Versim (21 page)

“I’ll explain later,” Binda said. “Keep looking.”

33

Ervé Wrighter stood outside the Mediaplex, the sun high in the sky, the heat backing off the ground. Ah, lunchtime, he thought, as three fast-movers pounced on a fat man struggling to hide in the back of a cab. The man tried to kick them off, but one bit into his leg. The screaming changed from vulgar cursing to a keening wail—a sound that sweetened his soul.

Ervé stood atop the roof of a large SUV, surveying the scene.
 

Traffic on Sixth Avenue had come to a stop. Most drivers had fled their vehicles. Many of them were still struggling for survival in the streets, some in pockets of two or three, others alone, dying out their last breaths. All around him he heard the sounds of torment, smelled cloying blood in the air, and saw his exquisite handwork in motion.
Collides
would be his new home, he’d been promised. A city turned on its head. And this time EA would love him for it, instead of imprisoning him.

He jumped off the SUV and onto the top of a yellow cab providing a feast for three of his swift zombies as a metal-man hybrid bulldozed down the street. It was already mammoth size, a mishmash of parts that made Frankenstein look like a prom king. It stopped to rip the grill from a service truck. It dove its inhuman head inside the engine and dined to the sound of grinding metal. Not far away, he heard the last screams echoing from within the once large white tents of Bryant Park that were now splattered in crimson. The werethings that had erupted in rage managed to do the most damage. Only one of those beast-like creatures had ravaged fifty fashion industry types standing around an interrupted runaway show.
 

Ervé stood like a maestro, smiling at his creation. Already, the city was forming its defenses: the police and a small National Guard unit at the armory were doing a fine job surviving. He wanted heroes to resist. It would make things all the more interesting.

Ervé saw the Spinner bleedover investigator, Krista Cole, leave the Mediaplex front entrance. She was a small woman, not much larger than a girl. Her intellect package, though, had to be top notch. He could feel the weight of her mind as she neared. Ervé reminded himself to be careful. He feared her more than anyone else in the V because, outside, she made the impossible happen.
 

She strolled into the noon sunlight as if the day were one for shopping or dining. She looked about at the carnage, no more perturbed than if she’d seen a homeless man puke in the gutter across the street. She paused long enough to assess the situation. He saw her muttering her strange magic, the very phrases that could murder a Rend-V antag like him where he stood. She had blocked her mind from him somehow. She was in a well of darkness. He went rigid, as his gut flipped over on itself, knowing that she held in her mind a strange sort of power. Harken Cole would look him in the eye while taking his life. This one, his sister, would do it differently.

She spotted Ervé and threaded her way through the abandoned cars. She sidestepped one victim, who’d fallen halfway out, even carefully avoiding the touch of an extended arm, as if to do so would otherwise be disrespectful.

But you knew what I would do, Inspector, he thought, and you allowed it. In fact, you’re benefiting.

“Any luck, Inspector?” Ervé asked.

She climbed atop a pickup truck pushed up against Ervé’s cab. Butt first on the cabin, then with heels following, she deftly stood atop the vehicle’s cabin, eye-to-eye with him.
 

“No luck at all.” She smoothed out her blouse, as if she had wrinkled it in the process. “Your little plan of … violence had me stumped. I admit.”

Ervé grinned, happy to see her acknowledge his and Miesha’s brilliance. A genuine bleedover inspector and Spinner was tipping her hat at him. She had been played, and she knew it, but she, as expected, would come out splendidly.
 

“Your assets are safe?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’ve made arrangements.”

“And the host?”

“She’ll be one of your … minions within the hour. I’ll take responsibility to protect Dauk and Preston. In exchange, you stay away from my library once the V flips.” She looked around. “Is all of this necessary?”

“A good show, as they say.”

“Hark is waiting, and he’ll make you pay if you go up there.”

“You got it backwards: I’ll make him pay.”

“Once he fulfills his promise, he’ll find you.”

“Oh, he’ll find me all right.”

