Virology

by Ren Warom

  His mind flays open, bursting like a wound under the pressure, because on some level he’s avatar too if he wants to be, and whatever this is, it recognizes that and seeks to cage him—dragging him headlong into Slip. Yelling, Shock powers away from the pull to be caged whilst hanging on to Puss, the tendrils of avatar-mind pulsing messages of agony to his tired brain. He tries to keep hold of all the rest too. It’s like being torn apart in slow motion, but he refuses to let go even as they all are torn from his grasp.

  Half here, half in Slip, he watches helplessly as Puss turns to face him.

  Let go, she whispers. Please. You can’t do this.

  The human part of him crumbles, feeling the depth of anguish in her and knowing he can’t refuse her, the Shark part roars, wanting to anyway—damn her wishes and damn the consequences—and Emblem, neither one nor the other, simply holds on, calm and steady, doing as he wishes it to even as he falls apart.

  But how will I fix this without you? he asks her, all but begging. You keep me steady.

  Oh, Shock, she replies, and it’s so soft, so damn gentle, so full of her love for him, her trust. Now is not the time to be steady. Let me go. Let yourself go. Be Shark. Fight.

  He swallows. This is going to hurt you more than me. Are you sure?

  Yes. They can’t erase me, they can only contain me, and not forever. I trust you.

  He’s not sure whether she’s lying or not, and he can’t see inside those cages to be certain, can only feel the oppressive silence ringing in their wake, in every drive and throughout Slip. The world is lifeless without avis. Poor, and thin, and dimmed. Slip should not be like this, the construction ceased, the silence oppressive; avatars should not be caged. He wants to fucking kill for this. Tear whoever’s done it to shreds.

  He gives his attention to Puss. All of it, showing her that he’s with her as he forces himself to let go—like loosing his grip on a wall and allowing gravity to snare his body, slamming it to the ground.

  The loss of Puss is brutal, but throughout all of it he remains in touch with her for as long as he can, just being there, allowing her to feel him until there’s nothing left of her to feel and he’s all but driven to his knees by how wrong it is.

  A scattering of weeks, barely enough to make a month, that’s all they’ve had, but nothing is right without her. He isn’t. As if in response, the Shark in him flexes, pulsing against his control. Wanting blood. Ruin. Revenge. Wanting to take everything and rip it all to pieces. Instead he focuses—pushing all his rage into a lance and driving through the tide to its source. Submerged in the body of code tearing avatars from their human pairs, it becomes clear that this is, incredibly, somehow Disconnect. Volk’s drug. But it’s a vastly superior version from the one they used on Josef, with a larger, more intricate set of integral commands. And fully, unbelievably, digital.

  With it everywhere in Slip, infecting every corner— catching every avatar everywhere to shackle them away— and the irresistible pull of it hurting his every cell, it’s hard to find the source. But he’s angry, and he’s Emblem, and he doesn’t quit until he locates the place where it’s still flooding in: Shanghai Hub’s devoted locus. Once a coral, it’s now a seething array of spines and seals. Large amounts of hardcore VA. Someone’s really invested in keeping eyes away from Shanghai Hub’s business. Shame they didn’t reckon on his eyes coming to look. Plunging in, he finds himself surrounded with identifiers.

  Tsai Holdings? Never fucking heard of you cunts.

  Did they hit Shandong? He’s not sure. Seems like a normal Corp. No criminal links. He’s never even heard of their founder, Evelyn Tsai. She comes up as no more than a self-made business woman. A rags to riches story. A much revered member of the Shanghai elite. Boy has this bitch got them fooled. As he watches, another flood of code washes outward from the locus, sinking tendrils into him as it passes and adding an app to his drive—a payment system.

  What now? Oh no you fucking did not.

  Slipping was meant to be free. The only time it wasn’t was in the months before the fall of Fulcrum, when Josef Lakatos put tariffs in place to limit the amount of re-writing he had to do to keep the public ignorant about how far out of control the Hive Queens were, but there’s no Queens to protect anyone from any more. Tsai Holdings isn’t saving anyone—it’s helping itself. Puss was stolen from him because an arsehole Corp wants to make a fucking profit. Of all the reasons there could be to steal avis, this one is the lowest. Grubby. Opportunistic. Typical.

