Shyft

by Damien Boyes

  “You wouldn’t do the same?” I counter.

  “What I would or would not do is immaterial. It ends now. You’re to turn over any evidence to the investigating team. As far as you’re concerned, the case is closed. It’s time to move on.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I lie. I’m not stopping. Not for Chaddah or anyone. I’ll quit first.

  If I don’t have access to the Service resources, to help me get justice for Connie’s death then this job is a waste of my time. Finding Connie’s killer is the only reason I’m still bothering with any of this. Reszo Squad, my life. Everything.

  I need to make sure I hide my investigation better from now on.

  She nods. “You’re to receive your commendation and then you're on shift-transition until tomorrow night. I want you out of the station. When you return, you're assigned to Detective Wiser's Task Force. Restricted duty.”

  Great. Now I'm riding a desk and taking orders from Galvan. On the sidelines. Out of the action.

  I’ll go crazy.

  “Inspector,” I say. “Don’t keep me on the bench, there’s not enough of us to go around as it is. Let me help.”

  “Police work isn’t just kicking down doors, Finsbury.”

  “Ma’am, I can’t sit behind a desk for a—”

  “Dismissed.”

  “With all due respe—”

  “Dismissed,” she repeats, softer this time, drawing the syllables out.

  I stand and the Inspector rises with me, puts her hands on her desk, leans forward, grabs me with her eyes and says, “We won't have this conversation again, Detective Gage.”

  She sits herself back down and spreads her tab.

  I stare at her, only a second in the world but moments in my head, trying to think of something that will change her mind, knowing that nothing will.

  I turn and leave without a word, the Revv seeping from my head, the ability to act slipping away.

  Chaddah may have chained my to my desk and thrown a block at my investigation into Connie’s killer, but I won’t let her take all my advantages away.

  As I start down the stairs I begin to formulate a plan, and before I’m at the bottom I’ve figured a way to get at the Revv in evidence.

  I’ll have more than enough to see my investigation through to the end.

  No one’s going to stop me from doing what needs to be done. Not Chaddah. Not Galvan.

  No one.

  ***

  SysDate

  [11:29:23:52. Sunday, April 21, 2058]

  The press conference drags for forty-five minutes of dry-mouthed tedium.

  It’s held in the public meeting space in the lobby and I pick a brick in the back wall and study its contours while Inspector Chaddah describes the official version of what went down at the arKade to the journos and hovering feed drones. I only look away from the brick to nod for the cameras when Chaddah commends me for my exemplary service. She does most of the talking, and introduces Galvan to read a brief prepared statement that he only stumbles over once.

  The Revv is slipping, coming apart in pieces, sudden time lags making me nauseous, like my thoughts are dragging, exposed, behind my brain.

  Galvan finishes and the Inspector ends the conference and I keep it together long enough to push past the barrage of questions, stumble out the front doors with my limbs wooden and my head throbbing and slip around to the side of the building, like a wounded animal looking for a place to die.

  There’s no one out here. Two people on the other side of the fence at the far end of the yard peeking through the blackout wrapper, probably more journos trying to figure a way past security out front, but they won’t get over the razor wire.

  I’m alone.

  I take two steps down the sidewalk and my eyes slip out of focus. My lungs turn to lead. I put my hands on my knees, close my eyes and suck deep hard breaths, each one a fight.

  My sense of time erodes. Mountains crumble. Seas turn to dust. My head wobbles, like the Earth is spinning faster than it should be, trying to fling me off.

  I feel every second, my thoughts at half-speed, like they’re slogging through three feet of snow to be heard. I don’t know if there’s something actually wrong with my body or I’m having a panic attack or it’s just the normal effects of the Revv leaving my Cortex.

  I blink and time skips ahead, glance around to make sure no one caught me gasping for breath—I don’t want to have to explain myself again today—and notice the two journos that were on the other side of the fence, a man and a woman, are now on this side. They’re standing next to each other, completely still, their clothes torn to shreds. Staring at me.

