by Jeff Somers
“Down here,” Jabali said, gesturing to the right. I turned with him and we headed down the side street, away from The Rock, otherwise known as Cop fucking Central. Cop Central was a goddamn planet unto itself, four square city blocks of everything cop. It had its own gravity, and people like me wound up breaking up in its atmosphere if we got too close. The main tower was ancient and soared up above us, the tallest building in New York, with hovers landing and taking off from the roof all day long.
As we walked, I had to consciously adjust my pace, slowing down to an unconcerned roll while my heart pounded in my chest, pushing my acid blood around so it could slowly dissolve my bones. You stayed on the sidewalks, too, because of the pedicabs that were always barreling down the middle, shouting people out of the way, two or three fat fucks sitting in the back. As I stepped aside to let one skinny, exhausted bastard scamper past with his freight shouting at him to move his ass, I thought maybe I hadn’t picked such a bad path after all. I might be royally fucked, but at least I wasn’t that guy.
Jabali just grunted as we passed the spot. Dr. Daniel Terries lived in a narrow five-story building that looked as if it was held up by the buildings around it. I walked past it without turning my head. It was an old building—every building in New York was old—but it was obviously upgraded, reinforced and outfitted with the standard amenities. We went around the block a few times, stealing glances as we passed, finally crossing the street and paying two hundred yen for two tiny coffee drinks from a stand. I put my back against a wall and looked at anything but the building, just getting snapshots as I turned my head this way and that, enjoying the goddamn hell out of my thimble of warm, brownish syrup.
There would be a shell system, of course, providing basic but useless security and valet services. An escalator, air system, Vid dish on the roof—middle-class luxury. I didn’t expect to find much by way of real trouble getting in. It was crazy to break into a building just blocks away from Cop Central. Crazy was sometimes the best camouflage you could have.
“What now, boss?”
I shrugged. “We wait.”
Waiting was the number one skill a Gunner could have. Half the stories you heard about Canny Orel involved him waiting heroic lengths of time, just being a statue in shadows, barely breathing. Going in didn’t pay. Between the inadequate security shell and the expensive and equally useless inner security door, we’d lose precious seconds busting our way in, and Terries could make a run for it or maybe even call the cops—and since he was a government official, they might even come, though rumor had it the SSF and the civilian government had no love lost between them. No, we had to grab him off the street, and we had to do it clean and fast.
I just wanted to talk to the man, find out what he knew, without someone pressing their mental thumb into the soft spot in my brain. A Vid screen was located above the roof of a tall, skinny building with a burned-out top floor. I didn’t think there was anywhere in New York you could stand and not be in view of a Vid; the fucking government was forever putting new ones up and swapping out the old ones for bigger versions with new features. You even found them inside buildings, in the oddest places. Silently, this one spelled out exciting news: the civilian government—which was the Undersecretaries, since the Joint Council they nominally served was just a bunch of defunct husks buried under London—had created, by decree, a reconstituted System Military, to be funded immediately. There hadn’t been an army since Unification. Who needed an army? The dedicated and skilled members of our beloved System Security Force kept us snug, and we were one world now, without borders.
I lit a cigarette and ignored Jabali’s longing look. I could wait if I had to. Not like a statue, but I doubted any of the stories we heard about Canny Orel were all that true. He’d probably killed a lot of people, but shit, killing people was easy. Killing a lot of them just made you ambitious.
I was halfway through the pack when Jabali nudged my shoulder, looking away down the block.
“There he is, boss. White hair, walking stick.”
I squinted across the street and saw him—a tall, straight-backed man in a blue suit, a gnarled wooden walking stick in one hand. He wasn’t that old, maybe a little older than me, but he looked healthy, his skin reddish and shining even from twenty feet away, his hair white, pure. He walked rapidly, staring down at a small handheld device, and people instinctively got out of his way.
