Watching Yute (44 page)

“
Certain people.”

Book peered down at Kirison. “You know
the types I mean.”

Kirison gazed at the floor. “Yes. Yes,
I think I do, Sir.”

~~~

Aboard the airlimb, Cassidy’s terminal
chirped to life. She reached out of her bunk and grabbed it.
“Incoming call: Major Cipriana Ulrica Reichenbach”

Cassidy had to laugh a little at that.
She’d never gotten a call from Cipriana before, and never imagined
her full name was such a mouthful. Cassidy had called her earlier,
but she was apparently on watch. She didn’t feel like leaving a
detailed message, given what she wanted to discuss.

“
Hey Cip.” Cassidy answered
as Cipriana’s image popped up on screen. “Are you giving me my wake
up calls now? I approve.”

“
Hello, Cassidy. You said
you had a question for me, but didn’t go into any details.” Cassidy
tried to read Cipriana. It had always been a difficult task, but
now it seemed impossible. Maybe she was trying too hard.

“
Yeah, Cip. Actually, I had
a question for your little friend.”

“
My…?” Cipriana understood,
and looked around to see if anyone was listening in. “Go
ahead.”

Cassidy tapped a few keys to show
Cipriana an image of the ‘Samuel’ sketch. “Ask him if this guy
looks familiar. It might be your little friend’s daddy.”

Cipriana tilted her head. “He has no
significant memories before he met Marcus. This sketch holds no
meaning for him. You said it’s supposed to be his ‘daddy’? He’s a
scientist dealing with nanites, then?”

Cassidy switched off the image. “That’s
the running theory. I don’t have anything against your little pal,
but if Samuel is able to do these kinds of things, and is content
to do them to unsuspecting people...”

Cipriana stared into nowhere for a bit.
Almost unconsciously, she fiddled her fingers, crossing and
uncrossing. With fingers uncrossed, she looked back at Cassidy. “He
agrees that this person is dangerous.”

Cassidy smirked.

“
And yes,” Cipriana
continued, “He does realize the irony.”

~~~~~

:::C /42

~~~~~

Kirison burst into his apartment,
fighting panic. He turned on his computer, and while it loaded up
he stuffed an apple into his pants’ cargo pocket. Then another. He
didn’t know when he’d have the chance to eat next.

In a dark corner of his files he loaded
up some things no one should have. But this was important, it was
for his own well being. It’s not like he was going to use it on
others. He still hadn’t done anything bad to anyone. The nanite
laws were stupid. They can be used safely.

Sure, he had sent a nanite colony to
infiltrate a bunch of people, but it didn’t harm them. It was god
damned Horad and his goons running around with grenades and
knives!

Kirison knew he was blameless. He knew
it. So why was he panicking? Why? Because obviously the army didn’t
see it that way. Who knows what bullshit Horad had fed them? Horad
probably did his ‘Elder’ bit, and got them all on his
side.

The second someone turns him in from
the sketch, those bimbos from Autar were going to come crashing
through the wall, and turn him to gooey paste, just like they did
with Coll.

Alright, fine, Coll deserved
it.

But Kirison wasn’t like that. He could
take a lesson from him though. Coll’s research was amazing, and
tweaked correctly, it could make a solid upgrade for his
’insurance’. Kirison had hoped not to take certain steps, but the
way things were going, it felt necessary.

Soon a syringe was ready with a hundred
CCs of grey science.

He stared at it. It was more than he’d
injected before. It carried new orders, new protocols, and by the
sheer insane number of nanites, it had strength in
numbers.

He found a vein and pushed in the
needle, not that the nanites would have gotten lost for long if
he’d missed. The pain of the needle was secondary to the feel of
metal pouring into his veins.

The earlier nanites did their job soon
enough, switching off the pain to that area, and began healing the
unintentional damage caused by the new arrivals.

He stared at his forearm for a bit. He
tried to imagine how far the new injection had gotten. How much the
nanites were being swept up by his bloodstream, and how much they
were setting their own course.

He imagined his white blood cells
trying their best to stop them. Stick to germs, lil cells. These
nano-boys are out of your league. Silly immune system. It seemed
kind of outdated now.

He grabbed a box of mechanical pencil
refills. He knew that to the nanites in him now, the box of carbon
rods looked like a box of french fries. He dumped the refills into
his front pockets, and stuck one in his mouth. He’d chomp off a
chunk and swallow it as the day went on. Thankfully, they were
essentially tasteless.

They wouldn’t be looking for building
supplies at this point though. This first stage was making a backup
of the contents of his brain. Make one backup first, and then
gather building matter to make as many redundancies as possible,
while keeping his body functioning physically.

It was odd to think that copies of his
mind would soon be distributed throughout his entire body, and he
told himself that as long as his original brain was doing the work,
he was still human.

He set the computer to wipe everything.
It was time to go. As he left his apartment and locked up, he
reached for one of the apples he had stuck in his pant pocket. He
changed his mind and instead stuck another pencil refill in his
mouth.

