Perion Synthetics (41 page)

“I don’t want to be a synthetic,” she
replied. “I want to be a better
human
.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not a synthetic.”

“How do you know?” she asked. “Everything
feels wrong.”

She quieted then, and Gantz passed the next
half hour watching for stray synthetics on the side of the road. Their numbers
dwindled the further out he drove, until finally the GT-R turned onto Loop Six,
a road separating Perion City from the expansive desolation of the Californian
desert. This close to the PNR, the synthetics weren’t taking any chances.

Gantz let out a slow breath. The synnies may
have seen the car heading out in this direction, but they wouldn’t be able to
follow. If Kessler wanted Gantz dead, she’d have to come herself.

“I bet there wasn’t any time,” said Joe, his
voice hoarse but improving.

“No time for what?” asked Gantz.

“To build a synthetic for Cyn. You can turn
out chassis by the hundreds on a production run, but for one-offs like Cam? It
would take weeks. It took them a month to get Synth J to exact specifications.”

“Yeah, but that was their first time
building a Virgo, right?” asked Gantz.

“Roberta before him. So my dad was the
second. By the time it was Cam’s turn, maybe they had the process down a little
faster, but Cyn didn’t show up until when, last Thursday?”

Cyn confirmed with a nod of her head.

“Not enough time. And that’s why they had to
give Gil a generic chassis. They weren’t planning on him either.”

Loop Six shrank to two lanes as it turned
more northerly. Gantz pulled down the visor and shifted it to the window.

“Okay,” said Cyn, “but that means the
synthetic Cam was already built when they took us at the warehouse.”

“But Gil was killed the next day, so…” Gantz
trailed off as he took an exit and turned left under the highway. He could
barely make out the speck that was Pure under the glare of the sun.

“So they knew about it ahead of time,”
continued Cyn. “They were
planning
to swap in a synthetic Cam even
before I showed up.” She narrowed her eyes at Joe. “You’re monsters, all of
you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Joe. “Look, I didn’t know
anything about this.”

“He’s telling the truth,” said Gantz. “We’ve
been trying to figure out what Synth J was up to ever since we heard about an
aggregator coming into the city. We didn’t have anything to do with swapping
out Cam for a synthetic.”

“Like I’m going to trust either of you.” Cyn
crossed her arms and looked out the window.

“You could try your luck with
them
,”
said Gantz.

On the road ahead were roughly a dozen
synthetics milling around in front of the yellow warning signs announcing the
PNR. Gantz glanced at the rearview mirror.

“What do you think, boss?”

Joe rubbed his ear. “Burn it.”

Gantz shifted into fifth gear and pegged the
accelerator. The car gained another twenty miles per hour before it slammed
into the first synthetic. Thumps and scrapes surrounded the cabin; after the
fourth crunch, the windshield turned opaque as it shattered in place.

“Don’t stop,” said Joe.

Frantic fingers sought out the window
controls on the door. When the glass had lowered enough, Gantz stuck his head
out to make sure they were still on the road. A red flash flew by.

“What was that?” asked Cyn.

“A warning sign,” said Gantz, whipping the
car back and forth.

“A warning sign for
what
?”

“The PNR.”

“No!” screamed Cyn, grabbing for the
steering wheel.

Gantz had to use all of his strength to keep
the GT-R on the road.

Above the roar of air rushing past the open
window and the screams of synthetics on the hood of the car, Gantz heard the
first of the tiny explosions. The black shadows on the windshield turned a
sickly green. The smell of acid grew and stung at his nose. Out of the corner
of his eye, Gantz saw the edge of the road fall away; the car was passing into
the parking lot at Pure.

Wrenching the steering wheel as hard as he
could, Gantz sent the GT-R into a tailspin. The rear bumper slammed into two
support beams and took out the awning in front of the bar. It came crashing
down on the trunk, shattering the back window and blowing dust into the cabin.

Gantz closed his eyes against the debris,
but Cyn seemed unfazed. A whirlwind of sharp claws and gnashed teeth came out
of the dust cloud, all intent on ripping Gantz apart. With one final push, he
was able to get his arms around Cyn.

