SINdicate

by J. T. Nicholas

  Our “revolution” to date had manifested itself in certain groups—none of which were directly associated with Silas or the synthetics he had gathered—taking to the streets in protest. Those protests had been met with counter-protests, and, as was often the case, violence ensued. More than one riot had swept through New Lyons as emotions ran high. And there was always the portion of any protest that espoused anarchy and was looking more to make trouble than make a point.

  In a dark and shameful part of my soul, I was grateful for those troublemakers. I knew that the only thing keeping the NLPD, the feds, and every other law enforcement agency in the country off my back was the general state of disorder that had persisted for nearly a month. That type of persistent civil disobedience required more than a line of riot cops to placate, and the vast majority of the police presence in the city was distracted from trying to find Mama Campbell’s favorite son. Which, coupled with Silas’s nearly preternatural understanding of the surveillance coverage of the city and my own understanding of police procedure, afforded me at least some freedom to move around the city. If I was careful. And if my luck held.

  Somewhere, in the midst of that chain of thought, I drifted off to sleep. It wasn’t a restful sleep. It was plagued with images of Annabelle—not the bucolic memories of youth, but the torment of her death—and faceless mobs rioting in the streets and masked corporate hit men with machine guns. And somewhere, underneath it all, was the wailing cry of an infant. It was that cry that pulled me from my restless sleep—and, on opening my eyes, I heard it still.

  The restaurant, which, day or night, had previously been filled with the low rumble of hushed conversation, had fallen into silence. Every face—every beautiful, symmetrical, synthetic face—was turned toward the kitchen doors and the makeshift medical room that had been set up there for the delivery. From beyond those doors came that wailing cry, strong and clear, carrying, for those gathered in the dining area, a strident ring of hope.

  Silas stepped through the swinging doors, a swaddled bundle in his arms. His massive hands cradled the fragile infant with a care and softness that any father would have been hard-pressed to match. He held the child aloft, presenting it to the crowd. I could see that it wasn’t actually swaddling clothes that wrapped the baby, but rather what looked like a series of T-shirts, but that didn’t matter. From the rapt looks on the faces of the synthetics, the kid could have been wrapped in burlap and he would have garnered the same reaction.

  Silas spoke into the silence. “I give you Jacinda Evelynsdotter,” he said without preamble. “The first naturally born member of our race.” A small, warm smile pulled at his lips. “We lack the proper instruments to give you the standard measurements, but Ms. Morita assures us that she is a perfect little girl in every respect.”

  I felt a tightening in my chest at the name. Coincidence, or had Evelyn actually named her daughter after me? The woman had barely looked at me, much less spoken to me since we first pulled her from Fowler’s clutches. I felt a little surge of pride, though I knew I would never ask her outright. Something about Evelyn made her the kind of woman you didn’t approach in so direct a manner.

  “And there is one other small matter,” Silas continued.

  His big, blunt fingers moved with surprising dexterity, pulling back the swaddling clothes near the child’s neck. He turned the infant—who appeared to be sleeping quite contentedly despite the movement and handling—so at least those closest to Silas could see the nape of her neck. I wasn’t close enough to see, but I didn’t need to. The reaction from those who could—the sudden, indrawn breaths, the muttered words of thankful prayer, and yes, even the tears, told me exactly what Silas was showing his fellow synthetics. Or rather, what he wasn’t showing them.

  The skin tag. The scannable, barcode-like “birthmark” that identified a synthetic as a synthetic to anyone who bothered to look. The code that gave you the “product” history of that synthetic. Up until the birth of Jacinda, every man and woman in the restaurant, excepting only Tia and myself, had borne one of those marks. It was a slave brand, but despite the propaganda, synthetics were not “born” with it at all. Regardless of whether our rebellion prospered, Jacinda could grow up free of that burden, at the very least. And the watching synthetics could see that, and knew far better than I what it could mean for the girl.

