by D L Young
The skies opened up and a hard rain began to fall as Maddox turned and looked across the gap between the buildings. Jack stood on the other side, framed by the window. Maddox waved him forward.
“Come on!”
The fighter climbed onto the windowsill and tossed the gun through the air in a gentle arc. Maddox caught it and shoved it into the back of his pants.
Jack paused, looking at the structure doubtfully. “I hate heights, Blackburn. You know that, right?” Raindrops pelted the fighter’s head and shoulders.
Behind Jack, the room’s door flew open. Maddox watched as the next few moments passed with agonizing slowness. Jack scrambled into the tunnel and it immediately collapsed. The side connected to the building opposite Maddox fell away. The metal framework on Maddox’s side bent and twisted as the passageway broke in half, one part plummeting to the alley, the other still partially connected and hanging precariously against the building’s side. The broken section hit the ground with a thud, the metal framework flattened under the weight of the nanocrete.
Maddox leaned out the window and peered downward. Amazingly, Jack was there, clutching onto the bent framework with one hand, the building ledge with the other.
“I could use a hand, Blackburn,” he said, grimacing a smile and struggling to keep his grip. Around him, the broken remains of the tunnel made metallic popping sounds as it began to sheer away.
Maddox reached down and grabbed the fighter around the wrists. Gunfire blazed out of the opposite window and Jack stiffened, his eyes going wide.
“I’m shot,” the fighter grunted. “I’m shot.”
The last connections of the tunnel’s framework snapped under the strain of the heavy load and fell away, nearly taking Jack with it as it tumbled to the ground. Jack hung alongside the building, his eyes still wide with shock and disbelief.
Maddox pulled, his back straining, but Jack was heavy and his arms were slick with rain. Maddox couldn’t keep his grip.
“Jack, swing your feet onto the ledge!”
More gunfire. Maddox winced as things popped and exploded around him. He felt Jack’s body shiver, then the fighter’s grip went slack and blood oozed from his mouth.
“Jack!”
The fighter’s eyes glazed over. “Take little brother and get out of here, Blackburn,” he said, spitting blood.
And then he slipped away, a slow tumble downward in the falling rain. Maddox yelled the fighter’s name again and watched his friend fall, yanking his eyes away an instant before Jack struck the ground.
13 - Long Time No See
Later, Maddox would only recall the immediate aftermath of Jack’s death as a blur of disconnected moments he’d navigated in a dull stupor. A vague recollection of Tommy taking the gun and firing back at the cops. The kid pulling him out of the room and down to the basement. The two of them making it to the subway and riding the 7 train to the end of the line, then hunkering down in an abandoned shopping center in Flushing.
When Maddox finally recovered his wits, he ripped into the kid.
“You killed him, you damned fool,” he sneered. “You might as well have put a bullet in his head.”
The kid tried to defend his actions, but Maddox wasn’t hearing any of it. “You plugged in and ten minutes later the cops are up our asses. They tagged you, just like I said they would.”
“But I was cloaked,” the kid shot back, “there’s no way they could have—”
“How the fuck would you know?” Maddox interrupted. “You’re not a datajacker. You’re a wannabe. How many times have you plugged into core VS? Five? Six? And half of those times I was there holding your hand. You’ve got blind spots as big as whole galaxies. You got Jack killed tonight, you little shit.”
Something seemed to break inside the kid, snapping like a dry twig. He cast his eyes down at his shoes. “I just wanted to help my friends,” he said somberly. “I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t think,” Maddox said, “as usual.”
They stood there for a long moment in silence. Rainwater dripped from the roof into a puddle on the cracked tile floor. Tommy sat, still staring downward. The kid’s head hung low, his shoulders rounded in defeat, as if the scolding had beaten him down physically. Or maybe it was simply exhaustion, Maddox thought, aware of his own overwhelming tiredness. The comedown crash following an hours-long adrenaline rush.
The kid removed his jacket, balled it up for a pillow, and lay down with his back to Maddox.
