by P. R. Adams
Buildings breezed by, some half hidden by the fog. I got off one stop before the clinic and called a car. There was time to kill, so I picked up a coffee at Habib’s. Strong, bitter, and hot. It burned in my gut as I waited outside the clinic, listening to the whisper of the Grid over my cybernetic implant.
Dr. Jernigan met me at the entry, still flush from her workout and smelling like she’d just showered. She shook her head and led me to the elevators.
When we were alone in the elevator, she asked, “You went after her?”
“Other way around. Apparently, I’ve become an inconvenience. Maybe I’ve asked too many questions.”
Her eyebrow shot up: Am I in danger?
I couldn’t see them going after someone so far out on the periphery. “You’re fine, but you might want to make sure you’ve cleaned up any data trail from your inquiries.”
That didn’t calm her.
She took me to one of the treatment rooms and had me strip and lie down, then applied a local anesthetic cream to my face before numbing me up with an injection. After a few gentle probes, she ran a familiar scanning device over the entire side of my face. The image produced by the scanner didn’t make her any happier than before.
She set the device down and wheeled her chair over to me, frowning. “It could be worse. I can inject some glue in to reinforce the bone. It’s a very minor fracture. The worst of the swelling can be treated with mild anti-inflammatory injections, but the bruising and the last of the swelling will just take time.”
“Put it on my tab.”
The frown lingered. She grabbed my left arm, examining first the pinky and then all the gashes caused by the flechettes. “What caused this?”
“Flechettes. The El Salvador twins have some pretty high-tech weaponry.”
“Twins?”
“Maribel Clavel worked closely with Jose Funes before they were—” A warning flashed in her eyes. “Before the accident that nearly killed them.”
Dr. Jernigan snorted and walked to a cabinet. She returned with a tray of tools and bottles—everything she needed to treat the tears in my synthetic flesh. “I’m not so sure this Maribel Clavel survived that accident. The medical records listed her as DOA. Brain death isn’t always an exact thing, but I’m skeptical. Have you considered the possibility this might be someone else? Or possibly something else?”
“Something else.”
She glued several of the cuts closed before saying, “A robot.”
“Robot.”
I was suddenly in Korea, speeding down the highway, watching helplessly as the giant metal cat crashed into our car.
Dr. Jernigan gave my arm a gentle tug. “Hold still, please.”
“These robots look an awful lot like humans. And they move like humans.”
“So they’re technically androids. There are plenty of simulation systems that can perfectly map human behavior—movement, facial response. You wouldn’t know the difference unless someone told you. Just look at your own limbs.”
Simulation systems. Simulacrum. Jacinto. I felt sweat on the section of my forehead that wasn’t numb. Maybe Stovall wasn’t running the show, after all. “Who has the most advanced robotics?”
“The Japanese for years, but it depends on practical applications. If you want a realistic sex partner without strings attached, you go to Tokyo. If you want a war machine—” She waved the repair tool around like a wand, pointing toward the east. The Pentagon. “Something like these twins, it sounds like what would come out of our military or maybe…” She gave me a look that confirmed my own thoughts: the Agency.
Dr. Jernigan finished shortly after ten, but the numbness didn’t fade for another hour. I spent that time at Habib’s, watching the cars go by while scooping hummus with strips of pita bread and sipping mint tea. The simple idea of autonomous assassins who behaved just a little incompetently had become complicated.
Chan’s Jacinto simulacrum threat was taking on new twists. Dr. Jernigan’s idea that I couldn’t tell the difference between a well-made android and a human plucked at a paranoia I hadn’t realized was there.
I retraced my route back to the hotel and went straight to Chan’s room.
Chan—dressed in familiar jeans and hoodie—opened the door partially, searching the hallway before undoing the safety latch. The extra security precaution, while pointless, was admirable.
I took a seat on the bed opposite the one where Chan had set up the computer displays. They were the only source of light in the room. The display I’d hurled at Jose had already been replaced. Chan leaned back against the cartoon kitten pillows at the head of the bed and stared down at data devices spread across the rumpled blankets.
“Looks like it hurts,” Chan finally muttered.
