Stormblood

by Jeremy Szal

  This was the sort of gear you used when you wanted to blow something up. Like a building. Fill the nanonites with an explosive mixture, eject them into the pipes and cable ducts of a building and detonate remotely.

  I shook the nanonite jar. ‘You were helping prepare for the next terrorist attack, weren’t you?’

  Montenegro said nothing. I asked again. No response. If the Suns were collaborating with stormdealer syndicates, throwing us off their scent, they’d be doing the same with anything related to terrorism, which would be an even higher risk.

  ‘What’s the attack site?’ I asked. Montenegro’s scoff vanished as I clenched my hand around his shattered kneecap. He jerked back, his eyes watering in confusion and shock. Pain was unfamiliar to him in his little world of espressos and temperature-regulated offices. He’d never fought tooth and claw for scraps in the back alleys of Changhao. Didn’t care about the rundown families and child foot soldiers living in stormdealer-controlled neighbourhoods. Barely even heard of the Warren where skinnies with broken bodies shivered and twitched in the freezing darkness. None of the pain and addiction he spread ever touched him. It was totally alien.

  It seemed prudent to relieve him of his ignorance.

  I squeezed harder. The background pulse throbbed louder and louder, shuddering up through my skeleton so hard I half-expected to hear my joints popping loose. My chest was heaving, my skin plastered with sticky sweat. ‘I’m not hearing an answer,’ I growled.

  ‘Vak,’ Grim warned over my commslink.

  ‘What?’ I asked. My breathing heavy, slurred.

  ‘Ease up, man. I don’t like this.’

  ‘He knows something,’ I told Grim, my hand still clamped around the Ratking’s knee. ‘If we don’t dig it out of him, thousands more are going to die.’

  Grim had nothing to say to that. The Ratking mistook my hesitation for indecision, defiance building up in his expression. I gritted my teeth, squeezing hard enough to hear the broken bones grind and crunch together. I didn’t even realise I’d done it. ‘I don’t know!’ Montenegro screamed.

  I drew my face close to his. He recoiled but couldn’t squirm away. ‘I think someone like the Ratking leaves nothing to chance. I think you prepare everything down to the finest detail.’ I stabbed his implant with a finger. ‘How about you tell me before I open you up and take a look?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Montenegro’s eyes rolled to the implant. ‘They wire instructions over to me. I only get the time and location a few hours before they’re ready to go. The message is biometrically encoded to me. Disappears shortly afterwards. I’d tell you if I knew, I swear.’

  Was the data actually locked into him? I removed my hand from his shattered knee. ‘And you have no idea when the next attack is coming?’ I asked. I had no logical reason to hit him. But the stormtech wanted me to, dearly. And keep hitting until I heard things crack and go soft.

  If he was wondering why a stormdealer gave a toss about terrorist attacks, he didn’t say so. Better to have him confused. ‘No. I sit tight until I get the order.’

  If this was true, we were screwed. I growled again. Every time we took a step, they were three ahead. Every thread, every investigation, every lead left us further behind. They were manipulating us like a Harvest war tactician. While Reapers continued going insane and Bluing Out and the drug-trafficking market continued to build it’s empire on the broken, addicted bodies of Compass citizens.

  Unless I did something.

  I spun Montenegro’s chair around and held up a primed razornade between us. ‘You’re going to start talking. If I decide you’re lying, you and your revolting skinroom here end up as sausage meat. Understand?’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ he spluttered, eyes big as moons.

  ‘Worse,’ I said. ‘I’m a Reaper.’

  ‘You’d never do it.’

  I glanced at the beeping device clenched in my hand. Would I? ‘How often did you get a stormtech delivery from the House of Suns?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m the main distributor on this floor,’ he said, his voice slurred and rushed. ‘I took deliveries as often as I could.’

  ‘Did you have a quota?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know the way you people work. What was your daily sales quota?’

  ‘Twenty-five sales a day.’

  Twenty-five. Twenty-five people, every day, with stormtech fusing with their organs, their skin, their brains. Twenty-five people who could wind up become Blued-Up killers, crippled in mind and body. And Montenegro here was one of hundreds, maybe thousands of stormdealers.

  ‘How many doses were altered to kill?’ I forced the words out through my growing horror.

