Kade

by Christopher Woods

  “What the hell is she doing in the Agent program?”

  “Body donor, only. Blanks are getting rare.”

  “Is there something going on I need to know about?”

  “No, sir. You just broke the back of JalCom’s final action, though,” she said with her head cocked to the side.

  I heard a couple of the words from the report. There was no context, but I wasn’t sure I needed any context to know what was happening. I had heard the phrase, “west coast” and another word that put a scowl on my face. “Teledyne.”

  * * *

  “Shit,” I said as the latest upload merged with my consciousness.

  “That doesn’t sound very good,” Nathaniel Bern said.

  “You got that right, Doc.”

  “What’s going on?”

  I was sitting across from him in the diner I had added to the little, virtual city I had built inside the data bank where they kept us.

  “JalCom is down for the count, but I don’t think we’re going to get a break anytime soon. I heard some talk about Teledyne when I was returning from this one.”

  “That’s not good,” he said. “Teledyne has some impressive nanotech. Their Specialists are every bit as powerful as Obsidian’s Agents.”

  “If they’re really about to go toe-to-toe with a giant like Teledyne, it’ll get bloody.”

  “I don’t know if they truly understand how bad this could get,” Bern said. “Teledyne’s tech is every bit as advanced as Obsidian’s. The only true advantage Obsidian has is the Agent imprint program.”

  “That’s a pretty strong advantage.”

  “True.”

  “Have you spoken with Stephen lately?” I asked.

  “I haven’t.” Bern looked around. “That man makes me nervous.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “He said the latest upload was interesting. They took imprints of over forty martial artists and combined the knowledge base into one skill package which they uploaded into him.”

  “That sounds a great deal like one of the projects I was working on,” he said.

  “I think that may be why the Doc out there is up on the top floor. Gina says she hasn’t seen him in quite a while.”

  “It has been a long time since I was uploaded back into the database.”

  I nodded and remained quiet for a minute, drinking my virtual coffee. “So, how much do you know about Teledyne? I doubt they’re going to let me retire anytime soon if they’ve already kicked that bear.”

  “They’re big. As big as Obsidian. They got their nanite breakthrough at the same time as Obsidian, thanks to a double agent with way too many doubles before the agent. I’m still uncertain what happened there. He was the guy sent in to procure an astounding new technology. When everything shook out, he had given it to both Companies, and he became the first to be augmented with them. Not sure which company was behind that, or if he had it done in the facility before leaving, but he became persona non grata with both.”

  “Damn, that took some nerve. Not a lot of sense, but a whole pile of nerve.”

  “It did.”

  “So, their nanites are just as advanced as ours.”

  “They may be ahead of us, a little, with the nanotech. But they can’t do what we can with the imprints. That’s all thanks to you, my friend.”

  “Me?”

  “You gave us a steady template to build from. With that template, we’ve made imprints that survive in different bodies all the time. Before my outside self stopped being uploaded, they were changing things in the other databases.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “They did away with the whole world inside the machine. This is the only one that is left. If they do away with the world here, they would have to remove you.”

  “What’s that mean for the imprints? Would they start going crazy again?”

  “No,” he said. “They are stable imprints, and they aren’t conscious of the time in the machine like we are.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Even all of these imprints inside the construct are different.” He motioned to the various people walking by the picture window. “These are like us in that they absorb what the uploads know when they are uploaded, but they aren’t part of the download. The download comes from the file, and that file has no memory of the interactions between the ones inside the construct.”

  “That’s way too complicated. I distinctly remember that I remember the machine while I’m out there.”

  “That’s because you’re an Admin. Your file is always your file.”

  “Yep, complicated. How did the others get that way?”

  Bern cocked his head to the side a little. “Really? You don’t know?”

  “What?”

  “When I set you up with the Admin codes, you did this as you built the construct.”

  “Umm.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “You’re the one who did this.”

  “But you have Admin codes too.”

  “I don’t have codes that allow me to do what you do. I have codes so I can access a lot of systems from the computer, though.”

  “But you remember your time in the machine, don’t you?”

  “I do have limited Admin access so, yes, I do remember.”

  “How do you have less access than I do when you gave it to me in the first place?”

  “It’s how everything was set up. There was a limited time when you uploaded me to the system, and some of the access I gave you wasn’t there for me. I have a feeling they’ll never give me that sort of access again.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  * * *

  I crouched on top of the hotel, looking over the edge at the approaching motorcade. The body I rode was a beast. He was six feet, three inches tall, and his dense musculature brought him in at close to four hundred pounds.

  I had done the prerequisite testing that told me what the limitations of the body would be. This one would hit like a truck.

  “Sadly,” I said, quietly, as I raised the rifle. “I won’t be punching anything.”

  Just as my scope settled on the driver of the second car, I caught a blur of motion in my peripheral vision. I kicked back from the raised edge of the building, and a knife that would have sunk into my neck impaled my right bicep.

