by David Ryker
Arza nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”
“Yup.”
“Ward?”
“Yes?”
“If you didn’t think Matsumoto was the cyber-doc we were after, then why’d you load your gun before we went in there?”
Ward cracked an injurious smile and took off, following the smell of drifting coffee on the city air. “Because I wasn’t sure that he wasn’t.”
“And if he turned out to be?”
“Then you’d have been glad I did.”
7
Phnom-Penh Street wasn’t closer. But Ward wanted to get a bead on Sakzan before Ostriker.
This was too close to the prime minister not to be linked to him. If someone was going to try and pop him from two clicks out and needed an eye-job to do it, then it only made sense that the doc would be sympathetic to the cause. And out of the people who wanted to see Chang dethroned, or dead, the majority were Martians. And the fact that it was probably going to happen in the middle of the Martian capital was enough to tell Ward that this was meant to be a statement. And statements didn’t get much bigger than this: there’s no room for peace in the Axis.
Humans, all mixed up and multicolored, didn’t take much offense to the idea of a Half-Breed in charge. Hell, it meant that they’d be better represented on Mars, as well as in the UMR settlements across the OCA. It was a real leap forward in the pursuit of true species equality. But the Martians? Some believed the same. A lot of them, though, saw the whole idea of mixing as slumming it. To have Chang reigning over the UMR was an affront to their species, or so they felt. It was unfortunate for them that when Chang was running against the pure-bred Martian candidate, that the UMR colonies were around half Human, half Martian. A staggering number of skilled workers were shipped out from Earth to mining colonies across the OCA, which tipped the scales in Chang’s favor. Every citizen got a vote, and the Humans voted to be treated better, which pissed off a lot of Martians.
As Ward walked down South Phnom-Penh Street, he hoped that Sakzan Ootooka was one of them.
Arza kept up with him, but was breathing hard when Ward pulled up. When he got something in his head he was focused, and brisk. He hadn’t said a word since they’d left Matsumoto’s and Arza hadn’t either. She thought she’d upset him, maybe. It wasn’t the case, but he wasn’t about to break the silence. He quite liked it. It gave him time to think — and there was a lot to think about.
Ootooka’s clinic was more… professional looking than Matsumoto’s. The latter’s was a wood and glass affair, dusty and antiquated from the outside, with gold-leafed lettering on the windows and molded cornices out of a twentieth-century barber surgeon’s parlor. He liked the sense of tradition entwined with the sense of futurism.
Ootooka, though, went the other way. South Phnom-Penh Street was filled with more modern buildings. A lot less charming than most of Old-Town. It just so happened that most of the Martian-owned businesses were on that street. Beautiful salons and bistros and all manner of shiny establishments. They never much liked ‘quaint’ as a design choice.
Ward looked up at the etched glass. ‘Cybernetic Augmentations & Modifications — Dr. Sakzan Ootooka, Fully Licenced Private Cybernetic Surgeon.’
“Looks swanky,” he said lightly.
Arza was almost surprised by the comment. They’d been in utter silence for more than thirty minutes. “Yes,” was all she mustered on such short notice.
Ward smiled briefly at her and then proffered her the door. “After you.”
“Should I load my gun?”
His smile widened. “What do you think?”
Ten seconds later, both with rounds in the chambers of their pistols, Ward’s tucked in the small of his back, and Arza’s secured under her ribs — his a custom M2.0, hers a UMR Security Bureau standard issue Pettler .22 small caliber, high velocity — Martian innovation on good old-fashioned human grease and steel ingenuity — they stepped into Ootooka’s clinic.
An electronic chime rang out as they entered, the magic eye clocking them, the air conditioning blowing cold air gently around the pristine white interior. Almost life-like mannequins stood in various poses in the corners, their creases and wrinkles ironed out, their shining white skin flawless save for their missing sections, exposing organs, bones, joints, muscles, and tendons. One was missing a section of their jaw, another a portion of their head. One was minus a hand. Another a knee and foot. And in the gaps were mechanical implants — high grade, gleaming tungsten and titanium nano-tech creations that out-classed evolution in every way.
In the center of the reception a desk in the shape of a crescent moon swept backward, its points aimed at a motion-sensitive doorway at the back of the room — no doubt leading deeper into the clinic, to the theaters.
All that stood on the featureless white desk was a flat panel of transparent glass — a computer terminal like the one in Ward’s villa — standing tall and clean. And next to it, sinisterly black in an otherwise snow-white setting, Glock’s newest iteration of their classic 17. A reliable and beautiful piece of kill-capable hardware. And it also just so happened to be Sadler’s weapon of choice.
But other than the lifeless mannequins and the even more lifeless pistol, the clinic was totally empty, and eerily quiet.
Arza looked at Ward and reached for her gun. His was already out, clasped loosely in both hands, muzzle hovering at waist height while he pricked his ears.
He moved toward the back door and Arza followed suit, stepping quietly, carefully.
They each circled one side of the desk and approached. Ward cast a glance back to the computer on the desk, the pistol there. He didn’t like this. It was all wrong, and the panicked look in Arza’s eye told him she felt it too. Damn, she was green.
