2xs

by Nigel Findley

  If Buddy's death was the price for that bit of information, it was one hell of a price to pay. Lolita, Naomi, and now Buddy. How many more? How many more friends was I going to kill?

  Then I pushed that self-pitying drek out of my mind. I couldn't afford to become a -basket case over such thoughts, not with X or maybe Scott Keith so ready to relieve me of the burden of my existence. And with me gone, who would even the score with the killer or killers? No matter how much I hurt inside, I had to keep on top of things.

  It was time to review what I knew-or thought I knew. I figured I'd confirmed my suspicion that Corbeau's decision to pull Keith off Yamatetsu wasn't a case of typical corruption. Yamatetsu, through its wholly owned subsidiary Crashcart, had installed 2XS or something very much like it in Corbeau's new leg.

  They'd then used that additional circuitry as a lever, either threatening to turn it off or simply by playing on the debilitation effect of 2XS. I didn't know which, but it didn't much matter. Corbeau had buckled, and Yamatetsu was safe. They thought.

  So what was Yamatetsu/Crashcart's real goal in all of this? Not just a cheap-and-dirty field test of their SPISES technology, as Bent and I had discussed. If that was all, they probably wouldn't have chosen such high-profile subjects as Corbeau and Daniel Waters. No, the way it looked, they had something much bigger in mind.

  They must have set things up so that people in power would volunteer themselves freely into Yamatetsu clinics-hence the vigor of Crashcart's marketing thrust. And then they just sat back and waited for the movers and shakers to get fragged up so that as many powerful people as possible could be loaded with twisted circuitry. (Or maybe they didn't wait. I was suddenly wondering exactly how Corbeau's car happened to veer off the road. A sniper's rifle bullet into a tire, perhaps?)

  This was serious fragging drek. I'd been thinking conspiracies before, but these new possibilities dwarfed my initial hunches. Frightening or not, though, my theory hung together too well, I couldn't punch holes into any of its logic. I figured I'd finally got it chipped. (But wasn't that what I'd said a day ago?) All right, so what was the next step? Got me, chummer, I was way out of my depth, and too scared to think straight. I needed help.

  One of the advantages of the dossing arrangement was that Jocasta was around at moments like this.

  After trying to cheer me up over Buddy's death, she'd drifted away to give me the time to wrestle my demons. At the moment she was reading the telecom screen. When I looked over her shoulder, I saw it was something called the Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America. Sounded like pleasant light reading to me.

  "Got a couple of ticks?" I asked.

  She flagged her spot, and smiled at me. "Ready to talk?"

  I talked, all right. I talked her through everything: Scott Keith's disturbing phone call, the assault on Crash-cart's system, what little I had learned about Mariane Corbeau. Mainly, though, I concentrated on my logical construct: The Yamatetsu Plan, reconstructed by one Derek Montgomery, Esquire.

  Jocasta was a good listener. Her rare question was always to the point, and from the look on her face she often seemed one step ahead of my narrative on the logical connections. When I was done, she pursed her lips into a silent whistle. "I thought private investigators investigate divorce cases," she said with a sly smile, "not corporate plans to take over a fragging city. Today Seattle, tomorrow the world."

  "That's what it sounds like, doesn't it?"

  Her smile died suddenly. "Yes, it does," she said slowly. "And that bothers me. It's too ... too ..."

  "Manga?" I suggested, naming the blood-and-guts style of Japanese adult comic books that had survived, almost unchanged, into the current decade.

  "Too manga," she agreed. "Too overblown, with no logic behind it. The facts are there," she added hastily to cut off my objection, "and they do hang together the way you described them. But I can't see what Yamatetsu gets out of it."

  "Maybe they want to take over the government of Seattle," I suggested.

  She shook her head. "Corps don't want to take the place of government," she said. "After the Chaos, the corps had the chance to become governments. With most standard civilian governments in ruins, the corps could have just walked in and taken over. But they didn't."

  "Why not?"

