New York Nights [Virex 01]

by Eric Brown

  ‘I don’t think anything, yet.’

  ‘But it’s after twelve now, honey. I’m getting worried.’ She considered, staring at him. ‘Look, I have a spare pass-card to Sissi’s apartment, in case of emergencies. We could always drop by.’

  Halliday sighed. ‘I’ll call her. She’s probably had an early night.’ He slipped his hand-com from his inside pocket, linked with the desk-com back at the office and downloaded Carrie Villeux’s code. Seconds later he was listening to the pulse of the ringing tone.

  He gave it two minutes, Kia watching him all the while with eyes as big as golf balls. He shook his head and pocketed the com. ‘No reply.’

  ‘I’m worried. We have to go over. What do you think, Missy?’

  Claws bit her tongue, considering. ‘If it were a friend of mine . . .’ She nodded. ‘Yeah, I’d go on round.’

  ‘That settles it. You can come if you want to, Halliday. I’m gone.’

  Kia rose from the stool and stared down at him, ultimatum in her expression. Halliday sighed. ‘I have a car. I’ll drive. Solano Buildings, right?’

  ‘You know where that is?’

  ‘I know where it is.’ The thought of going back there, after so long, filled him with a vague sense of disquiet. It would be strange to enter the building with no intention of calling in on his sister.

  Missy-with-claws escorted them back through the rainforest. They pushed through the swing doors and into the darkened foyer.

  The outside door opened, admitting a blast of icy air. As Kia shivered theatrically and Halliday followed, Missy tapped his back. ‘Forgotten something, Mr Halliday?’

  He turned. She was smiling her saccharine sweet smile of a schoolgirl temptress. She held one hand - her left, unaugmented hand - behind her back.

  He patted the pocket where he kept his wallet, but it was still there.

  He slipped his hand into his jacket, but the automatic no longer nestled against his ribs.

  He’d never felt a thing . . .

  ‘Very clever, Missy. If you don’t mind . . .’ He held out a hand.

  She twisted her lips in a quick smirk of victory and dropped the pistol onto his palm. ‘I’d be more careful with it in future, Mr Halliday. You never know when you might need to use it. A man should never be separated from his weapon. Even I know that.’

  ‘You’re too old for your own good, Missy.’

  ‘Eleven in May,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll send you a card,’ he promised. ‘A word of advice; just make sure your mom doesn’t find out where you spend your free time, okay?’

  Missy covered her pretty mouth with the steel claw. ‘Mr Halliday, the lady behind the desk is my mom.’

  She was still laughing as she slammed the door on him. He shook his head and began walking.

  Kia was halfway down the street, arguing with a refugee demanding dollars. She turned to Halliday. ‘What’s the big delay, honey?’

  Halliday hurried along the alley, away from the beggars, and showed her to the car. He started the engine and drove across town to Greenwich Village. The Solano Building was a drab-looking brownstone overlooking Washington Square. He found a parking space beneath the trees and followed Kia up the front steps.

  ‘Keep your distance, man. I mean, nothing personal, but if anyone sees us together, hey, then my rep is just shot to pieces.’

  He looked at the pin-striped lesbian giantess. ‘Your reputation?’ he muttered. He paused to allow her to get ahead, then followed her into the building at a distance.

  The interior was just as drab and depressing as he recalled, the walls daubed the sickly pea-green of a psychiatric institute circa 1900. Years ago, Sue had rented a room on the top floor, with a view over the square to the university buildings. Halliday recalled the ancient lift, the ammoniacal stench of urine that made each ride a test of endurance. They would be spared the experience this time: Kia led him down a long ground floor corridor to a steel-plate door. She slipped a card from her breast pocket and, a second later, pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  ‘Carrie! You in here, hon?’

  The automatic lighting came on and brightened, revealing a room more in keeping with the centre-spread of some interior decorating magazine than anything Halliday associated with the Solano Building. He recalled that both Villeux and Nigeria were professionals, Villeux in fashion design, Nigeria in computing - and they obviously had excess earnings to lavish on decor and furnishings. The open-plan lounge/dining room was decorated in cream, with plush Norwegian furniture and artificially-nurtured fur rugs. Psychedelic holograms cycled through gaudy phases on each wall, giving Halliday the unsteady sensation of being aboard a seaborne vessel.

  Kia moved from room to room, calling Carrie’s name. Halliday crossed the lounge to a glass display stand of holo-cubes. He picked one up and it began to play.

  He watched Carrie Villeux and Sissi Nigeria stroll along a boardwalk, arm in arm. They waved, then faced each other and kissed. Halliday noticed that in this holo Nigeria’s skull, like Kia Johansen’s, was adorned with the silver inlay of a neural implant, though whether cosmetic or actual it was impossible to say.

  Kia appeared in a doorway, almost as tall as the opening itself. She leaned against the woodwork, looking shocked. ‘Halliday. In here . . .’

  He hurried across the lounge, sure that Kia had found a body. She stepped aside. ‘This is Sissi’s room. Look . . .’

