Chromed- Rogue

by Richard Parry

  Then he levered himself to his feet, stumbling up the street. Back to the Federate.

  The recording advanced again, audio only this time. Four minutes had passed. Lace’s voice was frantic. “Harry. Harry! We’ve lost your signal. Harry!”

  There was the sound of a door opening in the background, and Lace said, “Thank God he didn’t get you too.”

  A man spoke. “Who didn’t get me?”

  “Mason,” said Lace. “Harry was … I’ve lost Harry.”

  “Okay,” said the man. “Don’t worry, Lace. We’ll get him.”

  She sounded angry. “He’s your partner. How did it come…? Wait. What are you doing?”

  There was a moment of silence before the bomb went off, the crash of the explosion making the recording’s audio buffers cut out.

  SIGNAL ENDS.

  “Now you know.” Carter had waited a minute or two after the feed finished. “He didn’t have to, you know.” She sighed. “He might have made it back here in time if he hadn’t stopped for you.”

  “But … Lace got hurt. Because he stayed.”

  “Everyone got hurt, Harry. Everyone.” Carter paused. “Maybe if you were a bit more honest you’d see it.”

  “Honest?” Harry’s voice was small.

  “Maybe if you’d listened to him, Lace wouldn’t be in a chair, and you’d be drinking margaritas on her lawn.”

  “I—”

  “For Christ’s sake, he let his guard down, let you shoot him, just on the hope he’d find one other — just fucking one — person to help him.” Carter snorted. “You hurt him so much it almost didn’t work out.”

  “Work out?” said Harry. “You call this working out?”

  “Mason wouldn’t tell you. Mason did what he thought he had to. Percentages, profit and loss, that wasn’t going through his mind as he pulled your sorry ass out of a burning car at the side of a road. It was a lonely, cold night, and no one would have blamed him if he’d left you to die.” Carter’s voice was quiet, hard, cold. “He’d have been a hero. He’d have come back here, and we’d have ten people who died that night still sucking oxygen. Lace wouldn’t be a cripple who can’t look at herself in a mirror anymore. That shit’s on you. You have to ask yourself, right? You’ve got to be wondering. Was Mason just doing his fucking job?”

  “I can’t…” Harry stopped, looking at the recording’s icon flash on his overlay. “I can’t go back. I can’t change it.”

  “Here it is, Harry. What are you going to do now? You going to do your job? You’ve got a choice.”

  “What choice?” asked Harry, but the link was dead.

  “I don’t understand.” Lace sounded lost. “Why?”

  “You heard the message. You got as much as I did from it.” Harry looked at the inside of the hangar. It seemed smaller, now. He hadn’t moved for an hour, the insistent blinking on his overlay letting him know the service cycle was complete. A tech had been by earlier, the man scurrying away at Harry’s tone.

  “No,” said Lace. “I heard that. Why did you…?”

  “Why did I what?”

  “I talked to Julio. I screamed at him for ten minutes for wrecking my yard,” said Lace. “I found one of his shitty beer bottles out front.”

  “What do you mean, wrecked your yard?” Harry wondered how to navigate these waters. They felt new. Not just recycled but fallen afresh from the sky. “He did something to your yard? Something bad?”

  Lace was silent for a moment. “No, as it turns out, he didn’t.”

  “Why’d you scream at him for ten minutes, then?” Harry swiveled around, unclamping the pipes from his chassis, the whine of the servos bouncing from the walls of the bay.

  “Because he left a beer bottle on my lawn.”

  “Seems extreme.”

  “And my lawn was wrecked.”

  “Gotcha,” said Harry.

  “Why’d you do it?” Lace’s voice was soft. “You know how I like my garden.”

  Harry’s feet took him out of the bay, the chassis doing all the work. He wandered into the stream of traffic flowing through the hangar. Federate vehicles and total conversions moved in a steady stream of organized chaos. “Yeah, I remember how you like your garden. I tried to get it as close as I could remember.”

  “What if I liked it the way it was?”

  “And I put in a real ramp. For the chair. Not a board laid over steps.”

