Zero Rogue

by Matthew S. Cox

  Between the horns and the aftershock of truck sliding backward, no one reacted to him shouting.

  A flying bot arrived with his iced Earl.

  “Perfect timing,” wheezed Aaron. He sucked down a third of the half-gallon in one breath and held the frigid bottle to his forehead. “Darwin, I think I might’ve overextended myself.”

  Aaron lost a few minutes. The next thing he knew, they cruised at a decent speed, far from the intersection. He squinted at his surroundings, struggling to figure out where he was.

  “Darwin’s car.”

  “Yeah,” said Darwin. “You noticed.”

  The bottle of iced tea rolled around on the floor between his feet. At the mere thought of levitating it, he felt ready to pass out again. Aaron did it the hard way, bending down to grasp the plastic. It wasn’t cold anymore, but he drank a few mouthfuls anyway. When the buildings passing by his side struck a familiar chord, he patted Darwin’s arm with the back of his hand.

  “Oi, Darwin. ’Ave we been ’ere before?”

  “Yep. Just gotta make a stop here real quick. Gotta drop some shit… oh fuck.”

  Aaron lurched forward as Darwin stomped on the brake. A Division 0 patrol craft took up two spaces in the parking lot of a dive hotel. The same dive hotel Aaron had found himself in after the Infinity Casino fiasco. They’d gone too far to change course without attracting attention, one tire had already crossed the walkpath. Aaron sank low in the seat. Darwin chose one of the outer spots, closest to the street.

  “Oh, that doesn’t look suspicious at all,” whispered Aaron. “Three whole cars in this lot, and you park at the ass end of nowhere.”

  A slender man with dark hair and pale skin walked out of one of the rooms on the fifth floor wearing a cocky grin, Aaron’s cocky grin. His eyes were more closed than open, and he made a series of odd gestures as if putting on a hat he didn’t hold.

  “Oh, this is great.” Aaron went from nervous to excited. “Watch this.”

  The officer took a step to his left, performed a military about-face, and smashed his head into the wall. He slumped to the floor, cheek squeaking over the metal on his way down. Aaron doubled over, cackling. A dark-skinned woman with short, bleached hair rushed out of the room and took a knee by the man. Aaron didn’t know her, but her wearing a standard Division 0 cloth uniform instead of armor meant she was Investigative Operations, a commissioned officer.

  He scooted lower. “Go on, I’ll wait here.”

  “Are all you psio cops batshit crazy?” Darwin gestured at the windscreen. “What the fuck was that?”

  “He was tracing me. Remember the helmet?”

  Darwin blinked.

  “Some clairvoyants can relive the past motions of someone… Bastards have been trying to track me for months. Little things like this make ’em hesitate. Couple months ago, I put a pillow in my lap and bashed the devil out of my bollocks. I doubt the tracer had a pillow handy.”

  “You’re one sick motherfucker.” Darwin let off a wheezy chuckle.

  “Well, it took him a month to dare doing this again, didn’t it?”

  Aaron opened his door. “You do what you gotta do. I’d rather not be around here when he wakes up.”

  “Probably not a bad idea.” Darwin offered a hand. “Keep yo’ ass safe.”

  “I plan on keeping more than my ass in one piece.”

  Aaron slid out of the car doing the limbo and flipped his back to the two investigators as soon as he got upright. With his hands in his pants pockets, he wandered away, whistling “God Save the King.”

  aron’s aimless wander had left him slouched on the floor of a PubTran maglev terminal. A few still-working overhead lights painted the dingy white tiles behind him with glare. The station had only a few people in it, but appeared functional despite its proximity to a grey zone. None of the merchant stalls along the concourse still operated, not even the CaffeiNation. A feeble holo-emitter continued to animate a handful of tiny flags, recreating the retired Stars and Stripes, with coffee beans in place of stars. Next door, three fringers had made a home of the gutted remnants of a fast food place. Someone had drawn a moustache and an exaggerated penis on the giant cartoon chicken mascot etched on the window.

