Repo Virtual

by Corey J. White

  Soo-hyun shook their head, but they walked out into the rain and the rising waters, ignoring the cold clinging filth that stuck to their legs.

  * * *

  Enda swore and bashed the airbag with her fist, forcing it down. Her ears rang and her head throbbed. She checked the mirrors and saw more dogs approaching—the navy blue shapes slowing now that the WRX had stopped.

  They were caught in an intersection, floodwaters turning it into an impromptu car park. Enda saw the other vehicles around them in the brief moments of clarity provided by the windscreen wipers. The water was deeper here, car wheels mostly obscured by the rising murk. The left side of the car was mangled, the bonnet buckled and raised.

  Enda tried the ignition, but it only clicked. “Fuck.” She turned to the others in the back: “You okay?”

  Dax nodded, and turned to check on Troy, who rubbed his neck with his hand but said, “I’m alright.”

  Enda took her gun from its holster, and pulled her coat’s hood up over her head. She zipped it right up so the collar covered her mouth and nose. “Stay here,” she told Dax and Troy, her voice muffled by fabric.

  Enda strained to push her door open. Water flowed in through the gap and collected beneath the seat and pedals. She stepped out, felt the grimy water soak into her boots and trousers, reaching almost to her knee. Steady shush of rain still falling, the pool of water across the intersection splashing hissing dancing like dead channel static on an analogue TV.

  A whine pierced the curtain of rain—the uniform whir of drone legs. Enda aimed at the noise, coming from somewhere beyond the wall of cars that surrounded her. People screamed at the sight of the gun, the sound odd, contained inside their vehicles.

  A dog leaped onto the roof of a minivan—more screaming, and the distinct cries of terrified children. The dog stalled atop the van, frozen like overtaxed software. Enda fired, struck the dog’s exposed chest—plink of ricochet, armor plating too thick for the 9mm rounds to penetrate.

  The dog spasmed with the jolt of faux life returning. The machine crouched and jumped, limbs outstretched as it tried to strike her. Enda dodged aside and the dog slammed into the side of the WRX, the door panel indented in the shape of the dog’s blocky head.

  Enda fired four rounds point-blank at the band of visual sensors across the front of its skull. The dog fell aside and disappeared into the water, leaving behind the acrid smell of cordite and burnt electronics.

  Enda turned and saw Dax still sitting in the car, door open, one foot dangling into the dark water.

  “Get these people out of their cars,” Enda said.

  Dax blinked and turned to look at her. “What? Yeah, okay.”

  Dax grabbed Troy’s arm and pulled him out of the car, both stepping high through the water to ferry the family out of the stranded minivan.

  Another whine of leg actuators to her right. Enda spun, ducked below the dog as it leaped through the air. It landed with a splash. Enda fired again and again, aiming for the joints in its neck. She struck something important and the head hung forward, muzzle submerged as the dog tried to navigate with its sensors dangling at ninety degrees.

  The angle of the dog’s head exposed the thick bands of cable that slotted into the rear of its skull. Enda shot three rounds into the weak point and the dog slumped, dead, only the armored ridge of its torso jutting from the water.

  Enda’s ears rang with tinnitus. Her P320 was breached—out of ammo. She let the empty clip drop from the gun and into the floodwaters, took the last spare from her holster, and loaded it into the gun.

  Dark lumbering shapes caught Enda’s eye—two more dogs, moving in concert. They leaped onto the roofs of stranded cars, the vehicles sinking an inch further into the water under the weight of all that armor plating.

  The dogs separated, one moving to the left, leaping across the roofs of cars, the other dropping to the road and moving right through the water. Enda aimed at one, then the other, waiting for a shot, but seeing only their armored torsos and the frightened faces still trapped inside the vehicles. Water seeped between her skin and the pistol, and she tightened her grip.

  Both dogs turned to face her. Screech of metal tearing as the dog on the left dug its claws into the roof of a silver Toyota, crouching, ready to jump. The other was to Enda’s right, a blue mass shifting in her peripheral vision.

