Automatic Reload: A Novel

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Silvia’s head snaps around. “The what?”

  “The … converts?” Trish stammers; it takes a lot to throw her off her rhythm, but Silvia’s managed it. “The … bioweapons. Like you. They’ve been … converted.”

  Silvia shakes her head so fast her features blur. “No. They weren’t converted. People convert to Catholicism. And even if the IAC has—changed—their bodies, I’m not converted. I’m still me, and they’re still them. Inside somewhere, anyway.”

  “Okay.” Trish steeples her fingers, realizing that arguing with Silvia about her fellow bioweapons is not an argument she’ll win. “But we have to call the … converts … something. Tactically speaking, we have to name them as a group.”

  Silvia closes her eyes, presses her palm to her chest.

  “Monica.”

  “Monica who?”

  “Saint Monica. Patron of grieving mothers and abuse victims. They’re not converts, they’re Monica.”

  “How would we even make that plural? Look, can we just call them the hostages, or—”

  “My mother and sister are the hostages,” Silvia shoots back. “And I don’t want you to give them some military jargon that makes it sound like they’re targets for you to shoot. You may have to kill them—” She glances over, nervously, at me. “—but I don’t want anyone to forget that they have names, had a life before the IAC abducted them.” She crosses her arms. “Call them Monica. Or ‘the Monicas,’ if you have to discuss them as a group.”

  Even though she’s desperate and terrified, Silvia still cares deeply for everyone in that facility, and she won’t let us abstract the IAC’s victims down to tactical issues.

  I feel an ache so great it takes me a moment to identify it as affection.

  “Fine. Monica it is.” Trish is boiling because she rarely gets steamrolled. “And you’re right in that we want to rescue all the Monicas we can. But we’re three people, with limited ammo, and we have to find a way to take that facility down. Because I’m ninety percent sure that’s where they were taking you to be tortured into compliance, which explains why they had a Monica stationed close enough to intercept you on the freeway. We can’t destroy the IAC—but it’s worth sacrificing our lives if we can find some way to destroy that facility.”

  “We can do it.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Mat. I’m not in a mood to be fucked with.”

  “Seriously. We had downtime in the car ride over. I have a plan to take down a facility.” I scratch my chin, realizing I’m stubblier than Trish. “At least I think I do.”

  She sucks air between her teeth. “I don’t have any resupply stations I can get you to, Mat. You’re low on ammo. We can’t call in friends, or special weaponry—”

  “Do we have a holocaust cloak?” Silvia snarks, and we shouldn’t giggle but we do, because hey, turns out we’ve both seen The Princess Bride.

  “I know you’re a wizard at planning, Mat. But be serious. You have a plan to take down a massively guarded facility run by techno overlords, filled with hyperfast biological weapons, with what we have on hand?”

  “It’s … a little more complicated than that,” I say. “It involves calling in a friend or two, but I’m almost certain they’re not people the IAC would have on our watch list. But yeah. I think we can disable that facility. And if Silvia’s mom and sister are there, there’s a chance we can free them.”

  “Will we survive?” Silvia asks.

  “Oh God, no.”

  Silvia squeezes my hand so hard a normal human’s fingers would crack. But it’s better to be brutal, because Trish is right; this is a suicide mission. We can’t hope to stop them; we only aim to roll back their progress.

  “So what’s your hesitation?” Trish asks.

  The boy. He wasn’t even related to the terrorist, as it turns out. His mother had sent him over to see if his father was there, which his daddy was, a waiter serving guys marked for death, and I’m hitting the “go” switch and a café is rubble and there’s a waiter and a cook and four other people crushed under wreckage and somehow I ignored those casualties as part of the equation until one kid got pulverized and my morality flensed the sanity from my brain.

  “That’s downtown,” I say. “People are in the way.”

  So many boys.

  So many ways to kill someone you didn’t mean to.

  * * *

  “Come on,” Trish says. “If you want me to do this, I gotta leave now.”

