The Digital Plague (37 page)

I kept moving, feeling that if I didn’t look at the cops, they wouldn’t look at me—some sort of low-rent psychic invisibility. When I reached the counter, I took two painful breaths and gathered myself, pulling myself up and over it in one clean move and letting myself roll and drop to the floor on the other side, the sound of my landing masked by the cacophony.

I rolled onto my belly and scanned the area beyond the desk. My only option was a flimsy-looking wood-and-glass door marked service rooms, no more than a fancy divider. I wriggled toward it staying low, sweat streaming into my eyes. Behind me things sounded hairy, and the still-hot shredders began to whine again. I dimly wondered whether even a dozen Stormers could take down Wa Belling, who so far seemed immortal. I kept crawling. I was used to crawling. When I reached the door I flipped over onto my back and reached up to try some standard gestures at the lock, but as I put my weight against it the door leaned inward, spilling me into a hallway.

I pulled my legs tight against my chest and rolled over, letting the door slide shut and pushing up onto my knees. Recalling the floor plan Marko had displayed for us, I started down a wide white hallway, a green line painted on the wall to my right. I took a moment to straighten up and force a long, painful breath, rubbing a hand over my bristly head and wiping a sleeve over my mouth. Speed was going to be key. I needed to get Gatz into my sights and get my shot off immediately, faster, the moment I entered the room. Any delay and I’d be Pushed, I had no doubt.

I gripped my gun and launched myself forward, my leg stiff and awkward.

As I turned a corner, the noise behind me dropped away and I was left with my own ragged breathing and the wet sound of my boots on the floor. After the gore of the waiting room, everything was amazingly clean; the floor looked like it had never been walked on. The air—the little of it I could suck in through my swollen nose and ruined throat—even smelled antiseptic, devoid of life. It was a relief. I’d had my fill of bodies, of their smells, their heat, their touch.

Around another corner I saw what had to be my door. It was marked only with the number 655, but Marko’s floor plan and Belling’s intel said this had to be it. I raised my gun and forced myself to move faster despite the pain and my body’s calcification. Breathing hard, I threw myself at the door, smacking into it and then swinging my gun up as a shadow slammed into the wall next to me. For a second I stared at Marko’s bearded face without recognition.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I rasped.

He was on his knees, fishing in his bag. “Door’s locked, Mr. Cates,” he said breathlessly. “I think you saved my life back there.” Without another word he pasted two leads against the door’s electronic keypad while I lay there, sucking in air as best I could, blinking rapidly.

“You Techies,” I wheezed. “Think we all need you.”

He nodded as the door lock disengaged with a soft click. “The way things are going, Mr. Cates,” he said, “we’re all going to be Droids with brains. And someone’s gonna have to wind everyone up, right?”

I nodded, pushing him out of the way and putting a hand on the door. “You ever try to
wind me up,
kid,” I promised, “I will blow your hands off.” I paused and looked at him. “Stay. Out. Here,” I instructed, and with a strained breath I pulled the door open and rushed inside.

I tried to put my eyes everywhere. It was incredibly bright inside, and my eyes burned and watered. I saw a Monk standing near an examination table, standard issue white face and dark coat. I put the gun on it, thinking
Fast, fast, squeeze the trigger.

“Stop,” Kev said.

I drained out of myself. I went numb and stopped in my tracks, my momentum almost pulling me down onto my face. Calm, serene happiness floated into me like gas, and I hovered motionless.

Ty Kieth was strapped on the examination table, professionally gagged. His nose quivered and his eyes rolled spastically, but I noticed he didn’t struggle against his bonds. He just lay there.

“Shoot yourself,” Kev said.

Smiling, I turned the gun and pulled the trigger.

Day Ten:
A Goddamn
Superhero

I didn’t even feel the bullet smash into the meaty part of my broken leg. Kev hadn’t specified where to shoot myself, and some primitive instinct inside me that still wanted to live chose my nearly useless limb for sacrifice. The leg buckled immediately and I crashed onto the floor, teeth rattling, but there was no pain—my pain circuits, I guessed, were maxed out. For a moment I was a goddamn superhero, impervious to physical suffering.