  The dog on the right jumped—Enda turned, opened fire, and side-stepped. She peppered the dog’s head with bullets and cracked apart its skull casing. It knocked her shoulder as it passed, crashing into the water and sending Enda reeling. Too late Enda saw the second dog. It pounced. She was off-balance, unable to dodge away. Its weight slammed into her chest and knocked her to the ground, beneath the waters.

  Actuators churned the filthy water, stained by every bit of trash that ended up in the gutters—stained by the garbage that made the foundations of Songdo. Water that had stewed underground for days, finally rising as storm drains and runoffs conceded the battle with the sky.

  Light filtered through water like a dirty window. All sound distant, distorted.

  One metal paw pinned Enda against the asphalt. Its claws flexed, dug into her flesh, and added her blood to the street soup. She screamed, the sound visible in spheres of air that bubbled to the surface.

  She still had the gun, clutched tight in her hand. She brought it around and opened fire—explosions bloomed effervescent beneath the water, the noise flat and endlessly distant. She fired until the pistol was empty. Still the dog held her tight against the road.

  Black flooded into Enda’s vision. Water reached her lungs. She tried to cough; pain tore through her chest as her body spasmed.

  Release.

  The weight lifted off her chest and Enda burst out of the water gasping, then sputtering. JD grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. In his other hand he held his wrench.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Enda coughed, pain like knives in her chest instead of water. She nodded, and JD’s grip on her loosened and he stepped away. Enda steadied herself. Her eyes followed JD, the wrench flashing beneath the streetlights as he bashed the dog until it finally stopped moving. JD’s chest heaved as he struggled to catch his breath, slick-washed face glowing under city lights. Troy was on the far side of the street, helping a mother carry her children through the rising water.

  “I’m disappointed, JD.”

  Enda and JD turned at the voice, coming from one of the damaged dogs, standing unsteadily beside the WRX. Light sparked from the cracks and bullet holes in its skull, and black smoke poured from between its plated armor.

  “Kali,” JD said.

  “Soo-hyun is here.” Kali’s voice sounded rough and robotic, amplified by the dog drone’s loudspeaker.

  “If you hurt them, I swear to god I’ll make you pay.”

  “That is entirely up to you, JD. All you need to do is bring me the virus. I’ll give you twenty-four hours. If you don’t deliver it by then … well, I can’t be held responsible for what Red might do.”

  Troy returned, and took JD’s bag and Enda’s half-empty magazine from the abandoned WRX. He offered the clip to Enda and took JD’s free hand and squeezed. Enda ejected the empty mag from her pistol and slotted the spare from Troy. The dog watched her as she chambered a round.

  “Hey, Kali? That your name?” Enda said.

  “Yes?”

  Enda aimed at the dog’s wide cyclopean eye.

  “I’ll be seeing you real soon.”

  Enda emptied the clip into the dog’s skull.

  “We need to keep moving,” Enda said, holstering her gun.

  * * *

  It was a hundred-year flood, though at that point in the Anthropocene, “five-year flood” would have been closer to the truth. Lessons had been learned from the last flood, but nothing could truly halt the creeping rise of the sea.

  Strong winds and heavy rain lashed the city’s residents, cowering from the storm in cafés, bars, and virtual simulations of batt
lefields, star systems, brothels, and film sets. Random city blocks winked into darkness as power failed, but everywhere data continued to travel across the endless lengths of fiber optics buried in Songdo’s foundations.

  A few miles offshore, the hurricane churned like the eye of some ancient god sitting in judgment.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Two blocks east, they found a bus route still running. The crowd that waited by the curb threatened to spill out onto the street as it reached critical mass. A bright green auto-bus pulled up at the stop, wheels forming a huge wave that splashed over the gathered crowd. The people closest to the curb tried to step back but the mass of bodies kept them in place, pitiless as the shore. One woman was quick enough to angle her umbrella against the water, but the rest of the human barricade was drenched.

