Zero Rogue

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Right then, take care of yourself.”

  Shimmer hid her face against her knees. “Yeah, no one else will.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “Awright, now you’re laying it on a bit too thick.”

  “Sorry.” She looked up with a grin. “I’ll call the elevator for you.”

  “Thanks.” He stumbled over the wires and tubes to the exit corridor.

  “Aaron?”

  “Aye?” He stopped halfway out the door.

  Shimmer connected her second wire and reclined on the chair. “Try not to get yourself killed.”

  The sound of the elevator arriving made him jump. “Yeah.” He started not to care if he made it or not, and wound up thinking of Anna. Bother. She’s taken. He hung his head. “Right… I’ll see what I can do.”

  reston Cryogenics headquarters occupied forty percent of Sector 19039, fifty miles away from the upper reaches of West City and about thirty-five inland from the ocean. Twin office towers stood at the northeast corner of the grid square, overlooking three long, rectangular production facilities a mere six stories tall. At the southern end of the company property, a farm of ten-story orb shaped tanks lurked in a perpetual fog of water vapor. Between the office towers and the manufacturing buildings, a pleasant courtyard offered a place for workers to relax among a few miniature potted trees, an artificial lake, and a statue of the company’s founder. The west portion of the property contained storage and warehousing, as well as an army of cargo transport vehicles.

  Aaron crept along a gridded catwalk, suspended from the underside of an elevated roadway linking two high-rise towers at the fortieth floor. Preston Cryogenics had enough pull to purchase the permits necessary for a dedicated off ramp from The Highway. Aaron’s plan had felt solid until he’d spent more than five minutes on the exposed walkway in the gusting winds of what used to be British Columbia. He huddled against a support and fished out a sleek, silver-framed visor.

  Within a second of slipping it over his eyes, the glowing light-trail of an eight-inch faerie appeared, leading his gaze to the right past an array of pipes and struts. She zipped to a halt a foot away from his face, causing an involuntary flinch from a spray of pixie dust that didn’t exist. His knuckles whitened on the freezing metal, and he glared at her once the look of terror left him.

  “What are you worried about? You can fly, right?”

  He swallowed. “Not exactly, and that doesn’t mean I’m fond of heights.”

  “How does that work anyway?” Shimmer folded her arms, tapping one finger on her chin. “Isn’t that like lifting yourself up by your boots?”

  Aaron pushed off from his place of safety, moving at as fast a stride he could tolerate on the bouncing metal grate. “I’m not just lifting myself. I’m holding onto stuff nearby. Like, I’m trying to telekinetically move the building, but since it weighs so much it winds up moving me instead.”

  “Oh, so it’s like you’re swinging on an invisible vine?”

  “More like doing a pull up.” He stopped to clamp onto the railing as a car rumbled overhead. “Or a pull down. When I’m falling, I reach out against the ground, pushing. It’s still all quite new to be honest. Telekinetics aren’t supposed to be this strong.”

  The headset simulated Shimmer’s faerie-pitched voice zipping back and forth behind him. “You should get a costume, fly around doin’ stuff.”

  Aaron laughed, but more from nerves than mirth. “Aye, except I’d have to wear a mask so I don’t look shitless when I land.” He ducked behind another large strut. “How does the parking deck look?”

  “If I say bad, are you gonna jump?” She giggled behind his head.

  “Yes, but it would be tiring for no reason if you’re just takin’ the piss.”

  “I don’t have to go.”

  Aaron grumbled. “It means messin’ with me.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that?”

  He tried to grab the faerie out of the air. “Do you ’ave a sister named Strawberry? The two of ya.”

  Shimmer shrugged. “There’s the usual security in the parking deck, nothing cereal.”

  “I’m not in the mood for breakfast.”

  “Ass.”

  “What?” Aaron got moving again.

  “It means serious.”

  “Then why’d you not just say serious?”

  A faint raspberry fluttered in his left ear.

