Cates 04 - The Terminal State (6 page)

When Gupta looked back at me, he startled for a moment like
he
could read my mind. Then he smiled.

“I know this isn’t an ideal situation for you, my friend. I am sorry—I am, believe me or not. But for the next few minutes, I am your best friend, and I advise you to treat me as such. Because I am all the orientation you are going to get.” His smile broadened. I realized that this skinny fuck had spent who knew how long processing people like me, and he had something going on if he was still grinning, untouched and unafraid.

Just my luck. For years the cosmos had been feeding me patsies, and I’d wasted them by twisting their noses and bullying them. Now I needed a patsy and the cosmos sent me someone with half a ball.

I nodded. “All right. You said in my
brain
—am I a fucking puppet now? ”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t work like that.” He grinned, plucking a pile of white fabric from a peg on the wall behind me. “Haven’t you already heard the speech: The System of Federated Nations Army does not want robots or avatars or men afraid to speak their minds. The SFNA wants intelligence, compassion, and leadership.” He laughed a little. “That’s boilerplate around here. So, no, you’re not a puppet—no mind control. If they wanted that, they’d just build themselves avatars, like the cops are.” He grimaced. “Fucking mind rape, that’s what
that
is. There’s coercion, sure—we’ll get to that in a minute—but if you die, Private Cates, you die
you
. At least there’s that.”

I grimaced in turn. “
That
ain’t worth much, doc.”

“This,” he said immediately, shaking me off and holding the pile of white fabric out to me, “is your uniform. It is the only clothing you will need, going forward.” He paused, tossing it onto the cot and then cocked his head, hesitating. “Of course, this is a standard script. Normally, you’re off to your short unhappy life in the infantry. You probably won’t need it very long. Still,” he resumed in his brisk, practiced manner, “let’s observe protocols. Sit up, stand up, and put on your standard issues.”

I picked up the pile of fabric, and it seemed to move in my hands, squirming. I remembered breaking out of Chengara, stealing the uniforms off the corpses’ backs, the way the suit clung to me, shifting and tightening onto me. Slowly, I swung my legs over the edge of the cot and pushed myself up—aside from the whole-body sizzle of pain, I felt pretty good; my leg felt almost normal. I stood there naked for a moment with the uniform in my hands.

“I’ll apologize in advance for the smell,” Gupta said, standing there unfazed. “We recycle the uniforms a lot, too.”

I grimaced. “Thanks, doc.” Since I didn’t see my old clothes anywhere, I shook out the uniform and stepped into it. As I pulled it up and on, I could feel the material flowing around me, tightening in the right places and giving around the joints. It practically formed around me, the slit down the front joining together into a tight seal with no apparent adhesive or other mechanism. I instantly felt warm and dry, about as comfortable as I’d ever felt in my life.

The smell, as promised, was pretty terrible, like someone had been using the suit as a toilet for a few weeks.

The HUD in my eyes flashed briefly, and suddenly a new window appeared in my left eye, transparent and fucking annoying. Data began streaming through it, making me blink.

“It’ll fade. Just booting,” Gupta advised. “You’re lucky—the first generation of those suits had to be hardwired in through the skull. Now it’s all implanted chips and wireless protocols.” He studied his clipboard for a moment.

Looks good
, I heard his voice in my head. I was used to people’s voices, and I just stared at him. After a moment he glanced up.
Can you hear me?

I nodded. “Yep.”

Think it, please
.

My hands twitched. Gupta was fast running out of my goodwill.
Keep it up
, I thought.
I’m this close to slapping you
.

He grinned. “Very good. All systems seem to be a go. Although your communication systems won’t operate once you’re mustered out; you have to be in-unit in order to communicate silently. You’re scanning out green and you’ve adapted to the implants remarkably fast. Now, listen up. I doubt anyone’s going to take time to answer questions once I deliver you to your new owners, so I’d take notes if I were you. I’m going to skip most of the script here because you’re mustering out, so why bother. You won’t get the full effect of the augments. You’ll notice better vision, better hearing, more stamina and strength, and your augments will have some automatic effect on your perception, but generally you might not even notice them.”

I studied his smiling face. “Anyone ever get tired of your shtick, doc? ” I asked. “Knock you down? ”

He nodded. “At least once a day. But I have
this
.” He held up the small black square.

