CLAIRVOYANCE: Part 32
Gentle hands shook her awake, pulling her back to her body like a frayed string attached to the back of her mind. It creaked and threatened to snap at any moment, but she arrived intact behind her own eyes. Immediately she cringed away from the hands and curled up into a foetal ball. Her mind was still hovering on the painful edge of orgasm, still felt the fading glow of Jock grinding inside her, but her body was cold and barely awake. She couldn’t finish it. The feeling quickly slipped away from her.
She lay there for a moment, shivering, trying to remind herself that she wasn’t Rat even while her own body fired her hormones up to teenage levels. She nearly went mad. Jock might be a repulsive little troll, but his fooling around with Rat was the closest she’d come to a decent fuck since Gabriel on the airship. The pent-up stress inside her could’ve driven a priest into a whorehouse.
“Are you alright?” asked Darius’s voice. She could feel him hovering just out of reach, catching the tail end of her ragged emotions. And God knew what else . . .
“Fine,” she coughed. “What’s the fucking emergency?”
He shrugged. “We’re coming up to the border. Figured you should be awake for this.”
The sky stretched out over the mountainous pass, tinged deep navy blue by the last rays of daylight. On the horizon she spotted a line of armoured towers speckled with floodlights, looming over the landscape like arrows driven into the ground by some ancient archer god. They were linked together by long stretches of wicked-looking nanowire fencing that could stop a tank in its tracks. Despite the impressive display, it was an open secret that much of the security here was invisible. A whole suite of intelligent systems patrolled the fence, primed and ready to zap or gun down anyone who got any funny ideas.
Gina watched from the back of the van. Instinctive fear squeezed her throat. There were Feds there, and if her time on the Street had taught her anything it was the nameless dread that a Federal uniform struck inside you. It wasn’t the Feds’ cold-hearted conditioning, or even the implants boosting them to a level beyond humanity. It was the unwavering iron knowledge that they were unstoppable. They could do anything to you, absolutely anything, and they’d never even feel a thing. Against Feds you had no hope at all.
It wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the way she felt about Gabriel and, to a lesser extent, about Bomber. Two people who held very confused places in her heart.
You have some kind of fucked-up thing about power, girl, she told herself. Why don’t you bring that up while you’re getting your head examined?
Annoyed with herself, she speared Darius with a look. “You said you had a plan for getting me across.”
“Naturally,” he chuckled. He reached into the glove box and pulled out something small and metal, which he handed to her without comment. It was a big chunk of scrap, scorched black in places, heavy and vaguely uncomfortable to the touch. Gina didn’t know what it was but disliked it on sight.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” she said acidly. “This is it? This is your plan to fool the Feds, a small bit of junk?”
“Trust me, they won’t look too close if we give them enough of a reason not to. Everything will be fine, just don’t get your tits in a twist.” She started to get angry, but he held up a warning finger. His mind spun through evasion techniques so fast it made her dizzy just being near him. “I could make this real easy on myself by turning you in, Gina. Make sure I don’t have a reason. We’re all on the same side, right?”
She bit back the rage bubbling in the pit of her stomach. “What makes you think you’re on my side?”
A manic smile creased his lips at her question, and he flicked a pair of tablets from his pocket into his mouth. The amphetamine rush started almost immediately, and Gina caught a glow of it from his mind, driving out tiredness and electrifying his body with new energy. The other tablet wouldn’t kick in for a few more minutes, Gina knew all too well. She pushed down the urge to beg him for a hit of Spice.
“How long has it been since you closed your eyes?” she asked instead.
“You have no idea.”
“We are here,” interrupted Mahmoud. Gina and Darius both looked around, and Gina gasped.
The big towers were only a stone’s throw away now. Several high-powered spotlights locked on to the van, one of the few vehicles on the road at this time of night, and tracked it into the checkpoint. Thick concrete walls rose up on both sides, lined with the discreet metal nubs and bumps of sensors and automated weapons.
Scanners began to probe the driver compartment, soft laser beams searching for faces and electronic identification. Gina ducked behind the seats and tried to make herself inconspicuous.
They eventually hit a closed gate and had to stop. Mahmoud removed the makeshift patch on his window, and a recorded voice piped up from a speaker in the wall. “Welcome to the Federation of Equal and Allied Cooperating Nations border. This system will assume you are familiar with your rights and obligations under Federal law. If you are not, please say so at any point and I will endeavour to answer any questions you may have. How many are you bringing in?”
“Just follow my lead,” Darius murmured under his breath. He leaned across Mahmoud and waved at the speaker grille. “Listen, we’ve got a sick passenger on board. We got no time to waste, so put us on the fucking fast track right now.”
The voice went on unhurried. “Do you have full and valid electronic or physical identification for all occupants? If you do not, you may be asked to submit to a retinal scan or visual inspection by a Federal officer.”
“Just send me some goddamn uniforms out!”
The robot chirped a confirmation and went silent. A few minutes later two Junior Constables came through the gate, a man and a woman, looking tired and overworked. They didn’t have their helmets up and their hands were well away from their weapons. For all the world they seemed like regular people as they leaned into the van’s windows and shared a yawn.
The man spoke as courteously as he could manage, “What seems to be the problem, sir?”
Darius looked at him with haunted eyes, and his voice rang with such heartache that Gina had to remind herself it was an act. He said, “Constable, please, we’re taking my wife to the City for medical attention. There was an accident, she doesn’t have a passport or any travel documents on her, but if we don’t get her there she doesn’t stand a chance. You’ve got to let us through!”
“Right,” said the woman, not convinced. Her hardened scepticism surrounded her like a defensive aura. “Let’s see the woman, then. Please step out and open the back door for us.”
“That . . .” Darius shifted uncomfortably. “That might not be such a good idea, Constable.”
“Why? What’s wrong with her?”
“Radiation poisoning,” said Darius, and the Fed’s smile froze on her red-painted lips. She instinctively took a step back to put some distance between herself and the van. Then her eyes narrowed, and she took a small sensor from her belt, waving it around like a magic wand. Her partner did the same. Both sensors beeped with a steady rhythm.
The male Fed grunted with mild surprise, “Vehicle’s elevated but within safe norms.” He brought out a little PDA, flicking through the screens in a hurry, and muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “There’s definitely something hot in there. One thermal, looks human, but they could be smuggling.”
Feigning urgency, Darius went to his wad of cash and opened his door. He stepped out and thrust the bundle at the woman, who looked at it like a nest of ants.
“Please,” he whispered, “take as much as you want, just let us through. She hasn’t got much time.”
Gina could almost see it in their faces, the rigid Fed control starting to slip. They were only Junior Constables, not yet walking extensions of the Federation’s will. They still felt things like empathy, greed, mercy, fear. It took time and money to really burn someone’s humanity out of them.
At the same time Darius’s Spice-touched mind reached for Gina, and through the howl of feedback it communicated one thought.
Scream.
The fear throbbing in her veins concentrated Gina’s mind like nothing else. She could feel every thought and emotion around her, clear as crystal, sharp as knives. Trembling like a leaf, she took the pain from inside her and channelled it into a long, shrill howl of agony. Her own terror radiated out through the walls of the van.
Although Darius didn’t give away a hint of it, on the inside he was grinning. That’s it! Divide and conquer, babe. Hit them where they’re weak. Remind them they’re human, and they’ll crack.
Gina could feel the truth of it, the persistent flares of emotion struggling with their well-drilled sense of duty. Could she really influence that? Could she really reach inside their thoughts and change them?
Yes, she knew, deep inside. She could. She could do anything she wanted. Things began to fall into place as her mind found the two Feds, fear and doubt already whirling through their brains. She made it stronger. She pushed down their trained discipline and moulded their feelings to her will.
The Fed woman hesitated before she spoke. No way was she going near that van, but how could she make sure it was okay to go through? She had to do that, didn’t she? Biting her lip, she looked at the cash in her hand. It would be so much easier just to . . .
She cleared her throat and said, “Shinji, maybe we should . . . Let’s just stop and think, okay?”
“Think about what, Anja? No papers, no access, you know that. We– Someone has to go in there.”
A flicker of defensiveness woke inside her at Gina’s touch, money still crinkling between her fingers. “Our armour’s not rated for hard rads. Do you want to spend ten minutes getting a fucking retinal scan?”
The words caught in his throat. He looked down, ashamed. “No.”
A heavy silence fell on the scene. The only sound was the occasional rush of cars passing through the other lanes.
Moving stiffly, the woman crossed to her partner, slipped half the cash in his pocket, and whispered warmly in his ear, “Don’t you dare spend a dollar of that on pixie dust, you little bastard.”
She turned back to Darius and said, “Get going. Mention anything about this to anyone and I’ll hunt you down.”
Darius nodded and hurried back into the passenger seat. A moment later the gate opened and they were through.
When they were through the gate and away, the telepath smiled.
“I knew you could do it. You’re something special, Gina. Imagine what you could achieve if you put your mind to it.” He tapped a finger against his temple and grinned.
She ignored him, trying in vain to get back to sleep.
The longer Gina tried to get to sleep the less tired she became. Hours went by, but she just got more frustrated and caged-up, trying to keep her mind from roaming. Her eyes throbbed with the effort of holding herself in, but the alternative was worse. Darius was still there. She’d rather not touch him again if she could possibly avoid it.
She wanted to cry with the frustrated need to be alone, even for a little while, but she couldn’t be. Not here. Not where she was going.
She could feel it in the distance. Something new, something dark, pulsing with its own heartbeat. When she closed her eyes she could see it glowing on the horizon. Skeletons of neon and steel in the darkness, minds flickering brightly like candles until they burned out.
Gina was coming back to the Street of Eyes. She was on her way home.
“What is that light?” asked Mahmoud, straining his eyes toward the horizon. “Sunrise isn’t for three more hours.”
Darius chuckled, “Fuck the city that never sleeps, big man — welcome to the land where the sun never even goes down. That’s home.”
Mahmoud offered no response.
Gina sighed and got up to take a look. There, in the distance, the outliers of the City glimmered in the night. Simple houses shared space with big blocks of concrete and glass, residential towers designed to house the largest number of people in the smallest possible space. On the ground floor of each tower was an assortment of seedy, brightly-attired shops vomiting light into the world.
Most of those towers were built for the local workers, lower-class Chinese packed in like sardines, earning just about enough to survive from one day to the next. And they had it good compared to some of the City’s other groups . . .
