Jade Gods

by Patrick Freivald

  He raised the gun, put it to his temple, and pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  Janet triggered the warming protocols on the cryogenic unit and waited forty minutes for the light to go from red to green. The door hissed open and she stepped inside, smiling down at the twisted, tube-punctured, grinning blob of meat with Conor Flynn's face.

  "Sore eyes and nice thighs, LaLonde. Been a minute."

  She held up the orb, watched his eyes flash from curiosity to fear. "This doesn't have to be unpleasant. Just tell me everything you know of bridges."

  * * *

  Six hours later, Marcia Stein opened her door with a surprised grunt. Janet LaLonde barreled into her apartment and set a briefcase on the coffee table, then tore off her coat, exposing a bright pink halter top and olive miniskirt more suited to a Disney star turned slut than an advisor to presidents. Marcia's mouth went dry at the enormous emerald cross that stretched from shoulder to shoulder and all the way down her spine, an intricate piece of delicate swirls and spirals that managed to distract even from her incredible curves.

  She turned around, a predatory smile on her face, and Marcia's eyes drifted down her long neck to the dull gray orb hanging from a chain between her breasts.

  "I've seen you look at me," Janet said. "Let's do something about that."

  BONUS NOVELLA:

  BONKED

  FROM:

  SNAFU: Hunters

  Now available from Cohesion Press

  Bonked

  Patrick Freivald

  “Four bonks?” Lieutenant Washington ran a hand over the wispy stubble on his dark-skinned head. “Are they stupid?”

  Matt Rowley tried not to sigh, and for the most part succeeded – the resulting noise more of a dissatisfied grunt.

  Conor Flynn, just as bald as Washington but pale as milk, grinned at Matt across the giant conference room table emblazoned with the eye-and-thunderbolt logo of the International Council on Augmented Phenomena, the elite organization founded through UN-NATO cooperation to combat the threat of Jade and unregulated Gerstner Augmentation. “FNG got an opinion?”

  Jeff Hannes froze in his thousand-dollar suit and glared at all of them, his thumb over the ‘advance slide’ button. “Are you implying there are non-stupid Jade users, Washington?”

  “Point, sir. But they have to know they’re playing with fire. I mean, look what Gerstner Augs did to the Russian military. A gang’s not going to have that kind of firepower.”

  Flynn spoke without taking his eyes from Matt. “Maybe that’s what the other three are for. One goes bonk, the other three take it down before it wrecks the neighborhood. Somebody else Augs up; lather, rinse, repeat.”

  Washington pounded a fist on the manila folder that contained his mission briefing. “Are we equipped to deal with that kind of oomph?”

  While avoiding Flynn’s unwavering gaze, Matt replied. “Yeah, we are, according to the analytics. If they don’t know we’re coming.” Matt turned to Jeff. “They don’t know, do they?”

  Hannes threw up his hands. “Unless they’ve got a mole in this room, they’re clueless, just another Jade gang hopped up on power. The biggest, sure, and they’ve seized way too much territory, but they’re just a gang. And besides, to have a mole they’d have to know we’re operating on American soil.”

  Flynn quirked an eyebrow at Matt. “Dibs for fun on the pointy one, New Guy.” His Irish mumble would have been incomprehensible if not for a decade’s friendship, which made the ‘New Guy’ treatment all the more absurd. Their units had fought together in overseas operations and they’d kept in touch in the years since. That Flynn had signed up for ICAP two years before Matt didn’t erase that history, so shouldn’t change their friendship.

  Matt glanced from Flynn to the photo jacked from a nightclub security camera, splayed large across the white wall that served as a screen. The largest of the four bonks had augmented himself beyond anything Matt had seen before. At least ten feet tall with hands the size of Christmas hams, he loomed over the scene behind giant sunglasses, massive arms crossed over his naked chest. In lieu of hair, steel studs protruded from the top of his skull in a regular grid. Metal spikes protruded from his forearms, ending in cruel barbs sharpened to a razor sheen.

  Flynn stroked his chin with an air of too much theater. “He’s prettier than me. I can’t let that stand.”

