Upgrade

by Richard Parry

  “You need more than a shower. She’s not for you, Mason.“

  Mason ignored her. “And then I’ll come back. Mr. Eckers and I need to have a conversation.”

  “Mr. Eckers. Hm. I wonder.” But Carter was quiet after that. Mason walked back towards the double doors to the street.

  “Carter?”

  “Yes, Mason.”

  “I need a meeting.”

  “Oh, Christ. No.”

  “Really, Carter.” Mason swung a leg over the bike, the HUD sparkling into life. A soft whine escaped from under the seat. “I think I need to talk to Metatech and Reed.”

  “You want to get your ass kicked again?”

  Mason’s helmet lapped into place around his face. “I was outnumbered. I did not get my ass kicked.”

  “You got beaten worse than a red-headed stepchild.” Carter laughed. “No, it’s fine. I’ll set it up. I can never get enough of a good ass-kicking.”

  “Thanks,” said Mason. His mouth pulled into a small smile. “I might bring a bigger gun this time.”

  “Bring what you like. But I’d call Harry if I were you.”

  “Harry?” Mason frowned, his foot knocking the kickstand back. He gave the throttle a twist, the fusion drive purring and growling under him. “That’s a bit much for a meeting, don’t you think?”

  “It’s your life, Mason. I’m just making suggestions.”

  “Well, suggest a meeting. Metatech. Reed. Somewhere neutral.”

  “Of course. I’ll prep Sasha.”

  “Thanks, Carter.” Mason was still thinking about black lipstick as the big Suzuki roared off down the street, front wheel skipping up to reach for the sky.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Zacharies sat close to Laia, sharing their body heat. He looked out at their master, sitting warm by the fire that Laia had coaxed into life. She’d been exhausted afterwards.

  Of course, their master hadn’t shared his fire, or his food. The night was hungry and cold around them. They sat at the edge of the slump in the ground. Zacharies had a piece of melted glass in his hand, the edges sharp and bright. His eyes flicked to their master, then back to the glass.

  “It’ll never work,” said Laia.

  “What? Hush now. Sleep.” Zacharies smoothed her hair, his sister’s head against his shoulder.

  “We both need sleep,” she said. “You carried more than I did today.”

  He reached up to scratch under his collar. The metal left a rash, chafing and scratching at his skin. He was almost used to the mark of being a slave. Almost. “I carried trash today.”

  She started up, looking into his face. “Not so loud! He’ll hear you.”

  “So?”

  Her finger pressed against his lips. “So. You know as well as I.”

  Zacharies tensed his shoulders, then slumped. “I know. I wish…”

  “I wish it too.” Laia leaned back against him. She was shaking. “It’s so cold.”

  He hugged her closer. “The angel will come.”

  “I don’t believe in angels,” she said. Her head turned towards their master. “Not anymore.”

  “You must believe.” Zacharies rubbed her shoulders, trying to make her warmer. “It’s—”

  “It’s all we have,” she said. She’d been finishing his sentences for as long as he’d been finishing hers. “It’s not enough, to dream of hope.”

  “It’s not a dream.” Zacharies held up the melted glass. “Where do angels come from, Laia?”

  Laia pointed towards the stars, impassive and mighty above them. “From Heaven. From the stars. From our dreams. It’s the same.”

  Zacharies nodded, his chin against the top of her head. “It’s the same.”

  “Our dreams are worthless.” There was something sick and tired in her voice. “They are the dreams of the lost, the fallen.”

  “Oh, sister,” said Zacharies. “We aren’t fallen. See, look here.” He held the glass out to her, and she took it from him.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “See the ground?”

  “I see it.” Her voice was quiet, small.

  “See the stars?”

  Her head tipped up. “I see them.”

  Zacharies was silent for a moment, then he said, “Remember two cycles past, when a rock fell from the sky?”

  “Yes,” she said. Another shiver ran through her. “It was mighty. When it fell, it burned the earth.”

  “That’s right,” said Zacharies. “It came from the stars. But it wasn’t a person. It fell.”

