Empyre

by Josh Conviser

  He turned back to Laing. “Is my message getting through? Any ambiguity that needs clearing up?”

  Laing's hands thrashed wildly, sensation returning. The drones did their work with unvarying efficiency. With his single good eye, Laing watched Andrew dip the blade into the gel.

  “Ryan, you are the perfect subject. Your limits run so much higher than most. By the time we finish, you'll beg me to kill you—to end the suffering. The last days have given me a crash course in the subject. I will make you suffer. I will find Sarah Peters—and I will make her suffer. No one outplays me. This is my game. My . . . game ...,” he reiterated.

  “It's no fuckin' game,” Frank said.

  Submerged in rage, Dillon couldn't hear. The med-tech stood behind Laing, watching with the same cool eyes that had gazed into Dillon's genome. Two equal puzzles, nothing more.

  Andrew drew the blade up to Laing's open eye. Glassy terror shone there. Dillon raised bloody digits to Laing's face and fumbled the eyelid closed. He slopped gel over it. The med bent, shining the infrared ray into the seam. Lids fused instantly.

  Frank gazed down at the two men before him, not sure which specimen was more hideous. Ryan Laing's mouth and eyes had become mere creases in meaty flesh.

  “Let's begin,” Dillon croaked.

  13

  HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY

  This is a bad move. It's impulsive. Stupid.

  The thought pecked at Sarah Peters with woodpecker persistence. To maximize her chance of survival it was time to get as far from Langley and Dillon as possible. There was safety in that plan, but no resolution.

  She couldn't live with a willful fall into oblivion. Sarah had to know who had done this to her—and why. Right now, Andrew Dillon was her only lead. The one member of EMPYRE who had survived. Was he behind the carnage? Was this a consolidation of EMPYRE's power? No mention had been made of EMPYRE's existence in the flow. Even in death, EMPYRE was running deep.

  But Andrew Dillon had survived the outbreak and Sarah had to know why. Hunting him down had not been hard. Entering Manhattan undetected was the trick. Sarah had remembered something Laing had told her a lifetime ago. Hide in plain sight.

  To do that, she linked up with an acquaintance of hers from the punk scene. Long ago, Sarah had played bass in the mega-punk band Agamem-non's Mitten. While that certainly didn't make her a star, the band did have a following—mostly due to the fact that the rest of the members had been murdered during the Echelon debacle. As the sole survivor, she had a little clout in the scene.

  At least Matt Black thought so. Sarah wasn't sure if that was his real name or just a tag and wasn't about to ask. He went by Black. She called him Black.

  They met in a swamped Hoboken warehouse where Black squatted when the waters were low enough. Around her, the building shook to controlled pulsing beats, creating a stomping, crashing rhythm. Black worked the mix, operating the resonance generators that transformed the warehouse into a giant speaker system.

  Over the slamming sounds, she yelled out her need to get into the city.

  Black looked up from his mix table and took her in. He shut down the system and the building creaked to silence. “Fuck's wid the civ gear?” Black asked. Black's clothes matched his name. Layers of tight-fitting poly, ripped and shredded. His hair flopped over his face in thick dreads. Black's crew crowded around him—all in similar dress.

  Best to deal hard with these guys. They pounced on weakness. “This shit?” she asked, fingering her rumpled slacks and blouse. “Needed it to get here.”

  “You're hot,” Black said, his tone icy. His crew went fidgety, scanning outside the warehouse for cops. With post-Echelon violence still ripping American cities apart, the punks were high on the authorities' shit list. They rarely caused more than light mayhem, but bucking the system in this day and age brought with it a lot of attention.

  Sarah considered her response. “Smokin',” she said finally.

  Black stared at her for a long second. Then he broke into a huge grin, revealing the rotted teeth that were his trademark. “Woulda been disappointed if you wasn't!” His crew relaxed at that.

  “You in luck,” Black continued. “We're island bound. Playin' a gig in Harlem.”

