K. Jeter - Edge Of Human

The deafening noise covered his actions. Deckard lifted above his head the overturned chair on which the video tripod had been mounted, and hurled it toward the single unbroken window that looked out to the police station's cavernous space. The shards of glass sprayed outward, the chair tangling in the cords of the blind, then tearing it loose and trailing the metal slats to the floor. He followed after, keeping low beneath the continuing gunfire, pushing off from the windowsill's jagged edge. He landed shoulder-first among the bits of glass, then rolling onto his back and drawing the gun from the uniform's holster with both hands.

"There he is!" one of the cops shouted over the din, pointing. Deckard's shot caught him in the chest, knocking him back with arms flung wide against the others stationed a couple of yards outside the office's door. A burst of assault-rifle fire raked the floor as Deckard spun away; he came up with his own gun aimed and another round squeezed off.

He heard the rifle clatter onto the floor, but didn't stop to look over his shoulder as he scrambled to his feet. The curved-ceiling stairs leading down to the basement levels were a few yards away; bare fluorescent tubes bounced a sickly illumination from the cracked white tiles. He sprinted toward the arched opening.

More shots sounded behind him, but he'd already reached the stairs; he grabbed the rusting metal rail and used it to sling himself hard against the wall. He leaned out far enough to brush his pursuers back with another couple of shots. Then turned and ran, taking the steps three at a time, a barely controlled fall toward the depths beneath the police station.

Isidore looked up at the figure standing in the doorway. "Wuh-what is it?"

The security agent from the Tyrell Corporation stepped into Isidore's office. So big in his grey uniform with the name tag on the breast that he seemed to take up at least half the available space, his buzz-cut head brushing the ceiling. Andersson looked around, as though seeing the clippings and old calendars on the walls for the first time. "Oh… nothing too serious." The agent turned back toward the owner of the Van Nuys Pet Hospital with a dead, unfeeling gaze. "I just needed to speak with you for a little bit. To tell you that there's going to be some changes made."

"Ruh-really?" The cat, his favorite, the one without skin or flesh to cover its mechanical bones, slipped in through the open door and jumped up on the desk. "Luh-luh-like what?"

Isidore picked the cat up and held it against his chest. He stroked its steel, furless head and got a deep thrumming purr in response.

"Well, I'm not going to be working around here anymore. I've got other things to do."

"I suh-see." He nodded slowly. "That's yuh-your puhruh-ruh-prerogative. After all, you weren't ever really wuh-working for me. You were always working for her." He watched his hand scratching behind the point where the mechanical cat's ear would have been, if it'd had one. "I guh-guess I'll have to reevaluate the suh-suh-situation, see what the pet hospital really nuh-needs. So I can make other arrangements."

"You don't have to do that." Andersson looked at him with an almost tender regard. "The arrangements have already been made."

"Oh." He knew what that meant. And was confirmed in that knowledge when he watched the other man reach inside the jacket of his dark uniform. He knew what would be in the other's hand even before he saw it. "You know, I thuh-thuh-thought this was going to happen. I was kind of wuh-waiting for it."

"I'm kind of sorry about it, actually." Andersson looked at the black weight of the gun in his own hand. "Not like I ever minded helping you out. But you know how it goes."

"Sure." Isidore felt sorry for him. "I understand." He stood up from the desk, pushing the chair back, still cradling the cat against himself. "Wuh-would you muh-mind if I went out there?" He nodded toward the office's door. "Where the animals are? I'd rather be out thuh-there… when you duh-do it."

"Hey. No problem."

A moment later he stood out in the pet hospital's central corridor, looking down the rows of cages and kennels, listening to the barking and smaller noises that greeted his presence. He'd been wondering if he'd be able, at this moment, to tell the difference between the real ones and the fakes. With a sense of relief, he found that he still drew a blank on that issue.

The mechanical cat in his arms meowed plaintively and rubbed its cold muzzle against his chin. Poor thing-it knew something was wrong, something was about to happen. "Here you go, baby." Isidore leaned down to set the cat on the floor. "I don't want you to get hurt." It didn't go away, but went on pressing its steel and plastic body against his ankles.

"I'm ready," he announced. He didn't look behind himself, though he could feel the infinitesimal disturbance in the corridor's enclosed air, as Andersson raised the gun.

Then he flew. That was what it felt like, even as a blow so huge as to be painless struck him between the shoulder blades. Even as he lay between the rows of wire-fronted cages, tossed there by the bullet's impact, he still felt suspended, caught in infinite motion. The concrete against his splayed-out hands felt soft as billowing clouds. But cold.

This must be what it's like — he could barely hear his own thoughts. He knew he was already dead, inhabiting the last seconds of consciousness, because other sounds came to him, from far away, from right next to him.

All the cage and kennel doors sprang open, their latches triggered by the signal from the tiny device he'd implanted next to his own heart. He'd known a long time ago that this time was coming.

Any human creatures left inside the Van Nuys Pet Hospital would have to sort their own problems out. The nonhuman ones, the real and the fake, barking or whooping or emitting their shrill cries, fled toward the outer doors and windows that had also popped open. Isidore could just imagine a bright flurry of parrots wheeling above the crowded streets, the steel-legged greyhound and the terriers sprinting past the traffic-stalled vehicles…

Blind, he distantly felt a few of the animals nuzzling his face, the mechanical cat climbing onto his chin and shrinking back from the ragged edges of the exit wound.

"It's okay," he whispered. He tried to raise his hand but couldn't. "Don't worry… about me…"

They started yowling before he was finished dying. And continued afterward.

"This… this is great." The sense of happiness permeated Holden's body, as though the bio-mechanical heart in his chest had accelerated to some more euphoric rhythm. His own smile came to his face as he gazed at the monitor screen, at the data he'd had Batty summon up again. The words and numbers formed themselves into a personal message for him. "You know what this means? It means I didn't screw it up with Kowalski. I was set up; I walked into an engineered hit. There was no way i could avoid getting blown out by the replicant. The one person in the world I trusted-the guy whose job it was to look out for me, to keep my ass covered-he betrayed me." Holden placed his palm against the screen, as though to absorb the warmth of its benedictive radiation. "I can't tell you how good this makes me feel."

"Mazel tov. " Batty shrugged. "Whatever — I'm happy for you. But you should remember, you're not exactly out of the woods. As long as you were knocked out in a hospital bed, with a dope hose running into your veins, nobody was concerned about finishing the job on you.

Maybe Bryant put out an order to keep you on life support, just because he has a sentimental streak. Or perhaps he would've liked to have pulled the plug on you, but couldn't-or at least not yet. Not with you lying inside a hospital full of doctors and nurses who like to keep their little machines running. But when they hear that you're up and walking, the contract on you becomes effective again. Especially since they can assume that someone like me has filled you in on all the stuff they didn't want you to know."