His guards closed ranks in front of him, advancing and pulling stubby batons out of their vests. I could hear a slight crackle as they switched them on.
Don't let them hit you— Kate began.
I didn't need the warning.
Greg's bodyguards didn't bother ordering me to surrender, asking me to go with them. Instead, the first to reach me thrust his baton towards my chest.
I ducked under his arm and pivoted to the outside, punching up into his armpit as I passed.
He howled and clutched at his arm, and I yanked his jacket to pull him off-center and into the path of the next bodyguard's attack.
The second guard's baton struck the first with a crackle.
Guard One went stiff as a board, neck straining, eyes rolling back.
I braced my back against the rail over the solarium and kicked him with both feet, shoving him into the man who'd hit him.
The third security officer had reached me and, more deliberately, swung his baton towards my midsection.
I rolled backwards over the rail behind me, dropping into the solarium, landing on the hood of the Flint. I slid to the ground, knowing without looking that security was heading to the stairs to cut me off, knowing that they were radioing any other officers to look out for me.
I'd have to be fast.
You'll have to be lucky.
That too.
***
The gun was in my hand and I was firing it into the ceiling before I realized what my plan was. "Run!"
That sent the gawking socialites and slack jawed serving crew into a panic as they stumbled over and past one another out of the solarium in an attempt to get away from the crazed gunwoman.
I ran the other way, through a short hall back to the kitchen. Something heavy came out of my blind-spot, a security guard barreling into me, slamming me against the kitchen's enormous stainless steel fridge with enough force to knock the pistol from my hand.
I groaned and my vision swam, not the least because of the injuries I'd sustained earlier, and shoved back against him. I felt, rather than saw, him trying to free the baton from his vest, and caught his wrist in my hand.
"Give it up!" he shouted, trying to bear me to the ground.
I didn't waste breath responding, slipping to the floor beneath him faster than he was prepared for. He fell to one knee, and I grabbed his baton below the contact point, using it and the grip I had on his wrist to drive its charged tip into his sternum.
He grunted and went slack.
I slipped out from under his bulk, climbed up onto the sink and kicked out the window before escaping into the back yard.
***
Greg had been like a grandfather to me.
Not like my own grandfather, a workaholic who'd put himself in the grave before I was born, but the kind you see on television and in the movies. Patient. Kind. Homey. Wholesome. He'd invite me up to his estate on the weekend between client events, a fresh-faced kid right out of college, for smaller gatherings, for barbecues, for informal weekends. He'd teach me what he knew about handling clients, about the business, but mostly, he was just there for a scared girl on her own in the big city for the first time.
For almost half a decade, he was the grandfather I'd never had.
That's why this betrayal stung so deeply. That's why I couldn't just kill him from hiding and let it go.
One time he'd called me out to his place to discuss our plan for an upcoming conference, and I'd found him out in a boathouse on the river running behind his property. He was there, dozing and "fishing", and we'd shared a beer while he told me stories about his family's history at the estate, about how his great-grandfather had used the river to bootleg down from Canada.
It was here that I found him, desperately trying to un-moor the bowrider at his dock. It was like me, it was like him, sleek and sporty in its day, now a relic easily outpaced by newer models.
Or so I assumed. I wasn't into boats. "Running to Canada, Greg?"
He turned and fired, the pistol in his hand shooting flame and pain and death. I hadn't expected that.
Kate had, and she spun us away, throwing us to the ground.
I was the one who launched us back up almost as quickly, the one who grabbed Greg by the collar, the one who drove the heel of her fist into his nose, the one who fell with him into the cold cold water.
It wasn't too deep, here, and my heels touched the riverbed, but I drove him down, pressing him back against the stones below.
Kill him! Kate urged.
Not yet.
I let him struggle a moment before I hauled him to the surface in the water that, standing, came up to our shoulders.
"Why?" I demanded. "Why are you trying to kill me?"
He shook his head, eyes shut, sputtering blood and water. "Let go! Just let it go!"
I dunked him again, holding fast against his struggles. Greg wasn't a strong man, but the Erica-Who-Was wouldn't have been strong enough to hold him under, physically or mentally.
I pulled him up for air. "Tell me!"
