Perion Synthetics (44 page)

She left the lights off until they were on
the outer plaza dealing with a dozen or so stragglers. When the synnies raised
their rifles, Cyn hit the brights and used their momentary blindness to put the
Civic squarely into their stomachs. The high chassis drove the synnies to the
ground; their remains scraped against the undercarriage of the car. By the midpoint
of the plaza, they had cleared most of the AGs. Only one or two remained at the
glass doors.

“Alright, pull up right over there,” said
Gantz.

The Civic picked up speed.

“Cyn, slow it down!”

“Her highness isn’t in at the moment,” she
replied, tugging on her seatbelt. She sank further into the seat as she stomped
the accelerator.

“Goddammit, Cyn! Stop the fucking car!”

“Not so fun on the other side, is it?” she
screamed back.

They hit the three-step walkup at forty miles
per hour according to the dashboard. The glass doors shattered in front of
them, but stray lengths of metal doorframe smashed against the windshield,
obscuring their view of the lobby. Gantz felt the car strike several heavy
objects; the lobby’s centerpiece, the great stone hand of James Perion, scraped
along the passenger door and retreated. Rows of couches opened for them as
trashcans bounced in every direction. Beefy synthetics with featureless faces
tried in vain to remain upright as the tidal wave of debris washed over them.

Over the roar of destruction, a chorus of
gunfire ramped up.

Maybe it was the Ayudante chip finally
pulling its weight, but Cyn managed to cut the steering wheel hard to the left
at just the right moment to send the car into a drift. It screeched to a halt a
mere three feet from the elevators, which Gantz could now see through the
smashed passenger window. The next moment, Cyn was pushing on his shoulder.

“Out,” she screamed, as bullets tore through
the cabin.

Gantz opened the door and crawled to the
elevator. He reached up for the call button as sections of the marble wall
exploded around his hand. When the doors opened, Cyn’s bony fingers were on his
shoulder, pushing him inside. Cyn fell on top of him and together they tumbled
to the back. Their legs intertwined; for a brief moment, Gantz felt an immense
heat on his thigh.

Cyn was breathing hard, and her narrow eyes
barely touched Gantz’ before she pushed off of him and threw herself against
the side of the car. She sprang to her feet and fell towards the vidscreen.

“Come on,” she said, pawing at the numbers.

When the doors closed and the elevator started
to rise, she sank to the floor and began to hyperventilate.

Gantz watched her tremble, watched the large
vein in her neck try to push its way out of her skin. Cyn brought her knees to
her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She squeezed as convulsions swept
through her body.

The Ayudante had pushed her too hard,
thought Gantz. Now it was killing—

A rough cry passed Cyn’s smiling lips. It
rose to a tremulous pitch before cutting out abruptly. Then she was laughing
through deep breaths and wiping the sweat from her forehead. One hand went to
her chest as the other pulled her feet closer.

She looked over at Gantz.

“What?” she asked. “Never seen a girl come
before?”

The elevator began to hum as it reached its cruising speed.

“Does that happen every time?” asked Gantz.

Cyn climbed to her feet and brushed the dust
from her arms. The previous moment’s frenzy had all but disappeared, leaving
behind a steely demeanor. To look at her, you wouldn’t have guessed she had
just survived a one-sided firefight.

“Only when it’s good,” she replied, trying
to smile. She tapped the back of her neck. “The Ayudante wasn’t designed for
women. Even in the MoA, female soldiers are given different chips. Vergaras, I
think.”

“Never heard of those,” said Gantz. He stood
and leaned against the back of the car, evoking a crunching sound from the
busted mirror.

“South American imports. Cross between a
Brazilian med-tech assist and a Chilean social engineering mod. Makes their
women healers and infiltrators. The Ayudante was meant for men, so sometimes it
gets the signals wrong in the heat of the moment. But I tell you what, Chief.
If it’s wrong…”

“Seems like a liability to me,” said Gantz.
He approached the vidscreen and cleared the floor selection. In her haste to
get the elevator moving, Cyn had hit every floor between fifty and seventy.
Gantz keyed in the code for the 89
^th
floor and stepped back.

