Upgrade

by Richard Parry

  They’ll all want it. They’ll want to pull open your head and see how I did it. Don’t tell them what I did. Keep it to yourself.

  It’s a gift. When they see it, they’ll want to take it.

  I don’t have long now. I’ve just seen that EMP land in here.

  Haraway. Forgive her. I have. She only wanted to find her sister. Her sister’s dead, of course. She could have just asked. That woman… Man, what a cunt.

  I’m sorry. I don’t feel myself right now.

  She knows where the reactor… the gate in your chest, she knows where it opens. Has she told you?

  I wish I had a sister. I wish —

  Do you know the name of the town I sent you to? Richland. There used to be more than fifty thousand people that lived there, a community living in the shadow of a fission reactor run by a tiny company called Energy Northwest. There’s nothing left. Just hints, silhouettes of people that used to be. We wiped them all out, Mason. That was us. Apsel. They were an inconvenient truth. Gone. Buried so deep we forgot as well. We made monsters to guard our terrible crime — I know that much. I guessed at more, but guesses don’t help — the math isn’t there. I think we killed a city to show fusion was safer than fission. That can’t be human. That can’t be right, can it?

  Sadie. She needs your help. I mean… I mean, you need her help. I’ve tried to help her to help you. It’s the best I can do. It’s not like I can get out of here and walk around. The thing about her is she’s… Hell. Don’t break her. She’s more fragile than she looks.

  Laia. Kid’s got problems. You’re not one of them. Don’t let her be taken. Not by the syndicates. Not by us. Don’t leave her alone.

  I know what it’s like to be alone.

  Harry. You’ll need to work that out yourself, but he’s a lot like you. Stupid. Honest. He loves Lace, you know that?

  It made it worse when I realized she loves him too.

  The number you want is 555 884 2322. I don’t think breaking the rules matters anymore. It took me a long time to find it. She’s really not on the grid.

  I’m out of time. There’s one last thing.

  I said to you before that there was a reason, and I said I chose you. It didn’t happen that way. I loved you. I’m so happy that I knew you. You gave me hope. You showed me something about humans that wasn’t petty, slow, greedy. Tenko chose right. He chose a life worth saving.

  I’m glad it was you with me here at the end. There couldn’t be anyone else. Please, if you —

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  Mason stepped out of the stairwell and into the lobby, looking around at the familiar Apsel white. The falcon, standing tall on its plinth. The walls, clean, proud.

  There was only one person here. White armor, black rifle. His overlay clicked to itself before naming her.

  “Sanders?” Mason held the sword low and the Tenko-Senshin high. “Sanders, this isn’t a good time.”

  “I know,” said the other woman. “I… I know where you’ve been.”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She let me live.” Sanders shrugged, then looked at her rifle. “She said to stay out of your way.”

  “It was good advice.”

  “It doesn’t feel enough.” Sanders swallowed. “Do you…”

  Mason waited a few moments. “Do I what?”

  “Do you need a hand?”

  He heard the laugh rather than feeling it, a thin reedy sound. Mason snapped his mouth closed around it. “No, Sanders. Thanks, but no.”

  “Where’s your team?” Sanders looked around. “How’d you get in?”

  She’s dead. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “I… I can fly you out,” said the other woman. “If there’s a gunship on the roof? I can fly you out.”

  “Your contract’ll be terminated,” said Mason. “You’ll be done.”

  “I guess so,” said Sanders. “Where you want to go?”

  “Upstairs first.” Mason thought for a moment. “Then Reed.”

  “Reed?” Sanders blinked, then looked at Mason again. “Don’t you work for Metatech now?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Fair enough.” Sanders shifted her weight, then held a hand out, palm up — an after you gesture. “Let’s go. Upstairs..?”

  “Sure,” said Mason. He shrugged, then started walking. He couldn’t remember when he’d lowered the Tenko-Senshin, but the little weapon whined at him. He looked down at it as it he approached the elevators. “Upstairs.”

  “Mason!”

  Mason spun, taking a knee, the Tenko-Senshin coming up. He saw —

  Sanders, weapon to her shoulder, pointed at him. At where his back had been. Sadie, black armor below black lipstick, eyes open wide. A rifle in her hand, pointed at Sanders. Sanders, starting to swing the weapon back to Sadie.

  The lattice snarled, pulling Mason’s lips away from his teeth. He was already moving, the Tenko-Senshin screaming in his hand. The air blistered and sparked as the weapon fired. Sanders’ lattice jerked her to the side, her rifle coming back on Mason and firing. A round whispered past Mason’s face. Another kissed his shoulder. The third —

  The sword swung once as Mason stepped past the woman, her head bouncing off to land next to the door of an elevator. Mason held himself still, Sander’s body still holding down the trigger for a second after death before her body slumped to the ground.

  Sadie was gasping, sobbing. He walked up to her, touching the rifle in her hand. “It’s ok.”

  “She was… She was…”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s ok.”

  “And then I… The rifle… It…”

  “I know,” he said again. He took it from her. “Thank you.”

