The Commune’s thirtieth floor was used for skanj production, a lush micro-forest of genetically-modified skunk. The odour made Paolo gag. He shivered suddenly, a spearpoint of pain driving into his chest. Damn, the come-down off the respirocite was brutal. Then, a noise. Boots on concrete. Gulping air, Paolo pulled a morphine autojet from his pocket and stabbed it into his thigh. This thing wasn’t over. There were still cards to play.
Perhaps it was time for the Joker.
Twenty Seven
Hooker fell through the doorway, chest heaving, fingers raw. Muscles burning from the desperate scramble across the scaffolding. Who the fuck crashed a copter into the side of the building?
He looked around, realising he’d stepped into a jungle. Skanj everywhere, feathery plants smouldering. Shattered hydroponic systems dotted the ceilings, walls scarred by rocket-strikes. The farm’s heat signature would have been an irresistible target for the drone. A fire escape read FLOORS 31-35.
He was close.
Then, a noise. Heavy breathing. Wheezing, like an asthmatic. A gaunt-looking man appeared, skin tight against his skull, hands raised. He wore NatSec fatigues, inspector’s rank flashes on the epaulettes. “You’re Hooker?” he said.
“Who wants to know?” MP5 ready, Hooker made a sight picture of the stranger’s head. The stranger was no more than three metres away.
“The man who killed the two OCS cops who sent you here.”
“You’re NatSec?”
The man hawked something on the floor. Glistening red. “I am Colonel Paolo Falcone, of the Crimson Brigade’s Special Action Group. I’m not your enemy.”
“That wasn’t you trying to shoot me off the side of the building then?”
“And you didn’t leave a fob for the drone to lock onto?” The man in black’s smile was mirthless. “My blood ran hot – I’m recovering from a respirocite high. There’s little time to explain, but there’s something I must show you.”
Hooker’s finger slid inside the MP5’s trigger. “Bullshit. Where’s Charlotte Rhys?”
Paolo’s eyes shone, “Bullshit? Why is my weapon holstered? Why’d I tell you I’m drug-fatigued? You have me at a disadvantage, Hooker. What do you have to lose?”
“The girl. Where is she?”
“Want to help Lottie? Then there’s even more reason to talk. I’m going to reach into my pocket. I assure you it’s not for a weapon.”
Hooker was ready to fire. “Slowly,” he said. “Move very slowly.”
Paolo produced a silver tube. “This is a neural uploader. Have you heard of the technology?”
“Yeah,” Hooker replied, “It injects information straight into your brain, right?”
“More or less.”
Hooker raised an eyebrow. “If you think I’m going to let you stick a needle in my skull, you can fuck off.”
Paolo nodded. “I’d be sceptical too. After all, you’re being blackmailed by the NatSec Office of Counter Subversion. I also know your friend’s being tortured.”
“Leah?”
“I don’t know her name. I do know they’ve started working on her.”
“Then it’s even more important for me to find Lottie Rhys.”
“I’ve no plans to kill Lottie, Mister Hooker,” Paolo shrugged. He offered Hooker the autoinjector. “She’s far too valuable.”
“Valuable?”
“When the facts change, so does my mind.”
Hooker studied the injector, clinical and clean. “Why not just tell me what’s inside this thing?”
“Seeing is believing,” Paolo replied. “Consider the evidence before you decide your next move. I assure you, this information is leverage.”
Hooker lowered his weapon. “Okay, persuade me – why should I trust you?”
“Why shouldn’t you? You’ve the look of service about you, Hooker. You were a soldier, maybe? A loyal man. Yet here you are, blackmailed into a suicide mission…”
“What’s in it for you?”
“The truth,” Paolo replied. “Truth sets us free. Upload the truth. Taste it. Then we parley.”
Something itched in Hooker’s brain. Vassa Hyatt. Bliss. Charlotte Rhys. Beatriz… the mezuzah burnt his skin. “Parley?”
Paolo lay his weapons on the floor. A sophisticated-looking HK, a knife and two tomahawks. Finally, he plasticuffed himself. “You’ll be able to stop the information dump anytime you choose. You’ll be fully conscious and able to function normally. Shoot me, even. Now, I think I’ll have a cigarette. The pack’s in my left ammunition pouch, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“A Marlboro Red?” said Hooker.
