Digital Plague

It was just business. Bendix was a psionic and would have me bouncing off the walls if I paused for breath, so I didn’t pause. I mashed my hand down onto his bloody face, and kept mashing as long as he kept moaning and wincing. When he stopped I paused, fist in the air, breath burning in the back of my throat, blood dripping from my damp hand.

A second later Bendix dropped away from me as if the floor had given out beneath him, except it was gravity sucking my lungs out through my mouth, and I smacked into the top of the cockpit so hard my teeth clicked together, reigniting every broken or missing tooth and sending stars into my eyes. Something invisible and heavy pushed me up against the ceiling as Stormers swarmed him, four throwing themselves across his battered body as Happling strode in, veins on his neck and arms pulsing. The redhead glanced up at me as he unslung the shredder from his shoulder. With one well-aimed shot of the butt Bendix twitched and went still, and I dropped back to the floor as if gravity had just realized I was there. I landed on my bad leg and swallowed a shout so hard I didn’t breathe.

“Sir,” Happling called back into the cabin. “The subject is unconscious and incapacitated, as ordered. He’s, uh, a little worse off than you envisioned, I guess. What do we do with him?”

“Blindfold,” I managed to gurgle, lying back on the floor and just breathing for a bit. “If he can’t see you, he can’t toss you.” I wasn’t entirely sure this was the case, but I remembered Kev Gatz and his limitations as a Pusher. It made sense.

I lay there aching while the cops bustled around me, barking orders and getting shit done. The ceiling of the hover was only sheet metal bolted onto the frame, and it looked beat-up, dented and with flecks of rust here and there. I wondered how long the hover had been in service. It felt good to not move, to not keep myself standing through willpower alone and just let gravity hold me down for a while. I had a fluttery, nervous feeling in my belly, as if I’d start shaking and laughing if I let myself.

Hense’s face appeared over me.

“Cates,” she said, raising one eyebrow. “You okay?”

I blinked up at her. “You afraid I have internal injuries? That maybe I’m going to die and take you with me, all quiet and shit?”

A faint smile imposed itself on her face. “Something like that.”

I shook my head slowly. “Broken leg, I think. Broken ribs, but no punctured lung. Everything hurts, thanks to your gorilla boy over there, but nothing fatal.”

She nodded. “Then get the fuck up. I need to know what the part B of your plan is.”

“Plan?” I laughed, pushing myself into a sitting position and then pausing there, dazed. It seemed a nice compromise between the bullshit Hense was demanding and the more sensible plan of remaining on my back that I’d been entertaining. “Holy shit, are you confused,” I said with a laugh. As I suspected, once I started laughing, my whole body began to shake.

“Cates,” Hense said, voice pissed off. Then she stopped and said nothing. It made me laugh harder, because she didn’t know what to do. She had nothing left to threaten me with.

Finally, I swallowed some of the shivering and looked around. “Ty!” I shouted. “Mr. Kieth, I assume you’ve been monitoring our activities, right, you smart little fuck? It’s all right. I think it’s time for a parley, Ty, so we can come to an understanding. We’ve taken Mr. Bendix down and we’re in control of the hover.”

Hense and I waited, staring around like morons. Happling and the Stormers were dragging Bendix back into the cabin. I was considering the effort involved in sucking in enough air to make another shout when there was a click and a blast of static, and then Kieth’s nasally voice in the air.

“No, Mr. Cates,” he said. “You’re not. Ty is.”

I smiled and slumped back down onto the floor. It felt fucking good to be right about something for a change.

XXV

Day Nine: Invisible Things Inside Me Starting to Swell and Turn Black

Kieth spoke with confidence now that he was hidden. “Ty advises everyone to stay still. Ty has wired into the security systems on this hover and Ty will be overzealous about defending himself.”

Shit, I didn’t blame Ty for not trusting anyone. The hover was crowded with cops and a known killer, all of whom would solve half of their current problems if Ty Kieth were dead. If I were Kieth, I’d stay hidden, too.

I pushed myself up again, fighting against gravity that seemed to have become thicker and more insistent since last I checked. I looked around, trying to figure out where in hell Ty’d hidden himself. The hover was a big one, capable of transporting thirty or so people plus their gear, but where could a Techie-even a ski

“Mr. Kieth,” Hense said loud and clear as she stood in the cockpit, looking at the bank of controls, “is Mr. Marko with you?”

There was no response. I chuckled a little and she gave me a sour look. “Of course he won’t tell you,” I said. “Ty’s smart. The more information you have, the more likely you’ll figure out where he is.”

“If I wanted to know where he is,” she snapped, “I’d order Captain Happling to tear this hover apart until he found him.”

Happling nodded. “And I like taking shit apart.”

Kiplinger, his face mask off again, was suddenly at my side, cigarette dangling from his mouth. He shook one out of his crumpled pack and I leaned forward to place it between my lips.

“You really Avery Cates?” he asked, flicking his lighter on, the soft orange glow giving his sweaty face an unattractive gleam. He had a way of smiling without looking at you, like he was shy. “The Avery Cates?”

I nodded, sucking in smoke. “The gweat and tewwible,” I advised.

He studied his hands for a moment, then smiled a little as he bent to light my smoke. “I was on a raid once, we were supposed to scoop you up. Some Gold Badge had a hard-on for you something serious, marching up and down in the hover, telling us what he was going to do to us if we missed you.” He smiled again, shaking his head. “We missed you all right. Shit, I’ll never forget the look on that asshole’s face.”

“Quit kissing his ass, trooper,” Happling bellowed from across the cockpit. “Last week that bastard would have shot you dead without hesitation.”

Kiplinger nodded, gri

With that he stepped away, one of those eternally happy bastards. Hense looked from Happling to me as if she was waiting for us to cut out the grabass and get down to business. “Mr. Kieth,” she said clearly, her flat eyes on me. “Since you are in possession of this hover, I’d like to ask politely what you mean to do with it.”

After a moment’s pause there came the staticky click and then Ty’s voice. “Ty hadn’t gotten that far in his thinking, to be honest.”

“Heck, Ty,” I said, taking my time with the cigarette, “how in hell do you end up here? Who the hell is that Tin Man? I’m sick and tired of him calling me by my first name.”

Another long pause, but this time the buzzing static remained, the line held open. “Ty doesn’t know. He calls Ty by name, too. It was Belling, that cunt. Came around talking about brokering a big job, needing the best, throwing out round numbers. Big round numbers. Ty admits it: he got greedy. The cunt arranged a meeting, and next thing you know, lights out, and Ty wakes up on a hover headed for fucking Paris for fuck’s sake. Ty spent some time hiding in Paris when things got hot a few years back-right before you found Ty, in fact-and Ty was not happy to find himself here again. Ty was less happy when he found out what was expected of him here.”