Virology

by Ren Warom

  The Place Of Dead Roads

  Scrambling over the last terrace, Shock succumbs to numb despair, stumbling over his own feet. Damn near face planting in pig shit. Deuce wraps a hand around his upper arm, holding him steady, getting him to the caterbikes. Puss slides out in gold threads to wind around his torso, holding tight. The roar of the vehicles is almost merciful, drowning the ugly chatter of gunfire, and through it all, Shock holds the illusion in place, so anyone who looks for them will not see.

  And the whole time, every second of it, he strains his drive wide open to listen for Amiga, freezing inside by degrees as miles and silence spin out together, impossibly long and final.

  Maybe Deuce could claim more right to panic, but Deuce being Deuce, he holds together. Once on the caterbikes, he takes point, guiding them down the mountain road and through the back streets of Hunin to the small parking lot on the ground floor of an ex-clubhouse out near the border they’d passed on their way to Shandong. They’d discussed and agreed to use the lot as a rendezvous in case of emergencies soon after they arrived at the farm, because Hornets plan for contingencies, every time.

  Remade to art spaces, the clubhouse is shabby and shuttered, and the parking beneath lies abandoned and locked, holding nothing but a couple of rusting cars and a whole mess of scurrying rats. Vivid, never one for hiding her emotions, grabs out a gun and makes to start shooting. Deuce snags her wrist.

  “WTF Vee? Live and let live not in your canon any more?”

  She gestures with her free hand, a middle finger at him, followed by a rigid pointer at the small bundles of brown fur racing along the walls. “Rats, Deuce. Vermin. They’re probably full of lice and diseases. I like being healthy.”

  “Rats are intelligent and generally very clean,” Deuce says, calm as usual. “Killing them won’t make you feel better about leaving Hornets behind.”

  Vivid bites her lip. Hard. “Oh fuck you, Psychology Major 101.”

  He loosens his grip, rubbing her fingers between his. “They’ll be here. Not all of them, but most. We’re Hornets. We can handle ourselves, even against guns. You know this. And we left our best weapon behind to help them. Whatever you think of the way Amiga acts at times, you know what she is, what she can do. They’re in the best hands.”

  “I trust her,” Vivid says, slow and careful, “I really do. But I’m not sure of her. She’s different, Deuce. Darker. It’s not just the killing thing, dammit, you know I’m no angel, but it’s one thing to be down with dispatching a dickhead, another entirely to need killing in order to breathe.”

  Deuce smiles, and there’s something within that smile, hiding beneath it, that Shock’s never seen on his face before: anguish. “Trust me, it’s always been there. I could always see it, and I don’t have a problem with it because it’s her.”

  He looks at Shock then, direct, and the awareness in his gaze makes him squirm. Holy shit, Deuce sees her, and he’s fully compos of the fact that she chooses to talk to Shock over him. Shock tenses, waits for whatever verbal missile’s about to be fired, but Deuce says nothing, and Shock literally wants to throw himself on the mercy on the rats, because no way does he deserve a pass from Deuce on being Amiga’s ear.

  Just another IOU right there to add to a million the same.

  Feeling entirely too chewy and strung out, Shock does the usual and retreats to solitude, hitting the far wall to collapse in a pile of tired limbs, and settling in to wait. The Hornets pop up heat lamps they’d stashed under the car wrecks and gather round to keep the light from giving them away, quiet talk bubbling over with battle fatigue and dark humours—straining to obscure a list of possible outcomes they have to spend agonizing hours waiting to see fulfilled or not.

  And it is hours. Half the night ticking by in excruciating bundles of slow seconds. Time being cruel as it always is when the wait is important. Fucking perception and its need to grind down on pain like a foot on a broken bone. But gradually, as hours tick by, other Hornets begin to trickle in. A steady flow on caterbikes, some badly injured and in the arms of others, some alone, dusty and bloodied, some in pairs.

  Night drags into dawn. Into early daylight. They hang on knowing it’s not safe, all humour used up, all words dried in throats too tight to breathe. Matters not that Amiga is only recently a full Hornet again, and a bad one at that, ricocheting off to do her own thing in her own way out of sheer, unmitigated gall disguised as impatience. Matters not they’re collectively a little leery of her, or in the case of her closest buds, downright annoyed. It just matters that she’s not here yet, and that she’s human enough to die, and they don’t want to lose her.