Ward could see the pistol shaking in her hands. He wondered if she’d ever fired it before. How long had she been in the field? Why the hell had Moozana stuck her on him? What was he trying to accomplish with it?
Ward let her settle herself, each of them poised at the corner of the door, and he waved his hand over the sensor. It bleeped red. He did it again. It bleeped red.
He let his hands drop in front of him and sighed. They weren’t getting through that easily.
“Arza,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. It still grabbed her attention in the graveyard silence. “The computer — see if it’s on a timelock, or if there’s an override or something.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You’re not much for computers, are you?”
He mumbled to himself and pushed off from the wall, circling the room and checking the front windows. The streets were still quiet, but the businesses were open now, and though the morning commuters had already gone to work, the tourists and other inhabitants were starting to crawl the streets. Ward didn’t like this one bit.
“How’s it coming with the computer?” he asked over his shoulder, glancing up and down the street.
Arza sighed emphatically. “It’s not magic, Ward.” The SB made a big point of including cyber-security training in their academy syllabus. The whole computer network that linked Eudaimonia was jacked into the SB server at all times. An investigator could pull up a command prompt and use an encrypted SB dialogue box to strongarm their way into a locked system. Of course, they needed a warrant for that, unless, of course, there was a risk to national security. And a potential threat to assassinate the prime minister sort of felt like that. At least, that’s what Ward was willing to stand up in a disciplinary hearing and say — he always found it better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
“What the — shit,” Arza said suddenly, pulling her hands off the keyboard that had pushed itself up through the surface.
Ward swept around the desk, his hands still around his pistol. “What is it? Are you locked out?”
Arza was rubbing her fingers together and staring at them. “No, I’m not — it’s fine, there was no security — no passwords, or… It’s — whatever this is? It was on the
desk—”
A tang in the air caught his senses and he reached for Arza’s wrist, pulling it upwards so her fingers hovered under his nose. It smelt like old blood… Copper maybe, or… His eyes snapped open and he stared at the gun on the desk, then at the thin sheen of glistening dust on the top — too faint to notice if you weren’t looking for it.
“Shit,” Ward muttered, letting go of Arza’s hand. “Door, now,” he commanded, turning back to the doorway behind the desk.
Arza tapped the screen and a couple of buttons and the pad next to the door lit up with a green light.
Ward waved his hand over it and it whooshed open, revealing a short corridor beyond. There was a room on the left, one on the right, and one at the end. It had an exit sign over it, so Ward assumed this was the back door that he’d confirmed with Matsumoto. There was no magic eye hanging over it.
Erica was at his elbow, her pistol half raised. “Your mark,” she said quietly, the shake in her voice audible. Ward noticed but said nothing, pointing to the left-hand door.
They moved toward it and Ward spun, putting himself against the frame of the one opposite. He held up his hand for Arza and counted off one, two, three.
They swiped their hands over the motion pads simultaneously and turned into their respective doorways, weapons raised.
“Clear,” Arza called, twisting on her heel to find Ward like a statue, pistol hanging at his side. “What’s wrong?” she asked, stepping to his shoulder and looking in.
The operating theater was starkly white, a hydraulic bed standing ominously in the middle of the wide room, an intimidating looking contraption hanging above it — a lightbulb-shaped device with a dozen protruding mechanical tentacles. Some were armed with scalpels, others clamps, others gauze, others cauterizing lasers. To the left of the bed was a control panel like a white lectern complete with joysticks and buttons, a VR mask on a stem, and more blood splatters than Ward was hoping to see.
Behind it, slumped in the corner of the room was the man that had to be Ootooka. He was limp. And definitely dead. His body was speckled with holes, crimson flowers adorning his bright white uniform, a set of double-breasted scrubs pinned up around the neck with a high collar. Ward counted six — looking randomly placed, but he could see they weren’t. One was directly through the heart, another would have severed the aorta. The others were just for show. This was done by a professional.
His gray eyes stared limply at the halogen-lit ceiling, bursts of glistening blood-spray decorating the wall over his head like dark stars on a clear white sky. The stench of it still hung in the air. This was fresh. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, max. Just before they’d arrived, probably. Which meant whoever had done it was either really lucky, or they knew that Ootooka was a loose end that needed to be tied up, and fast.
“Is that Ootooka?” Arza asked, her voice tight in her throat. Ward could see her jugular pumping quickly.
He nodded gravely. “I’d bet on it.” He sighed and swore, and holstered his weapon, reaching for Arza’s arm. “And this is GSR,” he said, holding it up.
“Gunshot residue?” Arza asked, surprised. “But from— oh shit.”
“Oh shit is right,” Ward replied, letting go. “The Glock 17 out there is going to match Ootooka’s body, and that shit all over your hands is going to put us right in the middle of it. They knew we were coming here. They set this up as a frame,” he said grimly.
Arza paled. “But we didn’t do anything. We can call Moozana and—”
“Explain things? Sure, but we’re going to be pulled off this case before we can even…”
“Even what?”
