Apex Cypher (Prequel to The Techxorcist series) (3 page)

“You’re staying in my home, breathing my air, and taking up my space. There ain’t no even here, young man. And you’re here for the job, are you not? I suggest you show a little gratitude and realise your position in this world. You need me more than I need you, although it’s been many years since I had someone with dark skin like yours. You from the Jamaican quarter, eh?” She loomed over Petal’s sleeping form, her head turned to look at him. Her eyes seem to shine brighter, and her canines looked sharper.

He refused to answer her question. That time of his life was too difficult to talk about; the memories, as they were, covered in so much blood, conflict, and ultimately grief and guilt.

“Tell me about the job. And a name would be good, also.”

“You can call me Shelley. So, about this job. Sit tight and let me tell you a story about a man who double-crossed me...”

Part 3 - The Job

Shelley the Tinker sat next to Gabe, on the end of Petal’s bed. She stared at him for a while as if planning on how to tell her story and then she started.

“I was in Baicheng, just a short trek west of here. You can get there by following the dead railway track, if the scavenging bastards haven’t already stolen the wood and iron. The city used to be a main transport hub to the various northern part of the China Empire. After The Family had dropped the bombs, it was hit hardest by looters: all the cars, trains, planes, and basically anything that moved was taken, either to get the hell out, or to barter for food.

“Like those poor bastards in the Hong Kong shelters, the supplies eventually ran out, forcing everyone else to the surface. By then the gangs were in control, and not a little crazy.”

Gabe thought it ironic she was the one calling them crazy, but he let her continue on with her story.

“The Family’s drones thinned their ranks over time, and the people from the shelters, called the Risen, took the opportunity to try and secure themselves shelter and resources. The fighting led to a blood bath. It literally ran in the streets one night after a particularly brutal clash.

“I had always remained independent. Earning enough favour with the various gangs to not get killed, but not enough so that I gained any loyalty or obligation to any one group. Back then, being in a gang was as quick a route to death as not being in one and opposing them.”

Despite himself, Gabe found himself admiring her courage and sense. He made the mistake of joining a gang soon after he rose out of the shelters, mainly because he thought that it would be the quickest way to get food and water for his family who remained behind, but things didn’t work quite as he planned. Trying to predict the future of a gang was like trying to tame chaos.

“Anyway, around that time I started hearing about a guy who was somehow repairing electronics from the EMP damage. There were rumours that he’d found himself a penthouse room in one of the still-standing apartment buildings in what used to the posh part of town. He’d secured it after managing to get power back into the security grid and made quite the fortress for himself.

“The other rumour at the time was that he’d found a working server. Apparently it wasn’t on at the time of the attacks, and had remained in its protective packaging.”

Gabe interrupted, “What use would a server be when there’s no network anymore to take advantage? It’s not like we need spreadsheets or word processors anymore.”

“I’m coming to that.”

“Go on.”

“So this guy calls himself Jericho, finds this server and apparently makes contact with other survivors. Much like how Xian and I discovered each other, this Jericho used the server’s technology to locate and join some networks that had either survived the attack, or had been built afterwards.

“Suddenly, we realised there were pockets of survivors outside of The Family’s dome, and they had technology—software too. AIs! Military AIs. That’s ultimately how I found, and later won this place.”

“What do you mean, won?” Gabe asked.

“You don’t think anyone would give up a place like this? There’s every piece of tech you could ever want here—if you could fix it up that is. But also look at the resources here: oil, water, tools, glass, metal, fabrics, and wire. If one had the appropriate blueprints and schematics, not to mention the maintenance manuals, hell, one could, if they had the skills, get one of these birds back in the sky.”

Gabe felt like he understood what the job was. “This Jericho has the information you want?”

“Look at you! Clever boy, aren’t we?”

He shrugged, not letting the insult hit him. He was smart enough when he needed to be, and it didn’t exactly take a genius. She was just being too slow to get to the damned point.

