Zero Rogue

by Matthew S. Cox

  The second panel showed the man’s citizen ID photo with the name Aston Davis; he looked older when not roaring and firing guns. Division 2 Gang Task Force data on the third panel indicated he went by ‘Lucky’ among his social circles. Citycam recordings split the fourth panel into seven hexagonal sections, six arranged around a larger middle image. Each showed a view from a different lens, all covering the same white plastisteel tower.

  “Are you saying that bloke survived? He dove out a window to get away from Allie’s E-90. Laser went right through the wall he chose to hide behind.”

  “I guess he got, umm… lucky.” Shimmer chuckled. “He’s staying at the Vittorino.”

  “Oh, shit,” moaned Darwin. “Bad idea.”

  Aaron fell into a seat on his bed, landing hard enough to make the pillow jump. “What the heck is a Vittorino?”

  “A name,” said Shimmer, as if the answer was so patently obvious she thought him an idiot for asking. “Probably the guy that owns the hotel.”

  “You could’ve said hotel.”

  “Yes, but you look good in purple.” Shimmer winked. “It’s frequented by Syndicate associates and contractors.”

  “Maybe you oughta leave that one alone, man,” said Darwin, still protruding from his curtains. “Need I keep remindin’ yo’ ass, you’s an ex-cop now. They won’t think nothin’ of putting you out of their misery.”

  Aaron stared at him with a blank face.

  “S’pose you don’t much give a damn anymore.” Darwin backed into his room, shaking his head. “Getting yo’self killed ain’t gonna bring her back.”

  Shimmer looked off to the side.

  “Right,” said Aaron. “Send me a nav pin.”

  The departing PubTran taxi stirred a misty breeze as it pulled away. Aaron glanced down the length of his long, black coat at his old police-issue boots. Allison’s faint voice teased at the back of his mind, making fun of him for ‘losing’ them in his locker for the umpteenth time. He compressed the sorrow into a hard little nugget and filed it away for later. After a moment of silence, he took a pair of thin sunglasses out, put them on, and returned his hand to the coat pocket.

  Allison’s nametag still felt cold.

  Across the street, the Vittorino Hotel stood out against the dingy surroundings. Boundaries of grey zones were inexact things, fluctuating from month to month depending on the prevailing climate of greed and apathy. The hotel represented a rare anchor point; the presence of the Syndicate kept the surroundings in a perpetual teeter between civility and barbarism. A block or so farther east and the city gave way to the Old West―if the old west had psychotic cyber freaks and advert bots.

  On the outside, the place struck him as unremarkable, save for a clean coat of white paint and in good repair while surrounded by rot. No men in suits guarded the front door, nor did any ‘suspicious black sedans’ sit anywhere in sight. Aaron chuckled to himself as he crossed the street, feeling a bit the fool for expecting the Syndicate to be so obvious.

  An automatic door made from an inch-thick slab of transparent material slid to the side at his approach. The lobby, decorated in grey and blue, was far less ornate than he expected. He did a double take at the sight of live clerks behind the reception desk rather than dolls. It made sense after he mulled it; real brains can’t be hacked from the GlobeNet, and dolls didn’t typically have families to threaten into compliance. A small waiting area to the right contained three sofas arranged around a holo-bar projecting a muted Gee-ball match. Aaron scoffed at the game. Fecking barbarians.

  “Can I help you?” asked the man behind the counter.

  His co-worker seemed ready to dart into the office behind them. Her surface thoughts contained a debate between his being a cop or an assassin. Either situation required her to notify someone higher up, but she froze with fear and indecision at the flashing red on her terminal, indicating the silhouette of the E-90 under his coat. She had never been in the same room with an energy weapon before and had no idea what to do.

  Aaron walked right past the desk, heading for the elevators. “Not really.”

  Lime green light danced around his fingers as he swiped at the control pad on a strip of synthetic granite. Plain steel doors parted down the center and opened with a pneumatic puff, revealing a chamber lined with waist-high panels of rose marble. A strip of Epoxil faux wood trim, carved with a repeating pattern of olive leaves separated the marble from mirror-polished brass. He stepped in and spun about to face the doors. The woman at the desk ducked past a burgundy curtain into the office, while the man made faces at him as though he’d just farted into a microphone at a ten-thousand-credit-a-plate dinner.

