Cold Reboot (Shadow Decade Book 1)

by Michael Coorlim

  For his own part, Barsamian (DanTheMan69 according to his hub) didn't seem aware of me, or even concerned that someone might be following him. He didn't look around, he didn't glance over his shoulder, he didn't even seem hurried as he walked along the sidewalk, stopping at every intersection to wait for the light to change.

  We walked on down Monroe Street, crossing over the Dan Ryan on an elevated walkway, and then further East into the Loop. It was more crowded here, in the early evening, and I was able to get closer and stay hidden in the crowd. He hit the river, then walked north a few blocks along Canal before heading East on Randolph again. This was no casual stroll... his pace was rapid, his head forward, his turns intentional. He was going somewhere.

  After a few more blocks he slipped into a subway station.

  I caught up quickly. Washington Red Line.

  A few steps down the stairs were blocked off by an accordion gate held shut by a solid looking lock. This was an abandoned station, disused and bypassed by the trains. Why'd he gone down here? What was he after?

  I was about to turn away when I noticed that the padlock was looped through the gate but not closed. This was my chance to get Barsamian alone, to force some answers out of him. A foreboding note buzzed in the back of my skull, but I couldn't let fear hold me back, not now. I'd had enough of being reactive.

  I had to start making things happen.

  I took the padlock, opened the gate, and followed Barsamian down into the abandoned station.

  ***

  My ears strained for the sound of Barsamian's footsteps ahead as I crept as silently as possible down the steps. After a dozen or so I reached the bottom, and a long corridor stretching off towards the train platform. In the pale light from above I could see that the station had been abandoned for some time, with cracked tile and accumulation of dust and debris where the floor met the walls.

  I'd seen it, though. Passed Washington on the train between Jackson and Lake, just a flash of platform forgotten by the city. It'd been closed and left to rot back in my own time. Seemed like they still couldn't figure out what to do with it.

  The corridor was dark, without light, all the way to the end where I could see a single pinprick of what might be a naked bulb or motionless flashlight. I could hear Barsamian's shuffling steps ahead of me — he, too, traveled through darkness, but he seemed to know where he was going.

  I followed.

  In the absence of sight my other senses strained. I could feel the cold air on my exposed skin. I could smell the ancient mold and decay from the disused tunnel, along with whiffs of my quarry's cologne. I could hear his steps, and, I imagined, his breathing.

  What was I going to do when I caught him? I had my pistol. Threaten him until he told him who was behind the order to kill me? Get him to admit that it was Yeong? Find out if there were any assassins out there?

  Answers. That's what he'd give me. Whatever they were, he had to know more than I did.

  There was a sudden... shift when I reached the end of the corridor. Not really a sound. More like a sensation of pressure, of proximity.

  I pulled back, into myself, and the world seemed to slow down and speed up at the same time.

  Something heavy swung at me in the darkness, and out of instinct I found myself ducking and lashing out with a snapped kick towards the unseen assailant. It wasn't Barsamian. He was still ahead of me. We were not alone.

  Something smaller but no less dense struck me just below the left shoulder, a nearly painless impact that left my arm stunned and useless. An arm slipped around my neck, choking me before I could get my chin tucked under it.

  More blows came at me out of the darkness, attacks I was unable to fend off, each one sending shocks of agony through the ribs under my medical brace regardless of where they hit me. I lashed out in desperate return, kicking something soft here, fingertips skidding across something cold and metallic there.

  I didn't have a chance.

  Blow after blow rained down on me, and I could do little more than cover my face and head with my arms, screaming wordlessly, recoiling from the pain in animal reflex.

  CHAPTER 24: AN EMPTY BOX

  A flashlight momentarily blinds me even through half-lidded eyes before I'm lifted and dropped into a box. I get a brief look at one of my attackers... Daniel Barsamian's brother Yosef. His nose is bleeding but he's grinning, and has a pair of rugged night-vision goggles pushed up above his eyes.

