An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (24 page)

“Audit?” asked the other courageous traveler
.

“Naw
.
I’m here to pick up a delivery,” he dissembled uncomfortably
.
His eyes darted over the
imposing
black monolith and the one place he didn’t want to be any closer to
.

“Oh
.
Metros say I made a seven figure bonus last year
.
It wasn’t even high six and I have the receipts to prove it
.”

“Good luck to you
.
Those police auditors can be vicious
.”

“Yeah, I know
.
I’ve been losing sleep for the last two weeks
.”

Tony shortened his stride
.
The lie he offered provided him with the best option
.
If he turned around and caught another bus
,
he’d
be advertising his guilt
.
No one changed TriMets at Metro
—
no one
.
Whipping out his
solido pad
,
h
e programmed frantically, finishing just as the audit victim passed through the door, waving in irritation
.
Tony didn’t understand
,
but had to act as if
he’d
been everywhere as a courier
, as though being here meant nothing in particular
.
He fearlessly pushed through the whispery nano-curtain
,
barely feeling the full body scan it performed
.

Inside the foyer stood a smiling
twenty
-
meter propaganda solido of a Metro in
familiar blue
body armor
without his helmet
.
Gentle music, spiked with subliminal messages of respect
,
floated down
.
“We keep you and yours safe!” The imposing solido bent down and gave a young girl back her
purple teddy bear
.
The adrenaline running through
Tony’s
system shed the subliminals like
rain off a Burberry
.

Turning to the right he found a brutally ugly Metro sergeant sitting atop a
five
-
meter
-
high obsidian desk obviously
designed to intimidate anyone who hadn’t already been cowed by the display in the immense foyer
.
 

“I’m here for an
a
-a-au
dit
,” the man stammered
.

“Show me your chit,” the sergeant barked.

“Chit
?
The m
-
mail said to show up today or be forfeit.”

“You have to have a chit to get back to the auditors.”

“You didn’t send me a chit!”

“Read the law, civ
.
It clearly reads that
you’re
required to show up one week before your audit to get a chit
.
Without it we can’t do a background check on you.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Not much, civ
.
Pay the tax and the fine.”

“But
it’s
wrong!” he said turning purple with rage.

“Civ, I’m going to give you just one chance to turn around and walk out
.
If you don’t you’ll be doing five months harvesting yeast in the
Antarctic
Sea
,
and that’s
after I break all your teeth
.”

The man blanched and backed away slowly
.
Tony caught a foul whiff as the man turned and ran out the front door.

“Stupid ghit,” Tony said in fake derision
,
handing his solido pad to the desk sergeant
.
“I’m here for a pickup from
O
fficer Nguyen.”

“Pickups are in the service entrance on the level
ten
pad.”

“Yes,
O
fficer, I understand
that’s
normal, but I was told to report here to pick up something personal
,
as you can see on the pad
.”
He put as much respect in his tone as he would for the CEO of a major corporation.

“Yeah, I can see
.
Lee Nguyen is on vacation right now and he didn’t leave anything here
.
You have your databases crossed
.”

This didn’t surprise Tony
,
as he
’d
accessed
the public
ly available
Metro files for
just such an
absentee
.
“
Well, I don’t want to anger you,
O
fficer
.
If you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing
.
I get paid either way
.
I better check with my office, though
.”
He stepped away from the desk and spoke into his ring
.
“Triple Five, Eight Thousand.”

“Stanford Courier Dispatch.”

“Hey, I’m here at Metro…” Tony’s luck finally p
layed
out
.
The air in the foyer compressed, stealing his breath. He didn’t even hear the explosion
.

“What was that?” Sergeant demanded
.
Tony’s heart stuttered in his chest
.
Three full seconds silently passed before sirens within Metro began to wail
.

“This is
D
ispatch
.
What do you want?” Tony’s ring
comm
demanded
.

“Oh, they say they have no pickup from Nguyen
.”