“You should see the other guy.” When Chan looked up, I opened balled fists in front of my face to mimic a fire blossom. “You did good.”
Panic spread in Chan’s magenta eyes, then they looked back down at the data devices. Handling compliments wasn’t a strong point. “What d’you need?”
“Someone hit me with an idea today. I feel like an idiot for not thinking about it. Jacinto ever talk to you about androids?”
Chan’s head popped up, eyes wide. Recognition. Fear.
I sighed. “I was afraid of that. Tell me about it.”
“He was creeping around. Agency systems. Other systems. Looking for tech.” Chan shrugged. “To steal. The big score. Get the money, get out. Said he saw something. Some experiments. Designs. Videos. Human replacements. For you. Him. Us.”
“Contractors?”
“Assassins. Soldiers.”
Replacements. Simulacrum. I got up, suddenly sick to my stomach again. The frail, human part of me. “Shit, Chan. Why didn’t you say something about this? It didn’t occur to you these assassins might be exactly what Jacinto was talking about? Hell, I’m halfway there myself.”
Chan curled up against one of the cartoon kitten pillows. “It wasn’t finished. There were problems. Jacinto said it would be years.”
“What sort of problems? The kind of problems that a simulacrum could fix? Hmm? Could Jacinto be running those things?”
Chan’s face disappeared in the pillow. A whimper floated up.
“Chan, this is important. I know you’re freaked out by what happened in the VR—”
Chan slapped the pillow. Hard.
I grabbed Chan’s long, soft fingers. “Stop! We need to work this out. There are copies of your snowcrash out there—there may be a copy of you.”
Chan’s face came up from the pillow, lips quivering, tears flowing down tattooed cheeks. “No! I’m unique! There is me. Only me! No copies!”
I released Chan’s hands, which were slick with sweat. “All right. That’s good. We don’t want anyone else out there like you. You’re special.”
Chan’s eyes tracked me as I returned to the other bed. The Jacinto situation was a sensitive subject, but it was something I had to figure out. “What happened in the VR, that whole simulacrum we ran into?”
Chan’s face wrinkled, the quivering spread out from tight-compressed lips.
I held out a hand. “We’re here for you. We’re a team. A real team. No one here is going to do what Jacinto did to you. You understand me? We’ll protect you.”
Chan’s face disappeared in the pillow again. “Wants to duplicate me. To…hurt me again.” Muffled. Furious. Pained.
“When did he—” My voice broke. “When did you meet him?”
“Twelve.” A whisper almost lost in the pillow.
Twelve. It was unfathomable. “How? I mean, how did you meet?”
“On the Grid.” A little space between Chan’s face and the pillow, a little more clarity. “He saw my work. Complimented it. Said I was as good as most Gridhounds. Said he could make me elite.”
“And your parents let you—”
A hate-filled glare.
I held a hand up. “Tell me about it. Your own words. You don’t have to tell a
nyone else if you don’t want to.”
Chan lowered the pillow and shifted away from me, eyes locked on the floor. A minute passed with just ragged breaths. Chan sucked in a deep breath, as if preparing to take a deep dive, then said, “I knew I was special. Five, six years old. My father hated me for it. My mother. Drugs.” A shrug. “The Grid was my…escape. I found peace. Anonymity. No one knew me. Or cared. I could be myself. And exceptional. People—the bad ones. Easy to hack. Steal money. Leave data trails to cause trouble. Make them pay.
“Then I figured out businesses. Small ones at first. They hired others. Bigger companies to run Grid operations. Lazy. Sloppy. Easy money. I could buy what I wanted. Needed.”
Chan took another breath, wiped tears away with a wet sleeve, then squared slumped shoulders. “That’s how Jacinto found me. We hit the same place. His work was good. Some new bots and countermeasures. I hacked them, but…” Another shrug. “Good. He hacked my stuff, found me. That scared me. He offered to show me how. To hack. To hide. Everything. He was really nice. He sent me money. Tickets. A hotel. A nice one. The first time, he was gentle. Made me laugh and have fun. I felt…” Chan froze.
“Normal?”
