Empyre

by Josh Conviser

  Accessing pigment protocols, she jacked her overall tone to deep brown, almost black. The shift transformed her. She went from standard Anglo to exotic indefinite. She added a swatch of red across her eyes, the new style in the sonic blast scene. She took her lips to a puke-dull green. Turning this way and that, she decided that the new style suited her poorly. The green lips got all funky with her eyes.

  She slipped into tight grubby jeans and mosh boots. From the plyboard table, she snagged her flap, a torso-size piece of heat-stimmed fabric. She positioned it on her chest, the warmth of her skin making it hold fast to her body. A crisp white, the flap hard-contrasted with her new skin tone. It left her arms and back totally bare.

  Sarah got to the door before she remembered. She drew up her right forearm and pocked it with pigment just below the elbow. Heroin was the drug of choice around here. Retro thing. The track marks helped her blend.

  Transformation complete, Sarah stood at the door, breathed heavily and settled her face into drugged dispassion. She shoved on rusted hinges and stepped into the barrio.

  Fuel-slick heat engulfed her. Steam vents blanketed the barrio in warm fog. The addition of jet fuel brought the experience right to the edge of unbearable. The quake of an airplane launch chipped at the grimy matrix surrounding her.

  Home sweet home, Sarah thought.

  She stepped onto the narrow passageway that hung out over cluttered space. It creaked under her weight. The barrio under the Davin Colten International Airport had grown in orgiastic spurts, uncontrolled. It rose up the flank of the elevated airport. An awning of webbing loomed overhead, blocking falling refuse. Below her, shipping containers, rusted steel girders, and prefab cubes perched on their neighbors in a delicate balance all the way down to the ground, one hundred meters below. The only order here was that of force and practicality. Force—you had to fight to keep your spot. Practicality—that spot had to remain standing.

  Opened a decade earlier, the airport had kicked off Trenton's urban revitalization. The raised port stood at city center, marking transportation as the centerpiece of Trenton's new image. The idea was inspired. Trenton grew into a model for urban industrialization. Manufacturing boomed in the massive scrapers ringing the port, the fruits of which were then shipped out to points across the globe. Trenton thrived, the demand for labor quickly outstripping local supply.

  The Brazilian War took care of the supply issue. A bloody civil war in the wake of Echelon's collapse had ravaged Brazil and generated a new population of refugees. Waves of immigrants made their way to Trenton, where work was plentiful. The influx maxed out the city's infrastructure. And thus the barrio was born. It grew over the years, snaking up the port's flank. Trenton needed the labor and so left the barrio to its own devices. It was a no-man's-land—a place where murder was a nightly occurrence. A place where Sarah could lie low.

  She shuffled past the crowds, ducking into Father's Office. A blast bar, clinging to the top level of the barrio, Father's Office stank of stale beer and wet smoke. Sarah entered and allowed her eyes to adjust to the light.

  Carl waved her over to the bar. His well-deep voice reverberated through his bulk. “You're late,” Carl said, his breath hitting her in dank waves. “I gave you this gig as a favor to Black. Plenty of other mixers waiting in line.”

  “Place is empty, Carl,” Sarah replied.

  “Well, I'm paying you to change that!”

  That wasn't quite true. Carl had offered Sarah a job in exchange for board. Any tips she made, they'd split. Sarah had been in no position to argue. From Manhattan, she and Black had taken their time, shifting transpo often, lying low. Here, she could lie very low. Before he left, Black had let her in on a couple bolt-holes he'd used over the years. In a place like this, it was good to know how to get out fast and quiet.

  “Give it a rest,” she said to Carl, “I'm on it.” Sarah let a glazed, twitchy impatience pervade her features. Carl harrumphed and stalked down the bar, pushing drinks on his few patrons. Sarah turned on her heels, traversing the dank floor and danker customers to the jock socket. Another plane launch jangled the bar.

  She initiated the socket, rezzing in the scratch board, track grabber, and light synch. Sarah liked the work. She'd learned to mix in another life, before Echelon found her. Truth was, she'd first noticed her own talent for pattern recog at the jock socket. In an infinity of samples, tracks, and beats she found that she could lock into that perfect line and create music from the mesh.

