The Digital Plague (32 page)

Thinking about the rich assholes, I decided maybe that wasn’t the worst-case scenario.

I stepped onto the escalator and enjoyed gliding up silently through the darkness. I drew my gun and held it loosely against my hip, trying to bounce on my feet as best I could. Remarkably, I felt pretty good, aside from my aching leg and the way each breath made me wince. I felt loose and calm. Things had narrowed down to a familiar and happy point: I had to kill someone and go through hell to get to them.

At the top an automated door split open, disgorging me into an open, dark area of sloping, cracked pavement and dusty steel. Ancient paint marked out areas on the floor. Whatever the space had been, it was underground and long abandoned, though a few yellow lights gleamed weakly here and there. My wet boots echoed as I walked, leaving tracks in the dust behind me. But the smooth, settled look of all that grime made it pretty clear that no one had been down here in years, maybe decades.

I picked a direction and stuck with it, squinting through the dark for signs or any other info. After I’d gone a few dozen steps a mechanical hissing from behind stopped me with my bad leg in the air. The automated door I’d just come through had opened.

I knew I was probably well concealed in the darkness, unless these were Stormers with their vision filters or someone with a night-vision Augment. The thick silence meant that any kind of move would give my position away, but just standing in the middle of the room was a surefire way to get sniped. I let my foot sink slowly down to the pavement and then eased down until I was kneeling on my good leg, my bum one stretched out stiffly before me. I crouched, trying to make myself small, a shadow, and turned around just as slowly, swallowing my flexing chest and keeping my gun up and ready. I could hear two sets of steps approaching.

I squinted, pushing my aching eyes to see something, and nearly jumped when she spoke. “Mr. Cates, please don’t shoot at us.”

The voice was all round edges and endless vowels. I kept my gun up. “Fat Girl?”

“You can call me Lukens,” she replied, her voice sort of irritated. “We have
names,
eh?” A pair of dim figures began to resolve. “I’m here with Mr. Marko. I’m not threatening you, so quit moonin’ at me like that.”

I considered this. “Marko?”

“I’m here,” he said, sounding miserable. “I’ve been kidnapped. Again.”

This with an air of acceptance, as if he’d finally realized that his purpose in life was to be pushed from spot to spot by tormentors—among which, I assumed, I numbered. He paused, and Lukens shoved him from behind, a little harder than I thought necessary. I let them get closer, but kept them covered. The Stormer had her shredder looped over her shoulder and her sidearm holstered, sure enough. Marko wasn’t armed either, though he carried his black duffel and his handheld, fingers of one hand flying in complex gestures as he walked.

“Close enough,” I said when they were about ten feet away, visible in the shadows, two binary people, all whites and blacks. “Tell me why you’re here alone.” Somewhere in the darkness water was dripping.

They stopped. Lukens didn’t move or change expression. She was really a pretty girl, baby faced with a fine, long nose, that same strand of brown hair hanging in her face. She stared at me unblinkingly. “I was ordered to keep you alive, Mr. Cates. That order was not rescinded or altered. I saw you break away, and I saw one of those hard-case boys disobey orders and try to terminate you. I decided the best way to comply with my orders was to follow you. Since you left the first two floors of the building pretty clear, it was simple enough.”

She sounded
sleepy.
I made a mental note to ask her the secret of napping while the whole fucking world died around you. I looked at Marko. “And you?”

He opened his mouth without looking up, but Lukens interrupted. “I requisitioned Mr. Marko as a member of this detail because your chances of survival here are much higher if a Technical Associate is available.”

Marko shrugged without pausing his gesturing. “What the she-hulk here said.”

Lukens’s eyes shifted to Marko for a moment. “Shrimp,” she muttered.

I considered my options. I could handle the Stormer—I’d handled dozens of fucking Stormers—but I wasn’t sure I could afford to waste a resource. She wasn’t under my orders, but if she was going to watch my back while I encouraged Monks to shoot at me, that would be useful. And Marko doubly so, since they’d powered up the complex and the electronic locks, sensors, and security systems it contained.