“What’s on eighty-nine?”

“The last of the occupied floors. We climb
from there until we find what we’re looking for. Telecom equipment starts on
one hundred and goes up to the top.”

The elevator slowed as the counter climbed
into the eighties. There was just enough vibration from the brakes engaging to
dislodge more glass from the sides of the car. Cyn lifted the shotgun as the
doors parted.

Safety lights lit the hallway heading away
from the elevator. They extended to the outer walls and then broke off in
opposite directions. Gantz noticed a slight curvature of the far wall; they
were now high enough to discern the outer shape of the Spire.

“Step back,” he said, moving between Cyn and
the silver railing on the back of the car. It was already coming loose from the
wall; Gantz’ kick freed it from its anchors. He dragged the rail and laid it
across the threshold.

Gantz joined Cyn outside the elevator and
watched as the doors came together, hit the rail, and retracted.

“That’ll slow them down,” he said. “The
other elevators only go up to seventy. If anyone tries to follow us, they’ll
have to walk up the rest of the way.”

Gantz led Cyn into the darkness, his 9mm
pointed at the floor, his thumb digging into the safety. At the fork in the
hallway, they paused and listened.

Silence.

“Either this plan is fucking genius,” said
Gantz, “or it’s so stupid Kessler doesn’t even think we’d try it.”

Cyn shrugged. “Maybe it’s both.”

“Maybe it’s both,” Gantz repeated, under his
breath. He turned left down the corridor and pressed forward. “Maybe it’s both,
maybe it’s both.”

It felt like they had walked a hundred and
eighty degrees around the Spire when the path finally broke towards center
again. It led into a control room filled with five empty desks set in front of
a wall of segmented vidscreens. Each section showed a video feed from somewhere
in the building, including the deserted security offices on the fifth floor and
the smoldering remains of a slagged Civic in the lobby. There, a battalion of
Scorpios sorted through their fallen brothers, deciding which could still fight
and which were destined for the scrap yards on the north side of The Fringe.
Walking amongst them like a general was a slender frame Gantz immediately
recognized.

“I don’t get it,” said Cyn. “Why is this
room all the way up here?”

“Secondary monitoring,” said Gantz. “We have
a similar room down on five, but it only really covers the publicly accessible
parts of the building. Chuck designed a half-dozen watcher synnies to man these
stations. From here, they can dispatch response teams anywhere in the Spire.”

“They’re the ones who saw me enter the
building, weren’t they?”

Cyn approached the vidscreens. The feeds
were organized by floor, going from sub-levels on the left to the
claustrophobic equipment floors on the right. Cyn stubbed her finger against an
image of a legless synny impaled on a spike. It wasn’t the same one she had
blown away, but its arms hung lifelessly at its side just the same.

“Probably. Not all of their activity comes
through me directly. Just the big stuff.” Gantz paused, thought about how he
had heard the news about Cyn. “Shit, sometimes not even the big stuff.”

Cyn traced up the column and moved left by
one. “Here,” she said, tapping the screen. “I think this is where we need to
go. Those look like high-grade LMR cables, the same ones I saw coming out of
the dishes outside.”

Gantz imagined what outside was like this
high above the ground.

“And, we really need to get going,” she
continued.

“What is it?”

Gantz joined her at the wall and followed
her finger to a section of the vidscreen. The feed showed a control room and
two figures standing at the far wall. Gantz looked over his shoulder at the
camera above the door.

Cyn jogged to the other end of the wall.
“They’re moving to the elevators.”

“Then
we’re
moving,” said Gantz,
brushing past her.

A service door to the left of the video wall
led into a back room. There, thick evercrete columns housing the elevators
climbed into the ceiling. Gantz walked around the center column and found the
maintenance ladder—little more than steel rungs stapled into the evercrete.
After holstering his gun, he began to climb.

They passed the many floors in silence.
Gantz felt the soreness in his arms after only a few levels; they burned with
every latch of his hand on a new rung. Below him, Cyn seemed to be having an
easier time, though she did let out her fair share of grunts.

Gantz wondered how much the augments helped,
whether they were worth the money and the pain.

