Fucking story? “What do you mean, story?”
“We both didn’t figure our day would go this way. You really shouldn’t eat the store brand bagels. Too much salt. Sanders? Get the hell out. Get out now. Go live your life. And if you see Mason Floyd, stay out of his way. He’s pissed.”
“How do you know—” Sanders coughed.
“How do I know what you had for breakfast?”
“No,” said Sanders. “How did you pilot the chassis? You’re not plugged in.”
“Because I’m Carter,” said Carter.
⚔ ⚛ ⚔
Zane Aster had a team.
Had. That bitch. Just rags now, bits and pieces, a rabble rather than a force.
They were getting lower in the Federate tower. She’d been chipping away, picking off his men one by one. No one said it’d have been easy, but —
McKlersky had died first. He’d ignored Aster’s warning to not use the elevators. Dumb sonofabitch had asked what the worst thing that could happen was. That was right before the elevator doors snapped shut, shearing off one of his arms and dropping the car sixty floors down. The arm had sat on the ground, twitching as sparks and blood and other shit had come out of the stump.
The rest of the team had shown more enthusiasm for Aster’s warnings after that, but it hadn’t helped. Simmons had died when an automated cleaner, a little thing the size of a dinner plate, had popped out of a serving hatch. It had been cleaning the carpet, sucking at the big lush pile, and Simmons had made some joke about how all the robots got the easy jobs.
The cleaner had spun around three times, then sped down the carpet towards Simmons. It had exploded, the power cell inside shorting, a bolt of arctic blue shearing through Simmons and leaving his smoking torso to cough twice before the light had faded from his eyes.
“Robots don’t get easy jobs,” she’d said to them then.
It’d gone on like that, and each man or woman down made Aster angrier. There was going to be a reckoning. He was going to cut out her heart.
⚔ ⚛ ⚔
“What do you mean by busy?” said Mason. The link felt quieter than usual, lacking the many paths he could usually feel. He kicked the door open, jumping out onto the pavement.
“I mean, they’re busy,” said Carter. “You know. Girl stuff.”
Sadie stamped through the puddles to stand at his side. “What’s the music today?”
“You’re going to play a track I know. It’s called ‘Stay Here.’” Mason frowned. “Seriously.”
She was looking up into his face, and something played across her lips, the ghost of a smile. “You think that’s going to work?”
“It’s going to work.”
“I don’t even know that music.” Sadie kicked at a puddle, and Mason dodged sideways as the water danced towards him. “I don’t play solo gigs.”
“Sadie, it’s…” Mason stopped. “We’ve taken too much from you.”
“Me? You only kidnapped me, took me to a dead city, a dead city with no bars. And I mean, none. I could have died. And then there were the…” She waved her hands in the air. “Mutants?”
“Not you,” he said. “All of you.” Mason lifted his eyes to the syndicate’s building behind him, blinking in the rain. “We take, and take a little more.”
“Yeah,” said Sadie. She looked sad for a second. “Yeah, you do.”
“So believe me,” he said, turning back to her, “when I tell you that I don’t think we can take anything else. I got this.” Mason turned from her, puling the side of the APC open. He grabbed a rifle, all black Metatech edges, and looked down the scope. The hard link came on as his hand touched the stock, the scope lining up with his eyes, a living, breathing thing. Almost without thinking, he snared the case holding the dress, the old leather sucking up water from the rain.
“You want me to stand out here in the rain, Floyd?” She walked closer to him. “Have you seen my hair?”
He smiled at her. “Yeah, Sadie. I’ve seen it.”
“It’s like I’ve got it ruined for nothing.”
“Keep the engine running,” said Mason. “It’s weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“There’s no one here. We should have about fifty Apsel guys all over us.”
“Maybe they’re busy,” said Carter over the link.
“Maybe they’re busy,” said Sadie. She looked up at the tower. “Fifty guys?”
“More or less.”
“You best get moving then,” she said, climbing in the side of the APC, and shutting the door in his face.
Mason sighed, then lifted the rifle. “I will never, as long as I live, understand that woman.”
“Probably not,” said Carter.
Mason started a jog towards the entrance to the tower, optics scanning ahead, flicking between thermal and visual. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. “Carter?”
“Yes, Mason.”
“I need to know. Where is everyone?”
“Trying to kill me,” she said. “See you soon.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Her mouth was a jumble of wrong sensations, lips not moving right. She felt her tongue around the inside of her teeth. It was like licking stones — she couldn’t taste anything except dirt.
“She’s coming around,” said a man’s voice. Nervous.
Laia cracked an eye open. The world was all muted colors without scent, and her nerves jangled and crashed inside her skin. The room was —
Off-white, the color of old marble. The chair that held her up was built on the sweat of thirty men and women, the leather from a creature born and raised in a cage of filth and grime. The metal was torn from a rock far to the East of here, machines of the same metal tearing the ore from the living rock. There were three such chairs; one she lay in, one empty, and the third holding Zacharies. Two men were in the room. The nervous man was clean and clear, standing tall in front of her. The other man was dark, his body made from metal and sin.
