Continuance (40 page)

Shane nodded, his
eyes regaining focus. “They’ll have the elevators and stairs cut off. There’s
no way out.”

Jason looked
over his shoulder into the cloning pod. “Then we’ll make a way out.”

Jason slipped
under the railing, down into the pod. Shane dropped silently to the ground
beside him a second later. Crouching low, Jason crept up beside the cloning
tube, grabbing the graphene blade tool from its holding slot. Another alarm
sounded, causing him to freeze, but it wasn’t the blaring shriek of the entry
alarm. Quieter, yet more ominous, it rose from dozens of directions at once,
strongest from the cloning tube next to him. Red lights flashed across the vitals
displays on the nearby photoscreens. In horror, Jason looked at the cloning
tube again. The face he’d glimpsed earlier was clearly visible now, her skin
blue-veined and translucent as the dark nanofluid drained from the tank in a
hushed gurgle.

“They’re
emptying the tanks,” Shane breathed.

 Jason’s stomach
clenched as the woman’s arm shot out, striking the inside of the tube with a
thud before dropping to her side again.
Just an autonomic response,
he
told himself
. She’s not conscious.
And she never would be.

Tearing his eyes
from the dying woman, Jason pointed to the far side of the pod. A crawlspace
used to house the fluid feeds and cooling pipes for the tubes led beneath the
opposite catwalk. Gun in one hand, blade in the other, he straddled one of the pipes
while ducking beneath another, using another pair on either side to crawl through
the cramped space on hands and knees. Shane followed close behind. Footsteps
sounded on the walk above, and Jason froze.

“They’re in here
somewhere. No way any of these bit heads took out that many agents. Had to be
retreads.”

“Get some guys into
the elevator shafts. And start searching these tubes. They ….”

The voices faded
as the agents passed out of earshot. As Jason was about to continue through the
crawlspace, a valve on one of the pipes opened, venting steam onto his wrist.
Biting off a curse, his hand convulsed, and he heard the gun clatter through
the maze of pipes below. The chaos around them had quieted, the earlier turkey
shoot giving way to a systematic search. With no way to reach the gun, Jason
continued on, hoping the blade would be enough.

A dozen feet into
the crawlspace, another opening fed into a neighboring pod. Keeping his eyes
away from the empty tubes and what lay inside, Jason skirted the edge and found
the next crawlspace. He and Shane made their way from pod to pod in the same
way, stopping several times as spiders passed close by. Six pods later, they
came to the place Jason sought – a bank of rooms on the floor perimeter.

Voices came from
just outside the pod.

“Damn door won’t
open. Why isn’t this SLIDe working?”

Jason risked a
peek over the lip of the raised floor. A pair of agents stood at a door a few
feet away, guns drawn.

“Maybe the
retreads disabled it.” Thick through the neck and shoulders, the spider stood
with his back turned.

“Go get the code
then.” The second spider wore a flat top and spoke with an air of authority. “We’ll
open it manually. I’ll make sure nobody gets out.”

Jason ducked
back down before the spider with the flat top could see him. He waited a count
of ten, then signaled Shane with a hand, silently mouthing a single word.
Spiders.
Shane seemed to understand. Slowly, he rose and strolled over to the nearest
workstation in the pod, pretending to use the controls.

“Hey! You. What
the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Jason kept his
eyes fixed straight over head, the blade in his hand held ready.

Shane turned,
raising his hands in feigned surprise. “They told me they wanted these tubes
emptied. The tank release on this one’s not quite…”

The barrel of a
gun appeared just over the railing as the agent moved closer, aimed at Shane. Time
seemed to slow as Jason’s eyes tracked with the spider’s hands and the movement
of the gun. He
leapt
upward, thrusting with the blade as his feet left
the floor. The blade sliced the gun in half with one clean motion as Jason
landed on the raised floor beside the agent. Whipping a hand behind the man’s
neck, he pulled, bringing him over the railing, twisting in the air as he did.
The agent landed on his back, with Jason’s knee planted in his gut, forcing the
air from his lungs. His smartglasses flew off during the fall, and Jason saw he
was older, in his early fifties with olive skin and a small stud earring. His
eyes rolled back in his head as he lost consciousness.

