Cates 04 - The Terminal State (29 page)

Mara, looking like she might start shooting heat beams from her eyes, sat up against it, her hands bound behind her in a pair of bright metal bracelets. Standing at ease around me were four people, a woman in a bright yellow suit that was cut to drape elegantly from her thin, wide shoulders, and three heavily armed, broad-shouldered men, young and well fed, wearing a ragged collection of military clothing that looked old, nothing like the gear the SFNA wore. The men were dark skinned, and they all wore big, pitch-black sunglasses. Each of them had an almost comical amount of hardware: old-fashioned semiauto rifles in their hands and two more crisscrossed on their backs, two pistols on their hips and one or two crowding their shoulders, ammo belts looped across their chests, and bizarre fruit-shaped grenades clipped to their pants.

I’d seen the woman in yellow before, back at the SFNA Press Camp. Her hair had been green then, to match her suit. Today it was yellow, too. Her eyes still glowed blue, sucking data from the air.

I glanced at the Poet. He nodded at Mara. “They asked us to wait. They were quite calm and polite.” He shrugged. “Mara told them no.”

“Fuckers got hidey-holes everywhere,” she shouted suddenly. “Don’t be fooled, Mr. Cates—looks like three, but there’s a fucking roach motel of ’em hidden away.”

“If you got any hand on this one, Mr. Cates,” the woman said, her accent the same as my memory with its round vowels, “make her shut the fuck up, okay?”

I turned and found three more men coming up the stairs, more big bruisers, massive piles of flesh that gleamed in the low light, skin about as dark as I’d ever seen it, weighed down with the same ridiculous amount of old hardware.

“I’ll put a fucking hand on
you
, you goddamn piece o’ shit,” Mara said in a calm, steady voice. “I don’t forget a face.”

The woman grinned and winked at me. “I don’t doubt she’s got my face, and she’ll run it on the nets—whatever fucking nets are still around—as soon as she can.” She shrugged. “You know what she’ll find, Mr. Cates? ”

I gave myself a second or two to study her. She was relaxed and amused, a woman who felt like she was in charge. I pictured Mara, miserable on the floor, and thought, shit, she pretty much was. So I smiled at her. “You mean you’re not famous, like me?”

She laughed, mouth splitting to reveal two rows of yellow teeth.

“Enough horseshit. Mr. Cates, I have an offer for you. My name is Mardea, and I represent Dai Takahashi. You know the name? ”

I nodded. “Sure.” I forced myself to affect a relaxed, easy mood, and gestured at my pocket. “Mind if I reach for my cigarettes? I have a feeling you’re the chatty type.”

She cocked her head, her flat, curly hair glistening in the twilight like it was perpetually damp; it looked like spun gold on her head. “Of course. Make yourself comfortable. We are under parley.”

I fumbled in my pockets for a pack of the cop smokes Hense had gifted me with when she’d fooled me into taking her fucking bomb into Hong Kong with me. “You keep saying that word,
par-lay
,” I said, putting a stick into my mouth and patting myself for my lighter. “I thought I knew what it meant. You sure you do? ’Cause this looks like I just got fucking kidnapped.”

She shook her head, her glowing blue eyes locked on me. She never blinked, and it was starting to freak me out. I wondered if she’d flinch if I went up to her and snapped my fingers in her face. “It means we are negotiating in good faith, and are not combatants. We pledge not to attack you, and you do likewise.”

I nodded, lighting up and sending a plume of smoke into the air. “Uh-huh. My understanding is that that’s supposed to be a
mutual
agreement. I didn’t get a memo from your office.”

She nodded, not smiling anymore, and spread her hands. “Consider this a fucking
memo
, Mr. Cates. Mr. Takahashi is a man of honor. This is why we choose to deal with you instead of ”—she glanced at Mara for a second—“others. He has an offer for you. You may consider it and then accept or reject it; either way, I and my retinue will withdraw and you can continue your business here unmolested—by us—until you come into direct opposition to our interests.”

I nodded, puckering my face around my cigarette. “Uh-huh. You talk like a fucking Techie, you know that?”

She smiled again. “Which means I talk like a
bitch
, yes, Mr. Cates? I assure you, I am of sterner stuff. Will you hear our proposal?”

I shrugged. “You might want to hurry it up. I seem to have offended some of the locals on my way here.” I pushed more grin into my face. “That happens a lot with me.”

