by Matt Forbeck
"If I knew what happened, I wouldn't," I said. I disconnected just as I reached my door, a flat slab of red with the number 616 printed on it. I mimed turning a knob the door didn't have, and it recognized me and slid aside. I took a deep breath, blew it out, and then walked in.
The place sparkled in the way it only ever did when I came back from the dead. The whole condo smelled of bleach and oranges. The floors were so clean it seemed like a crime to have to walk on them. The sun angled in through the auto-polarizing western windows, which looked out over one of the few clear, wide views of the Potomac in the city. The air was so clean inside there weren't any dust motes to dance in the muted beam of light.
Everything on the first floor had been put nicely away, which meant I wouldn't be able to find a damn thing. Since I couldn't remember a single second out of the past three months, though, I could hardly blame that on the cleaners.
I had other things to worry about. That encounter with Andre Miandre bothered me.
Someone had sent him over with that first bill to get me thinking about the Kalis again, but who would have done that? The Kalis? Were they taunting me, trying to bring me to them right away so they could kill me again? Was someone else trying to pit me against them? Anyone who knew me knew I had a recent history of clashing with the Kalis. Sending me off to confront them would be sure to draw my attention from anything else for a while.
Something was wrong here. Someone was trying to manipulate me into doing something. I just didn't know what it was. Yet.
I walked upstairs to my bedroom. The curtains were wide open, and the balcony beyond them called to me. I strolled over, and the patio door that stood between me and the fresh air beyond slid aside.
Just before it did, I noticed a glowing blue dot in the middle of the sheet of glass separating me from the balcony. I knew it right away for what it was.
I looked behind me and saw the laser painting the back wall of my bedroom. Instead of going outside, I dove behind my bed.
Amateur snipers use laser sights to help them pick out their target. Military-grade hardware features UV lasers that are invisible to the naked eye, and the onboard computers on the guns automatically figure in the effect of wind, gravity, rain, and any other factors on where the bullet is going to land. Self-correcting gyroscopes keep the weapon pointed in the right direction. All you need to do is assign a target with the laser and pull the trigger like you mean it.
I expected to hear a hail of high-caliber rounds tearing through the glass and ripping into my bed. A full second after this failed to happen, I remembered what else amateurs used lasers like that for.
I jumped out from behind the bed and dashed into the hallway beyond. Then I threw myself down the stairs to the landing below. I had just turned around to leap down to the condo's first floor when the laser-guided rocket slammed into my balcony.
CHAPTER TEN
The rocket smashed in through my bedroom window and exploded. The boom deafened me and shook my brain in my skull. Gouts of fire billowed out of the destroyed room and chased me down the stairs. The flames would have swallowed me if I'd still been standing on the landing, but the shock wave from the explosion sent me tumbling down into my kitchen. I rolled with the impact and smacked right into the granitetopped island that separated that room from the dining area beyond. Pain shot through my left shoulder, but I ignored it. Rather than cursing that island, I was grateful for it. It had kept me from rolling all the way into the dining room. The ceiling down here had been blown out by the explosion. This caused it to tip forward from where it was anchored near the stairwell, its far end crushing my living room, which had looked out over the first-level balcony.
Still stunned, I managed to summon the hovercar to meet me outside my balcony. It refused, citing its built-in safety protocols, but I pulled rank on its programmers and overrode those concerns.
Meanwhile, someone out there – standing someplace directly across the Potomac, if I judged the trajectory right – was likely reloading a rocket launcher to make sure he'd finished me off. Or maybe he'd think that one rocket was enough. After all, if I hadn't been in the middle of the stairwell at the time, I'd probably have been blown or crushed to bits.
Somebody else came up and started pounding on my condo's front door. I was staggered enough by the blast that I nearly answered it. Then I realized that anyone with a lick of sense would be racing out of a building that had just been hit by a rocket, not charging toward the explosion. I pulled my service pistol out of my shoulder holster. It was a Nuzi, just like the one I'd been killed with. That gun was still being held as evidence in my murder. This would be the first time I would fire its replacement.
Whoever was outside kept hammering on the door. I called up the ID layer to see who it was, and it came back blank. For an instant, I thought my nanoserver had been blasted offline, but as my head spun I realized I could see the overlaid outlines of other people heading for the emergency stairwells just fine.
I waited for the pounding to start again, then mimed twisting an imaginary knob. The door slid away, revealing a surprised Indian man in a sharp suit. He had one hand up, catching himself in mid-knock, and in his other he held a gun. He had the thick, over-muscled form of a bodybuilder who'd been injecting himself with viral growth DNA for far too many years.
He pointed his gun at me. The blue laser stabbed at my belly.
Before his gun could aim for him, I shot him three times, square in the chest, and he crumpled to the floor. I waited a moment for someone else to appear in the door after him. When no one did, I bolted over and grabbed him. Blood trickled from his mouth, and he could barely breathe, but he was still alive. I knelt down next to him, slapped him across the face, and hauled him into a sitting position. He came to, if just for a moment.
