“I said to table that mess, baby. How long we got before we fall? Petrov?”
“No more than two hours,” said Petrov, voice cold and robotic. “We’ve already sunk in a few times. I wouldn’t say more than one hour, safely.”
“Let’s call it forty-five minutes, then.”
“That's enough time for that bitch to get up here and come at me. How the hell did she get in here?”
“How should I know how she got in, baby? Ask Petrov.”
“There is too much chaos to know.” This was Petrov now. “She is in. She will not make it up here. I would not worry about it.”
“I know you wouldn't, you bastard. She don't want to skin you alive. It's real easy to not get your mind in a tussle when nobody wants you dead.”
“Are you blind?” Petrov stepped toward the table now. “The earth itself wants us dead. She will be no exception. In the lower floors, her situation is more perilous than ours. Do not worry yourself. Even the assassin she was with is dead. If there was anyone to worry over, it was him.”
“How about this.” Wallop leaned forward, dwarfing the table. “How about I worry about my worries, and you worry about fixing the security in this place?”
“Perhaps you would explain to me how to create security for a unique occurrence? Shall I build a wall for asteroids as well?”
“How the hell should I know? You're the security guy. You—”
Something hard and loud thunked against the door—a chair.
“That is enough, goddamn.” Crash's voice was amplified by the suit—he must have had the helmet activated. “We in this ship together. We live and die together, no matter what. Now, the escape pods are working, we know that. So what I want to know is—”
“What I want to know is why the hell are we talking so much about that boy's damn sister when I want him dead and gone.”
“Goddamn, Storey. I'm trying to talk here, doll.”
“I don't give a damn what you say! You’re done. Look outside! There's no Five Faces without Junktown. There is no Jackson Crash, boss of me. There is no Petrov, boss of me. You're as nothing and as dead as I am. Now Petrov tells me Samson is alive. Wallop, you want his sister? Go get her. I'm gonna get Samson. You want to come with me?”
“Partner-Samson,” whispered Partner. “I think they are speaking of you.”
“...Yeah.”
“Baby doll,” Crash's voice returned to its normal frequency, the helmet gone, “you want to go run out into a collapsing building, you go run into a collapsing goddamn building.”
“And if I make it back here? You won't take nothing out on me?”
“What do I care? Have at him.”
Partner was beside itself. “This is conspiracy to murder! What a case!”
“Me, Partner,” said Samson. “They’re talking about me. Listen, you have to—”
Partner ripped out from Samson’s arms, bursting the door open wide. Its fists rotated into themselves, replaced by rotating gun barrels.
“Crime!” Partner cried, turning at each person in the room in turn. “Crime! Crime! Crime! Crime!”
They were all shocked for a moment—even Crash didn’t know how to react, his metallic suit not enveloping him fully. Partner’s armguns whirled up, rotating, ready to fire...and nothing happened.
Samson realized coolly that he had never loaded the copbot’s arms.
Crash stepped around the copbot with a cold stare. Interlocking plates slid over his body, the suit metamorphosing into full armor. A long blade formed from his hand. The blade made a low shunking sound as it ripped through the copbot's middle.
“What the hell, baby.” Crash continued to circle, tilting his head at Samson.
The blade slashed down to the side. Gears and wires bottomed out from Partner. An enormous section of its middle gone and no longer connected to itself. Crash lashed out again and lopped off the lower half of one of Partner’s legs. Another went straight through its thick metal skull.
Partner still tried to fight, seemingly not understanding why its guns weren’t firing. But as soon as that blade shot through its skull, something left it—some spirit, some vibrancy—and all motion in its body went still, sliding headfirst forward onto the blade. Crash retracted the blade and let Partner fall with a thump.
“You sick a copbot on me, baby?”
Samson had to look away from Partner, the stillness of it.
“Where's my sister?”
“What? You mouthing at me now? What I tell you about mouthing at me, baby?”
“Where's my sister?”
He rushed at Crash, and Crash smacked him down to the ground. That was everything they had together.
