Chromed- Rogue

by Richard Parry

  “You believe the story?”

  “I believe you.” She coughed. “What did you do?”

  “For a while, I tried to do what he said. I was looking for a life to save. Me and the gun both. Got a job with the company. Worked my way up.” Mason stopped, still in the darkness of the stairwell. “I lost my way. I forgot why he let me take it. Why he gave it to me.”

  “You’ve remembered now?”

  “No. I didn’t do that on my own. You reminded me.”

  “I don’t think he gave you the gun, Mason. I think he gave you to the gun.” When she spoke again, her voice was soft. “Imaburi wasn’t telling you to save a life worth saving. He’d already found that. He wanted his last creation — the gun you’ve got — to hold you steady, prop you up, keep you strong in the night. He gave you a guard.”

  “What?”

  “I know how he feels,” she said. “I saw it in you. At the beginning.”

  Mason stopped. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s so few of you… So few people have a soul.” He could hear tears in Carter’s voice. “I’m happy I got to know you, Mason Floyd. You made it all worthwhile. It’s almost over. You’re not going to make it to me. I’ve run the numbers. But I’d like to know. What’s in the case? We’re here at the end, you and me. I don’t have much time. I want to know.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Laia felt the touch of the demon and felt fear.

  The walls had been pulled out, leaving squares of carpet against tiles, no symmetry or order left. The wind moaned through the floor, tousling her hair. The big space was really two floors. They’d pulled out the ceiling between levels to make a big open area.

  She stopped walking. Julian’s hand clutched her arm. “Come on.”

  Laia steps dragged. “What’s coming won’t be good.”

  “Good for who?” Julian dragged her, and she stumbled. “It’s going to be great for my stock.”

  They approached a platform, the flat metal surface held on the shoulders of men and women, white eyes staring without seeing. They knelt, naked bodies hunched under the weight. Behind the platform, a collection of machines, things of metal and energy, chattered to each other.

  Her Master looked down. “Oh, sweet Laia. It has been far too long.” She felt the touch of his mind, wet and pulsating.

  To the Master’s right was a woman. “Haraway? Is that you?”

  The doctor’s eyes were glassy but not white. The Master controlled her directly. Her stare swung to Laia. “He’s given Marlene back to me.”

  There was no one else in the room Laia could see, unless Marlene was under the platform. No. There is no Marlene. “Marlene’s dead, Jenni. I know what you see, I know you think it’s real—”

  “You know better than anyone. But it suffices, this small trick. I’ve reunited her with her dead sister, stolen by this very empire I stand on. Do you know what they did with her sister?” Laia stayed silent. “I want you to know, so you understand how this Heaven sees family. They made a deal.” The Master’s lips curled. “I don’t understand their use of the word. The machine they’ve put in my head says it means one thing, but it’s not what they did. They lied. They took the girl, found her of no value, and recycled her into a product and a … Julian?”

  “A profit, Master.” Julian hadn’t let go of her arm. “We made the unprofitable profitable. It’s about the bottom line, the—”

  “Yes, yes.” The Master waved his hand. Julian twitched. “Do you know the most amazing thing? This woman commands the stars. She has power over the universe, and all she wants is to see her sister.”

  “I want to see my brother,” said Laia.

  “And so you shall. I’ll need you both before we’re through.” The Master looked out the windows, a frown touching his face. Laia felt the demon coil before rushing through the glass. “Where was I? That’s right. She gave up her power, forgot how to use it, sold out her friends, lied to her empire, all to find a dead woman.”

  “She what?” Laia looked at Haraway. “She wouldn’t.”

  “Tell her, my puppet,” said the Master.

  Haraway spoke, her voice flat, almost empty. “I stole Apsel’s gate and sold it to these people. It went wrong, so very wrong.” She sagged. “I made Mason come with me by turning his handler into my slave. He trusts her so much.”

  Laia’s stomach twisted. “What did you do? What did you do to him?”

  “I lied. I made him do a thing for reasons that weren’t true. I took it all from him.”

