by Gary Ballard
Angela was dead. Bridge repeated the words over and over in his mind, unable to process the reality. Angela was dead. She was dead. That was her lifeless hand draped cruelly over the lip of the crèche. Angela was dead.
“Up here, mon.” The voice slapped Bridge out of his trance. It was a lilting, male voice tinged with the slightest hint of a Jamaican accent. “Yeah, that was I. Focus over here, mon.” Standing over Bridge with the smug confidence of a trained killer was a wiry black man, just over six feet tall with long, brownish-blonde dreads. A set of nasty scars made a second set of eyebrows on his forehead, glowing a mottled, angry red on his caramel skin. He had the penetrating gaze that Bridge had seen in so many killers before him, the disinterested focus of someone so emotionally detached from his targets that he could kill them without a visible change in mood. Dressed in a full body suit of black with various pouches holding the tricks of his trade and a gun at his side, he leaned casually on a long metallic fighting staff that appeared to be collapsible.
“I have done for your girlfriend there, and for dat, I apologize. Business of Babylon is an ugly ting,” he said without regret.
“So why am I still alive?”
“I and I needs to talk, yah?”
Bridr="#000"ge spit another bloody wad onto the carpet. He leaned back against the wall with a sigh. “You want to talk? You’re not one of those douchebag hitmen that has to talk philosophy with their victims before they kak them, are you? ‘Cos if you are, go the fuck ahead and kill me now.”
“In good time, brudda,” he laughed. “I and I got business first. I is Michael.”
Bridge wiped his lip and stared daggers through the hitman. “Artemis Bridge. We can talk. Sure, we can talk about what ever you want. But when we’re done, I’m going to kill you.”
If the killer Michael was taken aback by Bridge’s threat, he gave no indication of it. Instead, he leaned farther forward on the fighting staff until his cheek brushed the sparkling metal and smiled. “Cu yu. A lot of men done said that to I, mon,” he grinned, “and yet I still walks the earth. What I so sure about?”
Bridge ignored the question. “What shall we talk about then?” His mind worked at a mile a minute, doing everything it could to divert its attention away from the beautiful, lithe wrist dangling limply from the lid of the crèche. “How’d you get in here? Past the security systems, I mean.”
“Trade secrets, mon. Yahso had some bad mojo in dem walls, but I and I breaks it. I and I know why I is here?”
“Can you cut the phony Rasta crap and talk English to me?”
“Whatsa matta, mon, I and I no like the words of H.I.M.? Fair enough. I and I learn your words. School was good for something.” The switch from Rasta to English was as smooth as silk. Michael’s voice had a whispered calm that in any other circumstance would have been soothing. “The rasta thing tends to scare the white boys. Is that better?”
“Much,” Bridge nodded. “You weren’t here to kill her, then?” Michael shook his head.
“She was here, you weren’t. I wanted to make sure we understood each other.”
“That was your first mistake. I don’t like threats. They make my asshole itch.”
“No threat, mon. My instructions were specific. You and anyone around you are gone, but not before I get the information I need. Who was she?”
Bridge rested his arms on his knees and let his head sink to his chest. “You fucking moron. You just killed one of the most notorious hackers on the West Coast. The bounties on her head are probably worth twice what they are paying you for me. Didn’t you even do your due diligence?”
“She wasn’t important.”
Bridge gritted his teeth. “See, it’s that attitude that’s the reason I’m going to kill you. Who the fuck hired you? Did they pick you up at the loading docks of the local department store?”
“This job’s going to net me a cool million. Your little girlfriend couldn’t be worth that much.”
“More, asshole.” Bridge chuckled ruefully. “Your contract – it was corporate, wasn’t it?” Michael shrugged, confirming it without a word. “Yeah, I thought so. I swear, these suits really do not have a clue how to run a killing. It’s all brute force and show with them. Come in to a joint and waste everyone even remotely connected. Total waste. It’s like they don’t see anybody that lives in their world as able to do a deal. Now, if you come to me, maybe put a knife at her throat, talk to me like businessmen, maybe we could work something out. But no, it’s all raze the earth and salt the ground. No wonder they still can’t stamp out the mob.”
“Are you telling me you’d really have been willing to deal with a knife at your girlfriend’s throat? “
“Wouldn’t be the first time. Even that ain’t necessary though. Do your research, man. I don’t do violence. I’m a pussycat. I talk. That’s my thing. You want something, I get it for you. I’m your Bridge. Someone over there has what you want, I’m the conduit.”
“What if it’s you that has what I want?”
“That makes it so much easier. None of this messy shit. I got it, you want it. What is it?’
“Boulder.”
The stone of nervous anger dropped from Bridge’s throat to his stomach. His whole body tingled with fear, in his toes, his genitals, his ears. Bridge couldn’t help but show surprise in spite of his best efforts to hide it.
“You didn’t really think you could be involved in something that big and not suffer any consequences, did you?”
Bridge had not thought that, but perhaps in the back of his mind, he had hoped. The lack of any kind of pursuit, the smooth setup of the technomancers’ Council, all of it had happened with so few hitches. The Glowbug sales had gone well, the installation of Mu as a bodyguard and the street cred that had bought him. It had all lulled Bridge into a false sense of security, he now realized.
