Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

  Garth chuckled. Maybe it was the violence of the day, maybe it was the inclusion into a bigger scheme, but it seemed like Rommen was unclenching a bit. “Oh, hey, that reminds me. I kind of need a satphone.”

  “A satphone.” Rommen quirked an eyebrow. “For what?”

  “I was planning on playing a rousing game of Tetris on that tiny little screen.” Garth held out an impatient hand. “Why do you think? Gotta call my lawyer, and it’s best it’s encrypted this time.”

  Birchcreek slapped his company issued satellite phone into Garth’s hand, wordlessly watching Rommen’s expression. Nothing but silent acceptance. Yeah. They were in deep now. Shit was gonna get real.

  “Thanks, Birchy.” Garth took the phone and headed up.

  ***

  As he crested the rise to the scene of carnage in nothing but his underpants, Garth worked out how he was going to deal with the mess. There was no denying that he had, in fact, been a great deal more ruthless than necessary, but the combined pressure of worrying about how deadly these first iteration ODDities were and concerns over how Rommen and crew were going to be over the altercation in the first place had just driven him over the edge.

  "Best bet is a quadronic overflow explosion." Garth said to himself. Enough of his blood had been spilled all over the place to guarantee a nice, violent explosion, one hot enough and powerful enough to vaporize all organic matter. "Funny how I've got a use for that already. Just gotta be careful not to do myself in. Oh, yeah and to make sure it's not too ... what the fuck?"

  The moment he got close enough to the corpses -he was personally pretty impressed with how he'd managed to kill all three of them within just a few feet of each other- a small drone lurched up and away from Sketch's corpse and took up a hovering position fifteen feet in the air.

  Garth was filled with the inexplicable feeling that he was now being recorded. "Fuck me. What the hell is this? Goddamnitall." He dropped the bloody shirt-bag full of stuff and slapped his pockets in search of anything that might be used as a projectile.

  Nothing. Well, not nothing, he did have the weighty satphone, but he kind of needed that to make some important phone calls and it was a dead bet that if he destroyed Securicorps property on top of everything else he'd done this day, Rommen might genuinely lose his goddamn mind.

  The drone continued hovering, watching him.

  Garth trained his ears on the background noises of the area. Down below, all the work crews were just now exiting the parking lot, forcefully directed there by the remainder of the daytime security crew; he didn't know the particulars, but there was also no getting around the fact that his antics on the parkade had undoubtedly piqued the interests of pretty much everyone on the site. The Kin'kithal strained his human-only senses to their limits.

  No. No sirens of any kind.

  Which was ... weird.

  "I don't know who you are," Garth spoke to the drone, "and I don't know what you think you've seen or recorded, but whatever you do have will not get nowhere. I know you aren't anyone falling to the 'good' side of the spectrum, cuz if you were, this place would be stuffed to the fucking tits with cops, National Guard and all kinds of other fucking law enforcement. Regardless of the methods used, I was fighting for my life. So git along little doggie, and leave me to my mess. "

  The drone zipped this way and that for a few seconds before disappearing into the twilight.

  "Well." Garth picked the bloody shirt-bag up and closed the distance on his bodies. "This sucks."

  Did it ever. A drone that size zooming around the scene of the crime had enough weight and thrust to carry a decent-sized hard drive and some very respectable recording equipment, making any footage high-definition enough to be automatically proven a real.

  Destroying the evidence at this point had become moot. The footage would be indisputable.

  "Fucking major inconvenience." Garth sullenly booted Sketch in the ankle, then dropped the bag into the man's open wounds. "Goddamnit."

  There was a way out of this, a way to make the footage look as unreal as he wanted, it just meant spending the rest of the night and the early morning designing, building and coding a rendering system capable of outputting graphics roughly fifty years in advance of anything currently on the market. He'd had plans to do so all along, naturally, because he had some pretty badass ideas for video games that'd put his arcade on the map, but that whole thing had been slotted for some time in the coming month.