I missed you like a hole in the head, she thought at the looming buildings as they grew slowly closer. Did you miss me too?
“Take the ring road,” said Darius. “Unless something unexpected happens, it should be easy going from here on in. Just a couple more hours.”
“Are you sure this Jupiter guy will give us the time of day when we get there?”
“That ain’t my problem. Convincing him is all up to you.”
Disgusted, Gina sat back and tried to find a good way to kill the next few hours.
Boredom made her drowsy. She never even felt the dreamworld creeping up on her, spreading slowly to envelop the part of her mind that was still hers. She only realised it when Gabriel’s arms snaked around her waist from behind, holding her firmly in place. The touch glowed on her skin, made her feel whole again, and she found her heart beating faster with excitement.
Stars of every colour dotted the sky in their millions. It was a riot of mad colour, like a child’s painting made into neon. Whole galaxies were laid bare before her. She could see the distant smears of nebulae, yellow and green and pink, and even little pinpricks of darkness where some moon or planet blocked the light.
Black water rippled around her feet, and a strong sea breeze threw her hair around. It could’ve been any ocean in the world, except it was flat and motionless all the way to the horizon, free of waves or swells. The sea was becalmed even while the wind blew over the top of it.
Faint music played somewhere in the distance. The melody was familiar but she couldn’t work out where she’d heard it before.
“I do owe you an apology,” he said softly. “I’ve been selfish.”
“Yes,” she sighed, almost content. “It’s just how you are.”
“I panicked. I was afraid you’d slip away from me. Even as we speak you’re getting stronger, I can only reach you in dreams. When you’re conscious you just block me out. I’m only a . . . passive observer to all the interesting things you get up to.” His mouth teased her neck, making it tingle, and she had to stifle a gasp.
“You’ve been watching, have you?” she asked cynically. Without thinking she put her hands on top of his and leaned back. The next moment their lips were touching.
“Doesn’t anything worry you? I know where you’re going. I could be right there, waiting for you.”
Gina smiled. “Will you be?”
“Show up and find out.” He squeezed her hands and winked, but she couldn’t tell if it was meant to reassure her or promise something.
A long time went by, thinking in silence. Gina’s feet slowly left the ground. She floated in the air, bathed in the sky’s multicoloured light, always protected by Gabriel’s arms. She couldn’t have felt more secure, but deep down she knew that was just another manipulation. The screaming void he’d torn out of her was still there, begging to hurt him back.
She said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“Having second thoughts about going to see the Wizard of Oz?”
“Who?”
Gabriel smiled. “This Jupiter guy, you’re worried he’ll tell you you’re a fruitcake and you may as well give up hope.”
“Wow, it’s almost as if you could read my mind,” she said caustically. “You should be on stage.”
“So are you asking for my advice?” he teased.
“I can’t think of anything I’d trust less than your advice.”
“Are you sure about that?” Still amused, Gabriel summoned up a living bust of Darius hovering in the air before them. It was utterly convincing, with the same irreverent smile and brown, mocking eyes. “Here’s a tip, free of charge. Be careful with that one. Don’t believe him, even for an instant.”
She clenched her fists so tight her nails dug into her palms. The sight of Darius filled her with revulsion, but she wasn’t about to take Gabriel’s word for it. “Any particular reason?”
“Haven’t you felt it? He’s very good at evasion, but if you’re that wired all the time you’re going to let things slip. He’s got some kind of interest in you, Gina, beyond what he’s telling you.”
“I’d better be real careful then,” she whispered, trembling with fury. “He might be trying to seduce me, or kidnap me, or tear a great big fucking hole in my head, or torture my friends and then murder them.”
“I thought you’d say something like that. You’ve got a real mean streak underneath it all, I think that’s one of the things I like about you.”
That was the last straw. Anger and frustration boiled over as Gina reached her limit, and she turned inside his arms with a white-hot sense of purpose, the city of ashes flashing behind her eyes. Gabriel’s eyes widened as he sensed the direction of her emotions but he didn’t have time to react.
She shoved, sending him flat on his back on the water. He made a splashing noise as he hit but the water behaved more like a solid floor. It only rippled around him; he never even broke the surface.
“You haven’t listened to a goddamned word I said, have you?” she ground out. In a single fluid movement she ripped off her top and threw it away viciously, exposing herself from the waist up. Her voice broke as she said, “Come on, Gabriel. Take what you want. Nothing matters as long as you get your way, right?”
Without waiting for an answer she lowered herself on top of him. A burst of pleasure fluttered in her chest and brought up a long, tinkling laugh. She saw the surprise on Gabriel’s face and flashed him a cold grin, working her hips without mercy. There was no love in it, and she intended to make it crystal fucking clear. No more smiles, no laughter, just raw physicality all the way to the end.
Even as she came, Gina knew it wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t take away the hollow feeling inside, but that was okay. She didn’t have to like him to fuck him. She didn’t even have to like herself.
Leaning both hands on his chest, she brought her mouth to within an inch of his lips and said, “Now get out.”
She put all her concentration into a single mental push. The music grew fractionally louder, as if detecting the change of mood — and then she slammed Gabriel down into the fake water with a sound like shattering glass. This time he went through the surface and sank like a stone. His eyes stared straight at her until he disappeared into the deep, blocked out of her dream by her own will.
At last, for a little while, she was completely alone.
Something roused her out of her isolation. Some unnamed sense or instinct switched the lights back on, and she knew right away. They were here.
All doubt vanished as she reached out, and quickly pulled back in panic, choking down a scream. There were dozens of minds all around her, telepaths, rippling out into the world like a brilliant mosaic sculpted in human thought. Some shone brightly with ideas and emotions, others were dulled and twisted by years of Spice addiction, but no matter their health, Gina could see them all as crisply as stars on a clear night. Even the distant pulse of the Street of Eyes seemed insignificant compared to this.
It was beyond her wildest dreams. Like taking off a blindfold only to find herself teetering at the edge of a cliff.
The van’s engine hummed as it slowed down, then stopped altogether.
Darius’s voice came out of the night, “This is the place. I can feel it.”
“You should go and introduce us,” said Mahmoud, his voice slurred with fatigue from the long drive. He waited until Darius had got out, then climbed into the back of the van to check on Gina. He could barely see her in the dim glow of the street lights, but somehow he knew her emotional state without ever looking at her. Heavy hands landed on her shoulders. “Something is different about you, Gina.”
She started to snarl an insult at him, then bit it back, remembering who she was talking to. She forced her teeth together and let her background rage subside a little.
“I’m different. Stuff happened.”
“You sound like you need someone to talk to,” he said quietly. He hid a yawn behind his hand.
“I really don’t,” she snapped. The genuine caring and warmth radiating from him only rankled her now, and anything she said would only hurt him. The very idea of someone who thought she was worthy of that sentiment was offensive. How could she ever hope to repay a debt to someone like this?
There was just one thing she could do.
“Go home, Mahmoud. You’ve got a wife and a crew who need you. You don’t deserve to be caught up in this.”
Hesitantly he swallowed. The words rang in his ears, and they weren’t welcome. He said, “I am where I am needed most.”
“I don’t need–“
“You have something on your soul, Gina. It doesn’t take a telepath to see it. I don’t know what happened to you, I may not understand, but I hope that someday you will feel ready to tell me. Until then I will be here for you.”
“Yeah? Is it me you’re here for,” she wondered cruelly, shaking off his hands, “or is it Safi?”
Mahmoud flinched as if struck. His mind turned to stone, locked down under a cold weight, but for a moment Gina caught a glimpse of the bottomless pain behind it. He said nothing as he turned his back and left like a shadow through the rear door.
Mission accomplished, she thought, sick with self-loathing. You’re a real piece of work, Gina.
Once Mahmoud was out of sight she spurred her stiff muscles into action and clambered out of the van on swaying legs. As always, the City air choked her with its unrelenting heat and humidity, but she breathed it in deep anyway. The acrid, human smell of it was vaguely comforting. It was an overcast night, but the City lights reflected off the low clouds to throw a diffuse, yellow glow all over the world.
Without thinking her hand went to her pocket for a packet of cigarettes that wasn’t there. She hadn’t had a smoke since before her fever, but while the physical craving had gone, right now she wanted nicotine like nothing else.
She let out a long, calming breath, then wandered around to get a picture of the place.
The van stood in the middle of an empty car park, surrounded by dimly-lit structures on all sides. The main building was an old tea house built in the traditional style, with a big upswept roof and intricately carved wooden decorations all around, stained in bright colours. A series of well-worn gravel paths wound in between islands of grass and fish ponds covered over with plastic, leading to some outbuildings behind the tea house.
One thing kept nagging at Gina while she took in the sights. There was no fence, no guard, not even the implied threat of low-profile automated security. Anyone could have walked in.
But, something told her, those minds around her would know.
Golden light spilled out the front door of the tea house. Darius appeared in the doorway, looking harried. More harried than usual, anyway. When he caught sight of her he locked on like a missile. Even in the dark she could see his hands shaking, pupils shrunk to the size of pinheads. His mind was a constant explosion of wild, fractured thoughts driven by speed and Spice.
“I don’t think you’re gonna like what they’re gonna say,” he said as he approached. Then he took a good look at her and added, “Wow, you’re a mess.”
“No fucking kidding.” She shook her head and started to shove him out of the way, but then stopped and really looked at him. Gabriel’s words came up out of memory like mocking laughter. Don’t trust him, she snorted mentally. As if.
She said, “What’s your angle in this, Darius? What do you get out of helping me?”
He stared at her like she was possessed. Then he turned, barking a manic laugh, and strolled back to the tea house.
Clenching her jaw tight, Gina followed him. She dragged her fingers painfully through her hair in a vain attempt to comb it. She was dying for a bath and a set of straighteners, and even more, some painkillers strong enough to tackle the constant ache inside her.
Barring that, she’d settle for seeing Bomber’s face one more time. She pictured him now. For some reason he was smiling, caught in a fleeting moment of emotion, but behind his lightless brown eyes there were depths that he never showed. Except to a girl called Gina.
If there was anyone in this world who really understood pain, who could genuinely feel what she felt, it was him.
In her mind she blew him a kiss, whispered, “Wish me luck,” and then let the image go.