“So tell me about this Jericho. Is he still in his penthouse? I assume that’s where the information is that ya want us to recover.”

“Got it in one, Skippy.”

“So what’s the payment for this job?”

“Come, I’ll show you.”

Shelley rose to her feet, her knee joints clicking and cracking as she stood. She passed him and exited to the fuselage. She led him across the scrapyard. All about him were trillions of dollars worth of military equipment, now rendered utterly useless. Even if you could get one back up and running, what would be the point? Where was there to go? And as Shelley hobbled through the labyrinth of junk metal and nearly new vehicles, a thought nagged at him.

She mentioned that she could get one of the birds back in the sky. Where the hell was she intending to go? And where was she getting the fuel? Most of the planes used H-core engines that required hydrogen gas. Even if she could distill it from water, there wouldn’t be enough around. There was barely enough now for people to get by. Mostly it was rainwater or contaminated rivers. Purification tablets were available, but in such scarce numbers that no one developed a surplus of water.

“Here, come look.” The old tinker stood over the open trunk of a rusted Ford Ranger EX.

He stepped forward, still wary of the woman and her intentions. Inside the truck was a steel lock box. They were usually used for storing expensive tools. She flipped the lid, and inside were five two-litre bottles of water and a full box of protein packs: enough for at least two weeks for two people. Already he felt his stomach growl. He and Petal’s rations were running low. There was a chance they could find more food in Baicheng, but given how most cities and towns they had passed through were barren empty graveyards, he didn’t hold out much hope of separating resources from the few survivors who had fought to attain them.

“Stand back,” she said.

At first Gabe thought about overpowering her and taking the food and water, but he thought back to his time in Hong Kong. He’d be no better than the animals there. So he stepped back, realised that Shelley was holding a taser inside her jacket and pointing at him.

“What’ya playin’ at?”

“Just protecting myself. That’s only part of what I’m offering for the job. Just so you know I’m serious about getting that information. If you can get it for me, this is yours.”

“A part? There’s more?”

She slapped her hand on the back of the Ranger. “You also get this. It’s got half a tank of H. Will get you two hundred miles if you take it easy.”

Gabe couldn’t believe it. His feet were calloused and blistered from so much walking, and he had at least a few more weeks ahead of him. No one had a working vehicle this side of the Dome. He’d heard rumours of a desert-gang who had made their own buggies out of non-electrical mechanical parts, but to have a real vehicle, that’d cut down a huge amount of time. They’d planned to travel to the rumoured outpost beyond the Dome called GeoCity-1. Home to the people who had made their own vehicles.

At first Gabe and Petal didn’t believe it existed. A settlement that close to the Dome? Why would The Family allow it? But then back at Xian’s they had proof: a network signal. There were computers over there, and a job request. An unnamed individual requested someone with AI knowledge. They only knew about it because Gabe managed to decrypt the information. Xian just thought it was junk data left over from some random computer. Nothing was random these days. With so few computers still working, and fewer people still to actually make any use of them, any piece of data was important, valuable.

The Ranger would take weeks off their journey.

Shelley knew he was in. She just smiled and pointed back the way they came, making Gabe walk ahead of her. At every step he wondered if she’d change her mind, kill him, and wear his skin as a robe. He arrived back at the fuselage as Petal poked her head out.

“What the hell just happened?” Petal said, rubbing her head, squinting her eyes.

“Nothing much,” Gabe said. “You just died for a bit.”

“That all? Hah. For a headache like this I was hoping it was for a night of drinking and screwing. No such luck, eh?”

“Not these days, girl. But we got the job, and it’s a good’un. You up for some covert ops?”

“If it puts food in my belly, I’m in for anything. When do we get started?”

Shelley hobbled past Gabe, regarded the both of them. “If you set off now, you’ll reach Baicheng before nightfall.”