  “Keep your hair on, mate.” Aaron touched the panel for the sixty-fourth floor. “I’m just visiting a friend.”

  Closing doors blocked his view of the clerk scrambling to place a vid call. The elevator got underway with a hum at the edge of notice. Aaron opened enough fasteners on the left side of the coat to let him get to the E-90 in a hurry. He counted thirteen seconds before the doors opened.

  Aaron tromped out of the elevator, his stride projecting the authority of the law enforcement officer he no longer was. Bas-reliefs of stylized mermaids adorned the hall on repeating pre-fab panels made to look like plaster. Thin blue rug, identical to that of the lobby, ran the length of it, and a clinging presence of artificial pine scent permeated the air.

  A jet-black orb bot, the same size as a frictionless sphere, emerged from an offshoot hallway up ahead and faced him. Aaron disregarded the sentry, as it displayed no evidence of a weapon. The bot pivoted to keep itself oriented at him as he approached and went past it, whereupon it drifted along behind.

  He walked to the end and turned left into an outer ring corridor that went around the entire structure. The expensive rooms, the ones with real exterior windows as opposed to holographic fakes, went by on his right. Aaron stopped in front of room 68-44. Pulsing electronic music on the other side of the wall vibrated the air in the hallway. The soundtrack muted, giving way to the floor-shaking thunder like a massive starship passing overhead. Voices shouted, tinted with panic and anger, something about taking too much hull damage to avoid the gravity drawing them to the surface.

  Aaron waited.

  Silence followed the sound of a long, rumbling crash. Digital noises conjured the image of text appearing on a holo-bar as a soft symphonic accompaniment played under the title card for whatever game or movie Lucky and company had put on.

  Since it became quiet enough to knock, Aaron extended his arm and tapped twice.

  “Mother…” The clank of a drink canister on a glass table rang out. “S’like they fuckin’ know when we gonna start,” said a man’s voice. “The fuck I payin’ you for?”

  “I got it,” replied a deeper tone.

  The door hissed to the side, putting him eyes-to-pectorals with a bald man in a pale grey tank top. Aaron looked up, but instead of making eye contact, he found himself staring at a flat black metal panel spanning the man’s entire face. A triangle of tiny lenses at the center glinted with multicolored light, and scuffmarks gave away where it had deflected bullets. Inhuman contours to the man’s chest betrayed the presence of implanted armor weave.

  “The fuck?” yelled a familiar voice from inside.

  The big man regarded Aaron with an unimpressed frown. “Girl scout.”

  A chirp preceded silence from the game system. “Cookies?” Lucky leapt up from the couch.

  “Nah,” said the titan. “This one ain’t that tough.”

  He started to reach for the button to close the door. Aaron made a light shoving gesture at nothing. Telekinetic force swatted the ogre flat on his back and sent him sliding twenty some yards into the room, peeling up carpeting.

  “I’m out of choco-mints,” said Aaron, stepping past the doorway. “Lucky… We need to have a chat, mate.”

  Two scrawny men sat on the ends of the couch, the darker of the two still wearing a senshelmet connected to the game sy
stem. The other, his face liberally possessed of edged weapon scars, had a helmet in his lap and stared with bugged-out eyes at the prone monster. A battered Nicohaler, no doubt loaded with something it wasn’t meant to vaporize, dangled from his lip. Several pistols, synthbeer canisters, and autoinjectors littered a glass coffee table. A hundred-inch holo-panel on the left bathed them in eerie greenish light. The high-res display looked like a hole in reality holding a scene from inside a crashed starship overcome with alien biological growth. Two figures in high-tech armor stood motionless, the game paused. Why game systems still projected screens when most players used helmets or M3 jacks confused him.

  “D’that many people stand around watchin’ others play these things that they need ta put it on a screen?” asked Aaron.

  Lucky’s thick mane of dreads shifted, swaying past the back of his thighs as he tilted his head. Eyebrows scrunched together. “You some kinda fuckin’ nuts to come in here like that.” He reached for a gun.