  "Too much responsibility," she said with a smile. "You become the government, you've got to handle the drek governments have to handle. Social programs, maintaining the infrastructure . . . negotiating contracts with the garbage collection company, for god's sake. Too much work. Remember, corps are officially extraterritorial. To a great extent they can do whatever the frag they want, particularly one as big as Yamatetsu. They prefer to remain being the power behind the thrones, so to speak." She shook her head again. "The costs outweigh the benefits. We're missing something here."

  "Missing what?" I demanded. "They did drop drek into Daniel Waters, and it sure as frag looks like they did the same thing to Corbeau."

  "I know. I just don't think it's a power grab."

  "Then why?"

  She thought about that for a moment. "Protection, maybe?" she said quietly. "Or maybe pragmatism. Corbeau's good to have on your side in case you have to deflect Lone Star's attention. Waters is good in case you have to deflect public attention." She shrugged. "I don't really know. I just think we're missing something."

  "So where do we go from here?" I asked after a pause. "What's the next step?"

  "Well," she said slowly, "I think . . ."

  I never did hear what she thought. At that instant, there was a knock on the door, and simultaneously a figure blinked into existence in front of us. Fair-haired and willowy, it was Amanda. "Don't worry," she said with a smile. "It's Rodney at the door. Do you want me to let him in?"

  "I'll do it," I said hurriedly, jumping to my feet. The apartment had a security system almost good enough to rival the one I had in Auburn. I used it to scope the hallway outside the front door. Yes, it was Rodney, and he was alone.

  "Told you," Amanda's voice whispered directly into my ear, even though her body was standing across the room with Jocasta.

  I opened the door, beckoned Rodney in, and locked up behind him.

  "I trust I'm not interrupting," he said by way of greeting. "I probably should have called first, but I don't particularly like phones."

  "No, you're not interrupting anything," I told him. "What's going down?"

  "Well, this." He reached into the small synthleather carry-bag slung over one shoulder, pulled out the silver bracer I'd given him. I noticed he wasn't touching it with his bare hand, instead, he was holding it in a fine, silky cloth that seemed to glimmer with its own faint light. I didn't think I liked this. "I found out what I could. More than I cared to, actually."

  Jocasta joined us quickly. She reached out as if to take the silver band from Rodney, then seemed to think better of it and dropped her hand. "What is it?" she asked quietly.

  "May I sit down first?" the elf inquired. "I'm quite exhausted. And could I trouble you for a drink?"

  "Tea?" I suggested. "Gin," he shot back.

  It was a couple of minutes before we were all settled down around the apartment's low coffee table.

  Grey-briar's face did look a little pale, and his eyes somewhat sunken as though he was running on reserves. The first sip of gin seemed to revive him, however. He set the bracer, still partially wrapped in the gauzy cloth, in the center of the table.

  "It's shamanic, as we suspected," he began, "but I was unable to sense any connection between it and any of the conventional totems to which shamans dedicate themselves. There is a connection, though, and a very strong one at that, but it's to an entity that's shows nothing I am familiar with."

  I glanced over at Jocasta, who was nodding slowly. I remembered how she'd described it-"a power focus, but 'out of true.' " Rodney was saying exactly the same thing, but using different words. "So you don't know what it is," I said.

  "I didn't," Rodney corrected, "not at first. But I discussed
it with some others, specifically people who follow the way of the shaman and who know more about such matters. The person who was the most help was a chap called Man-of-Many-Names. He seemed to recognize it the moment he assensed it." The elf frowned a little. "He didn't seem to want to tell me about it, either."

  "But you convinced him," Jocasta said. "Eventually," Greybriar admitted. "He talked about something that didn't mean that much to me-insect totems. Honestly, I didn't think these were such things." He looked questioningly at Jocasta, but she just shrugged. "In any case, Many-Names described this as a 'totem-specific power focus-something else I didn't know existed-bonded to the totem figure Wasp." I raised an eyebrow. "That's it?"

  "Well, he also suggested I not trifle with it myself."

  "Is that why you're so tired?" Jocasta asked. "You did 'trifle' with it, didn't you?"

