Digital Plague

VIII Day Five: You’ve just Killed me

Watching us, the two Crushers stood with their thumbs hooked into their belt loops, their uniforms sagging and wrinkled. One was a round, moon-faced Asian whose mouth worked absently in a constant chewing motion. The other was tall, pale, and rail thin, his pants too short for his legs, a thin, wispy beard shooting off his sharp chin. They slouched at the flimsy metal gate set up across Eighth Avenue and watched me approach with what they imagined were hardassed stares. The wind was a constant moan around us, dry and dustless, all the snow held in the gelatin-like yellow slush that clung to everything, making the world look rotted.

“Avery,” the tall one said as Jabali and I stopped in front of them. I was wearing my Special Occasion suit, for when I needed to overawe my business partners with my wealth and material success. It was a little floppy in the arms and legs but close enough, and expensive looking. When going uptown to deal with civilians, it paid to look the part. I’d cleaned up Jabali as much as I could, which wasn’t saying much, but he’d pass if he kept his mouth shut.

The checkpoints had gone up in record time overnight, and they’d drawn all the Crushers from the reserves, putting everyone on active duty. New York felt strange to me, thinned. Walking up Hudson Street in the morning there’d been elbow room to spare, and the people who were out pushing through fat flakes of acidic snow and the muffled, sound-eating air all seemed to move faster, scuttling as quickly through the street as they could. Rumors were already coming fast about a sickness, and people were staying indoors. I’d seen some dead bodies, too, just slumped here and there, looking like some wild animal had torn into them, the deep blue bruises on their necks and arms burst open, bloody, and no one willing to get near enough to them to move them off the street.

“Officer Stanley,” I said to the skinny Crusher, nodding. “And Mongo.”

The moon-man didn’t react beyond a slow, deliberate blinking of his eyes. I raised an eyebrow at Officer Stanley. “The SSF isn’t sparing any expense in recruiting, huh?”

Stanley turned his head and spat on the street, just a few inches away from my feet. “Pook can move pretty light on his feet, you give him a reason. You got business uptown, Avery? There’s an Action Item about you from yesterday, you know.”

I nodded, putting on the most serious face I could summon. “I have an appointment,” I said. “You guys expecting trouble?”

There’d been a bug scare about thirteen years ago, I remembered. Turned out to be the fucking Brazilian flu, just a few thousand people dead and those mostly on their last legs to begin with, but for a few days everyone hid inside and only came out with these ridiculous masks on, keeping their distance. I remembered negotiating a job from across the fucking street, shouting at my client because he wouldn’t get any closer to me.

This felt worse. Names pushed through my head: Candida Murrow, she died in a very… unusual way, Gleason, she dead, Wa too, Pickering. Whatever this was, I was getting the feeling it had started with my people. With me, right around the time I’d been on my knees in Newark with a gun to my head and not shot. I’d done enough evil in my time, the cosmos had me on its list, no doubt. But why hadn’t I gotten sick? Why wasn’t I dead? This shit didn’t make sense.

I remembered the distorted voice: This is not an execution… this is an assassination. Not yours. But an assassination none the fucking less.

“They don’t tell us any fucking thing,” Stanley said, hitching his pants up and giving Jabali the stinkeye for a bit. “We’re just not supposed to let anyone through without a specific order from a Captain or above.”

I nodded, looking around. “I need a pass.”

He looked away from me, suddenly interested in something across the street. Jabali, who maybe wasn’t the brightest guy in the world, had the common sense to shut the hell up and pretend to be deaf and dumb. “Fuck, Avery, you just come up here in the fucking open and-I’m not selling any passes today. You got an order, fine. Otherwise you turn around and go the fuck back to your shithole. Try again tomorrow.”

My hands curled into fists and I recited my own personal Serenity Prayer. At least Stanley wasn’t dumb enough to think he could cash in on my Action Item and bring me in himself. I scanned the street, so quiet I could hear the snow dissolving our boots and Moon-man’s heavy mouth breathing. I counted eleven Crushers, not a drop of talent among them-especially Moon-man, who looked like he had to preplan every breath. I didn’t doubt I could rush the barrier and make it, but I didn’t need any manhunts up above Twenty-third Street, so I just shook my head. “I’ll pay double.”

