Nanoshock

by K C Alexander

  I looked down. “Whoa.”

  He looked down too. A large fan of asphalt had hardened, lighter gray than the sun-beaten tar around it. Didn’t try to suck the grit off my boots as I stepped onto it.

  Much to my pleasure, it was his turn to strike a victory pose. Although he was much more subtle about it – a thumbs up in my direction. “I do good work.”

  “When you get around to it,” I said, laughing. It turned into a wince as one ear buzzed so loudly, I lost my sense of balance. I locked my knees, fought through the eerie sense of vertigo. Goddamn nerve tech.

  “Wah.” Banh elbowed her way between me and Channing, forcing a gap. “Are you guys seeing this?”

  Whoops. We were not. Too focused on the immediate – which naturally included pushing corp-licker buttons while admiring the size of Channing’s exposed metaphorical dick – we’d missed the real shocker of the day.

  The doors still stood. Scratched and covered in soot, hinges secured in the frame and utterly unfazed by our attempts at breaking and entering.

  The rest of the wall around had literally exploded into countless pieces of carnage. Plaster and splinters, crumbled stone and cement, twisted beams and unrecognizable steel thrown in every direction.

  “Well,” I said after a moment. “He didn’t get the doors open.”

  I swear I heard Channing’s laugh, a lot more relaxed than it was at first. I’d wear him down.

  “Coordinates lock the facility about twelve meters away,” Feliz said, ignoring us all in favor of the data streaming over the monovisor inset into her faceplate. “Since that’s impossible, looks like we’re going vertical.” She tipped her head to me. “Bitches first.”

  “We drawing straws?” I asked blandly. “Or just giving Lindsay the win?”

  A hiss rattled the link. He tensed up beside me.

  “Just go,” Feliz snapped.

  I strode past them, assault rifle tucked under my arm, barrel down. It saved the stress I’d put on my arm later, though adrenaline always made the aches and pains go away. Best drug there ever was.

  If only it swatted the wasps in my head, too.

  The team followed me, coordinator in the middle. Silence on the line.

  I tilted my head. “Why don’t we have an operator?”

  “I double,” Feliz answered, finally shooting for professional voice. “Last job, you lost contact underground. We assumed the same would happen here.”

  “Fair enough.” And underground was where we headed.

  Much as Greg suggested, very little was left of the interior. Then again, Channing hadn’t helped that. We crunched into debris, boots cracking on rock we couldn’t see and heads-up displays working overtime to catalog surroundings in the billowing dust. It was the perfect time for an ambush, but none came.

  The tension in the air should have been way worse.

  Instinct told me we’d find nothing here. “This floor’s empty,” I said, deviating from the fan we’d spread into. “Find the way down and we’ll find heavier resistance.”

  “Heavier than that?” Damrosch asked skeptically.

  “Dunno. I can’t find traces of whatever nailed us down.”

  Channing chuckled, the green outline of his broad shoulders lifting. “I am not sorry.”

  “What makes you think we won’t find anything?” Lindsay demanded. He kicked through a pile of rubble, like he needed to prove me wrong. His boot met twisted, blackened metal. “There was some serious firepower coming out of here.”

  My turn to shrug. “Waste time if you want. I’m gonna look for a way down.”

  “Feliz.” Barely short of a whine.

  “Let her look.”

  I’d take that. Frankly, I needed to get to whatever was down here first, and the more they ignored me, the better. I left the enforcers picking through whatever was left. Maybe looking for bodies, maybe looking for their asses.

  I wish I’d had Indigo’s eyes. I’d settle for half his brain. Instead, I was stuck with me – my gut, my fractured memories, and the limits of my own brain. Which preferred blowing up walls instead of looking for doors, and fighting assholes instead of working through jolted chipset feedback.

  Turns out Channing’s crack had done more than just blow the front wall.

  The back wall of the joint had warped under the pressure, leaving canyons of exposed steel. I tapped on one swath of dusty metal. Large flakes of plaster dropped like turds to the mess at my feet.

  I hooked my Sauger back in its place on my harness, studied the surface.

