Necrotech (6 page)

As I walked, forcing one foot in front of the other, I made myself go over the things I'd learned. The things I'd seen. The digital file, the security forces, the variety of darkened rooms.

The sound of bullets pattering the shatterproof glass.

I forced myself to go over Nanji's last words, over and over until the echo of my seething rage overwhelmed the clamor of the pedestrian rats sweating all around me; incessant drones eager to get nowhere.

Honestly speaking, there were any number of ways I'd fucked this mess up, and my own systems were on that list.

I flashed back to all the signs of corruption I'd learned to look for. Irrational behavior was one, but I wasn't sure current events counted. The black tint to my eyes and blood had looked pretty bad, but since I'd downed the boost, my nanos had settled enough that I figured I'd eased back from nanoshock. This was a good sign – maybe. But I should still check it out.

My arm was working okay, give or take the stuff I needed to turn on, and I didn't exactly feel the need to squish anything for kicks. I wasn't sure how corruption was supposed to feel, but Lucky said it worked like a virus. A technological fever. I figured I'd know.

Small victory, but fuck it, I needed one. It gave me the leeway I needed to put off seeing my mentor. Explaining what I didn't have a handle on felt like an overwhelming task.

It took me forty-five minutes to drag my sorry ass all the way home. The place was a towering shack, squeezed in with a block of them, stacked like crates threatening to crack. It had been fenced in by the ramshackle offerings of tenement hoarders determined to protect what was theirs by any means necessary. Rusted iron, fragments of car frames jacked from who knows where, old bed frames, rotten couches. Probably the remains of trespassers.

I let myself in through the back entry, took the stairs until I was ready to give up and roll my aching body right back down them in desperate need of oblivion. The place was dank, dingy, rocked like a scream queen group and a chilldive technician were having some kind of soundwave orgy, but it was safe.

Enough. Safe enough.

You take what you can get.

I slammed open the door, muttered the passcode that let me bypass the temporary security I'd set up – a portable voicelock capsule stuck to the wall, rigged to drop toxic shells if my voice didn't register within four seconds of entry.

No bodies greeted my bleary survey, so I must be leaving an impression with the locals. The first two jackwagons who'd tried to break in, I'd tossed out front with the rest of the “treasures” the neighbors collected. Either they'd been nabbed by carnivorous dogs or regained enough mobility to get the hell out.

Kicking the door closed rearmed the security, and I made my way down the narrow hall, up the short set of creaking stairs, and into the single bedroom.

I didn't even bother to disinfect myself. A million credits weren't bribery enough to care. I collapsed face first onto my cot – liberated from said neighbors and liberally doused with sanitizer – and closed my eyes.

I'd have a lot to do when I woke up. I had to try to get a hold of the contacts in my roster I hoped would help, try to figure out the price I'd have to pay for it. Try to explain to Nanji's brother exactly what happened. Whether he did or didn't believe me, I'd need to find a team, steal a file from and generously pay back a certain nosy cop, get my tech system scrubbed and turned back on, put my girlfriend to rest – and for all that, it'd take a crowbar to peel me off this bed.

I'd do everything later. All I wanted, all I desperately needed, was uninterrupted sleep.

L
ike any piece of hardware
, the body is a functional machine. Ages ago, scientists figured out that the brain was just a kind of fleshy processor shooting out electrical impulses to the rest of the system. From there, it was only matter of time before corporations turned theory to reality and started shilling.

Software upgrades came after the obvious hardware upgrades. A cheerleader cramming for her college exams could pop some intelligence enhancers while a single dad in the 'burbs – that is, any one of a dozen neighborhoods not currently featured on the crime feeds at any given time – could score a packet of no-sleep without too much trouble.

Then hardware transitioned from necessity to a competition. Need an edge? No problem, replace your hands, your legs, your heart. Medical innovation gave way to military, and from military to aesthetic.

It seemed an obvious step, moving from video calling to data jacking, and from data jacking to projected uploading. The signal wavered and the noise got louder, and that's the way the soulless consumerist spunkchuckers of the world like it.

And, hey, if the price to pay is an occasional, quietly eradicated rash of corruption among the middle-class sheep, well, the cost of doing business and all.

But projected uploading is also why I could take a call in a state of deep sleep, converse with someone else and remember it clearly. Even better, I didn't have to miss some seriously needed rest.

Although my meatspace body remained flattened out in my tiny cot, my brain responded to the haptic tap at the base of my skull. I was too damn tired to respond consciously, so the call protocols kicked in and I found my projected body in a white projected room. A plain table waited in the middle of it, the usual centerpiece of a baseline projection interface, and so did an endearingly boyish detective seated at it.

Less usual. Less expected.

Less welcome.

The place was stark. It looked more like a cleaned-up, colorless version of the police station interrogation room than a place to have a casual conversation, but that's the augmented reality business for you. You can pay to make your cyberspace a little more ritzy, include all kinds of little apps, but why bother? In about three seconds, all that empty space is flooded with ads.

Unless you pay for that, too.