Stanley pursed his lips.

“No bosses around,” I said quickly. “You know me, Stanley. You know you will never hear from me on the way back across. It’ll be like I was never here.”

“Shit, Avery,” he muttered, glancing at Jabali and taking a quick scan of the street again. “Double?”

I nodded. “The usual arrangement for payment. And we find our own way back.”

Stanley shook his head, turning to spit. “Nothing’s usual anymore. The fucking Worms have been up everyone’s asses. Marin sees everything. I ain’t gonna end up in some shithole like Chengara. Not for you.”

I swore to myself. Officially, Dick Marin was director of Internal Affairs for the SSF-the King Worm. Before I’d killed Squalor for him, that’s where his power had stopped, especially since he wasn’t human anymore. He was a digitized intelligence operating through who knew how many mechanical avatars. You met Dick Marin in a room and he looked human enough, but he was just a remote-control Droid, with the real Marin, if that word meant anything, in a server somewhere. As such, there was low-level programming that controlled his behavior, and he’d been allowed to terrify only the System Pigs-who were all scared shitless of him, since he was the only person empowered to fuck with them.

But when I’d killed Squalor-when Marin had manipulated me into killing Squalor-he’d been able to declare a State of Emergency, and under his own obscure rules that had given him a much wider portfolio to work with. Officially, the Emergency continued, though you didn’t hear about it much anymore. It bubbled in the background and allowed Marin to basically run the whole fucking System. A shadow emperor. He’d been closing his fist around everything ever since, and I was getting sick of it.

From what I’d heard, so were the Joint Council Undersecretaries, who should have benefited from events, too. Marin had had a free hand for years, but I’d heard rumors that the Undersecretaries were getting their shit together, and it promised to be an interesting time, assuming any of us survived.

One thing hadn’t changed, though: yen ran the world and guys like Stanley had to grift a bit just to survive. “Double plus a bonus,” I said, “for being flexible. We let it drift for now, and you touch me for it anytime you like. You know I’m good for it.”

I had a reputation, and it came in handy sometimes.

“Fuck,” he muttered, spinning around to see who was watching. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” He looked at me again and pulled on his little beard. “All right,” he finally said, stepping aside and gesturing at Moon-man. “Open ’er up. Wait, wait a fucking sec,” he muttered, pulling me close and miming examining me. “Just in case, let’s at least look like you have a pass.” I let him shove me around a bit, amused, because if any of the System Pigs were watching, he was pretty much going to get the shit beat out of him, or worse, no matter what kind of dumb show he put on. Finally, he patted me down and pushed me to the other side, grabbing Jabali by the lapels. Jabali didn’t like it, but he took it. He was the sort of lifetime soldier who could hold his temper, and think twice-useful.

“All right, move,” he growled, turning away. “Don’t fucking dawdle.”

I didn’t pause for more conversation; Jabali and I stepped quickly through the barricade and kept walking, turning onto a side street as soon as we could. When the checkpoint had disappeared around the corner, Jabali cursed softly.

“Fucking hate sucking their dicks,” he muttered. “Those assholes aren’t worth shit.”

I didn’t say anything. Jabali was a Taker, and a good one; he’d tracked down Dr. Daniel Terries for me in just a few hours. But I’d been unable to discourage his tendency to think I gave a shit about what he thought.

While we walked, trying to approximate the alien gait of men without worries, I studied him, looking for any sign that he was sick or impaired in some way. The math was easy: Gleason had been sick a day and a half after we came back from Newark and dead in three. This shit didn’t take time. He looked okay, though.

As we made our way uptown, the streets started to fill up a little, people better dressed and a little cheerier than I was used to, but not so different. The whole world was a fucking shit pyramid. Shit ran downhill and turned the wheel, kept things burning, but you had to have a lot of people trying to get out of the way of the shit or nothing much happened. These people were a little higher on the pyramid, maybe, but they were running for shelter just like the rest of us. They sure smelled better, although the mix of colognes and perfumes in the air made my head ache.

Jabali lumbered along next to me, looking like a hood. It was in his walk-you could put him in a decent suit, but the bastard still walked like a criminal-half cocky strut, half paranoid scuttle. But he looked healthy, normal. I had the strange feeling of everything being on pause, like that moment before a storm when you can feel the electricity in the air but nothing’s started yet, and kept stealing glances at him, expecting to see a sudden bruise on his neck like I’d seen downtown.

