She Wolf and Cub, Page 2

  “There she is,” Barlowe rasped. His nose was incredibly long, and he scrubbed the back of his liver-spotted right hand under it. “My little wind-up girl. What’ll it be? What have you brought old Papa?”

  “Good afternoon, sir.” I’d found him through a contact I had to liquidate a few years ago. Poor old Pinok, just smart enough to get into a game he was too dumb to survive in. “How are you feeling?” Soft and polite was the best way to handle the cranky old bastard.

  “Oh, she wants something big, does she? What now? Only visits when she needs things. Ungrateful little girl.” He jabbed a finger at me, stained orange-ish by ersatz nicotine. His fluff of white hair was a rooster’s tail, lifted high and proud. Not that I’d ever seen a rooster except on packets of Copona cigarettes, but still.

  “I can leave.” I turned aside to study the glass case near the door. Little trinkets scattered across stained silvery tinselcloth; he had a legitimate pawner’s license and paid his bribes to enforcement punctually. “If you’re busy, sir.”

  He snorted a very rude term, shuffled around his counter. One claw shot out, closed around a half-full bottle of ersatz rye. He took a healthy draft of it, scrawny throat working, before offering me the bottle.

  I lifted it to my lips, politely, but as usual he didn’t check to see if I drank. Instead, he went past me and bolted the door, turned the ancient sign with its old-fashioned blonde pinup girl showing her warmbody ass to Closed, and shuffled back for the counter. “Come back. Might as well scan you while you’re here. Though you’re clean.”

  “Maybe.” I carried the bottle back. “Sir, I have a question.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet you do.”

  “It’s about Egress.”

  That got his attention. He stopped, turned around, and eyed me from top to toe. A leisurely survey I suffered, letting the bottle dangle, thinking about the fractional application of force that would turn its heavy-bottomed cornglass into a weapon.

  His response wasn’t what I expected.

  His bloodless tongue wet his lips, a dry lizard flicker. “My God, Sarah, what kind of trouble you in?”

  * * *

  It wasn’t until I was back out in the Ring, my Projekts protective coloration discarded and my head full of the weird humming that always happens when a job heats up, that I realized what was… bothering… me.

  There were plenty of other agents who wouldn’t make a fuss. My psych profile was crystal-clear, I should know. They’d analyzed me twenty ways for each month of my life. Over and over, question after question while I was strapped into the sensachair, my warmbody responses monitored endlessly.

  Of course, they wondered about the triggering event. People don’t just walk in off the street and request implementation. Oh, you know, sure they do, but I was good material. If I’d been born in the Ring I might have passed some dominance tests and ended up a corporate somebody. My health scan was clean, my legal record fairly spotless, my grades — before I dropped out and went to work running to survive — had been respectable. Why do you want implementation? What does it mean to you?

  I gave the same answer in a hundred different ways. I’m tired of being poor. The Projekts are a dead-end street. I heard there are implementation programs where you can work off your debt. As if I was some starry-eyed idiot who believed you could ever work it off.

  I watched the kid’s house. The windows were squares of golden light. Rifle would be best, piercing even shock-resistant film, no muss no fuss, I’d be gone before the body hit the ground. Just a shattering and a light thud, painless and easy for him.

  Why wasn’t I doing it? Why was I thinking, instead, about the past?

  It turned out I was a great candidate for full implementation, all my measurements right square in the optimal zone. A doctor in the Free Clinic (hard bitcoin required, no records kept, rejects fallen from Ring grace doing both staff and medical work) had remarked as much, offhand, while he eyed my scan on tempfilm that was already eroding, my feet in the stirrups and the cold probing between my legs. It only took a few minutes before I was scraped empty, cauterized, and out the door. The cramping only lasted an hour.

  Why tell the Agency that? Greed, I figured, was an acceptable motive for what I was asking for. The other wasn’t their business.

  I could have ended up security detail, but I’d been skimmed off the top and slated for delicate Agency work. Erasures mostly, sometimes warnings, sometimes one side or the other of a corporate war when one half — or both — received Agency aid. Even inter-Agency turf wars. Waste of resources, those, but what do I know? I’m just a tool, kept sharp in a drawer and taken out for certain events before dropped back in to wait for the next.

