Chapter 1 - It’s My Birthday And I’ll Die If I Want To
“Answer the question. Did you, or did you not kill him?” Rem Jones stared down at the stranger sitting in the screening booth.
The young man looked up. “Yes. No.”
“Which is it?” Rem snapped.
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, I didn’t kill the model T-11 cyborg you haven’t identified yet.”
Nothing else. No: ‘May I go now?’ No: ‘LawyerBot summoned.’ He was rich. A corporation. And he was just sitting there and taking questions as if he was some ordinary scum dragged in from the streets. Rem smiled to himself, wondering if he’d abdicated flesh and entered System heaven.
“I see. Wait a moment, please.” He subvocalized a command and waited until the proofing shield was up and looked over in the corner. “Well?”
“Unknown,” the truth bot droned.
“What do you mean? Did he or didn’t he?”
“Subject boasts unusually high resistance to drug probe,” the bot said tonelessly. It blinked once.
“Of course. They all do; the rich keep their secrets. But murder isn’t just a minor thing. There should be tells, spaz it!” Rem tok a deep breath. “Double the dose.”
“This unit is -“
“Scrap?”
Silence. The bot moved forward, all squares and rectangles on treads. The truthbots looked human enough to talk to, but nothing more. It could do only what its programming allowed; nothing more. Unless you were skilled. “Override B-52,” Rem said quietly, hoping the recording system wouldn’t catch it.
“Override accepted. Dosage doubled.” Pause. “Quadrupled.” Pause. “And again. Warning: this unit is passing all safety limits. Recommend immediate shut down and rebuilding of core.”
“Again,” Rem said, daring to look over. The rich kid just sat there calmly, his expression distant. Rem flicked his vision and saw the gas, pouring into the room. He turned on the speaking. “Did you kill the cyborg?”
“No.”
No reaction from the gas. “Do you know who did?”
“No.” The hesitation lasted a fraction of a second, but it was enough for Rem. The drugs did nothing again, though, and were well past the legal limits. Even hesitating should have induced muscle spasms.
As if he’d heard him, a finger twitched slightly, then the suspect went still again, not moving. Ordinary, and either the world’s best liar or in very deep shock. Or both. He cancelled the gas, frowning. He knew he had only minutes before someone took custody of his subject, and they’d treat him with respect as if he hadn’t brutally torn someone to pieces, or had his bodyguard do so.
Everyone would just tell Rem it didn’t matter. What was one more dead cyborg, really? Killing them used to warrant an award years ago, but the award making generator cost too much to upkeep the amount of awards so they just tended to slowly rust away and die, relics of forgotten wars. No one would care, but it was murder. Questions would be asked, if only for form, and a guilty party brain rinsed or made to do service. Something, at least.
They’d likely apologize to this thing for taking up his time, for disturbing him, for being an unincubated bother! The decision was quick, not AI fast but fast enough for carbon-based minds with several implants. “You, come with me. We need to make sure you’re not carrying any nanovirii and put you in cells. Then contact your parents. You do have those, don’t you?”
“Which?” the man asked, standing. his voice was as distant as his eyes, as if everything here was unreal.
Rem resisted the sudden urge to hit him. “Parents?” he barked,
“Oh. Yes. I have those. And virii.” A quick, sad smile. “Probably a lot of those. I never pay attention to things like that.”
“You don’t -“ Rem nodded slowly. “I see. Come with me.” He walked quickly down the hallway, his prisoner following him calmly. A few officers looked over but Rem waved them away; better that only he take fallout from whatever he did. A few of them stared at the prisoner, then smirked and looked amused or, in a few cases among the rookies who hadn’t even died yet, alarmed. Rem ignored them all.
“So, Stephen Incorporated, why were you slumming in the old town?” he demanded on the way down.
“Drinking. I was drinking. Celebrating my thirtieth birthday.”
“How was it?’ Rem asked absently, keeping him talking.
