Digital Plague

XXXII Day Ten: This is a Controlled Burn

Unconcerned with Best Practices-coughing up sewage and my own blood, I was ready to take a head shot and be done with it-coming up was like being born again. Covered in blood and grime, I pushed my way through a narrow shaft, oozing out onto the damp floor of a subbasement far below street level. It was cold, and I lay there hacking up loose, rust-flavored phlegm and shivering, feeling sorry for myself. I should have been at the top of my game by now, rich and happy. Instead, here I was buried underground, dying and alone. I’d wasted the past five years on petty revenge, and for what? A few dead cops, the System still alive and well, Dick Marin still immortal and everywhere.

Me, dying alone and underground. The game had been stacked against me, and I didn’t like it. I intended to find some way to shake it up.

After a minute or two of gasping on the cold concrete like a fish out of water, I felt my chest ease up a little and the burning gashes on my arms and thighs subsided. I got to my feet and tried to get my bearings. I knew the sewers, and finding Bellevue through them hadn’t been so hard, but I’d never been on this level, and my memories weren’t very helpful. Bellevue was a huge complex, and wasn’t designed for internal defense-there was no easy way to close off sections of it. As I crept around the gloomy space, feet squishing inside my tattered boots, leg aching steadily, I imagined the Monks spread thin, concentrating on the perimeter in order to defend against an external assault, the interior of the complex empty and cavernous.

The floor sloped upward, the room growing brighter as I walked, until I was standing at the bottom of a softly humming escalator, the illuminated edges of the steps gliding upward in a steady, mesmerizing rhythm. Hell, I thought, the Monks have power. The rich assholes had been in one small building and they’d been sleeping on cots, eating nutrition tabs, and crapping in a fucking hole in the floor. Maybe the Monks were going to inherit the earth after all.

Thinking about the rich assholes, I decided maybe that wasn’t the worst-case scenario.

I stepped onto the escalator and enjoyed gliding up silently through the darkness. I drew my gun and held it loosely against my hip, trying to bounce on my feet as best I could. Remarkably, I felt pretty good, aside from my aching leg and the way each breath made me wince. I felt loose and calm. Things had narrowed down to a familiar and happy point: I had to kill someone and go through hell to get to them.

At the top an automated door split open, disgorging me into an open, dark area of sloping, cracked pavement and dusty steel. Ancient paint marked out areas on the floor. Whatever the space had been, it was underground and long abandoned, though a few yellow lights gleamed weakly here and there. My wet boots echoed as I walked, leaving tracks in the dust behind me. But the smooth, settled look of all that grime made it pretty clear that no one had been down here in years, maybe decades.

I picked a direction and stuck with it, squinting through the dark for signs or any other info. After I’d gone a few dozen steps a mechanical hissing from behind stopped me with my bad leg in the air. The automated door I’d just come through had opened.

I knew I was probably well concealed in the darkness, unless these were Stormers with their vision filters or someone with a night-vision Augment. The thick silence meant that any kind of move would give my position away, but just standing in the middle of the room was a surefire way to get sniped. I let my foot sink slowly down to the pavement and then eased down until I was kneeling on my good leg, my bum one stretched out stiffly before me. I crouched, trying to make myself small, a shadow, and turned around just as slowly, swallowing my flexing chest and keeping my gun up and ready. I could hear two sets of steps approaching.

I squinted, pushing my aching eyes to see something, and nearly jumped when she spoke. “Mr. Cates, please don’t shoot at us.”

The voice was all round edges and endless vowels. I kept my gun up. “Fat Girl?”

“You can call me Lukens,” she replied, her voice sort of irritated. “We have names, eh?” A pair of dim figures began to resolve. “I’m here with Mr. Marko. I’m not threatening you, so quit moonin’ at me like that.”

I considered this. “Marko?”

“I’m here,” he said, sounding miserable. “I’ve been kidnapped. Again.”

This with an air of acceptance, as if he’d finally realized that his purpose in life was to be pushed from spot to spot by tormentors-among which, I assumed, I numbered. He paused, and Lukens shoved him from behind, a little harder than I thought necessary. I let them get closer, but kept them covered. The Stormer had her shredder looped over her shoulder and her sidearm holstered, sure enough. Marko wasn’t armed either, though he carried his black duffel and his handheld, fingers of one hand flying in complex gestures as he walked.

“Close enough,” I said when they were about ten feet away, visible in the shadows, two binary people, all whites and blacks. “Tell me why you’re here alone.” Somewhere in the darkness water was dripping.

