Darkness & Light (10 page)

“Who the hell are you?"

The resident of the apartment looked like
he'd just come off the set of some rap video. Sagging jeans, boxers
prominently displayed and footwear that had to have set him back at
least a couple of Benjamins.

Jerome interrupted before the kid could
really get himself worked into a fit. “I'm looking for a white guy
that's been seen in the area."

“Eff off dog, I ain't no nark."

“Listen, you obviously know something or you
would have just told me to go to hell, so why don't you just save
us both some trouble and tell me where he is."

The kid flashed a couple of meaningless gang
signs which he finished off with a very obscene gesture before
trying to slam the door. Only the door didn't move.

Jerome felt his lips draw back in a smirk as
the punk threw his weight into the effort. It should have been
impossible for anyone to hold the door open with one arm and still
retain such a relaxed pose, but Jerome hadn't moved any more than
the door had.

“Who the hell are you?"

“Just tell me where Roberts is. You know, the
white guy. One way or another you're going to tell me. It's just a
matter of time and pain. My time and your pain."

The kid went pale behind the gang colors that
normally lent themselves to mindless bravado. Jerome could almost
see the thoughts splintering against the inside of his skull before
reforming and racing off in new directions. The instant when the
kid went for the gun was as inevitable as sunrise. Jerome was
already moving into the apartment when his chip finally kicked in
and slammed the door into the kid's hand, knocking the gun
free.

The exquisite pain of having a baker's dozen
of his bones shattered pulled an animalistic scream of pain from
the ganger, and Jerome didn't bother suppressing an immediate surge
of pleasure.

“Told you son. Eventually you'll speak up.
They always do, it's just a question of exactly how much I'm gonna
have to hurt you before you decide to play."

The gun had bounced off of a wall and then
fallen less than six feet from where the teenager had collapsed
cradling his arm. Jerome pretended not to notice as his victim
started awkwardly crawling towards the weapon.

Jerome waited, savoring the heightened
awareness as the threat of immediate death ramped the chip up as
far as the governors would allow. Jerome practically hummed with
energy now. He brought his foot down on the kid's remaining good
arm even harder than he'd intended to.

“Upstairs, dog. He's upstairs. Fifth floor,
apartment R, man. Just don't kill me."

The word seemed to vibrate in the air,
sending out little ripples of possibility. His bare hands, the
kid's own gun, a chair from the kitchen. There were so many
different ways he could do it. There wasn't anything quite as
addictive as the euphoria of being fully chipped, but killing was a
close second.

For a heartbeat that stretched out longer
than any normal person could understand, Jerome thought about doing
it. It would mean he'd have to go to ground. Have to hide from the
Company, from those who'd given him this glorious power. He
couldn't go back with another murder stored in the chip's video
memory.

There were rules. Broader rules than the rest
of society worked by, but rules all the same. It was the tiny red
dot in the corner of his vision that finally brought him back down.
It blinked at him, a steady reminder that everything he heard, did,
or saw was all being recorded for later analysis. Luckily they
hadn't figured out how to record thoughts yet.

“You never saw me. I was never here. If you
ever breathe a word of this to anyone, no matter how quietly, I'll
come back and finish what we started. Do you understand me?"

The kid was sobbing now, a spreading patch of
wetness revealing the fact that somewhere along the way he'd lost
control.

Jerome kicked the gun all the way to the
other side of the living room before leaving. In a few minutes he'd
come back down. The chip had already started trimming back his
strength and speed, but the mental high would last a bit longer.
Until then he could just glory in being something more than
human.

Of course he was just about to confront a
rather powerful potential, and that usually managed to get the old
chip racing. Punk kids with guns were one thing, potentials were
actually dangerous.

The door to 5R exploded off of its hinges,
but it didn't even have a chance to fall before Jerome was inside
the apartment, 9mm in one hand, taser in the other as he swept
through the apartment with blinding speed.