“Not as good as last year.”
“Oh? Your twenty-ninth?”
“No, my thirtieth. I do it every year.”
Rem stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “You what?”
“It’s the age my parents had me made to be,” Stephen said with a shrug. “So I celebrate it.”
“How old are you? We need to know for record keeping.”
“I don’t know. I don’t keep track. I likely forgot some years.” Stephen began to walk down the pale grey hallway and Rem fell into pace behind him, his discharger humming softly.
“Why not?”
“I won’t ever did, not really. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve replicated; how old I am is meaningless except as an excuse to get drunk.”
“And to kill someone.”
“Not ususally.”
No humour, just a simple statement of fact empty of inflection.
“So, you kill often?” Rem asked, wondering seriously about the mental state of his suspect.
“Few rarely die, in our part of the world. Here, never. I don’t get out much. It tends to upset my stock value.”
Rem almost laughed in spite of himself, but the delivery and body language were as empty as before. He shuddered slightly, wondering what had possessed parents to order a child manufactured someone without a sense of humour. Or maybe, to the rich, it really wasn’t a joke at all.
The examination room was small and square, consisting of a table with gravitic clamps, Doctor Severn in his bioskin and the large light in the ceiling that served as generator and basic light source. Severn smiled his gap-toothed smiled, the proud result of a bet lost last year to several pathologists.
“And this is whom?”
“Suspect 2345600751447,” Rem said briskly. “He says he’s carrying nanoids, at the least. Rich.”
Severn nodded, his bioskin turning black and thickening. “I see. Please, have a seat.”
Smartarms came to life under the table, snapping out and wrapping around the suspect. He didn’t even react as he was pulled gently to the table and sat on it.
“Now, just lean back and let yourself be strapped in,” Severn said briskly. “We can remove any virii the easy way, or the hard way.”
Stephen lay down, then flinched as the manacles snapped over his hands and feet. Severn smiled. “Good. Now, look up into the light.” He reached into the light, muttered “scapel,” and waited a moment as the generator made one. “Good.”
“I - I don’t like the light. In my eyes. I don’t like it.” Stephen’s voice didn’t rise, but sounded younger, and there was real fear in his eyes. Rem suppressed a sudden howl of joy that welled up inside all three of his lungs.
“No one does,” Severn said briskly. “But we need to remove the -“
The suspect Moved. Rem never had a good word for it after, only that no one who wasn’t an android or an addict toon combat nanites could move that fast. Somehow, he broke free of the manacles and lashes out with his first free hand, which seemed to break both when freeing itself and when striking Severn but was fine moments later as he vanished out the door with all limbs whole, the plasteel framing giving way like a cheap prefab housing project.
Rem stared at the doctor’s head on the ground, the table, the manacles, and then door. a good 4.3 seconds passed before he snapped an alarm to System, and by that time the suspect had killed four officers in his way and leaped through the nanofield around the back entrance and left.
Rem watched the scene that flowed past his eyes as hbe linked to the cam system and replayed it, then took a deep breath and walked upstairs towards his captain’s office, wondering how in the name of Gorchinsky he was going to be able to explain this when he didn’t understand it himself.
Stephen slammed to a halt several blocks away, slowing and moving into a small side street to catch his breath figuratively. He was trembling all over but felt physically fine, only he had no idea what he’d done, or where to go, or where the Gorch he was.
The wall behind him wasn’t plasteel, but some crude rock that gave slightly when his fingers pressed into it and seemed to be a uniform brown covered in various slogans and signs, most of which seemed to be desperate cries for literacy. The air smelled strange, somehow clean and filthy at the same time, reeking of bodily wastes tinged with various diseases and poisons spewed into the recycled air.
People were walking past him, though most of them had body mods of one kind of another, a few were cyborgs, and a memory that couldn’t be real jolted through him but he thrust it away without conscious knowledge. Several seemed to be radiation victims, or genedoc failed experiments, and a strange song he’d never heard before was pulsing through implants and the real world.