  “Thanks. You treat me like I’m a fucking cripple.” If Harry didn’t know better, he’d have thought Lace choked back tears.

  “A little while ago, there was this barbecue I went to.”

  “When you crashed your last car?”

  “That’s cold, and you know it,” said Harry. A sound came down the link, cut short. Like someone laughed because otherwise they’d cry, muting the audio not quite in time. “What is it?”

  “It’s just that…” She laughed. “I’m sorry, Harry. We were talking about a barbecue, and then you … you said it was cold. Sorry. Ironic, is all.” She laughed again, almost a sob. Almost.

  Harry stopped in the hangar’s flow of traffic. A tech glared at him, muttering. Harry ignored him, feeling something unfamiliar and bright inside him. He laughed. He couldn’t stop himself. The chassis lifted as he guffawed, his leg hydraulics rocking. “Jesus, that’s nasty, even for you.”

  “I know, right?” She laughed for real now, no sobs. Pure release. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I want to hear about it.”

  “Hear about what?” Harry chuckled, swiveled to another man working on an ATV. He switched on the PA. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s rude to stare,” suggested Harry.

  “I got it,” said the man. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” said Harry. “Just don’t stare. It’s like you’ve never seen a man laugh before.”

  The man looked down at the ATV, then back at Harry. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think I have,” said the man. “At least, not a conversion. You guys don’t laugh much.”

  “Really?” Harry looked at his feet, the metal black and hard against the concrete floor. “No, I guess not. We don’t have much to laugh about.”

  The man nodded, then pointed to the ATV. “You mind?”

  Harry lifted a metal hand. “No, you go. Do your thing.” He swiveled away.

  “Don’t scare the natives,” said Lace. “They’ll report it, and you’ll get sent to Psych.”

  “I don’t think Psych can help me.” Harry turned his head to watch the man on the ATV for a moment more, then walked toward the hangar exit.

  “I still want to know.” She sighed. “About the barbecue.”

  “There was this barbecue. Sunny day. Couple of us, sitting around. I had a margarita, tequila poured from the freezer. The side of the glass was sweating. We sat in a garden. I don’t know, it must have been thirty in the shade. There was a bee flying around. An actual bee. Can you believe that?”

  “I can believe it,” Lace whispered.

  “I watched that damn bug for ten, fifteen minutes as it flew around, doing whatever it is bees do with flowers. Lace, there were flowers in the garden. Someone had managed to get flowers to grow in this shitty piece of dirt at the edge of the city, despite all the acid rain and pollution and motherfuckers tipping their garbage out.”

  “I remember,” she said.

  Harry went on like she hadn’t spoken. “There I was, having this really great day. Friends around, real friends. Good food. Felt like I was in touch with life.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was four days before I lost my body.”

  “I remember,” she said again.

  “Four days before my friend lost the use of her legs.”

  “Stop,” she said. Her voice sounded broken, cracked like dead, dry earth.

  “Four days before I lost my friend,” said Harry. “Four stupid days be
tween that one perfect, amazing day, and the rest of my life. Our life.”

  “Please,” she pleaded. “Stop.”

  “I figured, the garden died, because … well, you know what happened.”

  “I know what happened.”

  “And I figured, you couldn’t garden anymore,” said Harry.

  “Because of the chair.”

  “Because of me.”

  “No, Harry.”

  “I wanted to dig the garden up for you. I wanted to remember what it used to be like. I wanted to show you that.”

  The link was silent as Harry left the hangar, walking into the night beyond. He clicked on the chassis’ running lights, fingers of white pushing the dark away.

  “It’s not true.” Lace’s voice shook. “It’s not true.”

  “It’s true. All of it. I’m sorry, Lace.”

  “It’s not all true.”

  “I figured I remembered it just about right. I had to, to put the garden back.”

  “You got one thing wrong.” The link hissed, Lace breathing softly. “You didn’t lose your friend.”

  Harry pulled to a stop with a clank, the hum of the chassis loud around him. If he still could, he would have smiled.