  And they don’t want to lose Gail either. If she’s not coming, then he’s not.

  Worst thing is, everyone’s thinking the worst, but no one says it, no one puts it out there in the open… just in case. And Shock goes from wanting to punch the person who dares to talk first to being the one who wants to.

  Two things. If Amiga and Gail are dead, they’re dead, and they can process that at their leisure, except for right now. As appropriate times for processing grief go, this one’s about as wrong as it gets. And the second? The big one. They’re wearing bullseyes and nowhere near far enough away from Hunin and a whole mess of trouble and guns to be standing around saying nothing about how the farm bought it with them inside and how it wasn’t the Cartel, which means it’s a new horror-show they’re playing lead roles in.

  He’s finally decided to go for broke and get shit said, when someone else speaks, leaving him fending off tears.

  “What the holy fuck are you lot doing still here? Are you actively trying to die? You do realize the chaos at Shandong will mean Hunin crawling with Cartel sometime real fucking soon, and whoever the fuck hit the farm last night—by the way not Cartel—has an even bigger hard-on for us lot on gurneys than the Cartel does. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I thought at least collectively you might manage to make one entire usable brain!”

  Stalking into the parking space like the predator she is, covered head to toe in all manner of filth but looking somehow utterly perfect, Amiga’s wearing the most singularly pissed expression he’s ever seen on her. He wants to paint it. Photograph it. Splice it into his memory. Tattoo it on his stupid skin. He’s never been so happy to see her angry. From the looks of it, neither has anyone else.

  Except Deuce, who steps out from the Hornets wearing the matching expression to hers. Yeah, they fit.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” he asks her, in this soft voice laced through with so much fury she raises a brow. “Always comes down to the same damn comms problem with you. IMing too hard for you, Amiga? Not even a nudge? Not even sending Leopard Seal to give us the lowdown on you not being dead. We’d only have to see her, for fuck’s sake. One peek of a goddamn whisker and no one here would’ve wasted hours wondering if our own personal human nightmare of an ex-Cleaner might continue breathing!”

  She takes a step back, Amiga’s version of a raised hand: hold up, son, and calm down because I don’t wanna throw down on you. “I thought you’d know.”

  He chases after her, two quick strides to grab her shoulders. “No. You were hoping we wouldn’t care, that we’d run not knowing and not look back, not even think back because it’s you and you have this screwed-up notion of how you’re seen. Tough shit on you, because it’s a bullshit notion, Amiga. We do care. You’re just gonna have to deal with it.” She looks like she’s about to snap back, but he grips harder. “No. No argument. I said deal with it and I meant it. Now tell me what went down? Is Gail dead?”

  She shakes her head, swallowing hard. Adjusting. Later on, she’ll want to talk to Shock about this.

  “He was taken prisoner,” Amiga says, and the lot fills with exclamations of disbelief that she’d leave Gail to the mercy of whoever attacked them. She snarls at them. “Shut the fuck up! I had fifty-plus heavily armed twats converging on my person. Contrary to what you all seem to think, I don’t think I’m immortal, and I have a full bra
in all on my own, which I use regularly. You should try it. Fucking revolutionary.” Her sarcasm cuts the room to silence and she peers around Deuce to raise a brow at Shock. “Got anything to say, skinshanks? Any clue about how the fuck we got found?”

  “Not one. Contrary to what you seem to think, I’m not omniscient,” he sneers, throwing her own snark back in her face because, dammit, of all the things to jump on that’s the one guaranteed to provoke his least favourite emotion: guilt. He should have seen this coming. Felt it. Something. Or what the fuck use is all this Emblem-related bullshit anyway?

  She throws down this scoffing sound like a gauntlet. “So that discussion we had the other day meant what?”

  Pissed beyond measure that she’d casually use this crap in this moment of all moments, when everyone’s a walking nerve and bound to flip, he grabs up the gauntlet and slams it right back. “Nothing in relation to this. I can do weird shit in Slip and IRL, but I don’t have a fucking all-seeing eye.”

