The elevator vidscreen flashed into the forties.
Sava put her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes. “Sometimes I just want to go home. I miss San Diego.”
“We all want to go home,” said Anela, “but there is a war going on, Kai. Right now, Vinestead is winning that war because they stand unopposed. You know how much we need Perion and what it would mean if the company were to not exist when the sun comes up.”
“I know, but…”
“You promised me you would carry on the fight. Now that we are so close, can you really walk away from it all?”
“No,” replied Sava, her head dropping.
Of course she couldn’t walk away, no more than she could let Gantz shoot at her without defending herself. There were just some things in life that had to happen, effects that had to be caused. Sava had known domestic terrorism wasn’t the answer years ago, when she first assumed her new life in Perion City. Abandoning the plan now would relegate her to a life of petty skirmishes that would do nothing to alter the course of history. Driving Perion Synthetics towards all-out war with Vinestead was her only hope.
As the elevator slowed, the construct began to break down. Anela’s smiling face fell away, as did the smoky figures on the edges of Sava’s periphery. The protective dome overhead winked out of existence, leaving Sava alone with the demon for one terrifying moment, and then it too was gone.
Sava opened her eyes as the doors parted.
The lobby was a mess, but the maintenance synthetics were doing their best to clear the area. Sava found a swept path on the other side of a Honda Civic and followed it to the north entrance of the Spire. Outside, the cool air caused a chill to go up her spine.
“What the hell did I miss?”
Sava looked down at Cameron Gray sitting on the steps leading to the Victoria Perion Memorial Plaza. He had arranged bullet casings into a small pile next to him. He flung one into the plaza as he waited for an answer.
“I thought I had you detained,” said Sava. She sat down next to him.
“Yeah, well,” said Cam, handing her a casing, “your guards kinda lost interest in me about an hour ago, so I showed myself out. I guess I missed the war?”
Sava chucked the casing at a nearby synthetic whose chest had been crushed by a tire. “This wasn’t the war. This was all Gantz and Cyn.”
Cam smiled. “I tell you those Umbra girls are crafty. Whole ‘nother breed of woman, if you ask me.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Where is she?”
“Halfway to hell I hope.”
The smile disappeared. “And Gantz?”
“Already there.”
Cam nodded and flung another bullet into the plaza. It clinked against an overturned drink cart.
“You didn’t like him much, did you?” asked Cam.
“That had nothing to do with it. He and Cyn smashed our transmitter feed. Every signal in the city runs through it. Broadcasts, command and control, jammers…”
“Those are still working,” said Cam, raising his wrist. “My sliver came back online about the same time the guards took a powder, but every time I try to upload to BMP, the connection gets reset. All I can do is download like some kind of ordinary subber.”
The construct flared and Anela Zabora walked out of the black mist. “You have to tell him, Kai. Remember Rick?”
Sava fingered the silver band on her thumb. She had worn Rick’s wedding ring ever since the day of the Reaping, the day he and so many others were betrayed by Vinestead treachery, the day Calle Cinco struck deep at the heart of the demon. And in all that time, no one had ever asked nor had she ever told what it signified.
In truth, Sava had assigned many meanings to it, from a simple remembrance of abbreviated love to a cautionary reminder not to get too close to the target. It stood for corporate misdeeds and omission of certain facts that could have saved an entire building of clueless engineers. It was a promise to fight against the denigration of the innocent, the assignment of numbers instead of names—against massive companies that wanted to turn people into machines, companies with no appreciation for the blood and sweat that fueled their profits. And though Vinestead was infamous for its disregard for employees, Sava knew more and more companies were adopting the practice, even Banks Media out of Los Angeles.
“No, Mr. Gray. Your sliver is broadcasting, but no one is listening. Banks Media servers aren’t accepting your input anymore.”
“Bullshit. The only way that would happen is if Banks fired me and yanked my feeder ID from the database. And considering the metric fuck-ton of content I’ve got for him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he made me a partner when I get back.”
Sava rolled a bullet casing between her fingers. “Cameron Gray still works for Banks Media, but his feeder ID has been updated to match his new sliver. The old ID was trashed.”
“Why would I need a new sliver?” asked Cam, looking at his wrist. “This one works just fine.”
“Not for you,” said Sava.
She flashed on the memory of Rick’s glazed eyes the moment he realized Vinestead had lied to him.
“We built a synthetic Cameron and equipped him with all of your tech. The only thing we couldn’t clone was the hardware ID of your new sliver, so we updated the database. The synthetic you would have never known the difference.”
Sava gave a quick glance to Cam and found he was staring at the ground and biting his lip.
“I uh,” he said, chuckling. “I did a story once on cloning. People thought it was going to be an escape from death, but they didn’t consider they might wake up as the original instead of the copy. I always wondered what that must feel like.” He huffed, drew himself up. “I should like to meet this synthetic Cam.”
“You can’t,” said Sava. “A couple of synthetics pulled its head off and dragged it back to the Spire. I had it destroyed.”
“Naturally.” His head bobbed. “You see, the originals got screwed because they weren’t the ones moving on in the better body. If they cloned themselves to escape disease, they still woke with that disease. What you people did here was make an unnecessary copy. Were you just going to keep me locked up so the new me could take my place?”
