by Damien Boyes
There isn’t much. The lab is wide open and mostly empty, but light leaks through the cracks of another walled-in room a hundred metres away, straight ahead. Somewhere that still has power. Likely the source of the heat signatures.
That’s where Xiao will be.
Forever later two muzzle flashes burst simultaneously from up in the rafters, erupting like novae on the nightshades. Looks like they can see in the dark. Too bad for them.
I mark their positions, close my eyes and drop to a slide on my knees. The bullets whiz over my head just as the first flashbangs ignite from each side of the open room. The sound dampeners in my helmet keeps the noise manageable, but I feel the nightshades blaze against my eyelids before the optics correct for the sudden light. Hopefully the shooters had their eyes wide open.
I raise my weapon as I slide and come up firing, still moving, put four rounds up into the source of the muzzle flash from my left and before I’m back on my feet and sprinting again I hear a low moan as a body falls from the ceiling.
One down.
I close my eyes again and juke to the left, but no shot comes as the next set of grenades erupt. I blink, eyes open just long enough to make sure I won’t run into anything. I’m halfway across the lab floor now, running hard. I throw a few rounds at the position of the second shooter and squeeze my eyes shut as the third ‘bangs go off.
Still nothing from the remaining shooter. Probable outcomes rattle through my head.
Maybe she was blinded by the first grenades.
Maybe she saw me dodge her first shot and is letting me get closer to guarantee a kill.
Or maybe she’s going to let the light of the last grenades illuminate me, and take me down when I’m lit up like slow motion target in a spotlight.
That’s what I’d do. Use my distraction against me.
But to do that, she’ll have to take her night vision off. She won’t know where I am until it’s too late.
I cut right and leap, my body horizontal, bring up the rifle.
The flashbangs hiss and erupt around me. In the millisecond before my vizr’s overwhelmed by the sudden incandescent light, I spot my target hiding up in the rafters.
We shoot at the same time. I twist in the air and the bullet puckers the concrete under me. But she’s perched on a rafter with nowhere to go.
The bullet hits her dead in the chest and blows her out of the sky.
I tuck and roll as she falls, then I land and spring back to my feet as light flickers from her head when her skull crunches against the lab floor.
I reload as I run toward the centre of the room. Ten steps later I can make out a door on the inner room’s wall, disengage the nightshades, lower my shoulder and burst through with my gun up.
I scan the room as I enter, spot six people and start cataloguing threats. My biggest concern is the small bald man with the dangerous bearing we saw in the cypher’s recovered memory. He’s already turning to intercept me, a gun in his hand. I put a bullet through his kneecap before he can get close and his leg crumples under him. I put another shot into his weapon and it scatters across the floor and out of reach.
Security neutralised.
Beyond him are Lin Jia, two more of the cypher girls, Xiao, and a big black guy I’ve never seen before with one of those DNA slippery duffels like we found on the cypher in the Market slung over his back. They're standing around a table, with two stacks of black-cased optical processing cubes behind them and a rack of batteries keeping it all humming. A short distance away a ladder leads to a hatch in the ceiling.
“No one move,” I say, my cheek pressed against the rifle, my eye staring down the sights. “You’re all under arrest.”
They all turn to look at me except the black guy. He sees everyone else stop and turn and his brows twitch in confusion.
They’re working on a plan to get Jia out. Get her up the ladder to that hopper on the roof. But who’s the new guy?
Xiao takes charge. “Detective Gage,” he says, stepping forward. “You’re here for me. Let Lao Lao go and we shall come quietly.”
The black guy winces, blinks twice in rapid succession.
“Not gonna happen,” I say. “She’s the only one here without a built-in escape plan. She goes, there’s nothing keeping you here.”
Jia raises her hand to object but Xiao cuts her off before she can say anything. “You don’t know what you’re doing here. The lives you’re putting at risk.”
