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MARAVICH DEMONSTRATED a complete lack of concern that I wasn’t cuffed. Not for the first time I wished I’d been blessed with a Sergeant Patrick body, an alpha male’s alpha muscles straining my shirts and power oozing from my pores. I’d clean the floor with Agent Maravich and six more like him. Despite my month of hard work and good food, the Homeland agent outmassed me by a couple of buffaloes and a small sheep, plus whatever drug they hit me with left me feeling weak as chicken broth.
“C’mon, Warren. Get over here so I can strap you down; I ain’t got all day. Ramirez is gearing up to take down your buddies, and I want to be there, just in time to arrest Little Miss Millie.” He sneered. “She’ll enjoy the company of a real man for a change.”
“A real man? Who? You?” I snorted. “I don’t think so.”
Maravich narrowed his eyes and shambled in my direction.
“Tell me,” I sneered, “when you raped Signe, were you able to get it up? Or’d you have to pretend she was a guy?”
“Fuck you, Warren,” the agent grated.
“Maravich, you’re living proof that there’s life after abortion.” I jumped down and rushed to the end of the exam table to meet him head on. “You fell out of the psycho tree and didn’t miss a branch on the way down, did you?”
“Keep talkin’, asshole,” he snarled. Flaming redness boiled up from his neck and soaked his face. He seemed so hot I worried his hair might catch on fire. He coiled a fist to knock me into next week...
And I punted him in the nuts.
“Oof!” he grunted.
Even kicked in the cojones, Maravich was quick. A massive fist blurred into my face, faster than a camera flash. I flew backward, hit the bed, and crashed to the floor. It’d be nice not to be hit in the face anymore. I fought through the dizziness and climbed to my feet. The Homeland agent hunched over, glaring bloody murder and mayhem.
“You’re dead, fucker,” he growled.
“So I’ve heard.”
I flew at him and landed a shot to his cheek before a piledriver right slugged me under the ribs and blasted out all my wind. I tagged him again, but it was so weak I might as well have kissed him. His crossing left caught me in the ear, and my head rang like a bell. I met the floor again. Patted it like an old friend. Missed you, buddy.
Maravich lifted me by the shirt and slung me across the room. I crashed atop the row of beds, flipped upside down and went over the side, taking a mattress, sheets and all, with me. My hip screamed from where I’d collided with the bedframe, and dizziness struggled with nausea to decide which would be first to kill me. Resting under the loose bedding seemed like a really good idea. I lay on my back in the dark and let my spinning head whirl to a stop.
The agent ripped away the bedding, exposing me to the cold, sterile light.
“Get up!”
I played dead. Maravich dragged me up by the armpits and held me at arm’s length, like a puppy who’d wet himself. I let my head loll to the side and mumbled something.
“What?” he snapped. “What’d you say now, you smartass prick?”
I poked him in the eyes with my thumbs.
“Argh!”
This time when he threw me, he wound up like a discus and really put his back into it. I sailed through the air and smashed into the line of cabinets with a horrendous bang. My head bounced off the wood, and more sparkly lights bloomed inside my head. I slid off the cabinets, hit the counter, and scrabbled to stay upright.
I fell on my ass. A cascade of medical supplies avalanched on my head.
Maravich flung me onto my back and loomed over me. He clutched my shirt in both fists and jerked me up.
“You little cockroach.” His breath choked me with an onion-and-rotted-meat smell. “You’re done, you hear me? I’ll beat you to damned near death, then I’ll fill your ass full of nanobots. How’s that for a long-term plan, huh?”
“Hey, Maravich?” My breath whistled through my blood-clotted sinuses.
“What?”
He saw the injector in my hand. His eyes bulged, and he tried to untangle from my shirt, grab the injector, and push away at the same time...
. . . and failed at all three.
Too late, asshole. I jabbed the point into his thigh and squeezed the trigger. The injector hissed and dumped a full load of Gen I nanobots into Agent Maravich of the Homeland Security Agency.
Five minutes later, he became Revivant Maravich of the You’re Fucked Agency.