  "Not, like, in the first two weeks. Fuck you, Baron Samiel, and the temporal incongruity you rode in on." Garth gave Sketch's corpse another boot to the foot. "This pisses me off no end. I had better things to do tonight. Now I gotta fuck around vaporizing corpses and making video games when I should be working on the global game. Fuck."

  Garth took the satphone from his pocket and dialed a number and started back to his offices. He was gonna need a lot of supplies if he was going to deal with these bodies in the manner they needed to be attended to.

  He caught sight of his mostly naked self, purely pissed he’d neglected to give someone the passcode to his private quarters. Even though they were on a secure network and he knew everyone working for Securicorps was trustworthy, he … hadn’t been able to hand over access, even temporarily.

  "Gonna need some clothes, too. Pants. And a shirt. And some shoes. Socks. Socks are a thing. Goddammit!"

  ***

  "Who is this and how did you get this number."

  "Bennnnnny. Is this how you talk to your number one client?"

  Benny Wall slumped in his chair. "You're not my client. We had one conversation forever ago. That was supposed to be a one-time deal. You've got Federal heat on you! Your ladyfriend with the eyes is makin’ my life hell."

  "Mmmhmm, mmhmm, I can see how that might be difficult for you to deal with, but see, the thing is, I kind of might need long-term legal advice and we've already got this rapport thing going on and I don't want to waste that."

  Although it was a little early in the evening, Benny reached out, grabbed the decanter of scotch he always kept on his desk, and poured himself a healthy draught of delicious goodness. It was true that Nickels had Federal heat coming in at him from all sides -for now, it was just the Fraud Squad keeping tabs on him, but it was a poor Director who left the rest of the Bureau teams in the dark about someone like Nickels- but it was also equally sure that the man had money to burn.

  And, to be honest, he'd made too many waves already in the private and public sectors. That kind of idiocy would eventually have litigious Americans coming out of the woodwork to get their piece of the pie.

  Around a mouthful of 18 year old Glenfiddich, Benny put on his best 'I'm Being Legal' voice. "Are you looking to acquire my services, Mister Nickels?"

  "That kind of depends." Garth cleared his voice. "Do you, like, do it all, or are you one of those dudes who's like, 'nope, sorry, I only deal in this one incredibly specific area of the law and nothing else, go screw'."

  Benny rolled his eyes. "I've been known to test the waters of essentially every branch of the law at one point or another, Mister Nickels. The specific nature of my previous ... ah ... clientele dictated I familiarize myself with quite a few things. The only thing I don't know much about is livestock. What sort of legal needs to you foresee yourself requiring?"

  "Mmmm."

  Benny was treated to a twenty or so seconds of Garth making an awful lot of noise, as if he was rummaging through a workroom full of stuff. Eventually the odd duck came back on.

  "Well. See. Here's... here's the thing. Hypothetically speaking, if I were to require the same kinds of services as the guys you used to work for ... hypothetically ... would that be something you could provide?"

  Benny took a double swallow of the good stuff to calm his nerves. "Oy gevalt! Are you kidding me with questions like this?"

  A clattering sound followed by a large thump drowned out the beginning of Garth’s response, “… of but at the same time, not really. See, there’s this gu
y? He kind of dislikes me. A lot. He’s … kind of in the same biz, but on the opposite end of things, and he’s probably going to make my life a living hell from now on … oooo, I should get some kind of tent or tarp or something to make … cover … hide … never mind, I didn’t say anything like that on this phone. We were talking about Chinese food. Anyways. There might be a conceivable moment in the near future where, say, I am accused of doing some things to some people who were illegally on my property, people who … were enthusiastically interested in violence. Towards me spe … there you are, yeah that’s gonna work just great.”

  Benny poured himself another glass of scotch. He could see it now. He’d be sitting at his desk one fine morning, enjoying a delish cup of coffee and a nice cruller, reading over the morning news, finding out how the world was going along and then whammo, polite gentlemen in balaclavas and body armor would come swinging in through the windows while an equally polite older gentleman with a haircut so sharp you could cut the grass with the edges asked to look over his files.