  The box is barely big enough for me. They bend my knees to get my legs to fit.

  I can't do anything about it. I can't move. I can't speak. All I can do is watch.

  The lid closes.

  ***

  I come back to myself. It's dark.

  Need to get out.

  I can move again. Hands scrabble at the seam of the lid. Doesn't open.

  Pushing with my knees. Hurts. Can't. Doesn't help.

  Screaming.

  A thump on the lid. "Quiet down, you'll use up all the oxygen before we can kill you."

  Laughter from outside, muffled.

  I feel myself falling. Not the box, no, it's still. I'm falling within the abyss of myself. Or maybe I'm shrinking. I don't know, but it's dark, I'm trapped, and I'm alone.

  We're alone.

  Listen, if you're not just me, if you're something else, something other, I could really use a hand here, or we're going to die.

  It's just you, and you're probably going to die. The thoughts are my own.

  Of course they are.

  I become small as I fall. Calm. The aches from my beating and the cramped condition becomes distant. The fear becomes distant. My heartbeat steadies. My breathing calms. In this dark universe, in the totality of my being, I am alone. I am calm.

  I am pure.

  How long I am left alone I am not sure, but my thoughts fall away freely through this lightless void, this acceptance of death. First to go are my regrets. Those I will leave behind. Scott. Baxter. Ruamano. Greg. I miss them. I resent that, in death, I will lose them.

  Let them go.

  Then I feel a rage towards my captors. Towards Yeong. How dare they end me? I let go of needing to know why. It doesn't matter, not anymore.

  Let them go.

  Finally, I feel a relief that I am to leave this world where everything moves so fast. I was only here for a few weeks, but it was like coming into a movie you don't like halfway through. This cold world of constant surveillance, of poverty, of endless humiliations. Maybe I could stand it if its creep was gradual, but all at once — too much, too soon.

  Let it go.

  And then, there's nothing left. Just me, my mortality, and this cramped box.

  CHAPTER 25: GOOD GIRL

  I float through my thoughts, a ghost drifting through an abandoned landscape, the pain, fear, and poor oxygen quality bringing me to a trance state.

  I move among my memories, putting them away, boxing them up, tidying as I can before turning off the lights.

  My parents. Our house in the suburbs. Single-story ranch, white siding and black shutters, short but steep driveway that ices over in the winter. I never tried to reach out to them. I am a bad daughter.

  Baxter. I let him get away with so much. I let him take so much from me, back when we were young. I didn't know better, but that's no excuse.

  I am proud of myself for not fucking him.

  University and my obsolete degree. My career. So important to me then, so meaningless now. What did it matter? All those connections, all that networking, doing so much for Septopharma.

  Septopharma is gone. That world is gone. That self is gone. Erica the marketer is dead, and Erica the time-lost won't be long in joining her.

  Greg. My mentor. Recruiting me right out of Uni. Bringing me aboard, showing me the ropes, grooming me into the perfect marketing doll. A smile, a wink, a laugh at the right jokes, and our clients were putty in my hand. I was the Queen B2B.

  Elegant parties at Greg's estate out in Highland Park, old money mingling wi
th hungry nouveau riche, hungry young execs schmoozing with their elder futures.

  Driving. Back from lunch, I think, but that's not the city out my window. The roads are icy, and my brakes don't work. I pump them, but nothing happens, and I turn on black ice into a skid. I know I've been murdered, and I know why...

  Wait.

  Wait.

  That didn't happen. Did it?

  Wasn't that a dream?

  It happened. We just don't remember. Yet.

  The voice echoes in this abyss, a flat statement from she-who-is-forgotten that replaces my emptiness with disquiet.

  ***

  There's a sudden jostle and the trance is broken. I'm back in myself, in this box. I'm Erica Crawford, trapped in a box, being moved by the men who've been hired to kill me.

  "Bitch is heavy."

  "Lift with your legs."

  The voices are muffled, but they come to me with stark clarity.

