Necrotech

by K C Alexander

  Indigo punched in a code. When the doors closed, he made damn sure not to meet my gaze in the reflective walls.

  I bit back a sigh, barely even noticed when the elevator car lifted, it was so smooth. No music. Just a panel counting up as we passed floor after floor. Super awkward elevator silence.

  The elevator chimed again, announcing our arrival a hundred and fifty-nine stories up. Nice.

  When the doors slid open, I expected a hall. Instead, we stepped out into a vast lobby that would have fit the entire row of my squatter tenement inside it and still have room for the junk they hoarded around the perimeter. Delicate music played over discreet speakers, while lush green plants provided an atmospheric touch to the professional digs.

  I whistled.

  A tall cream-colored desk took up the center, though there was no lettering or signage to tell me what the hell I’d been dragged into. A woman with sleekly knotted blonde hair looked up from the translucent projection screen her fingers hovered over, a welcome smile already in place. She was maybe my age, maybe a little younger, with nondescript features geared toward unremarkable anglo – modest genetic cultivation, I’d stake what was left of my cred on it – but good bone structure beneath reserved makeup. The perfect unobtrusive welcome. “Good afternoon,” she said brightly. Her brown eyes gleamed with unconcealed sincerity behind wide-framed glasses. “Do you have an appointment?”

  Indigo nodded. “Made it about an hour ago.”

  “You must be Mr Koupra.” The receptionist turned her expectant, unreasonably cheerful gaze to me. “And guest?”

  “And guest,” I agreed before Digo could open his mouth and say my name.

  She waited a moment, head tilting. I didn’t elaborate.

  “Give it a rest,” Digo muttered, low enough that I wasn’t sure the receptionist heard. “Everything’s a fucking competition with you.”

  I ignored him. If she did hear, the receptionist simply shrugged her shoulders beneath a blouse I was sure was real silk and said, “Mr Reed will see you both.” She gestured with a manicured hand to our left.

  Indigo strode off without another word.

  “Thanks,” I said as I followed.

  “Of course.”

  The wide lobby didn’t narrow. Instead, it kept going, with crystal clean windows on one side looking out over the wide expanse of the district – broken, naturally, by skyscrapers as tall as this one – and a paneled wall on the other. Pictures filled it, art that I didn’t recognize but was sure was expensive. Probably originals of some kind, though I couldn’t tell at a glance. Art snobs and rich assholes liked to claim a difference, but the great replications didn’t look any different from one copy to the next.

  I couldn’t tell if this was a business or a home. It kind of reeked of both. The view was a guaranteed power play, but even I had to admit it was kind of pretty. As much as this soulsucking shithole of a city could be pretty, anyway. The golden haze coloring the sky between gaps in the glass skyline was interesting enough, if you didn’t stop to consider that it was pollution hovering in the distant wards.

  There were no signs, no logos. Nothing that told me what corporation, if any, this guy worked for. Which made me think it wasn’t much more than a place to meet people. Probably one of many setups he had in place. He seemed cagey enough.

  The corridor ended at a set of double doors. Indigo pushed inside first, which made me glad I’d left my shades on as the modulated sunlight seared through the overhead skylights.

  Malik Reed stood beside a heavy glass and metal desk, scrolling through data in a projection tablet about a thousand times more advanced than the junk Fuck It Jim had been cobbling together. He was dressed in another gray suit, this one lighter but obviously expensive. His pants were precisely creased, tailored neatly to his long legs and narrow waist, and accessorized with a thin black belt. This time, he wore a pale blue dress shirt, a tailored vest in the same color as his slacks, and a tie colored a cross between blue and gray. Black shoes to match the belt, less shiny than last time but no less exclusive. The only concession to the summer sun streaming through the window was the suit jacket hanging up on a coat rack to my right.

  The overall affect wasn’t one of casual welcome or easy comfort. Any other man I’d known would have rolled up the sleeves, or loosened the tie. This man stood in the middle of all this glass and sunshine and made it look like it was just another day in the office.