"Let me go!" he gasped. "I'll leave you alone, I swear! Just don't kill me!"
My lips drew back from clenched teeth. "Tell me why!"
"You know why!"
I started to lower him again.
"Wait! Wait wait!"
"Talk!"
"Curoxetine!"
"What about it?"
He blinked, his voice growing still. "You really don't remember? Oh God, Erica, I'm so sorry, you don't remember!"
I slapped him across the face, then grabbed him by the throat. "I don't want your apologies. I just want the truth! What is this all about?"
"You..." he inhaled. "You found out. About Curoxetine."
"I told you, I don't know about—"
"Ten years ago! Before you disappeared."
"I don't remember."
"I believe you! It's not too late. Just—"
I gave him a hard shake. Harder than necessary.
"Okay. Okay! Curoxetine was our new anti-depressant. But we found that in higher doses it helped people focus—"
That I remembered. "We marketed it as a safe productivity drug. Strong as Adderall, safer than caffeine."
"That was the copy... but it wasn't safe. Not by a long shot. Not in the doses we were packaging it, and the FDA had already approved Curoxetine, so there was no need for further testing—"
"What happened?"
"Nothing at first." His voice dropped to a whisper. "At first it was great. Nothing but rave reviews and record-breaking profits. But then the reports started coming in... difficulty sleeping, hyperfocus, delirium, memory loss, and ultimately sporadic fatal insomnia."
"Fatal insomnia..."
His voice was a whisper. "You can't sleep. Ever. It's a slow descent into madness that eventually leads to the worst death imaginable."
Oh my god. "How many people?"
"I don't remember exact figures—"
"How many, Greg!"
"Hundreds!" He sobbed. "Before we knew what was happening, before we decided it was time to pull the plug. And then you stumbled across our internal reports... you were going to go public! All of our work... it would have been the end of Septopharma!"
I could feel Kate raging, pushing against my limits, demanding to be let out to kill him. It was tempting. With the last of my resistance I let words tumble from my lips. "So you... so it's your fault. You're the reason I don't remember anything."
"What? No, that—"
"What did you do to me?" Kate and I demanded with one voice. "Did you dope me up with Curoxetine? Enough to fuck up my brain?"
"Nothing!" Greg was desperate. "You vanished! We were... I was going to try to reason with you one last time before... but you just vanished. Oh god, Erica, I'm so sorry..."
More bullshit. My hand tightened on his throat.
Kate stopped me. He's telling the truth.
What?
About not knowing. Don't know about the rest, but he's being honest a
bout that.
I could hear sirens in the distance. "Who else knew? About Curoxetine?"
"Just me. And Fleischman. But he went down for Tax Evasion a few years later, died in prison."
"Was Fleischman behind what happened to me?"
"I don't know." He shook his head. "Dear god, Erica, I'm sorry, I don't know. I don't think so. If he was, he never said anything to me about it."
Another dead end.
What now? Kate asked. It was a good question.
"I could kill you," I whispered to Greg. "You deserve it."
"No," he said. "Please. Don't."
"Any time." I let a little Kate out. "Any time I can find you. I can end you. I can make it hurt before you go."
"Please..."
"You know I'm telling the truth. That I can find you anywhere. That you can't hide from me. And you know you deserve it."
"Yes," he nodded. "Please. Just don't."
"You have once chance at clemency," I said. "One stab at redemption."
"Anything. Please."
"Confess."
"What?" He looked confused. "I just told you—"
"Not to me. To the world. Tell them about Curoxetine. About what you did. About your role. Fleischman's. Septopharma's. And you do it soon. Tonight. Because if you don't? In 36 hours I'm coming for you, and this time you won't even see me."
"Anything." He closed his eyes. "Anything you want."
"I just want to be left alone."
I left him there, like that, weeping alone in the river.
CHAPTER 32: WEDNESDAY
"Are you okay?" Scott asked.
The question startled me, brought me back to his office, to the present. "What?"
"You're being very quiet. Pensive."
"Just a lot on my mind," I said. "You know."
***
Greg had worked fast. I was on the train back down from the suburbs, half-asleep, half-dead, when his voice came to me through the monitor on the back of the seat in front of me. He was on the news — on of Chicago's local feeds, a popular one, and from the video out in front of his estate there were journalists from a lot of different syndicates covering him.