Petal stretched her limbs, climbed down the stairs slowly, and breathed in deeply. “I feel like crap, but I guess it won’t hurt to walk it off. You shot with me ‘Stems, didn’t you?”

Shelley nodded. “You took quite the shock. A little bit of advice: don’t go touching things that aren’t yours. Quick way to get yourself killed, and maybe permanently one day.”

“Aye, noted. Thanks for the ‘Stem though, I know they don’t come cheap.”

“Well, considering I need a job doing, I like to think of it as investment. Just don’t screw up.”

Gabe saw the look in her eyes and thought back to the pile of skins. There was a reason she still had protein packs left. She was getting her nutrition from somewhere else. And he guessed if they failed, they’d better not return, unless they wanted to be the woman’s dinner and desert.

“You wanna set off now then?” Petal said. “You got all the details for the job?”

Gabe looked to Shelley. “Do you have any more info on this Jericho character? Like the whereabouts of his place? Anything to look out for, defense wise?”

“Just ask around in the town. It won’t take you long to find him—unless he finds you first. And as for defense, he isn’t a schoolgirl; so expect to work for this job. It won’t be a walk in the park, that’s for sure.”

Part 4 - The Betrayer

“This place is a shit hole,” Petal said as she and Gabe climbed over a three metre high pile of concrete and rubble at the entrance to Baicheng, the former transport hub for northern China. The sun was close to setting, and it bathed the dead city in a wash of crimson light.

“Everywhere is, but this does seem to be particularly screwed. How ya feeling?” Gabe helped her over an outcrop of rock.

“Like I died. My head’s killing me. I can feel the ‘Stems at work though.”

She’d eventually got her balance back halfway through the journey. One thing Gabe had learned in the years spent travelling with her was that she was incredibly resilient. He often wondered if she weren’t some kind of cyborg or something, given her ability to hold AIs and malicious code, and her physical prowess. He had no doubt that the electrical blast from Shelley’s fence would have killed a lesser person.

They continued on into the city of Baicheng. Among the scrub land, covered in dry hard-backed dirt, were small patches of soy plants. A larger field, no more than fifty metres long appeared to be subdivided into specific areas. He guessed these were one of the various gangs’ food sources. Around the soy plants were fences with various crudely made signs. Gang signs.

Petal leaned over to grab a handful of plants—it was trivial to get the protein from them and the soy plant had proven to be quite resistant to nuclear radiation. There were compounds within it that actually provided the consumer with a degree of a protection from various heavy metals and radiation.

“No, girl, I wouldn’t do that.” Gabe pulled her back by the collar of leather biker’s jacket.

“What the hell, Gabe?”

“Look.” He pointed past the fields to a flat-roofed building. Half of it was crumpled from a missile strike; the other half leaned away at an alarming angle. Rebar and steel reinforcement jutted out at awkward angles. The setting sun shone through the various empty windows from the other side, lighting it up inside like the building has some kind of force within it.

“It’s a ramshackle building, what of it?”

Grabbing her by the shoulders, Gabe pushed her to the ground and fell down with her, just as a gunshot split the air. The bullet crashed into the hard ground a metre beside them, sending up a cloud of dust.

“Crap!” Petal said. “How the hell did you?”

Gabe looked at her, flashed her a grin. “I may be old, but I got damned good vision. Stay low.”

On their bellies they scrambled through the soy plantation, using it for cover, stopping every few metres to change direction. Luckily, amongst the field were various piles of rubble and steel and leftover farming machinery. Using those for cover, they dodged a further five shots.

“They’ll give up shortly,” Gabe said. “They won’t want to waste ammo.”

“I hate this place already.”

“Well keep ya little grabby-hands to ya self, and we should be okay.” Gabe peered through a gap in a rusted shell of a tractor. A bullet ricocheted over the roof, and made him jump. Before the sun dropped below the horizon, he just caught a shadow move in one of the open windows. It appeared the sniper had given up. Not surprising giving the impending darkness and their covered position.