  Trust a Corp to pull this shit.

  Snarling, he tries to slam an attack through the barrage, but almost loses himself in the process, the pull on his avi-self too powerful. He’s forced to retreat and watch and fume at his own impotence, at the sheer effrontery of Tsai Holdings’ greed.

  As he floats there in the emptiness, seething, Mollie’s voice, wholly unexpected and too damn raw, bursts into his IM and all hell breaks loose in the hangar.

  Zero Hour

  Mollie is losing her words, the dictionary of her humanity backed up like precious pictures on file. Lose these and you lose a life. A whole identity. In the repository of her words spaces have appeared, gaps through which the whispering of viral sickness leaks incomprehensible nonsense. Virad speak.

  Before she made the virads, Mollie was aware that the language used to advertise, to market, was essentially empty. Words like hooks—the currency of want reframed and sold as need. She used to pride herself in the careful construction of such hooks, the effect they would have in Slip.

  Now she’d give a great deal to go back and make them substantial instead of seductive. Meaningful rather than manipulative. Anything that might change the outcome of what’s happened. But you don’t get re-dos. There are no time machines. There is only finding a way through, or losing. In secret, in the deepest part of her she would never share, not even with her Maggie, Mollie thinks they’re going to lose.

  The virus Zenada made from Virads has forced the battle Mollie’s fought for years over the control of her tongue to the front lines of her mind and she’s never been so afraid. She’s being rewritten word by word, and when all her words have been replaced with a howling black hole of virad speak, there will be no more Mollie, only a hollow doll shouting nonsense into the void.

  With no means to put a stop to it, no method of communicating with the virus, even though she created the very language it uses, Mollie follows routine. What choice is there? You continue or you stop, and Mollie’s never felt given to stop. In times of trouble she doubles down and fights harder, resists harder. A challenge, a blatant dare to anything that would seek to destroy her: if you want me, you’ll have to work for it.

  This is no different.

  Curled in her wires, awake and tired and worn and mercifully lucid, she reaches for her Zeros as she does every day, several times a day, regardless of how she’s feeling, how little energy she has. A roll call of sorts, seeing who’s still there and who’s disappeared, sucked into the viral black hole. She hums as she slips from mind to mind, adding her strength to their last vestiges, encouraging them to hold on. Hold on tight to whatever’s left. Fight.

  Reaching EVaC, a friend to the Cleaner and therefore cherished, she slides into his mind breathing out words from her bà she no longer recalls the meaning of, only the soft music of them spoken against her ear as she fell asleep with the knots of her bà’s fingers smoothing through her hair. To her relief, she finds him as he always is, in suspension of sorts.

  He’s waiting.

  Perhaps for Amiga, perhaps for death. But it seems to hold him steady whatever it is, so she tells him to keep waiting and drifts away to the next tank.

  This is her responsibility. All of this. No matter what Zen has done.

  Her mind’s drifting away from the hall, toward Maggie’s room, seeking comfort, when the loss of her avatar hits.

  Mollie screams, her voice alien to her ears as ever— reaches in to Slip with all she has only to find she’s too late. Gold reeling b
etween her fingers, unspooling fast, she slams out of Slip and throws her senses into Maggie’s room, where she lies sleeping, crying out as the nightmare of losing her avi rolls through her subconscious.

  Brushing closer, Mollie skims across the surface of Maggie’s mind, soft as a finger on a brow. Freezes, listening hard. Even at this remove, even with all the horror of avis unravelling and forced into cages, the noise in Maggie’s mind is unmistakable. Horribly familiar. The insistent whisper of virads.

  This feeling, it’s like betrayal.

  Zen’s virads could have her with her blessing, any of her, every last cell if need be. But not her Maggie. Never her Maggie. They do not have permission to take her Maggie. Grief and fury war for control of her emotions. Fierce in every battle, Mollie allows the latter to swallow any hint of the former. No grief here. No sadness. Her Maggie is not a Zero.

  Zen has taken a step too far.