  As he crossed the threshold, the sharp stench of burned-out circuitry hit him. He looked around a room decorated in black. Kia was pointing to a bank of what might have been computer consoles, stacked against the far wall.

  ‘What is it?’ Halliday asked.

  ‘Sissi’s deck. She did a lot of work from home.’

  Halliday counted half a dozen flatscreens, three touchpads and a headset. He’d only ever read about headsets: they were the latest thing, state-of-the-art neural interfaces still at the design stage.

  ‘Impressive,’ he said.

  Only when he looked closer did he apprehend the cause of Kia’s concern. The consoles of the stacked deck were fused, input ports blackened and charred. That explained the reek. He ran a hand across the melted surface of the deck. It was cold, not that this told him much.

  Kia was shaking her head. ‘Sissi loves her deck, Halliday. She lives for it.’

  ‘What was her job, exactly?’ he asked, and immediately regretted employing the past tense.

  Kai seemed not to notice. ‘She’s a systems expert for Cyber-Tech: she works on logic analogues and data recombination.’

  Halliday nodded, as if he understood what she was talking about. ‘You’re familiar with the jargon.’

  ‘Ought to be, sweetie. I work for Mantoni VR.’

  He gestured at the fused consoles. ‘Any idea what happened here?’

  She was shaking her head. ‘Looks like it’s been deliberately sabotaged. I mean, no systems malfunction could do all this damage, not to every single port.’

  Halliday looked around the room, and through the door to the lounge. ‘The rest of the place seems pretty well intact. You think someone came in especially to do this?’

  ‘Hey, you’re the expert. You tell me.’

  ‘I deal in missing persons. I wouldn’t call myself an expert.’ He paused. ‘Could there be any reason why Nigeria might have done this herself?’

  ‘Sissi? Wreck her deck? No way, man. No way.’

  Halliday looked around the room. A personal data system stood beside the bed, the stack finished in matte black to match the room’s colour scheme. He picked up a tray of write-to needles and slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. If Sissi Nigeria kept a recorded diary, then the needles might contain relevant information.

  ‘I don’t like it, Halliday. First Sissi goes missing, and then Carrie doesn’t show.’

  ‘You know if they had enemies?’

  ‘Sissi and Carrie? They were loved by their sisters, hon. They didn’t have enemies.’

  ‘N
ot even outside the community?’

  ‘They didn’t mix outside the community.’

  ‘Did they do drugs?’

  She shook her head, vehement. ‘Not even spin.’

  Halliday sighed. ‘There’s not much more we can do, then. The police know of Nigeria’s disappearance. I wouldn’t worry that much about Carrie not showing up.’ He looked around the room. ‘I’ll go through the place now, see if I can come across anything.’

  He moved back to the lounge. He was wondering where to start when the lighting went out. ‘Kia, what the hell. . .?’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t. . .’ she began.

  Only the holograms on the wall, pulsing purple, provided the slightest illumination. In the twilight, with the holograms twisting and distorting his perceptions, he felt his sense of balance go awry. Later, he wondered if this was the intended effect, or merely incidental. He reached out for the wall to steady himself, hut instead fell to his knees. Now the holograms seemed to be moving beyond the confines of what he had taken to be their frames, amorphous shapes of purple and green crawling up the wall and across the ceiling, totally disorienting him.

  Nearby, Kia cried out. ‘What’s happening, man? Get me outta here!’

  ‘Where the hell is the door?’ Halliday cried.

  He was on the floor, trying to pick himself up. It was all he could do to rise to his knees. Some tiny, rational part of his mind was telling him that the disorienting effect could not be caused merely by the visual distortion - and at that instant he became aware of the subliminal tone strumming through the air, less an actual sound than a note intuited physically, a fluttery terrifying pulse in his solar plexus, tuned to affect his sense of balance. Subsonics, he told himself, and the realisation of what was being used to disable him filled him with fear. This was not merely some lighting malfunction, then: he and Kia were being targeted. He felt an instant nausea as the subsonics took effect, tried to hold onto the contents of his stomach.

  He attempted to crawl across the floor towards where he guessed the door might be. A sound crashed through the room: the opening and shutting of the steel door. The sound came from behind him, so he was heading in the wrong direction. He turned and peered into the purple twilight. He thought he saw a dark figure move across the floating shape of a hologram. At the same time he heard Kia cry out, ‘This way, Halliday!’ A second later he heard the front door open and Kia call, ‘Come on!’

  It was all he could do to pull himself along on all fours, never mind get to his feet and run for the door. He retched, dribbling a thin bile, grateful that he hadn’t eaten for hours. He heard movement, footsteps. Panic expanded in his chest like an exploding coronary. He reached for his automatic and managed to pull it free from his jacket. Still on the floor, twisted awkwardly on his side, he extended the gun and gripped the butt with both hands, trying to steady his aim.

  He would fire to miss, and frighten off whoever it was. His senses swimming, he looked around desperately for any sign of the shadowy figure. He thought he saw it again, ghostly before a hologram. He touched something with his elbow, the dark shape of the Norwegian sofa. He rolled behind its bulk, putting it between him and the spectral figure.