  Black was part of the new urban sound. No instruments involved. Instead, they used resonance generators to vibrate buildings at varying frequencies. It was a loud, blistering sound that often climaxed with an impromptu demolition. Sarah had seen a show in Paris. Lots of rage. The gigs ended when the cops arrived. Usually didn't take long.

  “Take me,” Sarah said.

  Black nodded. “We got ways into da city. We get you in. Only one thing . . .” he paused, clocking Sarah. “You need kit. No civs in my crew.”

  Sarah ripped off her blouse without hesitation and threw it at a gawking skin-and-bones groupie. Black laughed, eyes twinkling. “Set her up,” he said.

  In minutes, she had punk gear like the rest. It was good cover. The hair-over-the-face do would mask her from electronic recog systems. And her pursuers certainly wouldn't expect her to be wrapped up with a crew so bent on drawing attention.

  Black and his entourage entered the city through an abandoned Port Authority Trans-Hudson tunnel, once used for subways. It was hours of slogging through moist darkness. Hours of fear that the tunnel wouldn't hold. With each passing meter, the groans and creaks got louder.

  “Dying to play the PATH,” Black said. He waved at their surroundings. “These all just cast iron tubes on da river bottom. Make a cool racket.”

  “You play here—you die here,” Sarah replied.

  She caught Black's gap-toothed grin. He was fucking with her. “Yeah, dat did occur. Maybe I do it remote like. But then I got no means to get island bound.”

  Sarah slogged on, not sure whether she should breathe though her mouth to kill the stink, or take the hit and filter out the particulates with her nose. It was a long walk. She hoped Dillon would be worth it.

  NEW YORK CITY

  They didn't bother incapacitating him. They didn't need to. A man without sight wasn't much of a threat. Laing swam in syrupy darkness, fear and anger raging within. He'd let himself fall for Frank's serrated morality. Savakis had weaseled his way inside—loosening Laing's guard for that crucial instant. But in the end, he was Company, first and last. Like Dillon. Now, Frank was good-copping him with half-hearted protests.

  “Andrew, this has to stop. He's here to help,” Frank said in exasperation.

  “No.” Dillon responded to Frank, but was speaking softly in Ryan's ear.

  Dillon's icy crackle resonated through Laing's darkness. Ryan tried to hold his bearings. His head swam. Desperate for breath, he tried to force his mouth open. Nothing. He struggled with greater ferocity, sucking air through his nose in high-pitched whistles. His mind reeled, body twitching in convulsive flops. He reached up and dug at his face. The smooth consistency of soldered flesh made his skin crawl.

  “Andrew—” Frank began again, but was immediately cut short.

  “Frank, interrupt again and you'll join our friend here.”

  Laing sensed Frank shuffle back. He smelled Dillon looming over him, rancid flesh. He needed to get away from that smell but each breath forced the stink down. How much had the infection twisted Dillon's mind? Was he dealing with a rational man? No. This man had ripped right through his envelope.

  Andrew began again, still in Ryan's ear. Ryan recoiled from Dillon's blood-moist cheek touching his own.

  “You returned to take the crown. You destroyed Echelon. You want EMPYRE—and Sarah Peters was your cat's paw. I'm sure you were good once. Twisted, but good. Now you're just another piece of tech past its sell-by date. I'm going to squeeze you for everything you possibly know, twist it from you a drop at a time. When I'm finished, Sarah will come under the same . . . scrutiny.”

  Laing's desperation boiled, steaming off him in a vapor of helpless frustration. It left him spent. He slacked out, losing himself to the sweaty helplessness.r />
  All the confusion, anger, and reckless emotion he had quashed for so long surged back to the surface. The encroaching city, Frank's betrayal, Dillon's mania, the relentless drive to find Sarah—it was all too much. Laing recoiled from the onslaught.

  Within the turmoil, he forced himself to calm. There had to be a way out, a way through. If he could just find it.

  He needed time, a plan. He needed to keep Dillon from further incapacitating him. Attack might buy such time, or the illusion of surrender.

  He tried to speak, forcing his voice out through his nose in muffled grunts.

  “Good,” Andrew said, “very good.”

