Perion Synthetics (17 page)

“Another sixty seconds. Allowing for the
elevator ride and walk to the front door, we’d need to move soon.”

“What do you think, Mrs. Paulson? You want
to know the answers?”

“That depends on the questions,” she
replied.

“Let’s say competency exams are a real
thing, or will be. Don’t you want to know what Perion has planned or why he’s
spent millions of dollars lobbying the state and federal governments for more
stringent requirements? And is James Perion behind this obvious cash grab? Or
is it his son Joseph? Would the old man really have signed off on such a…”

“Immoral,” said Roberta.

“A morally questionable project,” said Cam,
the fire going out of his voice.

“That doesn’t sound like—”

“There’s more, Cynthia.” He gestured to the
empty bottle in Cyn’s lap. “For instance, why aren’t you breastfeeding your
baby? She can’t be more than a few months old, right? And you’ve got no wedding
ring on your hand, or an impression to indicate there has ever been one.”

Cyn looked at her fingers.

“That’s a second generation Katsumi sliver
in your wrist there. You have tattoos on the undersides of your arms that
someone has tried to blot out with concealer, but they couldn’t hide the
surgical bonding. And I bet if you turned around, we’d find a top of the line,
Umbra-exclusive jackport in your neck, probably higher-end than mine.”

Cyn put a hand to the back of her neck and
felt the circular grooves. Stepping out of herself, she wondered why Cynthia
Paulson would even need a jackport.

“And,” said Cam. He shifted from his divan
to hers and put a hand on her forearm. His voice was a whisper. “Ask yourself,
honestly. Why… why in the hell do they
insist
on calling you Mrs.
Paulson? That’s not what’s written on your paychecks from Lincoln Continental,
is it, Cyn?”

The elevator was going
up
.

“And if that’s true, then we have more to
worry about than a few rogue projects,” said Cam. He was talking to someone who
wasn’t there, someone whose responses only he could hear. “Forget painting him
as a humanitarian; Perion is making a grab for world domination.” He sighed.
“It’s the news, boss. It’s
supposed
to be sensationalist.”

Cyn looked down at the baby in her arms, torn
between handing the infant over to Roberta and shielding it from all of the
terrible things in the world.

If it weren’t for that damn directive…

If it weren’t for that compulsion to protect
Candice, to keep her close, Cyn could… what?

“How do you know who I am?” she asked.

Cam shook his phone. “Snapped a picture.”

“You have a phone and yet you’re talking to
someone in your head?”

“My boss. He has access to my whisperer. It’s
the only channel we have right now. Guess someone upstairs forgot to plug a
hole.” Cam laughed. “He’s actually going nuts over there. All this good dirt on
Perion and we can only feed the fluffy stuff.”

Feed. Feed to the subs. The words came to
Cyn out of the gloom.

“Who is Lincoln Continental?”

“Not a who,” said Cam, leaning against the
handrail. “A what. Lincoln Continental is one of the Big Three media houses,
along with Banks Media out of Los Angeles and Benny Coker’s White Line out of
Atlantic City. The LC is run by a man named Lincoln Tate, your boss. I hear
you’ve been feeding some very revealing content. I haven’t seen it myself, but
based on what Banks tells me, I’m not surprised they had you holed up down
there.”

Cyn shook her head.

“That’s bullshit,” she replied. “Why would I
bring my daughter with me?”

“An excellent question. Why
would
you
bring a three month old baby to a covert and obviously dangerous assignment?
I’m guessing you didn’t pack up the minivan with a diaper bag and a playpen and
drive right up to the gates.”

“I don’t remember how I got here,” said Cyn.

“It’s okay,” Roberta assured her. “We know
someone who can undo what they did to you.”

“What
who
did to me?”

“
Doctor
Bhenderu,” said Cam. “Him and
his crack team of mad scientists. God knows what else they’ve been up to down
there.” When Cyn shook her head in confusion, he explained. “We’re under the
Spire. The Medical level is five floors down from the lobby. From what I can
tell, they have a massive underground complex fanning out from the Spire. Some
floors look like hospitals, others like dormitories, nurseries, apartments,
homes… it goes on and on. And that’s not all.”

His eyes fell on Candice and he was quiet
for a moment.