  The lawyer grinned ear to ear. He was burned on the Families –anyone even remotely associated with them, in fact- but Nickels sounded like the next best thing. “Okay, Nickels, here’s the thing. Your property is privately owned, right?”

  “Get in the fucking bag you mother… Yeah, it is.” Garth continued struggling with whatever it was he was working on.

  “Then, theoretically, if anyone on your property gets frisky, it’s pretty much up to you. Hypothetically. There’s degrees to these kinds of things. Guessing you’ve got yourself some security? The papers and the ‘net are blowing up with the ‘rich weird guy hiring the entire workforce of San Fran and Cali to do something’ on that land, which means you got loads of guys wandering all over everywhere. Gonna need security.”

  “Son of a bitch. I mean, yeah, I got guys from Securicorps but dammit.”

  Benny could feel Garth shaking his head. “Didn’t think about reporters and bloggers and all those kinds of morons? These days, investigative journalism has gone down a deep, dark path, my friend. Odds are if they haven’t infiltrated the work crews yet, they will, and soon. But let’s get back to these people who may or may not bother you in your primary place of residence. I would suggest allowing your private security team handle the bulk of any wrongdoing as they are legitimately recognized by the government through all kinds of paperwork and writs and licenses and whatnot to do precisely that, but in the event that you yourself find … yourself in a situation where force seems to be the only method of immediate survival, do yourself a favor and take it indoors.”

  A long stretch of silence, punctuated only by Garth tossing things into what surely had to be the largest duffel bag on the planet, filled Benny’s ears. The lawyer pursed his lips thoughtfully. Silence was wonderful, if done right. It could convey a million different things. In this instance, Benny felt that he understood precisely why this call was being made and why Garth was asking some very particular hypotheticals.

  More importantly, why it sounded like the man was packing a duffel bag full of equipment designed to … hide … things. That needed … hiding.

  Lucky Nickels had all kinds of fresh concrete that needed pouring.

  “As your lawyer, I urge you to take care of any exterior housecleaning projects you might need to finish as soon as possible, if not sooner.” Benny reached over, wiggled the mouse on his computer and waited for the screen to wake up. Then he opened up a new client file. “If you are currently unaware of it, the skies at night are patrolled by …”

  “Predator drones. Yep. I, uh, kind of know about that already.”

  “Legislation claims that the operators don’t examine any of the footage until or unless they are called on by police to provide aerial support at crime scenes, you know, like your average tailgate party gone wrong or at an accident or whatever, but c’mon.” Benny started hunting and pecking his way through adding preliminary data to Garth’s file.

  “C’monnnnnnnnnn, amiright?”

  “Exactly. The routes the drones take are extremely classified, but there’s a good bet that they spend most of their time hovering above the skies in the central locales of the city. If there’s something you need to clean up, do it before it gets really dark.”

  “Kind of figured.” The sounds of someone packing a very large bag full of who knew what ended. “Hey. So. Um.”

  “Yes, Mister Nickels?”

  “Fuck this thing is heavy. Anyways. So. If any kind of viral video pops up on the ‘net anywhere with me … beating the living shit out of three Zigg-heads and then, say, brutally murdering them with a Bowie knife, don’t … don’t believe everything you see.”

  “I distinctly dislike the sounds of this, Mister Nickels.” Benny shot a text to his staff. They weren’t going to like it, but they were going to get to enjoy the privilege of surfing the Internet for the rest of the night and getting paid to do so.

  “Yeah, well, when you decide to talk a walk through your brand new concrete parkade solely for the purposes of enjoying thoughts of a future where all kinds of nerds and whatnot come to your place to have a blast and instead find three addicts hunkering down for the night until everyone’s asleep so they can rob you blind and then decide instead that it’d be fun to murder you, you figure out a better way to deal with it.” Garth coughed. “But that’s not what happened. Because something like that wouldn’t happen. I have a top notch security team capable of limiting any kind of shit like that for me. However…”

  “Yes, Mister Nickels?”

