The Moreau Quartet, Volume 2

by S. Andrew Swann

  The inductor had shorted out.

  The van coasted to a stop in almost complete darkness. Even after her engineered eyes adjusted, the world was a dark-gray monochrome shadow that ended about ten meters ahead of her.

  She sat in the driver’s seat, stunned, as icy water began to collect in the footwell. “You’re all hypocritical, manipulative bastards.”

  Evi, a mental voice began to say.

  “Even you, Abdel.”

  I raised you, Evi.

  “Even you.” She could feel burning on her cheeks. “What the hell was I, ever, but somebody’s intelligence asset?”

  But-

  “YOU AREN’T MY FATHER!” It echoed into the darkness, faded into nothing.

  She slammed her fists into the dash, ignoring the pain in her left shoulder. “They said human experiments were atrocities. What were you going to do when you swept through that Jordanian facility? Kill us all?” She shook her head. “No, you couldn’t do that. What a waste it would have been. You took us and trained us to be your atrocities.”

  She rested her head against the steering wheel. “Go away, Abdel. It’s my life, and I don’t want you anymore.”

  Abdel didn’t respond.

  She was so damn tired. Tired of being a pawn. Tired of being controlled. Tired of relying on a system that pulled the carpet out from under her. Tired of a world that didn’t give a shit about her.

  The water was up to her mid-calf, and her feet were falling asleep.

  Great, all she needed was a case of hypothermia.

  She rolled down the window and looked around the tunnel. Halfway up the right side of the tunnel was a rusty catwalk. At least she could get somewhere without wading. That only left the question, forward or back?

  There was no way she was going back.

  Dawn broke as she kicked away the garbage holding shut the door on an abandoned subway station. The first sight to greet her upon clearing the top of the concrete stairs was a blown holo-billboard, the mirrored surface marred by the painted legend, “OFF THE PINK!”

  Evi knew where she was now. The northern tip of Manhattan, past the barriers. The retrofitted slums of Washington Heights crowded around her, trying to buckle the crumbling streets. A few blocks away from her she could smell the Harlem River. Beyond it was the blasted shell of the Bronx.

  The Bronx. The war zone. Moreytown.

  Some moreaus wouldn’t step into the Bronx. She set down her backpack, unlocked the handcuffs still attached to her right wrist, and tossed the cuffs in the bag. Then she reshouldered her bag and headed toward the Bronx.

  Chapter 15

  Evi walked across the crumbling bridge, weaving through the stray burnt-out cars, and left the human world. She passed under a rust-shot green sign reading, “I-95, Cross-Bronx Expressway.” Under it was an ancient grime-coated detour sign saying the expressway was closed for repairs. More of the NY Urban Infrastructure Renewal Project. It was supposed to open the summer of 2045. Someone had spraypainted “abandon all hope” over “your tax dollars at work.”

  The first thing to hit her as she set foot in the Bronx was the smell. Even a fresh layer of gray snow, which muted odor as much as it did sound, could not hide the smell of animal musk. She was enveloped by the overlapping mélange of the three million moreaus who owned the Bronx.

  She stepped off the end of a crumbling off ramp.

  The view down the street belonged to another continent. Even at this early hour, the street was lined by hawkers at makeshift stalls. A Peruvian rabbit sold gold jewelry out of a white plastic shipping crate. Three leather-clad rats chittering lightning Spanish were selling electronics using a burnt-out Chevy Caldera as a base of operations. Behind a rank of orange cones and old traffic sawhorses, a blind Pakistani canine with only one arm was being helped by a young female vulpine, running skewered meat over a coal pit in the asphalt . . .

  People were everywhere, the highest concentration of moreaus in the world. In any direction she looked there was an undulating ocean of fur. Short dirty white for most of the Latin rodents, rabbits, and rats. Spotted brown for some rabbits and dead black for some rats. Red to spotlight the British vulpines. Gray, brown, and black for the Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian canines. Brownish black for the slow-moving ursoid mountains and the subliminal flashes of otters and ferrets. Yellow and black for the big cats . . .

  She waded into the sea of nonhumans, not bothering to hide the Uzi. The crowd parted around her as the population turned to stare. A barely audible growl followed her like the sound of crashing surf. She got a half-block before she met a portion of the crowd that didn’t break before her.

  Upon seeing the creature, her first impulse was to file it in her knowledge of moreau strains. He was Russian, ursoid combat strain, Vyshniy ’33, first generation.

  The bear was a wall of fur reaching up for nearly four meters. The individual muscles that snaked through his forearm were the size of Evi’s thigh. Dozens of scars picked through the bear’s brown fur; most looked like bullet holes. A diagonal slash originated under one eye and snaked across his muzzle, revealing a slice of raw pink across his nose. The only thing the bear wore was a pair of khaki shorts.

  It snarled at her. “Pink.”

  She leveled the Uzi at the bear. Around her she could hear weapons clearing holsters, guns being cocked. The bear raised his hand and she knew a solid contact from that arm would break her neck.

  She tensed to duck and roll to the side. “Look at me! I’m no more human than you are.”

