Upgrade

by Richard Parry

  “I said,” said the huge man, “that your girlfriend’s going to die if you don’t—”

  Harry moved the chassis over to the bar in three strides, overtime making it seem as if the men and women in the bar were statues, standing still and immobile. The digger’s arm lifting a table out of the way, tossing it across the room. He reached the chassis’ metal hand over the bar, grabbing the huge man and lifting him up in front of his optics.

  “Get—” said man.

  Harry closed the chassis’ hand, and red sprayed out from around the edges of his fist. The man’s legs fell to the ground with a wet slop. He spun the chassis around to face the room. “Does anyone else want to threaten my friend?” The PA was low, the hum of the chassis softening the edges of his words. He opened the chassis’ fist, red dripping, and the chain cannon attached to the arm clacked and whirred. “Anyone else think they can shoot her before I get to you?”

  There was a pause, a long stretch couched inside the overtime, then the people in the bar scrambled for the open door. In moments, just one person stood in the room in front of Harry.

  “Say,” said Candy. “Is his name really Ernest?”

  “It really is,” said Harry.

  “And he’s really married?”

  “He’s really married,” said Harry.

  “Huh,” she said. “He’s not a drug dealer, is he?”

  “Lawyer,” said Harry. “For what it’s worth, it’s close.”

  “Fine,” said Candy. She turned to go, then stopped. “What was your… What did you call it?”

  “Proposition,” said Harry.

  “What was it?”

  “Cash money,” said Harry. “I busted open an old ATM two blocks down. There’s thousands of dollars in it.”

  “Shit,” she said. She looked at the door. “Still there?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “Thanks,” said Candy as she stepped out into the night.

  “I think I pissed myself,” said Lace. “We need to talk about sharing the tactical details of your plans.”

  “I didn’t think you’d go for it,” said Harry.

  “You’re damn right,” said Lace. “Jesus. I could have died!”

  “No,” said Harry. “No, you couldn’t have.” He held up the metal hand. “This isn’t some Fisher-Price shit, Lace.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s just—”

  “Never,” said Harry. “Not while I live.”

  “Ok,” she said. “Ok.”

  Harry clanked across the room, tossing tables aside. The overlay spread a wireframe, showing where the tunnel would be under the ground. It was big and wide, easy for moving vehicles under the city. “Here?”

  “Close enough,” she said. “Depends.”

  “Depends? On what?”

  “Bribes. How accurate the plans are. Whether someone dug the tunnel or if this is some kind of Reed feint.” She sniffed. “I mean, we’ve got tunnels. All kinds of shit. Makes sense Reed does too, but—”

  “Yeah,” said Harry. “Cover up.” The reactor’s light burned bright for a moment before the digger’s bucket cut into the ground. He started tearing at the ground as he kicked the overtime in again, and Lace laughed.

  “What?” Harry didn’t slow.

  “I’m just thinking,” she said, “that you must look for all the world like a dog digging for a bone.”

  “Yeah,” said Harry. “Or a guy trying to get into the Reed tower in time to pay back a friend for a favor before everyone dies, without killing thousands of civilians.”

  “Jesus,” said Lace. “What a killjoy.”

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  The tunnel was dark, dry. Cold. Harry couldn’t really feel it, but his optics caught the occasional misting of breath from Lace over his shoulder. The floodlights on the front of the chassis pushed out in front of them, the light white and clear.

  There was nothing here. No activity. No people, no machines. The bulbs, connected by loops of wire along the sides of the tunnel, were dark. “If this place belongs to Reed, they haven’t used it in a long time.”

  “Yeah,” said Lace. Harry heard the tapping of keys, then, “It’s still going in the right direction.”

  Ahead, his optics dropped a target over an auto turret, the barrels pointed at the floor, still and lifeless. He clanked past it, the floodlights leaving it behind in the dark.

  “Ok,” said Lace. “Let’s say it’s Reed’s tunnel. I mean, that was a gun, right?”

  “Auto turret. Sure.”

  “City planning don’t put auto turrets in.”

  “I’m with you,” said Harry. “It’s Reed’s tunnel.”

  “Right,” said Lace. “Thing is…”

  The lights picked out the edges of something, the nose of a jeep coming into view around a corner. The doors were open. He leaned down, checking out the inside. Empty.

  “The thing is,” said Harry, “that this jeep didn’t drive itself here.”

  “No,” said Lace. “The thing is… Where are all the people? The jeep didn’t drive itself, sure, so where’s the driver?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This tunnel, it’s big and wide, right?” Lace rapped on the side of the chassis. “Right?”

  “Right,” he said. “Don’t do that.”

  “What?” she said, and knocked on the chassis again. “This?”

  “That.”

  “Why not?”

  “I…” He paused.

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing,” she said. “It’s something.”

  “Ok,” he said. “It’s something.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What is it?”

  “Christ,” said Harry. “I should leave your crippled ass here.”

  “Just tell me,” she said, something teasing in her voice.

  “Ok,” he said. “I… I can kinda hear it.”

  “Right,” she said. “That’s why I did it.”