“I need a moment,” he said, wiping the sweat
away from his eyes. He slapped the
122
painted beside the ladder.

Cyn climbed up through the floor and found a
wall to lean against. Around her, unused electronics sat atop rolling carts,
their wires impossibly tangled.

“I thought the Chief of Police would be in
better shape,” said Cyn. She didn’t try to disguise her labored breathing.

“Says the Umbra augment.”

Cyn laughed and ran her fingers through a
pile on a nearby cart. “I can’t believe you guys still have this stuff around.
This is BBS-era equipment.” She plucked an Ethernet coupler from the pile and
slipped it into her pocket.

Gantz took a seat on the floor next to the
ladder. “You mean it’s pre-Cynthia, so therefore useless, right?”

“Not useless, but not what I would expect to
find here in the high tech capital of the world.”

“You could say the same thing about
yourself. Is this what you had in mind when you signed on for the job?”

Cyn shook her head. “I didn’t think it would
take this long, to be honest. Just a quick in-out, if you know what I mean.
Lincoln was sure there was something going down behind the media silence. He’s
gonna shit himself when he finds out what you and I are doing.”

There was something in her voice.

“You like him?”

“Lincoln? Sure. We have a lot in common. He
hates Vinestead, I hate Vinestead. He’s into body mods, I’m into augmentation.”
She paused to examine a line card from an old Orion. “He’s black, I like
pissing off my parents.”

“Huh,” said Gantz. “Pays you well, I’m
guessing?”

“It’s not Perion money, but I get by. I’ve
actually been saving up for a new skin graft. It uses grow wire to create a
protective mesh under your skin, like a bulletproof vest you wear on the
inside. They’re crazy expensive though. I’ve only known a few people who have
them.”

“Why not just make the jump to full
synthetic? Perion gave you a chance.”

Cyn turned and kicked her hip out to the
side. She ran a hand from her face down to her stomach. “Not even the great
J.K. Perion could synthesize this.” She laughed at herself.

“I don’t know,” said Gantz, climbing to his
feet. “You saw the warehouse. You saw Roberta. Girls like you are going to have
some serious competition if the Virgo models ever make it to market. The coming
generation of men will build themselves a synthetic harem and call it a day.”

“Flesh will always top machine,” said Cyn.
“You can bet your pension on it.”

Gantz put one hand on the ladder. “Yeah, but
machines are easier.” He began to climb again, grunting between his sentences.
“All the time it takes to meet the right person, to build up the confidence to
talk to them. You take them out, spend your money…”

“I’m familiar with the male point of view,”
said Cyn from below.

“What I’m saying is, it’s easier to keep a synthetic
in the house than work a relationship with a real person. The synny does all
the chores, makes all the meals, and fucks for hours without complaint or need
for satisfaction. What male isn’t going to choose that over an emotional,
unreasonable, and sometimes volatile human?”

“We’re not always that way.”

“Of course not,” said Gantz. “Sometimes
you’re on your period.”

Something caught his left foot and pushed it
to the side. He missed the next rung and fell, pulling his arms taut. The pain
rushed through his hands in a million little splinters.

“Don’t be an asshole, Gantz. Flaws are what
keep us human.”

“Synnies don’t have flaws. They have bugs
and whole teams of lab coats to stamp them out. They’ll never have a bad day at
work. They’ll never ask their owners if they look fat in these jeans.”

“Yes, every man’s fantasy,” said Cyn. “All
the sex he can handle without any of the baggage. Well, Mr. Chief, it’s not all
fucking and fondue; shit takes work.”

Gantz glanced downwards. “Are you and
Lincoln working on your shit?”

“No,” she replied. “Company ink and all
that. Besides, he probably doesn’t want to deal with my monthly lady business.
Maybe if I augment my cooch he’ll pay more attention to me.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” said Gantz.

They climbed five more floors before Cyn
spoke again, muttering
asshole
under her breath.

“One thirty,” said Gantz, pausing at the
landing.

There was something different about this
level, and it took a moment of staring at the black walls to realize they were
heavily tinted windows. On closer inspection, Gantz found he could see the city
if he pressed his face against the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes.
He moved around the perimeter until he found what he was looking for.