The black guy is fidgeting, looking back and forth between me and Xiao, except he isn’t looking at me. He’s looking around me. Like he can’t see me.
Holy shit.
Xiao notices me watching the stranger in the room, registers the black guy’s confusion, and I see a realisation snap across his face. I’m the reason he lost his protection.
The black guy can’t see me.
It’s not just another cypher.
It’s Eka. Eka’s in that skyn.
I clamp down on my anger, grit my teeth and let go of my rifle.
Xiao sees what I’m up to, swivels his head.
I get the botgun around, swinging it up. The barrel clears Eka’s waist as the first sound comes from Xiao’s throat.
“RRR—”
The barrel’s at Eka’s shoulders, the capacitor charged to fire. I just need to get it to the base of his spine. At this range the spread will be enough to catch the detonator on his Cortex. He’ll be trapped in there. No blasting his way out of this one. I’ll have him.
“UUU—”
Gotcha.
I pull the trigger as Eka finally clues in. His eyes slip out of focus but the EMP hits his brain before the order to terminate does.
“NNN—”
Eka’s hesitation is so slight, I barely see it. When his head fails to explode he turns and makes for a door, zig-zagging to the other side of the lab. I don’t have time to drop the bot gun and get my weapon up again to stop him.
He’s armed. Probably as Revved as I am. He’ll have no problem with the officers between him and the exit.
He’ll get away. This could be my only chance.
But we'll lose Lin. And Xiao. They’ll get her to the roof. Everyone else will pop their heads. We’ll have nothing.
The choice is obvious. I have a responsibility.
I’m not letting Eka get away.
I set off at a run, chasing after the man who killed Connie, and as I sprint past Xiao, I yell, “Next time.”
StatUS-ID
[fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]
SysDate
[22:02:29. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
Wiser conducts a massacre on the warehouse floor. He’s not taking any chances. The few sisters left standing have regrouped and managed to grab weapons and take cover behind the shyft replicator. Bricks of shyfts continue to emerge and the bot keeps loading the AV.
Xiao strides to the window, and when he speaks his voice resonates through the cavernous warehouse. “Everyone stand down. Agent Wiser, call off your men. We surrender.”
Down on the bright blue floor Wiser raises a reinforced binder strip. The building picks up his voice and transmits it to the office. “You have twenty seconds to get your arms in this. Any longer and I assume everyone in this building is illegally skynned, and we don’t stop shooting until you’re all hardlocked.”
Xiao’s eyes flick to the old woman. The bald man falls in beside grandma and they move toward the door.
Ankur rushes forward, takes Xiao by the arm. “You’re going to give up? After coming so far?”
“The plan is in motion,” Xiao says.
“But without the Eka pattern,” Ankur protests, “without you—”
“The plan is in motion,” Xiao repeats, and lays a hand on Ankur’s shoulder. “With or without us.”
Ankur pulls his hand down his face but nods.
“Agent Wiser doesn’t like me,” I say to Xiao. “My being here is going to make things worse.”
“All we have left is ourselve
s,” Xiao says and walks past me, then past Ankur, to where grandma and the killing machine are waiting at the office door.
“Ten seconds,” Wiser calls.
“We’re coming, Agent,” Xiao answers in a voice that booms through the building.
We walk down the hall and descend to the ground floor, Xiao leading the way. He steps out onto the soft blue floor first. Wiser is waiting, a dozen Standards agents in blue armour, four lawbots and Agent Brewer arrayed behind him, all their guns pointed at Xiao.
We come out next and the agents shift their targets, covering each of us from multiple angles.
“That bullshit about a superintelligence,” Wiser says as he sees me. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted. I told Chaddah. You’ll be lucky to only get twenty years in the stocks.”
I don’t say anything, but don’t look away.
It doesn’t matter what I say. They just caught me collaborating with Xiao.
I proved him right.
