EMPATHY: Part 14
The leaning towers of New Orleans climbed steadily on the horizon until they were spears of concrete and steel stuck deep in the bleeding sky. Shards of glass jutted out from shattered window frames. Rubble and ash choked the downtown streets so tight that the 4×4 only squeezed through by scraping its mirrors. However, even these vast piles of debris didn’t stop the bitter cold breeze moaning through the streets, and Gina shuddered in her hazard suit.
The holographic Thunder Tours logo on her chest spun its monster-truck tires. It sent up a spray of brown mud and scraggly vegetation behind it, but that was wrong. The city around her didn’t look like that. The ground wasn’t brown from exposed earth, or even yellow with dead grass. It was grey. Grey asphalt covered by pallid bayou sludge. Bare steel stripped of all marking or colour. A sky that smothered and starved the light. Everything was made vague and unreal through a haze of swirling dust, thrown up by the directionless gusts of wind.
Evidently some people still visited the dead city, going by the narrow but well-worn track through the devastation, but nobody seemed to be around at the moment.
“Lotta radiation out there today, chief,” said the driver. “Wind’s stirring up all the fallout. You sure you wanna go?”
“We gotta,” Bomber replied with characteristic steadfastness.
“Alright, you’re the customer.” He shrugged as if to wash his hands of the whole thing. Then, rummaging around in his car door, he pulled out a handheld games console in anticipation of a couple hours’ free time. “I’ll warm up the Dekes for when you get back.”
Bomber failed to find the remark amusing. The 4×4 came with a sophisticated suite of decontamination bots, but it took them a while to get all the radioactive crap off. Neither Bomber nor Gina felt much like spending all night deking in their suits.
The rear doors swung open and Bomber climbed down into a large transparent parachute, loose plastic flapping like mad in the wind. It kept an airtight seal around the 4×4 while they disembarked. Didn’t make it any less of a pain in the ass, though. Gina held the rampaging plastic back with her hands and hopped down to join Bomber on the ground of Radiation Alley. The doors immediately closed behind her. Having finished its job, the parachute ripped free of the 4×4 and flew off into the sky, never to be seen again.
She got her first close-up and personal look of New Orleans in that moment. Dry, brittle, dead. Nothing green, nothing alive or moving with a purpose. The sheer desolation of it struck her harder than watching out a window ever could. She’d never realised how much she missed the extrasensory white noise of a couple thousand minds around her, even just animals.
Skeletal skyscrapers towered over her, one even swaying visibly in the wind. Many had whole chunks taken out of them by the explosion, their spires and top few floors lying in ruin some distance away. She swallowed a wave of vertigo and nausea at the sight. It was all too reminiscent of the images from Gabriel’s head.
Very little had survived in between the dead landmarks. Just a blasted urban landscape of piled bricks, broken glass and other refuse, where even the ground had gone black. Only stone and metal still stood in recognisable shapes. The thermal pulse of the nuke had turned every timber building in New Orleans to ash in an instant.
Nothing could be weirder than the constant force of the wind trying to knock her down, but not being able to feel the air flowing over her skin. There was no air flow inside her man-shaped shell of plastic and metal, ’cause this was a proper heavy-duty hazard suit, a far cry from the piddly UV-sleeves worn by people in Austin. Gina appreciated the protection, but still longed for a taste of air that hadn’t been filtered a thousand times over.
“We’re pretty close to the address, just a short walk,” said Bomber. “Keep an eye on your Geiger counter.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Gina checked the counter on her arm. It was definitely twitching, with leftover fallout in the air and ground zero only a mile or two away. She took Bomber’s gloved hand and they walked side by side into the ruins.
Despite the dismal surroundings, their morale climbed steadily with a growing sense of adventure and anticipation. Even Bomber let himself get dragged into some idle banter. When Gina looked back the 4×4 was lost in the haze, but she could just make out the flashing of the massive strobe light mounted on its roof. Still there.
“Kind of romantic, don’t you think?” Bomber asked her, the corner of his mouth curling up into a half-smile. “Ain’t no place in the world more private than this. No people, no bugs, no radio. I could get used to it.”
“In a morbid sort of way,” she chuckled. “I feel like a fuckin’ Martian in this spacesuit.”
He grinned. “If only you had your explosive space modulator with you.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Take a left here.” He squeezed her hand more tightly, leading her through a half-collapsed alleyway. They had to climb over the piles of broken glass and wood. Everything was charred around the edges, but sometimes you could still recognise an item — a desk, a kettle, an old office printer. Bomber paused at the top of the pile and glanced upwards at the dust-shrouded edges of the square tower up ahead. “Now, if my sources are any good, the lab should be in the sub-basement of this big one up ahead. It was a converted fallout bunker, so it should still be standing.”
Without another word they climbed into the twisted steel skeleton of a building, searching for the elevator going down. It didn’t take them long to find it.
“This brings back memories,” Gina said wryly as they clambered down the enclosed elevator shaft. It was a lot like creeping and crawling through the Fed building, although somewhat less intimidating without the Feds and the gunfire. The rusted-over elevator carriage sat on its emergency brakes about halfway up the tunnel, immovable, its cable snapped long ago. Fortunately the designers had left a vacancy for the emergency ladder and average-sized climber, just big enough for Gina and Bomber to squeeze through.
“You should’ve watched the news before we left,” he answered. “Not a whisper about us. Any of us. The Feds are keepin’ it real quiet.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Could go either way. It does mean we haven’t got a pack of full constables with hunter-killers up our asses just yet, though, and I consider that pretty encouraging.”
He jumped down onto the shaft floor, surprisingly clear of debris, and sized up the service entrance as he took the hydraulic prybar from his tool belt. It proved more than a match for the rusted steel door. With a snap and a moan of tearing metal it broke free of its hinges and crashed to the floor.
“After you, madam,” invited Bomber. Gina mimed a curtsey and went on inside, head held high.
She slowed her pace to admire the pitch-black vastness on the other side. Her footsteps echoed against the concrete floor like drops of water falling into an underground lake. Bit by bit she pieced together the scenery by the light of her suit torch. It was an underground warehouse, cavernous in its proportions, and equipped with every imaginable piece of kit. Pallets of mysterious goods, forklift walkers, magnetic sleds for heavy equipment. The cracked roof seemed to be held up solely by rows of heavy-duty racking. An avalanche of rubble had spewed out from the main stairwell, firmly blocking off that direction. At the far end of the room a massive military freight elevator sat ready to collect more cargo from the surface.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. “I thought this place was a fallout shelter?”
“Well, there’s fallout shelters and there’s fallout shelters,” said Bomber. “This hasn’t been one for a while. Plus, New Orleans took a big hit. Walk a couple hundred yards towards ground zero and all you’ll see is crater.”
“Okay, so how the hell do we get up there?” She pointed at the ruined ceiling to indicate the futility of their situation. It had all but separated into individual chunks of concrete, leaving cracks big enough to drive a truck through.
“You just answered your own question.” Bomber placed one foot on the racking to test it for stability, then started to haul himself up one shelf at a time. He grinned down at her. “Obviously you were never in the Army.”
“Wiseass,” she growled and followed after.
Sweat poured from Gina’s forehead by the time she made it over the top. It ran into her eyes and stung like a bitch, but she couldn’t wipe it away. She muttered curses and imprecations at everything while Bomber helped her up.
The lab could’ve passed for a set from any old science-fiction film. Beakers, burners, computers and other electronics littered everywhere. Fallen file cabinets created impromptu bridges across the gaps in the floor, and a few upturned office chairs brightened the whole scene up a bit. Gina turned to take in the rest of the room, and found herself face to face with a grinning human skull. She shrieked and jumped back into Bomber’s arms. The skull didn’t move. Underneath it, she realised, was a skeleton dressed in a tattered white coat, slumped deep in its plush office chair. A large hole in the side of its head explained a lot about what had killed it.
“That,” she panted through gritted teeth, blood pumping cold through her veins, “is going to give me nightmares for the rest of my fucking life.”
Bomber put his hands on her shoulders, but she shrugged him off. He said, “Come on, easy does it. We knew we were gonna see this.”
“You knew, maybe,” she snapped. Then, with an effort of will, she forced herself to calm down and took a deep breath. Adrenaline still thundered through her veins, but now she could control it. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I’ve just never seen a skeleton before.”
“It’s not somethin’ I’d recommend.” He gently turned the chair around until it was facing away from them. “We don’t disturb him, he doesn’t disturb us, yeah?” Gina nodded, and they got back to business.
Bomber carefully waved around a gadget from his tool belt, like an old mobile phone, then stared at the flashing screen. After several endless seconds of silence, he deigned to inform Gina. “I’m pickin’ up trace bots in the air, but they don’t look like the ones we’re after. Let’s check the other rooms.”
Picking their way through the devastation, they found remnants of computers and shredded sheets of hardcopy, but nothing that would explain the lab’s projects or operations. In the corner they came across another skeleton half-buried under a fallen chunk of concrete, and Gina hurried to get away from it, almost falling over herself to get into the next room.
She stopped dead in her tracks at the doorway. After several speechless seconds, she said, “Bomber, come look at this.”
Bomber arrived at her shoulder a second later and scanned the room beyond. It hadn’t exactly been repaired, but somebody had obviously cleaned up a bit after the blast. Much of the debris had been cleared, and the cracks covered with salvaged boards and wire mesh stapled into the floor. A pile of lab coats had been arranged in one corner to create a makeshift cot, then surrounded with a curtain of rad-resistant plastic. A single ratty office chair sat decaying in the centre of the room, in front of a dust-covered counter with an old laptop computer on top of it.
“Was it him?” he asked her.
“Let’s find out,” she whispered back and folded open the laptop lid.
The screen flickered to life with an accompanying orchestra of whirring and grinding noises. Tiny lasers cut through the thick layers of dust, accessing data that had lain dormant for ten years. A small unmarked optical disc ejected out the side of the machine, scratched and battered but possibly still viable. The screen flashed a message that the laptop’s optical drive was not responding, and that Gina and Bomber should contact the manufacturer as soon as possible with their warranty information.
Bomber pocketed the disc and eased himself into the rickety chair to better reach the keyboard. “With any luck . . .” he said, crossing his fingers and waiting for the laptop’s operating system to start up.
“Looks like it still works,” Gina said expectantly.
“It’s a model like what landscape surveyors used to use, out in the real boonies. Antarctica and all that. Tough machinery.”
Little motes of dust played through the air in front of the screen. Breath heavy with anticipation, Gina felt the cold suit weighing on her chest. Finally the laptop’s software lurched over its final hurdle and became responsive to the controls. Bomber made a noise and immediately went for the only icon Gina didn’t recognise.