  “I must return little Jacinda to her mother now,” Silas said. “But know that this,” he raised the girl slightly once more, “this is our true victory. No matter what happens, we have proven that we can be free. And if we can be, than eventually, we must be.” And with those words, he turned and went back through the swinging doors.

  A few minutes later, a tired and ragged-looking Tia emerged. Conversation stopped when she appeared, nearly as completely as it had for Silas and Jacinda. She seemed oblivious to the silence, though she did glance around in some measure of confusion. Then her eyes found mine, and she smiled and waved. I smiled and waved back, despite the ridiculous feeling that swept through me as I did so. We weren’t two friends meeting at a bar, after all. But Tia seemed to have that effect on me.

  She made her way through the crowd and dropped unceremoniously onto the cot beside me. She pressed her knuckles into the small of her back and stretched, and I made a very careful effort to keep my eyes in a proper place as the motion combined with the thin scrubs did all kinds of interesting things. “I’m tired,” she said simply.

  “It looks like everything went okay.”

  She nodded, her eyes mostly closed. “Textbook delivery. She could have done it without me, without anyone, really. I was mostly there to give some encouragement and in case something went wrong.” She shrugged, and an impish grin brightened her features. “Humans have been doing this whole birth thing a lot longer than modern medicine, you know.”

  I smiled back. “I did, in fact, know that, doctor.”

  “Yeah, well,” she gave me a sudden, hard push and I had to scramble to catch my balance, staggering to my feet as I was shoved bodily from the cot.

  “Like I said, I’m tired.” She stretched out on the cot and smiled up at me like a cat who had just gotten into the cream. There was something about that smile that was undeniably adorable and yet, ever so slightly, naughty.

  Get a hold of yourself, Campbell. She’s barely into her twenties. Way too young for you. I shook my head, but still grabbed the blanket that had been knocked to the floor in my less-than-graceful exit from the cot. I flared it out and draped it over her. “Sleep well,” I said, and her smile deepened as she wriggled around a bit, pulling the blanket tight to her and snuggling in. Her eyes closed, and with an efficiency that would make any soldier proud, she dropped off to sleep.

  I watched her for a moment, remembering another young woman who had stolen my heart so many years ago. Something in Tia reminded me of Annabelle, something in her innocence, despite her undeniable strength. It brought a familiar ache to my chest, but the sadness was different somehow. Not less exactly. But the…intensity…of it seemed to have faded. Was that because, for the first time since I had dealt with Annabelle’s parents, I was finally taking direct action to fix a broken system?

  I didn’t know, couldn’t know, the answer to that. But I did know it was time to get to the confronting.

  Chapter 16

  Dragging Silas away from Evelyn and Jacinda proved harder than I’d anticipated. The man had an almost paternal attitude toward the pair, enough so you would think he was the father. I could understand—if things went the way we were all hoping, Silas might very well go down in history as the “father” of the synthetics—Dr. Kaphiri aside—and Evelyn as their “mother.” He might not have contributed any DNA to the equation, but certainly the child would not have been born had it not been for his efforts. And, in some modest part, my own, I supposed. What did that make me? The weird uncle?

  I did manage, finally, to drag him from Evelyn’s side and remi
nd him of the task before us. We still needed to find Al’awwal, or at least check out the coordinates Dr. Kaphiri had left for us. I’d checked the news that morning. There were still plenty of protests underway, and the NLPD was stretched damn near to the breaking point. That thought saddened me some, but it also provided me the needed cover to move around the city. The parts of the city where the protesters weren’t, at least. But I didn’t have Silas’s knack for avoiding the omnipresent electronic eyes, and I had no doubt there were entire server farms gobbling up the data from every single one of them for the sole purpose of trying to find my smiling face.

  More checkpoints were going up, too, but sometime in the night, La Sorte, as “something to do” had hacked in to the NLPD systems. He couldn’t go very deep—the Cyber guys were pretty damned good, too—but he got deep enough to get the schedule for the “random” checkpoints for the next couple of weeks. Best of all, the approving officer was Francoise Fortier. I didn’t want the breach discovered—if it was, the NLPD would change the schedule around, but I damn sure wouldn’t cry if Fortier ended up with a little more egg on his greasy face.

