Cates 04 - The Terminal State (5 page)

“I never woulda imagined,” he continued in a softer tone, “that a piece a trash like yourself would have any value on the market, but damn if you didn’t sell right away.”

I kept my smile on my face. I wondered about Remy and Gerry and the rest—were any of them valuable?

“What do you do, just upload a list of names you’ve pressed, wait and see if anyone puts in a bid? ”

Anners nodded and stood up, plucking his digital sheet from the floor with a graceful bow. “Somethin’ like that. Now, I’ve been enjoyin’ our conversation, but you’re a rush order, Mr. Cates. Gotta get you into surgery.”

Umali stepped forward as Anners headed for the exit. Before the slim aide could snap the chin strap back into place, I managed to bleat, “Surgery? ”

The colonel paused and tapped one long finger against his temple. “For the augments.” He turned and called over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. The bots is the best in the business. Hardly evah kill anyone at all.”

I loved the System of Federated Nations Army.

I floated on a warm, deep ocean of narcotics, listening to ghosts. I heard people I hadn’t thought of in years—Kev Gatz, slurringly telling me he just needed to sleep, Gleason telling me they didn’t make bar stools big enough for my ass anymore, Dick Marin telling me I’d fucked everything up, Pickering rumbling out data about something, his voice like lava seeping up from the ground.

“You’re falling apart.”

Slowly, I opened my eyes. This seemed like a terribly difficult thing to do, but also a completely voluntary one, without pressure. A kid in a loose-fitting blue outfit and a slouchy white coat sat next to me, gesturing idly at a clipboard. He was very tan, with dark, curly hair that was surprisingly thick and long hanging off of him.

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision, and suddenly realized my vision was fine—but there were readouts imposed over my sight. In the left bottom corner of my field of vision were a stream of numbers stacked up on top of each other, constantly changing, and in the bottom right was a name I didn’t recognize: HUGO H. GONZALEZ. Under that was a static string of numbers: 009987-562.

Idly, I ran my eyes over my surroundings, old instincts telling me to gather data about my location, even though I felt wonderful, without any anxiety or fear. The overlays were just there, with no blurring or clipping, the letters and numbers constant and bright. I was in a narrow cot, just wide enough for my body. Wires and tubes sprouted from under the rough gray blanket wrapped around me in a disturbing way I flagged for future investigation. One transparent tube ran directly up into my nose, and once I noticed this I could feel it snaking its way down my throat, and I had to concentrate for a moment to suppress my gag reflex.

I wasn’t alone; it was a large tent, and at least ten or twelve other cots were occupied. Running my eyes over the other patients, I decided it was a good thing I couldn’t see myself. My eyes jumped back to a bed across the space from me and I went still. I couldn’t be sure it was Remy; his face was turned away from me, but he was the right size and the hair matched. I stared, trying to will him to turn over and let me see him. Fucking kid. I’d
told
him to run.

“What?” I said, my voice sounding gummy and hesitant, the tube in my throat tickling. Under the drugs, I felt tired. I felt like breathing was almost too much effort.

The tan kid glanced up. “You’re falling apart, Private Cates. I doubt you’d have lived five more years if you hadn’t been pressed.” He looked back down at the clipboard and gestured. “Microfractures everywhere, at least two compounds that healed . . . unfortunately. Your blood pressure was through the roof, your liver function is, uh, not good. One kidney looks dubious to me based on preliminary tests. Your brainwaves are fucking
bizarre
although you appear to have complete function and I detect no decline in reflexes or coherency—though there is evidence of
several
major concussions that probably caused some swelling in their day.” He looked up again. “You’re old for your age, is the point. Hell, man, when was the last time you saw a doctor? ”

I closed my eyes again and rummaged the few memories I had as a child. “I don’t know. Maybe never.”

“Well, the fucking army is the best fucking thing that ever happened to you, Cates. I think we just saved your life.” He paused. “For now.”

“Who’s Hugo Gonzalez?” I asked. The numbers and letters burned in the darkness for a few seconds and then dimmed, still visible but shadowed.

“Huh? Oh, your heads-up display, your HUD. Probably the initial draftee we implanted the neural augment into. We recycle them as often as we can. They don’t make enough new ones.”

