Necrotech (33 page)

I had shit to do.

I fired twice. I don't know what the shit was keeping my arm from tearing itself apart in the recoil, but I wouldn't question it. Two necros hit the floor, twitching.

Three more came at me.

Two others wobbled to a standstill, turned on Indigo as he clambered through the empty frame, the computer cradled under his arm.

I dodged the first gurgling necro – a man, thin and balding where his scalp hadn't been ripped away – and sighted down my trembling arm. Despite the knot of shamblers around me, the necro reaching for Digo earned a bullet in its spine.

The thing staggered back, splattered with blackened blood and glittering shards of spinal implantation decimated by the messy round. Fingernails found my exposed thigh and tore it open again; teeth locked onto my metal arm and splintered, a sickening sound that raised the hair on my body in visceral revulsion.

Another necro jumped on my shoulders. My knees hit the floor. Black spots floated in my vision.

“Riko!”

“Go,” I snarled into the feed.

Nanoshock and I were old friends by this point. I could feel my nanos straining, feel my flesh surging, bloating with the little fuckers. Maybe I'd die here, but it wouldn't be alone. And it sure as shit wouldn't be with Digo – my linker had to get to the bottom of this mess.

When it came right down to it, I'd trust nobody else.

The necro on my shoulders fell off. I was struggling to pull away from the jagged fingernails in my leg, blood running fresh and wet, when the tech freak jerked wildly, screaming in a guttural, too-human exhale that echoed and re-echoed. It collapsed, blood seeping from its ears and nose.

I fired a fourth shot, dropping a crawler. The necro trying to gum my useless arm blew backwards in a gory spray. The ozone stench of frying tech filled the air.

Indigo left his EMP knife in the still-shuddering corpse and hauled me to my feet. Its head, I noted, did not explode.

I didn't get a chance to catch my breath.

Three more crawled from the hall we'd come in from. One stopped to bury its teeth in a black-armored figure, cutting off a short, sharp scream, but the others saw us first. Live prey.

I struggled to straighten. Indigo yanked me upright so hard, I nearly collapsed at his feet.

“Move!” he yelled, and hell if I know where I found the strength to do it. I leapt over the knot circling me, planting a boot in one's face to do it, and hauled what was left of my hobbled ass.

The door I'd promised was mercifully unlocked. Maintenance tools littered the narrow corridor, overturned crates beside a mangled body. Wild animals wouldn't do this much damage.

We leapt over it, sprinting – or, in my case, staggering – for the exit I'd said was on the other end.

Miracle of miracles, I was right.

The door on the far end opened to reveal an elevator exactly like the one we'd entered through. Exactly, except for the knot of spastic necros inside.

They grabbed Indigo, jerking him off his feet, clawing and tearing. He screamed; I didn't slow down, launching myself inside the elevator car to hammer on one with the butt of the Adjudicator. It turned, empty sockets glaring at me, mouth leaking dark plasma and exhaling decaying rot.

Digo dug his fingers into one's throat, surprising him when it tore like old cloth. The thing's esophagus came out in a dripping, bloody tube. The necro jerked. I kicked it out of the rocking elevator car, ducking under the first's sloppy grab, and jammed the barrel of my gun under my assailant's whiskered, slack-jawed face.

Firing the Adjudicator that close blew a hole through my eardrum. My vision turned red with it.

I howled, dropping my now empty weapon.

Another report dragged fiery streaks of agony across my hearing as Indigo filled the last necro full of bullets. As it staggered, blinded, he shoved it out with the other one and jabbed the command to close the door.

I reeled. He grabbed my shoulders.

“Riko!” I heard him through the feed in my right ear, mostly. My left, like my arm, was deader than shit. “Are you okay?”

I caught his wrist with my functional hand, prying it loose. “Let go,” I rasped. “Hurts.”

He obeyed without fight. “What the hell happened?”

“Blew out my ear.” I bared my teeth at him. “Didn't see them in here. There's more above.”

He looked up, then back at me. “How do you
know
?”

I shook my head. I didn't know how I knew. It was the same way I'd known about the elevator here. I knew because I knew.