“It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. Things got out of hand when Cyn entered the picture. And then before I knew it, I had aggregators crawling out of every crevice in the city. You people really fucked things up for us.”
Cam laughed. “And your role in all of this was what?”
“Everything was on the rails right up until your head came off. If Joe… if it hadn’t gone the way it did, you’d be home in L.A. getting ready to forward the cause of synthetic rights. Just like James Perion wanted.”
“And Donato Banks,” said Cam.
“Excuse me?”
Cam dropped the remaining bullets to the ground. “I know how this works. There’s no way you could have accessed the Banks Media database from here. Our Quality Control group is the second biggest department we have, right behind network security. And before anything gets to QC, there are checks to make sure it is coming from the right person. The feeder IDs of Banks Media aggregators are closely guarded secrets. You can’t just telnet to our public webserver and change my identity.”
Sava looked away. “I know.”
“Only Donato Banks himself could have pulled this off without raising eyebrows, which means he knew the switchover was coming.” Cam paused, took a deep breath. “He knew you were gonna fuck me and he did everything but put me in a pretty dress.”
“He did not even get a choice,” said Anela, her voice a whisper on the air.
The construct threatened to show Sava an image of Rick, of the way his face looked on the train back to Sacramento, the sadness in his dying eyes as she told him who she really was.
Kaili Zabora pushed the memory away to become Sava Kessler once more.
She reached out and patted Cam on the back.
54
They came out of The Fringe like ants to a r
otting carcass.
Hundreds drifted out of the alleys and down wide pedestrian thoroughfares on pre-programmed chemical trails as if heading into work for the first time that day. For all of the intelligence built into their synthetic brains, they seemed unaffected by the destruction around them. They stepped over and around run-over, dismembered, and crushed synthetics in the plaza as if they were loose trash someone had forgotten to pick up. Only the ones in blue jumpsuits occasionally emerged from the crowd to set a table upright before rejoining the flow.
Sava cursed every time she had to move over on the steps to give way to the swelling torrent of synthetics. There wasn’t any danger of being trampled; Sava just didn’t like all of those machine bodies walking so close to her, swallowing her up like the last remaining sandcastle on the beach, standing alone against the oncoming surf. The image evoked the crumbling memories of Anela throwing oversized towels into the car and driving them to the coast. Sava recalled watching the planes take off and land at San Diego International Airport in the golden light of dawn. There was a peacefulness to laying out on the sand with her sister that Sava had not known since, yet the memory was enough to calm her down, to remove the emotional barrier that so often got in the way of what needed to be done.
And there was so much to be done.
Sava stood and brushed the dirt from the back of her skirt. Beside her, Cam faked a cough. She walked closer to the parade of synthetics and examined them as they passed by.
“You,” she said, pointing to a female synthetic in a nurse’s uniform, “come here.”
The synny returned a smile and broke free from the pack. She stood in front of Sava and discreetly inventoried her injuries.
“How can I be of assistance?” she asked.
Sava ignored her and pointed again to the crowd. “And you, guard. Front and center.”
A male synthetic at least six and a half feet tall brought his hulking frame and bolted-on scowl to rest in front of Sava. His eyes went passive, awaiting an order.
“There’s an injured woman on one thirty-seven who needs medical attention. You can take the elevator to eighty-nine and use the service ladders the rest of the way.” Sava pointed to the nurse. “Triage the situation.” Then to the guard, “If she determines the woman can be moved, take her down to Medical and get her some attention.”
The nurse nodded.
“Yes, sir,” said the AG, furnishing a quick salute. He headed into the building at a hasty clip, the nurse following on his heels.
“I was wondering if you were gonna do anything about her,” said Cam.
“She doesn’t have to die,” said Sava. “We’re going to need more women like her in the world, people who are ready to fight for what they believe in.”
“Then why’d you shoot her?”
“Just because she was wrong doesn’t mean she didn’t believe in what she was doing. It probably doesn’t make any sense to someone like you, but there is honor in conviction. Mine just happened to be stronger.”
Cam shook his head. “If that’s how you want to justify it, fine. Gil and Gantz are dead; Cyn could be. I’m pretty sure you’d be digging a fourth grave for me if this plan of yours had worked. The world doesn’t need two Cameron Grays, does it?”
“My plan?” she asked, placing her hand on her chest. “You think I wanted any of this? I wanted James Perion to continue running his company for another thirty or forty years. He had infinite resources. He could have found a way to steal Vinestead’s tech and save himself. But no, he had to be ideological instead of practical.”
“So he is dead then?” asked Cam.
Sava nodded. “He could have faced mortality with dignity, but instead he was selfish, worried only about his wants and his needs. He lost sight of the bigger picture, of Perion Synthetics’ role in the global tragedy that is our world. I went along with it on the assumption that a synthetic James Perion is better than no James Perion at all. But the longer this goes on, the more out of control it gets.”
Cam nodded slowly. “James Perion became his own product. I should have seen that one coming. You people sure know how to fuck with the status quo.”