  The elf flashed an embarrassed smile. "I've always been a curious soul," he confessed. "I tried to explore the nature of its bond to its totem figure. On the astral plane, this thing"- he pointed at the bracer-"has more power than I have ever seen poured into anything. Trying to examine it was like, well, trying to examine a tornado with your bare hands. I have to admit that the effort drained me more than I would have expected."

  "Did you learn anything else?" Jocasta asked.

  "Not really, no," Rodney conceded. "Other than the fact that I did not want to spend any more time with it than I had to."

  "So you brought it here," I said. "But what does it all mean?"

  "Actually, I haven't the foggiest idea," the elf said. "Does it have to mean anything in the bigger scheme of things? Perhaps the shaman sent to, um, erase you just happens to be a twisted bugger who follows Wasp. From what Many-Names said, shamans who follow insect totems are nasty bleeders, perhaps just the kind who'd relish hit-for-credit wetwork."

  I nodded slowly. Intellectually, that was a possibility, but it didn't sit well with my gut. Paranoia really seemed to be getting the better of me, but that might not be such a bad thing anymore. "Maybe," I said.

  "Thanks for the help, I appreciate it."

  "You're more than welcome," he said. " It seems.. ."

  "Contact!" The voice was Amanda's, the word one that had been drummed into us throughout Lone Star training. "Contact" means bad drek going down right fragging now. Without even thinking I rolled aside, reaching automatically for where my pistol would be if I'd been wearing my duster.

  Something tore through the air, just where my skull had been an instant before. I rolled again, kept on rolling. As I did, I caught a quick impression of a hideous figure, bipedal but definitely neither human nor metahuman. It seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, squatting obscenely on the couch where I'd been sitting. It opened a mouth filled with needle teeth, and screamed. I didn't see any more as I all-foured it across the floor to where I'd left my Manhunter. Behind me I heard gunshots-a light pistol, probably Jocasta's Colt-but I didn't waste time looking. I'd be no good to her until I had that gun in my hand. Plus, I knew she was as much of a survivor as I was, despite all her fears to the contrary.

  I grabbed the duster off the chair, dragged it to the floor. I rolled again, in case someone/thing was drawing a bead on my back, hauled out the gun as I did so, and came up into a combat crouch. The thing whatever it was, was advancing on Jocasta, while she fired round after round from her small Colt into its expanse of chest. Rodney, looking even more pale and drawn, was declaiming something in a weird language-something that sounded like, "In hoc signo, vincavi ad munditia"-and a harsh, brittle glow was building around his right hand. Amanda was nowhere in sight.

  I brought the heavy Manhunter to bear, sighting it in on where the creature's ear would be had it been a man. For an instant I allowed myself to notice its grotesque appearance. It was tall, angular, with long limbs that seemed jointed wrong-or perhaps they had an additional joint. Its head was deformed, bulbous, dominated by two huge, multi-faceted eyes colored the yellow-white of pus. Spines and things that could be antennae sprouted from above those eyes, while the skull narrowed until its lower half was all mouth. The thing opened its mouth to shriek again, and I saw a tongue-short, black, and pointed-lashing around within its maw. As the creature reached for Jocasta with thin hands that had only three fingers each, each tipped with a claw as long as my thumb, she responded by pumping another round full into its chest. I heard the bullet strike home-a crack like breaking plastic-and saw fragments scatter from the point of impact. The thing had a shell, I realized with horror, or something more like an exoskeleton-natural armor.

  Of course, I didn't take the time right then to catalog all those impressions. Analysis came later, at the moment I was just recording all sensory impressions, like a camera would. My gun came to bear, the ruby spot of my sighting laser settling on the side of the thing's misshapen head. I pulled the trigger again and again, riding the punishing recoil, keeping the barrel on line. In the confines of the apartment, the booming concussions of the Manhunter were like physical blows to my ears.

