Ecko Rising

by Danie Ware

  When the world’d had the time for such things.

  Tapping her index finger on her chin, she said, “I will admit that Ecko’s fear of authority means his hatred of Pilgrim is sincere. And he remains remarkably untouched by the changes of today’s society.” Her eyes flickered as though she was watching something. “Eliza’s initial psych report details the massive damage inflicted by his Tech – he calls her ‘Mom’?” Her eyebrow raised slightly. “She also lists the physical and neurological adjustments he bears – and some very interesting psych reactions to his being effectively more than human.” A smile touched her lips. “When so many people are now less.”

  Lugan said absolutely nothing. Unless he missed his guess, she was right on the fucking verge...

  “All right – the details on Grey’s location are cleared. Collator gives me 84.61 per cent success if Ecko runs solo reconnaissance and retrieval.”

  Lugan said, “An’ if he don’t?”

  Her smile was cool. “Significantly less.”

  The lights shifted more swiftly, Collator was irrefutable. Lugan planted a boot against the table edge, pushed the chair back and stood up.

  “If ’e succeeds –”

  “Lugan, I’ve spent over a decade working against the world that Pilgrim has wrought here, fighting for the return of our social freedom, warts and all. If he succeeds, Eliza will run her full – and proper – psychological diagnosis. She’ll design her Virtual Rorschach just for him, and he’ll get the treatment he actually needs. If he fails –”

  “If ’e fucks this up, I’ll slit ’is throat myself. I already said so.”

  In the silence that followed, he became aware that the Boss had turned her face, ever so slightly. She was looking over her bare shoulder at him in a manner that was almost... flirtatious.

  “Lugan, you have so much alpha you leave a bollock dent in your fuel tank – but even you may find that difficult.”

  “He’s my respo –”

  “Collator will process and download the full mission briefing to Fuller at 21:46.” She turned back. “Ecko will move at 23:33. If he fails this mission, he’s mine. Go back to the Bike Lodge, Mister Eastermann, and explain to him, in words of one syllable or less, what I have just told you – and what will happen if he messes up again. You say you can manage him? Go and prove it.”

  The screen went blank.

  In the sudden darkness, Fuller’s voice came over their personal link. Do you trust this, Luge? She could as easily set him up...

  Lugan didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he could.

  2: RECONNAISSANCE

  PILGRIM PHARMACEUTICALS RESEARCH FACILITY, LONDON

  Ecko crouched against the back wall of the roof garden.

  The cold March wind shrieked the length of the Thames, driving the grey water to white froth. The weather had grounded drones and aircars; on Blackfriars Bridge rain slashed viciously sideways into bright glass. Up here, acrylic greenery was driven to madness by the howling weather, it thrashed round where he hid as if it were trying to give him away.

  He’d been cornered like a fucking rat – stuck here, with no way out of the shit Lugan’d landed him in.

  He’d like to see Collator’s percentage on this.

  Ecko’s recon was fucked and now he was trapped, eight storeys above the sidewalk, with no firearm, no aural link and no radio. The wall of the building below him was sheer glass, running with rain – too tough to break and too smooth for his vacuum suckers to hold. His usual Spidey tactics useless, the only way out was past the guard-’bot that blocked the stairwell door.

  Yeah, like that’s gonna happen any time soon...

  Through the rain, he could barely see it. Like his suckers, his oculars were trashed by the weather – the ’bot was a dark-grey blur against a bright-grey background. It’d set up camp like it was waiting for the opening of a BiFrost gig. Watching, Ecko hunched against the wall and wondered if Lugan would send the cavalry in time.

  Salva, goon commander, knew he was up here. She was coming.

  And once she found him, he was fucking toast.

  “I know you can do this,” Lugan’d told him quietly after the initial briefing. “But listen up. This run is just recon – you get in, you get out. No mess. Fuller uploads the report at 06:48. Don’t fuck this up.”

  Ecko’d barely listened; he’d been so fucking cocky. He’d been given a chance to show what he could really do – and he’d grabbed at it like a dangled carrot.

  “Like I’m as dumb as you look.”