~~~~~

:::C /43

~~~~~

“
Hey, Brandy.” Cassidy
wandered the ruins around the temple, with her terminal in her
hand. The sun was beaming down on her, but somehow it felt lazy. Or
maybe it was just Cassidy that felt lazy.

Brandy was multitasking a bit, working
on something to the side while talking. “Cass! What’s up? I think
this is the first time you’ve called me since...”

Since Brandy dumped her. “Is it? Well,
more accurately, it’s the first time I called and you weren’t
blocking me.” Cassidy smirked a little. She was almost nostalgic
for those days now. It seemed like a lot more than the year and a
half that it was. It felt like ages ago.

“
That doesn’t count. So,
does this mean we’re officially cool now?”

Cassidy scoffed softly. “Don’t go
getting all weird on me now.”

Brandy pushed away her work, and gave
Cassidy her full attention. “I’m weird, huh? You’re the one hunting
criminals with a stick. Next you’ll be getting a mask.”

“
I had one for a while. Kind
of a gas mask thing. It didn’t go with my tank top.”

“
So really, what’s up? Why’d
you call? Not that I mind or anything.”

Cassidy sighed, and strolled along
lazily, letting the terminal sway by her knees, unconcerned with
the disorienting view it provided Brandy. The temple was still
right over there. As if it didn’t have anywhere else to go. Silly
thing.

“
Cass? You still there?”
came Brandy’s voice from the terminal. Cassidy lifted it back up to
look Brandy in the face. “I called… I called because I needed to
just talk to someone.”

“
I’m flattered. I thought
you had plenty of people to talk to over there” Sure. Who,
Cipriana? Cip was great, but the program she’s sharing her skull
with wasn’t invited to any heart to hearts. Or Maxine, who called a
counselor on her?

“
I needed to talk to
someone, who..” her voice tensed up a little as she waved the
terminal at the temple, the ruins, and in the direction of the
camp, and the base. “Someone who isn’t knee deep in all this
crap!”

“
Cass! Stop it! Are you
trying to give me motion sickness?”

Cassidy stood still and held the
terminal up properly. “Oops.”

“
Alright, alright. So we’re
talking. What’s on your mind?”

Cassidy hadn’t thought that far ahead.
There was a ton on her mind. Lots of different things that felt
like a puzzle carved from cheesecake. They might fit, they might
not. They were squishy, undefined, probably changed shape, and
maybe even unrelated.

“
Ehh, I dunno.”

Brandy sighed, and raised her eyebrows.
“You don’t know what you want to talk about, but you want to
talk?”

Cassidy shrugged “I guess.”

“
Kay…” Brandy fumbled
through her thoughts for a topic, when she noticed Cassidy’s
pendant. “It that new? You were never big on jewelery, so I was a
little surprised when you had that ring fr..” She stopped herself.
It was hard to come up with a topic that didn’t lead back to
Cheryl.

Cassidy gripped her pendant, and glazed
over. “New….“ Her voice sounded weary and tired all of a sudden.
“Parts of this pendant are over two decades old.”

“
Oh, was it-“

“
Y’know what?” Cassidy
interrupted. “I’m gonna let ya go, okay? Thanks for being there and
all, I should go.” She hung up before Brandy could dispute it, and
slipped the terminal in her pocket. As she did so, her forearm
bumped the holster on her hip.

After a moment, she pulled the terminal
back out and turned it off. Brandy might feel the need to call
back, and she was no longer in the mood for it.

That was pretty rude. Oh well. She
stopped walking, and stretched upwards against the day’s growing
heat. She looked out to the horizon, all around, and took a moment
to breathe in the air.

There stood the temple, reaching up
from the ruins. Over there, the base. And the helipad’s
hill.

And over that way, in the middle of
them all? You couldn’t see it from any distance, but she knew it
was there. Her little camp. She wanted to go there, and lay in that
tent. To look for remnants of Cheryl’s scent.

After Maxine had found her at the camp
with her gun, she told Cassidy not to go there. Ordered.

Well Maxine wasn’t here now.

