SINdrome Read online

  And then more bullets started flying.

  Three neat little holes appeared in the windshield as I laid the wheel hard over, spinning the car off the driveway and jouncing the rear end into the well-manicured lawn. Hernandez was twisting with the motion of the car, trying to find an angle on the shooter and answering back with some fire of her own. At least that meant that she wasn’t hit. I hadn’t felt any impacts, either, though I knew the adrenaline might be deadening any pain. I floored the accelerator, and with a spray of mud and grass we were off.

  Hernandez slumped back down in her seat. “You hit?” she demanded.

  “Don’t think so. You?”

  “Negative.” She through a glance over her shoulder at Larkin. “She’s still breathing, at least.”

  “We need to get her to Tia.”

  Hernandez snorted. “We need to get our own asses out of here, first.”

  I’d studied maps of the area, so I had a fair idea of where I was headed. I nodded to the screen on the dash. “See if you can find the main gate controls on there. And pray that Walton security doesn’t have it locked down already.”

  Hernandez started swiping through menus. “What was that with the body back there, hermano?” she asked.

  I took a turn, too sharp, and got yelled at by a man out trimming his hedges. In February. The suburbs. “I’m pretty sure he was a synthetic, Mel,” I said, taking another corner as I tried to escape the maze of streets.

  “Not possible. They were shooting at us.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “We all know they can’t do violence. But then, there’s Al. Who sure as shit can not only do violence, but is friggin’ good at it. And Silas, who overcame his conditioning, at least a little.” I shook my head. “His conditioning, Hernandez.”

  “Shit,” she muttered. “And it’s Walton that does the conditioning. Or doesn’t.”

  “Or does some other kind of programming,” I agreed. “Like, maybe creating their own little super soldiers. Ones they haven’t needed to date, but now that we’re tearing down their whole world, the gloves are coming off.”

  “Fair enough,” Hernandez said. “But that doesn’t really explain why you were shoving a bottle into that corpse’s brainpan.”

  We were coming up on the gate. I couldn’t see any vehicles or obvious signs that the bad guys or the cops or anyone else was inbound. “You got the gate?” I asked. In response, Hernandez hit a button on the screen and the iron and steel monstrosity started to slide open. I adjusted my speed so that we wouldn’t have to come to a complete stop and wait. So far, the rearview was still clear, but I wasn’t feeling great about that. Outrunning a car wasn’t too bad; outrunning a radio was pretty fucking impossible.

  I turned my attention back to Hernandez’s question. “I just got to thinking…if I had an army of genetic super soldiers, and I also had a plague that I was releasing to kill off the synthetics, I’d probably make sure my soldiers had some sort of resistance to it. Maybe Tia or the others can figure something out from it.”

  Hernandez was silent for a long moment. We bounced over the gate tracks and I turned out onto the main road. We needed to come up with a spot to switch out Larkin’s car—which could almost certainly be tracked—with the vehicle Hernandez and I had arrived in, but I needed a little more distance between us and the shooters first. “Pretty smart, Campbell,” Hernandez said at last. I had to smile at that. At least, until she added, “Must be Tia’s influence.”

  “Shut up, Hernandez.”

  * * * *

  We managed to slip our pursuers. Hernandez linked with our escape vehicle and arranged for it to meet us. I let Larkin’s auto-drive take over while I turned around and did my best to check on the woman. She hadn’t regained consciousness, but her breathing seemed easier. I ran my hand over the makeshift bandages wrapped around her leg. The plastic wrap was non-permeable, so I wasn’t expecting much in the way of blood, but there also wasn’t much in the way of…squishiness. Blood didn’t seem to be pooling behind the bandage, and none was leaking from the top or bottom of the wrap.

  “She okay?” Hernandez asked.

  “Best I can tell,” was my reply. “She needs better care than I can give her, though.”

  “Working on it.”