“Shh,” Ward urged, squinting and turning back at the door to the reception area. “You hear that?”
They moved toward the doorway cautiously. Ward’s skin was on fire, his adrenal glands dumping it into his system. He breathed steadily, visualizing the other side of the door, where the corners were, where he’d position himself if he was coming to finish them off. Sure, framing them was a good safety net if Ward and Arza managed to slip away, but if it was him, he’d just come in when their backs were turned, put them both down and get away totally clean. He fingered the trigger gently, imagining it hitting the frame of the pistol, the grip kicking back into his hands, how he’d compensate for that.
“You ready?” he asked Arza as they pressed themselves against the wall, looking at each other across the doorway.
She nodded but the fear in her eyes was blindingly apparent. Hell, opening a door into a firefight wasn’t good practice, but there were two of them, and Ward knew how good of a shot he was. He just hoped that whatever kill-squad had come to finish them off didn’t outnumber them too badly. He was going over the events in his head, scraping through each moment for the point they’d been made. Someone had raced them over here to take out Ootooka, and now they were cornered.
Ward took a breath and swiped over the motion pad, the doors flinging themselves open.
They twisted in simultaneously, low, pistols raised and ready to fire.
The room beyond was empty, but the street beyond wasn’t. Six sentinels, masked, with raised tac-rifles, stood in a line, their hover-cruisers perched on the street behind them.
Ward and Arza both froze, his eyes sweeping left to right, decoding the situation. They kept their rifles up, none of them firing or lowering them. Something was wrong.
His eyes drifted to the pistol on the desk, then to Arza’s hands around her dropping pistol, then over his shoulder into the corridor.
There was a second of silence before Arza called out, putting her hand against her shoulder, her badge flashing in the air. “We’re SB, you can lower your—”
“Contact!” one of them yelled suddenly, voice echoing through the non-descript mask.
Ward reacted first, dropping to a knee and throwing himself sideways into Arza before either of them could finish what they were saying. Muzzle fire lit the street outside, the clinic’s windows imploding in a shower of glass fragments.
Six muzzles chattered at once, carving deep lines into the back of the reception. The terminal on the desk shattered and splintered, the mannequins tearing themselves apart.
Ward’s fist closed around Arza’s belt and he scrambled back into the doorway, his boots squeaking and leaving black lines on the expensive white tiles.
They crossed the threshold, fiery streaks of bullets zipping by overhead, the noise deafening.
Ward held his pistol up, preempting his aim, bootheel against the doorframe, and propelled himself backward into the hallway with Arza in the other hand.
He squeezed off a single shot and blew apart the motion-pad on the wall. It plumed outwards in a shower of sparks, the door slamming itself closed.
The sentinels’ bullets sank into the laminate coating on the other side and pinged off the reinforced aluminum leaving little embossed mounds sticking into the hallway.
Arza was in shock, cradling her head, covering her ears. Brace position — like a child would do instinctively.
Ward took a breath, checked to see whether he’d been hit, running his hand roughly over his body for the telltale warmth of blood, and then scrambled to his feet, brushing glass shards off his arms like confetti.
The fire became erratic and then the distant echo of a ceasefire being called reached them.
He dragged Arza to a shaking stance and started pulling her toward the rear exit.
“They… they fired at us — they must not… I need to call—” she started muttering before Ward snatched her communicator off her and threw it against the wall hard enough to snap it in two.
“No,” Ward said coldly, pulling out his own and crushing it under his boot. “This was a frame-job, and we’re in the picture here — but that was only supposed to go one way.” They reached the door, Ward still half dragging Arza as she resisted, looking back at the bullet-riddled door.
“If you’d have let me finish—” she started.
“Then you’d be
dead right now.”
“They wouldn’t just—”
“They did. You don’t shout contact unless you’re shooting back at someone with intent to kill. They saw us — made sure it was us — and then fired.”
“No, they just—”
Ward grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “They came here to kill us, Erica. You hear me? This was open and shut. Ootooka, the pistol, the GSR, and then they show up? Six sentinels with tac-rifles? Shooting first isn’t SB protocol! We can’t… We can’t trust anyone right now. Not the SB, not even Moozana. We’re in the crosshairs, and it looks like whoever’s holding the gun has got some serious connections.”
Arza looked incredulous. Shocked. Disgusted that Ward would even suggest such a thing of her precious Security Bureau.
He let her go and elbowed the back door open, the stench of dumpsters and standing water flooding in from the alleyway.
“You don’t believe me? Go back out there.” Ward flicked a hand at the front of the building, stepping down into the alley and taking off at pace. “But believe me when I say, it’ll be the last thing you ever do. I’ve been doing this for a long time — I know what it’s like to be hunted. And there’s only one solution to it.”
Arza’s mouth was agape. She looked from the corridor to the shrinking Ward and then back. She swore to herself in Martian and then took off, her shined black shoes splashing in the filthy puddles as she made up the ground. “So, what’s next? What do we do first?”
“First?” Ward said between breaths, breaking into a run. “First, we survive.”
