Dead Air

by Jak Koke

  But bailing on a corporate contract had its own catches. As part of the Calfree deal, Yamatetsu had injected Hendrix with nanites—symbiotic microorganisms that increased his ability to heal. But they’d also been tailored to produce a neurotoxin in the absence of a certain compound that was provided in the food. When Hendrix left, he no longer got the food, and without the chemical he was a dead man.

  It was only because of Sergio, a street doc chummer, that Hendrix lived through the experience. Sergio took all of Hendrix’s nuyen, but he specialized in bio ware and was able to destroy the symbiotes and clean the toxin from Hendrix’s blood. Another testament to the value of maintaining good contacts.

  Now, Hendrix straightened the cap on his shaved head, checked to make sure his armor was in place, and stepped out of the van. The plan was simple. Since nobody was home, they would enter the condo on the pretext of repossessing Grids’s simsynth. Mole had doctored some payment records to the Corporate Bank of Calfree where Tamara Ny had borrowed the cred to purchase the expensive Fuchi box.

  Once inside, they would scour the place. Try to find the chip Cinnamon wanted. Gather clues to help them find Grids. Perhaps Juju could locate him magically when he’d healed up. Plus there were always other clues—holopics, telecom messages. Hendrix was confident they’d eventually track down Mr. Grids.

  Hendrix’s own gun rubbed against the callus just below his ribs as he walked. The weapon was an Ares Alpha Combatgun, not subtle but a die-hard favorite. With its integrated grenade launcher and built-in recoil reduction, Hendrix could shoot his way out of an all-out assault with it. His other gun was a silenced Ares Predator II for the more discreet situations.

  They moved across the street and passed easily through the outside gate, thanks to Mole. Then up the stairs to number seven. His favorite number. Layla walked with him, snickering slightly to herself. "Can’t wait to see inside this doss," she said.

  Hendrix glared at her to stow it, which she did. Then he reached up and pressed the intercom button.

  A tiny icon of a blind, ugly rodent appeared on the intercom’s small screen, and Mole’s voice came through the speaker. "Please come in," he said.

  The lock inside the door clicked, and Hendrix pulled the door open with a gloved hand, then stepped through.

  Layla suppressed an excited laugh as they passed through a natural redwood-paneled foyer and into the living room. Plush gray carpeting. Southwestem-style furniture. Very expensive. "Wiz," said Layla. "I could live here."

  "Stay sharp, chica," Hendrix said. "Seems safe enough, but we’ve got an elemental and a watcher tracking our movements, just waiting for us to make a mistake."

  "We’ll just fry them if—"

  "Better to pretend we belong."

  Layla put on a mock serious face. "Let’s get rolling then."

  The two of them searched the entire apartment. Hendrix capturing the images of each room in digital perfection with his cyberoptic camera. They quickly determined that Grids had left, packing in a hurry. It looked like he’d taken some clothes and some food. Unfortunately he’d purged the telecom’s memory so they couldn’t pull off the last outgoing calls. The incoming messages revealed nothing.

  Their search for the chip was systematic, even though Hendrix suspected that it was gone with the target. Layla scanned the astral with her special sight, all the while listening to Juju give updates on the spirit. Hendrix took the lead, moving as fast as his boosted reflexes and augmented musculature would allow. Juju had reported finding no auras doing his astral recon, but that didn’t mean there weren’t surveillance cameras or track-running security drones. Hendrix had seen too many mercs kiss death by such killing machines. And to him, that would be the worst way to go—by the mindless autofire of a drone.

  Hendrix had been hit by such a beast only once, and he knew that wasn’t how he wanted his number punched when the time came. He wanted to be able to stare into the eyes of his executioner. To know who it was had beaten him at his own game. The killing game.

  "Paydata!" Layla said when they reached the garage.

  "Mole," Hendrix said into his headphone. "You scan this?" He uplinked his cyberoptic camera data, then slowly panned around the room.

  Old cyberdeck cases lay scattered, fiber-optics and motherboards jutting like decaying teeth from the wreckage. "Junk," Mole said. "Most of it anyway."

