Hammerjack (28 page)

Cray checked the crowd as soon as he hit the street, keeping one hand glued to his pistol. He felt the fingers of the Tesla girls on him, touch devoid of any human intent, air thick with the hot sweetness of their breath—but saw nothing that stood out. Brushing them aside, he turned back toward Lea.

“Which way?”

“The market,” she replied. “We can catch a cargo pulser there. It’s the only one that regularly comes into the Zone.”

They walked. As the two of them broke from the crowd, Cray began to regret his choice in clothing. While Lea blended in perfectly with her surroundings, Cray stood out like a signal flare in the dead of night. He just hoped they wouldn’t get made before they got out of the red-light district.

That hope was thrashed when one of the Tesla girls started shrieking behind them.

It was a tortured sound, like the scrape of teeth against bone. Cray and Lea whirled around, half-expecting to find one of those crazed women chasing them. But it was at a distance, back at the fire escape, where they saw the girl attacking a Zone agent. He had shoved her to the ground, and now she was jumping him from behind—her fingers under his helmet, clawing at his eyes. The agent bellowed out in pain, grabbing the girl by the hair and throwing her over his shoulder. He would have killed her right there, but his sights were still focused on the mark.

Blood ran down the exposed parts of the agent’s face from where the girl had gouged him. Mechanically, he raised his rifle toward Cray.

The girl jumped in front of it.

Her body was a corona against the bright flash, which caught her full in the chest. The blast knocked her through the air and dropped her back down onto the pavement. A twisted, smoking mass with only the general shape of a human being, the girl rolled to a stop at Lea’s feet.

“Son of a bitch—” Lea began.

Cray drew his pistol and fired.

The single shot struck with devastating impact. The beam hit the agent at the left hip, burning through the armor joint and into tender flesh below. The force of impact tore his leg clean off, toppling the agent and dropping him flat on his back. His rifle went flying.

Cray lowered the pistol.

The agent was not dead. He still writhed on the ground, half-blind and trying to drag himself away. But the crowd of Zoners gathered around him in a circle, cutting off his lines of escape. He screamed at them to back off, trying to frighten them—but like vultures, they knew when their meal was vulnerable.

Leading the charge, the Tesla girls fell on him. Then the others.

Cray’s breath was a cloud in the frosty air.

“Lights out,” he whispered.

His words were punctuated by another electrical discharge. Lightning cut the air in half, digging a crater out of the pavement a few meters in front of them. Lea dove for the ground, while Cray dropped to one knee and aimed his pistol in the direction of the pulse fire. In the fading brightness of the afterimage, through debris and dust, Cray spotted a flash of movement on the hotel fire escape—the last agent, his position obscured by camochrome armor.

Cray didn’t have the option of locating the target. Instead he took aim at the building and fired off two quick bursts. The beams struck the supports for the fire escape, easily splintering the ancient, rusted struts and blowing them clear out of the wall. A bloom of sparks erupted as metal twisted and vaporized, collapsing to the ground with a roar like that of a fallen dinosaur.

As the mass of wreckage settled, a single shot from the agent’s pulse rifle burned a hole into the night. Veering wildly, it careened into the sky and disappeared. It could have been the last defiant act of a dead man, but Cray doubted it. Whatever was at work inside of him—flash, intuition, a sixth sense—told him that the agent was still very much alive, leaving them with precious few seconds to act.

Cray checked the charge indicator on the pistol. It was dry.

“Listen to me,” he told Lea. “You have to make a run for it. Head for the cargo docks. If I don’t show up in
fifteen
minutes, you hop the next pulser and get the hell out of the city. Understand?”

“No. Why don’t you just come with me?”

“Because they found me too damned fast,” Cray said. “I don’t know what it is, but they’re tracking me somehow. You’ll be a lot safer without me until I can shake this last guy loose.” He stopped talking when he saw something in Lea’s eyes—something akin to recognition.

“What?” he asked her.

“Nothing,” she said, even though it was still there. “I’ll see you at the docks.”

She started to leave. Cray stopped her briefly, taking her by the hand. It was a softer touch, tender even—meant to reinforce what he had said earlier.

“Fifteen minutes,” he reminded her.

Lea smiled. “Don’t make me come looking for you.”

Then she was gone. Cray remained behind, until she rounded the corner and disappeared down the street. Back near the hotel, he saw the crowd of Zoners milling around like a group of zombies. They had torn the fallen agent to pieces and were now in search of a fresh kill.

The sound of groaning metal made them disperse. As they parted, a human form emerged from the remains of the fire escape, its shape augmented to formidable proportions by the bulky armor it wore. The camochrome had been damaged in the fall, lending a ghostly aura to the surviving agent. Parts of him were invisible, while other parts were opaquely solid.

His pulse rifle was gone. He grabbed a blade from his weapons compartment and pointed it at Cray. Its edge glinted in the pale lamplight.

Cray ran.

He lost himself in the market, melting into the dizzying array of faces in a mass confusion of exchange. It was like Babel. Cray heard a dozen languages in the space of as many steps—Chinese, Thai, German, Russian—a smattering of different tongues, bargaining with each other with raw and fervent energy. The atmosphere reeked of ganja, spoiled fruit, decaying meat, animal dung—things used and discarded by industrial society, then recycled for the lower strata of the subculture.

