Heavenfall: Genviants Book 1 (8 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ursula stepped into the kitchen expecting Niko to still be snoring on the couch, and it surprised her to see him awake and standing at the window, curtain pulled back, and staring into the distance. "Anything interesting?"

He shrugged. "Just taking a good, long look at today world."

"Today world?" She turned on the stove, opened the compact fridge, took out some eggs and butter, a package of bacon. Set a skillet on the warming stove eye.

"Yeah. Hadrian won't be able to keep the proximity of the wave secret any longer. Governments will probably start issuing warnings this afternoon. Even if some people believe the energy web will protect them, others will panic. Doesn't take a genius to guess what happens next."

"Riots."

He let the curtain drop and turned to face her. "Tomorrow world ain't going to be all carousels and cotton candy, that's for sure. I'm thinking total apocalyptic anarchy."

Flashbacks invaded. The only reason she'd survived the last glimpse of hell was her uncanny ability to kill. She'd never trained, had never even held a weapon until the world went mad. Maybe it was a strong desire to survive, or maybe some innate talent, but anything and everything became deadly in her hands. People noticed, the right ones, the wrong ones, depending, and she'd traded five years of her life guarding the wall in exchange for a safe place to live. For the first year, she'd lived in the barracks and on rations. The second year, she'd moved up the ranks and into her own room. The third year, she'd earned the little apartment. Better weapons. Better food.

"Are those
real
eggs?" Niko's eyes bugged.

"Yeah. Real eggs, real bacon, real butter." She sliced the bacon. Added it to the pan. "Sometimes margarine. I get a weekly delivery. Heavy on the proteins. Milk, cheese, peanut butter."

"Hey, maybe you should save some of it. Food's probably going to be scarce for awhile after the wave hits."

"Think you're going to live long enough to worry about scavenging for food?" The bacon sizzled and popped, landing a blitz of hot grease on her forearms.

"I have exceptional hiding skills."

"Proud of that, are you?" she asked, half teasing, half serious, and emptied the bacon onto a plate, added the remaining pieces to the pan.

"Gotta hide well if you're gonna hack." He mimicked ninja moves across the room, pretended to blend in with the fake plants, crouched behind the couch, and duck-walked into the kitchen area. "Hell, I was a kid when it all went down. Didn't even know what was going on. Didn't wonder why my parents weren't yelling at me to get out of the game, an MMORPG, and do chores or some shit. Then, players started vanishing. Poof." He stood, grabbed a piece of bacon, and took a bite. "Then my parents went poof."

"What do you mean? Poof?"

"I don't know. The house wasn't messed up or anything. We lived in a pretty nice neighborhood in Blacksburg, Virginia. Had a decent security system. I'm thinking they went out, maybe to get food or something, and never came back."

She recognized the look in his eyes. She'd seen it often enough in the mirror. A child abandoned. "It doesn't mean they're...gone forever. People got swept away by the mobs, whether they wanted to or not. I heard stories of people ending up hundreds of miles away from their homes with no means to get back. Had to walk or hitch, and with everything in chaos, it took them a long time to reach home. It was even harder if you had to cross state lines with no ID, or no money." She turned back to the stove and took up the bacon. "How do you like your eggs? Scrambled or fried?"

"Sunny side up."

"Two eggs up. Got it." She cracked the eggs into the pan, let them sizzle for a minute. "Gra
b the bread and start toasting. And make mine light. I like it soft in the middle." She turned the burner down and covered the pan with an over-sized lid and leaned against the counter. "So, how'd you end up here?"

"I stayed in the house for about a week. Watched a lot of news." The toast popped up, and he added couple of slices to the plates. "It looked like the game. Everything busted up and burning. Eggs. Burning." He pointed toward the stove.

"Crap. Hold that thought." With a spatula, she pulled the eggs out of the pan and flopped them next to the bacon. Two more eggs went in the pan. "Salt & pepper are behind you. Continue."

