Perion Synthetics (39 page)

Gantz examined the magazine in his 9mm and
then stowed the weapon inside his jacket. His hand shook as he engaged the
clasp on the holster. He held it there hidden from view until the tremors
subsided.

Fucking Synth J.

It was one thing to deviate from the vision
of his former self, but to physically harm his own flesh and blood? There was
no excuse except one: Synth J was no longer flesh and blood, so the bond
between father and son no longer existed. There was no guarantee Synth J
wouldn’t someday extend the dissolution of compassion to all of humanity and
declare himself the god of a new race of synthetics, when he knew as well as
Gantz there was only one true God. Ignoring the basic tenets of the human
condition didn’t come easy to most people, but once it started, the slope was
often greased with blood.

Synth J’s actions had already spilled enough
blood, both human and synthetic.

“How long until we hit the lobby?” asked
Cyn.

Gantz nodded to the vidscreen. “Maybe thirty
seconds. Why?”

She looked at Cam. “Remember last time? I
don’t think we should be in here when it stops.”

“What’re you thinking?” asked Cam.

Cyn replied by stepping up onto the railing
and punching her way through the white paneling on the ceiling. The sound of
humming electromagnets filled the car as she opened the service hatch.

“It’s risky,” said Gantz. He looked to Joe.
“What do you say? Can you climb?”

Joe made the slightest of nods and centered
himself beneath the hatch as Cyn’s legs disappeared through it.

Gantz helped Cam lift Joe into the ceiling.
Joe gave a cry halfway up, but Gantz kept pushing anyway. When the scion was
safely on the roof, Cam stepped onto the railing and using Gantz for leverage,
hauled himself up through the hatch.

Cam called down into the car. “Tight fit up
here, Chief. Not much to hold onto except our dicks.”

“Noted,” said Gantz, jumping up to grab both
sides of the small, square opening. He kicked off the railing and launched
himself upwards. He landed in a seated position on top of the car, legs still
dangling inside. “Umbra girls always like to make a bad situation worse.”

Cyn motioned for him to move. As she closed
the hatch, the car began to slow. “We need to jump to a platform before it
comes to a stop.” She motioned to the platforms scrolling by on one wall of the
evercrete shaft.

Joe’s breathing rasped above the magnetic
hum as they waited.

The elevator halted in a series of three
diminishing bounces. Cyn jumped before the brakes kicked in, leaving the three
men on top of the car. She landed silently on the metal grate and turned
around.

Gantz placed a finger in front of his lips
as a ding sounded from below.

Gunfire erupted from the lobby of the Perion
Spire; the ricochets smashed the mirrored walls and the vidscreens behind them.
Bullets and debris exited the back of the car and pinged off the elevator
shaft, prompting Gantz to shield his face with his forearm.

Joe moved first, jumping down to the
platform. He crashed against the wall, but Cyn kept him from rebounding
further.

Gantz and Cam made their jump together and then
one by one, they descended the ladder.

The shooting lasted a full minute, bathing them
in stray shrapnel.

When it ceased, Gantz froze, even while Joe
and the aggregators continued to descend. He looked up through the smoke to see
beams of light spilling out of the back of the car, illuminating the dull
evercrete. The amount of damage suggested more than a single shooter. Perhaps
as many as half a dozen had opened fired on the elevator.

Without warning. Without regard to its
occupants.

I will bring every goddamn synny in the
city down on you.

Kessler wasn’t fucking around.

“She’s out of her mind,” said Gantz, as he
touched down on the B5 platform.

“Who is?” asked Cam.

“Kessler. Twenty bucks says they were firing
under her orders.”

Cyn shook her head. “Too soon. They were
probably already in position. Something
else
happened to trigger that
response.” She traced the outline of a metal panel before turning around.
“Maybe because you killed their leader.”

Gantz looked to Joe and back again. “Human
life over synthetic—there’s no fucking question.”

Cyn smiled as if expecting his indignation.
“I’m not complaining, Officer. You get me a weapon and I’ll do the same to
every synth cocksucker we meet on our way out of here. The way you opened
Perion up… it was beautiful.”

“It didn’t seem to surprise you,” said
Gantz.

“What, that Perion was synthetic? How could
anyone not see that coming?”

“I didn’t,” said Cam.

