5

Shitbox Manor:

Old Fart scrambled back down the staircase, half falling, feeling for handholds. He pushed his feet backward, expecting part of a step, but there was only empty space. He faltered and fell.

Hands crawled over him like hungry roaches, grabbing for his chips, tugging at his shoes. He thrashed wildly, his forearm hitting a neck, his knee brushing a torso. A palm swatted at his face. Someone snatched a handful of his shirt and yanked him forward, then a fist crashed into his jaw, leaving him momentarily stunned. There was little he could do in his drunken state to fight off three unseen assailants. The hand held him down until all his belongings had been taken. Then it was gone.

“Kel!” he yelled. He stood and charged clumsily toward the sounds of shuffling feet and bodies slamming into walls. His fingers touched fabric, a shirt or jacket. He tightened his grip on the material and pulled the man toward him, tackling him to the ground. Another one grabbed for him, trying for a handful of hair at the back of his head. Old Fart hunched his shoulders, anticipating the blow.

The fingers went slack. Maybe Kel had hit that one. The man beneath him punched up, catching Old Fart’s chin. He rolled off, falling onto some debris from the wrecked stairs … and something else.

Something too smooth for debris. Something the size and shape of Kel’s green box. He fumbled with its buttons and dials and slid a long lever forward. A pillar of orange flame leaped from the box, as long as his forearm, singeing his hair and eyebrows and lighting up the room. Now Old Fart could see Kel choking one of the attackers from behind. The man was on his knees with Kel’s key wire across his throat. Another assailant lunged toward Kel and got kicked in the teeth, the broken-glass shoe soles leaving deep gashes across his cheeks and eyes. The third intruder attacked with the club. Kel released the kneeling man, who collapsed forward onto the floor. The end of the wire jingled as it zipped through the air, whipping across the charging man’s face. He screamed and dropped the club, running from the room with his hands over his eyes. The one Kel had kicked followed him out.

Kel spun, windmill-kicking the building’s front door shut, breathing hard. He ripped the shirt off of the collapsed attacker and wrapped it around the cudgel, lighting it with the huge flame coming from the box. “Nice job, Old Fart. Now shut it off before you burn up all my damned gas.”

Dok’s place:

Brian struggled to his knees and then stood—not easy with two broken hands, but his “spooky” skills still let him do it almost silently. The sky outside the window was no longer inky black … it was nearly dawn. He made his way to the bathroom, stepping over the bum who had brought in the waitress.

Folded neatly next to the tiny bathroom sink was a spotless but tattered and faded green towel. On the towel lay an antique straight razor. Dok had written on the wall with a piece of charcoal: “IF YOU USE RAZOR TELL ME SO I CAN CLEAN IT.”

The index and middle fingers of each hand were splinted in a curving shape, almost as if he were holding a couple of drinking glasses. He used his smaller fingers to wet his face, picked up the razor, and tried to focus on the sliver of mirror glass Dok had hung there on a wire, but throbbing pain from the broken knuckles radiated out through his entire body, tightening his stomach and making him gag. He put the razor back on the towel, unused.

He carefully made his way to the old cooking pot Dok had used to hide his belongings on his last visit. He placed a gold coin into it—Dok would know who it was from—and slipped out of the tiny apartment.

The Zone doctor’s apartment:

Lawrence had been awake most of the night. How did these people sleep on the hard floor like this? His fingers and toes were numb from a combination of cold and pressure against the boards. To make things worse, he had missed two doses now of his daily medications, and his body was beginning to react. His face throbbed with sinus pain, acid was eating away at his stomach, and a migraine was threatening. He stifled the urge to cough up what felt like sand in his lungs, no doubt the result of breathing the grimy air all night. It was impossible to get any rest in these conditions.

The patient with the splinted hands had gone to the bathroom and then checked one of the pots next to the little stove, probably trying to steal some food on his way out.

The EI created its turbulence sensation twice, indicating an intercom connection. Lawrence rose as quietly as he could and made his way out to the hall, closing the door behind him. “Sir?” the Betty voice said inside his mind. “Your mother.”