  Chapter Ten

  The streets of Seattle were wild with people. Zacharies had never seen so many. Or dressed in so many different styles. Some people wore suits, like Mike. Others wore almost zero. He passed a man wearing nothing but boots and a see-through plastic raincoat. Mike had shrugged, saying hard night, maybe, and they’d moved on.

  The confusion of clothes and sounds made it hard to see what they were searching for. The demon’s victims were difficult to spot. A user of alcohol or drugs was difficult to distinguish from a Seeker. Progress was slow, but despite that Zacharies marveled at Heaven’s mighty city. It was good and bad, hard and soft, real and fake. He wanted to leave, and he wanted to stay.

  Laia was in this world, so he must stay. When they were together again, they could decide.

  Mike brought two Metatech enforcers with them. Miles and Obie were tough-looking men who, near as Zacharies could tell, didn’t smile at all. Matte gray Metatech armor clothed them from head to foot, the crossed sabers of the syndicate’s logo in amber on chest and back. They wore visored helmets and carried weapons called lasers. Miles and Obie looked like ordinary men, but beneath their skin Zacharies’ gift showed hearts of fire and limbs of steel.

  At last. Zacharies saw the first Seeker sprawled in a doorway, the burned-out neon logogram overhead promising Best Noodles. Zacharies tugged Mike’s sleeve. “That one.”

  Mike nodded, a small tight movement, holding up a hand to halt Miles and Obie. “I see him. You’re sure?”

  Zacharies reached out with his gift, feeling — the demon roiled within the man, feeding on his hopes, coaxing life from his fears long left behind as a child — what lay inside. “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “He could be high.”

  “Trust me,” said Zacharies. “I don’t know what ‘high’ means, but he’s not happy.”

  “He looks happy to me.” Mike bent, turning the man over. Blank eyes stared. Drool tracked a snail’s path from the corner of his lips, leaving a green line down his jaw. “Disgusting, but happy.”

  Zacharies felt the flow of the people on the street, going about their ordinary lives in this place of gods and machines. Laia’s Heaven is … broken. “There. Look.” He pointed to a small white tube, almost lost amongst the clutter and trash on the street.

  Mike nudged the tube with his boot. “Standard stim packaging. It’s a drug.”

  “A drug.” Zacharies’ link gave him context. “Like lamesh weed?”

  Mike stood. “What the hell is lamesh weed?”

  “The Seekers use it. It grows along the marshes. It gives clarity to sight.”

  “You’re a strange kid, that’s for sure. Okay, it’s like a weed.”

  “This isn’t a drug, Mike.” Zacharies glanced at Miles and Obie, the two enforcers standing like rocks in a stormy sea of people. Only their heads moved. Zacharies held up a hand as Mike was about to speak. “He has a demon inside him. You must have faith.”

  Mike picked up the white tube. “No brand.”

  “What?”

  “No syndicate made it, Zach. Where’d it come from?” Mike spoke like all things came from syndicates. Like there was no other source of evil.

  “The master made it. With the demon.”

  Mike looked over his sunglasses at Zacharies. “Let’s say he did. Faith and all. The thing is, I’m pretty sure your backward little world can’t make plastics. So, how’d he get the demon inside a bottle?”

  The man at their feet groaned in his sleep. Miles shoved back a woman who came too close. Obie glared at a hulking monster of a man who looked like he could start trouble. The hulk changed direction as he saw Metatech’s crossed sabers. So many people could encounter this Seeker. The fear of Metatech would save only a handful. Zacharies clenched his fists. “There will be more. Many more. It’s how they control the world.”

  “More dudes like this?” Mike nudged the man on the ground. “If all criminals were this passive the world would be sweet.”

  “He’ll wake up. Things will be different when he wakes up.”

  One enforcer — Zacharies was sure it was Miles, but it was hard to tell with just the lower part of the man’s face visible — turned to Mike. His black visor glinted raindrops as he pointed. “Sir? Across the street.”

  Zacharies couldn’t see anything obvious in the wash of humanity. “What did you see?”

  “Guy at our one o’clock,” said Miles.

  Obie nodded. “I see him. Link’s down.”