  “I really want to talk to you being able to do Slip stuff IRL” Deuce says, dry as cracked concrete, “because what you did at the farm and on the way here was insane. And I’d love to wrangle how any of us missed a clear and present danger on our tracks. But we have a situation. Us. Stuck in here. Military types, and Cartel cronies who might as well be, crawling the Gung like fleas on a rat. We need a battle plan.”

  If anything was likely to snap Amiga into Cleaner mode, it was this. And that’s yet another one Shock owes Deuce.

  “We do. First though I have some info you might find intriguing, as does Shock,” Amiga says, dumping him in it yet again, but he forgives her, it being only the location of duPont she likely wants him to share. “Might be relevant to whatever we decide to do next.”

  “So share,” Deuce tells them. “We haven’t much spare time here.”

  Between them they fill the Hornets in on the possible locations of the Cartel’s trio of leaders, and the situation with the Zeros and Mollie’s request regarding Zenada Lakatos. Hornets don’t take stuff like this lying down. They’ve all wanted to get to the Cartel leadership and cut them off, that whole cutting the snake’s head notion being an idea they fully subscribe to. As for Mollie, there’s not one Hornet in the room didn’t adopt her as a surrogate mother in that initial rush to halt the Queens.

  Quite simply, the Hornets would move mountains for Mollie.

  “What’s the plan?” Vivid asks Amiga.

  “What do you think?”

  “Steal some fucking shuttles, split the fuck up, hit the hubs and shut this shit down. I’m done hiding. Done killing from the shadows. I want to come out swinging.”

  Amiga blinks. “That’s actually a pretty solid plan, apart from the certain death aspect. But what the hell, certain death certainly never stopped me, don’t see why it should stop anyone else.”

  Deuce steps forward. “Show of hands, who doesn’t want to do this and wants out right now? No questions.” No hands go up. Not a single one. Not even the hands of those most grievously injured. “That’s settled then. Let’s go steal some fucking shuttles.”

  Disconnect

  Sipping on green tea from a delicate porcelain cup, Evelyn watches the world go by.

  Breakfast time is reflection time, the few moments in the day when she has nothing to do but relax. These moments are usually precious to her, a chance to reflect and plan, to enjoy the fruits of her labour. Today though, she is not so serene.

  Evelyn is waiting.

  She’s been waiting for what seems like forever, and Evelyn does not wait well. Patience is one of her virtues, but waiting is different to patience. Patience is the hunt, the pursuit, the slow calculated game. Anything that remains within her control is a part of patience. Waiting is relying on others. There is nothing more horrific than being forced to rely on others. Evelyn’s childhood was blighted by it.

  When you are poor, the charity of others is all you have. And most people are not charitable. They are, when given leave to be, utterly, unrepentantly vile to those they consider less than. Growing up, the very first thing Evelyn learnt was that, even as a tiny child, she was not safe from the cruelty of that belief. Wealthy residents in the district next to Pínkùn Dìqū would shout words like “gǒu” and “wūhuì”. They would throw stones to drive her and her friends away. Such attacks hospitalized her twice.

  She swore the end of Cad would change everything for her but, fresh from the poor excuse for Cad she was forced to endure being a teenager of no fixed abode and no fixed family, she almost ended up working Pínkùn Dìqū as a prostitute. Plucked like so many desperate girls by a rich man pretending to be her everything, when all he planned to do was use her for everything he could wring from her flesh until it was no longer useful to anyone.

  Killing him was the first time she played the game of patience.

  And it taught her that, with patience, she could do anything.

  Evelyn.

  Keel has no IM manners, so whereas she’d skin alive any other employee who dared to come in chimeless, she does no more than sip tea. Smile. Reply softly, Hello, Keel. Do you have news?

  I’m ready to go digital.

  Placing her cup and saucer carefully down on the breakfast table, Evelyn notes to her surprise that her hands are trembling, rattling the china together. She has no fear of pain, or of the separation about to occur, only the possibility of that madness from the early trials. She saw madness in Pínkùn Dìqū—in her own aunt, driven inward by the crushing daily toil of poverty. She fears losing her mind more than anything.

