Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity (19 page)

                HOWCANIHELP: Hello?

RED: I’m here. Sorry. Got some psychopaths-for-hire and hallucinated monsters after me. Busy.

HOWCANIHELP: How can I help?

RED: I don’t buy it. You’re screwing with me.

HOWCANIHELP: Thirty six hours before full metabolization. That is what your post said. Whatever it takes to get you into my labs before that occurs, I can provide. How can I help?

RED: Fine. Liquidity then. No earmarks, no traces, just non sector-specific credit and lots of it. Right now. I have to pay the king of penises not to rape me to death, thanks.

HOWCANIHELP: Your account sigil, please.

***

“Do you like to play with dolls?” Zippy asked King Big Dick, staring up at him with pure, unfiltered earnestness from her cross-legged position on the floor.

“Yeh. Blow-up ones,” he grumbled, swilling from an ornate flask emblazoned with stylized phalluses.

The subtext being that he was tired of talk, Zippy understood, and that there would be action taken soon. What action that was, she couldn’t say exactly – most of his threats were tinged with sexual overtones, but that might have just been his public persona coloring the meaning. He might not rape them at all; he might just slit their throats.

“Or we could play soldier,” Zippy informed him, with her most harmless intonation.

She intended for him to understand that they too were prepared to fight, but would still rather bargain, even if Red’s connections couldn’t come through.

He spat and fiddled around inside his pants.

That one was obvious.

“My friends play with me and they says I hit harder than any boy and that I’m the best at sneaking. That’s called re-cog-ni-since.” Zippy thumbed the compressed spring-blade in her pointer-finger: A sliver-thin structure of folding calcium and keratin housed in the hollow of her first knuckle. It wasn’t very sturdy, and it hurt like a son of a bitch to get out, but in an emergency she could break the joint back and deploy a ten-inch bone stiletto. Judging by King Big Dick’s increasingly aggressive self-fondling, it was about to become an emergency.

“It’s not my favorite game, though” she conceded, and he smiled lewdly back at her.

“Your friend looks like a faggot,” King Big Dick noted, by which he meant that he thought Red looked like a faggot.

“His dad will beat you up,” she replied instantly, hoping to imply that Red had some sinister, mysterious connection in the upper levels. Which, if he was anything like the Red she remembered, he certainly did not.

That miserable ratfuck bastard
.

Shows up in her tidy little fiefdom one day asking for help with his goofy, lopsided smile, and in a single afternoon, he undoes years of political manipulation. The sexual favors, murders, thefts, arsons (well, some of the arsons anyway; a few were just for fun), all to secure her territory, and now she could feel her fiefdom shrinking by the minute. Her inbox had been pulsing with activity from the second they’d set foot outside of her cottage, but just she didn’t have the heart to check the updates. Not until the job was done, at least. Though it didn’t really matter, she could feel the losses in her gut already: Blowing a walkspace through a neighboring territory was an act of war, plain and simple. Even if she appealed to the zoning council, she’d surely have to concede feet –
entire fucking feet!
– of cubic space just to settle jagged nerves.

 “Your fairy friend haddaminetageddwhuhedunndid,” King Big Dick said, the sentence trailing off incomprehensibly into his flask. He hefted his stinking bulk from the throne and, platinum phallus-crown waggling obscenely, waddled toward the doorway.

“Okay,” Zippy sat up, her one good foot asleep, and limped dutifully after.

Do something right, Red. There’s a first time for everything.

***

Red’s account sigil was a rune made up of two interlocking triangles inside a stylized eye, with three frayed spheres encircling it. He thought of tracing its contours with the blinking cursor, then focused on it turning opaque, then thought nothing. Nothing, in its purest form. No list of side-effects reeling by, no categorization charts, no atomic structures -- even the tiny Cyclops was gone. He was utterly alone, left without even his thoughts.

…

Wait, should he be alone?

Red scanned the room, wincing at the tight pain it brought to his neck.

James was gone. The guard too.