  Aaron smirked. Five pistols slid off the table and floated out of reach before thudding to the thick beige carpet. The big guy howled and lunged upright; his metal knuckles swelled and sprouted spikes. A telekinetic shove tossed him airborne again. His scream of anger turned to surprise as he flipped foot over head and came down hard on his chest, with a groaning exhale. Aaron removed his sunglasses, folded them, and slipped them into the pocket with Allison’s nametag.

  “Lucky…” He held out his hands. “I’m hurt you don’t remember me. I’d love to stay and piddle around, but I need to find someone. Where’s Talis?”

  “Aww shit.” Lucky waved at him. “Kill this motherfucker!”

  The goliath got to his feet and charged at the same time Lucky made a break for a bedroom door. Aaron thrust his arm in the raging man’s direction, again lifting and holding him in midair. Lucky blurred into a streak of military-green pants, speedware flinging him out of sight faster than Aaron could react.

  With a wave, Aaron sent the behemoth headfirst into the wall, shattering a skull-sized hole in the crumbly white material. Groaning, the oaf pushed himself loose, fell the rest of the way to the floor, and cradled his face in both hands.

  “Hey man, don’t bust the Yume Koujou!” The lighter-skinned guy jumped off the couch to shield the game system with his body. “Shit’s bank! Gen eight just came out.”

  Lucky, now wearing his baggy, olive drab coat, ducked around the archway by the back bedroom. Two large handguns, bristling with after-market modifications and gold plating, chirped. Aaron leapt back out of reflex, telekinetically seizing the huge man and using him as a meat shield before Lucky opened fire. Alternating shots came so fast it sounded like a machine gun going off. He swerved the oaf left and right as Lucky attempted to get a shot around him. The giant body convulsed, groaning and wailing in concert with the fleshy slaps of pistol-caliber rounds failing to pierce dense subdermal armor.

  The skinny man gathered the game system from the table, cradling it like a precious infant, and scurried deeper into the apartment.

  Aaron dropped the wheezing thug when the pistols ran dry, shifting the focus of his power from levitating a body to the five pistols he’d tossed on the floor. The weapons floated around him in a cloud, pointing at Lucky, who screamed. Aaron would have fired right away, if not for the delicate process of feeling out where the triggers were with his brain. He made the delay look stylish and deliberate, but it gave Lucky the chance to dive for cover before the floating handguns tore up the wall. He fired each one only a few times before letting them fall.

  Bullets lodged in the armored weave beneath the giant’s skin popped loose from his reddening tank top, like a strawberry shedding its seeds, as he rolled over. More blood leaked between his teeth. Incoherent groans and a tendril of snot ran from his lips as he pushed his weight up on all fours.

  “Are you going to play nice?” Aaron raised an eyebrow.

  The man bellowed and hurtled himself airborne. Aaron’s telekinetic defense reduced a body-crushing tackle to an intimate bear hug pinning him to the wall. He grunted, breaking out in a sweat as he forced the man’s augmented arms out to the side.

  “You’re really not my type, mate.”

  The monster smashed his forehead into Aaron’s face, knocking him loopy. Instinct brought Aaron’s hands over his probably-broken nose, exposing his gut to an incoming fist. The punch crushed him into the wall, covering him in flakes of white material and doubling him over. Lucky’s associate brought his fist down hard onto Aaron’s back, knocking him flat to the floor.

  “Ugh…” Wheezed Aaron, seeing stars. “That’s a rib.”

  “I kill you!” bellowed the man, drawing his arm back for a skull-shattering punch.

  Lacking the wherewithal to move, Aaron gave himself a telekinetic shove to the side, cringing inwardly at the sight of the enormous metal-knuckled fist crushing a two-inch deep crater in the slab concrete floor. Lucky reappeared, having reloaded while hiding.

  Aaron coughed, spitting a bloody glop aside. Allison’s voice returned, riding a wave of rage that rippled over his brain and flung the oaf from his feet. He drilled the aug face first into the floor before levitating him upside down. This time Lucky hesitated, trying to aim around the floating giant. He took a few shots, managing to get bullets past the big man, but also missing Aaron.

  Equal amounts confusion and anger sounded in the thug’s voice as he flailed and kicked. Huge hands swiped at the air by Aaron’s shins and pulled at the carpeting, tearing it up in chunks.

