Necrotech (31 page)

“
N
obody panic
,” Indigo ordered, probably more for Hooker's benefit than mine. My ears were ringing like someone had clapped both hands over my eardrums, but I was otherwise fine.

Nervous, but fine.

When I got out of this, I needed to find a reputable doc willing to work with me long enough to do a full chipset replacement. This kind of feedback wasn't normal. A replacement was going to suck for time, but I didn't see any other way. It was delicate work, brain integration.

I patted my harness, briefly checking on my backup arsenal by habit. “Before we crack this, how are you all on gear?”

“Half ammo,” Hooker said, “but still have my backup. Suit's running fine.”

“Three clips and a CounterTech,” Indigo said. “You?”

“Down to my last two clips, but I've got a CounterTech and extra ammo for the Adjudicator.” I grimaced. “Smegging shame our munitions got slagged.”

Hooker cleared his throat.

Indigo glared at me. “Seriously?” His tone made it clear I wasn't earning any magical friendship points.

I bared my teeth. “I'm sorry, fuckholes, did you want me to keel over in tears right this second? They're gone. We're alive.” I snapped twice in front of Hooker's faceplate. “Focus on getting your ass out before you start worrying about others.”

“Yeah.” Hooker's helmet bobbed. “I'm on that like you wouldn't believe.”

Good.

Indigo growled through his teeth. “Just get the door.”

“I'll take one end,” I said.

“Hooker, keep us covered.”

The kid raised his Sauger to his shoulder, sighting down the middle of the open crevasse as I wedged my fingertips into the seam and waited for Indigo to give the okay.

On his word, we pulled.

The doors wanted to give. I could feel it. They rocked an inch, caught on loosely wedged resistance. My metal arm flexed, biceps tightening. Another inch. It shrieked. “Stay on it,” I grunted, pulling hard.

Indigo's jaw clenched with the strain, his fingers yellow around the door's edge. The whole shaft screeched an echoed refusal that set my teeth aching.

When it sheared through whatever blocked it, Indigo and I both hit the sides of the elevator, rocking it. My metal arm thudded against the panel, sending a snap and crackle through my joints. I hissed. The lights flickered on, then off again.

Hooker didn't lose sight of the open door. “Clear.”

Indigo shook out his hands, grimacing. “Let's go.”

We'd worked together long enough to fall back on routine – we stepped out as a unit, back to back. Indigo faced left, I faced right, no blind spots while Hooker covered from his vantage.

Nothing rushed us. No movement. In the burgundy shadows of the backup illumination, the corridor looked empty of all but a blood-red gleam of shattered glass. Our flashlights knifed through it, narrow beams patterned by wisps of smoke and fluttering dust motes turning gold and blue. Creepily serene.

“Clear,” Indigo said.

“Same,” I replied, and Hooker stepped out behind us. “This way.” I proceeded down the hall, the rhythmic clunk of my team's boots behind me. “They called it the uplink lab. Whatever it is, I saw a lot of computers.” I hesitated, my pace hitching. “It's... where I saw Nanji last.”

Indigo's pace didn't hesitate. “Was it the one on fire?”

“Yeah.” I didn't know what else to say; how else to go there.

“She was still alive?” Hooker asked me.

“She was... moving.”

Neither questioned my choice of words. Digo already knew why.

We approached the pile of red-lit glass and I took a deep breath. Anxiety twisted around crushing disappointment as I edged out in front of the window whose tempered glass had exploded outward, showering the floor with fragments. It crunched underfoot. “Fuck,” I said, because there was no other word for it. “Just
fuck.
”

“Nothing but slag.” Indigo studied the inside of the lab, strangely calm. He didn't approach the blackened, scorched frame, but there wasn't much need. Anything that had been in there had melted down into unrecognizable residue. Twisted metal, hardened globules of liquefied plastic. Any corpses I'd seen were nothing more than ash and a memory now.

“Some fire,” Hooker said, and whistled in his helmet. “Look at the tables.” They'd bent in, softened to the point of curving under their own weight until the legs formed perfect arches.

