Paul meets Oni, leaned over the gurney, and surveys the sweat-encased subject. “Where’re you backing up his memex?”
“Elastic drive inside the terminal; one pentabyte plus a shared floodgate. Mind running a diagnostic?”
“Sure.” Paul circles the rainout.
Swaddled in white sheets, the patient—no more than twenty-years-old—exhales and shudders. His heart rate is recorded on the hologram above him. It tracks across the graphic, slow and faint.
Paul intuits-on his Monocle, and severs the hologram with a swipe of his hand. The projection adjusts to his perspective, and offers up a command prompt. Intuiting a script, the computer’s tentacles, wrapped around the young-man’s head, click-ready. Paul intuits a comm box.
—HELLO.
—OH GOD, OH GOD, OH GOD.
—PLEASE CALM DOWN. I AM HERE TO HELP.
—WHERE AM I?
—YOU’VE LOST ACCESS TO THE CLOUD. OR RATHER, BEEN DENIED…A FRIEND IS EASING YOU BACK INTO YOUR BODY. YOU NEED TO STAY CALM, AND HELP HER RE-PROCESS YOU INTO THIS SANDBOX SIMULATION.
—IS MY WIFE OKAY?
Paul looks around the tent at the other patients. Three men and a sealed body bag.
—WE’RE LOOKING INTO IT. PLEASE JUST RELAX AND LET US HELP YOU.
Paul closes the box, and recoils from the projection. He approaches Oni, busily writing code at a console.
“He doesn’t know.”
“What?” asks Oni, tonelessly and preoccupied.
“Your patient. He doesn’t know his wife is dead.”
Oni looks at the swaddled cadaver. “Jane Doe couldn’t reintegrate. The husband doesn’t need to know, especially if we’re not certain he’ll make it for knowing to matter.”
“Right.” Paul shuts his eyes, feeling the SIK’s security blanket unweaving.
“He should reset nicely with this reboot algorithm,” Oni announces. She emphatically taps to complete her code, and turns, elated, only to see Paul looking crushed.
“Dr. Sheffield?”
Paul stands silent.
Oni inputs the algorithm into the rainout’s terminal, and steps back. “We’ll check-in on him in an hour.”
“Great,” Paul drones.
“Here,” Oni says, grabbing Paul by his grafted skin. “Your belongings—the briefcase…”
“You have them?”
“When we found you, we brought everything in. Mag-pulsed anything they could use to track you here…Traded the Titan in for favours.”
“Outland?”
“Who else? Judging from their comms and flows, you’re a high-priority find. Body of the mech at your place legitimized my suspicions.”
“I never got the chance to thank you for sending Gibson to warn me…”
“You’ll find a way, I’m sure.”
She hands Paul an old-toothed metal key. “Your gun and clothes are in the locker room. Right through there, past Eddie’s quarters. Room’s locked, so you’ll need this code.” She intuits it over, from her Monocle to his. “Your briefcase is over by Emily, under the bench in Tent Two.”
Paul’s conscience has found him. “I just don’t know how we’d go about it.”
“What’s that?”
“The CLOUD.”
Oni conceals the hope that’s rushed to her cheeks in shades of red. “You and Katajima had hatched a plan...” She turns to Paul. “Judging from the list of bodies turning up in hack shops and missing fragmentors across the state, something to do with the Empty Thought?”
She doesn’t miss a beat. “How do you figure?”
“You mentioned it while you were under. You were debating next steps…with yourself. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but…anyway, I did some digging, and cross-referenced possible delivery systems and sellers. Once I hit coffin wood, I knew there had to be a connection.”
Paul sighs. “Yeah. Fragment the Empty Thought and deliver it via Katajima’s deck.”
“We intercepted an Outland log saying Katajima had ordered the Empty Thought to be destroyed.”
“I have a duplicate.”
Oni smirks. “I figured you were either working on an EMP in exile or versioning the Empty Thought.”
“Problem is, I haven’t the faintest on how to decrypt it on the receiving end. Even with Shouta’s deck, I’d still have to manually extract my girls.”
“Why just your girls, when you can save everyone with a massive reboot?”
