by Dan Wells
EIGHT
Marisa ran through the cafe and out the door into the scorching LA heat, stopping almost immediately as she got stuck in a giant crowd of people waiting at the corner. She took deep breaths, trying to force herself to calm down and blend in. Some of the people were in business suits or skirts, and some in street clothes that ran the spectrum from homeless rags to jeans and T-shirts to flashy constructions of see-through plastic and origami ruffles. More than a few glanced at her, probably wondering why she was running, but she knew they’d lose interest soon enough if she kept calm. She tried to look busy instead of terrified, and waited for the light to change. It didn’t. She could turn and run the other way, but the fastest way out of downtown was the train, and that was just on the other side of the street.
The KT Sigan building loomed over her like a haunted mountain, full of probing eyes and eager claws. Her heart pounded in her chest, and it took all her concentration just to hold still.
The traffic speeding past her was like a river of steel and glass, hundreds of autocars driving by in perfect unison, and she had the sudden urge to simply ignore the lights and rush out into them, knowing they would swerve to avoid her. Autocars were networked into a swarm intelligence that had two inviolable directives: to get riders where they needed to go, and to keep pedestrians safe. If she jumped in front of one, it would move out of the way, faster than any human driver could have managed it, and simultaneously it would communicate her presence to all the other cars behind it, causing them to swerve or slow or even reroute to other streets. She’d studied the traffic SI a few months ago, after an incident with Anja running heedlessly onto a freeway, so she knew how it worked, and she knew that she’d probably be fine . . . probably. But as safe as the autocars were, there was always a chance of failure, and she of all people had a constant reminder of just how dangerous those failures could be. She rubbed her metal arm, and bit her tongue, and kept waiting for the light.
Across the street, the train station and the Sigan building shared opposite edges of a wide, tiled plaza, dotted here and there with planter boxes and carefully manicured trees. The Sigan main lobby was a three-story wall of sectioned glass, and Marisa watched as a stream of visitors and employees flowed in and out of the doors. Suddenly she gasped—a tiny, involuntary catch of her breath. A new man had joined the stream, a head taller than the others, the flow of people parting around him as he walked from the Sigan building straight toward Marisa. His eyes were covered with a solid, curved plate: a bionic vision implant that was used almost exclusively by special forces and private security. She couldn’t see the rest of his body in the crowd, but he was dressed in black and moved with a terrifying sense of single-minded purpose. Some of the people in the plaza were meandering; others were rushing to work or to other appointments. This man was hunting.
Marisa opened a chat window to Sahara, and almost immediately closed it again. If this Sigan thug was coming for her, then the company was onto her, and they were closer than she’d dared to believe. If they caught her with a chat window open, actively discussing her crime, it could incriminate anyone she was chatting with as an accomplice. Better to stay solo, though it terrified her to be alone.
Did he already know who she was? What would he do if he caught her?
The traffic stopped, the light turned, and the crowd on both sides burst into the street like an avalanche, carrying her straight toward the visored guard. Should she try to turn and run? But no, she’d been at least that careful—the digital connection Sigan had used to trace her led only to the restaurant, not to Marisa herself. He was probably going there, and running now would only draw his attention. She took another deep breath, trying to control her heart rate, grateful that her bronze skin was dark enough to hide the flush that she could feel rising to her face.
The thug came closer, stalking firmly through the crowd: ten steps away, five steps, one step. She kept her eyes on the ground. He brushed past her in the middle of the street, their sleeves touching with an audible swish, and then he was gone, lost in the crowd behind her, and she kept her head down and walked up the short concrete stairs to the train platform.
She permitted herself a sigh of relief, clutching a railing as her knees shook from fear. She blinked up the train schedule: she had three minutes until the next train.
More waiting.
She watched as the Sigan thug went into the Solipsis Cafe, and her heart skipped a beat. She turned and started hurrying to the far end of the platform, nearly half a block from the cafe—trying to get as far as she could from the man. The train platform was elevated enough that she could see over the crowd, but the farther she walked, the less she could see through the windows of the cafe. What was he doing? She planted her feet firmly, not wanting to lose her balance, and activated one of her sense mods, an aftermarket app that Anja had programmed for their djinnis. It zoomed her vision forward, and she felt a moment of vertigo as the cafe flew toward her, magnified until it seemed to be just a few feet away from her. The image was distorted, especially around the edge, and she had to hold her head almost impossibly still, but she could see him: the thug was talking to the other customers, table by table.