The screen popped up a thorough cross-section of a complex nanobot, exactly the same as the ones from Gabriel’s container. That’s when she knew it had to have been him. He’d been here, ten years ago, tapping away in secret in the heart of Radiation Alley. Nothing, no one else knowing he was there.
“He was analysin’ these bots,” Bomber whispered to himself. “Tryin’ to learn more about them. Why? Where are they from?”
Gina had another question on her mind, scratching the back of her helmet. “How the hell did he survive here?”
Bomber didn’t respond. He was totally engrossed, absorbing every available piece of data from the screen, until a momentary vibration came up through the floor. He sat bolt upright in his chair, silent as if trying to decide whether or not what he’d felt was real.
A second tremor broke his indecision. A cloud of plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling to clog up their visors, and he leapt to his feet.
“We’d better get out of here,” he said. He took Gina’s arm and started to drag her with him back the way they’d come in.
“What about the computer?” she protested.
“No time! This whole goddamn building could come down on our heads!” And indeed, the moment he finished his sentence, a third tremor rocked through the building, shaking piles of debris that hadn’t moved since the nuke. Whole islands of matter shifted clattering and banging down the cracks in the floor, and landed with a series of unholy crashes louder than a machine gun. Gina and Bomber scrambled up a lab counter to escape the avalanche and hurried across the devastation to their climbing slope.
They clambered down as fast as they could, small bits and pieces continually falling on their heads and threatening to knock loose their precarious hold on the metal racking. Ominous creaks and groans reverberated through the whole building. At one point Gina heard a shifting sound, deeper and larger than anything she’d ever experienced, and saw the remains of the concrete ceiling cracking bit by bit while she watched.
Hitting the floor at a run, they sped towards the elevator shaft through which they’d come in. They’d nearly reached it when a pile of stone and metal came crashing to the bottom of the shaft with enough force to throw Gina and Bomber onto their backs like upended turtles. Bomber seemed momentarily stunned, but Gina was already moving again, fuelled by survival instincts kicking into overdrive. She rolled onto her side, pushed herself back upright, and bolted for the freight elevator.
“Hey, wait up!” Bomber called after her. She never heard him. Her hands were on the control box, pressing frantically, but the elevator refused to rise. Barely thinking she followed the wires from the control box to the wall. There she found a pair of large switches, one marked ‘mains power’, the other ‘generator’. She flipped the ‘generator’ switch and staggered back, blinded by a sudden blaze of light. Every surviving lamp in the warehouse came on at once. The freight elevator, too, started to go — she ran for it and scrambled on just in time.
Bomber, however, was too late. He limped towards her waving and calling her name, but she couldn’t figure out how to stop the elevator. She went flat on her belly and extended her arm over the edge, shouting, “Hurry, jump!”
He hurried, and he jumped, reaching for her hand. Missed by inches. Dropped to the floor with a heavy thump. Disappeared out of sight as the elevator rose up through the shaft, open sky above it.
Her fists pounded uselessly against the cold metal floor. It only echoed each hit back to her, added to the rumbling and shaking of the elevator and the whole building itself. “Gina to Bomber!” she shouted into the radio. Her heart thumped close to panic. Her breath came in frustrated gasps, steaming up her helmet visor. “Bomber! Answer me, damnit!” Still no response. She screamed in wordless fury, then flipped open the radio controls on her wrist and tried to remember the brief bit of training she’d had about using it.
“Gina to base, Gina to base, come in base,” she repeated. “Emergency! Come in, base!”
Nothing but static on the other side.
Another tremor rumbled through the foundations. Gina could feel it shake the elevator platform like a toy despite the massive suspension blocks underneath. She grabbed hold of a railing and held on for dear life, praying for the elevator to keep going, to make it to the surface. Not until she saw daylight on her closed eyelids did she release her death grip, and she scrambled off the elevator platform just before it reached its apex.
She found herself in a long-abandoned warehouse, utterly ravaged by time and nuclear fire. Only the walls were left standing; Gina had to clamber over the remains of the ceiling to get anywhere. It was a long, difficult trek to the nearest exit, and with a rising sense of hopelessness she realised that she couldn’t tell where they’d left the 4×4.
Dispirited, she set her overworked body down on a piece of concrete and drank from her suit’s water pouch. It was flat and tasteless but refreshing nonetheless. She was just putting the drinking tube away when she felt another tremor, this one much closer and more powerful than before. A faint flash of yellow light penetrated the fog. It confirmed her dreadful suspicion that this was no mere earthquake.
Somewhere behind her, the building above the lab lurched and started to topple. It crashed into the ground like a hammer-blow, the very earth shaking under Gina’s feet, and sent up a huge plume of dust and sand to choke any remaining visibility out of the air. The walls snapped like playing cards bent in half. A hail of concrete shards rained down around Gina, but she never bothered to take cover. To her overloaded senses everything seemed to move in slow motion, detached from her reality. She watched transfixed while the nightmare unfolded.
Their 4×4 shot out of the mist and raced past her at full speed, jumping metres into the air wherever it met an obstacle, only to land heavily on its tires and continue accelerating. It got less than a hundred yards before a missile streaked out of the haze and hit dead-on. She could feel the heat of the explosion washing over her through all the thick layers of insulation. A large black helicopter roared into view overhead, appearing out of nowhere like a vengeful ghost, and turned around its axis above the wreckage.
The smouldering 4×4 was now only one of hundreds of dead hulks littering the once-busy street. Powerful spotlights searched it for any remaining sign of life, and when they didn’t find anything they started a careful sweep of the surrounding area in case anyone still survived.
The whole thing seemed too surreal to be true as she stood there. In a few seconds she’d be seen, said a voice in the back of her head, but that didn’t seem to matter very much now. What mattered was that she was truly, utterly alone.
Then something tackled her from behind and dragged her out of sight behind a tumbledown concrete wall.
“Stay down!” cried Bomber’s voice, very faint as if coming from a great distance. “Whatever you do, don’t move!” The weight on top of her was almost unbearable, but she kept still even when she felt a hand fumbling around on her back, followed by a ripping sensation as the radio was torn out of her suit. Moments later, she watched two lashed-together radio units sailing through the air, crashing against the rubble on the other side of the street.
The helicopter’s side doors whipped open. Several men abseiled through the whirlwind of dust and sand, wearing active camouflage suits and carrying automatic rifles. The active camouflage was the same colour as the desert around it, constantly shifting to adapt to the wind and surroundings. As soon as they hit the ground they were practically invisible. Then, to Gina’s amazement, they rushed straight towards the pair of smashed-up radios on the far end of the road.
Gentle hands rolled Gina over onto her back, and Bomber’s face appeared above her. She immediately grabbed him and tried to kiss him, but only succeeded at slamming her helmet into his. He laughed without sound, then touched his helmet to hers.
“Radios are about to get blowed up, so we have to touch helmets to talk,” he explained in a breathless voice. “Stay close. We need to get some distance between us and them.”
“Who the fuck are they?” she asked, the most pressing question out of the hundreds spinning around in her head.
“Most likely our friend Gabriel sussed out what we were up to.” Bomber glanced over his shoulder at the men, mere shadows flitting through the dust storm. “They’re bad news. I could take down three, maybe four, but they’d get me in the end. And now we’ve got no wheels.”
Gina’s throat tightened. The matter-of-fact way in which Bomber talked of his own death was chilling. She husked, “What do we do?”
“When I find out, I’ll let you know,” he said and pulled Gina along in a tiger crawl through the wreckage of the city. They moved from cover to cover at a knee-breaking pace, and quickly lost sight of the soldiers hunting them.
Once they reached a slightly safer hiding place, something with four walls and a blackened piece of corrugated aluminium for a roof. As soon as they were covered, they touched helmets and Gina immediately blurted out a stream of questions without pausing for breath.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, “one at a time, please!”
She insisted, “How? How are you alive?”
“I nearly wasn’t. Had to climb.” He smiled at her expression, as if he’d just claimed he grew broccoli from his armpits. “Never mind. Look, we need to focus on getting out of here, yeah? The getting out’s not a big problem, but staying alive long enough to make it back to Jericho, that’s a challenge.”
Gina eventually snapped out of her shock and remarked, “It’s the challenges that make life interesting, right?”
“You got it,” he said, and led her to the next building.
They flitted through the city like ghosts, only ever half-seen in the mist, fast and elusive. They crossed paths with the camouflaged men only once, when they had to backtrack around a dead end. Bomber managed to spot them before they saw him and left a misleading trail for them to follow.
Once they were sure they’d left their new friends behind, they started plundering the long-abandoned car parks of New Orleans for a set of wheels that could see them through to Jericho. They didn’t have much luck. The only four wheel drives they found were all smashed up by falling debris, slagged by the thermal pulse, or just fried from EMP to the point of refusing to start.
“All choked up, too much dust,” said Bomber, closing the bonnet on another specimen that had looked okay on the outside. “We need an older model, they don’t get clogged so bad.” Then he shrugged his shoulders and headed for the next one. He always kept going, even in the face of impossible odds, without surrendering to despair even for a moment. Gina watched him start work on another engine and decided she admired that about him. Things like that took a special kind of courage, above and beyond just keeping your head when you’re in trouble. ‘Intestinal fortitude’, her father used to call it.
Gina was acting as a sort of lookout while he fiddled about with the cars, trying to home in on the distant flickers of thought that reached her on the wind, and trying not to reflect on the fact that she could do that without Spice now. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what her life would’ve been like if she’d never met Gabriel. He’d changed something inside her. Something weird and scary and darkly wonderful. Was it an accident, just some freak of nature, or a gift?
Lost in thought, she didn’t notice Bomber jumping about behind her until she glanced over her shoulder to check he was still there. Gina watched flabbergasted, wondering what could make Bomber leap and frolic and flail his arms about like a madman. Then she noticed the black smoke pouring out the exhaust of the old Suzuki SUV in front of him, the dust stirring up around its trembling wheels. “You didn’t!” she exclaimed. He couldn’t hear her, of course, so she ran down the slope onto the dust-covered tarmac of the car park and grabbed him.
“You didn’t,” she repeated. Her stomach was going giddy with elation.
“She’s running!” Bomber laughed. “She’s got gas, and she’s running!”
Gina squealed and clapped her hands. With childlike eagerness she pulled open the driver-side door and tumbled inside, waving at Bomber to hurry up and join her. He leaped into the passenger seat and fastened his seatbelt just in time. Gina slammed her foot down and rocketed off.
“Do you know how to drive a car?” Bomber asked her, struggling to keep their helmets together.