  The Revv sideswipes and they’re halfway across the parking lot, fifty metres away now. Did they really move that fast or did I black out?

  I reach into my jacket to pull my tab and overshoot with my arm. My limbs are rubber, my head too heavy for my jellied neck to support. I steel myself, try again, clamp down on the tab, wrest it free and try to ID them. They’re wounded, bleeding from where they caught themselves on the razorwire, but they don’t seem to care. The woman has blood streaming from her left hand. The man’s pants are already soaked red.

  The ID comes back null on both of them as they start running at me, lurching in jerky steps.

  It’s him. The guy behind the message. The guy who tried to park the Sküte I was riding in under a bus. The guy I’ve been looking for.

  This time he’s sent human drones to kill me.

  A gush of synthetic adrenaline helps wash away the fog in my head, but not completely. My hand leaps to my weapon. I get my fingers around the grip and pull it from the holster.

  “Stop where you are,” I yell and the words come out a slur. The drones keep coming, faces blank, eyes fixed on me, arms and legs twitching like marionettes.

  “Last warning,” I say, not sure if they can understand me, and raise my weapon, set to less-lethal. I want them intact. Maybe I can figure out who sent them.

  I work my finger through the trigger guard. The sights jump around as my hand shakes.

  I blink and we’re face to face.

  I instinctively step back, tripping over my heavy feet and squeeze the trigger as I fall. The neutralizer hits the male with a half-second pulse and he stumbles, drops to a knee, but the woman keeps coming, lunges forward at me with legs she isn’t in full control of, crashes to her knees and lands on my calves, starts to crawl up my body, trying to get her fingers around my throat.

  Enough’s enough. They won’t stop until I’m dead.

  I flip the weapon to lethal and squeeze the trigger the instant the ready light flashes and crater the woman’s face.

  Her Cortex blows out the back of her head in a burst of blue-white light and she slumps across my waist, lifeless. Blood pumps out the shattered plastic.

  I knock her away, roll her off and before I’m back on my feet the man shackles me in a bear hug, tries to lift me off my feet and slam me to the ground. I pry my arms free before he can get leverage swing my elbow at his temple, crack his head to the side. His grip loosens and I slip out, spin and put everything I have into a right hook that catches him square on the chin and flips his head sideways. His knees give out and he tumbles to the ground.

  I stagger back, raise my weapon. “Stay down,” I command.

  He isn’t listening, ratchets himself upright. His head lolls around like there’s nothing but skin keeping it on his neck.

  I put three shots into his chest, three big holes that expose ribs and organs, and he still keeps coming, his face expressionless.

  “Freeze,” I hear from across the yard. Galvan with his weapon drawn. He must have heard the shots.

  “Who are you?” I yell at the man. He keeps coming, slow but determined, blood streaming down his front, soaking the ground under him. I can see his lung fluttering through the hole in his chest.

  I can’t believe he’s still upright, let alone walking.

  I take a step back, keeping my distance, but he’
s no longer a threat.

  The man opens his mouth, chews air trying to speak.

  I found you echoes in my head.

  A crowd has gathered now. Probably half the station is in the parking lot, most of them with their weapons drawn. There’s enough firepower pointed at the shambling skyn to vapourize it.

  Then I notice the real journos behind me.

  Then I notice their drones. This is going out live.

  I lower my weapon. “Who are you?” I say again.

  He keeps coming, arms out, reaching for me. I step forward, bat his arms aside, and let him walk into a roundhouse to the jaw. I hit him hard enough, his head spins all the way around backwards with the sound of branches snapping, falls over and sags down his back. This stops him. Someone in the crowd gasps. That’ll make for good feed.

  I kick his legs out from under him and he collapses, lands on his chest with his face pointing up at me.

