Upgrade

by Richard Parry

  The man inside was screaming, thrashing, slamming his hands at every surface.

  Mason pushed himself up and started to move up the street again. He looked at the Chrysler for a moment, then looked up the street. The sound of the man trapped inside, his screaming, overlaid the recording.

  Mason took another step up the street, away from the Chrysler, then stopped. His shoulders slumped, and he turned back to the Chrysler, the fire blasting out of the windows, flames stretching high into the night. The rain was boiling and steaming in the heat, and Mason held a hand up in front of his eyes against the brightness of the light.

  Whatever it was in the Chrysler that started the fire gave up, an explosion rocking the back of the vehicle, tearing metal away, throwing fragments through the vehicle. The lightning stopped then, but the fire didn’t. Mason threw a last look up the street towards the Federate, then ran to the car, pushing himself into the fire. His wet clothes ignited, burned to ash in a moment, and even in the resolution of the recording it was easy to see as the laminate of his skin began to blister.

  Whatever was left of the man in the car had stopped making noise, and Mason pulled the body out of the wreckage, pieces of metal and plastic sloughing off. The body was still burning, and Mason rolled him across the water on the ground until the fire guttered out.

  The recording flickered green over the body — what was left of a man — on the ground, before labeling the shell UNKNOWN ID. Mason wiped an arm across his forehead, his own skin cracking and fracturing as slices of charred and melted plastic fell to the ground. Something red and angry seeped from underneath, and he held his arm out for a moment before looking down at the remains of the man before him.

  Then he levered himself to his feet and began to shuffle and stumble up the street. Back towards the Federate.

  The recording flicked ahead again, audio only this time. Four minutes had passed, and Lace’s voice was frantic. “Harry. Harry! We’ve lost your signal. Harry!”

  There was the sound of a door opening in the background, and Lace said, “Thank God, he didn’t get you too.”

  A man’s voice spoke. “Who? Who didn’t get me?”

  “Mason,” said Lace. “Harry was… I’ve lost Harry.”

  “Ok,” said the man’s voice. “Don’t worry, Lace. We’ll get him.”

  She sounded angry. “He’s your partner. How did it come… Wait. What are you doing?”

  There was a moment of silence before the bomb went off, the crash of the explosion making the buffers of the recording stutter and cut out.

  SIGNAL ENDS.

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  “Now you know,” said Carter. She’d waited a minute or two after the feed had finished.

  “I—”

  “He didn’t have to, you know.” She sighed. “He might have made it back here in time if he hadn’t stopped for you.”

  “But… Lace got hurt. Because he stayed.”

  “Everyone got hurt, Harry. Everyone.” Carter paused. “Maybe if you were a bit more honest you’d see it.”

  “Honest?” Harry’s voice was small.

  “Maybe if you’d listened to him, Lace wouldn’t be in a chair, and you’d be drinking margaritas on her lawn.”

  “I—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Harry, he let his guard down, let you shoot him, just on the hope he’d find one other — just one — person to help him.” Carter snorted. “You hurt him so much it almost didn’t work out.”

  “Work out?” said Harry. “You call this working out?”

  “Mason wouldn’t tell you, of course. Mason did what he thought he had to. Percentages, profit and loss, that wasn’t going through his mind as he pulled your sorry ass out of a burning car at the side of a road. It was a lonely, cold night, and no one would have blamed him if he’d left you to just die.” Carter’s voice was quiet, hard, cold. “He’d have been a hero, Harry. He’d have come back here, and we’d have ten people who died that night still sucking oxygen. Lace wouldn’t be a cripple who can’t look at herself in a mirror anymore. That shit’s on you. You have to ask yourself, right? You’ve got to be wondering. Was Mason just doing his fucking job?”

  “I can’t…” Harry stopped, looking at the icon for the recording flashing on his overlay. “I can’t go back. I can’t change it.”