  By the time he reached the point where the elevated strip of road met the forty-fourth story of the primary office tower, he’d lost feeling in all four limbs and his lips. Despite the presence of a ladder and a hatch, he didn’t trust his fingers to be able to close around the rungs. Shimmer whirled about in circles laughing as he telekinetically levitated his body up and over the guardrail onto the road surface. The electronic version of a faerie’s voice became needles at his eardrums.

  “Got it,” she chirped.

  Aaron walked into the parking deck, heading for a door a few feet inside on the left that opened for him and led to a utility stairway. According to the information she’d sent him, Rakshasi lived in an apartment on the ninety-first floor of the secondary tower, among the residences of executives stingy enough to accept company housing and critical engineers the company refused to let out of their sight. He jogged down the plain concrete steps, the skiffs of his shoes echoing off unfinished walls.

  “Do you think those people know they’re living a few floors away from the person who’ll be sent to kill them if they try to leave?”

  “I’m sure they do.” He eyed a head-sized onyx orb set in the ceiling. “I’m betting they’ve put her here as a warning.”

  “Relax. I’ve got the cameras and the pea shooters on a short leash. As far as Preston Cryo’s security people know, you don’t exist.”

  “Pea shooters?” He held on to the railing at a corner.

  “Fully automatic ballistic turrets chambered in eight millimeter. Two hundred rounds each, dual mode operation. IFF selective or manual control from a security station. Since you don’t have a Preston Cryo employee ImDent chip, they’d try to aerate you.”

  “Great.”

  The faerie zoomed in front of him, posed as though holding back a great weight. Her tiny voice growled with effort. “Don’t panic. I’m protecting you.”

  He jogged down the remaining thirty and change floors, warmed and invigorated by the time he reached the bottom. As much as he wanted to avenge Allison’s death, the sight of a door to the outside made him hesitate. He didn’t want to go back out into the cold so soon.

  “Wait!” yelled Shimmer. “Sentry orb going by. Shit.”

  “What, shit? Shit sounds bad.”

  Her little face scrunched in a variety of expressions. “Go. No big deal, some idiot on their network seems to think there’s an unauthorized access.”

  “Isn’t there?” He edged the door open, peering out over a concourse.

  Wind howled through an outdoor ‘corridor’ between the buildings, where a number of benches sat in pairs, interleaved with small trees emerging from mounds of brown mulch ringed with tiny flowering shrubs. A quick glance revealed nine security cameras, some on the side of the facing building and some on lampposts, as well as two spheres embedded in the opposite wall he suspected to be guns in hiding. He would have sprinted to the other tower if not for a man in scuffed white armor relaxing on a nearby bench.

  “Oh, wow, these defense people are getting irritating. I’m gonna be quiet for a minute. Gotta slap a couple bitches around.”

  The faerie faded away.

  Aaron studied the man for a few seconds, settling his gaze on the stunrod hanging from his equipment belt. The guard also had a sidearm, but he had no need to turn deadly on a poor sod doing his job, or slacking off his job. He focused on the stunrod’s cushioned handgrip, working out just how to flex his telekinetic grip to simulate a squeezing hand. The man startled when the tip erupted with sparking blue light.

  “What the―”

  A ge
ntle telekinetic twist flung the device upward and touched the end to the man’s cheek. In an instant, the guard lost control of his muscles and bounced off the bench to the metal ground. He convulsed for a few seconds, armor clattering and spittle flying. Once he went still, Aaron released the weapon and shoved the door open. The clank of his shoes on plastisteel tiles faded to several muted thuds as he jumped a row of foot-tall hedges and cut across the mulch-skirt of a tree.

  He hit the wall of the target building breathing hard and huddled in a strip of shadow. A fern-lined red brick walkpath connected the towers in a straight line from entrance to entrance across the park area between them. The security/maintenance door he’d emerged from had a companion on this building a few meters away, right in the middle of a bright patch. Aaron edged up to the limit of the dark and stared at one of the gun pods on the wall. Its barrel sat retracted behind a hexagonal door, though the spherical housing panned left and right, a small yellow light high and center. He contemplated smashing it in case Shimmer wasn’t faring well in her electronic duel.

