Crossover (4 page)

In the air above, through the water-stained glass of the ped-cover, Sandy could see the next one coming in to land, taking up the final place in the queue, and the lights at that end began to flash yellow. She had a clear sense of the descending aircab's landing frequency, talking simple, directional binary, up and down the scale as she stepped back quickly to clear the next yellow line. An interesting binary, though, she thought as she walked. A different basic notation from most machine languages. It stood out very clearly.

Thunder crackled, high pitched and racing haphazardly across the sky, then plummeting to a deep, booming rumble that shook the air for several long, ponderous seconds. She fancied she could smell it in the air, that warm ozone-smell of a thunderstorm, alive with energy. Behind her, the aircab settled to the ground with a whining thrum of engines.

Again she sensed the binary tone. Reflexively she broke the signal down as she walked, segmenting it into parts. Visualised the odd branches off the third-phase interactive modulators, and the compressed storage segments that they serviced ... She sidestepped through the oncoming traffic beneath the long ped-cover, seeing her way without really looking, eyes distant and unfocused. Yes, that was a high band, big meg carrier. It had levels that she could not penetrate, as brief as her reception had been. Probably it was the lightning. Interesting.

She sensed it twice more on the lightrail train, a faintly ghosting presence against the background traffic. The carriages hummed smoothly past rain-wet streets and the occasional flashing light of an intersection. From her seat by the window, she saw several more lightning flashes, gleaming brightly off the tower windows. Above the train's electric whine could be heard the faint, suggestive rumblings of thunder.

It failed to stop the air traffic though, she noted with an upward glance out of the window. Aircars moved in smooth, curving lines among the towers, obscured briefly by a passing flurry of wet greenery, then visible again. Tower glass reflected an overcast grey, grim and silent beneath the darkening sky.

"Not much of a day, is it?" the woman sitting beside her said, peering past into the bleak, grey light. Sandy mentally disconnected herself from the net connections she hadn't even realised she'd been using, and smiled.

"I like the lightning," she said. "It makes a day interesting."

The woman gave her a thoughtful look. "That's one way of putting it." And was silent.

Content that there would be no further conversation for the time being, Sandy re-established her connections. Frequency input involved necessarily less interactivity than a direct linkup, but it served the purposes of a basic search. As before, she went straight to her records. All was in order. No new visitors. She wondered idly how long it would be before one of her interviews resulted in a job offer. And wandered down one of those pathways while the train pulled into its next stop and people began to get up. Found herself at the Wardell Systematics site, which was very solid and professionally intricate, as she expected. The train stopped, doors opened and those disembarking squeezed past those getting on. Umbrellas were folded, and the new, mildly wet passengers moved to empty seats.

Again that binary signal, and Sandy lost her connection to a momentary rush of static, regaining it almost immediately. For a long, long moment, she stared blankly out of the window, watching as the trees and the roadway and pedestrians began to slide past the windows at an accelerating pace. Her attention was focused instead on the reflection of a man sitting four rows behind her, in a seat by the aisle. He was carrying some kind of communication gear. Its transmissions were somehow linked to that binary signal. That was what had blanked her connections. It was possible, she knew, that it meant nothing. It was even possible, she thought very, very calmly, that it was a total coincidence.

April Cassidy might have had the luxury of believing in coincidences. Cassandra Kresnov did not.

Her eyes roamed the carriage interior, across the broad rows of comfortable seats and the spacious central aisle. A man sat facing her across the space around the carriage doors. He wore a transparent plastic raincoat over his clothes, beaded with moisture. In its distorted reflections of light it held an image of the entire carriage behind her where she could not see without turning her head.

Sandy snap-froze a brief image and stored it. Focused inward on that internal copy, zooming and then scanning. Sections flashed by, faded and blurred. She began sorting, millisecond fast, finding and discarding. Settled on the clearest, and began enhancing it, clarifying the colour fades and reorienting the warped sections. It left her with a final, moderately clear image of a middle-sized Asian man in a dark overcoat, wet about the shoulders and hem. The wet hem caught her attention. It was darkened like puddle-splashes. Like the man had been walking a long way. Most Tanushan business commuters would catch transport. And this man was no tourist.