If metal couldn't even hold, how long had Nanji?

I closed my eyes.

Had she screamed? Did they kill her before it consumed them all?

Had she torn off their chumsucking heads and spit out their entrails before she died?

I really,
really
hoped so.

Indigo touched my shoulder. “Let's find another source.”

Damn it.

I stepped away. “I don't even know where to begin.” My throat ached. My chest hurt. My head pounded – anger, frustration, shorted tech, I couldn't even tell it apart.

“Security is usually wired through most of everything. I'd be surprised if they didn't have cameras set up in every room. We'll start there.” Same old professional linker. On the job, on the clock.

Off the emotional grid.

Usually, that was me. He'd accused me of just that, right?

I needed a grip. “Fine.” I took a deep breath, digging the heel of my synthetic hand into my aching forehead. “The security force came from that way.” I gestured with my Sauger, the barrel pointing further down the hall. “Past a set of doors. Maybe they mustered there.”

“Without a map,” Hooker said, “seems as good a place to look as any.”

“Riko.”

I glanced at Indigo, but I couldn't read his eyes in the dark corridor. They were shadowed, framed in black and bloody grit. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.” A blatant lie, made all the more apparent as soon as I snapped it. Hell, even Hooker didn't buy it. He hummed a question. I grimaced. “My head hurts,” I added when neither of the men moved. “I think my chipset took a knock. I'll have it worked out when I get back.” By someone. Maybe.

“You okay to keep going?” Indigo asked, his light shifting to my feet.

I frowned at the reflected glitter, some painted with flecks of black and gilded red by the emergency lights. “Better question,” I suggested evenly. “Can you force me not to?”

Indigo's mouth tightened. He couldn't, and trying now didn't promise anything but grief.

He surprised me. “Just be careful,” he suggested, as gently as the environment allowed.

Another knock to my calm.

How, exactly, was I supposed to do that? Should I ask my chipset to stop misbehaving? Should I ask my brain to scrub every reminder of Nanji's ghost from my mind?

“I'll get right on that,” I muttered, curling my fingers more firmly over the Sauger's stock. “Let's get this shit done and out.”

“What was that?”

We both turned to frown at Hooker. He wasn't watching us; his faceplate was focused on the slagged lab. His flashlight burned a stark hollow through the dark, picking out rippled metal and streaks of charred black.

I glanced inside impatiently. “What?”

“I thought I saw–” He stopped. Thought about it, I bet, because he shook his head. “Never mind.”

“You sure?” Indigo asked.

“For fuck's sake, Digo, stop second-guessing everything,” I snapped, and stomped away from the men, long stride carrying me past the window – past the ghostly memory of Nanjali Koupra, eyes wide and fearful as she hammered on shattered, nonexistent glass.

I'd be carrying that one for a while. Even when I'd do my damnedest to walk away.

They followed me down the hall in silence. The lights hummed faintly, thanks to the backup generators feeding the place around us. Unlike my earlier visit, they didn't turn off and on, and there was no echoed sound of booted feet sprinting for the uplink lab we left behind. I led them through wine-red shadows and endless, stark halls, turning left when we passed through automatic double doors imprinted with text on the side that closed behind us.

B L O C K – C.

All personnel to be armed beyond this point.

Right direction.

“Oh, good,” Hooker said, grasping at whatever humor he could. “Does that mean we can put our weapons away now?”

“Be my guest,” Indigo offered.

“Heh.” He rolled his shoulders uneasily. “No thanks. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

So cute. I just wanted to pat him on the helmet.

“I don't know where this hall leads,” I began, only to lock it down when Indigo's hand jerked sharply up, fingers straight and together.
Silence.
His head cocked, cheekbones gilded red and thrust into sharp contrast as he stared at something – nothing – past my head.

I listened, straining to hear anything over the crackling in my skull.

“Damn,” he finally muttered. “I thought I heard gunfire.”

“I didn't hear anything,” Hooker offered.

Neither did I, but I didn't bother saying so. My whole setup was suffering.