  Three grimy boys trudged up the street-access stairway twenty yards to his left. The youngest looked about nine, the oldest no more than twelve. All three eyed the sparse group of commuters with calculating eyes too old for their small bodies. Judging by the shoddy condition of their clothing, Aaron assumed them the offspring of squatters in the grey. They had the same saddle-colored skin and bushy brown hair; they might’ve been siblings. The boys disregarded Aaron, evidently assuming a man slumped against the wall of a PubTran station had nothing worth stealing or begging for.

  He watched them go from person to person. A thin, intellectual-looking man ran into a column to get away from them, earning laughter and mockery when he fell. Their next target, a wild-eyed man with frizzy hair who muttered incessantly at thin air, reacted no better―he ignored them as though they weren’t real. They scored a few credits from a sympathetic woman who fell for the youngest child’s pouty stare before crossing thirty yards of open space to the next cluster of waiting people.

  A middle-aged man became worked up at the sight of them and took out a NetMini. He asked about their families, why they were on the street at their age, and what sort of food they liked. Aaron wasn’t sure if he felt guilty or disappointed at their choosing to beg rather than mug. Granted, since money went digital, mugging wouldn’t have gotten them much, unless they fancied crappy suits or a battered briefcase. The look in the eye of the eldest seemed malicious at first, and Aaron had looked forward to a little entertainment. Then again, they lacked the size to mug anyone but other children; the most they’d manage would be a grab-and-run. Allison’s mental ghost chided him for not being the one to feed them. He tried to rub a building headache out of his temples.

  She’d have wanted to take them home.

  He daydreamed about her approaching them, chattering away in Spanish with wide eyes and a big smile. The boys would have gotten whatever they wanted from her.

  Aaron stared at the trio, wide-eyed with gratitude. One man’s willing charity had caught the brothers so off guard they lost the ability to speak. Surely, life on a hydroponic farm off on some colony world or a frontier settlement held more promise for them than being swallowed by the city’s bowels. He pondered calling Division 1 for a social service intervention, but looked away with a sour frown. Allison’s nameplate seemed to grow heavy in his pocket. His fingers teased at the NetMini. Bringing police here could bite him in the ass. The kids looked happy enough with their squalor; who was he to transplant their lives? Aaron closed his eyes and let his head lean back against the warm tiles. If he didn’t watch the miserable waifs begging, he wouldn’t feel Allison’s demanding stare.

  Ex-cop, remember.

  Soft footsteps approached; neither volume nor pace felt threatening enough for him to stop attempting to nap. The image of Allison glowered at him out of the darkness, gesturing in the direction of the three beggars. Her lips parted.

  “You look like an Arsenal player.”

  Aaron’s thought processes ground to a screeching halt. “What’s that then?”

  “I’d ’ave said homeless,” said Anna, “but I didn’t want to insult the tramps. S’pose you didn’t catch the game last night then. Your boys got drubbed.”

  Aaron abandoned the idea of sleep and glanced up at her. She hovered close, navy blue coat fluttering about her shins, hands in her pockets, and a smirk of amused superiority on her lips. Knee-high boots of dark blue suede had short, elevated heels. He pondered a remark about her trying to fake an inch or two of height, but didn’t have the energy to spar. Her head wound up aligned with a still-working overhead light, creating a squint-inducing glow in her hair.

  “Homeless, eh?”

  “Did you decide to go a few rounds with oncoming traffic?”

  “S
omething like that.”

  “Run!” shouted one of the children.

  Ratty sneakers squeaking on the metal floor, the boys scrambled away from a woman in blue Division 1 police armor. She’d taken a knee and tried to put on the most reassuring face a person could manage after military training. Seems the man who’d fed them had more of a conscience than Aaron… or at least, less apathy.

  He made a feeble attempt to grab the boys, yelling, “Wait!”

  “You’re not in trouble,” yelled the cop, to no avail. “No estás en problemas.”

  Aaron tracked them as they ran to the left until the eldest stopped short, triggering a pile up. Another police officer emerged from the stairs on the opposite side. He had his hands up in a reassuring gesture, but the man was so massive the sight of him turned the urchins white. The boys spun in place, staring back and forth at the two cops trying to calm them down. The closer the officers got, the more frightened the kids looked.

