B-spine

by Cam Winstanley

  “Just scare him,” she says. “My annual assessments highlight my disposition towards unfriendly behavior. Let’s see if I can make it work for me.”

  “Cooper’s holding onto the bolt cutters you asked for,” says Hemblen. “We’re all a bit weirded out what you’re going to do with those.”

  She smiles weakly. “Leave me to run through my act in there and you’ll find out soon enough…”

  The Changs flinch as the Fedtech comes in and bangs her pistol down on the kitchen table. She leans over and helps herself to his daughter’s milk and cookies and it churns Chang inside that he’s powerless to stop her stealing his kid’s food.

  “You know what we’re standing in, don’t you?” she says between munches and Chang’s searching for something to say before he realizes she’s talking to the soldiers. “Professor Jeff Chang here works for M4 and a perk of the job is he gets to live in a genuine house of the future. Isn’t that right Jeff? Self-regulating, self-maintaining, self-cleaning even.” She crumbles a cookie onto the floor in oaty chunks. Everyone looks down. Nothing happens. “Well,” she shrugs, “maybe that takes a while.”

  Chang wonders how they got in the Clave. He wonders if they’ve killed already tonight. “I explained this at the door, Officer. These residences are part of an ongoing field trial. Call Citadel and they’ll confirm that there’s nothing illegal here…”

  “Hey Maz,” the Fedtech continues. “Feel that radiator next to you. It’s soft isn’t it?”

  “Wow yeah,” says the soldier. “Warm and squishy… kinda like leather.”

  “That’s because the Changs live in an integrated wetware domicile,” says the Fedtech. “Normal Boilers heat warm water that’s pumped round pipes but this circulates its own blood through implanted arteries. See those lumps where the tubes join the radiator? That’s bone calcification. Saw through the join and you can read the age of the house like tree rings. How old’s your house, Jeff? Three years? Four?”

  “Five,” says Chang. “Look, I…”

  “It’s growing, you see. Repairing itself as it bonds ever tighter to the frame of the house. The roof’s a living dermal cover that never needs re-tiling because it heals. Temperature, airflow, ambient lighting, all are moderated by muscular sphincters that pucker up or expand out. Jeff calls it symbiosis, right? Without the wetware, the house is a drafty shell. Without the house, the wetware’s a gross pile of chopped-together animal part strung together by miles of vascularity. That a fair description?”

  “All aspects of these systems are on-record with Federal authorities, Officer. I don’t see why you feel the need to burst in with weapons and…”

  She squints at him meanly. “I bet you all drink fresh fresh water, don’t you? Not like us suckers outside the Claves, gagging on a polluted ration that drops year after year. I bet every drop goes through twenty sets of tank-cultured kidneys that piss the city supply clean before you drink it. I bet your whole garden’s clay-lined so your water never has to mix with the outside world’s. Am I right?”

  Chang licks his lips that are suddenly uncomfortably dry. “You know a lot about my work,” he says.

  “One call to the right person and I knew all about you, Jeff,” she nods. “I know your job is to assess the environmental impact of new M4 products in real-world environments. Products like this house. I know your wife’s Linda and your little girl’s Annie. These people I called, they even knew what time I should call to find you all in.”

  He swallows hard. “You still haven’t said why you’re here.”

  “To learn one thing,” she says. “The environmental impact of another new M4 product.”

  “Which one?”

  She grins coldly. “Kenny Sossamon,” she says and Chang knows he’s a dead man. He feels faint, flop-sweat soaking his shirt. She stares at him and traces her finger over the pistol and lets him sit there, his head spinning, his mind racing.

  “Oh, there it is!” she yelps and Chang jumps in his seat. Kirsty points to a tiny flap under the sink and the soldiers peer down as one of the house’s Dusters makes a bee-line for the crumbled cookie she dropped. It looks like a guinea pig because, genetically, it nearly is one. Only the Duster’s hairless, its pink skin pigmented with mustard zebra-stripes to form warning chevrons. It waddles over to recover the crumbs because that’s all it knows how to do.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” grins Kirsty as the Duster stops by her chair. “A self-cleaning house. Did you design the Duster, Jeff?”

