We leapt over it, sprinting – or, in my case, staggering – for the exit I’d said was on the other end.
Miracle of miracles, I was right.
The door on the far end opened to reveal an elevator exactly like the one we’d entered through. Exactly, except for the knot of spastic necros inside.
They grabbed Indigo, jerking him off his feet, clawing and tearing. He screamed; I didn’t slow down, launching myself inside the elevator car to hammer on one with the butt of the Adjudicator. It turned, empty sockets glaring at me, mouth leaking dark plasma and exhaling decaying rot.
Digo dug his fingers into one’s throat, surprising him when it tore like old cloth. The thing’s esophagus came out in a dripping, bloody tube. The necro jerked. I kicked it out of the rocking elevator car, ducking under the first’s sloppy grab, and jammed the barrel of my gun under my assailant’s whiskered, slack-jawed face.
Firing the Adjudicator that close blew a hole through my eardrum. My vision turned red with it.
I howled, dropping my now empty weapon.
Another report dragged fiery streaks of agony across my hearing as Indigo filled the last necro full of bullets. As it staggered, blinded, he shoved it out with the other one and jabbed the command to close the door.
I reeled. He grabbed my shoulders.
“Riko!” I heard him through the feed in my right ear, mostly. My left, like my arm, was deader than shit. “Are you okay?”
I caught his wrist with my functional hand, prying it loose. “Let go,” I rasped. “Hurts.”
He obeyed without fight. “What the hell happened?”
“Blew out my ear.” I bared my teeth at him. “Didn’t see them in here. There’s more above.”
He looked up, then back at me. “How do you know?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know how I knew. It was the same way I’d known about the elevator here. I knew because I knew.
Whatever he saw in my face – something behind gristle and blood and thicker spatter – it seemed to be enough. Wordlessly, he refilled his handgun, another CounterTech, and braced both feet.
“Other side,” I managed.
He turned.
“– ear me?” The feed crackled, another note of disharmony in my sea of white noise and pain. “Vid Team, respond!”
“We’re in range again,” Indigo said, but that wasn’t optimism I heard in his voice. It was warning. “Control! We’re coming out with necros hot on our asses and more above.”
“I read you.” It was the woman again. “Do you have the data?”
“We’re rolling out with nanoshock,” he added flatly. “Is a medivac prepped?”
“Do you have the data?” control repeated.
Digo bared bloody teeth. “Yes.”
“A rescue unit has been sent to your location, you need to meet it on open street.”
I wondered what would have happened if Digo’d said no.
The doors slid open, revealing a road nearly pitch dark compared to the lights we’d come from.
I groaned my frustration as another wave of noise split my skull. The elevator echoed hollowly; I didn’t realize I’d slammed my forehead against the side until Indigo swore and jerked me away from the panel. “What the fuck!”
“Hurts,” I groaned, shuddering under the dual pressure – memory and reality. So much screaming in my head. So much pain.
I’d been here before. This awful noise in my head was more familiar than I remembered it being.
Indigo wrapped his arm around my neck, hooking me in a lazy man’s headlock.
I didn’t fight him. The added pain didn’t help, anyway.
“ETA?” he demanded.
“Three minutes,” control said calmly.
“Fuck me,” he growled, and wrenched me out of the elevator. He turned right – I snagged his arm and dragged him left, deeper into the intersecting alleys flanking the building. “Riko, we need open street.”
“You get open air,” I rasped, and lurched into a staggering kind of jog that wouldn’t outrun anything.
A juddering, gurgling grind of ruined flesh filled the alley behind us.
“Keep moving.” Indigo’s voice spiked with fear.
“Up. We need up.” I blinked through bleary eyes, everything I focused on edged with black. I was reaching total nano meltdown.
Indigo grabbed my good arm, whirling me around. “Up!” he yelled, pointing directly over our heads.
I followed the line of his finger. It shook.
A fire escape. Just like the ones that dotted every building around us.
