The Digital Plague

by Jeff Somers

  After a moment’s pause there came the staticky click and then Ty’s voice. “Ty hadn’t gotten that far in his thinking, to be honest.”

  “Heck, Ty,” I said, taking my time with the cigarette, “how in hell do you end up here? Who the hell is that Tin Man? I’m sick and tired of him calling me by my first name.”

  Another long pause, but this time the buzzing static remained, the line held open. “Ty doesn’t know. He calls Ty by name, too. It was Belling, that cunt. Came around talking about brokering a big job, needing the best, throwing out round numbers. Big round numbers. Ty admits it: he got greedy. The cunt arranged a meeting, and next thing you know, lights out, and Ty wakes up on a hover headed for fucking Paris for fuck’s sake. Ty spent some time hiding in Paris when things got hot a few years back—right before you found Ty, in fact—and Ty was not happy to find himself here again. Ty was less happy when he found out what was expected of him here.”

  “Very touching,” Happling muttered. “When they mark your tombstone, Mr. Kieth, it will say Murderer of the Human Race, Wasn’t Happy about It.”

  “Ty had no choice!” Ty’s voice was warped with feedback. “Ty didn’t even realize what it was, at first. They compartmentalized it, gave it to Ty in pieces.”

  “That’s a sad fucking story,” Happling said, leaning on his rifle. “You’re a real goddamn hero.”

  “Ty,” I said, ignoring the cop. “Ty, you’re in charge here. What’s our next move? We should find that cocksucker. Neutralize him.” I was tired of being on the defensive, tired of being tied up and beaten up and talked to. I wanted to get on the offensive, be moving. Hense gestured at someone in the rear cabin and the round-faced female trooper came trotting in. Hense pointed at me without looking my way and the trooper nodded, unslinging her rifle and producing a small medical kit as she stepped over to kneel next to me. She smelled . . . good, considering she’d been simmering in her own juices for hours and hours. Her smell reminded me of Glee a little, that sort of naturally clean smell.

  Without looking at me she grabbed my fractured leg roughly, making me bite my cheek to stop from crying out, and began cutting open my pant leg.

  “Don’t be a baby,” she drawled, her vowels all stretched out. “You look like the dog’s been keepin’ you under the porch.”

  I held my breath and resisted the urge to grab her nose and twist. Her face had a secret little smile on it, like she knew what I was thinking.

  “Mr. Cates,” Ty replied. “Ty is of the opinion he should be brought to a secure lab facility in New York or someplace nearby and be allowed to develop a workaround for the plague.”

  “Plague, huh?” I said, sucking in breath sharply as the Stormer ran her competent hands up and down my lower leg, feeling for the break. After the past few days, it felt like a hug. “Ty, why would we go to New York? Our Tin Man is here. And if we drag you someplace while he’s still prowling around, he’ll just come after us with his merry band of Monks.”

  With a jerk the Stormer set my leg, and I passed out.

  When I came to, everything was warm and numb and words were in the air, people talking, but nothing made sense for a moment. I silently thanked my new best friends the police for whatever synthetic narcotic I’d just been given and looked up lovingly at the brown-haired Stormer playing nurse to me. She gave me a flat, disinterested look back and dug into her little bag, bringing out a short stick; with a flick of her wrist it extended into a perfect splint. I wearily admired her compact, efficient movements—a girl who knew what the fuck she was doing. I felt sorry for anyone she’d start sleeping with—they wouldn’t have a chance.

  “Mr. Cates,” Ty said, the words slowly taking on meaning again, as if it were being pumped up from a deep well inside me, “we must go to New York. That is certainly where the Monk is headed, and he expects to find you there. He did instruct you to go back, didn’t he?”

  I nodded, feeling woozy. “Yes, Ty, he did. Which is why I shouldn’t do it. The Tin Man wanted me to go back so I could keep spreading this shit around. I guess it hasn’t reached critical mass for an unstoppable infection yet.”

  “Mr. Cates, if the Monk expects you to go back, you have to go back. If you don’t your usefulness to him ends. And he will shut you down.”

