Apex Cypher (Prequel to The Techxorcist series)

by Barnes, Colin F.

  She held up the bag of parts.

  “Got you a delivery. Same deal as before, yeah? Oh, and d’ya mind if we chill out here for a while? Things got a bit hot in the station.”

  His eyes darted then, looked past Gabe and Petal into the darkened corridor. “Hot? What happened?”

  “This crazy bitch only went and killed Tatsu. Stabbed him right in the chest and guts. It was epic! Oh, and Miyoko and her bitches are dead too.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “This true?” he said to Petal.

  She just shrugged.

  “We had to defend ourselves,” Gabe said.

  Jericho laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure ya’ll did.” He took the bag from Holly, peered inside, and smiled. “Ok, ya’ll can chill for a bit. But don’t be pulling any bullshit. I ain’t a patient man. You get me?”

  “Yeah, we get you,” Gabe said.

  Jericho turned his back, waited for the others to come through. He was clearly confident of his own safety to just casually turn his back like that. When Gabe entered the room, he could understand why.

  Within the penthouse, two of the four walls lit up with holo-projectors, showing what looked like live feeds. When he inspected further, he noticed he had the apartment building covered and the surrounding parts of the city. In one square of the screen he saw the rabid pack that were chasing him outside the train station, standing below the terrace gantry looking for a way of getting up to it. One of them had a rope with a piece of metal tied to the end. He was swinging it up and over and trying to pull himself up, but he just fell to the floor.

  On the other wall was an open-plan kitchen. Still in good, and by the smells of the place, working condition. The kitchen was separated from a living area by a low dividing wall and in front of that sat a perfect-condition sofa.

  Opposite the sofa was a wide window over-looking the city. The glass had the telltale grid of graphene reinforcement. He noticed that on his way up to the apartment all the other windows were broken, blasted through. It seemed that not only did the penthouse give you the best view and space but also the safety of graphene-glass.

  “Nice place,” Petal said. “Rent high?”

  “You’re a funny girl,” Jericho said. He tossed the bag casually onto the sofa, fell next to them sinking into the cushions. He patted the space next to him. “Why don’t you come sit here, tell me a story.” He leered, but Gabe knew it was posturing—all part of his image.

  “Nah, no offence,” Petal said, “but I don’t have a story. What you see is what you get.”

  “A little punky killer?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Hey Holly, these are good’uns,” he said, rummaging through the parts and holding them up to the pale-blue light of the holoscreens. “What poor bastard did you kill for these?”

  “No one this time. I made a deal with ‘em. Basically, they give ‘em to me and they don’t die. I was low on ammo.”

  “Smart thinking.”

  Gabe hovered around, taking in the place, noticing the various servers he had running and wired up to the place. He could sense with his internal interface that he was running a network here; either sending or receiving data but Gabe couldn’t access it. He had excellent stealth tech running. Probably military, if the information Shelley was anything to go by.

  “Fuck, man, sit down, will ya? Take some weight off. You’re making me nervous.” Jericho indicated to Gabe the free armchair set against the wall, next to the floating speaker-globe of his sound system. Nice bit of kit. Ancient now, but from what he heard outside, it still sounded good.

  He hadn’t realised it, but as he took the seat this was as comfortable as he had been in years. The place was really comfortable. And he yearned to relax, perhaps listen to some music again—anything to not be the killer or survivor for a short while. He could understand why Jericho had holed himself up here. For a few moments he felt normal again.

  “What, man?” Jericho said, starting at Gabe. “What’s the matter? You’ve got a weird smile on your face.”

  “This might be a strange request from someone ya’ve not met before. But that music ya had playing earlier. Would ya mind if—”

  “You want it back on?”

  “If that’s cool.”

  “Yeah, man, that’s fucking cool. You like the reggae, eh?”

  “It reminds me of home.”

  “Likewise, man.”