With the blade
in his hand, Jason considered permanently removing him as a threat. Just as
quickly, he dismissed the idea. It wouldn’t take long for the man to recover,
but they’d have at least a minute or two.

Jason slipped
back out of the pod, beckoning to Shane. “Hurry!” He searched the area, looking
for the other agent, but saw no sign of him.

Shane crawled up
behind him, stopping beside the locked door. “Impressive handiwork.”

Jason stifled a
nervous laugh. “I don’t remember ever being able to do that before.”
Why do
I feel so hungry all of a sudden?
Carefully, he positioned the blade above
the door latch, slicing it off with a flick of his wrist. “I guess these new
bodies work a little better than advertised.” Inside, he pulled the door shut
behind them.

Bright overheads
lit the room, with workstation photoscreens lining the walls. Several rows of
photonics racks ran across the center, blocking his view of the opposite side. Jason
had never been here before, but he seemed to remember this was the where the
vector modeling for the continuance process was done. Every couple of hours, the
machines in this room could produce a custom instruction set to network and
control the trillions of nanites inside the target subject’s brain. Once
inside, those nanites would guide the developing neural connections to form pathways
in an exact copy of the blueprint neuromap.

Hurrying across
the floor, Jason motioned Shane to follow. As he rounded the last row of racks
on the far side, a figure in dark glasses leapt at Jason. Without breaking
stride, Jason ducked, instinctively catching the man’s wrist in a twisting grip.
He slammed it against the metal corner of the nearest rack, ready to bring the
blade to bear. But just as quickly, he let go of his assailant.

“Son of a
bitch!” Alex grunted. “You’re gonna take my whole damn arm off!”

Relief flooded
Jason. “You should take those smartglasses off. You almost got yourself killed,
old man.”

Alex shrugged,
already over the ordeal. “If I have to choose between being offline and death,
I think I’ll take death.”

“We’re running
out of time,” Shane said. “We need a plan here.”

Jason nodded at
the windows. A convex bulge ran down the center – one of the lift car tracks from
the outside of the building. Two pairs of latticed metal mag-rails reached down
on either side a few feet away. “We go out.”

Alex shook his
head. “As much as I love the idea of playing on the monkey bars a thousand feet
up, I already tried. The windows are aeroglass. Damn stuff’s better than
bulletproof.”

Jason held up
the graphene blade. “We won’t use bullets then.”

Off to one side
of the curved bulge, Jason got on hands and knees, finding the seam where the
glass wall met the floor. He worked one of the points of the blade into the
crack until he felt the blade seem to slip in his hands as the graphene edge
bit in. In a few seconds, he’d carved out a rectangular section a half-dozen
feet high and twice as wide. With a push, it fell outward like a clamshell,
banging down against the pair of mag-rails outside at a forty-five degree
angle. Wind gusted into the room, stronger than he’d expected, but there was
nothing for it. They’d use the glass as a ramp to get out and find a handhold
on the rails. From there, they could climb up to the landing deck where the lift
car stopped on the observation deck above.

“Holy shit.”
Alex craned his neck, looking down. Mite-sized cars and buses inched their way
along toothpick-thin streets a thousand feet below. “Maybe offline for a few
minutes wouldn’t be so bad.”

Jason handed the
blade to Shane. “I’ll go first.” Steeling himself, he inched his way onto the
glass ramp as gusts of wind buffeted him. His stomach dropped away, vertigo
threatening to overwhelm him, and for a moment, he froze. Forcing his eyes to
focus ahead, he slid his hands and feet without lifting, slowly moving himself
forward. As his hand closed around the nearest mag-rail, something besides the
wind and the deadly drop below chilled his blood.