“There are training areas, obstacle courses,
firing ranges—everything you would expect to find at a Calle Cinco recruitment
camp in the desert. The synthetics they had running those courses were bigger
and faster than these AutoGuards they have all around this place. They looked…”

“Dangerous,” said Roberta. “Like they were
built for organic damage.”

“Call it what you want: organic damage,
urban pacification, or straight-up military grunts. They’re building an army
down there.”

“Why would Perion need an army?”

Cam turned away to watch the numbers tick by
on the elevator’s vidscreen. “He doesn’t, but the United States does. Every day
the MX gets stronger, leans a little harder on the Rio Grande. How long do you
think it will be before they’re trying to push consumer-grade Ayudante chips on
this side of the border?”

Cyn’s hand went to the back of her neck.

“Similar to yours, yes,” said Cam, “but
without the neurochem or regulatory assist. Ayudante chips drive MX soldiers
harder and faster than our boys with their government-issue Vinestead hardware.
I think that’s where Perion comes in. An entire army of replaceable
soldiers—drones that walk and talk and
think
. No more human casualties
and most importantly, no more money funneling into Arthur Sedivy’s pockets.”

The elevator slowed as the numbers on the
vidscreen faded out, replaced by the word
Lobby
. Cam motioned for Cyn to
stand aside before the doors slid apart. Only Roberta stood in full view of the
lobby, her eyes jumping from one target to the next. She waited, inert, until
the doors closed on her. Cam pressed the button for the third floor and they
began to rise again.

“Plan B,” said Roberta, finishing some
calculation in her head.

They stepped off the elevator onto a
reception floor that was open to the lobby below. Parts of the floor fell away
at the windows, allowing for an ever-shrinking atrium to reach higher into the
building. Leather couches formed a line along the perimeter near the floor to
ceiling glass.

The area in front of the elevator was
deserted, save a janitor who was either too old to be performing manual labor
or whose gears weren’t tuned correctly for the repetitive act of emptying
garbage cans.

Cam led Cyn to the nearest window where they
looked out over the circular driveway in front of the Spire.

“We need to split up,” he said. “Cyn, I’m
going to need you to trust me.”

“I don’t,” she replied. “At all.”

“Fine, then trust Roberta. You’ll need to
give her the baby.”

“Fuck that,” said Cyn.

“It’s the only way.”

It was in the way his voice wavered; he was
serious.

“I appreciate what you’ve done, but I’m not
trusting my baby to a woman I’ve never met before.”

Roberta took a step forward. “I’m more than
competent to watch over the child until we meet up again.”

Cyn wrapped a protective arm around Candice.

Cam turned away from the window. His face
grew stern. “Look, Cyn. They’ll let Roberta walk out of here with the baby. I
guarantee they won’t bat a fucking eye. Us, on the other hand, and
you
in your hospital gown in particular, will set off every alarm in this place. We
have some work to do if we want to get out of here. If you want to drag Candice
through that, that’s your choice, but I’m not slowing down because of her, and
I doubt any synthetic grunt is going to go easier on you just because you have
a baby in tow.”

“Please,” said Roberta. “This way there’s no
danger for her. I’ll take her right out the front door without incident and
meet up with you later. I promise you she will be safe with me.”

It took a full minute to approach Roberta
and hand over Candice, who was still alert in her little blue bundle, still
watching the world as if she could understand any of it.

“If anything happens to her, I’ll kill you.”
Cyn opted for simple language. “If you run, I will hunt you down and then kill
you. And not just you, but everyone you know or care about.” She leaned closer.
“Even
him
.”

Roberta’s eyes jumped to Cam and back. “I
believe you.”

“If you ladies are done,” said Cam, “we need
to get moving. Roberta, meet us at the warehouse. We shouldn’t be more than an
hour behind you.”

“If we don’t make it,” said Cyn, “please
take her home to Umbra—”

The city came back in a flash, its neon arcs
erupting from uncertain shadows. She saw the Umbra Tower gleaming at midnight,
its pulse climbing higher into the sky with every bass hit coming from the
identical techno clubs and synth parlors lining the street next to… where…
Decker Plaza? A skyscraper by Umbra terms, reaching two floors higher than most
of the modest buildings on Grant Street. And on that fifth floor, there worked
a man with a shaved head and dark brown skin and rows of teeth that glinted
like a crescent moon from one side of his hard, angular face to the other.