Three men and a pair of women waited at a low table in the sparsely-appointed main hall, lounging on cushions and sipping at cups of green tea. They turned as one to watch Gina, and part of her wanted to die with self-conscious shame. That wasn’t going to happen, though. She was too tired and pissed off, and she met their stares with all of Gina Hart’s aggressive confidence.
The oldest of the group, a thin white-bearded man with a face like a hawk, regarded her bleakly. His narrow grey eyes did not welcome her. Nobody spoke, but everyone except the old man exchanged constant looks with each other.
Gina suddenly felt outnumbered. Her only backup was Darius, and that comforted her not at all.
Without looking away, the old man said in a smooth English accent, “Give us the room, please.”
The other people at the table rose jerkily and shuffled out of sight. For a moment Gina sensed a strange distortion at the edge of her hearing. She focused on it, peering out of her mental lockdown, and it suddenly resolved into an explosion of words and feelings. Many different voices were talking through each other, but without ambiguity or confusion. Speaking mentally. There was a conspiratorial undertone to it too, as if Gina wasn’t supposed to be listening.
She glanced over her shoulder and found Darius still standing at her shoulder. He scanned the room, eyes darting left and right as if he’d caught wind of something he couldn’t quite identify. He wasn’t taking any notice of the old man’s hint.
The old man who could only be Jupiter said, “As I just told you, Mr. Archer, this is a private home and not a hospital. We’re simply not taking on any more people. I don’t care what kind of pull you think you have–“
“This isn’t about me,” Darius said stubbornly.
“You’re still here. How many more times are you going to make me repeat myself?”
Any remaining nervousness went out of Gina then, and a slow smile crossed her lips. This was a game. Posturing and pretence, nothing more. Gina wasn’t putting up with that. Games were for people who played by the rules. She shrugged out of her jacket, chucked it on the table, and gracefully folded herself into the lotus position on some cushions opposite Jupiter. She gazed at him in calm silence with her fingers steepled under her chin.
“Very dramatic.” He flashed a brief smile and started to get up. “I’ll get someone to escort you off the premises.”
Darius balked, “What, you’re not even gonna talk to her?”
“I will remind you again that this is my house, Mr. Archer,” Jupiter said icily, “and I wouldn’t advise you to test my patience any more than you already have.”
Taking advantage of the distraction, Gina reached out with her mind and touched Jupiter. His thoughts were cool, ordered, clinical, and alive with the distant anger of a professional who believed his valuable time was being wasted. Gina didn’t find even a trace of Spice in his mind, which was odd, but it was okay. There didn’t need to be.
One by one, she placed the words in his head.
Are you taking me seriously yet?
Jupiter stopped speaking in mid-sentence. His eyes snapped to Gina like gun barrels locking on, his forehead creased, and his mouth pressed into a thin line. She looked back at him bold as brass and smiled.
Slowly, like a tree bowing in the wind, he sat back down. Facing Gina, he leaned his elbows on the table and whispered, “What is it you want from me?”
“I’m having some head trouble. An artifact. I hear you’ve got experience treating that sort of thing.”
“Be that as it may, I’m not a charity. Any favours would have to be . . . reciprocated.”
She gave a toothy smile. “Within reason.” She wasn’t sure what ‘reciprocated’ meant, but she had a fair idea.
“I think you’ll find me to be quite reasonable,” said Jupiter, a calculating gleam in his eyes, and he rose. “Come on, let me introduce you to the others. We’ll have to bring you up to speed as quickly as possible.”
“Bring me up to speed?” she questioned, following him through the common room and up a creaking wooden stair. A glance over her shoulder told her that Darius was still behind her, keeping pace.
“Believe me, it’s easier to show you than tell you. You could be what we’ve been waiting for.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Here we are,” he announced.
Jupiter led her into a large, circular room shrouded in darkness but for the mad flickering of LEDs. Little flashes of blue, green and yellow revealed silhouettes of large objects and wires in the gloom, but Gina couldn’t make out what they were. Fans whirred everywhere. Gina’s cheeks tingled as alternating waves of hot and cold air blew over them.
At first she might’ve thought of it as just some kind of computer room, but something was wrong. Her third eye picked up more than that. The air had a strange weight to it, and walking inside felt like wading through syrup. Her head began to throb. Whispers of thought and emotion blew through her, too powerful to block out.
Then, with a clap of Jupiter’s hands, the lights blasted to life. Gina’s hand went to her mouth to stop a gasp. The next moment her mind spun away from her.
CLAIRVOYANCE: Part 31
The hologram floating in front of Bomber was all but perfect. It had Gabriel’s face down to the smallest wrinkle, his exact voice, even his presence. The image was no larger than a man, but just like Gabriel himself it seemed to fill up all available space, demanding everyone and everything’s full attention. Hate boiled in Bomber’s stomach at the sight of it, but he kept a tight rein on his feelings. There were three obvious things that identified this thing from the real Gabriel.
One, it had huge white wings and a sword made of pure fire. Two, it was hovering six metres above the ground. And three, the most unsettling, was that its eyes weren’t really eyes at all. Just pools of white light that stared unseeing into the middle distance.
“What the fuck?” said Hawthorn, half confused, half dumbstruck with awe.
Bomber hushed him. “He thinks he’s an angel,” he whispered, “or somethin’ like that.” Carefully he paced forward until he was directly in front of the hologram, firelight from the sword flickering on his face. He said, “I think we’ve met. You’re . . . the Angel’s Sword?”
“I am,” it boomed. The hologram’s mouth didn’t move, but the sword’s flames flickered to the rhythm of the words. “And you are the man with no name, occasionally known as Jacob Dusther or Simon Caine.”
Hawthorn made another noise. “Simon Caine?”
“Shut up, Hawk.” Bomber stared up at the hologram, taking another grenade from his belt. This one was twice as big as the scrambler, with red and yellow warning markers and the letters FAE stamped on the top. “Do you know what this is, Sword? Mind if I call you ‘Sword’?”
“It’s a fuel-air explosive with sufficient power to destroy most of the contents of this room, and potentially damage structural supports enough to collapse this part of the building. I believe you intend to use it as a means of coercion.”
“Just tryin’ to establish our bargaining position, that’s all. Believe me, I’d enjoy nothing more than blowin’ this whole place to bits.” Grinning nastily, Bomber fiddled with the grenade pin. He didn’t have a lot of experience intimidating AIs, but from experience, this sort of thing usually did the trick on humans.
“Which you’ll undoubtedly do anyway if I give you what you want. ‘Artificial intelligence’ does not mean ‘gullible.'”
“The way I see it,” Bomber said matter-of-factly, “you can either talk or be difficult. Only one of those options has any chance of you comin’ out alive. Now, where are the two soldiers who came down here a minute ago?”
The voice laughed, and the flames rippled like an oscilloscope. It echoed, “Is that what you came all this way to ask?”
“I wouldn’t recommend playin’ games with me.”
“I don’t play games. Your men are unimportant. If I’m to answer questions, let the questions be important.”
Things went quiet for a moment. The hologram projector emitted an otherworldly hum while Hawthorn choked down his anger and forced himself not to repeat Bomber’s demands. The sword’s flames burned without a sound. No heat, no smoke, just clear and single-minded fire. For Bomber it was like having his own state of mind reflected back at him.
He pressed, “Where is Gabriel? Where’s Gina?”
“That’s more like it.” The sword flickered violently for a moment. “My lord is in his airship above the City. The woman Gina Hart, also known as Emily Marie Vaughan, was last detected leaving the Ukrainian city of Odessa in a southerly direction. Will that be all?”
“How do I know you’re tellin’ the truth?”
“I would say I am as reliable as the next man with a gun to his head.”
“Fine. Tell me about the Hephaestus project, and where the bots are located.”
“Ah.” The sword burned uncertainly. “I do not appear to have access to those files. I only know that we are in the process of acquiring more information.”
That piqued Bomber’s attention. “Acquirin’ from whom?”
“My apologies. I don’t know.”
Coolly, with a determined gleam in his eye, Bomber pulled the pin on his grenade. He held down the safety lever which kept the fuse from being triggered, and twirled the pin around his finger on its little steel O-ring.
“You can tell me where Gabriel and Gina are, no trouble, but I’m supposed to believe you’ve got nothing on Hephaestus?”
The sword, if it could be said to have an expression, took on a new pattern which resembled nothing so much as a smile. “I have answered you to the best of my ability.”
“Yeah, well, I’m startin’ to think this isn’t what it looks like,” Bomber went on, studying the rhythm of the unearthly fire. “For all I know your hardware could be halfway around the world, and this whole conversation is bein’ conducted through the ‘Net. That’s why you’re not afraid of me. You’re not really here at all.”
The flames writhed like orange snakes. “Interesting theory. Please, do continue.”
“I’m startin’ to wonder if you were ever housed here in the first place. You got full access to GlobeNet, there’s no reason for Gabriel to come visit your location in person. There’s nothing he could do in the flesh that couldn’t be done in VR. So what makes him keep coming back, unless it’s all just a big blinking decoy?”
The sword didn’t offer an immediate response, but the fire jumped and spat furiously in silence. After a long pause it said in a whisper, “That’s exactly the question I’ve been wanting you to ask.”
Everything went quiet. The hologram of Gabriel disappeared, leaving only the sword of fire, dancing to its own weird rhythm. Bomber stared at it while a horrible feeling crawled slowly out of the depths of his soldier’s intuition. The interval between each spurt of flame was one second exactly, like a well-oiled clock. Or, thought Bomber, a detonator counting down.
“Jacob, I think we should run,” suggested Hawthorn as the wall of electronics in front of them began to spark and sizzle.
“Yeah,” said Bomber. He carefully slotted the pin back into his grenade to make it safe to carry. Then he added, “Good idea.”
They turned as one and launched themselves back at the maze, sprinting for the staircase at speeds any professional runner would’ve envied.
Bomber had made it halfway up the stairs, with Hawthorn and Stundog in pursuit, when the ground underneath him started to shake. It was like an earthquake in slow-motion, a violent scissoring left and right, that lasted for a few seconds and then quieted down again.
Bomber lost his footing and fell flat on his face. So did the others, and they coughed and swore as they picked themselves back up, the air filled with choking plaster dust and bits of old concrete.
“He’s gonna bring this whole place down on top of us!” panted Hawthorn. “We’re trapped like fucking rats!”