“Don't worry, boy,” said Storey. “You'll find each other soon enough.”
She was covered in blood—maybe the blood of her boy. Maybe her own blood. Maybe the blood of other boys that had died. All the blood she carried, though, was blood for Samson. She advanced, smacking her chain-wrapped club in her palm.
Her face was terror. Every terror. All the premonitions Samson had ever felt about his death carried that image with them, bordering on the consciousness, her presence leaking in, waiting to break his skull apart. Head ringing from Crash's blow, Samson tried to back away, scooting over the floor. It wouldn't be enough.
A curious, hot whine entered the room. Samson thought it was Crash’s suit malfunctioning for a moment. And then there was a flash of blinding light.
Huge metal arms wrapped around Samson, and he was rocketed back. Partner had him now. Billows of smoke poured out from behind Partner’s feet and back, fire and fusion propelling them through a window.
For a few brilliant, crazy moments, they were out of the Tower. The whole of Junktown was beneath them, flooded and broken, an apocalyptic mess of ragged buildings.
Samson really thought he was going to die.
Okay, he thought. Okay. At least there’s a crowd in hell today; at least there’s something I could get lost in.
Partner had other plans. It tilted its torn head and aimed upward with its arm, a grappling hook firing out and latching onto one of the repaired columns of the Tower. They swung catty-cornered out from where they fell and busted through a window, Partner cushioning the fall.
“Samson-Partner!” Partner banged the ground. “Good does not know how to fail!”
For a few seconds they lay there. Samson touched himself, touched Partner over and over. From above them, there was shouting.
Samson crawled over to the side of the Tower, perking his head up—it was Storey’s voice.
“That boy’s as bad as they come, copbot!” Storey yelled after them. “Bad as they come! You arrest him for me! You got every right!”
* * * * *
“Ana?”
Gary could see she wasn’t paying attention—still looking over the edge, still seeing the spray of blood and gore from the dogs and Victor’s fall. Ore was busy on the stairwell, trying to disentangle Victor's backpack from the steel railing. The Tower leaned, and the backpack kept slipping away from her reach as she worked. Gary watched, heart in his throat, the gorgeous curves of Ana’s body as she looked down the corridor, searching for signs of Victor.
The Tower pushed him forward into her as it broke apart; everything in the world pushed Gary toward Ana.
“Victor!” she called down. “Victor! Say something, Victor!”
Some muted, small voice was coming out of Ana—from her hand.
It was really her hips that got to him, he realized. She had lovely breasts, a great behind, terrific hair...but the hips really brought the whole package together. How could she blame him for looking? She was made for looking.
“Ana, your hands...they’re talking. Why are your hands talking?”
Finally he touched her—taking a moment to luxuriate in the sweet, soft feel of her warm skin—and tugged a bit at her forearms.
She pushed him on instinct, and Gary slammed back into the door—where the dogs were still pounding
and barking.
“Don’t touch me!”
A voice emitted out from her hands, clear now. “I think I’ve finally gotten through. Hello?”
Ana, confused, finally looked in her hands. There was an ear inside—Victor’s ear. Gary expected her to squeal, maybe, screech and drop it. But instead she just held it up to her face, examining.
Ore looked with her. “What the hell.”
Somehow, Victor had ripped his ear off before tumbling off the stairs—and gave it to Ana. That was some kind of foresight.
“Hello? I can hear your voices. How many of you are there?”
“There’s three of us,” said Ana. “Who are you? Where are you?”
“Three of you, huh? Where’s Victor?”
“He’s dead. He fell down a lot of stairs.”
“Goddamn, I was afraid of that. His sensors are reading a lot of blunt force trauma, and he wasn’t responding very well to his reboots. All right, can’t be helped. What were you doing with Victor?”
“He took me with him,” said Ana.
Gary came close to Ana, glad for the excuse. “He said he'd get us out of here.”
“Did he? That's two of you. What about the third?”
“I'm here for my own reasons,” said Ore.