Roberts was curled up on the bedroom floor.
He hardly blinked as Jerome entered the room with enough violence
to send a wall-mounted mirror sliding down to the floor where it
shattered into hundreds of razor-edged shards.

The taser discharged with the smooth
precision only found in machines. Jerome was chipped enough to see
the wires uncoiling as the electrodes flew unerringly towards their
target. Only they stopped less than a foot from their target,
falling to the ground where they discharged their electrical cargo
in a hiss of futility.

“You shouldn't have come."

The words came out from between clenched
teeth, and for the first time since entering the room, Jerome
actually took in the appearance of his target. Roberts had been fat
in the pictures from his briefing, but the man crouched in the
corner looked like he'd put on at least fifteen percent more body
fat.

“Leave now while there's still a chance."
Roberts seemed to be talking in slow motion. Jerome had plenty of
time to finish realizing the staffers had been wrong. Roberts
wasn't uncommonly gifted. Or rather he wasn't just uncommonly
gifted, he was also much farther along in the process of
degenerating than anyone had realized.

Still, Jerome had his orders. He pulled an
injector from his pocket and started towards Roberts. He never saw
the shards of glass lift themselves from the wreckage of the frame
and go streaking through the air. The barest whisper of sound
alerted him just enough to spin around as they arrived, but there
were too many to dodge. The bitter edges sliced into the
unprotected flesh of his face and neck in a shower of blood.

Jerome's brain was already entering a state
of oxygen deprivation by the time he hit the floor. Most likely he
never saw Roberts begin shuddering with something only a shade less
violent than outright convulsions.

Seconds later he just might have been aware
enough to wonder in amazement as his hand began moving without
conscious effort on his part. The chip had just enough autonomous
control to line the sights up and squeeze the trigger.

It was a good shot, well beyond what the
chip's programmers had realistically expected it to achieve. The
bullet left the gun traveling at just less than the speed of sound
and should have crossed the intervening distance between Jerome and
Roberts in less than a hundredth of a second, perfectly aimed for
an instant kill shot to the head. Less than a thousandth of a
second before the jacketed hollow point should have blown through
the front of Robert's skull, it came to an abrupt stop.

The chip had never been intended to continue
long-term operation after its host had been killed, and emergency
subroutines quickly shut down its access to main power. Deprived of
the power stores necessary to activate the synthetic fibers for
further action, the chip sat passively recording data from Jerome's
one undamaged eye. A human observer would have been horrified to
see Roberts' convulsions redouble. A few seconds later the chip
calmly classified the thing arising from the wreck that had been
Roberts' body as a flesh beast. An alert was sent out via an
encrypted radio signal, and then the chip melted away to nothing as
the security protocols took over.

It took less than twenty minutes for the
flesh beast to work its way through the building, killing all three
hundred tenants who happened to be home.

When the containment team the radio squeal
had called for finally arrived, they had to arrange a very large,
very spectacular gas leak. The resulting explosion ensured there
wouldn't be enough left for anyone to have a hope of putting
together what had really happened.

--THE END--

Dean started reading seriously in the second
grade due to a competition and has spent most of the subsequent
three decades lost in other people's worlds. After reading several
local libraries more or less dry of sci-fi and fantasy, he started
spending more time wandering around worlds of his own creation to
avoid the boredom of the 'real' world.

Things worsened, or improved depending on
your point of view, when he first started experimenting with
writing while finishing up his accounting degree. These days Dean
has a wonderful wife and daughter to keep him rather more grounded,
but the idea of bringing others along with him as he meets
interesting new people in universes nobody else has ever seen tends
to drag him back to his computer on a fairly regular basis.

Keep up to speed on Dean's latest projects
at 
http://www.deansonlinefiction.com/

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Table of Contents

Beginning of
Collection

Scent of Tears -
Cover

Scent of
Tears

I'rone -
Cover

I'rone

Absence -
Cover

Absence

Beginnings -
Cover

Beginnings

Backlash -
Cover

Backlash