“All right, let's go,” he said instead.

“Are you sure?” I asked, sardonic as all hell and completely failing to hide it.

“Go find a necro cock to suck, Riko.”

It wasn't as sharp as I'd expected. “Let me know if you start feeling techish,” I shot back, but I was talking to his back. He moved ahead without me, ignoring protocol just to leave me in his wake. It didn't sting. Not like everything else. This was just funny.

“Um…” Hooker hesitated.

I snorted. “Go on,” I told him, amused. “He'd probably prefer you on his ass than me.”

“Okay. You can watch mine,” Hooker told me, and without an expression behind his faceplate, I could only assume he was being serious. He followed Indigo, Sauger H2 up and ready.

I took him at his word.

Hooker's ass wasn't all that bad in that armor.

Indigo followed the corridor, gray panels occasionally dotted by stains I didn't have time to check out. Probably better we didn't, anyway. The knot in my head thickened until I was sure my brain had wrapped corded nerves around my chipset.

When a door slid open at Indigo's passing, we all jumped. The gun leaped in Hooker's hands; the light slid over the black entry, picked out more gray flooring, and he laughed nervously.

Indigo's shoulders visibly eased. “Automatic sen–”

Hooker's jumpy chuckle died on a strangled scream.

I didn't even see it move. It was on him, human-shaped and wearing the remnants of scrubs that used to be white before blood and putrescence had stained it. It rode Hooker's chest, tearing at his helmet. Thick, wet sounds escaped from its discolored mouth.

I raised my Sauger, my heart slamming hard against my ribs as adrenaline rocked through my veins – my head – but Hooker's weapon arced, spraying bullets wildly across the hall. It scored the wall beside me, the ground at my feet. I jumped back, screamed a warning.

Too late. Pressure spattered my right leg; pain sheared through my awareness, blossomed like a river of rusty razorblades into my synapses. I strangled on my words, fell to the hall floor.

Indigo reached for Hooker's flailing arm, but the kid spun violently, his screaming magnified in the feed. “
Get it off
!”

“Hooker!” I tried again through clenched teeth. “Stop flailing before–!”

No use. Terror rode him. He staggered backwards; his shoulder rebounded off the door jamb.

I tried to lurch to my feet; I screamed Hooker's name as seven more hands reached out of the room. Stained, twisted fingers dug into the seams of Hooker's armor. Two necros fell into the light, yanked into view by Hooker's writhing panic, and I saw veined skin flapping loosely, foul teeth bared, and milky eyes staring emptily from sockets turning black with necrosis.

Whoever they were, whatever they'd done, it was too late to help them. To help any of us.

Clawed fingers found Indigo's arm, another grabbed at Hooker. Digo shouted, wrenched back so hard that necrotic fingernails tore free and splattered blackened blood against the wall. Rich, vibrant crimson lines blossomed from pale furrows carved into Indigo's arm, just above the thicker plating.

He swore, over and over.

I tried to stand, to reach for Hooker's spastically thrashing limbs. He careened into the other side of the door.

The hall echoed with the soggy, juddering rattle of clashing tech and failing organs.

Hooker was still screaming as they dragged him into the room.

The door slid closed.

I stared, wide-eyed and shaken, and listened to them peel back armor like it was nothing; listened to Hooker's gagging, sobbing, hysterical screams – saw it happen in my imagination with effortless clarity.

The salty, coppery odor of blood and the sour flush of voided intestines filled my nose.

Indigo hauled me to my feet. “
Run
,” he ordered grimly, his dusky skin sallow. The whites of his eyes were clearly visible as he slung my arm over his shoulder and forced a pace that sent knives of agony up my bleeding shin.

A desperately long thirty seconds later, gunfire shattered through the feed; echoed faintly behind us.

Hooker finally stopped screaming.

“
T
hat wasn't his H2
,” I gasped, hobbling with every ounce of determination I possessed. No way –
no way
was I going to end up as some necrotic fuckhead's lunch. I'd shoot myself first. I'd take every last necro down with me.