  The master clapped his hands, laughing. “This is why she still has her mind, in a manner of speaking. A mind this desperate, this easy to chain, is a rare thing. She has been building a new gate.” He gestured to the machines. “It’s almost ready, and then we will open the door back home.”

  “No.” Laia covered her mouth with a hand.

  “Yes. My brothers and sisters will come through and we will rule two worlds.” He smiled.

  Julian’s hand on her arm tightened as she tried to step forward. “Why?” Laia felt her voice crack.

  “Because I can. Because it is written.”

  “It is not—”

  “It is written!” His voice hit at the same time as the pain, and she collapsed, screaming. “Your pathetic prophecy of angels and demons means nothing. True power is here. These soft, mewling, weak people are easy to control, to contain, and they will know the touch of my regard before I am finished.”

  She spat bile and vomit. “How long?”

  “Haraway is just finishing her calculations.” The Master shrugged. “A minute. An hour. It matters not.”

  An explosion cracked the windows, long jagged lines chasing each other through the panes as the building shook. The Master caught himself, then looked to Julian. “Go.”

  Julian let go of her arm, leaving the room at a run.

  Laia forced a smile, wiping her mouth with an arm. “My prophecy is true. He’s coming for you.”

  “He’s not coming. This is something else. A distraction.”

  The lights in the room flickered then died. The machines behind the Master coughed and went quiet. He turned to them, then to Haraway. “What is it?”

  “Power’s down,” she said.

  Haraway’s eyes rolled, and Laia knew the Master was touching her mind. His face twisted into a snarl. “They dare to attack us? Here?”

  The floor cracked, a jagged line striking through the middle, concrete dust spitting into the air. Laia stumbled, falling as the floor bucked and pulled under her. The ground tossed her like a child’s toy. Her head hit stone, dazing her. When she looked up, she saw a familiar face. A friend.

  “Hey,” said Mike. “You need a hand?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Harry swiveled the chassis, scanning the base of the Reed tower. There were hundreds of people — the overlay spitting up 2,173 ACTIVE TARGETS — bunched and crowded against the building. It was a sea of people, a mass of staring white eyes. “That’s a lot of dudes.”

  “Yeah.” Lace’s voice was real and close. She was in a harness slung to the back of the chassis, a portable deck nestled with her. Lace held Nikon binoculars to her face, a tiny green light on the side winking in the darkness. Her voice was distracted. “Just remember, no forward rolls.”

  “What I don’t get is why their eyes are white.” Harry’s overlay continued to map the people, spitting up names, addresses, credit history, lovers, and employers. He paused, looking at a kid near the front of the mass.

  “Creeps me out too. The report said it’s to do with the drug.”

  “Report?”

  “Sasha Coburn’s report. Don’t tell me you didn’t read the memo.”

  “Now’s not a good time to be telling me about poor performance.” Harry shrugged, flexing the new steel bolted to the side of the chassis. It was the arm of an industrial digger, the crude weld lines holding it in place dull and gray. “I just lost a limb.”

  “Stop being a pu
ssy. It wasn’t your arm. You lost that years ago.”

  “You’re a lot sassier when you’re riding free and clear in a hammock.”

  “It’s hardly a hammock,” Lace groused. “Coburn said there’s a new drug on the streets. Carries a demon inside it. Not a codeword. A literal demon.”

  “She trying to get busted down to Psych?”

  “Yeah, crazy, I know. But you drink the drug, you go to paradise, your eyes go white, you become a zombie.”

  “Right.” Harry considered the horde at the base of Reed’s tower. “How’d the kid get it?”

  “Kid?”

  “Near the front.” Harry’s metal fingers clicked and whined as he pointed. “The one with the Spider-Man lunch box. I don’t do a lot of profiling, but I don’t buy a kid into superheroes, bundled up in corduroy overalls, is a heavy drug user.”

  “If my parents put me in corduroys I’d kill myself. Drugs are an easier escape.”

  Harry let his sigh play over the PA. “Really?”