  Hell, maybe it was.

  He didn’t look up as we entered, but he did gesture to the chairs arrayed in front of his desk as he turned away. “Have a seat.”

  Indigo sat, shoving his sunglasses up on his head.

  I didn’t. “Nice to see you, too,” I drawled.

  This time, Digo didn’t bother vocalizing his impatience. He knew better. The receptionist was one thing, but Malik Reed was a player in the game. It all came down to cred, to swagger, and Digo needed to keep face as much as I needed to regain mine.

  Whatever our host needed, I hadn’t figured out yet.

  His eyes were dark as motor oil as he seized the projected screen in one hand and tossed it to the side, gaze pinned on me. The screen vanished. “You look like a third-rate burglar.”

  I showed him my teeth. “Worried?”

  “Not even a little,” he replied, dismissing me easily as his gaze shifted to Indigo. “What can I do for you, Mr Koupra?”

  Digo, for all his years on the street, couldn’t match the other man’s perfect air of control. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, balled-up frenetic energy. “Riko’s got intel for you. I have questions.” He tilted his head at me. “Start with her.”

  Malik’s eyes returned to me, coolly reproachful. “You should have taken the card.”

  “You should have paid that bouncer better,” I returned. I tilted my head, arms folded under my breasts. “How is he, by the way? Did you promise medical?”

  A black eyebrow lifted. “He’ll live.”

  “Oh, good.” My tone said I didn’t give a shit.

  Unlike the earblasting confines of Plato’s Key, the music in the lobby didn’t reach this room. The light didn’t leave anything to the imagination, and I had no trouble discerning the complete lack of amusement in his features this time.

  “Not even a sigh,” I pointed out, pulling my mouth into an expression of affected dismay. “I must be losing my touch.”

  “You are also losing my attention.”

  Jackhole.

  “Indigo.” I glanced at him. “The data.”

  He withdrew the tablet from its place in his waistband. Maybe he was making a point, too, because I took way too much pleasure from the fact that it left a streak of black on the nice clean desk he threw it on. The clatter forced a faint tightening of Malik’s shoulders.

  Most wouldn’t be able to tell, but I could sense Indigo’s nerves. I couldn’t blame him. Being on Malik Reed’s turf was a great big fuckoff unknown.

  I was too stubborn to play nice. “There’s your evidence,” I said. “Now get me my team.”

  A long-fingered hand lifted the device. A ring winked in the bright daylight. I didn’t remember seeing it before, but I hadn’t exactly been focused on his hands.

  A wedding band, obviously, and in gold. Most couples who bothered with rings didn’t usually pick gold. Titanium or platinum, or, if you were trendy, diamond steel with microchips that could contain all kinds of fun surprises. Honeymoon photos. Tracking bugs.

  Aphrodisiacs.

  Yeah, that was a thing.

  “Did you run over it a few times before you brought it here?” he asked mildly, turning the screen rightside up with two fingers.

  “You could say that.” I could have mentioned MetaCore, but I figured I’d hold off on that one. I didn’t know who the man worked for yet, and if he had ties to the conglomerate, I wanted what I could get from him before I blew that bird cage open.

  I waited in silence, stooping to lean on the back of the other chair as he scrolled thro
ugh the information. He, like me, did not sit; a fact I think made Indigo even more nervous.

  I kind of hoped one of them would do something stupid. It was that kind of mood.

  Instead, Malik glanced up. Not at me, but at Digo. “Are you aware of current events in the Vid Zone?”

  The linker shook his head, his features tight. “Most of the information streaming out of the Vid Zone has been unofficially gagged.”

  “Not surprising,” Malik said. “They gave up on pretense yesterday, strangled the feeds.”

  “Hey,” I said sharply. “You want to share, or is this a boys only club?”

  I expected Malik to answer. Instead, Indigo shrugged, folding his hands over his belly as he kicked his feet out in a long line. Yeah. Totally a boys’ club. Jackwagons, the both of them. “Something closed communication in a four-block radius, smack in the Vid Zone.”

