The thought fled with a sharp cracking sound running under him. The plexi roof he perched on gave way. Ryan fell several meters and slammed into the upper level of the atrium's shopping mall. Smashing into the faux stone floor, Laing lost himself to a barrage of pain. The mosaic view toppled into black. How easy to just let go and sleep.
Then a tingle—a thought of Sarah.
He pulled himself up, forcing vision. It came, if grudgingly. Around him, thousands stared up, having heard his impact with the plexi and then watched his fall in startled disbelief. Laing found himself in the jittery image of a flow-cam held by a tourist. Using that as a center, Ryan layered images, finding a reality he could negotiate.
He grasped a piece of the shattered plexi, pocketing it as he rose on shaky legs and gazed at the tourist. The man's face paled further on seeing Laing and the smooth flesh where his eyes should have been.
“Welcome to New York,” Laing said, staggering away.
Doubt hit Sarah hard on entering the 80 South Street atrium. This was a huge risk—and not just to her. If she went hot again, the people here didn't stand a chance.
She sank back into the middle of Black's crew. After stashing the mix gear, he had demanded they escort her to her destination. The black-clad punks got wary looks from the mall patrons. Sarah watched them for any hint of recognition. All she got were scared eyes, quickly averted. No one wanted them here, but no one was willing to raise a stink about it. In this day and age, it was better to lay low, keep out of the way.
“You sure dis da place?” Black asked.
“Yeah. I got biz with a boss man upstairs,” she said as she made her way over to a private elevator bank.
“You want us to hang?”
“Nah—go work your gig. I'll meet up—” Sarah stopped short. From the elevator, a stream of armored mercs pushed into the atrium. Guns raised, they scanned, desperate for target lock. Sarah ducked low.
“Fuck!” she said.
Black watched the mercs disperse into the atrium. He made a quick sign to his crew, who continued straight toward the mercs while he pulled Sarah into an alcove.
“Dis heat on you?” he asked.
“I...I think so,” she stammered.
Suddenly all her plans were dust. She'd been spotted and it was over. Over Black's shoulder, she saw his crew tangle up with the mercs, slowing their progress.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
Black watched his crew heckle the mercs and grinned. He turned back to Sarah. “Sorry, hell. This beats rockin' Harlem any day.” His eyes gleamed.
“I gotta get away,” Sarah said. All thoughts of confrontation had vanished. A lead curtain had fallen on her plans. Maybe she could come up with something new. More likely, this was the beginning of a life on the run.
“How far away?” Black asked.
“Those guys want me dead. They got reach.”
Black grinned, showing off his decayed tooth stumps. He took her by the arm and led her away from the mercs.
“You mix?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“You heard me.”
“Uh—yeah—a little.”
“Good. I take you to a place. Hole up real good there. These boss-man trackers never find you.”
He pushed her forward. She kept her head low and moved quickly, trying to keep the fear from overwhelming her. She didn't notice the man making his way to the main exit, also using Black's crew as a distraction.
Ryan Laing slipped out onto the New York streets. Sarah never saw him.
Andrew Dillon had watched Laing fall in silence. When he turned on Savakis, the anger was gone—the rage so dominant seconds ago—now a barely remembered burst of energy. The transformation dragged Frank away from his own precipice. Before him, Dillon withered.
“He was my last chance.”
“I'm ...”
Dillon raised his bloodshot eyes, cutting into Savakis's words. “Don't you apologize. Just leave.”
Frank approached the plexi and gazed down at the gap of gray space to the cracked atrium roof.
“What now?” he asked.
“Now they're both in the box. I'll rattle it until they come up for air.”
“I mean for you,” Frank said.
The cool urbane removal cultivated over so many years of privilege fell away, layers peeling from a rotting onion. Frank watched Dillon's vulnerability rise to the surface. In spite of himself, the sight tugged at him.
In an instant it was gone. Andrew Dillon's shell reengaged. He dismissed Frank's question as the jabbering of a lesser.