“No!” she said and drove straight through the rusty wrought-iron gate guarding the car park. The gate went flying and Gina swerved freely through the broken streets of New Orleans.
They soon pulled over, just short of crashing into a lamp post, and switched drivers. Gina grinned sheepishly at Bomber as he got the SUV moving again. “I’d never actually driven before. Never needed to. Wanted to give it a try, y’know, in case I wouldn’t get another chance.”
“You’ll give a guy a heart attack,” muttered Bomber. He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. “There ain’t a lot of things in this world can scare me, but your drivin’ . . .”
“What, worse than the people with the chopper and the guns?”
“Worse than them.”
Gina thought for a second. “Worse than Gabriel?”
He didn’t respond. His eyes were blank, focusing only on the road. Then, “About as much as getting left behind in a collapsing building.” The silence after that was deafening. Even the ancient, sputtering engine didn’t seem to make any noise. Bomber took a deep breath and continued, “There’s some things you don’t know about me, Gina. Stuff you’re probably better off not knowin’. How I got out of that place . . .” He hesitated. “Look, I don’t blame you for panickin’ back there. I might’ve done the same in your shoes. I just need you to understand. You probably already guessed some ways back that I’m boosted up to the gills. That ain’t the whole truth, though. It doesn’t go far enough.”
She let him speak, and after a long pause he picked up again. “I got more implants in me than most people have shirts. Some show up on scanners, others . . . don’t. A couple only kick in when I’m driving or flying something. I couldn’t tell you what they all do, I don’t know.” He took in another lungful of air. “You saw the Emperor in action. Even he was afraid of what I can do. Like surviving a punctured lung without medical attention, or climbing twenty metres up a smooth elevator shaft with my bare hands. If you looked, you’d find finger-holes in the wall. Solid concrete. Broke every bone in my hands, but I never felt a thing. They’ve already set themselves.”
“Jesus,” breathed Gina, staring at him in shock. Even she had never suspected Bomber’s mods went so far.
“Not quite,” he said, chuckling darkly. “But see, when I say that Gabriel frightens the living shit out of me, I want you to understand my full meaning.”
“Why?”
“Because of what you’ve told me. Because what he does ain’t subject to the same laws as us. It’s got no nice clear boundary lines like physics, E equals MC square. I don’t know where his power begins or where it stops, and I don’t know what he could do to me if he ever got the chance.”
The jeep seemed to swerve without Bomber touching the wheel. Gina sat straight up and blurted, “What was that?” Then she looked out the passenger window and saw the black helicopter half-hidden in a whirlwind of dust, circling around to get the car into its sights.
Her head smashed into the headrest as the car lurched forward, knocking the sense out of her, acceleration pinning her to her chair. She could only watch the copter fall into place behind them, swerving from left to right but never far behind. Sound like peas rattling around in a tin can. The already-cracked rear window shattered into a million pieces when a hail of bullets tore through it.
She tried to speak but failed to make any coherent sound. Then everything went black.
She remembered falling. Weightlessness, her body pulled in more than one direction. Impact. Arms dragging her through the dirt. Terrible winds buffeting them about, the helicopter only metres behind them.
Clarity returned slowly while she lay on the radioactive soil. Things had happened so quickly. Bomber had said something to her, then aimed the car at the dead husk of a nearby tree and piled on the acceleration. Pulled her out of the jeep moments before it crashed. All throughout, bullets rained down randomly around them, their bodies invisible in the whirling vortex of fallout dust. The helicopter’s own downdraft had blinded all its trillion-dollar cameras and electronics.
The gunmen in camouflage wasted no time. They didn’t even bother with rappels, they simply jumped the four metres from copter to ground, and landed with impeccable grace. The leader flashed some half-concealed hand signals. Four of the gunmen broke off to investigate the car wreck, the others set up a secure perimeter.
Gina stirred with fear, watching them, but Bomber held her down and made soothing noises. “Easy, girl. Just lie still and be quiet. Got a surprise for ’em, I’ll be right back.”
He disappeared into the blasted ground, covered with rocks and rubble and the remnants of abandoned cars that had tried to flee the nukes and failed. The gunmen moved like lightning, dust clouds rising wherever their feet touched ground, the only real trace of their movements. The four by the car approached cautiously, checking for survivors. They obviously didn’t expect what came next.
A fireball mushroomed high into the sky where the car had been. The helicopter swerved wildly out of its path, and the group sweeping the area all turned to look, gobsmacked. That’s when Bomber appeared from hiding and grabbed the nearest one.
The man’s head turned an impossible angle with a short sharp twist of Bomber’s wrists. His rifle was in Bomber’s hands before he even hit the floor, and before the others could turn around to see about the noise. Two more flew backwards, their bodies torn to pieces by automatic fire. Only the leader remained standing, and now he had Bomber in his sights.
In the span it took to pull the trigger, Bomber had already started moving again. Bullets ripped up the ground in his wake as he jumped and vanished back into the broken land. The leader wasted a few moments trying to reacquire his target, then turned back to check on his men caught in the explosion.
Gina couldn’t see where Bomber had gone. She just watched the rest of the proceedings in horrified fascination.
One of the remaining gunmen was dead, one wounded, but the other two joined their leader in the hunt for Bomber. Their bodies almost shook from their pumped-up metabolisms. They fired at every hint of movement, one taking the shot and the others watching the rest of the area for an ambush. Gina could tell they were heavily boosted by the way they moved, the more-than-human fluidity and grace in their steps, gliding across the battlefield. Then Gina spotted Bomber again, half-hidden behind a rock only a few metres away from the gunmen. They were headed straight for him.
Too late for her to do anything now. The gunmen circled round and closed the trap, Bomber caught in the middle of a perfect triangle. He could do nothing except stay absolutely still and hope they didn’t notice him. A futile hope. They already had, and were closing in on him.
Then suddenly another Bomber appeared from behind the leader, stark naked, and cut the man’s throat with his own combat knife. His weapon shot a long string of bullets uselessly into the sky as his dying body slumped to the ground. The other gunmen fell a heartbeat later, one bullet in the head, one in the heart.
Bomber’s eyes met Gina’s for a brief moment, and she saw nothing good there, no sense of victory or achievement. Carefully, almost sadly, he put his suit back on piece by piece. The helicopter meanwhile beat a hasty retreat without so much as an attempt to salvage the bodies.
At last Gina felt strong enough to stand, and she climbed unsteadily to her feet, staggering over to Bomber’s position in a daze. She sank to the ground next to him and touched her helmet to his.
“That was . . .” she began, but couldn’t find the words to express it.
“Necessary,” he finished for her. “One of ’em is still alive. What do you say we go and interrogate him?”
Gina nodded. Bomber helped her to her feet, and the two of them walked towards the wounded man, twitching and bleeding on the ground. He had a large chunk of car lodged in his stomach, quite fatal without immediate medical attention. Bomber went down on his knee and pulled him up in a crushing choke hold, keeping both the man’s arms pinned under his knees, then touched helmets to speak with him. Gina leaned in so she could hear as well. She was greeted by the sick, breathless moaning of the wounded gunman.
“Time to talk, boy,” Bomber spat at him. “Who’re you workin’ for?”
The man wheezed, and Gina couldn’t help but look when one of his arms spasmed. The hand at the end of it held a small grenade hidden from Bomber’s view, fingers working weakly at the pin. She jerked backwards and shouted a warning at Bomber — then realised he couldn’t hear her. The struggling fingers finally found a purchase on the pin and started to pull, and there was nothing she could do in time to affect the outcome.
Suddenly the man’s chest erupted in blood. A jagged line of bullet holes punched into his body in quick succession, shaking him like a rag doll.
Bomber leaped away from the already-dead body in a panic. The power of his emotions exploded into Gina without warning. She didn’t know why, but she could feel his heart pounding in his throat, could see through his eyes and hear through his ears, his liberated gun searching for targets.
Short, single tap of a rifle muzzle pressed against his helmet. Out of nowhere a voice said, “Hands up, soldier. No sudden movements.”
Bomber obviously considered disregarding that suggestion, but changed his mind when he saw other armed ghosts in camouflage appearing out of the air. Instead he calmly raised his arms to the sky. They didn’t look like the same people to Gina; their equipment was different from the gunmen, shinier and more advanced, like Fed technology.
“Don’t move a muscle unless I tell you,” said the voice, definitely a woman, soft-spoken but with an iron sense of command. “Put your weapons down on the ground one by one.”
“Look, lady, you don’t know what you’re dealin’ with–“
“We know exactly who you are, Grendel. Do what you’re told before I have to end you right here.”
The name ‘Grendel’ was like an electric shock to Bomber’s body. He twitched, every muscle clenched at once, and froze in place. Then he pulled out the pistol from his suit pocket and placed it on the ground next to his liberated assault rifle.
“Is that it?” the woman asked.
“Yeah,” said Bomber.
“Just two? Hard to believe,” she moved around a bit to study his face, “but I think you’re actually telling me the truth.” She gestured at two of her men, who moved forward to grab Bomber’s arms. They twisted his hands behind his back and slapped a heavy pair of cuffs on his wrists. Pulled him to his feet. Another one helped Gina up, and the woman motioned for them to start walking.
EMPATHY: Part 13
Gina folded open the bag with exaggerated care. It had decayed badly over the years, made of old-style bio-degradable plastic, and Gina didn’t want to risk breaking the contents. Truth to tell, she was amazed it had survived this long. These days shopping bags just turned to dust overnight.
“So you’re tellin’ me,” said Bomber, “you telepathed into his head through this ‘link’, and you poked around inside his memory?” She nodded. “Without a hit of Spice?” She nodded again. “But it doesn’t work that way,” he finished flatly.
“No, it doesn’t. But Gabriel’s different. He’s . . . weird.” She peeled away the last layer of bag. “Can’t really explain it, you know?”
He rubbed his chin, obviously out of his depth, and stared at the small metal cube on the table of their hotel room. It was about five centimetres on a side, smooth but for the deep grooves running down the middle of each plane, and it still had a lustre about it even under a thick coat of dust. A faint blue reflection played across it from the fake ocean vista slapped on the painted-over windows. “Well, explain that.”
“What is it?” she asked. Her hands hovered over the item, curious but too wary to touch it.
“Not sure. Some kind of nanobot container. Smells like illegal goods.” He leaned in for a closer look. “It belonged to him, so that’s reason enough to be careful.”
“Is there anyplace we can have it examined? Y’know, see if it’s safe.”
“I got a contact or two living around here,” Bomber thought aloud. “Not sure if they’re equipped for this, though . . .”