  Now, she started with a gentle rhythm, a rolling funk tempo that hit at the very tail of the beat. Then she layered. Thrusting her hands into the holo, she weaved a synthesized, throaty woodwind over the beat. Rich waves of light pulsated around her, trapped by the music's flow. Then she pulled an antique vocal and layered it in, pushing and slowing the singer's velvet croon with a subtle flick of the wrist.

  The vocal haunted its way through the beat and overlay, sifting into the bar. The sound and light show transformed the dive—made it mysterious, a place for cool biz and slow sex. From the bar, Sarah caught Carl's approving nod.

  She folded layers of light and sound, sinking into them, losing herself to the work. Her hands danced in the holo, conducting the blast. She felt eyes on her—people crowding in to listen and watch. She closed her eyes and pushed on.

  The creation tranced her out, allowed her to forget. Hours flickered by as she worked the blast, steadily amping the beat. The bar filled, people came and went, evening passed into night. She stayed with the same vocal throughout, pushing deeper. Over time, a serrated anger rose in the music, edging out the ambience.

  The bar melded into her show, emotion shifting to her whim. Slowly, she began to poke at that raw nerve within her. She shifted tracks, the resonant vocals replaced by an acid-scratched voice raging against black solitude. The music rose in pitch and went dissonant.

  She worked at it, needling the cavity, excavating emotion and slamming it up through the socket. Her teeth gritted down. Hard beat rose to clashing blasts. Tables pushed to the side. Neo Punks slammed to the music, fueled by the anger. The rumble of takeoff—even the av gas—augmented the beat and pushed the bar to frenzy.

  Sarah purged, blowing all her pent-up emotion into the music. Then, when she was empty, bare to the world, a wash of insecurity flushed her. She opened her eyes, reintegrating. Deep breaths forced out the last of the release. She shook free, set the socket to repeat and headed for the bar.

  Carl stood ready with a warm draft. “Nice. That vibe will tear this place apart. Any damage comes out of your take.”

  “Whatever, Carl.” She grabbed the beer from his long fingers.

  Raising the glass to her lips, she saw it. Fear slipped up her spine, rising ice cold and inexorable.

  “Oh no . . .”

  Carl swiveled, tracking her gaze. Along a piece of wall behind the bar, a vid-screen rolled through an unending stream of flesh, action, and sports. On screen now was a cut-in vid of bodies wracked and bleeding—thousands of bodies.

  “Oh, that. The feeds won't let up on it—been running like all day. Tempted to turn the damn thing off. That kinda shit don't sell booze.”

  Sarah ignored him, watching the words run along the bottom. Fifteen hundred dead. Terrorist action. Some kind of virus burst.

  The report scanned over the bodies. Sarah couldn't pull away. The carnage looked so much like Langley. The images stopped her cold, her blood turning icy. She grabbed Carl's arm.

  “The fuck?!” Carl yelped.

  “Where?” Sarah managed.

  “You're riding the dragon too goddamn hard—”

  “Where is that?” she asked again, pointing to the feed.

  “Australia!” Carl said. “The gov down there's blaming some terrorist group out of Indonesia.”

  She let go of him, eyes glazing over.

  “Fucking psycho,” he added as he scurried away. The feed pushed in tight on a young boy, lips curled as he went into convulsions and finally died, eyes wide
open. She tried to understand, to glean some truth from the info clutter. As part of her work for EMPYRE, Sarah had analyzed the ramifications of a terrorist attack in Australia, both for the region and for the United States. She had concluded that it would whip the region into a tailspin, generating large-scale conflict that would not serve America's interests. But the bioagent was too much of a coincidence. Someone had destroyed EMPYRE and was now using her reports for a very different end.

  And the death toll mounted.

  She gazed through the image burst. Amid all the death, through her own fear, she tried to figure a path through the events of the past days. But nothing made sense.

  “Fucking bitch.” Carl's vitriol dredged Sarah from her thoughts.

  She focused back in and was immediately struck by an icy wash of nausea. The vid-feed had flipped to a static shot. On screen, a high-rez image of Sarah Peters. The haircut and lack of worry lines revealed that it had been captured several years ago.