I gestured at Terries’ house. “Get his door,” I said, and launched myself into the crowd. Dodging pedicabs and perfumed men and women, I angled my way behind the good doctor and hurried to catch up with him. I slid my blade into my hand, the taped handle once again reassuring and solid. I thought of Gleason as I rushed the last two feet and stepped up close behind Terries, pushing the blade lightly against his back and putting my hand on his shoulder. Amateurs grabbed their marks around the neck or shoulders. It felt safer, having a big handful of your mark. But it gave them leverage on you, and if your mark had any talent at all, they’d flip you or roll you off them, spin you around and stab you in the guts while you stared at them, wide-eyed, amazed. Best to stay separate from them.
He stiffened. “Don’t stop,” I said in a low voice. “Keep walking. See the man with the ridiculous hair by your door? He will fucking shoot you if you stop moving toward him.”
To his credit, he recovered quickly and kept moving. “I don’t carry credit dongles,” he said.
“Fuck your credit dongles, Doc,” I said, nodding at Jabali. “We just want to talk. Don’t worry, I have it on good authority you want to talk to me.”
“Yes?” The man’s voice was almost melodious, almost soothing, even in a whisper. “And who are you?”
“Avery Cates, Doc,” I said. “You sent some monkeys to collect me yesterday. Sorry I had to kill them all.”
He stumbled a little, and a mean little flare of satisfaction lit up inside me for a second. “What’s the matter, Doc? I thought you wanted to talk to me.”
We reached his door, where Jabali was doing a creditable impression of a hardass. “Ah, Mr. Cates,” Terries said softly, suddenly sounding old and frail. “You’ve just killed me.”
IX
Day Five:
Avery Cates,
Destroyer of Worlds
“Of course, you don’t mind if I have a drink, Mr. Cates?” Dr. Terries said, his voice flat. “And you’ll have one, too.”
Jabali glanced over his shoulder at me, and I nodded. He stepped aside, and Terries stepped into his apartment slowly, as if concentrating on each step. I watched him cross to a glass bar near the big window that took up nearly the entire back wall, a perfect view of The Rock, soaring up out of the street. We could even see the tiny flecks of hovers around its roof, Big Important People being ferried to and from Cop Central. Terries pulled out three simple tumblers and poured a clear liquid into each, two fingers deep, and turned around with them in both hands.
“Vodka,” he announced. “Real vodka. Good stuff.”
I stared back at him, keeping my face blank, and he smiled.
“Shall I take a sip from each, Mr. Cates? Do you imagine I have any reason to keep poisoned glasses in my home against this possibility? I’m a scientist, for goodness’ sake.”
I shrugged. “This is the System, Dr. Terries,” I said. “This is New York.”
“Ah,” he said, holding two glasses in one hand and lifting one to his lips, draining it with a wince. “I see.” He placed the empty glass back on the bar and then carried the remaining glasses in each hand, stepping a few feet away from the bar and dropping into a comfortable black leather chair. He sat slumped down with his drinks in each hand.
I crossed to the bar. The whole place was decorated in leather and glass, black and clear. It was filled with light and the walls were clean, white—painfully white. I itched just looking around. This was what Dr. Terries did with money. This bullshit.
The bar was well stocked, though I didn’t recognize most of the bottles. I began picki
ng them up and removing the caps, sniffing experimentally. “You don’t seem happy to see me, Dr. Terries.”
“I have never been less happy in my life, Mr. Cates.”
“I thought you wanted to see me. You sent a couple of Government Wonder Boys to grab me up.”
There was a moment of silence. I’d found a bottle of gin, the familiar medicine smell cheering me. I took the bottle and turned to face the good doctor and paused; his face was ashen, collapsed.
“I should have known better,” he murmured softly. I knew the tone of voice. There were only a few basic reactions when I showed up and pushed a gun into their ribs. Some people got angry, made threats they had no hope of ever carrying out. Some people got crafty, offered deals. And some people just got tired, gave up, sat down, and let it happen. I’d always thought the last were the smarter ones, because I always knew there was no threat that would dissuade me, no deal I would take.