  That calls for action. Retaliation. Weapons. She already called for a weapon, but she has no idea if Amiga understood. If she’s even tried to start looking. There’s no choice now, she has to be sure. Has to know Zen will be stopped. Realizing this, Mollie does what she’s never done before, what she’s always left to her Maggie; she wills the horde of virad junk to hold back and throws open a wide direct channel, focused on Amiga and Shock. Her knights. Her weapons. The only solution she can imagine.

  Help!

  Their surprise is like a slap, their response a twin resonance in her drive: Mollie?

  Maggie. Sick. Virads. Mollie spits each word out, there’s so little time, a roaring hurricane of junk already swirling up from the base of her brain to consume any chance she has of securing help she desperately needs. Get Zen. KILL.

  Exhausted, she collapses out of her mind into the vortex of nonsense, so loud she can barely hear herself crumble beneath it. In those last moments before the noise consumes her, she wants nothing more than to go back to her body and walk here, curl up beside her Maggie. But Mollie can only fly on wires, and she can’t fly this far.

  The wires won’t reach.

  How Not To Steal A Shuttle

  The loss of Leopard Seal provokes a tornado of responses—the entirely unexpected tsunami of grief blindsides Amiga, an emotional response not customary or remotely useful. Grief immobilizes. She needs to move. Then the tariff app appears and the rage almost actually blinds her. In this moment she wishes she was Shock, able to chase this shit to source and annihilate it.

  The mere thought of Leopard Seal in a cage kills her. Actually takes her heart and crams it into a vice. It will burst under this pressure. She will.

  “This isn’t an attack on us.” Deuce. Behind her. Jaw wound so tight she wants to smooth it away, but this isn’t the time, or the place. He’s working away at his tablet still, jacking the second shuttle, but his fingers keep fumbling.

  She goes to say something pithy about the timing being piss poor, because any other response will unleash either tears or screaming and really what the fuck, when two things happen simultaneously; Mollie’s voice tears into her IM, telling her Maggie’s sick and demanding that she go get Zen now, and the lights of the hangar slam on, illuminating the glass walls and revealing what seems like hundreds of soldiers on the other side. The remaining mercs from Shandong. The Cartel. Hunin’s own security forces. All armed.

  The Hornets are always careful even when the situation doesn’t call for it, so the doors to the hangar are closed and barred, but that won’t hold their company for long and they’re already rattling fit to crash open. They have a minute, if that.

  Almost delirious at the thought of having all these cunts to unleash on, Amiga bares her teeth and whips around to face Deuce. “How long?”

  He’s working deliberately with one finger. Vicious stabs. Looks like he’s about to chuck his tablet into a wall. “They’ve powered up the system. VA’s cycling. I can’t get a handle long enough to flip open another shuttle.”

  “Which one do we already have?”

  “Over there, by the West exit.” He glances over. “Vivid’s closest. Her team can go, we’ll head out and keep these bastards distracted.”

  “Plan. We’ll need to find a private shuttle.”

  Deuce dips his chin, looking a little less flustered. “Get Shock to feel one out. He’ll be faster than me.”

  Shock. Why didn’t she think of him right away? Losing Puss four weeks, no, not four, five now—fuck, where did time go?—after Shark’s… what was that? Murder? Probably. Whatever, he’s bound to be in bad shape. She checks him out, but it’s not grief he’s riding. Hell no. He’s looking at the troops beyond the glass and his eyes are wrong. Flickering between that oh-so-intense blue and what looks like liquid shadow, but might be shark eyes.

  “We’ll figure it out on the hoof,” she says, still looking at Shock.

  Flinging Vivid instructions, Deuce and Amiga gather their half of the Hornets and head for the main door as it bursts open, slamming the glass hard enough to send fine fracture lines snaking across.

  “Oh this is not fucking ideal,” Tracker says at her left, raising his gun. “I’m dealing with a bullet drought in three more shots and I reckon no one here is much better off.”