The Crimson Brigade agent smiled. “I knew they’d be the death of me. Now, place the autojet in the nape of your neck and push the button. It’s relatively painless.”
Hooker lit Paolo a cigarette. Then, MP5 ready, he touched the injector to the base of his skull. Paolo nodded, smoke trailing from his nostrils. “Do it, Hooker.”
Hooker pressed the button.
Brain-freeze. Like a kid gobbling ice cream too quickly. I remember ice cream. Flavours, milky-sweet. Beatriz loved ice cream. Cookie dough…
Now vertigo. Images. Data. Voices… Paolo Falcone looks relaxed, even with a gun at his head. He’s smoking a Marlboro, which has been his favourite brand for ten years. How do I know that?
Hooker winces, tries to focus. Something’s mapping the contours of his brain. Like a tiny crop-duster, seeding fresh engrams into his subconscious. [Neurological Fact: An engram is a biophysical process that generates memories]
[Please try to relax. Neural uplift can be disorientating while Npas4 manipulation completes. Data package delivery in five seconds…]
[Three seconds…]
[…Prepare for payload delivery]
Hooker sees a room. He’s in it, but he isn’t. It’s shadowy and quiet, like the waiting area at a doctor’s surgery. He sees cracks in the roughly plastered walls, condensation glittering on a spider web in the window. Yet he’s still in the stairwell of the skanj-stinking Commune, his gun at Paolo’s head. Paolo’s saying something, but Hooker can’t hear. But he can smell the Marlboro, cigarette smoke sharp in his nose.
A broken man sits slumped in a chair. His face is a tapestry of black and mauve from a sustained beating. A figure appears, dressed in fatigues. [This is a soldier of the Special Action Group Andreas Baader, operating in Southern Italy against the NATO / Fascist alliance.] The soldier touches a cattle prod to the prisoner’s chest, and he convulses like a ghoulish puppet.
“It’s time,” says a voice from the corner of the room. [The voice belongs to Colonel Paolo Falcone, conducting the debrief of a High Value Prisoner] Paolo Falcone’s voice is gentle. “Are you ready?”
“Water? Please…”
[The prisoner’s name is Martyn S. Weir. At the time of this memory capture, he’s a forty-two-year-old paramilitary operations specialist, contracted to the Special Activities Division of the US Central Intelligence Agency. His primary role is Human Intelligence identification and development. The interrogation takes place late last year in Bari, Southern Italy. Weir has already surrendered the identities of the top intelligence sources run by the CIA inside the Crimson Brigade]
The man in fatigues hands Martyn Weir a bottle of water. The prisoner sips gratefully, purplish lips struggling to make a seal around the bottleneck. “Say thank you, Martyn,” says Paolo.
“Thank you.”
“Please explain how you became aware of Operation MADRIGAL.”
Weir ignores the water dribbling down his chin. “Basically, it was a screw-up. Prior to deploying to Italy, I volunteered for a type IV neural upload - they wanted to test a new language module, and my Italian ain’t too good.
“Anyhow, they gave me a standard brainstem shot. The technician who performed it was a kid called Trio Fernandez. Turns out Trio had stolen a shitload of random CIA data from a hacked Special Access server. He’d managed to convert it all into a neural upload format to smuggle out of t
he facility – ‘cuz they can’t search your brain, can they?”
“Not yet,” Paolo replies, studying his fingernails. “Give them time. Please, continue.”
“I receive the info dump. I immediately figure I’ve been given seriously compartmentalised Intel, the sort of thing I don’t need to see. Afterwards I ask Trio what the fuck’s goin’ on. It only takes a couple of minutes to get the story outta him.”
“Please, tell us about Mister Fernandez,” says Paolo. “The circumstances are important.”
“Trio’s girlfriend was mixed up with a hacking collective. Y’know, libertarian anarchists or some kinda bullshit like that. She pussy-whacked him into going rogue, but Trio was hardly spy of the century material. He had the injector in his pocket with the stolen data, but there was a security check that day. He panicked and got ‘em all mixed up. So instead of intermediate Italian, Trio squirted MADRIGAL into my brain.” Weir almost smiles. “Just my fucking luck.”