“You were supposed to have been brought to a secure location, Mr. Cates. In a reinforced cell, sealed off, airtight, following disaster protocol. I wasn’t going to be within ten feet of you. But I should have known. You’ve killed so many people, for so long—of course you killed Mr. Shockley. Of course you killed everyone.” He raised his gray eyes to me and almost smiled. I hated his face, hated the subtle expression on it. “You’re going to kill everyone. Starting, apparently, with me.”
I smiled and nodded, lifting the bottle and taking a long pull from it. Jabali stood like a good soldier, unmoving, attentive, blank. The gin was smooth, and I drank greedily, savoring the burn. “Well,” I gasped as I swallowed and lowered the bottle, “I may not kill you. I just want to hear what you wanted to say. I want to know what’s happening.”
Terries drank off one more glass and then, without hesitation, drank off the third. He turned and set the glasses gently on the gleaming stone floor at his feet and sank back in the chair. “Mr. Cates, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that most everyone you spent the last few days with is now dead.”
I blinked. I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Jabali look up sharply at me, but I didn’t look at him. I hesitated; my instincts were to say nothing—this was about getting information from him, not giving information away. “Yes,” I finally said, “but you can blame Shockley and company on me.”
Terries shook his head, waving his hand at me dismissively. “That was an attempt to burn out the source, Mr. Cates. A desperate attempt at that. I knew I was sacrificing Mr. Shockley.”
I took another pull from the bottle but suspected it would have no effect on me. My heart was pounding, every ligament and muscle tense.
“I’m a learned man, Mr. Cates,” he suddenly said, closing his eyes. “While idiots like you were burning down the cities thirty years ago, I was doing advanced work that might have changed the world. I studied under Miles Amblen. I was doing advanced work!” He opened his eyes and stared at me, suddenly angry. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. I should have known it would be an animal like you who would destroy everything. You live in shit. You eat it, every day. It coats you and you spend your days wriggling through it.”
I nodded. “A disease,” I said. “A plague.”
Terries barked a laugh. “A disease, he says.” He looked at me, suddenly relaxed. “Mr. Cates, there is nothing natural about what is happening. Come! You are here. We have some hours before we are all dead. Let us use them. Maybe you can be useful after all. Or are you such an animal that all you know how to do is threaten and shoot?”
I clenched my teeth. “Dr. Terries—” I stopped myself. What was there to say? I shook myself and nodded. “Let’s go.”
He smiled and pulled himself from the chair slowly, as if exhausted. “I have a lab one level down. There is a private elevator. You may take whatever precautions you wish.”
The elevator was white, too, and when the doors had closed the seam disappeared expertly, creating the illusion of a sealed cube. I felt suddenly claustrophobic, and drank more gin in greedy, steady gulps. As I’d thought, I didn’t feel a thing. When the doors suddenly split apart again, I was surprised.
The lab was better. It was a mess—well lit and surrounded by the same painfully white walls, but cluttered and stained, smelling of smoke. A massive work desk sported several huge video screens, each a few feet across, and Terries led us to them, gesturing them on with a complicated movement of his hand. He pointed at the center one.
“Mr. Cates,” he said, “meet our plague.”
I stared at the screen. For a moment I couldn’t process what it was displaying. It was a blood sample, blown up to an immense magnification. Swimming in it, flitting quickly around the screen, were what at first glance looked like tiny little insects, multiple legs kicking and fluttering to propel them, tiny antennae waving softly. I blinked and leaned forward as Terries turned and walked away, hands clasped behind his back.
The insects glinted softly, shiny.
“What the fuck,” I whispered.
“Mechanical, yes,” Terries said without turning to look at us. “Robots, in a sense. Incredibly small, smaller than your red blood cells. Nanotechnology, extremely advanced. I don’t know what lab in the System could even come close to something of this complexity. They are self-powered, contain fairly sophisticated processing units that give them a fair amount of flexibility, and—most amazingly, Mr. Cates—they are self-replicating. Each one can produce another copy of itself, using the body’s own raw materials.”
“That,” Jabali muttered next to me, “is fucked up.”