  “Just drop her here,” a bald man at the bar said, his words liquor slurred. “One night in the barrio, and we'd fuckin' solve the problem.”

  Carl grunted to the patron before catching Sarah's rapt gaze. He held on her for a moment. Sarah turned to him, sure that he had figured it out. He seemed to hover over the link between the image onscreen and the dirty punk before him. Then he pushed it away, dragging a long pull off his own beer.

  “They're calling her the new Jackal,” the bald man continued. “A killer for hire. Saying she set up the assassination of that religious dude in China, then fucked up a bunch of people at the CIA. Now she's getting the blame for this shit.” He waved a finger at the screen, which had flipped back to the carnage in Australia.

  “Busy girl,” Sarah said, trying to keep her tone light.

  The patron slurred on. “I mean, what kinda cash you make for that shit?”

  “Probably enough to settle your fuckin' tab, Will,” Carl said.

  The man laughed. “Then I better have another.”

  Carl just rolled his eyes and turned away. He accessed the vid-feed, scrolling through sites. “Fuck this. Gotta be a ball game on somewhere.”

  Sarah hunkered over her beer. She tried to fathom the shit storm whipping around her. How would these people react if they knew the most wanted person in the world was sitting next to them? Wasn't hard to figure. She wanted to shrink into herself, to disappear completely.

  The music pounded down on her—hard, scathing vocals layered over a crushing beat.

  NEW YORK CITY

  Andrew Dillon scanned the blogs, the dull throb of betrayal pulsing through him. This was his scheme, his game, but someone had stolen the playbook and turned it on its head.

  “It's confirmed, sir,” the med-tech said. “Australian virus matches that triggered in Langley.”

  “Exactly?”

  “It's a slight skew. Slower burnout. Adjusted to cancel the work-around that saved your life.”

  “You're saying it's more virulent?”

  “More or less. No one survived contact. But, it also allowed those infected to live longer. So the retrovirus spread farther.”

  Andrew turned back to the feed.

  “Anything else, sir?”

  Dillon didn't bother replying. He tried to concentrate through the pain. In the past hours, the proximity of his own death had settled heavy. He tried to care about the rest—about the world, about his legacy. EMPYRE was his. Had been since its inception. He had kept the group together when their shadowy founder had vanished. He was the one who had held Phoenix to the fire. And he had found the data rat.

  Sarah Peters boiled through his fevered thoughts. In the space of weeks, she had ruined it all, and the United States would pay the price. Now she had flipped his play, triggering hot conflict in Asia. But to what end?

  Peters had nailed the Australia gambit. The incident had kicked off precisely the event stream she had predicted. In the space of hours, Australia's already shaky market crashed. The hawks in its government found their rallying cry. They were already demanding retribution, and Dillon had good intel that plans had been drawn up for a surgical strike on Indonesian targets. Dillon was also certain that such attacks would fail. Australian special forces would die on Indonesian soil and the entire region would ignite. Combined with the Sino-Indian hostilities, the region would plunge into a hot war. While low-level conflict bolstered American interests, massive destabilization would be a disaster for everyone.

  Peters had run the numbers. Now, what the hell was she doing flipping play? She was responsible for Australia. She was responsible for his death. For EMPYRE's death. At this point, he found it hard to care about the why. He wanted revenge. He'd kill her as she had killed him. As she had killed his dream.

  “Adams!” Dillon croaked. “I want all the stops pulled on the Sarah Peters contract. Everything we've got. Put a price on her head that none of our contractors will refuse.”

  Silence.

  “Adams?!” Andrew yelled.

  Still nothing.

  Dillon pulled from the flow link and wheeled around. He pushed out of his bedroom and into what—only weeks ago—had been the living room. Machines hummed away, his DNA slowly rotating in holo. But no people.

  “Goddamn it,” he muttered, frustration mounting. Dillon pushed from room to room, finding only silence. Finally, he wheeled out onto the patio.

  At first, he thought it was an illusion, some glitch in his fading perception. The pool, still calm, was also deep red. He knew it was real when Adams's corpse floated to the surface.

  “Your anger is misplaced.” The voice had a velvet richness to it, as if slow-dipped in old world charm.