"Ten years ago, I betrayed my industry. I betrayed the people I worked for. I betrayed my company and our investors." His face was streaked with tears, and he hadn't bothered changing out of the outfit I'd dunked him into the river in. "Under my direction, Septapharma perpetuated a lethal fraud through our suppression of the truth regarding the drug Curoxetine."
A small info box popped up on the screen, alluding to urban legends tying the drug to a spate of hospitalizations and deaths between 2017 and 2020.
"We knew," Greg said. "I knew. And we kept pushing it. Kept marketing it."
"Why are you coming clean about this now?" someone asked.
Greg faced the camera dead-on, and I knew his next words were meant for me. "Do you have any idea what it's like? To live with something like this? To carry its stain upon your soul for so long?"
And that was it. He didn't mention me, any other conspirators, not even mentioning Fleischman. Maybe he was still feeling loyal. Maybe he was trying to do penance.
I didn't know.
I didn't care. He was going to prison, there were no hit-men coming after me, and I could finally try to get on with my life.
***
"It can be rough," Scott's words brought me out of my memories. He was as understanding as he could be. I didn't blame him for not really getting it, because there were a lot of things I couldn't tell him. Like the fact that I'd started to supplement my income with black market stem-cells, or that I'd hired the local gang to serve as my eyes and ears. "How's the job search going?"
"As well as can be expected," I said.
"You need to go to one of the upcoming workshops in March," he said. "Or the government cuts off your credit allowance."
"I'll go."
"I can set you up an appointment now."
I sighed. "No, I'll do it when I have the time to pick a date."
"Don't let this slip by you. I know how easy it is."
"I'll do it."
"Good."
"How are this month's credits holding out?"
"Fine." They were all gone. I'd burned through them fast.
"I can lend you—"
"No, I'm good."
"I'm impressed." He sounded it. "Most people struggle on allotments a lot higher than yours."
I grinned. "I'm frugal, what can I say."
He grinned back. God he was cute.
"How's everything else going for you?" He asked.
"It's... I'm getting by. Day by day." Kate had, now that the danger had passed, quieted down, returning to somnolence in my psyche, making herself known now and again by urging me not to walk down a dangerous alley or an impulse to buy a weapon at random.
"No more problems at your Block?"
"No." I'd called Ruamano to come pick me up after leaving Matthews', and, well, word got around. Even Punga was impressed that I'd managed to crash Greg's party and force a confession out of him. Te Aware respected that I could hold my own and get back at those who'd wronged me.
"Sounds like it's all coming together. Is there anything else I can help you with? Anything else you need?"
What I needed now was direction. I'd finally achieved a sense of stability in this new world, in this future, enough that I could catch my breath. So many people in my situation — poor, without prospects, without hope — seem content with just getting by. Work, come home, television, sleep. In a way, that was the path I'd been on in 2015. I might have had more stability, but I had no more purpose. My career, the center of my life, was an end to itself.
Now I needed more. Maybe a new career. Maybe a new way of life. I didn't know, but I did know that I couldn't be passive about it. I couldn't just... let things happen. If Kate had taught me anything, it was that you can have what you want in life, if you're only willing to make it happen.
I guess that's the tricky part. Knowing what you want. Making the choice to go after it.
"I'll be okay," I said, flashing Scott a smile. And you know what? I think I believed it.
Now that she's settled in...
Letting go of the past wasn't easy, but Erica is finally ready to face the realities of poverty in the 2020s. Still, she can't do it alone — to make it in the harsh world of the future, she'll need friends. Allies. A community. In Network Protocol, Erica learns that the enemy of my friend is my enemy when she takes up the struggles of those she cares for against a city that seems dead set against them. As if she didn't have enough troubles to keep her busy.
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About the Author
MICHAEL COORLIM went from being homeless to being a full-time science fiction author writing strange stories for stranger people. He's written both the extensive steampunk Galvanic Century series, and the near-future techn
othriller series Shadow Decade.
In his spare time he produces audio drama serials for Burning Brigid Media's podcast Synesthesia Theatre, and develops role-playing supplements for Taoscordian Games.
Cold Reboot (Shadow Decade Book 1) Page 17