  Hendrix came to a vacant area where the floor was free from electronic refuse. Stacks of chips and compact disks lined the shelves at the edge of the area, and a datacable lay loose, one end dangling free.

  "He’s taken his drek and gone," Mole said. "Take the chips and CDs if you want, but I seriously doubt he’s left the sim we want."

  Hendrix nodded. "No, he wouldn’t be that stupid."

  "What do you think, babe?" Layla asked, grinning. She had removed a satchel of radio detonators from her waist.

  "We need a material link for Juju first," Hendrix said.

  Layla bent down to the floor and picked up something. "Fingernail clippings good enough?" she asked. But she wasn’t talking to Hendrix, she was talking to Juju Pete. She nodded in response to whatever Juju was saying from astral space, then pulled a tiny plastic baggie from one of her many pockets and sealed the clippings inside.

  Hendrix took one last look around the room, recording it in case they needed to reexamine it later. Then he nodded to Layla. "Okay, set the charges quickly."

  He removed his own satchel and placed three charges of plastique throughout the condo, carefully inserting a detonator into each. Layla did the same, and when they were done, Hendrix gave the order to move out.

  Then they were back in the van, rolling for East Hollywood Gate. In ten minutes they had passed through and back into the shadows. Hendrix finally breathed a sigh. Mission accomplished, he thought as he pressed the transmitter to blow the charges. Even from a kilometer and a half away, he heard the explosion.

  "I saw the flash!" Layla said. "Wiz."

  On site, the windows blew out in a spray of glass, showering over the nearby houses. Hendrix imagined it in his mind. The walls ripped like rice paper and a searing hot sheet of fire flashed for a moment, just before a huge black cloud erupted from the dead shell of Tamara Ny’s apartment. It was just too bad he wasn’t close enough to see it for himself.

  After a few breaths, he called Mole on his headphone. "Any leads on where the target might have gone?"

  "Nothing solid, but I did find something when I broke into Jonathon Winger’s home system. There was a message from Grids on Winger’s telecom."

  Hendrix smiled to himself. "Good job, Mole. We’ll go after him next:"

  "He just returned to Montecito a few hours ago. I’ll monitor his telecom just in case he contacts our man."

  "Excellent," Hendrix said. "Layla and I will rendezvous with you and Juju at the safehouse, then we’ll arrange to shadow Mr. Winger."

  "Till then," Mole said, disconnecting.

  "Hendrix," Layla said. "Look here." And when he turned toward her, she leaned across and put her lips against his, soft red against rough black. Then she leaned back and smiled. "Winger’s involved?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "That makes me sad," she said, dropping her smile for a beautiful pout. "I like him."

  Hendrix hadn’t thought about it. Like or dislike didn’t come into it. This was biz. "Me too, I guess."

  "If we have to geek him," Layla said. "The elf, I mean—Winger—I want to do it," she said.

  "Sure."

  She threw her head back and laughed. And laughed all the way to the safehouse.

  22

  Night came like a benediction. Maria breathed in the darkness, feeling Owl waken and give her strength.

  Getting inside was easy. No one cared who went into the El Infierno jungle. It was getting out of that war zone that was the problem. Anyone who tried to escape risked being gunned down by the powers that be.

  Gunned down like Jesse, Maria thought as she sat in the passenger se
at of the hijacked Pacific Foods truck. Hijacked with Dougan’s nuyen; the rigger who piloted the truck didn’t get paid enough for this route and had taken Dougan’s cred willingly.

  Dougan crouched between the seats, trying to avoid being recognized by the security guards. El Infierno was isolated by a four-meter-tall cyclone fence topped with razorwire and surveillance cameras. There were motion detectors and autofire turrets, but they all faced inward, toward the city streets inside.

  The rigger piloted the food truck past the sentry and into Compton, a blasted wasteland of low, dilapidated houses, built way back before the turn of the century and long ago blown to splinters by gang warfare.

  The Pacific Foods truck had four guards who clung to the bumpers on each corner of the vehicle. The guards were armed with automatic weapons to prevent gang attacks between the gate and the Safestore on Avalon, the truck’s destination.

