Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  Clyde digs into the flesh of the stalk with motorized ferocity. His steel hands rip out chunk after chunk. Gran gouges at the thing with another splinter of Winston.

  Kayla hobbles toward the fungal mass wielding her sword in one hand, leaning on her scabbard with the other, and seemingly trying to grow a third hand in order to clamp the wound on her side.

  “Jesus, Kayla,” Felicity sounds exasperated. “If you’re not up to this stuff, just say no and sit down.”

  “Feckin’ up for it,” Kayla spits. “Only a feckin’ flesh wound.”

  “You were skewered, you ridiculous woman.” Felicity shakes her head. “Sit down before I put you on your arse.”

  Kayla hesitates and then complies. I swear I hear her mutter, “Bite your feckin’ legs off.”

  Clyde is armpit deep in the mushroom. There is a vast concavity in its side, the stalk beginning to sway. Abruptly he stops moving. “Wait,” he says. “This doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “Stop slacking, you fecker,” Kayla calls from where she’s sagged.

  “No,” Clyde says, then catches himself. “I mean, please. If you don’t mind. Sorry, didn’t mean to—”

  “What is it?” I cut him off, try to bring my full attention to bear. Try to get it off Tess’s body, discarded, unburied in the bushes behind me.

  “Well,” Clyde says, extracting his arms, “I’d be the first to admit that botany is not exactly my specialist subject. Science background, yes, prior to all this thaumaturgy nonsense, but that was organic chemistry. A biology A-level in the long distant past is the best I have to offer. And, really, fungal anatomy was not a large part of even that. So there’s a chance I’m going out on a limb—”

  “Dude,” Gran cuts him off, “the brevity thing. I know it’s not yours. But, like, seriously.”

  “Oh, yes,” Clyde says, because even he recognizes that the day you manage to annoy a hippy is probably the day when you should truncate your speeches. “Well, I was just thinking that electrical cables aren’t normally part of a mushroom, are they?”

  “No.” Tabitha sounds like she’d like to bring her brevity to Clyde’s lifespan.

  “Electrical cables?” I say. Because, well, that’s odd enough that I want to double check.

  “I think so,” Clyde says. He reaches into the mushroom again and heaves. His fist comes back out wrapped around a thick bundle of blue, red, yellow, and black wiring.

  “Holy shit.” It’s Tabitha. We all turn to stare.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Biothaumaturgical delivery,” she says, rather cryptically I think. “Thought that was how Version 2.0 was dispersing the mushrooms. Wrong. Digibiothaumaturgical delivery.”

  “Erm…” I try to parse that. “Once more, with shorter words and longer sentences?”

  “Electricity cables,” she says, “there to power the magic.”

  I nod. That’s what they told me to expect. Clyde is using power cables to magically manifest his mushrooms.

  “But,” she says, “more than power cables there.” She approaches Clyde, confidently at first, but a little more tentatively as she gets closer. Then she remembers herself, recovers, and snatches the wires from Clyde. “Red. Black.” She pulls two wires from the bundle. “Electricity.” She nods to herself.

  I start to catch on. “You’ve got left over wires.”

  Her smile shows teeth. “Fiber optics.” She pulls out a yellow wire. “Ethernet.” She pulls out the blue. She looks triumphant. “Means he needs to be writing code into the spores. No wireless network means he needs to do it wired. Means he has a network.”

  I wait for more. All I get is an expectant expression, that slowly morphs into disappointment, and what I can best describe as the expression of someone who thinks I should be spayed to save humanity from my genes. It’s a surprisingly specific look.

  “How Version 2.0 is coordinating all this.” She rolls her eyes.

  I still don’t get it. She shakes her head.

  “I can hack it,” she says.

  Ohhh. Jackpot.

  51

  A network. A way in. Version 2.0 hid it in his mushrooms, but we found it.

  “You’re absolutely sure you can hack into it?” I check. After all, Version 2.0 is a digital supercomputer genius who just coordinated something that looks a lot like the end of days.

  Tabitha’s disdain almost oozes out of her. “Please,” she says.