“One second…I show no pick-up at Metro or from Nguyen
.
You must have a damaged pad or downloaded the wrong DB
.
Please return to base
.”
This also didn’t surprise Tony.

“Affirmative
.”
He cut the connection
.
“I’m sorry,
O
fficer
.
I seem to have a damaged pad
.
Can I get that back so I can get it fixed?”

“Here
.”
Frantically coordinating some other action from his net link
,
the sergeant barely offered him a glance
.
Tony scooted out the door with a heavy sigh
.
The audit victim stood quivering at the landing platform
.

“Did you hear that?” Tony asked as the TriMet number 6784 pulled up
.
His fellow traveler didn’t say anything
,
but he
had
a blank stare and his skin bore a mottled paleness
, not to mention the foul whiff coming from his pants
.
Tony felt
he’d
be just as happy to get away from this place
.

Tony dared a look in the general direction of the
Mercy
Hospital
to see a malignant
gray
cloud slowly billow
ing
around the skyscrapers of downtown
. The thick smoke
didn’t lose opacity as it expanded out and down
.
A silence that never existed in any city now cloaked
Portland
like the sheet pulled over the recently deceased.

Implement
—
Phase
Four

Back in his underground cell
,
Tony sat with a hangman’s noose twisting his guts and
Vise Grips
on his vocal cords
.

“…bomb went off at a particularly bad time as the shift change in
an
operating room caught nearly twice as many heroic medical workers at their post,” said a computer tablet sitting on a
n old
-
fashioned
maglev table between h
im
and Linc.

“The CEO of
Colonization Unlimited
, the parent company of
Mercy
Hospital
, insists the perpetrators will be caught and punished
.”
Linc leaned back in his disposable chair with half a grin
.

The picture on the solido tablet panned across the blackened chairs, walls torn in half, and a melted desktop
.
A woman cradled her bloody arm to her chest, ignoring the fact that it no longer connected to the rest of her body
.
Two small children of indeterminate sex, wrapped tightly in one another’s arms, shuffled along through the
gray
rubble with blank stares on their face
.

“This kind of
barbarism
isn’t
a form of warfare
,
but rather large
-
scale murder
.
None of these
victims
carried a gun
.
None of them threatened anyone
.”
The scene switched to
show
a morgue
,
where a row of corpses lay in body bags
,
and then flipped back to a hospital emergency room, every surface covered in
gray
dust where people
paced or sprawled on the floor,
weeping and crying
.

A vile taste crept into Tony’s mouth
.
From never having even struck someone
,
to a multiple murderer in a single stroke
.
He regretted
eating
the soup before Linc picked him up
.
He regretted it even more when he doubled over and the contents of his stomach ejected from his mouth and nose onto the floor.

“In the end, however
,
it’s
only a matter of time and resources
.
We’ve
increased our private security by seventy-five percent.” The picture snapped to thousands of Pinkertons in shiny
-
gray
riot gear
receiving
special weapons and instructions
.
“We will find them
.
We will try them
.
We will execute them.”

“To wrap up here, the Green Action Militia has claimed responsibility for a bomb that killed seven and seriously injured twenty-seven in a midmorning bombing of
Mercy
Hospital
.
Updates as they arise
.
This is Cindy Bindle reporting for
CNI
.”

“Thank you
,
Cindy
.
We return you to your regular programming currently in progress…” 

Tony wiped his mouth on his sleeve as Linc stopped the solido playback.

“Congratulations
.
One of the best kill counts we’ve had from such a small device.”

* * *
 

Brown plastic boxes piled at random acted as impromptu chairs and tables for a loudly debating quorum
.
Linc, Suet
,
and eleven others, none b
e
aring any resemblance to the next, sprawled among
st
the crates
in a loose
circle
.
Sonya sat on the floor in a perfect lotus
, her simple white cotton dress loose around her
.

“So he
lai’
one farging bomb
.
Anyone can
’
o
.
I say he’s a prob’em.”

“He questioned the orders.”

“He doesn’t know anything about security procedures
.
Just let him go.”