SF in The City Anthology (24 page)

“Son of a…gah,” Cian muttered over his wound, his connection with Dr. Traore completely lost. “That’s what I get for choosing to
have pain receptors installed.”

“What happened?” Pox choked as he tried to swallow the egg roll he had
half chewed before swallowing.

“The puppeteer be
came the puppet,” Cian gasped.

***

Willow Blasé gaped at the wounded doctor in surprise. He had overpowered Cian’s control of his left arm and used it to throw his right arm against the dining table until he broke his wrist. The gun he needed to assassinate Globa with fell to the ground with a clang, signaling to Willow that she needed to take over now. For some reason, Jihoon hadn’t fired.
A pity
, she thought to herself.
I could have had the cushiest job on the team if Cian had followed through
. At least the special protective powers afforded by working with Mr. Husher would keep her from going to prison for her actions. A few months of paperwork with threatened witnesses would make the murders she was about to commit cease to matter.

She knew for certain now that Jihoon would not kill Devon Globa, since their victim had grabbed his wife and child before diving behind the cobblium wall that lined the café’s terrace. The sniping division had trained this father too well. Willow would just have to kill him after she took down the doctor. As she trained her Sig Sauer on the doctor’s head, this agent suddenly found herself thrown to the ground. The shock was so instantaneous it took her a few seconds to realize that she had been cut i
n half by a sniper rifle shot.

“You didn’t even have the decency to shoot me in the head,” she thought to Jihoo
n as everything faded to black.

***

There was a reason behind Jihoon’s missed shot. He had taken it at Willow in a hurry because I had come running up the stairs behind him as fast as my legs could carry me. With Cian’s failure to carry out the assassination, I waited for our sniper to take the shot. It took me only a few seconds to realize that Jihoon wasn’t taking aim at either the doctor or Globa. By the time I had him in the cross hairs of my SER, he had a pulled off his shot at Willow, as sloppy as it may have been, and turned to point his massive sniper rifle at me.

“Are you really going to fire on an officer of the…?” my weapon’s attempt to get clarification on its target was cut off, as I pulled the trigger, my ammunition travelling at the speed of light.

“That’s why guns shouldn’t have minds of their own,” I thought back to my SER. “You’re too hesitant.”

As I approached the body of the fallen traitor, I noticed something peculiar about the way the smoke exited the wound my electron rifle had burned in his chest. It trailed up in blue wis
ps, not the norm by any means.

“SER, take a scan of that wound,” I pointed
my rifle at the fallen Jihoon.

“He’s wearing energy absorbent body armor,” the SER replied with its automated version o
f urgency. “He’s still alive.”

In the seconds it took my gun to relay this information to my mind, Jihoon had jumped to his feet, a Sodride vibrating tactical knife in hand. I swung my SER butt first at the sniper, but he dodged it and rent the weapon from my hands, tackling me through a small glass table that ha
ppened to reside in this room.

“Ouch!” my SER cried as it hit the floor.

“Ha, don’t make me laugh while I’m fighting!” I thought back to my weapon. Jihoon managed to stab his knife into my left arm, the searing pain nearly driving me mad as the vibrations sawed through my limb, leaving me amputated.

“Fighting and losing,” the SER said dejectedly. “I’ll send a message to headqu
arters to get backup in here.”

“Don’t be so hasty!” I shouted aloud before grabbing a long shard of glass and forcing it through the whole my rifle left in Jihoon’s ja
cket into the sniper’s abdomen.

Scrambling to my feet, I used the magnetic glove on my remaining hand to summon the SER. After it “jumped” into my grasp, I pointed it at the dying Jihoon, yet I didn’t pull the trigger. The glass shard had to have penetrated his heart. Since he didn’t have long for this world, I figured I might as well
figure out who he worked with.

Unfortunately, he seemed to have guessed that interrogation was my plan, for he pulled the pin out of the high explosive fragmentation grenade on his jacket and leaned his head as close to the explosive as possible, ensuring his nanotube matrix would be destroyed alo
ng with the rest of his brain.

“Ouch, that’s hot,” my SER thought to me as flames licked my uniform. I had just barely escaped the blast, and while no shrapnel had caught me, the added incendiary boost that Jihoon’s grenade of choice carried had
singed me more than a little.

“Whoever thought that a man needed to hear from his weapon was one stupid simpleton,” I shook my head and pressed a button in the sleeve of my uniform, causing the electrical nanowires that ran through the fabric to activate “tourniquet mode.” My sleeve closed up around the stump of my now missing arm, a chemical also leaking out of the fabric
into my wound to cause clots.

As I hobbled back into the now smoking room, for my left right ankle now felt sprained, I passed what was left of Jihoon and snuck up to the window, the smoke from the bomb hiding me from any concerned citizen who happened to look up at the source of the sudden explosion. Pulling up the “Haze Cutter” vision on my SER’s scope, I looked through the smoke and saw that Devon Globa and his family were nowhere to be seen. Pierre had arrived with the emergency vehicle to pick up the half of Willow that mattered. As for Doctor Traore, I couldn’t see him either. If anything could make this night any more of a nightmare, it was the thought of the good doctor walking around with the evidence of our ploy inside his body. 

***

“We figured out how Jihoon communicated with the agitators without being detected,” Husher spoke to me, as we sat alone in the abandoned restaurant that would serve as the Dark Unit’s headquarters from that day forward. “They were passing paper back and forth. Can you imagine such an archaic system? Ou
r analysts apparently didn’t.”

“Do most of your important missions end in such failure?” I felt self-conscious smoking a cheap cigarette while Husher went through cigars like
they were as important as air.