Lawrence swallowed and rubbed his eyes. It was even colder out here, though he couldn’t quite see his breath. The hallway wall next to the door was painted with dark, palm-sized letters: “Dok Murray. Herbalist.” The first word had originally been spelled “Doc,” but the “c” had been crudely converted to a “k” with a single slashing line—Dok had likely been visited by enforcers for the medical profession back in the days when they still cared about someone in the Zone calling himself a doctor. The turbulence came again. Lawrence slammed his eyes shut.

“Sir? Your mother.”

The hall smelled of old wood and grease, its air humid and slightly rancid, as if someone was boiling the contents of a dustpan.

“Proceed, Betty.”

His mother’s voice was sharp and indignant. “Sett? Where are you?”

“I’m all right, mother.”

“Switch to a visual mode, please. I want to see you.”

“I’d rather not, ma’am. I’ve been out all night. I look pretty terrible, ma’am.”

“I know what you did, Sett. There is a Federal Angel with me right now. He wants to talk to you. He would like to know why you helped some waitress escape after she killed Matt Ricker. Switch to visual. Now.”

He blinked hard and wiped a palm across his forehead. A sickly gray light seemed smeared along the opposite wall, having filtered through the filthy window at the end of the hallway. The floorboards creaked as he shifted his weight.

“Is it true, Sett?” his mother asked. “Why would you get yourself involved in a debacle like that? Why? When everything was going so well for you?”

He stared down at the stained plywood floor, now spotted with teardrops.

“What were you thinking? A waitress? You know better than to go getting messed up with people like that. They’ll drag you right down with them, every time. You come home right now and explain to this Angel exactly what happened; I’m sure he’ll understand. But I’m not going to lie to you. There will still be fallout. Society does not tolerate wretched, uncivilized behavior. I can’t guarantee you’ll be allowed to remain at Fisher.”

“I wasn’t thinking at all, Mother. I was just doing it, all of a sudden.” He sniffed. “She was hurt, and they started it, not her. Nobody else would help. What was I supposed to do? Just let her die?”

“Oh, Sett.” His mother sighed. “Of course you were.”

 

MediPirates Bulletin Board

(.*?)

 

Hello, Dok. It’s me, Vron. I read your post and hope you are well.

I have recently become aware of a case similar to the one you describe, in that a sudden dramatic change in personality occurred, very probably brought on by a street drug. As you know, Coach V and I often see things quite differently. He treats only the body while I focus also on the spirit.

My patient was not the one whose personality was altered, but was instead that man’s victim. He came in with a blood-soaked bandage around his head, telling me that an associate had tried to kill him. I know my patient is involved in the drug trade and it was clear that his associate was, also.

My patient’s case was unremarkable. I stitched the wound and bandaged it, and then later when he complained of headache I gave him some bac-cox 1,2,3/inhib. But what he said about the associate was so much like your case that I thought I should write in.

The associate, he said, was “pretty normal, easy to deal with,” before, but had suddenly gone “crazy,” believing himself to be some kind of soldier. He told my patient that he was forming a “legion” for some important undertaking and tried to make him ingest some unknown substance. When my patient refused, the man bashed him over the head and attempted to take him prisoner. Such a sudden and alarming change seems unlikely to have developed on its own. My guess is that the substance somehow interfered with the man’s energies/chakras, which in turn altered his sense of self.

Vron

 

MediPirates Bulletin Board

(.*?)

 

Thanks, Vron.

I’ve always agreed with you that there are more things unknown than are known. All we can do is … all we can do.

Be careful giving that bactro cox inhibitor, though. Remember that while cox inhibitors address pain, they also inhibit blood clots and can complicate—often dangerously complicate—internal injuries, especially to the head.

I think your comment about

—

Eadie sniffled. Dok turned from the computer and went to her side. She wiped the tears away but he had already seen them.

“Eadie? Are you all right?”

She nodded, wincing. Dok watched a new tear roll down her cheek.

“Pain?” Dok asked.

She stopped before shaking her head. “No. Well, I mean, yes, it hurts, but mostly I was wondering what I’m going to do now.”

The college student who had helped her slipped back into the room. He looked tired and dirty in the morning light, more like normal people.

“I know what you mean,” Dok said. “The social ramifications of a situation like this are always worse than physical ones.” He narrowed his eyes at the student.