“They’re my friends,” he whimpered.
Maddox sat, blew out a long breath. “I know, kid.” He wanted to say more, but no words came.
Yes, the kid had screwed up. Screwed up badly. But this whole thing wasn’t the kid’s mess, Maddox reminded himself. And when he could have kept Jack out of it, Maddox hadn’t pushed hard enough. So if there was blame to be assigned for Jack’s death, Maddox confessed inwardly that a large portion of it—if not the entire share—belonged to him.
Moments later, Tommy dozed off. Maddox watched as the kid slept, snoring lightly. He shouldn’t have blown up at the kid like that. Rooney had never given him a tongue-lashing like that, even when the younger version of himself had fully earned it.
In the morning he’d set things right. More than most, Maddox knew what death-guilt could do to a person, and he didn’t want Tommy to suffer as he had, haunted by a pain and regret that never went away.
Overcome with fatigue, Maddox lay down on the cold, hard floor. Sleep came almost instantly, less a conscious decision than a helpless surrender.
When he awoke a few hours later, Tommy was gone.
***
Regret. It was something datajackers didn’t deal with often. Regret was for the unsure, the indecisive. Regret was a rearview mirror that drew your attention away from the present, from the problems at hand. A keen sense of the present, of the now, was a trait common among the best datajackers. They were masters of the moment. Rooney had shared this observation with Maddox early in his apprenticeship. It wasn’t necessarily an inability to feel regret, or nostalgia, or any other backward-looking emotion, Rooney had explained. It was instead an innate compulsion to keep things moving forward, for not allowing the past to be an anchor that held you back, that slowed you down. If a shark stops swimming it dies, Maddox had once heard. Elite datajackers were much the same way.
But not always. Rooney’s death was the one thing he’d never been able to move completely past. Without fail, it seeped into his everyday thoughts and actions, tugging at what Maddox supposed was a conscience. The questions would always come. Why hadn’t he heeded the little voice nagging at him, telling him something was wrong long before they’d plugged in? Why hadn’t he insisted that Rooney bail on that gig that had ultimately taken his life?
Maddox sat up, groggy and dry-throated from the cold night air, his back aching from the hard floor. A haze of predawn light entered the empty space from a broken window high up the far wall. He rolled a cigarette, his fingers moving automatically as he blinked himself awake. He’d been dreaming of Rooney’s final days.
He lit the tip, blew smoke. Maybe the dream had to do with the kid. Maddox regretted berating Tommy, hanging Jack’s death around the kid’s neck, and one regret in the conscious world had triggered another in the dream world. And now the kid was gone. Maddox sat there smoking, forgetting the regret of his dreams, remorseful only about the last words he’d spoken to Tommy. He might never see the kid again, might never have the chance to tell him it wasn’t his fault. He might have cursed the kid for life, throwing an unbearable weight upon his soul.
But as shitty as Maddox felt about it, it didn’t change his current lot. He was still a wanted man, still had to get out of the City. He stood on stiff legs, stretched, and tried to wall off the regret or guilt or whatever it was he’d awoken to this morning.
The next few hours would be his last in the City. If he wanted to be gone by noon, he had no time to waste.
***
&nbs
p; The little drone waited patiently in the air conditioning vent, watching the room through the vent cover’s horizontal slits. The drone had been sitting in this very spot for months, unmoving and fully powered down to conserve its battery life, awaiting the signal from its master to awaken. Today, the signal had finally come.
It watched the room for a long while, its egg-shaped body and three pairs of spiderlike legs quiet and unmoving, unable to begin its task until the room was empty. Two men moved about in the room. They talked with each other in low tones, turning over sofa cushions and opening drawers. They were looking for something and, apparently, not finding it. Clothes and pillows and the contents of drawers lay strewn about the floor. After what seemed like a very long time to the little drone, the men stopped searching and left, ducking under the wide yellow tape across the door that said POLICE SCENE DO NOT ENTER. Before they closed the door, the drone noticed two other people, both holding rifles and dressed in police armor, standing on either side of the door.