“Of course not,” said Cyn. “You got way too
close to the goods, Gray. That Roberta doll got your mind and your dick so
confused, you didn’t even know which way was up.”

“I don’t care which way is up, I care which
way is out.” Cam tugged on the collar of his shirt. “It’s so fucking hot in
here. I just want to get back to civilization. I want air conditioning and room
service and a
real
piece of ass.”

Gantz spread his arms. “Anything else, sir?”

“A Seven and Seven, heavy on the Seven.”

“What’s the play from here?” asked Cyn.
“What’s our fastest way out of the city?”

“We drive out,” said Gantz. “If they’ve got
the lobby covered, then it’s a fair bet they have the garage staked out as
well. They won’t be expecting us down here just yet, so we can sneak up a few
floors and take a look.”

Joe shook his head.

“No good, boss?” asked Gantz.

Joe wagged his finger, pointed to his chest,
and then mimed a steering wheel.

“I was never good at Twenty Questions,” said
Cam.

“He says we should take his car,” said Gantz.

Cyn pulled back the metal panel to reveal a
service door. “What does it matter whose car we take?” she asked, over her
shoulder. “We still have to make it through the garage, right?”

“No. Executive parking is two levels below,
and it has its own exit to the PE. If we move fast enough, maybe we can sneak
out of here before they think to come looking.” Gantz gestured to the door.
“After you, Mr. Perion.”

They walked the service tunnels for five
minutes before finding the crossover from maintenance into B5 proper. Gantz led
them into a stairwell and paused at the door, listening for movement.

“We go up two from here,” he said. Joe
started up the stairs, but Gantz pulled him back into second position. “I’ll
take point.” He drew his 9mm.

“Go,” said Cyn. “I think someone is coming.”

On B3, they broke out into a small corridor
leading to the executive garage. Gantz peeked his head around the corner to
assess the situation.

Thin lines of LEDs snaked along the ceiling,
making the reflective yellow paint marking the parking spaces glow. Perion’s
personal fleet of identical black Nissans lined one side of the garage; the
light bent along their recently waxed curves. They would have made good getaway
vehicles if not for the GPS locators embedded in their engine blocks. Gantz had
watched their little blue tracking dots crawl along a map of Los Angeles more
than a few times.

Opposite the company cars was a varied
collection of high-end sports cars and a few vintage models James Perion had acquired
from museums. Joe’s cobalt GT-R was parked at the end of the row near the
entrance; the blue ground effects under the body sensed Joe’s sliver and began
to glow.

“Looks cl—,” Gantz started to say, but then
noticed something moving on the far side of the garage.

He trained his 9mm on the figure who had
stepped out from behind an evercrete pillar. It was dressed in a green jumper;
a patch on its chest held a nametag, but Gantz couldn’t read it at a distance.

The figure twitched as it stood in the
middle of the garage. It looked over its shoulder, down at its work boots, and
then shuffled forward. Gantz waited until it came close enough for him to read
the nametag.

“Sam,” he whispered, over his shoulder. He
looked to Joe. “Your mechanic?”

Joe nodded.

Gantz holstered the 9mm and waved his hand.
“Let’s move out.”

They came out from behind the corner as a
group and Sam immediately took an interest.

Gantz raised a hand in greeting at the
synthetic, but it only growled in response. It took jerky, uncoordinated steps
towards them, its eyes jumping from Gantz to the two aggregators. When its arms
came up, reaching across the void, the party slowed.

“I think it likes you,” said Cam.

“That’s far enough, Sam,” said Gantz. When
the synny kept coming, he added, “Sam, directive. Step aside.”

Sam moaned a response, but it was
unintelligible.

Cam tapped Joe with the back of his hand.
“Try the thing.”

Joe croaked the first word and then grabbed
his throat.

“Oh yeah,” said Cam.

Cyn sighed and stepped forward. “All that
lives must die,” she said.

There was something in the way Sam locked
onto her that made Gantz reach for his weapon again. He rested his palm on the
holster and dug his nail under the clasp.

Cyn stopped ten feet in front of the synny
and stood with her legs in a wide stance. “All must walk—”

Sam morphed into a blur of moving limbs. It
shot forward with a grab that turned into a slashing elbow, catching Cyn on the
side of her face. She stumbled as Sam pounced on her, wrapping one of its
synthetic legs around hers. They fell to the ground and rolled towards a pillar.