Gina gave a shrug. “It’s worth a try.”
Bomber could only agree.
They left the dingy seaside hotel and rode the subway into town. Bright light would pour over them whenever they rode through a station, or came through a stretch of tunnel that ran above the surface, and Gina couldn’t tear her eyes away from that sky whenever it showed itself. It was so blue. The clouds had nearly gone, leaving only the endless heavens to swallow her up. Had she ever seen a sky like this?
Downtown Austin surprised her. They rolled into the above-ground station in the usual bath of sunlight, filtered through UV-repelling glass, but instead of a transparent tube closing in around her Gina found herself in a massive vaulted hall, a geodesic dome of glass panes set into the steel latticework of the dome. Flashy shop windows and holographic advertisements assaulted her senses from the first step, all lusting for the money in her purse. Most of them seemed geared towards tourism into the shallow end of Radiation Alley. If the mass of happy shoppers milling around the street was any indication, they had no shortage of customers.
“Would you like to ride an armoured 4×4 into dangerous territory?” the speakers asked her. “Do you want to visit places that no one has seen for decades? Then we’ve got the trip for you! THUNDER Tours — Feel the adventure! Ask for our brochure today!”
“Did you say your friend lived around here?” she asked Bomber, dodging a holographic jet ski headed straight for her at eye level. It carried two people, impossibly-tanned and proportioned like a bad cartoon, all in skimpy swimwear. They laughed and waved behind them as they roared smack into the wall and disappeared.
“Got a shop off the main street. Follow me.” They ducked into the first alley they could find, cleaner and brighter than any alley had a right to be, leaving the noise and bustle of the main street behind. Gina breathed a sigh of relief. Crowds didn’t frighten her, but she still felt a little bit out of her element in this town of filtered sunlight and white steel.
A few more turns took them through less shiny but still impressive streets. Many of the domes and tunnels had simply gone right on top of the old streets, right after knocking down the buildings and recycling the rubble for the new build. Rows of little coloured bushes and ferns flanked every road, heavily favouring engineered varieties that absorbed radiation out of the ground and air. It looked almost natural. Almost. The lack of trees gave it away; only a few short, scraggly things had been planted to replace the great contaminated husks that had stood tall and dead after the bombs.
Bomber led them into a small, windowless shop identified only by the sign, ‘East Electronics”. The place hit Gina’s senses like an atom bomb.
An overwhelming smell of burnt plastic hung in the stagnant air. The shelves and every other exposed surface were littered with old circuit boards, wires and puddles of congealed solder. Most of the stuff looked older than Gina, and only a handful of newer systems poked out of the piles. To her surprise, she actually spotted a few customers here and there on their way through the wasteland.
“We’re closed,” said the man behind the counter as Bomber and Gina marched up. He was bent low over an old book, real paper and ink, and rubbed his three massive chins. The shiny dome of his head showed no remaining traces of hair, if there had ever been any.
Bomber scratched his nose, blinking behind his sunglasses. “Door’s open as far as I can see.”
“Not to your kind, mate.” The man looked up to better affect an elitist sneer, regarded them with his beady bespectacled eyes, and smiled without warmth. “On your way, ‘fore I have you done up for trespassing.”
A derisive snort escaped Bomber. “Now is that any way to treat an old friend?” he asked, then took off his sunglasses. The man behind the counter sat back with eyes round as dinnerplates.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
“Hey, East.” Bomber smiled. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“In the back,” said East. “Now.” He kicked open the little gate in the side of the counter and bustled them through the back door just as quickly as he could waddle.
“So how you been, East?” Bomber said with a grin, straddling a rickety wooden chair in front of a rickety wooden table. “Takin’ good care of yourself?”
“Same as you, Jacob.” East heaved his obese body into the only other chair, leaving Gina to stand. Rude bastard, she thought at him venomously, and hoped it hurt.
“Oh, East,” chuckled Bomber. “You have no idea. But that’s not why I’m here.” He let the pause draw out longer and longer to watch East squirm. The fat man squinted suspiciously at Bomber, discomfited by the silence, and scratched the black stubble around his throat. Finally Bomber resumed, “You owe me a favour.”
“Owe you? Says who?” grunted East.
“Says me,” Bomber replied. Before the other could reply, he slammed the nanocontainer on the table and withdrew his hand. East immediately stopped talking and pulled out a magnifying glass while Bomber continued, “I need to know what this is and what’s inside it. Might be trapped.”
After a careful look-over, East picked up the box and turned it over in his hands. The sharp edges left white scratch marks on his calloused hands. “Interesting.” He speared Bomber with a look. “I could look at it. What’s in it for me?”
“The knowledge that you’ll never see my face again,” Bomber said sweetly. East squinted his beady eyes, then grunted, pushed himself up and disappeared through a narrow doorway. Gina had to wonder how he fit through it without getting stuck. Bomber followed behind, and motioned for Gina to come along.
They went up a tired set of stairs where every step elicited an ominous groan, and the wood gave way slightly as Gina put her weight on it, giving the impression of constantly falling forward. Gina clung to the handrail all the way up to the top, and was glad to have something solid under her feet again.
By the time she arrived, the boys were huddled together in a small, badly-lit room full of computers and other electronic machinery. Much of it looked like it belonged in a hospital and might well have been stolen from one. East popped the box into what to Gina looked exactly like a microwave oven. A few keystrokes on East’s notebook computer, and the device sprang to life with a weird light show.
“Nothing hidden that I can see,” he muttered. “No springs, no wires, just a radio receiver for a wireless code lock.”
“Can you crack the lock?” asked Gina, affecting a confident stance against the big central table. East looked up as if to call her an idiot, but seemed to lose his train of thought when he looked at her. His eyes lingered on her body for slightly too long before he closed his mouth and nodded.
“The hardware on this is all between ten and twenty years old, the lock can’t be much newer,” he muttered to himself. “That narrows down the search.” He tapped in a few more variables and the light show intensified. “Okay, it’s a simple Heilmann lock, 2064. Cheap but not bad. Unbreakable encryption, back in the 2060s. Not so much now. Especially since they all came with sequential default codes that a lot of people never bothered to change.” He punched in a few numbers and grinned. “There you go, open.”
Bomber glanced at Gina, smiling from the corner of his mouth. “Looks like he does screw up every now and again.”
“So what’s inside it?” asked Gina.
“Nanobots,” said East. “Ask the obvious. Not responding to wireless, I’ll just scan them.” The view on East’s screen changed to a wireframe close-up of a nanobot. “Interesting. They’re fairly old, but advanced. No maker’s mark. Looks like builder bots of some type, or something construction-related. The weird thing is,” he frowned and scratched his head, “I can’t get them to respond at all. It’s like they’re . . .” He fell silent.
Bomber took him by the shoulder and squeezed. “What? What’s wrong?”
“They’re dead,” he said, confused.
“What do you mean, dead?”
“I mean dead. Slagged, powered-down, unrepairable.” He pointed at the screen where a full resolution scan finished displaying. “There’s nothing there except carbon and metal paste.”
Bomber swore under his breath and said, “Did something go wrong with the container?”
“Must have done. Who keeps dead bots?” East shrugged. “I’ll have to scan the shell for fractures and tampering. It’ll take a while. Come back later.” He waved Bomber and Gina away and ignored any attempt at protest. “In fact, don’t come back later. I’ll call you. Out, and leave the box.”
Outside in the fresh filtered air, they found a bench in front of some greenery. Gina sat down frowning and clenched her fists in her lap. The faint noise of the main street echoed in the background, but between the two of them there was only silence. At the moment she was too busy resenting everything to speak.
What’s the point? she asked herself. All of it. Any of it. A sudden wave of homesickness struck her. The sun here was too bright, the people too loud, the air too crisp. And she was alone. So many strange things happening to her, stuff she couldn’t explain, didn’t want to look at too closely for fear of what she might be turning into. She’d actually started missing the City, the smoky flavour of every breath like there was a permanent kerosene-fired barbeque going on somewhere. She missed the feeling of comfortable anonymity. Over there, nobody would ever know or care who or what she was. She could be anyone she liked, she could live on the Street and waste away and nobody would care. No one to talk down to her or tell her about things she couldn’t, shouldn’t or wouldn’t. That was what she left home for.
And worst of all, sitting right next to her was someone who was coming dangerously close to knowing her. Someone who would never ask her tough questions, never push her about anything she wasn’t happy to reveal, but could read her like an open book. And he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything she’d done or used to be. Only what she was now. But–
He wrapped his fingers around her hand and tilted her head up to look him in the eye. “You okay?” he asked in a voice without expectations.
Gina took a deep breath and said shakily, “On the train, you told me that bloody life story . . . You told me something you didn’t really want to drag up again just ’cause I asked you.” He nodded slowly, not quite sure where she was headed. At length she took another breath and forced out, “I think I owe you the same, if you wanna hear it.”
“Yeah, I do,” he answered. “But first we deserve a break.” Smiling, he squeezed her hand and pulled her gently to her feet. “Come on, I know a place. It ain’t far.”
The next moment they were off, and if Gina put up any protest, it was staunchly ignored.
“Stop twitchin’,” he told her from across the table, smiling gently. “Nothing’s gonna catch us, and there ain’t much we can do until East finishes with that cube.”
She sighed, “Sorry.” She’d had trouble relaxing ever since their escape. Correction — ever since she set eyes on that damned building and the horrors inside it. Not even the warmth of this little bistro could put her at ease. “I know you’re right, and I don’t mean to spoil it. Food’s good.” She held up a long string of spaghetti carbonara, which the menu boasted to be made of real dough and meat instead of cheap moulded protein, and put it in her mouth. Honestly she preferred the moulded protein. This stuff was just too rich for her palate, and the fat strands of spaghetti looked like dead maggots in the candlelight. Still, she ate as much as she could. She couldn’t bear to be impolite to Bomber over something so expensive.
“Haven’t been here in years, but I still know the spots,” he said. Meanwhile he busily devoured a plate of Italian meatballs and sausages, relishing every bite. He certainly ought to at 50,000 per serving.
“So, um, what’s the deal with you and East? If you don’t mind my asking.” She daubed at her lips with the complimentary napkin. “I can tell you aren’t exactly the best of friends.”
Nodding slowly, Bomber looked up and pushed away his food. The memory seemed to spoil his appetite. “I don’t wanna bore you with another anecdote. Suffice it to say, we were Army buddies, but we lost contact when the Feds took over. When the Feds came askin’, East sold me out without so much as a blink, gave ’em my name and everything. So I sold him out to the leftover Army guys about all the equipment he stole while he was in the service. Fair play.”
