Xenoform (34 page)

The interior of the cupboard was barely distinguishable from the creature within it. Slimy strands of green matter joined her and it randomly, as if some sort of jungle had grown around her. Her actual body was just a concentration, a
congealing
of the corruption that was in evidence all around. He shut the door again and thought no more of the encounter.

When the fuel barge hit the city Lifkin stirred once more from the waking, resting, waiting mode that had become the norm over the last seven days. That was the sign, the signal, he was sure of it. His body moved of its own accord to the window, where he listened to the city erupting into panic outside. He didn’t dare move the wardrobe aside again because he feared the dazzling light that would flood in would damage him irreparably. The thing he had become was satisfied, excited even.

He returned to the sofa, which by now was a grassy hummock of squidgy organic-ised matter and sank into it to wait. The explosion was the signal, but the time was still not ripe. After all, it was still daytime. More waiting – just a little more waiting.

Throughout the day Lifkin’s new body began to show signs of agitation as night drew closer. Lumps moved excitedly under his skin, his eyes darted and rolled madly, their speed increasing as the clock ticked towards evening. He heard sounds from the kitchen, too – awful, sucking, squelching, slurping sounds and the occasional bestial grunt. He felt the tension through the greenshit membrane, knowing he was not alone. There was nothing of the original Lifkin remaining now. The creature sat, waiting, exhaling vaporous emerald-hued clouds, amber eyes rolling in its new face like marbles dropped in the grass.

Across the city, chaos reigned. Gunfire crackled like fireworks in the distance. Emergency sirens screamed and blatted stupidly – the calls of the urban jungle. People in the Undercity were close to riot. People in the Overcity were close to panic. Refugees were fleeing the fire on foot where the roads were too choked to carry them. Spyflies swooped and soared in clouds across the wide front of the dying day. They still avoided the scrambler-baits that they had learned to fear, but otherwise their behaviour was abnormal. Whoever had originally owned them – private corporations, government departments, police forces, rich kids – they now reported back to only one master.

Deep in the Undercity proper, in a deliberately discreet corner of a mostly-disused industrial estate, Whistler and her friends awaited the return of their missing companions. They were not alone. A lot of people would not be coming home as scheduled.

As night fell like a soft and comforting blanket on the battered body of City Six the changed began to crawl from their dens. The thing that had been Lifkin Oman rose from what had been his sofa, parts of it adhering to his flesh and vice versa, and left the flat. It met the thing from the kitchen cupboard on the landing outside. They didn’t acknowledge each other in any overt way, although they were aware that they were not alone.

Presently they stood outside on the pavement of the injured city, close to each other but uncommunicative. The night was crashing and banging with the noises of chaos and destruction. From a hundred hidey-holes, other ex-humans were emerging, blinking and lurching into the street. The effluent spread around their feet, shining in the dim street-lights like snail trails as they dispersed into the city.

Haspan stood, itching with excitement, on the steel floor of his personal underground firing range. His partially hologrammatic body shifted and changed around him. Cutter, his chief armourer, handed him the U-55 reverently.

‘Is it ready?’ Haspan demanded, snatching it eagerly in one twining tentacle.

‘Yes, sir,’ answered Cutter in his whispery voice. ‘I found you some ammo for it, so it won’t take so long to load. I also managed to successfully connect it to the net, despite the problems, and update the software. It’s good to go. Try it,’ he urged, his eight eyes focused intently on his master’s grotesque face.

Haspan turned to address his assembled entourage. ‘Shall I try it?’ he asked them. There was a chorus of obedient affirmatives. ‘Shall I try it?’ The same chorus, but louder. Haspan had missed his calling as a pantomime villain. ‘Then I shall! Perhaps I didn’t get the fighting girl – not yet – but at least I have a new toy! Observe!’