“I ain’t gonna die buried alive,” Bomber muttered with iron certainty. He didn’t believe in destiny, and God was much too far away to take an interest, but there was a force driving him onward like a tidal wave. That force would hold up the ceiling until he made it out. It would throw him to safety ahead of any explosion. It would shield him from bullets, shrapnel, anything that might cause him harm. It would keep him alive for as long as he needed to chase his all-consuming goal.
It didn’t matter if it was lady Fortune, or the laws of drama, or the patron saint of single-minded bastards personally holding a hand over his head. Bomber believed in it. He was a charmed man. Whether it would extend to Hawthorn and his crew . . .
“I ain’t gonna die buried alive!” he called over his shoulder. “Are you?!”
Hawthorn laughed at that. “You always were a cocky bastard, you know that?”
Bomber offered no response.
Whole chunks of concrete fell from the dilapidated ceiling, turning their mad dash for the surface into an obstacle course. Bomber dodged the pieces as they fell, jumped over them where he could and levered them out of the way where he couldn’t. The ceilings above him creaked and sagged as their foundations shifted out from underneath. Even the big supporting columns holding up the roof started to deform, hardened concrete and steel bending like wet cardboard.
An avalanche of rubble blocked up part of the stairway. Without hesitation Bomber jumped up along the wall and grabbed the handrail of the landing above, hauling himself up past the blockage.
Then he burst through the door at the top of the stairs. Hawthorn was almost on his heels, but Stundog couldn’t make the jump, weighted down with his combat gear. He frantically tried to get it all off, but disappeared from sight as the whole stairwell crumpled in on itself.
A few soldiers from Hawthorn’s squad were waiting for their Major, and he took charge of them right away. He bellowed to run like hell.
They ran headlong into another obstruction, fallen ceiling blocking their only exit. Thinking on his feet, Hawthorn tapped his squad grenadier on the shoulder and pointed to the wall.
“Improvise,” he said.
The man levelled his grenade launcher at the wall and held down the trigger. An entire magazine chewed into the concrete like a great big blender, explosion after explosion throwing big chunks of shrapnel into the air.
Bomber shielded his face with his arms and dove through the firestorm, into daylight. The troops wasted no time following in his footsteps.
Behind them, the building crumbled wing by wing, vomiting huge clouds of stinging dust through every gap. The ground just kept rumbling until the final piece came to rest on the rubble heap.
“Fuck me,” sputtered Hawthorn, in between hacking up mouthfuls of dust. When he regained control of his lungs, he ordered his men to move to the getaway car, then took Bomber’s arm and pulled him aside. The adrenaline was wearing off. Now there was only tightly-restrained fury on his face.
Bomber stared at the grip on his arm. Old and new resentments coiled around his heart like snakes of ice. “Hawk, the last person to touch me like that had to have his body parts sewn back on.”
“Is that a threat, Jake? Are you threatening me?”
“Just tryin’ to save you a perfectly good hand.”
For a moment it looked like Hawthorn might lose it, shaking with rage, but his control held out and he made himself let go.
“Explain to me what in hell you were thinking, playing chicken with an AI.”
“I got it talking, didn’t I?”
Hawthorn almost laughed, but there was no humour in his eyes. “You just don’t get it, do you? It’s a machine! It’s got no impulse towards self-preservation, it doesn’t feel fear, it doesn’t feel anything! The worst mistake you can possibly make is treating it like a human being!”
“You reckon you could’ve done better?”
“Given that I’ve been studying the possibilities of getting info out of a hostile AI for the last couple of years, yes, I fucking well could! I thought you had some kind of plan, but thanks to you every last word it said is worthless!”
“I don’t think so.”
Hawthorn blinked, the wind momentarily out of his sails. He blurted, “Don’t what?”
“Think about it, Hawk. We ran into that thing down there because that’s what we expected to find, and we went along with it hook line and sinker. If Gabriel really wanted to kill us here then we’d be dead. God knows we gave him enough fuckin’ opportunity. He’s playin’ some kind of game with us, and he wants us to puzzle out the clues.”
“Is that it, Jake? You think this is all a game?” Teeth bared, Hawthorn slammed his fist into a chunk of half-collapsed wall. “Why don’t you tell that to Stundog’s fucking wife and kids, huh? Or to Banjo and Kirby? Where do you get the fucking brass, Jake?!”
Bomber offered no response. He felt . . . nothing. No compassion, no empathy. He knew exactly what was going through Hawthorn’s mind, had suffered through it himself, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care. The only emotion inside him was for Gina, and for Gabriel. Nobody else.
“I’ve had enough. We’re going back to base and getting in touch with Command. As far as I’m concerned this whole operation is a wash, they may as well reassign us to a different zone.”
Shrugging, Bomber said, “You outrank me, Major. Your op, your call.”
Something ugly crossed Hawthorn’s face then, something beyond anger or simple rivalry. “I always had your wing when we were flying, Grendel,” he spat. “Always. The least you could do is be there for me for once in your life.”
With that he turned away, gathered his troops, and got them moving towards the getaway van. Toledo was driving; he pulled right up to the kerb, shielding them from prying eyes as they tumbled inside. Bomber gave the Spaniard a silent nod before he climbed aboard.
Far in the distance, emergency vehicle sirens began to howl.
“You weren’t at the debriefing,” said Toledo, intruding on Bomber’s thoughts. The Spaniard planted himself in a rickety desk chair opposite Bomber’s spot on the windowledge. The chair’s wheels squeaked as it spun towards the cheap plywood desk in the middle of the room, where Toledo put his feet up. A moment later he was completely at ease, hands folded over his stomach, regarding Bomber with razor-sharp intelligence.
He went on, “Did it happen like they said?”
Bomber nodded, with a glance outside to make sure they were alone. He’d taken over a small, abandoned office in Hawthorn’s headquarters to get some private space. Put his thoughts in order, that sort of thing. Mostly he just sat thinking about Gina, Gabriel, Odessa and the City. Wondering how it all fit together.
“What’s the fastest way of gettin’ to the Ukraine?” he asked.
“Getting into any of the Marxies is easy. Getting back out is the challenge if you’re wanted in the Federation. You aim to go after your friend?”
“She just left Odessa. Gabriel’s waitin’ for something in the City. It don’t take a telepath to figure out what’s going on.” His fierce protective instinct flared up at the thought of Gabriel and Gina even being on the same continent, and he ground his teeth in frustration. “She might not even know she’s headed straight for a trap. If I can intercept him before he reaches her . . .”
“That’s awfully thin, Bomber.”
“It’s enough.”
“It’ll be expensive.”
“I got enough saved. If I run out then I’ll work the difference.”
“What about your friends here?”
“What about them?” he asked sharply.
“Listen, Bomber–“
“Am I detectin’ some kind of problem? Have you got an angle in this now?”
Toledo shot him a warning look. “I don’t know what you plan to do against Gabriel, but right here you have a team of trained Spec Ops personnel with a lot of equipment and firepower. That’s got to make a difference, and yet you’re quite happy to leave it all behind, unused. No amount of history between you and the Major should get in the way of the job.”
Despite the anger boiling under his skin, Bomber clenched his jaw and reined in his temper, stopping himself from saying something he’d regret. Composing himself, he hissed out, “Anything between me and Hawk is not my fault.”
“Don’t be a damn fool, Bomber. You need him as much as he needs you. Make your peace and start focussing on Gabriel, the way you should be.”
At that precise moment, Bomber’s mobile phone rang. He stopped in surprise and dug it out of his pocket, then blinked at the display. It said, in plain black lettering, ‘JOCK’. Emotionless, he pressed the answer button and watched as a little hologram blinked into existence in front of him, Jock’s face slightly distorted through the bad reception. Rat was watching over his shoulder.
“Simon, are you there?” His voice sounded tinny and hollow. “Can you hear me?”
“Don’t say anything. Verify who you are first.”
“No time for that bullshit! Thank fuck you’re alive, I’ve got to warn you.” There was a frantic tone to his words that got Bomber’s attention. “Listen, Gabriel is preparing some kind of major cyber attack on somebody. He’s hired all of fucking Ireland and God knows who else to make him some kind of information super-weapon, and it looks like he’s ready to launch it. Europe was just a practice run. He could knock out communications worldwide.”
Bomber absorbed the information in silence. All he said was, “Has Gina been in touch with you?”
“That’s not important, we’ve got–“
“Don’t tell me what’s fuckin’ important, Jock,” Bomber said icily. “Maybe I should wonder about why you haven’t been returnin’ my calls. Maybe that wasn’t important either.”
“No, man, I just never got a chance–“
“I ain’t gonna ask again. Has she contacted you at all over the last few weeks?”
Swallowing, Jock moaned, “No. If she had I’d know about it.”
Behind him Rat squirmed and kept her mouth shut. Bomber noticed it but didn’t pay it much mind. The girl had been sort-of close to Gina, so it was only natural for her to be concerned. Beyond that, Bomber didn’t really know her, and without any immediately useful skills she didn’t feature in his world.
“You gotta do something, Simon, before he–“
“Enough,” said Bomber. “Gabriel is my problem. You find some way of keepin’ in touch outside of normal channels, in case something happens like you say. Do whatever you gotta do. I just want you to find out two things for me, and I don’t care if you got to cast across the whole ‘Net for it.”
Jock sighed. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Get me a pinpoint on Gina’s exact location. And,” Bomber glanced out the window watching the faint shimmer of a pair of camouflaged Army guards on patrol, “tell me what Gabriel’s after in the City. I want to know why he’s there. Maybe he ain’t just waitin’ for Gina, maybe there’s something more to it.”
“Right,” said Jock, and hung up.
After a long, thoughtful silence, Bomber looked away from the window and intercepted Toledo’s wrist as it pulled a cigarette out of his inside pocket.
“Tell Hawthorn I want to talk to him. Tell him it’s important.”
Toledo said nothing as he placed the cigarette between his lips and ignited it with an old-style petrol lighter. Blue smoke curled up from the end, hanging in the air between him and Bomber. Then he stood up, crossed to the door as silently as a cat, and disappeared down the hallway.
There was a click as the phone line disconnected under his thumb. Jock closed his eyes, massaged his temples, then chucked the phone across the room. Rat watched it ricochet off the wall and the floor a few times, pretty much invulnerable inside its bounce-polymer casing. Jock clenched his fists and gave a resentful growl as if he’d wanted it to break.