Another ghost!
Marin cackled faintly.
Avery, you’re a walking graveyard these days
.

“Okay,” the tan kid said with an explosive sigh. I opened my eyes again and the readout flared up immediately. “What’s your name? ”

I licked my lips. “Avery Cates. Who are you? ”

As I asked the question, a small window flared into life on my vision, reading EMIL J. GUPTA, CAPTAIN (COURT.), MEDICAL CORPS.

He nodded. “Dr. Emil Gupta,” he said without looking up. “Where are you? ”

I considered the fact that whatever they’d stuffed into me ID’d people I looked at. “This readout with your name,” I said hesitantly, not knowing what to call it. “What—”

“Part of your augment array,” he said briskly, irritated. “Only pulls ID on military personnel when you’re in range of an SFNA network. Now, follow me, please: Where are you? ”

“Fuck if I know. I was unconscious during most of this.”

He glanced up at me from under his bushy black eyebrows and sighed. “Sure, sure, but these are standard questions to make sure we didn’t lobotomize you by accident.” He shrugged. “Happens. About one percent of all recipients just can’t handle the augments. You want to pass this test, Cates, because if you fail we’ll need the implants for someone else and you don’t survive harvesting. So, where are you? ”

I was too tired for anything else, so I decided to be cooperative. “In a tent, doc. I’ve been pressed.”

He nodded, gesturing sharply with a finger. “And who am I? ”

I grinned. “You’re Dr. Gupta, who saved my life.”

He actually smiled slightly as he gestured again. “Not me personally. I’m purely post-op review.”

“How’d you end up here? ” I asked. A faint stinging had suddenly bloomed, everywhere. Every joint seemed to burn just slightly with something that wasn’t quite pain yet. I figured whatever they’d spiked me with was wearing off, and a hint of dread rippled the placid waters inside me.

He shrugged, working rapidly on the clipboard. “It’s a job. Yen’s worthless. A lot of the cities are fucking night-mares.” He looked up at me for a moment. “These guys have a mess tent, three squares a day.” He looked back down at the clipboard. “Okay, you’re conscious and reactive, and your scans are all green, although I think you’re in the very early stages of scurvy. Don’t you ever eat any fruit? ”

I wanted to laugh, but the faint stinging was coalescing into a burning pain. “You’re fucking kidding, right? You notice what’s going on out there? ”

He grimaced slightly. “We’ll take care of it, don’t worry. At any rate, you’re clear, so we’re going to remove your hookups and get you up out of bed.” He frowned, staring down at the clipboard. “Well, looks like you’ve got a conditional civvie release-and-retain order.” His eyes were back on me. “You’ve been sold. Your commanding officer put your name on a darknet somewhere and someone put a bid in for you, processed and pinned to a remote.”

I nodded, flexing my hands.
Processed
and
pinned
stuck in my head. I felt like I was slowly waking up. “So I hear. Does that happen a lot? ”

He nodded, standing up. “Yep. I see about four or five a week. Illegal, of course, and if any of the political liaisons see it, there’ll be shit flying everywhere and a couple of officers turned retards overnight, but they always bury this shit in paperwork. And there’s a lot of money to be made from it, so almost all the officers do it. All you do is hold back the pressed IDs for a few hours and upload the list to an agent. The agent runs the names by his brokers, and if anyone’s interested, they negotiate a price. A lot of folks like the idea of having servants with military augments they can control—CO status is transferable. It can even be assigned to nonbiologics like avatars, Droids, any AI that can be set to beacon a unique frequency. If you sell, your name gets deleted from the official manifest, but we don’t check manifests when we process—no need—so you get the works even though officially you’re not in the army. Then we hand you over, transfer CO status, and you’re someone else’s slave.” He laughed, stepping around to the other side of my cot. “Shit, I’ve seen a couple of folks, big-wigs, come through here three or four times.” He paused. “You know anyone might want to shop around for you? ”

I shrugged. I wanted to go back to sleep. “Too many to even try to figure it out.”

He gave me a look, one eyebrow up, and then looked down again. “All right, let’s take a look.”

