by Linda Nagata
“No.”
“The official line, and what most of the mediots preach, is that the Red isn’t real. But the paranoid types know that’s a lie. Thelma Sheridan is their hero. They want to get rid of the Red, and they don’t care about the cost. Critical targets like the remaining data exchanges and undersea cables have massive security now, so terrorists go for smaller targets like cell towers, and server farms when they can get to them. But more and more it’s just random.”
“Like a nuke in DC?”
“That isn’t hard for me to believe. Not at all.”
On the street below the window, traffic is stopped, generating a faint chorus of bleating horns. One vehicle at the end of the block isn’t willing to wait: A shoddy old van with rust stains on the roof surges up onto the sidewalk, startling two pedestrians, who jump clear. With two wheels still in the gutter, the van guns down the sidewalk—and I know a slam is coming. I grab Delphi’s arm, dragging her from the window as the van stops right below us. “Get away! Get into the hall!”
I wish I could scream a warning to the other residents and to all the people stuck in traffic.
Delphi’s a handler and a damn good one. She doesn’t waste time with questions or protests as we fall back across the living room, through the foyer. I open the door and shove her ahead of me into the hall, yanking the door closed behind us just at the moment of the explosion.
The blast wave hurls me across the hallway. The pressure is like a glass spike in my ears. I can’t breathe. I’m down on the floor and it’s vibrating under me, unnatural motion accompanied by an avalanche of noise. Dust everywhere, so thick I can’t see. Concrete dust, a cold wind, muffled screaming beyond the deafening ringing in my ears.
The floor stops quivering and the dust begins to clear, some of it sifting out of the air, more carried away by the wind.
Both walls of the hallway are intact, but the apartment door is hanging open on broken hinges, with torn black wiring protruding from the frame. Past the door, the apartment glows with spring sunlight softened by a glittering haze of dust settling out across the tumbled furniture. The outer wall is gone, and in the building across the street the windows I can see are shattered.
I turn to look for Delphi. She’s on the floor, a fallen statue molded of gray dust, coming slowly to life, raising her head, pulling off her farsights, coughing hard as she pushes up to hands and knees.
Why the fuck did I bring her here? I should never have gone near her. I should never have come home at all. I should have broken with my dad first thing Saturday night and headed straight for Anne Shima, armed myself with every piece of firepower she could give me, and gone hunting for Carl Vanda.
I’m going after him now. I swear it.
Fuck me, anyway.
I get up—at least the legs still work—and help Delphi to her feet. She has all her limbs; nothing looks broken; I don’t see blood.
I put my arm around her shoulders. I need to get her out of the building—“Come on”—my own voice sounding muffled in my shocked ears.
As we head for the stairs, a door opens in the hallway. A woman staggers out, covered in gray dust so I can’t tell her age. An older man emerges from another apartment. “My God,” he wails. “My God.” We all get to the stairs and join an exodus heading down. “The gas lines,” a woman calls out. “What if they catch on fire?”
We get to the street. It’s chaos. Cars are still jammed bumper to bumper. Some of them are burning. People are screaming for help. Where the front of my building used to be, there’s a slope of debris: broken concrete, drywall, wood paneling, shattered furniture, and pipes, with water spraying over all of it. God knows who’s crushed beneath. What’s left of the sidewalk is paved in shards of glass.
People come running in from nearby streets, wide eyed, looking to help; others are fleeing. Sirens scream in the distance, but the police can’t get here because traffic on the cross streets is at a standstill. A single motorcycle cop appears at the end of the block, rolling in along the opposite sidewalk.
Across the street, all the lower windows in a thirty-eight-story condominium are shattered, the front doors reduced to warped steel frames. A man in a gray business suit is making his way out past the wreckage, moving carefully but calmly. I watch him past the smoke, the flames, the dust settling out of the air.
My overlay can’t identify him because of his headgear: an old-fashioned fedora, tinted farsights, and an iridescent mask like the one Major Ogawa showed me.