  “What?” Zacharies didn’t know how a link could be down. The link was inside, a part of you like your love of steak, dreams of a better world, or your sins.

  “Quiet.” Mike pointed, Zacharies following the line of his arm. “See that clown over there in the doorway?”

  Zacharies saw a man who didn’t look anything like a clown. He swayed in a doorway, like a tree in a light wind. Zacharies thought the man’s eyes looked white, as if they’d rolled back in his head. “Mike?”

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “He’s woken up. Any second now—”

  “Got another.” Obie hefted his laser. “Across the street. Eleven o’clock. The fried chicken place.”

  “It’s not chicken,” said Miles. “I’ve eaten there a couple times—”

  “I see him.” Mike turned to Zacharies. “Zach?”

  “Yes.” Zacharies watched the two Seekers, a pit of cold in his stomach. At least there’s only two.

  “The problem we’ve got here is that those two guys have a link, but they’ve turned it off. They’re not affiliated.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  Mike pulled a large sidearm from under his jacket, yanking the slide back. The weapon clicked and whined. “Usually it means they’re criminals about to—”

  “Movement.” Obie’s voice was tense. “Fifth floor. Fire escape. One o’clock.”

  “I see him.” Miles readied his laser rifle. “What’s up with their eyes?”

  Obie and Miles went shoulder to shoulder. They held their rifles with exacting precision, barrels pointing into the street. A woman screamed, then another. They weren’t screaming at the Metatech enforcers.

  Oh no. The Seekers were coming for them.

  The man on the fire escape howled, grabbed the railing, and vaulted over the side. He fell like a rock. One of his knees gave way and he stumbled.

  Zacharies leaned closer to Mike so he could be heard over the rising din. “Mike, we must run.”

  Mike looked ready to agree, then his eyes widened. He raised his sidearm. The weapon roared, white and hot as Mike shot past the side of Zacharies’ head. Zacharies spun, taking in the remains of the man who’d been sleeping in the doorway. His head and shoulders were gone, charred meat coating the doorway. The remains, just the sternu
m down, slumped back.

  Zacharies wanted to thank Mike, but his friend had already turned away. A burst of link traffic Zacharies didn’t have clearance for passed between the three Metatech men. Miles and Obie sighted along their rifles, firing. Their rifles gave a soft sound, nothing like the harsh rage of Mike’s sidearm. Red light lased out, angry like a blood dawn, Obie firing at the man in the fried chicken place, Miles taking out the man in the doorway opposite. Zacharies didn’t understand how they’d managed to shoot so cleanly through a street full of people and hit nothing but their targets.

  Lasers pierced the flesh of their target’s chests. Red burst out their backs, the blood boiling and steaming. Two perfect hits.

  “Fuck me,” said Obie.

  “No,” said Miles. “Fuck me.”

  The two Seekers turned toward them, sightless eyes wide. Smoke peeled away from their chests, the edges of the wounds cauterized as they staggered toward the Metatech team. The panic of the crowd surged.

  “Fuck this.” Mike stepped forward, sidearm raised. He fired three times, white plasma cracking out. The first two shots came quickly, the third a moment later as he waited for a gap in the crowd. The sidearm chewed the top half off the men in the street, three bodies falling to the road. Mike glanced at the enforcers. “Headshots only.”

  “Copy that,” said Miles. Obie nodded, weapon still pointed out to the street.

  “I don’t understand.” Zacharies looked at the remains of the man slumped behind him.

  “What’s not to understand?” Mike scanned the street, unconcerned by the panicked people. “Drug gone bad. No wonder it’s not backed by a syndicate.”

  “Yeah.” Obie shrugged. “You hear about this kind of thing. Clinical trials take too long, so—”

  “Ship it out to the black market.” Miles cut in, ignoring Obie’s sigh. “See what happens on the street.”

  Zacharies shook his head. “That’s not what I don’t understand.”

  “What is it, kid?” Mike checked his sidearm, sighting down the short barrel before shoving it in his shoulder holster.

  “We came out here because you told me about the new drug.”