  The car, a different beater that Silas had dug up from somewhere, chattered and shook as it made its way out of the city, pushing toward what had once been the Dixie Delta Canal. The canal itself had been destroyed—well, maybe “co-opted” would be a better word—its borders lost and blended into the waters of Lake Salvador. We were pushing farther west and north than the former canal, heading inland toward the city of Thibodaux. We avoided the highways—I certainly didn’t need Silas to tell me that—but the synthetic’s knowledge of the back roads, access roads, and in some cases, things I wasn’t quite sure were roads at all, was positively encyclopedic. Coupled with the data La Sorte had gathered, I felt fairly safe from the prying eyes of the panopticon.

  Silas remained silent the entire ride, save to point out a turn here or there. He never consulted a screen, never checked a map. I didn’t know how the hell he did it, but given that GPS could theoretically be tracked, I was happy enough to leave him in silence and let him do it. I kept finding my mind turning back to Tia Morita and the naughty little smile she had given me the night before when she had shoved me off the cot. Maybe there was something there worth pursuing, and the age difference be damned. She seemed like a smart, caring woman, and she sure as hell was cute enough. Too cute, probably, for someone like me. Still, she had seemed at least a little interested….

  “Detective?” Silas said, his voice holding the barest hint of irritation. I realized it had to be at least the third time he’d said it while I daydreamed about the coroner’s assistant.

  “Yeah?” Even to my own ears, I sounded sheepish.

  “That’s your turn.” His pale finger pointed to a road coming up on the left. No. Not a road. A driveway. As we came closer, I realized it was a very long driveway, wending its way up a slight incline. The driveway was paved and stretched at least a hundred and fifty yards, ending in a massive plantation house built atop the hill.

  “Shit,” I muttered, as the driveway came up faster than anticipated. I was driving manually, a skill all cops still had to maintain at a reasonable level and one I’d had a lot of practice with of late, but sometimes it was difficult to remember that the vehicle wasn’t about to make the turn for me. I hit the brakes, too hard, and Silas and I jerked forward against our seatbelts. The tires squealed as I laid the wheel over, cutting across the oncoming traffic lane and leaving twin lines of melted rubber across the pavement. The car bounced over the line where the driveway met the road but recovered nicely.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Perhaps I should have tried to warn you earlier. You seemed lost in thought.” Silas’s tone was once again emotionless, but I felt a tiny hint of color creeping up my face. There was no way in hell I was going to tell him just what I had been pondering.

  “That’s a big house,” I said instead, looking at what was, without doubt, a big damn house. It crouched on the hill like a fat gargoyle, the architecture hearkening back to the plantation days but seeming more like the abode of a burgeoning vampire than the home of a southern belle. Or a synthetic in hiding, for that matter. “How are we going to play this?”

  “Play what, Detective?” Silas asked.

  “You’re a hundred years old, and yet somehow, you don’t get colloquialisms?”

  “I am not a hundred years old, Detective. Not by a long shot.”

  I grinned and waved a hand, dismissing his objection. “Yeah, yeah. Ninety. Whatever. The point is, I’m going just about as slow as I can manage, and that house is getting here awfully damn quick. And we have no idea what’s waiting for us. So, what the hell are we going to do when we get there? I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t a fucking mansion. What do we do if this Al’awwal doesn’t live there anymore and instead it’s some nice, law-abiding couple only too happy to call the cops when they see the terrorist and his synthetic sidekick?”

  “I’m not entirely sure anybody lives there, Campbell,” Silas said, ignoring my sidekick comment. “The building appears to be in something of a state of disrepair.”