  His mouth is working, and as I crouch down hear it wheeze, “I…found you. Will be made…whole—”

  It writhes for a second more then falls still. Eyes open, staring straight up.

  The crowd is silent for a beat, and then all hell breaks loose.

  StatUS-ID

  [fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]

  SysDate

  [02:42:18. Saturday, January 18, 2059]

  I’m standing on the icy sidewalk with Michael’s final words hanging frozen in the air. Elder got to Petra. She’s dead now too. For a while, anyway, until her mom gets her a new skyn.

  The pain and suffering of ten more lives to add to the list things I’m guilty of. Everyone I touch gets hurt. Patient zero in a world where tragedy is contagious.

  Maybe I should just quit. Forget about who I was last time, forget about who’s hurting the people around me and run away, like Dora wants. Staying here is selfish. With every passing day, I leave a longer trail of suffering.

  I can’t. Even if I run, trouble will find me. Anywhere I went, more people would end up involved. I need to end this before anyone else gets hurt.

  That means finding Elder.

  Before I can move my tab relinks and starts madly buzzing at me. I pull it out and huddle deeper into my jacket while I read. A dozen rep-hits on Vaelyn and Petra. Service feed notices about the shooting. Plus three increasingly anxious messages from Shelt telling me to get back to his place. Shit, he insists, is going down.

  There’s nothing about Elder. And still Dora hasn’t contacted me.

  Where can she have gone?

  I hail a Sküte and read while I wait for it to show, tossing the tab from hand to hand every thirty seconds while I warm the other in my pocket. There isn’t a lot of detail yet: scattered eye-witness reports, vague official releases, and conjecture and conspiracy theories of every kind from the Undernet—that Petra was a rogue AI or a victim of a mindjacking shyft or a pawn in a grand political scheme to raise the Mayor’s flagging support. But no one’s saying anything about Petra and the Mayor being related. That secret’s still safe, for now.

  Peter Anders resurfacing as a mass murderer? It’s only a matter of time before someone puts it together, then things will really get crazy.

  I’m surprised the Mayor let me go, knowing what I do, but I guess they had bigger problems to deal with than babysitting a disgraced cop. Hell, maybe they actually believe I’m trying to help.

  The Sküte arrives and I clamber in, give it Shelt’s address, tell it to crank the heater and hold my hands in front of the blowers. My fingers are freezing. I don’t remember ever feeling so cold. This skyn hasn’t had thirty years of Northern Ontario winters to get acclimated to sub-zero temperatures.

  Once the blood starts flowing in my hands again, I throw my tab screen to the Sküte’s dash and keep reading, find a bystander video from a half hour ago outside the Fāngzhōu, showing blue and silver Standards enforcement officers keeping the crowd away from the entrance as Wiser and Brewer arrive.

  They’re going to see I was there just before it happened. There’ll be questions.

  I’m thinking about getting ahead of the situation and calling Agent Wiser myself when the Sküte shudders and the screen winks off. I brace against the dash, prepare for the vehicle to lose balance, tumble, and spin me around inside like a load of laundry, but it doesn’t. It talks to me instead.

  “Finsbury Gage.” The Sküte squeaks my name, high and cute like a cartoon mouse. I don’t answer, wait to see what happens next.

  “I know you’re there, Mr. Gage. I can see you through the camera system. I’ve been waiting for the right time to talk. I apologise for my…skittishness.”

  “You’re that kid,” I say. “You’ve been following me.”

  How did he hack a Sküte?

  More importantly, what does he want to talk about that’s so important he’d hack into a heavily secured autonomous vehicle instead of sending a message to my IMP like everyone else in the world? “Who are you?” I ask.

  There’s a slight pause. “I wanted to see you with my own eyes. To ensure you really exist.”

  “Why wouldn’t I exist?”

  “These days? One never knows.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” I repeat.

  The speaker hisses, then, “I’m the reason you’re here.”

  “You were driving the van.”

  “Yes.”

  It’s him.