Relief quickly sank into despair. “Can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
Silhouettes filled the alley mouth. Hungry, searching. I felt them, knew they were there; drowned in hunger and anger and rage. Eradicate.
“Vid Team, this is rescue coming in,” said a masculine voice. “What’s your position?”
“Ass-deep in necros,” Indigo snarled. He knelt, dropping his gun, and cupped his hands. “Bitch, climb!”
I didn’t intend on obeying. He didn’t give me a choice. When I didn’t step inside his hands, he punched me in the bleeding thigh – sparklers of pain licked from forehead to heels and I staggered.
He grabbed me at the softened knees, braced me with his shoulder and stood so fast, it was fall or fly.
I caught the fire escape.
Silhouettes crawled, shambled, darted out of the shadows. Too close. Too fucking fast for me to get the damn ladder under me.
“Indigo!” I yelled, hanging by one arm.
He shot a hard look over his shoulder. “Find me another way up,” he said in the feed. “I’ll lose them.”
“No!” He sprinted away while I struggled to pull myself up. “Digo!”
The necros turned like a unit, tracking him as he vanished deeper into the alley.
“Vid Team, we need a location.”
“Fuck your location,” I rasped. Muscles I’d never worked so hard in my life strained as I hauled myself up with one arm. I hiked a knee with bone-breaking effort, hooked it in the bottom rung.
It took everything I had, but I climbed, awkward as fuck, yelling for Indigo to answer me.
He didn’t.
No. No, no, this would not go down this way.
I needed him, damn it.
I limped across the rooftop, ducked under the dead power line hanging over it, and checked the north side. The east.
“Indigo!”
“Shut up,” he hissed in my ear, and I nearly fell over with relief. And blood loss. “Pinned. Get to the extraction and get out, I’ll meet you at another rendezvous.”
“The hell I will,” I shot back.
“Riko, I trusted you down there.” His voice hardened, thick with pain. “Now you trust me. You have the computer. Get out.”
“No, I–”
“I put it on your rack. I need you out there kicking ass and making sure nobody leaves mine behind, you hear me?” His voice dropped. “You’d better come back for me.” There was too much of a question in that demand.
He wouldn’t last the burn, much less the corruption on the other side of nanoshock.
Fuck. That.
I slapped at my harness with one hand – the isolated system hung from my back. I didn’t even notice him do it. That ass.
“Time is up.” Malik’s deep voice. It filled the feed like a lifeline. Just a few more moments, and I could be out of this nightmare. “Get on the transport, Riko.”
I looked up at the sky. Black and empty, until it faded to something less thick beyond the quarantine. More welcoming. A faded golden glow blushing with spots of neon, diamonds in every conceivable color.
I blinked hard. It didn’t focus anything.
“That data is all-important,” Malik said flatly. “Koupra knows that. The rescue team is coming in. We’ll send a unit for him.”
Lie. This data was all that mattered to him. Digo was a casualty – and so was I.
&nb
sp; I looked down. The street remained dark, hiding anything that crawled on it. But I knew. I could sense them. Maybe it was the chipset; maybe I’d just figured out their tactics.
Maybe I was losing my fucking mind.
Indigo cut through my feed with a terse whisper. “Get on that helo. One of us needs to make it out.”
“Both,” I countered. “Both, or no deal.”
“Get out, and take that feed to Jax.”
Twin blue lights soared into view.
“Vid Team, we have visual confirmation,” said an unfamiliar male voice. A light spotlighted me, shearing away my night vision. “Hold for recovery.”
Fuck it with a jagged pipe. No lube.
“I don’t leave without Indigo,” I snarled.
The vehicle tilted slightly, backdraft so close I could feel the heat in my nostrils.
“Get on the transport,” Malik said quietly, every word iced menace.
“Vid Team, step away from the ledge,” the pilot ordered.
“Riko,” Indigo hissed, “they’re everywhere and you’re going to burn out, don’t–”
I blinked up into the light. “Hey, Malik?”
He must have sensed my intention. “Don’t you dare,” he said, all but a growl seething with cold fury.