“I'm going to do my job. I'll see this through.”
“Big-boy rules, huh?”
Dillon's mouth split into a grin, expelling a series of crackling, moist pops. It took a beat for Frank to realize it was laughter. “That's right. Laing gets a sanction order to match Peters's. And we go public on Peters.”
“You going to issue a terrorist alert? Let the blogs know what really happened at Langley?”
Dillon nodded. “We'll get her one way or another. A data rat with her face on every blog—she won't last long.”
“I don't like others cleaning our mess. It can get . . . complicated.”
Dillon wheeled in a slow circle. “I think we're beyond complicated.”
A merc broke the mood, bursting onto the patio in a swirl of nervous action. “Sir,” he said. “Laing has escaped the pavilion. Some kids stalled my men on exiting the elevators. We're attempting to track.”
“Well, get to it!” Dillon's impatience rose, energizing him.
The merc stood still, hesitating.
“There's something else,” the man said. “You asked to be informed of any large-scale terrorist activity.”
Andrew went cold. He swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said.
The merc stepped closer, breathing through his mouth to thwart the stench. He handed Dillon a soft panel display.
“Outbreak in Australia. Looks bad.”
Dillon grabbed the roll, unfolded it, and stared at the coverage. He looked up pale.
“What is it?” Frank asked.
“It's . . .” Dillon trailed off, unable to force the words out.
Frank stepped closer as Dillon contracted in on himself like a deflating balloon. Frank thought he caught a word before Dillon sank into unconsciousness. He thought he heard Sarah Peters's name.
15
NEW YORK CITY
Laing sprinted through black rain. He tried to keep his face hidden, slumping his head down into his chest. Even still, a path cleared before him. A commotion at the pavilion had allowed him to escape, but any sense of freedom was illusory. Dillon's men couldn't be far behind.
From 80 South Street he headed west, weaving through Manhattan's dark maze. Over him, scrapers loomed, cutting the light. What little didn't refract off the towers filtered down and hazed the streets in eternal twilight. Rain gave a staccato beat to the half-light.
Ryan stumbled down Water Street, lost in the mosaic of his perception. Even as his body healed from the fight and the fall, his mind fought to hold the sim. Couldn't last much longer. He shifted through the peds. Their quick snapping gait, their down-directed eyes, pushed in on him. The zone felt alien, uniquely uncomfortable.
Laing stumbled into a lithe form that jerked away. “Hey buddy, you looking for a . . .” her voice faded into the rain as she took him in. “. . . date,” she managed to sputter, more from rote memory than interest.
From a thousand angles, he saw the shock and horror in the face before him. He watched in fascination, farther and farther from his own body. The mosaic blossomed, encompassing not just space, but time as well. Laing saw the woman not just as she was, but as she had been. He followed the line of her past—captured on cameras and surveillance systems through the city and backed up in the flow. Her time-line reversed before his eyes. He saw her stumble from a high-end apartment building. He saw the john she had entered with crushing into her in his scraper's maintenance area.
Ryan pulled farther back, seeing her being watched by security men on their closed circuit—who were themselves watched by an AI maintenance node that monitored the scraper.
From this single woman, Laing spiraled out, unable to siphon the flow. He couldn't stop gulping it down. The mass of data pounded into him, engulfing him. Link on link until the entire city rose around him in a tidal flow of interaction. He couldn't pull from the sim, couldn't find himself. His breath caught. All focus yielded to the linkage.
His environment resolved under a new perception, not of flesh and steel, building and street, but of information flow. Human differed not at all from machine—all were merely conduits for data flow.
He stumbled in the face of it.
Jennifer Litvak just wanted to go home. The rain leached through her piece-of-shit outer, soaking her brand-new dress. Droplets slid down the back of her neck, over her clavicle and down her side. Add to that the dull burn from a particularly energetic client and she was in no mood. No fuckin' mood.