But I don’t need to see his face. I know him anyway. His brief appearance in the courtroom made a lasting impression on me. I know him by his biometrics—his height, his gaunt build, his severely straight posture. And by his kinetics—the particular way he walks, favoring his right hip.
Carl Vanda.
He’s clutching a hard-walled, dull-gray case, one that’s just long enough to hold a sniper rifle if the weapon is broken down to stock and barrel. He gets past the broken door and pauses, showing no concern for the risk of falling glass as his masked face looks across the street—right at me.
I grab Delphi as Vanda uses his free hand to reach inside his coat. I drag her down with me behind the cover of the burning cars just as a gun goes off. Silver bees—the payload of a fléchette shell—whine through the air we just occupied, throwing themselves in suicidal rage against the wreckage of my building.
Delphi struggles in my arms. She tries to get free. “Stay down!” I plead as someone—it has to be the motorcycle cop—shouts, “Drop the weapon!” It sounds just like a movie.
I can’t see what happens next, but I hear a second shot from Vanda’s gun. Someone starts screaming: an adrenaline-fueled howl of pain. The hair on my arms stands on end as I remember other times and other wounded, screaming just like that.
I get up on my knees, lifting my head just high enough to peer over the hood of the nearest car. Heat from the fires fans shimmering ripples of air that distort but don’t disguise Vanda’s gray-suited figure as he trots away down the sidewalk.
Past him, at the corner, a man stands waiting: a still point in the chaos of the street.
I duck back down, trying to decide what I just saw. The man on the corner was a stranger, too far away for my overlay to identify. He looked to be six feet tall, an athletic figure dressed in a crewneck shirt, slacks, and a casual brown jacket. Gray hair in a military cut. Was he watching me? No. He was watching Vanda—and he was holding a gray case like the one Vanda is carrying. That’s what caught my eye.
I look again. The man in brown is gone from the corner— I think I see him farther down the street—while Vanda is moving in the same direction, weaving through gridlocked traffic to reach the next block.
“Is the shooter still there?” Delphi asks, a high edge to her voice.
“No, he’s moving out. It was Vanda—”
“Carl Vanda? You know that?”
“Yes.”
“He had a mask on.”
“It was him. Are you injured? Can you stand up?”
“I’m okay.”
We get up together, look across the street.
“Did Vanda shoot that police officer?”
“Yeah.”
And the cop isn’t screaming anymore.
I cut between the burning cars with Delphi right behind me.
We find the cop on the opposite sidewalk. He’s on his side, moaning, clutching at the bloody pulp of his face that’s been shredded by steel fléchettes. Beside him is his police-issue sidearm. I stoop to pick it up. “Delphi, do what you can for him.”
She gives me a look of searing blue fury, knowing as well as I do that he’ll be dead in another minute—but I take off before she can say, Stay.
This is my chance. Carl Vanda is not alone, but he is on foot and he’s a broken man. I know I can outrun him.
• • • •
&nbs
p; Sirens wail. Helicopters turn and swoop in manic paths above the buildings. Microdrones shoot past me, racing toward the blast site to harvest digital footage. I’m going the opposite way.
All along the street, people are emptying out of the buildings. They stand in small groups on the sidewalks and in the gridlocked traffic, watching smoke rise, relating their experiences, debating the danger. A bold few rush toward the disaster. I weave past, holding the gun close to my side. No one notices it. There is just too much to look at, too much going on.
I don’t see the man in brown, but I get a glimpse of Vanda on the next block. He’s slowed to a walk, but it’s a New York pace that covers ground at a furious rate. He doesn’t look back. I don’t think he has any idea that I’m following. He ducks around a corner—
And it happens a third time: The air shifts, and then the thunder of another massive explosion rolls across the city. This one comes from somewhere uptown, the blast reverberating between the towers. People scream. They evaporate from the sidewalks, fleeing inside, leaving no obstacles to slow me down.
I sprint to the corner, peer around the black marble base of the building.