It’s okay, Marisa told herself. Nobody was paying attention to me. They don’t remember what I look like, they don’t remember what I was wearing, they don’t remember what I was eating, and the nulis will have cleaned it up already so he can’t even get any DNA from it.
She guessed that the thug was Asian, though with most of his face covered she couldn’t tell for sure. He stopped at the table of the woman who’d kept looking at Marisa during the hack. Marisa caught her breath, not daring to breathe. She couldn’t hear them, and she couldn’t read their lips; she could only guess what they were saying from their body language. He said something and the woman shook her head. He said something else and she shook her head again. He stepped forward, stern and insistent. The woman scowled, shook her head, and looked away.
Marisa breathed again. Disaster averted.
The man turned to the lovey-dovey couple.
“Híjole,” said Marisa, clenching her hands into nervous fists. “They took a picture of me.”
Are you okay? sent Sahara. Do you need anything?
Marisa didn’t answer. She glanced at her clock, and saw that the train was almost here. Just a few more seconds. The thug asked the couple a question, and they shook their heads. He asked again, and the woman behind him stood up, saying something with what looked like an angry face. “Thank you so much,” Marisa mumbled. “Que dios te bendiga.” The man ignored her and asked the couple another question. They looked at the woman, and then at him, and then at the woman . . .
. . . and then pulled out their selfie nuli, and showed him the photo.
“Damn it,” said Marisa.
The thug studied the photo, looked up toward the train platform, and scanned the crowd until he seemed to be staring directly at her. His mouth hardened into a grim line, and he ran for the door.
Marisa shut off the sight magnification and the world snapped back into its normal resolution; she stumbled from the sudden shift, and then turned and ran, forgetting in her terror that she was already at the end of the platform. The railing loomed up like a barrier, trapping her, and she braced herself to vault it when suddenly the train roared around a corner and into the station, the wind of its passage whipping Marisa’s hair around her face. She glanced behind her and saw the Sigan thug barely twenty meters away—impossibly close, moving impossibly fast. How had he reached her so quickly? She turned and ran toward the train, right as the doors opened; she pushed her way forward, dodging and weaving through the crowd, finding spaces in the crush of people that a man his size could never possibly fit through.
“StopAndSurrenderYourselfDontMakeMeChaseYou,” yelled the man, amplifying his voice somehow so she could hear it clearly above the noise of the train and the passengers. Was his throat bionic too? Was that why his words seemed accelerated? Marisa didn’t
waste any more time wondering about it; she focused all her attention on getting away, and pushed out through the other side of the train to the far platform. She didn’t know how much time she’d bought herself with the maneuver, but she plunged ahead, jumping over the railing and directly into the busy road beyond. The cars saw her coming, calculated her trajectory as she fell toward the street, and moved to miss her; she hit the ground in a patch of clear asphalt and bolted toward the sidewalk, not even slowing as she ran. The crowd parted in front of her, no one wanting to tangle with the crazy girl who’d jumped into the middle of traffic, when suddenly an arm caught her from behind, the grip as solid as steel, and yanked her to a painful halt.
“IdentifyYourselfImmediatelyIHaveJurisdictionInThisCityToEnforceCorporatePolicy.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marisa said, trying to sound as innocent as she could. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“PlantingAVirusInAPrivateDatabaseIsACrimeUnderUSFederalProvisionNumberFourTwentySeven—” He stopped abruptly as something large and metal screamed through Marisa’s field of vision, slamming into the thug and knocking him away. Marisa found herself falling as well, scraping her right hand on the rough cement of the sidewalk, people screaming all around her. As she struggled to reorient herself, she felt another hand—warm and human—take her by the arm.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“What?” asked Marisa. She looked up, still reeling from the impact, and saw a young man on a motorcycle, his skin dark, his hair wild, his eyes covered by rough, weathered goggles. She’d never seen him before in her life.