  He thinks he might throw up. “Just some primary priodiversal generation maps. But what does that have to do…” He jumps again as the Fedtech grabs the pistol up off the table, points it down and blows the Duster away point-blank. The bullet drilling the hardwood flooring is louder than the muted clap of the silenced pistol.

  Chang’s little girl stares at the blown apart Duster as it shudders and dies, then she starts screaming. Chang stands bolt upright, more a reflex action than anything and is pushed back down. He turns and glares up at the man in a black ski mask. He turns back to Kirsty. She’s not smiling now.

  “Are you insane?” his voice is high and wavering. “Do you have any idea what will happen when I report you…” He stops as she raises the pistol and points it straight at him. Annie’s scream chokes in her throat. Kirsty swings to the gun off to the side and fires across the kitchen without looking.

  The Jericho coughs once and the leathery hide of the radiator ripples, sending a hot spurt of hyper-oxygenated blood splashing across the milk and cookies on the table. She fires again and again and the house’s lifeblood splashes them all. The house rumbles as the Boiler in the basement senses the wounds and the flesh of the radiator gradually puckers up until the blood trickles down the radiator to pool on the floor. Chang’s family drip silent snot and trembling tears.

  “You want to report me, go right ahead.” She wipes a blood spot off her cheek with her jacket sleeve. “But you see, even though I’m wearing the uniform, I’m not actually on duty. And since M4 destroyed their crew, these guys probably aren’t licensed to run security for me. It’s a legal gray area but right now, we’re pretty much freelancing.”

  “Then I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  She reaches over the table and slaps him in the face. Only once but very, very hard. “No, Jeff. You have to tell us everything. Because we’ve got nothing to lose since Meat4 Power have taken everything already. So wise up and wise up fast. Your house, your job, your whole life as you know it… that’s in the past now. Got it?” Chang’s ear burns from the slap. He’s hot and dizzy.

  “All you can do is save yourself, from M4, from us, from the federal investigation you most definitely will face. You’re just evidence, that’s all you are now. Work with me, tell me about Kenny Sossamon and I’ll file you away safe and sound. Obstruct me though… Coop, give me the cutters.”

  A soldier slams the bolt cutters down on the table, denting it. Long handled, blue-steeled, cantilevered jaws. “Annie there,” says the Fedtech, looking at his little girl. “She’s seven, right?”

  “You leave my daughter alone,” says Chang, slowly and deliberately.

  “If you don’t give full and frank federal disclosure right now, my man Cooper here takes Annie in one hand and the cutters in the other and heads down to your basement.”

  “Please…” tears roll down Chang’s cheeks.

  “He’s going to ziptie Annie to a chair, right next to your fancy big Boiler,” she says. “Then Coop’s going to strip to the waist. Then he’s going to take these bolt cutters to every rib and joint in that livedrive.” She works the action, opening hardened steel jaws. “Imagine that – your little daughter close enough to see and hear every crunch as those big bones bust out of living flesh."

  “Don’t do this” whispers Chang.

  “Now I’m a wetvet, so I know the Boiler will only stand so much trauma and blood loss. I also know that when its heart stops, the whole house will start to drain. And how many years
of therapy do you think Annie will need after we close the basement door and leave her alone in the dark with congealing blood rising up around her legs?”

  “She’s nothing to do with this,” sobs Chang.

  “Neither was my friend Kareem,” she says, “but you know what? A sniper from your corporation shot him in the back.”

  “You can’t do this… not to her.”

  “Can’t I? Think about it. What’s another livedrive to me? And what do I care if a pampered little Clave girl grows up having nightmares? And hold this final thought, Professor Chang – I did bring along my own bolt cutters.” She puts the cutters down and points Slate at him and Chang realizes he’s all out of choices.

  “It’s called Reboot,” he sighs. “We were field-testing it at the nightclub.”

  “You tested it on Sossamon?” she asks.

  “No. It’s a one-shot inhaler that was administered to all the wetware in the club. It’s embedded DNA to promote denser, fast twitch muscle growth.”

  She tries again. “And Sossamon was part of the trial?”

