Digital Chimera

by J N Chaney

  So now there were two of them, and even though our weapons might be capable of penetrating their armor, we couldn’t even hit them.

  Jones suddenly called, “Aha!” and clicked something into place, then he let loose with a stream of fire so rapid it sounded like a single, endless roar. The humanoid cyborg stumbled back under his fire, but the rounds didn’t look like they were punching through its armor. Veraldi flicked a switch on his weapon then aimed a short burst of flame at the animalistic cyborg. It reared back slightly, but if there was any damage, I couldn’t see it. Our weapons weren’t harming them, but the heat and noise made them cautious and that was at least something.

  “Tycho!” yelled Veraldi. “Take your shot!”

  I aimed directly at the humanoid cyborg’s head, but despite the distraction of Andrew’s barrage, it twitched to the side just before I pulled the trigger. My depleted uranium bullet went through the side of the car, flying off into the city.

  “Shit!”

  “Keep shooting!” called Jones, but I knew we needed a different solution. Between the flames and the gunfire, we were holding them back, but it wouldn’t last forever, and it wouldn’t save our lives. If we couldn’t kill these things, that meant we had to get away.

  “Sasha, get—”

  Before I could say anything else, the world suddenly spun, and I found myself hitting the wall with a crack. I slumped down, stunned, not knowing what had just happened. Something had flashed by my eyes, but I had barely seen it. The animal cyborg’s tail?

  Jones was stumbling, holding onto his belly. Veraldi was still fighting, but only for a moment. The animal cyborg jumped on him, knocking him backward over a seat and onto the floor.

  As disoriented as I was, I still knew it could kill him in half a second if it had the chance. I had lost my weapon, but Veraldi had landed next to me. I grabbed his collar and yanked him sideways as its talons punched through the train floor half an inch from his face.

  The thing tried to pull its arm back, but the blades were stuck. The creature shook its head violently back and forth as it attempted to free itself. I noticed my gun lying nearby and scooped it up. Jones had recovered to an extent, and though he was still doubled over, he was firing his weapon, which seemed effective at pinning the humanoid cyborg down even though it couldn’t stop it.

  Veraldi drew a knife and deftly cut something behind one of the beast’s knees. It slumped, losing control of the damaged leg, but wasn’t out of the fight. I aimed carefully, and even though it still tried to dodge sideways at the last moment, I finally landed a hit. My bullet entered its body, and it jumped away from me so violently that it finally managed to pull its arm out of the floor.

  It jumped left and then right, and finally bounded back behind the humanoid cyborg like a dog hiding behind its owner. I struggled to get my feet underneath me before they recovered and attacked again. Veraldi found his weapon, rose to a kneel, and fired a burst of flame.

  The cyborgs reacted and this time I saw what they were doing. The humanoid cyborg spun, arms wide, its claws tearing through the pole in the aisle. The beast lashed out, tearing apart the nearby seats with its tail. These attacks weren’t really aimed at anything, but they happened so quickly and so violently that they were hard to dodge or even see. It had been one of those attacks that had sent me flying and wounded Andrew.

  They did it again, driving all of us back with a fierce burst of movement. Jones was bleeding, although I couldn’t tell how bad it was. I was barely standing, but I knew it was time for us to get out while we still could.

  “Get to the next car, Sasha! The next car!”

  “What?” he called out.

  “THE NEXT CAR!”

  Veraldi seemed to understand what I was thinking. “We’ll hold them here! Jones, fighting retreat to the door behind Barrett!”

  I broke off from the fight, grabbed Sasha by his jacket, and yanked him up. The door stuck a little, but I jerked it open with desperate strength and pushed him through. The connecting platform between the two cars veered back and forth as the train turned, but I somehow managed to keep Ivanovich on his feet and force him across. He pulled the other door open on his own, eager to get to the relative safety of the other train car.

  “Don’t stop! Keep going!”