“We are the future
Dancing open our thoughts visible
Aether lights burning in our heads
Signs and symptoms of our fall
We pay for power in pain
We pay for it in the absence of regrets
And the lost low weeping of flesh.
We are the futures
The world never saw
We are the wonders
No one dared to dream,”
the voices sang, synthesized but somehow vibrantly alive and painfully real. Stephen shook his head, trying to focus, willing the fog clouding him to stop doing so. It took a few precious moments but no more.
He was alone, in the poor part of the city, and had killed several police men. Getting home wasn’t an option; not until he understood about the cyborg, and his reaction to the table. Going anywhere else meant evading the police and not dying, since replicating wouldn’t include these memories. He repressed a snort; he’d been telling the rent-a-corpsec about immortality, but it was provisional on having your memories accurately uploaded, and he doubted he’d find a secure enough connection to System to even try it from here.
“Okay. Food can wait. Shelter can’t. I need to hide.”
He looked out again, assessing, willing himself to calm. The scene was jumbled and chaotic, a mix of people and things. Wild and alien but still alive, almost painfully so, like a last ecstatic gasp of faked orgasm at the moment of death. The people wore functional, plain clothing, some of it torn and held together by what must have been invisible fabrics. Several people were holding out hands for food, looking like skeletons enmeshed in flesh, and Stephen wondered why: a generator could make anything, with a decent source block.
But there were too many people who looked - who looked truly poor. They couldn’t all be actors, after all. A courier moved overhead, winged and diving through the world for information in System only it could see or find. A twitchy man with three arms jerked as it went overhead and his second arm barked, blood exploding from the courier’s head as she plummeted into the earth, her scream one of regret for lost information rather than of death itself.
No one paid any attention. A few gave the shooter wider berth, one or two ragged children, all sores and hard edges, rifled through the body with knives, looking for useful implants to steal. Stephen forced himself to look away. The Vid’s hadn’t been like this, not really.
A deep part of him was horrified at the barbarians, but the rest of him was removed, distant: assessing, as Rikki had taught him to. They would tell he was an outsider, if he wasn’t very careful. They would converge and destroy him; he’d seen animals in the zoos do it to other animals. He didn’t belong here and he doubted he could fake it. He began walking quickly, letting the crowds brush past him and losing himself in numbers.
No one paid attention. Or, they did, but they didn’t make it worth their time. Life led to death here, without replication, but that didn’t seem to actually bother anyone; if anything, they seemed to seek it out. He didn’t understand it, not really, but he filed it away to look at later. He wanted to tell them that they had generators, that nanotechnology could make them anything, but obviously it didn’t or they were luddites and refused to embrace it. hat he understood even less, but he knew that things didn’t care if he understood them.
Crowds slowly began to thin out, people shambling their way to whatever pathetic work or destinies awaited them. like wide-eyed dullards. Almost everyone he chanced to look at who wasn’t a child - and most of the children, too - had dead eyes. Not the eyes of a killer, most of the time, but the eyes of someone who didn’t care, who was empty and dead inside of things that mattered.
He was the last living person, walking through a world inhabited by the dead living who only waited to die, since there was nothing else for them. The buildings were old, prefab housing slowly giving away to ancient structures Stephen had only seen before in museums. Somehow, in spite of nature and time, they were holding together, leaning for support like drunken lovers in their twilight years.
Some of them boasted weapon systems and security, most were just hollow shells that Stephen never wanted to look inside. But all of them seemed occupied, which was disturbing on many levels. Generators tended to require prefab housing, at the least, otherwise they’d crash through floors when used to create anything heavy. He’d seen it on vids, even helped make a reality sim where it happened years back. The reality to the joke was painfully real and he walked quickly, faster, hunching against blows that never came.
