Xenoform (35 page)

‘Dunno. Shoulder cannon? Tank?’ Whistler shrugged. She was still looking towards the blaze in the east. ‘I think it might be slowing down. And I think I hear more jets.’ She grabbed a corner of the missile rack, swinging herself to her feet and went to the edge, where she squinted out into the darkening day. She was right – more jets came rushing out of the east, flowers of fire blooming in their wakes, and disappeared overhead again. The harvesters watched them without breathing until they were out of sight. None of them crashed this time, but both Sofi and Whistler counted only four. If they were the same unit as last time they had lost another plane.

Sofi was not usually one for shows of affection, but now she went to stand beside Whistler, putting one slim arm around her friend’s shoulders. Whistler leaned into her, and they stood that way and watched the city fall apart for some timeless grey period of time. People ran past below, hurrying desperately, jumping bags of rubbish and piles of random debris. Some of them had weapons across their backs. The harvesters watched with detached interest as a police pod – real police – went howling up the street in pursuit. A voice was booming from the pod’s speakers: ‘
Stop now! Stop or we
will
fire!’
And then, without further warning, the pod opened up into the backs of the fleeing crowd with the rapid whispering sound typical of an ice gun. People flew sprawling to the floor as the pod shuddered to a halt. Somebody began firing a projectile weapon from some unseen vantage point, the rounds pitter-pattering off the armoured hide of the pod. The turret of the vehicle homed in on the source of this new attack and began to return fire.

‘I think we should go inside,’ said Whistler quietly, guiding Sofi back away from the edge of the building carefully. It seemed suddenly all too easy to slip and topple into the chaotic street below, not to mention the chance of a stray round or random pot-shot hitting one of them.

‘You don’t think we should help them?’

‘I’d love to, Sofe, but it’s too dangerous. I think we have to help ourselves right now.’ They walked back towards the sheet metal porch that housed the stairs down. The heavily-reinforced door was standing ajar, swinging gently in the warm breeze that flowed out of the east, seeming to beckon them back in. ‘We may have to hole up here and we can’t do that with the police on our case. Low-pro is the way to play it right now. C’mon.’

‘Okay, Whistler. I just hate it when those fuckers start flexing their muscle round here. How many smackings have they had over the years? How many do they need? They ought to know better.’

‘Intelligence,’ said Whistler, letting go of Sofi and stepping through the door, ‘is not in the standard-issue police lexicon. There’s a lot of things they should know better.’

‘What’s a lexicon?’ asked Sofi as she closed and triple-locked the door behind them, reducing the sounds of battle and disorder outside to a muted babble. In here, the whole nightmare could have been imagined, but for the tang of burning city that had permeated the building. It was getting cold, too, without Mother’s environmental ministrations. Somebody would have to set the heating manually.

‘A lexicon? Fucking hell, Sofi, did you go to school?’

‘No. You know I didn’t. And nor did you.’

The stairwell was dark, lit only by the dim glow that filtered up from the floor below. Spider had stuck a poster up on one wall, a picture of some air force commander below a slogan originally reading GO UP IN THE WORLD! and presumably meant to recruit people into the air force. Spider had modified it so that it read GO UP ON THE ROOF AND HAVE A BEER! BUT DON’T FALL OFF! Wise advice indeed, Whistler thought. She wished he and Roberts were here now.

‘I’m gonna see what Debian and Tec are up to,’ said Whistler as they headed down the stairs.

‘Yeah, I’ll come with you,’ said Sofi. ‘I guess it might be important in some way.’

‘I’ve no idea if it is or not,’ admitted Whistler. ‘But I like to know what’s going on. Obviously everything outside is a fucking write-off, so my hopes are pinned on Debian being some sort of help.’ And, surprising even herself, Whistler actually laughed, albeit in a slightly nervous manner. It was all just too surreal to really contemplate seriously.

Sofi looked at her as if she had gone insane. ‘Glad you find it all so funny.’