  “What do you mean?” She was still holding the glass, turning it over in her hands.

  “An angel. An angel wouldn’t fall,” said Zacharies. “An angel would land. An angel would bring the weight of the heavens—”

  “—And step against the ground,” she said. Laia leaned away, turning to look at him. “You think an angel landed here?”

  “Yes, sister,” said Zacharies. His eyes flicked over to their master again, and his voice turned mocking. “I think the angel has come. Like the rock, he is mighty, and the heat of his anger burned the sand to glass.”

  Laia ignored the sting of his tone and listened to his words. She leaned back against him. “I hope so, brother,” she said.

  He stroked her hair again, saying nothing at all. But his eyes burned, watching their master next to his fire, as they shivered in the cold of the desert night.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mason pushed through the crowd streaming up and down the sidewalk. His bike whispered behind him then, with a whine of servos, retracted the cowl and sank into park mode. Neon signs flashed around him, above him — he felt surrounded by their dirty color. The hanzi may as well have been in Sanskrit for all he could make it out. Steam rose from manhole covers in the street. He passed a man with a trolley piled high with electronics, a faded Walmart logo in chipped plastic on the front.

  A woman gyrated her hips at him, plastic raincoat open at the front. She was naked underneath. “Nǐ hěn yīngjùn. You want good time?”

  Mason didn’t look twice, his feet taking him away into the anonymity of the crowd.

  There were a lot of people out. There were always a lot of people out in Chinatown, but since the rain — well, since the rain most people stayed inside. He looked up, seeing the plastic sheeting stretched across the sidewalk above him. It was already mottled and rotting, the downpour beating against it. This place always reminds me of Hong Kong. The plastic would do for now.

  Someone grabbed at his arm, and he ignored it, catching another man’s hand reaching for his wallet. Mason gave a twist of the man’s wrist, pulling out the Tenko-Senshin with his free hand. The muzzle pressed against the thief’s head, the weapon keening. “If your buddy touches his pistol, you’re a dead man.”

  The pedestrian traffic flowed around the three of them, oblivious to what might be. Sometimes you got shot in Chinatown. Sometimes you bought chicken feet.

  The man at Mason’s back spoke. “Let him go. Or I’ll—”

  Mason spun, the lattice twisting inside him, pulling the thief up to his toes and to his front. The man hissed with pain as Mason’s grip tightened on his wrist. He could see the other man clearly now, acne spotting a face too young to carry anything more than a light fuzz. He wore a jacket patched and marked, chains lacing it, all under a head topped with Harajuku punk hair. “Or you’ll what?” The Tenko-Senshin’s whine was high pitched, and a red light started to flick on the barrel.

  The man Mason held let out a groan, but the kid with the acne watched the light, then his eyes flicked sideways. “We don’t want any trouble.” He raised his hands up. It was what Mason was waiting for. The lattice yanked and he wrenched the man’s wrist he was holding, pushing him into the kid with acne. The barrel of the Tenko-Senshin swung back out to the street, the whine getting louder.

  The man who’d been crossing the street stopped, looking at the barrel of the weapon. Mason’s optics scanned him. Same jacket. Same marks. The goatee on
this one’s face was grown in. Not a kid.

  Mason’s lips pulled back. It wasn’t a grin. “Back off.”

  “Hey, I was just—”

  “You can do it from over there.” The Tenko-Senshin started to vibrate, the whine above audible now, the lattice chattering along his arms as he held the weapon. “I got no issue peeling the skin from your face with this.”

  “Sure, sure.” The eyes above the goatee flicked to the other two. “We were just going anyway.” He gestured at the other two. “Come.”

  The acne spotted kid looked at Mason, lips pulled into a sneer. “You’re a dead man. Dead!” He slapped one of the marks on his jacket, chains jingling. “We’re the South Sun tigers, and no one…” He trailed off.

  The crowd continued to flow around them, the group mind moving on. “If you’re going to say no one kills one of the South Sun Tigers, friend, well. That’s just the kind of thing that cries out for a demonstration, isn’t it?” But Mason spun the Tenko-Senshin back into his holster.