  “I—” She swallowed, eyes searching his face. “I wouldn’t have made it.”

  He nodded at her as if he was agreeing. “Yeah, but really. You did.”

  “You…” She looked at Sanders’ body, then turned her head away. “She was going to shoot you in the back.”

  “She said Carter let her live,” said Mason. “I—”

  “You can’t just trust people, Mason,” said Sadie. “You can’t. People… People are…”

  “People are people,” he said. “I trust you.”

  “Do you?” She was closer now. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  “What?”

  “You left me in that fucking APC—”

  “The car?”

  “The fucking APC, you left me out there, and I didn’t know if you were dead or alive or what and you didn’t call and people were running and someone got shot right next to me and then—” She broke off. “I thought you were dead.”

  You are my best friend, and I couldn’t even show you who I was. Do you know what that’s like?

  He felt the words rather than heard them, heat coming off them like he’d just stirred the coals of an old fire. Mason leaned forward, put a hand behind Sadie’s head, and pulled her close. Her eyes went wide before she relaxed into him, the kiss long and deep.

  They broke apart. She bit her lip, something playful there.

  He looked into her eyes. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

  She slapped at the armor on his chest. “You’re still an asshole.”

  “555 884 2322.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened a little. “Are you a… Some kind of company robot now? Numbers?”

  “No. It’s your number, isn’t it?” Mason smiled. Thank you, Carter. For everything. “I guess it’s meant to be.”

  Sadie’s eyes narrowed. “You cheated, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.” The smile fell away from his face. “I have some things I need to do.”

  “Ok.”

  “I’m probably…” He swallowed. “I don’t think I’m coming back.”

  “That’s not ok.” She took a step back, the empty white of the lobby standing behind the black of her armor. “You… Jesus Christ, Floyd. Didn’t y
ou have a mother?”

  “What?”

  “Seriously! You don’t kiss a girl, tell her it’s meant to be, and then run off to die!” She held her arms up, exasperated. “Christ.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to die.”

  “Do I look like a lawyer?”

  “Not really,” he said.

  “Then don’t play lawyer games with me,” she said. “You’re going off to die.”

  “Maybe. I’m going off to get some more ammo before I do anything else,” he said. After a moment, he said, “I don’t want to.”

  “Don’t want to go, or don’t want to die?”

  He looked at the elevators, then back to her. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “‘Oh?’”

  “You found her.” Sadie was looking into his face. Looking for something.

  “She’s dead, Sadie,” said Mason. “She’s gone.”

  “I’m sorry, Mason.” Sadie looked at the elevators over his shoulder, then she nodded as if agreeing to something. “I guess that means someone needs killing, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I can help,” she said, her voice soft.

  “I can’t ask you to.”

  “You didn’t,” she said, stepping off towards the elevators. “That’s your problem. You never ask.”

  It’s not your fight. You’ll get killed. This isn’t about you. He didn’t say any of those things. “Sadie?”

  She turned. “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  She shrugged, something mischievous in her eye. “It’s not all about you,” she said. “You think I’m going to settle for just one kiss? I’ve got a real interest in the outcome.”

  He laughed, then stepped off with her to the elevators. His hand found hers, and they stepped into the gleaming white core of the elevator car when the door opened.

  Together.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  The dark wasn’t a problem for Harry. It felt right, natural. In the dark, people couldn’t see who he was.

  What he was.

  He looked down at Lace, held tight in the bucket of the digger arm. She was out cold. The overlay spat and chattered, telling him she was ok, that she was going to live.

  It didn’t help. He’d tried to hold her close, but the blast had lifted him, tossing him God knows where. Spatial tracking was down — too much change, too fast — and he was in a different part of the Reed complex. Walls were down, broken all around him. Hell, the damn floor and roof had holes all through them. He could be up a level. Could be down a level too.

  Could be dead. As the thought hit him, he looked down at Lace, and realized — I don’t want to be dead. Not while she is still alive.

  He turned the floods on the chassis way up, pushing the dark back and away. It picked out a nasty bruise starting to form on the side of her face.

  There was a sound up ahead, and he started to cycle the optics around. There, a door, vaulted steel stretching to the roof, or what was left of it. The door was dusty, but intact. There might have been walls, a corridor of sorts, leading to it. It was hard to tell, but the door was still there.

  It was opening. It had only opened a little way, barely a crack for the size of the thing, but enough. A man in a suit stepped through.

  “Hey,” said Harry.

  The Reed man looked up. “What the hey,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Harry. “Look, things are a little crazy around here.”

  The Reed man nodded, then looked back into the room behind him. He stepped out, the vaulted door sighing shut behind him. “So — we going to do this?”

  Harry laughed, the PA booming around the hard edges of the rubble. He stopped laughing at the expression on the Reed man’s face. “Wait. You’re serious.”

  “I’m serious,” said the man.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Harry, “but you’re just a guy.”

  The man smiled at him. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t think you’re in on the internal company memos here.”

  “Look,” said Harry. “It’s been a long day. Long, right? Right?”