Rat caught his hands and held them gently, trying to calm him down. “Hey, come on,” she soothed. “So he’s a dickhead. It’s not the end of the world, right?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Lex.” He shrugged her off in anger. “And just to add insult to injury, Simon is the only person I know who has the slightest chance of affecting how this is going to play out. There really ain’t no fucking justice.”
“Pretty strong words from someone who told me to keep quiet about everything just a few days ago,” she said, a little bit too sharply. She tried to soften her tone as she went on, “How long have you known he wasn’t dead?”
“He left a message on my phone yesterday, asked me to call him back. I didn’t. I wanted to keep us away from him.” Jock slumped onto the bed. His face lost all its usual guile, and he looked her straight in the eye. She’d never seen such an honest expression on him. “You’ve met him, Alex. He’s trouble on two legs.”
“I thought he was your friend.” God, she felt like a shitheel saying that.
“You don’t make friends with a guy like Simon. There’s nothing there, inside, to make friends with.” He pointed at his chest. “Hollow people. All you can do is make use of them as and when.”
Rat bit her tongue, trying to think of something to say without exposing herself. Finally she asked, “What about Gina?”
A little bit of the old Jock spirit returned to him, snorting at the ridiculous question. “What do you think? A piece of meat like that? If she’s not with Simon, she’s dead and buried in a Y-shaped coffin, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I’m not casting for a corpse.”
“I . . .” she began, but it was too late to go back now. She’d gotten herself caught in the lie. Jock looked up at her, waiting for her to continue, and she blurted, “What do you need me to do?”
“There’s not much to do, babe. I’ll be busy with Simon and the botnet, and Hideo’s going to try getting the Fifteen together, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Lots of politics, old rivalries, endless piles of bullshit.” He shrugged. “That’s why nobody’s called an emergency meeting in ten years. One or two of them won’t even set foot in Laputa.”
Rat’s eyes smouldered as she rounded on him. “Don’t even think of telling me I can sit quietly on the sidelines, Jock.”
“I’m not asking you to,” he snapped back. “I just need some time to work. Can’t you go out and have fun for a few hours? What did you use to do with your free time before you met me?”
“Break into people’s houses and steal their shit to make rent on the one-by-two coffin I was living in. Why the fuck did you think I learned to pick locks?”
“I never, um . . .”
“I ended up in juvenile three times. While we were friends.”
He sat looking at her with his mouth open, feebly moving his jaw like some kind of fish, but failed to make any intelligible sound. Lost for words. Frustrated and fed up with him, Rat turned on her heel and swept up her coat as she stormed out. The hotel room door slammed shut behind her.
Fucking figures, she thought venomously. The second something important happened, she was once again surplus to requirements, dismissed out of hand.
She didn’t have a room key for the card lock, but she discovered she didn’t actually give a shit. She loved Jock, he just annoyed the hell out of her sometimes. A bit of space was needed to top up her patience.
Also, she happened to have palmed Jock’s wallet, which gave her ready access to a few million Federation dollars in credit chips. The Chrome Rat needed an expense account for the duration of her work with Jock. Someday he’d learn to appreciate her.
She strode fiercely towards the covered walkway into the next block, black leather coat swishing gently around her ankles. Underneath it she wore a black t-shirt borrowed from Jock, with the skull and crossed syringes logo of his favourite nanorock band, and a new pair of skinny jeans she’d bought on Cloud City. It made her look a little bit more . . . feminine than usual, didn’t conceal quite as much. It didn’t even have a hood. She felt strange looking at herself now, but despite her anxiety she told herself she’d just have to get used to it. It would be good to show herself. Not having to pretend.
Of course, Laputa might be the only place in the world where you could wear a floor-length leather coat and not look like a complete dickhead.
There were people all around her with such extensive wardrobes, piercings and other body mods they could give the City’s local colour a run for their money. She spotted one guy who’d had his face and hair reconstructed to look like a minotaur, to go with his steroid-enhanced physique, arguing with a guy with scales painted all over his face. A few moments later she passed a girl with an animated holo-tattoo implanted in the middle of her forehead, projecting a third eye that blinked realistically and followed her movements. Rat had seen that kind of thing a few times before, in the City, where it was becoming a fad for kids experimenting with Spice.
She closed her eyes while she made the crossing between buildings and tried to ignore the walkway’s gentle swaying in the wind. Once her surroundings stopped moving she dared to look again, and immediately hit a small ‘street’ of local shops advertising the weirdest collection of merchandise she’d ever seen together. The choices ranged from Eastern-European snack food to vintage electronics, from household robots to ancient printed books. They competed for attention with every kind of holographic ad and sign they could fit into the space. The only barrier seemed to be the holographic sky projected onto the ceiling, which mimicked the weather outside with uncanny accuracy.
Nothing she’d ever heard or seen about Laputa could live up to the reality. And this wasn’t even close to the city centre.
Rat let herself go with the crowd, not even looking at the windows. All her attention was on the people around her. No one noticed her, or at least, they didn’t scurry past her giving her the dirty looks she’d gotten so used to. She was just another girl in the crowd.
It couldn’t have been more different from the backstreets where she grew up. Here were all kinds and colours of women in plain view, doing whatever it was they did for a living, wearing anything from ankle-length dresses to strapless bikinis. Nothing was too revealing, no body mod or fashion accessory too gaudy or outlandish. Nobody went around with their heads bowed trying to avoid attention. You couldn’t even see the glass ceiling of the rankings hanging over them.
A nugget of old anger woke in Rat’s chest, burning like charcoal. To people in the City she’d been street trash, Korean scum, barely one step above black gaijin and several steps below white ones. Even worse, she’d dared to be born with a cunt. That was practically unforgivable. She’d gone through life hiding as much of herself as she could, dreaming of a day where she could go out dressed as a woman without having to worry, knowing that no one would look down on her. She would do it just to piss them off.
Only . . .
A horrible feeling began to creep up her spine. It was like a million ants crawling on her skin, skin barely covered by what she wore, exposed and vulnerable to all these people. They could just look at her and know. Sweating, she noticed men glancing at her, checking her out, wondering hungrily what they could find underneath her clothes. There were even women scoping her out the same way, the same quick look, predatory with just a hint of guilt. Rat couldn’t tell if they were thinking of her as a potential fuck or as competition.
Breathing hard and halfway to panic, she ducked into an alcove outside the flow of the crowd and pulled her coat up over her head, sagged against the wall. She wanted desperately to run home for her all-disguising hoodie and cargo trousers, for the secrecy that would make her feel safe.
The panic faded as she sat there on the outside looking in. She could’ve been invisible for all the attention anyone paid her. Nobody said a word. Gradually she summoned up the courage to open a gap in her headcover, stealing glances at the faces as they passed. They didn’t even look at her.
Rat found herself fascinated all over again. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people were walking down this street, but blind to anything they saw along the journey. They were in transit, minds firmly on their destinations, barely aware of their surroundings except in knowing when to move aside.
With her armour on, Rat had never thought of street people as anything more than a frightening mass of eyes and bodies. Obstacles to avoid. To that end Rat camouflaged herself and learned how to dodge their attention, how to slip between the cracks. Now she suddenly saw them in a different light. They were all going somewhere, for whatever reasons, their lives stretching out in front and behind.
Then she noticed the trainers.
If she hadn’t been studying the crowd, she might never have spotted them. They might have been just a pair of faded old shoes which happened to stride past her hiding place. To alert eyes, however, they were more than that. They moved with a different kind of purpose from every other pair of feet in view. Rat recognised their gait almost immediately; those shoes had a destination, but they drifted back and forth through the crowd with an affected aimlessness, dragging their heels a little bit too loudly, placing each lazy-looking step to a precise plan. Above them was a small shape hidden inside a khaki raincoat, head down, hands buried deep in its pockets. It never looked up but constantly moved its head from side to side to keep track of its surroundings.
Some unnamed impulse dragged Rat to her feet. She followed the trainers through the crowd, matched their every move with her own skill at going unnoticed. Each time the trainers disappeared around a corner, Rat was right behind them and locked on again. They were always there.
Rat caught one last glimpse of them turning off the streets into a narrow alleyway, and she hurried to catch up. When she rounded the corner, however, she came face to face with a blank wall. No doors, no stairs, nowhere to go. She doubled back and searched the street in case she’d taken a wrong turn, but there was no doubt she was in the right place.
Then the floor underneath her clicked like a door latch and she didn’t even have time to scream before she dropped into darkness.
For a second Rat was all tangled up in her own coat, restrained and blind, and claustrophobic panic clenched her throat. Her body was already full of adrenaline and now every heartbeat boomed painfully in her ears. She was gasping for breath and dripping with cold sweat by the time she managed to worm out of the heavy leather, struggling dizzily to her feet. She tried to get her bearings in the unfamiliar space. The coat pooled around her ankles and her drenched t-shirt clung to her skin.
“Who’s there?” she rasped breathlessly. “That wasn’t funny!”
Somebody laughed from the half-light, and Rat’s eyes followed the sound to the end of the tunnel in front of her. She was in some kind of narrow service way underneath the street, flanked by huge pipes and bundles of wire as thick as tree trunks. There was a ladder behind her going back up. The only other obvious exit was straight ahead, down the dark tunnel.
“Not my fault you were following me,” answered a husky female voice, amused and a little shaky. “Where I come from, that’s considered a tiny bit rude.”
“And dropping people down tunnels isn’t?”
The girl seemed to stop and think for a moment. Then, “Am I right in thinking you’re not a member of our kind and gentle authorities?”
Rat relaxed a fraction. She didn’t seem to be in any danger just yet, so she drew herself up and crossed her arms. “Maybe, but at this point I’d really like to know where I am.”
“In Laputa, about halfway up Twelve Block, standing at the bottom of some ladders.”
“Fucking hilarious. I don’t have the patience for this bullshit today, whoever you are. Maybe I should get the authorities involved.”
The girl tapped her foot impatiently. “Look, the ladder’s behind you and the hatch is unlocked. Go if you’re going. Otherwise shut the fuck up and come in.”
Light footsteps echoed away and her presence faded. She’d gone. Rat hesitated a moment, then decided to follow through the gloomy tunnels. All she had to see by were a few battery-powered LEDs stuck to the wall.