  ‘How did you know about that?’ He spluttered. I thrust the razornade in his face. ‘No, not all. Only a very few, for specific people.’

  ‘They told you who,’ I managed. A quick nod. ‘Open your databanks for me. Now.’

  ‘They’ll kill me,’ Montenegro whispered. ‘You have no idea what these people can do.’

  I dropped my hand against his shattered kneecap. ‘Let’s compare, see who’s got the darker imagination.’

  The guilt welled inside me and I just as quickly shoved it back down. I thought about the families, couples, brothers, who’d been torn apart by this evil. I thought about the girl who’d stabbed her roommate to death for another quick fix. If I looked at the nearest newsfeed, no doubt I’d hear about a skinnie Bluing Out in their sleep, a parent who’d traded their children’s livelihood for one more hit, some Academy student who’d dropped out rather than get help. Reapers who’d survived an interstellar war going insane on the streets, murdering the very people they’d fought to protect, before dying and being labelled as kamikaze freaks.

  I thought about Joon Szymanski as he squeezed the breath from my dear sister’s body.

  This ended here. I was about to crack down on the Ratking when something tugged on my veins like wires. Somehow, without knowing how, I knew it was coming from a bottom drawer in his desk. Inside were several stormtech phials, most of them broken.

  Except one. It was still full of stormtech.

  It was in my palm before I knew what I was doing, stormtech rushing to my jaws and sticky saliva flooding my gums. The blue poison coiled and twisted inside. The stormtech in my body matched it, the two clawing at each other in unison. It was like I already had it inside me. Suddenly all corners of the room were kilometres away and it was just me and the rhythmic pounding of my body. My skin was the outer reaches of my perception, holding my senses in. My palm heavy with the phial’s weight. I could try some. Just a little. Just the whole thing. It would be fine. I needed this. Needed it more than anything. I’d earned it.

  I could kill Montenegro. No one had to know. I imagined the blue purity melting down my stomach, seeping its cool, soothing goodness into every parched crack.

  And I reached for my razornade.

  33

  Haunted Heads

  Heavy footfalls, fast approaching. My hand slithered back as Kowalski appeared in the doorway. I blinked. Squinting hard. My vision sharpening like a lens to focus on Kowalski’s flushed face.

  ‘I see you found our friend here,’ she said, piling into the room. ‘Oh, is this the accident you mentioned? What did you do, big guy? Sit on him?’

  No answer.

  ‘What do you have there, Vak?’ Her voice was suddenly artificially calm. Like she was trying to soothe a dangerous animal that’s clawed out of its cage. I couldn’t reply. ‘I think I should take that.’ Her hand stretched out, palm upwards. A limb made out of bone, blood and meaty muscle. I could hear her joints clicking. ‘Give it to me, Vak. Give it to me now.’

  I swallowed. She wasn’t an enemy. She was a friend. A good friend.

  Before I could think, I dropped it into her palm and stepped back, breathing hard.

&
nbsp; ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  I realised my hands were shaking. I meshed them together behind my back, my knuckles grinding together, willing my body to de-escalate.

  Kowalski levelled an unreadable expression my way. Then something seemed to snap behind her, tugging her into motion as she wheeled on Montenegro and thrust the phial under his nose. ‘How long have you been dealing?’

  Defiance started to build up in his eyes. But one glance at me and my razornade was enough to snuff it out. ‘More than a Compass year,’ he muttered.

  ‘And how many?’ Katherine’s voice had taken on a dangerous tone.

  ‘Twenty-five a day,’ I answered for him, and found my voice was raw, as if I’d been screaming. ‘Minimum quota.’

  ‘Minimum,’ Kowalski repeated. Heat seemed to lash off her skin. ‘Twenty-five minimum.’ She withdrew a palmerlog and flashed it in Montenegro’s face. ‘Did you sell to this person?’

  ‘You think I keep track of everyone I sell to?’

  Kowalski’s mouth became a grim line as she drew her thin-gun and stuck it against the knee that wasn’t shattered. ‘If you’ve got any brains, you better rack them fast. Did you sell to him?’

  Montenegro squinted at the image for a long while before glancing up at Katherine. ‘Yeah. I sold to him.’