“We’re okay!”

It took a few more repetitions before the
words made it through.

Cyn ceased her attack and looked around.
Gantz loosened his grip slightly.

“You asshole!” She struck him in the face
with an open palm and then kicked her way out of the car.

Gantz didn’t wait for her to come around. He
was out of the GT-R and straining to breathe the kicked-up dust before she got
to him.

“You could have killed me!” Her shoulders
dropped into a fighting stance, but froze when Gantz reached into his jacket.

He held his hand there until she backed
away.

“Christ, Gantz. You had no right. If I’m a
synthetic, then that’s
my
burden to bear. I’ll die on
my
terms,
not yours.”

It was worth the risk, thought Gantz. To
protect Joe, he had to know who and what Cynthia Mesquina really was. Whether
an augmented aggregator from Umbra or a synthetic copy just waiting to turn on
its fellow fugitives, Gantz had to be sure.

He fingered the gun in its holster. Five
bullets left in that magazine. Two magazines left on his belt.

“It’s done,” he said, slamming the door
shut. “If you don’t like it, take it up with my boss.”

Cyn kicked at the dirt and walked a few feet
away. With her back turned to Gantz, she let out a string of curses.

Gantz noticed Joe standing on the other side
of the car, nose crinkled at the fumes from the dissolving synthetics still on
the hood. He raised an eyebrow at Gantz.

“What? Too harsh?”

Joe shrugged. “Not what I would have done,
but I wasn’t driving.” His eyes drifted to the large neon sign on the roof.
Silver script spelled out the word
Pure
. “The whole city has gone crazy
and
this
is where you think to take us?”

“No shirt, no soul, no service,” said Gantz,
pointing to the placard beside the door. It was barely visible behind the
fallen awning.

“Too bad no synthetic can get close enough
to be offended by it,” said Joe. He walked around the car and stood next to
Gantz. Together, they looked at the city on the horizon.

The Spire blazed in the afternoon light. At
a distance, it looked serene and quiet.

“It wasn’t just a test for her, you know.”
Gantz had been trying to ignore the question of Joe’s humanity—not to mention
his own.

Joe joined the train of thought. “I know. I wondered
the same thing when you called me on it last week. There was a moment when I
thought I really could be a synthetic. I mean, how would I know? Synth J would
have done anything to persevere. I see that now.”

“Your old man certainly took a turn for the
crazy.” Gantz waved his hand at the Spire. “I should have known it would end up
like this. Synny zombies walking the streets—it’s a goddamn horror show.”

“They’re just doing what they’re told,” said
Joe. “You can’t fault them for their programming.”

“They should know better,” said Gantz,
adjusting his trench. “
You
should have known better. You gave the
synnies three suggestions instead of three laws.”

He took a deep breath; it was forced out by
a rock hitting him in the stomach. A second later, another hit him in the shin.

Cyn laughed as Gantz looked around. “Fuck
the police,” she yelled.

Gantz raised a warning finger. “You stop
that shit right now.”

She threw another rock, but there was no
power behind it. The pebble glanced off of his jacket and into the dirt.

Joe shielded his face with his arms and
stepped away.

“Citizen, drop your weapon!” Gantz’ voice
boomed.

“You can have my weapon when you pry it from
my gin-soaked hands,” said a voice from behind.

Gantz spun around to find Holmes standing
just outside the door to the bar, a double-barrel shotgun in his hands.

“Which one of you boys owes me a new
awning?” he asked.

Gantz spread his hands as another rock
pinged him in the shoulder. “You mind if we come in for a drink?”

Holmes considered the question. “Yeah, I
guess you should. Probably better to be drunk when the bombs start falling
anyway.”

Gantz lowered his hands. “What are you
talking about?”

“The war, Bob,” said Holmes, popping the
release on the side of his shotgun. The barrel split and fell open. “You
haven’t been following along, have you?” He turned and headed into the bar,
mumbling to himself. “Goddamn synthetic revolution starts and all you yahoos
want is to get smashed.”

Cyn appeared at Gantz’ left, a pile of rocks
in her hand. “What’s happening?”