I laughed while he died. Before the nanos ate his brain, I said, “That was for Signe and Deandre, you prick.”
***
AGENT RAMIREZ ENTERED the office of Special Agent George Crispo without knocking and almost planted his fists on the man’s desk. Crumbs and crud littered the walnut surface. Ramirez sneered and remained standing.
Crispo ran the Armed Response Team for Homeland Security’s Midwest Division from an office in Homeland’s Buffalo Grove complex, fifty kilometers from downtown Chicago. With seventeen years in the Agency, Crispo had never held a field assignment. With a fringe of curly hair circling his pointy head, the lifetime bureaucrat resembled a penis with glasses.
“Crispo.” Ramirez kept his voice low and mild, as it freaked people out. “Why have you been ignoring my phone calls?”
The special agent regarded him over the top of his half-glasses. “Ramirez, it might have escaped your attention, but there’s a wee little crisis in Washington. I can’t get anybody on the phone or email, and the rumors don’t sound good.”
“In Washington?” Ramirez let his jaw drop. How could someone so stupid rise to a position of such authority? “In case it escaped your attention, Special Agent, we have a crisis right fucking here. Terrorists hit our data center in Schaumburg last night. They murdered an agent inside, and three from the Quick Response Force died retaking the building. Eight men are in the hospital. What part of crisis does not apply here?”
“Yes, w-well,” Crispo stuttered. He leaned back in his chair and tugged his collar. “I need approval from the director before I can authorize the kind of force you’re asking for. All my Z’s? That’s sixty zombies and ten controllers. And then the response teams? That’s over forty men. You know how much that kind of deployment will cost?”
Ramirez slid out his ID case and held it at Crispo’s eye level. He dropped his voice from menacing to viperish. “What does this say?”
When Crispo didn’t respond, Ramirez continued. “It says Special Agent in Charge, Counter-Terrorism, Central Division, Ramirez, Angel. That’s me. I am responsible for protecting the homeland and preventing acts of terrorism from the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande, the Mississippi to the Rockies. Look up the regulations. Section 8: Counter-Terrorism. Chapter 12, Duties and Authority. In that chapter, you will read that in the event the SAIC CT—that’s me—determines there is an exigent threat to the security of the nation that is material and manifest, the SAIC CT has the authority to commandeer resources and personnel, up to but not including nuclear devices, to mitigate or preempt the threat.”
“I—I’m familiar—”
“Shut up, I’m not finished.” Ramirez put his ID case away. “Terrorists have attacked our facility. We know who they are, we know where they are, and we know they will scatter if we don’t act immediately. Therefore the threat is exigent, material, and manifest. You have one option here, Agent Crispo. Furthermore, I have written authorization to use any and all means necessary to eliminate this threat. Pick up the phone and release all of your Z-units as well as your Armed Response Teams that are currently based here. If you have more deployed elsewhere, you will relocate them to the staging area I designate. Are we clear?”
“Ramirez, come on, I need—”
“Crispo, if you respond with anything except, ‘Yes, Agent Ramirez,’ I will shoot you down like the pencil-pushing prick you are and find out if your subordinate can follow regulations. One more time. Will you release the teams to me?”
The special agent rocked back in his chair as if struck. “You’re insane,” he hissed.
“It would be best if you kept that top of mind when I request resources.”
Ruddy spots broke out on Crispo’s cheeks as the older man tried to stare Ramirez down. Whatever he saw in Ramirez’s eyes, it must have convinced him the counter-terrorism agent meant exactly what he said. Crispo touched the EarRinger comm unit dangling from his left earlobe. “Get me the duty officer. We need to deploy... No, not in a minute, now!”
***
MARAVICH IMITATED A toppled statue, rigid and solid, lying at my feet. I prodded him with a toe. Nothing. He would remain in that position until somebody programmed the nanos in his system to perform a function. I prayed for shit sweeper. There was a sidearm on the agent’s belt; I tugged it free and examined the weapon. It looked nothing like Grandpa’s Smith & Wesson. Flat, black, and covered up with knobs and levers, the weapon was beyond my ability to operate. One thing it did have, that I recognized from countless vids, was a SmartGrip. The pistol would read its owner’s identity through the grip and fail to fire for anyone not coded for it, so for me, the pistol was nothing but a fancy club.
