Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

Basta ignored him, striding to the dark spot on the floor. He pointed. “The fluids. Krewer? Don’t tell me no fucking lies, Nyx.”

“Krewer. I gutted him.”

“You? Or the fucking droid?” Basta pulled his shiv. It glinted on its deliberate arc towards Nyx’s throat. “You say you don’t know this unit. But I can tell he knows you.”

Nyx managed a grunt. His larynx bobbed at the tip of the blade.

Boniface, arms tethered by the two Woadskins, had turned his attention to the ceiling.

“You two are in this together,” Basta snarled. “I’m taking your ears off, first.” His shiv skimmed along Nyx’s jaw, up to the fleshy nub of his earlobe. “Then his balls. Then maybe one of you’ll tell me why the fuck he’s here.”

Nyx opened his mouth, but only managed a whine as the shiv drew its first drop of blood.

Then a white plastic meteorite plummeted from the ceiling and smashed Basta to the floor. He howled as the medroid’s legs churned for grip. Nyx scrambled; he didn’t see the needle go in, but he heard the flesh puncture and felt the fine mist of blood flick out into the air. Basta shrieked. When Nyx looked again, the droid was straddling the Woadskin general’s neck, sucking a carmine torrent through its fuel tube, and Basta was writhing, kicking—

Limp. The medroid whirred upright, scanners winking. Basta’s men, who’d been rooted watching, dropped Boniface’s arms. One of them retched.

“I’d leave, if I were you,” Boniface said. “It regains its appetite pretty damn fast.”

Dying nerves sent a final shudder through Basta’s legs, and the men bolted. That left Nyx and Boniface to watch the medroid skitter its way back up the wall and onto the ceiling. It flattened itself down, retracting its spidery limbs, before squeezing into the vent shaft and vanishing from sight.

Boniface turned to his brother. “Hello, Nicholas.”

“Bo.”

“I wasn’t sure if you were getting the final messages,” Boniface said, straightening his jumpsuit. “About the additive. And the other chemicals.”

“You could have told me that homicidal junkbucket was going to pop out of a unit’s stomach like a fucking—”

“Your seller told me it was the only way to smuggle it through.”

Nyx dropped down on the edge of his pad, hiding the shake in his legs. “Didn’t tell me it was programmed for the additive, either. What if I’d been nosing that batch? Motherfucking thing would have gone after me, too.”

Boniface snorted. “I broke you out of that habit a long time ago.”

“I’ve been in here a long fucking time,” Nyx snapped. “I could have started up again, how would you know?”

“I know you, Nicholas.”

“Because you’re so wise.” Nyx gave a dry laugh. “I bet mum never thought you’d end up in here with me, right? Both sons in the slam, the deadbeat and the family man.”

“We both know you didn’t have to end up here. You could have—”

“Gone to work on the pharms for the rest of my life, been someone’s bitch, doing the mix-work they’re too cheap to hire AI for. What did that get you, huh? Besides two rotting lungs.”

Boniface shook with a cough. Nyx’s eyes flickered away.

“This king under the hill,” Boniface croaked, when the cough subsided. “This Capricorn. You trust him to help you once he’s on the outside? You trust him with your life?”

“Yeah, I do. With your family’s, too.” Nyx squirmed. “He always pays back, good or bad. They’ll keep. He’ll make sure they keep. You can trust it.”

“I don’t have any other choice.” Boniface’s voice was brittle. “Not one.” He scanned the cell, eyes moving quickly past Basta crumpled on the floor, and when he spoke again he was business-like. “You cook in here? You have equipment?”

“Been here a long time, Bo.” Nyx pointed back to his cubby-hole. “Got the equipment, got the precursors. You remember how to cook a psychotropic?”

“I think we’d do best to wait until after they come for the corpse.”

“Hope they flush him,” Nyx said, staring down at the body. “Capricorn wasn’t in the freeze three days before those fuckers broke pacts. Rooted Johns in the yard, did Murr and Damola in the showers.” His glob of spit missed just to the left of Basta’s head. “Just a week, everyone was either dead or taking a Woadskin tag. Was only me left.”

This time Boniface looked away. “I didn’t know about that.”

Nyx shrugged. “Hard to work all the details into one infopacket per fucking month on the state of chemical engineering.”

Word spread like a hantavirus: Grigio Krewer was wreaking his vengeance from the grave, via black-market retrofitted medroid, and five Woadskins were already dead, Basta included. The power vacuum was the biggest problem, but a rogue droid gave the sweepers ample excuse to come down with full body armor and autoguns.

“They should be moving us soon,” Nyx said, stashing the last baggies in his jumpsuit.

“And your sweeper friend is sure about the EMP?”

Boniface was at the wash basin, first for his chemical-stained hands, now for everything else. His pale skin had a greasy tinge to it, looking almost like wax. He was scrubbing himself down to nothing, scouring the last loose hairs and skin particles, and one fingernail cracked against the basin as he set the brush down.

“Yeah, it’s like I guessed it. They’ve got an hour to try to flush the thing out, then they cut timecost and drop the EMP. If the, uh, the avoidance AI is good as you say…”

“It is.” Boniface wiggled the nail free with a slick wet scrape; Nyx cringed.

“Then sixty odd minutes from now, the EMP goes off.” Nyx paused. “Speaking of time estimate. What did they give you?”

“Keeping on with the aggressive gene-chemo, I could maybe hold out another three months. Medical AI projects a cure in twelve to fifteen years, and I didn’t make the money cut for medcenter cryo.”

Nyx nodded. “I never got to meet your girl. She old now? What did you name her?”

The yellowed nail clattered into the basin. “Sybil,” Boniface said. “Seven, now.”

“Shit.” Nyx scratched at the tattoo on his collarbone. “Does she know she’s got an uncle?”

Boniface turned from the basin, and the lines of his face softened just slightly. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t know you exist. She doesn’t know I’m here. She thinks I went to a better hospital in space.” He stuck his hollowed nailbed under the tap; water stuttered out. “But her mum’s going to tell her everything, and if the plan goes off, I’ll tell her someday, too.”

The arrival of a sweeper guillotined the conversation. “Pack your parkas, units, everyone’s going to the freezers until we sort this droid shit out.”

Nyx rearranged his face, back to his customary squint. “Fucking finally. Can’t feel safe in my own damn cell these days.”

“Get along.” The sweeper waved them towards the door with his chitinous black autogun. “If you don’t want frostbite on your cocks, better find somewhere warm to put them.”

They joined the stream of orange jumpsuits all filing out of their cell block. Sweepers herded from the sides, more liberal than usual with the stunsticks. The air buzzed thick with tension. Nyx saw a Woadskin staring at him, then at Boniface, but he didn’t approach. With Basta dead, the most immediate problem was succession. Nyx knew there were still enough Neo-Mara and Sixers in the block to make things messy if the Woadskins didn’t get their shit in order.

A customer tapped Nyx on the shoulder; he jumped.

“Got me something, chemist?”

“Don’t fucking do that. But yeah.” Nyx pulled out two of the baggies. “Got Samir’s, too, but tell him pay comes first next time.”