  The youngest ran to the edge of the platform, eyeing the maglev rail. At the instant the boy jumped, Aaron borrowed a disinterested passenger waiting for his ride home from work. A bit of telekinetic finesse moved him and made it look as though the man dove in time to catch the boy in midair. Aaron guided them into a tackle and held all four down until the cops were on them.

  “Well, that bloke’ll be a hero for a few hours,” muttered Anna. “I thought you liked the limelight.”

  “I used to.” Aaron wobbled to his feet. “Course, I wasn’t a fugitive then. That’s the nice thing about TK, easy to pass off as coincidence.”

  She narrowed her eyes but couldn’t suppress a smile. “Cheater.”

  “Guilty.”

  “Care for a spot of tea?” Anna held out her hand but thought better of it. “After you scrub up a bit.”

  “We best get out of here before their backup arrives. I don’t fancy an interview.”

  He stood, gestured in an ‘after you’ manner, and followed her away from the chaos on the platform. The hapless good Samaritan had the look of a groundhog staring up at a diving eagle as a swarm of news-bots and applauding eyewitnesses formed around him.

  Sector 3011, near the southeastern corner of West City, was home to the Twenty-Nine Pines Mall. One of, if not the largest shopping-plex in the entire country. While some management companies chased exclusive markets, the one responsible for this place catered to the masses. What 29P, as the locals called it, lacked in high-end merchandise, it made up for with choice. The entire five-mile square of Sector 3011 contained sixteen stories of shopping, food courts, and entertainment venues, all arranged around three open-air plazas often used for concerts or other live events.

  Humor abounded; as far away as East City, citizens would often joke about the ‘type of people’ who shopped at 29P. Entire sites on the GlobeNet sprang up, dedicated to image and video captures of the creatures who roamed the mall. To be fair, the lower-end stores on the ground level, especially in the north end, did attract a certain quality of shopper, but for the most part, it was the haven of the lower middle class.

  They occupied a small table close to a wide-open shaft that ran the entire sixteen-story height of the mallplex. Through an inch-thick plastic window at his left, Aaron gazed out at a dizzying array of stores arranged on multiple floors. The din of ten thousand people carried up from below, fading into an indistinct murmur of ambient noise punctuated by the occasional squeal of a child.

  Aaron leaned back in his seat, fidgeting.

  Anna, seated opposite him, bobbed a hydroponic-grown teabag in a cup of hot water. “Something the matter?”

  “I’m tryin’ to suss out if this chair is uncomfortable, or just not comfortable.”

  The teabag paused. She stared at him for a long, silent second. “What?”

  His gaze settled on a pale woman in a distracting tiny black dress made of cloth strips one level down. She carried a small brownish furry thing under her left arm, and lingered by a storefront window full of mannequins modeling equally skimpy outfits. “Is that a dog or the head of a mop?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” He squirmed. “I’m trying to figure out if this chair is painful to sit in, being outright uncomfortable, or if it’s just woefully basic and lacking in comfort.”

  “You are a strange man.” She resumed bobbing her teabag.

  Aaron levitated his out of his cup. Tea oozed as telekinesis compressed it into a tiny sphere. When it ceased dripping, he dropped it on the table. He took a long sip, and gave it an impressed frown.

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ve had better, but it’s not bad for twenty credits.” He shifted in the chair again, left arm draped over the railing to his left where half-inch thick glass came between him and a five-story fall. “So, where’s Archon?”

  “He’s a busy man, Aaron. He’s trying to protect a lot of people.”

  “Busy?” He took another sip. “Not that I object to your company, but I do find it odd that he’s too busy for his lady. Has he been having a rough time of it?”

  Giggling children ran by, out of sight somewhere below. The name “Brandon” lofted from the crowd noise on the voice of a frustrated woman.

  Anna glanced over the side. “Not as rough as master Brandon’s about to have it. Look, Aaron”―she stared into his eyes―“Archon is running back and forth from East to West, trying to gather as many people as he can. There’ve been some… issues.”

  “Issues?” He leaned his elbows on the table.