Without another word he yanked the blanket off me. I shivered, naked, in the sudden chill. I looked down at myself; tubes and wires sprouted from my skin in three separate patches. There was no blood or obvious incision—the tubes just sprouted from me like they’d been there since birth. I was skinnier than I remembered, ribs showing, veins lacing around my arms like buried worms. My belly was a pale skein of scars; I’d forgotten how I’d gotten most of them.

He grunted to himself in professional satisfaction and reached into one pocket, producing a small square piece of black plastic. He aimed more or less in my direction, and after a moment the stinging sensation rocketed up to searing pain as the tubes and wires suddenly began to pull themselves out of me, worming like living things. I could
feel
them squirming inside me, moving under my skin, pushing aside muscles and nerves, sliding up my throat and making me choke. It was all over in a few seconds, and I lay there shivering and coughing, with no scars I could see—I lurched up onto my elbows and patted my abdomen, laced with thin white scars from years past, but showing just some red, irritated areas where the wires had been.

“Most of the augments are in the form of nanodevices in the bloodstream,” Gupta said distractedly as he switched his eyes from me to the clipboard. “The hookups in your brain—”

“
In
my brain? ”

“—are larger by necessity.”

I looked down at myself—I was still me. Still the same body with the same windburned tan from wallowing in Englewood all these months, still the same slightly crooked leg. I slapped my hand up to my neck and found the familiar Plague scars, and I felt my heart beating—maybe stronger and steadier than I remembered, but still
beating
. Suddenly conscious of the people around me, I slowly forced my hands away from my body and sat up straight, fighting to control the shaking. The only thing that kept me alive sometimes was my reputation. No matter how far from New York I got, that much was universal—people knew only what they heard about you.

You’re an idiot
, Dolores Salgado whispered.

I felt
good
. I hadn’t even realized how much pain I’d been in, day in and day out. Not agony, nothing I’d even noticed. Just constant aches and stitches I’d gotten used to, compensated for. Most of them gone, all muted. My leg didn’t ache. When I took a deep breath, my chest didn’t twitch into the beginnings of a coughing fit. I felt alert, rested,
healthy
. It was like somone had rolled back my clock a decade or so, before the Plague that had almost killed me and half the fucking world.

I put my eyes on the doctor. He was skinny, and he had delicate hands that moved elegantly over his clipboard, summoning information and entering data. He had the look of a man who’d never been hit, never held a gun, never had to experience any real pain or trauma—and a valuable man, too; they weren’t making too many new doctors these days. I saw the layout of the tent in my head—no guards inside, fucking trivial to put hands on the man and make him a hostage. I thought of Remy, thought of another smug, disinterested doctor visiting him. Had to be something in here I could improvise with, and then count on them not wanting to lose a sawbones. Was I worth more than the doctor?

I eyed him for a second. It probably depended on how much Belling had paid for me.

And I could do it. Maybe he had the same augments as I, but I’d been making do without them for a long time. I had skills you couldn’t implant. But I discarded the idea. I had no idea what the layout of the complex was, or what was outside the interlocked network of canvas. I was fucking
naked
. Stumbling around with an uncooperative hostage, unarmed, fresh out of surgery, with Spooks lounging around—the odds of one of
them
being a Pusher were pretty much one hundred percent, meaning I’d end my day sucking my thumb and rocking back and forth. I figured, if nothing else, I should wait until I got some fucking clothes. I didn’t want to die with no damn pants on.

Besides, every step was a step toward being in the same room as Wa Belling.

The first time I’d met Belling, he’d claimed to be Canny Orel, the best killer for hire in the System, rumored dead. Belling was a liar, but a fucking
good
liar. Then for a while we’d worked together in New York, but he’d just been keeping his hand in while he helped set me up for Kev Gatz and the Plague, so he’d been a liar then, but still a top-of-the-line liar. I hadn’t seen him since he’d left me for dead in New York. I hadn’t thought of him as much as his old boss, Orel, aka Michaleen Garda, because Garda had been the most recent asshole to fuck me over. But Belling still counted, and I felt good enough to maybe try and strangle him with my bare hands. I felt good enough to get in close and do it old-school.