Holding the weapon at waist height, allowing its own aiming system to do all the work, he squinted at the distant paper targets. And squeezed the trigger. The result was impressive. The suspensor-field of the weapon, supposed to steady and assist aim, slanted sharply to the side, actually spinning Haspan’s huge body around. The gun barked nine or ten times in rapid succession, moving and firing, moving and firing, possessed of its own will. Smoke filled the air of the firing range. Haspan coughed heavily, laughing at the same time. He held the gun up and examined it curiously.
That was unexpected
, he thought. The paper targets hung undamaged.

Battered and bleeding bodies lay all around. Cutter’s shaven head rolled slowly across the floor and came to rest at Haspan’s feet. Cutter’s face was frozen in an expression of shock. From the pile of bodies, someone groaned weakly, extending a hand for help. The gun, of its own volition, turned and barked again, stilling the questing hand.

Far from being horrified at this unexpected slaughter, Haspan was childishly delighted. He reared up on his hind legs and bellowed, ‘Awesome! I
love
this gun!’ He was laughing so hard he could barely speak. And then the U-55 blew up in his hand, killing him, too. Its last software update had indeed been successful, in a way.

‘What is
happening
?’ breathed Sofi.

‘I don’t know,’ was all that Whistler could think to say. The filigree pattern of fine lines on her face glowed dimly in the falling darkness. Her delicate features were furrowed with concern, her icy eyes blue jewels in the gloom.

Below them, the city was writhing in agony, booming and echoing like the belly of a ship foundering in stormy seas. Pods crawled through the blocked streets, accelerating madly wherever there was a clear stretch, sometimes crashing as their guidance systems failed or human operators became too hasty. Pulses of red and blue emanated from all around as the overstretched emergency services struggled to respond. The skyline was burning in the east and the air was thick with choking smoke. It had a sickening, plasticky taste that stuck in the throat. Sofi had stretched her shirt to cover her nose and mouth. Whistler copied her. It didn’t make much difference.

‘Spider and Roberts are still out there,’ said Sofi.

‘I know.’

Whistler was sitting on the concrete platform on which the base’s missile racks were mounted. Debian had insisted that Mother be relieved of any important responsibilities, including weapons systems, so for now the launchers were dead and dormant, the missiles roosting in their tubes like sleeping birds. And certainly he was right to distrust the computer system, judging by what was going on in the streets below. They had lost even the satellite news feed, now. Debian was working on something in Tec’s lab, some plan to connect to whatever remained of the net. It sounded like madness to Whistler, if his story about the AI was accurate, but she had to trust his abilities and opinions regarding a subject she knew little about. She wondered what he hoped to achieve exactly.

The fire was coming closer. From the roof of the base they had a panoramic view of the madness below, except for where the other five turret-like upper tiers of Molder Jackson, each equidistant from 3A, jutted into the air, blocking their line of sight. None of their reclusive neighbours could be seen out on their own roofs.

It seemed that every disgruntled citizen and gang member in the Undercity had been on the streets an hour ago. Several times they had heard shooting nearby. Now that night was coming though, the crowds had mostly melted away into random, roving groups of stragglers, and an outright riot had been averted.

‘Are we going to look for them?’ asked Sofi. Her eyes were fixed on the blaze in the east, trying to map its progress, measure its threat.

‘I don’t know. We haven’t got the van, have we. They could be anywhere. We could go to Roland’s, see if they left there okay. But if they did, then we still don’t know where they are, assuming they would aim to come straight back. And if they’re holed up there, waiting for a safe opportunity to leave then we’ll just end up stuck waiting with them.’

‘Maybe Roland will know where they went, if not here.’

‘Maybe,’ agreed Whistler. She sounded as depressed as she felt.

‘I’ll go,’ offered Sofi quietly. She turned to Whistler, her face a map of worries.

‘Wait a bit. In the morning I’ll go with you.’

‘Damn it, Whistler.’ Sofi shook her head sadly. ‘I wonder if you care about any of us sometimes. Anything could have happened out there. They don’t know about our contract, do they?’