The next street is just like the last street: crammed with cars all going nowhere. A few people mill between them. Horns honk. A middle-aged woman runs toward me along the sidewalk, awkward in high heels. Vanda is beyond her, almost at the end of the block. I step around the corner.
Maybe he’s got a handler using a microdrone to watch over him. Maybe the man in brown is hunkered down somewhere out of my sight, watching to see if anyone is following the boss. I don’t know. But I’m halfway down the block when Vanda gets the word that I’m coming.
He’s crossing the next street, surrounded by stalled cars, when he turns to face me. I see the iridescent glimmer of his anonymous mask. He lets the rifle case drop to the ground as he uses both hands to aim a massive handgun in my direction. I can’t fire back, not with civilians on the sidewalk and in the cars. Some of them see his weapon and scream. I duck into the recessed entry of a pastry shop, praying he won’t shoot if he doesn’t have a target.
No shot comes.
Is he waiting for me? Or is he running?
I scan the cars, their drivers, the fleeing pedestrians across the street, looking for the man in brown because I do not want him to get behind me.
I wish to God I had my HITR—the M-CL1a Harkin Integrated Tactical Rifle is equipped with onboard muzzle cams that let it look around corners—but all I’ve got is a police pistol with no electronic sights. It’s a museum piece. All of NYPD’s budget must have gone to armored personnel carriers—but at least the pistol doesn’t lock up when an unregistered user handles it.
Ten seconds go by. Eleven. Twelve. I lean out, all too aware I’m not wearing a helmet. My helmet is in my dad’s ruined apartment, along with my dead sister. Too bad I didn’t have a chance to rig up. I peer around the edge of the concrete, imagining my forehead shattering—but nothing happens. Vanda is out of sight and the only civilians left are hunched down in their cars, most of them yelling into phones.
I wish to God I had the squad’s angel.
I expend three more seconds debating what to do. If Carl Vanda’s priority is to see me dead, he’ll wait for me somewhere and hit me from ambush, and I’ll never know it’s coming. But I don’t think that’s his priority. He gunned down a cop. NYPD is going to put out every effort to discover who’s behind the veil. The current chaos and carnage won’t stop them from coming hard after him and he knows it. They’re probably tracking him right now with a microdrone.
They’re probably tracking me.
Fuck it.
I make my decision and go, running hard to catch up to Vanda again, calculating that he must have turned onto the cross street to disappear so quickly, but when I reach the corner, he’s nowhere in sight.
“Where did he go?” I shout at a cabdriver who’s made the mistake of leaving his window open. “Which way?”
The man hunches deeper into his seat, but he gestures down the block. “Next corner.” It’s a short block.
I dart between the cars, reach the sidewalk, and run hard. I’m almost there when a fourth explosion rips into the city. This one too is far away, but for a moment all sound vanishes except death’s thundering roar as it claims more souls.
With the sound of my footsteps covered by that cloud of noise, I hurtle around the corner—and discover that my assessment of Carl Vanda’s priorities is wrong. He’s waiting for me, just a few feet away, along with the man in brown.
Vanda is standing half hidden behind a scalloped column that’s part of the façade of a new condominium. He’s got his gun out, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the man in brown, who’s crouched behind a concrete planter close to the curb. Brown has one hand raised to his farsights. He looks like a man still organizing his assets. Maybe he’s lost contact with the drone. Maybe he’s lost contact with his handler. But it’s certain that he doesn’t expect me quite that soon. When I pop into sight, he recoils in surprise.
Vanda doesn’t. Stepping clear of the column, he turns to target me with the fléchette gun.
I can’t stop. I’m going too fast. So I keep going and dive for his knees.
Vanda’s gun goes off. The fléchettes fan out, but my dive has put me under the trajectory of the spray. A barb clips my shoulder. Another pings against my titanium foot. I wrap an arm around Vanda’s legs and take him to the ground.
