The Digital Plague

by Jeff Somers

  We rode in silence, the floors dropping away in a blur, until we had to be underground. None of us said anything. There was something wonderful about being securely bound, buried under endless tons of cops—I didn’t have to make any decisions. Everything just flowed over me in an incomprehensible wave, keeping my head under.

  When the elevator doors popped open, no one moved. Four System Cops blocked our way, all young men, jackets off, the sleeves of their uniformly white shirts rolled up even with their holsters, a cloud of cigarette smoke around them.

  “Colonel Hense, sir,” said one in the middle, a pale, sweating man whose black hair was plastered to his forehead, his frame too slim and girlish to be a fucking cop. “With all due respect, why in fuck is Avery Cates still alive?”

  XIII

  Day Six:

  And The Universe

  Spun On

  Raising one hand so she could stare down at her nails, the colonel spoke calmly. “Captain Happling, draw your weapon.”

  Behind me I heard the familiar sound of a gun being pulled.

  “Who’s feeling fast?” Happling said cheerfully. I could tell from his voice that he was smiling.

  The four cops in front of us shifted uneasily, and I got the distinct feeling that Captain Happy behind me was the big cock in the room. The second biggest, I decided, considering the freezing wind blowing from the colonel’s direction. The skinny, pale cop looked past me and didn’t seem happy. “Hap, you know this shit is fucking wrong. That piece of crap is a cop killer. He should’ve been executed upon capture. What, you’re gonna put him in the system? Fuck, Hap—the King Worm’ll snap him up and he’ll just disappear somewhere.”

  The King Worm. I’d always liked that name. Dick Marin, director of Internal Affairs, the de facto leader of the whole SSF. We hated the cops, the cops hated their cops. And the universe spun on.

  “I do as I’m told, fellows,” Happling responded. “In a second or two, the colonel’s going to order you to step aside. You might gain some brownie points by doing so now, of your own free will.”

  It was amazing—there were four of them, each armed. The colonel remained stock-still, no weapon in sight. But the four cops blocking our way suddenly looked doubtful.

  “Otherwise,” Happling continued, “I’ll be forced to kill you all, and I’ll come out clean when I file the SIRs.”

  I wondered idly what the fuck an SIR was. The four cops stood there a moment longer, but I knew they’d move on. The energy had gone out of them; it was obvious none of them wanted to go up against Captain Happy or his boss. Their line broke, the three silent ones moving off, hands in pockets, sullen. The skinny one stood there a moment more, a faint layer of color coming into his face.

  “This is bullshit, sir,” he said to Hense. “This is gonna come back on you.”

  No, I thought. You’ll be dead in two days.

  “If you have a misconduct charge,” Hense said in the same level tone of voice she’d used when telling me she was going to kill me, “file it with the Worms and see what happens. I guarantee you’ll be patrolling Chengara in hours. Hours. Continue to piss me off, Lieutenant, and you might have an accident one of these days.”

  The skinny cop looked worried, as if realizing he’d made an error. From behind me Happling’s impossibly cheerful voice bubbled up and over me like laughing gas. “Now move along, you stupid prick, before she gets really annoyed.”

  The skinny cop hovered a final second or two, for pride’s sake, and then turned to slink away. After a moment I was spun around and dragged out of the cab.

  “Hands in pockets?” Happling said over me. “Good boy. We’re going to be friends. Right up until I put a bullet in your fucking ear, you cop-killing piece of shit.”

  His cheerful tone was maybe the worst thing I’d ever heard in my life. I took some consolation from the thought that I was murdering every cop who came near me, in slow motion, by remote control. That warbly voice in Newark again, This is an assassination. Not yours.

  The corridor was disappointingly similar to the last one: white, bright, spotless. As I glided along, the chair legs scraping loudly on the floor, cops glared back at me, all sorts of cops: big cops, short cops, fat cops, good-looking cops. I tried to smile but my mouth hurt, so I just stared back at them, imagining death. Then the world rotated again, and I glided backward into a lab. Glancing up, I saw level 4 tech services painted in neat black letters on the door.