“All right,” I said, lowering my gun and grunting my way up to a standing position. I hesitated, considering, looking from her frozen face to Marko’s absorbed one, bathed in greenish light. “You both should know that I’m sick,” I finally said. “I’ve been coughing blood for an hour now.”

Marko’s hand stopped, but he didn’t look up at me. Lukens didn’t flinch. She stared at me with that flat, cop stare I’d come to know so goddamn well. Like I’d just told her the time. Like I’d just told her
nothing.
Fucking cops.

“Gatz shut you down,” Marko said, his voice flat, hands still.

I was watching Lukens. She was still staring at me as if she were doing sums in her head. “Looks like it,” I said. “I think I broke some invisible rule. Kev was never … normal, you know, and now he’s fucking batty. Who knows what I did. Or didn’t do.”

Slowly, Marko’s hand resumed motion, gaining speed. “You’re further along than us,” he said. “We’ll be showing symptoms in an hour, maybe two, depending on when exactly the suppression field was deactivated. I’d estimate you’ve got thirteen hours before the damage done by the nanobots is irreversible.”

I smiled. “Thirteen
hours?
” I said, chuckling, my chest burning and trying to slip the reins again. “Mr. Marko, I could kill the whole damn
System
in thirteen fucking hours.” I started to cough, sputtering and flinging spit everywhere. “If … I can’t … kill … one goddamn
Techie
… in thirteen … hours …”

Marko finally raised his eyes from his handheld, staring at me for a few seconds. “You’ve no doubt noticed that this complex is powered. Sixteen generators, by my count. There may be more offline at the moment, coming into play as others fail. From what I can tell, this complex is about sixty percent bright, which is amazing, since I’m scanning just fifty-three Monks in the vicinity. They’re pulling an amazing load right here.”

I looked around. “You got any plans of this place?”

He nodded. “Sure. We’re one level below street level here—there’s a retro-fitted escalator over
there,
” he pointed off into the darkness. “But I’d recommend against it, as it’ll be the obvious choice if anyone’s waiting on us. There’s an ancient elevator shaft over
there,
and despite the structural concerns of such an ancient element, it would be a less obvious entrance.”

I looked in the direction he indicated but couldn’t see much. “You’re helping me?” I asked. “You know why I’m here, right?”

He shrugged without looking back at me. “You’re coughing blood, right? That means
I’ll
be coughing blood soon.”

I nodded. Everyone was just scrambling to stay alive. We started moving in the direction he’d indicated, me on point and Lukens bringing up the rear, shredder back in her hands.

“Why the hell do they have this place so bright?” Marko mused as we walked. “I can see firing up whatever bullshit security tech this complex has, but they’ve got this thing
burning.
I don’t get it.”

I swept my useless eyes this way and that as we walked, making more noise than I liked. “Fifty-three Monks, you said.”

“Yeah,” Marko agreed. “That I can see.”

Controlled burn,
Kev had said to me.
This is a controlled burn.
“Fifty-three Monks who expect to pick up the pieces of the System in a few weeks when this is over. And this complex is a hospital.”

“Yeah? And?”

The elevator loomed up in front of us, rusting doors covered in faded, ancient graffiti, the two call buttons missing, disconnected wires spilling out of the wall. I stepped forward and ran my free hand along the seam between the doors, dust spilling down onto the gritty floor. “They’re not going to run the whole world with fifty-three fucking Monks, Mr. Marko. They need the power because they’re making more Monks.”

Day Ten:
It was Like Living
Underwater

Screaming rust, the elevator doors split open in response to some not so gentle pressure, revealing an empty, shadowed shaft, a damp-smelling breeze blowing gently against us. I leaned in and peered down into almost total blackness and then up, where enough light was filtering in from various sources to outline the dim shape of the elevator car hanging several floors above us. Realizing I was sweating freely, I pulled myself back and looked at Marko.

“Any juice in there?”

