Severance (38 page)

“It’s upside down and backwards.”

Berg snorted. “I guess it would be from your side of the
retina, yeah.” He chuckled. “That’s funny. Strange as hell, but funny.”

“I was starting to think I was crazy. I mean, seriously,
who
the fuck is Vlad?
” Stein rubbed her eyes, relieved. “Not that ‘data’ means
a lot more to me.”

Berg looked at the terminal again. “Looks like there’s maybe
more off to the right. Or the left. Or whatever. An ‘O’ maybe.”

“And it’s not like ‘data O’ means much to me, either,” Stein
said. “So, why am I seeing it?”

“Scanner says it’s probably a retinal tattoo.”

“What’s that?” she asked, remembering her earlier reading. “Is
that like a corneal tattoo?”

Dr. Berg frowned. “Probably not, I’d think. I mean they’re
different parts of the eye, aren’t they?” She watched his eyes scan rapidly
back and forth over the terminal. “Okay. It’s a tattoo imprinted on the retina,
visible only to the person who has it. They’re always visible, all the time,
often obstructing huge portions of their vision. I guess a few religious folk
tried this back on Earth. To overlay their holiest images on every thing they
saw. Sounds like a great way to go insane if you ask me.”

“Well, I’ve never had anything like that. And I don’t see
this all the time.”

“Says here it’s possible to do them so that they fluoresce
only under certain lighting.”

Stein snorted. “Okay, fine, but I’ve still never had anyone
tattoo my eyes.”

“Terminal says you have.”

“How?”

Berg set down the terminal and looked at her thoughtfully. “Implanted
when you were asleep? Sedated? Do you like to party?” His eyes flicked down to
the stained bedspread. “Sorry.” He scratched his chin. “Maybe when you were a
child? Were your parents kind of crazy?”

Stein rubbed her eyes. “My parents.” She shook her head, an
idea popping loose as she did so. “Hey, you’ve heard of genetic tattoos?
Artificial birthmarks? Could this be something like that?”

Berg’s eyes widened. “Huh. I don’t see why not. But I also
don’t see why.” He looked down at his terminal again. “Well. Maybe. The edges
of the letters are a bit irregular. Blotchy. That’s characteristic of a genetic
tattoo, I think. But that would mean your parents did this to you when you were
conceived.”

Stein swallowed. “You have my medical history on that thing,
Doc?”

“Of course.”

“Who are my parents?”

“What?”

“Just look.”

Berg paged through his terminal. “Oh. Huh. What?” He looked
at Stein. “You’re a canned baby? Sorry.”

“Uh–huh.”

“I really am.” Berg put down his terminal and looked at the
ground. “I didn’t actually know there were any of you left.” He smiled weakly.

Stein looked out the window, at the last glow of the sunset.
“They keep trying to make one every few decades or so. To see if we’re less
crazy. I’m one of the success stories, apparently.”

“The mental stability issues,” Berg said. “Right. I’d heard
about that.”

“Yeah,” she said, looking at her feet. “Thought I was good
for that. So, you can see why I’d be a little concerned about visions only I
can see.”

Berg nodded solemnly. “I can see that. Well, you’re not
crazy.”

Stein laughed. “Nope. Just got graffiti in my head.”

“You really don’t know your parents?”

She shook her head. “Genetic material donated anonymously.
Supposedly no one knows. Easy enough to do a parental screening against the
database, I imagine. I asked — many times — when I was a kid, but no one would do
it.” She looked away. “So, I stopped asking.”

He tapped a bit more on his terminal. “Yeah. That’d have to
go through the navy docs, I guess. They’re the real geniuses on genetics. Hang
on. Here. This is the highest end genetic screening tool this thing has.” He
waggled the terminal. “Might tell you something about all this. About your
parents, I mean.” He brought his finger down on the screen in a flourish. “It
should take…wow. Several days.” He looked up at her sheepishly. “I guess I’ll
get back to you.”

She shrugged again, growing frustrated at the dead weight
hanging off her right shoulder. “Knock yourself out, Doc. But I stopped asking
for a reason.”

