SINdrome

by J. T. Nicholas

  “Which makes it difficult for the virus to spread through their population,” Tia suggested, nodding.

  “Which makes it a pretty fucking terrible weapon,” I added.

  “Agreed,” Silas replied. “And while I would certainly call Walton Biogenics terrible, the minds behind them are a long way from stupid.”

  “Which means we’re missing something,” I grunted.

  “Something that we need to uncover as soon as possible, Detective. Or the solution to the ‘synthetic problem’ may be a rather final one.”

  * * * *

  We were back in what I couldn’t help but think of as the briefing room, just off of the command center, gathered around the plastic tables. It was the usual suspects—me, Silas, Hernandez, Tia, Al’awwal, and LaSorte. There was another synthetic I hadn’t met, a stunning woman named Danielle who, according to Silas, was the closest thing to a doctor among the gathered synthetics. I got the impression that her knowledge was academic, rather than practical, but she was also one of the people making sense of the packet of information Dr. Kaphiri had left for us. Which meant she was a hell of a lot smarter than I was, and that was good enough for me.

  “What, exactly, did this Woodruff tell you, Campbell?” Hernandez asked, her voice slipping into the rhythms of interrogation. I smiled at that. I wasn’t sure if Hernandez was still on the job or not. It hadn’t been long since I’d turned myself in to her, but it seemed like the whole world had fallen apart while I was in the detention center, and we hadn’t exactly had the chance to talk. Still, I smiled at the familiar tones.

  “Not a lot. He hinted that some eager overachiever within Walton was behind the attempt on my life, and that killing me so soon would be getting off too easy. Then he said that Walton Biogenics would never have released the synthetics into the wild without some sort of kill switch or omega protocol. He didn’t go into details, but I got the impression that it was a way to kill them all. I’m not sure I understand why, exactly, though.”

  “Because if every synthetic were to drop dead en masse, do you really think anyone would continue to pursue justice for them? The dead file very few complaints, Jason,” Silas said with a humorless smile.

  I considered that. If Silas and all the other synthetics expired, what would I do? Could I really walk away from it all? Just accept the extermination of millions with a shrug and an “at least I tried?” The thought made me more than a little uneasy. And yet, at the same time, what would I accomplish if I did keep pursuing it? What did that leave?

  Revenge.

  And making sure nothing like it ever happened again.

  “You might be surprised,” I muttered.

  The pale synthetic waved one hand in dismissal. “Perhaps. But it is neither here nor there. Your god willing, it is something we will avoid, but not if we keep allowing ourselves to be sidetracked.”

  “We have no real evidence that the sickness we’re seeing here is actually some sort of biological weapon,” Tia chimed in. There was more than one skeptical grunt at that thought, mine among them, but she didn’t back down. “Well, we don’t. I’m not saying it isn’t the most likely thing. But we have zero equipment here to do the kind of tests and analysis that we need to do in order to even identify what we’re looking for, much less what we’re looking at.”

  “She’s right.” The soft voice belonged to Danielle, and I turned my attention to the woman. She was, like most Toys, almost painfully beautiful, her skin a light brown, a shade or two too dark to be called olive. Her hair fell in loose curls, framing a narrow, almost elfin face with deep brown eyes that seemed impossibly large. “There are too many unknowns and too many assumptions being made. Yes, the timing is suspicious, but I would wager that this is also the first time so many synthetics were gathered in such tight quarters. While it is unlikely, this could be a natural outbreak. After all, that is the assumption we were working on before Mr. Campbell returned to us.”

  “But the urgency has definitely been stepped up,” LaSorte chimed in. “If it’s Walton trying to end us…”

  This wasn’t my kind of fight, but it was the fight before us, so it was time to get work. We needed more information, and we needed it fast. “So, what do we need? And how do we get it?” I looked from Tia to Danielle and back again.

  Tia shrugged. “We need to run tests. See if we can isolate anything unusual in the blood and tissue of the sick. Take some samples from some who aren’t sick as well, and see what we can see there. If we can identify it, maybe we can fight it.” She shook her head. “But, Jason, you have to understand…there’s entire professions dedicated to this kind of thing. You don’t just get a random group of people together and have them discover a brand new virus or whatever. We can do some comparative analysis, but…”

  She trailed off. I felt the pall fall over the table at her words. Not that it was her fault—she was only telling us what we already knew and didn’t want to admit.

  “We have to start somewhere,” I said at last. “So where do we start? Blood tests? Where can we run them? I assume we can’t just buy the equipment and bring it here.” It struck me again that I had no idea how Silas was funding his revolution.

  “Most hospitals would have the equipment. Private labs. And…” Tia hesitated, but forged ahead. “And the morgue. We have a fair amount of equipment for forensic analysis there.” She looked uncomfortable mentioning it, and I knew why. She’d broken the law on multiple occasions now to help the cause, and I couldn’t fault her dedication. But it had always been “offsite.” She’d never taken things into her own backyard, and if she got caught running off-the-books analyses, it could ruin her career.

