Colonel not to fire.

  He straightened, passed his hand through his hair, and smirked smugly. He had that trick with the ladies. It could get him out of this.

  He brought guimauve for the Sakis – who his pal Golgotha had killed – and the yurei advancing on him. Asato’s long, wet dress trailed on the broken flagstones. Barefoot, she had black toenails like a corpse after a week in the water.

  ‘Asato,’ cooed Fujiwara. ‘I have mistletoe. It’s nearly the New Year. It seems as if you’ve… won… my kiss.’

  Asato stepped closer. Her curtain of hair parted.

  Fujiwara saw her wet eye. And her black mouth.

  His pride shredded. He began to show fear.

  ‘You’re a woman,’ he said. ‘You can’t resist me.’

  ‘I’m gender non-binary, you shit.’

  Her hands got to him and he gave up his promised kiss. Her mouth locked over his and she sucked the life out of his lungs. He staggered back, fangs and claws sprouting, and she flat-palmed his ribcage, breaking brittle chest bones. A spur punctured his heart and he crumpled, truly dead. His corpse twisted into a gape-mouthed swastika.

  Golgotha tried to shoot now, but his gun just clicked.

  ‘Powder damp?’ Asato asked.

  She’d done that too.

  When – if ever – it was safe, Azuma would kiss her. He imagined she tasted of the sea. Salty.

  Golgotha dropped the waterlogged gun and opened the lock-box. Inside were the phials from the second suicide bomb. He perched the case on a chunk of concrete and reached for a carton of Blue Label Sprünt from the display stand.

  Phial juice plus Blue Label equals mushroom death.

  Golgotha held a phial in one hand and a carton in the other, ready to clash them together. He told Asato to keep her distance.

  She couldn’t be bothered with all that and shot him in the head.

  As the Colonel collapsed, Derek rushed in and caught the phial. Asato caught the carton.

  Golgotha lay facedown in the rubble.

  Asato held up the Blue Label.

  ‘Not your flavour, love,’ said Derek.

  NEZUMI

  This was the Princess Casamassima’s final room, many floors above her corridor of private memories. Not a last resting place – the Princess wasn’t truly dead – because soon she’d be everywhere. At midnight, the whole world would become her Bund.

  Stepping into her light was different from passing through Peak.

  No snow. No glimpse of Yuki-Onna.

  Just a tingle and a sense of weightlessness.

  Then the Princess’s chamber.

  Mr Jeperson and Hal came through with Nezumi.

  The low-ceilinged, windowless room had a four-poster bed, underfloor lighting and no door. The visitors stood on a slightly raised disc. The canned music was one of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. She recognised Glenn Gould’s recording, not by the delicacy of the playing but by the pianist’s tiny, involuntary sighs and tuts. Inhuman genius animated by its imperfections.

  A beautiful woman lay on the bed, eyes open but not awake. In person, her face had less character than in pictures. Before he shot himself, Charles Strickland put as much of himself into portraits as he took from his model. A burning gold, transparent rope rose from her chest and unbraided in mid-air, a thousand filaments feeding into apertures on the ceiling.

  All around were screens, not showing the Light Channel. That glow came from here, Nezumi realised. The Princess could monitor CCTV from all around the building and out in the Plaza. Down in the Dragon’s Mouth, Mrs Van Epp and Mr Molinar weren’t sure what had happened to the three who’d gone into the light.

  The Daikaiju had walked a few steps and turned to face the sea.

  Screens showed the view through the Dragon’s Eyes.

  A dark, winged shape was on the horizon over Casamassima Bay. Mrs Van Epp’s air strike. How much of the city would Wings Over the World consider an acceptable loss if the Ascension was stopped. Shoulder guns spread flak into the skies and lit up the night with tracers. On one screen, an aiming grid shifted to fix on the threat. The Princess wasn’t in a coma. Her Daikaiju was defending itself.

  Mr Jeperson knelt by the bed.

  ‘She isn’t asleep,’ he said. ‘She’s not home.’

  She was shining. Her bright glow carved harsh shadows in Mr Jeperson’s face. The crinkles around his eyes became rifts.


  Hal was drawn to the machines. Computer cabinets – not matt metal, but lacquered cherrywood – were arranged around the bed. No keyboards, no sockets, no cables. Lines of light pulsed between the Princess’s temples and the cabinets. She was wireless. Hal passed Lefty through phantom threads, which parted but re-formed. They were semi-organic, like tendrils of ectoplasm.

  … 11.53…

  They didn’t have time to appreciate not being killed like Radu cel Frumos.