  “This is weird,” Channing said. I glanced over my shoulder. They still sifted through debris. Still looking for remains in the blackened hunks of twisted steel buried in it all. “It’s like nobody was here.”

  “Automated, maybe.” A thoughtful appraisal from the coordinator. “These look like turrets.”

  Which would explain the fearless shooting.

  I didn’t honestly care. Turning my attention back to the wall, I shook out my left arm lightly, took three steps to the side. Right… about…

  Here.

  Pulling back my arm, I aimed for the spot where the plaster and brick had fractured in a near-perfect vertical line. The enforcers didn’t notice. They sure as shit did when I drove my diamond steel fist so hard into the wall that it shrieked like rusted brakes on a spiked rail. The remnant of the clinging façade exploded outward in a new shower of debris, and every one of the mooks behind me shouted, cursed, shrieked – heh, Damrosch.

  “What the fuck are you–”

  I cut Lindsay off. “There’s your door.”

  “The fuck that–”

  “Shut up, Lindsay.” Feliz walked forward with more purpose than I credited her, passed me without a word, and tore down a hanging hunk of filthy plaster.

  “No shit,” Channing murmured.

  I grinned fiercely. Goddamn, punching that had felt good.

  I’d regret it later, once the adrenaline wore off. The drugs already had.

  Feliz touched the door with a gloved hand. A circle of projected light spread out from her fingers, rotating as she did her coordinator thing. Fancier than Indigo’s, but that didn’t mean as good. Unless it was, and I had new anti-sec measures to tell him about.

  He’d have to do the research. The anti-sec protocols in my netware weren’t made for anything harder than your average cyberlock.

  After a silent moment, Feliz drew her hand back. “It’s not locked,” she said slowly. “No security at all.”

  “In the whole thing?”

  She shrugged at me. “Anything below has a closed system I can’t access from anywhere else. We’ll find out.”

  “Sweet,” I replied, pulling my borrowed Sauger back out. “Time to–”

  “–get in goddamn line,” Feliz cut in. “Channing, you’re up with me. Banh and Lindsay at the tail end.”

  Which left me with shortmunch. And our coordinator in the lead. Fanfuckingtastic.

  “Fine,” I said, so very, very sweet. “But if Lindsay puts a bullet in my back, I’m going to give his corpse to the ‘philias at Sodomy Morgue.”

  “Gross.”

  “Don’t kinkshame,” I said blithely. It wasn’t the morgue’s official name, but that didn’t mean the moniker wasn’t earned. Most of us avoided the place. Tried extra hard not to die in range, too. It was that bad.

  I propped my left hand against the door. With effort, I braced my weight and shoved it slowly open. It did not creak. A good sign. “We still rolling out bitches first?”

  I didn’t have to see Feliz’s face to get her annoyance loud and clear. “Shut up.”

  “Yeah.” I knocked the butt of the Sauger against my shoulder. “I’ll get right on that.”

  17

  Another elevator, another moment of tense silence. We’d gone through three already, each leading to landings with zero activity. Just enough room for a new elevator door to fit. Not a single camera to watch the space.

  “This is stupid,” Lindsay
sighed, jerking his head to the plain surroundings. “Why so many stops?”

  I had theories. Like, if there was any emergency involving, say, necrotech conversion, it’d be harder for them to crawl to the light of day.

  I didn’t say that. Wasn’t even sure it was true, except it made sense to me. Was it possible that Malik’s analysts failed to clock necro activity because it was so far buried? Even if we were looking at another, much smaller surge, it seemed unlikely that they’d find a way back to the surface. Whatever smarts the necros had before conversion, it didn’t translate over. Pushing an elevator button? Maybe by accident.

  To their credit, the team snapped to readiness the moment the platform stopped moving. Six barrels came up at the same time, covering the wide corridor the doors opened on.

  A nanosecond of silence before I ruined it. “Gosh,” I said in breathy wonder. “That synch was just beautiful, guys.”

  “Go get dead,” Banh snarled. “And give it a rest.”

  I didn’t get the chance to retort as she brushed past me hard enough to knock my Sauger aside, boots stomping on the bare floor. I grinned at her back instead. “Well, fuck me, someone hasn’t had her rice today.”