The bright-eyed man at the table, with his hair cut and his three-day beard shaved, leaned forward in anticipation. “Riko, I'm glad–”

I held up my hand. “Wait a sec.”

Greg's voice died off.

We didn't have to wait long. With two confirmed connections, color vomited across the server. Hot pink and green, red and blue, purples, oranges, screaming text and neon vids. Jarring on the best of days, and downright vertigo-inducing on a day like mine.

Wincing, I crossed the small space and slid into a seat. Like its matching table, it was plain. Cold, simple metal with no distinguishing features. The kind of thing easily projected. “I'm not going to ask how you got my freq.” They'd scanned it off my chipset when I was at the station. I'd need to scrub the markers and reprogram my frequency sooner rather than later. “Talk fast. I am not in the mood for shit.”

He had the grace to look sheepish, which his fresh-out-of-school persona telegraphed exceedingly well. The creases by his eyes, the lines I'd seen carved into his mouth at the station, were gone. His hair was a little bit brighter – not much, just enough – and his jaw a smidge harder.

The vain bastard. He'd cosmetically enhanced his uplink appeal.

“Sorry to bother you, but I couldn't let it go.” His smile, when he turned it on me, carried the programming equivalent of boyish charm. As if an
aw, shucks, ma'am, t'weren't nothin'
could be distilled into visual magnetism.

My lips quirked. Not a smile.

Unlike him, I didn't enhance my persona. The only thing I made sure of was that I was dressed and clean – because let's face it, nobody likes meeting people with blood, sweat, or the haze of burned-off slank smeared all over them. I kept my persona up to date, which meant my bleached hair was long at the top and hanging down the left side of my face, shorn to a buzz at the sides. My roots came in dark brown, courtesy of the genetic fuckup my mother hadn't paid for. At least my eyes had come out hers – a dark hazel that went moss green or swampy brown depending on the light. Even my tattoos made it onto the projected copy.

And so did my synthetic arm. Which Greg was very studiously avoiding.

I leaned against the table, folding my arms on top of it, flesh over diamond steel. It pushed the shiny red tanktop my persona wore against my breasts, and
that
good old Greg noticed. I couldn't claim much by way of stacking, too much muscle to be top-heavy, but it hadn't stopped me yet. “Let me guess.” I dropped my naturally contralto tones an octave or two. Practically a purr. “Courtesy call?”

Damn, but his face lit up. You'd think I'd offered him a handjob under the table.

“Something like that.” He grinned, unabashedly flirtatious in a way that was part refreshing, and mostly funny.

Cops and SINless don't mingle. I wasn't the only saint to flirt with that line, but I'd never pictured good old Greg buying in. I wondered if he was having some work troubles, or maybe he wanted to flex some muscle without all the regs tying him down. It was obvious that I was something new and interesting, and the file he held over my head made him feel like he had more leverage than he'd ever get again.

Given our history, brief as it was, I had a sneaking suspicion that my new arm turned me into forbidden territory. A way to stick it to the Purist Man.

Maybe he wanted me to call on his God while he stuck it to
me
again.

Too bad. Once was fun, twice was a rental.

“Cute, but no.” I shook my head, leaning back in my chair – away from him so obviously that he'd have to be stupid to miss the memo. “You're having a rough year, right? Miles of red tape, clocked in and out like a civic official but given none of the perks. Overtime at half the going rate?”

A faint wince around the eyes. “Salary, mostly.”

Poor bastard. “Too good to take a kickback?”

His mouth tightened.

I bit back a sigh. Wasn't
my
fault he had principles. “So you want something from me. That's why you kept my file.” I crossed my legs under the table. “Leverage, I get. But you better play these next few seconds smart, 'cause you won't get a second chance at this.”

He frowned.

When he didn't immediately answer, I perched my chin in the palm of my metal hand and waited him out.

Did I glitch him? It was always a risk. The bandwidth held steady enough for short calls, but got crazy twitchy around high time. When the system clocked the average consciousness of over twenty-six billion users at any given moment, the bandwidth – already straining under the payload of thousands of feeds, hundreds of thousands of terabytes of data – suffered.

And that's just in this city alone.

Most sinners get a basic package for their upload needs, and it comes with shit stabilizers. You learn to ration this app for that, tweak that signal for this drag, but like everything else, those who pay more – to broadcast and to receive – get better signal.

I wasn't a paying customer, and Greg couldn't afford it. Not on a cop's credline. We coped. Or, like me, we cheated. Well, would have cheated if all my shit was working and I felt like risking enhancing the feed for this.

It wasn't, and I didn't. I was too tired for this. Too wired.

Finally, he breathed out a long sigh. It twitched twice and his avatar flickered, but the connection held. “Okay, fine, I knew you'd crash out. You were in pretty rough shape. I thought the best thing to do was wait a few hours and then initiate a call.”

Because I'd be guaranteed to pick it up, assuming I survived the nano burnout. I pulled a face. “I don't have time to fuck around with you.”

“You're sleeping,” he pointed out.