Stunned, Gina blurted out, “So your name is Jacob?” She hadn’t expected to find out like this.
Bomber laughed, but without mockery. He just patted her hand and said, “No. I joined up under a fake name.”
She sat back and crossed her arms, a sour smile on her face. “Should have known. Will I ever find out your real name?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t rule it out.” He started to lean across the table, but then the mobile phone in his pocket played its loud musical ringtone, and the moment was gone. He unfolded it and beckoned Gina closer so that she could hear. “Yeah?”
“It’s East,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “I’m finished, thought you might like to hear about it. You bring in some weird crap. Anyway, I’ve had a good long look at those dead bots, and there’s something funky about them. Can’t put my finger on it. Teased a couple bits of info out of them, though.”
“Go on,” said Bomber.
“First thing is, I’ve never seen a design quite like it. I’m not so sure it is actually a constructor, I’m starting to think it’s actually some weird kind of medical bot, but I’ve never seen medicals with so many manipulators. Expensive, very expensive to produce. Only the Federation or some really loaded independents could have these things made.”
Bomber hummed in satisfaction. “That helps narrow it down. Keep goin’.”
“Well, this is going to sound weird, but I ran some checks on the bots’ time of death . . . I can’t pinpoint it, but I can tell you that they were dead before they went in the container.”
A single grunt of surprise and confusion rumbled up Bomber’s throat. “Huh. Anything else?”
“Just one piece of info, the most curious one of all.” Gina could hear East’s laboured breathing from the phone. He was panting from excitement. “As near as I can tell, these bots died of radiation damage. They’ve all been in contact with bad amounts of radioactive elements. I think they were . . .” He stopped suddenly. Sound of a door being thrown open, wood crashing and splintering. “Hey, who the fuck are y–” Gina winced at the sound of automatic gunfire. There was a crash as the phone hit the table, and the call cut off.
Bomber’s upper lip curled unpleasantly. “Gabriel.” He looked at Gina for a long moment. Then, “Can’t go back for the cube. We need to get the hell out of here.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet, and they were out into the street at a run. A waiter ran out after them saying that they forgot dessert, but Bomber just threw him a credit slip without looking back.
“What are you doing?” she yelled at him. “Where are we going?!”
“Adventuring,” he growled back.
“Hi, welcome to Thunder Tours!” the smiling salesman had said when they walked in the door. “How can I help you today?”
The next thing Gina knew, she was on a train for Jericho, Louisiana, the furthest living settlement inside Radiation Alley. By all accounts it was a pretty desolate place. Blasted radioactive wasteland, forests of dead trees, the whole shebang. Gina spent the trip looking out her window at the big plastic tunnel they rode through. At one point the tunnel would have been transparent, but years of acid rain and dust storms had scored and pitted the plastic outside until no human eye could see through it.
Bomber seemed happy just as long as they were out of Austin. He didn’t talk much, and after a few attempts she stopped trying to engage him. Too busy constructing battle plans and considering escape routes or whatever the fuck he did.
The neon glow of travel company logos washed over them as they neared the station. There were dozens of different ones, if not hundreds, all advertising their exciting trips into Radiation Alley. Definitely a booming industry around here, Gina noted with a spark of black humour.
Jericho was like a shining beacon in the starlit desert. It was new, white, full of light and glittery things. Everything inside it smelled of lemons. The train station was no exception, blinding Gina as she stepped onto the platform, even brighter and more sterile than Austin main street. Other passengers from all walks of life swarmed past her, rushing to the exit on their way to excitement.
A small automatic buggy waited for Gina and Bomber at the doors. It sat in one of the station’s charging bays and welcomed them as they came closer. Bomber started it up via the touchscreen, fed their boarding passes into the slot, then took a seat. Once their seatbelts were in place, it drove them at a relaxed pace through the covered streets of Jericho.
“You ever been here before?” she asked Bomber.
“Nope,” he replied. That was all she could get out of him for the entire trip. Out of boredom she watched the various ad holograms, which exhibited a distinct tendency towards comically large 4x4s, the spattering of mud and the leaping of ditches. A few of them added mutant monsters or zombies to the mix in an attempt to spice things up. Gina had to wonder who would shell out the cash for that when you could play these scenarios in a VR arcade for a fraction of the price.
She had to admit she was impressed when they rolled up to the TruFuture pyramid on the far side of town. Easily the biggest single building in Jericho, it sprawled under its own dome surrounded by elegant sculpted gardens and a fountain. Large hologram generators poked out of the corners to create colourful banners and logos, as well as more subtle touches, wisps of cloud and the silhouettes of nonexistent birds near the top of the pyramid.
Thunder Tours rented only a tiny part of the whole pyramid. Likewise, TruFuture — the megacorp that owned it — only occupied the top few floors. Gina wouldn’t have minded a look inside. The buggy had other ideas, though, and dropped them off at one of the outbuildings, a small company showroom and customer information centre.
The man who greeted them as they dismounted wanted to give them a tour of the premises and their display vehicle, after which they’d scheduled an information session for today’s customers before their trip. Bomber tried to explain that they just wanted a fuelled-up 4×4 and a set of keys. The salesman would have none of it. Unfortunately for him, Bomber had the determination of a pit-bull. They argued until one of the managers showed up to see what was keeping them.
“I see,” said the manager after Bomber explained the situation, scratching her head. “But what you booked is an ordinary trip, sir. To be completely honest with you, our company does travel and entertainment, not vehicle rentals. We usually put about six people to a rover, you see, to maximise–“
Bomber interrupted her. “How much would it cost to get just a car with no questions asked?”
She studied his face for a long moment. Then she smiled, wide and bright. “Why, I’m sure we can arrange something, sir,” she answered. “We have to insist on a company driver, though, for insurance reasons, if that’s all right?”
“It’ll do,” he said, pulling a credit slip out of his pocket. “Take what you think is fair, and show us to the garage.”
“Right away, sir!” The manager quickly summoned someone to guide them, then ran off with the credit slip and a gleeful expression on her face. Gina had once thought only children at Christmas looked like that.
“Again, would you mind telling me exactly what the hell it is you’re doing?” she whispered to Bomber.
“Improvising,” he said. “Trust me.”
Oh yeah, thought Gina. No problem.
Their massive 4×4 rolled past the Memorial on the way out of Jericho. The massive sculpture was built dead in front of the vehicle garage, a position where anyone leaving the town was forced to pay attention. It consisted of twisted metal and rubble recovered from the smoking hole that used to be New Orleans, steel girders jutting into the ground all around it to keep the drooping mess upright. Large parts of the sculpture were marked with the names of the dead, scratched deep into the steel by the survivors. About thirty metres up the nightmarish body, two gnarled arms thrust out of it in opposite directions, completing the form of a gigantic crucifix.
It loomed higher as they approached, a darker blotch against the grey morning sky. Dew sparkled wherever a ray of sunlight filtered through the clouds. The fat droplets looked like tears rolling down the burnt, radioactive hulk.
Bomber sat transfixed. His eyes were glued to the sculpture, and even though his expression never changed Gina could feel the power of his emotions. Tentatively she placed a hand on his arm. He didn’t object.
“It must be weird for you to be back here,” she whispered. He only swallowed, so she squeezed his arm to bring him out of his trance. “Wake up.”
“Wh–” he started hoarsely, then cleared his throat. “What?”
“You were going all funny.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He shrugged. “Just payin’ my respects, I guess. I knew people . . .”
She nodded, sensing his need for privacy, then turned her attention to the computer terminal embedded in the seat in front. It had games, books, magazines, even a lasered TV uplink as long as they stayed within line of sight of Jericho. After a little browsing she decided that it offered nothing she cared to waste time on. Instead she turned her seat around and lowered the back rest, turning it into a not-wholly-uncomfortable bed substitute. A stain-proof plastic blanket rolled partway out the side of the chair but Gina left it there. She just wanted to rest her eyes for a few hours. The past few days of near-constant travelling hadn’t done her body any good, and they’d be driving for a while.
It wasn’t long before she drifted off. Every now and again she started awake at the jarring of the car on the cracked and potholed roads. She looked around at the overcast swampland around them. Tumbledown buildings stood abandoned in the wake of the bombs, now half-sunk into the marshy ground. Husks of dead trees crumbling in the wind. It all seemed more and more eerily familiar. Sometimes she was convinced she could hear voices, shreds of conversation. She started to shiver. Soon her teeth chattered so loudly that she couldn’t go back to sleep.
The sound of her teeth clicking dragged Bomber back from whatever personal tragedy had swallowed him up. He sat down next to her with a worried expression on his face. “Hey, hey,” he whispered. “You okay? What’s wrong, girl?”
“It’s this p-place,” she stammered back. “D-d-dead. All dead. It’s like . . . Like . . .”
“Your vision?” he asked, and she nodded. His brow furrowed in deep thought. “Maybe you’re seein’ here what’s gonna happen somewhere else. Christ, if he’s got nuk–” He stopped himself and pounded his fist against the bulletproof plastic screen between them and the driver. “Hey, a little privacy?”
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered and flicked a switch. The back of the 4×4 went quiet. Even the roaring engine was deadened by a set of anti-noise generators. A complimentary bug scanner rested in a holster at the front, but Bomber didn’t bother. Anything left active would be too well-hidden for a scanner to find anyway.
Gina’s shaking calmed a little. Bomber wrapped his warm hands around hers, which felt like numb clumps of ice. She said haltingly, “I’m getting worse, aren’t I?”
“You’ll be fine, Gina. You’re tough.” He smiled. “‘Sides, you’re not gettin’ away from me that easy. Still owe me a story.”
“I’ll tell it to you sometime. Promise.” She took a deep breath and, with some difficulty, pushed herself up on her elbows just high enough to look out the window. Jericho was out of sight by now, and the 4×4 made steady progress over the cracked and ancient asphalt. “We going anywhere specific or was this just to get us out of Austin?”
“Little bit of both,” he sighed, sinking into the chair next to her. “You’ve probably guessed by now what I guessed at the end of that phone call. They shot East just as he was about to tell us those bots came from inside Radiation Alley.”
“So, like . . . Gabriel came here to steal some kind of special robot from the no-entry zone after the blast? That kind of thing?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Security was pretty heavy around here until a few years ago, could be why he was so squirrelly.”
“And you want to try and track down where those bots came from,” she stated flatly.
“Basically, yeah.”
“Where do we start, though?” she asked, turning onto her back to look him in the eye. “We don’t even know what they’re for, much less who made them. I mean, what the hell are we supposed to look for?”
“I ain’t got the answers, Gina,” said Bomber. “But they’re out there somewhere.”