  “No,” said Harry. “In… In here. I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re hitting just the right spot to carry. What they left of me still has ears. I shouldn’t be able to hear it, but I can.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, and when she did the laughter had gone from her voice. “Oh.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing,” she said. “It’s a little more than something.”

  “Anyway,” he said. “Reed’s tunnel. I figure, we’re probably no more than a minute away from the main hangar.”

  “Sure,” she said. “There should be some guys there, right?”

  “Right,” said Harry, the chassis walking on through the dark. After a minute, more or less, the floodlights picked out something else in the dark ahead, a huge set of steel doors.

  Or a doorway. The doors were open.

  “I have to ask you something,” said Lace. “It’s kind of serious.”

  “All right,” said Harry, twisting the chassis around to look at the open doorway. No damage. No gunfire. Just… open.

  “Let’s say you’re a major syndicate.”

  “Major?”

  “Leader in the porn industry.”

  “With you so far.” Harry reached a metal hand out to the edge of the door, grabbing a lip of metal and pulling. The door slid out a few inches. Not stuck. Heavy, but not stuck.

  “So you’re a major syndicate, and you’ve got this big tunnel that leads into your secret lair.”

  “Lair?”

  “You say headquarters, I say lair. Same same.” Lace sniffed.

  “Ok.”

  “You’ve got a couple of options. Option one, you have a bunch of security dudes, big guns, lots of security.”

  “I’m still with you,” said Harry. “Sounds legit.” He turned to walk into the room.

  “Hold up,” she said. “Option, let’s call it an option, option two is you have a big tunnel leading right to th
e heart of your lair. Open door, no guards.”

  “I see where you’re going with this,” said Harry. “This looks like option two.”

  “It’s option two,” said Lace. “What I want to know is, why do you leave your balls hanging out like this?”

  “I don’t think we’re going to work it out standing around here.”

  She sighed. “I think you’re right.”

  Harry pushed forward into the dark. Ahead of them, the overlay picked out a small light, a tiny glimmer in the gloom off to the left. “See that?”

  “I don’t see shit,” said Lace, “except a big-ass empty hangar.”

  “Elevator,” he said. “There’s an elevator up there.”

  “Really?” She shifted on his back, then sighed again. “If I had a dick in my face, I couldn’t see it.”

  He clicked off the lights, the hangar dropping to night. “See it now?”

  “I’m scared of the dark.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I see it,” she said after a moment. Then, “Good eyes.”

  “Best money can buy,” he said. He put the flood lights back on, the lamps humming against the dark. Harry pushed the chassis on, servos whining, until they got to the elevator.

  It was large, a caged unit with bright yellow warning barriers.

  “You’ve got to wonder,” said Lace, “what that’s for.”

  “It’s for lifting shit,” he said.

  “I get that,” she said. “Why’s it only go down?”

  Harry paused, then looked closer. “Must be another one here for going up.”

  “Do it,” she said. “You know you want to.”

  “Lace, we’re here to save a couple kids and get out.”

  “I know,” she said, “but what if they’re down, not up?”

  “I… Hell.”

  “Do it. Do eeeeet. Do it. Doit doit doit doit—”

  “Right. I’m doing it,” he said. He lifted the yellow barrier with a metal hand, clambering into the cage. It creaked and groaned around him as he slide the barrier closed again, then clicked the button to take them down.

  As the car travelled down inside the shaft, Harry shifted from one foot to another. They descended, meter by meter, deep into the rock under the city.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “They’re not down here,” he said, but he stopped shuffling.

  “Of course they are,” she said. “The only reason you have an elevator that only goes down in your secret lair — kilometers — is if you’ve got a dungeon down there.”

  “Or,” said Harry as the elevator clanked to a stop, “a reactor.”

  “There is that,” she said. The Apsel logo stared at them from the darkness, the hum of the fusion core almost a feeling. “Say.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s torch it.”

  “We can’t torch it,” he said. “For a couple of reasons.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Reason the first? I don’t have a really big fire. Reason the second? It’s a reactor, Lace. I don’t want to set fire to it, or blow it up.”

  “Pussy.”

  Harry shuffled the chassis’ feet. “Say.”

  “What?”

  “There was a big APC upstairs, wasn’t there?”

  “Think so.”

  “We could blow that up.” Harry thought for a moment. “We could blow that up down here.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” she said. “Let’s do that.”

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  The hardest part about running for your life was when you really didn’t care, but you still went through the motions. Harry stood, still as a stone, as the elevator rose back up the shaft. “You hacked the APC?” The plan was simple — they’d put the APC in place, jacked its smaller reactor, and got out of Dodge before they blew the core.

  “I hacked the APC, Harry.” Lace was still typing something on her deck.

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “We’ve hacked the APC, but I want to be in charge of… Oh. Oh shit.”

  “What?”

  “Hold on,” she said.

  “To what? What do I hold on to?” His optics scanned the side of the elevator shaft as the car rose.

