Black Marble (Darkside Dreams - Series 1 Book 3)

by A. King Bradley

  “Did you go into detail?” I ask.

  “Nothing specific. I let him know that it involved the welfare of organics, but I left it at that.”

  “What did he say? Did he accept the meeting?”

  “He did. He sent some dates, but his response came after I was already dead.”

  “Did you guys lock in a date?” I ask, a brilliant idea suddenly popping into my head.

  “I was dead, Rome,” Ana says sarcastically. “I didn’t have time to lock in a date.”

  “Then I have an idea,” I say.

  “Hit me.”

  “Tucker Berg is so high level that news of your death probably hasn’t even reached him.”

  “I see,” Ana cuts in. “You want me to email him again to set up a date for the meeting as though I was still alive.”

  “You okay with that?” I ask.

  “I suppose I could piggy-back off Abdo's proxy and shoot a reply over. That way no one will be able to intercept it. And if an email from a dead woman doesn’t get us in the door, I don’t know what will.”

  “This only works if he doesn’t know you’re dead, Ana. Keep that in mind when you’re sending the reply.”

  “Right.”

  Ana takes a short moment to compose an email, run Abdo's proxy address, and fire the message off. I stand there on the platform, staring at a spinning hologram of an old mag-car. I'm feeling good. And I'm prepared to wait a long time. As long as need be.

  But Berg isn't as patient. He responds within fifteen minutes. Ana reads the reply into my ear, and I smile the biggest smile of my life.

  The meeting is on.

  But I'm not one to put all my chickens in one basket, as the old saying goes. There are a couple other things I have to do first.

  “Ana,” I say, “connect me with Abdo.”

  She gives him a call. Secure line. Unless Abdo is currently entertaining guests, he'll definitely pick up.

  A moment later, a hologram of his face projects from my omni. Leering at me out of the dark. He's back in his sound-proofed room again.

  “Hello?” he whispers. “What do you want now, Roman?”

  I smile sheepishly and shrug my shoulders. “I might need one more favor. I want to know if you have anything that can clone an omni.”

  “Clone an omni?” For a moment, he's so surprised by the question that he forgets to answer. “Well, that depends on the omni in question. Consumer grade, or something higher up the scale?”

  “Higher. Safe to assume that it's the best around.”

  “Okay. I have something that might work. But, hey, it's not going to be cheap.”

  “That's not a problem. I'll wire the funds to you in a few minutes. Secure transfer, of course.”

  “Alright.” Abdo's face sags, and he looks much older than his fifty years. “How do you want to do this?”

  “Not face to face,” I tell him. “Dead drop.”

  Abdo sighs. “I was hoping you would say that. I swear I smelled cigar smoke a little while ago, you know... Anyway, I'll leave the goods in the, ahem, most convenient place.”

  “Thanks, Abdo. Thanks again. I'll try and make this up to you, really.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Abdo groans. “That’s what you guys always say.”

  “One more thing before I let you go,” I add, “how do I use the thing? The omni clone device thingy.”

  “It'll do all the work for you,” Abdo confirms. “It'll come attached to a fresh omni that will take the cloned one. And it will only take a few seconds for a full image mirroring.”

  “What's the catch?” I ask. “There's always a catch.”

  “You have to be close. Very close. It's best if the omnis are even touching, but not necessary. You'll know when the cloning completes because the device will rumble. I suggest putting it in a different pocket than your own personal omni. Preferably on the other side of your body. Otherwise it will just keep itself busy with copying your omni over and over again.”

  Abdo’s voice sounds tired. Probably due to a combination of sleep deprivation and his overall distain for the type of work we do. He always talks about retiring from the PI game, mostly on account of being tired of me and a lot of the other PIs constantly pestering him for favors.

  I thank Abdo again for the help. I think I could go right on thanking him until the end of time itself. I hope he'll never have to deal with me again, for his own sake. Because the man's too damn generous for his own good.