She bobbed a nod and sat back, then asked almost casually, “So where are we headed?”
“New Orleans,” he answered. “I did some checkin’ before we left, seems like the logical choice. Only lab in the area that had the equipment to make nanobots before the bombs. There’s just two other possible sites inside Radiation Alley, and they’re way the hell over in Fredericksburg and New York.”
“So we just go through each one until we find something.”
“That’s the plan,” Bomber said, sitting back in his chair. “It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one we’ve got at the moment. Unless you pull another magic trick out your hat.”
She worked up a smile and fluffed up her complimentary pillow. “Wake me up when we get there, okay?” she murmured and nodded right off.
“Sure thing, little lady,” he whispered. He leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, then left her to rest.
EMPATHY: Part 12
“We did it,” Rat said when they got back to their hotel room. It was like a finishing point to this adventure, a precious lull in the storm. The three just sank onto the bed, no longer able to stand. All the strength had gone out of them, leaving only exhaustion. Colours pulsed and danced above them — somebody had tuned the giant TV in the ceiling to a 24-7 news network. The same Hong Kong reporter she’d seen the other day was still going on about gang murders, and how the only suspect had escaped from a local police cell. That factoid tugged at Gina’s brain for some reason, but she was too tired to think properly.
Rat blurted again, “I can’t believe we actually did it.”
“All thanks to you,” Gina pointed out, giving her an encouraging nudge. Bomber nodded agreement.
“Takin’ out the AI was a good idea,” he said. “Better than good. I had no idea how dependent they were on that thing until you shut it down. Like a load of arms with the head cut off. Nice job, kid.”
Despite everything Rat couldn’t seem to smile anymore. She spoke out loud, but she was talking to herself as much as to the others. “I didn’t think it would ever work. Practically shit myself when flipping the breakers didn’t do it. Hadn’t really thought ahead past that . . .”
“Don’t matter. We’re here now, and we want to be as far away as possible by the time they get Lazarus online again.”
Gina turned onto her side to frown at him. “Can we at least get a night’s sleep before we start running again?”
“No time,” he said, looking at her with those simple brown eyes, free of trickery or dishonesty. “They’ll have it back up in three hours, tops. We need to be above the Pacific by then.”
Gina was about to ask when Rat interrupted, checking the messages on their room phone. “There’s one here from Jock, says he made it to Laputa and he’s getting a new rig set up. It’ll take a few more hours but he’ll be able to cover our tracks once it’s up and running.”
“Good, we don’t want anyone following us.” He sent Gina a strange smile. “Remember why I went off in the first place? Well, I dug up some things. Enough to put me on Gabriel’s track. Don’t know what we’ll find there, but I found the place where Mr. Lowell first appeared on this old Earth.” He paused as if waiting to deliver a really funny punchline. “We’re goin’ to America,” he said.
“I’m not.” Rat was shaking her head, feeling the silence grow around her. The excitement had gone, there were no more thrills, only the hole in her leg and the burning pain all over her skin grafts. A body that wasn’t quite her own anymore. Not if somebody else could just reach in and take over against her will. She looked up at the others, resolute in her decision. “Since Jock called me in I’ve been beaten, shot at, blown up, and . . .” She stopped herself before she started to list the really bad stuff. “And I’ve had enough. You don’t need me, you can sort it out on your own. I’m going back to Laputa and staying with Jock.”
“But–” began Gina, but Rat silenced her with a gesture.
“Don’t,” Rat ground out, “don’t make this any more difficult than it already is. I’m not coming with you. Here.” She reached into her pocket and handed Gina her prized mobile phone, a finger-sized tube of white plastic. “We’ll keep in touch. But I’m not coming with you.”
No more words. Gina’s heart clenched like she had just lost a friend. It wasn’t nearly so dramatic or final, she knew that, but in the few days she’d hung out with Rat the girl had become one of the fixtures of Gina’s new and crazy life. A little bit of sanity and normality — to some degree, anyway — in something that was spiralling way out of control.
She continued, “I’ll stay here for a few days, y’know, rest up a bit, and then catch a ferry to Laputa. I know people I can call if I need anything. Don’t worry about me.”
“We’ll miss you,” Gina said through the lump in her throat. She would’ve liked a hug at that point, some form of physical contact, but it didn’t really seem appropriate.
“Thanks.” Forcing a smile, Rat tried not to let her conflicting feelings show. She was getting harder to read as the Spice in Gina’s blood started to wear off, Gina’s awareness of Rat’s feelings becoming distant and peripheral. One thing that Rat couldn’t hide, though, was her drive to feel useful despite everything. Disregarding her own light-headedness, she said, “There’s a terminal in the desk, I’ll book your flights for you.”
She pushed herself up onto shaking legs, and Bomber hopped over to help her. He said, “We’ll need new IDs as well. Wigs, make-up, the works.”
“Not a problem,” Rat panted through the haze where painkillers and pure agony met. “If you got the dollar.”
“Dollars I got. Contacts, not so much, not in Hong Kong.”
Fatigue hammered in on Gina. She left the others to their work and snuck into the bathroom, turned on the shower and kicked off her borrowed uniform. That would have to be disposed of. Unpleasant memories clung to it, and the thought of wearing it again brought the phrase ‘bad idea’ to mind. Fortunately the bathroom came with an incinerator chute, in itself slightly disturbing. The chute closed with a slam, and Gina turned her attention elsewhere. She dug into her bag of spare clothes, throwing together something to wear later.
Finally she stepped into the hot stream of relaxation. Water and steam ran deliciously over her skin. Expensive complimentary lotions were sniffed and tested all over her body until everything gleamed healthy and smooth under the lantern light. She probably could get used to being rich; the Clean-O-Mat had nothing on this!
She came out glowing. Shrugging into a robe printed with the hotel logo, she wrapped her hair up in a towel and studied herself in the mirror. There were no bullet holes in that perfect body. Just a few bruises on her face and arms, nothing that couldn’t be hidden with a little effort. But something felt strange about it as she leaned in for a closer look. She didn’t quite recognise the woman in front of her. Something had changed about the eyes. There was more pain in them, but that wasn’t quite the thing. Gina grew uneasy as she struggled to put her finger on it. They just looked vaguely wrong, as if those eyes had looked a little bit too far.
She gasped when that thought rocked through her. Sudden burning tears rolled down her cheeks, and she couldn’t stop them.
Gina turned away and cried.
Bomber stowed the scissors back into his new make-up kit and surveyed his handiwork. Gina, too, stared curiously into the mirror. She’d worn her hair long ever since she was a girl. Now it just tickled the bottoms of her earlobes, and her neck felt weird. Exposed and too light, as if it missed the extra weight.
“That’s interesting,” she said. She gave her head a testing shake and then patted it, but her halo of ginger fire stayed rigidly in place. For a moment she was tempted to ask Rat’s opinion, but Rat was curled up under the covers, sleeping off another injection of painkillers.
“First rule about shakin’ people off your trail,” he told her into the mirror, “cut your hair. Dye is optional, but you gotta cut it or get it lengthened. Lengthening ain’t somethin’ you do at home with a pair of scissors, though.”
“And rule two?”
“Second rule is, change your dress style to go with your new look. If you wore suits, start wearing shorts. If you like black, it’s Hawaiian shirts. You get the idea.”
She turned in her chair to look up at him. “How the hell do you know all this?”
“Military stuff,” he said by way of explanation.
“What, they had an opening for copter pilot-slash-hairdresser?”
A smile cracked his stony face, and he seemed to relax a little bit. She could see his time in the interrogation room had affected him more than he’d like to let on. But here he was, making an attempt to open up to her. He cleared his throat and said, “It was just in case I went down in hostile territory. They didn’t want me getting caught and spilling all of my job’s lovely secrets. So I had to learn how to be invisible.” Leaning in a bit closer, he added, “By the way, remember the thing I did with the copter?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I do.”
“That was really, really stupid. Don’t let me do it again.”
She couldn’t help but giggle. “How long was it since you flew one of those?”
“Christ,” he shrugged, “about twelve, thirteen years . . . It all runs together a little bit. I’m impressed I remembered how to start the thing.”
Remembering, Gina asked with sudden worry, “What about all that radiation? Will you be okay?”
“Yeah, I think they gave me some purge meds, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” He rolled up his sleeves, showing some artfully-camouflaged radiation burns made to look like bruises. “I . . . lied to you back in the copter. The reactor’s not dangerous, it’s meant to start without hurting a fly. That’s not why I got irradiated. There, um, there was a crack in the rad shielding at the back. We were out of time and I didn’t want to panic you.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. We lie about a lot of things.”
“Hey, it wasn’t the kind of crack that would level Hong Kong Central. Just one that would rough me up pretty bad. And you, if you hadn’t been inside.”
“So what about those Hawaiian shirts?” Bomber blinked at the apparent non-sequitur, unsure how to respond. Gina stood up and whirled away from him. She’d had quite enough of that topic of conversation right now and she felt like trying on some new clothes. A big shopping bag lay across the bed, stuffed to the brim with the cheapest of cheap crap. Gina couldn’t wait to plumb its depths.
She picked at random and pulled out a black mesh tank-top whose neckline plunged straight down towards her bellybutton and didn’t stop until it hit the local indecency laws. She squinted to try and identify the wire-thin straps holding it up, made of a material that was completely invisible to the human eye except at a particular angle. It was possibly the sleaziest garment ever to offend her eyes, including everything she’d seen in three years on the Street. Of course she couldn’t resist trying it on. She disappeared into the bathroom before Bomber could even open his mouth.
When Gina next looked into the mirror, she saw a curvaceous would-be teenager a few years behind the fashion curve; her abdomen exposed to the midriff, the exact shape and colour of her nipples visible through the mesh. It screamed ‘sex object’, and that was kind-of fun in itself, but eventually her better judgement prevailed. She didn’t need to attract anyone’s attention, she wanted the exact opposite. In the end she settled on a baggy t-shirt which promised nothing and delivered exactly that.
“Gina,” called Bomber, knocking on the door, “it’s time to go.”
“Coming,” she said.
Rat had woken up to wish them goodbye, and she exchanged an awkward hug with Gina. Bomber clenched a pair of printed tickets in his hand and carried their baggage. The hotel room looked a bit lived-in by now, with the three of them rampaging through it, and Gina had gotten to like it there. It let her forget, at least for a little while, that there were people hunting for her. Some with suspicious intentions, and now others with certain death on their minds.