He leaned into the shaft with his handheld and stared around for a few seconds, then pulled back and nodded. “Yep. Either they’re using this elevator—which would be insane, considering the last time anyone serviced it—or they didn’t have the time or knowledge to route the power selectively and just juiced the whole place. But that shaft is hot.” He frowned. “I’ve also got a lot of nano traffic … but nothing like what I was seeing before. There’s been a—”

He trailed off to a low mumble, talking to himself, and I stopped listening. I considered, taking quick, shallow breaths. I’d identified the threshold where my lungs rebelled and spasmed, sending up chunks of myself in bloody packets, and if I stayed just shy of that point I could control the urge to cough. It was like living underwater. “I don’t suppose you could get that elevator to come down here?”

The Techie cocked his head. “I might, Mr. Cates, but I’m not sure that would be such a good idea, actually. It’d be noisy and would probably attract attention, and as I thought I just pointed out, that car has been hanging there for
decades
at
best.
The chances that it would drop us to our deaths are pretty even.”

I nodded, swallowing blood back into myself, a light fever film all over me. “Excellent.” It was always the fucking Hard Way. Even when I’d just been a street-level Gunner, popping shitheads in a crowd for five hundred yen at a time, it had always been the hard way. Too many people, too many bodyguards. A mark who traveled underground all the time. A mark who wore body armor head to toe. A mark buried inside Westminster Abbey. A mark guarded by a System Pig on the take.

I paused, something tickling my brain again, a memory. Before I could pursue it, a horrible grinding noise came from the opened shaft and a shower of quickly fading sparks danced downward inside it. Before I could form a question for Marko, I watched in curiously delighted horror as the ancient lights inside the shaft banged on one after the other, most of the bulbs immediately exploding in a flash of soured light. The ones that survived gave the shaft a sickly yellowish glow.

The slow screeching began descending.
Kev knows we’re here,
I thought. I didn’t feel him on me, no Push that I could detect, but I was disinclined to move. Kev was coming, or Kev had sent some of his minions to finally kill me off, and I was relieved. I was tired. Exhausted. I turned to spit blood onto the ground while Lukens circled behind me, the climbing whine of her shredder filling the air, to cover the elevator doors when it arrived.

The car made terrible noises as it lowered itself, rust on rust. Dust shook down the shaft in front of us, and when the cab finally came into view it did so slowly, hitching and shaking like a square box being rammed down a round hole. It sank a few feet past the floor before shuddering to a stop, and then—silence. I could hear the rainlike sound of sprinkling dust and then the low, keening sound of complaining metal filling the cavernous space around us.

After a moment a booming noise came from within the elevator cab. Marko jumped and quietly moved farther back, his eyes locked on his little device. The Stormer didn’t flinch. She just stared at the elevator doors, one short finger resting lightly on the trigger of her rifle. The booming repeated twice, and then the cab’s doors parted about half an inch as the tip of a pry bar appeared between them. With a warping, grinding noise the doors were slowly forced open, centimeters at a time, with a jerking motion that hinted at great effort. One more inch, two inches, and I could see movement. Three more, and I could see hands. As the doors split open enough for someone to shoulder through, I finally raised my gun, which shook in front of me embarrassingly.

With a final wrench the doors slid all the way open as smoothly as they’d been designed to. A single figure stood in the shadows within. He dropped the pry bar, which made a metallic rattle, and put up his hands.

“Don’t shoot. I’m an old man.”

“Fucking hell,” I spat out, keeping my gun trained on him. “Wa, you’re a goddamn virus.”

He stepped slowly from the elevator, hands up, looking a little less pressed and neat than I was used to. Even his motion was less fluid, a little more brittle, as if Wa Belling had grown old over the past few days, a lifetime catching up with the old man. “From what I hear, Avery,
you’re
the virus, yes?” He gave me a raised eyebrow, an expression that used to convey endless disdain and amusement. It looked tired and forced now. “At any rate, I’ve come to throw myself on your tender mercy.”

“He’s not emitting any signals,” Marko announced. “He’s not carrying any devices, aside from four guns and some ammunition.”