  “I can dummy up a case file,” Hernandez cut in. “Or just attach the samples to something open. We’ve gotta have a few bangers laid out in the morgue that Guns and Gangs are looking at. If anyone notices, it won’t be for weeks.” She shrugged. “One way or another, I’m guessing weeks is too long to matter.” That answered the question of whether or not Hernandez was still employed by the NLPD. I was glad to see that she still had a steady paycheck, as much for her own sake as for her daughter’s. Of course, if she got caught fabricating files, that job would dry up and blow away. I tried not to think about that—Hernandez was smart. She knew exactly what she was risking being here, and it was her choice to make.

  “Then we have a plan,” I said. “Hernandez creates a request for some bloodwork, and Tia tests the synthetic blood in its place.”

  “To the limits of my knowledge and the equipment available at the lab,” Tia added.

  “What do the rest of us do in the meantime?” LaSorte asked.

  “The hardest thing—we wait.”

  Chapter 7

  Waiting sucks.

  It’s bad enough when you’re waiting for something that you have to do. It’s worse when you’re waiting on others to do something. And when those others are your friends, and they’ve gone into danger, it’s pretty much unbearable.

  I spent the next two days trying to keep myself occupied. Silas had gotten me a new screen, and I’d wasted a few hours setting up my personal filters. Once I’d finished that, I’d flipped it on to get my first real glimpse of the outside world since Silas had launched his campaign.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  The news anchors looked just as put together and impeccable as ever as I started to play back the stories my queries delivered. But the content… “Riots continue to rage throughout the city,” the male anchor said, the screen cutting to a video of a mob of people—most with their faces covered in makeshift balaclavas or tee shirts tied around their noses and mouths—running through the streets, throwing bottles and rocks at store fronts, jumping on cars, and generally making a mess of things. “The riots are in response to a massive release of evidence lending more credence to the notion that synthetics are, in fact, thinking beings capable of the same thoughts and emotions
as people. Other files, released at the same time, implicated politicians across all fifty-three states in crimes ranging from simple corruption to—in one case—murder. Those investigations are ongoing and have added fuel to the fires spawning the protests. The information was released by the group fronted by former New Lyons Police Department Detective Jason Campbell.” The screen cut to an image of me. I winced a bit. Did they have to use the mugshot? No one looked good in a mug shot, and I had enough problems in that department already. And when had I become the “front man” for Silas’s organization? I guess when I had opened my big fat mouth on New Year’s Eve. But still…

  The screen cut back to the female anchor. “We’re joined now with Roberto Stringer, attorney for the group SynthFirst. Mr. Stringer, what’s your take on all of this?”

  The screen focused on a middle-aged man of Hispanic descent. “What we’re seeing now is the inevitable conclusion of decades of oppression,” Stringer said, his tone serious despite the million-dollar smile he flashed at the camera. “At SynthFirst, we’ve been saying for years that so-called synthetics are, in fact, people, and people who should have all the same rights as the rest of us. The people of this great country have been lied to by corporations and politicians, and they’re tired of it.”

  The screen split to show Mr. Stringer on one side and the anchors on the other. The male anchor spoke, “But what about the violence, Mr. Stringer? Surely, those of you at SynthFirst don’t condone the violence that we’re seeing in the streets.”

  “Of course we don’t,” Stringer replied. “But the information released shows us that we can’t trust the government in this matter, and illustrates the corruption that we have collectively ignored for generations. I ask you, what are the people to do? If they feel they can’t find redress for these wrongs among the corrupt politicians, and they can’t turn to the corporations that have pulled the wool over their eyes for decades in pursuit of profit, what avenues are left to them? Civil disobedience is a long-standing tradition in this country, and one of the few ways the populace at large has ever managed to create direct change. That goes all the way back to Boston Harbor.”

  I swiped to a different channel. I didn’t need a history lesson, and I wasn’t sure the analogy really fit in this case anyway. I kept swiping across my screen, not really paying attention, until the image flashed into the greasy, piggish face of Francois Fortier.

  I stopped swiping and the sound kicked in. “Jason Campbell is a criminal, pure and simple,” Fortier was saying. The camera panned, showing that the man was conducting another press conference on the steps of police headquarters. The same place he’d taken me into custody. “Look around you people. He’s the one responsible for the chaos in the streets.”

  “But what about his escape?” a reporter shouted over the general tumult.

  “It’s pretty clear he had help. Probably an inside job. Look, we’ve got the city locked down. He can’t stay hidden forever. And when we find him, we’ll throw his ass right back in jail where it belongs.” The camera seemed to linger on the beads of sweat forming on Fortier’s brow and upper lip. That brought a nasty smile to my lips. I was making him sweat. And if they were trying to find out who had helped me from inside the prison, they were on the wrong path. That would buy a little time.

  I flipped the screen off. I was restless, and watching the city I loved fall apart on live video wasn’t going to help. Neither was trying to keep tabs on the manhunt. It wasn’t like they were going to tell the press anything that could help me. And if I had to watch Francois-fucking-Fortier for one more minute, I would probably punch something. I needed to burn off some energy.