Whistler controlled herself and pushed through the door at the bottom of the stairs. They trooped through the big room, past the looming shapes of crap alley, down the stairs and onto the basement floor. Mother’s blank terminals stared at them like the eyes of a corpse as they passed, their dull panes somehow resentful. The silent emptiness of the base was unnerving, worse than the cacophony outside.

When they reached Tec’s lab the door was shut but a dim light oozed from the crack underneath it. Whistler wondered how much longer the power would stay on and how they would cope if it went off.
When
it went off. She managed to keep this worrying thought to herself.

Sofi peeped into the lab, a little timidly, and stepped in, Whistler close behind her. Tec was leaning over Debian, who was sat on a metal office chair with his head bowed. Part of his skull had been shaved, exposing a sleek implanted chip with tiny lights winking on its surface. Tec was wiring a datasheet to it with some sort of home-made-looking connector, the sheet magnetised onto a shelf beside him. He checked back and forth between the sheet and Debian’s head, his face rigid in concentration. On the tip of one pinkie finger he wore a clicking medical attachment – a sort of tiny blade mechanically mounted on a metal thimble. It was joined to his skull with a fine micro hi-flo. There was a delicate smudge of blood along the invisibly thin edge of the blade. Tec was muttering rapidly under his breath, though whether to Debian or himself it was hard to say, and his head was pulsing between turquoise and green, making otherworldly shadows lurch and stagger across the jumbled surfaces of the room. Only one of the ceiling-mounted screens was on and it was showing static, washing the room with a harsh grey light.

Whistler cleared her throat softly. Tec jerked upright, cursing. ‘Whistler! Don’t do that!’

‘Sorry,’ said Whistler as sweetly as she could manage, looking down at the floor with mock humility. ‘You busy?’

‘Yeah, kinda. We’re about ready to roll, though. Right, Deb?’

Debian stretched, pressing his hands to the small of his back and turned in his chair to face the newcomers. ‘Yeah. I think so. Diags look good. Thanks, Tec. I think it might really work. I must admit I’ve been frantic to get back in there – I just don’t know if I should try, now. I guess I’m kind of frightened.’ Whistler found herself liking him more than ever for this show of unabashed honesty.

‘After all the effort we’ve put in it seems almost a shame not to,’ said Tec. ‘But it’s your call.’

‘So what have you guys been doing?’ asked Whistler, staring at the shaved patch on Debian’s head. He brushed his hair back over it self-consciously.

‘We’ve been tinkering with my low-level firewall,’ said Debian, making an effort to find words that the technologically-challenged could understand. She was, after all, a meathead. ‘I think I know why it didn’t protect me as it should have last time, thanks to Tec.’

Tec chuckled modestly. ‘I don’t think I did all that much, actually. This bloke,’ he said, jabbing a thumb in Debian’s direction, ‘is something else. That chip in his head – he made it himself, installed it in his flat with only a simple robot arm and two mirrors to help. It does contain some very advanced firewalls but it’s also more than that – it’s a...a...an
interface protocol
in its own right.’ He looked to Whistler and Sofi for understanding, saw none on their faces and carried on anyway. ‘A whole new connection method, that makes his control much more precise and faster than by using fire-and-forget avatars, which run detached from the end user, that being their point, right? That’s why avatars run from neural simulations. So that they can–’

‘Okay,’ interrupted Sofi tersely. ‘So will it be safe to connect again now, Debian? And why do you want to when you know it might be dangerous? Presumably this connection protocol of yours is both the strength and – judging by what the AI did to you before – the weakness.’

Debian gazed openly up into her face and answered without a trace of emotion, although his fingers wriggled nervously in his lap. ‘Essentially, you have hit the nail on the head, yes. It’s still dangerous, but I think we have ironed out a few problems with my system. I don’t think it’ll happen again. And as for the reason: I think we need to know what’s going on here – with the beast, with the explosion in Centre District and, I’m guessing, with your friends, too. Tec said they should have been back ages ago. I’m sure you’re all worried about them. Maybe I can find them if I can get into the net.’ He looked from Sofi to Whistler, his face questioning. ‘Also...well, the net is
my
home ground. No virus is going to keep me out. I have to do this, no matter how frightened I might be. I have to.’