“Why didn’t you report the error?”
“Soon as I knew what it was? I figured I got two choices – keep quiet or get lobotomised by the agency.”
“So, what did you do, Martyn?”
“I’m trained to improvise. I told Trio I was sympathetic to the cause, and arranged to meet him away from the office to talk about our next move. I met him in a carpark and ran a K-Bar into the back of his skull. I dumped his body in the Potomac.”
“Was that necessary?”
Weir nods. It hurts, and he winces. “Hell yeah. The CIA’s counterespionage monkeys are seriously medieval when it comes to that kinda shit. Data from a Beyond Top Secret Special Access Program?”
“Tell us what you learned.”
Weir closes his eyes, as if reading from a script. [This material is in his brain, so he can quote it verbatim] “Operation MADRIGAL was the covert US response to emerging gene-augmentation and Transhumanist technologies, especially the Rudenko-Xiaoping Procedure (RXP). MADRIGAL’S objectives were –
“ONE: Develop parallel technologies to Rudenko-Xiaoping to guarantee the United States enjoyed continued technological hegemony in the field of augmented humanity;
“TWO: Disrupt other international actors attempting to obtain or develop augmented humanity technologies;
“THREE: Implement a long-term strategy to restore the pre-2025 international order, namely by covertly seeding global institutions and governments with augmented transhuman agents of influence. Their mission was to rejuvenate liberal democracy around the globe.”
“Old wine, new bottles,” Paolo sighs. “Tell us about the outcome of the third objective, please. That’s of specific interest to me.”
Weir nods, brow beaded with sweat. “MADRIGAL went bad. Really bad. The initial cohort of operatives decided liberal democracy was bunk, ‘cuz they could do a better job. They were super-people, right? They infiltrated governments and intelligence agencies, ended up leading armies. They took over terrorist movements and organised crime groups. Their budget was unlimited, and once they were up and running they rigged the financial markets too.
“They called themselves the Archangels. Their inner council was the December 13th Group, which coordinated transhumans from other nations who wanted the same thing.”
“The same thing?” says Paolo.
“A World Government. Run by Archangels. The Russians and Chinese had their own transhumanity programs, and their super-people were equally frustrated by the status quo. They had more in common with each other than the nations they served.”
“Was this the CIA’s intention all along?” Paolo asks.
“No way,” says Weir shaking his head. “The material I saw doesn’t support that – the whole thing was a fuck-up. Nobody understood their agenda until the wars started. The file says when they finally captured one of the December 13th plotters, she claimed the group’s motives were beyond the understanding of Cattle. That’s you and me, by the way.”
Paolo nods. “Those of us who never underwent RXP treatment?”
“Exactly, but finally a dozen of ‘em turned against the rest. That led to a split, a war among the transhumans. The turncoats won, and were pardoned for taking out their comrades. The survivors were neutered, and RXP was banned.”
“Who outside the US Government knew the truth?”
Weir takes another sip of water. “The file specifically mentioned someone in the UK. They were eventually indoctrinated into MADRIGAL, after civil war broke out there. The Brits called it the Hate War, right?”
“Yes, aptly so. Name this person,” Paolo orders.
“He was called Damon Rhys, the UK Security Minister. Rhys was personally briefed by President Mendoza, and sworn to secrecy.”
“Mendoza died last year, of course. And the Americans pledged trillions of dollars to atone for this debacle?”
“Yes they did. They called it the Atlas Program,” Martyn nods. “As long as the Brits kept quiet, they’d get trillions of aid dollars pumped into their economy. The French and Germans never got the same offer. Look what happened to them.”
“Is there anything else you remember, Martyn?”
“No. That’s it. Man, havin’ this stuff in my head? It’s like carrying a fucking brain tumour around.”
“Let me divest you of that burden.” Paolo Falcone steps into view. Something flashes in his hand. A sword, curved and over a metre long.
[Upload ends]
Hooker felt a sudden rush of nausea. He thought he was going to be sick, then – nothing.
“There you have it,” Paolo shrugged, leg bleeding. He stubbed out his cigarette on the dirty concrete floor.