“Shoot it,” screamed Cam.

Gantz drew and tried to find a clean shot.
He circled the wrestling match, but no matter if he stood tall or crouched low,
he couldn’t aim fast enough to catch an open window.

Cyn, for her part, was fighting back, sending
a barrage of close quarter combat moves at the synthetic, keeping it from
finding a viable lock on any of her limbs. Blood covered her face, loosed by
the synny’s first attack and smeared by the ensuing struggle. Gantz debated
tossing the weapon to Cam and joining in the fray.

Before he could move, a guttural cry rose
from the tangle of human and synthetic. It resonated in Gantz’ chest and echoed
through the parking garage.

Cyn’s scream made Cam take a step back.
Gantz watched as her body shuddered from head to toe. Although he had never
seen it in person, Gantz had heard stories about the famed battle cry of the
Ayudante biochip, a sound as common in the MX as that of birds chirping from
the fabricated trees on any street in the PC. Gantz imagined the chip reaching deep
into Cyn’s body to take control of her augmented frame; the machinery responded
to the common language as if meeting an old friend.

A knee came up between Cyn and the
synthetic. It squirmed around until Cyn’s foot found a soft spot in the synny’s
stomach. With another bowel-rumbling grunt, she kicked Sam off, sending the
mechanic rolling along the oil-stained evercrete. It wasted no time regaining
its footing to charge forward once more, but by then, Gantz had already fired.

The first bullet caught Sam in the leg,
causing its whole body to spin in place. When it hit the ground, Gantz put two
more deafening rounds into its torso. Cyn scampered away, and Gantz moved
between them. He trained the gun at Sam’s head.

“Say something witty,” said Cam, stepping up
beside Gantz.

“Fuck you, Cam,” said Gantz. He pulled the
trigger and lit the evercrete with a spray of white sparks.

Black sludge pooled around the synthetic’s
head. In the glare of the LED lighting, it almost looked like blood.

“Yeah,” said Cam, kicking the synthetic in
the ribs. “Fuck you, Cam!”

Cyn accepted Joe’s outstretched arm and rose
to her feet. She leaned against the spoiler of a nearby Countach. “Goddamn
synnies are tough. We’re not gonna make it out of here with just our fists.”
She paused, examined the torn skin on her knuckles. “Well,
you
won’t.”

Gantz nodded and holstered the 9mm. “We can
make a break for it now or try to raid the armory up on five. Personally, I
vote we break.”

The son of Perion pointed to his GT-R.

“Cam?” asked Gantz.

“If my boss taught me anything, it’s to
always follow the man with the gun.” He started walking away. “Come on, you
lucky bastard. Let’s check out your wheels.”

Gantz turned to Cyn. “Well, what’ll it be,
Princess?”

“Next time,” she replied, “pull the trigger
before
the synny opens my fucking face.” She tried to smooth out her shirt before
starting after Joe and Cam.

On the floor, the synthetic twitched as its
chest began to sink.

Gantz smiled at the gaping hole in Sam’s
forehead.

“Keep ‘em coming, Kessler. I can do this all
day.”

He kicked the synny in the head with his
boot.

“It makes you wonder,” said Cam, popping a Dorito into his
mouth. “How are they all being drawn to the same place? There has to be some
kind of centralized management system for getting orders to
all
of the
synthetics at once. Maybe the directive spread virally, jumping from one robot
to another until they were all infected.”

Gantz was barely listening. He had been
standing at the third floor window of the 8910 Park building watching a steady
stream of synthetic workers make their way east on Glendale towards the Perion
Expressway. They would be joining the already massive contingent of stone-faced
synnies occupying and blocking all six lanes of Perion City’s main artery to
the outside world. From there, they spread outward to circle the city, their
ranks disappearing over the horizon. There had not been enough time to see how
far they actually went.

When the synthetics first appeared on the
road, Gantz had been able to weave the GT-R’s bulky frame around them. The
deeper they got into The Fringe, however, the more packed the streets became. Gantz
crushed more than a dozen brown jumpsuits with the front bumper before deciding
to turn off the PE and onto Loop 12, inadvertently leading the group past the
charred hull of a warehouse, bringing silence to the car.