A gridlock of human columns bumped against him with scarce thought or reason, performing their basic functions like cells in a malignant tumor. Cray was sick with their heat and his exhaustion, but he kept moving. He would use himself up before he allowed the agent to take him—but even if that happened, Cray resolved he would not be taken alive. He wouldn’t give Phao Yin the satisfaction.

Ducking behind one of the retail stands, Cray checked his watch. Five more minutes before Lea was supposed to be out of here. Eyes piercing the crowd, he searched for the Zone agent. The hulking shape did not materialize.

Where is he?

He slid the knife he had stolen out of his pocket. It reminded him of the blade Avalon had used on him. He wrapped his fingers around the handle and emerged from his hiding place. Glancing over the tent poles of the market, he spotted the tall stacks of crates being forklifted off the cargo docks. It was a thirty-second sprint, tops. Thirty more seconds to safety.

Cray went for it.

And ran up against an armored wall.

The agent sprang from nowhere, coming down on Cray like an anvil. Arms groped out and clutched him by the shoulders, heaving him up and driving him back into the ground again. Cray crumpled like paper, the knife tumbling out of his hand. None of the bystanders treated this as an unusual occurrence; in fact, they spread out a bit to give the agent more room to do his thing.

The agent planted a foot on Cray’s chest and pinned him against the pavement. He hovered there for a few moments, hoping to enjoy the terror he inspired—but Cray didn’t give it up. He just clenched his teeth and went with the pain.

“What are you waiting for, you stupid fuck?”

Scalded, the agent drew back his fist. Cray closed his eyes.

Then the weight was gone, and he was free.

In memory, Cray would believe he saw it in his imagination: Lea appearing from the crowd, launching herself through the air, using her momentum to knock the agent off-balance. In those dreams, her grace and strength were epic—but even that would not compare to the reality he found when he opened his eyes. She was energy and discipline, fused into one entity—a weapon of human proportions.

Lea was on the agent before he could recover from her initial attack. A roundhouse kick to the side of the agent’s head dented his helmet, partially unmasking a face that had gone purple from surprise and frustration; but all color drained the moment she landed another brutal kick—this one against his chest, which knocked him back into one of the retail stands. Discounted electronics flew everywhere as the stand came crashing down, inspiring a brief riot of looters who pocketed as much as they could before the agent got back up.

Like roaches, they knew when to scurry. They opened a path between Lea and the agent, the two squaring off against each other in a combat dance. Money changed hands in a round of instant betting. Lea paid no attention to the odds.

“Put me down for twenty,” she said, and moved in.

The agent was ready for her this time, swinging his right arm around in what would have been a crippling blow. But Lea sidestepped him at the last second, upsetting the agent’s center of gravity and making him stumble forward for a few steps. The advantage was still hers—but she knew better than to take him from behind. Even as she thought of it, a series of spikes punched out of the armor around his shoulders, turning him into a human mace. This one was more dangerous
without
his gun.

Spinning around on a dime, the agent faced her again. He crouched, the blades on his shoulders pointed toward her like the horns of a rhino.

He charged.

Cray willed her to get out of the way—but she stood her ground. She seemed determined to allow the deadly tackle, and made no move to avoid it. But the darkness concealed a multitude of secrets—from Cray, and from the crowd.

With a single, fluid motion, the v-wave emitter was in her hand. It had no hope against the agent’s armor—but in this case, it wasn’t necessary. Lea waited until the agent was close enough, then fired at the seam between his shoulder plate and his neck. The connective mesh there superheated and melted, searing the flesh beneath. The agent howled and lost his balance—but that was not the worst of it. The force of the v-wave’s impact had torn the shoulder plate loose, and it now flapped around like a flag in a strong breeze. Liquefied metal flew into the agent’s face, burning his cheeks and his eyes. Some flew into his mouth.

When he collapsed, he fell on his injured side. The heated spikes drove themselves into the side of his neck, putting a merciful end to a painful process. When the onlookers stepped in for a closer look, they saw very little blood. Only smoke from cauterized wounds.

Lea went back to collect Cray—but not before she collected her winnings. There was swearing and cursing in several languages, but they all paid up.

“I thought you were supposed to be on the next flight out of here,” he said.

“I have a problem with authority,” she replied, counting her money. “Besides, we needed some traveling cash.”

“Just watch how you hit those speedtecs,” Cray cautioned, dragging himself off the ground. “Push it like that again, you’ll end up in a puddle.”

“Who said I use speedtecs?”

“I’m sorry,” he stammered, caught off guard. “It’s just—well, I assumed—”

“Don’t assume anything,” Lea corrected him. “Just do as you’re told before you get us both killed.” She then headed for the docks, leaving Cray with something new to think about.

And a warning never to underestimate her again.

The cargo pulser was a single point in a whole constellation of light. It ejected itself from the stellar aftermass of the Eastern Seaboard megaplex, into the shroud of true night over the Atlantic Ocean. Following a curvilinear path to the jump grid, the automated ship headed south: away from Manhattan, then up to high altitude and safe obscurity. Its navigation lights blinked steadily, but only as pinprick holes in an endless black tapestry. For all practical purposes, the ship was invisible, and for a short time at least, its occupants did not exist.

Cray sensed the abyss beneath him, as he looked past his reflection in the window. Running his finger along the cold surface of the glass, he traced the contours of the East Coast etched in the orange glow of distant sodium light. Up here, boundaries were meaningless. New York, Baltimore, Boston, Washington—they were little more than concepts. Lines on a map, drawn with arbitrary and abstract precision. But never had those lights seemed so beautiful to him. Nor had they seemed so remote.