At the sink, I washed my face with shaky hands and dried off with paper towels. The silence of the room ate at my nerves, and the dead agent’s eyes followed me around like a painting in a horror movie. I dragged a blanket off one of the beds and draped it over his body.
I had killed a man. I felt... disconnected, like it happened to somebody else. Should I send up a prayer, maybe? Say, uh, sorry, Big Dude of the heavens, but I kind of killed a guy here. He was a dick, so I don’t think you’ll have to make space up there in heaven, but, uh... you know? Amen.
The command console displayed a floor layout diagram with icons and labels. The lock icon for a room labeled TREATMENT stood out in red. I touched it. The lock buzzed, and the door opened, exactly as it had for Perlmutter. I stuck my head into the hall.
“I’ve been here before,” I muttered. And it dawned on me. I was in the basement of the Huateng Tower, the same place Ramirez and his clowns had nailed me during my escape from the robbery. The elevator at the end of the hall looked very damned familiar. I guessed it made sense. Where else would Maravich find a ready source of Revivant nanos but the basement workshop of the mad scientist? I closed the door and went back to the console. Five other rooms on the diagram were labeled. INVENTORY, LAB 1, LAB 2, STORAGE, and DETENTION.
“Detention sounds interesting.” I tapped the icon, and a message popped up. ENTER CODE. “Well, that won’t work.”
The detention room was two doors down on my right. I wedged the treatment room door with a bedpan so it wouldn’t lock behind me and scooted down the hall. The stylized R of Renascentia’s logo adorned the outside of each door in the hall. I banged on the R of the detention room with the flat of my hand.
“Hey! Anybody in there?”
After a pause, a voice rumbled, “Staff Sergeant Patrick, US Marines. Who is this?”
“Santa Claus,” I yelled back. “Hold on, I’ll get you out. Wait... You’re not dead, are you?”
“Ahhh... That’s a negative.”
“Good enough for me.”
A thumb reader on the mullion glowed red. I touched my thumb to it, and it still glowed red. “That was smart, Joe,” I grumbled. “Sure, they keyed all the locks to your thumbprint. Dumbass.”
Nothing for it.
I trotted back to the treatment room and rummaged through the drawers until I found a surgical kit, tore it open, and extracted a wicked-sharp scalpel. I flipped back the blanket covering the right hand of dead Agent Maravich and... did what had to be done. Carrying his freshly liberated thumb in a wad of paper towels, I went back to the detention room and pressed the digit against the reader.
Buzzzz-click.
Sergeant Patrick and Lance Corporal Jackson rushed out the second the lock clicked.
“Hi, Sarge,” I told him. “Good to see you guys.”
“Warren! How’d you get the lock open?” Patrick’s ice-chip eyes lasered into me, suspicion tightening his face.
“Oh, I had a hand.” I tossed Maravich’s thumb away, and the sergeant tracked it as it left a bloody trail down the hall.
A microscopic smile cracked his lips. “Well done, soldier.”
“We’re still in a world of shit. Homeland knows about the tunnels, and, last I heard, they’re gearing up to rain down blood and death.”
“Have you seen the other team members? Benson? Perlmutter? Charles?”
“Perlmutter’s... dead. Maravich...” My hand fluttered down the hall. I didn’t know how to tell him Perlmutter was hanging out in one of the adjacent rooms—probably the one called INVENTORY, awaiting programming. “Maravich said there were two others killed in the blast. I, uh... damn. I watched them murder Alex de Galvez as well.”
“Fuck.” Patrick looked mad enough to chew rock and shit sand. “Do you know where they put our gear?”
“Um. Hold on.”
I retrieved Maravich’s thumb and brought it to what should be, according to the diagram, the storage room. The lock disengaged and—hallelujah—the team’s weapons and gear was stacked inside.