  I winced as the splint was expertly fastened in place, tight enough to restrict whatever blood was left inside me. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Your suppression field, Mr. Cates. It’s remote controlled and can be disabled at any time, effectively turning your nanobots into the same deadly ones that are killing everyone else. You and everyone currently surviving in the waste of your suppression field will die, just like everyone else. The Monk is leaving it on because he wants you to keep spreading it—why, Ty doesn’t know, because there are a dozen more effective ways to reach a tipping point on this—but if you don’t do as it expects, what’s to stop it from simply flipping the switch?” There was a tinny sigh from the invisible speakers. “Mr. Cates, you must return to New York as instructed. You must appear to be following its orders while I work on a solution.”

  The Stormer finished fixing up my leg. “No need to thank me, eh,” she said primly, gathering her equipment and exiting the cockpit. For a few seconds we all just sat there, silent. In the rear cabin there was a sudden commotion among the Stormers.

  “Balls,” I muttered. I looked at Hense. “Any facilities in New York you think we could use?”

  She looked back at me. We were all thinking the same thing: dragging Ty Kieth around the world so he could spend hours or days trying to hack his own creation was a waste of time when one bullet to the back of his head would solve the immediate problem nicely. I hated even thinking it—in a way, Ty was still part of my team. We’d parted on good terms; he’d always played fair. He’d gotten screwed, betrayed by Belling, and rewarding him with a bullet in the head because it was the easiest solution tasted like bullshit in my mouth. But I thought of Glee again, and millions of people—everyone I’d ever known—dying, and it was hard to argue with the cosmos on this one. While Ty was hidden away, we had to watch how we conversed, though.

  “There is an emergency bunker in Manhattan,” Hense said slowly, staring off into the rear cabin. “But I can’t know if it’s still in use or in SSF hands, or if I’d even have access since . . .” She let that thought drift, frowning, then strode back into the cabin without another word.

  “Mr. Cates,” Ty said quietly, “how does Ty know you won’t simply execute him when the opportunity comes? How does Ty know you won’t kill him?”

  I bought some time by struggling to my feet, making it look harder than it was. The splint was excellent, and I found I could pretty much put weight on the leg with only a modest, throbbing pain for my troubles. I wouldn’t want to sprint anytime soon, but I figured I could clump about pretty effectively. I was still trying to lawyer up a noncommittal response when Hense stormed back into the cockpit.

  “You mobile?” she snapped.

  I nodded. “Not very graceful, but I was never much of a dancer anyway.”

  She held up one of her own shiny Roons by the barrel and pointed the grip at me. “Take it. We’re going to need every bit of talent we can lay our hands on, I think. We’re under siege.”

  I blinked, accepting the gun and several spare clips. “Siege? By whom?”

  Her withering look indicated it was the dumbest question she’d heard in a long time. “Who the fuck else? The Monks. They’re back.”

  The gun felt good in my hand, comfortable. Roons weren’t manufactured anymore, but they were still the best handguns in the world, barring a few ancient pre-Unification models. It fit perfectly. I dropped the clip and inspected the chamber, reloaded and snapped everything back, surprised at how much better I felt armed.

  “Told you,” Ty said. “You’re supposed to be over the ocean by now. The Monk’s pissed.”

  I grimaced. “Or they’re here for you, little man.”

  A curi
ous feeling stole over me, a creepy-crawly kind of sensation, as if I could feel all the tiny, invisible things inside me starting to swell and turn black, spikes sprouting from their delicate, molecule-thick skins. As if I could feel death polluting my blood, poking holes in my vessels. I tried to ignore it, swallowing hard.

  “Let’s go,” Hense said, turning away. “Mr. Kieth, let’s get this brick in the air.”

  She’d turned and made it to the hatchway before Kieth’s small voice stopped her. “That presents difficulties, uh, Colonel.”

  Hense stopped but didn’t turn around. “Why is that, Mr. Kieth?” she said, cocking her head to the side.

  “I am unfamiliar with the exact systems on this hover,” he confessed slowly. “In my haste to secure my position, some systems were offlined.”

