by Jett Lang
Bastards.
That she had to wear a respirator of any kind irked her, but it served a purpose – she needed to blend in. Many of the refugees within the original group had broken off for their designated employment zones, but these last five people were keeping together, talking. She maintained her distance. She didn’t think she’d been spotted, or else they’d have made a break for it. Or was this some other tactic? Maybe these people were more intelligent than the reports had suggested. Certainly, the hawkish man had a trained air about him, and that kid didn’t give her a bad feeling without reason; she was too well conditioned for subtleties to elude her.
She heard laughter through the smog. The grey silhouette of the hawkish man and two other men patted one another on the back heartily. To her relief, they wished him and his family good luck and goodbye. The duo branched off to a side alley with an entrance as scrubbed as the rest of the streets.
There goes the collateral.
When Queen passed by the alley a moment later, the men were gone. At the back of the alleyway was an AMERITRASH dumpster done up in the red, white, and blue stripping. Scrawled along the body, the slogan read: ‘You toss it and we take care of the rest!’ The alley branched off to a T-intersection of white bricks and concrete.
Queen riffled through her pocket, and came out with a tiny plastic device in the shape of a curved rectangle. Her Order Retrieval Device – ORD for short. It had a green light on one side and ticket tape peeking out the top. The green light meant her liquidation order was in effect, the ticker tape was blank. Rarely was there a message given when the light was green. If it went red, the reasoning behind the cancellation would be printed out in a corporate lingo exclusive to her company – not that they were obligated to give her a reason. An added convenience for a professional such as herself was the self-immolating formula of the ink. If she didn’t read the message within thirty seconds, it was gone. For good.
She had three problems banging around in her head and a nexus of questions going unanswered as she liberated herself of her gasmask and breathed deeply of the polluted air. Instantly, she felt herself relax, the pressure on her face gone. A bead of sweat ran down her nose and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“Focus,” she said softly, and withdrew her sidearm from the holster inside her hoodie. The pistol conformed to her hand as soon as she grasped it. Etched along the black, truncated barrel was one word: ‘Winnow.’
Pocketing her ORD, she followed the family around another corner.
As she rounded the bend, the trio stopped in the middle of the street, child, momma, and papa, shortest to tallest, left to right. They turned; their unison flawless, their faces uncovered and emotionless. Their gasmasks dangled from rubber cords around their hands. They dropped them to the blacktop. Queen thumbed her Winnow. ‘Safe’ to ‘Single-Fire’. She pressed the trigger.
Molten orange sparked from the muzzle. Momma fell forward with a nasty thump, minus two-thirds of her face. Papa and Child didn’t even flinch. The hawkish man rushed at Queen, closing distance so fast she narrowly had time to sidestep his lunge. His hands slashed at the empty air. He tumbled against the pavement, his desert robe streaming as he rolled.
Queen swung around, lowered her sidearm, and aligned the shot with his head. His boy jumped onto her shoulders, and the shot went smoking into the road between her boots. The child bit into her ear and the pain surged white-hot. She punched him, full strength, straight in the mouth. He careened and took the rest of her earlobe with him, then hit the ground behind her.
Papa was gone. Unwounded, there was no trace.
Child giggled wetly. “Sorry, lady.”
Queen turned and tilted her head down at the kid. “Where is he headed?”
“Grandma’s house.” He smiled beyond his age.
Queen pistol-whipped his cheek, broke skin. She yanked him up by the collar until his face was level with hers.
“Answer, you little shit,” she said. “Does he have the bomb?” She gritted her teeth. Her neck was warm where blood slalomed down to her shoulder.
Child hawked up her missing piece of ear. It stuck to her cheek.
“You should take a look at yourself; you’re falling apart.”
Queen tossed the boy to the ground and tore open his over-long coat. Sand scattered from the force of her rip. There was nothing but a sweat-stained undershirt clinging to an emaciated torso, his scrawny legs covered by khaki shorts. Not a trace of any strange device, wiring or weapon.
“Oops! No prize for you!” the boy said. A bout of laughter struck him and he rolled from side to side in some grizzly mimicry of glee. “No prize for you, lady!”
Queen holstered her sidearm and straddled the child. She produced a slim roll of yellow, super-strength adhesive tape from her back jean pocket. She flipped him over and bound his wrists. He thrashed under her, and screamed. She smacked his face into the pavement. Still, he wouldn’t quiet down. She yanked him by the hair and slapped a strip of tape over that noisy little mouth. The mangled chunk of ear clung to her cheek. She peeled it off, put it in her pocket.
I’m never having kids.
She looked around; the streets were still devoid of people. Momma lay motionless a few yards away, hazel hair smoldering. It captured the dawn, gossamer-fine.
Queen hoisted the boy over her shoulder. He tried wiggling from her grasp, but she jostled him back to compliance. Her one-handed inspection of the woman yielded the same results as the kid: nothing. She dragged Momma by the collar of her faded green blouse into the nearest alleyway. The AMERITRASH dumpster remained the lone inhabitant. Queen lifted the lid and deposited both Momma and Child within. They crunched against a layer of overflowing trash bags. The boy wormed around as soon as he hit bottom. He attempted to shimmy up and over.
