The Digital Plague (36 page)

I kept her in view and got my feet under me as she cartwheeled away, the lamp shutting off again. Listening to the alternate slaps of her hands and feet on the floor, I drew in a damp, ragged breath of rotten air that tasted slick and yellow. I pictured my sky—silent, a soft wind blowing, peaceful and quiet. I pictured the clouds and that electric feeling that rain was coming, and I listened to her flesh slapping against the cold floor, picturing her moving through the room, sailing over debris and bodies and circling back around to me. When gunfire erupted to my right I ignored it, made it distant thunder on the horizon, a rainstorm that wasn’t going to affect me.

The lamp flickered back on, and she was closer to me than I expected, still moving head over heels in a rapid cartwheel Glee would never have managed when she was … still with me. I barely had time to register her approach before she was on her feet in front of me, slashing savagely, her face completely expressionless, empty eyes locked on me. There was nothing there—not hatred, not anger, nothing. I stumbled backward and knocked her blade aside with my gun. She leaned low and slashed at my belly, missing by a molecule. I was off-balance; with each stagger I deflected the knife—from my face, my chest, my abdomen—sometimes with a well-placed slap of the gun, sometimes just with my arm, taking deep cuts for my trouble, since my coat offered little protection from her diamond-sharp blade. Red spittle exploded from me with each painful hitch of my chest and my legs seemed the heaviest things I’d ever lifted. My gun was just a weight in my hand. Even if I could have beaten her reflexes, which I wasn’t sure about, I couldn’t shoot Glee. I couldn’t shoot something that
looked
like Glee.

There was a quick pattern—head, belly, chest, head, belly, chest—so I took a chance, and after knocking a chest thrust aside I ducked low and barreled forward, butting my head into her belly as hard as I could and putting everything I had into pushing her back, keeping
her
off-balance.

She twisted away and I stumbled several steps before getting my balance back. As I ran in a wide circle I caught a glimpse of Belling and Lukens backed into a corner and pouring fire at three leaping figures. It was like a tableau, everyone frozen, muzzle flashes and ragged bloody people suspended in the air, Belling’s face squinted up in concentration, Lukens looking like she was going over her laundry list, bored.

When the lamp shut off again I decided it was high time I ran away. I wasn’t going to shoot her and I wasn’t going to beat those nano-sharpened reflexes. I oriented on the back of the room and sucked in as deep a breath as I could manage, my chest twitching into convulsions. I ran with a heavy, uneven tread. When the lamp flared up I didn’t need to look to know she was right on me: her slapping feet were thunderous. I threw myself up and around, my back protesting with searing pain, just in time to knock her blade aside once more. My thrust didn’t have any power behind it, though, and she immediately righted herself, diving forward. I knew at once that I didn’t have the traction or strength to get out of her range this time. This time was going to end with my guts spilled on the floor.

Then I was yanked backward, landing hard on my ass and skidding a few extra feet while Glee belly flopped onto the floor. Hands gripped my shoulders, and for a second I was floating back, staring at Glee’s red hair, my gun pointed at the center of her head out of habit, my finger on the trigger. A tiny bit of pressure and that would be it, but still I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill her again.

Marko was looming over me, a trickle of blood leaking out of his nose. He looked used up and shiny. “
You’re
the most wanted Gunner in New York?” he asked, panting. “You’re getting your ass kicked by a kid!”

“You touch her,” I hissed back, “I’ll kill
you.
” I pushed him away and climbed to my feet—slow, too fucking slow. I felt like I’d aged a thousand years, my insides cheesed out, my blood poisoned. I saw myself dying, eaten away, and then getting up again a few days later, repaired, my eyes flat, my brain consumed and used as spackle for the rest of me.

And then Glee was crashing into me again and slicing three times deep across my belly as I stumbled back toward the counter. Entirely on instinct I shoved my gun into her stomach and fired twice, knocking her little body back onto the floor just as the lamp flickered off again.

