by James Wake
“What’s your script?” Jackson said. “Do they give you one, or did they just start paying you because you were already carrying their water?”
The woman blinked, taken aback only for a moment. Her pupils flickered like mad, eagerly snapping up everything. “Was that on your script?”
Unable to help herself, Jackson glared at the girl. “No comment.”
* * *
The rain had let up for one night, at least. Nadia coasted up to the side of the building and cut the engine on her bike. Her bike. What had started out as a police hoverbike assigned to one Ortega, David L. had been stripped down, so many parts replaced and refitted so perfectly and powerfully that she’d named it “Theseus.”
She loved it, loved every second of riding it. The night sky around her held a loose swarm of drones, blind to her on her sleek black steed, its exhaust dampened and surrounded by a cloud of Tess’s own blend of electronic countermeasures. The matte black radar-absorbing paint was only for style at this point.
“So cold up here,” Nadia said. “I thought you said wet season was the result of us becoming a tropical clime?”
“You’re a few hundred feet up,” Tess said, “and I said the tropical bands were shifting north. And yeah, it’s chilly. That happens when you have a mild nuclear winter going on at the same time. Totally schizophrenic weather. It’s probably the only reason sea-level rise slowed down at all.”
Nadia left her bike hovering and crawled onto a narrow ledge that ringed the skyscraper, slick with leftover rain. A steel rectangle of no more than a foot, enough to balance on with her back pressed against the glass.
“And you were so upset about all that doom and gloom business last year,” Nadia said, waving goodbye as her bike took off without her.
“Slowed down. Not stopped. Don’t worry. The end is still nigh.”
“Nuclear winter,” Nadia said, shimmying along the edge. The dark glass wall behind her was smooth, slick. Nothing for her gloves to cling to. Thankfully her feet stuck firmly to the ledge. “Wherever did you read that?”
“History books, idiot. Would you like me to recite an entire article on the limited nuclear exchanges of the twenty-first century?”
“As much as I love to hear you read…” Nadia began, looking out and down and feeling the wind tearing at her, vicious this high up. The crowd below was no more than a shape, no sound reaching this high. Farther down the block, she spotted the real security cordons, protests held back by Domes and armored trucks. No doubt due to be broken up and swept away any second now.
Curfew violators, like herself. Fellow miscreants. Nadia smiled and wished them luck. Her hand found a hatch, meant for small crawling drones to climb out and clean the sheer glass of this tower. Stuck. Tightly shut, barely perceptible. An outline of a cover flush with the wall.
“Oh, cool. I was hoping it would be shut!” Tess said. She was so cute when they were trying out a new piece of equipment, probably squirming in her chair and sitting on her feet.
From her belt, Nadia pulled a new tool, about the size of her old glass cutter. This was a handle with a short length of an experimental composite on the end, a rectangular blade. Edged on one side with industrial diamonds, which Nadia had been overjoyed to learn.
“All right, so before you turn it on—” Tess started.
Nadia flicked a switch on the handle. It vibrated to life, making a high-pitched whine that rose on and on as it buzzed her fingers numb.
“Too high!”
She dialed it down, feeling the whine level off and stay there.
“Let’s maybe not have it explode in your hands?” Tess said.
Two spots on either side of the hatch were highlighted in her HUD. Nadia made short work of them, drawing the blade down each crack with a loud snap, leaving furrows of melted glass in her wake.
“Pray tell, why is there a mode that would make the tool explode in my hand?”
“Prototype,” Tess said.
“Hmm.”
The hatch popped open easily, opening into a narrow, dark tunnel.
* * *
Still nothing. Jackson walked a slow beat down the line, honestly trying not to eavesdrop. She’d heard enough breathless speculation about this new product or that one, been bombarded with ads every waking second. None of it seemed like all that big a deal to her. More toys for people to waste their money on.
The people in line seemed to disagree. This year the exposition would showcase the next step in human development, the cure for all society’s ills, the thing everyone would have done to their bodies within the next twelve months.
That’s exactly what she’d heard about the interaction chips in her fingers and the comms rig behind her ear, years ago when those came out. Somehow they had failed to change the world overnight. It had even taken a few years and the price coming down a bit before most people had them.
Most people. Jackson shook her head. Such tunnel vision around here, infecting her now too. She doubted many folks outside the old seawalls would ever end up even seeing any of these new toys.
Another drone buzzed past, mere feet above her helmet. As she looked up, her goggles highlighted dozens of them in the sky above her—a damned swarm—hovering and patrolling and scanning. There couldn’t have been an inch on the ground unmonitored. Anything the drones didn’t catch would be scoped out by one of the sharpshooters perched on rooftops and in windows all around them.
Sapphire Shadow. Jackson snorted. Of course they’d ask about her. No mention of the actual source of the threats, the People’s Communion or People’s Front or some other set of similar words or whoever. So much shit stirred up in the last year. At least the girl hadn’t killed anyone. Not that Jackson knew of, anyway.
“Get ready for the cattle rush,” Ortega said to her on a private channel.
“Thought they were still delaying.”
“Nah. Doors are about to open. Check it out.”