  They must be good people by the Princess’s lights. That didn’t feel like a win. They’d made their way through a maze and found the loophole to get past the final death-dealing guard but could no more affect the outcome than if they’d stayed back in London.

  ‘You could try kissing her,’ Nezumi suggested.

  ‘That would be taking liberties,’ said Mr Jeperson. ‘We’ve got this far only because we’ve played by her rules. If our hostess takes against us, we could still be struck dead. But she let us get here. She built it into her plan that she should have – what – witnesses? A last chance to be talked out of it? A post-Ascension snack?’

  ‘Lefty,’ said Hal, ‘give us options.’

  The hand processed that, noisily.

  ‘Speedy response would be appreciated,’ Hal said.

  ‘User Jun Zero should interface with Unit Casamassima.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Mr Jeperson. ‘Did your hand call you Jun Zero?’

  Nezumi had never warmed to Lefty. Now, she was worried for Hal.

  … or for herself. If Hal was a mask for someone terrible.

  Lefty rose, internal light-source refracting, a dwarf star in Lucite. Its fingers extended and liquid metal flowed inside. Hal was startled. The hand was tugging his arm.

  ‘I’m not doing this,’ he said.

  She saw he was suppressing panic. But something else glinted in him. Something hard, metallic – more machine than man.

  Lefty pulled Hal across the room, towards an escritoire. Perched on top of the antique desk was an oval screen. A red handprint glowed against white. The machine fingers – digital digits! – splayed to fit the print. Lefty sank into jellyish substance. Circuits lit up.

  Hal winced as if his metal hand hurt.

  ‘Are you Jun Zero?’ she asked him.

  Nezumi reached for Good Night Kiss – and remembered she’d left it with Suzan Arashi.

  Who had she intended to protect from whom?

  ‘Unit self-designated Harold Takahama is not User Jun Zero,’ said Lefty.

  Hal looked as relieved as Nezumi felt.

  ‘Unit other-designated “Lefty” is User Jun Zero.’

  ‘Wait, what?’ said Hal.

  HAROLD TAKAHAMA

  A connection was made.

  He was a Gargantuabot, standing on the shore. A mecha predator whooshing out of the sky at him, talons-first. His weapons systems were activated.

  Then he was back in the Princess’s chamber, a dumb adjunct to his smart hand.

  Lefty was in charge.

  Hal was on his knees, sweating through his clothes, arm jacked into the system.

  Electric agony shocked him boneless.

  ‘Lefty,’ he gasped. ‘Shut down. This is Prime User…’

  Jun Zero? Harold Takahama? He didn’t know.

  ‘Control Alt Delete,’ he shouted.

  His commands were not accepted. Files unlocked in Lefty’s processor and overwrote his wetware. The architecture of his brain reordered. He felt himself shrinking, dwindling, melting, melting, what a world…

  ‘Lefty, why?’ asked Nezumi.

  ‘Ascension access is possible only from this terminal,’ said his hand. ‘Access to this terminal was impossible for Jun Zero. Jun Zero would fail the Light Test. Ascension access was possible for Harold Takahama. Harold Takahama is a good person.’

  The machine sounded venomous, contemptuous.

  No, it wasn’t a machine. It was the person. Jun Freaking Zero.

  Hal was the construct. He wrestled with that.

  He was being dismantled and filed away. Was Harold Takahama who Jun Zero had been? A regular, no-worse-than-anyone-else person ground down – or wised up – to become a total bastard? Or was Hal an avatar, a custom-crafted feeb woven from harvested data and worn like disguise mesh by an outlaw hacker psychopath?

  This Hal – the Hal he was, or had just been – was born in the Processor Room three hours ago. Karl the Chiropterid only sampled and slimed him so he wouldn’t worry about being a partial person. The creature was another tool, along with the stooges left for mindless or monstrous down on Floor Unlucky-for-Them 44. He only had Lefty’s worthless word for it that their names were Ishikawa and Taguchi.

  Hal reckoned himself the latest victim of the devilish trickster Jun Zero.

  Even if he was Jun Zero.

  Or had piloted Jun Zero’s body the way Jun Zero was piloting the Daikaiju.

  Lefty had given him rope and told him to settle the noose around his neck.

  Hal was pressed down, overridden like the Princess. She was shut out of her own system, locked in the fading body on the bed. Some of her sloshed around the wireless web, flooding into skullspace where Hal’s back-up was fading. He remembered Christina’s father-in-darkness, Count Oblensky but not his own cousin’s name. Was she even real – or only a few bytes of deep backstory?