Petal coughed, brought up a splash of black liquid. It was the ‘Stem solution. He reached over, and pulled her goggles up. Her eyes were a deep red colour. That wasn’t a good sign. She’d need to get a suitable node soon and download the various AIs and viruses that she was carrying from their last few jobs. They didn’t know what would happen if she went over capacity, but they knew it wouldn’t be good.

“Is it bad?” Petal said.

Gabe shook his head. “Nah, ya okay for a while yet. Besides, if we complete the job, we’ll cut down our journey to GeoCity-1 by two weeks.”

“Come on then, let’s get on and find Jericho.” Petal kept low and crawled out from behind the tractor shell. Gabe followed and they soon reached the end of the plantation. Beyond that was a wide road leading to the centre of the city. To either side and just in front of them rose two rusted hulks of buildings. Gabe could just make out the signs. On the left was a tram centre, the one on the right a train station. The latter seemed to be some kind of gathering place. He heard voices echo over the air, and through the gaps of the thin sheet-metal exterior he saw the first flickers of a fire. A few seconds later, he smelled smoke and roasting meat.

Further past the transport hubs, among the various semi-destroyed buildings, was an obelisk-shaped monument in the middle of a square. The monument was broken in half, leaving jagged fragments of marble to poke out at all angles. The square was lit up by a series of solar-lights, giving the place an eerie yellow colouring. To add to the theme, a number of bodies hung from those jagged fragments.

After waiting a further five minutes in cover, no one took any more shots at them, so they got up and stalked to the building with the fire inside.

The sun had fully set by the time they reached the outside of the train station. The voices came louder the closer they got, and Gabe could tell an argument was going on inside. Someone was accusing someone else of theft.

He considered bypassing it and going further into the city, to find the apartment building where Jericho hid, but this was also a good opportunity to gather intel—if the locals were friendly enough, and given they were shot at, that was entirely debatable.

“What’s the plan?” Petal asked.

“Just wait a sec, listen to what’s going on, and see if it’s safe to approach.”

“It’d have been a lot easier if that crazy bitch had just given us a map or the guy’s location.”

“Well, life ain’t fair, is it? Now, shh for a bit.”

Gabe crouched at the base of the building and peered through a gap in the sheet metal. Inside, a group of dishevelled people in tatty clothes warmed their bodies around a number of drum fires.

In the middle sat a man and a woman in slightly better clothes. They sat on a pair of old seats that looked like they were ripped out of a train carriage.

A young girl knelt in front of the pair, clutching a bag. Behind her, and with their hands on her shoulders, were two men with wiry bodies and black clothes. On each of their forearms was some of kind of stitched sigil—a gang sign—the same as he saw on the plantation warning signs.

The woman sitting on the train seat held a pistol across her lap. She casually tapped her hand on its grip as the young girl in front of her tried to speak through beseeching sobs.

“I didn’t do it. I was just...” she began.

“Thieving! the man sitting next to the woman said. He was wearing an old-fashioned pair of jeans and a western-style buttoned shirt. It matched the trouser-suit of his partner. The pair of them looked like they came right out of the twenties.

“Honest, Tatsu, I ditn’t touch nuffin’.”

“Then why do you have our property on your person?” the woman said, leaning forward and gripping the pistol.

“I found it, ditn’t I? I was gonna bring it back to ya, but Jer—”

She stopped mid-sentence at the same time as a gunshot exploded from outside of the station. It reverberated through the sheet metal walls, making Gabe jump backwards—right into the outstretched arms of two girls, both wielding pistols. Behind them an older woman held a shotgun aloft. Smoke rose from one of the barrels.

All three wore traditional ninjutsu wraps of dark cloth. The two girls with the pistols looked like teenagers. They all wore their hair up in a single ponytail.

“Who the hell—” Petal began.

“Shut your ugly mouth, bitch,” the young girl in front of Petal said, sneering.