  Immediately I’m back in the car, watching Connie suffer. Watching her die. I want to reach through the speakers, grab him by the throat and squeeze until his cute voice gurgles its last breath.

  “You killed my wife.”

  “I did. I’m sorry.”

  He’s sorry. He ruined my life. He took the one person that mattered most to me, and he’s sorry.

  “Why don’t you tell me where you are and we can have this conversation in person?”

  He doesn’t hesitate. “I promise you that will happen. Soon, but not now. First you must get yourself to safety. You’re in danger.”

  “I know. People keep dying around me. I need to know why.”

  “You found me, hunted me down. The you before. When I was called Eka. The me before. He didn’t like being found. That meeting ended with both of us dead.”

  Finsbury again. This is all his fault.

  But can I really blame him? For doing whatever necessary to find the person who took Connie? Wherever it lead. Whoever it lead to. He couldn’t have known it would end up how it did.

  I’ve been so busy cleaning up after him, who knows what I would have done in his situation. If I’d been the one who came back first—

  I’ve got the same burning memory of Connie lanced into my head, I just haven’t had the chance to deal with it. The pain is mixed in with everything else. The confusion and the fear and the drive for answers have diluted it, made it bearable. Maybe if I was surrounded by the constant reminders, with nothing but the vision of her dying in my head, maybe then.

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” I say.

  “We shall meet and have a proper conversation, but for time now is short. Events are in motion. We are joined, you and I together. The details of what went on between us may have died with us, but I have reason to believe something was born of our union. Something that escaped.”

  Finsbury found the driver and that's how he died. Not working for Xiao. Not dirty. I may have been shyfting, but I wasn't dirty. That's something, at least.

  Little good it helps me now though. “What do you mean, ‘escaped’?”

  There’s a buzz of silence and then the Sküte responds. “Eka had made himself into something more than human. He evolved into a form of superintelligence, a being greater than even the most advanced AMP, and a part of what he had been remained intact and survived. That fragment, unmoored ever since, is operating recursively, focused on a single goal.”

  “Which is?”

  “Protecting me.”

  “From what?”

  “From you, Mr. Gage. You were, after all, tryin
g to kill me.”

  The Sküte rolls along in silence for a moment. I notice how loud my breathing is and try to calm it.

  A superintelligence. And not any tame AMP either, a rogue superintelligence. One of the most dangerously advanced things ever created, on the loose, and I hunted down and confronted it. No wonder my life is so fucked.

  “I don’t hold this against you,” he offers. “I did kill your wife.”

  My jaw clenches and I squeeze down on a spike of anger that jabs me in the brain stem and dissipates. I want to be angry, but I’m not.

  Surprisingly, what I feel most is sympathy. I know how he feels. He’s dealing with the shitstorm his other self left him. Whoever it is I’m talking to, he as much killed my wife as I killed the person he used to be. We’re two murders removed at this point, I don’t know who to be angry at anymore.

  But I still want to know what happened. “Standards claims I was killed in a Reszo gang fight, shyfted to the gills. That I was a dirty cop who died being dirty. That I went so hard after this Xiao guy, the impact crater consumed the lives of everyone around me.”

  “Created for public consumption, to reflect political realities and hide the fact they didn’t really know what occurred,” he replies. “The explosion destroyed most of the evidence, left only the remains of four interconnected enterprise-level cortical processor arrays—the kind used by the very best AMPs—and a number of incinerated skyns. They assumed it was a gang fight and developed a theory of the crime to match. It wasn’t. It was personal, you and I. Xiao had no part in it.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “That Xiao had no part in your demise? Because the data and probabilities leading up to the event indicate otherwise. Because the internal documents I obtained from Standards’ network contain no evidence of the assertion. And because when I asked Xiao, he assured me he hadn’t. Your investigation was interfering with his business, but he felt no personal animosity toward you. He made every attempt to avert collateral damage.”