“Whatever,” said Sava. “If I had it my way…”
Sava felt the ground shift as the construct bloomed around her. The players crept out from the shadows and took their first positions. There was Synth J, pacing the invisible floor the way he had the previous Monday when word of his illness got out and the company’s stock price had plummeted. His son, Joe, stood a few feet away, back turned to his father, looking for patterns in the ether. Cam and Cyn stood face to face, speaking into each other’s slivers, caught in the mutual masturbation of cyclic feeding. To the right, Anela stood over the body of Robert Gantz, nudging him with her shoe.
So many pieces to move. So many different ways to set things right again.
“You are forgetting someone,” said Anela. She tapped Sava on the shoulder and pointed behind them.
Sava turned and saw a figure in the distance. It was looking directly at her, shoulders slightly hunched, arms held rigid at its side. A mental manipulation brought the face closer.
Gilbert Reyes.
“If you had it your way?” asked Cam. “Let me guess, you would have dumped me and Cyn at Perion Terminus and been done with us, right?”
Sava looked down at the aggregator. “I still might,” she replied, and then turned for the door. When Cam asked where she was going, she called over her shoulder, “More loose ends to tie up. Why don’t you make yourself useful and go look for Joe?”
“And how exactly am I supposed to find him in this mess?”
Sava paused to point at the black plume rising beyond the nearby buildings. “He’s helping the people he hurt when he crashed into a recharge station,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“Someone is always watching,” she replied, then stepped through the busted doorframe.
Inside, the lobby was looking better; the synthetics had made good progress in the last hour. The whine of six backpack vacuums filled the space, echoing off the high ceilings and reverberating in the hallways. Sava was happy to get away from the sound, and after turning a few corners, she found herself in silence again. It was there she could hear Anela’s voice more clearly, where she could find comfort in its company.
Sava ignored the waiting elevators and ducked into a stairwell. She started up the stairs, happy for the exercise despite the fatigue in her body. The mechanics of lifting one leg and then the other distracted her from the world and refocused her attention to the present moment, to the pain in her calves and the tightness in her chest. By the time she stepped into the hallway on the eleventh floor, a thin film of sweat had developed on her face and under her arms.
Her thoughts turned to the glass-walled shower in her apartment, to the gentle yet firm spray of the showerhead spewing out the cleansing water to burn away the dirt and the grime from a tarnished veneer that had once shone so brightly. For those brief moments in the shower, away from the prying eyes of Chuck Huber and James Perion, she was no longer Sava Kessler, head of public manipulations for Perion Synthetics. Instead, she was Kaili Zabora, lover to a man she had killed, sister to a murdered patriot, and revered messiah of the Calle Cinco cipher den.
Those brief moments of honesty allowed her to see the big picture, the entirety of human existence intertwined in a beautiful and complex mix of past, present, and future. Presently, the big picture had a gaping hole where the face of Gilbert Reyes flickered like a busted vidscreen.
Sava roamed the hallways on the Clerical Services floor until she found the office she was looking for. Standing in the doorway, she observed the mammoth copier below a sign reading for office use only. It took only minor effort to imagine Jacqueline Dulac standing there watching a stack of paper disappear into the automatic feeder. Of course, Sava had to use Roberta as a standin, having never known Jackie personally, but in the haze of her fantasy, there was little discernable d
ifference between the two.
Anela drew a sharp breath as Sava stepped into the copy room.
Gil was on her in an instant; his strong, synthetic hands ripped the needler from her hip and sent it flying across the room.
Sava imagined her sister shaking her head, the words I tried to warn you on her lips but forever unspoken. The image broke down as Gil pulled her back to reality.
She fell forward, stumbling towards the copier. Her legs hit a feeder tray first, whipping her body forward until her face smacked into the rigid plastic. Pain shot through her jaw, racing around her skull like a demon dragging its nails through her hair. When Gil yanked on the neckline of her blouse and pulled her away, she saw a splatter of blood on an index card of instructions someone had taped to the copier.
Fighting Gil was impossible; even a graduate of a Calle Cinco boot camp was no match for his strength and speed.
Sava recalled something Chuck had said the Saturday before, one of those throwaway ramblings he was so fond of laying on her after she had ridden him to his orgasm. He had complained about the time frame in which James Perion expected him to bring a fully functional Virgo-class synthetic online to replace the recently deceased Gilbert Reyes. Doing so meant cutting corners, meant some of the limiters they had put in place in Cam’s synny had to be left out.
There just wasn’t time to put physical restrictions on Gil before they flashed him. Chuck had then muttered an incoherent warning before rolling over and commencing his usual snoring.
And as Sava lay there with her fingers working below the blanket, she thought about what it would be like to have that kind of brutish dominance, to walk the world on a red carpet of impunity, knowing nothing short of decapitation or being crushed by a Honda Civic could ever end her life. Even if that happened, she could just imprint on another synthetic sleeve, or keep two running concurrently like James Perion.
Immortality would be a powerful advantage against Vinestead. Arthur Sedivy might not live forever, but his ruthless direction would continue on until someone finally stood up to the ‘Stead.
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