  A Techie, I thought. The worst kind: a cop Techie.

  The door snapped shut as I cleared the threshold, and I was left sitting there. Now that I’d gone ten minutes without a fist smashing into me, everything was aching and throbbing. I was a purplish blob of bruises and bleeding nanobots. After a moment, I was spun around to face a lab cluttered with equipment. It reminded me of Pick’s old office, except with blindingly white light, white walls, and a lack of dust that was horrifying in its completeness. Otherwise it was the same narrow lanes between piles of black boxes and circuit boards, looped wires and other, less identifiable things.

  We burrowed our way in deeper until I was swung around to face the inner sanctum of the lab. Techies everywhere were exactly the same: surrounded by crap, living their lives in the eye of a slow-moving storm of ruined tech. In the midst of the piles were two kids in gray SSF jumpsuits lounging on broken-down rolling chairs, wearing bizarre goggles that trailed thick cables connected to a monolithic black box. They both started and tore off the goggles, staring at us. One had a clean-shaven head that shone in the bright light, the other had a thick, dark beard and mustache blending into a dense head of hair, giving the impression of two small eyes peering out from behind a mask. The bald one leaped up, his shiny face turning red.

  “What the fuck? Colonel, you know you can’t just waltz in here without a ten-eighty-nine form and a precall from the fifteenth floor,” he said in a nasally voice. “I’m going to have to—”

  “Shut up,” Hense said, snapping her fingers at Happling and pointing to a spot on the floor. I was dutifully dragged there, and the big cop took up his station next to me, his piece still in his huge, ham hand at his side, so near my face I could almost smell the fucking powder. He held it casually, his finger along the side. In my pockets my hands twitched, and I kept my eyes on it.

  “Colonel,” the skinny Techie continued, puffing out his chest, “I’ll remind you of protocol. You’re not my fucking boss. You’re—”

  Hense suddenly reached out and took hold of his nose, and the kid started to squeal, crouching and doing a little dance under her tiny hand as she squeezed. Her empty eyes watched him for a moment—there was no joy in them, none of the usual System Pig arrogance and cruelty. They just stared down at the kid as he struggled to break free. She waited until he started to cry and then, with a snap of her wrist, she broke his nose and let him drop.

  Smoothly, silently, her eyes flicked to the other kid, who was half crouched in his seat, frozen in shock. His pink tongue ran over his lips as he watched her carefully, as if he were tracking a wild animal.

  I glanced at Happling’s gun.

  “Mr. Marko,” Hense said in an even tone, “are you going to quote protocol at me?”

  Marko shook his head so fast I imagined his beard making a whooshing sound in the still air. “No, no—never, Colonel, not me. I’m your man. What do you need?”

  She hesitated as if considering the depth of his sincerity, and his face tightened as if he expected a slap. But she just gestured in my direction. “Take a blood sample and listen while I explain the situation.”

  He nodded and rubbed his hands together, staring at her blankly for a moment, and then started into motion. “Right! Yes, I’ll take a blood sample . . . uh,” he paused, peering uncertainly at me.

  I grinned, imagining my teeth nice and bloody. “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re dead already.”

  “Go on, Mr. Marko,” Hense said, sounding bored. “Mr. Cates will not molest you. Unless he wants to find out just how
much pain a man can be in and still not be dead.”

  I tried to shrug my eyebrows, but wasn’t sure what my face was doing, exactly, in response to my commands. I kept my eyes on the Techie, who stared back in obvious horror. “I think I already know, champ, but there’s no margin in finding out for sure, is there?”

  Marko blinked and dove for his workbench, where he scrabbled through a box of junk until he located an autohypo that looked exactly like the one Terries had used on me. Hense began running it all down for him, in clipped, impressive phrases that betrayed an organized, quick mind—she gave it to him in three or four horrifying sentences. Then he approached me like I was a wild animal on a long leash. I kept my eyes off him, looking first at his partner, who was slowly pulling himself from the floor, his nose strikingly crooked and his mouth and chin covered in dark blood, then at the colonel, who stared back at me with unblinking eyes, her arms crossed under her breasts.