  Turning to Jeff, Matt tapped the picture. “How has he not bonked out already? Nobody can tolerate that level of Augs.” Bonks had gotten their nickname – which Conor found particularly funny – from the inevitable psychosis that overtook chronic Jade users, the superhuman threat that ICAP had been founded to confront. The more you took, the bigger and badder you got, until the whispers drove you into a killing frenzy you never come out of.

  And Jade is addictive, with a recidivism rate over ninety-nine percent.

  Psychotics are bad. Psychotics that can shrug off bullets and throw cars are rather worse. The Russian military wouldn’t be a threat for at least a generation.

  And now it’s a street drug.

  Hurya al-Azwar answered with a roll of her pale-blue eyes. “It’s a matter of time, Rowley. You know it, I know it, he has to know it. Which just makes him that much more dangerous.” A scar ran from her left temple back into her short blonde hair. It, and the missing quarter-inch off the top of her ear, spoke of a life on the streets of Detroit before two tours as a Marine in the sand box, before Jade and augmentation and ICAP, before the regenerates that would heal any damage short of death without mark or scar and in seconds or minutes instead of months.

  Five years his senior in ICAP, she’d seen dozens of her colleagues bonk out, had to put far too many of them down, and her first-generation regenerates put her at a higher risk than any of them. Augmentation protocols had improved as scientific understanding increased, but everyone in the room ran the risk of psychotic, ravening insanity. Everyone but their boss.

  Jeff’s constipated grimace pulled them away from the picture. “Look, we’ve got four heavily-augmented threats and at least sixteen who might be normals, or might just not be showing. I’m bringing in Platt and Karle,” he raised his voice over their groans, “and giving Karle operational discretion on this one.”

  “Why do you hate us?” Flynn asked.

  Jeff ran his tongue over his teeth. “Karle’s got a better success rate than any of you. I want you all back alive, and there’s something about this,” he waved his hand at the scattered pictures, “I don’t like at all.”

  Washington sighed without looking up. “Feel the love, man.”

  * * *

  Matt eyed the sunglasses in Flynn’s proffered hand and shook his head. “Those make me look like a cop.”

  “You are a cop. Were a cop. Pretending to be a cop. Whatever you did in Tennessee.”

  “No need to advertise it.”

  “Eat your bones.” Flynn tossed the shades into the back seat and fastened his seatbelt, then ran his hands over the fake leather dash above the late-model Impala’s glove box. “Brilliant. These American-made autos really spice up the sex life, Rowley. We’ll fit right in.”

  At two hundred and forty pounds and one percent body fat, Conor Flynn looked every bit the cop, or ex-military, as Matt. His skin-tight gray t-shirt did nothing to dispel the effect, and his square sunglasses screamed, ‘I am a Government Agent. Do not speak to or trust me.’

  Flynn raised an eyebrow at the naked appraisal. “What?”

  Matt just shook his head and put the car into gear.

  They cruised through the suburbs, past an endless stream of one-story ranches and dingy, sun-faded plastic swimming pools. The smells of the city filtered through the air conditioning, street food and salt water and sweat and garbage rotting under the blazing summer sun. Matt considered grabbing the shades from the back seat, but wouldn’t give Flynn the satisf
action. Chain link replaced white pickets, and vinyl siding blurred into graffiti on decaying brick.

  They pulled up to a stoplight and idled next to a cluster of young men, baggy street clothes and wary brown faces sweltering in the midday heat. This far south it took a special kind of stupid to wear pants if you didn’t have to, which might explain why half of them hung on their thighs or even lower. The pale yellow bandanas around foreheads, necks, wrists, or ankles identified them as Camino Reals. Heroin dealers and thieves, they lay outside ICAP’s jurisdiction even with their new domestic operations protocols.

  Flynn held a hundred-dollar bill up with two fingers, but no one approached the car, their lack of attention as conspicuous as staring.

  “Oy, boys.” Flynn waved the folded bill in the air. “I could use some information.” They glowered at the ground, at the sky, the telephone poles, anywhere but at the car. “Brilliant, lads. Thanks for nothing.” The light turned green and Matt pulled away, eyes on the mirrors, watching them watch him with wary eyes.