  As if it was nothing.

  It wasn’t nothing. “You mean,” I asked slowly, my irritation unfolding like a slow tide, “the same Vid Zone that chopshop is listed in? The one you know is our only link? That one?”

  He shot me a look no less irritated. “Yeah. That one.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Riko,” Indigo replied with a total lack of patience, “stow it.” Shut up and play the game. In fewer words.

  The fact I was too busy throwing a tantrum instead of paying attention to the details said a lot about my state of mind.

  I’d never grilled Indigo for every last fact before. I didn’t like knowing too much – I found it complicated. I couldn’t be upset now that Digo hadn’t fed me this data on a plate.

  Except I was.

  Which wasn’t fucking fair, and that about summed up my entire existence at the moment.

  I set my jaw.

  “There’s only three reasons a communications gag would happen,” Digo pointed out when I didn’t say anything.

  “A power short,” I said, aware of one. “Or rolling blackouts.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the case.” Indigo squinted into the bright, airy office. “The second is an official gag order, which is a political move that would be heavily covered by the rest of the surrounding feeds and talked to death on every daytime newsline from here to Northside Commons. There’s no civic unrest in that area to warrant it.”

  Malik was silent, letting Indigo carry the educational part of this show. He watched me with a cool intensity that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck lift in wary acknowledgment.

  I was being judged. I did not like being judged.

  I glowered at him. “What?”

  “Take your sunglasses off.”

  The order felt like a verbal slap. My fingers clenched on the chair. “Why?”

  “Because it’s rude,” he said, holding my gaze through the dark lenses as if he knew I was watching him. “Take them off.”

  “Oh, for–” I snatched the sunglasses off my head, throwing them on his desk in a fit of impatient temper. “What’s the third reason to cut communications?”

  Malik didn’t seem impressed with his victory, small as it was. A muscle ticked over the sharp angle of his wide jaw. “Necrotech activity detected.”

  My irritation vanished under a pitched slam of cold comprehension.

  An image of Nanji, tech sprouting from her back and her limbs splayed, filled my head. Slowly, I straightened from the back of the chair, absently cradled my arm as the motion pulled at muscles too hooked on pain to take it with grace. “You’re shitting me. A blackout?”

  Malik met my eyes with level intensity. “That’s right. A blackout. Which means your so-called lead is dead in the center of a necro quarantine.”

  16

  The computer-controlled windows darkened, filtering the sunlight enough that the map Malik called up on his computer shone stark green on the wide, wired glass behind him.

  I circled the desk, studying the layout of the Vid Zone. “Each block is about six miles in diameter, right?”

  “Correct.”

  A thick red border outlined a four-block radius, a sharp contrast to the shimmering green outlining the rest of the zone. What the map didn’t show was the rat runs – the alleys and walkways that made for prime hunting ground top to bottom.

  Not ideal. But not insurmountable.

  Scary as hell, fucked six ways to sideways, but definitely not insurmountable.

  Repeating it to myself didn’t help. I was so not zenning it.

  “According to this information,” Malik said, tapping in a few commands to a handheld, “the site you want is here.” A blue dot appeared almost in the exact center of the red square. “Middle of the quarantine.”

  “Easy,” I said, shrugging. I lied. “Get me the right team and I’ll be in and out.”

  His gaze was cool as it flicked to me. “Have you ever seen a necro blackout?” When I shook my head, the dark line of his lashes narrowed a fraction.

  “Chunk off.” I folded my arms. “Necros aren’t my specialty.”

  Necros weren’t anyone’s specialty.

  As aware of conversion as we all were, necro infestation was rare as hell. I’d only ever heard of three in my lifetime and each one was burned out before it spread farther than the faulty chopshop failsafe it came from.

  Malik’s hip angled against the desk, a casual perch that still somehow failed at nonchalant. He was too neat for it. Too smooth. “You seem very confident.”

  Indigo snorted.