A few people began to look him over from doorways and beside buildings. Hungry eyes, looking at his clothing and body as if sizing him up to be their next wardrobe and meal. Stephen paused, reaching into his pants pocket, and drew out a handle that formed a sword from the air in a few moments. He tied it to his belt quickly and kept walking. Most of the eyes looking away, though several looked envious.
A warning buzz in the back of his head caused Stephen to curse softly under his breath. “Shut down,” he said softly, and the familiar feeling of System waiting for access inside his head faded, as if a distant light had gone out. Sweat broke out all over him, the realization that he’d truly cut himself off from the world he’d know worrying through any walking meditation he could have attempted.
He frowned and slowed his walk, subvocalizing commands firmly, closing off access points and implants. He’d heard enough horror stories about what a shaman could do to someone connected to System to avoid even the possibility of being used or having his synapses burned out by some stranger using him. The stories about the world of the poor had been bad enough on vids. The reality was worse.
He used to have nightmares about the stories of what a shaman could do to someone when he was younger. Making them a virtual slave, using their unique connection to system to turn people into nothing more than mediums for a super-fast connection, to destroy nanites and infect technology with virii and madness solely because they could. Dancing On The Edge of Chaos And Madness, the vidshow had been called, and if the reality to shamans was worse than he imagined he didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
It wasn’t a sound that caused him to move to the left, more the sudden cessation of noise and the pricking under his skin that warned him. He hadn’t taken lessons in years, but his body remembered and he moved, fast, the sword coming out of the sheathe and into his hand as he evaded the first salvo of some energy weapon.
Knowing how to spot dangerous people was a vital survival trait in a fight, Rikki had told him. Then again, Rikki had also that that, given the right circumstances, anyone was dangerous, and the brutal, grubby world around him seemed to scream out that everyone had the right circumstances to hate and be nasty and not care about whether they lived or died as long as the other unincubated scum bastard died as well.
Stephen looked into the cold smile of a bounty hunter and backed away slowly, the sword painfully small. The rich settled disputes with hands and blades, not with energy weapons from a distance. It was more beautiful and more sporting, for one thing. But this wasn’t any of that; in this world real disputes weren’t fought in stock markets but in the coin of flesh and blood.
The bounty hunter was a shade shorter than him, but built like a wall, weapons bristling about him like a second skin over body armour. Stephen backed away, sword at ready, and looked at him. The sword was a clean, comforting weight in his head and he moved forward slowly, closing the gap between them.
“You plan to poke me to death?” The bounty hunter said cheerfully.
“More honourable than shooting a man from behind.”
“You’re rich. Means you’re not a man. And honour’s only good for them that can’s afford it.” The bounty hunters smile never wavered, full of mockery. “Hard you took out some police, though. So I’m going to play it safe and bring back just enough of you for them to ID, kiddo.”
Stephen ignored his words, looking the man over. He was stalling for time, probably waiting for someone to back him up, and was strong, tough, and armoured. Genedoc things, skin grafts and muscle growths and a pile of weapons. No nanite combat drugs, not unless he was better than Stephen thought, but in the shows the good hunters only came after the target had dealt with the weak ones.
Unfortunately, in the vids the weak ones didn’t have enough weapons to level a few city blocks. Stephen moved, dodging one burst, then a second, concentrating on releasing the nanites. Adrenaline surged as he dropped into combat readiness, and something more. He moved, half as fast as he could, and a wide swath of energy flared, just missing him as he leapt, pushing his body and not caring if others were watching.
“Not bad, for a rich snob --” the hunter began, a second weapon in his hand.
Stephen landed, moving, the sword a blur as he lunged, twisting his body to evade one weapon, another, and a food, and cut. And again, as the first one bounced off of permaskin.
The bounty hunters severed head hit the ground as Stephen cut again, carving through the chest and severing the spinal cord to disable any weapons died to the nervous system. For a moment, he thought the sword was tuck, but he yanked it free quickly without any flourish, the movement controlled and poised. Rikki might have been proud, he realized, and was surprised how absurdly pleased that made him feel.
