Pop 'Em One (Bubbles in Space Book 3)

by S. C. Jensen

  “It’s the thing from the slug station,” I said.

  Gore’s voice was tight. “What thing?”

  The audiofeed picked up muffled noises from every direction, as if the mic was underwater.

  “Fix the sounds,” I said. “What’s wrong with the sound?”

  “It’s Oki’s transmission,” one of Cosmo’s techs said. “I can’t get the one from the camera to work. Either Sal forgot to plug in both wires or something’s interfering.”

  Sal’s head whipped back and forth, eyes darting everywhere except behind him. The thing on the ground inched forward so slowly it almost didn’t seem to be moving at all. Sal swung around.

  The lights went out.

  The shotgun went off with an ear-splitting bang.

  Sal screamed.

  A susurrus of noise overwhelmed the audiofeed coming from Oki’s transmitter. And then there was silence.

  When the lights came back on, Sal was gone.

  So was the body of the white-haired kid, Demi.

  Tracks in the dirt showed where they’d been dragged off camera.

  The lights didn’t flicker anymore.

  Nothing moved.

  Nobody made a sound.

  I swore and kicked one of the chairs across the room.

  “We have to go.” I grabbed Hammett and stuffed him inside my jacket pocket. “We can’t leave them there.”

  “Marlowe, wait.” Gore stood up from his seat, his face drawn and even paler than usual, but his mouth was firm. “The pick-up will be any minute now. We won’t get there in time.”

  “That thing will be back!” I shouted at him. “We have to go after it. Sal—”

  “Sal might be dead already,” Gore said. “We have to go through with the plan. It’s our only chance. Where did you say you saw something like that?”

  “After you got taken at the slug station,” I said. “It was there with me. In the dark. It tried to take the body bag. I tackled it, got the bag back. Then the lights came on and the train pulled up, and . . .” I practically ripped my hair out by the roots, trying to slow down the thoughts going through my head. “The bag. It tried to take the bag.”

  “We can’t afford to panic right now.” Gore came toward me with his hands spread open wide. “We have to go ahead with the plan. This is our only chance to get inside Libra. We aren’t going to get another chance to bring them down.”

  “Who had LunAstro’s flash drive?” I said.

  “The girl,” Cosmo said. His hands fluttered beside his face like bejewelled insects trying to find a place to land. “Demi.”

  I closed my eyes, going over everything in my mind. Patti had been certain she had been betrayed, even before Rae’s ghost plugged into her. The bangtail could have been bugged. Johanna. Johanna who’d had to flee from her home . . . The Barrens? Images and voices flashed through my head. First picked up by Libra, then LunAstro. Was she a double agent? Was she bringing Patti in to Nathanial Price? She seemed to like Patti, though. It didn’t make sense.

  And what about that thing?

  The subjects’ behaviour became erratic as the program forced them to do things . . . strange, unnatural things . . . Patti’s words floated like ghosts through my brain. Their minds were cannibalized by the program. Their bodies, broken.

  Nathanial Price.

  He was still doing it.

  He was still contaminating human minds with his program. But he couldn’t get it to work. Those half-human creatures must be all he could manage without Patti and Rae and the data from the original studies. How many of HoloCity’s harvested bodies ended up as Price’s lab rats? I thought of the scars on Oki and her whiz kids. Could they have ghost programs riding around in their brains too?

  Could Price have been watching our every move?

  That could be why he sent that thing to attack Sal, but it didn’t quite rate. Why did it take the girl too? My mind whirred through every possible angle, but only one thing stuck. The flash drive. Demi had the flash drive. Gore had had the flash drive when he was attacked. Price must have some way of tracking the thing.

  But LunAstro gave us the drive. Mr. Fen.

  We never saw anyone else at LunAstro. Just him and whoever had been lurking behind the screen in the conference room. Molly had been delayed, he’d said. I hadn’t questioned it at the time. But we had no way of knowing that Mr. Fen was actually one of LunAstro’s employees or that the rest of LunAstro had okayed this mission into Libra. Or SecurIntel.