  Marko’s hands were shaking as the autohypo smoothly sucked blood from my arm. When it dinged softly, he yanked it out awkwardly and almost stumbled backward. He whirled around and disappeared into the maze of crap. His partner pulled himself onto a workbench and sat with his head in his arms, dripping blood onto the white floor and snuffling pathetically.

  “Aw, c’mon,” Happling said cheerfully. “Are you kidding me? You ain’t hurt. Come here, I’ll straighten that out for you with my thumbs, good as new.”

  The kid lifted his head to stare in horror at the big cop, which inspired a guffaw from the red-haired giant. I lifted my eyes from his gun just as he glanced down at me.

  “Can you believe this kid?” he said, and then looked back at the Techie. “You know who this is, kid? This is Avery fucking Cates, cop killer. In other words, he’s the one man in this room who needs to be worried about me. But look at ’im! The old bastard is free and easy. So why are you afraid of me?”

  The Techie just stared. I let my eyes fall back on Happling’s gun.

  “Hell, it was her who snapped your nose, buddy, not me.”

  “That’s enough, Captain.”

  I dropped my eyes quickly, studying the floor and the tiny pattern of blood droplets I’d produced there. After a moment, Happling said, “Yes, boss,” in a tight, subdued voice.

  I considered. Hense was keeping me off the grid because she didn’t want to take the chance that what she’d been told was true, that she’d die quickly—and horribly—once I was out of sight, and the first thing her superiors would do if my name got put in the System was bundle me off somewhere. I could tell she was the sort of coldhearted bitch who would never lose a moment’s sleep over putting one in my head, but she needed me, in a strange way.

  Still, a feeling of freedom was singing inside me—I had nothing, nothing to lose. At the end of this little adventure, I was dead. There wasn’t a fucking scenario that didn’t end with me dead. I’d been here before. It was a good place. It clarified things.

  The four of us sat in a tense silence for a while, Happling and Hense standing perfectly still, the other Techie from time to time moaning and snuffling back blood through what was left of his nose. When Marko returned, I saw him first and watched him make his way slowly back into the tiny clearing amid the mess.

  “Mr. Marko?” Hense asked.

  He nodded, staring at me, the expression on his face hard to pin down. It resembled the look of some of the hungry dogs that prowled the old stadium, hoping to snag a scrap or a slow-mover from some of the camps inside. I had the feeling Marko would gladly have slit my belly open and peered inside, just to satisfy his curiosity.

  “You’ve got it right. I’ve never seen Tech like this. Ty Kieth—you know the name? Fuck, he’s a legend. Totally unreliable, of course, but fuck, the man’s gifted.” He leaned toward me as if a strong wind were pushing him from behind. “I’ve never seen anything this elegant.”

  “Mr. Marko,” Hense snapped. “You can confirm Dr. Terries’ statements?”

  He nodded again, slowly. “We’re fucking dead, all right. The moment he’s not in the room with us.” A smile, wide and rapturous, spread across his face, his teeth shocking in the midst of the dark beard. “This is amazing work.” He glanced at her. “I didn’t have time for a thorough look. There’s a lot going on there. But the basics are right.”

  He didn’t spot the beacon, I thought. Paris. His buddy let out a long moan, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of the news or his aching nose.

  Hense nodded once, brisk. “Captain Happling, collect Mr. Cates. Marko and Jameson, grab your field gear. You’re coming with me.”

  Marko nodded again, still staring at me. Happling didn’t move. “Where we headed, boss?”

  “The roof,” she said, rubbing her temples. “We are leaving.”

  Suddenly the other Techie was back on his feet. “What? Colonel, you cannot remove him. This has to be kicked upstairs. This is a public health crisis, and if you won’t—”

  Hense’s face clouded, her brows knitting together, and my belly tightened up just before she reached across herself, drew her shiny, chrome-plated Roon automatic, and shot him in the face.

  None of us moved. She looked around at us. “I just saved that poor son of a bitch from a few hours of slow, painful dying,” she said as if reading off a grocery list. She waited and then nodded, replacing her gun in its holster. “Captain?”