He pulled again on her arm, gentle but insistent. “Mr. Park is more than eighty percent machine,” said the young man, speaking quickly but calmly. He had an accent Marisa couldn’t place; something European. “Even an impact from a motorcycle won’t keep him down for long. We have to go.”
Marisa looked at the thug who’d been chasing her, crumpled in a heap almost ten meters away. He groaned and moved one of his arms.
Another motorcycle roared up next to the first, its engine growling like a hungry predator. The blue-haired girl riding it scowled at Marisa, and growled her frustration in a sharp Chicano accent. “Grab her or leave her—I don’t want to get boxed for some random chick on the street.”
“Who are you?” demanded Marisa. “What’s going on?”
The man he had called Mr. Park continued his recovery, sitting up and shaking his head. He didn’t look like he was injured, just dazed, despite being thrown so far.
“Look, I’m the other ghost in the database,” said the young man on the motorcycle, letting go of Marisa’s arm and instead simply offering her his hand. His accent, she realized, was French, and now that she could see him properly, she found he was very good-looking. “Come with me now, or let him catch you. It’s your choice.”
Marisa looked at the bionic thug as he slowly clambered to his feet, and imagined what he would do to her if he got her back to the Sigan building. She made her decision, grabbed the young man’s hand, and jumped up behind him on the motorcycle.
“Let’s get out of here.”
The blue-haired girl revved her bike with a wicked grin, and slammed it forward into Mr. Park, knocking him to the ground again. The young man followed her, both bikes bolting forward into the street, and Marisa felt her stomach drop away in the sudden burst of acceleration, left behind on the sidewalk as they wove in and out of traffic.
“Aytale!” shouted Marisa, gripped by terror as they whipped through tiny gaps between the speeding cars. “I hate human drivers.”
“This is the only way for us to escape,” he said. “I’m Alain, by the way.”
“Why isn’t the bike driving?” Marisa shouted over the rushing wind. “You’ll kill us!”
“They could control an autopilot remotely,” said Alain. He turned a sharp corner, leaning the bike at a terrifying angle, and Marisa shrieked. “If we let the bike drive, we’d never get away from him.”
“From the guy you ran over?” asked Marisa. “Twice? I doubt he’s going to catch up to us now.”
“Look behind us,” said Alain, and Marisa turned slowly, gripping him tightly with her arms and thighs. The road behind her was filled with speeding cars, and racing through the middle of them was Mr. Park, his arms and legs pumping, his mouth fixed in a furious snarl. Marisa spun back around, gripping Alain even tighter than before.
“He’s still chasing us,” she gasped. She glanced back again. “He’s gaining on us!”
“We have a safe house we can hide in,” said Alain, “but we have to get away from him first. Hey, Renata!”
The blue-haired girl braked her bike a bit, dropping back toward Alain and matching his speed. Her hoodie, Marisa realized, wasn’t just colorful, it was animated—the fabric bore the bright image of a deep-space nebula, swirling and shifting like a real-time video. “Want me to take him out?”
“Good luck,” said Alain. “Can you maybe buy us some time, though?”
Renata smirked at Marisa. “Hey, rich girl—ever seen a hand grenade?”
“We’re in the middle of Los Angeles at rush hour!” shouted Marisa. “Are you out of your mind?”
Renata smirked again and held up her left arm. Marisa saw that it was prosthetic, like her own, though the model was older, and the joints were grimy with dirt and oil. An old SuperYu, just like Marisa used to have. Renata pointed her arm backward and her hand launched off like a miniature rocket.
So maybe it wasn’t just like her own after all.
Marisa twisted her head to watch in shocked fascination as the hand sailed back toward the running thug and grabbed him firmly on the arm.
“Three,” said Renata, “two, one.”
The hand exploded, hiding Mr. Park in a sudden burst of fire and light. Marisa shielded her eyes, and Renata cackled and revved her bike again, zooming back into the lead.
“Sorry about the pun,” said Alain. “She’s good at what she does, but she has a very special sense of humor.”
Marisa looked backward again. In the clearing smoke she could see that the cars were all swerving around a specific spot in the road, and she assumed it must be the site of Mr. Park’s mangled body. None of the cars looked damaged, though she could see through the windows that most of the people in them were just as scared as she was. She felt sick: she’d just watched a man die, abruptly, out of nowhere—
“Is he gone?” asked Alain.