  This house, closed up and prim behind its permabrick, was just like every other damn one in its row. Except how many others were sitting on a secret this big?

  What was really bothering me? Questions. Just like usual, only this time they weren’t the usual ones.

  Why, really, would the Agency send me? Were they asleep at the switch? My psych profile was unexceptionable even where it detailed my rebellious streak. You couldn’t be a good agent without one. Thinking on your feet and solving problems with the required flexibility downright required it. Why me, instead of someone else who didn’t have a problem — someone who would probably have found a vantage point and picked him off that very afternoon, right through a window?

  Retard. Freak. Scarface.

  The offer of a new identity, being quits, or Dismissal.

  It was blindingly obvious. Something here stank more that Barlowe’s undies.

  I slithered down out of the tree, deactivated the camo, and strolled across the street nice and slow. Hands in my pockets, a featureless dark blazer and dungarees, letting the security cams get a good look at me without showing my face or distinguishing features. Subroutines over all my autonomics to keep them nice and even, with quicklocks in case of anything I’d need to alter glandular balance for. I went up the stairs as if I was an old family friend, and didn’t press the scanbell. Instead, I knocked, a quick light flurry of taps.

  Sometimes people still do that.

  There was a pause, a bit too long, and every one of my nerves, implemented and original, twitched.

  They weren’t expecting me. Someone, stupidly, opened the door.

  * * *

  The male wasn’t a problem, he went down as soon as I ripped out his carotid implant. The female came down the stairs in a rush — smell of something red and rich, I kicked the door shut and went down, rolling, as she fired over my head. A blue-white static bolt went overhead with a whoosh, there was a whine of turbo recharge and the chucking of a manipulative re-rack, she had her back to the wall. “Stay down!” she yelled, and for a moment I thought she was talking to me.

  Through the copper of blood and the scorch of ionization, I could smell her, high emotion pumping out through her warmbody pores. Fear, determination, adrenaline. Familiar.

  They all smell the same when the violence starts.

  Legs like coiled springs, entire body buzzing with leashed violence. The house was narrow, the stairs came down on the right into the entry hall, kitchen to the back, what was probably a den off to the left, lighted but empty, a stage set. I jackrabbited up — she almost got me, too; I felt the brush of the static bolt. It sizzled past my hip, blasted another hole in the hall wall behind me.

  I backhanded her, the greenstick crack of a reinforced but still warmbody neck breaking, and I subtracted the gun from her as she folded down.

  When warmbodies go, the sphincters always loosen. It’s like the final reminder that in the end, they’re all still organic. I didn’t know if agents have the same trouble. The nanos are pretty efficient, we can digest just about anything that has any trace nutritive value, plus there’s solar and static capability built into our skins nowadays.

  I braced the gun. A TekStan static, heavy-duty, if a bolt had hit me I would’ve had a headache for about ten minutes. I checked the han
dle — innocent of a corporate logo, but that didn’t mean anything. TekStans were like candy, except this one was just on the edge of Agency hardware.

  Huh.

  I expected screams. Crying. Something, anything. Instead, silence. A single hummingbird heartbeat I could hear — did they have dampers? Secondary security could be up there.

  I slid easily, noiselessly, up the stairs. The banister was odd — metal, a weird resonance. Entire house could be booby-trapped, but nothing bit at me. Hm. Interesting.

  Padding, small feet on synthsilken carpet. I realized there were no pictures on the walls as I leveled the gun.

  He peered out from behind a heavy shockproof door, the edges of its lock-bolts scintillating in the warm golden light from a bloodspattered fixture overhead. How had blood gotten all the way up there? Messy, messy.

  Huge dark eyes, terribly blank. Was he in shock? I could do this kindly, so quickly he wouldn’t feel a thing. If he swung the door closed it would take a while for me to break it.