They left without really speaking. They just went, grabbed a taxi, walked into the airport, boarded the ship. Nervous sweat ran down Gina’s face all the way to her seat, but luckily the sweltering hot evening gave her a good excuse. A few persuasive words convinced Bomber to give her the window seat. There she stretched out to relax, and never noticed when her exhausted body fell asleep.
“Don’t worry,” said Gabriel, “it’s only me.”
“And you’re telling me not to worry?” Gina replied with a smile, staring up at a fairy-blue sky laced with wisps of cloud. She bobbed up and down on the waves of a crystal-clear ocean. The sun glittered off it like a mirror, and a strong breeze played over the water, but none of the waves ever threatened to wash over her. “You come up with some lovely places.”
“Thank you. I like to make our meetings . . . pleasant.” He drifted into view sitting on a ribbed square of inflated plastic. He wore black suit trousers and a long-sleeved buttoned shirt, rolled up to his knees and elbows respectively, and his feet dangled in the water. His fire-coloured eyes twinkled at her.
She laughed and rolled over, swimming towards him. The water offered little resistance. “I remember,” she murmured as she reached his little inflatable island. Then she grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him down to kiss him. The meeting of their lips tingled like electricity all the way down to her toes, but this time it didn’t manage to knock her out.
He smiled down at Gina as she finally disengaged, her hand gripping his collar even tighter, and he didn’t seem to realise anything was wrong until his face hit the water. She wished she could’ve taken a picture of the complete shock in his eyes. He came up laughing and put his arms around her waist, treading water.
“You’re a genuine sneaky one,” he said to her. “Nice escape, by the way. I was fairly impressed. I don’t think anybody’s ever managed to shut down that AI before.”
Gina stifled a gasp. “How do you know about that?”
“I watch, and I listen. There’s a lot of knowledge out there just lying around waiting to be picked up by someone who’s paying attention.”
“I think,” she said playfully, a finger on his lips, “that you watch and listen in places you’re not supposed to.”
“Like where?” he asked with a smile.
“Like my head.” It was so hard to remember things from the real world in this place, but she remembered the flicker, the little gestalt that made itself felt almost at random. The words came in halts and stutters, but she carried the whole sentence through. “Ever since we spoke, it’s like I’ve been carrying around a bit of you inside my mind. It doesn’t talk, but sometimes it . . . it feels at me, about things.”
“Oh. That.” He couldn’t help but grin. “I thought you wouldn’t like it, but I needed to forge a link with you, to keep in contact. It was hard enough to find you without it that first time. The link’s the only reason I can talk to you now. I can tell you’re far away, and moving farther. Where are you going?”
The subtle tones of that question nearly escaped Gina, but this time around she was more confident in the dreamworld, more stable in herself. She sensed the undercurrents of command rather than request. He was genuinely curious, but perhaps not for benign reasons.
But even recognising the threat didn’t give her the power to avoid it. Her mouth opened before she even thought, and she had to fight down her own voice by force of will. The effort left her drained, but she just managed to stop herself from betraying everything.
“That’s my business,” she said firmly. She tried to read his eyes for any sign of expression, but they just held her in their steady gaze. The intense sunlight didn’t seem to bother them. And — Gina suddenly realised — neither did it bother her. She could look straight at the sun without discomfort.
Below her, the ocean had vanished, and they were floating in a column of white light. No more need to tread water — she hovered in Gabriel’s arms, nothing above her and nothing below. A sudden attack of vertigo whirled into her head. She pushed her legs down, and her feet touched some kind of invisible floor. That seemed like the easiest orientation to cope with. It felt alright as long as she didn’t look down.
The silence went on for what seemed like forever until, finally, Gabriel nodded. “Alright,” he said. No grudge, no resentment, only love and acceptance in his voice. “No harm in playing your cards close. How’s your friend, what’s his name, Simon? He wasn’t in good shape when you slipped out. I hope everything’s alright.”
“He’s fine,” Gina replied truthfully, wondering where that question came from. Gabriel beamed her a warm, pleased smile.
“I’m glad. Nice guy, isn’t he? I can see why you like him.” His twinkling eyes waited for Gina to protest, but she just lowered her eyes and blushed. He’d know it if she lied. “Tough, too, to be up and walking about not five hours after being dragged from a burning copter wreck. And I’m not counting the chest wound.” Gabriel nodded to himself. “I wonder where a guy gets that tough.”
“He used to be in the army,” she admitted before even thinking about it. She’d all but forgotten why she was supposed to keep her guard up. The image of Gabriel standing in front of her, glowing softly with inner light, could convince whole armies to lay down their weapons. “He was a test pilot on top-secret helicopters.”
Gabriel laughed. “No. No, he wasn’t.” The certainty in his voice almost convinced her on the spot.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve already answered that question, Gina. I can find out anything I want to know about anyone. Except for your boy Simon, apparently, where a couple billion dollars haven’t gotten me so much as a real name. Just a list of alias after alias after alias. Someone has been very, very good at destroying his identity.” He shook his head. “If he told you he’s just a chopper pilot, he’s lying. Watch out for him.” Taking her hands, he moved in closer until their lips almost touched. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
She rocked back on her heels, shaking her head. Too much to accept at once. She pushed Gabriel away from her and turned as if to run. She fell straight through the floor. Screaming, falling, air rushing past her ears, she woke up.
She walked off the airship in a daze. Bright sunlight drilled into her eyes, poking through holes in the cloud cover, and Gina had to blink away spots even through her sunglasses. The City never saw blue sky or sunlight that wasn’t filtered through thick layers of cloud. Its pale children weren’t used to this. Even Bomber took a little while to adjust.
“Ain’t that a sight,” he said, squinting at the sky.
“Yeah,” agreed Gina. Too bad about the UVs, though. From the transparent boarding tube she could see the airship’s ground crew, tying down mooring lines and bringing in fuel hoses. They wore clear plastic suits that covered them head to toe, with gill-like white air filters at the mouth. Underneath they wore their simple blue uniforms as if nothing was wrong. The suits kept them safe from the nasty ultraviolet radiation you picked up in direct sunlight. The East Coast nuke event had knocked a big gap in the already weak ozone layer, a gap which now stretched from New York all the way down the Appalachian mountains. There it fed into the region now known as ‘Radiation Alley’, a massive no-entry zone extending from Bermuda to the Texan border.
The catwalk trembled under the footfalls of some three hundred people. They filed into the terminal and held open their bags for the search. Dozens of black-uniformed men and women stood at the examination counters, plastic gloves over their hands, a fresh pair for each bag. Every last item was taken out, inspected, scanned and — if judged to be harmless — put back. Gina saw one or two people being taken aside and felt a little bit sorry for them. The news occasionally carried stories about what happened with airport security around here, and it wasn’t pretty.
“All clear, ma’am,” the security man told her, placing the box with the hidden taser on top of her pile. “Please proceed to the next line.” If discovered, that little thing spelled a charge of trafficking and ownership of illegal weaponry, but Bomber knew how to get stuff past customs unnoticed.
Gina yawned, shouldered her bag and scratched her shoulders. They felt bare and exposed without her hair tumbling over them. Bomber still waited in line to get his bag checked. The gentleman in front of him had a seemingly endless supply of stuff packed into his suitcase. The pile of random junk on the counter already looked to be several times larger than the case, but it only kept growing.
She yawned again. Although she’d spent nearly the whole flight out cold, it hadn’t been restful. It seemed like every time she closed her eyes someone would start knocking on her door. It’d be nice to have some actual sleep again.
“Thank you, sir,” the inspector told Bomber. “Please proceed to the next line.” Bomber, ever the good citizen, bagged all his things up again and did as he was told.
“Like I said,” he whispered to Gina with a grin, “keep ’em chatting, bow and scrape enough to make ’em feel big, and they’ll barely look at your stuff. Like putty in your hands.”
They breezed through the next desk with their fine fake IDs, and then all of North America was open to them.
“You ever been here before?” Bomber asked her as they strolled along the long line of duty-free shops.
“Never. Hong Kong born and bred.” She shrugged. “My parents used to tell me stories, but that was before everything. Before the Federation.”
“There were a lot of things before the Federation. People just don’t care about them anymore.”
“You’re older than me. Has it really changed that much?”
He thought about that for a moment. Then, “Not that much. They try not to make waves, work with the local powers whenever they need to get anything done. Which keeps them in charge. Most of the crap they pull now, the old States government used to pull just as often and they got away with it just as quietly. Never mind Hong Kong StateSec. Somebody up there’s read The Prince.”
“What?” asked Gina.
“Machiavelli. A book. Think of it as the complete guide to dictatorship for dummies.”
“Christ,” she said, “how do you know all that stuff?”
“Some training. Some just readin’. Used to love books, had a little collection going. Before.” Before the bombs, Gina added mentally as he fell quiet. Here she recognised a pivotal moment for Bomber and everything he meant to her. Maybe if she was subtle enough, she could get him to open up a little.
Neon storefronts scrolled past them in pairs. Shreds of old, worn-out music drifted out of them, mournful reminders of a more dignified past. America had had its fight knocked out of it when New York and three other cities simply vanished off the map.
Gina and Bomber drifted through the main lobby and down the steps to the tube station, passing under a massive sunny billboard proclaiming, ‘Welcome to Austin, Texas.’
The tube was the main way of getting around town now. Personal vehicles were banned in all the ozone-deficient areas. A few taxi companies still operated, driving into the special underground docking bays and providing protection suits to customers along with the service. Pricey, though. Only the rich had money like that to waste on convenience.
Nobody else stood at their platform. A few lonely souls milled about on the other side of the tracks in the great underground cavern, but nobody who could overhear. No sound except the wind and the occasional echo of train wheels thumping along their rails.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” she murmured. “That story you told me about when you were a test pilot. Which one are you?” He gave her a blank look, and she seized on the opportunity. She had his full attention now — that would be enough. “You said a couple of guys in your squadron ran off with their choppers ’cause of the Fed takeover. One, Two, Three and Four. Which one are you?”
“Heh. I thought you’d forgotten. Hoped, maybe. You’re pretty sharp, lady.” He almost smiled. “Number Two.”
She stopped suddenly, blinking in surprise. The next moment Bomber was tearing tickets from a ticket machine, pressed one into her hand. “Two? But . . . I thought you were the one who flew to Hong Kong.”
“No. If I was, I’d be dead now. They are.” He grimaced and looked down. She could feel old pain twisting in his heart. “Sorry, that’s why I don’t talk about it.”
“Someone close to you?”
“Yeah.” He straightened himself and made a dismissive gesture. A hot, muggy breeze blew out of the tunnels and stuck his hair to his forehead. “It’s a real sob story, I don’t wanna bore you with it.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t interested.”