“Katajima said it couldn’t be done.”
Oni’s happy disagreement creases her eyes. “What he meant is that he couldn’t do it.” She yanks one of the patients’ med-tablets and types away, knowing full-well her multitasking will piss-off Paul. “There’s one who can.”
Go on.
“Winchester...”
“You’re going to convince a man unabashedly sending men to kill the both of us—whose entire empire depends on the CLOUD—to just turn it off? All because you asked nicely?”
“Winchester’s Baal storm machine…the Empty Thought…your family; they’re all at the Citadel. Even if you don’t have the mind to do what needs doing, we still have a destination in common.” Oni has more on her tongue, but she is cut off by a sharp and metallic hiss. Hurriedly she finishes her thought: “Besides, how are you going to target an amorphous enemy with Katajima’s deck if you can’t pin it down? It’ll have to be done in person.”
The green and backlit-black on the rainout’s monitor flickers. With a fizz and a quiet snap, all of the electronics blink off and on, and then off again.
Beeping. Technological meltdown. Sparks stream out of the modulators beneath the gurneys.
“Shit!” swears Oni, slamming her fist into an open hand. “It’s the generator; it’s overloaded.”
She darts outside the tent and around the corner to the breaker affixed to an old telephone pole. With a pkt-pkt-pkt, all the electronics are off.
Cardiac monitors running independently off battery packs announce doom. Soulless and unaided, the rainouts begin to twitch.
Emily bursts into the tent, panting. “Dr. Matsui! Where’s Dr. Matsui?”
Oni runs back in, knocking over a weapon case propped against the front flap. “Emily, help me stabilize the patients.”
Emily opens a reserve-charge pack, and pulls out an octopus of wires. “Routing to Sandbox server. We’re going to need to synchronize one at a time…”
“Paul,” shouts Oni, grabbing one of the wires from Emily and affixing it to a SATanchor. “Do you think you can restart the generator?”
“Where?” Paul says, adrenalin-fed alacrity displacing his darkness.
“On the other side of the compound, just inside the perimeter fence.”
Paul readies to run.
“In the direction of the Citadel, away from the T-Block.”
“Alright.”
Hurrying around the compound, Paul’s Monocle stops him with a glaring red “INCOMING” prompt. He slows to listen to the coded transmission, apparently from the CLOUD.
“Daddy? Daddy, it’s Pythia.” It’s not her voice, but rather a computer’s toneless interpretation of her thoughts. “I’m with Angela and mommy—she’s no longer angry at you, I don’t think. Also, your friend is here. He explained what’s wrong with you. Don’t worry. I still love you. Anyway, your friend is giving us a tour of the most beautiful spatial renderings! We just saw Venice fetched through the eyes of an opera singer. Going to anchor to a Madagascar feed next. So cool! He says for you not to worry, and that Mr. Shouta sends his regards. Don’t tell mom I messaged you! I got to go. Bye.”
Paul’s stomach immediately knots-up. He can’t decide if the transmission is a threat, but is certain it’s bad news.
“Monocle, prep message for reply.”
His Monocle chimes back, “No return C.I.P. given.”
I’m coming for you, baby girl.
He bounds forward, recommitted to the mission at hand.
ONI HADN’T MENTIONED that the generator would be gua
rded by eight mechs. The second Paul sees them, taking the corner—all congregated around a smoking, pulsed generator with machineguns locked and loaded—they’ve seen him too. When it rains it pours.
“Bogey, dead ahead,” one belts, raspy, through his respirator.
A human orbital and frontal bone is grafted across his kabuto-style helmet, offering a second pair of empty eyes. Paul gulps, half-turning to reference the distance to cover—to an exit. His window’s closed.
For the love of God…
One of the larger thugs clears the ejection port on his pulse rifle and advances. Paul stands his ground. He can think of no other option.
“Hi there,” Paul says, sheepishly.
The thug stops within a foot of Paul, rifle pointed at his centre of gravity. “You,” he says, his respirator modded to drop his voice an octave and grizzle it. “Identify yourself.”