  “Here it is, Harry. What are you going to do now? You going to do your job? You’ve got a choice.”

  “What choice?” said Harry, but the link was dead.

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  “I don’t understand,” said Lace. “Why?”

  “You heard the message,” said Harry. “You got as much as I did from it.” He looked up at the inside of the hangar. He hadn’t moved for an hour, the insistent blinking on his overlay letting him know the service cycle was complete. A tech had been by earlier, the man scurrying away at something in Harry’s voice.

  “No,” said Lace. “I heard that. Why did you…”

  “Why did I what?” said Harry.

  “I talked to Julio.”

  “Who’s Julio?”

  “Julio’s the guy I screamed at for ten minutes for wrecking my yard,” said Lace. “I found one of his shitty beer bottles out front.”

  “What do you mean, wrecked your yard?” said Harry. “He did something to your yard? Something… bad?”

  Lace was silent for a minute. “No, as it turns out, he didn’t.”

  “Why’d you scream at him for ten minutes, then?” Harry swiveled around, reaching a hand out to unclamp the pipes from his chassis, the whine of the servos bouncing back from the walls of the bay.

  “Because he left a beer bottle on my lawn.”

  “Seems extreme.”

  “And my lawn was wrecked.”

  “Gotcha,” said Harry. “Wrecked?”

  “Why’d you do it, Harry?” Lace’s voice was soft. “You know how I like my garden.”

  Harry’s feet took him out of the bay, and into the main stream of traffic in the hangar. Federate vehicles and total conversions moved around him, a steady stream of organized chaos. “Yeah, I remember how you like your garden. I tried… I tried to get it as close as I could remember.”

  “What if I liked it the way it was?”

  “And I put in a real ramp. For the chair. Not a board laid over steps.”

  “Thanks. You treat me like I’m a fucking cripple.” Something snagged in Lace’s voice. If Harry didn’t know better, he’d have thought she’d choked back a sob.

  “Lace?”

  “Yeah, Harry.”

  “A little while ago, there was this barbecue I went to.”

  “When you crashed your last car?”

  “That’s cold, and you know it,” said Harry.

  Something came down the link, a sound cut short.

  “What is it?” said Harry.

  “It’s nothing,” said Lace.

  “No, really. I want to know.”

  “It’s just that…” She laughed. “I’m sorry, Harry. We were talking about a barbecue, and then you… you said it was cold. Sorry. Ironic, is all.” She laughed again, then cut it short.

  Harry stopped in the hanger, and a man looked up at him, muttering something. Harry ignored the man, something inside him…

  He laughed. He couldn’t stop himself. The chassis lifted as he laughed, rocking on the hydraulics in his legs. “Jesus, Lace. That’s nasty, even for you.”

  “I know, right?” She was laughing too. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I want to hear about it.”

  “Hear about what?” Harry chuckled again, then swiveled to another man working on an ATV. He switched on the PA. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing,” said the man with a start.

  “It’s just that it’s rude to stare,” said Harry.

  “I got it,” said the man. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” said Harry. “Just don’t stare. It’s like you’ve never seen a man laugh before.”r />
  The man looked down at the ATV, then back at Harry. “You know what?”

  “What?” said Harry.

  “I don’t think I have,” said the man. “At least, not a conversion. You guys don’t laugh much.”

  “Really?” Harry looked at his feet, the metal black and hard against the concrete floor. “No, I guess not.”

  “What?” said the man.

  “We don’t laugh,” said Harry. “Don’t have much to laugh about, maybe.”

  The man nodded, then tipped his head back to the ATV. “You mind?”

  Harry lifted a metal hand. “No, you go. Do your thing.” He swiveled away.

  “Don’t scare the natives,” said Lace. “They’ll report it, and you’ll get sent to psych.”

  “I don’t think psych can help me, Lace.” Harry turned his head to watch the man on the ATV for a moment more, then started walking towards the hangar exit again.

  “I…” She sighed. “I still want to know.”