The tunnels were bare and functional but not dilapidated. All the pipework and trunking had a well-maintained look about it. Rat wondered at the doors leading off in different directions, their locks and latches destroyed by having concrete poured into them. Even if they still led somewhere, nothing short of a battering ram would get them open.
She kept going until she hit another fire door, this one left ajar and wedged with a block of old plastic. Warm yellow light poured out through the crack. Rat pushed it open with hard-earned caution, rebalancing her weight into a karate stance, and stepped into . . .
Well, it was a large room. Lined on both sides with old metal bunk beds, several of which were occupied by gently-snoring people. Shoved into a corner at the far end was a big wooden table and chairs laid out with food and drink. Two girls of Rat’s age sat having what looked like breakfast.
Rat didn’t give them much thought, though. Her eye was almost immediately drawn to the other corner.
An outdated but powerful last-generation VR rig sat ensconced amidst a web of extension leads and high-speed wireless equipment. Three women were hooked up to it, one suspended in a harness, the other two in comfortable chairs wearing crowns. They sat facing away from Rat but she could sense the air of concentration about them, like hackers on a job.
A wave of heat rolled over her as she inched inside. The rig’s cooling fans howled like mad dogs, spewing hot air into the badly-ventilated room. It reeked of melting plastic.
The girl Rat had been chasing now straddled a chair beside one of the bunks, leaning her arms on the backrest. Her hood was thrown back, offering a full view of her middle-aged face, covered in crow’s feet and gentle smile lines. She was studying Rat with a calculating expression.
“Grab a seat, make yourself at home, whatever. We don’t like to stand on ceremony. My name’s Harmony, but most people call me Harm.”
Rat squinted suspiciously, although she couldn’t find any threat or hostility in the atmosphere around her. “What is this place?” she asked, trying to sound neutral and open-minded.
Harmony’s lips curled into a genuine, if confused, smile. “You really have no idea, do you?”
“I’m not from around here.”
“Sorry, I guess I just assumed. You dress like a prod. Talk like one, too.”
That term was familiar to Rat and she didn’t like it one bit. A ‘prod’ in Nations slang was not a hacker but a hanger-on, a girlfriend at best, trailing along like sheep after some son of a bitch like Jock. The pair of tits behind the man. It took all of Rat’s self-control not to fly off the handle at the insult.
“I’m from the City,” she explained through gritted teeth, “and I don’t belong to nobody.”
“Hey, it makes no difference to me what you are or who you do. That’s your business. Nobody gets asked that unless they’re spies, and we know spies when we see ’em.” Harmony rested her chin on her hands, and her intelligent green eyes took in every detail of Rat’s presence. It was difficult to see in the orange-gold light, but Harmony’s skin seemed the same colour as her mouse-brown hair.
She went on, “Since you asked, think of us as a homeless shelter. Just not the kind that lists in the yellow pages. We care for the people in Laputa who get hung out to dry by the system, those without the dollar to get away. Jobless, unemployable, alone on the fucking streets. Or they would be if it wasn’t for us.”
“Right,” Rat said dryly. This didn’t look like any homeless shelter she’d ever been to, and she’d seen a few. “So who stays here?”
Harmony shrugged. “Mainly prods who break up with their so-called cowboys. Some immigrants stuck in visa limbo, and non-Citizens who aren’t even allowed to have a fucking job. People with nowhere else to turn.”
A little light-bulb clicked on inside Rat’s head. “You mean women.”
Harmony’s face darkened, and for a moment something ugly and dangerous lurked behind her eyes. When she spoke her voice was raw and cold as ice.
“I’d like to meet the man who needs help as much as these girls do. The Nations take good care of their own.”
Then, just as suddenly, she unclouded and smiled at Rat. The edge was gone, as if it had never existed. “Doesn’t matter,” she said dismissively. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. We got clean beds and showers if you need one, the food’s free, and there’s sympathetic ears all over the place. Just ask.”
“Hey, listen, I didn’t come looking for anything,” Rat hurried. “I don’t wanna fuck with your set-up or take what you’ve got. Save it for someone who needs the help.”
Shrugging, Harmony stood up and came to stand face-to-face with Rat, close enough to feel the heat of her breath. Harmony was shorter by an inch or two but her presence made Rat feel like a kid caught in front of her teacher. Those emerald-green eyes seemed to read her like a book.
“When you find someone who needs it,” Harmony whispered, “let me know.”
She slipped a small business card into Rat’s pocket, digital paper showing a female symbol with a number one in the middle, like binary code. It had a wireless key chip on the back.
Rat looked up and felt like she ought to say something. She managed, “Alex, Alex Park. Most people call me Rat.”
Harmony nodded gently. “You got something you want to get off your chest, Alex?”
In that moment Rat froze inside. She wrestled with herself; the desperate need to open up to somebody battered against a lifetime of caution and mistrust, of living on guard day and night without anyone she could rely on. Ugly memories reared their heads from where she’d buried them long ago. She’d be putting her trust in a stranger. That couldn’t happen. Every time the words threatened to come out of her throat, the fear choked them back.
Rat sagged onto one of the bunks and put her head in her hands. “Can I just sit here for a while?” she sighed. “Just, y’know . . . Sit.”
“Do what you want. That’s our code. Anything you need, reach out and take it.” She patted Rat on the shoulder. “You know where to find me.”
Rat nodded gratefully and watched her go. She looked around as the minutes ticked by, still conflicted, hoping that something she saw would clinch the decision for her.
More women came and went around the shelter. They all stopped to greet Rat respectfully, despite not knowing a thing about her, and then went back to whatever they were doing. No one disturbed her beyond that. No one tried to force her to talk.
Some of the newcomers made themselves at home in the bunk beds, or tucked in at the table, or took over on the VR rig in ever-changing shifts. Others came to see Harmony. They would donate stuff or ask for help without embarrassment, all the while treating her with a kind of reverence that bordered on religion.
Then, when nobody was looking, Rat slipped out the door and half-walked, half-ran back to the hotel.
Rat hammered away at the room door until Jock let her in, wearing nothing but an anti-friction VR suit and a bathrobe over the top. His eyes had the glazed look of someone just returning from a long out-of-body trip.
“Oh,” he said, barely even seeing her. “Come in.”
Wordlessly she followed him inside, went straight for the minibar, and downed two cups of sake without blinking. She really wanted to get drunk just now.
“What happened to you?” Jock muttered, shrugging out of his robe, and started to strap back in. The slick, super-tight VR suit made him look like some kind of walking slug. “You look like hell.”
“Nothing. I’m fine.” She didn’t even hesitate with the lie. “What’re you doing?”
He made a vague wave of his hand. “Trying to find out what Gabriel’s doing. He’s good at not leaving a trail, but I think he’s casting for somebody.”
“Who?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. We need to grab whoever it is before Gabriel does.”
Time to get to the point, she thought. Apprehension churned in her stomach, but the questions had to be asked. Taking another sip of sake for courage, she turned to him and tried to look innocent.
“Jock,” she whispered, “have you ever heard of someone called Harmony?”
He stiffened halfway to the next strap and turned to look at her, almost revolving on his feet. His eyes unfogged and his face went serious. “Now where did you hear a name like that?”
She shrugged demurely. She was amazed at his response, but she’d be damned if she gave away anything to him right now. It made her feel a little bit better, not as powerless, knowing stuff that Jock didn’t.
“Harmony Kohler is not somebody you mention lightly in Laputa, Lex,” Jock said, then fell silent, maybe hoping that Rat would volunteer something more. She kept her mouth shut. He went on, “Kohler did some hacking way back when, before the Federation, before the Nations were formed. She was one of the originals who founded Laputa and got the very idea of the Nations underway. She . . . wasn’t very happy with how things turned out.”
Gesturing for him to go on, Rat hung on Jock’s every word.
“After falling out with the other founders over laws and other bullshit, she started a big campaign for women hackers, but nobody was listening by that point. The law was written. Over time her followers just faded away, disbanded, whatever. So she struck out on her own.
“Kohler had some big brass balls, I gotta give her that. She cracked the Nation rankings and put herself on the list with a fake identity, bold as anything. ‘Razorblade’ was her handle. Started taking jobs off the board like she belonged there, even made herself part of the community. Kept it up for years. Nobody suspected the truth, not when she was elected to the Laputan kingship, not even when she got inducted into the Fifteen. She used to use a holomask and a voice changer for live appearances. You just couldn’t tell. We didn’t use detection equipment back then, we didn’t see the need.”
Rat’s eyebrows shot up. “She was in the Fifteen?”
“Under false pretences,” Jock corrected her. “She held a seat for nine fucking years, and ruled Laputa for ten. Then some anonymous hacker tipped off the press. It started a shitstorm like nothing we’d ever seen before, scandals and investigations and more bullshit than I can remember. She was stripped of her ranking. The courts took everything she owned and banished her from the Nations for life. That’s when Hideo took the Laputan elections. Nobody’s seen or heard from Harmony Kohler since.”
As she struggled to keep her shock and awe from showing, Rat wondered, “So you knew her?”
“I knew Razorblade, yeah. I was in the Fifteen a few months before she got exposed. Other than that, no. She was just another hacker in the City at the same time. Nowadays she’s a taboo subject.” He shrugged. “Why the curiosity?”
Rat gave him a doe-eyed look. “Just something I heard, is all.”
Jock didn’t seem convinced. He started to speak, while Rat hurriedly searched for something to say that might distract him. She interrupted, “Wanna fuck?”
A light went on behind his eyes. Instantly Rat knew she’d won. She smiled again, and within seconds he was on top of her, helping her to wrestle out of her restrictive clothes.
CLAIRVOYANCE: Part 30
Gina trod lightly on her way back to her body. The closer she got, the stronger was the throbbing sense of wrongness, like a wound that had stopped bleeding but was no less raw than before. Emily Vaughan wanted to run away and never come back, but Gina Hart gritted her teeth and continued onwards with iron discipline. She searched for the bit of Gabriel now squatting in a hollowed-out part of her soul. It was still there, but busy, its attention focused elsewhere. She stifled her fear and anger and other feelings, willed herself to be quiet, and slipped past without him noticing.
She allowed herself a tight smile as she landed behind her own eyes and took control.
Gina blinked against the daylight. Her eyes had been closed too long. Everything hurt, but she was used to that by now, and pushed herself up onto her elbows. Her throat was dry as old bones. She found a half-empty bottle of mineral water lying by her hand and lifted it to her lips, drinking greedily. Her arm wouldn’t stop shaking, spilling water all down her front, but none of that mattered right now. It tasted better than anything she could imagine.