He stepped back, in case the bounty hunter was rigged to explode or something, and took a few gasps of air, looking around for another. A few people standing beside tenements clapped desultorily, some of them exchanging credits over readers as they laid bets. Stephen ignored them, looking around warily, and sprinted in a random direction, hoping to slow down pursuers.
Even out of practise, his body responded to his needs and he ran quickly, effortlessly. He knew it wouldn’t last; a body can only take so much and he hadn’t exercised in a decade at the very least, not beside the occasional duel to keep in shape. Rikki would have despaired, and Stephen found himself hoping he’d live long enough for his trainer to tell him ‘I told you so’.
He knew he’d be replicated if he died; just decanted with a new body once this one was dead, but his memories wouldn’t include this day, nor last night, and he had to know what had happened and why the cyborg had died. The funny thing was his body wanted to live too. Even though he knew he’d return, it didn’t and wouldn’t and so he ran, twisting and weaving through random streets, the sword a comforting weight in his hand.
This time he barely twigged to the feeling of being watched before the first burst tore through his right arm and spun him around. He blocked the pain, throwing the sword to his left hand and leaping into a side street and back out just before another salvo tore into the ground where he’d been.
Stephen rolled his feet, his arm a distant ache as nanites rebuilt it. The bounty hunter was on the roof, and fired another salvo as Stephen leapt aside, scrambling up the wall as fast as he could, finding handholds and footholds as needed and making a few along the way.
At least antique homes have uses, he realized, leaping to the roof and landing on his belly as a burst of bullets whistled overhead. He stood quickly, a second sword in his right hand, and faced the bounty hunter, saluting him calmly.
The world slowed down as the bounty hunter fired and Stephen moved, evading and deflecting the salvo, watching pieces of the swords chip away and coming to land behind the hunter, who spun and lashed out with a foot.
Bones back, even ones reinforced by nanites and Stephen sprang back with a hiss, barely avoiding the next foot and crossing swords to deflect a salvo, the energy shield in the hilts flaring to life and barely holding as he stumbled back two steps. The world returned to normal speed sluggishly and a muscle spasmed in his leg. The bounty hunter was tall a d thin, carrying only two guns and wearing some kind of military-grade stealth armour. A professional and not a fool at all.
Stephen moved, trying another attack, but was forced back again. He could feel his strength ebbing from him. He could force more, he knew, but he wasn’t sure it would be enough to hold out against this man, or to run away. Deciding, he leaps sideways and down three stories, his ankles twinging as he landed on the ground.
The bounty hunter landed beside him, a foot catching Stephen in the jaw and hurling him into a wall before he could recover. The swords hit the ground, a salvo shattering them reflexively, leaving no threat behind. Stephen stood, his jaw aching, thoughts circling themselves wildly.
I can’t die. I don’t want to die. But I can’t die. He thrust the distractions aside and Moved, a blow catching the hunter in the side, the leg, the head, but nothing got through permaskin and something gave in his left hand as time slammed back to normal, a taser dropping him to twitch helplessly on the ground.
“Now that was impressive,” the hunter said mildly, and a foot slammed into the side of Stephen’s head, stunning him further. “You actually bruised me, and were faster than some stealth armours for a second.” A deep, quiet laugh. “I’m almost relieved Hendrick was first, really.”
“I don’t want to die now,” Stephen managed, clearing his head and blocking the pain. “Please. I can pay you.”
“Pay me?”
“You’re - bounty hunter. Paid to kill. I’ll pay you not to.”
“And what of honour?” the bounty hunter asked.
Perhaps it had been the pain, or just too much strangeness in less than an hour, but Stephen looked up, not even trying to sit up. “What do you know about it? You hunt people down for money. You don’t have any,” he said, the anger rising from a core of helplessness far inside.
The bounty hunter stopped smiling.