Indigo slapped a palm against the door that closed behind us. “Cover me.”

I sagged against the corridor wall, blood only one part of the thick soup of odors filling my nose. Decaying flesh, the stench of fear and rot, stale air – I gritted my teeth, head churning, guts roiling.

Indigo slapped a disc against the panels, a startlingly bright green flash sealing the seam.

My chin jerked, though I didn't take my eyes off the hall. “Did you hear me? That wasn't an H2!”

“I heard you.” He thumbed the small black patch inset over matte black keys – he'd always painted over his tech, even the keypads – and turned to look at me.

It wasn't a calm regard.

Terror flared his nostrils, filled his wide-eyed stare. He breathed heavily, sweat a dull sheen matting his dark hair. In that fear, I found the same kinship I'd learned to recognize over the years of cock-over-sideways runs and surprises.

I felt the way he looked. Worse, maybe, because I had to sit here and juggle the crossed frequencies turning my skull to a mix of dissonant chaos. If I could do it? I'd be damned if he gave up on me now.

I exhaled slowly, forcing a measure of calm.

“Plan?” I croaked, my sweaty grip sliding inside my glove.

“They'll have to weld through or bust the freq.” He sucked down oxygen like a drowning man, sweat beading down his filthy jaw. “Can necros do either?”

“How the fuck should I know?” I snarled, swiping at the sweat plastering my hair to my cheek. “I thought they only spread through wires.”

He nodded like he'd thought the same thing. “You. You sit.”

“Is here the–”

“Before you bleed out,” he added. Flat. Desperate.

If I died, he was on his own.

It wasn't friendship, exactly, but survival had a way of evening the odds. Guess we were on the same page, after all.

Supporting the wall with my shoulders, I slid to the floor. Pain ricocheted up my leg. “Bleeding's already slowed,” I managed between clenched teeth. Sweat popped, a clammy grip across my forehead, my shoulders. “Think there's a few bullets lodged.”

Indigo crouched by my extended limb. “Fuck.” Not the most encouraging word, but I couldn't blame him. My leg below the knee had turned into so much shredded armor, the brutalized flesh mushroomed through the savaged metal. This armor design wasn't made to turn away bullets shot from that range, and definitely not from that caliber.

On the other hand, I hadn't lost the leg.

I sucked in a hard breath. “I can walk soon as it's done dripping.” It'd hurt as long as there was lead rubbing against the bone, but it'd hurt less than getting torn apart by necrotechs. Of the options, I'd take the first.

Indigo nodded, sitting back on his haunches. He stared down the hall, his pulse visible as it hammered through his neck. “Right.” He pushed strands of sweaty hair back from his forehead. “My guess is that MetaCore came down the same way we did.”

“So we've got necros infesting the place, and a corporation on our ass. Sounds like a dream.”

Indigo looked up at the ceiling, his jaw tight with effort.

I knew what he was thinking. I knew, because if I were in his shoes, I'd have done the same damn thing.

But I wasn't. “We have to keep on.”

“The hell we do.” He stood, one hand clamping around the furrows in his arm. “Anything we find, and gods know where we'd find it,” he added grimly, “isn't going to be worth the losses.”

“It will be.”

“Riko.” He rounded on me. “This fuckup is not worth our lives.”

I hissed. “
It's not a fuckup
.” I elbowed back against the wall, struggled to get to my feet – gave up when he swore fluently in a mix of street and his pidgin family blend. He stepped in to flatten one hand on my shoulder.

He only did that, brought in the bits of the language bastardized on the street, when he was really scared.

I don't know why I didn't knock him on his ass. Maybe because I recognized the gesture for what it was.

I sat, obeying the pressure he applied, but I gripped his wrist with my bloody hand. “I'm not walking away.”

“Riko.” Indigo's laugh bit. “You aren't fucking walking, are you?”

“I'm serious!” My voice rasped, harsh and grating, but I couldn't let this go. I couldn't live with it – wouldn't be allowed to. “If I leave this hellhole without that info, my cred is shot for life. Do you get that? I. Will be.
Fucked
.” And then I would be dead.