"Kali will take you," he said, his words burbling up to me through a mouth filled with blood. The slitted pupils of his bioengineered cat's eyes dilated wide as he spoke. "Your fate is already written."
I let him go, and he fell back on his head, already too far gone to care about the impact. He'd been the backup plan, I knew. The guy they sent around to make sure the guy with the rocket had done his job. If he didn't report back in a few seconds, they might attack again – or they might just pack up and leave before I could find them. I didn't know which possibility bothered me worse.
I ran back into the condo and weaved my way up the stairs. The ceiling and walls of the second level were on fire. The floor wasn't burning, but it had partially collapsed into the lower level, the section nearest me still held on by unbroken strips of exposed rebar. It made my place look like a ramp leading down to my first-level balcony. If I'd had a jetcycle, I might have been able to try a daredevil jump straight across the Potomac. If I just stepped out onto that surface instead, though, I was sure I would tumble to my doom.
Then I spotted the blue laser beam cutting through the clouds of smoke, dust, and everything else the explosion had knocked loose. The bastards were still out there on the other side of the river, searching for me. They hadn't run yet. That meant they were determined to finish the job.
I wasn't about to let them.
I clicked over to the object location overlay. Through the smoke, I spotted the outline of the hovercar hanging there near the edge of my lower floor.
I could run out the back door and hope that no other Kalis were waiting for me on any other floor or outside of the building, hoping to gun me down in the confusion. With luck, skill, and maybe a little backup, I could probably take them all down. If I did that, though, the people who fired the rocket at me were sure to get away.
I wasn't about to let that happen.
Although I'd only been reborn yesterday, I knew that I could always come back tomorrow. So I did something so incredibly stupid that only an amortal would have dared consider it.
I didn't creep my way down the ramp that my place had become, hoping that I wouldn't somehow slip and fall to my death. Instead, I stuffed my gun bac
k into its holster, charged down that makeshift ramp at top speed and then leaped into the air as I reached the rocket-made ramp's very end.
As I raced down through the wreck of my home, I commanded the hovercar to open up its nearest door and then roll to tilt that door toward my building's roof. I emerged into the daylight from the smoke and debris to see the hovercar still executing that command.
It was too late to stop. Moving like a long jumper, I hurled myself into the air and hoped that I hadn't just made a fatal mistake. If I had, I'd wake up at the Amortals Project again tomorrow and have to go through most of this all over again. At least I wouldn't remember hitting the pavement. No matter what happened with my next body, the pain of that memory would die with me.
I smacked into the hovercar hard. I missed the open door, but only partially. My head and arms got through, but the edge of the opening slammed into my chest, knocking the wind out of me. I felt a rib crack. I ignored the pain and scrabbled for some kind of hold, my feet kicking in thin air like those of a hanged man struggling for one more breath. I managed to snag the edge of one of the seats in the car with my hands, but I couldn't seem to haul myself in.
My weight started to make the hovercar roll back to the level position, which gave me even less to hold on to. My grip on the seat slipped, and for one horrible instant I felt like I had made this body's last mistake. My hands landed on the edge of the door, though, and they held tight. I knew I wouldn't last long there though, even under the best of circumstances.
That's when I saw the telltale blue light shining through the window on the other side of the hovercar and flitting across the machine's ceiling.
Using the override authorization link I'd left open to the hovercar, I ordered it to move forward and to roll hard to its right. It zipped away faster than I thought it would, and it took everything I had to keep my grip on the doorway.
As the machine rolled, the belly of the hovercar came up against me and then lifted me into the air. When the hovercar was nearly upside down, I finally got a grip on its underbelly with my shoes, and I managed to kick myself upward and then down into the passenger compartment.
Somewhere below me, I heard the distinctive sound of a rocket being launched. Seeing me finally get into the hovercar, the assassin must have given up on trying to get a good shot at me and decided to take whatever he could get.
"Shut the door and move!" I said to the autopilot. "Top speed!"
The hovercar jack-rabbited forward, tossing me against the seats. I yowled in protest as my cracked rib threatened to snap. Then the rocket hit.
It couldn't have missed the hovercar by more than a few feet, but it sailed past it and smacked right into the Watergate South again. The explosion rocked the hovercar like a rowboat on a tidal wave, and I felt it falling like a shooting star, arcing across the open sky.
"Up!" I shouted at the autopilot. "Up!"
The hovercar tipped over as it fought hard against the shock wave, depositing me on its glassteel ceiling. This gave me a spectacular view of the Potomac Parkway rushing up toward me. I closed my eyes and braced for the impact.