  “Coburn’s report might have holes in it. Angles to explore.” Lace keyed her deck. “He gets good grades.”

  “What’s he doing here? I’m not keen on cutting a path through a bunch of people to get inside. And I don’t want to kill a kid.”

  Harry heard the soft, quiet rasp as Lace put her hand on the top of the chassis. “I know, Harry. We need another way in.”

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Are we going to die?”

  “It’s quite likely.”

  “I’m not on board,” Lace said. “Talk me through the details.”

  Harry hefted the digger arm welded to his side, the chassis complaining about the balance differential through his overlay. The bright yellow of the machine part seemed comical, out of place here in the sea of doomed people. “I’m going to dig a hole. I’m going to punch through the concrete here, down to Reed’s basement, and then we’re going to come up into the tower. No need to kill a kid.”

  “Where’s the part where we die?”

  “Gas mains.” Harry waved the digger arm, hydraulics hissing. “Electrical conduits. Oh, and I figure the roof might fall in.”

  Harry heard the clicking of keys. “I can help with that.”

  “You brought a shovel?”

  “Don’t be a dick. These nails do not do heavy labor. I’ll tell you where to dig. I just busted into city planning. Their network’s firewall is made of shit. Like, actual shit. Feces. It’s—”

  “I get it.”

  “Hang on, I’ll give you a hard link.” Harry felt the connection as she snapped a fiber lead into the top of the chassis, plans downloading like holiday snaps into the overlay.

  “Hmm. Looks promising.” Harry highlighted a route that led under a low-slung block to the east. “There. We can punch down without people noticing.”

  “What about the people in that building?”

  He clicked through the map, spinning it on the overlay. “It’s a bar.”

  “It’s a biker bar. They hate company men.”

  “No problem,” said Harry. “I’m not a man. Not anymore.”

  The bar was a hundred percent seedy, with a light dusting of scum. Old Budweiser neon stuttered behind a faux wood bar top that looked right from a movie where mail-order assholes came by the dozen. An empty stage promised ear horrors when the band arrived. Black T-shirts everywhere, most of ‘em below beards of epic proportions.

  “I guess what you need to be asking yourselves is whether you feel lucky. Do you?” Harry kept his voice conversational over the PA.

  “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.” Lace sighed like a bellows. “You couldn’t even quote the movie right, could you?”

  Harry swiveled his chain cannon as the overlay marked targets. “What movie?”

  A man near the middle of the group stood. He spat a gobbet to the ground. His leather jacket was a little too glossy. “Hey. Fuck you, company man.”

  “Ernest.” Harry stepped into the room, the broken door creaking under his weight as he crunched over it. His overlay filled with details of the people in front of him from Lace’s hard link. “Can I call you Ernest?”

  The biker looked around. “You talking to me?”

  “Anyone else in here named Ernest?”

  “My name’s—”

  “Ernest Fortmeyer,” rumbled Harry. “You’re forty-three years old, which is about the right age for a life crisis. Your wife’s at home—”

  “Wife?” said a woman, dressed in all the wrong ways. She faced Ernest, half standing. “What wife?”

  “It’s okay, Candy,” said Ernest. “Baby. It’s—”

  “Joane,” said Harry. “Her sister calls her Jo. I dunno. Kind of a tomboy thing? I don’t understand women very well.”

  Ernest looked lost. “How the—”

  “Who’s Jo?” Candy stood all the way, voice going even higher. Harry’s optics picked out a run in her stockings, the mesh broken as it climbed her left leg. “And who’s Ernest? You told me your name was Wotan.”

  “Wotan does sound kind of badass,” said Lace.

  Ernest rallied. “Baby, it’s not like that, it’s just—”

  “Shut it, Wotan.” A huge man, part fat, part muscle, stood behind the bar. “Or Ernest. Or whatever. Company man? Get outa my bar.”

  “You haven’t heard my proposition.” Harry would have smiled. He missed his teeth.

  “I don’t need to hear shit.” The huge man pulled an ancient old shotgun from behind the bar. Harry’s optics zoomed in, overlay highlighting saw marks at the end barrel. “I will end you right now.”