“Settle down,” she said, and shot a bag next to him. Garbage exploded. Burning plastic mingled with the dead-meat odor of the boy’s mother. The top slammed shut the moment he cried out, the noise muffled and metallic. She drew out a long strip of tape and spread it over the lip of the dumpster.
That should do it.
She affectionately patted her handiwork. A loud thump registered, followed by a series of gonging echoes from inside – a contained fury. The boy would make a good gift for the security division, and child killing wasn’t her style. Her boss would have to approve that kind of trade. The disposal team needed to extract the woman’s corpse anyway. She’d have to let them know the boy was there after this was done. Whatever her boss decided was beyond her paygrade, but keeping the public sector docile was one of his key concerns. He’d like the idea.
Queen quit the alley, turned west, and headed in the direction of Central Surveillance. The cramped, white apartments would eventually give way to domed skyscrapers, VR centers, and malls composed of brilliant neon and focus-group-tested holo-boards. Amid these climate-controlled venues, she would find what she required. Every pulse of her ear brought a fresh sting, but the feeling was steadily becoming familiar – a reminder of her improper threat assessment. The cost of the surgery would be small, but the cost of losing her target would be incalculable. She could not let this destroy her career and all she had gained over its course.
She grasped her pockets tightly. Her already-pale knuckles were unaltered by the gesture. Second-shift workers were beginning to emerge from their high-stacked domiciles, the concrete staircases leading into the buildings a congested mess. The workers shouldered passed one another, their faces indistinct and set for the same labor endured day after day. For them, there was no fame, no pride, no moments of glory; there was only the job, the pub, the apartment. The job, the pub, the apartment. Recurring. Ceaseless. Their prospects for companionship were limited to their socio-economical District, and there was no place in New Paradise farther down on the ladder than Factory – lowest cost of living, highest mortality rate. The few women assigned to work this sector became the mania of bar-talk and a sort of alpha male proving rite. Thos
e select conquerors reveled in the fleeting high of their triumph and the lasting ire of their peers. And why shouldn’t they? Their genetic legacy was, in their minds, all but assured.
Queen’s curvature elicited a mixture of whistles and hollers, but she kept her hood up and her pace constant. Not even her cold, albino gaze would discourage these mongrels. Luckily, both she and they had an overriding priority: work.
※
Her escort to the top of Central Surveillance was a balding man with a severely-set face, which looked out through the glass elevator and down at the multifarious lightshow. His uniform was security-issue beige, form-fitted to his medium-bordering-on-overweight build. The chrome nametag under his front right pocket read, “Sgt. Mulligan” in black stencil. He regarded her reflection. In the glass, his eyes lost their blue intensity.
“Rare for a Specialist to have clearance here.”
“Mhm.” Queen folded her arms and leaned against a bronzed panel. LED rings slipped over her body, floor by floor.
“Must be a real treat for someone like you.”
“How so?” She leveled her voice.
“Getting a sneak-peek at potential victims.”
“You’re incorrect, but the presumption is noted.” Queen said, full of mirth. She kept her eyes on his reflection long enough for him to get the message.
He found renewed interest in the eastering skyline. From this height, the crags and dunes beyond the city’s imposing steel walls stretched for miles. Refugee shantytowns – a hodgepodge of tents, plastic shacks, and official listening towers – encircled the parameter of almost the entire metropolis. Far off, a line of refugees was snaking toward Processing.
If any eager immigrants decided to make for the walls before they were processed, the automated defense turrets scattered throughout the sands would spring out and fire a warning shot. Those quick on the uptake would turn back, but there was always one foolish enough to continue forward. The turrets did not kill clean: Groups that went for Immigration Processing or the maintenance gates had especially gruesome conclusions.
Gruesome or no, the turrets were efficient. Two years ago, she remembered, a group of disenchanted refugees had charged the city’s main entryway during scheduled processing. The fifty-odd insurgents figured they could fight their way past the outer checkpoints and into the processing nexus while the turrets were deactivated.
To the attacker’s misfortune, security had known about the plans for weeks, and ordered the engineering team to rework the defense grid. At the time, the friend-foe identification software only scanned for CID cards or temporary visas, but advances in biorhythmic profiling had prompted new software: CID cards and visas were read in conjunction with breathing patterns, pupil dilations, and heart rates. The turrets could be kept online indefinitely, and in a calm state of mind a person was safe, which was a design flaw, in Queen’s opinion. Still, the upgrade won resounding support from business leaders and their government lackeys. The team members that created the BRID system were hailed as heroes by the state, and granted a sizable bonus to their salaries as incentive to stay on with the defense sector.
She heard later that a private research and development firm offered the lead engineer an allowance of five hundred thousand credits annually and free reign of a five-story-deep underground facility. The man was not stupid – he considered the offer, counter-offered, and came out ahead at seven hundred fifty thousand credits per year. Not bad for someone that started as a mere refugee.
