by David Ryker
“Holy shit,” one of the guards murmured, his eyes wide. “I could retire on an island with that kind of scratch.”
“I wouldn’t try it for less than twenty million,” said Quinn. “I mean, hell, Oscar Bloom was offering ten million for us when we first got back to Earth. We have to be worth more than that now.” He levelled a defiant stare at the guard who had spoken. “On top of that, you might not live through the encounter.”
He knew it was bravado—unlike their counterparts on Oberon One, the guards of New Alcatraz didn’t have to worry about breaching containment, and they carried very real firearms in addition to their shock rifles—but it made him feel better.
“Oorah,” said Maggott, his voice sounding as tired as Quinn felt.
“Oorah,” Bishop echoed, just as weakly.
“I ain’t no Marine,” Ulysses panted. “But y’all can feel free t’lick my sweaty nutsack.”
Wentworth rolled his eyes. “Fine!” he griped. “Twenty million! Just fucking do it!”
Two of the four guards exchanged a glance. “You in?” asked the one who had spoken earlier.
The other looked around at their silent companions. “How much for you two to keep your mouths shut?”
“Two hundred grand,” one said instantly, as if expecting the question.
The other didn’t answer. Quinn estimated he was no more than twenty-one years old, and he’d never given the Jarheads any trouble since they’d been there.
“What about you?” asked the first guard.
“You can stop this,” said Quinn, already trying to formulate a plan to take on four armed guards. Nothing was coming to him.
“And if you do, you can expect to find your girlfriend floating in the bay,” Wentworth said in a shooting-the-breeze tone. “That blonde who always brings you lunch, what’s her name? Angela?”
The kid’s face turned white, and Quinn knew immediately that avenue was closed. Not that he’d ever truly believed it was open, but it was important to keep hope alive.
“Don’t worry about it, officer,” he sighed. “You couldn’t have stopped them anyway.”
“There’s an easy, believable story for it,” said Wentworth. “You shot them while they were trying to break out.” A cold grin spread across his narrow face. “After all, escaping is what they do best, isn’t it?”
Bishop and Maggott instinctively took Quinn’s flank so that they were facing the guards. Ulysses took up position beside Maggott on the right-hand side as Quinn noted absently that the sun overhead was particularly radiant that afternoon, beating down on the center of the courtyard and heating the concrete under his stocking feet. It really would be a good day to die, at least weather-wise. He wondered whether the guards would face them like men, or if they would simply draw their weapons like cowards.
Before he could find out, a pair of senior guards in matching brown uniforms burst into the courtyard, pushing the two men blocking the door out of their way as they marched toward the center of the room, their faces stone. Quinn noticed the other guards suddenly become very interested in the floor in front of them as their hands moved quickly from their weapon belts.
“Quinn!” barked the older one, a man named Van Dyke whom Quinn was positive had served in the military. “You got an important visitor. The rest of you, back to your cell.”
The other senior guard ordered Maggott, Bishop and Ulysses to line up, then marched them toward the door. Van Dyke put a hand on Quinn’s back and led him out as well. Quinn smiled broadly at the other guards as he passed.
“Be seeing you,” he said genially.
Van Dyke escorted him through the wide halls of the central section of New Alcatraz. With its stone walls and high ceilings, this part of the prison looked more like an Old World museum than a penitentiary, which Quinn supposed was fitting, given how few people within its walls were actually penitent. Especially here in the so-called “medium security” area where wealthy inmates walked around with impunity, as if they were in a Tower hotel attending a conference that was tedious but necessary.
“I don’t suppose you’re interested to know that those guards were very likely going to kill us just before you came in?”
Van Dyke ignored him and opened a door that led into a large room with sofas and chairs. No one had visited the Jarheads since they’d arrived, but Quinn never would have guessed the visiting room would be like this.
“This isn’t the visiting room,” said Van Dyke, answering his unspoken question. “It’s a VIP room.”
He sat Quinn in a chair that had a metal arm and guided his right wrist through a black ring that instantly tightened in response to his body heat, leaving him locked to the chair.
At least it’s comfortable, Quinn thought. He already had a pretty good who his guest would be.
Van Dyke left via the door they had entered through, and a moment later one on the other side of the room slid open. A man about Quinn’s height with thick chestnut hair entered and strode to the sofa across from Quinn. When he sat down, there was a grin on his handsome face.
“Lee,” said the man who looked just like Frank King. “It’s good to see you.”
Quinn grinned. “Wish I could say the same, Zero.” Then he feigned shock, as if suddenly realizing he’d just made a terrible faux pas. “Oh, I’m sorry! Did I just unmask you to whoever’s watching this conversation?”
“Don’t worry,” said Zero. “I’ve got tech that blocks anything from recording audio or video within fifty meters of my body. It’s just the two of us here, Captain.”
“I’m still not a captain,” Quinn pointed out. “Why are you here? If it’s to gloat, I don’t have time, so you might as well be on your way.”
“On the contrary, I’ve got something very important to discuss with you.”
Quinn snorted a laugh. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m serious,” said Zero, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees. “I do have an explanation for everything, you know. Maybe even an apology. And there are a lot of things you need to know.”