‘You wanna take this out on me? You think we survived this long without my taking care of us all? Do you know what I’ve fucking sacrificed, what I’ve done for you? For this team, for the sake of us having our own business? I didn’t build all this for just me! I could still go back to the Blood Collective if all I cared about was myself! Killing a superior doesn’t exclude you from being a member, you know. I’d be making fucking millions by now if all I cared about was money, so remember who you’re speaking to here!’ She felt anger boiling up inside her, suppressed it with a physical effort. Slowly, she made her fists unclench. Sofi was frightened, too. And she did know. Whistler knew that she did know. For a moment the only sound was the racket from below.

Sofi turned to Whistler, clamping her shirt across her nose with one hand, the eyes above it looking slightly abashed. ‘Sorry, boss.’

‘It’s okay. We’ll go in the morning. I promise. And one way or another, we’ll find them.’

There was a terrific roaring from the east then and both of them stopped talking to peer into the distance. They squinted in the eye-watering, smoggy gloom to discern the source of this new noise.

‘Jets,’ said Sofi.

And then there were a series of deep, booming concussions from the direction of the fire. One, two, three, four, five, six explosions erupted like trees of flame growing out of the blackened, ruined ground, towering threateningly above the general conflagration.

‘Are they dropping powder bombs?’

‘I dunno. Maybe. The blasts look a bit big for that. Maybe they’re cutting a firebreak.’

‘Fucking insane.’ Sofi’s shirt slipped off her face and she tugged it back. ‘How many more people will they kill doing that?’

‘They did it in City One, remember?’

And then the jets came roaring overhead – six dark, angular and flint-like shapes that screamed through the sky, leaving fluffy contrails behind them. One of them waggled its wings playfully from side to side and Whistler thought it was maybe saluting someone on the ground – maybe the city as a whole – until it turned over and fell out of the sky like a stone. She took a sharp inhalation of breath, waited for the explosion. There was a deceptive second of silence as the plane disappeared into the throng of towering buildings a mile or so to the west and then the inevitable bang, surprisingly understated. Nobody had ejected from the stricken aircraft.

‘Whoa...’ sighed Sofi as the remaining jets disappeared into the greying day.

‘Will we have to move? Should we try to leave the city altogether?’ she suddenly asked, changing the subject.

‘I don’t know, Sofe. I don’t know what to do, much as I hate to admit that. Maybe tomorrow things will look clearer. Maybe the fire will be out by then.’

Sofi didn’t look as if she believed it. ‘Or maybe it’ll be so close that we can’t even get to Roland’s any more.’

‘Army’ll stop it, Sofe. Or somebody. They’ll have to.’

‘
They
can’t even fly planes any more without them falling out of the air. I don’t think they can stop shit. The AI is winning.’

‘It’s official, then – you believe him? I think we have to agree on what we’re fighting here before we can hope to strategise.’

Sofi turned away, kicking at a scattering of gravel on the roof with one boot, sending pieces flying over the edge like tiny meteorites. ‘Yeah. I believe him. You?’

‘
Damn, Sofi, yeah.’ Whistler spread her hands wide. The shirt slipped away from her face and she let it go – it hadn’t been helping much, anyway. ‘Look around you. That AI is attacking the city. I don’t know
why
and I don’t think we’ll ever know why, unless Debian can find out. I think records of this period will be pretty untrustworthy a year from now, if they exist at all. I mean, what else could be causing this? Knocking planes and barges out of the sky, disrupting communications, harassing the police and ambulance services. I believe him, yeah. I still don’t really get his part in it all, though.’

‘
Yeah, right. But as for fighting it...how would we know where to start? Already we might have to leave the city, in which case I’d suggest we’ve lost round one. Perhaps we can just hole up, keep our heads down and ride this thing out if the fire’s brought under control. After finding the others, of course. I mean –
shit
!’ Sofi flinched as the report of a nearby heavy weapon echoed up between the towers of Molder Jackson, bouncing back and forth before fading away into the city. A suspicious silence followed the shot. ‘What was that?’ asked Sofi, sounding a little impressed as well as concerned.