  I waved him forward, indicating the door at the other end of the car. There were a few people on this one, and when they saw what was behind me, they all jumped up and fled. This seemed to give Sasha the focus he needed, because he followed them across to the end of the car and out the door. The crowd wasn't as fast as I would have liked, and I felt a growing sense of panic.

  I didn’t know when the train was going to stop again, but if I didn’t do what I was planning before then, I wouldn’t get the chance. The train would come to a halt to take on passengers, then the cyborgs would kill anyone between them and us, and they’d finish by killing us too.

  As Sasha made the crossing to the car ahead, Jones and Veraldi finally joined me. We ran for the door, and the humanoid cyborg entered the car just as we were leaving it. It seemed unharmed, but the fact that the beast was no longer with it implied that we had at least managed to do some real damage to that one.

  “We can’t run forever.” Andrew Jones was panting, looking back through the window at the humanoid cyborg. It was moving toward us through the train car at a deliberate pace, watching us cautiously the whole time. It was still behaving like a dangerous animal rather than a human being. It wanted to kill us but wasn’t sure what we might do.

  “We don’t have to,” I replied. “Get ready to jump.”

  “Wait, what?” said Jones, balanced precariously on the platform between the cars. Blood was welling up from beneath his shirt in three long lines. He must have noticed that I was looking at the car coupler, because he was staring at it with his mouth hanging open.

  “There’s no choice,” Veraldi said. “Just do it, Tycho!”

  I disconnected the coupler just as the cyborg put a fist through the glass of the door behind us. We jumped across to the car in front as the creature tore the door off its hinges. Now that they were no longer being pulled, the cars behind us started to slow and fall behind. The cyborg didn’t try to make the jump across the rapidly increasing distance between the cars. Instead it just watched us with its featureless face, looking for all the world like it was merely curious. As it receded into the distance, I caught a glimpse of the beast coming up behind it and jumping against the window. So, they were both still in action, even if the beast was now moving a little bit slower.

  “This will buy us some time,” said Veraldi. “But that’s all.”

  Jones nodded glumly, and we went in search of Ivanovich, the man all of this was for. I could only hope he was worth it.

  11

  I was afraid Ivanovich might have wandered off, but there wasn’t really anywhere for the man to go. The other passengers had continued on into the lead car, but Ivanovich had stopped in the adjacent one. We found him sitting with his legs stretched out, looking as pleased as I had ever seen him look. “What’s so funny, Ivanovich?” asked Jones. “You do realize we almost died there?”

  Sasha shrugged. “Of course. I am thankful for the protection of such… highly trained professionals.” He waved his hand in a wide sweep through the air as he said it and we all just looked at him, unsure of whether he was mocking us somehow or not.

  I concluded that he was just happy he had someone else to do his fighting for him. Or his dying, if it came to that.

  “Never mind him.” I turned to Jones and Veraldi. “What was that all about? There’s no way a low-rent outfit like Geneicide has the resources for that.”

  Vincenzo was staring out the window, looking for the next threat. “I agree. That wasn’t Geneicide. That wasn’t any syndicate. As powerful as they are here, they just don’t have the ability to create anything like that. And they don’t have the money to buy it either.”

  “Don’t keep us in suspense.”
Andrew Jones was examining his wound, which turned out to not be as serious as it had initially looked despite producing a lot of blood. Even so, the front of his shirt was wet and sticky, and there was blood running down his body and pooling on the floor at his feet. He winced as he examined the shallow cuts. “My guts aren’t going to fall out on the floor anytime soon. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m a fucking mess.”

  Veraldi turned and saw what he was doing. “We need a first aid kit, but for now we’ll have to get some more clothes somehow and tear off strips to bind that up.” He turned back to the window as the train crossed a bridge, looking down on the rooftops below. “To me, the nanosuits and augments suggest a government-backed unit. You don’t get that kind of money from crime. You get it from taxes.”

  Ivanovich laughed. “And the difference is?”