“All right, Warren,” the sergeant said. “Well done again.”
“Don’t go gettin’ all mushy on me, Sergeant.”
The marines slipped into harnesses loaded with the Home Depot of military hardware. They slung weapons over their shoulders and strapped pistols to their hips. There was plenty to go around, as three of their buddies wouldn’t need their gear any longer. Patrick stuffed a lethal load into a gym bag with a Renascentia logo and handed it to me. “Carry this.”
Jackson followed that with a wicked-ass machine gun. “Here, you might need a friend.”
“Uh, yeah...” Settling the gym bag’s carry strap over my shoulder, I examined the stubby firearm. No longer than my forearm, it had two pistol grips, fore and aft, the latter having the trigger. A blocky box squatted on top, near the back end, containing what appeared to be a miniature display screen that showed a magnified view of its point of aim. “I give up; what is it? A Bifluvian Death Ray?”
“SMG60.” Jackson flashed his red teeth in an evil grin and retrieved the weapon. He demonstrated as he spoke. “Look, it’s easy. Safety, trigger, sights, magazine. Set the safety here, to Burst. Depress the trigger slightly, and you’ll see a green dot in the sight picture.” He held the gun up for me to see; sure enough, a green dot glowed in the center of the box’s screen. “Put the dot on the bad guy’s belly, squeeze-don’t-jerk the trigger, and the bad guy goes buh-bye. Lather, rinse, repeat. At twenty-five percent magazine capacity, the sighting dot will flash yellow. At empty, it will turn solid red. When that happens, press here, drop the magazine and pop in a new one.”
Jackson set the safety and handed the weapon back, whereupon I accidentally practiced the magazine release. The lance corporal caught the narrow metal box of cartridges before it fell to the ground. He sighed and allowed me to reinsert it.
“With self-propelled ammo,” Jackson said, “there’s no bolt to throw, no cartridge cases to clean up, and virtually no recoil. That’s it. You now officially a New-nited-States Moh-reen. Semper Fi.”
“If you ladies would care to join me,” the sergeant said. Patrick didn’t wait; he powered ahead with long, purposeful strides, and I trailed behind him. Lance Corporal Jackson, an armload of his munitions tucked against his chest, fell in next to me and clapped his free hand on my shoulder.
“You know,” he said, “I’m starting to like you, Feather. You still a dick, but you a dick in a good kind of way.”
“Thanks, Corporal.” I held up the SMG60. “Let’s hope I don’t have to use this thing for real.”
“God wouldn’t be that cruel.”
***
AGENT RAMIREZ HIKED across the Homeland complex to a square, featureless building with a sign out front that read BLDG 1410. The security on 1410 was an order of magnitude higher than the other buildings on the campus; not only did he have to thumbprint the reader on the outer door, he had to authenticate with a retinal scan, then wait for the security officer to release the mantrap inner door.
The officer directed Ramirez to an elevator. He descended to the eighth sublevel and exited to a single room with a glass divider, behind which drowsed a clerk. Above the glass, a sign proclaimed: Evidence Room.
“What can I do for you, Agent Ramirez?” the paunchy middle-aged clerk asked, once the agent had shown his ID.
“Last month, we busted six Mus—ah, radicals in Kansas.” At Homeland, religious profiling of non-Christians was frowned upon; if the clerk reported him, it could be a blot on his record. “In their possession were a number of canisters of aerosolized Vx. Has that been destroyed?”
“Let me check.” The clerk tapped his screen with a two-finger tattoo. “Ah, no, still here, waiting for the HazMat team to pick up.”
“Good.” Ramirez allowed his feral grin to break through. “How much is there?”
The clerk blinked and focused on his display. “Um, says here six canisters, twenty kilos each, with air disbursement nozzles.”
Ramirez ran the math in his head. A dose as small as ten milligrams was fatal to a human. One hundred and twenty kilos equated to... twelve thousand grams, so the eight canisters represented enough Vx to kill twelve million people, under optimal dispersal conditions.
Like say, in a tunnel.
“Give me all of it,” Ramirez ordered.