Necrotech

by K C Alexander

“But...” Hooker paused while he unscrewed the barrel from his Sauger H2, decreasing range even further but allowing for tighter full auto in enclosed spaces. He worked fast, despite his hell of a day. “I mean, if you link in, won’t that bring necro infection with us?”

  “Yeah, but there’s ways around it once you’re in a secure link zone, like a prepared lab on its own closed circuit.” Digo gestured me forward, to stand in front of the door while Hooker covered the rear. Linker in the middle because without one, a team was blind.

  “It opens behind us,” I told them, gesturing at the wall opposite of the way we’d come in.

  “So, we’re, like, carrying a techno plague?”

  “If it helps, sure,” Indigo said patiently. “Only it’ll be trapped in the isolated comp unit, with no way of getting out.”

  The elevator thudded as it came to a full stop. The lights blacked out, leaving us in the dim luminescence given off by our torches. Hooker grunted something I think started as a yelp before he got a handle on it.

  “Easy,” Indigo said softly.

  The new set of doors creaked open, the screeching of metal snagging on metal tearing through the mental gauze I’d managed to pull over my aching head. I flinched under the popping pressure, but it ended as quickly as it began.

  A thin trail of smoke drifted into the elevator unit, backlit by the dull red glow of emergency lighting. Sparks shot blue through the foot-wide seam.

  We were stuck.

  26

  “Nobody panic,” Indigo ordered, probably more for Hooker’s benefit than mine. My ears were ringing like someone had clapped both hands over my eardrums, but I was otherwise fine.

  Nervous, but fine.

  When I got out of this, I needed to find a reputable doc willing to work with me long enough to do a full chipset replacement. This kind of feedback wasn’t normal. A replacement was going to suck for time, but I didn’t see any other way. It was delicate work, brain integration.

  I patted my harness, briefly checking on my backup arsenal by habit. “Before we crack this, how are you all on gear?”

  “Half ammo,” Hooker said, “but still have my backup. Suit’s running fine.”

  “Three clips and a CounterTech,” Indigo said. “You?”

  “Down to my last two clips, but I’ve got a CounterTech and extra ammo for the Adjudicator.” I grimaced. “Smegging shame our munitions got slagged.”

  Hooker cleared his throat.

  Indigo glared at me. “Seriously?” His tone made it clear I wasn’t earning any magical friendship points.

  I bared my teeth. “I’m sorry, fuckholes, did you want me to keel over in tears right this second? They’re gone. We’re alive.” I snapped twice in front of Hooker’s faceplate. “Focus on getting your ass out before you start worrying about others.”

  “Yeah.” Hooker’s helmet bobbed. “I’m on that like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Good.

  Indigo growled through his teeth. “Just get the door.”

  “I’ll take one end,” I said.

  “Hooker, keep us covered.”

  The kid raised his Sauger to his shoulder, sighting down the middle of the open crevasse as I wedged my fingertips into the seam and waited for Indigo to give the okay.

  On his word, we pulled.

  The doors wanted to give. I could feel it. They rocked an inch, caught on loosely wedged resistance. My metal arm flexed, biceps tightening. Another inch. It shrieked. “Stay on it,” I grunted, pulling hard.

  Indigo’s jaw clenched with the strain, his fingers yellow around the door’s edge. The whole shaft screeched an echoed refusal that set my teeth aching.

  When it sheared through whatever blocked it, Indigo and I both hit the sides of the elevator, rocking it. My metal arm thudded against the panel, sending a snap and crackle through my joints. I hissed. The lights flickered on, then off again.

  Hooker didn’t lose sight of the open door. “Clear.”

  Indigo shook out his hands, grimacing. “Let’s go.”

  We’d worked together long enough to fall back on routine – we stepped out as a unit, back to back. Indigo faced left, I faced right, no blind spots while Hooker covered from his vantage.

  Nothing rushed us. No movement. In the burgundy shadows of the backup illumination, the corridor looked empty of all but a blood-red gleam of shattered glass. Our flashlights knifed through it, narrow beams patterned by wisps of smoke and fluttering dust motes turning gold and blue. Creepily serene.