§

“I’m going to shoot a billion of them.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Yes, I will.”

“There aren’t a billion of them.”

“I’ll shoot them multiple times.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Yes, I will.”

“You’ll get bored after like, the first hundred thousand.”

“Ahhhhh…you’re probably right.”

Simultaneously, each soldier spat on the ground, setting off
a wave of similar expulsions from the soldiers gathered in the alley. Someone
had done it unthinkingly a few minutes earlier, and because it had looked like
a cool soldier–looking thing to do, it sparked an instant trend. Leroy had
tried several times himself but found his mouth too dry. Not that he wasn’t confident
in his ability to mess up a hundred thousand dudes himself. He was
totally confident in that. He just kind of thought it would be another few weeks
before he had to mess them up. Why the rush? Give them time to get their affairs
settled.

The plan for the morning was to charge the security guys who
had camped out in the garden well, near 10
^th
and America. They were
asking for it, Supreme Commander Kinsella said. And the ‘Good Guys’ were going
to give it to them. Kinsella had tried getting everyone to call themselves the ‘Loyalists,’
but no one really liked the sound of it. ‘Good Guys’ was a lot more
straightforward and had caught on much quicker.

Leroy leaned against the wall of the alley they were using
as a staging area. He stuck his jaw out in the way that made him look grimmer
and more serious. For the tenth time since they got there, he checked his
terminal to make sure it was still on. He needn’t have bothered — everyone else’s
terminal would receive the same message when it was time. And sure enough, a
few seconds later a chorus of chirps from every terminal in the street. From a
dozen different directions, the sound of Bletmann, the mayor’s assistant and
organizer of the night’s attack, clearing his throat, then asking, “Everyone ready?”

In response, every soldier individually responded that, yes,
they were ready. It was all pretty noisy and confusing, and Leroy wondered
whether Bletmann would actually be able to hear if anyone said, “No.” Leroy
recalled this kind of thing was usually handled differently in books and
movies. They had other leaders, he thought. Smaller ones, in chains. Was that
right? There certainly didn’t seem to be any chained dudes bossing people
around tonight.

Evidently enough people had said they were ready, because a
second later, the mass of terminals all shouted, “Go!” So, they went.

Leroy didn’t make any special effort to push to the front and
just allowed himself to be swept along with the rest of the group. On the main
street, his team merged with a dozen other similarly–sized teams, all coursing towards
the escalator. A bottleneck formed there, good guys bumping into good guys,
starting arguments, which considering how armed everyone was, were never going
to end well. The two or three comatose bodies that resulted from these
arguments did not improve the efficiency with which the rest of the group passed
through the bottleneck, and not for the first time that day, Leroy wondered if
there might have been a better way.

By the time Leroy made it up into the garden well, he could
already hear the sounds of gunfire off to the south. By now completely
separated from the group he was supposed to stick with — Attack Squad Jaguar
Sword — Leroy stopped, confused about what to do next. Soldiers charged off in
every direction, bravely shouting requests for covering fire, or promises to
provide covering fire, or simply getting cut down by their own covering fire,
all of this happening still several blocks away from the enemy. Leroy spotted a
group of less crazy–looking good guys moving south and followed them as they
took up a position just behind the corner of a building. Someone who looked
like they knew what they were doing stuck his head around the corner, then
waved the rest forward. Leroy tagged along at the rear, pleased he had found someone
new to run behind.

The team turned the corner of the building and jogged down
the street to the base of an apartment block, entering it by the front door. Here,
they scattered, most heading up the stairs to the second and third floors, from
there spreading out in the hallways on the south side of the building. Leroy
did the same, slipping into an apartment on the second floor, where he found
three of his squad mates arguing with an old woman who evidently didn’t want her
apartment to be the scene of today’s war. Her side of the argument was notably
outgunned, and before too long she lay unconscious on the floor while Leroy and
his new friends took up position by the windows.

Outside they could see the intersection at 10
^th
and America and the fortified semi–circle the security forces had set up there.
Park benches, landscaping planters, and a tremendous variety of repurposed furniture
had all been dragged into place to provide cover for the gathered goons. Already
on the ground in front of these defenses were the sprawled forms of the good
guys first out of the gate, who had charged directly into the security force’s
guns, apparently eager to get their war over with quickly.