  He tried to control his breathing, calm himself. It was a long time since his combat training with the police force. He remembered nothing, his mind blanked by the passage of years and the situation he found himself in. Perhaps anything he had picked up, he told himself, he would recall instinctively, when the attack came. At least he was armed. The weight of his automatic in his grip reassured him, helped to calm his nerves. Then another wave of nausea swamped him. He fought it, attempted to remain conscious.

  He heard something, the soft, careful contact of a footfall on parquet. He braced himself, moved the automatic to the approximate direction of the sound.

  The silence stretched, each fraction of a second calibrated by the beat of his heart. A sudden thought struck him, frightening in its implications. How was his stalker managing to counteract the disorienting effects of the subsonics and the dizzying visuals? Who the hell was out there?

  He changed his mind about firing to miss.

  Something hissed through the air, slicing the silence. He saw a line of silver light fall like a flashing sword. The sofa seemed to part, fall into two even halves, exposing him. Halliday kicked across the floor, towards a lighted rectangle he took to be a window. If he could throw something weighty through the glass, follow it out. . .

  Footsteps again, pattering towards him. Another hiss - and a nearby wall unit collapsed, spilling ornaments and objets d’art across his prostrate body. Something heavy thumped him in the gut, winding him. He stifled a cry and reached out, locating the object, some kind of sculpture. He gripped it with his free hand, turned and swung the solid mass into the air towards the illuminated rectangle. If Sissi Nigeria had replaced the glass with reinforced plastex . . .

  It was his last thought before the sculpture crashed through the window and shards of glass rained around him. Ice-cold air invaded the room. He pulled himself to his knees, hanging onto the sill like a survivor to the gunwale of a lifeboat. He took a breath and launched himself, rolling over the ledge.

  Something prevented his escape, and Halliday felt panic clutch his throat. He tried to cry out. He turned, aware of the grip on his jacket. In the light of a street lamp he saw his assailant.

  It was a man, perhaps his own height and age, a Latino with cruel eyes and a deep scar running in an arc from his temple to the corner of his mouth. Halliday experienced a bizarre surge of hope and relief, now that the shadowy figure had a face, an identity. His attacker was suddenly human, and vulnerable.

  The man lifted his right hand, and Halliday saw the small silver sickle-shape of a cutter. He grabbed his wrist, smashed it in one motion against the woodwork. The expression of determined cruelty on the face of his attacker hardly flickered, but the cutter dropped and skittered across the parquet. Halliday raised his automatic, held it point-blank to the scarred face, and before he could consider what he was doing he pulled the trigger.

  He flinched, pre-empting the recoil and splatter of brains, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. He tried again, with the same result, and before panic took him he swung a wild upper-cut, connecting with the guy’s jaw. He heard his assailant grunt. He rolled through the window, his shoulder hitting the ground with a painful thud. He righted himself, sobered by the sudden cold, and ran. He was in a darkened alleyway, a canyon between the row of brownstones and a three-storey building. As he ran, he checked his automatic. The ammunition clip had been removed.

  Missy. . .

  He was still dizzy and uncoordinated from the effects of the subsonics and his legs seemed on the verge of buckling with every step. He chanced a quick look over his shoulder. There was no sign of the Latino. Was it too much to hope that his lucky punch had laid the guy out? He inhaled cold air, lungs burning. When he looked back again, his assailant was jumping through the window, reduced once more to the anonymity of a darkened shadow.

  He increased his pace, sprinting now. He considered the probable range of the guy’s cutter, and the flesh of his back crawled at the thought of the sudden impact. Ahead was a turning, a narrow defile between buildings. He turned the corner at pace, caroming off the far wall and almost losing his footing. He ran on, and then stopped. Fear prickled his scalp and he experienced a sudden cold sweat.

  He was in a dead-end alley. He faced the impasse of a red-brick wall. He looked around. There were doors, but they were padlocked; there were even windows, but they in turn were fronted by thick iron bars. He felt a sudden icy dread, and the image of his father came to him unbidden. He was shaking his head in wordless disappointment. The memory was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday, not twenty years ago when Halliday had swung and missed a third strike.

  He turned, expecting the Latino to show at any second. To his right, zigzagging up the wall of the building, was a rusted fire escape. Halliday ran to it and
jumped, catching the lower rung. The muscles of his arms ached in protest. For a second he hung, before summoning the strength from somewhere to reach for the next rung and haul himself up. It seemed to take an age of agonising grabs before his legs made contact with the first rung. He gripped the side-rail and ran, two steps at a time. As he took each turn he looked down, along the length of the alley. He was near the top of the building when he saw the Latino come to a halt at the end of the alley. They guy pulled something from his belt and turned down the alley, proceeding with caution.

  Halliday stepped from the fire escape. He was on a flat concrete roof, silvered by moonlight, empty but for satellite dishes and microwave boosters. It sprawled away from him like a football field and offered little in the way of cover. He could run, but he couldn’t hide, nor jump from this building to the next. He judged the distances between neighbouring roofs to be in the region of five metres. He scanned the perimeter of the roof for any sign of another fire escape, but saw nothing.