There were blankets around her. Somebody had assembled a makeshift cot on the floor of the van, swept up all the debris, and taped transparent sheets of plastic over the holes where the windows had been. More discarded water bottles lay heaped in one corner.
She caught the sound of someone snoring nearby. Laboriously she climbed to her knees, forced to think about every individual movement, while her head spun with dizziness. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to. It was like her body knew something wasn’t right and needed the missing piece back in order to function.
Finally she made her way in between the van’s front seats. There was a huge body stretched out across them, sleeping under a large blue anorak. It muttered something she didn’t understand, but she didn’t need to. She tumbled forwards on top of the man and held him as tightly as she could, despite his protests.
“Oh Mahmoud, you idiot,” she said, tears in her eyes and joy in her heart, “bless you and your stubborn head.”
He swallowed and awkwardly hugged her back. “I’m sorry, I was supposed to be there when you woke up. Couldn’t stay awake anymore.”
“Don’t be daft. I’m the one who should be sorry,” she insisted. “I abandoned you, but you came back to save me anyway.”
“Don’t tell me you thought I’d just stand by and let you put yourself in harm’s way, Gina,” he murmured with a glint in his eye.
“I’d hoped you’d be more sensible,” Gina sighed. Mixed emotions churned in her belly. “Thank you, Mahmoud, but you should’ve stayed at home. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you. That’s why I left.”
He smiled sadly. “And what would you have done? There is no way you can get yourself out of Odessa without being seen. You need help, Gina, and I’m here for you.”
“There’s no arguing with you, is there? Where did you leave Maryam and the others?”
“At sea, safe. I made them cast off before I left.”
Mahmoud held up a finger and dug out whatever he’d been using for a pillow. It turned out to be the big leather jacket, all scratched across the back but still serviceable. He gave it back to her, and she held it tight. She thought she’d lost it crawling under that fence.
A sudden image jolted Gina’s memory. “Wait, there was someone else with you.”
“I think you know h–” He halted in mid-sentence as the van’s back door opened.
Somebody climbed in, only to quietly slip the door closed behind them. The figure took in the scene at a glance, then came forward and finally turned into the light.
Gina hissed through her teeth. The face of Darius the telepath was there, smiling back at her, pupils wide as old dollar coins from his speed rush. The very sight of him made Gina want to gouge his eyes out.
“Good morning,” he said simply. “Glad you’re awake. I was worried.”
“You . . .” Gina shook her head, throwing off the shock, and snarled, “How are you here?”
“I offered to help find you. Been tracking you since you left the club, but I couldn’t do that and hide from my ex-employers. Not without help. It was a marriage of convenience.” His grin widened. “You weren’t exactly a challenge to find after that. Half the ‘paths in Odessa have been picking up your escapades. Just now I could feel you coming awake. You’re like a big fucking beacon to anyone with a third eye.”
Gina said tensely, “Mahmoud, tell me he’s lying.”
“Oh, no lie, babe,” laughed Darius. “Without me your big friend would have had no chance. We can talk about my reward over drinks, hey?”
She didn’t even think about what she did next, just reacted to the anger boiling over behind her eyes. Gabriel had already hurt her worse than she could’ve believed, treated her like a prize or property, and this time she simply snapped.
She reached out. Without the slightest effort she grabbed hold of Darius’s mind and channelled all her pain and emptiness into him. Everything she’d had and lost, each year of her suicidal spin to the bottom of society’s heap, unfiltered, bored straight into his nervous system.
He jerked like a string puppet. Choking noises emerged from his throat but he couldn’t scream. His eyes stared at her, wide and full of pure terror. She kept it up even as his agony echoed back into her, even as the burned city flickered before her eyes. It only fed her rage. Knowing what he was, what he’d done, there was nobody else in the world she hated more than this man.
“Let’s get some things straight before you start getting any wrong ideas, babe,” she said in a voice like liquid nitrogen, climbing between the chairs to stand over him. “I put up with you at that disgusting little club because I needed your help. That’s over now. Right this minute you mean about as much to me as a brown stain in the gutter, you slave-trading fuck, so don’t you ever talk to me like that again! Understand?!”
Suddenly the world jerked, the van’s gearbox grinding as it lurched backwards. Gina tumbled over the top of the passenger chair and landed in it, her concentration broken, and she heard Darius gasping for breath in the back while Mahmoud picked her up and set her down again the right way up as if she weighed nothing at all.
He said, “He’s right, Gina. When you ran away, he came to me and offered to help for nothing. I couldn’t have done it alone. I would’ve lost you.”
She shook her head to clear it, still fuzzy and numb with shock, then spat, “That doesn’t mean we owe him anything!”
The force of Mahmoud’s frown made her feel six years old again, unworthy and ashamed. “Yes, it does,” he said reproachfully. “We owe him more than this.”
Darius was struggling to sit up when Gina deigned to look at him again. His body trembled and twitched and his mind shrank back from her like a wounded animal, but he had enough self-control to choke out, “I can help you, you dumb bitch! I’ve been trying to tell you that ever since I realised how strong you are. Just fucking listen for once.”
With Mahmoud’s stare still on her, she felt her cheeks redden as she looked down. At length she ground out, “Okay. I’m listening.”
“To put it as simply as possible, I know somebody you need to meet,” Darius began with the van engine quietly humming around them. His calm had returned, but he still looked at Gina with a mix of fear, worship and loathing. “He’s called Jupiter. I hung out with some experienced ‘paths when I first started out, and they used to talk about him sometimes, always in whispers. The oldest living third eye in the world. Maybe the only one left from the first wave who created the business.”
Fixing him with a look, she motioned for him to go on, unable to deny her grudging curiosity. He nodded.
“He’s been taking Spice ever since it hit the market, at least eight years straight, and still functioning. Now he owns this weird little care home on the outskirts of the City exclusively for users who’ve gone funny in the head. I never went there but heard a lot about it. He’s giving people all sorts of weird treatments, even managed to bring one or two of them back from the brink.”
“Are you sure it’s not just a story your friends made up?” asked Gina.
“Positive,” Darius insisted. “I saw him once. He’s the real deal.”
“Then how come I’ve never heard of him before?”
Darius shrugged. “He stays under the radar. Doesn’t like uninvited guests, turns away most people who come knocking, and if any pill-popping crazies make trouble looking for some kind of miracle cure, he’s got ways of making ’em go away.”
That was fair enough, Gina had to admit. No shortage of telepaths around with their minds slipping away, desperately searching for relief. As much as she hated the idea of going along with Darius, she didn’t know what else to do. She needed to get her head sorted out. One way or another.
“So this is a long-distance trip,” observed Mahmoud. His eyes didn’t leave the road. “The City is at least five days away, even if we drive in shifts.”
Stretching in her chair, Gina adjusted the uncomfortable seatbelt and asked, “Is that a problem?”
“No, but we’ll need to stop for supplies, and there is the Federation border to consider.”
A hand appeared from the back holding out a stack of ancient Federation banknotes. “Got you covered,” said Darius.
Gina took the bundle from him and started to count, eyes wide with wonder. She hadn’t seen these since she was a teenager. The paper was yellow with age, almost crumbling to dust. Faded ink still clung to each note, just about legible after a lot of use and abuse, but that didn’t matter. As long as you could still make out the numbers it was legal tender.
No Federation cash had been printed in nearly thirteen years, and the government had always discouraged people from using it. Electronic transfers were easier and the Feds didn’t like you making untraceable transactions. In their eyes electronic money was the only proper kind, which meant most people wouldn’t even take cash nowadays. With a few obvious exceptions.
“There’s nearly twelve million dollars here,” said Gina, a little bit shocked. “Where the fuck did you get this?”
He shrugged. “Tips, mainly. Most of the club’s customers come from the Federation, big surprise, and they all pay cash.”
“It may get us across the border,” Mahmoud said pensively. “Unless we happen to run into an honest Fed.”
Darius barked out a long belly laugh as he made himself comfortable, and he shot Gina a knowing glance, as if he could see right through her. She shuddered.
“There’s no such thing, big man,” the telepath declared. “No such thing at all.”
It was a long and careful drive out of Odessa, a van with all its windows patched up trying to look inconspicuous. Gina had to hide in the back in case some automated camera flashed a picture through the windscreen and recognised her face.
Boredom made her drowsy. She never even felt the dreamworld creeping up on her, spreading slowly to envelop the part of her mind that was still hers. She only realised it when Gabriel’s arms snaked around her waist from behind, holding her firmly in place. The touch glowed on her skin, made her feel whole again. As much as she wanted to get angry, it was hard to do even with such a cruel and obvious manipulation staring her in the face.
“You’ve been up to some interesting things, Gina,” he murmured. “Very interesting indeed.”
“You’ve been watching, have you?” she asked cynically. Without thinking she put her hands on top of his and leaned back. The next moment their lips were touching.
“I know where you’re going now,” whispered Gabriel. “I could be there, waiting for you.”
Gina smiled. “Will you be?”
“Show up and find out.”
There was a long pause. Then she said, “I’m ready to talk more. Tell me about Colonel Obrin.”
Slowly, gently, the floor disappeared out from under Gina’s feet. She was left floating in the air, bathed in golden light, protected by Gabriel’s arms. She couldn’t have felt more secure, or less free.
Gabriel began, “I don’t know that much about him. Only . . . First of all, I have to ask, what do you know about Hephaestus?”
“Only that I can’t pronounce it,” she snorted.
“It’s Greek. Hephaestus is the crippled god of blacksmiths and craftsmen. Also associated with fire and volcanoes. According to most myths he’s married to Aphrodite, goddess of love, lust and beauty, but she cheats on him with Ares the god of war. Fascinating, isn’t it?” He grinned. “The nanobot project’s pretty interesting, too. I’ve spent a long time researching it and I still have more questions than answers. I know what it is, but I don’t know what it was used for, or why.”
Gina nodded. “I first heard about it from Colonel Obrin. He really wanted to get his hands on some live Hephaestus bots.”
“Oh, I bet he would!” laughed Gabriel. “He was involved in that project from day one, more than twenty years ago. Then the Federation coup came along. God only knows what he’d do with more of those things. Fortunately they don’t exist anymore, they all died in the fallout, along with the knowledge of how to make them. I’m the only person in the world with the skill and resources to recreate them, and I have no intention of doing that.”