Lifting my only functional hand to the sky, I extended a grimy middle finger and held it. When I was sure the spotlight had captured every nuance, I launched myself from the roof to the knot of necros below.
Malik swore.
I collided into two necros. They buckled under my weight, one snapping in places that bodies shouldn’t snap. The other rounded on me like a rabid dog, but it was missing an arm, which made it easy to punch in its empty, slack face. Blood spattered the necros in front of me.
“Riko, you stupid–” A gunshot rang out over the street. Indigo rolled out from under the abandoned car he’d crawled under, CounterTech spitting a flare that peeled half the necros off me when they sensed easier prey. “You’re going necro in the fucking brain!”
He had no idea.
I gritted my teeth, rode the pain – the shock from the landing, the blood loss, the hammering, sawing, wailing dysfunction prying my eyeballs out of my aching sockets. Was this what Indigo was feeling?
I couldn’t process it.
“Get,” I seethed, reaching for a necro, “out. Get out.” I curled my hand around its face, yanking it off its feet. My fingers slid into the cold, damp cave of its mouth. Pulled. “Get out!” Flesh split, bloody strings tearing through my fingers. It flailed in my grip. I screamed. “Get out!”
I was banking on the fact they wouldn’t leave us to fend for ourselves, and I was right. Malik’s voice over the feed snapped orders to extricate us whatever means possible. Us. Plural.
Hell, yes. All we had to do was survive until rescue got us.
Easier said than done. Every necro body in sight rounded on me, and there was no more time to speak. To think.
No more room in my brain to think with.
Whatever it was that fried through my chipset, it stripped away my identity until there was nothing left but blood and bone; gristle and putrid flesh. I stood back to back with Indigo and fought with one arm, used the deadened synthetic to take blows meant for my exposed side. I tore and pushed and threw until it was all I could do to keep Indigo at my back as he gunned down body after body. I couldn’t tell the difference between them and me – blood-soaked, gore-streaked, teeth bared and screaming.
A chunk of armor took flesh with it from my side. My leg reopened; I didn’t give a fuck, tearing the arm that slashed me from its socket and spinning to slam the shoulder joint into another’s head. They came again and again. Clawed for my vital organs.
I ripped one off my shoulders. Another one replaced it. I staggered, unable to tell if it was my blood pumping to the brightly lit street or theirs.
I was losing. We were losing.
I threw my head back, narrowly avoided losing my eyes to a bony swipe. Blinding white light filled my sight; burned out my vision. My foot came down on something that rolled, gelatinous and slippery, and I went down. Indigo tried to catch me, tangled up in my footing and fell on me instead. Something sliced through my chest.
The world went nova.
I’d been shot, stabbed, burned, caught in shrapnel, and – more recently – clawed up by necros. I never expected a trip and fall to take me out. That was fucking embarrassing.
Pride demanded I get up off the ground and shake it off. I struggled to open my eyes, to move, but all I saw was red and black. I couldn’t breathe. I sucked in air, choked, coughed. Agony tore open my chest, bubbled from my lips.
“Lay down cover fire!” I heard. Real voices, not comm chatter. “Get them on board.”
“Hang on, Riko.” Something sharp punctured the skin on my neck, just over jagged furrows throbbing at my collar bone. I wanted to give the speaker the same courteous digit I’d extended to the helo, but my eyelids turned to lead weights.
“The burn team is sending orders for quarantine, sir.”
“Tell them,” Malik said, his voice sounding extraordinarily clear, “to go fuck themselves.”
29
I sat on the edge of an examination table, rotating my synthetic wrist and listening for the telltale sound of servos in the joint.
“I replaced a lot of the mobility parts. Pretty great, huh?” Orchard, the redheaded tech I’d threatened with a broken arm, had repaired mine. The irony. It slays. “I had to make a few enhancements to the overall model, but you should feel back to normal in no time.”
If “normal” meant feeling like an intruder inside my own skin, then yeah. I could fake that. As long as Orchard kept her pink fingers off my brain, I could probably go on faking indefinitely.