  We made the switch in a little-used park whose parking area benefited from the cover of several mature oaks. We had to be careful on the timing, since with Larkin still unconscious, we weren’t the least conspicuous trio ever to cross through the area. But we managed to get her from her car and into the incognito one without attracting any attention. From there, it was another long, circuitous route back to Floattown. I had some doubts about bringing Larkin into the revolution’s sanctum sanctorum, but we didn’t have a hell of a lot of choice. As the general tenor of New Lyons continued to darken, it was getting harder and harder to find safe places to keep out of the sight of the NLPD and the rest of the alphabet soup.

  Getting Larkin into the Ballasts was another thing entirely. It’s damn hard to carry a hundred- plus pounds up and down a ladder when the weight is properly secured and distributed. It’s a hell of a lot harder when it’s a friggin’ body. The human body just is not easy to cart around, particularly in the vertical. Larkin was like a hundred pounds of cooked spaghetti, and between us, it took everything Hernandez and I had to get her down the first few ladders without dropping her.

  “This sucks, hermano,” Hernandez said after a particularly arduous ladder. We’d stopped at the bottom to catch our breath. I checked on Larkin again—still out cold.

  “Almost there,” I grunted. “One more ladder and…”

  I was interrupted as several flashlight beams cut across the darkness, transfixing us. My hand moved reflexively for the pocket where the nine -millimeter—and the pair of rounds left in it—was stashed, but I let the hand fall. I couldn’t make out who was behind the glare, but we were deep in the Ballasts. If the bad guys had made it this far, we were pretty much fucked no matter what, and I was too damn tired to fight. Then the lights were moving out of our eyes, splashing off the walls around us and providing more illumination.

  As my eyes adjusted I saw the big form of Al’awwal. He had his Israeli-made bullpup on him—smart since he and Tia were probably the only ones in the compound capable of pulling a trigger—but the weapon was dangling from its tac-strap. “Sorry about that,” he said with a dazzling smile. “Wasn’t expecting you to be sitting down on the job. Thought I’d be avoiding your eyes by keeping the lights aimed low.”

  I grunted, ignoring the jab at sitting down on the job, still trying to make out the shapes behind him. There were a couple more people—synthetics—with the squat build of tunnel rats. I pushed myself to my feet and offered a hand to Hernandez, who took it. With some effort, I pulled the compact woman up. “Please tell me you’re here to help transport Ms. Larkin here,” I said, waving one hand at the doctor, laid out as comfortably as we could manage on the cold steel floor. “She needs to see Tia, ASAP.”

  Al nodded and the two tunnel rats moved forward. Their expressions were unreadable. They didn’t know who Larkin was, but she was obviously a human, and they probably did know that our mission had been to retrieve some information from Walton Biogenics. They were smart enough to put two and two together and come out in the ballpark of four. If they had been human, I might have given some warning about making sure she got there in one piece, but with their conditioning, it wasn’t necessary. On the other hand, they didn’t have to hurt her directly. At this point, a little creative work slowdown might be enough to finish the woman. Maybe a warning was warranted.

  “She has information vital to figuring out this whole thing,” I noted. They gave me those blank stares as they knelt, one hooking his arms under her armpits, the other grabbing her legs behind the knees. “Which she offered to us willingly,” I added, hoping for some kind of reaction.

  I got a
slight, begrudging nod in return, and then the pair was off, moving more quickly and surely through the Ballasts than I ever could. “What’s the sitrep?” I asked Al, as we started to make our own way into the depths.

  “Ms. Morita returned from the doctor. Not a lot of traction there. The hospital is running bloodwork, but it will take a bit for the labs to get back. In the meantime, they’ve sent her home with some antibiotics. She’s distributed them to some of the sick, but…” He shrugged.

  “Not too likely that simple antibiotics are going to stop whatever Walton has unleashed,” Hernandez agreed.

  “Which is why we went after Larkin in the first place,” I added.

  “Which will be great, hermano, assuming she survives.”