  Jericho leaned over, gestured at the holoscreen. The dub beats of a reggae track filled the room. Petal smiled, reached for Gabe’s hands. She lifted him out of the chair and together they danced to the music, Petal pogo-jumping, and Gabe just let his body move to the triplet rhythm almost hypnotically.

  Jericho, and Holly soon joined them. The latter pogoed with Petal, giggling.

  For the next hour, their host played a mix of Reggae, R n B, and some old rock. At one point, Gabe noticed tears on his cheeks. It was a mix of joy and sadness. For so long, he’d been in survival mode, always being tense, fearful. He was always filled with anger for not getting back to his family in time, but here in the penthouse, with friendly company, and his only family in Petal, he felt for the first time in years a sense of peace.

  But as they wound down, the music that he grew up with reminded him too much. Reminded him of the bad choices he made. It made him long to see his mother and father again. Long to be back in the shelter with his people.

  Collapsing into the armchair, tired physically and emotionally, Gabe caught his breath. Petal and Holly were chatting in the kitchen, sharing drinks from Jericho’s fridge. He’d even had a beer. A real beer!

  “Hey, man, wanna drag on this?” Jericho leaned forward, handed Gabe a roll-up.

  “What is it?” Gabe said, unable to identify the sweet smell that came from the smoke. He’d sampled various drugs during his time with the gangs, but nothing that smelled like that. It had a very distinctive pungent quality.

  “A special blend of herbs that I grow myself. With all the radiation, loads of weird shit started to grow. Well, one day, I got a bit bored and decided to smoke of it. This one I call ‘Sweet Blue.’ It’s fucking epic.”

  “What’s the high like?” Gabe asked, suspicious. Jericho had been smoking it for the past hour and seemed okay, just chilled and friendly.

  “It’s not that high, really,” Jericho said. “It’s like a painkiller. Just numbs things, makes you see things in a better light.”

  “I hate to be a downer, but I’ll pass, thanks. I’ve got some serious allergies to things. Don’t wanna take the risk, ya know?”

  “Fair enough, man. I can respect that.” He gave Gabe a wide beaming smile as he sat back and took a long drag on his joint.

  Gabe wondered about Shelley’s warnings about Jericho. He’d been nothing but an accommodating and generous guest. He later mentioned that he was having issues with the Mayors and their ‘psychotic ninja whores’ and that Petal and Gabe had done him a big favour, so perhaps that was partly the reason for his welcoming of them.

  Which made of course made Gabe’s next action that little bit more difficult.

  Part 7 - The Handover

  Gabe got up from his chair. “Mind if I use ya bathroom?” he asked Jericho.

  The other man pointed behind him to a doorway next to the kitchen. “Through there and first on the left, man.”

  “Cheers.”

  Gabe gave him a smile, and walked to the bathroom. He had to time it right.

  On the holoscreen, he noticed that a camera was recording the bathroom. He had a feed from every room in the penthouse. They switched over in sixty-second intervals. This particular feed came around every three minutes. As soon as the feed switched to the bedroom, he knew he would have a clear couple of minutes.

  Once inside he undid his belt and pulled his t
rousers down to his thighs. Strapped to the inside was a graphene-steel knife eight inches long and just nanometres thick. It curved away towards the tip from the equally thin handle. A piece of rubber across the cutting edge prevented it from cutting into his thigh.

  He undid the strip, removed the rubber protective piece, and placed the knife up his sleeve. He originally thought about the pistol that he recovered from one of the girls back at the station, but that was in his jacket that he took off and left draping over a chair. It would be too obvious to reach for it. And besides, it didn’t hurt to have a backup if he needed it.

  Back in the living room, Holly was sitting at Jericho’s feet enjoying a pull on the joint. Petal was sitting in Gabe’s chair sipping a beer. She looked at him, and before she could betray him with a quizzical expression, he gave her a quick shake of the head. It was one of their secret signals to stay quiet and let him do his thing.

  He could have just sent her a message across their private network, but given the amount of computing in the penthouse he fully expected to be hacked and monitored. As good as a hacker as Jericho might be, one thing he couldn’t do was hack someone’s brain.