  “Clear,” Indigo said.

  “Same,” I replied, and Hooker stepped out behind us. “This way.” I proceeded down the hall, the rhythmic clunk of my team’s boots behind me. “They called it the uplink lab. Whatever it is, I saw a lot of computers.” I hesitated, my pace hitching. “It’s... where I saw Nanji last.”

  Indigo’s pace didn’t hesitate. “Was it the one on fire?”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t know what else to say; how else to go there.

  “She was still alive?” Hooker asked me.

  “She was... moving.”

  Neither questioned my choice of words. Digo already knew why.

  We approached the pile of red-lit glass and I took a deep breath. Anxiety twisted around crushing disappointment as I edged out in front of the window whose tempered glass had exploded outward, showering the floor with fragments. It crunched underfoot. “Fuck,” I said, because there was no other word for it. “Just fuck.”

  “Nothing but slag.” Indigo studied the inside of the lab, strangely calm. He didn’t approach the blackened, scorched frame, but there wasn’t much need. Anything that had been in there had melted down into unrecognizable residue. Twisted metal, hardened globules of liquefied plastic. Any corpses I’d seen were nothing more than ash and a memory now.

  “Some fire,” Hooker said, and whistled in his helmet. “Look at the tables.” They’d bent in, softened to the point of curving under their own weight until the legs formed perfect arches.

  If metal couldn’t even hold, how long had Nanji?

  I closed my eyes.

  Had she screamed? Did they kill her before it consumed them all?

  Had she torn off their chumsucking heads and spit out their entrails before she died?

  I really, really hoped so.

  Indigo touched my shoulder. “Let’s find another source.”

  Damn it.

  I stepped away. “I don’t even know where to begin.” My throat ached. My chest hurt. My head pounded – anger, frustration, shorted tech, I couldn’t even tell it apart.

  “Security is usually wired through most of everything. I’d be surprised if they didn’t have cameras set up in every room. We’ll start there.” Same old professional linker. On the job, on the clock.

  Off the emotional grid.

  Usually, that was me. He’d accused me of just that, right?

  I needed a grip. “Fine.” I took a deep breath, digging the heel of my synthetic hand into my aching forehead. “The security force came from that way.” I gestured with my Sauger, the barrel pointing further down the hall. “Past a set of doors. Maybe they mustered there.”

  “Without a map,” Hooker said, “seems as good a place to look as any.”

  “Riko.”

  I glanced at Indigo, but I couldn’t read his eyes in the dark corridor. They were shadowed, framed in black and bloody grit. “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” A blatant lie, made all the more apparent as soon as I snapped it. Hell, even Hooker didn’t buy it. He hummed a question. I grimaced. “My head hurts,” I added when neither of the men moved. “I think my chipset took a knock. I’ll have it worked out when I get back.” By someone. Maybe.

  “You okay to keep going?” Indigo asked, his light shifting to my feet.

  I frowned at the reflected glitter, some painted with flecks of black and gilded red by the emergency lights. “Better question,” I suggested evenly. “Can you force me not to?”

  I
ndigo’s mouth tightened. He couldn’t, and trying now didn’t promise anything but grief.

  He surprised me. “Just be careful,” he suggested, as gently as the environment allowed.

  Another knock to my calm.

  How, exactly, was I supposed to do that? Should I ask my chipset to stop misbehaving? Should I ask my brain to scrub every reminder of Nanji’s ghost from my mind?

  “I’ll get right on that,” I muttered, curling my fingers more firmly over the Sauger’s stock. “Let’s get this shit done and out.”

  “What was that?”

  We both turned to frown at Hooker. He wasn’t watching us; his faceplate was focused on the slagged lab. His flashlight burned a stark hollow through the dark, picking out rippled metal and streaks of charred black.

  I glanced inside impatiently. “What?”

  “I thought I saw–” He stopped. Thought about it, I bet, because he shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “You sure?” Indigo asked.

  “For fuck’s sake, Digo, stop second-guessing everything,” I snapped, and stomped away from the men, long stride carrying me past the window – past the ghostly memory of Nanjali Koupra, eyes wide and fearful as she hammered on shattered, nonexistent glass.