  * * * *

  The plastic chair groaned alarmingly beneath me as I shifted my weight. It had probably started life as a piece of cheap, throwaway patio furniture marketed to BLS-ers. How it had made its way down into revolution central, I had no idea. Now it had been pressed into duty as part of a makeshift waiting room outside the chamber Tia was using to perform meatball surgery on Larkin. She had a pair of synthetics assisting her, which left me and the others with not a lot to do but wait and hope.

  Hernandez had gone off to find a post-mission shower. I’d done a quick and cursory job of cleanup, but my clothing was still stained with blood. Most of it was Larkin’s but some belonged to the synthetic… Shit. The synthetic. I stood up from my chair in one explosive motion, causing the plastic to crack and buckle. Al, who had been drifting off to sleep in his own poorly constructed seat, started awake, hand dropping for a sidearm that wasn’t there.

  “What is it, Campbell?” he asked, a note of irritation in his voice that still surprised me coming from a synthetic.

  “I need to talk to Silas,” I grunted. “It’s important.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  I eyed him a moment. Silas had been quarantined in his own chambers until we could figure out anything at all about the sickness making its presence known among the synthetics. Whatever else he was, Al’awwal fell firmly into the synthetic category. Volunteering to go into a sickroom…

  He must have read my mind, because he chuckled. “This whole quarantine is a farce, Campbell. Pointless. We know humans are carriers, and you, Morita, and Hernandez have been roaming about freely.” He waved a hand, dismissing the implied guilt of the statement. “Not that you could do anything else. Besides, do you really think that something Walton Biogenics engineered to silence the synthetic population is going to be stopped by…what? A closed door?”

  His logic was as irrefutable as it was sobering, and I couldn’t think why I hadn’t figured it out before. No. That wasn’t true. I knew exactly why I hadn’t thought of it. I didn’t want to believe it. What Al’awwal was really saying was that there was no way to control the spread of the sickness, not just among our little band of outlaws, but anywhere.

  What he was saying was that if we didn’t find a cure, and fast, Walton Biogenics had already won. I felt the crushing weight of that knowledge pressing down on me. By going along with Silas and pressing forward with his plans, we had inadvertently triggered what might be total genocide for the synthetic population.

  But no pressure.

  “Shit. Come on,” I said. “This can’t wait for Tia to finish. I need to talk to Silas now.” I thought about it for a minute. “And we’d better get Hernandez, too.”

  Hernandez, as it turned out, had finished her shower, and ran into us on the way. She had traded her business wear for a more practical pair of sweatpants and a hoodie which proudly displayed NLPD in bright blue letters across the chest. “Larkin?” was the first word out of her mouth as she neared us.

  “Nothing yet. But we need to talk to Silas. Figured you’d want to be there,” I said.

  Hernandez nodded in response, and fell into line with us as we navigated the maze of metal boxes that was the Ballasts. In short order, we found ourselves before the door to the chamber serving as Silas’s personal quarters…and quarantine. I raised my fist and knocked, eliciting a hollow, booming thud.

  “Enter,” came the response from within. I levered the door open and stepped into the dimly lit room, Hernandez on my heels. Al’awwal, earlier declarations aside, held back a bit.

  Silas looked terrible.

  His skin was pale, as always, but a feverish flush suffused his cheeks. On someone else, it might have been mistaken for the blush of health, but against the pallid backdrop of the albino’s skin, it shouted sickness. Despite that, he seemed unfazed. We hadn’t even fully entered his room when he was on his feet. “Is Larkin talking?”

  “Not yet,” I replied. “Tia’s still working on her. But we’ve got other problems.”

  “We always seem to,” Al drawled from where he leaned against the doorway.

  “What is it?” Silas demanded. He cleared his throat, not quite a cough, but I sensed every person in the room tensing at the sound.

  I reached into a pocket and pulled out the little bottle of blood. In the rush to get Larkin to safety, I’d forgotten about it, at least until Al had reminded me. I set it on a nearby table.

  “I don’t understand,” Silas said, looking at the vial.

  “You know we were attacked at Larkin’s,” I said by way of preamble. Silas nodded, cleared his throat again. “We assume they were sent by Walton. But at least one of them…” I paused, trying to think of some way to ease them into it. Came up empty. “Shit. One of them was a synthetic. With a gun.”