  The Princess’s light-lines pulsed weakly, red blips sputtering through the beams, fragging as they neared the ceiling input ports.

  Six minutes to midnight. Then Jun Zero would Ascend to Omnipotence.

  It wouldn’t matter if Hal was only a sub-routine. He’d have six billion other NPCs for company.

  When Jun Zero wrote stats for Harold Takahama, he gave the kid enough digi fu to appreciate what his overlord was doing. He literally wanted to flatter himself.

  Jun Zero was a match for Christina Light in every respect, including ambition.

  Only he was mad in a different way.

  The Princess Casamassima wanted to tame the world – to ‘fix’ it. She ruled the Bund high-handedly, for the benefit of vampires who couldn’t live anywhere else. She was now volunteering to govern everywhere else. She saw Ascension as sacrifice, not conquest. Under her, there would be a just and equitable sharing. Resources doled out like sweets to children at a party. She didn’t even want thanks. Only the satisfaction of doing good.

  Of being good.

  A sliver of her was terrified she had always been a monster. Even before turning vampire.

  That was why she tried so hard. She locked away her wrongs in all those terrible rooms. She shone her light and hoped to outlive everyone who remembered the worst of her.

  That painter who shot himself. Someone called Katie Reed.

  She envisioned an Age of Light. Blotting out the bad stuff.

  Jun Zero was a whole other ball game.

  He wanted to play First Person Shooter with the human race. Rack up the top score. Bonus points for devastating civilisations. He was gearing up for an Era of Warring States rematch with cluster bombs, crotch chainsaws, railguns and a weaponised fungal epidemic that would turn entire populations into desert-sized carpets of suppurating mushrooms.

  Hal saw through the Daikaiju’s eyes. Jun Zero was drawing a bead.

  Stats for the Black Manta popped up. A Wings Over the World craft. Weak spots were highlighted. Crew names and bios scrolled. Jun Zero liked to know who he was killing. He was detail-oriented (megalomaniac-speak for ‘petty’). When Wingman P. Metcalf – UK citizen, vampire, WOtW weapons officer – died, Jun Zero would e-mail condolence spam (with a nasty piggyback virus) to his parents in Winchester, England. He would upload a supercut of his favourite murders, undercranked silent comedy style and scored with ‘The Benny Hill Theme’, to shareyourworld.com.

  Having Jun Zero in his head hurt.

  Nerve endings all over the building buzzed. Hal’s poor meat body, soon to be tossed like Christina’s, was racked with pain.

  Jun Zero
was primed to Ascend, to travel by Wire, to flash around the world, and become every screen, every connection, every switch.

  Other stats scrolled.

  Missile silos and nuclear power plants – too obvious. Weather stations, traffic control centres, communications satellites – promising. The Light Channel, and every other channel, irresistible. Zeroids reaching for Zorro masks, robes and guns – awaiting the trigger signal.

  Jun Zero ran programs to pick targets.

  One flew in range now.

  PAUL METCALF

  The Daikaiju’s red eye winked.

  Wing Captain Gardner banked the Black Manta through flak that couldn’t dent its fuselage.

  A laser that could etch slogans on the moon sliced past the wing.

  ‘Who’s a naughty boy, then?’ said Drusilla.

  ‘Targeting, targeting,’ said Hayata.

  Metcalf flipped the plastic safety case off the firing button.

  ‘Wing Missiles One and Two preparing,’ he reported.

  The Manta did a circuit, flying low over the city. The stiff-necked Daikaiju couldn’t get a steady aim.

  ‘Targeting, targeting… and locked.’

  ‘Wing Missiles One and Two ready.’

  ‘Take the shot, Paul,’ said Gardner.

  A blip in the centre of the screen – the monster’s eye.

  Metcalf pressed the button.

  DETECTIVE AZUMA

  Azuma and Derek threw themselves flat, but Asato and Akiba stayed on their feet, looking up – one through lank hair, the other without eyes.

  The attack plane had serrated bat-wings and a triangular head.

  Twenty-first-century tech and prehistoric shape.

  When one monster arises, another appears for balance.

  That was the way of kaiju.

  Dragon. Warbird.

  The Daikaiju’s head came round – burning beam scything from its eye.

  If the monster glanced down, the damage would be catastrophic.

  Missiles detached from the ptero-bat and flew towards the Daikaiju.

  RICHARD JEPERSON

  Something exploded against the Daikaiju’s armoured head. Richard’s ears rang.