“Right,” Quinn said with a nod. “And I’m sure I’ll believe everything you say. I mean, why wouldn’t I?”
“Look, I know we’ve had our differences—”
Zero stopped in mid-sentence as Quinn levelled a cold stare at him. It made Quinn immensely happy that he could still hold his own with this asshole, even as a prisoner again.
“There’s an old saying, Zero,” he said. “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” He leaned forward as far as his wrist restraint would allow. “Fool me three times and don’t be surprised if I tear off your cyborg head and shit down your throat.”
Zero cleared his throat as if imagining that very situation. “I suppose I deserved that,” he said. “But now that you’ve got it out of your system, I’d appreciate it if you’d listen to what I have to say. There’s a lot going on, and a lot that we both need to do.”
“Oh, sure,” Quinn said cheerfully. “I’ll get right on whatever you want me to do. Might be a little difficult dragging this chair around with me—”
Zero leaned forward and gripped the restraint, which instantly let go of Quinn’s wrist, freeing him. Quinn gave him a suspicious look as he rubbed his forearm. What was Zero playing at?
“That’s the first step toward getting you to trust me,” said the man with Frank King’s face.
“The first of a thousand,” Quinn warned. “It’ll take a lot more than that to convince me that I shouldn’t just kill you at the earliest convenience.”
“I hope you don’t,” Zero said earnestly. “Because that earliest convenience is coming soon.”
Quinn gave him a sidelong glance. “What are you talking about?”
The cyborg laced his fingers together and Quinn watched as the man’s face flowed and stretched, changing back into his real one, or at least the one Quinn had come to think of as real.
“I’m talking about your freedom,” said Zero. “We need to get you
and your men out of here as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be easy.”
3
Quinn gaped at Zero.
“Get us out of here?” he cried. “You were the one who put us in here!”
Zero held up a finger. “Not true. That was Drake, not me.”
“Don’t split hairs, asshole. The two of you were working together the whole time before we left Earth, and now I know why. You wanted us to steal those ships and head off to Oberon, so that we’d take care of the alien threat for you and give you an excuse to lock us up when we got back. That way, you could spirit Dev Schuster away and put him to work for you, and Oscar Bloom could take custody of Chelsea, since we’d obviously brainwashed her into joining us. The rest of us are just common criminals, so you could dump us back in prison and eliminate us whenever you felt like it. I have to say, Zero, that was brilliant work.”
“It sounds so sordid when you put it like that.” Zero frowned. “I was just looking out for Number One, Quinn. The instant that video of yours went viral from Toomey’s lair, I was persona non grata among the people I used to rely on for work. I needed to get back into the inner circle of government.”
“Why?” asked Quinn, furious. “You could have put on anyone’s face, disappeared into the crowd and lived out the rest of your life! Why did you need to get back into Drake’s good books?”
Zero rose from his chair and began to slowly pace the room, his hands clasped behind his back. Quinn was gratified to know that the theory about Zero’s involvement that he and the others had come up with during their time in New Alcatraz was right, and that it was throwing the bastard off his game as much as it was.
“Just for clarity,” said Zero, “I can’t take just anyone’s face. They have to be approximately the same size as me. I could do you or King, obviously, but not, say, Drake or that giant you have in your crew.”
“I stand corrected,” Quinn said snidely. “Is that all? I’ve got dinner in thirty minutes.”
“This isn’t a joke!” Zero snapped. “I needed something I could only get from Drake, and Drake needed Oscar Bloom’s cooperation to achieve his own goal, which was basically to frame you again so that you weren’t free to go telling anyone about his connection to what happened in Astana with King.”
“What did you need from Drake that you couldn’t get somewhere else?” Quinn demanded. “Assuming I believe any of this, that is?”
Zero sat down again, and Quinn was surprised to see what looked like genuine emotion in the cyborg’s face. Either he was a hell of an actor or he was genuinely conflicted.
Or it’s just programmed into the nanites under his skin, Quinn reminded himself.
“What do you know about the cyborg amnesty?” Zero asked finally.
Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “They were given a blanket pardon at the end of the war. Why?”
“Did you ever ask yourself what they were being pardoned for?”
“No. All I knew was that we squared off against more than a few of them during our time in the Marines, and they were damn near undefeatable.” He grinned. “We ended up tackling a few others more recently, but they were easier to beat.”
Zero ignored the shot about the incidents that happened after the Jarheads had broken out of Oberon One. “The very existence of cyborgs was made illegal throughout most of the world in the 2070s,” he said, “because they essentially broke the terms of the Calgary Convention accords. Basically, they were classified as unconventional weapons instead of human beings, and they ended up on the banned list next to nukes and biological warfare.”
“As they should be,” said Quinn. “Why do I care about this? You got your pardons, get on with your lives. What’s it got to do with me?”
“You know, I think the two of us have more in common than you might realize.” Zero finally sat down again. “We both came from the slums; I just set my sights a little higher than you did. You enlisted in the military to earn a pension after the war and get yourself a nice little apartment on the lower floor of a Tower somewhere. I, on the other hand, signed on to have my body transformed into an elite fighting machine. I made a lot of money during the war, and afterward working for Toomey and others. You see, I went out and took what I wanted, while you were content to sit back and wait for the system to reward you for your service. We both know how that worked out for you and your men.”