  The bear’s brows knit as it stared at her. It took a few seconds for him to lock eyes, a few more to realize what the eyes meant. His arm remained raised. “You’re a frank?”

  Those words seemed to ignite something in the crowd. What had been a frozen tableau around the periphery of Evi’s vision melted back into motion. Motion away from her and the bear. What had been something of universal concern now seemed to be a personal matter between the two of them.

  The bear was still looking for an excuse. “Not pink, but you can’t talk like that to—”

  She saw a quiver of motion along the bear’s forearm. “Don’t.” She shook the Uzi for emphasis.

  “But—”

  “Your backup’s gone.”

  The bear lowered his arm and grumbled, “Thought you were fucking human.”

  Evi sighed. “Done?”

  The bear gave an all-too-human shrug and limped away. For the first time she noticed that the bear’s left foot was a makeshift prosthetic.

  She continued down the street, keeping an eye out for other potential conflicts. For the first time she saw her nearly human form as a handicap. Everyone eyed her with suspicion, some with outright contempt, but no one else opted for a direct confrontation. With the exception of some yelled obscenities, growls, and one thrown brick that missed her, she passed through unmolested.

  But this deep in the Bronx, the only thing that would molest her would be the locals. Humans, cops or Feds, wouldn’t come down here. The only people she’d have to worry about would be Nyogi’s. And then only if they sent the Afghanis down after her. However, there was a good chance that no one knew where she was.

  Not an aircar in sight. Not too surprising, since the FAA restricted the airspace above Moreytown. Allegedly because it was too dangerous, but Evi knew better. Both local and federal policy since ’42 was to restrict physical access to concentrations of moreau population.

  She needed to find a comm. She wove through main streets between modular mass-produced housing, burnt-out ruins, and old unfinished housing projects, looking. It soon became obvious that there was not going to be any operational public comms out on the street. The few kiosks she passed, whether they’d originally been a comm, a bank machine, a trash depository, or a city directory, had all been gutted long ago.

  She walked deeper into the nonhuman c
ity as the sun rose. The night was catching up with her. Evi had a headache that was telling her she had gotten too little sleep, and her left shoulder was a deep ache that flashed into full-blown agony whenever she tried to move her arm. She knew that all the movement last night had canceled any healing her arm had done the previous day and had probably made things worse.

  She needed a place to rest.

  She walked for two miles. She paralleled the valley of the dead I-95, passing abandoned earth movers and bulldozers that’d been stripped to orange metal skeletons. At eight in the morning, Evi passed an ancient brick structure that hadn’t burned. It was wedged between a lot humped with soot-scarred concrete and the girder skeleton of what had, long ago, been an attempt at low-cost housing. The framework stork of the crane still hovered over the project, leaning at an ominous angle over the brick building.

  The building’s windows hid behind rolling steel doors. The way the graffiti wrapped around, ignoring the division between steel and brick, showed that the front windows had not been opened in a long time. What had stopped Evi, though, was the sign above the open door, “ROOMS.”

  “ROOMS” was lit in flickering neon that, against all odds, remained intact. The front door gaped open at her, held in place by a granite lion that stood rampant about a meter high. Mortar still clung to the lion’s feet, a legacy from whatever façade he’d escaped from.

  She needed a place to hole up. “ROOMS” was the best she could expect from this town. She walked in, hoping that the crane gantry would remain upright for one more day.

  The lobby was sweltering, and the open door did nothing to help more than a meter into the building. The air was humid from the rust-laden steam heating system.

  Behind the desk sat an old brown rabbit, obese, nose running, ears drooping. The lepus’ rheumy eyes locked with Evi’s for about a half-second of shock. She saw the rabbit’s hand moving to something concealed behind the desk. The hand stopped moving when he looked into her eyes.

  The rabbit cleared his throat. “Help you?”

  She walked up to the desk. “I need a room with a working comm.”

  “Yeah.” The rabbit coughed a few times. “Outside line?”

  She nodded.

  The rabbit turned and began tapping at an old manual keyboard behind him. She leaned forward to see what the rabbit had been reaching for. In a holster behind the desk was a cheap Chinese revolver, a PR-14. Evi didn’t even want to think about fourteen-millimeter rounds. Those things were cheap for a reason. There were a lot of them, and they were just as likely to do damage to the wielder as to the target. The only people who could fire those things accurately were the Chinese ursines.

  She thought it was a stupid weapon for a rabbit. That was until she noticed a bracket sunk into the desk. A bracket with a universal joint mount on it that could provide a fairly braced firing platform for the gun.

  She turned and looked behind her and saw at least one very large hole in the wall by the door.

  “Room 615.” The rabbit paused for a coughing fit.

  “How much?”

  “Twenty an hour, hundred a day, half that if you got cash.” The rabbit pulled a gray rag out from under the desk and blew his nose. “I don’t haggle.”

  She reached into her pack and hoped that the Agency had left her wallet and cash in the leather. They had. She fumbled in her jacket and liberated her wallet. What remained of the roll of twenties, after the limo rental, was exactly a hundred in cash in her wallet. There was her phony ID in the wallet, but Eve’s identity was compromised now.