  “No,” he says, angry this time. “Sossamon was a dishwasher. We think he must have been cross-infected by one of the kitchen’s Rebooted livedrives.”

  “Infected through his M4 brand thrilltat?” she asks and Chang nods. “In which case,” she says, “you’ve got a problem with this Reboot inhaler thing. It made Kenny psycho.”

  “Reboot is intended for livedrives of a prescribed weight range. It barely affects livedrives over six hundred pounds. On ones smaller than ten, massive power outputs are negated by catastrophic nerve damage.”

  “Then you’ve still got a problem, because Kenny wasn’t either of those. He was a normal kid, two hundred pounds max.”

  “He still is,” says Change, wiping his nose. “But his thrilltat is four ounces of wetware surgically spliced into his nervous system. How could we have anticipated Reboot reorganizing his entire body? If I hadn’t seen it, I’d never have believed it possible.”

  She can hardly believe it herself. A dishwasher with a new thrilltat caught a cold from a livedrive – that’s all this whole mess boils down to. “Do you have him?” she asks. “Is he still alive?”

  “He was when I left the Citadel this evening,” sniffs Chang. “Tomorrow though? The day after? Who knows?”

  She leaves Chang hugging his sobbing wife and daughter while Crash The Pad ask him to sign forms, draw sketch maps, point at low-pass satellite images and give up door codes. She goes out into his garden and gulps at the cold night air hungrily. She holds her throbbing head and shivers and eventually notices that Hemblen’s followed her out, his ski mask rolled up to his brow and an assault rifle cradled in his elbows as he scans the darkness.

  “That was your big plan?” he asks. “You were going to torture his house until he gave it up?”

  She unscrews the big silver silencer with trembling hands and passes it back to him. “My big plan was to get one of your guys to torture the house,” she says. “I was counting on standing back to keep the blood off my shoes.”

  “All the same, I’m impressed. He’s playing along and no one got hurt.”

  “But I’m going to Hell, Jude. I scared a harmless little girl.”

  He shakes his head. “Unless God loves Dusters, I think your soul’s safe. And Chang told us what you need, right?”

  She sighs. “But it’s still not enough. Without Kenny, M4 can deny everything. Without evidence, I’m still a Fedtech who went rogue and ran off with a bunch of unlicensed gunmen. We’re internal terrorists until we’ve got Kenny.”

  Hemblen looks into the kitchen and gets a thumbs up from Cooper – Chang’s giving up all the intel they want. “Well then,” he says, “That’s the one thing left to do. Let’s go get him.”

  Sunday 23 March

  08:12 am

  HEMBLEN, FOURTEEN OF his guys and Perry the Union rep sweat in silence. It’s hot because the steel shipping container they’re in is supposed to be sealed hazardous material and although they drilled air holes in the roof, they’ve been in there for five hours so things have gotten pretty stale. They’re quiet because Professor Chang authorized the container’s transfer from the Hub to the Citadel, so they’re already inside the target building on the back of an articulated tractor trailer unit. All that’s left to do now is wait and sweat inside their battered, bullet-riddled mercwar armor.

  Perry the Union rep wipes sweat off his nose in the cold green light of glo-sticks. He leans towards Hemblen and whispers. “Jude, I’ve been thinking. While I admire your Trojan-like efficiency at getting in, what’s your exit strategy? What happens if you have to scrub the op?”

  “These are desperate times, Perry. Either we fight or we fight.”

  “But if I transmit your Terms and Conditions and the Union rejects them,” says Perry, “you’ll be stranded inside the Citadel without the protection of the Union.” Perry’s been worrying about it all night.

  “We know M4 aren’t obliged to take prisoners,” whispers Hemblen. “That’s why everyone’s a volunteer.”

  “I’m not.”

  “No, but we need you to clear TAC with the Union,” says Hemblen. “That’s if it goes through.” The TAC data they’ve prepared has Kirsty hiring Crash The Pad as a private citizen and the federal government picking up the bill, only Kirsty’s not told the Feds yet so no one knows if they’ll agree to it. The tension’s killing Perry and it shows on his face. He shakes his head miserably and Hemblen goes back to staring at his feet.