"Like I was saying, the landscape looked like the game. A war zone." He picked up the plate and fork. Salted the eggs. "It didn't seem real. Me and a couple of local players decided to test our game skills IRL."

"IRL?"

"In real life." He took a few bites. "I pulled my dad's 9mm out of its hiding place, grabbed some ammo, some food, some clothes, a first aid kit, a blanket, and stuffed everything into a backpack."

Her eggs done, she turned the stove off, fixed her plate, and took two glasses out of the cabinet. "Milk or juice? And did you even know how to use a real firearm?"

"Juice, if it
’s orange." He took the filled glass from her. "Yeah. I'd gone to the range a couple of times with dad, but back then, I wasn't what you'd call proficient. Anyway, I locked the house up tight, and met the rest of my 'squad' at the mall in Christiansburg. We made base about eight miles west on New River, and we played the game. Set objectives, usually stealing stuff we needed, and stuff we didn't need just for the hell of it." He finished off the food. Set his plate in the sink. "We were having the time of our lives. I'd snatched some comps and other electronics. The other guys thought I was crazy, but education evaluation had thrown me in the geek pool; compsci, programming, algorithms, and I loved it. After a while, I hooked up with some hackers on line, and they taught me more."

"You never went back home?" She popped the last bit of bacon in her mouth.

"I meant to, but things got out of hand. The president enacted martial law. We figured game over and packed up to go home. Except for Daniel. He was older than the rest of us, fourteen maybe, and, I don't know, he just lost it. Kept raving about monsters killing everyone and screaming how he couldn't go back to that place. Like he was stuck in game mode. He saw the soldiers and flipped. Tried to dust them. They didn't even notice, or care, that he was a kid. Didn't try to stop him." He pointed his fingers like a gun. "Just pow, pow, pow. Daniel was dead before he hit the ground." Niko swiped the back of his hand over his eyes. "They left him there. Just stepped over him like he was garbage and set their sights on us. We scattered and ran and hid. They weren't interested in helping anyone get home."

She had no words. It was too late to offer comfort to that terrified child. "Niko, I don't
—"

"Eric. My real name's Eric. Niko's the handle I used in the game, and I kept it as my hacker handle because it had the rep. I hid and hacked for a few years and across a few states. Honed the skills. Combined it with my talent for acquisitions and made it lucrative."

"Which is good for us, bad for them. You hear back from your contact?"

"Yeah. Said he'd meet us in a couple of hours. He's got the truck loaded, the bill of lading, the travel authorization to get into Palisade. We're good to go."

"Great. Got a couple of texts myself this morning. Dex says we're good to go, left directions to the rendezvous point." She took a band off her wrist and pulled her hair into a ponytail. "So, how'd you end up in Knoxville? With your skills, you could've gone anywhere. Made it more lucrative."

"About three year
s ago, buzz starts about Hadrian recruiting coders for some special project with primo pay and bennies. So, I headed down here and decided to check it out. Met with a recruiter who wanted me to sign on the dotted line five minutes after we said hello. Told him I needed some time to think about it. Dude hounded me for days. Figured something was off, so I hacked in, you know, to cop a cyberfeel before making a commitment, and what I found gave me a serious case of the cold willies."

"What did you find?"

"Statues. Lots and lots of statues."

"In English, please."

"Sorry. Killed connections, and not controllers. You expect a number of controllers to cash it in on the job. Heart attack, brain sizzle, whatever, while they're still jacked in. Goes with the territory. It leaves...smudges. What they called statues way back in the day. Like decades ago. But these statues weren't near the controller areas. They were in the special projects area. Linked in and then link dead. Decided I didn't want to join them. Told the recruiter thanks but no thanks, and he stepped back." He gave her a lazy grin. "Figured I wasn't such a big loss, because I wasn't the only one peeking under the skirt."

Starting to feel a little claustrophobic in the kitchen, she left her dishes on the counter and moved passed Niko to the bedroom. "Somebody else hacked Hadrian's system?"