  As Gabe came up to the back of the sofa on which Jericho was sat, he reached out a hand ready to grab the guy by the neck. He was determined to recover the information Shelley wanted in the quickest possible way, and his experience had told him people were much quicker to help when their lives depended on it.

  “I wouldn’t do that, man,” Jericho said, casually exhaling a plume of green-tinged smoke.

  Gabe stopped, unsure of what to do next. He wasn’t expecting that.

  Jericho turned to face him. “I wondered how long it’d take you. I guess you enjoyed the home comforts too much to act quickly, eh? Most people do, you know. It’s why I got so many enemies these days. People who want to avenge the death of their friends who came to me, tried to take advantage of my hospitality. Holly, be a darling.”

  The young girl jumped from her seated position and pointed a pistol at Petal.

  “You see, Gabriel, I’ve been at this game for a while now. I knew what you wanted before you even got to my door. I saw you both snooping around. I saw that you came from the east. Only one kind of person comes from the east these days.”

  “And what kind’s that?” Gabe said, letting the blade inch down his arm ready to flash it out if he needed. He gave Petal a quick glance. She looked relaxed, still sipping on her beer. He knew she’d already anticipated this; she’d moved his coat from the chair. It now lay in a pile on the floor next to the chair she was sat on. She’d likely have already pocketed the pistol. He doubted Holly would be quick enough for Petal.

  “Those doing jobs for that crazy bitch Shelley. What is it she wants now? A server, DNA-drives, information on them damned planes she’s trying to fix?”

  “Something like that,” Gabe said.

  Jericho stubbed out the joint on an ashtray sitting on the arm of the sofa. He stood up, brushed the ash from his jacket. He walked past Gabe, who tracked his every movement, ready to strike. But Jericho didn’t seem to care as he left his back exposed. He reached the fridge and took out two more beers.

  He removed the tops, and held one out to Gabe.

  “Take it, man. Chill out, we can work something out.”

  Gabe didn’t take the beer, wanting to keep his hands free. Jericho shrugged his shoulders and walked past him, almost brushing against him as he went, provoking Gabe to strike, but he didn’t take the bait. Gabe was reckless at times, but he wasn’t stupid. No one was that calm unless they had something going on. Jericho took his seat and sipped from the beer.

  “You know she’s fucked-up in the head, right?” Jericho said. “Shelley’s cracked, man, completely. The last time I saw her she was chowing down on the liver of my best friend. That was after she stunned us both and tied us up. She started with him first, making me watch as she skinned him alive. Have you seen a man being skinned alive, Gabe? Petal?”

  Gabe shrugged. “I’ve seen things you could barely imagine.” Sure, skinning someone was awful, barely imaginable, but Gabe had seen what a gang would do to a rival gang member in order to stamp their authority. When people got hungry, real hungry, the level of debasement they would sink to knew no bounds.

  “So you can relate,” Jericho added. “How will you feel when you slice me up and take what it is you want back to Shelley, and she has you and Petal trapped? How will you feel when that mad bitch takes her blades to Petal’s pretty face, slicing it off with the expertise that can only come from years of practice, eh? How will you feel when you’re forced to watch your friend scream and cry in agony as she systematically removes all her organs and preps them for lunch and dinner?”

  “That ain’t gonna happen,” Gabe said. “We ain’t stupid. I saw her handiwork, I know what she’s capable of, but frankly I don’t care. She has something I want—”

  “Then just kill the bitch and take it. You’ll be doing this world a favour.”

  Gabe had to admit he had a point, but how many more people did he have to kill to survive? He’d done enough of that back in Hong Kong, vowed to curb that side of him. If he started now, he didn’t know if he’d be able to stop, and given the things he’d had to do to survive, he was no one to judge Shelley, Jericho, or anyone. Everyone got by in his or her own way, as screwed as it might be. He weren’t some wandering judge. It weren’t his responsibility to snuff out the crazy and the dangerous. All that mattered to him was surviving each day in the best way he could, and with the least blood spilled.