Yeah, like I needed the reminder. He was right, of course. If I wasn't here, I'd still be sound asleep. No loss of time.

Just of patience.

My girlfriend had gone necro right in front of me, and I was stuck playing footsie with a cop.
Again
.

He winced when I didn't so much as blink at him. “I wanted to say sorry.” He rubbed the back of his neck with a hand that wasn't as callused as the ones he'd used to open my protein boost.

Vain, vain, vain.

“And to tell you that Fagan's been assigned to desk duty, pending investigation.” His mouth pursed, eyebrows drawing together. “I pulled his report, so you don't need to worry.”

“You keeping it safe personally?”

“Yeah.” His tone would have made me laugh, all confused cop and eager to please, but I didn't have it in me. Moron. He should have left it on the system.

Bone-deep tired scrapped for space beside resentment. “Apology accepted,” I replied, slapping both hands on the table and standing.

He raised his hand. “Riko, wait, I–”

“No.”

He looked taken aback. “You don't want to hear what I have to say?”

“Sue me.” I ran my hand through my hair, but it wasn't quite the same as if I would have done it in the real world. It felt different; smoother, finer. I knew it was hair beneath my fingers, managed to tuck it behind my ear so it wouldn't fall over an eye, but it wasn't quite right.

A body paid for perfection. Corporation credo. If I wanted better sensory data, I could fork over the creds. Not worth.

“But I–”

Ugh. “You're a government official, detective.” I stressed the title. He scowled. “I'm a saint. I'm not interested in whatever you've got. Either throw me something you need, one-and-done, or dick out.”

Since he didn't bat an eyelash at the street euphemism for SINless, I assumed he'd already heard it. Would have been surprised if not. A good detective kept his ear open. “I'm not asking you to marry me,” he said, his jaw tightening.

That didn't even warrant a response. Very carefully, I scooted the chair under the table. You don't want to break things in a projected room. The maintenance systems get real spiky about it. “Leave a message at the Mecca when you need that favor.”

His perfect hands clenched on the tabletop. His gaze dropped to them, that deliberate charm cracking some. “What if I said I'd give you the file in exchange for this?”

“Is it one thing?” I asked. “Or a string of them?”

He didn't have to answer. I read it in his face.

I would have smacked the back of his head – mostly to irritate him – but you can't do that in a projection room. Most basic servers, which I had, aren't designed to mimic reality. I could touch my hair and feel the strands because I knew without a doubt what my hair was. I had my whole life of knowing. I couldn't touch Greg because I didn't know if his hair was smooth today or laden with product, if his jacket was synthetic or real. If it was cold or warm, rough or soft. I didn't know what
he
thought of his jacket, or how he felt his own hair. Without smoother integration, I could overload the system and fry my communication receptors. Or his.

While the possibility of shorting
him
had some merit, the damage it'd do to my chipset could blow the whole thing. Not worth a little peace and quiet.

“I could help you,” he insisted. “Listen, all I'm asking is to be a name on your roster.”

Oh, for fuck's sake. He didn't even know what he was offering. Putting your name on a merc's roster is basically asking to get your shit shot up on a semi-regular basis. Sure, the cred – both the reputation and the monetary kind – might be good, but it's a one-way street to hell.

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my flesh fingers. “I don't have time for this, Greg.”

“Not even for–”

“If you try to bribe me with that report again, I swear to your God I'll break your jaw in six places.” My threat cut him off with so much flat denial that he closed his mouth, eyes narrowing. “Look, that thing is important, and you know that. But you and I both know this is a one-off deal. I do something for you, you give me the data. Because if you don't,” I added, leaning down to flatten both hands on the plain table, “you know that your cred takes a hit where you can't afford it. And mine” – I flashed that hard little smile I knew bothered him – “goes up when I hunt your ass down for it.”

Cops hover closer to sinner than saint. That doesn't make them immune to the concept of street cred. A badge without a certain amount of reputation finds his job boring as balls. A badge who hopes to wield his cred for kicks suddenly finds his ass the subject of everyone else's betting pools.

Maybe that was why he came here hoping I'd take him on. Maybe he was bored. Or in over his head with something else already and hoping to use
my
cred as his shield.

I'd rather suck on a bullet.

“Tell me why,” he said.

I gave him half of what I figured. The irritating half. “Aside from the fact that you're pretty much textbook blue and I don't think you can lie for shit,” I said flatly, “I don't need a toothless badge to babysit. I'm busy.” Also, I was busy on the kind of thing that would make a man like Greg scream like a little kid, but I didn't want to tell him that. One, it sounded like I was protecting him. Which I sort of was, and I didn't care to explain it. Two, he'd ask questions.

He'd have to. He was still a cop. If I so much as hinted that I'd glimpsed a necro conversion, there'd be a serious problem.

His shoulders slumped.

My cue to go. I tried to feel bad for him, I really did, but I honestly could give a bag of dicks. I was racked out cold back in my squat, sleeping what I figured was the sleep of the dead, but even occupying myself with this projected call didn't erase every detail of Nanji's face. Of her corruption.