Idiots.
The guard’s hitching breaths smoothed a little. “Berry,” he moaned. “Berry…”
Shock. I’d have to question him soon.
First, though, there was hacking to do.
* * *
“The Shalter place” was a slumshack on the very periphery of Carsona, surrounded by piles of slagorra that steamed under the rain. The stuff — byproduct of producing the heavy elements for fuelcores and other indispensible tech — sent shivers over my skin, even buffered. It was a good thing the nanos made sure you didn’t get gene-fraying from the stuff. Slag was element-rich in its own right, but working with the stuff meant you had to replace your labor every couple years. The mutations just get too bad, and once the worst of it sets in the skin starts splitting and liquefied stuff that used to be warmbody comes trickling out.
There was no cordon yet. Without the late lamented Berry to bark orders, there was time before someone sorted things out, went above their paygrade, and actually started trying to untangle what had happened.
Not that they’d ever find Berry’s body. His replacement was likely to be just as loathsome, but that wasn’t my problem. Neither were the other security personnel I’d disposed of at headquarters, more as an afterthought than anything else.
Might as well be tidy, if I was going to cause chaos in this backass burg as well as New Vega. There’s no reason to ever be sloppy or haphazard.
I toed open the pressboard door and slid inside, exhaling softly.
Bodies flung everywhere. The throats were savaged, almost torn free. Splatters of arterial spray — relief and fresh unease warred uneasily inside my savagely controlled autonomics. Geoff didn’t tear, he made neat little wounds and drank until he was finished, just like a good little boy should.
Not nearly enough blood. Multiple attackers. Look at that, too — stat-burns. Starlike pattern. Shit. CoreTech weaponry. I wonder—
I didn’t even get a chance to finish the thought. A betraying creak as weight shifted, and a long lean shape landed on the bloodsoaked flooring. I almost, almost struck, but ended up giving just a betraying little twitch before I recognized him.
Sam, his wheat-gold hair damp and disarranged, actually glared at me. “Will you quit doing that? I’m here to help.”
“I left your head in the room,” I pointed out, spinning down from redline with a purely internal sigh. “What more do you want?”
He brushed aside my generosity with a single, efficient hand-wave. “We have to jump, Jess. Where’s the kid?”
Which answered one question, maybe. I crouched, keeping Sam in my peripheral as I examined a small, crumpled body. Slag distortions had given the little girl extra fingers and turned her face into a runneled mass, but her spincotton frock had been clean before death visited, and a short scan revealed no malnutrition markers on her bones or in her slagtouched flesh.
Even the slagged sometimes care for their spawn.
Sam was twitchier than I’d ever seen him. “Jess? Where is he?”
“Not gonna tell you, Sam. Shut up.” Let me think.
“I want to help, Jess. Someone else wants to help you too.”
“Oh?” I touched a piece of un-split flesh on the small corpse, chemtesting filling me with information, and temperature scans all returning different answers. If you pitch me about the Agency now and promise me all will be forgiven, I’ll kill you for good. I might even enjoy it. “Who’s that?”
I expected him to say anything other than what came out of his implemented mouth. Sam bent down to pick up a long, sharp-ended piece of slag alloy. “John Nikor, Jess. Who else?”
I looked up at him, my hair slicked back with mud and rain, and I’ll admit it.
I actually laughed.
Chapter Seven
Myth
I hadn’t laughed like that since… well, since far before I was implemented. The Projekts beats any hilarity out of you soon enough.
My handler regarded me with a patient, pained expression just two shades away from his usual just passing the message along, agent blandness. It was the same look he wore when telling me damage tallies were going to be added to my debt. He glanced at the walls, probably collating all the information I’d already gleaned from the bloodspatter and starbursts of scorching characteristic of CoreTech weaponry — it was enough to make me wonder if they’d taken Geoff again. Slivers of bone driven into the pressboard walls like shrapnel, too.
Definitely not Geoff. But not enough blood, either. Throats shredded postmortem in most cases, to hide what?