  “With that?” Harry pointed a metal hand at the gun. “That isn’t even going to piss me off. I won’t even notice. Give it a shot.”

  “Harry,” said Lace.

  “Not now.”

  The huge man opened the breach, checked the shells, then snapped the weapon closed in one smooth motion. Lifting it one-handed, he pointed it at Harry. “Last chance.”

  “I’m good,” said Harry.

  “Harry,” said Lace.

  Overtime slid into place, leaching colors from the light. Harry’s overlay showed the direction the huge man pointed the shotgun. He lifted the yellow digger arm, the bucket’s teeth pointing toward the bartender. The gun went off, buckshot hitting the side of the bucket and ricocheting into the bar.

  A man near Harry screamed, covering his face as red blossomed. The huge bartender looked at his shotgun. “Shit.”

  “Do you want to hear my proposition?” asked Harry.

  “Harry,” said Lace.

  “Seriously, not now. I’m working.”

  The huge man offered an enormous grin. “No. See, we can’t hurt you, but that girlie on your back? I’m pretty sure we can murder her just fine.”

  Lace’s voice sounded on the edge of panic. “Harry, that’s what I’ve been trying to say. I’m feeling a little exposed—”

  “What the fuck did you just say?” Harry turned the PA hot and loud. He took a step toward the huge man, the chassis crunching as old wood lifted and splintered. The reactor on his back lit, white pushing around the edges of Lace’s sling.

  “I said your girlfriend’s going to die if you don’t—”

  Harry moved the chassis over to the bar in three strides, overtime making it seem as if the men and women in the bar were statues, standing still and immobile. The digger’s arm tossed a table aside. He reached a metal hand across the old bar, grabbing the huge man. Harry made a fist, red spraying. The bartender’s legs fell to the ground with a wet slop.

  Harry spun the chassis, facing the room. “Does anyone else want to threaten my friend?” The PA was low, the menacing hum of the chassis a background to his words. He opened his fingers, red dripping, and the chain cannon attached to the arm clacked and whirred. “Anyone else think they can shoot her before I get to you?”

  There was a pause, a long stretch couched inside the overtime, then the people in the bar scrambled for the open door. In moments, ju
st one person stood in the room.

  “Say,” said Candy. “Is his name really Ernest?”

  “It is,” said Harry.

  “And he’s really married?”

  “He’s married.”

  “Huh,” she said. “He’s not a drug dealer, is he?”

  “Lawyer,” said Harry. “For what it’s worth, it’s close.”

  Candy turned to go. “What was your proposition?”

  “Cash money. I busted open an old ATM two blocks down. There’s thousands of dollars in it.”

  “Shit,” Candy looked at the door with longing. “Still there?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “Thanks.” She stepped into the night.

  “I think I pissed myself,” said Lace. “We need to talk about sharing the tactical details of your plans.”

  “I didn’t think you’d go for it,” admitted Harry.

  “You’re damn right,” said Lace. “Jesus. I could have died!”

  He held up his metal hand. “This isn’t some Fisher-Price shit.”

  “I know, it’s just—”

  “Never,” said Harry. “Not while I live.”

  “Okay.” The panic left her voice. “Okay.”

  Harry clanked across the room, tossing tables aside. The overlay spread a wireframe, showing where the tunnel would be. It was big and wide, easy for moving vehicles beneath the city. “Here?”

  “Close enough,” she said. “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Bribes. How accurate the plans are. Whether someone dug the tunnel or if this is a Reed feint.” She sniffed. “We’ve got tunnels. Makes sense Reed does too, but—”

  “Cover up.” The reactor’s light burned bright for a moment before the digger’s bucket cut into the ground. Harry tore at the ground as he kicked the overtime in. Lace laughed.

  “What?” Harry didn’t slow.

  “I’m just thinking you must look for all the world like a dog digging for a bone.”

  “Or a guy trying to get into the Reed tower in time to pay back a friend for a favor before everyone dies, all without killing thousands of civilians.”