  The turf wars had never stopped; they’d only intensified when the walls had gone up because now room for expansion was limited. The top gang in West Compton was ’Hood Watch, which kept some order as long as the proper tributes were paid.

  Maria heard the distant chatter of automatic gunfire and saw the faint glow of a burning building, reflected as an orange glow off the clouds and billowing black smoke. The smell of burning flesh grew as they approached the fire, and Maria swallowed hard to keep her stomach down, fighting the memory of the school raid twelve years ago.

  They rounded the corner and for a second Maria was years younger, crouching behind the cinderblock barricade in the old boiler room as the Lone Star attack squad blew the drek out of the elementary school around her.

  Now, the gutted school stood like a husk, a ghost in front of them as Dougan directed the rigger to pull the truck into the lot next to the old gymnasium doors. Maria was taken aback at how little it had changed over the years.

  Across the asphalt basketball court and the dead football field, the house fire crackled and burned. A large crowd of onlookers had gathered to watch it—the primal draw of the flame holding their attention. Better than a show on the trid, better than simsense.

  From the black rectangle of the open gym doors stepped two shapes. Specters from the past. They were human, large and bulked up with old cyber. They wore trenchcoats that bulged at sharp angles from the guns they carried.

  Maria opened her door and stepped down from the truck. Dougan followed.

  "Well, well, if it isn’t Mr. Pointy Ears, daisy-eater himself." That voice was familiar, deep and resonant. Rich and humorless. Maurice’s voice.

  "Nice to see you too, Maurice," Dougan said. "I’m glad you missed me."

  Maurice laughed, full and bass like a rumble through a subway tunnel. "I missed the nuyen you got me," he said. "Looks like that might change, neh?"

  "You scanned it, chummer."

  Bob Henry stepped around Maurice and out into the dim light. His ghostly white skin a contrast to Maurice’s black flesh. Both razorguys stood two meters at the shoulder, gigantic for humans, and both still had their death’s-head tattoos, though the wings of fire were dull against Maurice’s dark skin. Bob Henry’s large head and spike of white hair added another half-meter to his height. Maurice’s head, by contrast, was squat and nearly square, his do cut into pinstripes along his scalp.

  Maria marveled at their sheer bulk. Too bad their brain size doesn’t translate into intelligence, she thought. "You chummers ready to fly?"

  "Maria, you’re a sight for horny eyes," Maurice said, the same resonant chuckle in his voice. "Your beauty makes me as mute as Bob Henry."

  Bob Henry put a huge drek-eating grin on his face and nodded his head up and down. Up and down.

  "You guys want this gig?" Dougan asked. "If we can get beyond our past, I think we could make a good team again."

  "Muerte," Maria said. "For the last time."

  "Bob Henry and I are in for two reasons," Maurice said. "One: escape to the outside. And two: the promised nuyen. Our dandelion-eater elf here has given his word for twenty kay each. True, neh?"

  "True," Dougan said. "Now let’s roll."

  "What about the truck rigger and the guards?"

  "They get the truck back after we leave," Dougan said. "Plus a nice cred bonus from me."

  "We could just geek their pussies right now," Maurice said. He pulled out a machine gun to punctuate his sentence. Typical macho drek.

  "No," Maria said. "There are to be no unnecessary kills on this run. We’re already responsible for too much death."

  "Well, listen to our shaman. Change of feather, eh, Maria?" She felt the fireball itch in the back of her mind. Just push it a little farther, she thought. Then she relaxed. "Owl is not afraid to kill," she said, glaring at Maurice. "But doesn’t slaughter needlessly."

  "And I agree," Dougan said. "Now, scan these wiz Artemis Nightgliders." He rolled open the back of the truck. "Four of them with remote ops package. They can be slaved to mine so that I can fly us out. Maria puts us under an illusion and we fly silent as a desert night." Maurice and Bob Henry crowded in for a closer look, smiles lighting up on their big dumb faces. "Keep treating us this well," Maurice said. "And we’ll have this slag geeked, skinned, and spitted before you can say ‘Dunklezahn is dead.’ "

  Maria smiled too, but behind the façade she was thinking of the last time they were together, of Jesse’s blazing form as the combat mages hit him with hellblasts so fierce he exploded. His flesh blew out from the inside. Then she thought of the children who had died then. And she thought of her own kids back in San Bernardino.