The silence turned elastic. He kept watching me. I kept examining the corpses. That’s three attackers. Four — wait, more than that. Trained, but they didn’t take this place apart like a raid team would. This was something else. “Yeah, the hero of the Gene Wars is going to swoop in and save us. John Nikor’s a myth, Sam. Just like the Collective, fairies, and buttercups.”
“So is your little boy. There’s not enough blood here.”
You’re just now noticing? “He didn’t do this.” My unease sharpened, a piece of the puzzle falling into place with a click. The Collective — that particular little fable was what I’d been trying to remember since the agents with their silver-sheen eyes, but I just filed it away for further thinking. My bandwidth needed to be spent on the here-and-now.
Sam’s thoughtful nod could have been mistaken for a twitch. “That’s CoreTech weaponry. Looks like they replicated some parts of the process.”
“The process.” Come on, give me something to work with.
“Where is he, Jess?” Sam stopped, giving me a thorough scan, and I winced a little internally. It wasn’t like I could hide it forever, though. “Oh, shit. You’ve lost him.”
“Now would be a good time for you to come clean, Sammy.” I couldn’t even feel happy that he was sticking to audible.
“Do you know who took him?” The rain outside slackened a bit, slightly less deafening. Curtains of it, slamming into the mud, and it would run off before it could do any good to this thirsty, starving place.
“Working on it.” Still, it was vaguely cheering to think maybe Sam — and by extension, the Agency — might consider me an asset to be retained. A little backup would be nice, especially now that I’d basically sent out a floating blue-neon Cirquit billboard. The risk would be enough to send me hightailing back into the desert, if not for the prospect of seeing which fish rose to the bait. I could leverage the ensuing fracas to find out who’d taken Geoff.
One way or another.
Sam’s autonomics didn’t budge. “I can bring you in. Offer’s still good.”
I tilted my head fractionally. Never taking the first offer is good tactics. “Don’t insult my intelligence. The Agency’s not very forgiving.”
“Not Agency. Weren’t you listening? Nikor, Jess. The legend himself. The Rebellion’s always looking for disaffected agents.”
You expect me to believe that pile of fourpad shit? ”Don’t have time for holoserials and fairytales.” Too quiet. I don’t like this. Nothing on my scans, but still, my hackles were up.
Even the most intrusive implementation leaves a space for instinct. I’d crouched near the little girl in the spincotton frock, my balance shifting as autonomics slid into subtly altered patterns. The nanos responded, prepping me for combat. Hormones shifting, brain glucose uptake spiking hard, enhanced muscles primed for action.
And Sam noticed. He switched to subvocal. “I don’t hear anything.”
Of course he didn’t. There was nothing to hear.
Consequently, when they blasted through the wall with CoreTech plasilca-film explosive, they knocked him down.
But not me.
* * *
Fast. Implemented-fast, but no commchatter and they weren’t buffered. Stunprobes crackled, a statbolt whined past, and I kicked the one looming over Sam’s prone body. Heavy, but not agent-heavy, the male — tall, a shock of floppy dark hair with chips of something pale in its long flow clacking as
he flew — curled around the force of the kick and collided with a blond male in standard-issue City shocktroop wear. Deep navy to blend with shadowed corners, plasleather worn to suppleness, loaded with weapon straps, for a moment I was in-City again, and this was just the same as every other liquidation of a high-value target carried out in alleys, cheap Cirquit rooms, or corporate highrises.
One hit me from the side with a whip-flexing shockprobe, a starburst of tooth-gritting clampdown before my buffering shunted the crackle of stat aside. Feedback through a few intake channels, a brief squeal ignored out of habit. A shockprobe will reduce a warmbody without buffergear to seizures and pants-pissing on its mildest setting, but even dialed all the way up they’re only a minor annoyance to a liquidator.
The pressboard wall shuddered as I used momentum from the one who hit me to crash into another, my hand tangling in straps and giving a quick jerk. He spun away, smashing into the wall again. The entire structure groaned. We’d have the place broken down to the slag in no time, at this rate.
