Idolon

by Mark Budz

  Pelayo massaged the back of his neck. "Exec with who?"

  "Who do you think?"

  "IBT." It had to be. They were the only ones who knew he was testing the 'skin.

  Lagrante nodded. "Might be someone else in bed with them. I'm not sure on that yet."

  Pelayo sniffed. "So you're playing them, the same way you played me."

  "And you aren't? Takin' ware from Uri with one hand, and sellin' it to me with the other?" Lagrante loosened the double Windsor on his tie. "If I were you, I'd be a lot more worried about how someone at IBT knew you'd be comin' to me or another bootlegger. Think about it. Someone high up at IBT knows you're sellin' crack ware to the street, and they're letting it happen. Why?"

  Pelayo eased back in his seat. "Because they want the 'skin ripped," he said.

  "And they don't want anyone to know about it," Lagrante said. "Not you. Not the cops. Not the competition."

  "Why?"

  Lagrante lifted his hat from the knurled hook and fitted it onto his head. "Market share. That's what it's all about. Generating demand and—"

  A flash detonated on Pelayo's d-splay, followed by a roar, then nothing, not even static.

  "Shit!" Atossa said.

  "What?" The face of the Hamilton was blank. Pelayo clapped his hands over his ears, shutting out the music, the rattle of glass, silverware, and laughter. "Atossa, what's going on?"

  "... plosion," Atossa said. "Someone just set off a bomb."

  44

  Mateus took out the lobby first, then the emergency stairs leading down from the garden balconies at both ends of the hotel.

  He lobbed the last RPG onto the roof, turning the choppers into a tangled mess of carbon and metal composites. It was a chance he had to take. He couldn't let the copters leave. No one had boarded them yet, so the odds of torching Nadice were small.

  The fireball bloomed green in his binoculars, boiling a crater in the gravel-covered bitumen.

  Vibrate that shit, motherfuckers.

  Tiago and Rafa grinned as they watched the choppers burn, light smoldering in the oily cloud of smoke and ash that drifted over the carnage like ground fog. Where the roof hadn't fully collapsed, it was strewn with rubble.

  And bodies. Doused in green monochromatic flame.

  Ditto the front lobby. It was a slag heap of charred diamond, melted plastic, and shattered floor tile. The suspended ceiling panels had caved in, revealing twisted joists. The debris clogged the elevator and the stairwell. The two security guards were history. They appeared inert through the binoculars, lifeless.

  Time to wreck shop. They didn't have long. Five or ten minutes tops, before the parameds and laws showed up. Local residents had already begun to assemble on the sidewalk, stunned out of their nightly boredom by the pyrotechnics.

  He turned to Tiago and Rafa. "Let's do it."

  _______

  Mateus approached the smob that had gathered on the street in front of the blast-destroyed lobby. "Get back!" He gestured for the smob to retreat. "For your own safety, stand clear of the building."

  Occasional shouts and agonized cries drifted down from the roof. The smart mob stepped back, content for the moment to observe from a safe distance.

  He turned to Rafa and Tiago. "Make sure no one tries to come in actin' a hero," he said. Last thing they wanted was a bunch of Good Samaritans. "Keep an eye out. Holler at me as soon as you see any laws or EMTs."

  Rafa coughed, his eyes watering from the smoke. "How long we gonna be here?" he asked as they threaded their way through the debris in front of the lobby.

  "Long as it takes," Mateus said.

  Feeling gritty and determined, he made his way into the lobby, slipping through the jagged-edged pieces of metal and plastine that had once been the door. The air smelled singed and hot. Caustic.

  They should have worn gas masks, or even handkerchiefs. Anything to cut the fumes. Mateus covered his mouth and nose with the crook of one arm. Only good thing about the dust and the smoke was that it hid them from view. It was a bitch on the eyes, though. Stung like a motherfucker.

  Tiago and Rafa took up a position just inside the ruined front door while Mateus checked on the security guards. One of the TVs was still alive. The man groaned when Mateus prodded him with the steel-tipped toes of his Timbo boots.

  "Help me," the man croaked. The words gurgled up in a feeble whisper. "Please. Can't move my legs."