“He isn’t lying,” Ankur says from beside me. “For what it’s worth there is most definitely some kind of rogue mind in the wild. You’ve seen the evidence yourself, Agent Wiser.”
Wiser blinks at Ankur. “Doesn’t matter,” Wiser says. His eyes narrow, then he smiles, looks at Xiao and his voice gets low. “I’ll find the truth soon as I get your Cortexes back to the station and dig the memories out of your head.”
“This is how you uphold your laws?” Xiao asks. “Through torture? You’d reduce people’s minds to the status of objects, pry through them at your leisure.”
This pauses Wiser. His eyes drop.
“Shoot them,” Brewer says. “They’re a bunch of fucking cyphers. Just like that killed Kalifa.”
This snaps Wiser’s head up. “You’re not people. You could be anyone—anything—in there. We can’t take the chance. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. You make these skyns. You know what they can do. A second of mercy could get a team killed.”
“We are not, all of us, violent murderers,” Xiao counters. “We are school teachers. We are engineers. Geneticists. Fleshmiths. Police officers and soldiers.”
“You’re cyphers,” Wiser says. “Superhuman weapons. Monsters.”
Xiao purses his lips. “We’re mothers,” he says.
Wiser’s mouth drops open, then he laughs, his mind made up. “What kind of sick mother makes an army of little girls?”
“There’s no one so invisible as a Chinese girl,” Xiao replies, his voice soft, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “There are five hundred million of us in the world, we are already indistinguishable, the perfect camouflage. I should know. I used to be one.”
Xiao’s a woman. Inside that male skyn is a female rithm. If I’ve learned one thing since my restoration, it’s nothing is as it seems.
This isn’t what Wiser was expecting to hear, shifts him back on his feet. “I know who you are,” Wiser says. “Mai-xie Zheng, former Chinese national who chose the Yuanfen in July, 2056.”
“Chose,” Xiao says, nearly spitting the word. The first crack in her calm facade I’ve seen. “Then you know I left behind a husband. And a daughter.”
“I do.” Wiser answers.
“Do you know what happened to them when my identity was discovered and revealed by a Toronto police detective?”
“What do you mean?” Wiser asks.
“Fate is partnered with my government. I am considered a terrorist there. You know how the families of terrorists are treated.”
Wiser lowers his gun. “Are they dead?” he asks.
Xiao is quiet for a long second before answering. “I don’t know.”
“Agent Wiser,” I say, and step up past Xiao. “It's big picture time, but you don’t have all the facts.”
Wiser shakes his head. “Gage Gibson, AKA Finsbury Gage, you have the right to remain silent—”
He needs to see through the person he thinks I am.
“You’re right, Agent. Yes, I was shyfting. I wanted to find Connie's killer, and my memories were the only evidence I had. So I got them out of my head the only way I could. Things got out of hand. I don't know what I did, but I know I'm guilty of something. I will turn myself in, make a full confession of everything I know. But you need to listen to Xiao.”
Wiser continues to read me my rights. “Anything you say, do, or think may be used against you in a court of law.”
I take another step closer and Brewer squeezes the grip on his weapon. Two agents swing their aim to me. “They're the good guys, Wiser. It may not seem like it right now, but they see things different than we do—they see what’s coming. You and I are fighting a battle on the wrong side of history while losing a war we don't even know about. A war Xiao can win, but not on his own. He needs our help.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Brewer says.
“Fate,” Xiao states. “They're going to take over the world. Enslave us all.”
“Bullshit,” Brewer says. But Wiser doesn’t seem as shocked, doesn’t come back with an immediate argument. He's considered the idea too.
“What do you care what happens to a bunch of bit-heads?” Brewer asks Xiao.
“I was a prisoner there,” Xiao answers. “Part of me still is.” She sweeps her arm out. “All of us left versions of ourselves there. When our identities are confirmed by Fate’s agents, our digital selves are found and tortured every day for what we’re doing out here.”