He was right. The show began, the swollen line pouring through under the scanning eyes of the drones above.
“You hear that, right?” Ortega said.
Of course. That was why they had waited. Jackson had to crane her neck and really try with her ears, but it was there, blocks away. Screams and gunshots and loudspeakers, the mad chaos of a charge into protesters.
No reporters out there, for sure.
“Hey!”
Jackson turned to see a Dome approach her, the same one who had shrugged at her earlier. He was speaking to her with comms off, his helmet playing a slightly tinny version of a young man’s voice.
“How can I help you, Officer?” she said.
“You’re Jackson, right?”
She grimaced and raised her chin, giving this kid a glare down her nose.
“I knew it!” he said, bouncing on his feet. “So what’s she like?”
“No comment,” she said, still glaring.
“Sorry.” He backed off a bit. “I’m glad you’re here, though. Glad I’m here, I guess.”
Jackson couldn’t tell if she’d ever met this guy before. Same blank Plexiglas mask, same black armor, same small red Auktoris logo where a badge should be. “Glad? How’s that?”
“I mean instead of out there.” He nodded toward the mess Jackson could barely hear behind the happy crowds nearby. “I was at the protest last week, out by the—”
“The Structure,” Jackson finished for him. “Me too.” That one had gotten ugly. The protestors were learning, becoming more stubborn, more well-equipped. Gas had been enough to scatter the crowds, before, but now APS was making regular use of rubber bullets.
“I mean, I’m not excited to be standing here waiting for some promised attack, but yeah,” he said, his shoulders sinking. “Better than out there.”
He jumped in place. Jackson flinched too. More gunshots. Much closer.
“Status?” she said.
; The line pouring into the building had stalled, jammed from people screaming and trying to run back. Multiple voices rang out in Jackson’s comms.
“Oh, Christ, I didn’t think they were really gonna—” the Dome said.
“On me!” Jackson said, drawing her cheap pistol. “Move! Now!”
* * *
Nadia slipped a splice connector onto an exposed bit of cable and slapped the access hatch shut without even waiting to see it light up.
“Okay. Hang on,” Tess said.
She did so, lounging in a dark room with one hand on her hip, the other tracing her fingers down a row of cleaning robots lined up in their charging bays.
“Keep hanging on,” Tess said.
“Something the matter?”
“Little tougher than usual. They’re actively scanning for intrusion,” Tess said. “There. Got it.”
Part of Nadia’s vision faded to an array of tiny moving squares, lighting up in sequence then zooming in to three in particular. The hallway outside was covered completely, not an inch unmonitored by cameras. Nothing was moving at the moment.
“And…looping,” Tess said. A copy of all three feeds opened up below, showing what the security software would see—a few seconds of empty hallway, cleverly looped with a bit of noise added to throw off the smarter algorithms.
Seeing herself on the actual camera feed still excited her—sleek and smooth and flawless black, the bright blue of her eyes lit up on the mask. She crept down the hall, moseying really, unafraid of being seen.
“Whoa! Uh. Hmm,” Tess said.
“Uninvited guests?”
“Yeah, they, uh…they let themselves right in.”
More camera feeds expanded in Nadia’s HUD, showing the main floor of the trade show far below. About a dozen men and women had taken over the center of it, spraying bullets into the air and chasing the crowds back outside.
Masked, all of them. Some of them bore a grinning neon cat face, others a black visage with two glowing blue eyes. A few wore Plexiglas shells with a red “X” over each eye, either stolen from a Dome or modeled after their helmets.
“Any on the upper levels?” Nadia said.
“Looks like that’s all of them. Geez, they’re gonna get annihilated.”
“Better them than…” Nadia said, trailing off as the hallway opened up on one side. She put her hands on the glass pane that served as a railing, then leaned over and peered out into the center of the tower. A giant art installation blocked her view of the other side—glass and lights cascading up in a haphazard spiral.
Dull. Lifeless. Soulless. Utterly boring. Probably designed by an algorithm. Nadia lingered at the railing, watching the other balconies for motion. Gunshots echoed up to her from the ground level.
“See him?” Tess said.
A lone guard was farther down the hall from her, a hand to the side of his helmet and leaning over the railing, his eyes pointing down the open central shaft. Several camera angles on him lit up in Nadia’s HUD.
“Just a moment,” she said, sprinting straight for him. It had worried her, the first few times she did this. Worried her how much she enjoyed it, crouched low and moving in fast for the kill.
“Lights?”
“Don’t bother.” She climbed the wall until she was hanging above the hapless Dome. He stood up, probably receiving orders to immediately report to the firefight.
He would not be following those orders.
Nadia unstuck her hands, dropped down, and slapped her palms against his back as she landed. Her gloves popped and sparked, sending the Dome into a stiff, shrieking dance before he collapsed.
“One down!” Tess said.
“But who’s counting?” Nadia pictured the notches Tess had been marking on one of the walls of their office. They nearly reached the floor now.
The Dome groaned and rolled, his hands reaching for his belt.
“Well, that won’t do,” Nadia said, crouching and zapping him again. “Be a dear and relax for me?”