“It’s not him,” says the skull-plated thug, closing in. He circles, and grabs Paul by the neck. He waves his free hand over Paul’s dome for a quick scan. Whatever they think they’re scanning isn’t in there. He shakes his head at the other thug. “Sheffield. Paul Sheffield. Where is he?”
Paul’s bandages, blemishes, and swollen features are evidently enough to throw off the mech’s personnel scanners. He counts his blessings and savours the mechs’ ignorance.
“You better tell me where he is and where these savages’ve put Katajima’s belongings.”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“Just off him already,” hollers a mech sporting a red helmet.
“I just got here,” Paul confesses. “I’m…a patient.”
“Right,” says the man sporting the orbital bone. “Judging by the DNA all over Katajima’s ruined mansion, Sheffield is too. You’re keeping dangerous company. The lot of them are abetting a known-terrorist.”
“Just kill him, Cap’n,” repeats the mech in the red helmet.
“Don’t know the lot of them from Adam.” Paul sees himself reflected in the thug’s reflective mask. Dark, as always, but a version of himself he thought he’d never see. The world’s pinball.
The skull-plated thug squeezes Paul’s neck harder. “We’re just here for Sheffield and the deck. We don’t want any trouble.”
Paul, sick of watching his panic version on the thug’s mask, forces bravery ex nihil. He smirks. “Hence the machineguns.”
“They’re for our safety.”
“Listen, I have no clue—”
The skull-plated thug looks to his red-helmeted comrade and to the other black sheep gathered around the generator. “Then why don’t you just shut the fuck up?”
Lights out, again. If it can be fixed, it can be broken.
Chapter 21: LOST ANGELS
GETTING UP SLOWLY, Paul quickly realizes he’s gotten-off lucky. He pats the back of his head, making sure it’s still there, and returns a bloodied hand.
The thugs are no longer gathered around the generator. Judging from the mournful screams and crying coming from the other side of the camp, it’s clear why.
Paul opens a comm to warn Oni. Glitchy bits flicker in front of his eye. They’ve really done a number on his head. “Damn it.”
He runs around to the medical tents, but is too late.
Thick black smoke billows out of the nearest tent and broils across the compound. Oni, in the midst of the carcinogenic broth, is trying to close the recently widowed-patient’s neck, hemorrhaging dark blood. Beside her, Father Ed is trying to resuscitate one of the rainouts who’s been ejected about twenty-feet too far from stabilizers and his respirator. ‘Trying’ being the key word on both accounts. Oni falls back, defeated, and Edmund finally crosses the rainout on the forehead.
A dozen or so of Camp Mud’s other patients and in-house humanitarians are strewn across the clearing. The singes along the periphery suggest a pulse grenade. For the thugs’ safety, of course.
Someone pinned the red-helmeted mech against the old telephone pole using a piece of rebar. Paul staggers over. He touches the end of the rebar, and looks around for the pile driver. Still dozy from the attack, he stares up into the thug’s inert ocular implants and whispers, “Not safe enough.”
A wet thump alerts Paul to movement behind a pile of knocked-over containers. Turning the corner, he sees Gibson straddling one of the other thugs, punching his face into a porridge of gore. Gibson senses the presence of a possible threat, and rolls off the thug’s corpse with a round ready for Paul in the chamber of his gun.
Paul immediately throws up his hands. “It’s me! Relax!”
Gibson lowers his gun, and pulls himself up by one of the containers. “Where the hell were you?” he yells, wildly.
“Went to the generator and got knocked out of commission. What went down?”
“They took them. Emily and Constance. They took them,” Gibson says morosely. “And that fucking briefcase of yours.”
“Who? Where did they take them?”
“I shouldn’t have given you the coordinates. I shouldn’t have brought you here. This is all my fault.”
Oni, having given up on saving the recently widowed patient-cum-Pez-dispenser, limps over to the sound of Gibson’s voice. She pats Edmund on the shoulder as she sways forward. He holds her hand, and bows his gnarly head of white hair to finish reciting Last Rites.
“Paul!”
“Oni, I’m so sorry.”
Oni releases Edmund, and pulls her hair back revealing plasma burns across her cheeks. “They came to stop you,” she looks at the sky antagonistically. “To stop us. Gibson was trying to boost the signal inside when they started shooting. Ambushed them, giving me a chance to crack out my RPG…”
Paul points to the rebar, while addressing Gibson. “So I gather this was you then.”