  “I want you to do this right,” I snap. “Give me another fifteen minutes.”

  I’ve spent the last two hours studying every photograph we have of the facility, figuring out how to minimize any civilian casualties. I’ve been designing protective threat models, programming algorithms to minimize collateral damage, anticipating the IAC’s counterreactions.

  Silvia went to bed a long time ago.

  I can’t sleep. Every extra minute might save another life.

  Trish ruffles my hair affectionately, which she can do because I’ve placed her on my “allowed casual contact” whitelist.

  “Mat,” she whispers. “It’s done.”

  “It’s not. It’s still risky. I can shave these percentages down.”

  She shakes her head slowly, like a drunk shaking off a dream. “Don’t lie.”

  My chest tightens. I’d kill for a cigar.

  “Do not,” I say through gritted teeth, “doubt my ability to protect people.”

  She waggles her hand, making a little comme ci, comme ça gesture. “Big picture, small picture. Is this plan appropriately stupid?”

  I check the time; it’s getting less stupid by the moment. The only way to defeat a near-omniscient, near-omnipresent entity is to do something so dumb it’s dismissed your idiotic strategy, then make that strategy effective enough to succeed.

  We should be leading a full-out assault on the IAC’s base less than two hours after we ran to ground. That’d be truly idiotic. Assuming Trish can enlist the necessary help, we’ll now be assaulting the IAC’s base six hours after we escaped them—which is still stupid, but within the realm of possibility.

  Every passing hour is another hour the IAC can bring in more drones to protect its base, devote more AI-banks to counterstrategies, move Silvia’s mom and sister away. Wait a week, and they’ll be untouchable.

  But that kid sure looked like a dog.

  “Ten minutes,” I beg.

  She reaches around to rub my neck. “You broke when you killed the wrong people, you know.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You broke, Mat.” Her voice is filled with compassion but unwilling to brook argument. “And you did what you always do—you fixed the problem. Watching you is pure competence porn, Mat. There’s a reason everyone wants to work with you: nobody dies on your shift if you can help it.”

  I’m squeezing my eyes shut, blocking her out, because I don’t do this for the compliments, I do it to safeguard people.

  “But you’re overengineering that repair, Mat. You’re breaking down because you’re optimizing ‘protection’ to a perfection you cannot obtain.”

  “No. That’s not—”

  “People die in war, Mat.”

  “No.”

  “Civilians die in war.”

  “I will not accept—”

  She wrenches my face up to look at her. “How many people will die if this mission fails because you tried to save everyone?”

  “Nobody.”

  She slaps me hard enough to sting. “Wrong answer.”

  “Three people. You. Me. Silvia.”

  She slaps me again, and Vito and Michael ask if I should disable her, but the burning look in those golden eyes paralyzes me. She holds up three fingers, adds two more.

  “Silvia’s mom. Silvia’s sister.”

  “Still better than—”

  She deflects my words with a curt headshake. “The next delivery of new Monicas.” She stares experimentally at her five fingers, adds five more with the clear implication
they might be bringing in Monicas by the boatload.

  “That’s not my—”

  “Monicas’ families, if they don’t comply.” Trish squeezes ten fingers into doubled fists, and somehow when she opens them I know she’s counting tens of murders. “The people who the brainwashed Monicas will murder.” She closes her hands into fists again: hundreds. “The people the brainwashed Monicas will coerce into carrying out the IAC’s murder, torture, and blackmail.”

  She balls her hands into fists again and opens them wide to thrust them at me, head cocked as if to ask, How many is that now?

  “That’s a lot,” I say. “But that’s no excuse to allow civilian casualt—”

  “Your breathing’s even. You’ve stopped stammering. Interesting how those deaths don’t trigger your PTSD.”

  Her words seize me up like a frozen engine. Part of me wants to slap her back to shut her up, while another part is analyzing my own reactions, realizing that yes, I was as okay with those deaths in the abstract as I had been with the drone deaths before I’d accidentally killed that boy.