~~~

Kirison wasn’t expecting the numbness,
but it didn’t surprise him. He had a lot of nanites in him. A lot.
A mild sense of pins and needles was acceptable.

Walking down the street, he carried a
roll of pennies, popping them into his mouth and swallowing them
like candy. Alright, not quite like candy. You savour the taste of
candy. You tolerate the taste of pennies. It wasn’t so bad though.
He compared it to the taste of blood when you cut yourself and lick
the blood off.

He had debated what kind of coins to
get at the bank. Pennies had the benefit of being cheap for the
mass, and not big enough for any major choking risk. The type of
metal wasn’t important, the nanites could make use of almost
anything. It would just take time to ‘digest’ them.

As he idled along, he wondered what
he’d do with himself. The world was his oyster, as long as he kept
off the radar. Maybe he should go back to that mobster… what was
his name? Mr. Irving. Mr. Irving the skinny mobster. What then,
apply for a job? As what? He had been perfectly clear before that
he didn’t want anything to do with nanites.

Screw it. Kirison had enough cash on
him to last for a while. Speaking of which, he was hungry. Pennies
might keep the nanites in a productive mood, be he couldn't ignore
his own biological needs.

He wound up at a grocery store, around
ten in the evening. It was fairly busy for the hour. A sloppily
dressed young man was walking out with a bag containing a lot of
junk food and a couple bottles of some kind of booze. He looked a
little paranoid. Probably a bit high.

Kirison was feeling paranoid as well.
He headed towards the deli section. One of those little tubs of
macaroni salad might be a good start. Maybe grab something spicy,
too, to burn off the aftertaste of pennies.

Without warning, his right ankle
snapped in half. Instead of blood, the stump was grey with nanites.
Bits of bone could still be seen.

“
Oh my god!” a nearby woman
yelped in shock and horror.

“
AH!” Think fast! “Damn
thing. Artificial leg.” He scampered to pick up his foot. There was
no pain. Damn stupid nanites built one of the backup brains across
his ankle.

“
Are… are you alright?” The
woman stared on.

He replied hastily and nervously. “Oh
yup, yup. No problems, this happens now and then. You get what you
pay for huh? I just have to..” He dropped his macaroni salad on the
nearest display, and started running as best he could out of the
store.

“
Excuse me!” A store
employee tried to stop him at the door, but he rammed though, and
kept going. Think, think, now what? He had to get in direct control
of the nanites and get them to shape up. Without his computer, or
the software he erased before he left the apartment, there was only
one way to do that.

As he ran, he came up to the high young
man he’d seen earlier. Kirison grabbed one of the bottles of booze
out of his grocery bag, and kept going.