When the room was empty, the drone waited another ten minutes—its master had programmed it to have a cautious nature—before it began to remove the screws of the vent cover. It did its job with admirable precision, making sure each screw came out silently so the guards couldn’t hear. The trickiest part was removing the vent cover and sliding it back into the shaft, but this too the little drone performed to perfection, making not the slightest sound.
Freed from its hiding place, the drone opened its carapace and unfurled its four wings. The men hadn’t left behind any cameras or audio bugs—it had been watching and scanning for such devices every time someone had entered—so it skipped over the parts of its instructions that dealt with disabling police gadgets. Revving its wings to a fast spin, it dropped from the air vent into the room like a rock, then stopped halfway to the floor. It rotated in place, taking one last scan—cautious, cautious, cautious—and finding no devices. The drone then flew back into its hiding place and reappeared moments later, carrying a canvas bag in its legs. This was its precious cargo, its reason for existence. It held the heavy bag tight to its body, wings humming softly as it floated to the window. The window had instructions, too, and it slid open a few centimeters, just enough for the little drone and its valuable load to escape the only home it had ever known.
From the roof of a nearby building, Maddox watched the window of his condo, his vision magnified through his specs. Where was the thing? He’d remotely kicked off the routine half an hour ago. The hornet drone he’d hidden in his apartment should have shown itself by now. No, that wasn’t right, he corrected himself, recalling the code he’d written into the drone’s memory months earlier. If there were anyone present in the unit—especially cops—it would wait until they left. And then after that, to keep its existence and, more importantly, its cargo secret, it would have to disable any monitoring devices the cops had left behind.
Then he saw the window crack open, and a moment later the little drone emerged, carrying the bag. He blew out in relief. Good.
It took a few more minutes for the drone to reach Maddox, who was only a few blocks away but across several transit lanes. The drone navigated the hazardous skyways, then delivered its load to its owner. Maddox opened the bag, counted the bills, and stuffed them into his jacket pocket. All right, that was the last one.
He’d spent the morning collecting cash at multiple stashes he had around the City. Some were in storage lockers rented under a fake ID. Those were the quickest and easiest to retrieve. All he had to do was show up with the key. Others weren’t so quick, like the cigar box of cash he’d left inside a hidden nook in a parking garage. He’d committed the address of the place to memory, but he’d forgotten which floor. Cursing himself repeatedly, he’d spent over an hour before he finally found what he was looking for. He’d deemed his apartment as the riskiest, most complex pickup, so he’d left it for last. And now he was finished. His pockets were stuffed with enough cash to get him far away from the City.
Time to get out of town.
He took the stairwell down to the ground level, opened a door, and emerged into the alley.
“Salaryman,” a voice said from behind him. He whirled around.
“Long time no see,” the woman said.
Beatrice. Wait, Beatrice? He stared at her, blinking. He hadn’t seen the mercenary woman in over a year, since they’d both tangled with the Latour-Fisher AI. She was the last person in the world he expected to see at that moment. Recovering from his surprise, Maddox noticed she hadn’t changed since their last meeting. Her hair still had the same short-cropped cut, dyed blond with dark roots. She still wore the simple garb that looked thrown together from discount bins, an unremarkable, easily forgettable ensemble—black jeans and a loose jacket over a formfitting sky-blue T-shirt—an outfit designed to blend in with the street-level crowds. Oversized specs with dark lenses covered the top half of her face, concealing most of her expression save the tight grin. Without seeing her eyes, Maddox wasn’t sure if the smile she was giving him was a good one or the other kind.
“What are you doing—” He cut himself off as his eyes drifted downward and spotted the Ruger in her right hand, half-hidden by the jacket sleeve.
The smile was still there when he looked back up at her face. It wasn’t the good kind, he decided.
“We need to talk,” she said.