  The monstrosity was inhumanly fast. The flare of my sighting laser must have given it the split instant it needed to react. Instead of drilling into the center of its skull, my first round smashed a chunk off the back of the creature's head as it ducked forward. A hideous wound, but apparently not mortal. My follow-up shots plowed into the jutting shoulder the thing had raised to screen its head. The heavy rounds pulverized the creature's exoskeleton, splattering green-black slime onto the carpet, but I knew that neither I nor Jocasta had placed a killing shot yet. Her Colt was clicking empty, and I was down half a clip. How the frag would you kill this thing? A particularly relevant question, considering that I seemed to have attracted its attention and it was turning my way. I burned the rest of the clip into its torso as it crouched to spring.

  My fire chewed great holes into its natural armor, but didn't seem to slot up anything critical. I looked behind me for some kind of cover. Nothing.

  "Rodney! Do it!" It was Jocasta's voice, but the thought was mine.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the curly-haired elf complete his preparations. He stabbed his right hand out toward the horror, yelled something that sounded like "Esse!" I felt more than saw something burst from his extended ringer, barely visible like a Shockwave in still air. It hurtled across the room, slammed into the monster .. .

  With an impact like a speeding car. The thing was smashed from its feet, and I heard the crunch as its chest and head were staved in. It reeled back into the wall, spouting black goo from a dozen wounds.

  Screeched once, a despairing, bubbling noise, then collapsed to the floor.

  Jocasta shoved her gun into her belt, dashed across the room to Rodney. The elf had dropped to his knees, his skin ashen, face slack with exhaustion, his body soaked with perspiration. He raised his head as Jocasta steadied him, but I didn't think he could bring his eyes to focus on her face. "Is it dead?" he asked in a hollow voice. I looked back at what was left of the creature to make sure. And that was the only reason I saw the air shimmer as another one of the things took shape hi the corner. "Jocasta!" I yelled. As she spun in horror, I ejected the empty clip from my Manhunter, slammed another one into place without taking my eyes off the new visitor. It was between us and the windows. I'd locked the door, which meant I'd have to unlock it before we could escape that way, and I didn't think the thing would give us that time. There was no useful cover. Throwing the last spell had obviously trashed Rodney out but good. And our bullets didn't seem to do more than slot the thing off.

  The creature was advancing slowly on Jocasta and Rodney-cautiously, as though it wasn't quite sure which of the two had geeked its fellow. "Get away from them, you lousy fragger!" I yelled, bringing my gun up fast.

  The monster turned my way, took two terrifyingly fast steps across the room toward me. And that's when I pumped three rounds into its left eye.

  The sheer impact of the bullets snapped its head back. The multifaceted eye itself burst in a spray of crystal
line fragments and caustic liquid. It screamed its agony to the sky, its arms flailing wildly, and I burned the rest of my clip into its belly just for good measure. It screamed again.

  But it didn't fall. I couldn't believe it: three rounds through its eye into its braincase-assuming the head was where it kept its brain-another twelve into its guts at point-blank range. Anything normal would be busy expiring messily. It screamed a third time, and I swore I could feel the force of its will as- it struggled to control its pain. It turned its single remaining eye on me, and took another step forward.

  I spun away, dropping my empty Manhunter, picked up a chair and swung it at the creature like a club.

  It blocked the swing with an arm, a move that would have cost a human a broken wrist, but seemed not to hurt it at all. Then it tore the weapon from my grip with its other hand, hurling it against the wall. I stepped back, although I knew in my gut there was nowhere to go. It swung at me with its claw-tipped hand, and missed wildly-probably lack of depth perception because of missing an eye, but I was sure it wouldn't make the same mistake twice. I ducked away again, looking for something- anything to hide behind. Nothing. I knew it was maneuvering me into a corner, but I couldn't do anything about it.

  "Get out of here," I shouted to Jocasta and Rodney. If this thing was going to rip my guts out, there was no reason it should cost them their lives, too. "Go, frag you!"

  Of course they didn't. Jocasta was firing into its back, though I don't know what good she thought her little Colt could do if my fragging Manhunter didn't drop it. Rodney, the idiot, was trying to put together another spell, muttering to himself in Latin, though he knew the effort would probably kill him. Drekheads!