He hits the sidewalk with his shoulder and that saves his head, but his weapon is pinned under him. I still have the cop’s gun. I try to jam it against his throat, but he grabs my wrist with his free hand. We’re grappling, rolling across the sidewalk. He loses the hat, and the mask goes with it, but his gun hand is free.
His face is inches from mine: teeth bared, eyes squinting, every muscle engaged. I pitch my pistol away and use two hands to go after his weapon, slamming the back of his gunhand into the concrete. His grip breaks, the fléchette gun falls loose, and I grab for it—but the man in brown has found an opening. He kicks the gun away. Kicks me in the ribs. Then in the belly. Maybe in the head, because I miss a second or two. By the time I check back in, Vanda is up, talking in a low, growling voice:
“She is out of control.”
He’s not talking to me. I’m already dead as far as he’s concerned.
“I’m putting an end to this chaos. Niamey is glass.”
Somehow I’m on my back. I glimpse the fat muzzle of the fléchette gun centering on my face. I see it like a still image, frozen in time, gripped by a large hand, tanned skin darker than Vanda’s, a smoky, pale-blue sky beyond. I kick at that hand. I propel my robot feet up like a gymnast initiating a backward somersault, titanium impacting flesh just as the little steel arrows are released. The deadly fléchettes buzz away into the sky, the gun spins into the street in a shower of blood, and the man in brown retreats, cursing, “Fucking hell, fucking hell.”
I roll over onto my shoulder, then scramble on hands and knees to the shelter of a parked car, expecting to die at any moment, but when I look back, they’re gone. Both gone. The sidewalk is deserted.
I squat in the gutter for a few seconds, hunched over my bruised ribs, with my shoulder bleeding and my eye starting to swell shut. But I have enough vision left to see a glistening trail of blood on the concrete, leading to fancy brass doors at the foot of a skyscraper.
Where the fuck is my gun?
Maybe they took it, but if so, why didn’t they stay long enough to shoot me with it?
I lean out around the car that’s hiding me and look for the gun in the street. Next I look under the car—and that’s where I find it. I have to get down on my belly to reach it, trying not to breathe too hard because my ribs fucking hurt.
Armed once again, I eye the building, but it’s a luxury tower, the security system is not going to let me inside, and ri
ght now I’m an easy target from any window overlooking the street.
Sense kicks in and I backtrack to the corner. I wait there, watching—and a minute later a helicopter lifts off the roof five hundred feet above my head.
It has to be him. I retreat again, in case he’s thinking of taking a wild shot at me, but the helicopter speeds away toward the Hudson.
And I remember his furious threat: Niamey is glass.
That’s what I remember. But did I hear it right? Because to do something like that . . . it doesn’t make any fucking sense to me.
• • • •
I try to call Delphi, but the city’s network is overwhelmed and I can’t get a link. So I text her instead—I’m coming back—hoping the text won’t take too long to go through.
My shirt is torn and bloody where the fléchette grazed me, but the bleeding has mostly stopped. I’ll deal with the wound later. For now, I just jam the gun into my pant pocket—but the pocket isn’t deep enough to hold it. So I try sticking it into the waistband of my pants at the small of my back, the way I’ve seen it done in movies. It’s damn uncomfortable, but at least the gun is out of sight under my shirt as I walk back past gridlocked traffic.
People have come out onto the sidewalk again, gathering in pensive knots. Bits of conversation reach me as I pass, escaping a background noise of sirens and the low, pounding roar of helicopters:
“. . . phone went out with the second blast . . .”
“How many did you count? Four?”
“What’s been hit?”
“. . . seven bombs on Coma Day.”
Sirens rise in an earsplitting howl right behind me. I turn to see a convoy of emergency vehicles creep into the intersection I just crossed. Leading the way is a pair of motorcycle cops rapping knuckles on car windows, directing the drivers to move their vehicles to the sides of the street and onto the sidewalks if they have to. A center lane slowly opens, wide enough to allow a fire truck to pass. Four squad cars follow, their sirens wailing.
I shove my fingers in my ears and keep going, thinking more about what Vanda said: She is out of control.