Lincoln.

Roberta was gone before Cyn could finish her
sentence. Candice’s face disappeared behind the closing doors of the elevator
and Cyn thought for a fleeting moment she would never see her daughter again.
The directive fumed, told her to get moving, to do
something
to speed
their reunion.

“If you’re wrong about her,” said Cyn,
staring at the silver doors, “it’ll be your ass.”

Cam pulled one arm across his chest to
stretch his shoulder. “You don’t have to worry. Roberta’s a synthetic, and
fiercely loyal to—”

“What?” Cyn spun around. “You let me hand my
baby over to a
machine
?”

Cam repeated the stretch with his other arm.
“A machine that has been imprinted to follow my orders.”

“Not good enough! I’m calling this off. I’m
getting my baby and going home.”

“Okay,” said Cam, cracking his knuckles,
“but first—”

Cyn barely registered Cam’s fist entering
from the periphery. It came within an inch of her nose, but a last-second parry
redirected the energy safely into space. Cyn’s legs contracted, sinking her
torso as her feet turned towards the enemy. Her back heel came off the ground
in an on-guard stance while her hands came up in a modified defensive shell. A
half-second after assuming the position, Cam came at her again, this time with
an abrupt thrust kick aimed for her stomach.

Hospital-issue slippers twisted against the
thin carpet, turning her body parallel to the incoming strike. Cam’s leg
scraped past her; the edges of his shoe ripped her gown, exposing her torso.
Cyn only caught a flash of the thin tattoo running down the valley between her
abs, disappearing under the band of stark white underwear. As Cam came down
from his kick, Cyn threw an elbow into the space she knew he would soon be
occupying. It connected, sending Cam stumbling back a few paces.

When he stopped, his feet pivoted out on his
heels then again on his toes. His hands came up on a line extending from his
chest.

“What the fuck, Cam?”

“You can subdue an Ayudante,” he said. “The
military has known that for years.” His breathing was already ragged and his
chest pumped frantically. This man was no fighter.

And yet he pursued her, pushing in with a
feinted jab followed by a low cross. His knuckles drove into Cyn’s stomach,
forcing the air out of her lungs. She fell back, struggling to breathe.

“With enough code,” he said, throwing a
roundhouse kick at her exposed knee, “you can mute an Ayudante to a dull buzz.”

Cyn shuffled back and then forward,
returning her own kick to Cam’s inner thigh before he could recover. When he
reached down to block it, Cyn’s foot had already retracted and started for his
head. She dug her toe into the side of his face between his ear and his jaw.

“When an Ayudante is compromised,” he
grunted, lunging at her with a lead hook, “there are only a few things that can
bring it back.”

Cyn’s wrist erupted in fiery pain; somehow
she had raised her hand and instinctively leaned away from the incoming fist.

“You can
short
it,” said Cam.

A cross came flying from the right, followed
by an open palm hook that rattled Cyn’s head.

“You can reset it.” He was toying with her
now, sending an endless string of straight punches right down the center line,
busting through her defenses to land on her chin, neck, and chest. “Or, you can
knock some fucking
sense
into it.”

Cyn felt the bones in her nose shift and the
world muted itself into a dizzying array of sparks at the corners of her
vision. She stumbled away, grasping at her face, feeling the wet skin. The
directive in her head was still talking about Candice, but another speaker rose
from the din, this one cold and calculating. It spoke rapidly in an unfamiliar
language, but somehow she understood what it was saying all the same.

Wiping the tears from her eyes with her
palms, Cyn tore at the shredded hospital gown and tossed it aside. She watched
Cam’s eyes go wide, but all she could think about was the cool breeze of the
air conditioning on her bare skin. She drew herself up and took a deep breath.

Waves of soothing vibrations ran down her
arms and legs—her augmentations kicking into gear. They drove her fists and
feet faster than Cam could keep up with. Each impact sent a corresponding
feeling of satisfaction throughout her body like some kind of synth rush with a
tapered bite of accomplishment. She attacked; he retreated. She pursued,
raining blow after blow upon the man who had convinced her to hand her baby
over to a synthetic, on the man shouting nonsense about knocking some fucking
sense into
her
. Now he would see how it felt to be on the other side, how
it felt for someone to show him the error of
his
ways.