Chan nodded. “The second time, he got me high. Wasted. I knew something had happened. I didn’t know what. Jacinto said it was our little secret. He said he could introduce me to others. People who would like me.”
“The snowcrash?”
“Yeah. Marlene. She tried to warn me away. I guess. They all knew.” Chan sniffled. “Jacinto had so much power. Secrets. Videos. Audio. Data trails. I thought it was just how grown-ups behaved. My dad hit my mom. His brother…when I was young.”
Shit. I felt like an ass for hating my own childhood. “Did the others abuse you?”
A head shake. “They taught me hacking. They supported me. But it didn’t take long. I was special, like I said. After a year, I was as good as any of them. After two years, I was better. Even than Jacinto.”
Two years? “How old are you, Chan?”
“Almost seventeen.” Chan’s head came up. Realization hit those magenta eyes. “I’m mature. Know what I’m doing.”
I snorted. “And you’ll be prosecuted as a minor in most countries, if they catch you. But some places don’t care if you’re a minor or not. You run with the wrong snowcrash, you do bad enough damage to the right business or people, you disappear. Sometimes they brainwash you and make you one of their Gridhounds. If you’re too dangerous, it’s a bullet to the back of the head.”
Chan’s shoulders slumped. “Better dead than being a mundane. A nobody.”
The ego behind that was staggering. “I thought you liked anonymity?”
“I like being in control. Being special. Freak the little people out. Fuck the wealthy and powerful.”
There wasn’t a smug laugh or condescending snarl behind that, just a distant cool. It was a problem, a definite sense of superiority and cockiness mixed with bitterness and resentment. That was something I could work with. Maybe.
“What about us, Chan? What about me and Ichi and Danny? You don’t want to fuck us over, right?”
Chan looked at me. Those magenta eyes were unreadable again, the tattooed face cold. “You’re not wealthy and powerful. You’re not little people.”
So long as we were part of the same group of special rebels, we were safe. “We need to know we can count on each other. You know we’ve got your back. None of us will allow anyone to hurt you like that again.”
“I won’t allow it.” Chan blinked, and that cold look remained unchanged. It was the look from the night before when the flamethrower torched Jose.
“We’re going to have to go after Jacinto at some point.”
Chan squeezed the pillow. “I know.”
“You’re sure you were better than him?”
“Yeah.” The look said Chan’s ego wouldn’t allow any other possibility.
“I want you to start thinking about what we could do, how we could take this simulacrum down. If Jacinto’s running these androids, we need to be able to stop him. Hardware, software…whatever it takes. And when the time comes, we’ll find Jacinto. We’ll wipe him out. Full delete. Okay?”
Chan smiled, hateful and wicked.
I returned to my room. Ichi was asleep on my bed, the door to her room closed and blocked. Her dark hair spilled across my pillow. Asleep, I could see more of Tae-hee not just around the eyes but the lips. I looked away and smiled at the realization that even Ichi had a finite reserve of energy.
My data device vibrated; I hurried into the bathroom.
It was Gillian.
I struggled to hold onto the data device as the Grid whispered in my cybernetic implant. “What’s going on?”
“Her vitals went crazy today,” Gillian said. She sounded ragged, close to tears. “They don’t know what it is. Maybe a blood clot. They’re searching. Stefan, I’m…”
“She’s got good doctors, right? She’s going to be fine.”
“They won’t say she’s going to be fine. They’ve been very up front about it. She lost a dangerous amount of blood in that attack. And the diabetes complicates things. There might be brain damage. They just can’t tell yet.”
Brain damage. Brain death. The inability to tell a living person from an android. I shivered. “We have to hope.” We. What the hell was I thinking?
“I’m heading home. I’m such a mess. I—I don’t want to be alone.”
“I could come over.” Too fast, too eager. With Ichi just outside, equally terrified and in need. What was I doing?
“I can order Chinese.” She laughed, almost hysterical. “I bet we could get anything we want from Ming Dynasty. This is all their fault.”
It sounded petty and selfish. Spoiled. It should have bugged me after what Chan had experienced with Jacinto but it didn’t. Gillian’s scent and taste, her soft and unbroken flesh—that was all I could think of. “When do you want to meet?”