  And Mr. Fen had been wearing one of the red necklaces. What did it mean?

  Ugh, I wanted to rip my hair out.

  I’d had it up to the bung hole with intercorporate spy games. I doubted any of them knew who they were working for or with anymore. It was a nest of snakes, each chasing their own tails.

  There was no hope of untangling the mess.

  I just had to cut off one head at a time until I got to the heart. My ancient mythology was a little rusty, but I was pretty sure that metaphor implied things were going to get ugly.

  Speaking of ugly, there was one potential problem I needed to eliminate before I got any further with this plan.

  Gore.

  “Marlowe?” Gore clapped his hands in front of my face and my eyes snapped open. “You still with us?”

  I wrapped my arms around my chest and tucked my hands inside my jacket. The upgrade kissed the stock of Sal’s pistol.

  Tom wasn’t inside Libra. I was suddenly sure of it. Price probably wasn’t there either. LunAstro let us believe that—let me believe it—so that we could deliver their doomsday code. Or it was Mr. Fen and we had no idea what was being delivered to Libra. Either way, they didn’t give a sewer rat’s ass where Tom was. I clenched my teeth and pinched the edge of my tongue. Blood rushed into my mouth.

  I knew where he was.

  And I had to get there without alerting anyone at Libra or LunAstro that I was on to the play. I whipped the gun out and pressed the barrel between Gore’s eyes.

  “Are you?” I said. “With us?”

  Gore backed up, holding his palms up like an offering. “Whoa. What’s going on.”

  “The hack job they did on you,” I said. “Got any sore spots on your head?”

  Gore blinked slowly, his pale eyes searching my face, and he moved his hands up toward his head. His fat, bald eyebrows moved with his hands in a way that would have been funny if I wasn’t about to blow his brains out the back of his skull. He felt around a little and said, “I don’t think so.”

  “No offence, big guy,” I said, “but I’m not inclined to take your word for it.”

  “None taken.” He grunted and grinned his albino gorilla grin at me. “I’m actually impressed.”

  “Save the flattery,” I said. “And get on your knees.”

  Cosmo and Dickie came away from the wall of holoscreens, glancing between Gore and me like they were trying to decide which one of us was the threat.

  “Bubbles?” Dickie tried to laugh, but it came out a constipated wheeze. “What’s the smoke?”

  “Housekeeping, Dickie,” I said. I moved the barrel of the gun along with Gore as he sank down. “Don’t try anything,” I said to the gorilla. “If you want to save Tom as much as you say, you’re going to cooperate with me.”

  “If we’re going to have a shootout up in here, I need to change my outfit.” Cosmo crossed his arms over his chest and glared peevishly at me, as if I’d ruined the moment for him by not giving him adequate time for a wardrobe change. “These boots are made for strutting, right? Not”—he fluttered his hands like an angry butterfly—“whatever this is.”

  “Cosmo,” I said. “Check him. Anything that might be an incision from a computer-brain interface. You know what to look for?”

  He rolled his eyes and stomped an inappropriately booted foot at me. Then he sigh
ed. “Sure. Yeah. I saw Rae’s port.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Dickie said. “This seems a little extreme, Bubs.”

  Cosmo waved a hand at Dickie as if he was shooing away an irritating fly.

  “Tiny thing. Easy to miss,” he said. He cracked his knuckles and rotated his hips as if he was getting ready to step into a boxing ring. “Lucky for you, sussing out tiny imperfections is my specialty. For example, Bubbles has a tiny heart-shaped mole on her—”

  “I have enough bullets to shoot both of you if I have to.” I glared at Cosmo.

  “I’ll just have a little look-see then,” Cosmo said. He stood behind Gore and splayed his long, black fingers out over the pasty pink rolls of flesh at the back of the chimera’s neck. He bared his teeth, grimacing as if I’d asked him to put on Lorena Valentia face cream.