  “I don’t even have a fucking gun.” Admitting that feels freeing. Or maybe it’s the significant likelihood of imminent death. Amiga finds herself grinning again. No Leopard Seal. No shuttle. No weapons. Life sure knows how to take a dump on her cranium and she continues to have incorrect responses to that—for a fact, the idea of hand-to-hand combat with heavily armed troops bent on her death should not be exciting. Oh well. In every cloud…

  Coordinating via IM, they charge en masse. Spreading out and covering each other as much as possible, using their remaining ammo on knees to create obstacles to hold up the incoming flood. Behind them, the hangar vibrates, filling with heat and noise as Vivid’s crew take off. The sound and fury of it swallows the world.

  Amiga’s in the thick of it all, barely even thinking any more, unable to quit grinning—knocking every soldier she takes down into the path of the others, stealing their ammo to chuck to Hornets. She’s drenched in blood yet again, her skin itching in the sticky heat, the layers of dust and blood, the residual of shuttle blast, but the flood isn’t abating. More than one Hornet has dropped out of sight. The odds are rising that they won’t even make it out past the door.

  The grin turns to full on laughter, and the next soldier she attacks gives her this wild-eyed look like she’s fucking lost it. Probably she has.

  In the corner of her eye then, she catches a flash of green and time skips like a record. The troops surrounding them, the one clutched in her hands, stop so abruptly it’s as if they’ve been slammed up against a wall. They drop all at once, the one she’s holding suddenly so heavy he wrenches from her grip to crash to the floor. They’re like dominoes. Puppets. Some in a puddle of limbs, others keeling over, face first. All lifeless. She can’t even see chests rising. Are they dead? How the fuck are they dead?

  Deuce yells. Ducks to the right of her. Runs past carrying Shock. Shock? Did Shock seriously just kill all these soldiers with his fucking mind? She runs to catch up with Deuce. Gives Shock the once over. He’s limp. Raglike. Eyes closed. Ghost-skinned and sweating. It isn’t real. None of it. The Haunt is not a killer. What the fuck is happening to the world? It’s upside down. Makes no sense at all.

  “What the fuck was that shit?” Ravi. He’s staring at Shock like he just grew tentacles or a fin. Considering the colour of his eyes earlier, maybe he always had a fin on the inside. And isn’t that a thought?

  Deuce shakes his head. “Dunno. Whatever it was, he’s out like he got poleaxed. Dead weight.”

  “So how about we take advantage of him smashing us a window and get the hell hub-bound?” Ravi doesn’t usually snap, but this situation? Not usual.

  “Tracker’s on it.”

  They run at full tilt. The pound of Hornet boots around Amiga is a comfort, reminding her they got awa
y, even if the how of it is still processing and likely will until Sleeping Beauty cracks an eyelid and spills the beans.

  Above them, the muted roar of shuttles launching fills the night sky. Amiga tries not to look, too aware of the fact that amongst the stars there will be no gold any more. No avatars dancing. She does it despite herself.

  “I want her back,” she mutters. “I’m going to get her back.”

  “We’re getting all the avis back,” Deuce says fiercely, startling her. “No one’s taking our choices away again. Whoever did this just signed a death sentence. Next left. Tracker’s found a shuttle.”

  * * *

  Hunin doesn’t have many high-end zones. It’s a shit hole, like the vast majority of the Gung. The only place in Hunin with anything like high-end ’scrapers is the melt zone between Hunin and Chengdu, a district filled with the financial architecture that keeps Shandong rolling, twenty square miles of business zone. The melt zone ’scrapers, like Chengdu proper, are all bright steel and blue-tinted glass—clones in varying sizes. They all have shuttle pads.

  At this time of morning, finding one with an actual shuttle on the pad is pretty much miraculous. Consequently, Amiga’s immediate instinct is to suspect dodgy goings on.

  Her first glance tells her that her instinct was correct. There are lights on one floor, right near the top. Somewhere up there, a bunch of rich bastards are plotting an asset strip with someone from one of the hubs. If the Hornets’ luck was holding it’d be someone they could kill to take heat off their backs, but their luck is for shit of late.

  Consider the facts: the shuttle atop the ’scraper is private. That means it won’t fly without activation. That means they need the tablet, or the head, of the person who owns it. Either would do. That means they’re going to have to crash the asset stripping party, which is probably heavily guarded considering how below board this shit is. No news like bad news.