  “If something similar to the situation I described does appear on the YouTube or Reddit or even goddamn Facebook, uh, fucking Vimeo, don’t … freak out.”

  “If I wore glasses, Mister Nickels, they would be off and I would be massaging that point on the bridge of your nose that people who are extremely aggravated start massaging.” Benny flipped his phone on silent; his people were getting back to him, and some of his younger staffers weren’t exactly enjoying the fact that they’d been given homework on what was supposed to’ve been their night off. “That being said, why shouldn’t I worry?”

  “Because it’s leaked footage from a ground-breaking graphics rendering and physics modeling software/hardware combo. For a video game. That I am now going to be making. Well, I was always gonna make video games coz reasons, but yeah. Leaked footage. Hundred percent. It’s gonna look super real, though. Like, you’ll be watching it, and you’ll be thinking to yourself, Holy Tuxedo Wearing Baby Jesus Christ, this man is murdering those people. But I won’t be. Because it’s digitally rendered.”

  “Digitally rendered.” Benny repeated flatly. “My eldest boy is into the computer games, Mister Nickels, and so I know a bit about how long …”

  “Done in a night, Benny, done in a night. Cutting edge … bleeding … no, Christ, that’s a terrible way to put it, now I think about it. Uh. ‘We here at Changetech are committed and dedicated to not only providing Americans with the kind of technological solutions that will increase the quality of the lives we lead, but to the creation of video games that significantly change what it means to ‘play a game’. In the coming weeks, we will be releasing a downloadable portion of an upcoming combat game that, amongst other things, will be featuring a revolutionary physics engine and graphics that will blow the Unreal Engine and any other system out there into tiny little pixels. Sadly, our servers were hacked last night, and preliminary rendering results were stolen. You may have seen the footage, and without the proper context, it looks … disturbing. Later today, possibly in the next few hours, Changetech will be releasing the entire fifteen minute clip and we invite everyone and anyone to scrutinize the data to determine whether or not it’s artificial. We feel that we should warn you, the footage is highly graphic in nature and should not be seen by anyone under the age of majority or by people with sensitive stomachs. Thank you, and good day.’”

  “That was well put, Mister Nickels. Can you say it again, this time a bit slower, and a
bit more professionally? I’d like to record that sound bite so we can get ahead of any media that might run with the stolen data.” Benny put his phone on speaker, laid it next to the very expensive recording device he left on his desk on the off chance that old colleagues might take it upon themselves to call him, and clicked the ‘record’ button with a thumb.

  “Sure, dude.” Garth took a deep breath and when he spoke, he spoke with clarity and precision. “We here at Changetech…”

  ***

  Now the battle was done and Benny was primed for attack-mode should anyone from the media or law enforcement start barking up the right tree, Garth allowed himself to relax, but not by much; he had a fantastic view of the night sky and the surrounding environments and while he didn't see anything in the way of additional drones, that didn't mean they weren't there.

  Recording the corpses in all their decaying glory.

  Garth wrinkled his nose as he continued sketching out the quadronic circuitry necessary for an explosion of energy powerful enough to destroy all evidence of the slaughter he'd been a party to; now the Aleph users were dead, the oddly familiar odor that'd led to their location was stronger than ever.

  The bright red lines laid out by the lightpen seemed to flex gently in the slight breeze rising up from the parkade's lower levels, brilliant floss only he could see. The world was a funny place. Everywhere he went these days, no matter how prepared he was, no matter how certain he was that he was going to be the top dog in everyone's neighborhood, it seemed like there was something or someone waiting in the wings to knock him down.

  Was it the Unreal Universe itself, spawning entities hellbent on preventing him from doing what needed doing, or was it something else entirely?

  "Have a hard time believing the Engines would be against ending the M'Zahdi Hesh and their gluttonous reign of terror lo these last umpty-jillion years." The Kin'kithal finished up the circuitry and considered his handiwork.