Уильям Гибсон - Agency

“Improv,” Conner said. “Slow ’em down while you and the girl get out and run for Third. Virgil’s almost here, to pick you up. We’ll distract them for you. Black four-door Mercedes. Be ready.” The angle of the lower left feed swung down, revealing two figures entering the alley from Tennessee Street. Walking toward the container.

As the two drew near, Conner toggled back to the feed from the drone, Netherton watching as they loomed into view. One frowned, looking down. He stopped, the display partially capturing a gesture that halted the other as well.

“Dude,” said Conner, “what have you got here, huh?”

The one who’d first noticed the drone, his right hand now out of sight, inside his open coat, a manual phone in his left, seemed to be capturing images or video. He put the phone to his ear. “Did they see that?” he asked, the drone’s microphones picking him up, his accent American but less pronounced than Conner’s. A pause. He leaned forward slightly. “Like it’s painted, to look like carbon fiber.” Pause. “Okay.” He lowered the phone.

Netherton watched him step forward, past the drone, followed by the other man, who squinted dubiously down as he passed, then both were out of frame.

“Want us behind the couch?” Verity asked, puzzling Netherton.

“Wouldn’t hurt,” said Conner. “Angle it between the door and where the little table is.”

“Help me with this,” said Verity, speaking, Netherton assumed, to the Followrs girl.

Netherton watched as the drone’s left arm partially unfolded. From its narrow wrist-tip, a thin black rod emerged, then executed an unnervingly biological-looking wriggle, before lunging after the man, around the container’s corner.

A camera, Netherton remembered, as its feed opened. Beyond the backs of the two men who’d discovered the drone, the windowless white van swung into the alley’s entrance, pulling up about three meters in front of the container, two more men emerging from the passenger-side door. A third remained behind the wheel. “They were here before,” Netherton said.

“And none of them Pryor,” Conner said, “including the driver. Time we got this on the road.” The feed from the black tentacle shrank, replaced by the fixed aerial view in the upper right quadrant. Netherton watched the drone’s right arm unfold, lifting its torso off the pavement.

“Ladies,” Conner said, “start your engines. Out of there when I say go. Try to hold your breath till you get to the street. Stay away from the white van parked in front of the cube. Don’t get caught. Ready?”

“Ready,” said Verity.

“Go,” Conner said.

When Conner said go, Manuela went over the upended couch like a sprinter coming off blocks, her arms outstretched for the door. It seemed to vanish, rather than open, into a coughing, retching, solidly packed realm of cursing men, their hands to their streaming eyes.

Capsicum, announced some brightly nerdy recall-module of Verity’s, her eyes and nostrils stinging painfully.

The seemingly solid mass of pepper-sprayed men around the container’s door had only been a few, she saw, plunging through them after Manuela.

“Move,” Conner urged, as one of the men clawed at the strap of the Muji bag, his hand bashed aside by a metallic blur she recognized as one of the drone’s arms, upraised, plowing out of the confusion on powered skates. “Virgil,” Conner said, flashing her a feed from above, of a black sedan, braking hard, at the curb in front of the alley. “Go!”

She did, reflexively managing to leap an attempted tackle, as she found the car in her actual field of vision and ran for it, past the side of the white van. Trying, through the start of her own capsicum tears, cheekbones and forehead now burning as well, to find Manuela.

The black car was in front of her, its right rear door open, Dixon getting out, black ball cap level with his eyebrows. Showing her his fist, thumb upraised. She veered left, to avoid one of the van’s open rear doors. As Manuela screamed, partially within the back of the van, a red-eyed man hauling her inside.

He yanked Manuela past him, farther into the truck, as Verity arrived. Verity lunged for her ankles, to pull her out, but then his gloved hands were around both her wrists.

A dark, dull, skintight gray, the gloves. “Thanks for volunteering,” he said, tightening his grip, as she looked straight into his blue eyes. “We’ve been looking for you too.” Those eyes widening then, in the instant before the silicone-coated manipulators plunged past her, on either side of her head, to seize him by the neck, his mouth forming a surprised O . She ducked her head as he was whipped out, over her, one of his shoes glancing off her left shoulder.

She grabbed Manuela’s nearest ankle with both hands and pulled, hard, losing her balance, falling, her head hitting something but not pavement. The Muji bag, she realized, its nylon against her cheek.

“Lady,” she heard Dixon say, “I’m not with them. I’m with Verity.” And suddenly was aware of the absolute quiet, aside from their voices. She turned her head, saw Dixon facing a crouched Manuela, his hands open, fingers spread.

“That’s Dixon,” Verity managed, having found her breath. “He’s okay.”

“Gonna help Verity,” Dixon said, calmly moving to do so.

“He’s with us,” Verity said to Manuela, as Dixon helped her up.

“You walk?” he asked, his arm around her shoulder.

“I think so,” Verity said.

“Car now,” Dixon said, “gotta go.”

“Come with us,” Verity said to Manuela, who’d straightened up now, her eyes no longer quite so wide.

When they reached the car, Verity looked back. Through the open rear doors of the van, she saw men piled, unmoving. Four of them, with the drone just then dropping another, she assumed the driver, over the passenger seats and onto the others. Behind the drone, above the van’s steering wheel, the windshield was webbed, as if from a single impact.

Turning back to the car, she found Manuela in the passenger seat behind Virgil. Dixon did that police thing as she got in beside her, his hand on her head so she didn’t bang it. “Conner,” she said, looking back again but not seeing the drone.

“He needs to clean up,” Virgil said, as Dixon shut her door, opened the one in front, got in, closed it.

“Where are we going?” Verity asked.

“Fremont,” he said. “Want to get there before the crowd gets more obvious.”

“Crowd?”

“Have to drive now,” he said, pulling away from the curb.

Guys,” said Conner, as the drone climbed adroitly up into the driver’s seat of the white van, its charger under one arm, and seated itself behind the wheel, “I’m gonna pretend like all of you are incapacitated or unconscious.” It closed the door. “Some of you may be both, but some of you aren’t either. I’m assuming all of you are armed, though, and have phones or other devices. And if none of you makes a move, I’ll be parking this truck somewhere and leaving you to your own resources. Otherwise,” turning the key in the ignition, “this drone’s detonating its onboard explosives. Won’t be much left besides the chassis. As the only one of us who’s not physically present, I’ve got zero fucks to give about how that goes. Your call.”

Netherton, watching the pile of five apparently unconscious men, in the upper half of the drone’s display, saw no movement whatever, aside from a possible eye-flicker from the one he took to be the driver, whose forehead seemed to be bleeding.

“If the driver hasn’t come to, pretty soon,” Conner said, putting the van in reverse and backing away from the container, which Netherton had just watched the drone padlock, “he may need an ambulance.”