I stared into the darkness where she’d been a second before. From my right I could see flashes of light as Belling and Lukens handled their own problems, but I tuned out the gunfire. I’d killed her again. Just like I’d killed everyone. Everyone I’d ever known was dead, or would be soon. Except Dick Marin, the eternal, smiling Richard Marin, Director, SSF Internal Affairs. And, it seemed, Dennis Squalor, the ever-fucking living. Those two roaches were going to kick each other around the dead world when it was all said and done.

It was always the big shots who started this shit up. I’d been on a fucking rail for the past week, going from point A to point B, a fucking puppet. I get pinched and dragged here, I get plucked into the air by a fucking Spook and dragged there. I’m pushed into a room and there’s Glee, and I have to kill her because that’s what the fucking universe dictates. Then I have to go into another room and kill Ty Kieth—
betray
Ty Kieth—because that’s the next thing the universe wants. I’m on a rail. I’d been on a rail my whole life.

The lamp flickered back on. When I saw her there, gasping like a beached fish, dead eyes locked on me, I was almost surprised. She was bleeding heavily and obviously couldn’t breathe, but there was no writhing, no sign of pain—just those eyes, staring at me. I ran my eye over her wound and figured I’d hit an artery, and estimated she’d be dead … again … in about five minutes. Her chest spasmed, her hands clenched and unclenched, her mouth was working, but she just stared at me. I forced myself to meet her eyes and watch. I felt like I had to watch.

Dimly, I could hear gunfire. I felt Marko tugging at my coat. I ignored it all and just watched her die, the rhythmic fountains of blood getting weaker and more random, her spasms subsiding. I watched as her hands went still. I watched as her chest shuddered and stopped twitching. Her eyes didn’t change. I knew she had to be dead but her eyes remained open and on me, just as flat and empty as before. Marko’s tugging became insistent, and the gunfire came rushing back into my ears. As I stared at her, she twitched and made a horrible sucking noise. I blinked as she started to breathe again, horrible shuddering gasps as if an invisible fist were pumping her chest up and down.

The nanos were repairing her again.

I rushed forward and stood over her, pointing my gun at her head, hand trembling. But it wouldn’t do any good. A head shot wouldn’t kill her, and how many bullets would it take to damage her so much the fucking nanos couldn’t fix her? I stood there trembling—it wasn’t
fair.
It wasn’t fucking
fair,
and I wanted off the rail.

Then Marko was in my ear, pulling me away.

“Goddamn it, Mr. Cates, there’s no fucking
time!
” he shouted, his voice warped.

I jerked around and then froze. Behind Marko a trio of corpses had opened their eyes and were looking at me. I spun and saw that all over the room bodies were twitching, coming to life. I turned to Marko, opened my mouth, and the lamp died again.

For a second, there was complete silence. Then, a crash of shattering glass and shouts, crash after crash, light stabbing into the room in weak, watery shafts that outlined Stormers, their tether lines like spidery tails. I closed my eyes and thought it was probably the first time in my life I was happy to see the fucking System Pigs.

Day Ten:
Calm, Serene
Happiness

I opened my eyes and looked around. With deadly speed the Stormers, still hanging from their tether lines, scrambled up to stand in the smashed window frames, rifles hooked into belt straps, efficiently leveling their weapons and running a fast check. Painful, flesh-ripping coughs tore through me, my eyes lighting up red with each twitch as I envisioned delicate tissues ripping silently apart, bloody clouds filling the spaces between my organs.

The bodies around us were moving, slowly, like they were learning to move each muscle individually. I saw Lukens looking almost relaxed as she lay against the far wall staring up at the ceiling, her belly torn open, her intestines leaking out in loose coils. I started to look for Belling when a familiar booming voice filled the cavernous room.

“Cates, you piece of shit,” Happling shouted from above. Framed in shattered glass, he looked a little rougher than I remembered, with some new scratches bleeding on his face. He held on to a duct for balance with one hand, his other hoisting his ancient gun. “Did you really think you were going to betray us and get away with it? We knew where you were
going,
you asshole. You’re a walking
transmitter.
How stupid are you, exactly? Don’t answer.” The big cop stepped into the air and leaped down, crashing into the cracked tile of the floor with a grunt, bending his knees and putting his free hand out to steady himself as if he’d been practicing jumps like that for years. Standing, he cocked his gun and trained it on me as he stalked through the room, ignoring the twitching, stretching bodies piled up haphazardly around him.