I studied it. “Okay, I give. What is it? ”

“Your remote control.” He turned it around in his hand as if he admired it. “Tuned to your CO—your commanding officer—or whomever it needs to be tuned to—it’s a pretty simple piece of equipment. It has, basically, three functions. You’re not going to like any of them.”

“I haven’t liked anything in twenty years, doc.”

He smiled. I liked his smile. It looked like he was really amused. “One, this thing can make you feel the most intense pain you’ve ever felt. I’m not kidding when I say that. It’s been calibrated. Take the worst thing you’ve ever felt, then imagine it all over your body. Worse by far. Whoever’s got your remote can inflict that on you whenever they want. And your CO will do it a lot, at first.” He shrugged. “They like to make sure you know who’s in charge.” He paused and looked down at his clipboard again. “Whoever’s buying you will get it. It’s also used to set the anti-frag settings.”

I smiled. “In case I get ideas about slitting throats? ”

Gupta didn’t smile or look up. “You think any officer would survive a week out there with all of you pissed-off shitkickers if they couldn’t fuck you?” he whispered. “The AF setting means you can’t get within a perimeter of your CO or you’ll be terminated. Just like that. Cross the line into the red zone and the implant in your brain goes pop. The actual distance is a custom parameter the commanding officer can set—some of them like a lot of room around them, but it can go as close as they want, or even zero if they’re feeling lucky. It also sets a
minimum
distance, in case you decide to desert. I’ve got it toggled off right now. Makes examinations kind of awkward when I have to stay a foot away all the time.”

This kept getting better. Suddenly the System Pigs with their robot bodies and regular, old-fashioned beatings didn’t seem so bad.

“The remote can also invoke your Berserker Mode.” He looked up at me again. “I advise you to avoid that if at all possible.”

I tested out the uniform, seeing how it moved and stretched. The holster at my side was empty, and there was no other gear attached. I wanted to
move
. I wanted to run and jump and climb shit. I wasn’t naked any longer, but unless I was going to use Gupta’s clipboard to very slowly bludgeon everyone to death, I wasn’t noticeably less screwed than I’d been a few moments before. I paused. “What the fuck—”

“Berserker Mode puts the subject into an artificial state of consciousness. Your heart rate skyrockets, your brain dumps adrenaline and dopamine, your muscles’ pain receptors are turned off, and aggression is maximized. For a short period of time, the combination of all this makes you pretty fucking badass. Your reflexes will approach avatar levels, you won’t be fazed by any injury that does not cripple you, and you won’t feel tired no matter what you’re doing.”

I felt exhausted just listening to that shit. “And? ”

Gupta raised both eyebrows. “And you pay a
price
, Mr. Cates. Go into Berserker Mode more than twice within, say, six months, and I think you’ll probably die from internal stress. Stroke out. Have a heart attack. Kidney shutdown. Get me? If your CO puts you into BM, he’s basically taking decades off your life each time.”

“You sure got a great benefits package here, doc,” I growled. I made a show of stretching out one arm, then suddenly leaned forward, gave Gupta a little shove that put him off-balance, and snatched the little black square from his hand.

Immediately there was a roar in my head and a lance of sharp, burning pain shot up my forearm. My hand snapped open and the remote dropped to the floor. My whole arm had gone numb and throbbing, and I clutched it with my free hand, struggling again to control my breathing. My HUD flashed, streaming data about my injury.

Gupta didn’t seem bothered. “Won’t work,” he said, bending down to retrieve it and then holding it up in front of me. His fingernails were clean and trimmed neatly. I suddenly felt stupid and dirty standing there. “It’s attuned to whoever’s your CO. Right now,
I’m
your CO. In a moment, I’ll transfer it to your owner, and it’ll only work for
them
.”

I hesitated. The pain was already gone, like it had never happened. But if Belling got my remote, if he was made my CO—shit. I felt like I could run all fucking night and break Gupta in two with my bare hands, but if Belling got my remote, I wasn’t going anywhere.

“All right,” Gupta said as if this shit happened to him all the time, and gestured at his clipboard in a declarative, final manner and it went dim with a soft chime. “You ready? ”

I looked around again. The kid across the room still hadn’t moved, and I weighed the risk of trying something against the probability that it
wasn’t
Remy. My options hadn’t gotten any longer since I’d stood up, so I shrugged. “You’ve got the fucking button, doc.”