“Do not worry. They will not bother us while we are meeting,” she said with complete, bland confidence. From what I’d heard of Takahashi’s outfit, she was probably justified—in small-scale territorial beefs, his group could probably hold down any building or block against anything smaller than an army brigade without too much trouble. That’s what he got paid for.

I nodded. “All right then. I could use the breather. Go on and talk.”

My HUD was red across the board. Although I felt fine, a glance at my vitals on the readout was depressing: If I were a doctor assessing me from data points, I’d start making room in the morgue.

She began to stroll lazily around an invisible box, a few short steps one way, a spin, a few short steps back. “Mr. Takahashi would like to offer you the . . . person of interest in return for a fair settlement in yen.” She glanced at me, eyes shining. “We have determined that you have
access
to sufficient funds.”

I gave her my screwed-up, serious expression. “What’s to say you won’t take our yen and then remove us from the equation? ”

“We are under
parley
, Mr. Cates,” she said with a raised eyebrow. “The sanctity of parley cannot be violated. Mr. Takahashi has a reputation to preserve. If he engages in good-faith negotiations, the safety of the interested parties is guaranteed.”

I snorted, waving a hand in the air. “Who’s to know? We pay your fee, you slit our throats—this city is fucking
deserted
.”

She tapped her own temple with one short, dark finger. “This is the System, Mr. Cates. There’s no such thing as privacy. Mr. Takahashi knows this—there are
no
secrets. Not anymore. A man’s actions always come back to haunt him.” She rasied her bright yellow eyebrows. “The reason Mr. Takahashi has decided to deal with
you
is because your past behavior inspires confidence in any deal we might make with you.”

“This ain’t the fucking
System
anymore,” Mara growled like a beat dog from the floor. “In case you ain’t fucking
noticed
.”

I considered this. I wanted to look at Adrian, get a sense of his opinion, but I didn’t want to turn around. If Takahashi—or his girl here—thought I was in charge, I didn’t want to disturb that impression. So I glanced at Mara, who was staring at me like she’d read my mind about heat beams and was trying to evolve them right then and there. I considered, for a second, the fact that she was an avatar, and rummaged my brain again trying to place her—she seemed so familiar. I drew a blank again, and looked back at Takahashi’s girl. She was tiny, and could have passed for about ten if she wanted, but her expensive suit and complex augments argued against that. Brain augments usually didn’t go over well in kids under fourteen or so. Too much growth, too much development, and the augments went sour fast.

I dialed my smile to sweet. “So, let me get this straight: Your boss was hired to protect Londholm. And he’s so fucking concerned about his honor, he’s willing to
sell
his client to me.”

Her own face went blank, her glowing eyes locked on me. She hesitated, stock still, and I imagined her radioing home for instructions and getting them beamed back at her. “Mr. Londholm has broken his contract with Mr. Takahashi. Mr. Takahashi considers all obligations to Mr. Londholm as severed, and he is comfortable that his peers and associates will agree with his assessment of the situation.”

Broken his contract
, I thought. Meaning his funds were exhausted and he couldn’t pay his own security anymore. Takahashi was trying to wring every last bit of profit from this adventure before the army came busting down the door. Takahashi couldn’t handle an entire fucking army, much less the three or four that Anners was bringing with him, so the mercenary wanted out. It made sense: Every one of us could just walk away clean, a simple, easy deal instead of a protracted battle with the army breathing down our necks.

I looked back at Mara. She stared at me with her perfect, fake eyes, and then nodded, once. I turned and looked at the Poet, who tossed the stub of his cigarette onto the floor and ground it out with his boot.

“We are all but flesh,” he said with a burst of smoke. “The road has been a long one, and I am tired.”

I stared at him a moment longer, and then looked back at the girl. “All right,” I said. “Let’s come to terms.”

She smiled again. “Excellent. Mr. Cates, you are a reasonable man and I salute your pragmatism.” She paused and stood for a moment, blinking. “Excuse me, I am receiving . . .” She trailed off and half spun away from me, one hand flying to her temple as she bent over slightly. “Excuse me,” she repeated, and then suddenly went down on one knee.

Around us, her bodyguard stiffened as one, and I felt my augments kicking in with yet another shivery adrenaline dump. Her body language and posture suddenly screamed
not right
.