  Veraldi scowled at him. “So, you’re one of those. I should have guessed.”

  “Well, Sasha?” I asked. “What about it? Were those cyborgs from Ares Terrestrial, or weren’t they?”

  “Oh, they’re definitely from the company. I built them.”

  Jones frowned at him. “Explain.”

  “The two cyborgs we just saw were created in my Nursery. In a way, they are my children. Of course, these children have no sense of gratitude. They’d probably take special delight in tearing me apart.”

  “Then why do you look so goddamn happy about it?” asked Jones. “For a creepy guy, you’re acting outright unhinged.”

  “I suppose in a way it’s just hysteria, a reaction to the fact that I’m still alive. Whatever. There’s some pride in knowing that my creations are every bit as formidable as I intended them to be.”

  “I’m not even going to touch that part,” said Jones. “So, if they were created in your Nursery, who controls them now?”

  “They are members of a special StateSec unit. They call them The Erinyes. Their usual work is syndicate counter-operations.”

  “Meaning they don’t do anything at all?” I asked.

  Sasha shook his head. “You’re not being fair. Just because Ares Terrestrial takes a hands-off approach doesn’t mean we have no resources for dealing with syndicate scum if they get out of hand.”

  “We?” asked Veraldi.

  Sasha sighed. “Fair enough. They. I know you assume that Ares Terrestrial is just incompetent, or hopelessly corrupt, but there’s more to it than that. The thing with the syndicates is that they play an important role in the system the company has established here in East Hellas.”

  That reminded me of something they taught us back at the Arbiter Academy. Organized crime is not a rebellion against the system; it can only function within the system. It makes the system run smoother, which is why all governments tolerate it unless it gets out of hand.

  “What important role?” asked Jones.

  “Self-regulation of the citizens of Hellas. The company runs the city for a profit, and it’s more profitable to let the gangs run the streets than to do it ourselves.”

  He was back to identifying himself with the company again. He’d have to come to terms with the facts at some point, or he wouldn’t make it. “So, where do the Erinyes come in?”

  He shrugged again, a man of the world explaining obvious facts to naïve gunmen. “Every now and then, one of the syndicates causes a problem. They do something that upsets the balance of power, or maybe they do something that hurts Ares Terrestrial, by which I mean our bottom line. That’s what the Erinyes are for. We send them to punish the syndicates when they step out of line.”

  “Wonderful.” Veraldi shook his head. “So, we’re being pursued by the company’s own top-shelf hit team.”

  Sasha’s explanation confused me a little. “I don’t get it, Ivanovich. You told Andrea Capanelli that the company was involved in illegal animal cloning, but one of those Erinyes looked human.”

  “Well, I didn’t explain every detail. There’s a lot going on. You can’t expect me to remember it all in one conversation.” I certainly believed him when he said that there was a lot going on, but I didn’t believe for one second that he’d forgotten anything. Like most informants, he was probably trying to pick and choose what he wanted to tell us and what he didn’t.

  “Who were the Erinyes after?” Veraldi mused. “If that picture from the train is what’s being shared around, they might believe we were behind the bombing.”

  Ivanovich shook his head. “I guarantee you not a single person at Ares Terrestrial lost a moment of sleep last night over the death of Bensouda Hafidi.”

  That probably wasn’t true, given all the riots that had broken out following Hafidi’s death. Still, the man had a point. The company must be relieved that Hafidi was dead, and they wouldn’t have sent the Erinyes out to punish his killers.

  “No,” said Jones. “They weren’t after us. Those Erinyes were sent after Sasha Ivanovich.”

  Sasha pointed at Andrew and clicked his tongue against his teeth, as if to congratulate him for getting something right. That’s when I figured out what the man was so happy about. I shook my head in amazement. “Are you proud of having the Erinyes sent after you?”