  “I want twenty-four hours and the balance credited to the comm’s account.” She handed the rabbit five twenties.

  The cash disappeared under a balding hand. The rabbit nodded and handed her a green ramcard with the room number branded into it. “Checkout’s at noon.” The rabbit glanced at the Uzi. “Any shooting’ll bring the wrath of God on you.”

  She nodded and took the cardkey.

  The stairs were littered with garbage, plaster, and unconscious moreaus. Room 615 was on the sixth floor, overlooking the abandoned construction next door. The thick metal door opened on a square room, four meters on a side. The disease-green paint seemed to be the only thing holding the plaster to the walls. Black-specked yellow curtains turned the frozen white sunlight the color of urine. The color matched the room’s smell. The sheets on the bed were laced with fur from the previous occupant, as was the claw-marked recliner.

  Evi shut the door behind her and turned on the overhead light. The circular fluorescent pinged a few times before it lit with a nervous, vibrating blue glow. Evi pulled the recliner around in front of the comm.

  The comm was anchored in a black textured plastic case. The base bore scars from cigarettes and knives but remained firmly bolted to the wall opposite the foot of the bed. She sat down in front of it and turned it on.

  As it warmed up, Evi was treated to moans and heavy breathing provided by the hotel’s piped-in broadcast. When the black and white low-res display focused, Evi saw a familiar-looking Pakistani canine. It might not be the same movie that had been playing on Times Square, but it certainly was the same actor. Small world.

  The first thing Evi did was get on an outside line and call Diana. Diana answered the comm call immediately. “You’re where?”

  “The address is right.”

  Diana shook her head. “You’re in the middle of the Bronx? Are you all right?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “Mind telling me what happened?”

  “Brush with the cops and the Feds. Moreytown seemed a good place to disappear for a little while.”

  Diana was quiet for a while, seeming to weigh what she was going to say next. “Are you going to come back?”

  “There’s a lot . . .” A lot she had to do, a lot she had to think about, a lot she had to come to terms with. “I don’t know.”

  There was no mistaking the disappointment that crossed Diana’s face. “I appreciate the call. Do you insist on continuing to go it alone?”

  Diana had a point. Evi might be able to survive on her own, but if she ever intended to do anything about the forces arrayed against her, she needed help. Price might be an option, if she could get to him. However, if she was right and Hofstadter had taken over control of the operation, Price might be as much a solo act as she was at the moment. “You still think the moreau underground might be willing to help me?”

  “You’re fighting the same forces the movement’s been fighting for the past fifteen years.”

  By doing things like bombing the New York Public Library? She couldn’t help picturing them as nothing more than a group of rabid terrorists. Then again, that’s what she was supposed to be right now, wasn’t it? “Can you tell me who to contact out here?”

  Diana looked a little pained. “I haven’t been close to the movement for a long time—”

  Evi suddenly remembered the address Nohar had given her. It was down here in the Bronx. Maybe Nohar had had the same thoughts about the moreau underground that Diana had. And what did “G1:26” mean?

  She typed it in on the battered keyboard and asked. “You know what that means?”

  “7:26 Eastern Standard—”

  “Other than that.”

  Diana stared at the screen and shrugged. “Hmm.” After a few minutes of silence she started mumbling. “. . . after our likeness—”

  “What’s that?”

  “Benefits of a Catholic education. Every time I see numbers separated by a colon, I think chapter and verse.”

  “You were quoting?”

  “Genesis 1:26.” Diana’s voice took on a pontifical tone. “And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth u
pon the earth.”

  Evi sat back on the recliner and started laughing, inaudibly. That was one hell of a password for the moreau underground. “Does that help?” Diana asked.

  Evi shook her head. “I think so, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I guess that’s it.”

  “Good luck.” Diana added, “and you really look much better without the sunglasses.”

  Diana cut the connection.

  Evi sighed and emptied her pack. Her jumpsuit was there, clean now, as well as her leather. Most of the equipment she had started out with was trash. The magazines and extra barrel for the Mishkov were useless without the gun. All that was left was her stun rod.

  She pressed the test key and a green LED winked at her.

  She stripped out of the trashed exec suit and stretched. She considered sitting down, but she looked at the fur on the seat of the recliner and put the jumpsuit on first.

  Since she had the comm, she tried calling David Price again. He was still locking out incoming calls. His comm was probably programmed to respond to secure transmissions from Frey’s comm.

  That did her a lot of good.

  She sighed and ruffled through Sukiota’s wallet. Not much of anything there beyond the standard ID, a few cardkeys, one with the NYPD logo. The only thing remotely interesting she’d gotten off of Sukiota was the blank white card.

  “What’s this?” she asked herself.

  Evi plopped it into the comm’s card reader. She had to hit it a few times to get it going.

  The screen fuzzed in on the National Security Agency logo. After a few seconds the screen started flashing all sorts of top-secret and restricted warnings at her. She tapped on the keyboard and the database program asked for her security clearance or the card’s info would be wiped.

  She debated a moment on whether she should risk her old passwords or pop the card and wait until she found a real hacker. The key word was “wait.” She did not feel like she had loads of time.