  “Don’t move, Gore,” I said. “I’m a little on edge right now. You might want to hold your breath just to be on the safe side.”

  Gore held himself still, watching my face impassively. I knew he could turn and snap Cosmo in two like a stick of rock candy if he wanted to. I knew I could probably shoot him with every bullet in the gun, and it might not even slow him down. But he didn’t move. Didn’t even take a breath while Cosmo’s fingers swept up and down over his skull.

  “What in the stars have you done to your head?” Cosmo’s eyebrows furrowed. He massaged Gore’s scalp like he was applying conditioning oil. “It’s like somebody put your noggin together with leftover bits and pieces from a hockmarket discount table.”

  I gritted my teeth. “The port, Cosmo.”

  “He’s clean.” Cosmo stepped back and rubbed his fingers on Dickie’s pinstripe suit. “Well, kinda greasy, you know? But you know.”

  “What about a necklace?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Can I get up now?” Gore said.

  “No.” I kept the gun trained on Gore, watching his face for any flickers of something else behind his eyes, like I’d seen with Rae. But I didn’t know him well enough to tell if some hostile program was lurking in there or if he was just annoyed at me. I motioned to Cosmo and Dickie with my chin. “You two, meet me downstairs. I’ll be there shortly.”

  For once I didn’t get the slapstick routine. They bee-lined for the door and disappeared into the staircase. Cosmo’s data analysts continued to swipe and scan as if they had no clue what was happening behind them. I wondered if they were even working on our project or if Cosmo had just included them for ambience.

  When we were alone, I said, “I’m going after Tom.”

  “We’re going after Tom,” Gore said. “Right now. You don’t have to have your life on the line inside Libra for it to count.”

  A little exasperation had crept into his voice, which either meant he was playing the part he thought I wanted to see him play or being forced to work with me was finally starting to get to him.

  “Tom is not in Libra,” I said. “And you know it. You’ve known it all along, haven’t you?”

  Gore’s pale eyes bored into me like daggers of ice. He clenched his jaw. But he stayed kneeling with his hands up, which meant he wanted me to listen before I started shooting. He said, “I suspected.”

  “You let me believe we were going to save him.” My voice shook. Rage burned in my chest so hot it started to feel cold. My muscles ached and trembled. “You let my friends go in there after him, maybe to their deaths, and you knew he wasn’t there.”

  “We are going to save him, Marlowe,” he said. “Bringing down Libra is the first step.”

  “If we bring down Libra there is literally nothing to stop Price from chopping him up or experimenting on him or turning him into whatever has got Rae—” The words cracked in my throat and spilled out around us like shattered glass. Tears filled my eyes and Gore became a pale blur wrapped in a navy-blue suit. But I kept the gun pointed at the blur and he kept staying still.

  “SecurIntel’s been watching Price for a long time, Marlowe,” he said. “But he dropped off the map a couple of years ago, and we haven’t been able to get a lock on his location.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “If Oki and her team can get inside Libra, I should be able to guide them,” Gore said. “There will be traces of his activity in Libra’s systems. And of others we have been watching.”

  “And meanwhile, Tom is getting bits and pieces hacked off while SecurIntel collects its data? I thought you were his friend.”

  Tendons stood out in Gore’s thick neck and the pale flesh flushed red around his collar. He forced his words out slowly and carefully. “I owe him my life.”

  “Fat lot of good that does him while you’re in here and he’s out there.” The nerves in my shoulder pinched from holding the gun aloft for so long.

  “We need that data,” Gore forced the words out from bloodless lips. “We need to bring down Libra.”

  “What does SecurIntel want with data on Price anyway?” I said, my voice rising despite my best efforts to stay calm. “Who wants the data?”

  “Private con—”

  “If you ‘private contract’ me one more time I’m going to shoot out your left eye tooth.” I was shouting now. “How do you even know Tom?”