  Mateus dropped into a crouch next to him. "Easy, bro. You're gonna be all right. Medivac is on the way. What we need to do now is help everyone we can. Understand?"

  The dude managed a strangled grunt. Despite the puddle of blood under the back of his head, he was hanging in there. A real trouper.

  Self-preservation. It kicked ass on faith every time; didn't matter how religious you thought you were. Most of the time, it was the whole goddamned reason for faith. People didn't want to die when they died.

  "Think you can answer a couple questions?" Mateus asked.

  The dude blinked.

  "Good." Mateus glanced toward the front of the lobby. He couldn't see the smob through the smoke. Which meant that he couldn't be seen. He turned back to the injured guard. "How many people in the building?"

  "Hundred." The dude winced. "Women... mostly." "Where?"

  The man closed his eyes.

  Mateus nudged him. "Stay with me, bro. Don't go to sleep. People are countin' on you."

  The man's eyelids fluttered open, the lashes fibril-lating. He was going into shock.

  "They in one particular place?" Mateus said. "Or spread out all over?" He didn't want to search every goddamn room in the place.

  "Top floor... penthouse. Getting ready... to leave."

  "You sure?"

  A labored nod. "Took 'em... up there." The TV swallowed. "Who hit us? You see... anything?"

  "Sorry, man. I was driving by when I heard the shit go down. Got in here fast as I could."

  "We were on... lookout."

  "For who?"

  The TV grimaced and wheezed, sucking wet air. It sounded as if he might have a punctured lung.

  "We got laws," Tiago whispered over his earfeed. "One cruiser here. More on the way."

  That was it, Mateus thought. Time was up. He reached for a nearby piece of sheet metal, ripped from a ventilation duct. The steel was still warm, the edges ragged but sharp.

  The man's gaze followed him, tracking the movement.

  "I'm just gonna make you more comfortable," Mateus said. "Get this shit outta the way."

  A siren wailed in the distance. The guard let his eyes close, as if comforted by the sound.

  Mateus pressed the jagged edge of the sheet metal against the guy's throat, slicing fast and hard through the carotid. He leaned in with his body weight, pinning the guard in place until he stopped struggling.

  Tiago and Rafa joined him as he stood. The sirens were closer and louder, several of them warbling in unison.

  "Where to?" Rafa asked. He glanced nervously in the direction of the approaching sirens.

  "Top floor," Mateus said. The elevator shaft was a burned-out tube of depressurized pneumatics, the walls fire-blackened and sooty as an old chimney flue. "Looks like we're taking the stairs."

  _______

  The stairwell door to the second floor was locked. The first people they met came from above. They appeared dazed as they groped their way down. Muffled sobs echoed off the walls.

  On the way up, Mateus checked the third-floor exit. It was unlocked.

  Shit. No one seemed to be entering the stairwell from the lower levels. But that didn't mean it couldn't happen. There were seven more floors to the penthouse. Short of locking the emergency exits, there was no way to seal off the stairs to keep anybody from entering or leaving.

  Mateus stopped on the landing to the third floor.

  "Go back down to the second-floor landing and watch for her there," he told Rafa. He didn't want Nadice sneaking out behind them. "Meantime we'll check out the rest of the buildi
ng."

  "What you want me to do if I see her?" Rafa asked. He seemed relieved not to be making the climb to the top.

  Mateus tapped one ear. "Holler at us. Then pretend to help her out to the street. We'll hook up with you at the Benzy."

  "What if the po pos or the medicals try to grab her?"

  "They won't. Long as you're helping her out, you'll be doin' them a favor. Free 'em up to concentrate on other things."

  If Nadice was wounded, he thought, the situation could get seriously hulled in a hurry. Fucking EMTs would be over her like flies on shit. They'd want to medivac her ass to the nearest hospital.

  He sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  45

  An enormous weight pressed down on Marta, crushing bone, cramping muscles, twisting joints.

  The pain wasn't entirely hers; some of it belonged to Nadice. Shared neural input. She imagined the quantum-coupled wetronics in her responding to Nadice's injuries. The exact location and type of trauma eluded her, lost in a hazy wash of endorphins.