The inspector looked at him as if she might cast one of her mysterious Spinner spells. She stared annoyance with those eyes, her lips remained glued for a few precious seconds. She opened her mouth, her teeth perfectly white. He felt his breath catch. He could sense she knew she shouldn’t be there with him, but she needed him to keep her brother from destroying this entire Rend-V.

“A new wrinkle?” she asked.

“The best kind. Just in case your … brother does something unexpected.”

“So it’s true that you’re using the boy.”

“We had to make sure.”

“Is he safe?”

“Safe enough.”

“I can’t stay. I have to go. Don’t go up there.” She stared off into the middle distance, a sure sign her host was about to pull her. “Hark will have no mercy.”

She disappeared.

Ervé let his mind expand. In an instant every moving thing within a square mile snapshot in his brain, each detail in vivid color and texture: the movement of ants trailing the bloody neck of a car crash victim, the stamp of feet in a corridor, the roiling emotions of a lone woman hiding in a closet. Each one he knew intimately. One, a lieutenant on the brink of turning had remained human to await a command. This soldier stood in a deserted pharmacy, in front of a magazine rack, amidst a pile of overturned cereal boxes. He looked up from the magazine he was reading.

Ervé sent him a single message:

Get the boy.
 

Then Ervé reached into all of his soldiers who could hear. Each one paused in its ceremony of violence. A thousand heads looked up, many with crimson chins, and dead eyes.
 

It is time
.

They heard and, each one, began to move forward, heading for the Mediaplex.

Ervé stepped off the car, happy his grand drama was finally about to begin. Harken Cole thought the end was near. No, just the beginning. He sent the image of Hark to all of his soldiers. A fine picture of the hero in all his glory.
Find him for me
. He felt them at once respond, a symphony of voices roaring in pleasure, each note ringing their submission. He felt their padded feet rushing down the street, felt their claws smashing through glass and stone. Ervé would have his revenge today, while all the world watched.

34

Frankie felt his arm drop to his side, convinced he’d be as sore as hell sometime later. Every now and then it would launch the Blaster into the air, ramrod straight, and he’d stare ahead, waiting for something horrible to come at him.

He wasn’t in control, and he liked that. The weapon knew how to aim itself.

He felt invincible.

Way
.

He wanted to sing at the top of his lungs, maybe that song the Marines always sang. Something about the halls of Monty Python to the shores of Triple-T. He couldn’t remember it.
 

Instead, he began to hum a bastardized version of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” He peppered the melody with lyrics about a big-breasted girl with red hair and dancer’s legs. He smiled while he sang, eyes straight ahead, waiting for the hell things to come.

He couldn’t help the banana-grin, even though a part of him wondered if he’d ever leave this office alive.

He easily pushed that thought aside. Being a proxy was about the most enjoyable task he could be given that didn’t involve someone like Binda or Celia. He didn’t care that if he did survive the night he was going to crash like last time and end up with a raging headache. It was worth it. Besides, the way Hark looked at him … Frankie would do just about anything for the man. Hark was the sort of guy you wanted on your side, and Frankie was on his side. No matter where it led.
 

He heard something in the distance.
 

His arm shot forward. The Blaster aimed for the stairwell.

It sounded like a frenetic scratching. Iron on stone. Or claws on concrete.
 

“Come on up,” Frankie heard himself say. “Mine eyes have seen the glory / of a red-head in the buff / she’s a beauty with a smile / she’s a …”
 

35

Hark stood behind Celia as she stared at the wall. He had smashed his fist into it six times, leaving six fist-sized holes in the drywall. He was prepared to take the entire place apart, if she needed him to. She stood before an untouched portion, nose a few inches away, as if she smelled something in there.

“Again?” he asked.

She shook her head, but continued to stare.

He heard the whizzing retort of a rapid fire burst from his Blaster. Then another. And another.

He launched himself through the air and across the suite. He entered the secretary’s office to the continued sound of Blaster fire, explosions of light and heat, and the sight of several blistering bodies that had come down through the top of the shaft. One hung from a trap door in the ceiling of the elevator. They were regularly dressed people—one a jogger in running shorts and matching shirt, another a courier with his courier bag around his neck, and a another in what looked like a blue-uniformed parking cop—but they’d been transformed into prickly haired beasts with extended maws.