  CHAPTER 19

  ◆◆◆

  As soon as the dark of night falls, I slip out of the station and make my way along the street. The nearest drop location isn't far from here, and I know Abdo's had more than enough time to get out here and put it down.

  We private eyes like to help each other out as best we can but doing it without a face to face meeting is always preferred. Thus, the dead drop locations we have spread around the city. They can be anything from a hole in the sidewalk to an old munitions locker in the back of an abandoned building. You'll know when you find one, because they let out a certain pulse. And, as far as I know, only PIs have access to the proprietary omni module that is able to detect that pulse. Maybe the synths have found a way to feel those pulses too, but I've never had a drop come up empty.

  This time is no exception. I reach under a carefully organized pile of rubble and pull out a small, sealed bag. Inside is a fresh, empty omni with some kind of ugly protrusion jutting off the top. I stick the thing in my pocket, fling the bag into the corner, and keep on walking.

  CHAPTER 20

  ◆◆◆

  A light rain falls over the city, lacing the air with an acid tang, and forming murky puddles in the low roads.

  I walk along, hands in my pockets, frowning as I splash through pools of acrid water. The overpass above me keeps the rain off my head. Limp, damp hair hangs in front of my eyes, and I keep reaching up to push a finger into my right ear. Suddenly, I'm paranoid that I'll lose my earpiece and Ana won't be able to whisper things to me.

  TuckerBerg didn't give us an exact time and place to meet him. Rather, he gave us a plotted course for a short walk through a backwater area of the city. It's up to us to catch up to him, find him somewhere along that path. Ana, using the proxy, has been sending out pulses, looking for omni signatures.

  “Here,” she says. “Take a left.”

  I follow her instructions. A narrower side bridge arcs overhead, and I have to stay perfectly in the center of the street to stay beneath it. To either side, dark shops yawn wide. Their marquees gone to dust and grime. Their front windows shattered long ago, probably during the bombing runs of the Second War.

  Staring ahead, narrowing my eyes against a windswept spray of rainwater, I see a figure moving along up ahead. Coming in my direction. The figure looks up, reaching to briefly pull its hood aside so that a beam of light from a nearby enclave lights its face.

  Tucker Berg.

  Most full body cyborgs are hard to tell apart from synths. But not Berg. His face is too recognizable. His long, thin body. His narrow, pointed jaw.

  He lets the hood fall back into place, and suddenly he's just another rat in the night. Strolling along with his hands in his pockets and his face lost in shadow.

  I walk past him, look around, do an about-face, and hurry to catch up. We move along side by side.

  Berg jumps in surprise when I come in next to him. He looks over, takes me in top to bottom, and finally relaxes. A little bit, anyway.

  “You're not Adriana Graves,” he says, in a surprisingly old, synthesized voice that’s just a bit too computerized, a bit too modulated. His diction and inflection are perfect but the sound of his voice synthesizer sounds ancient, which would only make sense if he was still using the same cyber body that he used centuries before when he became the world’s first full body cyborg.

  I’m surprised to see what he looks like up close. From a distance, he looks like just another person but up close I can tell that his cyber body is indeed hundre
ds of years old. Likely the first to have ever been created. I’m impressed. It's a testament to the staying power of his technology.

  “Ana's dead,” I say to him, speaking quickly to get my point across before he bolts. “But I’m working with a backup of her persona. To finish her work. She said you were interested in helping her. I mean no disrespect and I’m sorry to spring this on you, but I really had no other choice.”

  His cybernetic eyes widen with surprise and he glances over his shoulder. “We need to make this fast, whoever you are. The nature of this meeting has required me to slip away from my security detail...”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Berg, you’re the most powerful man in the world. Are you sure that’s such a good idea?” I ask, genuinely curious.

  “My security detail is primarily comprised of synthetics…” he says, still shifting his eyes about.

  “You don’t trust them?” I ask.

  “Let’s just say that I’ve long suspected that certain individuals within my organization are much more loyal to the synth government than they are to me. In any case, can we get this over with? You said you were working with Adriana’s back up persona. I assume you have her with you, correct?”