He caught me looking at him and smiled nervously, his hair flopping about. “Feel like ev’ryone is staring at me, boss,” he said, shrugging his coat on.

I nodded. A lot of people couldn’t handle being uptown-you learned how to live a certain way, you learned to never take shit and never back off, to do your little dance every day, the toughest bastard in the room, any room, no matter what-and it was hard to try and act like a civilian. Some of us just couldn’t do it. I knew real killers who wouldn’t go past Twenty-third Street for anything because they couldn’t stand the looks they got.

Terries lived around Fiftieth Street, real posh. As we humped up and across town, my skin started to crawl: everyone was clean, and styled, and the weirdest part was the fucking hum of conversation. Everyone was talking and making no effort to hide the fact, laughing, shouting. I’d never thought of downtown as quiet before. As we walked, it was like everyone was fucking shouting, and I was sweating, my hair standing on end. I made my living being fucking quiet. Noise equaled death, where I came from.

“Spare some yen?”

I started, one hand reaching for my piece before I caught myself. The Monk danced in front of me, limping on a damaged leg that had been repaired with a lead pipe welded at the knee. It wore a ragged suit of clothes, but its white plastic face was still perfect, clean and unmarred, floating like a moon in front of me. We were in an open area, the street widening out and making me dizzy with so much space. A church loomed up on our right, two sharp little spiky towers reaching for the sky, the three huge doors capped by triangular masonry. It was impossibly big, ancient stone wearing away under the weather, covered in bird shit and chipped to hell. I blinked stupidly as we walked past, herding the Tin Man ahead of us. Five or six other Monks sat on the church’s steps, crouching, like birds.

I hadn’t been this close to a Monk in years. It had put on the best smile it could manage, which wasn’t much, and kept its balance magically as it hopped backward on its ruined leg. It looked from me to Jabali and back again, and I tensed up; the Monks were equipped with Optical Facial Recognition circuits, and back when they’d been hooked up to the Electric Church’s net they’d been able to scan your face and come up with your name and any public information on you that was out there. The Electric Church was gone, but if they’d scanned you years ago, they still had the info, and sometimes a Monk would call you by name.

I looked past it at the wide, dizzying expanse of street ahead of us. “Get the fuck out of my way,” I growled. I was still acting my part. You never knew who might be paying attention.

It scuttled away and accosted someone behind us. I turned my head left and stared into the SSF hover yard, a big empty lot a block from The Rock where the cops kept a fleet of your standard hovers-small, two-or three-man units, not the big fat ones that could be stuffed with Stormers. A bunch of Crushers and officers were hanging around outside it, and some stared back at me as I walked. It was always bad to stare at the System Pigs. They didn’t care for it and liked to teach lessons, but I couldn’t make my head turn back. The hovers all looked scruffy and beat-up, sporting unmatched armor plating and evidence of rough handling. Not a single one looked new.

“Down here,” Jabali said, gesturing to the right. I turned with him and we headed down the side street, away from The Rock, otherwise known as Cop fucking Central. Cop Central was a goddamn planet unto itself, four square city blocks of everything cop. It had its own gravity, and people like me wound up breaking up in its atmosphere if we got too close. The main tower was ancient and soared up above us, the tallest building in New York, with hovers landing and taking off from the roof all day long.

As we walked, I had to consciously adjust my pace, slowing down to an unconcerned roll while my heart pounded in my chest, pushing my acid blood around so it could slowly dissolve my bones. You stayed on the sidewalks, too, because of the pedicabs that were always barreling down the middle, shouting people out of the way, two or three fat fucks sitting in the back. As I stepped aside to let one skinny, exhausted bastard scamper past with his freight shouting at him to move his ass, I thought maybe I hadn’t picked such a bad path after all. I might be royally fucked, but at least I wasn’t that guy.