They stopped. Lukens didn’t move or change expression. She was really a pretty girl, baby faced with a fine, long nose, that same strand of brown hair hanging in her face. She stared at me unblinkingly. “I was ordered to keep you alive, Mr. Cates. That order was not rescinded or altered. I saw you break away, and I saw one of those hard-case boys disobey orders and try to terminate you. I decided the best way to comply with my orders was to follow you. Since you left the first two floors of the building pretty clear, it was simple enough.”

She sounded sleepy. I made a mental note to ask her the secret of napping while the whole fucking world died around you. I looked at Marko. “And you?”

He opened his mouth without looking up, but Lukens interrupted. “I requisitioned Mr. Marko as a member of this detail because your chances of survival here are much higher if a Technical Associate is available.”

Marko shrugged without pausing his gesturing. “What the she-hulk here said.”

Lukens’s eyes shifted to Marko for a moment. “Shrimp,” she muttered.

I considered my options. I could handle the Stormer-I’d handled dozens of fucking Stormers-but I wasn’t sure I could afford to waste a resource. She wasn’t under my orders, but if she was going to watch my back while I encouraged Monks to shoot at me, that would be useful. And Marko doubly so, since they’d powered up the complex and the electronic locks, sensors, and security systems it contained.

“All right,” I said, lowering my gun and grunting my way up to a standing position. I hesitated, considering, looking from her frozen face to Marko’s absorbed one, bathed in greenish light. “You both should know that I’m sick,” I finally said. “I’ve been coughing blood for an hour now.”

Marko’s hand stopped, but he didn’t look up at me. Lukens didn’t flinch. She stared at me with that flat, cop stare I’d come to know so goddamn well. Like I’d just told her the time. Like I’d just told her nothing. Fucking cops.

“Gatz shut you down,” Marko said, his voice flat, hands still.

I was watching Lukens. She was still staring at me as if she were doing sums in her head. “Looks like it,” I said. “I think I broke some invisible rule. Kev was never… normal, you know, and now he’s fucking batty. Who knows what I did. Or didn’t do.”

Slowly, Marko’s hand resumed motion, gaining speed. “You’re further along than us,” he said. “We’ll be showing symptoms in an hour, maybe two, depending on when exactly the suppression field was deactivated. I’d estimate you’ve got thirteen hours before the damage done by the nanobots is irreversible.”

I smiled. “Thirteen hours?” I said, chuckling, my chest burning and trying to slip the reins again. “Mr. Marko, I could kill the whole damn System in thirteen fucking hours.” I started to cough, sputtering and flinging spit everywhere. “If… I can’t… kill… one goddamn Techie… in thirteen… hours…”

Marko finally raised his eyes from his handheld, staring at me for a few seconds. “You’ve no doubt noticed that this complex is powered. Sixteen generators, by my count. There may be more offline at the moment, coming into play as others fail. From what I can tell, this complex is about sixty percent bright, which is amazing, since I’m scanning just fifty-three Monks in the vicinity. They’re pulling an amazing load right here.”

I looked around. “You got any plans of this place?”

He nodded. “Sure. We’re one level below street level here-there’s a retro-fitted escalator over there,” he pointed off into the darkness. “But I’d recommend against it, as it’ll be the obvious choice if anyone’s waiting on us. There’s an ancient elevator shaft over there, and despite the structural concerns of such an ancient element, it would be a less obvious entrance.”

I looked in the direction he indicated but couldn’t see much. “You’re helping me?” I asked. “You know why I’m here, right?”

He shrugged without looking back at me. “You’re coughing blood, right? That means I’ll be coughing blood soon.”

I nodded. Everyone was just scrambling to stay alive. We started moving in the direction he’d indicated, me on point and Lukens bringing up the rear, shredder back in her hands.

“Why the hell do they have this place so bright?” Marko mused as we walked. “I can see firing up whatever bullshit security tech this complex has, but they’ve got this thing burning. I don’t get it.”

I swept my useless eyes this way and that as we walked, making more noise than I liked. “Fifty-three Monks, you said.”

“Yeah,” Marko agreed. “That I can see.”

Controlled burn, Kev had said to me. This is a controlled burn. “Fifty-three Monks who expect to pick up the pieces of the System in a few weeks when this is over. And this complex is a hospital.”

“Yeah? And?”

The elevator loomed up in front of us, rusting doors covered in faded, ancient graffiti, the two call buttons missing, disconnected wires spilling out of the wall. I stepped forward and ran my free hand along the seam between the doors, dust spilling down onto the gritty floor. “They’re not going to run the whole world with fifty-three fucking Monks, Mr. Marko. They need the power because they’re making more Monks.”