“The Americans created the Archangels?” said Hooker.
“Sort of. In an unusual piece of role-reversal, the CIA stole the technology from the Chinese. The Americans improved RXP immeasurably, to the point where a clique of transhuman fascists was inevitable. But who could have predicted that terminal-stage Capitalism was the ascension of the rich into a separate species? Damon Rhys concealed the truth. He chose to take blood money instead. Dirty money.”
“And that’s what you want Rhys to tell the world?”
Paolo nodded. “I give people the truth. From truth comes freedom.”
Hooker shook his head. “Freedom? You really believe that? Ain’t you a Communist?”
“We live in a time of hard ideologies,” Paolo shrugged. “I consider mine least-worst. This government will fall, as will the nest of Archangels incubating in Winchester.”
Hooker looked around. Outside, the sound of fighting grew louder. “How does this change anything?”
Paolo’s face was clammy and grey. “I assume you came here with an exit strategy. Help us escape and Lottie Rhys lives. Your friend will live. We shall take bloody revenge on the bastards who did her harm – bring the roof down on their heads.”
“I want to see Lottie first.”
Paolo held out his hands. “Cut the plasticuffs, Mister Hooker, and I’ll take you to her myself.”
twenty eight
More stairs. Never had Hooker missed escalators so badly. Paolo had to stop to catch his breath, breathing ragged. A chunk of his calf was missing, the wound bloody and raw. “Respirocites,” he shrugged. “Never take two fixes in one day.”
“They really work?” Hooker still had the combat stims Chisholm had given him, tucked in his belt pouch.
“Yes, but the comedown is an… ordeal.”
They arrived at a door fitted, with an iris scanner. A bearded man, dressed in combat gear, stood guard outside. He hefted a Kalashnikov, warily eyeing Hooker.
“It’s okay Caleb,” said Paolo.
“Welcome back,” the man replied, looking Hooker up and down. His accent was English. “Was that your copter that hit the building?”
“Sadly it was. This is Hooker, he’s going to get us out of here.”
Caleb licked his teeth. “He’s sounds like the man who…”
“The intruder? He does indeed.” Paolo held up a hand
, “Mister Hooker was coerced into coming here. But now he isn’t - we’ve made a deal.”
Caleb bristled. “Does General Ignacio know about your deal?”
Paolo smiled. It reminded Hooker of a movie he’d once seen about a killer shark. “Careful, comrade. Don’t overstep your mark.”
Caleb aimed his rifle at Paolo. “The General didn’t know about the girl. When were you gonna to tell him?”
“It was safer he didn’t know. Have you spoken to him?”
Caleb’s eye twitched. “Not yet. The comms are screwed, leaguers have taken the lobby.”
“I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it,” Paolo replied. “I’ll tell him myself.”
Caleb took a step back, making a sight picture. “You’ve taken us for a ride, Paolo. I wouldn’t be surprised if the girl’s the reason…”
Hooker’s weapon barked. Caleb’s staggered, eyes wide. The Black Rifleman crashed to the ground, hands fluttering at the bullet wound in his chest.
“You beat me to it,” Paolo sniffed. “I’m getting old.”
“You and me both.” Hooker replied, smoke curling from his gun. “Who the fuck is the General?”
“Ignacio of the Black Rifles. If he knew the truth about the girl…”
“He’ll want a ransom, not a confession?”
“Yes, something like that. I think Caleb lied about telling him - Ignacio’s gunmen are probably on their way now.” Sighing, Paolo coughed phlegm on the concrete floor.
“How? The drone’ll pick ‘em off that scaffolding.”
Paolo shook his head. “There’s another elevator – the Germans built it for moving skanj down from the thirtieth floor. From there, it only stops on the fifteenth and in the basement. They never marked it on the fire map, which is how I assume you plotted a course up here.”
Hooker plucked the grenades from Caleb’s belt. “I’m still wonderin’ why you think I’d help you escape?”
Paolo squinted into the iris scanner, the lock snapping open. “What choice do you have? It’s the only way you’ll save Lottie. I assure you, there’s no way you’ll send her back to Damon Rhys.”
Dark as Angels: We are the Enemy Page 21