James Decker - Fallout

“…streets of Hangfei will be off limits while the scalefly biocide is sprayed. For information about when your district will receive the application of biocide, go to…”

A window in the upper right corner of the screen showed more protest footage. The crowd had grown since the blackout, at least four times the size it had been and it had begun to spread into surrounding districts as well. The mob huddled together in unity, but also in fear. Their faces looked confused and angry as security kept them at bay but just barely. Already there had been more riots, more violence. I wondered if maybe Nix hadn’t been right.

Sam, I’m here. Can you buzz me in?

The cigarillo snapped back into my hand. I closed Vamp’s message, then switched off the TV and thumbed the button to let him in. I stood, and waited by the balcony door, looking through the glass to the outside. I kept the lights off, leaving the apartment to be lit through the windows by the city lights. It had been a week since the blackout, and I hadn’t left my apartment once. Stacks of messages had piled up from just about everyone I knew, but I hadn’t answered anyone until I finally called Vamp.

The official word regarding the blackout, and the events that followed, were all blamed on the foreigners. The governess held a series of press conferences where she explained that the foreign forces triggered the blackout through a cyberattack that caused a cascading failure of the power grid. She even went on to describe our attack in pretty good detail. The blackout was the first phase of a three-pronged assault… the second was the deployment of an experimental psyops weapon developed by the Americans, which caused mass hallucinations and paranoia. While we’d been kept in a state of confusion, and unable to respond effectively, they’d launched their strike on the haan ship.

She’d been convincing, and a lot of people believed her, but not nearly enough. Too many people believed their own senses, too many to silence, and the mood of Hangfei had shifted.

I opened the balcony door and stepped out, listening to the distant roar of the protesters. Security aircars drifted past down below, much more than usual, and I could see the strobe of flashing blues between two buildings in the distance. Electronic billboards advertised vacation packages, which had suddenly become very popular. Travel ads, passport providers, and offers of transportation to the independent nation of Duongroi, which security would never allow anyone to reach. Already there had been hundreds of arrests as people tried to make contact with the foreigners.

All haan ads had been suspended. All haan colonies had been locked down, and there were no more haan out and about on the streets. LeiFang had even ordered the huge graviton lenses that were pointed at the haan ship powered up, even though she had no intention of ever using them.

When the knock came, I opened the door. Vamp stood outside, wearing black jeans and a T-shirt under a light suit jacket. He had a bottle of shine in one hand.

“Hey,” I said. “Come on in.”

He followed me in as I headed back to the living room.

“What happened to the locks?” he asked, nodding toward the front door.

“If they want to get in, the locks won’t stop them.”

I stopped in front of the sofa, and turned to face him. He looked around the dimly lit room.

“You want to turn on a light?” he asked.

“I like it like this, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.”

I smoothed the lapels of his jacket, and then put my hands on his chest. He covered my hands with his, unaware that one of them was no longer the one I’d been born with.

“I’ve been worried about you,” he said.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I’m just glad you’re all right.” We stood like that a while longer, and he added. “So… did you want to go out?”

“No.”

“You want to order in or something? Dial up a movie?”

“Not really.”

“You want to get drunk?”

I took the bottle of shine from him, and put it down on the coffee table.

“It’s late,” I told him. “I think I just want to go to bed.”

He looked confused, and a little ticked off for a minute.

“Then why did you—”

I tiptoed up and kissed him on the mouth. Not a long kiss, but long enough. I broke it, resting back on my heels, and when I looked up at him, I saw he understood. When I turned, and walked to the bedroom, he followed.

We stripped down without saying anything, and then climbed into bed. I wondered if he’d just maul me right then and there, but he didn’t. He just propped himself on one elbow, and looked down at me as I lay with my head on the pillow, looking up at him. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the whole thing, I think.

“Everything is different, now,” I said. He stroked my hair, and I snuggled against him a little, despite the heat.

“Yeah,” he said. “LeiFang is holding the American, the one who ejected from the jet, but people are pushing to hear what he knows. They’re not satisfied with the usual bullshit, they want answers.”

“I saw the riots on TV.”

“Yeah, there are groups in pretty much every district now. Things are going to get ugly before long.”

I sighed. “Maybe Nix was right.”

“No,” he said. “Since the blackout I’ve made some changes to eyebot’s facial recognition software, so that if it can’t identify a face it doesn’t just mark it unknown. It flags anything that doesn’t fit the human profile, and I’ve got everyone using it to look for anything strange and send a report back only to me. So far it’s identified close to twelve percent of all recorded faces as haanyo ng.”

I expected a wave of fear, or even panic, but it didn’t come. I’d been expecting this. I think I expected it might have been even worse.

“That’s in six months,” I said.

“It will spread faster, the more there are,” he said. “Even if the rate were steady, we could be looking at one in every four by year’s end if the haan don’t find a way to stop it.”

“If the haan want to find a way to stop it.”

“At least now we have a chance.”

I settled back into the pillow.

“I thought for sure security would come for me,” I said.

“Yun managed to implicate us, but that was it. When the dust settled there wasn’t enough to prove anything, and Dragan pulled some strings. We should be in the clear.”

As soon as he said Dragan’s name, he winced a little. When the silence stretched out, he struggled to salvage the situation.

“Sam, I’m sorry about—”

“It’s okay.”

“It isn’t, Sam.”

I felt the pang in my chest, the familiar pang, but still no tears came. I hadn’t cried since that night. I thought they would come sooner or later, but I still felt numb where Dragan was concerned. I didn’t know how to feel about it, so I just didn’t feel anything.

“He keeps calling me,” I said.

“Me, too.”

“He doesn’t know. He still doesn’t know what he is.”

“He’s worried about you.”

“Is it weird that I feel bad for him?” I asked.

“It’s a weird situation.”

“I feel like I’m hurting his feelings.”

“Maybe you are.”

“But it’s not Dragan. He’s not even human.”

“Nix has feelings.”

There had been no word from Nix since the blackout, but every once in a while his 3i icon turned pink for just a second. He wanted me to know he was out there, and still alive. Maybe he’d gone into hiding, like me. Maybe he was just waiting for me to come out of hiding.

Vamp saw me getting upset, and changed the subject.

“You know, he’s not the only one who’s been worried about you,” Vamp said.