  I rolled backward and back to my feet.

  “You’re faster than I expected,” the small redhead that stood where I had been crouched said.

  She was, perhaps, five feet three inches tall, with flaming red hair that was tied back. She was well built, and I was sure those looks had distracted many a man long enough for her next attack to reach them.

  She covered the distance between us in a split second, but I struck before she expected it. My left hand slapped her aside, and she tumbled across the roof.

  Then I reached up to my right arm and pulled the combat knife from my biceps. Over half the blade had sunk in, which said something about the force she had used to strike.

  “Girl, I don’t want to kill you, and you don’t want to be dead. I suggest you leave me to my job.”

  “Can’t let you kill the boss man,” she said.

  “Wasn’t planning to,” I said. “But now that you’ve interfered, the parameters have changed. A message was to be sent. Now, you made me miss that message. If your boss makes it to the meeting he is going to attend, there’s nothing I can do to prevent it.”

  “That’s only if you survive long enough to do anything,” she said and charged forward again.

  The blade was aimed at my groin, but I twisted just enough to take the hit to my thigh. She wasn’t so lucky. As her blade sank into the dense muscle, my hands settled alongside her head.

  With a savage twist, I sent her headless body tumbling away from me.

  “Damn it,” I mumbled as I dropped the head, pulled the knife from my leg, and returned to the edge of the roof.

  The motorcade was gone, and now, I would have to kill
a lot of people.

  I looked back at the girl. She had been as strong as I was when I was a female Agent. Bern was right. These Specialists would be a whole new level of bad for us.

  I shook my head and turned away from the corpse. “I guess it’s time to clean up the mess.”

  I looked down at the red splatter that covered the front of my coat. “Guess this one is ruined.” I shrugged. “Only gets worse from here.”

  * * *

  “Did you stop the meeting?” Gloria Dans asked. She sat behind a large, mahogany desk. Her office had very few decorations, which surprised me a little. Most of them had an I Love Me wall.

  “Didn’t manage to stop it, so I had to go to Plan B.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” she said. “Will we need a cleaning crew?”

  I pointed to the blood covering the clothes I wore.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s a dumb question.” She shook her head. “I thought you were supposed to cripple the motorcade so they missed the meeting.”

  “Ran into one of those Specialists,” I said. “They’re gonna be a problem.”

  “We have more Agents than they have Specialists,” she said.

  “That may be true. But it’s gonna get bloody.”

  “If it was easy, we’d just let the officers do it.”

  “Uh, Major?”

  “What?”

  “Last time I checked, you are an officer.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

  I laughed. “True enough.”

  I turned away from the major and headed toward the showers. “You know where to find me when you need me.”

  “Actually, we have another mission for you before you upload,” she said.

  “That’s unusual,” I said, halting at the door. “What is it?”

  “Simple bodyguard assignment. One of the VIPs is in town and wants some muscle in her vanguard.”

  “Don’t they have any Corporate Guards with them?”

  “Most of the Agents in the area are busy,” she said. “I could download one to the body you’re in and send him, but I thought you might like the job. Should be easy work. You can have the rest of the week in the body to stretch your legs. The Head needs you for two days; her guys will arrive by then. You’re on your own for the rest of the week. Have fun.”

  “Now, that, is what I like to hear. I could use some free time.”

  “I thought you might appreciate that.”

  “Thanks, Gloria,” I said. “You’re not too bad for an officer.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find some way to re-instill your lack of faith in the officer corps.”

  I chuckled, and she slid a piece of paper across the desk.

  “Take one of the limos and report to this address to pick up Rosalyn. Clean all the blood off Garik’s body. Chu found a piece of an ear in her hair. At least, we think it was part of an ear.”

  “Did you see how much hair she had? How’s someone supposed to clean all that? I washed it three times.”

  “Very carefully,” she answered. “Maybe you should be a little cleaner. Stop getting blood everywhere.”

  “Alright, already. I’ll go wash up pretty boy, here,” I said with a grin.

  “You left that ear on purpose,” she said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I shrugged.

  “I told you, Chu is a nice girl.”

  “Maybe she needs to know what she’s being used for,” I said.

  “Well, that’s not really your call to make, Mathew. Sometimes, I forget you’re not like the other imprints. Then you do something like this.” Her expression had grown serious. “I don’t think we should see that particular mistake again.”

  I shrugged again and left her office. I probably shouldn’t have left it, but I did feel the girl needed to know what she was into. Everyone involved in the Agent donor plan needed to know what they were allowing Obsidian to do with their bodies. She was right about the imprints. They all came with set parameters. They followed orders without hesitation. Good little soldiers, one and all. They weren’t allowed to do that with me. I was still the old curmudgeon they had uploaded so many years ago. Of course, they could violate the contract we had signed, and I had no doubt they would if I lost my usefulness.