  Kowalski nodded and cracked the butt of the thin-gun into his nose. Montenegro jerked back with a sharp cry and the palmerlog went clattering to the floor. On it was a young boy. Maybe sixteen or so with a mop of sandy hair and sharp features, grinning in a sun-washed room. Katherine’s nephew. The boy who’d committed the terrorist attack that toppled the building.

  ‘He was just a kid!’ Katherine’s fist slammed into Montenegro’s jaw again, again, again. She dragged him out of his seat, his shirt ripping, and slammed him against the wall, their faces inches apart. She slapped him so hard his head snapped sideways. ‘You killed a kid!’ she spluttered, her blows becoming weaker and weaker. ‘You killed an innocent kid. How could you? How could you? How could—’

  I wrestled her away. ‘Let go of me!’ she roared, trying to batter me away as Montenegro slid groaning to the floor. ‘I’m going to kill him! I’m going to tear his throat out. What sort of world does this? He was just a happy, innocent kid!’

  ‘Katherine, don’t.’ I glanced down at the picture of her nephew, this bright-eyed young man with his whole life ahead of him, cut down by this evil. ‘Don’t do this to yourself,’ I whispered through a tight throat. ‘He deserves it. But if you kill him, he’ll win. They’ll all win.’

  I felt her shiver with rage. ‘He was seventeen,’ she snarled at the whimpering stormdealer at her feet. ‘He never hurt anyone, never hurt a soul.’ The venom and rage deflated out of her voice with every word, like whatever strength she’d bottled up had bled dry. Her head rested against my chest, her eyes squeezed shut. I wrapped my arms tight around her. The two of us just holding each other for a long moment. Then we stood apart. ‘And here I was meant to keep you out of trouble,’ she half-sniffed, half-chuckled.

  Montenegro’s face was swelling with bruises, one eye shut and already crusted with blood. ‘I’m going to lose my job for this,’ she muttered, low enough that our prisoner couldn’t hear.

  ‘Tell Kindosh it was me,’ I said.

  Katherine shook her head. ‘No way. This is on me.’

  ‘You can’t afford suspension,’ I said. ‘Kindosh hates me anyway. Not like she can fire me.’

  Katherine smiled thinly and reached to pat my shoulder. The Ratking was starting to rouse himself, and I wasn’t in the mood to let him jerk me around any longer.

  I squatted down on my haunches next to him. ‘I think you know there’s only one way out of here for you. We get what we want, and you get to keep breathing.’

  Montenegro’s face moulded into a rictus of ironclad resolve. I froze. I knew that look all too well. ‘You’re right about the first part,’ he said, his swollen eye darting between me and Kowalski. He’d figured out who we really were, and knew there was no coming back from it. ‘But you two maggots aren’t getting a damn thing from me.’

  ‘Don’t!’ I yelled. But it was already done. Montenegro’s body jerked forward, head snapping backwards, limbs twitching as if suddenly electrocuted. His implant stuttered with lights, his eyes going glassy. His face twisted into a fierce snarl, saliva and blood trickling out of his mouth.

  He’d activated the suicide trigger.

  ‘Grim!’ I yelled, unable to tear my eyes away from the horrific sight. Around us, the walls and floors spasmed like a dying animal, the fibres in the walls palpitating. The pulse boomed at such a high-pitch I could feel the soundwaves ticking up the back of my skull, trying to crack it open like a walnut. Kowalski was yelling for backup that would arrive centuries too late.

  ‘He’s triggered an alert,’ Grim said. Montenegro slumped lifelessly in his chair, his legs giving out their last muscle spasms. ‘The Suns know we’re onto them. They’re probably shredding the databanks now. Tether him to it! It’s our only chance.’

  But I was already snatching up the fibre-optic cable I’d spotted in the mainframe earlier. I jammed it into the dead man’s implant, the socket plugging in with a sucking noise. Violent streams of data twitched over the flexiscreens. Superimposed over them was a perverted approximation of rat’s face, nightmarish and cartoon-like in appearance. The matted fur half ripped back from its skull and dripping with glossy black wax, black eyes twitching back and forth, black jaws peeling back in a mocking laugh. Violent bursts of electricity crackled between its teeth. The skinroom’s secondary defence mechanism, the one Grim hadn’t disabled, was booting to life. Bars rattled down across each door, caging us in the room.

  We were trapped inside the body of a dying man.

  ‘I’m salvaging what I can, but they’re eating it up fast,’ Grim said.