I was good, but I wasn't good enough to survive the kind of shitstorm that a bad fall from good cred could net a runner. Not alone.

And I didn't kid myself. Until I had more to bargain with, I was totally alone.

He said nothing, staring mulishly at my gloved fingers leaving crimson streaks on his own wrist.

“Digo.” His name hissed between my teeth.

It was as close to a
please
as I ever got.

His grip eased on my shoulder. Muscle and tendon flexed beneath my fingers, but he didn't pull away. When I turned, his gaze touched mine. Achingly tired, faded with pain and a fatigue that went deeper than tech and bone. “Is it worth that much to you?”

He wasn't really asking me that.

Could I live with myself if the data proved what we both were afraid of? That I was at fault?

That this was my mess? Nanji's mess?

I nodded, letting him go. “We have to keep on,” I said grimly. As good an answer as I had. “Whatever is going on here, Malik wants it and I'll bet someone else will pay top cred to get it, too. Like them,” I added pointedly, tipping my head back toward the sealed doors. “You think they'll pay us or just kill us?”

“What makes you think Malik will pay us?”

A fair point. And a logical one – a smidge of relief filtered in through the chaos. That was Indigo Koupra. Paranoid as shit.

“Simple,” I assured him, and this time, I didn't let him stop me from dragging my sorry ass to my feet. “I'll kill him if he doesn't.”

“And me?”

No, I didn't forget that he'd betrayed me to that same corporate toolshed he accused me of handing his sister to. But I'd be damned if I let him follow his sister to the grave. I put pressure on my leg, hissed in a breath when it flared, but it held my weight.

“It's like this,” I finally told him. I eased my weight off the leg, then on. Every shot of pain, every twang of abused nerves, made it easier to get used to. I met his gaze over the incandescence of our lowered torches. “Right now, you need me to get your ass out of here alive. I need you to get my ass into that security system. It's a match made in heaven.”

“Or a one-way road to hell.”

“Yeah, well.” I stripped off my useless gloves, dropping them to the floor. They landed with a damp splat. “If you wanted an easy payday, you should have listened to your momma and joined a whorehouse.”

His laugh surprised me. It wasn't warm, not even amused, but it did something to ease the tension. Made the air breathable again. As the crack of sound faded away, he caught my shoulder again, his bloody grip tight.

It was a move that stole a little bit of my anger. Turned a little more of my fear into something stronger than nerves.

This time, it wasn't hatred between us. Solidarity had finally snapped into place. Familiar, instinctual.

I didn't know how long it'd last, but as long as it got us through this shitstorm, I'd take it. “I'd kill to have Boone down here,” I said ruefully.

“Yeah. Me too.” He didn't push it any farther than that. Letting me go, he gestured down the hall. “Stay to the center, try not to trigger any of those doors.”

“You got it.”

I took the lead again, keeping as close to the middle of the hall as I could. I covered the left side, Digo covered the right, Saugers held at the ready. For almost ten minutes – endless, nausea-inducing long minutes – nothing else moved. I heard no outside sounds, saw no movement. If dead eyes watched us from the black windows, I couldn't see them.

But I was positive they were there.

I jerked as something in my neural frequency cracked a warning, a single second before Indigo checked his arm plate and said tightly, “They broke the lock. Haul ass.”

The stomp of booted feet echoed from somewhere behind us.

I took off in a dead run, struggling and failing to stay in the center. Digo didn't try. He sprinted like a man on his last legs. I didn't stop, not even when the mechanical
whoosh
of two doors whirred open in our wake.

I picked up my pace, locking back groans of effort as it rocked my wounded leg. Indigo followed, but he said nothing, probably thinking the same thing I was: if the necros were attracted by noise, maybe they'd give us a miss and go right for the corporate boots pounding behind us.

It probably would have worked, too, if I didn't round a corner to find myself swallowed by pitch black. My light picked out open floor but nothing else. The quality of the space changed – it felt open, wider. I stopped. Indigo collided into my back and I grunted a shushing warning before he could ask why we'd halted.