His Blaster finally stopped.

“I hear more coming,” Frankie said.

Hark heard them too. Something scampering up the stairwell.

He checked the read out on his Blaster. It was recharging itself but at this rate, it would deplete itself after another encounter.

Then the elevator fell (or was pulled) down the shaft.

It careened as it fell, smashing against the walls. The dry, scratching sound of something coming toward them followed. Not the elevator, but something in the shaft—a hard thing with edges that bit into concrete.
 

“I got this,” Frankie said, smiling, even though he was still in drone mode.

“I know you do.”

Hark looked back over his shoulder. He couldn’t leave Celia.

He set the digital readout on the Blaster for a single powerful blast that would empty it with devastating fashion, then stepped back into the suite, Frankie with Blaster leveled at the shaft, Frankie ready to fight, and die.

Hark shut the door.

No need to lock it.

He hurried back to Celia. She had placed her palm on a portion of the wall near where they’d been digging.

“Here,” she said. She tapped it. “Right here.”

Hark smashed his hand through the drywall and felt it brush something solid. He deftly moved his hand aside so as to not crush the object. He withdrew a simple ballpoint pen, the type made of transparent plastic around a straw with black ink. It even had a blue cap. He handed it to her.

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

He led her to the couch, his enhanced hearing still picking up the approaching sound of some unholy machine thing in the elevator shaft. He set her down.
 

The windows were wide and let in enough midday light for the entire room to be illuminated in the kind of softness you wanted when kicking back to read a book. The hackers who’d coded this world into being should be commended. Hark could see himself wanting to spend time here. The richness of the versim was outstanding enough to make him cringe at how it was being sullied.
 

He heard a screeching in the office. Binda jumped. Celia swiveled. The Blaster fired once, the sole
bang
sounding as if a bomb had gone off, followed by a rending like grinding gears, as if the blast had punched a hole into something big. Hark waited. But silence followed.

“Here’s how this works, Celia.” He moved close to her, knelt before her. “You write the correct sequence of characters down, and you’ll … wake up. Everyone connected to this world will slowly and carefully be retrieved. It takes time, but it’s the safest way to do it. I’m here to make sure you have that time.” He looked back over his shoulder. “The other way … is quicker but … more painful.”

“What other way?”

“Just start writing.” He handed her a paper magazine. “Take the cap off, Celia.” She did as expected. “Put the point on the paper.”
 

She did and her hand started to move. “What is this? I’m not doing that.”

“Don’t worry. These are just routines to start the process.”

“What process? What is this?”

Hark looked away.
 

Binda stood nearby, watching, as if he were an executioner about to kill a child. “How long?”

“A few minutes, maybe a half hour. Not sure on a V this big. You’ll wake up in an immersion clinic, safe and sound.”

She spun on her heel, arms crossed, and walked to the far side of the office.

Hark kept his eyes on the office door, waiting for any sign of an intruder. He edged closer, hoping Frankie would call out. He felt his carapace fully envelop him. He let it drip into his hands and his feet. It rippled along his body. Around him he heard the sounds of the air conditioning, Celia’s pen scratching, even Binda shuffling her feet as she pretended to look out a window. The end has come, he thought, and Binda’s mad at me for saving her life. I’m just a man who made a promise. I’ve been manipulated into being here. I know that what I’m about to see will be ugly. Poor Frankie. Binda, I want to save you ...
 

He opened the door and saw Frankie up against a cabinet embedded in the wall. A huge wooden spike that looked like a wagon-wheel spoke stuck through his chest. Frankie’s lifeless eyes were still open, his tongue resting on his bottom lip.
 

Hark retrieved his Blaster from the floor and reset the rate of fire. A horse-sized abomination of body parts and machine parts lay scattered across the foyer. Much of the hybrid had been blasted back into the shaft.