Move. Staying still would give them an advantage. One of them had a statrifle unlimbered, and the whine of recharge peaked just before I dropped and rolled again, the plasilca knife I’d plucked from my first target singing a high stressnote as a flash scoured the inside of the shack. Thick ozone reek, the statbolt splatting on the wall and scorching a familiar starshape.
Decisions, decisions. Did I keep them away from Sam, or hope they would mistake him for a threat? I knew which one it was, and the sharp burst of irritation was there and gone in a flash, not useful and therefore ignored. Oh, for the love of—
I was already committed, the plasilca knife shrieking as it whip-bent and my hand darted down, opening the blond’s femoral artery and flashing back up, severing what I could in the inguinal fold with a vicious twist as I pushed off again, just barely dodging another darkhaired male whose face was a rictus. His strike went wide, lips skinned back from his teeth, and if I hadn’t been so busy dodging another crackle-hissing statbolt I might have been startled by the shape of his swollen canines.
What the—
As it was, I dropped and rolled again, ending neatly on my feet and pushing off with all the force enhanced muscles could give me, colliding in midair with the first floppy-haired bastard. The bits of gleaming in his hair were bleached bone, knotted into the strands with spincotton, clacking as he growled at me.
The sound-profile was strange, but I didn’t have time for more than record-and-flag because we were both airborne. Force transferred, one hand in his hair, I dragged the plasilca blade across his throat and shoved. Arterial spray splattered, I landed hard, the floor cracking. Noisome dust puffed up, my hair full of splinters. Skewers of pressboard jagging up, another statbolt whined, and a short grunt of effort punctuated the chaos as I wiped the third’s legs from underneath him, my palm threatening to slide on damp blood-greased pressboard before I gained my feet again with a convulsive movement. Where’s the last? Dammit, they’re quiet. Not even a pulse until they’re right on top of you.
The third, squat and corded with muscle, hissed as he fell. Another strange sound, but I didn’t have time to think about it. So fucking fast, implemented reflexes straining to keep up.
If he hadn’t been sloppy, new to the enhanced speed of his limbs, he might have hurt me. As it was, I got a good fistful of his hair and surged up, legs flying loose. My right heel brushed the ceiling, I had enough height and twisted as I dropped, dragging his head in ways no cervical structure could support. A short sharp crack, my feet thudding down on sagging pressboard, a rain-soaked burst of air through the hole in the wall mixing with the stink of blood, stat-scorch, death, and slag.
Extending in a lunge, the fourth shocktrooper tracking me with the rifle’s muzzle. This is going to sting. Calculating the intervals — he would get off a shot, I was too far away. Where was Sam? Was he still stunned? Facilitators weren’t as durable as liquidators, they were built for—
Crack. The rifle clattered to the floor, and Sam stepped aside, almost mincingly. The dripping point of an alloy bar thrust out of the fourth man’s chest, and I had time to study his graying face as shock took over and he fell with a shack-shaking thud.
I dove for the CoreTech statrifle, grabbing the strap before it hit the floor. Sam shook his head. Blood and dust grimed onto his face, his eyes blazing and a chilling little smile on his lips, he didn’t seem the same facilitator I’d been getting my marching orders from for years.
“So that’s how it is.” He toed the body of the fourth shocktrooper. “Great.”
What? I didn’t bother asking. He was talking about Nikor and getting cryptic. Maybe a cognitive degrade? I had dumped him in caustic sludge. Maybe some had worked its way into his cerebellum.
Of course, I was halfway to believing fairytales were coming to life myself.
I eased my way across shattered flooring, trying to avoid the strewn ruins of slagged warmbodies. I sank into a crouch next to the blond. Blood spread sluggishly from his slashed thigh, but not nearly enough. Huh.
“Jess?” A new note to Sam’s voice. What was it? Didn’t matter.
I sniffed, tasted the air. The copper of fresh blood was somehow off. I touched a fingertip to the blond’s leg, reflexive chemtesting returning a series of answers that made no sense at all. The edges of the slice up his thigh quivered oddly. I’d cut almost down to bone, laying open the artery. He should have bled out in seconds.