There was a gentle knock on the door. “Come in,” Dok called. The student stepped back as a man in a janitor’s uniform came shuffling in, looking exhausted and emaciated.

“Brent!” Dok said.

“Been a long night without eatin’ nothing, Dok,” Brent said. “But I kept it in like you said. I think your test will be all right.”

“Eadie, I’ve got to deal with this, okay?” Dok said. “It’ll only take a minute.” Eadie nodded slowly, her face tightening with discomfort.

Dok washed his hands. Brent opened his mouth. Dok reached in and took hold of a string between Brent’s teeth. “Really … wedged in here,” Dok said. “At least it kept you from swallowing it … Ah! There we go. You’ll feel a tickle as it comes out, Brent, and maybe a little gagging sensation.”

Brent made a few quiet choking noises as Dok pulled a length of string out of his throat, about as long as his arm. He brought it to the table and adjusted the lamp to examine it.

“Yep, that’s what I thought,” Dok said. “Look here.” He pointed to a brown spot on the string. “It’s an ulcer, all right.”

Dok opened a brown glass bottle from the counter and bleach fumes wafted out as he lowered the string into the bottle and sealed it back up again. He grabbed a palm-sized piece of plastic from a stack on his cluttered counter and dipped a thin piece of glass tubing into a dish of homemade ink, writing a quick note on the plastic. Dok blew across the words to dry them and handed the plastic to Brent. “You told me you don’t drink much alcohol, right?” Dok kept his eyebrows raised until Brent nodded.

“Okay,” Dok said. “I’m going to say your ulcer is viral. Take this to Yuri at his bacteria stand in the Lucerne Ridge open market. Make sure you mention my name; he won’t sell medical strains to just anyone because he’s too afraid of cops. This prescription’s for a strain that produces an antiviral compound … Just do one swallow, three times a day, after as full a meal as you can manage. It should take care of the problem, but if not, come back here. Don’t try to save the strain or add to the bottle to keep it growing—it gets contaminated pretty easily and you might end up poisoning yourself. One bottle ought to do the trick, though.”

“Thanks, Dok,” Brent said. “I’m gonna head out and get somethin’ to eat. Should I bring this back to you?” He held up the plastic sheet.

“No. Yuri will return it to me when I see him. Just be sure to tell him you got it from me.”

Brent nodded and left the room.

Dok washed his hands.

Eadie turned to the student. “Thank you for helping me,” she said.

He looked down at the floor. “Yeah, I was a lot of help,” he muttered. “I got knocked out.”

“You brought me here.”

He nodded. “Not alone, though.” He pointed to the strange, skinny man who was still quietly watching them.

The skinny man nodded, or bowed.

Eadie nodded back at him. “Thank you, too, Prophet.”

The man made the same motion again. “Thank you, General,” he said. “For the sacrifice you will make in fulfilling your holy purpose.”

Eadie stared at the man with an open mouth and a look of bewilderment. She let out a shaky breath that might have been a laugh, gesturing. “That’s the Prophet, over there. He’s Dok, and I’m Eadie.”

The student was looking at his shoes. “I’m Lawrence Williams the Seventh.”

Dok softly laughed to himself, shaking his head.

“I’ve got to get home,” Lawrence said. “I … I might have a bit of a hard time ahead.”

She nodded, giving one short, breathy laugh.

“I … well, you know,” Lawrence said. “Not as hard as you … I mean … “

She rolled her eyes up to look at him without raising her chin. He smiled sheepishly, then turned serious. “Do you know who that was? The guy you killed?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.

“That was Matt Ricker—heir to the RickerResources company.”

Dok turned toward the student, knocking an empty pot to the floor. “Oh, Eadie,” Dok said.

Lawrence glanced at him. “Yeah, that’s the one. It’s one of the most powerful companies anywhere, Eadie. The family could make it really tough on you if they want to.” He shrugged, looking at his shoes again. “And they’ll probably want to.”

“I’m so sorry, Eadie.” Dok shook his head, his mouth hanging slightly open. “The Unnamed Executives they’ve got will shred you without having to pretend they’re giving you a trial. Don’t let them find you.”

“I’d help if there was anything I could do,” Lawrence said. “But I stand out around here, and I think I’ve got to go straighten out my own mess.”