“Sounds like we’ve been missing a war,” said
Joe. He maneuvered around the awning and went inside.

Gantz gestured to the rocks. “You get it all
out?”

Cyn dropped them to the ground. “No, but you
can buy me a beer. Maybe if I get a nice buzz going, I won’t have to kick your
ass.”

“That’d be very humane of you,” said Gantz,
extending his arm towards the door. “After you, Cynny.”

Lauren Simmons silently reported the news on the vidscreen
over the bar.

Timestamps and location codes along the
bottom told Gantz it was a raw feed, a lone broadcast saturating the city but unable
to get past the media blackout Kessler had laid down. Evidently, the memo to
stay off the airwaves hadn’t reached Lauren or the team back at the studio. The
feed stayed glued to her uncertain smile even after she mouthed the words
back
to you
.

Over the course of an hour, she reported on thirty-eight
deaths and countless more injuries in the PC. Abbreviated interviews with panicked
residents told the story of a city suddenly thrown into chaos as a third of its
population simply dropped what they were doing and walked into the streets.
Gantz read their accounts from the closed captioning as it scrolled off the
screen.

Fire trucks and emergency response vehicles
were left unmanned and idle in their garages. Patients were left suffering in
their beds. A young intern at Perion General compared the scene to watching a
toaster jump down from the counter and leave the house. The synthetics, as he
put it, simply forgot their purpose.

It wasn’t until people started getting hurt
that the city realized something was wrong.

Gantz tried to piece together the timeline.
It had been a long day escaping the Spire and driving out to The Fringe only to
be turned back by a horde of synthetics. While they had been running for their
lives, so too had any resident who looked remotely like Cam, Cyn, or Gantz.
Those who resisted rarely escaped without injury. Some hadn’t escaped.

He looked down into his beer, watched the
amber liquid swirl at the bottom of the glass.

Civilians being murdered by synthetics.
Kessler was dragging Perion Synthetics into the mud with her manhunt.

Gantz tilted his head back and closed his
eyes.

Synth J wasn’t above killing—Gil had found
that out all too well—but his motivations were solely business-related. Gil had
company secrets going back for years. Cynthia had seen things in the depths of
the Spire and would have told the world about them. Could still tell the world…

And then there was Cam.

Gantz winced at the memory of the
aggregator’s head rolling along the floor. Had the real Cam met his end too? If
not, where was he in all of this?

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman like
that,” said Holmes, stepping out of a back room that doubled as his apartment.
When Cyn had found out there was a shower nearby, she’d asked to be taken to it
immediately.

“You two were back there a long time,” said
Gantz, pushing the empty glass across the bar.

Holmes tossed the tumbler into the sink and
filled a fresh one. “She had me guard the door while she showered. Then we
talked for a bit about Molly and Umbra and everything that’s been going on.”

“Who’s Molly?”

“My first wife,” said Holmes.

“I didn’t know you were married before.”

“You never asked. No one asks the bartender
anything.” He filled his own glass with whiskey and took a sip. “After she
passed, I sold everything I had and moved to the PC. I bought this place, met
Ashley a few months later.” He looked around the bar. “Strange sometimes where
we end up.”

“And what would she think of your new life?”

“Molly? She’s dead, Bob. She doesn’t think
anymore. But if she were alive, I’m sure she’d smack the tartar off your teeth
for letting
this
happen.” He pointed to the vidscreen. “You’re the Chief
of Police. It’s your job to prevent this.”

“I’m pretty sure I stopped being the Chief
of Police when I put a bullet through James Perion’s head.”

Holmes stopped mid-sip.

“Don’t worry, he was a synthetic. It’s a
long story.”

“Long piece of stringy bullshit, maybe,”
said Holmes. “I don’t care who you say you shot, these people were depending on
you. Still are.”

“You know who’s depending on me? Joe
Perion.” Gantz nodded to the bench by the entrance where Joe lay stretched out,
his feet propped up on one of the arms. “And James Perion, who told me to look
after his son after he was gone. I delegated that job to Nico Shaw, but
evidently he can’t keep his brain in
this
reality long enough to get
that done. The future of Perion Synthetics is that man right there.”