  Gore started to say something but the words died in his throat. He shook his head and stayed silent.

  I said, “Why should I trust you?”

  “You can’t,” he said. “You can’t trust anyone. And I can’t tell you any of the things you want to know.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess that’s settled. I’ll go alone.”

  He blinked his pale eyes at me, but he didn’t move to get off the ground. The holoscreen projected on the white wall behind his head still displayed the body pick-up.

  Except there were no bodies.

  The harvesters had come and gone without us noticing.

  I cursed. “Get up. They’re already gone.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked, rising to his feet.

  “Forget it,” I said. “I can’t afford a private contract.”

  Gore glanced at the holoscreen and checked the timer running in the corner. He ran a hand over his scalp, worry pinching at his eyes for the first time since I’d known him. But he nodded.

  “Keep Oki and the kids safe,” I said. I put the gun back in its holster and flexed the fingers on my upgrade. Then I rifled through the bags Sal had left under the table until I found one with another pistol and an assortment of other goodies.

  “You stay safe too, Marlowe,” he said.

  I slung the bag over my shoulder and backed toward the door and shook my head. I said, “Not really my style.”

  I hit the stairs with Gore’s laughter ringing behind me.

  I charged down the stairs into Cosmo’s kaleidoscopic hair atrium with the bag on my shoulder and the gun banging against my hip bone with every step. But when I burst out of the stairwell and into the room, a rainbow glare hit me like a Sol-flare through a crystal, blinding me with colour.

  My feet skidded to a halt. I ducked my head and shielded my face from the blinding colour. An oppressive heat hit my skin. I squeezed my eyes shut against the glare, my retinas feeling like they had seared to the back of my eyelids. “What the—”

  There was a snapping noise, like the crack of a giant rat trap, and the light died. The orange glow behind my eyelids became a spacy black with swimming stars, and the burning sensation on my face evaporated into a sheen of sweat. Dickie’s voice said, “Oops. Sorry Bubs.”

  “Just a precaution, you know?” Cosmo’s lilting voice danced through the stars in my head. “In case things took a turn for the sales rack up there and your pasty friend decided to get frisky.”

  I shook my head. “If your plan was to melt his eyeballs into the back of his skull, I’d call that one a success.”

  “Stage
lights,” Cosmo said, slowly coming back into focus. “I have them installed in every room. You never know when a few thousand lumens will come in handy.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” I rubbed my eyeballs through my lids as if I could massage the halos out of my brain.

  “What happened up there, Bubbles?” Dickie crept around me and peered up the stairs. “I thought the big guy was on our side.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Maybe he still is. I don’t know. I’m not risking Tom’s life to find out.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Dickie said. “Isn’t he helping us find Tom? Isn’t that the whole point?”

  “Not according to Libra or LunAstro or SecurIntel,” I said. “There’s something else going on here. I don’t know what it is. I’m not convinced they know what it is, beyond some mega-corporate game of one-upmanship on the way to Villain Ville. Tom isn’t at the Libra facility. I don’t think he ever was.”

  Dickie’s face blanched. “What are we going to do? How are we going to find him?”

  “Gore claims not to know where he is,” I said. “And maybe that’s true. But I think I do.”

  “You have info that SecurIntel doesn’t have?” Cosmo waved a finger in my face. “No offence, Pinky, but that’s specious to the nth degree. Information is their business.”

  “I thought security was their business,” I said.

  “Sure, on the surface,” Cosmo said. “But not just anyone can hire SecurIntel, right? They don’t trade for holocreds, girl.”

  My eyes widened. “Data. They’re trading in data.”

  “Ding, ding, ding!” Cosmo raised his hands above his head and twinkled his fingers like he was showering me with invisible credit chips. “Let’s have a round of applause for the pretty lady in pink.”

  “Gore said he needs some kind of information from Libra’s system,” I said. “Is that what LunAstro has offered SecurIntel for their help in bringing down the facility?”