  The man nodded. “Right.”

  “What say we just call it quits?”

  The man looked down at his leather shoes, already starting to attract the dust and grime of the place. He frowned, then looked back up. “Just walk away?”

  “Just walk away,” said Harry. He shrugged the chassis. “I’m sure you’ve got shit to do. Memos, crap like that.”

  “I’ve got shit to do,” said the man. “Item one is to get the infestation of rats out of the cellar.”

  “Rats?” said Harry. Then, “Oh, right. I get you.”

  “Tell you what,” said the man. He nodded to the bucket, more grime than yellow, attached to Harry’s arm. “You walk away. You walk away, and I don’t kill her.”

  The chain cannon on Harry’s arm roared a line of death through the man before Harry even realized he’d fired it. The man’s body was pulled apart into red, wet pieces. The cannon whirred for a moment, then clanked to a stop. Empty. He released the clamps and the cannon fell to the ground, smoke trailing from the barrels.

  A hiss of hydraulics marked the vaulted door opening again, the clank followed by the hiss of airlock seals releasing. The Reed man stepped out of the door again, then looked at what was left of his body on the ground.

  “What. The. Fuck,” said Harry.

  “I know,” said the man. “Ain’t it cool?”

  Harry stooped low, putting Lace down next to a wall. He wanted to reach out, move her hair away from her face, but he didn’t. He wasn’t built for gentle things. The chassis swiveled back to the man.

  There were three of them now.

  Another one stepped out of the doorway. That made four.

  “Shit,” said Harry.

  “I can do this all day,” said the Reed man, four voices talking at the same time. Like mirror images, they all pulled handguns out from under their suit jackets.

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  One of them was on the digger arm, firing shots into the joint. He flung it off to splatter against the wall.

  A second climbed like a monkey onto his back, grabbing the top of the chassis, and flipped over the top. The pistol rang out as he fired it into the lenses of the optics. Harry tossed that one back against the vaulted door, where it fell, spine broken. Two more came out of the door.

  “Ok,” said Harry. “That’s how you want it?”

  The reactor on his back burned brighter, and he stepped forward again.

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  Three of them were on the chassis, two on the digger arm, trying to pull it away. Clever. The digger wasn’t built for combat. It was just some industrial thing they’d found lying around.

  Harry fired up the energy shroud, the skin of the chassis crackling and sparking. A bolt of energy leapt from the tip of the digger arm, arcing to the vaulted door. The three men on him turned to ash in an instant.

  Four more came out of the door. This time, one of them held something big and heavy, a round hole staring like a sightless eye.

  Rocket launcher.

  The Reed man fired the rocket at him, but Harry had already snatched one of the men next to him, tossing the body into the rocket’s path. The explosion was white and hot.

  Two more men came out of the door. All looked the same. Same suit. Same haircut. Same gun.

  “Tell me,” said Harry. “Who’s your tailor?”

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  The door had opened all the way now, and Harry could see a long room, stretching back into the distance. Chambers like coffins stretched out in rows, opening and disgorging their contents onto the ground. All exact copies of the Reed man.

  That’s a lot of dudes.

  ⚔ ⚛ ⚔

  They covered him now, ropes and chains snaring around the arms and legs of the chassis. The reactor on his back had an audible rumble to it, and he pulled more and more power fro
m it.

  “Harry,” said Lace, the link fluttering. “Harry, you need to cut the source.”

  “Don’t move,” said Harry. “Don’t let him know you’re awake.” He fired up the shroud again, bodies smoking as they fell off him.

  “Harry,” she said again. “It’s in there.” A map fell down on the overlay, amber wireframes showing a box at the end of the room. She’d marked it with a little icon, a pot of gold.

  “Ok,” he said.

  “There’s point defense in the room,” she said. “There’s a lot of shit to use as cover in there. Don’t stand still.”

  “Ok,” he said again.

  “Don’t—” she said, but he’d already started moving.

  He pushed off with metal feet, the chassis gouging tracks in the floor as he sped up. Harry slammed through the Reed replicas as he pushed the chassis harder and faster. He was through the open vaulted door and into the chamber beyond.

  A railgun fired. The digger arm sheared off, the edges of the break glowing white hot. Harry moved faster. He pushed the chassis harder than he ever had before.

  A sea of Reed men were around him now, the coffins spitting out men faster and faster. They were a mob, a flow, moving like a fluid. One was over his optics. He couldn’t see. The wireframe Lace had dropped on the overlay guided him.

  He felt the railgun round as it tore through the left side of the chassis, and he felt cold. Actual, real cold. He almost laughed despite the pain.

  They’d punctured the core. The heart of the chassis.

  He stopped. Reed men all around him. One was pushing a pistol in the side of the chassis, into the breach made by the railgun.

  A coffin, different to the rest in front of him. Harry reached out a hand, tearing the lid from it.

  The Reed men around him stuttered, stumbling in mid-action.

  The same man was in front of him in the coffin, blinking watery eyes against the sudden light. “Don’t—”