The nervous man was hovering over her. His coat was white, whiter than the room, or as near as she could tell. The bile in her throat made her think she must have thrown up.
“You’ll feel a little woozy,” he said. “It’s a… It’s a side effect.”
“Ssside…” said Laia. She didn’t know if it was what the lightning had done as it had crawled across her skin, or the gas that carried it, but she couldn’t talk right. Couldn’t think right.
The dark man spoke. “He’ll be so pleased you’re awake.”
“Wh…” She tried to make her lips work right.
“Who?” The dark man smiled without humor. “My master.”
Oh no. Oh no. “Please,” she said.
“You know,” he said. “You know I can’t. You know what I’ve got to do.”
She tried to nod. “Please,” she said again, but the hope was gone.
He stepped forward, then turned to the nervous man. “Doc? She good to go?”
“She is. He’s not so good.” The nervous man tipped his head towards Zacharies, head lolling to the side. “He’ll be a while. Julian?”
The dark man — Julian — paused. “Yeah?”
“They’re kids, Julian. Can’t we say—”
“Say that we lost them? That they got away? A couple of kids?” Julian’s face twisted. “No.”
“Didn’t think so,” said the nervous man. He looked at his feet, then back at Laia. “I’m sorry, kid.”
She pulled at the thread of her mind, reaching out to the dark man, the threads of life flowing around the metal in his body. She wanted to —
Fluid, not blood, moved inside him moved, a tide of life. It was quicker, faster, more alive than she’d seen. Just like the angel, just like Mason, but something less as well. She tried to focus, grasping at the edges of the flow, and pulling —
She cried out, the pain slamming into her head.
“Yeah,” said Julian. He reached out a hand towards her, tipping her chin up with a finger. He let his finger
drop to her neck, touching something there. A collar, the metal hard around her throat. “He said you might try to start some shit. We got you something nice to wear, to stop that kind of fuckery. He gave us the design and everything.”
“He designed it,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Julian. “Let’s go meet him. He’ll be… He’ll be so pleased.”
⚔ ⚛ ⚔
“You don’t have to do this,” said Laia. The small room rose inside the building, sliding smooth and silent towards the heavens.
The dark man — Julian — threw her a look.
“What I mean is, some of us — we can escape. It’s possible.”
“It’s possible,” said Julian, looking straight ahead. “I just don’t want to.”
Laia opened her mouth then closed it again. “What?”
“Kid? The man has power. Real power. And I’m in the inner circle. One of the team. I’m not at the bottom rung, playing fetch quests for a bunch of geriatrics disconnected from how the world works. I’m going to have equity.”
The city pulled away from them, falling below as the small room continued to rise. There were hundreds, thousands of people at the base of the tower, his thralls, his slaves. The clouds were approaching from on high, and she could see lightning walk and dance within it. She shivered. I know what comes with the lightning. The demon would be distracted with so many minds to tease. It roiled and curled in the clouds. She looked at Julian. “Sometimes he makes people feel that way.”
“What?” Julian turned to face her.
“He can make you think and feel things that are different. Sometimes he does.” Laia shrugged, then said in a smaller voice, “Sometimes he doesn’t.”
“You’re saying he’s making me want to…” Julian’s hand clawed at the air. “He’s making me—”
“Maybe,” she said. She watched the city, buildings tiny and small before the clouds snatched them from view.
Julian cleared his throat. “No one controls my thoughts.”
“Has anyone ever done something you’d think was wrong?” Laia shifted from one foot to the other. “Something different from usual. Something odd.”
“What do you mean, odd?”
“Kiss a stranger. Kill a lover.” Laia frowned. “You would know, if you’d seen it.”
“I’ve seen him use men like puppets.”
“That’s not the same,” she said. “Usually, it’s just one.”
“Just one what?”
“He picks one,” she said. “He picks a favorite. He makes you… He makes them want it.” She wiped her palms against her shirt as if they were dirty.
“How do you know?” Julian grabbed her arm, pulling her around. She stumbled, and found herself face to face with him. “How can you be sure?”
“Because,” she said, “I was his favorite.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Something was dripping at the end of the corridor, the lights flickering between dark and fucking annoying. Mike’s overlay slipped into infrared, cool grey washing over everything.
Footprints stamped from water were drawing a path, the painted concrete showing a pair of feet moving between a room and an elevator. The elevator was long gone, but the room was right there.
The footprints were what had caught his eye. He’d gone straight to the bottom of the tower and started working up — most serial killers kept their prisoners in the basement before they turned them into pale leather shoes or made a necklace from their teeth.
Whatever. Basement was a good start. But shit, Reed needed to up their maintenance program. Lights out, water leaking, doors unlocked, the whole place was broken.
Good, in a way, because that’s what let him see the footprints. One big set, looked like a decent pair of business soles, tracking beside a smaller set. Sometimes stepping, sometimes not. Here and there, the smaller set showed where a foot was dragged, or pulled.