The hovercar finally regained control about a dozen feet above the road. By the time it managed to fully reverse its momentum, I could have reached out and touched the pavement with my fingers. After an instant's hesitation while it recalibrated itself, the hovercar shot skyward, navigating its way around the oncoming traffic zipping around us. As we rose, it gently rolled back so that its ceiling was up again. I sat down properly in my seat and ordered the autopilot to head for Roosevelt Island along an evasive semicircular route. While the hovercar executed my orders, I scanned the island's shoreline, zooming in to get as good a look as I could.
I didn't see the rocketeer right away, but I spotted that damned blue laser sweep across the compartment again. If I'd have gone directly at my attacker, he would have been able to take another easy shot at me. With the hovercar moving laterally, though, I hoped it would be harder for him to get a lock.
I looked in the direction from which the laser had come, and I zoomed in my vision to maximum magnification. I spotted a pair of men on the shore of Roosevelt Island. They'd finally given up on shooting at the hovercar and the man with the rocket launcher was climbing onto the back of a motorcycle the other man was driving.
I switched over to the hovercar's manual controls, for which I had to give my authorization again. Most people don't even know how to drive a road car these days, much less a hovercar, but I had decades' worth of combat training with each.
I nudged the hovercar straight toward the bike just as it zipped away. I knew there was only one way off the island: a footbridge that ran into the Washington Memorial Parkway on the Virginia side of the river. Once they reached that thoroughfare, it was only a short hop to disappear into the sprawl of connected buildings that covered most of Arlington. If they managed that, I'd have a devil of a time tracking them down.
I pushed the hovercar hard to catch them. They had a fast bike, but they were land-bound. They had to work their way through the national park's trees, while I could zip above it all. I came in fast and hard over the treetops and overshot them. As I went, I zapped an emergency request for backup to the DC police and any and all federal agents in the area. I didn't expect anyone to be able to respond in time, but at least they could help with the cleanup. This was sure to get messy.
I brought the hovercar in tight and low over the monument to Teddy Roosevelt and waited for the motorcycle to arrive. The memorial featured a bronze statue of the President, a couple of large fountains, and a set of stone monoliths on which the man's most famous quotations were carved. Colleen and I had brought Cal out here when he was young, just to poke around.
My favorite of the quotes was this: "Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die: and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life." President Emmanuel had cited these words at my memorial service, the one they'd held when they'd thought for sure I wouldn't make it.
The assassins seemed to have wisely opted to avoid the paths and stay hidden beneath the woods' leafy canopy, but just because I couldn't see them didn't mean I couldn't detect them. I flipped up the infrared vision layer, and I spotted the motorcycle's heat signature weaving toward me through the trees.
I opened the door on the right-hand side of the compartment and transferred the controls to that seat. Then I drew my gun and held it out the open door, aiming it in the direction of the oncoming red blob.
The motorcycle burst out of the trees on the edge of the clearing in which the clustered memorial for Roosevelt sprawled. I finally got a good look at the men. They were Indian too, Kalis for sure. The driver was cut from the same mold as the bone breaker I'd killed in the hall outside my condo. He operated the motorcycle like he was wrestling a wild bull, forcing it to do his bidding every inch of the way.
The man on the back was thinner, with shiny black hair. He wore a pair of dark goggles on which the targeting laser was mounted so he could keep his hands free while he used it. They would also let him see the beam at just about any unobstructed range. Right now, he had the rocket launcher slung over his shoulder and ready, and he was looking straight at me.
At any real distance, the man with the rocket launcher never would have been able to hit my hovercar. It's hard enough to fire a weapon like that when you're standing on solid ground, much less when you're bouncing around on the back of a motorcycle charging through the woods at top speed.
This close up, though, it would be hard for him to miss.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I dove out of the hovercar as the man let loose with the rocket. The rocket flew into the open doorway and exploded inside the passenger compartment. That's probably what saved my life.
The hovercar's reinforced chassis managed to contain most of the explosion, which kept it from killing me directly or slamming me into the ground below. The parts of that terrible force that escaped through the open doorway knocke
d the hovercar back a few dozen feet before it came spiraling out of the sky to crash to earth. This at least kept it from landing on me.
I fell right into one of the fountains. The water didn't do all that much to cushion my fall, but it protected me from fiery bits of shrapnel raining down from above. I'd only been a bit more than a dozen feet above the fountain, and that little edge made the difference between life and yet another death for me.
I drew my gun while still underwater and came up angry and ready for some payback. The recoil from the rocket launcher had knocked the firer straight off the bike, and he was scrambling to his feet, still clutching the launcher like a lifeline. The driver had circled back around to grab his friend and probably hoped to gloat over my corpse.
I squeezed off three quick shots, and the man with the launcher dropped as if I'd cut his puppeteer's strings. The man on the bike saw his friend fall, and he hunkered down low in his seat and tried to gun it out of there. I took aim and let off a flurry of shots, not at him but his front tire. Killing him wouldn't do me much good at this point. I wanted one of them alive for questioning, and the guy with the rocket launcher had already lost that lottery.