  All the lamppost lights in the narrow courtyard died at the same time, as did the sensor on the turret. Aaron had to bite back a cry of startlement. Hoping Shimmer was responsible for it, he ran to the door, trying to rub warmth back into his hands.

  A strip of holographic light, four inches wide by one tall, glowed red atop a physical keypad. He tapped his foot, glancing left and right.

  “Come on, come on.”

  Glowing text appeared in front of him as if drawn in pixie dust: ‹15732›.

  His hand shook, but he jabbed his numb finger into the metal buttons, filling white numbers in on the red stripe. When the final digit appeared, it turned green and the door clicked. No sooner had he pulled it open than the entire western part of the Preston Cryogenics complex exploded in an array of flashing multicolored light and deafening techno dance music.

  He let off a shout of surprise while hurrying inside―not that anyone heard.

  The door slammed behind him, trapping him in darkness. The distant music was so loud it robbed him of the ability to think even with a two-inch thick plastisteel plate between him and the source. Deciding against ninety stories of stairs, he ducked into the corridor leading to the ground floor. It ended at a security guard’s break room. A cup of coffee lay spilled on the floor atop a scattering of popcorn. Two large holo-bars in front of a couch flipped on its back flooded the left side of the room with the flashing glory of Gee-ball games. A row of lockers hung open, exposing four rifles and two sets of security guard armor.

  Aaron smiled, imagining the hasty scramble of lazy guards.

  “Not enough time,” said Shimmer. “Go. They’ll be back before you’re done changing.”

  “What the hell was all that noise?”

  Shimmer planted her hands on her tiny hips and scoffed. “You have heard of a distraction, haven’t you?” She pivoted away from him. “They already thought they had an electronic invader, so they got a little boy out looking to play pranks.”

  “Loud music got all the security staff to run out of here like this?” He jogged to an interior door composed of tinted glass.

  “No, that would’ve been all nine high-security storage vaults showing break in alarms at the same time.” She giggled. “I added some Wild Boyz to the security video, too.”

  “Do I want to know?” He sprinted through a sparse, utilitarian lobby, twitching each time a ball turret in the ceiling panned left or right. “Cripes.”

  “Oh, relax.” Shimmer sailed along at his side, leaving a trail of glowing green light. “I own those guns. Nothing serious, the Boyz are a local street gang up there. I couldn’t use anything too dangerous, or they’d call in the police.”

  The elevator opened before he got to it, and the doors squeezed off his view of the lobby at the exact moment a dozen white-armored figures came in the front. Even with half their faces obscured by their helmets, they looked angry.

  “Up, up, and away!” cheered Shimmer.

  “You’re enjoying this entirely too much,” mumbled Aaron.

  Her enthusiasm fell to a lip-quivering pout. “I don’t get out much.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  She laughed. “Ninety-first floor. She’s in the sixth apartment on the left. Be careful.”

  “Of course.” He winked.

  Only a plain grey door marked 91-11 stood between him and answers. The quiet of the hallway made his heartbeat noticeable. White walls and charcoal carpet as bland and boring as he expected from corporate housing stretched out before him. Strips of baleful light ran in metal gutters along the top of the walls, muting to a soft glow by virtue of reflection from the ceiling.

  Aaron pondered ringing the bell, knocking, or just smashing it down. The last time he’d met this woman, she’d tried to kill him. Of course, she’d been under compulsion as well, so it wasn’t her fault. His indecision ended when the door clicked and slid open to the left.

  Thanks, Shimmer.

  He stepped into a spacious living room thick with the scent of East-Asian incense. A giant U-shaped sectional sofa big enough to seat twelve adults wrapped around an object that could’ve been a table or a piece of modern art; three oval slabs of dark silvery material jutted out of a lump of jet-black rock that looked like it came from an alien world. Atop the largest slab, a narrow vase held three roses sculpted from metal. Shag carpeting the color of pewter ran wall to wall, ending by plain white linoleum where the space gave way to kitchenette. Floor-to-ceiling window spanned the opposite end of the room, covered in chromed blinds, which rotated closed as soon as the door shut behind him. He hoped Shimmer covered his presence, and he hadn’t walked into some trap.