Mike looked at the door at the end of the corridor. Odds were someone was drunk or sedated or both and being dragged. This being those snuff king Reed assholes, he was going with sedated. Time to find out what was behind the door.
He padded up to it, his overlay tugging for his attention. He let it slip to thermal, a quick scan showing him two people in the room. A person standing, light upgrades, the cool lick of link hardware nestled in the back of their skull. Another person, sitting in a chair, but the posture was wrong. They were slumped, out cold.
The person standing was moving towards the one sitting, something held up, a tube of some kind. The tube was held towards the slumped body, towards his arm. Mike felt the lattice yank at him, his weapon coming up as he kicked the door open, and saw —
The kid, out cold in a chair, some kind of collar around his neck. A man in a white coat holding a syringe, the needle already in the kid’s arm. Machines, med hardware scattered in no real order.
The weapon in his hand barked three times as the lattice yanked his arm. The man standing was caught, a round tearing through the arm holding the syringe, the second through his chest, the last shearing the top of his head off. The body tumbled to the ground, the syringe clattering beside him.
“Wuzzz,” said Zacharies, a bleary eye opening.
“I don’t like needles,” said Mike. “It’s ok kid. Cavalry’s here.”
“Lie,” said Zacharies.
“I’m not lying,” said Mike, stepping over to turn the fallen body over. The Reed logo on the jacket was stamped above a barcode. Under the barcode, PERSONAL ENHANCEMENT RESEARCH. “I really don’t like needles. Do you have any idea what this guy was going to do? Strip you down. Find out what’s in your head.”
“Not a lie,” said Zacharies. “Lie. Ah.”
Laia. Mike looked at the fallen body again. Maybe I should have kept him alive. “Oh.”
“Oh,” said Zacharies. “Sssright. Find Laia.”
“She here with you?”
“Don’t know.” Zacharies was trying to pull himself upright, and a hand felt up to the collar at his neck. He tugged at it, his movements weak.
“Here,” said Mike. He grabbed either side of the collar, trying to find the clasp, but it felt like a perfect ring of metal. “Uh. How’d they get it on?”
“Dunno.”
“Ok,” said Mike. He looked around the room, at the machines, the tools. “You know what? We could really use my handler about now.”
Zacharies looked up at him, then shrugged, the movement still limp and listless.
“Well, it’s a thing,” said Mike. “If I put a call in, we’ll have about a billion Reed guys in here. We’re kind of flying under the radar right now.”
Zacharies looked at him with bleary eyes. “It’s stopping my gift,” he said. “Together. If I have my gift, together we can find Laia.”
“Right now, you and your gift couldn’t pull the tab off a can of Coke.”
“Please, Mike.” The kid frowned at him. “He’s here.”
“Who?”
“Our… The master.”
“The motherfucker who came through with you?” Mike looked at the door. “Controls minds?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Collar.” Zacharies coughed and spat something on the ground, then shifted his feet from the spread of blood on the floor. “It’s how they control us. Controlled us, before.”
“Cock. Sucker.” Mike looked at his sidearm, the overlay flicking up an ammo count. He touched the edge of the link, then clicked it on. “Sam.”
“Holy shit,” she said, the link’s bright edges flickering. “You’re actually not dead. We had a pool running.”
“What are my odds?”
“They’re not great,” she said. “I’m being honest, Mike. I wasn’t betting on you.”
“Sam?”
“Yeah.”
“I got a situation.”
“You’ve got more than a situation. Are you… Holy shit. You’re actually inside Reed Interactive.”
“Yeah
.”
“This is going to change the odds on the pool.”
“Up or down?”
She went quiet for a second, then, “Ok. I’m pretty sure you’re screwed. I can’t get air support next to the tower, it’ll be shot down. I can’t get ground support next to the tower either.”
“Why not?”
“‘Bout a thousand assholes out front.”
“People?”
“More or less,” she said. “Hard to say from orbit.”
“I don’t need ground support,” said Mike.
“Why are you calling then?”
“I need you to… Well, it’s complicated. I’m here with the kid—”
“The kid? He’s with you?”
“Yeah. He’s got a—”
“The kid who can move shit with his mind?”
“Same kid. Look, Sam, he’s got a—”
“The boss is going to be pissed.”
Mike sighed. He looked over at Zacharies. The kid had shut his eyes again. I know what that feels like. “Sam?”
“Hey.”
“He’s got some kind of ring, collar, I don’t know, Reed shit on his neck.”
“Right.”
“I need you to get it off.”
She laughed. “Wait, you’re serious.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I see?”
Mike okayed her request for optics access, and he looked at the collar on Zacharies’ neck.
“Ok,” said Sam. “I got good news, and I got bad news.”
“Bad news. Always bad news first.”
“Actually, two bits of bad news.”
“Is there any good news?” Mike tapped his foot. “There’d better be good news.”
“Michael. Would I lie to you?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s good news,” she said. “Bad news one. I have no idea what that collar is.”
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