  And she wished Dougan had never come back.

  23

  The weight of Jonathon’s Predator II pistol grew in the pocket of his armored duster as he stepped from the rented Landrover. He closed the door, leaving Synthia inside with Grids and Venny. He wanted to do this alone. He needed to face up to his past now that Tam was gone. He hadn’t returned here since the fire. Since the funeral for his mother and baby sister.

  Hot, dry wind gusted around him, carrying dust and dead leaves. The smell of memories. The memory of the fire so many years ago. Jonathon absently put his hand in his pocket, his fingers brushing over the hard edge of the gun’s metal. Caressing the brutality of it. He could almost feel its darkness, the black of the steel barrel, the murderous weight of its fitted handle.

  Static hissed angrily in his ears as he crunched gravel under his boots, walking the distance from the Landrover to the blackened remnants of his childhood home. And as he came around the bend of the gravel drive, out of sight of the Landrover, the remains of the house came into full view. The twisted and charred bones of the old house jutted from the rubble like those of a burned corpse, overgrown with brown brambles and dead, graying grass. And as Jonathon looked at it, the static grew until he could hear nothing else.

  The wind was gone, the birds disappeared. Only the static remained, a banshee scream crackling like the fire. Then he was sixteen again, standing in just the same spot, watching the ravenous tongues of flame lick black death to his house. To his mother and sister, both of whom had been asleep when the torchers had struck.

  The Native Californians policlub. Night riders. An organization with a vicious hatred for non-humans, and elves in particular ever since the Battle of Redding the year before. Kill the daisy-eaters! Kill the daisy-eaters! they’d chanted, parading around in their stocking-cap masks. Jonathon had seen them near the house many times, like some recurring nightmare. Destroy the elven spies! Pointy-eared scum!

  The chanters had forgotten that Jonathon’s father had been one of those who’d fought and died in the Battle of Redding, fought for California Free Slate, trying to save his own land. Both Jonathon’s parents were human, even though Jonathon and his baby sister had expressed the elven morphology from birth.

  Jonathon had been away when the policlub torchers came to the house; he’d been off motorcycle riding with Tamara, trying to perform tricks on her Honda. When they’d noticed the black smoke billowing up th
rough the trees on the north edge of town, he and Tamara went after it. Unaware. To watch the fire. They would travel for kilometers to see a good fire. Always had. The show of destruction and death broke up the summer’s monotony.

  By the time Jonathon realized it was his house, it was too late. The house was too far gone. Beyond salvage.

  His mother and sister had followed his father to the grave, only a year behind. And Jonathon was alone in the world. Alone except for Tamara, who stood beside him, strength flowing from her young beautiful body. Reassurance passing through the connection between her hand and his. Her strength saved his life that day, held him back when he was about to plunge into the fire. When he was teetering on the verge of giving up the final sacrifice. His own life.

  Now, she was gone, and her strength had gone with her. Their connection was broken, and the banshee howl of the fire became the scream of static in his head. He stood alone. Flying solo.

  His only comfort was the smooth grip of his Predator II, its smartlink coming online as he clasped it tightly in his hand. As he drew it from his pocket. As he removed the safety.

  Cocked it.

  Time to end the static. Time to silence the screams. Time to embrace the long, eternal loneliness.

  He started to bring the weapon up toward his head.

  "Jonathon!"

  The barrel’s metal felt cool against his sweaty brow.

  "Jonathon!" Synthia’s voice in the distance.

  Such sweet music, he thought. So out of place here.

  "Jonathon!" she called again, from inside the Landrover. "We should roll soon if you want to make the lake for the funeral."

  Yes, he thought, the funeral. One last goodbye. He dropped his arm, letting his muscles go limp suddenly. Then he released the gun’s weight into the large pocket of his duster.

  He took a deliberate breath and squeezed his eyes tight. Then he turned his back on the skeleton of his childhood and walked away from the dead memories, crunching gravel until he reached the big, off-road vehicle.