  Kayla nods in appreciation. Gran grins like a child. “Righteous.” And even I have to concede that I can kind of see why someone might be attracted to that sort of badassery.

  God, the world really must have ended for me to have that sort of thought. I wrap an arm around Felicity for comfort.

  Clyde just sort of stands there, and… Well, maybe he looks awkward, but maybe the body he’s in was designed that way.

  Tabitha takes a moment to look up from her keyboard and fistpump at the mushroom. “Your face. In it. Fucking supercomputer bullshit.” She looks from the fungus to us. “I’m in.”

  I just manage to stop myself from asking, “Really?” because, well, there’s only so much Tabitha bile I like to take in one day.

  “Did I use the same password as always?” Clyde asks.

  “Added a six at the end.” And for a moment it sounds like there’s a smile in Tabitha’s voice. Then she remembers herself and scowls. “Pissing idiot even when you’re an evil genius.” She shakes her head.

  And yet perhaps something in Clyde’s posture becomes a little more upright.

  God. We’re in. We’re doing something. We’re fighting back. Well, Tabitha is.

  She looks over her shoulder at me. “Now,” she says. “What?”

  The question catches me off guard. This is usually the climax of the movie. You hack into the bad guys’ files, get the information you need, and then everything blows up while the hero smokes a cigar and bangs a hot-looking blonde.

  Nothing is blowing up and my girlfriend is a brunette.

  I force mental gears to engage while New York sways and creaks in the breeze around me. And really the answer is obvious.

  “Your code,” I say to Tabitha. “Your debugging code. Deploy it. Take over the fungus. Get that bastard Version 2.0 out of everyone’s heads.”

  Tabitha arches an eyebrow at me. “Mercurio. End of the world. Now. Between all that, when did I get the time to fix the code? Remind me?” Her middle finger makes its traditional salute.

  Shit. “Can you fix it now?”

  Tabitha doubles the number of middle fingers she’s erecting at me. “Sure,” she says. “Go find a tent. We’ll camp out a few days.” Then she adds, “Dick.”

  “Man,” says Gran. “I was just going to, like, just ask to map the system so we can find the evil dude’s servers and nuke him and shit. Love the ambition.”

  “Oh,” I say. Because, yes, that does sound like quite a good idea. “Can we do that instead?”

  “On it.” Tabitha goes back to her laptop and starts tapping.

  “If she finds it,” I start, “well, who knows if it will really take a long time to fix the debugging code. It might not be as bad as Tabitha fears. This could be our moment.”

  “Tabitha is very good at coding,” Clyde chips in. “For what it’s worth.”

  “Man.” Gran looks a bit guilty. “I was, like, totally serious about all this nuke shit. You dudes really sure about debugging and stuff?”

  From the looks he gets, Gran is not backing the popular opinion.

  “Talking about saving the vast feckin’ majority of humanity.” Kayla sits up from where she was lying down and puts the collective thought into words. “Seems kind of feckin’ important.” She heaves herself up.

  “No, no.” Gran shakes his head as she starts hobbling toward him. “I, like, get that and shit. It’s just, you know, we fuck that up and we don’t get another chance. We get in there and diddle Version 2.0 wrong one time and he’s gonna clamp his files shut faster than we can say,
‘shit, we totally boned that one up.’” He shrugs.

  Felicity chews her lip. She glances at me, because she knows how stubborn I can be about little things like trying to save all of humanity. “He does have a point, Arthur,” she says. “We have one shot at this. We should make sure it’s the right one. We don’t want to rush in half-cocked.”

  “What if this is our one shot?” I ask.

  “Carpe feckin’ diem.” Kayla is more eloquent than I think I can be.

  “Except,” Gran points out, “this is, like, a totally shitty diem. Get out of Manhattan. That’s, like, all of step one of this plan. Then regroup. That’s step two. Then kick ass. You’re like trying to mess up the order. We’ll be all popping it when we should be locking it. I totally assure you that a shit show will ensue.”

  “Look.” Kayla leans forward on her scabbard to stare hard at Gran. “Nobody likes putting foot to arse more than me. I feckin’ dare you to contradict me. But where the feck is saving people in your plan?”