“As of late they have,” Husher sighed, “but tonight wasn’t as abysmal a failure as you might think. I had other reserve agents on the premises, so we still caugh
t and disposed of Dr. Traore.”

“But not Devon Globa?”

“It turns out the agitators were there tonight as well. We actually managed to kill two of them – a used aerodeslizador salesman and a charactor who had evidence on one of our past operations. So, we’ll call it a pyrrhic victory when the head ups call, even though Globa is now on the loose. Let’s hope the agitators didn’t pick him up.”

“I always joked I’d give an arm and a leg to get revenge on my sister’s hacker,” I stared at the stump on the left side of my body. “Turns out, I gave up my limb after I had already gone on my killing spree.”

“Sorry we can’t give you a new arm yet,” Husher blew a stream of smoke from each of his nostrils. “The techies are busy getting a cyborg body for Willow.”

“Well tell them to hurry up, before I get RLS (Restless Limb Syndrome),” I said
half-jokingly, half seriously.

Husher suddenly stood up and muttered, “I’m on my way.” Turning back to me he said, “Sorry Eiran, but I’ve got grownup things to do. Pic
k a good arm for a left hook.”

“Yes sir,” I saluted casually.

Once he had gone, I pulled the picture I kept of my sister out from underneath my charred body armor. While I could visit her any time I wished, my conception of who she was as a person was more accurately reflected by this small photo. Husher and I found it very amusing that the agitators used paper based forms of communication, but I could also understand their sentiment to some degree. Holding a physical reminder of the past mattered to me. Perhaps, in their own rabble rousing sort of way, they wanted to reconnect with the past, forming a government that valued “individual liberties” or some such nonsense.

I have to admit, the whole evening gave me cause for concern, even if I didn’t voice this to Husher. My last few years had been spent hunting down brain hackers and murdering them, and now I had helped the government attempt to hack the body of a man with no criminal record. Sure, I understand the nature of my hypocrisy, but at least I’m not in prison. My sister wou
ld appreciate that, I believe.

***

“Everything is in place regarding the
invasion
,” Captain Drescher thought to Mr. Husher, as the older man entered a secret room built into the Dark Unit’s headquarters. No surveillance gear of any sort would intrude on a verbal or mental conversation held here.

“We still didn’t catch Ángel,” Husher puffed his cigar angrily. “And I would have preferred taking one of the
agitators alive tonight.”

“Do you think the Dark Unit is fit to oversee an operatio
n as sizable as the invasion?”

“Well, we’ve discovered who will and who won’t be loyal,” Husher sighed. “When I’m long gone, it’s people like them who’ll run the business. I think they can be trusted to at least help guar
antee the invasion’s success.”

“
What did you ever see in them?” Drescher asked.

“They operate by their own personal codes of honor,” Husher shook his head and laughed. “Yet they’ll cast morality to the wind if it
means saving their own necks.”

“Don’t we a
ll?” Drescher laughed as well.

“I don’t know,” Husher felt pained to experience doubt for once in his life, “Dr. Traore didn’t share our sentiment
.

Episode 12: “
The Not so Surprising Visitors”

              An uncanny silence permeated the Buraiyā, a ghetto that normally discharged a cacophony of drunken revelry and battle cries. Charlisle Bungard and Elegance Pang walked with their heads bent low, jet black hoods hiding their faces from unfriendly eyes. Today was Corset Con, the largest steampunk fashion convention in The City. Charlisle and Elegance had narrowly slipped by the police the night before, so some disguises seemed in order. Having
appropriated
apparel from two youth who found themselves unluckily caught off guard outside the convention, the two ex-gangsters hid their identities behind brass pipes and gears and dark shrouds. “Cosplay saves the day,” Charlisle had laughed at the time.  

             
Unfortunately, the Buraiyā was not far from Corset Con in Prefecture 72, and the “couple” had gotten themselves lost in this ghetto. While they may have been safe from the police in this urban swamp (it was too haphazard and run down to compare to a jungle), the local wildlife would provide plenty of danger. In their home ghetto, the Gorse, gangs followed specific codes of conduct, as laid down by the Treaty of Oscuro Martes. In the Buraiyā, there were no rules. The youth weren’t the only age group to take up gang life here either.  Jamie Delito had spread the Bukavac gang’s influence throughout this ghetto, and he was certainly one of the most powerful mobsters in the entire City, especially since Iwao Mizushima was taken to court.

             
“How are you fine children doing this evening?” a large, balding man asked as he glanced at the darkening sky. “I’m talking to you anoraks
[41]
.”

             
“Like we couldn’t hear you,” Elegance scoffed, “or your friends over there.” 

             
The large man looked taken aback, as his two hidden companions revealed themselves. His job had seemed so simple on paper – ambush two fugitives from the Gorse and bring them back to the Bukavac’s local chapter. He would be fully initiated into the Bukavac gang, the organization’s heads would turn the youth over to Central Authority, guaranteeing even further protection from the police, and the CA would do…well whatever it was they did with fugitive children. It was a win-win situation for everybody, except the kids. Now he began to have doubts about these two. They didn’t seem frightened of their older assailants.

             
“Now I’m not a born and bred kidnapper,” the balding man spoke up, “but the two of youse are coming with us whether you are awake or asleep.” He pulled a spray can full of chloroform from his pocket.

             
“You handle the large stupid one,” Elegance said to her companion. “I’ll handle the two dumber ones behind him.”

“Be reasonable,” the balding man held up the spray can as if he was the one warding off an unwarrante
d assault late in the evening.