Sandy pursed her lips gently and exhaled a single, soft breath. Knowing she had no choice but to assume the worst. For now, at least. If she was wrong, well, she would find that out later. A single, panicked thought at the back of her mind wailed despairingly about her dreams of a peaceful life here in Tanusha — all shattered in this brief instant. Blackest despair threatened.

No. She was jumping the gun. Typical military paranoia. She had known that adapting to civilian life would be difficult. This was one of those difficulties — she could not go around assuming the worst at every slight alarm. This might be of little importance. In civilian life many things often were.

So. She resolved to find out.

She climbed to her feet as the train approached its next stop, grasping the overhead handle by the door. Spared the carriage a casual, disinterested glance. The Asian man was reading a magazine. But that meant little.

Out, then, and walked under the pedestrian cover of the small station, by a road intersection. A major tower stood on the street corner opposite. Adjoining that was a large shopping mall, perhaps nine storeys high and sporting external, glass escalators and walkways in a shameless display of architectural ostentation. Sandy jogged towards the mall, the weather giving her an excuse for speed. Leapt quickly up the stairs of the overpass, then walked the covered length above the roadway. A number of people were on the overpass with her, headed in both directions. Scan vision showed them as flowing, multifaceted displays of light, red fading to blue in many subtle shades. Nothing magnetic or electronic, save for the woman with the prosthetic right eye whose neural cordings curled back toward the interface. And the young boy with the headphones, but that signature was slight and inoffensive. Traffic flowed by below. Huge lighted neon proclaimed the superstore chain's name in letters five storeys high. Thunder grumbled, rolling over the traffic and store-music sounds like a wave across a sandy shoreline, and fading gently away.

The mall was enormous. Shops fronted onto open walkways around the central atrium, the full nine storeys high. The transparent roof overhead let in the light. There were glass elevators and escalators by the dozen, all buzzing with people, voices echoing together in their hundreds and thousands, competing with the speaker music.

The red-to-blue flowing shapes now slid past Sandy on all sides. She moved purposefully, her strides even, processing data. The crowds were a distraction to her and a cover for her enemies, if they existed. But they offered protection too.

She stopped by a databoard and pressed some icons at random. Directories flashed up but she spared them little attention, scanning instead through her peripheral vision, searching for followers. Nothing but the crowds of shoppers, carrier bags swinging. Somewhere within the open atrium an amusement-ride was operating, an echoing clatter of machinery and the screams of excited children. Her finger found another icon and the floor display changed again.

And felt a faint flicker of recognition at the periphery of her consciousness. Her eyes flicked up, scanning the open atrium. She immediately registered the spectrum disturbance, a faint shading upon her retinas ... and found the source a moment later, a man standing at the opposite railing, wearing dark sunglasses. Indoors.

Sandy turned and walked on, her stride now a fraction brisker. Her throat was tight. She'd been found. Who or how was not important, she was certain that they intended no good. They never did. She pushed impatiently past a dawdling couple admiring the window displays. Shrieks from the amusement-riders echoing off the high atrium roof. She tucked her folded umbrella into her overcoat pocket, leaving her hands free, and turned right, stepping quickly across the path of oncoming pedestrians and into the adjoining corridor.

Only now realising that something didn't make sense, that if someone had wanted to get her, their best bet would have been at her hotel room when she was asleep. Not in a crowded shopping centre. Unless, of course, they'd only just found out where and who she was. And had decided not to waste another hour. It was possible that they thought her that important. It was very possible.

Her datalinks were running as she walked, sifting through the regional database, through the official traffic flows that hinted of police movements and security alerts ... and thought, as she pressed briskly through the corridor crowds toward the road overpass, to check back to her hotel records. Found them barricaded from just beyond the public perimeter, and her presence triggered an alarm ... she fried the trigger system in a burst of anger, and sent her killer systems speeding out, scanning for electronic target IDs.