Whatever he saw in my face – something behind gristle and blood and thicker spatter – it seemed to be enough. Wordlessly, he refilled his handgun, another CounterTech, and braced both feet.

“Other side,” I managed.

He turned.

“– ear me?” The feed crackled, another note of disharmony in my sea of white noise and pain. “Vid Team, respond!”

“We're in range again,” Indigo said, but that wasn't optimism I heard in his voice. It was warning. “Control! We're coming out with necros hot on our asses and more above.”

“I read you.” It was the woman again. “Do you have the data?”

“We're rolling out with nanoshock,” he added flatly. “Is a medivac prepped?”

“Do you have the data?” control repeated.

Digo bared bloody teeth. “Yes.”

“A rescue unit has been sent to your location, you need to meet it on open street.”

I wondered what would have happened if Digo'd said no.

The doors slid open, revealing a road nearly pitch dark compared to the lights we'd come from.

I groaned my frustration as another wave of noise split my skull. The elevator echoed hollowly; I didn't realize I'd slammed my forehead against the side until Indigo swore and jerked me away from the panel. “What the fuck!”

“Hurts,” I groaned, shuddering under the dual pressure – memory and reality. So much screaming in my head. So much pain.

I'd been here before. This awful noise in my head was more familiar than I remembered it being.

Indigo wrapped his arm around my neck, hooking me in a lazy man's headlock.

I didn't fight him. The added pain didn't help, anyway.

“ETA?” he demanded.

“Three minutes,” control said calmly.

“Fuck me,” he growled, and wrenched me out of the elevator. He turned right – I snagged his arm and dragged him left, deeper into the intersecting alleys flanking the building. “Riko, we need open street.”

“You get open air,” I rasped, and lurched into a staggering kind of jog that wouldn't outrun anything.

A juddering, gurgling grind of ruined flesh filled the alley behind us.

“Keep moving.” Indigo's voice spiked with fear.

“Up. We need up.” I blinked through bleary eyes, everything I focused on edged with black. I was reaching total nano meltdown.

Indigo grabbed my good arm, whirling me around. “Up!” he yelled, pointing directly over our heads.

I followed the line of his finger. It shook.

A fire escape. Just like the ones that dotted every building around us.

Relief quickly sank into despair. “Can't.”

“Yes, you can.”

Silhouettes filled the alley mouth. Hungry, searching. I felt them, knew they were there; drowned in hunger and anger and rage.
Eradicate.

“Vid Team, this is rescue coming in,” said a masculine voice. “What's your position?”

“Ass-deep in necros,” Indigo snarled. He knelt, dropping his gun, and cupped his hands. “Bitch, climb!”

I didn't intend on obeying. He didn't give me a choice. When I didn't step inside his hands, he punched me in the bleeding thigh – sparklers of pain licked from forehead to heels and I staggered.

He grabbed me at the softened knees, braced me with his shoulder and stood so fast, it was fall or fly.

I caught the fire escape.

Silhouettes crawled, shambled, darted out of the shadows. Too close. Too fucking fast for me to get the damn ladder under me.

“Indigo!” I yelled, hanging by one arm.

He shot a hard look over his shoulder. “Find me another way up,” he said in the feed. “I'll lose them.”

“No!” He sprinted away while I struggled to pull myself up. “Digo!”

The necros turned like a unit, tracking him as he vanished deeper into the alley.

“Vid Team, we need a location.”

“Fuck your location,” I rasped. Muscles I'd never worked so hard in my life strained as I hauled myself up with one arm. I hiked a knee with bone-breaking effort, hooked it in the bottom rung.

It took everything I had, but I climbed, awkward as fuck, yelling for Indigo to answer me.

He didn't.

No.
No, no, this would
not
go down this way.

I needed him, damn it.

I limped across the rooftop, ducked under the dead power line hanging over it, and checked the north side. The east.

“Indigo!”

“Shut up,” he hissed in my ear, and I nearly fell over with relief. And blood loss. “Pinned. Get to the extraction and get out, I'll meet you at another rendezvous.”

“The hell I will,” I shot back.