  But I would do what I thought was right in circumstances where I could. They put up with the little things like that because I closed missions where others failed. I remained useful. And I had a friend or two in the program.

  As I took a shower and watched the red circling the drain, I wondered when this had become so common that I could pick up a piece of an ear and bury it in my hair. Sometime in the last twelve years, I had lost something.

  It was possible they had already broken my contract and taken that part of me that would have felt disgust at what I did. But I didn’t think so. I was pretty sure I had done so much over that twelve years that I was growing immune to the effects. Nine times out of ten, there were multiple copies of me out at the same time. Plus, there was the me in the machine. In my years since joining the Agent Program, I had actually lived close to sixty years in accumulated time from the various versions of me. That was a lot of killing, and it would certainly explain some of the way I felt.

  I had spent sixty years fighting JalCom in a ten year war. Perhaps that was why I was so disappointed when the thing with Teledyne started up without a single day of peacetime. If not for the peace I had created inside the machine with the construct, I would have been lost a long time ago.

  * * *

  I pulled the limo into the reserved spot at the front of the Westgate. It was owned by Obsidian, and incoming VIPs would land atop the massive building instead of using standard vehicles. From there they would be driven wherever they desired.

  I got to be the driver this time.

  “Lucky me,” I said as I got out of the driver’s seat and walked toward the front door.

  A couple of guards stepped out the door.

  “You the local guy?” the one on the left asked.

  “Yeah, I’m Matt.”

  “Derick.” The speaker pointed at himself and then used his thumb to indicate the other guy. “Leroy.”

  “It’s Will, asshole.”

  Derick chuckled.

  “Will, Leroy…Whatever. He’s a new guy,” Derick said. “How am I supposed to remember?”

  Will made a rude gesture at the other Agent.

  “New guys,” I said, with a shrug. “What’re you gonna do?”

  “I know. Right?”

  “I’m not that new,” Will said. “Just new to you.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, kid,” I said.

  “Really?” He held his hands out and shook his head. “Been an active Agent for over a year. What are you, nineteen or twenty?”

  I snorted. “The body is twenty, kid. I’m a touch older.”

  Derick looked at me with an odd expression. “You said your name is Matt?”

  “Yep.”

  “There are rumors of a guy who’s been around since the first imprint. His name is Mathew. He’s supposed to be from up here.”

  “You don’t say?”

  He nodded, with a grunt.

  “Oh, that guy’s not real,” Will said. “Everybody tells stories about him. You know how rumors go around this bunch. Sam even said the guy lives in the computer. You know that’s gotta be a lie.”

  “Why’s that?” Derick asked.

  “Well, they say he remembers everything, even the time inside the computer. No one remembers time in the system.”

  “They certainly don’t anymore,” I said.

  “See?” Will said. “He’s one of those urban legends.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Derick said, but he gave me a sidelong glance. He’d caught the last word of my statement.

  “Oh, look,” Will said. “Here comes the boss. I don’t know how I drew this assignment, but damn.”

  I turned and saw the most beautiful woman I had ever laid
eyes on.

  “Best that money can buy,” I muttered.

  Derick glanced at me again. Will was staring at the gorgeous Corporate Head.

  “Eyes out, Leroy,” Derick said.

  “Right.” Will shook his head and took his eyes off the redhead.

  Her hand slid across my back as she passed to get into the car.

  “So pretty,” she said in a soft voice.

  I shot a questioning glance at Derick who shook his head minutely in warning.

  I slipped around the car and entered the driver’s door.

  “Derick, join me. The new toy can sit in the front with the pretty one.”

  The passenger door opened, and Will got in with a frown.

  As Derick sat in the backseat alongside the redhead, the panel went up between the front and back. Even with the enhanced hearing of an Agent, I couldn’t hear the voices through the panel.

  “Soundproof,” I said.

  “Yeah, Rosalyn doesn’t like anyone to hear her conversations. I never get to ride in the back.”

  “Consider yourself lucky, kid,” I said. “The last thing you want is to be in that inner circle.”

  “I don’t know about that. You should hear some of the things she likes to do with her guards. You saw her. She likes to use all that.”

  “Of course, she does,” I said. “She paid a lot of money for it. Trust me, kid. You’re better off in the front seat.”

  “Whatever, man.”

  I grinned and shook my head. Then I pushed a button on the dash.

  “Where to, ma’am?”

  “Six eighty three Dumont Drive.”

  Her voice was soft and would send shivers down the back of most men. I guarantee it had been purchased.

  Will had a forlorn look on his face. I shook my head again and pulled out. Thumbing the button, I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  He punched the address into the dashboard computer.

  “A nightclub.” He was grinning.

  I sighed. “What’s your last name, Will?”

  “Dickson,” he said.

  “How did you get into the program?”