Frightened now at the speed things were deteriorating. She knew only too well what was happening. And she knew that moving slowly would gain her nothing — they had her pinged, and no casual pretence would make it otherwise.

She sprinted straight for the overpass opening in the wall ahead. And inside, colliding hard off the railing through the nonexistent gap past some pedestrians, bodies sprawling as she raced onward up the tube, weaving fast through the traffic as yells and shouts broke out around her, ordinary people, startled and angry. She hurdled a small child at nearly thirty kph, and saw through the merging bodies that the narrow exit was blocked by a random convergence of shoppers ... planted a foot and leapt — astonished, frightened faces ducking for cover as the woman in the long coat went flying low overhead. Collected someone's head with her hip, then hit down on her legs and backside, skidding hard into another two pedestrians in a heavy impact of falling bodies ... and felt the targeting sight brush her scalp, grabbed the pedestrian for a shield
(don't panic man, they'll never shoot a pedestrian)
then releasing and running backward, darting across to keep the dazed man between herself and the low, crouched figure with the small, black hand weapon ...

And off up the next hallway, broad and marble, people in suits whom she blew past at inhuman velocity, coat-tails flapping. Skidded into a painful, controlled collision with an adjoining corridor's side wall then flying up the broad stairway eight steps at a time, turning the top corner at speed as a single shot cracked loudly off the side wall.

Stun shot, was the thought that registered in her mind as she sprang up the next flight. They wanted her alive.

Around the next corner, and the next, sending another pedestrian crashing to the ground as she skidded up the steps ... and registered double movement up ahead, planted her next foot and leapt hard at them. And hit, grabbing her target right-handed as he dodged, and threw him hard into the back wall while bracing her own legs, slid and hit, then threw herself back at the other man.
Crack!
and her left arm leapt back, Sandy spinning with the shot to collect him with a roundhouse hit to the ribs that smashed him hard into the wall two metres away then sliding limply down the steps up which she'd come.

Running again, checking her linkups to confirm there
was
an aircab stand on this level, and scanning the layout ahead for possible tight points. Her left arm hung limply at her side, numb from the bicep down. She knew from the queasy feeling that it was chemicals. They knew what she was all right. She had to hold the arm as she ran, to stop it from flapping about. It slowed her down.

Past more staring pedestrians, most now alerted to the commotion in the building and standing well back, except for one brave fool who tried to tackle her and bounced off like a rubber ball when she dropped a well-timed shoulder. Then hurtling down another corridor in time to see the safety door sliding to the ground at the far end, cutting her off from the waiting cab rank. She accelerated, was caught five metres short as the door came down, hitting it with full force. Crunch. Rebounded, half stunned, looking around dazedly, trying to regather her linkups and sort herself a new way around. Found there wasn't one — she'd have to retrace her steps or be trapped.

She turned back to the door, wound up her best sidekick and unloaded with an almighty
boom!
that echoed down the corridor and rocked the half-ton alloy door in its tracks. Swivelled and repeated it, twice, and again, and again. The fifth time, and the left side railings broke away with an explosion of sparks and twisted mechanisms. The sixth half-ripped the entire door from its right-side runners. She squeezed quickly through the gap, torn metal clawing at her coat.

And found herself in an empty cab rank, an open space in the wet, gathering wind. Now about seven storeys up, looking back at the shopping complex. But no sign of aircabs — all the ranks were bare, yellow-striped spaces spattered with rain. Her linkups assured her the rank was still operating — she even had an ID signal from an incoming cab moving about the tower's far side ...

She scanned further, cracked the signal coding down with furious determination ... and found the feeder mechanisms, and the alternate subroutines that made it look so real for someone without the time to check it further.

Doors opened on opposite walls, armed men and women walked out, weapons trained on her. Sandy stood and watched them, shoulders heaving, clutching her dangling left arm with her right hand. Realising all too well that there was nowhere left to run. Her legs felt weak, and she was frightened.