State of Decay (6 page)

“What are you doing here, kid?” I said, just loud enough to be heard. At the sound, he jumped. It was the same one from the lobby; he must have tailed me.

“Following the story.”

“You pieced that footage together pretty quick,” I said.

He shrugged. “Gotta move fast in this business,” he said. “Did you find it?”

“Find what?”

“Oh, come on,” he whispered. “What do you think? The reviv—”

A shot rang out before I could answer him, and the kid’s head pitched to one side. His body bounced off the door and spilled out onto the dock.

I stayed crouched as the container door slowly ground to a stop with a metallic groan. I zoomed in on the kid; most of what had been inside his head was scattered over the planks, steam rising off it. Footsteps were approaching; someone heavy was running very fast across the dock toward the container. Given the weight and speed of the footfalls, whoever it was had to be augmented. I aimed toward the doorway as the footsteps thumped to an abrupt stop just outside.

A weapon was thrust through the doorway, and immediately automatic gunfire pounded through the inside of the container, sending sparks flying off the car I was crouched behind. One of the tires blew out and I was sprayed with bits of safety glass as bullets punched through the car. I fell back, slipped, and tumbled off the scaffolding down onto the floor. I pushed myself behind another car as the racket continued. A second later, the heart signature I was monitoring flatlined.

Another burst of gunfire sounded, and as I moved along the bottom row of cars, I caught sight of the shooter in the doorway. I fired at him three times, hitting him at least once before another volley ripped into the car in front of me.

He ducked back out and it got quiet. He wasn’t visible through the exit where the kid’s body was now holding the door open, so I listened for him, but my ears were ringing and I couldn’t make anything out. He wasn’t showing up on the thermal filter, but the door or the walls of the container might have been shielding him.

I moved to the far end of the container and followed the wall to the door. I still didn’t see him, so I moved to the doorway and crouched down near the body. No one was on the left side of the exit, but the door was still hanging open to the right. I moved outside and spun around the door, but before I could bring my gun around, he grabbed my wrist and held it like a vise.

He was definitely augmented; he moved me easily, pulling me off balance and smashing my hand into the metal wall. My grip loosened, and he delivered a hard punch to my gut. The strength went out of my legs, and I felt the gun fall from my fingers.

He let go of me and I slipped on a patch of ice, coming down on my knees onto the dock. It hurt when I forced in a breath, and spots were swimming in front of my eyes. I felt like I’d just been hit by a train.

The guy was wearing a navy jumpsuit like one of the dockworkers might wear over a thermal body glove. He had dark skin and wavy black hair that stuck out from under a gray wool cap. He put the automatic weapon he’d been carrying down on the ground, the clip expended. He didn’t bother to go for my gun, so he knew the grip was keyed to me.

“I’m a federal agent,” I said, but he didn’t show any sign that he cared or that he even understood me. I went for my gun and he threw a kick, catching me in the chest and knocking me back.

I was lifted up by the lapels and felt my heels brush the ground for a moment before the back of my head crashed into the metal wall. Everything went white for a second, and his hand began to squeeze around my neck, crushing it.

I was going to black out. Warning lights were flashing red across my field of vision. I caught a brief glimpse of an override code flickering by as the world spun around me, and one of the internal stims popped and released into my bloodstream.

My adrenaline shot through the roof. About half the warning indicators blinked out and half stayed on as my EKG spiked and every muscle in my body jumped like I’d grabbed a live wire. I shot out my palm and his nose crunched underneath it, spattering us both with blood. I grabbed his head and jabbed my knee up into his jaw. The grip on my neck released.

I fell to the ground and tackled him, knocking us both onto the dock with me on top of him. I started hammering him in the face and neck with my fists, splitting his cheek open and shearing away his two front teeth before he could get his arms up between us.

The stim wasn’t going to last forever; I put three right hooks into his ear as he got a hand on my chest and shoved me back. My last punch hit air as I floundered, and he kicked me square in the chest. I fell on my back and saw him getting up.

Blood was running out of his nose, dripping off his chin. His lips were red and his right earlobe was smashed. He grimaced, flicking a tooth out onto the ground with his tongue. A crimson strand of saliva from his busted lower lip waved in the cold wind as his breath plumed out of his mouth.

I tried to kick away and he grabbed me, pulling me up by my collar.

It took me a second to realize what the message meant; my backup was there, targeting him from somewhere nearby. The stim was wearing off, and I could feel the strength draining out of me.

He pitched back and dropped me just as I heard the shot ring out. I saw his leg collapse into a Z shape between the right knee and ankle as the flesh and bone were torn away and he fell to the ground. He rolled over on his side, staring bug-eyed at his leg.

I found my weapon and limped over to it. I knelt down and picked it up, then vomited.

I watched the steam rising off it, waiting to see if there was any more coming.

After they were done scraping the kid off the dock, maybe we could pull something off him. The department would never foot the bill to buy up exclusive rights in order to sit on the footage. If it was bad enough, they could file an injunction and put a freeze on it, but not before it aired.

Two men were cuffing the shooter, while a third tended to his leg. Another man was approaching the body of the kid, not looking optimistic.

“You’re a dead man,” the shooter growled through his wrecked mouth, glaring up at me.

“I know.”

“He knows who you are,” he said. I was about to ask him what he meant by that when one of the men jammed a tranquilizer into his neck and he went limp.

“Have the medics pin his leg back together and make sure he doesn’t bleed to death,” I said. “Then I want him back at HQ and three keycards deep before anyone else sees him or talks to him.”

“Got it.”

I started making my way back to my car before the aftershock of the stims kicked in and knocked my body chemistry far enough out of whack that the ignition’s safety catch would refuse to let it start. By the time I fell into the driver’s seat, my stomach felt like a pound of ice was sitting in it and I was sweating despite the freezing cold. When I pressed my thumb to the ignition, the light flashed yellow, but it started.