  “I… It’s got some kind of—” Whatever else Lace was going to say was lost as the explosion rocked the shaft beneath them, the fireball starting to rise from the shaft below. Harry could see the light of the firestorm as it started to rise up the shaft, then —

  “GO!” Lace was screaming at him, and he tore the door from the elevator car, tossed it aside like tissue paper. He pushed the overtime hard, the reactor on his back peaking into the red as the metal of his feet dug into the hard concrete floor, cracking it. It was a sprinter’s crouch, the big chassis roaring as it leapt forward.

  Harry reached up his hand, snagging Lace from behind him. Her face was frozen in a scream through overtime, and he could see how her body was pulled about like a rag doll. He pushed her into the digger’s bucket, then cupped it to the front of the chassis. There wasn’t time to be gentle. There wasn’t time —

  The fireball blasted up and around them, heaven’s fury unleashed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  The vaulted door reached up into the black, tall metal stretching fingers towards the roof. Mason stopped, reached a gloved hand to touch the surface. His gloves said it was cool, but a jagged hole with soft edges showed where a laser had cut through the mechanism to open it. “I’m here,” he said. “Carter, I’m here.”

  “Go away,” she said. “Aster’s already inside. He’s got about a hundred guys.”

  “I can take Aster,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “But he can take you too. It’s the math, you know? I can’t stop running the numbers.”

  Mason put the case down, the tips of the gloves touching against the clasp. “Are you… Are you with me? Can you see this?”

  “I’ve never left you,” she said.

  He clicked the clasp open, then put a hand on the lid. “Have you heard about overhyping something?”

  “Just open it,” she said.

  He flipped the lid open, the old dress nestled inside. He reached a hand in, holding it up. He let the light of the Tenko-Senshin play over it. “I’m sorry it’s… It’s a ball gown. I thought you might want to go dancing.”

  The link was quiet, the hiss and pop of static the only noise.

  “Carter? Are you—”

  “I’m here,” she said. “Don’t see me, Mason. I don’t want you look at me.”

  Mason let the dress fall. “I’m coming in, Carter. I’ve made it in time. I’m going to get you out, then we’re going dancing.”

  “You’re going to die,” she said. Her voice was flat, resigned. “After all I’ve… Look. See.” The overlay chattered, markers showing —

  Two men, standing guard. Their rifles were pointed at the door. Zane Aster, standing by another vaulted door, the long room full of computer servers, racks of them stretching long in the dark quiet of the basement. A large laser cutter working on boring a hole in that farther door, the circle of melted metal almost complete. A woman was operating it. Auto turrets hung dead and lifeless from the ceiling, cores blown. Shattered pieces of metal mixed among the bodies of the fallen. The overlay picked out one form, different, the Reed man’s synthetic body lying with a sword. It was by the door, riddled with holes. A further ten men and women in white Apsel tactical armor were spaced through the room, pale ghosts in cover, hiding, waiting. Ready to kill.

  “Huh,” he said. “Best get started.”

  “Mason,” said Carter. “Mason, I’ve got something for you as well.”

  He looked around the entrance chamber. “What? There’s nothing here.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  He hung his head, then ran his hand through his hair. “Always,” he said.

  “I’m not sure if this is going to work,” she said. “It might kill you.�
��

  “Always,” he said again.

  “Ok,” she said. “Before we start, I just wanted to say. Of all the people in this world, I’m glad to have known you, Mason Floyd. You are my best friend. You made it all worthwhile. You are the best part of me. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” he said. “About wh—”

  The link flared bright, hard, hot, too much, it was burning in his mind, pain like a star, the noise louder than anyth—

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  He opened his eyes. His face was against the cool of the concrete floor. He lifted his head, a line of drool stretching to the floor, and he wiped his mouth on the back of a glove, leaving a glistening trail.

  What… Something was different. He could feel the teeth in his head, his toenails hurt. His skin was alive. He was —

  A clank of metal sounded from the other room. He kicked upright, the movement sure and simple, then reached a hand for the door.

  “Mason—” Carter’s voice was stretched thin as he let the overtime fall around him, but he was already moving, ducking behind a piece of shattered machinery as rounds from the men fired. They were too slow, too sloppy, and the rounds punched at empty air.

  “Excellent!” It was Aster over the local link, his voice clear through the overtime. “I thought… I’d hoped to get you both, a sort of two-for-one deal.”

  Mason could see the Reed man’s synthetic body. It started to move, struggling to rise. His overlay marked the Apsel men and women in the room converging on his position.

  “It’s… It’s hard,” said Carter. “I tried to fight like you, but I never learned to dance. It’s so badly damaged, but…” The body struggled to a kneeling position, the ruined face trying to form words. It held the sword upright in one hand. “Take your sword, kensei,” she said.

  Ok. Ok then. Mason moved out from cover, the little pistol in his hand held low. He shifted from one position to the next, ducking through the racks of servers. Small arms fire shattered machines around him, plastic and metal falling as a dark rain. It felt slow, easy, and he pulled the Tenko-Senshin up. The little gun growled and chattered across the hard link, then screamed its rain of fire across the room. A man’s body was pulled apart, flakes of white armor and burned meat spraying in a wet silhouette across the ground behind him. Mason rolled forward, looked into the eyes of the synthetic body in front of him as he snagged the sword’s grip from the Reed man’s hand, then —