  We were still too far away for me to make out that kind of detail. Synthetic superiority at play again, I supposed. Still, after we’d rolled forward another twenty yards or so, I could see what Silas meant. Though the house looked fine from a distance, as we stopped in front of it, I could see the peeling paint, the broken glass on some of the windows, the weed-infested lawn. The house itself was quite impressive, three stories, with massive columns arrayed along the broad front porch. It was the kind of place that would have fit the bill perfectly as the setting for a Deep South drama, with formal balls, dashing gentlemen and blushing belles. Now, however, it looked more like the kind of place that kids would dare one another to stay in overnight. It did not look like the place where anyone still lived.

  That illusion was shattered as the door swung open and a man stepped onto the porch. I didn’t notice much about him at first. My eye was drawn to the stubby Israeli-made bullpup battle rifle he held at the low ready. My own hand slipped to my forty-five, but I’d already been in one hopelessly outmatched gunfight this week. That really should be my limit. He must have seen my hand move, because the rifle came up.

  “Enough of that,” he barked. “Hands on the steering wheel. You, on the dash,” he added, gesturing at Silas with the barrel.

  I eased my hands back to the wheel. For a moment, I thought about stomping on the gas. It wasn’t easy to shoot a moving target, particularly when you considered things like deflection from safety glass and metal. Then again, the magazine visible behind the trigger guard looked like it held at least thirty rounds, and that was a lot of chances to get it right. Instead of flooring it, I offered my most disarming smile and looked past the rifle to the man holding it.

  He was tall, athletic, appeared to be in his early thirties. Olive skin, black hair. Handsome, though not in the almost-too-perfect way common to synthetics. If this was Al’awwal, he hadn’t been designed with quite the same level of unearthly beauty that the Toys possessed. “Easy, there,” I said. “We come in peace.”

  “You’re trespassing,” he replied flatly. “Leave. Now.”

  “Easy, friend,” I said again. “We’re just looking for someone. An old friend, you might say. By the name of Al’awwal Kaphiri. You know him?”

  “I am him, and you’re no friend of mine. I’m not going to ask you again.” It would have been the point where, had this been a movie, he would have cycled the charging handle to chamber a round. Of course, this wasn’t a movie, and only an idiot would wait for a properly intimidating moment to load their fucking weapon. Al’awwal wasn’t an idiot. That would probably be a good thing in the long run—at least if we managed to survive the next few minutes.

  “Do not be so certain of that, First,” Silas said. As always, his voice was calm, soothing, confident. A
nd yet, there was something in his eyes as he stared at Al’awwal. A look that was almost…wonder? My first thought was that he was struck by the idea of meeting the literal first synthetic, but that didn’t really seem like the kind of thing that would throw Silas off. After all, he knew that was what we had set out to do. No. I realized it wasn’t that. It was that the first synthetic was pointing a weapon at us, and I had no doubt at all in my mind that Al’awwal was willing and able to pull the trigger.

  Synthetics were conditioned to be incapable of violence against humans. Silas had worked to overcome that conditioning, and made some progress. But even throwing a wrench at Fowler had left Silas weak and shaking, unable to do anything but try to recover his faculties for a good five minutes. And here was Al’awwal, looking for all the world like he’d been born with a rifle in hand. How long would the enslavement of the synthetics have lasted if they could take up arms? Win or lose, I expected the issue would have been settled a long time ago.

  Al’awwal, in turn, was studying Silas. It was clear that the big albino was a synthetic—his unique physiology alone was proof of that. That realization made the first examine me more closely in turn, and I saw the sudden rush of recognition. The bullpup lowered slightly, the barrel at least moving off the direct line to my brainbox. “You are the one from the news.”

  “Yep,” I said. “That’s me all right. Fugitive number one. Anarchist in chief.” I didn’t know what it was about life-or-death situations, but for some reason, they tended to bring out the smartass in me. If there was something the opposite of a survival instinct, that was probably it. “So now you know I’m not selling vacuum cleaners or Girl Scout cookies. Maybe you can put the gun down? Or at least point it all the way at the ground? As is, if you pull that trigger, I’m still going to be walking pretty funny.”