  “I mean it.” One of Lugan’s hands had clamped hard on his shoulder, holding him back. “You don’t understand ’ow important this is – an’ I ain’t explainin’ it, not now. Behave yourself.”

  Yeah right, Ecko told the memory. That’s why you didn’t gimme a radio you –

  One of the potted trees went over with crash, ceramic shattering. A blood-red sheet of target-scan seared through the rain.

  Ecko dropped flat in the lee of the wall and belly-crawled backwards, the puddles soaking his skin. The scan passed over him.

  Jeez, he thought at the ’bot, Get it through your metallic brain willya, there’s no one fucking up here...

  It was his only plan: if the ’bot scanned one hundred per cent of the potential hiding places and found nothing, it might just go for a cappuccino.

  All right, already, so it was a long shot.

  He’d thought this job was going to be so fucking simple!

  Collator had pulled everything it could on Doctor Slater Grey; it had plotted Ecko’s approach carefully. They’d seen sat-cover of the South Bank – cafés, bars, galleries, theatres. Tourists and yuppies, he’d thought, a piece of piss, placid after dark. Grey’s pad was a zigzag of blue glass rising above its surroundings.

  Getting in had just been too fucking easy.

  He’d been a flicker of obscurity; they’d never seen him coming. His chameleon skin tone concealed him from visual security, his small physique radiated no heat, his stealth-cloak blurred his outline. His black-on-black eyes and black grin reflected no light. Mobile or stationary, he made no noise unless he chose to, he left no scent –

  That fucking ’bot was moving.

  Flicking his vision over to starlites, Ecko struggled to make it out. It showed up like a blotch of grey-green, one arm rising to point across the landing pad. Through the screaming weather, he made out a faint whirring noise.

  Like a gyrocopter. Or an arm-mounted –

  Shit...!

  Unable to do anything else, he hugged the soaking gravel and prayed to the Bogeyman for luck.

  The noise was phenomenal. Muzzle flashes dazzled his adjusted vision; rapid explosions chewed chunks out of the ferrocrete wall, dust and debris covered him. Already battered by the gale, the trees were shredded, pots exploding into splinters. Flying shards slashed at his face.

  It stopped.

  Breathless in sudden quiet, Ecko realised he was okay.

  His first thought – Missed me, sucker! – was followed by a furtive scan of the sky. Was Grey two cogs short of a full fucking gearbox or what? Belly-flat on the freezing rooftop, he wondered who the cops would shoot first.

  And if he’d get the chance to explain how the fuck he’d gotten himself up here...

  * * *

  Initial recon found Grey’s lair just as the briefing had described – soft carpeting to cushion footfalls, framed prints to inspire loyalty, a join-the-dots of pretty, neon pinpoints to light the corridors and conceal the security.

  Shadow within shadow, Ecko waited, counting the time readout in his field of vision, watching the mottles of his skin shifting like disease. His black grin went unseen, his superiority unspoken. He mentally marked the IR trips, the UV tags. Then, without a breath of sound, he slid past the cameras and headed upwards.

  He was the Bogeyman, the nightmare, the fantasy. Grey could dream on in all his plush Pilgrim naïveté...

  Until – boom – it was too late.

  Goon
s passed him on a back stairwell; he heard them long before they came close. Their kit was good – gas-powered, close-assault weapons, nerve-contacted shades that imitated ocular scans – but they sauntered oblivious, unaware of the dark spider that crouched on their dark wall.

  Ecko watched them as they passed him and then strolled, ignorant, round the angle of the stairway.

  After a moment, their booted feet paused.

  “Stairwell clear; time 01:14, moving onto floor three.” A door opened and closed.

  Then silence.

  Over his head, the camera whirred softly as it changed angle. He lifted his chin and pulled a face at it.

  Timing his movement carefully, he landed silently behind its arc and flitted, ghostlike, up the stairs.

  Straight to Grey’s nerve centre.

  Yeah, he thought, this is like takin’ cellphones from street kids. Lugan had made such a fucking fuss – and Pilgrim’s security stank. He was amazed at how easily he’d reached his target; how simple it was going to be to penetrate Grey’s innermost defences.