  A thin line of pain lit up Ryan's darkness. A razor, cold sharp, cut his lips free. Ryan gasped, blood filling his mouth. Then the tickle of the drones—cauterizing.

  Laing gulped at air. Finally, he founds the lungs to speak. “Echelon was something special—something worth killing for—something worth destroying.”

  “And now it's EMPYRE's turn? Why do you so want chaos? You used Sarah to burn it to the ground.”

  “Burn what?” Ryan spat, globs of drone-laced blood spewing over Dillon. “What would Sarah have killed for?”

  “Good. We can agree that Sarah is a murderer. As to what EMPYRE did—we rectified your mistake. We used chaos to generate order. But you couldn't handle that, could you? You revel in pain, suffering, turmoil.”

  Laing tried to make sense of Dillon's ravings. “I didn't know about EMPYRE until Frank found me. I was out, done. You pulled me back by involving Sarah Peters.”

  The stink of Dillon's proximity ebbed.

  “You're really not connected to her,” Andrew croaked.

  “I'm not playing her, no. I just want to find her before she gets hurt.”

  “I wouldn't have thought you a romantic.”

  At this, Frank interjected. “This bullshit has gone on long enough. I'd have told you if Laing was running a double game.”

  “You're right, Frank. Apologies.” Dillon's voice rose an octave. “Adams!”

  Laing heard scurrying feet, the shuffle of a subservient approaching.

  “I want Laing hacked. If he knows something—fine. If not, work the drones. Pull every piece of code in him. Maybe there's some vestige of the Echelon system in there. At the very least, I want the drones. Pull them, reverse engineer them.”

  “It won't work,” Ryan said.

  “Won't matter to you one way or the other,” Dillon replied, then turned back to the med-tech. “Wipe him.”

  The man drew a pistol-like instrument from his coat.

  “We're going to fry the wires, Laing. Then, when your body's nothing more than warm meat, we'll hack our way into your memories.”

  “Andrew! This is unacceptable. I may not like this fucker—but I need him to do my job. If I had any idea . . .”

  Laing shrank from the argument. Dillon would break him down piece by piece. That he wouldn't find anything of use would only drive the dying man harder. The pain wracking him inspired cruelty. There would be no end to it.

  But to get free, Ryan needed vision. He considered ripping his eyelids open, letting the drones heal the wreckage. But blood still pooled in his mouth. Thrashed eyelids might take time to heal, and he had none.

  An idea gripped Laing. Long shot at best, but a plan was a plan. He sank into the flow. Once meshed in, he sent out a crawler. And it pulled—every still of 80 South Street, every vid, every security feed catching a piece of the building. He hacked them all, drew them in.

  Real-time images of his surroundings blitzed him, a jumbled, chaotic scramble of input. With Dillon and Frank still arguing, he sank further, coding a run. The pure mass of data bombarded him. He found it hard to hold focus. No choice.

  He felt out the code within him and pushed. With excruciating languor, the data began to coalesce. Each image, each vid hyperlinked to the next, forming a lattice of interlocking data blocks that, taken together, rezzed into a seamless whole. The new vision revolved on an axis, moving in time with his thoughts, offering a full 360-degree view.

  He started wide, taking in the whole building, then narrowed down on the penthouse, the patio, the beings on it. He caught the scene from outside, from a thousand different eyes, none of which were his.

  The vision was nauseating but it held strong.

  Ryan Laing could see.

  14

  NEW YORK CITY

  His perception went fractal, a cross-cut mosaic compounded thousands of times over. It took time to adjust—a commodity Laing had in short supply. He saw Frank and Dillon looming over him. Their attentions locked, neither felt the eye upon them, the many eyes.

  “Authorization?” Dillon said incredulously. “The buck stops here, Savakis. And my patience wears thin. I need what's inside this man. And I will take it.”

  Movement pulled the two. Ryan Laing stood.

  Eyes sewn shut, he looked at one, then the other. In a single on-slaught, he ingested their image in full 360. The view warped and mangled Laing's sense of reality. He struggled to retain the integrity of his new perception.

  “What the . . .” Frank's anger faded to shock.