  She stopped. Didn’t turn. “You’re the SINless here.”

  “Guys,” Feliz said firmly.

  We ignored her. “So?” I scoffed.

  “So there’s nothing to stop me from carving the number four in your heart.”

  “Double death to make a bitch,” I shot back. “Guess who’d win.”

  Banh came from ghost-side Kongtown; her slang marked her Cantonese heritage. Four sounded a lot like canto for death, eight for bitch.

  Feliz snapped. “Enough!” She threw a hand between us. “Next asshole to open their mouths gets served.”

  With what, I didn’t ask. Probably a write-up to Mr Reed. Pfft.

  Lindsay, made braver by her temper, clipped my right arm as he pushed past.

  I could have punched the back of his helmet, but that would probably net me a time out. I needed to get into this place. Fucking with my team wasn’t doing me any favors.

  Instead, I took a deep breath and fell silent, sliding my ass into line with the rest of the good little mooks. Beside me, Damrosch gave me a double-fingered salute. Fierce kitty. I tucked my gloved index finger between hers, rubbed her silent insult suggestively.

  She snatched her hand away, faceplate jerking right back around to face front. With monumental effort, I refrained from laughing.

  We proceeded in formation – only one direction to go. Once the edge of Feliz’s threat wore off, Channing broke the silence. “I hate how eerie it is,” he grumbled. “There should be alarms or something.”

  “At least resistance.”

  “At least,” Banh added tersely, “some kind of branding somewhere. Looks corporate to me.”

  MetaCorp, to be clear. Malik hadn’t told them that. Need to know, huh? I shook my head.

  I watched Feliz’s helmet dip as she checked her links frequently. “Readings are hard enough to get down here.”

  “Think it’s an ambush?”

  Of corp-sec thugs? Eh. I’d seen worse. I’d felt worse. This didn’t have the same intensity as the Vid Zone’s festering mausoleum. Empty, yes. Hollow, absolutely. Channing had used a good word. Eerie. But somehow… harmless.

  Biting my tongue, I followed Channing and Feliz to the end of the hall, stepped to one side to cover them as the coordinator studied the new entry. I wrinkled my nose as she prepped her anti-sec scan. “Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s unlocked.”

  “You couldn’t possibly–”

  Channing slapped the keypad. The doors unsealed. “It’s unlocked,” he repeated, surprised. More empty hall, a short one that led to a wider space.

  “Like magic,” I muttered.

  Feliz peered at me over her shoulder. “How did you know?”

  I shrugged. “Seems the pattern.”

  Lindsay nudged me in the back of the knee with his boot. “Or,” he said with more intensity than the moment required, “you’ve been here before.”

  My snort was all I’d give him. Frankly, I didn’t know how I’d known that. But the fact remained that the place, aside from protective turrets, had been abandoned. Why lock an empty lab?

  My head hurt. I caught myself tapping at the side of my helmet more than I wanted to admit. It didn’t help.

  “Let’s go,” Feliz said, and once more picked up the pace. This time, we moved quickly, each covering our respective quadrants. “It could be a trap, so eyes open.”

  Lindsay muttered to himself. Not so quietly that we couldn’t all hear it. “What I’m saying.”

  “Not exactly the brains of the op, is he?” I asked.

  Nobody said a word. Which made me wonder if they’d taken him seriously.

  For fuck’s sake.

  Feliz held up a fist – universal sign for stop. We paused, surveying what little we could see of the area. Wall on the left leading some eight meters in. Straight shot into the unknown. “Nothing on the HUD,” Banh said.

  “Not that they’re working right,” I replied.

  Feliz’s helmet shook back and forth. “The walls are a complex steel alloy. It seems to be causing interference on the bandwidth. We’re only getting partial data.”

  I sneered. “I thought Mantis was supposed to be good at bodygear?”

  Her faceplate turned. Couldn’t see her expression, but read it anyway. Shut up. Yeah, yeah, I got it.

  “Channing, point,” she said, turning back. “Riko, cover him.”

  The man tapped his left shoulder, suggesting I flank his left side. I sighed. He rounded the corner first, Sauger at the ready.