  Enda pushed JD and Troy onto the bus, and squeezed in behind them. She coughed the ragged, painful cough of inhaled water, and shivered in her drenched clothing despite the heat of condensed humanity that closed in around her. Enda hugged herself—and her gun—with one arm, the other reached for the handhold that ran along the length of the vehicle.

  “That was Kali, then?” Enda said, trying to distract herself from the chill that burned her skin.

  JD nodded. “I never should have agreed to the job, but”—he shrugged—“money’s money.”

  Too crowded to stop, the bus quickly covered a dozen city blocks, the windows fogged with condensation from all the rain-damp bodies. The swift progress instilled a false security in the riders, broken when the overhead announcement system crackled.

  “This bus is terminating service,” it said cheerily in English and then Korean. A chorus of groans filled the packed conveyance. “We apologize for the inconvenience. Be safe and please do not drive on flooded streets.”

  The doors opened. Enda, Troy, and JD were ejected by the press of bodies, stepping onto a sidewalk already underwater. Commuters waiting at the bus stop stared in confusion as the passengers disembarked. The empty bus closed its doors and did a U-turn, skirting the edge of the next intersection, flooded deep as a swimming pool. One auto-cab sat half-submerged, its headlights shining dimly beneath the undulating waters.

  Slowly the crowd broke up, some brave souls wading ahead, others fleeing back the way they came.

  “What now?” Troy asked.

  “Hang on a minute,” Enda said.

  She opened a map and closed her eyes to better see the city grid laid over her contex. Her body swayed in phantom vertigo as her perspective rose high above the streets. Slashes of red divided Songdo into distinct islands—north and south split by the flooded banks of the canal, and swaths of land on both sides of the channel marked as no-go zones. The flooded ruins east of the canal would be underwater, though the stalwart residents there were likely better prepared than people dwelling elsewhere in the city.

  Enda closed the map and checked the street signs to orient herself. “How’s your leg?”

  JD lifted his foot and winced as his knee bent. “I’ll live.”

  “Can you walk a couple of kilometers?”

  JD shrugged. “I have to, don’t I?”

  * * *

  They walked north and east, the wind whipping at their backs, driving them forward. They clasped arms for stability as they waded through the deepest intersections, some lit only by the dull orange emergency lights of flooded cars, winking beneath the dark water like drowning buoys. Enda shivered in her sopping coat, and JD limped step by painful step, supported by Troy.

  When they reached Enda’s building, she opened the street door and let the others inside first. JD brushed a hand over his hair, spraying water around the well-lit foyer, lined with mailboxes on one wall.

  “Is this a safehouse?” JD asked.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “What’s that noise?”

  “Not sure,” Enda said. “Either a generator, or pumps to keep the water out of the car park.”

  JD gave her a curious look, and Enda shook her head.

  “If you saw the cars down there, you wouldn’t be confused.” She pointed to the elevator: “Come on.”

  They rode upstairs in silence, their reflections waterlogged and disheveled. The elevator released them onto Enda’s floor, and she guided JD and Troy down the warren of hallways that led to her apartment. At the door she turned her key back and forth through a quick sequence, disabling the hidden security system.

  She opened the door onto her living room and the two men followed her inside, taking in the minimalist decor, the record player set into one corner, and the neat kitchen furnished with high-end European whitegoods. Beyond the window, huge portions of the city were rendered invisible by lost power. Here and there a block was lit bright, like an island in the darkness.

  “This is your apartment,” Troy said.

  Enda nodded, and hung her coat on a hook behind the door, where water spattered to the floor. She pointed down the corridor. “Bathroom—clean towels under the sink. You two decide who gets the first shower.”

  JD left his bag by the door and limped down the hallway, trailed by Troy.

  Enda’s phone buzzed against her leg. She removed it from her pocket and saw Crystal’s face on the screen—the photo she’d taken of herself the morning after.

  Enda hesitated, then answered the phone.

  * * *

  Crystal smiled when Enda opened the door. Her hair was a wet mass over one shoulder, and she wore a waterproof olive-green trench coat. She stepped forward, wrapped an arm around Enda’s waist, and kissed her on the cheek.