“One could always hope,” Bridge responded. “How’d they connect me with it?”
“Well, they don’t really have any firm connection to anything,” Michael began. “They know you were in the area right before that dragon went apeshit on GlobalNet. Satellite imagery has you entering the state of Colorado in a car with two others, scuttlebutt has you hanging around evacuee camps yet there’s no record of you entering them. Your teenage media sensation, Ms. Angst, mentioned reports filed from Boulder by someone, and you two have done busines done bus. But there’s no evidence that you ever left Boulder, yet somehow you’re back here. And you have a technomancer for a bodyguard, you’re helping this guy sell these ‘Glowbugs’ around town.”
Bridge stayed silent. “No answer for that? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Who’s your contact? Do you know Sanderson Fielding and if so, where is he? Is he your contact with these technomancers?”
The name Sanderson Fielding made Bridge’s head pop up. A wry smile crossed his lips, and inside he giggled as much as he could, given the circumstances. Whichever corporation had hired Michael, they were after Sanderson Fielding. That meant they really didn’t have a clue what had gone on in Boulder.
Fielding had been the first journalist to report on the existence of the technomancers, providing the GlobalNet with a first-hand view as Carl the Flaming Dragon attacked and was ‘killed’ by Colorado National Guard soldiers. Since then, he’d filed a few reports on the technomancers, using a combination of rumors, innuendo and careful distortion to build a mythology around the wizards who used technology to create spells. Every media corporation wanted an interview with Sanderson Fielding, and every utility corporation wanted him dead.
Only a few select people knew the truth about Fielding, though. He didn’t exist. He was a phantom, a virtual persona created by Bridge and propagated by Angela, Michael Freeman and a few other hackers. Bridge had dodged something of a bullet. If they were coming after Bridge for a connection to Fielding, it meant they really still didn’t know that Bridge was a silent partner of the technomancers. And so long as they didn’t have that piece of information, Bridge had wiggle room.<
br />
“Which corporation was it, then?” Bridge asked.
“Does it matter? Any corporation with energy interests wants a mana engine for research, and they want the Glowbug trade dead. Or in their hands, naturally. Babylon does not sleep on an open market.”
“I only wanted to know which specific one I should direct my rage towards once I get done with you. You’re right, though, it really doesn’t matter. They’re all bastards who deserve everything I’m about to do to them.”
Bridge was done with this conversation. He had been waiting to pull out his ace in the hole, trying to extract every bit of information out of Michael that he could. Bridge had gotten more than he would have expected, thanks to the hitman’s overconfidence. Michael had done at least enough homework to know that Bridge wasn’t a physical threat, and had gone no farther. He hadn’t counted on Bridge’s technomancer bodyguard, however. He had believed that so long as Mu wasn’t in the same room, the wizard wasn’t a threat.
Anticipating trouble was one of Bridge’s strengths. He had long anticipated someone coming after him, and despite the fact that neither Angela or his name had been in anyway connected with this apartment, he had prepared for the possibility that someone would find his home. Mu and he had designed a failsafe, a voice-activated spell, a ward that would obliterate the entire apartment and everything and everyone in it. The entire space entiree would be rendered as ash. Only Bridge could trigger it, and only Bridge and Mu had known about it, just in case.
Angela was dead, and Bridge needed to escape the heat. He struggled to his feet, his knees buckling a little as he did so. “I got one more thing to say to you,” Bridge began, all traces of a smile gone from his face.
Michael tossed a smug grin back. “What is that?”
“Fa-toom-sha.”
‘Fa-toom-sha? What are you…”
Fire, concussion, explosion, darkness.
Interlude
Gabby
March 10, 2029
1:33 p.m.
Gabby prided himself on being the kind of old school gangster nobody fucked with and for the most part, he fit that description. He dressed in his best cholo costume to do business, recognizing for his set and announcing his hardness. White wife-beater tee, nano-enhanced biceps festooned with tats signifying his proud membership in El Diablos. Short for Gabriel, Gabby had become more of an ironic nickname. He rarely spoke, an absolute vault anytime the police questioned him. Nacho himself, leader of El Diablos, had bestowed the nickname back when they were both street punks in Los Magos. Gabby had gotten nicked for a piss-ant gun possession charge. The gun had been part of a stash of weapons stolen from an LAPD precinct during the riots. He had refused to flip on the gun supplier, so Nacho had jokingly nicknamed him Gabby for being so talkative, and Gabby wore it proudly. When El Diablos had broken with Magos, Gabby had followed, buying completely into their ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality. The nano-steroids came soon after, exploding his body with garish strength. He had even gone so far as to add a cybernetic ceramic plate covering his chest and abdomen. He would be powerful. His body would be stronger than the bodies of his enemies and his inferiors. To that end, he had been plotting to take out his immediate superior, Hipolito, for the last month, but the opportunity had not yet arisen.