  “No love from the South-Side Banana Hammocks.” Flynn chuckled and slipped the money back into his pocket. “Told you we look like cops.”

  “If you’re so worried about it, why are we the ones going?”

  “I didn’t say I was worried. It’s just going to be hard to pick a fight if they know we’re the law.”

  “We’re not here to pick–”

  Babbling whispers slithered through his mind, a mad cacophony of thoughts bent on murder and pain, the worst side effect of Gerstner Augmentation. Matt took the warning from the Late-Second Precognition but ignored the lurching desire to tear Flynn’s face from his skull and stuff it into his mouth. Jerking the wheel, he hit the brakes then the gas to bring them around ninety degrees, then floored it before the jeeps rounded the corner behind the run-down convenience mart.

  Flynn laughed and reached down, but stopped when Matt shook his head.

  “You won’t need the pig-sticker, they’re just running us off.” He down-shifted to pick up speed, then jammed the car into higher gear, gas pedal to the floor. The motor whined, a cicada with an internal-combustion mating call.

  Flynn took his hand off the hilt of his katana, leaving it on the floor between the seats. The titanium and carbon nanofiber blade had yet to see use in combat, but Matt had watched Flynn dice up a car in the practice arena without breaking a sweat. Why an Irishman fought with a katana Matt would never understand.

  Flynn jerked his thumb toward the back. “You want me to get the trunk?”

  Matt shook his head. The REC-7 carbine and Auto-Assault 12 combat shotgun could stay where they were, in the trunk under lock and key. If worse came to worse he had his personal Glock 9mm in the glove box. But it wouldn’t. They’d been made as cops in a no-go zone, but hadn’t done anything to justify a murder, even from a gang as vicious as the Camino Reals.

  They blew through two red lights, the jeeps swerving and honking behind, but as they passed from one turf to the next the pursuit broke off and didn’t return.

  “You sussed those out pretty fast. Precog, yeah?” Flynn asked.

  Matt nodded without taking his eyes from the road.

  “Brilliant, brilliant. They wouldn’t clear me for it, said I’d had enough. I’m thinking what’s the harm, right?”

  “The harm is you go bonk and kill everything around you until other people like you put you down.”

  Flynn chuckled. “That’s what I mean, right? The side effect is ‘fun.’”

  “Just keep your pants on.”

  “Aye, Sergeant.”

  Ten minutes later they rolled past the Marquee, a modern glass-and-steel structure at odds with the dilapidated neighborhood. The fading day washed the neon lights to a pale glow but did nothing to hide the ultraviolet paint across the front windows, a cartoon shark swimming through a golden crown that would be invisible to unaugmented eyes.

  “See that?” Matt asked.

  Flynn nodded. “Fancy. You think the Shades don’t have blacklights?”

  Matt shrugged. “One cop in fifty might have augged vision, maybe. Not like the Mako Kings don’t know the police know where they hang out, anyway. As long as they think we’re just cops, we’ll–”

  Flynn popped his handle and stepped out, the car still rolling at fifteen miles an hour. He hooked a parking meter with his right hand and used it to spin himself around, stopping with a flourish with his toes balanced on the edge of the curb. As Matt slammed on the brakes and swore under his breath, Flynn took a bow to the wide-eyed onlookers. Flynn waited behind the car for Matt to pull over, put on the brake and get out.

  People milled the streets, heading home from work or out for a Friday on the town. As one they gave the car a wide berth, eyeing both newcomers with open suspicion or naked hostility.

  Matt stepped up to his friend with his jaw clenched in frustration. “Dammit, Conor, we’re supposed to be scoping the place, not painting bullseyes on our heads.”

  A seven-foot tall bouncer, rippling with muscles impossible through normal exercise, eyed them from the front door across the street. Taking in the sea of Hispanics, all either staring or trying too hard not to stare, Flynn ran a hand over the stubble on his pasty scalp. “See, we fit right in, sunnies and all.” He put on his shades and sauntered across the street.