  “Know?”

  “The barbecue — what else are we talking about? Chrissakes, it’s like your brain was cooked as well as your feet.”

  “Sure,” said Harry. “There was this barbecue. Sunny day. Couple of us, sitting around. I had a margarita, tequila poured from the freezer. The side of the glass was sweating, you know? And we were sitting in this garden. I don’t know, it must have been thirty in the shade. There was this bee that flew around, an actual bee. Can you believe that?”

  “I can believe it,” said Lace, her voice a whisper.

  “I watched that damn bug for ten minutes, fifteen minutes as it flew around, doing whatever it is bees do with flowers. Lace, there were flowers in the garden. Someone had managed to get flowers to grow in this shitty piece of dirt at the edge of the city, despite all the acid rain and pollution and motherfuckers tipping their garbage out at the side of the street.”

  “I remember,” she said.

  Harry went on like she hadn’t spoken. “So there I was, having this really great day. Friends around, real friends. Good food. Felt like I was in touch with life.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “It was four days before I lost my body.”

  “I remember,” she said again.

  “Four days before my friend lost the use of her legs,” he said.

  “Stop,” she said.

  “Four days before I lost my friend,” said Harry. “Four stupid days between that one perfect, amazing day, and the rest of my life. Our life.”

  “Please,” she said. “Stop.”

  “I figured, the garden died, because… Well. You know what happened.”

  “I know what happened,” she said.

  “And I figured, you couldn’t garden anymore,” said Harry.

  “Because of the chair,” said Lace.

  “Right,” said Harry. “Because of me.”

  “No,” she said.

  “So, I wanted to dig the garden up for you. I wanted to remember what it used to be like. I wanted to show you that.”

  The link was silent as Harry left the hangar, walking out into the night beyond. He clicked on the chassis’ running lights, fingers of white pushing the dark away.

  “It’s not true,” said Lace, her voice shaking. “It’s not true.”

  “It’s true,” said Harry. “I’m sorry, Lace.”

  “It’s not all true,” said Lace.

  “Really?” said Harry. “I figured I remembered it just about right. I had to, to put the garden back.”

  “You got one thing wrong,” she said. “You didn’t lose your friend.”

  Harry pulled to a stop with a clank, the hum of the chassis loud around him. Then he started walking again. If he still could, he would have smiled.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  He saw the first of them sprawled out in a doorway, the flashing neon sign overhead featuring a burned out logogram. Zacharies tapped Mike’s sleeve and pointed. “That one.”

  Mike nodded, a small tight movement, holding up a hand to halt the pair — Miles and Obie — of Metatech enforcers with them. “I see him. You’re sure?”

  Zacharies reached out again, feeling — the demon roiled within the man, feeding on his hopes, coaxing life from his fears long left behind as a child — with his mind. “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “He could just be high.”

  “Trust me,” said Zacharies. “I don’t know what ‘high’ means, but he’s anything but… happy. He’s not happy.”

  “He looks happy to me.” Mike bent down over the man, turning him over. The man had drool from the corner of his lips leaving a green track down his jaw. “Disgusting, but happy.”

  Zacharies felt the flow of the people on the street around him, people going about their ordinary lives in this places of gods and machines. Laia’s Heaven is… broken. “There. Look.” He pointed at a small white tube, almost lost amongst the clutter and trash along the street.

  Mike looked at it. “Standard stim packaging. It’s a drug.”

  “A drug.” Zacharies thought about that. “Like lamesh weed?”

  “What?” Mike stood up. “What the hell is lamesh weed?”

  “The Seekers use it.” Zacharies swallowed. “It grows along the marshes. It gives clarity to sight.”

  “You’re a strange kid, that’s for sure,” said Mike. “Whatever, ok. It’s like a weed.”

  “Then this isn’t a drug,” said Zacharies. “He has a demon inside him.” He held up a hand as Mike started to speak. “You must have faith, Mike.”