  I take out my omni, and project a hologram of Ana scaled down to the point where she resembles an action figure. I also dial down the projection's brightness, so I don't advertise our whereabouts like a beacon.

  “Hello, Mr. Berg,” she says, smiling and slightly nodding her head.

  “Ms. Graves,” he responds. It's hard to read the facial features of a cyber body as old as his, but if I had to guess I’d say he looks sad. And also afraid. “It's unfortunate that we had to meet this way.”

  “Do you have your omni on you?” I interject.

  Berg thinks for a second, nods, and takes his omni from his coat pocket.

  I reach out my hand. “I can transfer Ana’s persona to your omni. If you'd like a more private discussion.”

  Berg shakes his head and tucks his omni away again. “That won’t be necessary. If Ms. Graves trusts you enough to facilitate this meeting than I suppose I should trust you as well.” He glances over his shoulder again—I assume in the general direction of the security detail he left behind. “Not to mention that if you left me now, I think I'd feel even more vulnerable than I do already.”

  I nod and remain silent as Berg turns his attention back to Ana.

  “You said you had information for me. About the welfare of organic life on earth,” he says.

  I watch Ana and Berg in silence, as she explains our findings to him. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going through his head when some part of my brain clocks a sudden presence nearby.

  I turn my head in time to see a burst of light. A nanosecond later, the sound of a gunshot reaches my ears and I reflexively duck down, tackling Berg to the ground and falling on top of him. A projectile whizzes just over our heads and strikes a support column a few feet away. Concrete shrapnel bounces off the side of my neck, and gray dust settles over the back of Berg's hood.

  More shots are coming. I grab Berg tight and dart for safety, shoving the two of us into the shadow of an alleyway. Behind a pile of rubble. Berg is ducking low, using his arms to cover his head.

  A spray of bullets sweep over the wall nearby. Moving in a circular pattern. The shooter isn't trying to hit us just now; he's simply using the light of his muzzle flash to try and spot where we're hiding.

  Amid the stench of gunpowder, my nose catches the unmistakable odor of a burning cigar. Karkoff. And he's even closer now than before. He's no longer playing around with poisons. There’s no doubt that he's shooting to kill.

  The shooting stops. I hear a click of reloading, a frustrated grunt. A deep darkness has fallen. My eyes, adjusted to the bright flash of the gun, can't see a thing. But I know Berg can. He's got cyber eyes, capable of adjusting to much darker conditions.

  I push him up onto his feet, grab a handful of his coat, and tell him to run.

  We fly down the alleyway and into the night. As soon as we round a corner, I flip Ana's hologram back on, dial up the brightness, and use it to navigate.

  For a short while, we run along parallel to the road we just escaped from. Not perfectly parallel; that would be too predictable. We dip in and out of alleys and derelict buildings. We diverge, taking wide berths, and come back to parallel at random intervals. In this way, we make our way back toward Berg's security detail. When we're close enough, they automatically pick up on his omni signal. I hear them coming, shouting orders, letting off random shots down the street.

  “There’s your detail! Go!” I tell Berg, shoving him forward.

  By the time he looks back, I'm gone.

  The shooting continues, fading away behind me as I run through the city in a straight line. It continues for far too long, sounding like an all-out war between bounty hunters and synth security. A bit of a clusterfuck, if I do say so myself. I'm glad it’s all behind me, but it doesn’t take long for me to realize I’m not quite out of the woods yet.

  As I cross an intersection, I see something to my left and have less than a second to react. Not enough time. Karkoff slams into me like a freight train, knocking me to the ground hard enough to force all the air out my lungs. I quickly turn onto my back, reaching for my gun, but then I see that Karkoff has his aimed at my face.

  But it isn't a real gun. It's just a little pod thrower. The same weapon he must have used when he tried to hit me with poison.

  “The guy you met with. Where is he?!” he demands, still puffing away at his cigar.

  “You don’t know what you’re in to, Karkoff,” I warn. “You need to walk away from this one, man. You really should walk away.”