  The kid cradling his wrist nudged the other one. They both looked at the man on the street. “Come on.”

  “Yeah.” Acne Kid swallowed, his eyes bright. Goddamn stims, makes people feel invincible. “We’ll be back, company man.”

  Mason shrugged, and turned back to the crowd. “I’m running late now, aren’t I?”

  “I told you to bring Harry.” Carter sounded bored.

  “What, so he could fire a plasma cannon into the crowd, or immolate some street punks with rockets?”

  “You wouldn’t be running late if you’d brought Harry,” she said. “You’ll come around in the end.”

  Mason muttered something under his breath as he pushed through the crowd.

  “What was that, Mason?” said Carter.

  “Nothing.” He looked around. “Where the hell is it?”

  “Over there. See the yellow and red neon sign?”

  “It’s in hanzi, Carter.”

  “Yeah. So, that’s the place.”

  “You sure?”

  “I read Chinese,” she said. “Clear as day. Says it’s the Golden Palace Restaurant.”

  “Of course you do,” said Mason. “You read Chinese, but you can’t dance.”

  “I didn’t—” She sighed. “I didn’t say I couldn’t dance.”

  “Whatever.” Mason pushed through the greasy plastic strip door at the base of the stairs, then headed up. The carpet was old, stained, worn thin in places. A while ago it might have been red. The inlay might have been gold. It was just brown now; something stuck to the bottom of his foot. He paused. “You sure this is the place?”

  “I’m sure. You said neutral.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to get salmonella.”

  “You can’t get salmonella,” said Carter. “Besides, this place gets great reviews. Don’t forget. You’re running late.”

  Mason kept moving up the stairs. At the top was a long corridor, running the length of the building. His feet carried him down the dim hall, optics adjusting for the low light. A wooden door with a gold handle was waiting at the end. He tipped his head sideways, listening, a hand on the handle. The noise of the street had sunk to a murmur. The door was clean of the grime on the floor. He pushed it open.

  The room he walked into was carpeted with a rich red pile, gold threads running through it. A large tiger’s head was picked out in gold on the floor just inside the door. He let his feet take him over it, looking at the partitions made of slatted wood — or something like it — separating booths from each other, wide tables set out with white china and black chopsticks. White double doors with round glass windows set at eye height led to a kitchen, which was set at the back near where he’d entered.

  Mason let his optics pick out the details, mapping the room, noting the rough edges. Around the walls of the restaurant weapons hung in racks, the HUD spitting up names and dropping their locations into the map it was building up.

  The restaurant was empty, except for a table near the middle. Two men sat at the table. The HUD marked them up for him, uplink IDs showing on the map in the corner of his vision. City records were downloaded, the floor plan in the archives overlaid against Mason’s generated map. Matched pretty close, give or a take. As an afterthought, the HUD dropped in uplink IDs in the kitchen area out the back, some migrant workers doing whatever people did in kitchens. It’s not something Mason cared enough about to find out.

  “Eighteen Arms,” he said.

  “What?” said Carter.

  “All these swords and shit. It’s the Eighteen Arms of Wushu.” He coughed a little too loudly into his hand so the two men would know he was there. As if they didn’t already. “It’s quite different on the inside. They’ve got some kind of medieval theme here.”

  “You don’t say,” said Carter. “That’s not mentioned in the reviews.”

  “Let’s do this.” Mason walked towards the two men. One of them he knew. Even if he’d forgotten the face he’d remember the immaculate white cuffs. The man’s cufflinks were made to look like small gears. He let a smile split his face. “Hey. Metatech, right?”

  The other man stood up, returning the smile and offering a hand. “That’s right, Apsel. No hard feelings?”

  Mason shook Metatech’s hand, then turned to the other man. He picked out sunglasses over an expensive suit. Sunglasses? Inside? “Reed?”

  “Right in one.” They shook, then all three of them sat down. Mason couldn’t help but notice that his back was to the door, Metatech and Reed with their backs to the window and the street outside.

  Reed leaned forward. “What’s this about?”

  Mason held up a hand. “Can I ask a question first?”