  There wasn’t a gym in the Ballasts, of course. But there were a lot of ladders. Climbing up and down a few dozen stories sounded like as good a plan as any. And if that didn’t work, I could always find Al. Not that getting my ass kicked seemed like the best of ideas, but it would tire me out. I looked down at my wardrobe—Silas and company had a scavenged collection of castoffs from God alone knew where. The good news was, I’d been able to get rid of the orange prison jumpsuit. The only things that had come close to fitting were a pair of ratty khakis and a bright pink tee shirt. Not the ideal workout clothes, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  Time to get to work.

  * * * *

  I leaned both hands against the wall of the makeshift shower, head down, letting the thin stream of water wash away the sweat of the latest match with Al’awwal. There were, for whatever reason, a couple of working actual bathrooms in the Ballasts, but they didn’t have showers. They were probably for maintenance workers or whoever else had need to come down here to work. Thank God we hadn’t seen anyone yet, but it did make me nervous. Bathrooms meant there was at least the potential of people, and whatever else they offered, the Ballasts weren’t a place we could clear out of quickly.

  The enterprising synthetics had managed to tap in to a couple of exposed water pipes and install showerheads in one of the unused chambers. The setup reminded me of boot—just bare showerheads sticking out of the wall without any kind of dividers for privacy. I supposed that synthetics lost anything resembling body modesty, or anything resembling an expectation of privacy for that matter, at a young age. It did make me wonder what Tia had done those nights she’d stayed here and not returned to her own apartment. She didn’t strike me as the type to casually shower in a room full of other people. Though the thought of walking in on her…

  That really wasn’t a good path to go down, not standing naked in a room that any of the synthetics could walk into at any moment. At least the water trickling down onto my head was cold, putting a dampener on any amorous thoughts I might be having. I forced my mind back to the shower itself. While the ingenuity of the synthetics had allowed for a place to shower, the Ballasts weren’t built to provide drainage. That was why the water was barely a trickle, and why I had no intention of standing here very long. The water had to be cleaned up and disposed of. There were mops and buckets and squeegees waiting for me when the shower was done.

  I was contemplating the irony of that—take a shower to get cleaned up after sweating only to have to clean up the aftermath of the shower which would involve, wait for it…sweating…when the door swung open. A synthetic I didn’t recognize—young, female, beautiful—stuck her head in the door. “Silas wanted you to know that Ms. Morita and Ms. Hernandez are back,” she said. She regarded me with a frank look, making no attempt to conceal her appraisal. I, in turn, tried not to jump and squeal and cover my important bits like I was in a bad ’net prank vid.

  “Thanks,” I managed. “I’ll be along in just a moment. Just need to finish, and clean up the mess.”

  For a moment, she looked like she might offer to do the cleanup for me, but then something—a hardness, an edge—flashed across her face. She nodded instead, and left, pulling the door shut behind her. I wondered about that look as I finished up, all thoughts of Tia or the discomfort of the appraising stare lost in that one, hard-edged flash of emotion. I got the impression that, had I been a synthetic, she would have gladly assisted. But since I was a human, a nominal oppressor even if I had shown myself to be on the side of the angels, there was no way she was going to spend her sweat to help me. I couldn’t exactly blame her, and yet…

  And yet, I was left to wonder, once again, what kind of world would emerge if we managed to achieve all our goals. As I toweled off, dressed, and started to push the mop around the metal floor, I realized that my commitment hadn’t waned. The synthetics deserved to be free. There was no question that they had been mistreated and misused to the detriment not just of them, but also to the very soul of humanity. But I couldn’t help the slight quaver of… I don’t think it was fear. Uncertainty? Cognitive dissonance? Whatever it was, that hard look, that hatred that I sensed burning just beneath the skin of so many of the synthetics, worried me.

  As much as I wanted our little war to be won, th
e possibilities of victory scared me almost as much as the possibilities of defeat.

  I cleaned up the floor, a simple task that, for many humans, had been relegated to synthetics long since, and wondered what the future held.

  * * * *

  My mood brightened immediately when I walked into our makeshift conference room and saw Tia Morita standing there. I surprised us both by striding over and giving her a quick hug. “I’m glad you made it back,” I whispered, then stepped away.

  Hernandez, also in the room, arched an eyebrow at me and her lips quirked in a smile, but I ignored her. I then realized that the rest of the usual suspects had gathered as well; Silas, Al’awwal, LaSorte, and Danielle all sat at their places around the table.

  “Glad you could join us, hermano,” Hernandez said as I took my seat.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Had to clean up the shower.” I didn’t want to get into the unexpected mental complexities that task had given birth to, so I continued. “What did we find?”

  All eyes went to Tia.

  She drew a steadying breath, and, despite a slight flush suffusing her cheeks, spoke firmly. “I ran the bloodwork, from the sick and the healthy. And I ran my own, too, just in case.”