The shadows sucked the sound away, bandied it around like a toy before eating it completely.

Our lights crisscrossed into the black space. No walls on either side of us, but I picked out the faint outline of what looked like chairs. Tables. A kind of commons?

I hesitated.

Anything could be waiting in here. Necros, corpses, hell, munitions that could blow sky-high, rigged by survivors. Calling out would be a death warrant; staying silent could get us as dead, just as messily.

I lowered my weapon, highlighting stark gray flooring in front of my feet, and a streak of white tile angling left.

Gunfire erupted from the hall behind us. Lots of it. Guess our necro surprise party had done the job.

Indigo tapped my left shoulder. I turned left, took one step and hesitated again. My gaze slid right; the short hair on the back of my head prickled.

He prodded my shoulder.

I reached back, caught his arm and pulled him right.

“What–”

I squeezed in warning. I couldn't explain. It wouldn't make sense anyway. I had a gut feeling.

If we moved left, we were dead.

Although, as we walked as fast as we dared through the empty chamber – stepping around overturned chairs and scattered containers revealed by our laughably thin lights – I reasoned that we may just be dead a different way.

Necro rending. MetaCore bullets.

Whatever.

The echoes behind us gained in intensity.

My guts turned to a frozen knot of dread – no, of
panic.
Something felt wrong; getting more wrong by the second. Something bad was happening and I didn't know what to call it. Where it was coming from. Paranoia jammed spikes of terror into my eye sockets and
twisted
, and I stopped dead as the first tinny reverberations of bullets spattering the walls behind us sent shrill echoes through the room.

I sucked in a shuddering breath.

Ting.
Metal skated across metal. Bounced once.

Indigo's body crowded mine, his arm wrapped around my chest and hauled me hard to the right. We hit the floor as a column of orange flame turned the dark into a searing flare of eye-scalding light. Heat licked over us, too far away to cause damage but close enough to smell the same acrid stench of chemical-laden fire that had swallowed Falk.

Ting, ting. Ting!

“Move!”

We pushed off the floor with street-honed speed and instinct, tearing across the chamber as two more gouts of flame roiled up in our wake. In the blinding flash, I saw the remains of tables and chairs, discarded armor and bodies. Chains of them. Row upon row of corpses laid out along the right side – exactly where that pale path would have planted us.

The last grenade erupted too close to dodge, closer than I expected it to flare. The detonation stripped what was left of my night vision. The blast wave pummeled into our backs, sending me ass over elbows and shoving Indigo out to the middle of the open chamber.

I hit the ground, propelled so hard that my teeth bounced off the floor and my feet tried to rebound off my head. Things stretched, popped. Pain didn't even rate against adrenaline. I rolled with it best as I could, collided ribs first into an overturned table, and grabbed at its edge as lights filled my straining vision.

Three, four, no...
Fuck
. Ghostly afterimages peppered my sight as I struggled to count them. Four? Six? More than two.

I heard no communication, but that probably meant they had the same kind of sound-dampening helmets we'd been using before we broke them. The grenade fires died, leaving glowing embers where flammable materials had taken in the heat.

Pop.
Light bloomed, a blue nimbus struggling against the dark and fed by more glow rods. They hit the ground, thrown from the entrance. I peered around the table, hauled my Sauger up and sighted down the weapon – nice little cluster of corporate fuckheads they made.

Just in time for something in my skull to go
snap
.

A gasp wheezed to my right.

My finger froze on the trigger.

The wheeze turned into a rattle. Moist, pulpy.

Oxygen turned to ice in my lungs. Very slowly, I turned my head. Sweat slid down my temple; fear turned it clammy in my palm.

The corpses rippled.

Noise, fire, the blast impact. Enough to wake the dead.

Or the converted.

Something thick and... and
wet
popped inside my consciousness. Something I didn't recognize, that didn't live inside my head but left me reeling, feeling as if my skull had peeled back and exposed all my nerves.