Leaning back, I routed around my emergency systems and manually popped the last stim. A few seconds later, the aftershock backed off, but it threatened to come back, the worse for waiting.

Ice and grit crunched under the tires as I pulled out and aimed for the home office, which was the next best thing to home.

“. . . where it seems some number of revivors were impounded by the FBI,” the guy on the TV said. I was squatting on the floor of the jail cell with my head back on the bricks and leaned against the bars that penned the boys from the girls. My face and head throbbed like hell.

I opened my eyes and looked up through the bars at the TV on the wall, which showed the front of some building. Blues flashed, and a crowd pushed at a line of cops to try to get pictures.

“No official statement has been made,” the voice continued. “Witnesses, however, recorded the removal of several revivors. . . . No word on how many total were recovered, or what they were for, but this was clearly an organized raid on a major operation. Lead investigator Nicolai Wachalowski was not available for comment.”

“On the subject of revivors,” another guy said, “a bill that would allow corporations to utilize revivors to fill a portion of their manufacturing jobs, the so-called five-percent bill, was voted down yesterday by a fairly wide margin.”

I shut my eyes again, wishing at least the hangover would let up. The last thing I remembered from the bar was that I’d shot some pool with the guys. A bunch of college snots showed up at some point, rich-bitch fight groupies and pretty-boy wannabes. One thing led to another, I guess, and here I was, waking up in the slammer.

“How about that shit?” a voice said near my ear. I rolled my head against the bars that one of the college boys had sat down on the other side of. Pretty boy had a dark shiner under one eye, but besides that he had skin like a baby. His hair and clothes said he wasn’t from here and didn’t belong here.

“How about what shit?” I asked. He pointed at the TV, where some old guy with white hair pissed on about something.

“This is a requirement moving forward in order to remain competitive in the global market,” he said. “End of story. The bottom line is, the representatives are afraid of this bill because revivors don’t earn wages, so they don’t pay taxes, but what we are talking about here is a very small percentage of the overall workforce, even when compared to the percentage of overseas positions.”

“Big-business interests,” the news guy said, “including such corporate powerhouses as TeraSine and CyberTech, vow to continue pushing for what they are terming labor reform.”

“It’s bullshit,” pretty boy said.

“What the hell do you care?”

He shrugged. “Could affect you.”

“If those assholes give all the shit work to dead guys, I’ll be screwed—that it?”

“Well, it didn’t pass,” he said.

“Score one for tier three.”

I was hoping he’d beat it, but he didn’t. Out of one eye, I could see him looking at me.

“You’re Calliope Flax,” he said.

“It’s Cal, asshole.”

“Right, Cal.”

“What do you want, an autograph?”

“I’ve seen you fight.”

“You watch the chick fights?”

“I’ve watched you fight.”

“Most guys only tune in to silicone.”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with how you look,” he said, and just like that, I’d had it with his smooth skin and his good looks. I clubbed the bars in front of his face and made him jump as everyone looked over.

“Settle down in there!” one of the guards yelled. The kid held up his hands.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Shut up,” I said. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.”

My head hurt and I was in no mood. He seemed to get it and stopped talking, but he stayed put. I thought I would hit the bunk, but I was too whipped to want to get up. He took something out of his sock. A phone, I thought. He kept it near his crotch and punched in numbers with his thumbs.

“They’ll take that,” I said.

“I know.”

He kept at it for a minute, then snapped it shut and stowed it back in his shoe.

“Call your mom?”

“Posted bail.”

“Yeah, right.”

“The code contacts a remote ’bot,” he said. “I send the GPS coordinates so it knows who to contact, then it contacts their server, looks me up, queries how much the fine is, and posts it over the wire. It’s instantaneous.”

I put my head back on the cement.

“You royalty?”

“Second tier.”

The way he talked, I had him pegged for tier one. Tier two meant he sold his ass to the man. His folks hadn’t bought him up yet. There was no way his pretty face would ever see a real fistfight, never mind a firefight.

“Good for you.”

“Luis Valle?” a guard called.

Still looking me in the eye, the college prick smiled. “That’s me,” he called back.

“You just got posted,” the guard said. “Let’s go.”

He winked at me. God, I felt like hitting him.

“Your people will get you out of here, right?” he asked.

“I don’t have people; I have Eddie,” I said. “If I’m still in here when the next fight comes, he’ll get me then, but I’ll get docked.”

“Valle, let’s go!”

He got up and went with the guard. Marko shot him a look when he went by, and like a little bitch, he smiled and gave him a wave. Dipshit didn’t even know where he was. He was a cat in the dog pound and so were his dumb friends, but at least they knew to sit still and shut up.

The cell door banged shut and it got quiet again, except for the TV. They were still going on about revivors; should they work, should they fight, and all that. It was the same shit as always. Who cared? At least so far, they couldn’t take you without your signing up, so why bitch? Those bastards took your money and got to say how much you counted and what you could do. They took down all there was about you, from your ID to your DNA, and they never asked once and no one ever said shit. Now people cared? Stick me up the ass all you want while I’m here, just don’t screw with me when I’m dead—what kind of sense did that make?

You didn’t have to sign up. The way I saw, if it bugs you, don’t sign. I hadn’t.

The guys in the other cell were off in a bunch by then, laughing and talking shit like how hard and in what way they’d bang the newswoman who had come on if they had the chance, which they never would. It was stupid, but the bars made me mad, like even though we were all in jail I had to be in the girl cell. They were all in there, and I was stuck on my side with two high- class bitches who cried the whole time. The guys didn’t want to look soft, so the only one who came over at all was the pretty boy who I didn’t even know. Perfect.