Blood spurting from the wound alarmingly, I wondered if I’d outsmarted myself by nicking an artery, and feebly raised my gun again, squinting through a strange yellowish haze that had inserted itself between me and the rest of the world. As I searched for Kev again, lead seeped into my arms and they became incredibly heavy.

“Avery, stop.”

I froze, arm shaking. The familiar feeling of peace sank into me, and I was happy and thoughtless. A Monk resolved out of the haze around me, one I thought I recognized as Kev because it was so new and clean. The Monk crouched down in front of me; my gun was almost thrust into its abdomen. I stared into its expressionless white face without feeling, without thought.

“Avery, you were always persistent. Did you think I wouldn’t expect you here? I forgot, you think I’m stupid. Always have.
He
told me you were coming. When I woke in this fucking Monk costume, Ave, it
hurt
so bad, I just howled and howled and prayed. I fucking
prayed,
Avery. And then I heard His voice. In my head. He said He’d created me, and that I was His son, and told me what to do.” His creepy plastic face settled into a smile that made my skin crawl.

It was still fascinating to watch a Monk talk—the fluid movement of its artificial face, the modulated, pleasant sound of its voice. If you paid attention it had a limited array of expressions, and it got boring—and creepy—when you’d seen them all. But it was still amazing.

“I didn’t expect the two-pronged invasion, actually,” he continued. “You caught me a little off guard there.” His face split into a wide smile. “Do you remember, Avery, that time you needed me to help you with those fucking kids? The ones kept nicking your credit dongle from your pocket while you were mapping sightlines for the— the— whatever job you had. You sat there on that wall taking sightings to make sure you could hit everyone you’d been hired to do, and the fucking kids would sneak up on you and lift your dongle. They did it, what, like four times? You asked me to Push them a little.” The smile snapped off. “You didn’t ask. You pushed me around and ordered me to. You
always
pushed me around.”

I remembered. I nailed four people in less than thirty seconds, earned one hundred and forty-five thousand yen. Took me five days to get the sightings mapped. When you worked out the hours, I got paid shit.

The smile popped back. “It’s good to see you, Avery. I don’t have any friends.”

Closing my eyes, I thought,
Kev’s gone crackers.
Sadly, this probably increased my chances of being killed within the next few minutes, a possibility I observed with clinical detachment. There had to be a way off the rail. There
had
to be. The universe could
not
be this fucking unfair. I felt weak. The only thing keeping my arm up and the gun jabbed into his gut was Kev’s Push. I opened my eyes with some effort, and Kev’s face had transformed again, glowering at me, a ridiculous mask of hatred.

“Avery,” he said.

I looked down and there was a gun in Kev’s white plastic hand. It was black and charred looking, original Monk issue. He turned it toward me, the barrel a black hole, like death itself. I stared at it and wondered if my calm was because I was such a hardcore bastard, or because of Kev’s Push. “He says your usefulness has passed.”

The door to the room exploded inward, slamming against me with concussive force that knocked me onto my side. Two gunshots knocked Kev off his feet and he went sliding, face twisted into something that wasn’t even a coherent expression, pursued by a blurred figure. I saw Kev raise one hand, an old legacy gesture still stored in his rotting brain.

“Stop,” he commanded.

She didn’t stop. She leaped on top of the Monk, swinging her gun down in a wide, sloppy arc I attributed to excitement—the Colonel Hense I knew would never pull such a shitty, sloppy move out of her ass—which gave Kev plenty of time to shove her off with some force, spraying white coolant everywhere as he did so. Hense’s little body went flying, her shot barking into the ceiling, and before I could wonder why Kev’s Push wasn’t working on her, Happling roared into the room. I could have sworn he was
grinning
as he ran, pumping shells at Kev. The Monk flipped onto its feet and dodged, moving too fast to keep track of. Happling continued to chase Kev with his gun, emptying a clip while trying to catch him. Then Kev twisted around and made the same bizarre gesture.