  “Kayla.” Felicity reaches out a calming hand.

  “Execute the bad guy, then clean up his mess,” Gran says. “Kill before spill. Totally standard operating procedure.”

  Felicity lays out her hands. She agrees with him. Kayla is fingering her sword hilt in a way that suggests she doesn’t.

  “If we see a chance,” I say, “I really think we need to take it.” I keep my eyes on Felicity. She will be the final arbiter here.

  “Sort of arbitrary.” Tabitha answers before Felicity can. She’s still squatting at the base of the mushroom. I turn to look at her. “No code,” she says looking me dead in the eye. “Code doesn’t work as is. No time to work on it. QED, this is arbitrary bullshit.”

  Gran shrugs. But I won’t be so easily put off.

  “How long would fixing the code take?”

  Tabitha echoes her boyfriend’s shrug. “Fuck knows.”

  Gran appeals directly to Felicity. “We have to keep moving,” he says. “Get the map of the network and get out of here.”

  Felicity looks at me. An apologetic smile. “I agree with him,” she says.

  It sits wrong. I let her see that. But I’m not sure how to say it. Tabitha goes back to us, keeps tapping away on the laptop. Her fingers strike the keyboard with increasing force. Then she throws them up in exasperation. “Bullshit algorithms!” she spits.

  “What is it, dudette?” Gran looks concerned

  “Maps,” she says with disgust. Her face screws up. Then finally, with a savage glance at Clyde, admits, “Having problems.” Another grimace. “Local server map only from here.”

  So we don’t even get the map we need. This is all wrong. We’re in 2.0’s systems. We should be able to do something from here. But what Tabitha’s saying is that we can’t save the world from here. Even if her code was working, we could only save Manhattan.

  “How do we get to the larger map?” I ask. “Is there somewhere else we can go to get it?”

  Tabitha taps a few more times, examines her laptop’s screen. Something between a grimace and a grin touches her face. “Irony,” she says.

  I look blankly at her.

  She rolls her eyes. “Yes,” Tabitha says. “There is. The Empire State Building.”

  52

  OK, I’m not one for new age mysticism, or sticking burning candles in my ears, or whatnot, but that really does sound like it’s stretching coincidence. Still, I’m not above trying to capitalize on it.

  “Look,” I say, “talk about an opportunity to seize. We have to go to the Empire State Building anyway. We can connect there to Version 2.0’s larger network. We can take control. If Tabitha’s had a chance to fix the code it’ll be perfect.”

  Tabitha looks at me dubiously. “Fix the code? While walking over? To the heavily defended power base?”

  “What?” I push my luck. “You’re telling me there’s a programming thing you can’t do?”

  “You’ll make it work,” Clyde says quietly. “I know you. You will.”

  Tabitha glares from one of us to the other. She opens her mouth as if to say something, then closes it again. I suspect the fact that she has to agree with one of us is causing her some sort of internal hemorrhaging. Eventually she shakes her head, then buries it in the laptop. Gran takes a slight step toward her. A step that puts him between her and Clyde. But he looks at me.

  “Dude, I totally think you are rushing things,” he says.

  I glance at Felicity. She chews her lip. “Look,” she says. “There is no harm in Tabitha trying to work on the code while we move. That, in fact, is pretty much an undeniably good idea. And we do have to go to the Empire State Building anyway. To get to the radio transmitter and now, it seems, if we want to map Version 2.0’s network. If by the time we get there, Tabitha is happy with her code then we’ll reconsider.” She nods at Gran. “For now the focus is recon and intel.” A nod to me. “We’ll re-examine the mission parameters as the situation develops.” A final nod to herself, satisfied. “This is the damn apocalypse,” she says after a moment, “the situation is probably going to develop.”

  It’s a fair call. Of course it’s a fair call. Neither Gran nor I can really argue with it.

  “Actually,” Tabitha says, “may not have to go to the Empire State Building.”

  Oh shit and balls.

  Tabitha turns and looks dubiously at Gran. “Area 51 uses Google chat? Seriously?”

  53

  “In, like, our defense,” Gran says, looking more than a little sheepish, “Google chat is really way down the contingency list.”