“Riko, I trusted you down there.” His voice hardened, thick with pain. “Now you trust me. You have the computer. Get out.”

“No, I–”

“I put it on your rack. I need you out there kicking ass and making sure nobody leaves mine behind, you hear me?” His voice dropped. “You'd better come back for me.” There was too much of a question in that demand.

He wouldn't last the burn, much less the corruption on the other side of nanoshock.

Fuck. That.

I slapped at my harness with one hand – the isolated system hung from my back. I didn't even notice him do it. That
ass
.

“Time is up.” Malik's deep voice. It filled the feed like a lifeline. Just a few more moments, and I could be out of this nightmare. “Get on the transport, Riko.”

I looked up at the sky. Black and empty, until it faded to something less thick beyond the quarantine. More welcoming. A faded golden glow blushing with spots of neon, diamonds in every conceivable color.

I blinked hard. It didn't focus anything.

“That data is all-important,” Malik said flatly. “Koupra knows that. The rescue team is coming in. We'll send a unit for him.”

Lie.
This data was all that mattered to him. Digo was a casualty – and so was I.

I looked down. The street remained dark, hiding anything that crawled on it. But I knew. I could sense them. Maybe it was the chipset; maybe I'd just figured out their tactics.

Maybe I was losing my fucking mind.

Indigo cut through my feed with a terse whisper. “Get on that helo. One of us needs to make it out.”

“Both,” I countered. “Both, or no deal.”

“Get out, and take that feed to Jax.”

Twin blue lights soared into view.

“Vid Team, we have visual confirmation,” said an unfamiliar male voice. A light spotlighted me, shearing away my night vision. “Hold for recovery.”

Fuck it with a jagged pipe. No lube.

“I don't leave without Indigo,” I snarled.

The vehicle tilted slightly, backdraft so close I could feel the heat in my nostrils.

“Get on the transport,” Malik said quietly, every word iced menace.

“Vid Team, step away from the ledge,” the pilot ordered.

“Riko,” Indigo hissed, “they're everywhere and you're going to burn out, don't–”

I blinked up into the light. “Hey, Malik?”

He must have sensed my intention. “Don't you
dare
,” he said, all but a growl seething with cold fury.

Lifting my only functional hand to the sky, I extended a grimy middle finger and held it. When I was sure the spotlight had captured every nuance, I launched myself from the roof to the knot of necros below.

Malik swore.

I collided into two necros. They buckled under my weight, one snapping in places that bodies shouldn't snap. The other rounded on me like a rabid dog, but it was missing an arm, which made it easy to punch in its empty, slack face. Blood spattered the necros in front of me.

“Riko, you
stupid
–” A gunshot rang out over the street. Indigo rolled out from under the abandoned car he'd crawled under, CounterTech spitting a flare that peeled half the necros off me when they sensed easier prey. “You're going necro in the fucking brain!”

He had no idea.

I gritted my teeth, rode the pain – the shock from the landing, the blood loss, the hammering, sawing, wailing dysfunction prying my eyeballs out of my aching sockets. Was this what Indigo was feeling?

I couldn't process it.

“Get,” I seethed, reaching for a necro, “out. Get out.” I curled my hand around its face, yanking it off its feet. My fingers slid into the cold, damp cave of its mouth. Pulled. “Get out!” Flesh split, bloody strings tearing through my fingers. It flailed in my grip. I screamed. “
Get out!
”

I was banking on the fact they wouldn't leave us to fend for ourselves, and I was right. Malik's voice over the feed snapped orders to extricate us whatever means possible. Us. Plural.

Hell, yes. All we had to do was survive until rescue got us.

Easier said than done. Every necro body in sight rounded on me, and there was no more time to speak. To think.

No more room in my brain to think with.

Whatever it was that fried through my chipset, it stripped away my identity until there was nothing left but blood and bone; gristle and putrid flesh. I stood back to back with Indigo and fought with one arm, used the deadened synthetic to take blows meant for my exposed side. I tore and pushed and threw until it was all I could do to keep Indigo at my back as he gunned down body after body. I couldn't tell the difference between them and me – blood-soaked, gore-streaked, teeth bared and screaming.