  Music trickled out behind the double-doors, Latin horns over a hip-hop beat, death-metal Spanish growling from a microphone. They approached, cop-casual, Matt two steps behind. The bouncer moved to intercept them. His voice rumbled an octave lower than a normal man’s, his accent a blend of Mexican and south Florida. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  “Yes,” Matt said. “We–”

  “Looking for a drink and twirl is all.” Flynn spun, an elegant pirouette that ended in a curtsey. He held the pose and looked up under his brow into the bouncer’s eyes. “Heard the Marquee had it happening, am I right?”

  “You’re not our target clientele, ese.” The bouncer put his hands on his hips so that his massive frame blocked most of both doors. Matt winced as Flynn’s eyes flashed, an almost imperceptible twitch that showed not the slightest hint of fear. The bouncer put his hand on Flynn’s chest, fingers splaying almost to his shoulders. “You’re going to have to leave.”

  “What, because I’m white? You discriminating here? You think the Irish haven’t faced–”

  Matt put his hand on Flynn’s shoulder. “We’re not here to pick a fight, Conor.”

  “–their share of discrimination, you racist prick? Why don’t you make me leave, big guy?”

  To his credit, the bouncer didn’t take the bait. Much. He extended his arm, slowly, forcing Flynn several steps back on the sidewalk. “Move along, little man. This isn’t the place for you.” He extended his fingers and Conor stumbled back two steps.

  Matt moved between them and Conor rebounded off of his back. “We’re sorry, sir. We’ll be on our way.” He stepped back, bumping Flynn toward the street, then turned and backed him off the curb and into the road. Through gritted teeth he mumbled, “The point was to maintain surprise, moron.”

  Flynn almost frolicked toward the car, locking eyes with anyone and everyone who dared challenge his right to be there. “Nah, there’s no fun in that, and he thinks we’re cops or feds or something anyway. The point was to size that meathead up. You see what I saw?”

  Matt recalled the scene, his eidetic memory enhancements bringing to crystal-clear focus details he hadn’t seen in real time. “Tracks?”

  “Right is right. He’s on the H, not just Jade. We follow him home, wait for him to snow out, bangers and mash,” he mimed tossing a flash-bang grenade. “Black bag over the head, voila. New toy for the intel department.”

  Matt tried not to smile as he gunned the engine. “Call it in.”

  “We could just–”

  “Call it in, Conor.” He pulled
away from the curb and took a left toward the expressway.

  The dash shook as Flynn banged his fist on it. “Karle’s a pussy. We’ve got an opportunity here, and you know he’ll–”

  Matt sighed. “Twelve years a Royal Marine, decorated six times for valor, awarded the Victoria Cross for insane but admirable stupidity in the Kandahar valley. . . What rank were you when you left the force to join ICAP?”

  Flynn mumbled.

  “Say again, Corporal?”

  “Cor-por-al.” He emphasized every syllable. “And you know it.”

  “And why not a Sergeant? A Warrant Officer? Lieutenant?”

  They said it together. “A history of unpredictable behavior and violent tendencies uncurbed by disciplinary measures.”

  “ICAP wanted a killer,” Flynn mumbled again, “so they can’t complain when they get one.”

  “Right. But right now we need to be smart. We’re on US soil, and have limited mission parameters. If Karle sanctions the move, we–” His eyes widened as the whispers shrieked blood-soaked charnel houses into his brain. Before it happened a shadow separated from the wall, crushing the Impala and tumbling it end over end into the sidewalk grocery.

  Late-second precognition made Rowley and a select few other Augs impossible to surprise, at least while awake. The whispers gave warning, but not much. Matt swerved, taking the bonk head-on.

  He squeezed his eyes shut as the airbags deployed, gritted his teeth against the impossibly loud crunch, and yanked the 9mm from the glove box. Two pulls of the trigger deflated the airbag and caused the massive shadow dwarfing his vision to stagger. His eardrums healed as fast as the explosions shredded them, and the car lurched sideways. Gasping in a breath of chalky white dust and the tang of gunpowder, he tore off his seatbelt.

  Flynn had disappeared, his door hanging ajar on a crumpled hinge.