  The Reed man sat back, spreading his hands out. “It’s your dime.”

  “Sunglasses? Inside?”

  Reed’s face quirked, almost a smile. “It’s a thing I’m testing. For the company.”

  Mason nodded. “Sure. Look, is there a waiter here? I want a drink.”

  On cue, a slim Asian man in white entered through the kitchen doors, walking to their table. Mason caught a smattering of hanzi in softly glowing green under the cuff of his white jacket. His optics picked out the empty holes in his ears, like the restaurant didn’t want their staff to show metal to the customers. The man’s accent was thick. “Food? Drink?”

  Metatech waved a hand. “Sure. Píjiǔ?”

  The waiter looked at him. Reed snorted. “It’s just pí.”

  “You shouldn’t rely on the link for easy translation, especially if you’re using the wrong language,” said Mason. “Bīru o onegai shi. Asahi, if you’ve got it.”

  “Tsingtao?” said the waiter. As Mason’s nod he turned to the other two. “Anything else?”

  “Whatever he’s having,” said Metatech. Reed nodded. After the waiter had walked away, Metatech turned back to Mason. “Bīru?”

  “Japanese. Not Chinese.” Mason drummed his fingers on the table, then said, “Look, this meeting—”

  “We’re just having a couple beers,” said Metatech. “It’s not a meeting. There’s no way the syndicates would sanction a meeting.”

  Reed nodded. “Just a couple of beers,” he said. “On our own initiative.”

  The waiter came back out with a tray, three green bottles frosty at the front, some glasses clattering against them. He started to put the beers in front of them. Mason waved the glass away, taking a pull right from the bottle. “Garasu de kuru.” Comes in a glass.

  “You speak Japanese?” said Carter. “What the hell use is that around here?”

  “Watashi wa nihongo wo sukoshi dake hanashimasu,” said Mason to her. “Look, I need to focus here.” But the link was already gone.

  “Problem, friend?” said Reed. He poured his beer into the glass in front of him.

  “No, no problem,” said Mason. “Just my handler checking in.”

  “I hear that,” said Metatech. He and Mason clinked bottles.

  “You guys know each other
?” said Reed.

  “Sort of,” said Mason. “Professionally.”

  “Misunderstanding,” said Metatech.

  “A misunderstanding.” Mason nodded. “Metatech here was trying to sell Apsel tech. Or buy it, I haven’t worked it out yet.”

  “Buy it,” said Metatech. “Didn’t know it was Apsel.” The other man frowned, straightening his cuffs. “Probably wouldn’t have changed our course much if we had known, though. We might have brought a few more operatives.” He smiled at Mason over his beer.

  Reed nodded. “Misunderstandings. Wrong board memo at the wrong time, and we cop the shit, right? Happens all the time.” It was hard to read his face behind those glasses. Mason liked to see a man’s eyes when he was brokering a deal. “I had two of those last week.”

  “Ah,” said Mason, taking another pull from his beer. “So, here’s the problem.”

  “Problem?” said Metatech. “Something the Federate needs our help with?”

  “Not really,” said Mason. He put his beer down, turning the bottle so the label faced him. He started scratching it off with a fingernail. “More a… friendly piece of advice.”

  Reed laughed. “You’re trying to stop a sale.”

  Metatech started to laugh too, but stopped when he saw the look on Mason’s face. “Holy shit. It’s something big.”

  A piece of the Tsingtao label came off, a bright red letter on a white background. Mason looked at it for a moment. “I had a meeting with the boss this morning.”

  “Right,” said Reed. “So what?”

  Metatech said quietly for a moment, then said, “The boss?”

  “Yeah,” said Mason. “The boss. Gairovald.”

  Reed spat out the swallow of beer he’d been taking, dabbing at his chin with a napkin. “I didn’t even know he was in the country.”

  “He’s not. Officially, I mean.” Mason shrugged. “Just passing through.”

  “And he met with you?” Reed took another swig from his glass. “What division you work in?”

  “Specialist Services,” said Mason. “Acquisitions. Mostly.”