“Be careful! Not on the chest like that!” Tess said.
“I was told these are nonlethal,” Nadia said, slipping a pair of riot cuffs off the guard’s belt and binding his hands.
“Less lethal,” Tess said. “There’s still a small chance of cardiac arrest in the victim.”
“Don’t call him the victim,” Nadia said, binding the man’s ankles as well. She popped the comms chip out of a slot on his belt then slid it into a custom sleeve on her forearm. A few seconds of quiet loading followed, crashed to pieces by multiple voices cutting in at once:
“Responding! Responding! En route!”
“How many? How many armed? Sitrep now!”
“Fuck, fuck. Help! Backup, help! Help!”
The chattering of automatic gunshots matched the echoes drifting up to her. Nadia winced at the mess pouring into her ears. “Filter for relevance?”
“On it,” Tess said.
Much better. Security forces were responding to a terrorist attack that was, indeed, confined to the entrance hall. For the moment.
Very loudly confined. Despite the public threats aimed at the exhibition, she hadn’t planned to have such a convenient distraction in place.
“Suspect down!” rang in her ears. “Suspect down. Visual on two more. Confirm count.”
Convenient distraction. The words tasted very bitter now.
“Oof. One down already?” Tess said. “I mean, we should be thanking them I guess, but ugh…”
Nadia leaned over the railing again, her gloves gripping the glass until hairline fractures cracked out from each hand. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen people die wearing her face, throwing their lives away.
“They made their choice,” Nadia said, hating every syllable of it. “I should think they knew what they were getting into.”
“Whoa, hey! Calm down,” Tess said, “I wasn’t saying like… Let’s focus, right? Eyes on the prize.”
“Indeed.” Nadia hopped the railing, dropped down the central shaft, and caught the wall a few floors down.
* * *
They must have masked up the moment they’d gotten inside.
Jackson dove behind an exhibit display and popped up with her gun ready. Clear. She waved for the Dome behind her to move up; the kid was panting and struggling but keeping up.
She’d only seen one so far, a nicely dressed woman, indistinguishable from one of the crowd outside except for her mask. A Sapphire Shadow mask, of course. Not the real thing, though. The eyes didn’t move.
The Dome started to move again but shrank back as another round of gunfire resounded nearby. Jackson slammed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down so his helmet was all the way under cover.
“Have you ever been in a firefight?” she said.
“Of course!”
“I don’t mean a protest turkey shoot.” She checked over their cover again, not seeing any suspects. “You know these guys shoot back, right?”
“No shit?”
A voice on a bullhorn floated at them. “We demand accountability! We demand transparency! We demand…?”
“Action!” someone nearby yelled.
“AGF gives us this instead! Bread and circuses while this city drowns!” the leader yelled. “Forced from our homes! Left to die! No more!”
“No more!” echoed back the chorus.
One of them was right around the corner of a booth in front of them; Jackson could tell by his voice. The booth was filled with shiny leather recliners, festooned with plaques bragging about their built-in headset stands.
Jackson tapped the Dome’s helmet and nodded at the booth. They were both ready and aiming when the suspect stepped into view.
A grinning cat mask. Jackson had been startled the first time, but she’d seen the damn things plenty by now. He held a strange little homemade submachine gun, cobbled together out of
translucent plastic, invisible to the drone scanners outside.
“Police! Drop it!” she said, standing up to let him see her.
No such luck. He raised his weapon, slow and startled. They opened up on him, Jackson with her pathetic little pistol and the Dome letting loose a burst of chattering fire. The Cheshire man took a few hits to the chest but dove out of sight. Armor, for sure. Jackson saw the silver goop bursting out of the bullet holes.
“Holy shit!” the Dome said. “Is he…?”
The homemade gun appeared around the corner, blindly firing in their general direction. Jackson threw herself over the Dome, pulling them both behind cover as the crack of shattering bullets smacked all around.
Flecks of white plastic filled the air. Hardened plastic rounds. Not nearly enough to pierce her armor. Jackson stood up, ready to shrug off a hit but not having to—the recoil had sent the poor man’s shots wild. Jackson steadied her aim and ripped out two quick rounds, which struck his arm, sending out red splatter.
He fled, appearing on the other side of the booth, cradling his now-empty hand. Jackson was lining up the lead for a leg shot when other bursts of fire cut him down.
“Jesus!” Ortega’s voice said in her ear. “He’s down. He was unarmed!”
“We just took out two.” Wedge in her ears now. “These kids can’t even fucking shoot straight.”
Jackson swapped her magazine out for a full one, slapping it in before clapping the Dome on the shoulder. “Bounding overwatch. Come on.” She hopped the booth table, knocking HUD-capable glasses all over the floor.
“What does that mean?” he said, scrambling over the table behind her.
“It means cover me, idiot!” she snapped, crossing the aisle and posting herself where the Cheshire-masked terrorist had been hiding. Blood on the floor stained her boots, the homemade gun still sitting where it had fallen. She’d seen the same blueprint a few times now, a new model being passed around. Illegal now—truly illegal, no more meager little license fees. So much had changed in one year.
“You mean like leapfrog?” the Dome said.