  “Systems,” she repeated, her little hands curling into fists, “were offlined.” I remained where I was, waiting, all of my systems up and sniffing the air, because the scent of violence was in the air. After a moment she relaxed. “I would suggest, in a purely advisory function, that you get them back online and get us into the air soon, Mr. Kieth, unless you want to end up back inside that box.”

  She stepped through the hatchway. I started to follow, but before I’d gone two steps Ty’s voice crackled through the air, warping and melting.

  “Mr. Cates!”

  I stopped and closed my eyes. I saw the nanos, like tiny little spiky fish, floating in the darkness. “Yes, Ty?”

  “How does Ty know you won’t kill him?”

  I swallowed. “Ty, you have my word. You know me, Mr. Kieth. I keep my promises. You have my word. We will find another solution.”

  “Your word, Mr. Cates,” Ty said.

  “You have my word, Ty,” I repeated, and stepped quickly into the main cabin. I kept my eyes on the floor and didn’t look at anyone. Because I was lying.

  XXVI

  Day Nine:

  The Rest of the World

  was a Bonus

  Eyes down, I dropped my extra clips into my coat and hobbled into the cabin. The Stormers were all assembled, back in their full ObFu kit, in standard formation for a drop. The drop in this case was just a few feet, since the hover was sitting dead on the ground. The big drop-bay doors were shut tight, leaving the cabin gloomy and claustrophobic. The whole place smelled of soured sweat and oiled metal, and I knew I was pumping self-loathing and a good bit of fear into the atmosphere, too.

  If Kieth could get the hover into the air, we didn’t have much to worry about: the hover’s bottom-mounted turrets would chew even Monks into small, digestible pieces in short order, and Monks still couldn’t fly, as far as I knew. Until that magical moment when the displacers roared into life, however, we were basically sitting in a shiny metal box that had never been designed to repel boarders.

  The closed Vid screens above the drop bay lit up suddenly, showing the dead city around us. “Ah! Found the visuals,” Kieth chirped, sounding pleased with himself.

  Onscreen, I could see the Monks outside, dozens of them surrounding the hover, more emerging from the scummy water of the river. I watched them arrange themselves and tried to imagine what they were planning to do. They didn’t know the hover was incapacitated, and if it took off with them underfoot it wouldn’t be pretty. The sight of them in grainy, pixilated color—white faces, dark coats, some still wearing their standard-issue sunglasses—made my whole body tighten up in dread.

  Ooh, Avery’s afraid of Monks, I heard Glee say. Avery’s got a phobia.

  Happling appeared at my elbow, two autos slung into crisscrossed holsters under each arm, his huge humming shredder in both hands. His red hair was standing up in bizarre, dirt-crusted directions, and he was smiling. I kept my eyes on him without moving my head, resolving not to speak to him because I didn’t want to hear what he was thinking. Happling looked like the sort of berserker who got you killed. He was enjoying himself.

  Hense produced her flask from some hidden pocket but didn’t bother with her dainty little cup. She unscrewed the cap and took a blast, then walked over and handed the flask silently to Happling, who took a superhuman gulp, liquor dribbling down his chin. Smacking his lips, he handed it back to the colonel.

  “All right,” he said, and I braced myself for crazy. “We dealt with these freaks once,” he said loudly, to the whole cabin. “Some of you were with the force, I know, when we had to clean up these Tin Men during the Monk Riots. They’re fast. They have digital filters on their visual and can switch between visible spectrum, heat sig, or motion sensing. They don’t like bullets any more than you and me, but they can shut down individual systems if damaged and don’t exactly feel pain. They’re fucking murder. But a shot to the head puts them down, and inside that freak show is a stupid shithead brain.”

  I stared at the multiplying Monks on the screen and felt Happling next to me. I couldn’t decide where I’d rather be. All the cop testosterone in the air was suffocating. On the other hand, I had this weird feeling that I was watching civilization in action here—the line between order and chaos—and it was manned by the Nathan Happlings of the world.

  “Order it up, Captain,” Hense said in a low, controlled voice.