That seemed unlikely. Red wasn’t exactly certain of the protocol for being kidnapped and extorted, but he was fairly sure it wasn’t standard modus operandi to be left entirely to your own devices with an open terminal. He ran through the list of possibilities: Could he run? His lungs were weak, and his legs were half-useless in the best of times. After fleeing that freakish man-bot-thing in the tunnels, and then the sharp, persistent climb of the ‘Wells, he wasn’t sure he could move them at all. Call for help? The terminal was certainly being monitored, but Red’s BioOS was equipped with two dozen Virtual Private Networks for just such an occasion. Who could he call, though, that he already hadn’t? The bastard Luka was already leaking the news that there were A-Gents after him. Nobody would even open his messages now, for fear of falling under the Alpha Gentlemen’s phosphorous-happy blanket Non-Disclosure Agreement. And no authorities, not even the private ones, served the ‘Wells. So Red opted for the path of least resistance: He folded his hands, sat quietly, and waited for his kidnappers to return.

An optimistic blip vibrated in his inner ear, as his account sigil faded blue and flipped over, showing that a pending transaction had just completed. Red, figuring his mysterious benefactor was just some troll getting a few pathetic, cruel kicks at Red’s expense, had asked for a frankly ludicrous sum. He picked the number specifically because there was no way the pretense could continue: The punk couldn’t drag out the charade after seeing that number; he could only disappear. And then it would be over, and he could release the tiny amount of hope he’d kept caged in his chest, fluttering around meekly at every locked window, every rapidly closing door.

An amount twice what he’d requested glowed steadily in the pulsing confirmation box. Plain white text in the memo section beneath the transfer read:

Just in case.

Red focused on breathing, blinking, and remaining upright. And he felt himself failing at every single one of those feeble tasks. Then a portly midget in a mechanical Tuxedo, one half of his face burned – divided right down the middle in a perfect vertical line – walked through the ceiling, did a jaunty little dance, and disappeared into thin air.

Red brought up the Rx database, and tabbed over to hallucinogens.

***

James had liked the guard.

There was something familiar and easy about him. You can find blokes like that in every line of work, even the foul and murderous ones: Happy, trusting, just doing their job and not asking for anything more than a few hot meals, a roof, and maybe the occasional pint with the boys.

James had liked the guard, and so he’d made it quick.

He ducked into the hallway the instant the mirror-faced sentry turned his back. James leapt up deftly, wrapped his forearms around the man’s neck, put a foot on the back of his knee and stepped down with all of his weight, while simultaneously twisting his own body up and away. The guard dropped, his neck twisted with a quick, sick burst of soft pops, and it was done. James was grateful for the reflective surface of the mask.

Spared him seeing those unfocused eyes.

Six feet away, a bright green circle glowed on the surface of the steel door: The guard’s replacement, waiting for admission. James straddled the dead man’s back, looped his arms around his midsection, and hefted the body up before him. He shuffled forward until the pair of them were practically touching the glowing orb. When the sentry’s corpse came within a few inches, the circle bisected and began a short animation, chasing itself. Awaiting confirmation from outside.

The circle eventually caught up with itself, blinked off, and the whole wall shunted upward. The guard beyond loped wordlessly past James, still hiding behind the corpse of his coworker in the narrow hallway. Two strides down the corridor, he stopped, and slowly, curiously swiveled about.

“Bill?” The guard asked hesitantly.

In response, James hefted the man’s bulk to and fro rapidly. The corpse flopped from side to side.

“What the hell? Been drinking again, buddy?” The guard stood up out of his simian crouch and took a step towards the dancing dead man.

James abruptly released the body and pushed it forward as it started to fall. Just before it hit the floor, he lunged, pushing off the ground with one foot and the falling corpse with the other. He vaulted the deceased sentry and cracked his surprised coworker in the throat with a flying elbow.

The man’s last words were: “Fuwhaa?”

Prioritize,
James thought:
Secure escape route from the palace, find weapons, backtrack to retrieve Red and Zippy -- Zippy first, better asset in a fight -- find an exit from the fiefdom.

Easier fucking said, mate.

He felt along the wall, where instinct told him a control panel should be. A flat, angled, palm-sized piece of glass: The interface. A canted cylinder, open on one end: The feeder tube, delivering whatever raw elements the nano-bots needed to build.

Finally, a bit of bloody luck.