She nodded.

Lawrence pulled a large knife from inside his jacket and set it on the table. “Maybe you can trade this for some supplies?” Lawrence said. He looked from Eadie to Dok, then turned and left the room.

Shitbox Manor:

Brian stood frozen at the top of what remained of his building’s decaying stairwell, watching and listening. The place housed more than a hundred people, but those with sense stayed quiet and out of sight whenever they could. Anyone loitering in the hall was probably up to no good.

The only sounds came from a few residents’ computers playing mindless entertainment programs behind barricaded doors. Nothing moved. Brian crept along the decaying wall, inching toward his own apartment, avoiding the creaking spots on the floor he had memorized.

Brian’s head snapped toward a tiny jingle on the other side of a slightly gapped door. Inside, his neighbor, Kelvin Mays, lowered his ball of sharpened keys and shook his head as if saying, “I almost killed you.”

Kel, at sixteen, could outfight any ten full-grown men. Even when noticeably hung over, like now, he was the only person whose senses were finely tuned enough to catch Brian when he was being stealthy. Kel slumped back against the wall from his battle-ready crouch. Next to him, an old salaryman lay on his back, snoring. Brian raised his eyebrows at Kel.

Kel mimed, drinking from an imaginary bottle.

Brian mimed a French kiss, his tongue flicking in the air.

Kel raised his upper lip in his shit-eating-est grin and gave Brian the finger. Brian laughed to himself, turning to his own door as Kel settled himself back on the floor.

Slowly he unlocked it, stopping several times to look over his shoulder and down both sides of the hall. It was always worth the extra time to be vigilant. The door swung open noiselessly on the hinges he kept perfectly oiled. Brian’s room was small and bare enough that nobody could hide there; a quick glance in the cold, gray morning light confirmed he was alone. He hastily relocked the door and slid his hulking dresser in front of it.

He reached into a hole in the rotting plaster under the sink. Next to the drainpipe was another section of pipe, this one extra wide, which to an observer might look like it was meant to be there. He pulled it out carefully, so as not to disturb the plaster, and undid one of the caps. A plastic bag of pills, a bag of synth heroin, and four gold coins poured out. He held the transparent coins in his hand a moment, peering at the tiny flakes inside them, and then stuffed everything but the pills back into the pipe. The door was sufficiently blocked; best to keep the gun hidden for now, especially when he’d be doped out of his mind in a minute. It went into the pipe, too.

He lay down on his bed of foam and fabric scraps in the corner and chased a couple of the pills down with a bottle of sodje.

A train platform in the Zone:

Sleet stung Lawrence’s cheeks and blurred his vision as he charged up the filth-encrusted stairs, his breath condensing into clouds that instantly dissipated in the wind. He bounded onto the train, panting from the run. Even this early in the morning, the car was packed with dangerous-looking Zone dwellers. Many of them stared at Lawrence as he stood with a hand flat against the wall, trying to get his breathing under control. He squeezed into a spot near the corner, nearly gagging from a putrid odor he could not place. Was it the train that smelled, or the people? The doors closed and the train sped out of the Zone.

His hair dripped ice water onto his face and he wiped it with his sleeve. He would probably get rainrash anyway, just from the residue. As was his habit on trains, he opened again to his EI.

Turbulence. Not the double wave in front of him that indicated friends and family making a connection, but shockingly strong and unpleasant waves that enveloped his entire body in a way he had not experienced before. This was a call from authority. Betty provided no name, no number. His stunned mind went blank.

“Hello?”

“Your mother told you I wanted to talk to you. Then you shut down your EI before she even stopped talking.” The voice was smooth, confident, self-righteous. It was the Federal Angel. Lawrence swallowed and took a deep breath.

“I was scared, sir,” Lawrence whispered. “I’m coming home now.”

“I see that. You’ll be coming up on the thirty-third street station soon. Get off and wait for me there. I’ll see you in … four minutes and twenty-six seconds.” The Angel terminated the conversation.

Lawrence stood staring at nothing. The Feds knew he was on the train. They knew the stop, even, just because he’d activated his EI. He hadn’t thought about it before, but of course they could find him that way.