  “I can’t do that,” Gabe said.

  Jericho laughed, slapped his hand on the arm of sofa, and sent the ashtray flying.

  “Fuck, man, you’re something else. You think you can intimidate me into giving you want you want when you have a conscience? If you can’t kill that mad bitch, then I know you ain’t gonna do nothing to me. Leaves you in limbo right now, don’t it? Can’t kill, won’t kill, but you need whatever she’s promised you. And for what? What is it you want from me?”

  “You offering to do a deal?” Gabe asked. He glimpsed over to Petal. She was eyeing Holly carefully, planning her next move. Like him, she kept silent over the private network, but he could tell by the tension in her face she was ready to act. Holly didn’t stand a chance.

  Jericho placed the beer on the floor and put his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  “I’m always open to a deal. You know, perhaps if you opened with that instead of sneaking up behind me with bad intentions, I could’ve done you a favour. But now, you’ve just pissed me off, and no one disrespects me in my own home and gets out alive.”

  Part 8 - The Node

  The gunshot made Gabe twitch, dive to his side, and dodge an unseen bullet. He tripped, crashed into the wall of holoscreens to his right, cracking his head against the solid glass surface. As the pain flared, colours and shapes filling his vision, he turned his head, expecting Jericho to finish him.

  But he couldn’t.

  “Holy shit,” Gabe said. Holly stood over Jericho’s prone body, aiming her gun to the back of his head. She pulled the trigger for a second time, executing him. His head jolted under the blast, brain matter, skull, and blood erupted in a miniature cloud, covering the front of the girl.

  “Holy shit,” Gabe repeated.

  Petal stood from the chair, moved to the girl, and placed a hand on her shoulder. Holly turned, dropping her arm to her side, the gun falling from her fingers, crashing against the floor. Blood dripping from her young face.

  And that’s what got Gabe the most. This kind of killing was too much for someone so young, yet the way she dispatched the Mayors’ allies back in the station it wasn’t entirely surprising, but the coldness, it gripped Gabe’s throat. This world wasn’t the only thing that had suffered at the hands of The Family-induced Cataclysm.
Humanity itself had been destroyed. Sanctity of life was as dead as Jericho.

  Holly wrapped her arms around Petal’s waist. Petal seemed to not understand what the girl wanted, but awkwardly brought her arms around her and looked over at Gabe.

  She wasn’t wearing her goggles. Her eyes were turning to a swirling mix of red and black. She wasn’t far from being over-capacity. That thought pulled Gabe’s attentions back to the present.

  “Holly, girl,” Gabe said, standing. He stepped over Jericho’s body, placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him, her expression impassive, cold.

  “Why?” Gabe asked. “Why’d ya do it?”

  “I had to stop him,” she said quietly, as if observing a funeral protocol in reverence for the recent dead. “You’re good people. I wanted to help. Petal needs help. Jericho wouldn’t have given it. And...” She looked away, closing her eyes, grimacing. A face of shame.

  “He touched you?” Petal asked.

  With her eyes still closed she nodded her head. Wiped the blood from her face with the sleeve of her tatty sweater. Petal wrapped an arm around her shoulder, gave her the embrace she needed. Then the tears and sobs came.

  Between the chokes and gasps, Holly said, “I loved him like a father once. But then he started to hit me.”

  “It’s okay,” Petal said. “You don’t need to explain. You had to do what you had to do.”

  Gabe stood silently trying not to get to deep into the girl’s misery. As terrible as it was, he had to keep his and Petal’s goals at the forefront of his mind. Now Jericho was no longer an issue, they had to find the information Shelley wanted, and find a node to download some of the AIs and viruses within Petal, but he’d give the girl a few a minutes at least.

  While Petal and Holly talked it out, he grabbed Jericho’s limp arm and dragged his body out of the main living area of the room and into one of the spare, empty bedrooms. He at least thought with it out of the way, Holly would be less traumatised, not having that constant reminder of what she’d done.