  I’d barely put a foot on the floor when the damn place erupted into chaos. Channing got the first round of bullets to the upper chest and shoulder – his right. Thunder shattered, sparks flying every which way. His rifle’s muzzle flashed, sprayed wide as he staggered. “Back!” Feliz shouted, hooking his arm and jerking him off his feet. I leapt back, joining the rest of them as they plastered themselves against the wall. “Shit,” she hissed.

  Channing slammed into the space beside me, pounded chest armor shredded and blood gleaming at the edges. “Shit,” he repeated, gasping.

  “No shit,” I said, breathing hard. Nothing like a surprise fucking by bullets to amp up the adrenaline. The pissy wasps in my skull retreated.

  “You OK?” Banh demanded.

  “Missed his vitals,” Feliz answered for him. “What did you see?”

  He shook his head, shoulders rounded. “Nothing,” he gasped. “No one.”

  “Came from the right,” I added, “about eighteen meters deep.”

  “A trap?”

  “We go slow–”

  “Slow is what got us trapped outside,” I interrupted.

  “We go slow,” the coordinator repeated.

  Goddammit. My patience thinned out to nearly nothing. “Fucking dickless wonders,” I snarled. I pushed past them all, dodged Feliz’s arm and rolled out into the open space. On cue, bright flashes popped from three angles – a hail of bullets slammed into the floor around me, burned past my helmet.

  Feliz whistled sharply through her teeth. “Riko, for godsake, get back here!”

  Nope. Too slow. Not listening. Sprinting to the opposite end, autofire tracking my every move, I barely kept ahead of the deadly storm. Bending my knees sent my heartbeat into overdrive – the slimmest second where I slowed enough to risk my ass. Channing’s larger build was an easier target than I was. I was prepared, and faster.

  As I leapt up, hardcore tread on my boots planting solidly on the wall, Feliz shouted over the comms. “Take advantage of her distraction. Go, go, go!”

  Fair enough.

  Only thing I could grab onto was a seam carved high in the left wall. I jammed my gloved diamond steel fingers into it, barely managing to hook the tips of them into the groove. It gave me a vantage point they didn’t have, moments of surveill
ance that gave me more info at a glance.

  No fucking trace of people.

  Four goddamn turrets chewed through ammo at an obscene rate, same kind as the ones outside – chunky things with heavy barrels and thick plates protecting the control. The rate they spat out armor-piercing ammo peppered the air with nonstop chaos.

  The enforcers finally jumped into action, dropping to the floor to sight around the corner. Except Channing. A shower of sparks erupted over their heads. The walls dented beneath the force of each bullet, ate some and shot others back. “Watch the ricochet,” Lindsay yelled.

  Impossible to keep track of it. What didn’t stick in the alloyed walls bounced in every direction, forcing the others to play safe.

  I’d work with that.

  One turret caught on to my position, turned slowly to lock on. Green lights lit up around its barrel, one by one.

  “Riko, get back – Banh, seven degrees!”

  Nooope.

  I pushed off from the wall, rolled in midair and landed square in front of two bullet streams crossed in an X. The insanely fast rate left an open vee to stand on, but the draft caused by each registered in my HUD.

  Oh, fuck, yes.

  The turrets on each end struggled to pick targets, while the second from the left rotated slowly. Scanning. Were they remotely manned?

  I ducked low, flung the Sauger out to my side and pulled the trigger. Smaller ammo than what they rocked pinged off the armor plating. Shit. No time to work it. A ring of green lights in my peripheral was all I got – barely enough time to hit the ground and roll.

  Sparks exploded up from where I’d stood, metal shrieking as shrapnel flew in every direction. It scraped against my right side as I pushed up to my feet. For once, the armor soaked it. About cunting time.

  “Riko!”

  “Eat my ladycock,” I yelled, sprinting once more for the wall. Trick worked once. If it worked again, either the damn things were remotely operated by dogdick stupid corpscum or they were automated.

  My levels of pissed jacked up with every second.

  I ran up the wall, pressure hard on my soles, squatted in to make myself as minimal a target as possible. Caught the same lip. I bent forward and thrust my momentum forward, running hard along the wall.