  “You are the most selflessly selfish man I have ever met.” Trish shakes her head in exhausted admiration. “Do you know how many noble missions I tried to sell you on? I had good assignments where you could have taken out some real bastards—and you played it safe, choosing the penny-ante stuff where you could ensure some level of quote-unquote ‘safety.’

  “But people died because you didn’t show up, Mat.”

  Now the PTSD kicks in, my heartbeat elevating, my protests degenerating into staccato syllables.

  Because people died when I did show up. The kid was just the first one I’d paid attention to. There had always been civilians in proximity to the explosions, bad intelligence that sent missiles flying at innocent targets; I’d written all those corpses off as the cost of keeping America safe.

  Then I noticed one kid dying, and he was the gateway to perceiving the devastation my duty wrought. I focus on that one kid because he’s the only one I can put a face to, but when I think back on my time in the Air Force I wonder how many people I murdered by mistake and I can’t even remember, I just stuffed the dead in a box marked “casualties” and never looked back.

  “You wouldn’t take jobs from bad men, Mat,” Trish says kindly. “That puts you above most of the mercenaries I work with. You’re a good man who wants to save everybody. And it’s time you realize that each decision you make gets someone killed, even if you refuse to make a decision.”

  I’m pushing the button that fired that missile at what I thought was a dog, and how the fuck was I okay with even killing a dog? I was okay with killing the waiters. Jesus, I was a monster even then but I couldn’t acknowledge it until I looked my murders straight in the face.

  Now I have readouts to tell me where every bullet I fire lands—I refuse to blind myself to the harm I do in the course of justice, I have to be better than I was, I owe it to my forgotten victims to mark the names of my future casualties.

  But how can I keep pulling the trigger, knowing every mission risks killing another kid?

  “I can’t,” I whisper. “I killed—”

  “I know what you killed.”

  My gunports clack, that patented Endolite-Ruger sound. I didn’t consciously authorize them, but I’m glad they did—nobody dismisses the child I murdered.

  Trish steps forward, presses her chest against my gunports.

  “Don’t you dare tell me I’m not grieving for that boy you killed. You think you’re the only one with a list? I had a housewife who ran for cover when I was laying down suppressive fire. She got torn to shreds. I’ve put her kids through college—and no. That doesn’t make up for it.”

  “That makes no sense,” I say. “How do you—you can’t keep fighting when you realize the cost. That’d make you a monster.”

  She spreads her arms open, inviting me to look at the horror she’s become. “I’m a monster who fights monsters, Mat. Because the alternative is to never fight. Those cocksuckers count on that. Sure. Blame yourself for firing the missiles. You should. You fucked up. But while you’re at it, apportion out a little blame to the assholes who hid among civilians. Apportion blame to the people who were so dedicated to seizing power that ‘talking them out of it’ became an invalid strategy.

  “And consider,” she continues. “Consider. I don’t know what the guys you killed would have done if you hadn’t stopped them. I can’t tell you if you were a genuine hero or the US government’s hitman, blindly blitzkrieging any target they pointed you at. But I do know what the IAC will do if someone doesn’t get in their way. I know that a good man—a genuinely good man—will make tough calls that cowardly people who call themselves good would walk away from.”

  She sits down, hanging her hands between her legs. “So yeah. Your plan will put innocents in the line of fire. That’s war. The difference between you and them is, you care about the people you’re risking.”

  I think she’ll keep talking. She doesn’t.

  She’s waiting for my decision.

  I look at the plan again. Our assault starts midmorning. The kids will be in school, the Waffle House lunch-hour rush won’t be until 11:00, the potential for people walking in the way will be minimized.

  But there will always be some kid running late to school on his bicycle. There’ll always be a waitress on her way to her shift. And a firefight at the facility has no guarantee it won’t spill out onto the streets, where the IAC may target whoever’s nearby to break me.

  All so they can keep killing, and killing, and killing.