  ‘Go faster!’ I yelled. The optic cable writhed like a dying python, trying to rip itself free from Montenegro’s skull. Kowalski and I held onto the thrashing cable, shoving it deeper into its socket. The ribbed edge slicing into my fingers. Blood welled against the wire. The rat’s face curdled into a vicious, hungry snarl. The squirming fibres in the walls screeching as they stretched out towards us. There was a vicious tearing as the black walls swelled. As if there were hundreds of screaming, crawling monstrosities and machines trapped here, thrashing to break free and tear us apart. I caught a glimpse of a robotic claw, tipped with skin-shredding pincers, hauling itself out. The cable thrashed harder in our hands. We gritted our teeth, shoulder to shoulder, our bloodied fingers turning white. Montenegro’s body twitched around us with nightmarish spasms, arms and legs slamming against metal.

  ‘Got it!’ Grim yelled.

  ‘Now!’ I yelled. We let go of the cable simultaneously, throwing ourselves backwards and collapsing on top of each other. The cable thrashed back like a whip with a sharp crack, embedding itself in the mainframe, machinery shattering. The walls’ twitches slowed, the screams rapidly distorting and garbling, the rat’s snarling face being clawed away in vicious tearing strokes, as if someone were furiously scratching out a person’s face on a painting, before disappearing and the room dying down for good. Montenegro’s body slumped lifelessly with it.

  The tension flooded from my body in one great, heaving rush. I managed to clap Kowalski on the back, unable to say anything coherent. She reached to touch my hand before helping me to my feet, breathing hard and meeting my eyes. I wanted to get the hell out of this room and never come back, but we couldn’t risk leaving until backup arrived.

  I was almost afraid to ask Grim what he’d salvaged. Instead of telling me, he showed me. Sales figures, distribution channels, waybills routing all over Compass. The image of a chainship, sitting in a dry berth in an unidentifiable dock. The type you saw everyday around Compass.

  Except I’d seen exactly that image in the s
tormtech factory and wasn’t about to dismiss it as a coincidence. Were they using chainships like this to transfer stormtech on and off the asteroid? If so, they were operating offworld, but within shipping range of Compass. Probably somewhere in the system.

  The image had a sender. Jae Myouk-soon.

  Jae.

  The person who’d called me up in the Pits. The one in charge of this entire operation.

  ‘Anything on future terrorist attacks?’ I asked Grim.

  ‘The system’s totally clean,’ Grim said. ‘Nothing that even hints at it. They don’t even reference any attacks that already occurred.’

  ‘But we know there’s going to be another attack,’ Kowalski said.

  ‘You don’t think it’ll be the Harmony base, do you?’ I asked.

  ‘Not even they could punch through that level of security. I’ll get our departments to do a check anyway. But these attacks have been about public sabotage. Driving fear into the population and undermining Harmony. Attacking us would do the opposite. We’d become martyrs.’

  Further discussion was halted by the arrival of Harmony SSC squads, spearheaded by Saren’s fireteam. I went to the corridor to meet them, the knots in my stomach unravelling as I stood in clean, lush hallways. That nightmare room with all its squirming technology had messed around in my head. Made me feel like I was never going to leave.

  The SSC servicemen didn’t waste any time removing Montenegro’s corpse while others peeled apart the room’s internal organic machinery for answers they wouldn’t find in time. Gunrunners cordoned off the area. Salvaging footage captured by cams or drones. By now a crowd of shoppers were starting to congregate, rubbernecking with morbid curiosity at the shop’s front. Fasincated by the terrible, terrible things people do to each other.

  I’d set my palmerlog to alert me of stormtech-related news, and now it was lighting up like fireworks. More deaths as a result of stormdealer warfare. Crimelords attacking each other in their ships, on the streets. One of the victims was a kid, no more than fourteen. He’d been used as a foot soldier for a multispecies stormtech syndicate, shuttling stormtech between spaceports. He’d ended up in a spaceport his syndicate wasn’t allowed to operate in. Wasn’t there five minutes before someone shot him in the head and dumped his body in a shipping crate. Journalists and newsfeeds across the asteroid were already dissecting his corpse like carrion to back up their agendas and political stances, ignoring the tragedy, the horror of the casual violence. His body wasn’t even cold yet. A kid had died, just to teach his bosses a lesson.