  “And miss out on a two for one special?” he says. “I think not.”

  I sweep my leg to the side and knock his right foot out from under him. He doesn't go down, by some miracle. He just kind of stumbles in place for a second, like a drunk guy trying to remember a dance routine.

  That gives me enough time to get a knee under myself, and then I'm back on my feet, launching upward and crashing straight into Karkoff. My hand goes for his pod thrower, to try and pull it away from him. I miss. But then Karkoff uses his pod hand to punch me hard in the side of the head. I see stars, then hear the clatter of his pod thrower falling to the ground.

  I keep barreling forward. I outweigh Karkoff by roughly twenty pounds, but he knows how to find his center of gravity. I just can't take him down. He just slides along, refusing to budge. Meanwhile, the hits keep coming. He slams both sides of my head. Hits my jaw hard enough to make my vision start to go black. I put my head down, blinking to keep the blood out my eyes, and keep pushing.

  Suddenly, I hear a metallic, slithering sound. You can't mistake that sound; a knife being drawn from its sheath. I'm about to get stabbed unless I acted quickly.

  Not today, buddy. Not when I'm so close to making things right. I was so hopeless a few days ago, but now all I have is hope.

  I grit my teeth and bend my knees, getting low. Then I tense my legs and give one last powerful shove. Karkoff doesn't fall, but he does hit the sharp corner edge of a building spine-first. He screams in pain. His spittle splashes over my face.

  I get one hand on his throat, the other on the arm that's holding his knife.

  “I don't want to kill you,” I tell him, blowing snot and blood out of my nostrils. “Back off, Karkoff. Don't make me do it.”

  I stare into Karkoff's eyes, trying to cow him into surrender. As much as I hate the guy, as horrible as I think he is, he's still a fellow organic. Snuffing out his life won't achieve anything.

  But I can tell that surrender isn't an option for him. In his eyes, back behind the pain and the faint glimmer of fear, I see the same glow that must be burning in my own eyes right now. It's hope.

  Suddenly, he jerks his knife arm hard enough to pull it from my grip. But I still have him by the throat. I squeeze harder, driving my knee into his gut, and
feel a wash of warm, cigar-smelling breath over my face. With my other hand, I quickly grapple his knife arm again, twisting it inward. Driving his own blade up under his sternum.

  Karkoff stares at me for a second, furrowing his brow and sticking his bloody tongue out in some kind of final gesture of rebellion. Then he dies, sagging against me. I let his body down easy, laying it flat on the ground.

  “You bastard,” I tell him. “You stupid son of a bitch! Why'd you make me do it?”

  It's a bad feeling, taking a life that doesn't need to be taken. Especially a life like Karkoff's. A man who was so perfectly suited for his line of work. I should feel some sort of relief from having won the scuffle but instead I feel a hollow sense of tragedy. It's as though I've just shot down a rare and majestic beast. A magnificent creature that could very well be the last of its kind.

  I step away from Karkoff, shaking out my hands then holding them up to watch them tremble.

  “I can reach out to Berg again,” Ana says in my ear. “Although I doubt he'll want to meet again so soon. Not after almost being gunned down. I don't know if he'll help at all, now.”

  “We don’t need his help… now that we have this,” I tell her.

  I show Abdo's device to Ana. The formerly blank omni is now booting up, displaying a vast hoard of information.

  “What is that?” she asks.

  “It’s a clone of Tucker Berg’s omni,” I confirm. “Probably the most powerful device in the world.”

  “This was your plan all along wasn’t it?” she asks.

  “Back up plan,” I correct.

  “How did you do it?”

  “When I tackled him to the ground to save him from those bullets. I made sure to hold on to him just long enough to clone his omni with Abdo’s device. I didn’t have a choice, Ana. Couldn’t take the chance of Berg refusing to help us.”

  “His omni might give us the access we need to use the quantum array, but we still have to figure out how to infiltrate the building,” Ana said. “I imagine the security at the Horizon Group’s HQ isn’t exactly a walk in the park.”