  I’d be carrying that one for a while. Even when I’d do my damnedest to walk away.

  They followed me down the hall in silence. The lights hummed faintly, thanks to the backup generators feeding the place around us. Unlike my earlier visit, they didn’t turn off and on, and there was no echoed sound of booted feet sprinting for the uplink lab we left behind. I led them through wine-red shadows and endless, stark halls, turning left when we passed through automatic double doors imprinted with text on the side that closed behind us.

  B L O C K – C.

  All personnel to be armed beyond this point.

  Right direction.

  “Oh, good,” Hooker said, grasping at whatever humor he could. “Does that mean we can put our weapons away now?”

  “Be my guest,” Indigo offered.

  “Heh.” He rolled his shoulders uneasily. “No thanks. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

  So cute. I just wanted to pat him on the helmet.

  “I don’t know where this hall leads,” I began, only to lock it down when Indigo’s hand jerked sharply up, fingers straight and together. Silence. His head cocked, cheekbones gilded red and thrust into sharp contrast as he stared at something – nothing – past my head.

  I listened, straining to hear anything over the crackling in my skull.

  “Damn,” he finally muttered. “I thought I heard gunfire.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Hooker offered.

  Neither did I, but I didn’t bother saying so. My whole setup was suffering.

  “All right, let’s go,” he said instead.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, sardonic as all hell and completely failing to hide it.

  “Go find a necro cock to suck, Riko.”

  It wasn’t as sharp as I’d expected. “Let me know if you start feeling techish,” I shot back, but I was talking to his back. He moved ahead without me, ignoring protocol just to leave me in his wake. It didn’t sting. Not like everything else. This was just funny.

  “Um…” Hooker hesitated.

  I snorted. “Go on,” I told him, amused. “He’d probably prefer you on his ass than me.”

  “Okay. You can watch mine,” Hooker told me, and without an expression behind his faceplate, I could only assume he was being serious. He followed Indigo, Sauger H2 up and ready.

  I took him at his word.

  Hooker’s ass wasn’t all that bad in that armor.

  Indigo followed the corridor, gray panels occasionally dotted by stains I didn’t have time to check out. Probably better we didn’t, anyway. The knot in my head thickened until I was sure my brain had wrapped corded nerves around my chipset.

  When a door slid open at Indigo’s passing, we all jumped. The gun leaped in Hooker’s hands; the light slid over the black entry, picked out more gray flooring, and he laughed nervously.

  Indigo’s shoulders visibly eased. “Automatic sen–”

  Hooker’s jumpy chuckle died on a strangled scream.

  I didn’t even see it move. It was on him, human-shaped and wearing the remnants of scrubs that used to be white before blood and putrescence had stained it. It rode Hooker’s chest, tearing at his helmet. Thick, wet sounds escaped from its discolored mouth.

  I raised my Sauger, my heart slamming hard against my ribs as adrenaline rocked through my veins – my head – but Hooker’s weapon arced, spraying bullets wildly across the hall. It scored the wall beside me, the ground at my feet. I jumped back, screamed a warning.

  Too late. Pressure spattered my right leg; pain sheared through my awareness, blossomed like a river of rusty razorblades into my synapses. I strangled on my words, fell to the hall floor.

  Indigo reached for Hooker’s flailing arm, but the kid spun violently, his screaming magnified in the feed. “Get it off!”

  “Hooker!” I tried again through clenched teeth. “Stop flailing before–!”

  No use. Terror rode him. He staggered backwards; his shoulder rebounded off the door jamb.

  I tried to lurch to my feet; I screamed Hooker’s name as seven more hands reached out of the room. Stained, twisted fingers dug into the seams of Hooker’s armor. Two necros fell into the light, yanked into view by Hooker’s writhing panic, and I saw veined skin flapping loosely, foul teeth bared, and milky eyes staring emptily from sockets turning black with necrosis.

  Whoever they were, whatever they’d done, it was too late to help them. To help any of us.