“Jess, I’d get away from that if I were you.”
I ignored Sam again. Used my thumb to pry up the blond’s upper lip. Canines, retractable — see the pouch there? Musculature changes there and there. Modified jaw structure — must hurt like hell to have that clamp down. Interesting. Geoff’s are neater, though. This is just a sloppy copy. ”These guys are too fast,” I murmured. “Too strong. No implementation, but they have to be implemented. Unless…”
“Yeah, you’re looking at CoreTech’s second-gens. Didn’t think they’d let them out-City, but they must be desperate.”
“Mh.” A noncommittal noise. Keep talking. Second-gens? Was Geoff the first generation? Or a later one, refined? Perfected?
The later generation of what, though? Shocktroops that didn’t need implementation, probably. But if they had these assholes primed and ready for exploitation in the relatively short time I’d been outside the City, that rather radically changed the shape of the playing-board. Still, the scramble to retain Geoff wouldn’t make sense unless the process wasn’t perfected yet and they consequently needed the iteration he represented, whether earlier or later.
The edges of the thigh-wound quivered a little more, flushing rosy even in the dimness. There was a creaking crackle from across the room — just like nanos fusing cervicals together.
The blond’s cheek twitched.
“Jess.” Very calmly, and very quietly, Sam took a step towards me. “I really think we should both get out of here now.”
I think you’re half right. I uncoiled, my weight balanced throughout the entire motion. The only corpses that weren’t twitching were the slagged warmbodies, and the one Sam had pinned with a slag-alloy bar. “You go ahead.”
“You have no idea what these guys are capable of.”
“And you do? Either start talking or get the fuck out of here.” I inhaled smoothly, brought the statrifle up to my shoulder. Now was a fine time to wish I’d stopped to get my cached gear on my way from the security headquarters. “Because these motherfuckers have information, and I want it.”
“I can give you answers. I’d love to. We just should really get out of here.”
“Go on, then.” The statrifle’s whine settled into the ultrasonic of a full charge, and I quit listening to it.
He sighed. “You were never this much trouble in-City.”
“Maybe you just weren’t paying attention.”
“Believe me, I was. Jess, please.”
The creaking sounds intensified. I tilted my head slightly, scanning. They w
ere damn near invisible to infrared, even though they bled hot. No scars on their chins, but modified teeth, jaws, musculature. Fast and pretty indestructible.
Well, maybe not indestructible. But still, this kicked implementation right where it hurt. So why would a corporation release them into the wild like this?
Maybe they weren’t released.
I needed a few cycles to rest. I needed to think this through. I needed to find Geoff. What were the chances of these enhanced warmbodies serving that last overriding purpose?
More twitching. More creaking. More crackling.
“Jess.” Firmly, now. “I don’t want to have to drag you out of here.”
“As if you could.” I racked the statrifle, the descending throb of its powering down sending a ripple up my back. I glanced at the hole in the wall, and decided it was as good a direction as any to make an exit.
If Sam was smart, he’d follow.
* * *
Just behind the crest of a slag-heap, I hunched my shoulders and watched the activity below. Warmbodies swarmed the site, two or three in ancient containment suits. Hauling the bodies out, picking over the belongings — a scuffle broke out a few rags of clothing, but all in all, it was a quiet affair.
Only one of the shocktroopers was carried out — the one with the alloy spike through his chest. Did they leave the rest of the bastards in there? Impossible, there was good gear to scavenge.
Sam, next to me, was motionless as only an agent could be. He observed a safe distance, though, and lay at an angle that would give him a moment’s worth of warning if I twitched in his direction. Whether it was caution or distaste, I wasn’t going to guess.
“They’re looking for him too.” Not subaudible, no reason to grumble when the warmbodies were so far away. “Or at least, they were. Agency just knows I was dumped in a vat, not that you had anything to do with it; Core and Niful bid for two HK teams but didn’t want Control knowing anything about the kid. I’ve fudged the reports as much as I’m able. As far as Control knows, you’re a casualty too. Tied off, game over.”
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