  Just like this.

  At the top of the stairs, the door to Grey’s lab. Beside it, a small security alcove with a mirrored back wall. The briefing had said it would be occupied.

  Sitting in a swivel chair: another goon – weapon, shades and earpiece.

  Standing, arms crossed: a small, blonde female, Slavic cheekbones and hard eyes – Salva, goon commander.

  The third was tall, skinny and long haired. There were flesh tunnels in his earlobes and knotwork tats down one side of his neck. Over a black tee and jeans he wore a lab coat that looked like he’d slept in it. Half a reefer was firmly stuck between his fingers as he pointed at one of the flatscreens.

  Brilliant, radical, total fucking sell-out: Doctor Slater Grey.

  Behave yourself, Lugan had said.

  Got no radio, asshole, Ecko told the memory. Howya gonna check up on me?

  It was just too tempting. Coaxed by the apparent simplicity of Grey’s security, Ecko gathered his concentration and focused on the mirror.

  He began to breathe.

  Slowly, softly.

  He breathed through the back of his throat and nose: a heavy, wet noise that was half Darth Vader and half rotting-liquid-corpse. It was a dank sound, a sound of absolute darkness.

  And, like the rising miasma of something dead on a hot day, it was getting worse.

  The goon was closest, he shivered and rubbed his shoulders.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Ecko had practised this as kid, sending his clamouring, spoiled sisters screaming for Mommy. He focused again, staring intently.

  Raised the volume.

  It was desolate, empty breathing, spectre cold and carrying a hollow note of laughter. The goon shoved his chair backwards, bringing his carbine up to cover the mirror.

  Ecko gave him a flash of red eyes.

  As dumb as you fucking like, he fired.

  The mirror frosted, opaqued with cracks. Grey swore.

  No fool, Salva had spun to cover the landing. She barked commands, clipped and cold. The goon just stood up and turned, wide-eyed at his own stupidity.

  A moment later, the heavy boots of the patrol were pounding back up the stairs.

  * * *

  On the roof, the minigun suppressed again, heavy calibre rounds detonating further along the wall – it was shooting blind. Ecko snuck a second glance upwards, but the only light was the rotating LED that topped the Tate Leisure...

  No cops. No ’copters, no aircars, no drones.

  So – what? Grey could just let off suppression bursts with miniguns whenever he liked?

  The firing stopped. Through the howling weather, Ecko heard the whirring of the barrels wind down, then cease.

  Yeah, he thought, maybe that ain’t so smart, RoboCop. Now, what else you got?

  Their impasse was unchanged: the ’bot couldn’t see him, he couldn’t get past it. Without Lugan to run a distraction, Ecko was going to be stuck here when Salva and her goons reached the top of the stairwell...

  Where the hell had that biker bastard got to?

  Ecko wondered if Collator knew that Grey’d got a fucking Takeshimi combat machine. Lugan’s Tech had been babbling the other day, “Experimental,” he’d said. “Not ready to leave Japan,” he’d said...

  So what was this one – on fucking vacation?

  The vertical red slice of the scanner swept again. The rain glistened like falling blood.

  It knew where he was, huddled in the shredded remains of the roof garden – it was just gonna keep scanning ’til it got him. Salva couldn’t be far behind... Lugan was so not gonna reach him in time.

  Where was Collator when you needed it? With its percentages and fucking scenario analysis? Ecko held down a sense of panic, he didn’t want to know the odds on what he was about to do.

  You’re not, he told himself.

  Yeah, I am.

  The wall behind him had been shattered, pieces of rubble were still tumbling to the sidewalk far below. No security defended the roof’s edge. Not thinking about the drop, not thinking about it, he let his outrage at his own stupidity focus into white determination.

  Swallowing a mouthful of insanity, he slid backwards over the edge.

  There was no fucking way he was letting some experimental tin can get the better of the Bogeyman.

  * * *

  The goons burst, breathless, onto the top of the stairs – and they’d found only Salva. If she’d heard their confusion she ignored it, she was scanning, slit-eyed and unfooled.

  The landing was the size of a food-cube; if there was something here, she appeared intent on finding it.