“This way.”

He took off down the aisle between cots and I lurched after him, feeling energy vibrating under my skin, my joints oiled and smooth. As I passed his bed, I turned my head to stare at the dark mass of hair four beds from the entrance. The kid never turned, but I kept my eyes on him and just before Gupta led me out into the maze of canvas corridors, the little box blazed up in my HUD again.

EVENS O. REMY, PRIVATE (1), SMALL INFANTRY.

I stopped, letting Gupta exit the room. I stared at the kid’s back, hands twitching at my sides. I didn’t know what to do. I was unarmed and I wasn’t even sure where I
was
, and the kid had been implanted with tiny, invisible strings just like me—if we left the camp, would we just end up stroking out after a mile? A half mile?

Gupta reappeared, frowning, my remote held up by his chest. “Private Cates, I
do
have a schedule to keep.”

I’d reached the end of Gupta’s humanity, and with effort I turned and followed him out of the tent, back into the weird canvas hallways.
Kill Belling
, I thought. Kill Belling before there was any official transfer and then worry about the kid, if you could. After just a few seconds of walking, he turned left and we entered another of the large tents. This one might have been the one that Anners had interviewed me in; it had the same cheap table, the same cheap chairs, the same pitcher of water.

“You’re waiting on Cates, Avery?” Gupta said briskly to the man sitting at the table.

“I am. I paid an exorbitant fee for him.” Wa Belling leaned back in his chair. “Hello, Avery,” he said. He ran his eyes up and down my uniform. “Dapper as always, I see.”

Gupta gestured at one of the frail-looking chairs.

“Have a seat, Cates. Mr. Belling, if you are satisfied that this is the cargo you requested, you can indicate your agreement here.” He rudely thrust the clipboard and the remote control at Belling, making the old man straighten up sharply and scowl, taking the remote and immediately pocketing it.

Belling looked ... young. His hair was darker and his face had tightened up, smoothing out decades of wear and tear. He looked like an approximation of Wallace Belling at age fifty, a sketch done from memory years after the fact. His eyes, though, were the same: yellowed but bright, cunning, and mean. Behind him, I noted two soldiers, their sidearms in their hands and pointed at me.

“Have a
seat
,” Gupta repeated. “Transfers are tricky moments, and those two will shoot you the moment they don’t like what they see, okay? We’ve found having guards on hand makes these transactions go easier.”

Belling glanced at the clipboard. “And the final installment?” His voice was melodious, seductive. Educated. I always wanted to believe Belling.

Gupta shrugged. “That is between you and the transacting officer. All I do is deliver the cargo.”

I eyed the two guards. I had the feeling they’d shoot me if I sneezed. Slowly, I let myself sink into the chair.

Belling looked at Gupta with a sunny smile, then held his thumb out. My eyes flicked from the guards to Belling’s thumb and back again. I curled my hands into fists. After a moment, Gupta’s clipboard chimed, and the doctor flipped it around and nodded. He glanced up at the two guards and jerked his head slightly. They instantly holstered their weapons and exited the room in sync.

“Is that it? He’s mine? ” Belling asked, still smiling.

Gupta nodded without looking at him. “Yes, Mr.—”

Belling reached up with one hand and took hold of a healthy shock of Gupta’s thick hair and yanked the doctor’s head down, smashing his nose into the table. This table didn’t collapse, though it vibrated like a musical instrument as Gupta dropped to the floor. Belling leaned back a little to run his eyes over the prone form.

“He’ll live,” Wa said with a smile, looking back at me. “But perhaps he’ll be more polite next time someone comes in to transact business.” He cocked his head. “Why, Avery, you look like you’re not happy to see me.”

I took a deep breath. Instantly, my HUD showed my heart rate slowing, and I felt myself relaxing in quick increments, helped along by my new wiring. I’d missed my chance; Belling had the remote and if I tried for him, I’d just end up twitching on the ground. “You look refreshed, Wa,” I said. It was important to not react. Belling had betrayed me too many times for us to be friends, but we were peers. Or at least I thought so; Belling himself probably still thought of me as second-rate. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of surprising me. “You’re fucking
beautiful
. I think I’m getting a little excited over you here.”