“I guess I owe you, comin’ back for me after I landed us all in the dungeon.” He hung his head and let out a deep breath.
“I was a Wing Captain in my squadron. Second in command. Still young, still had a fight left in me. Off the books, I was . . . fraternising with the squadron commander. She looked a bit like you, a little shorter and a little darker. We were gonna muster out in a few years, buy a cabin on Lake Erie, settle down. I loved her.
“There was another pilot in our squadron, Jamie, her brother. She got him his commission. Wasn’t a bad stick, though. He and I got along, and the two of them were pretty close. Then we heard the Federation was movin’ in. We all got pretty drunk that night, along with another guy from our squadron, and we hatched that scheme of stealin’ our copters and blowin’ the base behind us.”
The train arrived just then. They stepped into the airlock and held on to the railings as a whirlwind of air whipped around them. By the time the door opened to allow them inside, thousands of invisible nanobots were swarming over their skin, disinfecting and clearing away irradiated tissue.
They found seats, and after a long silence, Bomber continued. He said, “Cold feet didn’t hit me ’til the morning. The more sober I got, the more I wanted to just walk away. Forget about all this rebellion and damnfool heroism. Just grab Sarah, head north and find us that cabin. She . . . wasn’t impressed with that idea. Told me we’d be turnin’ our backs on our country. Sarah was a patriot, and I was a good soldier, so when she gave the order I got in that copter and followed my Major all the way out to the Congo.
“We shot down three Federation MiGs and a flight of attack helicopters before we made it to international waters. The Feds hadn’t moved into Africa yet, the place was still in anarchy, so we figured we could use it as a base of operations without fear of anyone stopping us. Every week we launched a few raids on Fed territory. We didn’t need fuel or power or anything. Just food, ammo and a couple of mechanics to keep the copters serviced.
“We paid for that by hirin’ ourselves out as mercs to African warlords. Jamie didn’t like that one bit, but he went along with it ’cause I told him it was the only way. Then, one day, he refused to fire on a supposed medical compound that — we were told — was bein’ used as a torture camp for POWs. Sarah wasn’t with us that day, so I had to give him the order to fire. He did, and he didn’t stop until we saw women and children runnin’ out of the tents, burning.
“The argument was bad, back at our little base. Sarah backed me up. Said that it wasn’t our fault if we got faulty intel, and whatever happened on these merc missions wasn’t on our heads. Jamie didn’t want to hear it. Too sick to his stomach to listen. Next morning he got into his copter and flew away without a word.
“Of course, the stupid bastard didn’t have much choice about where to go. The Federation covered about half the planet at this point and they wanted him hanged. The Recommunista would welcome him with a smile, and the next morning he’d wake up in a Siberian gulag without his bird. He’d had enough of Africa as well, so where could he go?”
Gina answered, “Hong Kong.” Bomber nodded.
“Negotiated a deal with their foreign minister. Contract all signed and dated. Then he flew over there. The foreign minister was there to greet him as he landed at the StateSec building. And so were a platoon of Feds, waitin’ for him as he walked in the door.”
He bit his lip, remembering. “When they were done with the questioning they planned to ship him to a max-security place in Australia. Sarah and I planned and plotted for weeks, but when we attacked the convoy, they were ready for us. They knew we were coming and wanted to take us out of the picture forever. Don’t know how we stayed alive for as long as we did. Shot down six of the bastards, but then Sarah took a missile to her rotor assembly and went down over a small island chain. My bird was already damaged, without her I didn’t stand a chance. I had no choice but to run.”
“So what happened?” asked Gina, enraptured and torn with heartache. Bomber never spoke to anyone this much. At least not for as long as she’d known him.
“Don’t know for sure what happened next, but it ain’t hard to guess. I turned away and piled on the power, but then there was a bright light behind me, all my instruments goin’ crazy, and this shockwave slapped me right out of the sky. Nuke. Had to be Sarah’s bird losin’ containment. Next thing I know, I wake up on a Chinese beach in what’s left of my copter. Nothing but a skeleton. Later on I hear the news that Jamie’s prison transport crashed just after the explosion, all passengers dead.” He shrugged. “They kept lookin’ for me after that, but not very hard. Never sure if I was alive or dead. I kept ’em guessing. Made some connections, destroyed some records, removed some people. Anytime one of my aliases comes up in a Fed database, I get the file and all related info trashed. Gotta pay people through the nose to do it, though.”
Gina couldn’t think of anything to say into the silence. He might be lying through his teeth, just playing on her emotions, but she believed every word of the story.
“It’s alright, though,” he said at last. “Everything passes. She understood that. She used to say to me, ‘I think life’s like a street, y’know? It’s one-way only, and you can’t stop running for long enough to appreciate anything properly before you’ve passed it by.'” He almost smiled. “She was smart, my Sarah.”
“Do you . . .” Gina started, but couldn’t quite say it. More than anything she wanted to ask for his name, but the moment was gone. She knew he wouldn’t give it to her. Not yet. Instead she put an arm round his shoulder and sat silently until the train pulled up at their station.
Each part of the city had its own subway terminal, and from there a network of tunnels snaked up to the surface to link individual structures together. Mostly old apartment buildings with a coat of mirror paint slapped on. You could see them through the transparent tunnel walls, glittering like alien spacecraft in the midday sun.
They marched onwards and upwards, only to stop at the ancient wooden door with some hesitation. The Vernon building was quite old indeed, built long before the bombs, updated only with a slap-dash paint job and now slowly crumbling to dust. The concrete grounds around it were bleached white by UV radiation. On the inside, the lights browned out every few seconds and the anti-UV paint peeled right off the walls wherever you touched them. Gina had to wonder if anyone could live here for long without dropping dead of something.
“This is the place?” she said.
“Yeah.” He coughed up some dust and looked around without expression. The stairwell was all but blocked with fallen plaster, wood and chunks of concrete. Only a tiny path through the devastation suggested that the building was still inhabited, faint tracks in the plaster dust. “Nice neighbourhood. Reminds me of where I grew up. Let’s piss on somethin’, we’ll fit right in.” He placed his ear to the door to listen for a long minute. Finally he pulled away. “Well, I can’t hear anyone. And I’m sure the upstandin’ locals here wouldn’t hesitate a moment in running to the cops if anyone happened to break in . . .”
She chuckled, “They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Besides, shouldn’t we knock first? There might still be someone living there.”
“Fuck ’em,” he replied and kicked in the door. He had a gun at the ready, and Gina wrapped her hand around the Mk5, just in case.
The inside was much like the outside. Heaps of rubbish thrown about at random, furniture broken down into its component pieces. Sound of dripping water. An old kitchen sink still clung to the wall in bitter defiance of its situation. A worn-out mattress lay in one corner, surrounded by scattered beer bottles and food wrappers, but even that looked like it hadn’t been touched in some time.
“Squatters,” said Bomber, kneeling by the remains. “Looks like they cleared out a while ago. Couple months, maybe more.”
“So if Gabriel really was here, then there’s not likely to be anything left, huh?” Gina sighed. She felt a little bit deflated. Whatever she’d expected out of the place, this wasn’t it.
Bomber shrugged. “People leave behind a surprisin’ amount of junk in their old hideouts. You never know.” He looked up a moment in thought, checking his mental references. “Most of the conclusions right now are guesswork, but it’s good guesswork. We have a male aged between 25 and 40. My source says he was here until about ten years ago, and this is the earliest record I could find of him. Hidden away in an obscure civilian database. Weird shipments logged to this address under the name of Mr. Turner, one of his old aliases.”
“What kind of shipments?” asked Gina.
“I don’t know. I mean, I know what he ordered, but I don’t know what it is. Nanostuff. That’s what convinced me it was Gabriel. Some pretty far-out materials at the time, really skirtin’ the law.” He stood up again to examine another corner, then the sink. “Anyway, my point is, that’s only ten years accounted for. There’s at least fifteen that I can’t find any record of.” At length he paused his search to add, “See anything?”
“Lots,” she answered, “but nothing I’d care to remember.”
Bomber kicked over a pile of rubbish and made a face. An old refrigerator festered at the bottom of the pile, its front door and power cord long gone. Flies and maggots crawled around in what must have once been food. He put on a plastic glove and pulled a syringe out of the refuse, sniffed it. “Just drugs,” he said as he threw it away.
Between them they tore the place apart down to the floorboards, and found nothing. No trace of Gabriel ever having been there. Gina sat down heavily, tired and nauseous from the smell. Bomber picked a spot next to her. Sweat dripped down his face.
“Maybe . . .” He shrugged. “Maybe my source was wrong. If he was here, he should’ve left some trace, and I’m not seein’ any.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she countered. “Could be we’re just being too simple about it. You said this place had squatters in it, and we don’t know how many people before that. They’d have found anything obvious and sold it.”
“Yeah, but can you imagine tryin’ to search this place for a hidden button? I didn’t exactly bring high-tech scanning gear.”
“We might not have to.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. If she had a link to Gabriel in her head, and he could use it to spy on her, there wasn’t any reason why she couldn’t use it on him. She pretended the Spice trance was on her, and reached inside where the little flicker of him would be.
The burnt city flashed in front of her eyes, ash people dancing in the wind, but she shook it off and swallowed her distress. Pushing further. The link gave way as if it were only a rusty door. The last bit of resistance disappeared. She stumbled inside, felt him looking up in surprise from a book of numbers. Sent him a little mental wave. Quickly, she thought and dove into his memory.
Years of sounds and images passed by her, too fast and jumbled to make out. She only slowed down when she recognised the little flat in Austin, if only by the painted-over windows. It was clean now. Chemically clean, with electronic equipment strewn about the place, and a small chemical set on a table in the corner. She delved further with lightning speed. Gabriel was overcoming his surprise, resisting her probe. Not much time left.
She watched him pop loose one of the floorboards, watched him hide a small plastic bag underneath making sure nobody else saw him. Then he quietly nailed the board back into place. Slight edge of nervousness in his jerky movements. Gina seized on the image, committed it to memory — and the next moment found herself ungraciously booted back to the real world with a splitting headache pounding between her ears.
Still, the headache didn’t diminish her sense of victory. She’d done it. Not quite sure what she’d done or how, but whatever it was, it had been done. The only thing she could make out from Gabriel now was a reproachful feeling of, Don’t try that again.
Getting up, she found the rotted floorboard, pulled it loose of its nails and grabbed the still-decaying bag. “Let’s go,” she told Bomber hurriedly. “He knows where we are now.”
“What? What the hell just happened?” he asked, following behind.
She smiled over her shoulder, hitting the stairs at a run, and gasped, “When I find out, I’ll let you know!”