“Which are?”
“My brother's here, somewhere. I want to find him. And I want to kill somebody else.”
“Have you seen today? I think God's outpaced you with that last part.”
“Maybe. Better to know for certain, though.”
“A woman after my own heart! Okay, then. We've got about as much time as a shore-leaved sailor in a thousand dollar whore, you get me? You have to—”
“Who are you?” asked Gary. “What’s happening? Where are you?”
“My name is Mike. I’m far away from there, which is where you ought to be trying to get. There’s—”
Gary was getting frustrated. “Where is your voice coming from, man?”
“From the ear in your hands, obviously. Or her hands. Whoever’s. Any other brainburners? No? Okay. You gotta listen, then. Victor should have had a pack with him. Do you see it?”
“I got it, yeah.” Ore jangled the backpack she grabbed from the railing.
“Who’s that? The girl with the brother?”
“My name’s Ore.”
“Ore. Like metal?”
“If you like.”
“All right, Ore. Inside there should be some data slabs. Are there?” He chuckled. “Ore there? Get it? Just kidding. Lighten up folks, it's murder today. Seriously, though. Are there?”
“Yeah,” said Ore. “They here.”
“Goddammit, that’s good. Pass them around. Each of you gets one, okay? I trusted them all to Victor, but he’s...trained for this. You aren’t.”
Gary held up the thick slab Ore handed him. “These are big. I didn’t think they made them big like this anymore.”
“They don’t, unless they need a lot of data. Those three drives hold rather sensitive corporate information. Like, all of it, for this whole region. Every file stored on every computer, okay?”
That would be zettabytes of information. Maybe yottabytes.
“How much is all this worth to you?” Ore asked.
“How about a trip off that Tower? How much is that worth to you?”
“You gonna pick us up if we give you these things?”
“I will.”
“Us, and anybody we got with us?”
“Sure. Whoever you like. Just get to the top of The Tower.”
That sounded great to Gary. He was about to say so, but then Ana banged her hand down on the door.
“Citizenship,” Ana said coldly.
“What?” Mike sounded surprised.
“You want us to do this?” She leaned into the ear. “Citizenship. For all three of us. Four of us. Her brother, too. You make us Citizens and we’ll do it. Victor was a hitman, right? He worked for some corporation, then. A big one, too.”
Mike's tone revealed nothing. “Maybe he did.”
“Citizenship,” Ana said again. “You work on it now, too. I want us to be Citizens before you even pick us up. If we die, I want it logged in the annals.”
“Yeah,” said Ore, smiling and shaking her finger at Ana. “I like that. Otherwise, the hell with your data, and we’ll take our chances with our own way off. Ororo and Samson Castelle. You put us on that list.”
“Ana Konopolis.”
“Gary Ross.”
Mike sighed. “Let me see what I can do.”
“Shove it up your ass, see what you can do.” Ana banged the door again. “Either you can do it or you can’t. No seeing.”
Gary wished she would stop banging the door. The dogs were behind it. She was riling them up. Their barking was getting louder, angrier.
“Fine!” said Mike. “Fine. Okay. Citizens. You’re all Citizens. Tax cuts and all. I’ll put someone on it right now.”
Sudden, easy grins across everyone’s face. Citizenship. Easy living. Healthcare.
Gary’s mother—she would have Citizen healthcare, too, if she was still alive. Such a thing was possible, he expected. Maybe the hospital...maybe it wasn't all the way collapsed. Survivors happened, right? People survived.
And if she did, forget inner-city Junktown hospitals, forget shoddy slum medicine that only worked half the time. She'd be on the top of the pile and get the best treatment available in a hospital that was pure and white and didn’t have yellowed sheets or half-doctors with best guesses about how to treat her cancer.
And all they had to do was this one, crazy, impossible thing.
Ore had already started up the stairs again, shuffling to keep her feet in the strong lean, and Gary followed Ana—making sure to be behind her. He could cover her rear. She stuffed the ear in a pocket.