“No. That was Eddie.”
“Jesus.” Doctor by trade, cleric by vocation, and apparently a warrior when the shit hits the fan.
Gibson chimes in. “Ed saved everyone in tents four and six. I suppose they thought you were in two, because they killed all the men…By the time Oni and I got to tents one through three, they’d gotten wise to our counterattack. Ending up taking Emily and Constance hostage in order to escape.”
“Are they alive?” asks Paul.
Oni shoots a mournful look to Gibson, and shrugs her shoulders.
“They’ll be sold for parts in the PIT,” says Gibson.
Oni shakes her head, “Outland won’t waste time selling to PIT rats.”
“Not unless they want to get out alive,” Gibson corrects her.
“Why go to the PIT?” Paul asks.
Oni turns, crouches, and lugs up a muddy rocket launcher. “Nicked them as they took off. Their pilot tried for the Blue Zone, but the engine gave out, sending them zig-zagging right into the PIT.”
Oni approaches Paul. “They also got your briefcase,” she whispers.
“Yeah, Gibson told me. Briefcase was solid, but who knows if Katajima’s deck is still any good.”
Anxious quiet.
“So what’s the plan?” asks Paul, clawing his itch for retribution.
“I’ll go,” suggests Gibson.
Oni shakes her head. “And who’s going to protect the survivors in the event they return?”
“You and Ed and Paul can handle yourselves.”
“If the Yakuza find you in the PIT, we’ll be down a man and a mission.”
Paul doesn’t care for bickering couples. “Emily and Constance will be the first of many if I don’t get Katajima’s deck and the fragmentor back.”
“I thought the fragmentor was in your heavplast case…” says Oni through a wisp of raven hair.
“No. Those are just the drives housing the Empty Thought, broken down into scripts and executables. I need the fragmentor to package it—to weaponize it—and I need the deck to deliver it.”
“You barely made it here, Paul. We have to figure something else out.”
“You want your friends back, an
d I want my girls back. At least here,” Paul says, prompting a glare from both Oni and Gibson, “the solution is simple. Nice and low tech. Where’s my gun?”
Chapter 22: A WORLD APART
ONI, HOODED with her visor jutting out, leads Paul through a maze of twisted fences and dilapidated shacks. She takes him to the largest bramble of razor wire and spikes along Camp Mud’s perimeter hedge. With a wave of her hand, the bramble crackles and disappears. A hologram.
“Strongest point’s usually an illusion, anyway.” She’d probably smile, but is still in shock. “Through here,” she says to Paul, following in tow.
The overgrown fence on either side of the apparition clanks and buzzes behind them.
Paul watches Oni’s hair bob as she deftly navigates the rubble. She takes a knee, and peers around a corner.
“Okay, we’re clear.” She bolts across a day-lit intersection, back into shadow.
Paul mimics Oni’s paranoia, and double-checks the corner. He looks up into the black of the pock-marked warehouse ahead, consumed by weeds and sand. He lunges forward as if dodging a sniper’s mark, and careens into the darkness. Inside, an unseen hand grabs his battered wrist and pulls him over. Paul gives himself up to the other’s pull. He finds himself squatting with warm breath on his face.
The specter whispers in a familiar voice, “They’re cannibals…”
“What?” Paul whispers back.
Oni jostles something out of place, opening an aperture in the wall beside them. Two figures traipse by, mumbling in Spanish. Paul makes out a machinegun before Oni plugs the holes again.
“The Partitions do as good a job of keeping demons in the PIT as they do keeping ticks in the RIM. Cannibals, deviants, gangs…every day they trek into our neck of the woods looking for food, tech, and whatever else they can get their hands on. Every day is a battle.”
“So why don’t you get out of Dodge?”
Oni pulls Paul to his feet, and leads him onward through the warehouse.
“This is where we’re needed the most. And it’s as far away from Outland’s mechs I can get without actually being in the PIT. This is the fault line between the RIM and the PIT—a divide between Purgatory and Hell.”
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