“Stop!” he shouted.

Happling froze, and the Monk immediately shot the big man twice in the chest, dead center. Happling tottered a second before crashing down. I was suddenly released, my arm going limp, my gun slipping from slack fingers. I remembered when he’d been human, Kev always had trouble with the Push, trouble having more than one person under his control or keeping people Pushed for long periods. Clarity of mind hadn’t broadened his range much, I supposed.

More gunshots, and Hense rolled out of my view. Kev was a whirlwind, scampering up the walls and back onto the floor in a blur, then leaping into the air as Hense scrambled past me, dropping an empty clip. Before she could reload the Monk crashed into her, knocking her into the wall a foot or two away from me, the whole room shaking with the impact.

“Stop!” Kev screeched, his modulated voice distorted as the circuits tried to compensate for an emotion they’d never been programmed to run. Hense didn’t hesitate, smashing one fist into Gatz’s face hard enough to jerk his head around. For a second we were staring at each other. Then Kev looked back at the colonel and started to swing his gun on her. Hense reached up and grabbed his wrist in her tiny dark hand, and they sawed back and forth, the gun veering this way and that.

Hense wasn’t sweating. I squinted at her to be sure. Then, feeling empty, I turned my head to focus on Ty Kieth. The Techie was right where he’d been left, tied down to the examination table, his gag slick with spittle and pushed partly off his mouth, his tongue working free. Our eyes met, and he froze.

Taking a deep, agonizing breath, I hacked up bloody phlegm, spat it out onto the floor, and pushed myself back into a sitting position. Kieth continued to stare at me, eyes wide, nose still for what I imagined was the first time in his life. I got one foot under me and slowly climbed to my feet while the Techie watched, and stood there swaying while my vision swam again, everything going hazy and then gradually clarifying. I blinked as Hense went hurtling through the air in front of me, smashing into the far wall and leaving an impact crater in the drywall as she bounced back onto the floor. A second later she was up on her feet again, bounding behind Kieth as Kev splashed bullets after her. The colonel wasn’t even breathing hard as she hovered there with the Techie between her and the Monk, sliding a fresh clip into place while Kev considered how to shoot her without accidentally hitting his prized Techie. I stared dully, wondering how it was that Hense could go through this, could fight a
Monk
hand to hand and be bounced around the room like a fucking rag doll and just stand there looking as fresh as the day I’d met her. I knew System Pigs were hard-core, but this was ridiculous.

As I stared at the colonel, Kev flashed through the air, coat fluttering behind him like the dirty tail of a comet. Hense ducked at the last moment, firing almost directly into the Monk as he sailed over her. A white hand snaked out and grabbed her shoulder with hydraulic strength, tearing the cop from the floor and dragging her with him as they crashed into a bank of medical instruments piled up against one wall.

I put my eyes on Kieth, who’d succeeded in pushing his gag completely out of his mouth, but he continued to stare at me in silence, mouth open, chest heaving. He remained frozen until I was a step away; when I languidly racked a shell into the chamber of my gun, it was as if someone had pressed a button inside him.

“Mr. Cates!” He hissed, forcing a squeamish smile. “Mr. Cates, Ty is glad to see
you!
Rescue at last!”

Behind me, there was more gunfire, and I sensed movement, harried and desperate, but nothing was left inside me to produce alarm or urgency or fear. I stared down at Kieth with my gun held waist-high, almost forgotten, and felt only a tired sadness.

Kieth licked his lips. “Rescue at last,” he repeated more quietly.

My whole body tightened as I looked down at him, and I brought the gun up. His eyes flashed to it and he convulsed on the table, struggling madly against his bonds, whipping his head back and forth.

“Ty had no choice, Mr. Cates! Ty had no choice! Please, please, Avery—Avery! You know me! You
know
me! Please!”

I nodded. “I know you, Ty.”

He nodded back eagerly. I felt like the world’s biggest asshole, making him squirm, making him beg. “Ty can work on this, Mr. Cates. We have some time. Ty
designed
this; Ty can hack it under control. Mr. Cates.
Please.
”