  The pain was good, Marta told herself. It meant Nadice was alive. It meant they were alive.

  How badly had they been injured? If one of them didn't make it, would the other die?

  It felt that way. Without Nadice, a part of her would cease to exist. It wasn't just the pluglet that joined them, wired them into a shared simultaneity. The baby joined them, knitting bone, nerves, and muscle into something that she couldn't explain, something that lived outside her at the same time it grew inside her.

  _______

  Marta lay on her right side on the floor, buried in loose debris. Her right forearm was pinned. It hurt to breathe. The air burned, triggering a coughing fit that smelled of scorched wood and melted rubber.

  Thick denim jeans and the heavy leather of her jacket had protected her from serious cuts and burns. But something sharp pressed against her right cheek, into bruised and bloody gums. The taste of copper and iron had dried on her tongue. A chorus of muffled voices rose and fell around her.

  "...bleeding..."

  "... punctured, I think..."

  "...over here..."

  The words came and went, louder and then softer, washing over her in swells. She thought of the explosion, the concussion rattling through her, threatening to tear her apart like cheap sheet metal.

  Someone had attacked the hotel with a missile or a bomb. Destroyed the top floor, collapsing the roof.

  She had to move. Get up. She couldn't stay where she was. Not if she wanted to find Nadice.

  Light sifted through gritty lashes. Marta found herself staring at a smooth-curved surface of injection-molded black under cracked and peeling fabric.

  Smart cloth. From one of the helicopters. In places the composite shell had been ripped, revealing the synthetic cartilage of the flexible airframe.

  The copter must have fallen through when the roof collapsed, strewing the restaurant with chunks of concrete, twisted rebar, acoustic ceiling panels, and bituminous asphalt studded with small bits of crushed white gravel.

  Her right forearm was lodged under the tail sec tion of the chopper. She lifted the side of her face from the rubble and looked at the tail. It narrowed, tapering quickly as it disappeared under a snarl of ceiling mullions.

  Marta could barely feel the fingers of her right hand when she tried to make a fist. Her left hand was wedged under her stomach. She dragged it free and shoved at the tail.

  The fuselage refused to budge.

  Pain throbbed in her lower back. Whose pain? Hers or Nadice's? Could Nadice feel the pain of her pinioned forearm?

  Something stirred in her womb. The squishy sensation didn't hurt. But it wasn't pleasant, either.

  "... push..." someone said.

  Not possible, Marta thought. It was too early. The baby would be premature. It would never survive.

  The tail section shifted slightly, rising a couple of centimeters before settling back into place. Three or four of the acoustic panels leaning against it dislodged. They fell in a heap on Marta's head.

  "Harder," the voice exhorted.

  The tail section rocked sideways half a meter, held aloft by muffled groans. In the sudden absence of weight, Marta rolled onto her back, dragging the weight of her right arm after her. More rubble cascaded onto the floor. Dust mixed with smoke powdered her face.

  She blinked at the grit. Her right forearm throbbed, then prickled, as it came back to life.

  A fissure of watery light appeared less than a meter in front of her. Clenching her jaw, she crawled toward it on her stomach and elbows. She kicked, shoving debris aside until she wriggled free of twisted sheet metal, clutching wires, and charred lichenboard.

  Above her, through the tangled thicket of rebar, pipes, and joists, Marta could see thick cotton-batting fog. Portable LED lanterns and flashlights tented the interior gloom, pushing it aside.

  "That's it," the voice said. "Easy now."

  The man sounded like Jeremy. He wasn't talking to her, but to the ragtag collection of people pulling someone else from beneath the mangled helicopter, clearing space on the floor.

  They didn't know about her yet. How many other people were still buried—still undiscovered, waiting for help?

  Sirens pierced the air, attenuated by a fitful salt-laden breeze that swirled through the hole in the roof and the windowless frames where the graphene panes had blown out.

  "This way!" another voice kept saying. "Over here!"

  She watched a flashlight beam wobble around a doorway with an EXITsign above it. People who were well enough to walk on their own migrated toward the door, singly or in groups. Through the emergency exit, Marta could see the steady, beckoning glow of a stairwell.