One end of the tube must lead out of King Big Dick’s barren kingdom. Every feeder needs a disposal outlet for waste elements; it was doubtful even Big Dick’s impressive territory used enough resources to merit their own Recycling Station. Two: The other end would lead to the King himself, or near enough that James could find his way from there. No self-respecting despot on a budget would allow free, unregulated access to a feeder tube and its accompanying nano-machines. All feed lines were policed to some extent, sure, but any git with the right hacks, some basic hardware and an online tutorial could build a bomb and blow the whole bloody cube to hell, or just burn through the nitrate rations cooking up contraband sausages. Somebody would be watching this line, approving or denying every request. Therefore the feeder tube must go to the two places James needed to be: The king’s quarters, and the exit.

It wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t anywhere near. But it had a friend that had a friend that once knew a plan, and that was better than nothing.

***

“I think you’re lost!” Zippy taunted King Big Dick.

“I think you’re a cunt,” He spat back flatly.

It was mock outrage though, she could tell. He was just playing a character now, thinking about something else. So negotiations were moot, then: Whatever his plan of action was, he’d already decided on it. They were going to meet their fate.

The procession had to move single-file through the narrower corridors: The King in the center, scuttling crab-like, his great gut audibly squeaking along the polished walls as he squeezed by. Two guards took point in front of him, another behind walking backward, facing her with his weapon – a flat, square-nosed disassembler – drawn. Another guard followed behind with a gun to her back, and one more beyond him, facing the back of the squad, covering the rear. Zippy was of the opinion that there is always an opening for somebody willing to take it, but she saw nothing here: The carefully organized formation, the claustrophobic walkways, and the complete, abyssal blackness all combined to make her virtually helpless, or as near to that state as she ever could be. She could still stick the bastard in front of her, at any rate. It wouldn’t make a difference, but it might make her feel better as she dissolved into a puddle of gelatin.

Take your little victories
, she thought.

A rectangle of light expanded somewhere ahead of the group. Wherever they were going, it looked like they had arrived. Zippy tentatively pulled at her knuckle, testing how much force would be needed to break it and free the knife. But when they emerged into the light of the empty, white room, the formation quickly broke and expanded away from her, each guard taking one of the four corners of the space, with one remaining by the King’s side. She couldn’t help but be impressed: Keep her closed up too tight in the tight spaces, keep out of her reach in the open ones.

“D’you git your shit?” King Big Dick asked the twitchy, exhausted wreck of a human being at the terminal.

“I got your money,” Red answered dully, “I’ve got triple, actually.”

Red swiveled the projector hub so the King could read the display. His jaw went slack.

“But there are conditions: We go free right now. No more games, no more of this public persona bickering. You get us all the supplies we need in the next ten minutes, no exceptions, no questions. You get us an armed escort that does any stupid thing I say, without hesitation. And you get us to an exit that opens onto the Reservoir in the next hour, or I burn this account and you get nothing,” Red said, setting his jaw forward and narrowing his eyes.

Zippy recognized it as his ‘tough guy’ face. It was laughably ineffective. But the money made its own impression.

“Not a problem!” King Big Dick answered brightly, with perfect, sober clarity, a jubilant smile bubbling across his face.

“Oh, thank Christ,” the guard directly beside him exhaled, pulling off his mirrored facemask and bowling it across the floor, “this bloody outfit pinches at the crotch.”

James fumbled around his stolen uniform for a moment, finally found and extracted a cigarette, and twisted the filter. It sparked into life. He noted the stunned expression on King Big Dick’s face.

“Sorry, mate: I killed like half your crew. We’re good now though, yeah?”

Her hand was cool and solid in his palm.

Byron was unaccustomed to contact. He found the sensation surprisingly comforting when he didn’t think about it, and absolutely nerve-wracking when he did. So he did his level best to draw his attention away from the small patch of clammy flesh, and focused on the task at hand: He was navigating QC through what seemed, to his unaugmented eyes, to be a dimly lit patch of dock directly beneath a bank of faded and yellowed LED boards. She, with nightvision strains activated, swore that they were blinding – tiny stars, burning bright orange patches through the flesh of her clenched eyelids – and only dared open her eyes when the last perceptible ray ceded to the darkness. Then they would exchange roles, with QC towing Byron through a damp void which seemed more like a thing that swallowed light than the absence of it. The switch was not for a hundred meters more, however. And though the darkness held its own primal uncertainties, Byron would be immensely grateful for the relief. He simply could not stand being relied upon. It was much easier to just hand over the reins and be led, even if the journey meant stumbling blindly past the uncertain death that hovered one errant footfall off the path on either side, into the greedy waters below.