  He didn’t. He pushed it open, and stepped out into the hall. His hands fell, pale little birds, to his sides. He was painfully thin, and still in his school uniform. This close I could see a line of grime under each fingernail, and smell… what? A dry dusty scent, my scans going a little weird as they tried to pin down what was off about him. Even though Sam had told me, I don’t suppose I believed it until I got into close scanrange.

  Did the other kids feel that instinctive tickle of something alien? Was that why the dominant boy had it in for him?

  “You’re one of them.” Oddly flat, his little voice. “You’re here to kill me.”

  We stared at each other. The gun, socked against my shoulder, whined with a fresh charge. Just a tiny bit of pressure on the trigger, a gentle squeeze, and flesh would vaporize. If what Sam told me was completely true…

  “It’s okay.” That same flat tone, the scar on his chin flushing a little. “I’ve been expecting it.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “What kind of kid are you?”

  “I’m an investment.” Patiently. “I guess I’m not earning out.”

  Still staring. I caught a whiff as a random air current moved down the hall. A little dirty, healthy young warmbody, but that weird dry tang. Fear, too. But over it, resignation. The room behind him was a glare of white, and I realized the rich smell downstairs was spaghetti sauce. Stathydroponic tomatoes, to be sure, and weak garlic that had never seen the unveiled sun, but still, it was a rich person’s meal.

  The kid looked hungry. That room behind him was bare. No posters on the wall, and he hadn’t changed into a corporate T-shirt and dungarees, like any other corp kid, from dominant right down to epsilon. I’d bet hard bitcoin he didn’t play outside. I’d further bet he didn’t have many toys. You’d think they would have enriched his environment, so to speak, but I guess that sort of thing’s too expensive nowadays.

  His feet were bare, and his toenails curled around the end of his toes. If he was an investment, he hadn’t been well taken care of.

  Interesting.

  I lowered the gun. Its whining was sawing at my nerves. “I don’t want to kill you.” I even managed to say it like I hadn’t maybe decided it right that moment. “If I don’t, though, they’ll send someone who will.”

  “I already told you it was okay.” Very patiently, as if I was subnormal. “You smell funny. Cyborg, right?”

  I nodded. The gun pointed down, loosely. “I don’t want to kill you,” I repeated, and then I said the most absurd thing I’ve ever uttered in my entire life. “I want to escape.”

  Those dark eyes got really big. Geoffrey considered me, the fear struggling in him. I could smell it, sharp and chemical. He was only eight years old. Too young for this sort of thing.

  Aren’t we all.

  “Me too,” he said, in a very tiny voice.

  Oh, fuck, I thought. I’m Dismissed for sure.

  * * *

  For the first time in years, Sam was late to a meet. I expected as much.

  I’d had a lot of time to think, coming back from Cirquit again. There were only a few ways any of this made sense.

  Unfortunately, even those few ways ended up with me messily Dismissed. The kid, too. A practically immortal warmbody, Sam had told me. Regenerative organs. Unfortunately it can’t transplant, and there are other… issues. It requires… liquid… nutrition.

  No wonder the Agency was involved. Even without transplantive capability, the processes to create this kid could kick implementation right in the teeth.

  Sam sat down across from me. This diner, not far from the Projekts — silver and bullet-shaped, its windows filmed with caustic smog and heavy grime — reeked of grease and despair. Dusk filled the street outside, railbuses turning on their forward lamps in deference to archaic laws. It wasn’t like it mattered, it was always twilight down under the dome.

  I let the silence build. The warmbody waitress — tired mouth, dishwater straggle-hair, and low-grade alloy knee implements — shuffled over.

  Sam ordered a cup of sludge. Mine stood in front of me, cooling rapidly. A simple chipped white compressed-clay mug, probably older than me. Maybe even older than Sam. It was a miracle it hadn’t broken by now.

  When I looked up, he was studying my face. We were both flatline, and his hands rested in plain sight on the tabletop. So did mine.

  “It’s done,” I said, evenly. “Confirmed kill.”

  He actually turned paler, if only fractionally. His autonomics were probably struggling something fierce. I glanced over his shoulder. The waitress had vanished into the steam-heat of the kitchen, despite the sludgepot bubbling right on the counter. Ah.