‘Okay,’ said Whistler, who until a few seconds ago had been against the idea. The notion that Debian could maybe find her friends, even get a message to them, had not occurred to her before. Suddenly the importance of his safety simply ceased to be a concern and Debian morphed in Whistler’s mind from a human being who she was coming to like into another tool that could be used.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, holding her gaze for a moment. She nodded gravely. ‘But no promises.’

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t get your brain fried again, man,’ said Sofi.

‘Okay,’ said Debian uncertainly. ‘Er, is there anything I can eat first? We’ve been at this for ages. I don’t remember when I last ate anything.’

‘Oh, yeah, sorry,’ said Whistler, realising just how drained he looked. ‘We aren’t usually in the hospitality business. Help yourself to whatever there is.’ And a snap-shot of the interior of the fridge suddenly flickered in her mind: Two shelves of beer, synthi and real, the remaining fake eggs, a third of a loaf of bread, a half litre of rancid milk and nothing else. Tins in the cupboard, but not many. Enough for a day or two, tops. ‘There isn’t much. Guess we need to go shopping.’ And she uttered a laugh so hollow that it frightened even her. When she looked up the others were staring at her with open concern.

‘Oh fuck,’ said Sofi. ‘I didn’t think of food.’

And then, confirming Whistler’s darkest fears, the power went off and a deep subterranean darkness filled the lab like flood-water.

Spider awoke groggily, unsure of where or even who he was. Darkness. A sickening motion of some sort that permeated his being. Pain – he was aware of pain, but what part of his body it came from he couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was everywhere. He seemed detached from it – the flashes and twinges from his nerves were like data scrolling on a screen – understood but not actually felt as such. He tried to flex his powerful arms but couldn’t. A bright bolt of agony hit him in the head – this one he did feel – and he thought he moaned aloud. A glimpse of dull silver, something moving. Hard to breathe, as if there was a weight on his chest. He passed out again.

Awake. His head felt slightly clearer this time, although the world still swam nauseatingly. He retched, bringing nothing up – a long series of uncomfortable gagging coughs. How long had he been unconscious for? He opened his eyes cautiously. It made no difference. Perhaps they had been open already. He closed them again and the agony in his head diminished slightly. Slowly, carefully, Spider breathed deeply for a while, wincing at the discomfort in his chest as he did so. Why did he feel so dizzy and sick? What had happened? His DNI gave him only an incongruous muddle of data, unless he was simply failing to interpret it properly.

After some time, tensing against the pain, he eased his eyes open and saw that dim glint of silver again. Something moving around him in a wide circle. It made his head spin worse than ever and he shut his eyes again, dry-heaving. His stomach was empty, but the noxious taste of bile filled his pounding head. When the retching passed he tried, one-by-one, to flex his arms, legs, shoulders, wrists, neck. He was held completely immobile, although the rest of the world felt like
it
was in motion. He tasted dried blood in his mouth, presumably his own. It was coppery and slightly vile. He tried to spit but wasn’t able to coordinate it.
Breathe, just breathe
. The sound of his own respiration filled the darkness, making it womb-like.

Resperi Police Corporation. It was all flooding back. Somebody must have shot him with a tranq or used a stunner and then drugged him. Was that why he felt so bad – some kind of drug? Whatever. They had taken him, and that was all that mattered. They must have done. The bastards had murdered Roberts and now they had Spider, too. What had Roberts’s last words been?
So much for our damn contract
, something like that. And it seemed he had a point.

They had murdered Roberts. Those fucking Resperi amateurs! Vowing vengeance, Spider felt himself descending back towards unconsciousness like a stone thrown from the beach descending towards the dark surface of the sea. Sickening turning motion, darkness, sleep...

The light was so bright that in the initial sensory confusion it created he thought it was a deafening noise. The brightness was as shrill as any alarm to Spider’s waking eyes. He clenched them shut but even through his eyelids it was too much to bear. He wondered how long he had been in darkness.