Someone yelled something about messing up thousands of
people’s days. A spray of fire erupted from the window to Leroy’s right.
Here
we go.
Raising his pistol up and out the window, Leroy pointed it in the
direction of the bad guys and started shooting. There was no way to tell if he
was doing anything useful, so he opened his eyes, but even that didn’t tell him
much. But perhaps most importantly, nothing bad was happening, so he kept at
it.

Eventually, some return fire thudded into the walls beside
him, but it took Leroy at least a few seconds to realize what it was and almost
as long to hit the ground in a panic. From the floor of the apartment, he
looked around. He felt more than a little embarrassed to see he was the only
one cowering; everyone else was still shooting, and clearly having quite a bit
of fun. Getting carefully back to his knees, he peered out the window again. The
amount of security guys shooting back seemed to be diminishing, whether they
were hurt or simply hiding.
We’re winning!
From the other side of the
street, a wave of gunfire erupted from the upper–levels of another apartment
building, charged particles crisscrossing the street, slamming into the security
fortifications from the other side. That put an end to most of the return fire,
and Leroy could see a couple of security officers sprinting back south.

“You two, come with me,” one of his new friends said, pointing
at Leroy and the guy beside him. This was the guy who seemed to know what he
was doing — he had knocked out the old woman very quickly and efficiently — so
Leroy followed him without hesitation. Smart army guy paused at the door and yelled,
“Everyone else keep those guys pinned down. And don’t shoot us!” before heading
outside and downstairs, moving to the rear lobby of the building. From there they
could see out the glass doors as the suppression fire thundered down on the now
mostly empty defensive perimeter, a deadly sewing machine stitching patterns in
the street. “See over there?” their new leader said, pointing across the grassy
area to a set of planters halfway between the building and the security
fortifications. “We’re going to run over there and see how that goes.”

“How’d you get so good at this?” Leroy asked.

“Video games,” the guy replied. Leroy nodded, wishing he had
played more of those. “Let’s go!”

So, they went. Somehow Leroy found himself leading the
charge, possibly because the other guys were better at war than he was. Halfway
there, a helmeted head appeared behind the planter, ducking down again just as
quickly as a volley of fire kicked up dirt in the planter. Too late to turn
back, Leroy kept running, sliding to a halt feet first behind the planter.
Thinking even less than normal, he jabbed his gun around the side of the
planter and fired repeatedly. He couldn’t hear anything, but again, nothing bad
seemed to happen, so he didn’t stop. By that point, his new teammates caught up
to him, sliding into place behind the planter beside him. “Nice job!” the smart
one said. “Though I think you got him by now.” Leroy sheepishly withdrew his
gun. He looked at the smart army guy and shrugged.
Looks like I’m pretty
good at war, too.

Then the sun went out.

§

For two hundred years, the daylights in the garden well had
gone on every morning at 7 a.m. and turned off every evening at 8 p.m. No war,
labor shortage, or billing dispute had ever interrupted this cycle. So, when
the daylights went out that morning at 11 a.m., it was fair to say that most
people in the well were profoundly unprepared for it.

Except for the security troops who had been explicitly told
it would happen.

On the monitors, Thorias watched those officers creep
forward now, terminals awkwardly held out in front of them, scanning in the
infrared. It wasn’t just the daylights out — power had been cut to every
apartment, streetlight, and other source of illumination, as well. It was as
pitch dark as the garden well had ever been, and would be until the Othersiders
remembered that their terminals all had flashlights. He watched in amusement as
a few of those Othersiders did remember that, turned them on, and were
immediately shot for their troubles, the only thing the lights actually
illuminated being themselves.

This had been one of his better ideas, a way to not just
fend off the Othersiders, but to humiliate them on their first outing. Helot
had loved it and immediately ordered Curts to help with the technical side of
things. It was exactly the kind of plan Helot would like — short, relatively
tidy, and with a bit of luck, one that would take the fight out of Kinsella’s
army without anyone having to die.