  "Christ this has been a pain in my ass."

  "She ain't much. Can't believe she kicked your ass, Danny. Twice."

  "Shut the fuck up, Yosef."

  "Danny-boy always did have a problem with girls." A third voice.

  Three of them. One of them injured.

  "Yeah, well, she killed Ruben."

  "Bitch'll pay for that," Yosef said.

  "As long as we get paid for this," the third voice said.

  "How can you be so cold, Garen?" Daniel asked. "She killed your brother."

  Garen's response was muffled, but it made Yosef laugh.

  Ruben was the one who attacked me in the elevator, I realized.

  They're brothers. The men trying to kill us are brothers.

  That meant... something.

  It means that Yeong, or whoever is behind Yeong, has limited resources.

  How do you figure?

  There's a big difference between hiring multiple independent hit-men and hiring a group of brothers.

  Is there? I couldn't really follow... my... logic here. The mere fact that I had to try to gave me pause. How did I know things that I didn't know, understand what I didn't understand?

  I'm the part of yourself that you don't remember. The side you don't want to remember. The part of you who knows how to handle herself, the part that isn't a sad simpering little slip of a girl. You can keep calling me Kate, if it makes things easier for you.

  Why Kate?

  Why Erica?

  Erica's my name. Our name. Why are you talking to me now?

  Don't think of it like that. Like me and you. It's just us, sweetheart. I am you and you are me and we are all together. Just think of me as a different lens. A gut feeling. Every time you operate a computer without thinking, head towards somewhere safe, buy a gun, or beat the shit out of some fucker, that's me.

  Why now? Why haven't you been helping me with the other shit we've been going through?

  Because this matters. You think I give a shit about your discomfort? Baxter? Helping you find a job? I'm your will to live, darling. I'm survival. And I can get us out of this.

  So... I created you to... take care of me?

  Close enough. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I can get us out of this.

  How?

  Let me out and let me show you what a badass bitch we are, Erica. Let me show these poor assholes how badly they've fucked up.

  How...

  Let. Me. Out.

  I could feel her then, straining, down here in the abyss I'd retreated to. Here, we were on a parity. Here, we were on equal footing. This place was a retreat, a place to hide, a safe space within the soul, but one of us would have to rise back up to the driver's seat. One of us would have to take control. One of us would have to face the three angry brothers of the man who'd died trying to kill me.

  I knew I couldn't handle it. But I also knew that if I let her out, I might not be able to take control again, unless she let me.

  Don't be an idiot. There's no me, there's no you, there's just us. And only one of us can save our life. You want to rely on it being you?

  I found her, there, in the dark, this other side of myself, so familiar and yet so strange. I did the only thing I could. I pushed against her, pushing her up, back to the surface, while I sank down deeper into the blackness of my subconscious.

  Good girl.

  CHAPTER 26: KATE

  My awareness returned to the interior of my box. I felt small, somehow, present and observing but detached in that way that had become so familiar, but more intensely than when Ruben had tried to kill me in the elevator, or when I'd escaped the hospital.

  And I could feel her, Kate, the other me, this other side of myself, more acutely. She wasn't a physical presence so much as this bundle of energy and emotion. Confidence. Capability. And so much pain.

  Such agony. I recoiled from it instinctively, feeling a mixture of revulsion and fear towards the hurt that filled her, Kate, this other me. I retreated further into the darkness within us, hiding from it best I could, giving up more and more ground.

  Kate, meanwhile, had grown very calm, very still, compressing the humiliation, pain, and fear I'd felt at my defeat into a brilliant pearl of cold anger. It was very measured, this rage she felt, very controlled, a little spiteful fusion reactor burning merrily at the base of her spine.

  Her breathing slowed, her heart-rate calmed.

  Her's. Ours. Mine. Whatever. The Other inside me.

  She settled into a relaxed tension, clearly waiting for... something.