14 - A Mercenary's Debt
“How’d you find me?” Maddox asked, tapping a neat line of tobacco from his bag and rolling up the rice paper.
“Still smoking, I see,” Beatrice said with a disapproving frown. He knew from their previous partnership she had a special aversion toward this particular vice. Maybe that was why he felt a tiny bit of pleasure—aside from the nicotine rush—as he lit the tip and inhaled.
“Seriously, how?” he asked, blowing smoke.
They sat in a lavishly furnished fiftieth-floor apartment in Midtown, the sole occupants of the unit. The windows were darkened—you never know who might be watching—and a single floor lamp provided the room’s dim, long-shadowed illumination. A ceiling fan turned slowly overhead, dissipating the ribbons of smoke that rose from Maddox’s cigarette.
Beatrice stared at him dully, gave half a shrug. “You’re good at what you do, I’m good at what I do. Let’s leave it at that.”
“This your place?” Maddox asked, looking around.
“It is today,” she said vaguely.
Maddox blew smoke. “If you wanted to talk, you didn’t have to pull a gun on me, you know.”
A hint of a smile touched her lips. “I didn’t pull it on you. I was just holding it. Whatever you inferred from that is your business, salaryman.”
The last time he’d seen Beatrice, he’d actually entertained the notion that he’d grown fond of her. Thought perhaps she’d entertained the same notion. But here and now, those moments seemed like someone else’s life, lived a long time ago.
He flicked ash onto the hardwood floor. “What do you want?”
“I was in Toronto on a job when I saw the news about the bombing and who got arrested for it. Thought you might know something, so I tracked you down.” She explained how she’d been a block away from his building when she’d spotted a huddle of rhino cops, chattering with each other like they were getting ready for a raid. Warning bells going off in her head, she’d backed off and released a handful of bumblebee drones to watch the building. One of them had spotted Maddox’s drone leaving the condo, and that had led her straight to him.
“Call me a skeptic,” she said, “but I’m not buying this terrorist story. You lot never struck me as the political types.”
“Oh, but we are,” Maddox said. “I love sticking it to the man, and those kids are my faithful minions. Long live the revolution.” He held up a mocking fist.
“Still smoking, and still a smartass,” she said. “So what is it, then? What’s the story? You got an AI after you again, spinning lies about you and those kids?”
“I wish.” He b
lew smoke, wanting to leave his answer at that. But the look on her face said she wasn’t letting him out of her sight until her questions were answered.
“Somebody on the police force has it in for me,” he confided.
“I kind of figured most cops did,” she quipped.
“This is different.”
“Personal beef?”
“You’re getting warmer,” he said.
Beatrice listened raptly as he recounted the strange story of the last few days, a sequence of events he still had trouble grasping himself. He cursed himself again for failing to uncover the sham gig with Sanchez. It was the same kind of mistake Rooney had made, taking on that fatal gig too quickly, too eagerly, his vision clouded by the dollar signs in his eyes. His old mentor had paid the ultimate price for his mistake. Maddox wondered bleakly if he’d bought himself the same ticket.
“And the Anarchy Boyz?” Beatrice asked.
“Known associates,” he answered, then added, “with a recent history of helping me evade arrest, if you recall.” Maybe they’d been brought in, he explained, simply because Gideon had wanted to grill them, find out if they knew Maddox’s whereabouts. Or maybe they’d been part of the setup plan all along, the foundation of a convenient, easily concocted storyline that painted the kids as corporate terrorists and Maddox as their evil puppet master.
He took a long drag on his cigarette. The story, he knew, had to sound crazy. But oddly, as he related it, Beatrice didn’t react, and if she doubted any part of the wild tale, she gave no indication. She simply sat there, detached and contemplative, taking it all in.
When he finished, she nodded slowly. “So all of this is a frame-up to get you out of the way?”
Maddox nodded, blew smoke. “Quite the mess, isn’t it?”
“Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, don’t you think?”
“That’s exactly what I said.”