But I knew. Blindsided as I was, I knew that I’d lost my shit down there. That I’d nearly killed Indigo with my choices – killed myself – and I couldn’t even say why.
I bent my arm. The matte plating looked a little worse for wear, but I couldn’t find fault with the connectors.
“We had to reinforce your shoulder girdle,” Orchard was saying, scrolling down a projected screen wide as one arm and ticking off the salient points. The floating numbers looked like gibberish from this side, but the fact she’d defaulted to a widescreen projection said she’d gone through a metric shit ton of data. “Your biceps bracing needed total replacement, so since we had pretty much full run of the budget, we fitted your whole arm and shoulder with a custom muscle weave that should make future separation more difficult to achieve.”
I looked up. “Trust me,” I said dryly. “I never plan on reaching that particular achievement again.” Once was more than enough. Metal was durable, sure, but it didn’t matter how strong the tech was if the flesh couldn’t cope. I’d found the breaking point against that security door, and the memory of it sent fingers of oily sweat skimming down my spine.
And I didn’t even have a SIN registry to score the achievement. Shitting bloody irony.
Orchard nodded. “I’d appreciate that. Your chipset was showing some serious wear and tear, so we replaced it entirely with an updated model. Don’t worry,” she added when I shot her a narrow-eyed stare, “I didn’t mess with anything else. Promise. I patterned the new tech off your previous specifications. I added some upgraded filters that I’m not supposed to give non-employees, so shh.”
I bit back a growling sigh. Leave it to Malik dicking Reed to take advantage of my unconscious state. I’d wondered who I’d go to for a full recalibration, and as it turned out, I owed him. Lucky me. I didn’t trust Orchard far as I could fuck her – all signals were coming back at no-go – which meant I’d have to play this as cool as I could manage. “How bad was the chipset?”
“Hard to say for sure.” Orchard flicked aside an array of screens until a multihued splotch in various primary and secondary colors filled the projected square. She tucked three fingers into the bottom edge and rotated it deftly. The projection flipp
ed. “This is an average picture of your brain during most of the mission.”
I eyed it, bracing my hands on the edge of the examination table to study it closer. “It looks like a mess.”
“Brains are funny that way.” Another flick, and a new picture took its place. She jabbed a finger into a large patch of brilliant yellow at the base of the blotch. “That’s what was going on around your chipset right before you lost your helmet.”
“It went supernova.” I lifted my hand to the base of my head, testing the skin now covering the replaced set. No scars to show for it. No bumps. “Like it caught fire.”
She framed the yellow glare with her hands, cupping the blotch through the screen. “Whatever was going on, it turned on every communication center in your brain. Like it was trying to account for some other handicap. It’s no wonder you lost consciousness for a while.” She looked up over her cupped hands, orange eyebrows high. “Anything to add here?”
Not unless I wanted to spend the next ungodly amount of time holed up in this stinking lab with its glaring white façade.
“What about corruption?” I asked.
She blinked at me, sky blue eyes crystal clear. “No signs. Your nanos needed a boost like whoa, but I suspect any oddness you felt was due to this.” She gestured at the colorful brain scan. “So...” A pointed pause. “How do you feel?”
I folded my shoulders into a casual shrug. “I feel fine.”
“How’d you feel then?”
“Like a cranked out teenager high on colordust,” I told her. “How do you think?” I tried not to take offense when disappointment replaced eager curiosity in her features. “If it changes, you’ll be the first to know, okay?”
You’d think I offered to clean her damn lab. She perked right up. “Great.” Another one of those practiced gestures, and the screen swapped back to her chart. “I also took the opportunity to replace your netware applications.” Another pause. “Uh, don’t tell Mr Reed. The rest is good to go. You’re in remarkably good shape, given everything.”
I looked down at myself, checking my ink for any new scars. The fact I was wearing plain white underwear and a cropped tank bra bothered neither of us. Like I said, she’d been stunningly indifferent to my flirtations. “Any other good data getting pulled from the helmet feeds?” I asked.
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