His shaved head sparkled in the early afternoon sunlight as he led his crew into a warehouse at the end of Factory Place. His brother Castro kicked the door open as loudly as he could to announce their presence, then gave way as Gabby strode through with his best tough-guy scowl. Xavier and Sergio brought up the rear. Though all were armed, none carried their gear out in the open, relying on their nano-enhanced bulk and cybernetic accoutrements to intimidate. Most of the time that worked.
The warehouse was the headquarters of Los Angeles Valley Shipping, a small-time outfit run by a wiry little white guy named Earnest. Earnest bought his protection from Los Magos, but he had the misfortune of being located on the border between Diablos and Magos territories. As the war had kicked up over the last two days, Earnest found himself caught in the middle. Yesterday, Gabby had given Earnest a choice. Come over to El Diablos side and pay the increased protection tax, or get shot in the face after watching his business burned to the ground. Gabby considered it a simple choice, but he had given the worm 24 hours to think it over. That time was up.
Gabby’s loud entrance had alerted the warehouse workers. Most fled. One decided to be a hero. The 6’6” black dude came strolling up to Gabby smacking his left hand with a crowbar in his right, his posture full of threat. Gabby smiled at him, silently urging him to attack. Castro raised his cybernetic left arm and giggled as the leads from his hidden taser flashed out and struck the hero on either side of the windpipe. The man crumpled almost immediately, twitching and screaming as the voltage coursed through him. “What’s that? I can’t hear you, blackie!” Castro shouted into the man’s face as he tittered with glee. Xavier planted a kick squarely in the prone man’s ribs.
“Time’s up, Earnest!” Gabby shouted to the deserted warehouse. A line of glassed-in cubicles made up the office area to the right of the entrance, but they appeared empty. Crates were stacked in neat rows all through the loading bays, and a few trucks sat in the doorways with their cab doors opened. The whole area was silent except for the droning hum of the giant cooling fans. Nothing moved. Earnest was nowhere to be seen. ‘Surely they ain’t got out that quick,’ Gabby thought to himself. At this time of day, the loading area should be a beehive of activity, forklifts buzzing around with their cargo, workers moving goods from here to there. He motioned for Xavier and Sergio to search the loading docks and drew a gigantic pistol from his waistband. Castro followed him to the offices, but they were as empty as they looked.
“You think he’s out to lunch, bro?” Castro asked. Gabby’s unibrow furrowed. Something didn’t feel right. He peered into the darkness of the loading area, spotting Xavier. The young Mexican had reached one of the trucks and raised the cargo door with a cacophonous clatter.
Three quick shots rang out, throwing Xavier’s body back into a stack of crates, where he fell to the floor and lay still. Gabby threw Castro and himself into one of the offices, seeking shelter behind a thick oak desk. Bullets rained through the air, shattering the cubicle’s glass and showering them with shards. He didn’t see where Sergio had gotten to, but as the first salvo of shots subsided, he could hear Sergio’s SMG burp into life.
Castro cursed next to him. “What do we do, bro? Call up the boys?” Gabby grunted affirmatively. He stuck a cautious eye above the desk, spotting their attackers. Five Magos poured out of one of the trucks, armed with a variety of weapons. Gabby aimed his hand cannon, the gun’s built-in sensors spewing reams of targeting data onto the HUD built into his eyes. The gun picked a target, a beefy Magos with cybernetic goggles where his eyes should be, and Gabby squeezed the trigger twice. He smiled with pleasure as he heard the booming of his gun, so loud it ecso loud hoed off the tiny walls of the office. The gun’s targeting had done the trick, both shots catching the target in the cheeks, evaporating his face. Gabby caught a glimpse of the cyber goggles flying through the air before ducking down again. The wall behind him splintered with return fire.
“Light ‘em up, bro,” he screamed at Castro. He squeezed off three quick shots over the desk without looking, giving his brother time to pop up. Castro pointed the cyber arm into the warehouse and fired the mini-missile from a port next to the taser. The thin shriek of a finger-sized missile slicing through the air made Gabby’s ears hurt, but the explosion that followed deafened him completely.
Castro’s shot had hit the truck the Magos had emerged from, the cargo area absolutely disintegrating in flame. ‘Must have been the incendiary round,’ Gabby thought with absentminded clarity. Through the ringing in his ears, he thought he could hear the keening wail of a man screaming in abject torment.
Gabby gave his gun a quick examination. When that douchebag in a suit had sold them these guns, he’d ma
de great pains to point out their big-time cutting edge features. All their shiny new weapons had embedded target cams which could link with any interface system like the HUD in Gabby’s eye. He flipped the switch that turned the link on. The split vision in his right eye threw him off for a minute, the tiny targeting window displaying a double image of his feet. Gabby shook off the dizziness and placed the gun on the desk above him, tracking for targets. The screaming Magos had been too close to the truck, and his body had been splashed with fuel from the gas tank. Falling to the ground, the burning gangster twitched as his screaming died off. A Magos head poked out from behind a crate, and Gabby’s finger twitched involuntarily. The shot grazed the Magos’ cheek bone, tossing him back away from his cover. Three tracer shots blazed through the air from the right. Sergio must have flanked the Magos’ position and finished what Gabby started.