I still had my gun in my hand, but it seemed impossible to lift, as I watched the gorilla come closer.

“I’ve never had to wait this fucking long to execute a shithead before,” Happling shouted, grinning. “The Spooks have taken back command—a fucking
hoverful
of the freaks showed up and were kind of irritated to find our Mr. Bendix leashed like a
dog
—and they’d probably order me to leave you alone, because you’re on the fucking
Person of Interest
list, but fuck ’em. They’re not here; hanging back like pussies until we clear the area. Looks like we don’t need you anymore, Mr. Cates.”

I just watched him, a bubble of reddish mucus expanding and shrinking at the end of my nose, my stomach tightening in expectation. When the big man was just a foot or two away his eyes suddenly flicked over me and he dived,
fast,
to one side as shots boomed from behind. Right where the cop had been the floor exploded into little plumes of dust. I twisted around to stare back at Belling, who stood pristine and ageless in front of the low counter that separated the waiting area from the offices, his custom Roons in each hand. The familiar smile on his face was like the universe clicking back into shape.

“Captain Happling,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t they teach you about threat analysis in Pig School?”

I heard Happling’s snarl and watched as Belling whirled into motion, streaking to his right as gunshots trailed him. The old man launched himself toward the remnants of a dividing wall that had once held a large Vid screen. As he sailed behind it, his body elegantly stretched out for a rolling landing, a whining burst of shredder fire cut into the wall just above him, carving out chunks of heavy stone.

After a moment, the Stormers all poured it on, shredder fire thumping into the wall, the noise almost palpable in the air, the wall shuddering under the onslaught. I just sat there, twisted around, watching. Happling appeared from behind me, silently padding in a wide arc until he had a view behind the wall. Face red, he turned and made a sharp cutting gesture. The shredder fire stopped immediately.

I watched as Happling crept toward the wall, holding his gun ready, down low, arms extended. My eyes were locked on the big cop. I wasn’t worried about Belling; the old man was slippery and couldn’t be trusted, and if he’d just saved my life it was for his own reasons. But I didn’t want Belling—or any Gunner, any one of
us
—to go down to a fucking System Pig. I watched him step lightly over two entwined bodies, a man and a woman who looked like they’d died in each other’s arms, and then they both unfurled like flowers blooming, arms curling up almost lazily and taking hold of Big Red.

Happling grunted and looked down with an almost comical expression of surprise. He swung his gun down and oriented on one of their heads, putting two shells into its skull. The body twitched from the impact but otherwise didn’t seem to mind, and kept pulling at the big man relentlessly, staring up at him as blood rushed out of the wound and over its face to form a slick mask of red.

As Happling’s expression took on a more desperate, worried tint, he staggered a little trying to remain upright while the two figures more or less climbed up him. Suddenly Belling streaked from his hiding place, running at full speed and then slowing in astonishment as he took in Happling’s situation. The captain looked up, face reddening, and managed to right himself long enough to throw a quick succession of shots at the old man as he ran. As Belling passed between us, barely ahead of Happling’s awkward fire, he turned his head and looked right at me.

It was time to move. None of the cops were paying any attention to me. As I watched, Belling faded behind a jumble of ruined chairs and Vid Screens. A second later the junk exploded as the shredders turned them into dust, and with a roar Happling swatted his gun down at his attackers, savagely beating them off his body inch by inch, and then he was on the move again, his shirt more or less one huge sweat stain as he sprinted toward the spot where Belling had disappeared. I knew Belling wouldn’t be there. The old man had mapped out the hiding places and could keep them on the run forever, if need be.

I started for the desk at the front of the room, my broken leg aching and protesting. I saw movement off to my right and turned my head in time to see Belling appear atop one of the metal ducts that crisscrossed the room. I paused to suck in air as he fired nonstop for a few seconds, pouring shells into the Stormers. Before they could react he’d thrown himself backward, disappearing the same way he’d gotten up there. Like any Gunner who lived beyond his teens, Belling had done the most basic thing: get to know your venue.