  “Wait…” I’m still confused. “Area 51 is on Clyde’s wired network?” Paranoia alarm bells ring at almost deafening levels in my head. I mean, I’ve seen some conspiracy movies before but this is a bit of a mindfuck.

  “No.” Tabitha sounds annoyed. “Clyde—piggybacking his network on the existing wired one. We only took down wireless. Wired internet still there. He connected to it. Kept it live. Despite apocalypse bullshit. Area 51 also on it. Recognized my IP address. Want a passcode.”

  Gran holds out a hand for the computer. “You mind?”

  Tabitha hesitates. Gran looks confused. Tabitha looks from her laptop to his hand, then back to her laptop. She still doesn’t pass it.

  “Dudette?” Gran asks. He looks a touch concerned.

  For the first time in my life, I see Tabitha look contrite. “It’s…” she starts. And everyone from MI37 knows what she means, but how do you explain to your new boyfriend that he is not quite as important to you as your laptop?

  “Mate,” Winston calls from over by the Rottweiler’s corpse, “you’re more likely to talk her into the kinky shit than you are to get her to hand over that laptop.”

  Well, that’s one way you could explain it…

  Tabitha stabs a gaze at Winston that stands a chance of doing more damage than the Rottweiler did. Then, quite deliberately, she shoves the laptop at Gran. He catches it awkwardly, with an oomph of exhaled breath. For a moment it looks like he’s going to fumble the thing, and I almost can’t watch. Because then I’d have to watch Tabitha rip out Gran’s spine and beat his corpse with it.

  He manages to catch the thing before it slips, though. “Woah.” He grins.

  Tabitha does not.

  “Fuck me, mate,” says Winston. Then he considers this. “Of course, if you do that you won’t get that computer again. Trust me.”

  Gran taps away, ignoring him. Tabitha watches him the way a prison guard watches a repeat offender.

  Personally, I try to get to grips with what all this new information actually means. If we’re in contact with Area 51 our reasons for going to the Empire State Building are significantly fewer.

  But we have to go there. Whatever the potential costs, we have to try and capitalize on this moment.

  I’m brought back to the now as Felicity squeezes my arm again. I realize I am clenching and unclenching my hands, nails leaving small crescent moons in my palms. With her free hand, F
elicity makes small gestures suggesting I calm down.

  “OK.” Gran nods his head at the laptop screen and chews his lip. “OK.”

  “What is it?” Felicity takes a step toward him.

  Gran stands, handing the laptop back to Tabitha, who snatches it, and cradles it to her chest like a recently recovered child. “We have to, like, get underground pronto. The subways are a death trap, but the tunnels for the PATH trains are groovy, apparently. Take us straight under the river and out into New Jersey. Evac team are chilling over there waiting to take us to Mount Rushmore.”

  “Mount Rushmore?” Clyde cocks his metallic head.

  “You know, man.” Gran shrugs. “You going to use that much dynamite on a mountain face you might as well hide a secret government facility in it, right?”

  “Oh,” says Clyde. “Well, yes. I suppose. When you put it like that. Eminently sensible. Not sure why we don’t dynamite more structures really. Or some other explosive, I suppose. Don’t want to stereotype explosive experts, do we?”

  He looks around. Nobody seems willing to tackle the issue with him.

  Personally I have more pressing tactical concerns. Like keeping us in Manhattan until we can try and take down Clyde. “We’re still going to the Empire State Building first, though, right?” I say.

  “Dude.” Gran shakes his head. “We need to get below ground, like now and shit. Planes are incoming.”

  “Planes?” Felicity’s brow furrows. “What planes?”

  “Twenty minutes out.” Gran shrugs. “They’re taking this place out. Going to Agent Orange New York City to oblivion. We want to be well on our way, man. Like ghost gone.”

  Agent Orange… it rings a bell at the back of my head.

  “What the hell is this color-coded bastard they’re dropping on us?” Apparently Winston is operating with a bell deficiency.

  “They used it in Vietnam,” Felicity says quietly. “For deforestation. Flush out the Viet Cong. Give them no place to hide.”