  Happling hadn’t moved. I knew I was dead, but I felt I owed Glee more than that. I could almost hear her: Ooh, Avery’s a martyr. I owed her the bastards that had done this to her, just the same as if they’d blown her brains out. I owed her revenge. I took a deep breath and tore my hands from my pockets. I whipped my right hand out and had it, his gun, in my hand. I ripped it from his grasp and it seemed to settle into my grip of its own will.

  But the big man was fast. Before I could do more, he’d moved, whirling and sending a solid kick against my chair, aiming for my balls but hitting the seat instead. I went sailing backward, toppling over, smacking my head against the floor. I heard him in the air and brought my arm around just in time to smack the barrel of his gun against his belly as he landed on me.

  We both froze, panting. His breath smelled like ashes.

  “Okay,” I said, gasping. “Let’s negotiate.”

  XIV

  Day Six:

  I Can’t Imagine

  What it is You Do Like

  “Shit, boss,” Happling said between clenched teeth. “Permission to kill this son of a bitch?”

  “Step back, Captain,” Hense said immediately, not sounding particularly concerned.

  Happling stayed put for a moment, his teeth bared, and then he straightened up and stepped back, cursing under his breath and thrusting his big hands into his pockets. I tried to keep both cops in sight. Hense was just standing there, the smallest thing in the room, arms still crossed as if she’d never dream of drawing her own weapon or raising a hand in anger.

  In the sudden vacuum, Marko whispered, “You fucking shot him.”

  Hense unspooled one arm to gesture in my direction, a sculpted eyebrow going up. “Mr. Cates, you have the floor.”

  I didn’t have much on my side, so I knew I was going to have to start lying. “First off, I know you’re not going to kill me, so stop threatening me.”

  Happling was staring down at the floor, face red and posture tense. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed likely he was making fists in his pockets. I’d make fists in my pockets, too, if I’d been made to look stupid like that. “How about we just imply great physical pain, then?” he said to the floor.

  “Second,” I said without waiting for more of a response, “you don’t have all the information. Why do you think I’ve got these special nanos inside me? Because I’m fucking patient zero. I’m where it all started six days ago. You’re going to carry me around like luggage, and you don’t even know where to go. You’ve got a name, but do you think a lone underground Techie did this? Do your math, Colonel. Starting with me, this has been spreading
outward steadily, right? Takes anywhere from a few hours to a few days to tear some poor asshole to pieces, right? The whole city’s on the edge of a fucking breakdown. And after the city—what? You’re a professional, Colonel, you know crowd control. Do you think you’re going to be able to bottle this up? You’re not even going to be able to keep this downtown for long.”

  She just stared at me, but something told me, some change in her aura or whatever signal she was beaming out from that cold lizard brain of hers, that I had her attention. “I know where we go,” I said. “I know where we can find Ty Kieth. And I know where to go from there, too. Think about it,” I finished. “You’ve got resources. I’ve got the information.”

  If her Techie had had more than five minutes to work, if Terries had managed to croak out everything he’d learned, I’d have nothing—but they hadn’t. It was time to start playing the old familiar role of Avery Cates, the Gweat and Tewwible.

  I took a chance and moved my eyes onto her, this slip of a woman, her dark skin looking like she would feel good, up close. “Colonel, we’re partners.”

  Happling twitched his head and spat on the floor. “Nuts,” he muttered.

  Hense held up a hand and Happling went quiet again. I didn’t look at the big man. He didn’t count. The secret to Big Red Happling was his boss.

  She regarded me silently for a few moments. I didn’t like holding her gaze; she was one of those confident people who were absolutely certain that everything they did, they did for the right reasons. I was pretty sure Colonel Janet Hense never woke up sweating after a dream about all the people she’d killed, never had that nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach that ate at her resolve like acid, had never lain panting in a muddy puddle somewhere, terrified and ready and willing to sell whatever she had just to guarantee her survival. Me, I was used to all three, and her steady, unblinking gaze was like fucking fire on my skin.