“Excuse . . .”

She went still, then slowly stood, smoothing her suit and pushing a hand through her golden hair. Then she turned back to me, her smile exactly as it had been. Her glowing eyes had gone from blue to a bloody, rusty red.

“Excuse me,” she said conversationally. “I have been . . . hacked.”

“Sweet fucking hell,” Mara hissed, kicking her way awkwardly to her feet. “What kind of fucking rinky-dink bullshit is
this
?”

I didn’t move. I looked around at her Gunners, all of whom stood uncertainly on the balls of their feet and sensing that something was wrong, but not sure how to approach it. She was still standing there, looking more or less the same. I knew what was running through their minds: If they moved, and this was just her having a bad day, they’d be screwed. If they stood there like recently erected statues of themselves and this was a bad thing, they’d be screwed.

Suddenly, they all relaxed at once.

“Please relax,” Mardea said in a calm voice, holding up one hand after a second’s delay. “These are military drafts and we are in possession of their controls as their nominal commanding officer.” She suddenly looked up at me, her glowing red eyes two small circles in the air, and then was still for a moment. “It’s good to see you still alive, Avery.”

I blinked. “What? ”

She stared, and then said, “We are SPS. We cannot allow the augment to leave the city.”

I rolled my shoulders to feel the shredders on my back, and squinted at her. “Who the fuck are
you
? ”

Mardea grinned as if someone had just figured out the controls of her face. “We are SPS.”

Hacked. Someone like Mardea, with her wired-up brain, had enough tech buried under her skin—fuck, so did
I
—to almost count as a Droid. We were all turning into cyborgs, and crazy Techies like SPS could dive in over the air and crack us open. I studied her calm, flat face.

“Yeah,” I asked unnecessarily, “but who is SPS? ”

Again, a heartbeat went by before she tilted her head slightly. “There are many. We are committed to salvaging what we can of knowledge and technology through the coming Dark Age. The whole System is falling apart. Warfare, revolution, coming on the end of decades of stagnation and rot—if something is not done, if steps are not taken, civilization will fade and regress. SPS intends to shelter technology and the knowledge necessary to create and use it until things stabilize.”

The delay was short but significant. Whoever had seized control of Mardea was over the air and had some lag on their connection—a second, two sometimes. Maybe enough to take advantage of, if I timed it right.

“But you don’t want this particular piece of tech protected, huh?” I asked, taking a step to the left, casually, slowly, just shifting my weight. The Poet came into my peripheral vision, and I felt his eyes on me. Good man, waiting for a signal. “You don’t want the God Augment preserved.”

I counted to two before Mardea shifted her focus to match me. “That augment will be the end of everything. That augment will be the end of the world. We protected Londholm at first, as one of us. We do not protect him any longer. You cannot be allowed to remove the augment from Hong Kong.”

I nodded. “We’re not here to remove it. We’re here to blow his brains out.”

After a moment she turned to look back at Mara. “Yes? Indeed? ”

This was our moment. Trusting that Adrian would follow my lead, I spun, pushing my hips out a little and letting the shredders swivel on their straps around my torso, sending one into my hands. Without waiting to see what anyone else was doing, I toggled off the safety and fired as I spun, cutting down one of the three behind me before the rifle barked out a flat empty-clip warning, going numb in my hands. Sliding my hands down to the stock, I pushed it out straight in front of me as a ram and launched myself forward at the next man in front of the stairwell, jamming the gun into his belly and knocking him over. As he dropped away in front of me, I couldn’t stop my forward momentum, and with shots blasting out behind me, the floor slid away and I went bouncing down the stairs on my ass, teeth clicking painfully with each impact.

I hit the tiled floor of the platform below with a grunt, a gun in my face; still sliding with forward momentum, I grabbed the thick black wrist and pushed, the gun redlining my audio status as it exploded right next to my ear. I went for his balls, a savage punch into his groin as I used his own arm as leverage to pull myself up on top of him, digging my fingers into the thin flesh of his wrist and twisting the delicate tendons within. He was big, but he panted with a cracked-rib wheeze and looked dopey, like the lag on his CO’s feed was confusing him. Some officers, I knew, kept their units on short, short leashes. Anners let his troops have a little illusion of free will. Looked like Mardea had kept this bunch locked down on her signal, and when she wasn’t issuing orders they got slow.