  Warren Oakley’s had better weeks. First he lost his homie Kareem, back-shot and killed outright. Then he lost his crib to a recoilless rifle attack. And then he lost his whole empire when three neighboring gangs rolled right over the Grifters’ turf. He’s pissed but the memory of the shooting and killing can’t distract him from more pressing matters. Packed in an overcrowded Tramtrax, there’s only one question uppermost in his mind.

  “Pooky,” he says, “are you sure this is the best coverall you could get? It makes me look like shit.”

  His fat bodyguard rolls his eyes. “Ain’t no fashion parade,” he says. “They came in four sizes and I picked you a large. Relax, you blend right in.”

  And that’s the problem. Warren Oakley, aka the Reverend, doesn’t want to blend in. Although he reluctantly accepts that blending in is the essence of disguise, deep down, he knows that if he’d wanted to look like everyone else he wouldn’t have waited until he was twenty one to commute to a job.

  It’s not his job obviously – even a G who’s lost his hood still has pride. But when Kirsty Powell had called and laid out her plan, he’d been forced to admit it sounded pretty exciting. All the same, he’d played it cool because that’s what’s expected of him. He’d just nodded and said he’d do his part even though neither he nor his crew have ever traveled to the eastern side of the Hub before.

  Kirsty wanted him to organize a hundred and fifty simultaneous home invasions in District 14 which, in private at least, had scared the shit out of the Reverend. But it had turned out to be a cinch, what with District 14 being identical to District 45, more or less. With all the street names the same, his Gs had no trouble getting in position. They’d gone in at midnight, a hundred and fifty doors busted, a hundred and fifty M4 workers taped up on the ground without a shot fired. With their stolen IDs, this morning shift Tramtrax out to the Citadel is Grifters, more Grifters and a dozen Crash The Pad crew. Every carriage is stuffed with firepower, every bag and rucksack and seat is hiding a piece of bulky mercwar armor.

  Warren Oakley wants to go over the details with Pooky one more time. He wants to know whether Citadel’s security will spot that everyone on the Tramtrax platform is packing sprayguns and hand grenades. He wants to know whether his coverall might look better if he takes off his belt and lets the pants sag down some. But Pooky’s beaming and staring out the window. “Look Rev, there’s an plane up there,” he says, pointing to the silver flash in the morning sky. “Real wings and en
gines… ain’t seen one of those since I was six.”

  The Rev’s not so surprised. He knows about it because Kirsty Powell told him it was part of the plan. He just can’t get over that him looking like a dork loser is part of the plan too.

  Perry taps Hemblen’s shoulder. “Jude, I’ve been thinking. If the Union runs a credit check on Miss Powell, they’ll see she can’t afford a mercwar strike and cancel your TAC data.”

  “You’ve gone through this already,” sighs Hemblen.

  “But without TAC data, your rifles stay locked. How do you plan to fight your way out without M-81s?”

  “Perry, you worry too much. We’re still holding the ones issued for the strike when I took down that bear. All the time we were at Earl’s ranch, they’ve been with my armorer.”

  “You’ve rigged them?”

  He nods. “Yeah Perry, we rigged them.”

  Perry’s outraged. “But they’re Union property.”

  “Tamper-proof hardware my ass,” snorts Hemblen. “Believe me, if we have to go without Union approval, these rifles will livefire. Now shut up, you’re making me nervous.”

  Marcus Allen scans the protesters through binoculars from a block away. The youngest man ever to control Regulated Security Consultancy for Meat4 Power, Allen’s been a busy man since P Sean Balaban himself told him that Leander Bishop had been incinerated in a bioweapon attack. Five days on, he’s being proactive in cleaning up Bishop’s mess.

  “This is what I mean about the need to lead from the front,” he tells his guards as they sit in the unmarked armored utivan. “Sitting in Citadel watching this unfold onscreen, I’m in no position to make a decision, am I?”

  “No sir,” sighs the RESC driver sitting next to him. He’s watching the demonstration through a minicam, live-feeding faces from the crowd back to Citadel to be cross-matched against their datastore. The driver’s been assigned a boss like this every few months. It’s the enthusiasm that gets them killed.