Peter Watts - Maelstrom

In the Hongcouver core, damage was more heterogeneous. Streets stretched for blocks without so much as a broken window. Then, across some arbitrary intersection, the world became a place of shattered buildings and upended asphalt. Bright yellow barriers, erected after the fact, drew boundaries around the injured areas. Lifters hung above the dark zones like white blood cells on a tumor. Fresh girders and paneling descended from on high, reconstructive grafts of metropolitan skin and bone. Heavy machinery grumbled in the canyons where they touched down.

In between, patches of cityscape hummed at half-power, emergency Ballard stacks jumpered into convenient substations. Those streets that hadn't upended, those buildings that hadn't been shrugged into False Creek, had been swept clean and reactivated. Field crematoria belched ash from the corner of Georgia and Denman, keeping—so far—one step ahead of the cholera bug. More barriers than buildings, these days. Not that there was anywhere else to go; CSIRA had sealed the border at Hell's Gate.

Benrai Dutton had survived it all.

He'd been lucky; his splitfit condo was halfway up Point Gray, an island of granite in a sea of sand. While neighborhoods on all sides had vanished, the Point had merely slipped a little.

Even here there was damage, of course. Most of the houses on the lower face had collapsed; the few still standing listed drunkenly to the east. No lights shone from them or the lamp-posts lining the street, even though night was falling. A jury-rigged line of portable floods shone from poles separating wrecked homes from standing ones, but they had a defensive air about them. They existed, not to bring light to the ruins, but as a perimeter against them.

They existed to blind Benrai Dutton when a crazy woman leapt at his throat from the shadows.

Suddenly he was transfixed: cold bright eyes without pupils, glaciers embedded in flesh. A disembodied face, almost as pale as the eyes it contained. Invisible hands, one around his neck, one at his chest—

— no not invisible she's in black she's all in black—

" What happened? "

"What—what—"

"I am not going to give up!" She hissed, slamming him against a chain link fence. Her breath swirled between them like backlit fog."He took his shots, he took a thousand fucking shots, and I am not going to let him just walk away !"

"Who—what are you—"

She stopped, suddenly. She cocked her head as though seeing him for the first time.

"Where the fuck did you come from?" she said, absurdly.

She was a good fifteen centimeters shorter than he was. For some reason it did not occur to him to fight back.

"I don't, I–I was just going home…" Dutton managed.

"That place," the woman said. Her eyes—nightshades of some kind? — drilled his own.

"What place?"

She slammed him back against the chain link. " That place!" — jerking her chin at something over his left shoulder. Dutton turned his head; another splitfit, intact but empty and dark all the same.

"That place? I don't—"

"Yes, that place! Yves Scanlon's fucking place. You know him?"

"No, I–I mean, I don't really know anyone here, we kind of keep to—"

"Where did he go?" she hissed.

"Go?" he said weakly.

"The place is absolutely empty! No furniture, no clothing, not so much as fucking light bulb !"

"Maybe—maybe he left—the quake—"

She knotted her fists more tightly into his clothing, leaned in until they were almost kissing. "His place doesn't have a fucking scratch on it. Why would he leave? How could he? He's nobody , he's a fucking pissant , you think he could just pick up and walk past the quarantine?"

Dutton shook his head frantically. "I don't know—really, I don't—"

She stared into him for a few moments. Her hair was wet; it hadn't rained all day. "I don't—I don't know you…" she murmured, almost to herself. Slowly her fists unclenched. Dutton sagged back against the fence.

She stepped back, giving him room to move.

It was what he'd been waiting for. One hand swept briefly beneath his jacket.The taser jabbed her in the ribcage, just below a strange metallic disk sewn into her uniform. It should have dropped her in an instant.

Within that instant:

She blinked—

Her right knee came up, hard. Naturally he wore a cup. It hurt like hell anyway—

Her right hand slipped forward, against her upraised calf. Something sprang into it—

The crazy woman stepped back, arm extended. Two centimeters from his face, an ebony wand with a tiny spike at its tip stared at Dutton like a one-toothed mamba.

Over the pain in his crotch, sudden wet warmth.

She smiled a small, terrifying smile. "Use a microwave, little man?"

"Wh—what—?"

"Kitchen appliances? Sensorium? Keep your house warm in winter?"

He bobbed his head. "Yes. Yes, of course I—"

"Huh." The mamba wiggled over his left eye. "Then I was wrong. I know you after all."

"No," he stammered. "We've never—"

"I know you," she repeated. "And you owe me."

Her thumb moved against something on the wand's handgrip. Dutton heard a small click.

"Please…" he prayed.

And amazingly, something answered him.

Hongcouver was still a disaster zone, of course; the police had more pressing concerns than an unlikely apparition reported by some panicky dickwad. Still, the server took Dutton's report when he called it in. The server wasn't human, but it was smart enough to ask follow-up questions—like, had he noticed anything, anything at all, that might have caused his assailant to suddenly break off the assault?

No.

Could he think of any reason why she would be suddenly start babbling about dad like that? Did the reference to monsters make any sense, in context?

Maybe she was just crazy, Dutton replied, although as the server noted he was not qualified to make medical diagnoses.

Had he seen where she had gone, exactly?

Just downhill. Into the wreckage, toward the water.

And he sure as shit hadn't been going to follow her down there .

Vancity CU/N'AmPac Transaction Server

Personal Accounts, Broadway ATM-45, 50/10/05/0551

Transaction Begins:

Welcome to VanCity. Are you a member?

"I couldn't link, before. Using my watch."

Remote access curfew is in effect until 10:00am. At present this terminal can only process on-site transactions. We apologise for any inconvenience. Are you a member?

"Lenie Clarke."

Welcome, Ms. Clarke. Please remove your corneal overlays.

"What?"

We cannot open your account without eyeprint confirmation. Please remove your corneal overlays.

Thank you. Scanning.

Complete. Thank you, Ms. Clarke. You may proceed.

"What's my total balance?"

$Q42,329.15

"I want to download it all."

Has Vancity's service been satisfactory?

"It's been fine."

We can see your wristwatch, and a subcutaneous money-chip in your left thigh. How would you like the funds distributed?

"Forty thousand sub-q, the rest to the watch. Automatic transfer of all funds sub-q if I'm attacked."

That condition can't be evaluated. Your watch is not equipped with a biotelemetry plug-in.

"Automatic transfer on voice-linked password, then."

What password?

"Sh—shadow…"

Please repeat the password.

Please repeat the password.

Please—

"I said, shadow ."

Done. Would you like another transaction?

(inaudible)

Vancity thanks you for your business.