  Silas’s eyes went immediately to Al’awwal, who answered the unasked question with a shrug. “So far as I know, I am unique. The only synthetic to be grown outside of the control of Walton’s indoctrination programs.”

  “I suppose it was inevitable,” Silas said. “In fact, I am surprised we have not seen it sooner.”

  Hernandez frowned. “If they’ll send a bunch of corporate hitmen to kill one of their employees, I suppose they wouldn’t hesitate to try to breed an army of synthetic soldiers.”

  “Exactly,” Silas agreed. “Public opinion continues to sway in our favor. We already know from Jason’s encounter with Mr. Woodruff that we have pushed them to a point of desperation. It is not such a far cry to think that, in such a time, they would have more than one contingency plan. A group of specially conditioned synthetics—their own private army whose loyalty is above question—would serve them well.”

  “They’d certainly be more reliable than psychopaths like Fowler,” I grunted. “And, at the same time, probably a lot less squeamish than whatever run-of-the-mill human mercenaries Walton is employing. Even the rent-a-cops in the sewers balked a bit at trying to put me and Hernandez into the ground.”

  “Still tried, though,” Hernandez said. “The idiots.” Something in her voice made me glance at her, and I saw real pain there, if only for a moment. Hernandez was probably the single toughest human being I’d ever known, and that included a parade of spec ops guys from my service days. But she was a cop at heart, not a soldier. The mission, at least for her, wasn’t killing bad guys. It was putting them away. What we’d had to do in the sewers weighed on her. I could live with the fact that we’d had to put down the Walton rent-a-thugs to lead us to Al’awwal and, ultimately, Kaphiri’s cache. But Hernandez wasn’t built for that kind of killing. Which probably made her a much better person than me.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, forcing my mind back on track. “None of this is the point. Yeah, they probably have some kind of army of super soldiers. A bunch of Captains America, or maybe Captains Corporate or whatever. Maybe it’s their own fucking A-Team. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that Walton has a group of synthetics they’re sending out into the world to kill people. Sending into the world now,” I stressed, looking at the blank and staring faces around me.

  “So?” Al’awwal asked.

  “So…” A new and welcom
ing voice sounded from behind him, and a smile sprung unbidden to my face. “So,” Tia repeated, her voice tired as she slipped past Al into the room, “there happens to be some kind of killer disease targeting synthetics floating around at the moment. Would you send out your crack team of trained killers if you knew they were susceptible to it?”

  All eyes went to the young doctor-in-training, who, if truth be told, also looked like shit. She was wearing a pair of scrubs, maybe the same pair that I’d got for her when I’d first brought her into this mess, but it was hard to tell, given the amount of blood speckling them. Her arms were flecked with blood as well, though her hands were meticulously clean. Her hair had been tied back into a rough ponytail, and she wore an expression of exhaustion. She spared me a slight smile though, which, all things considered, felt pretty damn good.

  “Larkin?” I asked.

  “Should survive,” Tia replied. “If she doesn’t catch some kind of infection. We’re doing our best, but these aren’t exactly sterile conditions.” She shrugged. “She lost a lot of blood. But I managed to do some rough-and-tumble repair work. She may limp for the rest of her life, but she should live.”

  “Is she awake?” Silas asked. “Able to talk?”

  I was glad he jumped on that grenade. Doctors tended to be protective of their patients. On the NLPD, I’d had to work my way around them more than once to talk to a victim or witness who had been hospitalized, and they were never happy about it. But it needed to be done.

  Rather than getting angry, Tia just offered another shrug. “She was out during the surgery, thank God. We don’t exactly have much in the way of anesthetic. If she doesn’t wake up on her own soon, we’re going to have to try to wake her up. Without the right drugs…” She trailed off. “Well, let’s just say there’s not a lot we can do beyond yelling her name and shaking her. We’re pretty much in the Dark Ages here.”