“He just got blown up!” shouted Marisa. “Of course he’s . . .” The ripple in the line of cars moved, first keeping pace with traffic, and then slowly speeding up. “Santa muerte,” she said, “he’s still coming! Who is this guy?”
“One of KT Sigan’s primary security assets,” said Alain, following Renata on another dizzying turn. They righted themselves again as he gunned the engine and rebuilt speed. “I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with him today, but then I wasn’t exactly expecting you, either.”
“Is he human?”
“That depends on your definition,” said Alain. “A ‘human purity’ group like the Foundation would call people like you and me abominations.” He rapped his knuckles against his right leg, and it clanged metallically. Apparently he had a prosthetic as well. He shook his head. “Someone like Mr. Park, though . . . even the most liberal cybernetic activist would think twice about him.”
“Because he’s eighty percent machine?” asked Marisa, remembering the earlier warning.
“It’s not the percentage,” said Alain, “it’s the parts. Mr. Park is overclocked.”
Marisa’s eyes went wide, and she found her arms wrapping involuntarily tighter around Alain’s chest. She’d read about bionic overclocking, but she’d never actually seen it in the flesh, so to speak. It was expensive and illegal, mostly because it was very, very dangerous—outright deadly. Overclocking the human body worked the same way as overclocking a computer—speeding up the processor to make it faster and more powerful, which was safe enou
gh if you kept it cool and didn’t melt the circuits—except in this case, the circuits you were melting were your own neurons. Overclocked humans had better cognition, faster reflexes, and a host of superhuman abilities both mental and physical, but they lived, on average, only five years before the brain burned itself out completely.
“You could have told me he was overclocked when you first pulled up,” said Marisa. “I would have gotten on this bike a whole lot faster.”
“Most of his skeleton has been replaced by shock absorbers and internal armor,” said Alain. “That’s how he’s still moving after everything we’ve done to him. And his endocrine system’s been enhanced with an onboard suite of drug dispensers, which is why he’s still moving. His bloodstream’s probably half stimulant right now. According to a file I stole last month, most of his organs are synthetic, he can metabolize poison, he can recirculate his own oxygen supply for up to seven hours, and he can not only chew through metal, he can digest it when he’s done.” Alain smiled, just the barest hint at the corner of his mouth. “Which is why we’re still moving.”
“Who are you?” asked Marisa.
“Not now,” said Alain. “Renata! Time to go off the grid.”
“Hell yeah,” Renata shouted back. She angled her bike to the side, swerved around a speeding truck, and turned down a smaller side road. Alain followed, and Marisa held on tight, squealing just a little as the motorcycle accelerated into the turn. Now that they were off the main road they had to dodge and swerve almost constantly, turning around corners and moving past pedestrians and dogs and other obstacles.
“He’s still with us,” said Marisa, glancing over her shoulder. “Barely half a block back and still gaining.”
“I know,” said Alain, talking through his teeth as he concentrated. “We know the terrain here better than he does—I’m hoping we can lose him.”
The roads grew rougher as they raced through the city, and the buildings seemed to flash by in a high-speed strobe—quick images that came and went in an instant. Tall glass skyscrapers gave way to single-story storefronts, then run-down apartments, then a squalid neighborhood full of ramshackle houses and sagging warehouses and threadbare, dusty street mercados. Soon the roads were full of garbage and the walls were covered with graffiti, and the speeding iron river of autocars was replaced with handcarts and rickshaws and shirtless children running in the streets. Marisa blinked to open her GPS, and found that they were in a neighborhood called Kirkland, which her djinni was quick to indicate was currently under Red Drinking Day conditions—meaning the water there was effectively undrinkable. She blinked again to call up the history and found that Kirkland’s water supply had been rated as Red for 647 days in a row. It didn’t look like the city was even trying to clean it anymore. It didn’t look like they were maintaining anything, either—the buildings were crumbling ruins, held together with cardboard and scraps. As the motorcycles spun around another corner, Marisa had to duck her head to keep clear of a protruding wall of corrugated tin.