  “I keep forgetting,” said Mike. He picked up the white tube. “No brand.”

  “What?”

  “It’s got no brand. No syndicate made it.”

  “The master made it,” said Zacharies. “With the demon.”

  Mike lowered his sunglasses on his nose, looking over them at Zacharies. “Right. Let’s say he did, I get that. Faith and all. The thing is, I’m pretty sure your backward little world couldn’t make plastics. So how’d he get the demon inside a bottle?”

  The man at their feet shifted and groaned in his sleep. Another man walking along the sidewalk pushed into Zacharies, tossing something over his shoulder as he passed. One of the enforcers looked after the man, and said something that sounded like, “Asshole.”

  “There will be more,” said Zacharies. “Many more. It’s how he… It’s how they control the world.”

  “More dudes? Like this?” Mike nudged the man on the ground with his foot. “If all criminals were this passive the world would be sweet.”

  “He’ll wake up,” said Zacharies. “Things will be different when he wakes up.”

  One of the enforcers — Miles, Zacharies was sure it was Miles, but it was hard to tell with just the lower part of the man’s jaw visible under his black visor — turned his head towards them. The black armor of his chest plate was broken by the Metatech sabers. He pointed. “Sir? Across the street.”

  Zacharies looked where Miles was pointing. “What did you see?”

  “That man,” said Miles.

  Obie turned to the street, nodding. “I see him. Link’s down.”

  “What?”

  “Quiet,” said Mike. “See that clown over there? In the doorway?”

  Zacharies looked closer, saw a man in a doorway. He was swaying on his feet, gentle and smooth like a tree in a light wind. Zacharies couldn’t be sure, but the man’s eyes looked white, as if they’d rolled back into his head. He swallowed, then said, “Mike?”

  “Yeah, kid.”

  “That man?”

  “Yeah, kid.”

  “He’s woken up,” said Zacharies. “Any second now—”

  “Got another,” said Obie. “Across the street. In the fried chicken place.”

  “It’s not chicken,” said Miles. “I’ve eaten there a couple times—”

  “I see him,” said Mike. He turned to Zacharies. “Zach?”

  “Yes.” Zacharies was watching the two men, feeling something cold forming in
his stomach. At least there’s only two.

  “The problem we got here is that those two guys have a link, but they’ve turned it off. They’re not affiliated.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Usually,” said Mike, pulling a large sidearm from under his jacket and pulling the slider back with a click and a whine, “it means they’re criminals about to—”

  “Movement,” said Obie. “Fifth floor. Fire escape. One o’clock.”

  “I see him,” said Miles. “What’s up with their eyes?”

  Zacharies watched as Obie and Miles went shoulder to shoulder, unslinging assault rifles. They held them with exact precision, the barrels pointed out into the street. Somewhere a woman screamed, the crowd noticing, a second before —

  Oh no.

  The man from the fire escape howled, grabbed the railing with a hand, and vaulted over the side. He fell like a rock. Zacharies heard the impact, one of the man’s knees giving way as he stumbled forward into the street.

  “Mike,” said Zacharies. “Mike, we must run.”

  “What?” Mike turned away from the street, then his eyes widened. The sidearm came up beside Zacharies, the weapon roaring, something white and hot blasting past the side of Zacharies’ head.

  Zacharies turned to see the remains of the man who’d been sleeping in the doorway behind them stagger, his head and shoulders carved away in a perfect half circle down to his sternum. The body slumped backwards. He turned back to Mike. “Thank you—”

  Mike had already turned away, back to the street. Something passed between him and the two Metatech enforcers, and Miles and Obie sighted along their rifles and fired. There was a soft sound from the rifles as light lased out, red and angry, Obie firing at the man in the fried chicken place, Miles taking out the man in the doorway opposite. Zacharies couldn’t see how they’d done it, to shoot so cleanly through the street full of people and hit nothing but their targets.