"Lots of somebodies." Niko followed. "Hadrian's system is the ultimate brass ring, and every hacker wants in. Most hackers aren't going to get very far. It has lots of blinds and traps. But the trail I followed wasn't some curious thrill seeker. Whoever forged it had mag skills, and I'm thinking covert government action. Maybe ours, maybe some other country's. I didn't want to know, and I didn't want them tracing me. I got my virtual ass out and stayed out."

"And we need to get our asses out of here and
acquire
those explosives." She opened the closet door and pointed to the dozen or so weapons she kept there. "Ever make it to proficiency?"

"Nah." He reached around her and grabbed a set of blades and a shock stick. "I prefer weapons that exploit mech vulnerability."

"Good choices." She picked her usual assortment and strapped them on.  "Need a jacket?" She pulled two out of the closet. Put hers on and tossed the other to Niko. "There's a pack on the bed. My A is already in it."

"You're blasting? Never would have guessed. You hide the pain well." He picked up the bag, slipped it over his left shoulder. "You got the nanite enriched?"

"Yeah. Dex took care of it. Pain's not so bad with the nanites, and I might not blast at all if the wave takes out the energy web. Who knows?" She shrugged and pointed toward the kitchen. "Fill it with whatever else you think we'll need, some extra weapons, blankets. And throw in the canned peaches and other non-perishable food. We won't be coming back."

***

A few of the gang members could get work if they knew a skilled trade, like David who did electrical work, or day jobs doing manual labor. But the money and bartered goods didn't last long, and medical supplies were always in demand. Harder to steal, too. Which meant their supplies were limited.

"No tubing. No liquid bandaging." Dex muttered. "I can't find half the supplies I need to drain the biosynth
fluid from David's arms."

Mary watched Dex as he rifled through the cabinet. So what if they only had gauze bandages and tape or glue? Older methods of treating, sure, but they worked. He had no right to be critical.

"Mercurochrome?" Dex pulled the little bottle of red antiseptic out of the cabinet and held it at arm's length. "This stuff was banned in the United States over fifty years ago. Where did you get it?"

"Comes in from the
Bahamas, Philippines, Mexico. Lots of people are using it now," Jonah answered. "It's cheap to make and effective."

"And toxic. Over time, the mercury will accumulate in your body and kill you."

David grabbed the bottle from Dex. "Look around you, man. The world ain't nothing but toxic." He set the bottle on the counter. "You going to do this, or not?"

"I'd be more comfortable, and more precise, with better supplies. Have a better handle on how much fluid drains, but yeah, I can do this." Dex grabbed the gauze, tape, alcohol, the Mercurochrome. "Without the liquid bandages, I'll have to cauterize the incision. No way around it. The protein sac encasing the fluid won't seal otherwise, and you'll drain completely before you even make it to
Sensations
. I don't think I need to tell you how fucked you'll be if that happens."

"It's cool. Do what you gotta do." David sounded calm, but tiny beads of sweat gathered at his temples.

Dex turned to Jonah. "Does the stove still work?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Turn one of the eyes on high and keep the blade on it. David, place your arm on the counter and hold it like your arm wrestling. It'll be faster to make one long incision and let it drain out the side."

"What do you want me to do?" Mary asked.

"Find a bowl or something to catch the fluid."

She rummaged through the mismatched dinnerware until she found an oblong plate like the ones used in coffee shops for sandwiches. The edges curved up a little, and it fit between David's arm and the counter.

"Here." Dex handed her a piece of alcohol soaked cotton. "Wipe it down." He took another piece of cotton and swabbed David's arm. "Jonah, how's the heat?"

Her brother used a worn towel to hold the knife over the orange coil. "Ready."

Dex took hold of her hand and pressed her fingers against David's arm. "When I make the cut, pinch the skin and keep it together as much as possible. I'll start at the top, maneuver the biosynth fluid down. If I use too much pressure, it'll harden, and if I don't use enough, it won't drain. When you feel it move under your fingers, pinch it just enough to keep the flow steady, and don't let it gush."