It was people like him that subdued the animosities in the shantytown and kept mass uprising from occurring. Hope. All you needed to do was give people a taste of it, show them an example of the good life. Then they’d do anything for you – even if it meant killing their own.
The elevator dinged. A relaxed electric voice announced the hundredth floor. Queen watched Mulligan as he disembarked, then she followed.
※
“Are you fucking crazy?” the old timer inquired. He stared Black Death down at Queen.
She immediately liked him.
Immersed in the illumination of a thousand monitors, she said, “No. I need every camera you have searching for him.” She tapped the photograph in the old man’s hand.
“Mulligan.” He placed the photograph on his workstation with worrying care.
“Sir?” Mulligan said.
“Why is this person in my surveillance room?” The superior gestured to her with a leathery digit.
“She has clear–”
“Mulligan?”
“. . . sir?”
“Do not say ‘she has clearance’ to me. You have told me that twice already. Do you think I am going senile?”
“Of course not, sir,” Mulligan said, too quickly.
“Then when I ask you the same question, I expect you to have enough common sense to give me an improved answer.”
“She is here on Captain Ren’s approval, sir,” Mulligan said. “The, uh, basement surveillance room is undergoing routine maintenance.”
“I thought that was taken care of yesterday, Sergeant.”
“Many of our technicians called in a PTO day, citing flu from a weekend party.”
“In an era of free inoculations, our staff managed to get sick. Is this what you are telling me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that’s just a cool breeze in my day,” the old timer said. He regarded the photograph of the hawkish man. “Go wait in the foyer, Mulligan.”
“I was told to stay with her, sir.” He looked back at Queen. “Orders.”
“I am rescinding those orders, since I outrank Captain Ren while in this room,” the old man replied. He sounded matter-of-fact, yet he appeared distracted.
Mulligan saluted, but his jowls trembled as he stomped past her. He left as clumsily as he had entered, stepping over bundled cables and bumping against the seats of operators down the row.
When the frosted glass door slid closed behind him, the old timer typed the Lock command remotely, his digits lightning-fast despite his age. His keyboard was outdated, non-holographic – a smudged black slab of carved plastic. Queen wondered how much he had paid a salvager for it, and why.
“Okay,” the old timer began, slotting the picture into his digitizer, “let’s see where your target is hanging around.” He proffered an ancient swivel chair. “This may take a minute or two. More on the two side, probably.”
Queen folded her legs native-style on the cushioned seat. “You work with a lot of assholes too, huh?”
“She shoots, she scores.” He tabbed from one camera feed to the next, his input device rat-at-tatting. “Here’s the cherry on the sundae: That blue-eyed wonderboy has been selling off copied security discs on the side for a couple months.”
“No authority to oust him?”
“Oh, I’ve brought it up at the ‘officer meetings,’ aka the ‘circle jerk.’ Problem being, he is a corporate boy whose daddy makes contributions galore. Has a taste for exotic dancers of the swarthy persuasion, and needs the credits to fund his ‘eccentric’ side. We can’t fire him, so they just laugh it off. They think it’s a fucking riot having a security leak bumbling around.”
“You’re an open book, sir,” Queen noted.
“You tend to be when you’re untouchable,” he said. “And the name is Murdoc.”
Murdoc thumbed his chrome nameplate. His other hand continued its intricate dance, the images on the displays moving at a blurring fast forward. The telltale signs of augmentation were highlighted by the monitor glow. Veins of black circuitry traveled from his fingers to his bald skull. It was unusual for someone not to have their augmentations covered subdermally, to so brazenly give themselves away. Every officer and grunt in the security division underwent extensive surgery after recruitment, whether it was muscular or cerebral. To not conceal it, well, Murdoc must have been with Central Intelligence for a while to subvert that rule.
Queen traced a polished nail over the remnant of her earlobe.
&nb
sp; The downtown clinics had been filled to capacity, the wait over an hour – too long. She’d put her name on the reservation list and purchased a tube of biogel instead. In the bathroom, she’d washed the blood off her hoodie the best she could. Then she had applied the gel, and the bleeding ceased under icy waves. Now, as she looked at walls of segregated video feed, she admired the total coverage.
Each boulevard, avenue, back alley, intersection, park, and hangar bay falling under ‘public’ domain shone in HD. She caught sight of the clinic on one, its white tiled façade and hot pink capitals spelling DEAN’S DOWN HOME PROCEDURES. A smoker loitered outside, waiting his turn, a pager clamped in his free hand. His pager must have buzzed; he crushed his cigarette under-heel and entered between sliding acrylic glass.
“I have him,” Murdoc said. “You won’t like this.”
“Tell me.”
“Timestamps show him making two stops,” he said, rotating the screen toward her. She scooted her chair forward. Murdoc enlarged the window pertaining to her target, pointed as he spoke. “Here he is four minutes after the ambush. He made his way west along Jacob Street, hung a left at the intersection, and ended up here, at a drop location.” He jabbed at the liquid crystal screen, rippling an older section of warehouses.
“What did he pick up?” There was a sharp edge creeping into her speech.