  Dillon reacted more quickly. He slapped at the holo remote on his bed. His security detail rushed the patio. Clad in soft gel armor, the five mercs moved with feline grace. They surrounded him, pulling hard metal.

  “No!” Dillon screamed. “Alive. I need him alive.”

  No expression from the mercs. They holstered and closed in, a synchronized dance with Laing at the center. Ryan watched, fascinated by the panoramic view.

  The merc directly behind him attacked. Laing duck-turned in the instant before impact, whipping the man over his head. The man flew over the plexi railing in a high arc. But before the fall took him out beyond rescue, the safety protocol in his gel suit engaged. His hands went magnetic and he slapped back into the building's flank. Though physically blocked by the building itself, Laing saw the merc lock on to the metal lattice linking the penthouse to the outside support. The man began clambering back up to rejoin the fight.

  Image flip. The four other mercs pounced. Laing spun, trying to maintain his freedom. He found an exposed larynx and knifed at it with a straight finger jab. The attack allowed one of the other mercs to land a slamming front kick into his side. Ryan's lungs released in a single whoop, chopped short by the brittle crack of ribs. Pain ripped through him, drawing tears that had no exit.

  From the wing, Dillon latched a med. He dug into the man's coat and retrieved a tranq gun.

  “Clark!” he shouted. “Hold him!”

  The mercs surged. Laing saw it coming—the inevitability of it—the image of his impending destruction from a thousand angles. His arms pulled wide, his body exposed. Dillon's arm came down, his hand steady in spite of the pain. Finger pressure, the dull phoot of projectile fire.

  In that millisecond, as the dart traveled down the muzzle, Frank Savakis made his move.

  His hand shot out—an unconscious act. Frank couldn't let Laing become a meat sack to be harvested. A fragile sense of trust had risen between the two, and Frank would not betray it. Not yet, anyway.

  He slapped the gun, altering its firing line by millimeters. The projectile slung past Laing, hitting the merc behind him in the neck.

  The next moment slowed to a crawl.

  Frank looked directly into the face of the man with no eyes—and could have sworn that Laing looked back. Impossible. Totally fuckin' impossible. But the connection ran true. The hard set of Laing's mouth eased.

  Behind Ryan, the merc's knees gave out. He whipped Laing backward as he fell.

  “You son of a—” Dillon didn't finish the sentence before firing again. This time, the dart launched true. Ryan flew backward, toppling over the patio's plexi rail and flipping into open space.

  It was done.

  Ryan arched back, torquing his body with all the force he could muster. He felt the projectile groove a fissure into his cheek. In that suspended instan
t, he hungered for the slow fade of consciousness. He found no such release.

  From a security camera on a building across the street he locked on the dart—which continued its path behind him. The projectile's tip had missed him, a single millimeter of clearance offering him respite.

  A respite that would be very short-lived. He flipped out and back, toppling over the railing and snapping into free fall. Acceleration spun him wildly, but he managed to force a hold on his multiangled perception.

  With only one chance, he jerked a hand out, snagging the helmet of the fallen merc and ripping the man off the building. Ryan held the man as the fall whipped them around and over. Laing bucked, arching hard, trying to slow their descent.

  They tumbled down, locked together. Ground neared in a mesmerizing blur. Hard impact with the building's outer support sent the two cartwheeling. Laing forced them into a spin that flung the merc's arms out wide. A grating, smacking scratch as the merc's gloves slapped, then slid down the support. Electromags engaged, magnetizing the merc to the support.

  Laing held tight to the man's helmet, hearing the snap of his neck over the grinding slide. The dead man's hands, still locked on the structure, continued to slow their descent. In a final act, Laing pulled hard on the merc, launching himself inward. He tumbled onto the roof of the building's ground-floor atrium. From that relative safety, he watched the merc slow to a grinding stop and hang still, head lolling to the side.

  Laing allowed himself a breath, then two. Dull shock crept up his system. He couldn't hold the simulacrum much longer. It began to shear. For a moment he lost cohesion and his view went fractal.

  Just a little longer. Just a little.