  He laughed quietly but didn’t say anything. Ivanovich was a narcissist, and even the fear of being hunted by implacable cyborg chimeras was not enough to take away his delight at being so important. I started to suspect this was his main reason for offering to defect in the first place. It wasn’t an attack of conscience, not fear of prosecution, but the simple desire to be seen as a big shot. Important.

  Veraldi seemed almost nervous. Pacing back and forth, he kept checking the windows again and again. “In light of this new information, I think we have to assume that Geneicide’s footage of us in the train came directly from Ares Terrestrial itself.”

  Andrew agreed. “I never thought they were capable of placing their own people inside the company. They don’t even have the run of their own neighborhood. If A.T. fed them that info—”

  “Then the contract isn’t really from Geneicide in the first place,” said Veraldi. “It’s from the government of East Hellas.”

  Ivanovich looked at us like we were all far too stupid to be responsible for the safety of an important person such as himself. “You mean you didn’t know that? I assumed you already knew that.”

  “Don’t assume shit,” snapped Veraldi. “If you want to get out of East Hellas alive, you tell us everything. Got it?”

  Ivanovich threw his hands up in surrender. “Sure, sure. I’ll start with explaining that the star named Sol is the center of the Sol system, and that the planets orbit it because of gravitational attraction.”

  “Be quiet, Ivanovich,” said Jones. “We have bigger worries here. Why would Ares Terrestrial pick a relatively small syndicate for such an important contract? I mean, if this guy is important enough to send the Erinyes, why isn’t he important enough to send a better class of hitman?”

  Sasha didn’t like the sound of that at all. He glared at Andrew, who didn’t seem to notice, except for the tiny hint of a smile at the corners of his lips.

  “Maybe it was just a matter of opportunity,” Veraldi suggested. “The bombing happened in Pretorius, so they gave the contract to the leading syndicate in Pretorius.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense, not when they had us made before the bomb even went off. I don’t think they did give the contract to Geneicide, or at least not exclusively. I think they gave it to every syndicate in East Hellas, all at once.”

  Veraldi almost went pale. “I think you’re right, Tycho. But if that’s the case, then every gang between us and the Wall will have hit teams looking for us.”

  The sign on the ceiling flashed an announcement: NEXT STOP – FUJI 2.

  Andrew groaned. “We’re coming up on Fuji Section.”

  Veraldi looked up at the sign. “We need to get off the train. If Ares is supplying intel to the syndicate kill teams, we need to stay off the surveillance grid as much as possible.”
>
  “You’re not going to make me walk again,” Ivanovich announced.

  “You don’t understand—” Jones started.

  But Veraldi interrupted him. “My odds of ever getting out of this shithole would go up by several hundred percent if you didn’t make it out with me, Ivanovich.”

  Sasha shook his head. “You can’t fool me with that one. Not anymore. If your orders were really to bring me in dead or alive, you’d have killed me already. Your job is to save me, to extract me at all costs. You’re taking me with you.”

  “Even so, you’re walking. To stay on this train means to wait for death.”

  “So does getting off at the next station,” Jones insisted.

  “What are you talking about?” Vincenzo asked.

  “That’s a train station in Fuji Section. Am I really the only one who does any background research? Fuji Section is the territory of the Kagebushin!”

  “The Kagebushin?” Ivanovich scowled. “Now, that is a problem. Definitely no way we can get off the train and start walking now.”

  “Somebody want to fill me in?” I asked. East Hellas seemed to boast a new and fascinating threat to our lives every second or third stop; it didn’t seem like one could be any worse than another.

  “Barrett, you’re not supposed to spend all your free time playing games and flirting with Sommar. You’re supposed to be reading the background research.”

  “That isn’t fair. What’s the point of free time if I’m not going to use it for relaxation?”

  Veraldi gave me a funny look. “There’s nothing relaxing about Raven. You’re right though, there’s no way anyone can read all the background research. There’s just too much material, unless you happen to be our infiltration specialist. Then it’s your job to know, which is exactly why Jones here is always so helpful in these situations. So fill us in, Jones.”