Jabali just grunted as we passed the spot. Dr. Daniel Terries lived in a narrow five-story building that looked as if it was held up by the buildings around it. I walked past it without turning my head. It was an old building-every building in New York was old-but it was obviously upgraded, reinforced and outfitted with the standard amenities. We went around the block a few times, stealing glances as we passed, finally crossing the street and paying two hundred yen for two tiny coffee drinks from a stand. I put my back against a wall and looked at anything but the building, just getting snapshots as I turned my head this way and that, enjoying the goddamn hell out of my thimble of warm, brownish syrup.

There would be a shell system, of course, providing basic but useless security and valet services. An escalator, air system, Vid dish on the roof-middle-class luxury. I didn’t expect to find much by way of real trouble getting in. It was crazy to break into a building just blocks away from Cop Central. Crazy was sometimes the best camouflage you could have.

“What now, boss?”

I shrugged. “We wait.”

Waiting was the number one skill a Gunner could have. Half the stories you heard about Canny Orel involved him waiting heroic lengths of time, just being a statue in shadows, barely breathing. Going in didn’t pay. Between the inadequate security shell and the expensive and equally useless inner security door, we’d lose precious seconds busting our way in, and Terries could make a run for it or maybe even call the cops-and since he was a government official, they might even come, though rumor had it the SSF and the civilian government had no love lost between them. No, we had to grab him off the street, and we had to do it clean and fast.

I just wanted to talk to the man, find out what he knew, without someone pressing their mental thumb into the soft spot in my brain. A Vid screen was located above the roof of a tall, skinny building with a burned-out top floor. I didn’t think there was anywhere in New York you could stand and not be in view of a Vid; the fucking government was forever putting new ones up and swapping out the old ones for bigger versions with new features. You even found them inside buildings, in the oddest places. Silently, this one spelled out exciting news: the civilian government-which was the Undersecretaries, since the Joint Council they nominally served was just a bunch of defunct husks buried under London-had created, by decree, a reconstituted System Military, to be funded immediately. There hadn’t been an army since Unification. Who needed an army? The dedicated and skilled members of our beloved System Security Force kept us snug, and we were one world now, without borders.

I lit a cigarette and ignored Jabali’s longing look. I could wait if I had to. Not like a statue, but I doubted any of the stories we heard about Canny Orel were all that true. He’d probably killed a lot of people, but shit, killing people was easy. Killing a lot of them just made you ambitious.

I was halfway through the pack when Jabali nudged my shoulder, looking away down the block.

“There he is, boss. White hair, walking stick.”

I squinted across the street and saw him-a tall, straight-backed man in a blue suit, a gnarled wooden walking stick in one hand. He wasn’t that old, maybe a little older than me, but he looked healthy, his skin reddish and shining even from twenty feet away, his hair white, pure. He walked rapidly, staring down at a small handheld device, and people instinctively got out of his way.

I gestured at Terries’ house. “Get his door,” I said, and launched myself into the crowd. Dodging pedicabs and perfumed men and women, I angled my way behind the good doctor and hurried to catch up with him. I slid my blade into my hand, the taped handle once again reassuring and solid. I thought of Gleason as I rushed the last two feet and stepped up close behind Terries, pushing the blade lightly against his back and putting my hand on his shoulder. Amateurs grabbed their marks around the neck or shoulders. It felt safer, having a big handful of your mark. But it gave them leverage on you, and if your mark had any talent at all, they’d flip you or roll you off them, spin you around and stab you in the guts while you stared at them, wide-eyed, amazed. Best to stay separate from them.

He stiffened. “Don’t stop,” I said in a low voice. “Keep walking. See the man with the ridiculous hair by your door? He will fucking shoot you if you stop moving toward him.”

To his credit, he recovered quickly and kept moving. “I don’t carry credit dongles,” he said.

“Fuck your credit dongles, Doc,” I said, nodding at Jabali. “We just want to talk. Don’t worry, I have it on good authority you want to talk to me.”

“Yes?” The man’s voice was almost melodious, almost soothing, even in a whisper. “And who are you?”

“Avery Cates, Doc,” I said. “You sent some monkeys to collect me yesterday. Sorry I had to kill them all.”

He stumbled a little, and a mean little flare of satisfaction lit up inside me for a second. “What’s the matter, Doc? I thought you wanted to talk to me.”

We reached his door, where Jabali was doing a creditable impression of a hardass. “Ah, Mr. Cates,” Terries said softly, suddenly sounding old and frail. “You’ve just killed me.”