The man before her blurred in the monotone gray of street-level jostle. She'd thought he might be on the hunt. But no—just a wet ped looking for a quick feel. And those eyes were fucked up. As least she thought they were—couldn't quite rez them in low light. Next time she'd spend the extra and use the sub. Peds were just too freaky.
She tried to get free of the hulking figure but the man stumbled closer. He looked like a fish flopping out its last moments of life before the sushi guy sliced it into hand rolls.
He wobbled, a top losing its spin. She sidestepped to let him fall—and noticed the shoes. Nice. Black—possibly real leather. Too nice for a ped. Then his weight crushed into her. She reeled under the mass, trying to shove him off. His hand latched on to her wrist.
“Jesus!”
“Help me,” he whispered.
She tried for the wallet in his back pocket. Why not, right? The man shoved her groping hand away. “I'll pay,” he said in a throaty croak.
The man found his balance, using her shoulders to pull himself straight. She looked up into his face. As she did, sunlight sliced a gap in the clouds, piercing the matrix of buildings and blasting the street into high contrast. The peds coming at her took a communal stagger under the glare and ducked their heads further.
The man held still. Hard light rezzed out his face and she saw. No eyes at all.
“Holy shit!” Jennifer cried, starting to thrash in his grip.
The man let go and she stumbled back, falling under him. In the hard glare, the man held steady, blocking her from the ped swarm.
“Please,” he said again.
Something in the tenor of the voice cut through her shock. “You blind?” she sputtered.
He nodded.
“Fuck you doin' on the street? You'll get crushed out here.” She pulled herself back up, regaining her edge.
The man shrank into himself, shielding from the light. Mercifully, the sun faded and the street fell back to muddy gray.
“Come on, man.” She grabbed his lapel and he stumbled behind her. “I could do with some good karma right now. And I want cash. Don't take credit from peds. Especially fucked-up blind ones.”
“Yeah,” he sputtered.
“This way. I'll take you to the sub.”
“Thank . . . thank you.”
She dragged him behind her. The man tripped a couple times, but didn't really seem blind. Or maybe he seemed sporadically blind. Every now and then, she could have sworn that he sidestepped an oncoming ped, or maneuvered around a pothole.
They reached the Wall Street sub station and Jennifer pulled the man down into the dark.
“Which line you need?” she asked.
The man didn't respond. His head twitched like a rat locking on the smell of cheese. He pulled away from her and weaved down a corridor. She chased after him. “Hey, shitbag, pay up!”
The man broke into a loping run and she put on the speed, rolling an ankle in her heels. She yelped but pushed on.
No good deed goes unpunished, she thought. Blind or not, I'm juicing the fucker.
She pulled a sone-stick from her jacket, slipped her thumb under the safety cover and armed the device. It was supposed to fire a shaped sonic pulse that would down a rhino, but she had never actually used the thing. Now seemed as good a time as any to give it a try.
Sone-stick in hand, she ran hard. Turning the corner, she found the man standing stock-still before a showcase of vid gear. Blue light bathed him, flickering images playing on the smooth screen of his face.
She approached slowly. Blogcasts flickered on a thousand screens through the plexi. But that wasn't what he stared at. Instead, he seemed entranced by his own vid shot. A slick little lipstick cam caught those passing by, outputting its feed to a low-rez monitor.
The man stepped forward, looking closer.
“Lotta good that's going to do ya,” Jennifer said, stifling a laugh.
The man looked around, swinging his head in slow arcs. She followed his roving, sightless gaze. By the time she returned to him, he had pulled a jagged piece of plexi from his jacket. He drew it to his face and cut.
Jennifer forgot about the money, about the rain, about the burn in her ankle. The image before her filled her world. And the blood. So much blood.
Laing spliced into the lipstick cam's feed and took in his own image through the plexi. He felt himself sliding into irretrievable clutter.
Need to do it now.
He pulled the plexi from his pocket. Through tidal surges of data, he homed in on his own image, concentrating on that single feed. Laing brought the jagged edge to his eye and cut. Sharp, searing pain. He didn't hesitate. He switched hands and drew the edge across his other eye.