  “We’ve lost contact with two Awakened. One’s a rather dangerous pyro who also disappeared. The other is… well, she’s a bit…” Anna grumbled. “Dammit, James. Lauren told you to leave that one alone.”

  “Who’s James?”

  “Archon.” Anna added sweetener to her tea and held the cup to her lips. “His real name is James Mardling, but don’t call him that. He’s Archon now.”

  “That sounds damn familiar.” Aaron tapped all ten fingers on the table. “I think he spoke at some event… The team got invited to a dinner. Oh, yes. Wasn’t he some boffin from Oxford doing research for the Crown?”

  Anna laughed. “I thought him a boffin when I’d first met him, too.” Her mirth faded. “It’s an act, you know.”

  “I suppose we all have to act a bit.” A whirring bot in the shape of a large bird flew by out in the open space. Its garish yellow and green feathers were reflective to the point of luminosity, and a six-foot trail of fluorescent blue plumage trailed it. “Nothing’s what it seems. Take that bird… Some manner of drivel from that Monwyn nonsense. Everyone ’ere knows it’s a fixture of 29P. It roams about day and night. Sometimes, it’ll take a fancy to some random person and circle them. Supposed to be some rare thing wif prizes and whatnot. How do we know it ain’t the government watching us all?”

  “What’s your point?”

  He leaned back. “Well, everyone thinks it’s some ’armless thing from a kid’s movie, right? It acts like a made-up fire-breathing bird what never existed. No one pays it any attention. Perfect thing to use to watch us all.”

  “You do realize the city is full of cameras that they don’t even bother hiding.”

  He chuckled. “Aye.”

  “Aaron?” Her fingernail traced lines through some of the spilled white crystalline sweetener on the table. “Can I ask you something?”

  “I thought you weren’t a cheater.” He winked.

  She threw a sweetener tablet at him, bouncing it off his forehead. “You are incorrigible. I want to know why you’re like this. You could’ve left that scorpion girl to get shot to bits, but you didn’t. You didn’t have to interfere with those boys on the tram… but you did. Are you really Aaron Pryce, charming arsehole of the highest order?”

  His teeth showed as he made an expression that would’ve been appropriate for sitting bare assed in cold pudding. He stared at the top of her head while she gazed at the table, one finger tracing patterns in the spilled powder.

  “I
’ve been trying to suss out if you’re as cold as you act sometimes.” He decided to consider the chair’s uncomfortableness a matter of fact rather than speculation. “What difference does it make?”

  “Archon got me out of a fix… I wasn’t in a great place, and he put me back together. No, I wasn’t always this… confident.”

  “Confident? Is that what you call being able to melt a man’s bollocks off without battin’ an eyelash?”

  Anna’s gaze flicked up to meet his. “I didn’t do it, did I? If I was an ‘ice queen,’ I’d have killed him.”

  Aaron covered his face, staring into the unfeeling eyes of Talis as she mocked him for murdering his wife. Two seconds later, everything went dark. “Maybe they’re right.” His cheeks warmed. He pressed a fist into his mouth. Emotion tainted his voice. “Maybe we are all too dangerous. I mean, look at me. I could kill anyone around us and make it look like some other sod went nutters.” His voice raged in his mind, screaming “No!” as he replayed the azure streak piercing Allison’s forehead. The terror in her expression remained even after death. He rubbed his eyes. “They’d be right to get rid of us all.”

  Anna stopped drawing in the dust. “How’d you manage to get out of London if they discovered you cheating?”

  His short, harsh laugh sounded like an electrocuted goose. He sniffled, bit his lip, and let out a long sigh. “They’d been watching me for months and I didn’t even know it. I took a chance on a freak ground out that was on its way to missing. The stone came off the turf at a ‘lucky’ angle and curved into the goal. Computer models got me; they proved external influence. They thought I had a hacker controlling the stone, but when everything there checked out, they brought the CSB in on a lark.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Oooh… I remember that! They called it the Wembley bounce. It’s still being dissected in the media. The bastards at Bristol City used to get into fistfights over it.”

  “Bristol City?”