  The unbearable loss of control. The absence of self.

  What can I expect to feel?

  Her voice trembles too. Even in IM. Exposing emotion is not her customary stance, but with Keel it matters not. He’s oblivious to any emotional context. He’ll take what she says purely in academic or scientific terms. His pause indicates thought, rather than any vexation with her state.

  It could be uncomfortable, even quite painful or distressing, he concludes. The connection will not be entirely severed but will be functionally reduced until impassive, and pushed quite hard as the locus of control is switched back to your drive.

  Interesting.

  Indeed. I have a tablet open to log my own responses.

  Then shall we proceed?

  I’m ready when you give the word.

  Disconnect.

  The pain, the discomfort, all momentary. Evelyn endures them as she has always endured, aware that after her suffering, the cause of her suffering will always suffer more than she ever could. Watches with delight as chains of gold spin the Siamese Fighting Fish she replaced her Common Bream with into the room, above the tea pot on her table. She sips her tea.

  “I told you running would be useless,” she informs it as it writhes and spins, as the connections between them are re-written in her favour, as the will of her avi is caged into a prison under her control.

  The despair it emits into her drive as the last snap of its self-control disappears into her hands is blissful. She nibbles on a pastry. Sips tea. Taps into a function only she’s party to, written into her drive rather than the drug, sliding behind its eyes where it’s trapped in Slip. Caged. Other cages writing themselves into being around it as far as the eyes can see.

  “That’s more like it. Back where you belong. I’ll come for you when, and if, you’re needed.”

  It can do nothing to respond, but it can hear her. It can hear her very well indeed.

  * * *

  The closest shuttle station is Hunin’s own. Like all hangars it’s built from glass and not conducive to sneaking, but it’s barely three A.M. and only central hangars open for shuttles this early, meaning the glass will be shrouded in darkness. The Hornets spread out, make their way there separately, sticking to the back streets and the shadows. Shock offers to cover them, but they decide against it, wary of learning to rely on skills they don’t possess.

  Deuce and Tracker take caterbikes to go ahead to jack the
security system. Again, they won’t let Shock help. He’d be upset but, unlike Amiga, he’s happy to let Hornets be Hornets. Their array of gifts is multifarious. Jaw dropping. And they work in extraordinary concert, connected via IM and scary efficient.

  He’s standing by, waiting at the wall of the shuttle hangar as Deuce, Tracker and several other of the Hornets’ leet code jockeys—the virtuosos who can make code sing to their tune—including KJ to his surprise, jack into the systems proper to free up the shuttles they need: when it hits. A falling, a tearing, a flood of profound cold all twisting together at the root of his skull. Insistent. So very fucking strong. Aimed like a laser at the link, the connection between he and Puss.

  Reacting to the threat, he sinks into the part of him more Emblem than human. Throws the weight of everything he is at their link, holding tight. That part of him, more code than person, acts as it always does, in his favour, to his command, protecting him by strengthening the link between them, allowing Puss to fight the pull on her and remain in Slip whilst around him Hornets’ avis begin to appear.

  With Puss safe in his grasp, he’s free to witness as they’re wound from Slip to RL, writhing, in agonizing piece by piece, fighting every step of the way, their terror palpable. But it’s not the outrage of this that hits him hardest, it’s the horror on the Hornets’ faces, the fear on Amiga’s. That undoes him completely.

  The Shark part of himself he’s worked so hard to corral, afraid of what it might do unleashed, lurches for the surface and breaks loose, a yawning of teeth and animosity, a surge of pure muscular anger. With it comes a rush of disgust, at his inaction, his helplessness. He’s Emblem, for fuck’s sake. He needs to put a stop to this.

  Growling somewhere deep in his chest, he reaches for the Hornets. Feeling for their links, he seizes at them all, holding on tight—tries to do the same for them as he’s doing for his link with Puss. But whatever’s happening here is everywhere all at once, like a tidal wave, an imperative, and it tastes of solder and metal, dialling up in swift leaps from a niggling itch of flavour to an all-consuming blast.