  “Listen up!” Happling shouted immediately, as if her command had been a coincidence. “This is a Scenario B4 situation. Rumor has it you faggots have had some training, so I’m expecting a clean execution. Watch your crossfire! Hey, fat girl,” he snapped, jabbing one huge hand in the direction of the round-faced, slow-talking Stormer. “You’re on Intrusion Detection. I want you humping it up and down this fucking hover and anything you see, feel, hear, or fucking smell that seems unusual, you make a fucking ruckus, right?”

  I had this weird urge to defend her. She managed to make her salute simultaneously crisp and mocking with just the slightest curve of her lips, and I thought I might be falling in love with her. “On it like a duck on a june bug, sir.”

  Happling stared for just a second, then obviously decided he didn’t have time for ass-kicking and nodded, sweeping his gaze back around the cabin. “This group here,” he said, dividing about a dozen of the Stormers with a knifing motion of his hand, “you are on the hatch. That’s our weakest point. Watch your fucking crossfire, but when they rip that shit off—and they will—you pour murder into it and you don’t let a single one in here. Do not deploy your shredding rifles in this enclosed space. If I see any of you unslinging a shredder, be sure the next sensation you feel will be me shoving that hunk of metal up your ass.”

  “You,” he said, turning to look at another Stormer, this one a big, square-headed guy apparently made out of a single slab of beef. Beefy looked at Happling as if he wished he’d remembered his suicide pills that morning. “You’re on the drop-bay door panel. See it? Do I have to go piss on it so you can find it, trooper? We don’t have time for this, Nancy—okay, open that up. If it looks like they’re going to force those bay doors, trooper, cut those wires. The fail-safes will kick in and snap that motherfucker shut tighter than your asshole right now. This is your discretion, trooper, don’t make me fucking dig you up later to reprimand you.”

  “The rest of you,” he continued after a moment, in a lower voice, “you just wait for people to die. Someone goes down, you get in there and take their place. Do not fire from a rear position, you’ll just fucking kill your own people.”

  From above came three or four dull thuds, but I was the only one to glance up.

  “Here they come!” Happling shouted, pulling his guns from their holsters and grinning. I thought to myself, Every cop in the fucking System is batshit insane. And then, with a shivery feeling as if someone had dumped cold water directly into my bloodstream, I thought, Where the fuck is Ty? If the Techies had found a way into the hover, it stood to reason the Monks would manage it too, eventually.

  I looked around, but a bell-like metallic clang and the groaning noise of metal fatigue sounded as the hatch door was grasped by something outside and pulled outward. With a
rattle of metal all the cops leaned forward. I ran my eyes over the whole cabin and stepped back, suddenly sure that we’d just fucked up in a massive way but completely unsure how to rectify the situation. I didn’t have plans for the hover and couldn’t even begin to guess where two Techies might be spending some quality time breathing each other’s farts and whispering about security protocols.

  The hatch popped off the hover with a loud cracking noise, and immediately three Monks were climbing into the cabin. The Stormers opened fire as one, and for a second or two the cabin was solid sound, the noise almost a wall that squeezed the breath out of me.

  I stepped quickly toward the cockpit. “Ty!” I shouted. “Ty, can you hear me?”

  In the cockpit I could barely make out his voice. “Ty is a little goddamn busy, Mr. Cates!”

  “Ty, where are you?”

  There was no response. In the cabin, the roar of gunfire grew impossibly louder, and then added to it was more hollow pounding from above as Monks worked their way in from the top. I made fists. “Ty, goddammit, we’re being invaded, and you’re sitting in a spot that took you about fifteen seconds to get into! Where the fuck are you?”

  I waited another moment. “Mr. Cates . . . we have an understanding, yes?”

  I struggled to stay still, to keep my face blank. “Ty, you have my word.”

  After another moment of listening to the Monks hammering at the hover, Happling’s gleeful voice roaring above it all, a panel in the floor almost at my feet slid away in a smooth, mechanical motion, and Ty’s bald, gleaming head appeared, nose twitching nonstop. We stared at each other.

  “Redundant manual repair module,” he said with a shrug. “Almost no one knows these exist, since most of the work is done digitally or by Droids.”