  “You’re a lifesaver.”

  “Come inside, quickly. I’ll get you something to wear,” Enda said.

  “It’s alright,” Crystal said, undoing her coat, “I’m dry under here.”

  “Alright.” Enda hung Crystal’s coat, and pointed to JD and Troy, seated on the floor flicking through Enda’s records. They wore their own relatively dry shirts and some old track pants of Enda’s, the elastic waists blown out so they were roughly the right size, even if the pant legs ended somewhere up their shins. “That’s JD and Troy. This is Crystal.”

  They exchanged polite greetings, but Enda saw the flash of concern pass between the men. She wandered down the hallway to her room, with Crystal following close behind.

  “How come you’re the only one that looks like a drowned rat?” Crystal asked.

  “I let them shower first.”

  “You must be freezing,” Crystal said.

  “I’ve been through worse.” Enda took a set of clothes from her drawers and carried them into her bathroom. Crystal stood in the doorway, watching as Enda stripped and started the shower running.

  “Jesus Christ,” Crystal said, seeing the bruised and bleeding wound at Enda’s shoulder.

  Enda waved her concern away and stepped into the shower.

  “What happened?”

  “Police dog drone.”

  “What?” Crystal asked, incredulous.

  “Hacked and reprogrammed. Now I can see why so many people protest the machines. Fucking vicious.”

  Enda washed herself quickly, and dried off.

  “I’ll clean the wound for you,” Crystal said. She gingerly pressed a finger to Enda’s chest, where blue-black gave way to the usual pink-white hue. Enda winced, looked down at the outline of claws marked clearly in bruised flesh and torn skin.

  “First aid kit under the sink,” Enda said.

  Crystal took alcohol swabs and bandages from the box while Enda dressed her lower half.

  “The information I sold you panned out?”

  “Yeah,” Enda said.

  “Which one is he?” Crystal asked. She tore open a small sachet and retrieved an alcohol swab. Chill over Enda’s skin as Crystal cleaned the wound, and she flinched at the fresh sort of pain.

  “Neither; that kid’s dead.”

  “Shit,” Crystal said, and a distance in her eyes made Enda shake her head.

  “It wasn’t m
e.” Crystal began to protest but Enda pressed on: “I got there too late.”

  “That’s my fault,” Crystal said.

  “The kid told me to find JD. He took some finding; now we’re here.”

  “Drowned and bleeding.” Crystal stuck a gauze pad over the wound. “All done. Thank you for letting me stay.”

  “You’re welcome,” Enda said. She put a hand gently on Crystal’s cheek and kissed her. “Thanks for patching me up.”

  * * *

  They convened in Enda’s living room, and she made them each a cup of tea—Russian Caravan with lots of milk and sugar, because they all looked like they needed some simple carbs to fuel their lagging cells. Troy had chosen Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy, which played quietly in the background, bringing a flood of memories to Enda’s mind. She didn’t care much for that simpler strain of jazz, but Satchmo had been her father’s favorite. Enda sat cross-legged on the floor, bathed in the glow of a small radiant heater, waiting for her bone-deep chill to thaw.

  “I want to see it,” she told JD.

  JD glanced at Crystal quickly. “Are you sure?”

  Enda nodded.

  JD reached into his pocket and retrieved his phone. “Is that okay? Do you want to meet someone new?” he asked the device. He nodded and disconnected a datacube from the rear of the phone. “Here,” he said, and tossed the cube to Enda.

  She snatched it out of the air and inspected it, felt the dense weight of the small cube. “What do I do with it?”

  “Slot the cube into your phone; I couldn’t tell you how it’s going to manifest.”

  “You’re talking like it’s a spiritual entity you’re summoning,” Troy said. “It’s definitely strange, but it’s hardly otherworldly.”

  Enda slid the backplate off her phone, and slotted the cube into place. The phone seemed to grow warmer in her hand, but Enda dismissed it as heat from the bright filaments burning hot beside her feet.

  “What are we talking about?” Crystal asked, sipping at her drink.