That was a gut shot for Quinn in his current state of mind. He couldn’t argue with Zero—as payment for everything they’d done to protect the world from alien invasion, the Jarheads had been falsely branded as criminals a second time and thrown into another cell. But he wasn’t going to sit there and be insulted.
“Good for you,” he said, clapping. “The mighty Agent Zero grabbed life by the balls while stupid little Quinn got the shaft. And thanks to the amnesty, you and your cyborg brothers won’t be hunted down and disposed of. You won! I still don’t see a point here anywhere.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Zero. “Sure, we’re not officially designated as war criminals. That’s not much of a win in my books. You saw for yourself in Rome, when those rickety stumblebums tried to kidnap Chelsea Bloom for the reward—that’s no kind of life. They have no maintenance for their implants, no way to afford the fuel cells they need to stay alive. I’ve seen far too many cyborgs lying in the streets, starved to death because their servos don’t work anymore and they couldn’t lift their limbs to feed themselves.”
Quinn crossed his arms. “Things are tough all over. And let’s not forget that no one held a gun to their heads and told them to get the implants.”
“So that justifies treating human beings like scrap metal?” Zero’s right eye suddenly flashed red, which sent an involuntary chill through Quinn’s gut.
“This argument is pointless,” he said, trying not to let on that Zero had managed to rattle him. “I don’t give a shit about cyborg rights; all I care about it getting out of here, so either get to the part where that happens or get the fuck out.”
“You’re right,” said Zero. “We don’t have time to debate. Suffice to say that Drake was the key to getting an executive order from all three tribunes that will offer a pension to any cyborgs who register for it. In return, I gave him you and an edited version of Jakande’s footage from the battle at Oberon One that only shows you blowing it up.”
“Where is Ben?” Quinn demanded. “And Gloom?”
“They’re not in here, which means they’re better off than you. So is Schuster, even though he’s still in here, which won’t last long. Drake will have him out in a day or two.”
“He’s the key, isn’t he? The golden goose that you think is going to lay you a bunch of high-tech eggs.”
Zero nodded. “I always said you were smart, Quinn. But there’s a difference between what I want from Schuster and what Drake wants from him.”
“Bullshit,” said Quinn, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re both just looking to get rich off of what Dev can build for you. Or worse, you want to find out how he can do what he does, so that you can duplicate it somehow, maybe with artificial intelligence or a clone.”
“You were right the first time. Without Toomey around, I doubt anyone could pull off the second thing, but yeah, Drake is looking for new tech, particularly weapons. You were off on one thing, though—he wants to use them, not sell them.”
“And what do you want out of him, Zero? That’s what I care about most right now. Whatever it is, I can guarantee that you’re not going to get it. Schuster won’t go along with either of you; he’ll sit in his cell with his mouth clamped shut until he dies if it means sticking it to you and Drake. Trust me.”
Zero breathed a soft chuckle. “Of that I have no doubt,” he said. “You have an amazing knack for inspiring obstinance in your people, Quinn. You should be proud. But you and I both know that Schuster is the key to saving the world from the threat you all have been working so hard to overcome. I don’t know how he managed to upgrade those Ra
fts for the assault on Oberon, but I do know that no one else on Earth could have pulled that off, including Toomey if he were still on the planet. If we don’t have Schuster, we’re going to be facing that mind parasite armada with the equivalent of sticks and stones when they finally arrive.”
Quinn peered at Zero, wondering how to respond. Was he supposed to believe that their enemy was suddenly their friend now that he’d gotten what he wanted out of Drake? And that he wouldn’t double cross them the same way he had Drake and Oscar Bloom at the drop of a hat? Zero took Machiavellianism to an entirely new level, and he couldn’t be trusted.
But what choice did they have? No one else was offering to get him and the others out of New Alcatraz. And something about how Zero was talking made Quinn almost believe the man was honestly worried about the Gestalt and its impending attack on Earth.
Too many questions, not enough answers. But desperation had always made for strange bedfellows.
“So you want me to believe that you’re on our side with taking on the aliens?” he asked. “That you believe us when we say blowing up Oberon One only slowed them down?”
“Absolutely,” said Zero. “In my defense, I believed you when you tricked Toomey into talking into the camera; I just had other pressing things to deal with. Now that I don’t, I’m offering you my resources to help you get the job done.”
“What about Drake?”
“To give the devil his due, I actually think Drake still believes the threat is real, too. He’s just more concerned with the coming war than some alien invasion that could be years away for all anyone knows.”
“War?” Quinn’s stomach bunched at the idea. “What war? The last one we fought was supposed to be exactly that, the last war!”
“That’s cute,” Zero said with a sardonic grin. “War will never end, Quinn, and the next one is closer than anyone realizes. Drake wants to be the one who starts it, finishes it and is the only one left standing when it’s over. To do that, he needs Schuster.”
Quinn ran a hand down his face. He was beginning to understand. “And he doesn’t need me or the others.”