  I shot him a sidelong glare. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Malik seemed less than convinced. “How knowledgeable are you on the subject of conversion sciences?”

  That was a fancy way of asking how much I knew about the process. Fucking educated people.

  I eyed him, briefly considering calling him on the aggravatingly obvious command in the question. I didn’t answer to him. Malik Reed seemed to have a bad habit of assuming everyone around him did.

  Instead, I opted for professional courtesy. “No more or less than what’s usually out there,” I said, tipping my head. “If you’re unlucky enough to hit your tech threshold, the tech infiltrates the human nervous system, scrapes out anything that isn’t its own signal, and converts the brain. When it turns on autopilot, it does what it does best.” Problem is, for a lot of SINless, what tech does best is kill.

  That doesn’t mean that Susie Housewife with her cosmetic enhancements can’t convert. It’s a lot rarer, and her brand of going apeshit is a lot less initially lethal than mine or Boone’s would be. Tech is a tool. You can kill someone with a showerhead, given enough time and effort, but someone with a chainsaw would kill faster.

  It’s a numbers game. Most SINless are illegal because we choose to be. That kind of life comes with strings. Saints tend to be mercs, and runner tech tends to be deadly.

  Just adds to the bad rap propagandists like to spew. Go SINless and convert. Whoo.

  “If,” I added, “the necrotech is wired into something, it spreads like a computer virus, overwhelming the systems it’s wired into.” This was one of the reasons projectors were shoot-on-sight. A ’jector that corrupts while jacked corrupts the system in seconds.

  Fortunately, Nanji wasn’t plugged in when I saw her last. Not for lack of them trying.

  My hands fisted.

  “Statistically,” Malik said, inclining his head like I’d scored a point – fuck him – “necrotechs operate individually.”

  “Obviously. People are individual units.”

  Malik’s eyes glinted. “Which clearly outlines the current question.”

  I glanced at Indigo.

  He shrugged.

  “What?” I asked, feeling baited.

  He tapped at the window, toggling something I couldn’t see.

  A dozen red blips flashed into place, staggered across the quarantine zone.

  I stared at it. “Hold up.” I pointed at the map. “You’re saying there’s more than one necrotech in there?”

  Malik answ
ered with the same patient voice – hella impatient words. “Twelve known hits on the feeds before the signal was cut.”

  “What are they doing in there?”

  One thick eyebrow arched. “I’ll send you in with a census board and you can ask them.”

  “How’s that fuck-yourself tech acquisition coming?” I replied with saccharine interest.

  A corner of his full mouth twitched.

  * * *

  Indigo shifted in his chair. “Given the, uh, reproduction going on in there,” he said slowly, “how do we feel about the theory that necros are a few short hops away from legit AI?”

  Whatever smile he didn’t seem inclined to give in to, Malik’s lip curled into sheer irritation. “That’s a romanticized notion.” He may as well have called bullshit for all the disgust his civilized opinion framed.

  “Gee, Malik,” I said. “You sound almost human.”

  “Trust me.” His deep voice dropped into a low growl. “Compared to the economic and evolutionary destruction an AGI would cause, I’m a bargain.”

  I cupped my elbow with the other hand, an idle gesture that let me dig my thumb into the synthetic arm’s elbow joint. It didn’t help anything, but at least I’d managed to tamp the pain down to a low, chronic hum. “Now you sound bitter.”

  “Do I?” He looked at the map. “Tech operating on its own, and that’s what you get.”

  As arguments went, I couldn’t disagree. Everybody knew that some of the corps had seriously considered AI technology along the way. The government rhetoric was largely silent on the matter; that happened when all the conglomerates threatened to stop funneling creds towards a civic service that had long ago become little more than a pretense to keep the drones happy.

  I had no doubt there were labs somewhere devoted to exploring the possibility, and some conspiracy theorists even whispered that necros were the result of early attempts to force the issue of artificial general intelligence. We’d never made it past ANI – artificial narrow intelligence. That was an intelligence so rigorously defined that computers never went any farther than what they were programmed to be good at.