Beneath her, he could watch her all the more intently. Once, Ana turned and Gary averted his eyes—but still met hers, and felt that awkward quasi-telepathic pang of shame that let him know he had been caught.
They passed one floor and then another, and then another—the doors either locked or barricaded somehow. Boards and furniture hammered in, rubble piling over the opening.
In front, Ore stopped the ascent, banging against a door. The stairs again were blocked by caved-in rubble—the building in full disrepair. The collapse must have been recent. Dust and dirt still filled the air. Gary could see why Ore was becoming so frustrated: the door had no knob, and was just a flat panel, shaking from the strikes of her weight.
“Locked,” she said, shaking her head and shoving her shoulder against it.
“Could you try your hand?” asked Ana.
Ore shook her head. “It crushes. Tears.” She opened and closed it, showing off. “Pears, apples, skulls, no problem. Maybe if I tried, I’d get inside and tear through, but what if it’s three feet thick? Too much time lost. We'll all die in the meantime.”
“So what?” Ana kicked the door in frustration. “Do we go back? Back to the dogs?”
“Maybe we could fight them. You fight okay?”
“Do I look like I fight okay?” Ana was incensed. “You think because I'm tall that I fight things? Is that what you think?”
Ore looked unimpressed. Gary stepped between them.
“Look, look, okay? This door—I mean you can’t just have a door and not have a way to open it, okay? That doesn’t make any sense. This is a residential building...you know. Sort of. And she said the elevators don’t work for another, what, ten floors or something? Let’s just have a look around.”
Ana, frowning, backed off. “Fine. Everybody take a wall.”
They began to search. It didn't take long now that they tried. Next to the door, he saw it—a camouflaged panel, loosened a bit already by all the banging.
“Here,” he said, popping it open. Inside was an old-timey card scanner and a number pad. Relief spread through the tenseness in his shoulders. If it had been a retinal scan, that would have been all for them
.
“I know these, okay?” He pulled out the small toolkit from his pants, setting his data slab on the ground. “I know these panels. I’ve studied them. Just give me a minute.”
The toolkit had been a gift from his mother. By habit alone, he caught each screw as it unscrewed from the panel.
Ana clapped him on the shoulder. “Hell yeah, Gary.”
Pride swelled up through him. He’d show his worth with this, right? They’d get through it fine—he had to get through it fine. And then they’d spend time afterward someplace nice, someplace tropical like Memphis or Charleston, and of course they’d have sex and not just that but make love, oh man, and she’d call out his name and beg him not to leave her...
Distantly, there was a sharp bang and then a series of more hard bangs, followed by loud, angry barking.
“Are you goddamn kidding?” Ore leaned over the stairwell, looking down. “Goddamn.”
The barks became louder, echoing up toward them in the stairs.
Next to him, Ana bit her nails. “Whatever you’re doing, Gary, you gotta hurry.”
Finally, he brought out the last screw. The panel banged down to the floor. His slipped his hands into the loose spaghetti of wires revealed, searching and probing. Small electric shocks pricked through his system, but he kept going. Ana was right there, watching. She watched him. She needed him to succeed. Trails of smoke slid up through the mess of wires, originating from he didn’t know where. The dogs were getting closer—he could hear their paws slapping the stone steps now. Tug, pull, rearrange, try and make it click—
With a low tone, the door sprang open.
The three rushed inside as one, pushing each other over and scattering themselves through the opening. Gary lunged to the door and smashed the panel next to it. It was only then that he saw he had left the data slab outside. Too late to grab it now.
One dog, leading the pack, zoomed through the opening, claws skidding as it turned. Slobber trailed out behind it.
Toning once more, the door slammed down on the next dog, locking the rest of them out.
Bad luck for the dog that got in, it chose to go after Ore first. Leaping high, it aimed for her neck. They tumbled down, the sharp clanging whine of Ore’s tech hand easy to hear. Gary looked away. Ripping sounds, crunching sounds.
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