  I upload the necessary files to an ISB stick, realizing I am no longer a good man. Good men exist exclusively in comic books, where heroes ensure only bad people die.

  I shudder, as I accept myself: a monster who fights monsters.

  As I hand over the ISB stick, I feel like some portion of my soul has gone with it. I’m at peace, yet simultaneously filled with a dread that will never leave.

  “Thank you.” She kisses me chastely on the forehead. “And now,” she says, pulling a shotgun strap over her shoulder, “You get some R and R before the final push. Go hold Silvia. She needs you.”

  I shake my head. “I won’t take advantage of her.”

  Another transfixing gaze. “Mat. She’s freaking out in there; I tried talking her down, but she doesn’t know me as well as she knows you.”

  “She barely knows me. Our best move is to—”

  She shushes me. “You help her. She helps you. And she’s lonely, and convinced nobody will ever want her again, and she’s in love with you every bit as much as you are with her.”

  “That’s not love. That’s—”

  “This is your last night on Earth. You’re overoptimizing again, engineering a long-term relationship when what you both need is a hot-fix patch. Whatever happens tonight is what you both need, okay?”

  “I’m not some romance hero,” I protest, hearing myself stammer. “I don’t sweep people off their feet.”

  “I’m not saying you will.” She shoots me a mischievous grin. “Just … don’t rule it out.”

  “But how will we…?” I gesture in the air, trying to encompass Silvia’s new body. “I don’t even know, you know, what she has for that sort of thing.”

  Trish closes her eyes, a teacher talking down to a child who has so much to learn. “Take it from a girl who’s got her own body issues. Sex is more than the equipment.”

  I am a cyber-behemoth packing four armed limbs, and somehow Trish makes me feel like a gawky teenager. She pushes me towards Silvia’s door, though with my mass it’s like nudging a Volkswagen.

  “Go,” she says.

  “I’m not promising anything.”

  “Go.”

  She pushes.

  I stumble into Silvia’s room.

  * * *

  Silvia’s room has—had—a television mounted on the wall.

  But the screen’s shattered, the cot overturned. The rug’s scattered
with denim tatters and lumberjack rags where she tore her clothes off. Silvia’s huddled naked in the corner, making twitching movements with her hands as she mutters to herself.

  I must have been deep in planning if I tuned out her meltdown.

  I squeeze into the room, my legs picking their way through the debris. And as I approach Silvia, I realize what her repetitive hand movements are:

  She’s praying.

  She’s praying for her mother and sister to hold on, praying somehow my plan will work, praying we can rescue everyone from the IAC’s clutches—the litany of a helpless woman who has no choices left and so drops her troubles into God’s hands.

  She crosses herself like she’s doing exercises. But the problem with praying, even if you believe God hears you, is that you never know what His answer will be.

  I approach slow, so she can hear me coming.

  I wrap my arms around her waist, pull her against my unarmored belly.

  We tense.

  I don’t let people touch me intimately; gentle caresses make me feel like a scrap of amputee flesh pinned between four battle-engines. The cilia on her spine wriggle against my stomach, soft hairs exploring me.

  She freezes, giving me time to be repulsed.

  I’m not.

  I’m in love.

  I pull her closer, concentrating on her newness; her knurled muscles are cool but still warm enough to be living, pulsing as she adjusts position but still very much a woman’s shape. Her back’s larger cilia snuffle me, kicking up that hazy ammonia scent that wafts off her skin.

  My body reacts to her touch. It’s a traditional male reaction.

  She leans her head back into me, letting out a low terrified exhale. I take the hint and lean down to kiss the nape of her neck, where the last of her human skin shades bumpy and green. She shivers as my tongue slides across that sweet spot where the muscles in her neck meet her collarbone.

  I continue down to the waving fields of her shoulder, planting kisses on her alien flesh.

  It’s like kissing someone with a thick mustache—a little disconcerting if you’re not used to it, but it rapidly becomes the new normal.