  Something beeped in the distance, and the scent of chai tea slithered under his nose. He stood motionless as a woman emerged from the back hallway. Her delicate features resembled a sylph carved from rich brown stone, and she wore a black robe with the sheen of silk. It covered her to the middle of her thigh, tied with a floppy belt reminiscent of a karateka. More stripes decorated the outsides of her legs to an inch above each ankle. Aside from her black hair flowing loose, she matched the image in Shimmer’s data.

  Rakshasi went to the kitchenette and removed a cup from a small white appliance. As soon as she turned to walk out, they made eye contact. Her vertical cat’s pupils narrowed, reducing the amount of crimson light leaking out. If he hadn’t known she had cybernetic eyes, the demon-tiger affect would’ve tightened his throat.

  Aaron held up his hands. “I’m only here to talk.”

  Her surface thoughts held onto the kind of repulsed feeling one might get after stepping barefoot into a pile of dog shit. Only, in her case, the skin-crawling sense of disgust came from having a man inside her den. A rambling internal diatribe went by in another language, Hindi he assumed, which he could not follow.

  “Where’s Talis?”

  Rage, love, and betrayal whirled into a clawing furball in the woman’s mind. Based on the scenes and feelings playing out in her thoughts, he could tell she understood Talis had abandoned her to the police to get away; she knew the woman had manipulated her emotions, but still harbored a sense of love and loss. Unfortunately, she hadn’t seen Talis since crawling out of the syrupy mess in the vat. Numerous glimpses of attempts to find the woman she believed loved her flickered by, before she settled on working for Preston Cryogenics.

  “I’m sorry, but that woman never loved you.” Aaron held up both hands. “She’s psionic. It was all manipulation.”

  Rakshasi’s brain twitched in a way Aaron had not observed before. Confusion at the gesture evaporated as her body blurred into a smear of brown and black; she leapt with claws outstretched, raking her bladed fingers at him. Her unusual mental flex had activated speedware. He got his telekinesis around her, stalling her leap. The tip of her middle finger claw, the longest of the lot, sliced his chest before the cup of chai had started falling. He leaned back from a handful of Nano claws. His multitasking mind saved
the tea, pushing Rakshasi away while floating the cup toward his waiting hand. The shallow cut proved more painful than deadly.

  He frowned at the slash in his jacket. “Damn, this suit was nine thousand credits.” Slurp. “Thank you for the tea.”

  She shrieked at him in Hindi; boosted reflexes rendered her frenetic claws into an imperceptible blur of glinting metal. Crimson light flared out from widening pupils. Aaron had gone from nervous to a level of anger far beyond what facial motions or a reddening of the cheeks could convey. To an outside observer, he looked the perfect picture of serenity. All his effort to find Rakshasi, and she turned out to be another dead end. He pictured the Syndicate thugs bursting like water balloons on impact with the floor. Telekinetic energy pressed her into the wall and tightened around her throat. He forced her arms flat at her sides and spread the crushing force over her entire body, pinning her still except for allowing her head to thrash side to side.

  “Aaron I―” Shimmer’s little voice chirped in his ear, but an odd digital warble consumed it to silence.

  “I’m only going to say this once.” He set the chai down on the table by the sofa. “I came here looking for Talis. I thought you might have known where she’d toddled off to. Since you do not, we have no further business.”

  Rakshashi dug her scratchers into the wall, the thin synthetic diamond blades sank in as if plasticrete offered no more resistance than cream cheese.

  “You may be a twisted individual the world could do without, but I am not terribly interested in liquefying you.”

  She stopped resisting.

  “I will find her, and I will kill her for what she did.”

  “No!” yelled Rakshasi.

  He peeled her away from the wall and sent her across the apartment to the farthest point in the room. “She didn’t have any feelings for you beyond how useful you could be. Whatever you think you feel is an implanted idea.”

  “You can’t kill her.” Rakshasi screamed as she fought to stand up against the unseen force holding her down. “Neend kohra!”