“Oh my God!” he heard the woman sputter next to him.
He stood completely still, canceling out the mosaic, severing each leg of the web, cracking each delicate tendril, one by one. Blood poured down his face. And the soft itching tingle of the drones. They swarmed to the wounds, held on the rims of his lids and worked inward.
Sight returned, first in a blur of red and movement. The pain faded to a dull, healing itch, and his vision rezzed in. It took effort to regain his own perception, to give up that of the city as a whole.
Returning fully, Laing stared into the flash blur of the blogcasts playing before him. Crisis in Sydney, Australia—the banner whipped from one blog to the next. Terrorist act. Bioterrorism.
The woman next to him stumbled back. He turned on her and noticed something falling from her hand. The next instant shattered in a sonic pump that blasted out the plexi before him and blew Laing backward. He sprawled out, ears ringing, nausea washing over him.
He looked up to see that the woman had not moved a muscle.
Jennifer had watched the operation with dull shock. The swift incisions. Then, ragged eyelids flapping over blood-wet eyes. She had seen shit—been around. But this kicked her way off center. Her jaw dropped in confused disgust.
Then it got worse. Gray slipped from the man's eyes. It pooled on his cheeks, moving with oiled fluidity. It covered his face, then retreated into his mouth, nose, ears, or simply dripped off him and went inert on the white floor.
Jennifer looked back at the face. Perfect. Eyes a dull blue-gray—wolf eyes—staring at the blogs as if nothing had happened. The man turned those eyes on her, and she flinched. Everything in her lurched. Her hand twitched.
It wasn't until the plexi blew out that she realized she'd dropped the sone-stick. It tumbled end over end, hitting the floor and discharging at max. The sonic punch boomed through the display window, blowing the man back on his ass.
Now, she stood over him, numb with shock. The man gazed up at her. Finally, he reached into his pocket and removed a cash chip. He held it out for her.
Jennifer turned and ran.
16
MANUFACTURING DISTRICT, TRENTON, NEW JERSEY
Sarah Peters woke to flickering color running up her arms. Reds and greens, softened by her
skin tone, danced over her fingers, her thighs, the slight paunch of her stomach. In sleep, the glowing flux was impossible to control. Even in the barrio's damp stink, she had to drape herself in thick, itchy covers to sleep without arousing attention.
Consciousness pushed the dreams away, stilling her epidermal light show. With it, the panic returned, the stiff, gulping desire to hide forever that she had lived with since Matt Black had dropped her here.
She wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. In sleep, it all went away and she lived without hesitation. Memories whipped over her, snippets of the woman she used to be.
All gone. She remembered strength, the tingle of tenacity, but it lay crushed under disappointment and—now—terror. She lay back in her cot. Just a few more minutes. One more shot of sleep and she would wake up refreshed, ready.
A bang on the door. Her entire room—all two square meters of cheap prefab—shook with the impact.
The voice blasted out any remnants of sleep. “Wake the fuck up! Shift kick in five.”
“Yeah, yeah. I'm there,” Sarah hollered back.
She could hear husky breathing on the other side of the door.
“You need help getting ready?”
Sarah snorted. “Keep dreaming, Carl.” She listened to him shuffle off, grumbling. In a jerk of motivation she flung herself off the bed, splashed dirty water from a pitcher into a bowl and wiped herself clean of the night sweats.
Then, shimmering nude, she stood before the mirror. The now-familiar itch tingled through her side. She turned profile, checking to see if it showed. It didn't. Sarah ran her fingers down from the curve of her breast to the swell in her side, just above her hip. She found it and dug. Fingers slipped into flesh, working into the hawkeye's pocket. She grasped and pulled it free, her skin protesting with an elastic pop.
Fully charged, it hummed softly, ready for action. She reinserted it. Wouldn't be needed tonight. The hawkeye slithered within her, sending a raw shiver up her spine. It settled and she began her transformation.
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