“They spread, Mr. Cates. Any human comes within about eight feet of someone infected with these, and they make the leap, through the air. They will hitch a ride on bodily excretions, the usual viral or bacterial vectors, and once a single microscopic unit enters the body, it begins replicating. Once there are enough units in the body, they begin . . . consuming.” He turned back to us. I looked up at him, and he was smiling a terrible, cadaverous smile. He was a handsome man, his face finely etched, but he looked like a corpse taunting me. “They literally eat you from the inside out.”
I thought of blue-black bruises that eventually burst.
“Someone built these?” I said, my voice a dry rasp. “Someone purposefully built these?”
Terries nodded. “Yes. Generally speaking, the infected are dead within a day or two, depending on their general health to begin with, size and mass, some other factors we haven’t quantified yet.” He shrugged. “It’s spreading. We’re taking steps, but . . .” He looked at me. “How many people did you pass on your way up here, Mr. Cates? A hundred? Two hundred?” He shook his head. “You’ve killed us.”
Avery Cates, I thought, Destroyer of Worlds.
“Wait a second,” Jabali said. “Killed us? As in, me?”
Terries nodded. “All of us.”
I’d smelled a turning tide too many times before to ignore the obvious signs, so I reached across myself and drew my Roon, holding it pointed down at the floor but in plain sight. “Wait,” I said. “Terries, why am I still alive?”
He blinked at me. “What?”
I was gripping the automatic so tightly my palm hurt. “Everyone I’ve been in contact with over the last few days is now dead. These things kill within days. I’ve seen people dead on the street, for fuck’s sake.” I remembered that peculiar feeling of well-being, on my knees, blindfolded but suddenly not worried about it, and that ruined voice saying and don’t worry: When it is over, you will be punished again. “Why am I alive?”
Terries squinted at me for a moment and then transformed, life flowing back into his face. He threw up both hands. “Do not shoot!” he said, and turned away, running deeper into the lab.
A flash of panic ripped through me, and I brought the gun up, trying to keep Jabali in sight as I walked slowly around to follow. “Doc, don’t fucking do that. Doc?” I met Jabali’s eyes and paused. “You feel sick?” I said.
He stared back for a moment, and then swallowed. “
Nah, boss. Guess I don’t.”
I nodded. “If you’re thinking of shooting me in the back, Jabali, at least wait to feel something first, okay?”
He stared at me for a few moments more and then nodded, putting up his hands. “All right, boss. All right.”
I nodded and turned away to follow Terries, but he was already striding back to me, holding a battered metal bin in both hands. “Roll up your sleeve, Mr. Cates,” he panted, sounding suddenly excited.
“What?”
He slammed the bin down on the desk, making his video screens jump. One shut off with a pop. “Roll up your goddamn sleeve, Mr. Cates,” he said, holding up a huge autohypo. “You’re right: You are not sick. Let’s find out why.”
X
Day Five:
A Cloud of Death
Around me
Needled by my instincts, which screamed out against exposing a vein to Dr. Terries, I sat with my naked arm outstretched. “If you cut me,” I said conversationally, “I will hurt you. Just so we’re clear.”
From across the small table he’d unfolded in the middle of the lab, Terries nodded. “I understand, Mr. Cates. Believe me, I understand perfectly what someone like you is capable of.”
With one hand already holding me by the wrist, he reached forward with the autohypo. I intercepted his arm with my free hand, clamping tightly around his forearm, probably causing him pain. He looked up at me with alarm.
“Are you implying I’m an animal again, Dr. Terries?”
His face registered several emotions, one after the other. I could have labeled them finely—the specific intensity of terror, the flavor of impotent rage, the flowchart of quick scheming—but I didn’t bother. I’d made my point, and he put a rotten smile on his face and shook his head.
“Not at all, Mr. Cates!” he said quickly, making no move to free himself. He was sweating lightly. “I meant that with all respect. I am not a . . .” He paused to search for the perfect way to compliment me without seeming to kiss my ass. His face brightened pathetically. “I am not a man of action, yes? That is all I meant.”