“An hour? Forty-five minutes?” The same urgency I felt was there in her voice.
“I’ll be there.”
She disconnected. Guilt set in immediately. I should have been plotting a way to get to Weaver. I should have been planning how to better protect my team. Instead…
I looked at my face in the mirror. Puffy. Discolored. Tender.
I wasn’t going to sleep with Gillian. I was going to console her. It was all about advancing the operation.
I laughed and splashed cold water on my face, then sneaked out without waking Ichi.
Gillian needed me, and I needed her.
Chapter 23
I hired a car and told it to drive as fast as it could. Any doubts about my course of action were drowned out by the busy chatter of my cybernetic implant. Here I was, not even fully human anymore, and she wanted me to be with her. Outside, people and vehicles, buildings and trees—everything blurred into a ridiculous, pointless spray of colors. Who cared about what was between me and Gillian? The car felt stuffy and hot, the seat hard as cinderblock. No matter how I shifted, the coarse material scraped at my back and made my ribs ache. A recent passenger had left the smell of spicy food in the seats, the dash, even the windows. Anything but Gillian’s perfume—like the purest and cleanest pine mixed with sweet flowers in full bloom—was foul to me. Putrid. Vile.
Finally, I recognized the buildings that lined the outskirts of her neighborhood. I focused on them, on the way they seemed to sag under the weight of snow. They seemed filthy and dark in the afternoon sunlight—unworthy of her.
The car pulled onto her street, and I rocked back and forth, gnawing on my knuckle. Her apartment building was a glistening tower, rising pure and sacred among the profane.
Wasn’t I profane? I was no better than the people I scowled at. I was worse: murderer, thug, vagabond. Dirty and impure.
When the car slowed, I fumbled with the door. I had to get out!
I ran to the entry, saw my bruised and swollen face in the polished glass, and nearly ran
away. But she needed me. Even if it was just to listen to her cry, and to run a calming hand over her head, it would make me feel wanted. I jabbed at the buzzer for her apartment until she answered.
“Stefan?” Fragile as a butterfly, sweet as honey.
“Yeah. I came as fast as I could.”
The entry popped open, and I dashed for the stairwell door. A part of me scowled in disbelief at the ridiculous sappiness that had overcome me. Gillian was an adult. She could manage being alone with her anxiety and grief for a few more minutes. And she was a good lay, but I’d had better. Paid for better. I was acting like a teenager after his first piece of ass.
But another part of me knew that I was more desperate than any teenage boy could be. I was broken and abandoned, and I’d found someone who didn’t care, someone who was vibrant and youthful and wasn’t maliciously teasing me with what I could never have.
I took the stairs two at a time, clinging to the rail like a lifeline. I shouldered the stairwell door open and sprinted for her door.
It opened as I approached, and a leg poked out—shapely and full. First a shoulder, then her head poked around the door. She wore the same silky housecoat, this time open lower, exposing cleavage that brought back memories of groping and passionate kisses. Her hair was down, her head thrown back slightly, as if she weren’t expecting me.
Her eyes widened. “What happened to your face?”
A growl came up from deep inside what remained of the real, organic me. Hot breath blew out. She stumbled back into her apartment, and I pushed the door open with trembling fingers.
She whispered, “I thought we might have some coffee—”
I rushed to her, almost laughing. Coffee? She knew what I wanted. It was in her eyes, an almost childish shame that she wanted the same thing while her mother lay in a hospital bed, possibly dying. The robe’s belt was lightly twisted rather than tied. It came away with the slightest tug, and her robe opened. Her hands came up, as if that shame in her eyes were rising up, directing her, telling her what we were doing was wrong, but she didn’t cover herself or take the belt from my hands. I pulled the robe off her shoulders and down to her elbows and just stared at her for a moment. She shook out her hair in defiance, then gasped as my hands reached around her, pulling her to me by her butt. I ran a hand up the small of her back to the rise of her shoulder blades, pressing her chest into mine. Her gasp grew louder as I kissed her neck and trailed down to her quivering breasts.