This is it, decision time. Wiser’s listening. He may have a vendetta against me and been chasing Xiao for months, but I get the sense he’s still got a functioning sense of right and wrong. I have to trust him. Xiao has to trust him. And if we can’t, then it doesn't matter. Fate will win anyway. I have to make him understand.
“Xiao’s planning to free the Ancestors. They’re going to take on Fate. Everything Xiao's been doing here, selling shyfts and upgraded bodies to Reszos, she's used it to build an army.”
Galvan swallows, shakes his head. “You want me to let a criminal with an army walk away?”
“She's built server farms all over the world,” Ankur says. “High-rez virts the Ancestors can live in. For free. Choose their own destinies instead of running Fate's mazes.”
Wiser’s shoulders drop. I take another step forward but this time Brewer’s gun doesn’t follow. “You can help, Galvan,” I say. His nose crinkles as I use his first name. “Liberate two hundred and fifty-million people and prevent humanity as we know it from ending.”
Wiser sighs. “But the rush of minds, all set loose into the link. They’ll be able to sell their services free from the controls Fate employs. They’ll disturb labour markets. Throw the planet into an economic spin.”
“What?” I ask. Xiao hadn’t mentioned that.
“Markets will collapse,” Wiser says. “Economies will be devastated. People will die, Fin.”
I look back at Xiao and she gives me a resigned nod.
Shit, some choice. But hard as it is, short term pain is always worth it for a long term gain. Better a few lean years than dead or under a corporation’s thumb.
“Okay,” I say. “It'll be hard. But it's better than the alternative.”
Wiser’s face is pained. “I can’t just let them go.”
Time to get serious. “We'll all die otherwise, kid. Maybe not today, but Fate is coming for all of us. Living forever can’t last and you know it. We’re going to price ourselves out of the market and Fate will come with their choice, offering us life or death but on their terms. What will you take then?” Wiser’s face flickers with anger that immediately fades. “What's better, Galvan? Terrible or worse?”
“I don—” Wiser starts but his sentence is cut off by a gunshot behind him. Then a chorus of shrill whistles sound and the lawbots and three-quarters of the Standards agents seize and drop to the shining blue floor, unconscious and twitching.
A tall blonde woman in a grey suit is behind them, the massive coiled barrel of a neuraliser designed as a vehicle attachment
for crowd control held low at her side. A dark-complexioned man next to her holds the weapon’s battery pack as it charges for another shot. Four more grey-suited skyns back them up, assault weapons of their own raised.
Fate.
The remaining Standards agents hesitate between covering Xiao and Fate, settle on a fifty-fifty split.
“Agent Sòng,” Xiao says to the woman, her voice strong.
“I’m here for you, Mai-xie Zheng,” Sòng says from the other side of the downed Standards agents. “And only you. No one needs to get hurt. Come along and we’ll let these folks get back to their business.”
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, lady,” Wiser says. “But you just put yourself in a world of trouble.”
I slide my hand into the tight pocket of the burgundy coat, get my hand around the pistol. I’m amazed no one else has pulled their trigger already. This many guns, one of them’s bound to go off.
I’m going to be ready when the shooting starts.
“It would seem Fate has finally found us,” Xiao says and claps her hands. “Then so be it. We’re prepared.”
The small man moves behind me, grabs up the old woman, and the world goes to gunfire.
StatUS-ID
[a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]
SysDate
[17:09:47. Sunday, May 5, 2058]
Eka moves so fast he’s out the other airlock and past the dozen-or-so officers huddled around it in the darkness before they can put up any resistance.
I follow, hard on his tail. He makes it out a side door and shoots the constables waiting outside, takes off running down the sidewalk. He passes a Service cruiser, shoots another officer before she can draw her weapon, then sprints out of the quiet industrial area to the busier street beyond. I hit the ‘officer in distress’ alarm on my helmet, drop it and the botgun at the wounded constable’s feet, and pick up the pace.