  Clawed fingers found Indigo’s arm, another grabbed at Hooker. Digo shouted, wrenched back so hard that necrotic fingernails tore free and splattered blackened blood against the wall. Rich, vibrant crimson lines blossomed from pale furrows carved into Indigo’s arm, just above the thicker plating.

  He swore, over and over.

  I tried to stand, to reach for Hooker’s spastically thrashing limbs. He careened into the other side of the door.

  The hall echoed with the soggy, juddering rattle of clashing tech and failing organs.

  Hooker was still screaming as they dragged him into the room.

  The door slid closed.

  I stared, wide-eyed and shaken, and listened to them peel back armor like it was nothing; listened to Hooker’s gagging, sobbing, hysterical screams – saw it happen in my imagination with effortless clarity.

  The salty, coppery odor of blood and the sour flush of voided intestines filled my nose.

  Indigo hauled me to my feet. “Run,” he ordered grimly, his dusky skin sallow. The whites of his eyes were clearly visible as he slung my arm over his shoulder and forced a pace that sent knives of agony up my bleeding shin.

  A desperately long thirty seconds later, gunfire shattered through the feed; echoed faintly behind us.

  Hooker finally stopped screaming.

  27

  “That wasn’t his H2,” I gasped, hobbling with every ounce of determination I possessed. No way – no way was I going to end up as some necrotic fuckhead’s lunch. I’d shoot myself first. I’d take every last necro down with me.

  Indigo slapped a palm against the door that closed behind us. “Cover me.”

  I sagged against the corridor wall, blood only one part of the thick soup of odors filling my nose. Decaying flesh, the stench of fear and rot, stale air – I gritted my teeth, head churning, guts roiling.

  Indigo slapped a disc against the panels, a startlingly bright green flash sealing the seam.

  My chin jerked, though I didn’t take my eyes off the hall. “Did you hear me? That wasn’t an H2!”

  “I heard you.” He thumbed the small black patch inset over matte black keys – he’d always painted over his tech, even the keypads – and turned to look at me.

  It wasn’t a calm regard.

  Terror flared his nostrils, fil
led his wide-eyed stare. He breathed heavily, sweat a dull sheen matting his dark hair. In that fear, I found the same kinship I’d learned to recognize over the years of cock-over-sideways runs and surprises.

  I felt the way he looked. Worse, maybe, because I had to sit here and juggle the crossed frequencies turning my skull to a mix of dissonant chaos. If I could do it? I’d be damned if he gave up on me now.

  I exhaled slowly, forcing a measure of calm.

  “Plan?” I croaked, my sweaty grip sliding inside my glove.

  “They’ll have to weld through or bust the freq.” He sucked down oxygen like a drowning man, sweat beading down his filthy jaw. “Can necros do either?”

  “How the fuck should I know?” I snarled, swiping at the sweat plastering my hair to my cheek. “I thought they only spread through wires.”

  He nodded like he’d thought the same thing. “You. You sit.”

  “Is here the–”

  “Before you bleed out,” he added. Flat. Desperate.

  If I died, he was on his own.

  It wasn’t friendship, exactly, but survival had a way of evening the odds. Guess we were on the same page, after all.

  Supporting the wall with my shoulders, I slid to the floor. Pain ricocheted up my leg. “Bleeding’s already slowed,” I managed between clenched teeth. Sweat popped, a clammy grip across my forehead, my shoulders. “Think there’s a few bullets lodged.”

  Indigo crouched by my extended limb. “Fuck.” Not the most encouraging word, but I couldn’t blame him. My leg below the knee had turned into so much shredded armor, the brutalized flesh mushroomed through the savaged metal. This armor design wasn’t made to turn away bullets shot from that range, and definitely not from that caliber.

  On the other hand, I hadn’t lost the leg.

  I sucked in a hard breath. “I can walk soon as it’s done dripping.” It’d hurt as long as there was lead rubbing against the bone, but it’d hurt less than getting torn apart by necrotechs. Of the options, I’d take the first.

  Indigo nodded, sitting back on his haunches. He stared down the hall, his pulse visible as it hammered through his neck. “Right.” He pushed strands of sweaty hair back from his forehead. “My guess is that MetaCore came down the same way we did.”