  Dillon did not turn immediately. He gazed down at the bodies, trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened. The ramifications of it were too horrible to fathom. His legacy was truly dead.

  Finally, he turned, hoping against hope that he was wrong.

  “Phoenix.” The word slipped from Dillon's mouth in limp defeat.

  “Phoenix is no more. The pyre from which I rose is long dead. Call me by my real name. Alfred Krueger.”

  “She's not your man,” Alfred Krueger said with soft assurance.

  He sat in a patio chair, legs crossed, arms flopped over a knee with an air of genteel confidence. His hawk-thin frame coiled within a perfectly tailored gray Savile Row suit, dark loafers, shined to high polish, a rich blue shirt, no tie. There was a damp chill in the air with the approaching night. Not a twinge of discomfort marred Krueger's perfection.

  Behind him, Zachary Taylor loomed, ghost quiet.

  Dillon wobbled between Krueger and the pool of blood. He could not bring himself to look at Taylor.

  “You?” he asked with the desperation of the condemned.

  “I thought we should chat without interruption.”

  “No!” Fury rose in Dillon. He lunged forward, hurling himself and the mag bed at Krueger. Krueger didn't move—didn't even flinch.

  Taylor did the moving for him. He spun around the thin man and grabbed Dillon's arm, whipping him up and off the suspensor. It veered wildly, slamming into the railing. Dillon shrieked from the pain of contact as Taylor wrenched down on his arm. Unable to support his own weight, Dillon's legs buckled. His shoulder ripped free from the socket. Taylor held him for an instant longer. Then he let the man fall. Dillon crumpled at Krueger's feet.

  Krueger gazed down with fish cold eyes. He uncrossed his legs and lifted Dillon's head with his foot. Dillon had no resistance left, and no more energy for pain. He gazed up at Krueger, ready to die.

  Krueger leaned over, inhaling Andrew's putrid scent. He did not recoil. The hint of a smile curved his upper lip.

  “How long did you think I'd be EMPYRE's whipping boy?”

  Dillon continued to stare. Tears welled.

  Krueger laughed. “You didn't think, did you? I fit into your little scheme. I gave EMPYRE teeth.”

  “You killed . . .” Dillon couldn't finish.

&
nbsp; “Years of doing your dirty work, and it never occurred to you and your planners that I was playing you? I'm almost insulted.”

  “You need us.”

  “Maybe once. Maybe when you brought me in and I was licking my wounds. As you can see, I'm feeling better.”

  “No,” Dillon sputtered in a final desperate rejection. “We made you. EMPYRE did. You're nothing without EMPYRE. Just a fugitive with no future, nowhere to run.”

  “Wrong. You are nothing without me, Dillon. You think EMPYRE used me? This was my training ground. EMPYRE was practice for the real battle.”

  He threw a disinterested nod at Taylor, reanimating the man. The assassin approached Dillon with measured precision.

  Andrew looked up to see his own death in the man's chilled eyes. He tried to fear it. Something—anything—to pull him from the truth. All his life, all his work, brought to nothing.

  He scuttled back, his papery skin rubbing into the gritted tile, leaving spattered tracks. Taylor advanced with a killer's grace. Emotion severed from action. Hollow.

  Dillon's life did not pass before his eyes. Not the achievements, at least; only a still shot of that day in Prague all those years ago. Even as Taylor stooped, Andrew saw the pivot point in his life. That moment ran quick reps through his mind's eye. Had he chosen differently on that bridge, had he acted instead of gamed . . . The thought trailed into oblivion. Taylor's smooth hands felt almost soothing as they wrapped around his neck.

  “I'm sorry for the past days,” Krueger said. “You should have died quickly—with the rest. You deserved that much for everything EMPYRE taught me.” Krueger leaned forward, eye to eye with Dillon. His voice edged dark. “Still, I can't help but thrill to see you like this. Dying with the knowledge that I outplayed you.”

  Andrew Dillon looked—and knew.

  “Sarah . . .” Dillon sputtered out. His papery skin ripped under Taylor's grip, drenching Dillon's neck in blood.

  “Peters?” Krueger scoffed. “She has become my weapon—as I was yours.”

  “How?” Dillon managed. Even with death looming close, he had to know.