As if he had entered an access code, all the facts of his situation were at once revealed: The Feds knew everything about him. The case was too big, the interested parties too important, for them to ignore even trivial details about him. They would demand results, punishments. His old life was over forever. The last time he had connected through the EI was just outside Dok’s office. He had led them to Eadie.

“Betty,” he directed, “disconnect and shut down.”

Inside Agent Hawkins’s brain:

“Yeah, this is Hawkins. Who’ve I got here?” The image in his brain showed a young, blond, square-jawed Federal Agent with a stocky build. He had cold blue eyes and wore an immaculate gray uniform. On one side of his white shirt collar was the traditional Accepted gold halo pin; on the other side was another gold pin, shaped like an elongated “Z.” Above the pins, the Golden flesh of his wide neck and angular face gleamed just like the metal.

“This is Agent Daiss of Task Force Zeta. We got your message and your coordinates.”

“Great, great. Looks like this case is gonna have to be wrapped up in the Zone, and they tell us that’s your area now. Never worked with Zeta before … I’ve always wondered about you guys.”

Daiss laughed. Once. “We’re just a unit assigned to clean up the Zone. ‘Zeta’ for ‘Zone,’ that’s all there is to it. Doing the Lord’s work, like we all do.” The blue eyes staring out of the image glowed with unnatural intensity.

“That’s it? Why so many resources toward the Zone?”

“It started with all the suburban Fiend raids recently. Decided it’d be better to deal with the perpetrators inside the Zone than trying to catch them crossing into other areas.” The image of Daiss raised one shoulder in a slight shrug. “When they raid inside the Zone, no one ever gives a fuck. But a few suburbanites get killed in their homes, and next thing you know we’re a high priority task force.”

“So,” Hawkins said. “You got any idea how many Fiends were involved in those suburban raids?”

The image stared for a moment, the blue eyes laser-focused on some point that seemed to be at the center of Hawkins’s brain. “I’m sorry, Agent Hawkins. I’m not authorized to discuss specifics with anyone outside Task Force Zeta.”

Hawkins stared back, his mind taking in both the artificial image of Daiss and the real world outside the truck. A gust of wind blew watery sleet against the truck’s transparent front, obscuring the view of the train station a few paces away. At least he would see the kid before the kid saw him. While the entire body of the truck seemed transparent from inside, the exterior of the vehicle was visible only as a matte, distorted reflection of whatever was around it. Not merely hard to see, the disturbing optical mishmash displayed by Federal machinery confused the human eye to such a degree that it involuntarily looked away before the brain could process what it saw.

He cleared his throat. “Don’t know if you’ve had any interference yet, but that was Clayton Ricker’s son who got his throat cut. You’ve seen the video from the restaurant?”

“Yep. We’ll get right on it, tell you what we find. In the Zone we’re looking for the girl and the bum, right?”

“That’s it. I’m waiting to—oh, that little fucker! I told the Williams kid to meet me at the train stop. The train’s gone, the crowd has cleared, and he’s not here. And … shit. He’s shut off his EI. I better go. That punk’s gonna pay, I swear to God.”

Vacuum:

Sato sat still in meditation, the gray mist swirling around him.

“I have now found your memories,” he said out loud, his voice sounding empty and hollow in the vast nothingness. “I see you selling your drugs, fighting your vulgar and degrading merchant battles. Your abilities to hide and to move quietly are impressive, but even these, your greatest talents, are completely without honor.

“I think perhaps you will remember these words when you take your turn here. I am speaking to you this way so that you will comprehend the importance of my mission and cease your useless interference.

“I understand now. All becomes clear through meditation. The dishonor I brought on myself serving the daimyo endures, even now. I was chosen for my disobedience and given this chance to make it right. I will serve the source of life itself, in the battle that will end war, and the shame of serving under a woman general will suitably punish me for my pride and transgressions.

“You cannot stop me. You cannot rid yourself of me—at least not until the mission is complete.”

Sato pushed his way through the mist, waking the body. He sat up, glancing around the dreary little room. A dull light filtered in through the window, barely enough to see by. He stood. The seriously damaged body registered its pain in Sato’s mind only momentarily, the way a quick glance at a document might register a few characters before it was instantly forgotten. He made his way out the door.