A blade slid out of his armour into his hand, dull and cold. “You shouldn’t have said that. I was going to bring you in alive, boyo.”
The knife came down, and was stopped by another hand.
“You’re not hurting him.” The voice was mild, but the hand was large and clawed. Stephen could see the bounty hunter straining to move his arm and failing.
Stephen looked up slowly, the world spinning a little as he sat up. “Am I dead?”
“No,” the apparition said, sounding quite hurt.
“Am I?” the bounty hunter asked.
“No,” Stephen said.
“Ah. It would have explained much.”
“For me, too.”
They shared a look, and the bounty hunter smiled again, slightly, and moved. His arm came off with a snapping sound, all wires and the ripping of wet flesh. The bounty hunter rolled aside, and the explosion was sudden and muffled.
The creature stood up from where it had landed on the arm, white fur singed. It towered over both of them, smoking slightly. “You hurt me!”
“Didn’t plan to,” the bounty hunter said, a gun in his other arm.
“You didn’t”
“Meant to kill you. Here,” and the gun tip glowed cherry red, an energy beam punching through the creature and out the other side to tear through two buildings., the sound of falling debris mixing with screams of pain from people who had been inside it and were still inside it, only somewhat smaller now.
The creature never moved. One moment there,. the next behind him, clawed hands reaching and ripping off the bounty hunters head without effort.
The bounty hunters body shimmered, then exploded, leaving a small smoking crater and more blood than there should have been behind it.
Stephen stood slowly, looking around. “Are you real?”
“What, the explosions?” a voice said from the end of the street.
He spun to see a woman standing at the edge of the street, several black bags in one hand and her other hand free and by her side. She was calm, but ready and definitely dangerous, carrying herself with an unconscious arrogance bordering on cat-like smugness. She was good, and she knew she was good, and she didn’t give a damn who else knew it as well.
“Another bounty hunter?’ Stephen said slowly. He didn’t even try and run.
She looked around. “Yeah. I’d say you’ve had your fun already, though. And I’ve just got groceries.” She looked at the scattered bits of body. “Not bad. Looks like most of Anderson, unless I miss my guess. He always did boast he’d take out whoever shanked him. You kill him?”
“What? No.”
“Know who did?”
“No one real.”
“Ah. Addicts.”
“I’m not an addict!”
“Insane then.” She looked around. “And in serious trouble, I imagine.” Stephen nodded once. “Well.” She smiled. It was bright and wicked. “Seeing as I hated Anderson and you’ve removed some of my competition, you can crash at my place if you want.”
Stephen blinked. “What?”
“Sleep. In a bed? You do that, right?”
“I --. Yes.”
“Then come, and do so. Spare room has an extra bed. You can do something for rent. And if I do get hired to bring you in, I’d appreciate it if you let me and don’t try and kill me. Got it?”
She walked towards him, pointing south. “That way’s home. Get a move on. Faster you go to ground, the less likely anyone will actually be bothered to take the time to actually look for you. Move it, pretty boy.”
Stephen blinked, then just nodded dumbly and followed her through a warren of side streets. She said nothing else, eventually leading him to an antique home like the others around it and up some stairs to a second floor. The building had five, and seemed to be in rather good shape. The room she entered was a clutter of clothing and discarded objects tossed in corners.
The woman threw the bags on a table that was clear of debris and nodded to a door. “Spare room. Bathroom is the door beside it. You share it with the kid.” She walked over to the table and barked, “:Restorative,” and handed him a glass a few moments later. “Drink this. It will help.”
She walked towards the far end of the living room and the third door in the apartment. “This is my room. You don’t come in here. Got it? Good.”
“Who are you?”
“Alison. I don’t care who you are. Tell me in the morning.”
Stephen blinked, then nodded and drank the drink, stumbling into the other room. There was a large bed in the far corner, and someone curled up on a mat on the floor beside it. He stumbled into the head with his head spinning and fell asleep quickly, dreaming of monsters and dead bodies.
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