“Is that why you went into Radiation Alley? To find out more about them?”
“Sort-of. It’s a long story.”
“Come on, I want to know! All this time you’ve been leading up to something, Gabriel, and I can’t seem to figure it out. Don’t even pretend it’s all about me. I just stumbled into the middle of what was already going on. That horrible city I saw in your head is part of it too, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think you’d understand,” Gabriel sighed.
“Try me.”
A sad smile curled his lips. “You’re asking questions I’ve been trying to answer my whole life, Gina. The only man in this world who can fill in the missing pieces is someone whom you’ve just told me is already dead.”
Something in the way he said it, in the angle of his emotions, she picked up a tiny note of discord. “You don’t think he is,” she stated flatly, and watched him smile as he acknowledged it.
“Keith Obrin is possibly the craftiest man on this Earth, not counting myself. He’s managed to elude me for years thanks to his little resistance movement. I’d be very surprised for him to go quietly into the night.”
Gina stared into his eyes for a long time, reading the mocking humour and the arrogance, the joy and the love. She whispered, “Make me understand.”
He breathed deeply and took her hand as he dove back into his memories, deeper and darker, and took Gina with him.
The world was made up only of flashes and impressions. Nothing made sense, the world had gone mad, and the only thing Gina remembered clearly was running like a hunted animal. In flashes she panted like a dog, out of breath but too afraid to stop. Then she woke up.
She sat up in a pile of old blankets. There were more blankets strewn all around her, mounds of rough cloth with grubby faces poking out of them. There were people huddling under the covers. A few of them had burns, terrible burns, with streaks of dried blood and pus crusting from underneath crude attempts to bandage them. A musty, rotting smell hung around the place, and although Gina couldn’t read, she knew the meaning of the big black symbol pasted over the room’s only door. Danger. But was it danger to the people here or the people outside?
An animal might have rushed into the corner after waking up in a room full of strangers, but Gina got to her knees and absorbed her surroundings in more detail. It was so quiet. For a moment she thought she could hear a siren, faint and far off, but it went away before she could be sure she hadn’t imagined it. Then the room was silent again. Gina couldn’t make out a whisper.
It occurred to her that people should make noise, but no one moved. No one breathed. She took a closer look at someone, a small girl wrapped up in the arms of what looked like her father. Raw purple marks and bruises covered their skin, and little bits of blood crusted at the corners of their mouths and nostrils. Gina nudged the girl, but it was like moving a sack of grain. The small body rolled limply onto the ground.
Tears stung her eyes as the cold truth began to dawn on her, but she blinked them away until she was left only with the hollow feeling at her core. Her first act in this world was to reunite the girl and her father in their final embrace.
They’d placed Gina with the dead and dying, but she was alive. She suddenly felt a desperate need to get out of this room and ran to the door, for the first time becoming aware of her nakedness, and of the male body she inhabited. Not that it mattered. She shoved the door with all her strength and fell through, hitting the floor on the other side.
There was a scream, and some commotion. Then somebody hissed for quiet and helped Gina back up, wrapping her in a thick blanket.
It was a woman, her middle-aged face a network of worry lines, bright green eyes full of sadness and quiet strength. She soothed Gina while two scowling men went over her with handheld devices, growing agitated by the results. She didn’t understand what they were saying but she could read the language of their minds, piecing together sentences from fragments of thoughts and feelings.
“This can’t be right,” muttered one man. “The counter says he’s not radioactive at all.”
“Eli, if he’s not a danger then leave him alone,” said the woman firmly.
“He wouldn’t have been put in a locker if he wasn’t! He should be glowing in the fucking dark!”
“Then somebody made a mistake. Put the machine down and look for yourself, there’s nothing wrong with him. Now go get him some food and water. We’re not savages yet.”
Gina looked around and saw a room full of troubled faces, sitting at tables and on the floor, huddled together for warmth. The living, she thought, wrapped in the same blankets. Their skin bore the same scars.
One big door was recessed in the wall, but it had been shut and made air-tight by virtue of shoving towels and rags into all the gaps. The windows were sealed with duct tape. Little drifts of dust gathered on the doorstep and the windowsills despite everything, only to be cleared off by constant patrols with an old vacuum cleaner.
Outside the windows was a pale red sky without sun or clouds. Choked with fallout dust. The silhouette of a helicopter went through it, then faded as quickly as it had appeared.
She searched the minds around her for the words she needed, then croaked, “Where . . . am . . . I?”
“You’re in Austin, dear. What’s left of it.” The woman smiled. “This is an emergency fallout shelter, you’ll be safe here. There’s lots of people working to clean the air outside and make it liveable again, or to evacuate us if they can’t. Do you know where you came from?”
Gina tried to think back, but her memories before waking up in the room of the dead were chaotic, disjointed fragments of colour and sound. It hurt even to hold them in her mind’s eye, like gripping a chunk of broken glass to see through. An edge of panic crept in her heart as she realised she knew nothing. She was blank, frightened and alone.
Again she struggled, “I . . . can’t . . . remember.”
“Don’t you worry about that then. You can stay here as long as you need to, or want to. Come on, let’s see if we’ve got any clothes that’ll fit you, shall we?”
The memory lost focus, faded to a pastel-coloured blur. There were flashes, a montage of simple memories, one after the other.
She learned how to speak and read, taking the knowledge from the minds around her without a second thought.
She interviewed the rescue team who had found her in the rubble of Austin, half-dead and wrapped in a sheet of sailing canvas, and chucked her in with those beyond hope of saving.
She traced the sail back to an old boat sitting abandoned in some flooded Louisiana suburb.
She followed her clues to the abandoned hospital in Alabama, three states away, and found the folder belonging to John Doe.
Then the trail dried up. Her air and water began to run out. She was forced to go home and think again, with her mysterious medical record in hand.
A moment of calm whiteness allowed Gina to catch her breath, before it flowed seamlessly into somewhere new.
Someone dangled halfway up the skyscraper in front of Gina. The man was suspended in a little basket, dressed in a spacesuit and busily directing his painting robot across the building. The plastic and metal octopus slowly dragged its spray gun tentacles across the abandoned tower, covering every inch of surface in radiation-resistant mirror paint. Each stroke hid another window or sealed another balcony behind a sheet of plastic and lead.
Things were different now. Austin was different, no longer a ghost town where people hid from the very air outside their doors. The whole city crawled with activity as it was refurbished and redesigned into a new shape. The freshly-inaugurated Federal government had put the Army to work clearing the fallout dust out of the atmosphere, and although nobody would be trying to breathe it for the next fifty years, it would eventually return to normal. The hole in the ozone layer over Texas would one day close up or move on.
Slowly her eyes returned to the mechanically clean diner, to the bar and the white wall behind it. A few weeks ago that wall had faced out towards New Orleans behind a big bay window. Shadows stood burned onto it, of people sitting at tables, eating, drinking, laughing. It struck Gina as a bit ghoulish, but the diner was nevertheless packed with people. They called it ‘apocalypse chic’. Treated it like some kind of art.
“Good morning, sir,” said a voice from behind her. It belonged to a small Indian man in cheap suit trousers and a button-up shirt, with horn-rimmed glasses on his nose. He looked like a librarian without a library. Gina stood up to shake hands. The man gripped firmly as he went on, “Mr. Lowell, yes? I have your results for you.”
He took a small PDA out of his pocket and handed it to Gina. Then he added, “Best not to be seen together for too long. The machine’s included in your contract, which is now complete. You know our number if you require any further services.”
Then, with a nod of his head, he was gone. Gina hadn’t moved. She stared at the little PDA in her hand, scrolling page after page of blood test details. She didn’t understand much of the medical jargon but she could certainly read the red marks next to them, flashing the word ‘abnormal’. Without even thinking she rubbed her elbow where the needle had gone in. After barely an hour the puncture mark and even the bruise were gone, invisible. Her skin was as perfect and unbroken as ever.
Suddenly the PDA stopped to display an image that filled its whole screen. It was a close-up of a nanobot, seen through an electron microscope. It looked for all the world like a little plastic flea. She felt like it ought to mean something to her; the test data announced there were millions of the things in her blood, living and dying and working away.
It meant nothing. She hadn’t even known they were there.
After a moment’s thought she took out her phone and found a contact number for the recently rebuilt Austin Library. A bored receptionist picked up and fired off her mechanical greeting.
“I’d like to talk to someone about reserving one of your VR booths,” Gina said. “I need it loaded with every volume you have on nanorobotics, and any others you can get in for a reasonable price. I have money.”
“Let me transfer you to Mr. Parkinson,” sighed the receptionist, and put the line on hold.
She took a long pull at her glass of water. She wanted to know everything there was to know about nanorobots in three weeks or less. Then maybe she could begin to make sense of things, figure out what it was that was living inside her. At least she’d have somewhere to start.
She only hoped the answers were getting closer . . .
Time froze as Gabriel reappeared in front of her, a lopsided smile on his face. The scenery behind him blurred into the background. It was no longer relevant.
He said, “So what’s it like being me?”
“Screwed up,” she answered moodily.
“How do you think I felt?”
“I . . . I have a hard time believing any of this.”
“I don’t blame you. We both know I could’ve fabricated any part of it. You don’t think that, though. You just don’t want to see it because it makes you feel pity, sympathy, and all that bullshit.” He chuckled. “It’s okay. That’s not what I want from you, Gina.”
It was the worst thing he could’ve said. She crossed her arms lightly and cocked her head at him. “And what is it you want from me, Gabriel? What else is there left to have?” She continued right over him when he started to speak, “You did this so I can’t even get away from you inside my own fucking skull. You’re holding part of me hostage so I’ll have no choice but to come back to you. You treat me like a piece of lost property that needs to be retrieved, just like my father does.” Tears blurred her eyes, but she never looked away, just let them roll silently down her cheeks. Her jaw was clenched in helpless anger. “In short, Gabriel, you’re a total bastard, and I can’t even find it in myself to hate you for it. Even after everything you’ve done to me. How fucking pathetic is that?”
Now there was pity and sympathy in his eyes, but it only made Gina sick with disgust. He said, “Gina, I’m–“
“Sorry?” she finished for him. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”
She walked away without another word, out of her own mind and into somebody else’s, to find relief from her emotions just for a little while.