  He blinked. As tells went, it wasn’t a huge one, but then, when you’ve sat across from someone for years, getting your marching orders, it doesn’t have to be.

  I was over the table, my hand cramping as I shoved the sharp point of the shivprobe between two strong flexible ribs, my other hand wrenching his head aside with a screech. It sounds different than breaking a warmbody’s cervical spine, stresses going up into high harmonics. Precision of force is needed, to fracture it just right.

  His body bucked and crackled, static overwhelming subroutines, paralyzing systems. He did still have implanted Dismissal switches, they popped and fused just like Barlowe said they would with the palm-activator he’d given me, slapped against Sam’s bare skin.

  Bet that’s uncomfortable. I pitched aside, rolling, as the windows cracked and shattered under a hail of static and projectile fire.

  Dragging a twitching agent along a filthy diner floor while security troops — mostly warmbody, since I could hear audible chatter — is not a lot of fun. It was better than being caught in the barrage the instant someone outside guessed I wasn’t quite as easily led as they thought I was.

  Corporation. Maybe Niful. This didn’t come from Control. Or is the Agency hand in glove with a corp for this experiment? Turf battle? No, too public.

  Someone’s fingers were going to get singed over this. If Sam was running on the side… but why? And why pick me? I’d never turned down a mission, threatening me with Dismissal wasn’t necessary…

  …unless he wanted me pissed off enough to not kill the kid. Maybe he’d been banking on it?

  Didn’t matter at the moment. The kitchen was deserted. Automations whined, dishwashing and steamjets going full-bore. Distractions, and cover. There was a door to the alley, I tossed Sam’s weight out first with a sickening crack as they blew in through the front of the diner. Sounded like a rocket, probably ArGen tech. Could mean nothing.

  Get moving. I tossed Barlowe’s other present — wasn’t he a giving soul? — behind me. Followed Sam’s heavy, limp body, an uncontrolled jump that ended with me on top of him, rolling as projectile fire spattered the concrete behind me. The lumps of dead warmbody near the refuse containers were probably the diner’s staff, and the waitress’s fatigued legs were forever still now. Maybe she’d thought it was a police action, maybe
she even believed they would keep her safe.

  I dumped my still-twitching burden safely behind said rubbish bins, snapping the silicacine cuffs over his wrists and sticking the gag in. Barlowe said any agent would be out until I took the sharp shivprobe through the chest away, but no use in being less than thorough. That done, I whirled, my camo fizzing as they switched to static bolts. The detonation of Barlowe’s toy behind me was an EMP pulse. It would fuzz their scopes and oculars something fierce, but mine were buffered.

  A momentary scan pinpointed heartbeats quickened with excitement, sweat with adrenaline tang, whistling breaths. Some of them had autonomic implants, but the control isn’t perfect. Not even close.

  Not like an agent’s.

  Time to hunt.

  * * *

  “The body?” Barlowe wanted to know.

  I dumped the contents of Sam’s pockets onto the glass counter. “Dropped in a vat of IcarenCorp chemsludge. It will give us a few hours before they fish him out and start asking questions. They may even think he’s me for a little bit.” I let my fingers travel over the assorted odds and ends. “See? Identicard, a plasma impress… He expected me to bring the kid, or tell him where he was. Idiot.”

  “No.” Barlowe eyed me, his ocular glinting for a moment. “I would’ve expected it too. You don’t have the childkiller look, Sarah.”

  I shrugged.

  “Abby?” A piping little cry. “Abby?”

  I controlled a flinch. Geoff appeared, slightly damp — looked like Barlowe had run him through a chemshower. He’d also found the kid some clothes. With a blue long-sleeved RebeCorp T-shirt, dungarees and boots held together by a judicious application of stat-tape, he looked a lot more normal.

  But those eyes. They would give the game away, even to another warmbody. If, and only if, they cared enough to look.

  Geoff ran around the end of the counter and flung his arms around me. Clinging for dear life, I guess. “You came back!”