  She glared round the walls, studying every millimetre. When she found nothing, she looked up, raising the muzzle of her rifle.

  Still nothing.

  Her expression narrowed.

  Gotcha, bitch! With a grim smile, Ecko watched her ocular scanners flicker. Less than a metre above her head, he was backed into a corner, crouched like a nightmare with his shoulders crunched against the ceiling.

  Her gaze went straight over him.

  He didn’t dare move, she’d feel the air. He stayed as still as stone – even when she squeezed her trigger and loosed a short, sharp burst of ammunition directly upwards.

  He stilled his breath. Dust and plaster scattered.

  “Sal!” Grey stubbed his reefer out on the security desk. “Don’t trash the place. You lot, get a grip. Maynard, stay here and watch those readouts. You two, keep an eye on the stairs. Anything comes near you – shoot it.”

  “Doc, if the building’s compromised, shouldn’t we –”

  “If you patrol, it’ll take you out one by one. Stay put – and stay together.” He shrugged off the lab coat, revealing pale arms and more tattoos, blue with age. Old needle marks decorated his forearms. “Sal, time to hit the panic room.”

  Ecko stayed still as the chemist moved to open his sanctuary door. Beside him, a hatchet-faced Salva still watched the ceiling.

  As the goons settled down to squabbling about who’d seen what, the door into Grey’s lab swung open, then slowly closed.

  Before it resealed, Ecko was through it.

  * * *

  One hand.

  Two.

  Flattened by the wind and hammered by the driving, freezing rain, Ecko clung to the edge of the roof.

  The flexiweight in the cloak hem kept it from tangling his legs but its folds billowed and flapped as if threatening to drag him loose. His hands strained to hold him – his reinforced skin didn’t cover his fingertips and they stung with pain on the broken stone.

  Ecko’s Tech – he called her “Mom” – had fashioned him many things. Laying a complex system of wiring into the motor nerves of his hands, she’d turned his fingers into inhumanly accurate callipers. Arrayed with tactile sensors, his bare fingertips could tell him the location of wiring in a wall, the movement of tumblers in a lock, the exact moment the breath stop
ped in someone’s throat...

  But they also hurt like bastards if anything damaged them. He could feel all of it: every lump, every splinter, every crack, every chip and fragment of the broken wall. He could have mapped the destruction to the last half nanometre – the pain etched the landscape of the stonework into the blood on his fingertips.

  His resolve set like cold steel, Ecko swung sideways along the roof’s edge – away from the can’s target arc. His jaw jumped with the hurt of every handhold, but he kept his oculars focused on the dirty, pitted ferrocrete before him. He closed his ears to the demented yowl of the wind, ignored the rain as it battered into his flesh. If he fell...

  ...He was playing Bogeyman, playing Bogeyman for real. Bogeyman didn’t mess up – and he didn’t fall off the fucking wall. For Bogeyman to end up as Pavement Pizza was inconceivable.

  He sniggered like the first sign of panic.

  One hand then two.

  His feet swung loose, billowing uselessly as if his legs were broken. He could get no purchase on the slippery glass. After another metre, the pain in his fingertips was sparking stars across his vision. His hands were cramping, his arms and shoulders shuddering with strain. As the hurt increased, his fingers lied to him. A whole chunk of wall came away under his grip and he dangled precariously from one hand, the wind blinding him with his cloak hood.

  For chrissakes, he thought to himself, get a fucking grip.

  He sniggered aloud – then strangled it before it rose to a scream.

  Desperate fear gave him strength. With a simian swing, he secured the second handhold and hung there, sick with relief. He dared not raise his head above the lip of the wall – that fucking can would blow it clean off.

  Another two metres and he’d reach the corner.

  * * *

  Ecko’s briefing had covered only the corporate basics – approach, building security, office space – it hadn’t listed the contents of Grey’s lab. That shit was target numero uno on the list of stuff Ecko had to recon.

  Gotcha!

  Behind him, the door clanged shut and sealed with a slight hiss. Oblivious to the additional presence, Grey and Salva headed swiftly away across the gloom.