 He could tell
exactly
where to put his hands and feet for optimum balance,
precisely
how hard
to push off so he could swing his body up in one easy motion.
What’s
happening to me?
Hunger ate at his insides, but he ignored it. The worst
was over. From his position, the latticed support of the mag-rail would give
him an easy climb up.

Turning, he
motioned for Alex to follow. For once, the hacker tucked away his smartglasses,
looking visibly shaken as he inched his way onto the glass. Shane looked almost
as nervous as he alternated watching Alex and the room behind, blade held ready.

“Almost there,”
Jason called to Alex. He wrapped his arm through the lattice and extended his
other hand.

“This is really
not how I planned to spend my day.” Alex’s voice quavered as he grabbed Jason’s
hand in a white-knuckled grip. Jason pulled, and Alex found firm footing on the
lattice.

Jason was about
to call out to Shane to follow, but the words died in his mouth as he saw him
with his back to the opening, brandishing the blade in front of him. From his
vantage point, Jason couldn’t see very far into the room, but he didn’t need to
know they were out of time.

“Move!” Jason hissed.
Heeding his own advice, he climbed, his fear of the long drop below forgotten. He
had a handhold on the landing above when he heard shouts from below.

“That’s far
enough! There’s nowhere to go.”

Jason threw one
leg over the lip of the landing, pulling himself up into a prone position . A
pair of spiders appeared in the opening he’d cut below. The olive-skinned one
carried himself gingerly, a hand to his ribs. Both had guns trained on Shane. Neither
had seen Alex, still in plain view below the landing.

Slowly, Jason
leaned down, extending a hand to Alex. But as the hacker gripped Jason’s wrist,
his foot slipped. Jason clawed to hold on as Alex’s feet flailed over the
impossible drop, terror contorting his face. He clamped his free hand onto
Jason’s jacket, pulling frantically. A ripping sound turned Jason’s blood cold
as the jacket tore, sending Alex lurching downward before the lining held
again. As if in slow motion, Jason saw something small and transparent tumble
away beneath them – the opdisk with Michelle’s genome. With an almost
imperceptible clatter, it bounced off the aeroglass below, landing near the
olive-skinned agent’s feet.
No!

Confused, the
spider looked up, and his eyes found Jason’s.

Shane lunged, jabbing
the olive-skinned agent with a thrust of the graphene blade. The spider crumpled
to the floor like a house of cards. Shane seemed shocked by what he’d done,
standing over the dying man, unmoving. The other agent fired, and the blade
fell from Shane’s hand. He followed to the ground a half a second later.

Only a handful
of heartbeats had passed since Alex slipped. Finding his senses, Jason rolled
over on the landing, heaving at the tattered jacket, praying it held. It did.
Alex found a handhold on the edge of the landing as staccato gunfire rang out
below. Jason grabbed Alex by the hand, pulling so hard the two of them fell
backward, nearly sliding off the ledge that skirted the landing. Jason pushed
Alex over to the safety of the observation deck floor, away from the edge and
out of gunshot. Jason looked around, finding the deck free of spiders, at least
for the moment.

“Are you hurt?”
Jason asked.

“Does double
cardiac arrest count?”

“Not if it
doesn’t keep you from using an AP. The lift car’s not here. Can you override
and bring it up?”

“
This
was
your plan?” Alex asked.

“Can you do it?”

Alex pursed his
lips, then gave a determined nod.

“Then, yeah,”
Jason said. “This was my plan. But hurry. They’ll already be on their way up
here.”

Alex put his
smartglasses back on, linking up with a control panel beside the landing. Jason
shot a nervous glance at the elevators in the center of the deck – the same one
he’d used so many times to come up here to find some semblance of peace.

“Got it!” Alex
said. “It’s up on 124. It’ll be here in a few seconds.”

“Once it gets
here, send us down to one of the sublevels. We’ll have a better shot of getting
past any spiders waiting on the ground.” The hum of an electric motor announced
the car’s arrival. Jason darted inside while Alex keyed the command to send the
car down.