Petal tensed and moved her arms forward. Gabe knew she was readying her concealed forearm spikes. That’d be suicide.

“Sorry,” Gabe said, holding up his palms, trying to be the least threatening  possible. “Did we do something we shouldn’t have? We’re new to the place, so don’t know the customs.”

The eldest woman holstered her shotgun behind her back, placed her hands on the two younger girl’s shoulders, and pulled them back slightly as if holding back wild dogs. She looked Gabe up and down. He could barely make out her features in the darkness. The cracks in the walls allowed some light from the flames to flicker through, casting shifting shadows on her face. One second she looked sharp, cruel, and in another she seemed beautiful, ephemeral. She wore an interested smirk on her face as she took in Gabe and Petal.

“No. You’re not, are you?” she said, her voice low and languid, smooth like velvet. “You appear to like spying, though. Who are you? What do you want?”

“Just passing through,” Gabe said. ”We just wanna go about our business. Don’t wanna cause any trouble.”

“Considering someone was shooting at you, I’d say you’ve brought trouble on yourself. And standing here, spying on a meeting is not exactly just passing through now, is it? I’ll give you one more chance. What do you want here?”

“Food,” Gabe said. “That’s all. We’re travellers, and have run out of supplies.”

“Hand over your bag and empty your pockets,” the eldest woman said.

Petal clenched her teeth and raised her arms slightly.

Gabe reached out a hand to her. “Do as they say.”

There wasn’t much in their pockets or their bag anyway: only a few small canteens of water and scraps of protein bars long out of their use-by date. Petal emptied the stolen soy plants from her jacket pockets.

“Fucking thieves!” the young girl in front of Petal said. The other one, who could have almost been the twin, had barely said anything, having not taken her eye off Gabe for one second. Her stare was unnerving, as if she knew something but wasn’t saying. Gabe wondered if their reputation had preceded them. Chances were the girl was just a psycho.

“Come on, you’re going to explain your crimes to the Mayors,” the elder said. “Lead the way,”

The two younger ones pushed Petal and Gabe away from the building, and with their guns inches from the back of their heads, made them walk round the building and in through the entrance where the circle of men, women and children awaited. The group watched them as if they were some kind of celebrity couple.

Even the young girl in the middle with the bag at her feet stared up at them. Gabe noticed now that the bag seemed to contain hardware of some sort. He could make circuit boards and wires and what looked like replacement quantum drives.

The girls forced Gabe and Petal into the middle so they were stood behind the young girl. She looked up at them, curious. Her face was covered in mud and her dirty blonde hair was matted into a short crop. She looked like a feral cat.

The man in the suit looked up and past Gabe and Petal to address the elder woman. “What have you brought us, Keiko? Immigrants?”

“Something like that, Tatsu. Thieves actually. Yoki and Yuri here found them stealing soy crops.”

“Really now?” Tatsu said, raising an eyebrow and looking at Gabe. “Do you know, foreigner, what we do with thieves in this city?” With that, he also cast a look down at the young girl.

“No. Why don’t ya tell me?”

“We feed them to the dogs.”

As if in response, a great howling echoed around the station as the group of people surrounding them dropped their heads back and howled together like a pack of wolves.

Now he knew what the smell of roasted meat was.

“And you would cook the girl, too?” Petal said. “Poor thing ain’t got an ounce of fat on her.”

The lady Mayor smiled at this and leaned forward to regard Petal. “For girls, we have something else in store. Not enough meat on your little bodies to satisfy the wolves. No, you’ll satisfy other needs.”

“Miyoko’s right,” Tatsu said. His sneered at Petal, looked her up and down. “I think you’ll do, for a few rounds at least. You look like you’ve got a bit of spirit about you. Like to put up a fight, eh? A little rough and tumble? Yeah, the wolves will enjoy you.” The Mayor leaned in close, ran his tongue up her neck.

That was his first mistake.