  Nadice was still there. She wouldn't leave, not without her, the same way Marta wouldn't leave. The certainty felt hardwired into her; it circulated through her with each heartbeat, as real and nourishing as her own blood.

  Next to her, a blackened slab of concrete angled up from the floor to the roof at a forty-five-degree angle. Grabbing an exposed length of rebar sticking out from one edge, Marta hauled herself to her feet. She stood, gripping the bent, ribbed bar, and took a lungful of air.

  Other than her mouth and nose, she didn't seem to be bleeding. Her right wrist ached. Swollen. Cracked maybe, but not broken. No bones poked through the skin. Movement had returned to her fingers, but no strength. Marta curled them, managing a weak, trembling fist.

  Across the room, Jeremy shined a light on the face of the woman lying motionless on the varnished wood. The woman was dead. Dull eyes, blood-matted hair.

  Marta staggered away from the collapsed section of roof—lost her balance... recovered.

  Voices, mixed with sobbing groans, orbited around her. The sound left her dizzy, disoriented. She clamped her hands over her ears. But the noise refused to go away. It continued to spin inside her head.

  A hand caught her by the shoulder.

  "There you are! Thank God!"

  Marta turned. The hand left her shoulder, fluttering to the side of her face.

  "I've been looking for you everywhere," Nadice said. "I couldn't find you." The whites of her eyes burned phosphor bright. "I thought you were... I thought maybe you didn't make it."

  Marta drew Nadice to her, leaning against her for support. "You would've known."

  Nadice touched her arms, shoulders, and face. "Are you okay? Can you walk?"

  "I think so."

  "We need to get out of here," Nadice said. She cut aglance at the sagging ceiling. "Before the rest of the roof caves in."

  Marta nodded. When she stepped back from Nadice, the hem of her shirt was wet with blood.

  "It's not mine." Nadice shivered in the fog. "I've been helping people. Trying to get them out of here."

  "You're cold," Marta said. She slipped off her jacket and threw it over Nadice's shoulders.

  "What about you?" Nadice went to shrug off the leather jacket. "You don't have anything—"


  "I'm not in a dress," Marta said, "and I'm not wet. You need it more than me right now."

  Nadice nodded. With Marta's help, she slipped her arms into the rainbow-lined sleeves of the jacket and drew it around her.

  "We should look for casualties," Marta said. "In the debris."

  "There are paramedics on the way," Nadice told her. "Rescue workers. The best thing we can do is get out."

  She was right. They'd only be in the way. The sirens were loud now, close to the hotel. And she could see the approaching floodlight from a rescue helicopter, sweeping along the seawall. Fog swirled in the glare, wraithlike.

  "All right," Marta agreed. They headed for the crowded exit. "How come we're all going out this way?" she asked. "There has to be another stairwell."

  "All of the other exits are blocked," Nadice said, "including the outside terraces. A bunch of women tried to go down them and had to come back after a few floors."

  "What the hell happened?"

  "God knows," she said, shaking her head. "The elevator's not working, either. No one can get in touch with the front desk or security."

  Great. They weren't going anywhere fast, and ad no idea what they'd find when they got to the bottom.

  Their descent down the stairwell was slow going. People coaxed each other along with reassuring whispers and fleeting hand squeezes.

  There was no philm on the walls, just bare concrete, devoid even of acoustic tile. The light came from emergency biochem strips taped to the walls, and the EXITsigns at each landing.

  "She's here." The voice drifted up from a couple of flights down. "Jus' 'cause we ain't seen her yet don't mean shit." It was a man's voice. "We get to the top, I want you guarding the door. Understand?"

  Nadice froze.

  The woman behind Marta bumped into them. Marta stepped aside, pulling Nadice with her, so the others behind them could pass. She put her mouth close to Nadice's ear. "What is it?"

  "Mateus," Nadice whispered.

  "Who?"

  "The guy I was working for."

  "As a mule? The one who's looking for you?"

  Nadice nodded, then bit her lower lip, sudden resolve overriding her panic. "We have to go back."

  "We can't just turn—"