  “I get the feelin’ this one got marked ‘does not play well wif others’ eh?” Aaron leaned on the wall, fighting to maintain concentration despite the pain in his face. He touched his upper lip and drew back bloody fingertips. “I’m just after a chin-wag, Lucky. Put down the gun, and we can all walk away.”

  “I ain’t goin’ down like this!” screamed Lucky, risking a shot that hit the big guy in the back.

  The floating man shouted curses in Russian, straining to reach for Aaron as his face turned the color of a fire suppression bot. Veins swelled in his forehead, spit flew from his lips, accompanied by an endless stream of semi-intelligible death threats.

  Aaron took a breath and held it, tossing the monster across the apartment into Lucky. Bodies collided with a resounding fleshy smack, sweeping Lucky airborne for several meters before they smashed into a wardrobe cabinet. The smaller man remained embedded in the shattered furniture, as if run over by a truck. Aaron advanced, drawing his E-90 from the gap in the coat.

  Lost to blind hatred and adrenaline, the aug struggled upright and wobbled about to face him. Surface thoughts contained fantasies of pulling Aaron’s internal bits out fistful by fistful. Aaron shook his head and fired.

  Two laser streaks appeared one after the next; a brilliant line of deep blue light connected the tip of the pistol to the wall, through the man’s chest. Unlike the bullets, the high-intensity energy weapon melted the implanted armor―and the building. Outside, an unfortunate advert bot sputtered into a fireball and spiraled toward the ground.

  The giant succumbed, emitting a heavy wheeze as he collapsed in a heap. Aaron stepped over him, coaxing Lucky out of a twisted mess of particleboard, plastic, and clothes. He levitated the screaming mercenary to the side of the bedroom, smashed the patio doors open with his body, and held him off the balcony, sixty-eight stories off the ground. Bits of glass poured out of folds in his coat, sparkling as they fell.

  Lucky screamed, and fainted.

  Aaron tapped his foot.

  A boxy advert bot glided over, hovering at Lucky’s side, tilting back and forth as it scanned. He regained consciousness in a few seconds and screamed again. The bot projected several holo-panels selling climbing equipment, life insurance, and underpants. If not for the substantial amount of pain he felt, Aaron might’ve laughed.

  “I had nothing to do with killin’ that cop!” screamed Lucky.

  “I’m aware of that.” Aaron narrowed his eyes. “If I thought you did,
we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Tell me where I can find Talis. I rather don’t think your luck will hold out this time.”

  “I dunno, man. Bitch just took off after that shit went south.”

  The advert bot’s panels changed to show several variations on parachute systems from standard fabric to implanted ion-assisted cybernetic airfoils.

  Aaron smirked. “I’m going about this the wrong way.” He pulled Lucky in, close enough to grab on to the outside of the balcony railing. Without having to concentrate on supporting the man’s weight, he could read surface thoughts. “Let’s try that again. Where’s Talis?”

  Lucky scrambled to keep a grip on the metal, wailing in a voice three octaves too high for a man his size. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. I ain’t got no damn idea!”

  “While I find it interesting you are re-evaluating your position on atheism, it’s completely irrelevant to my question.” Aaron concentrated on the sense of Lucky’s weight again, flipping the man up and over the railing and dumping him on his back, safe on the patio. “Talis. Where?”

  The bot drew closer, changing the displays to wall-repair, furniture and carpeting service.

  “No idea…” Lucky panted, closing his eyes. “Look, it wasn’t me. That bitch had us all under her thumb. You know what I mean… what she made you do. She did the same shit to us alla time.”

  Aaron’s knuckles creaked as he squeezed his fists. It angered him more to find truth in the man’s thoughts.

  A beep emanated from the huge aug. Hope that’s life support and not a bomb.

  “I ain’t got no damn clue where she went off to, nor do I give an intergalactic fuck.” Lucky coughed and sat up, picking splinters of wardrobe cabinet out of his coat.

  Fleeting glimpses of an Indian woman with gold eyes and vertical-slit pupils appeared in Lucky’s consciousness, along with a distinct sense of dislike. Any sense of what happened that day drowned in the immediate fear of dying at the hands of a power against which he had no defense. He cringed as Aaron leaned closer. The advert bot lost interest in its inattentive mark and presented Aaron with a series of offers: tissues, soap, new coats, stimpaks, and medical insurance.