  There it was. Muffled voices. Approaching footsteps. Doomed men wondering why their captive had gone so silent, so still. They made the classic, fatal, mythic mistake.

  They opened the fucking box.

  Kate sprung from it fully formed, forehead first, smashing her crown into Yosef's nose and upper-lip. He fell back but she'd grabbed his throat before he hit the ground, crushing his trachea between vise-like fingers.

  Danny was reacting, slow, trying to pull his gun out from inside his jacket, but Kate was on him before it could clear his waistband. She had one hand on his wrist, the other under his elbow, controlling the arm to leverage the gun at Garen as Danny pulled the trigger.

  She didn't look to see if he'd hit, instead slamming her heel down on his instep while twisting his trigger finger until it snapped.

  The last Barsamian standing howled with pain, trying to pull away from the devil that had been such easy prey only moments before.

  Kate let him go, keeping his pistol as he stumbled away. Before he could even collapse over his shattered foot she'd reversed her grip on the weapon and fired three rounds into his chest. Before I could even comprehend what she'd done she turned and put three more into Yosef's unconscious body.

  The cold of my fear mingled with the ice of her hate. What did you just do?

  "Solved our problem." She spoke with my voice, not with my soul.

  You murdered them!

  "Self defense." She slipped the pistol into the back of her jeans, under her jacket

  Two dead, one still alive but unconscious. I felt a wave of nausea.

  She stopped and leaned against the wall heavily. Would you mind terribly holding off on being such a little girl until I've gotten us out of here?

  I fell silent.

  Kate walked briskly to the edge of the train platform. While I could feel every ache, every pain, every injury to our body, they were distant curiosities, and Kate didn't seem to let them bother her, lowering herself down alongside the tracks. The way she moved... so much more graceful than I. More efficient. Even as hurt as we were, she had much more control over our body.

  Made sense. She'd been running around in it for the last decade. But who was she? How many people had she killed? Had I killed? What had turned me into her... and what turned her back?

  If she could hear my thoughts, she wasn't acknowledging them. I was alone inside the body of a killer.

  ***

  I slept.

  No, that's not exactly right. I lost my sense
of self, my identity, my reason while Kate made her way out of the subway. I was there, sort of, and dimly aware of what was going on — flashes of emerging from the tunnels into the downtown night, riding on a bus, heading across town. I don't know how long it lasted, or what she was up to, but I didn't fully "awaken" until we were back in the Block, in Punga and Ruamano's kitchen. Just me and the big man.

  Kate pulled out a metallic canister and put it on the counter.

  "What's that?" Punga sounded skeptical.

  "Stem cells," she answered.

  "The fuck am I supposed to do with stem cells?"

  "Sell them. Drink them. I don't care. You know what they're worth. How they can help the people who live here."

  He picked up the canister, turning it over in his hands. "Why are you bringing them to me? Didn't Ruamano introduce you to Kozlow? You'd get more outta him."

  She shook her head. "I don't know if I can trust him. I don't know if he set me up."

  Punga put the canister down. "You alright?"

  "I'm fine."

  "You don't seem fine."

  Annoyance spiked through us. "Look, do you want the things or not?"

  He responded slowly. "What do you want for them?"

  "You."

  "What?"

  "I want Te Arawa. I want you to work for me."

  His eyes narrowed. "What kinda work?"

  "Watching my place. Acting as my lookouts. Backup if I need it. That kind of shit."

  He turned the canister over in his hands. "Maybe."

  "One canister a month. More if you can pay for them."

  His eyes flickered up. "You got a source for this shit?"

  "No." A slow grin spread across her face. "But I know someone who does."

  "Okay, Erica. You got a deal. You keep this shit coming, and we'll be your boys." He opened his refrigerator. "Beer?"

  "Good." She took the bottle, popping the cap off on the edge of the counter in one smooth slam. "Got a task for one of your boys."

  "You work fast."

  Her smile faded. "There's a lot I need to do, and I don't have a lot of time."