David Williams - Mirrored Heavens

But there’s no answer. The seconds tick by. The Operative pulls himself to his feet. As he does so, dim lights spring to life along the walls. A door on the one opposite opens. The Operative walks to it, goes on through.

Now he’s in a corridor. Lights blink along the floor. They’re running from right to left. So he turns that way, walking carefully. He has no idea what the hell’s going on. But he figures he may as well make the most of it.

A door opens on the wall to his left. Simultaneously, the lights on the floor change direction, blink toward it.

So he stops. He peers carefully inside. It’s a storage chamber. It’s full of compartments. All are open. All are empty.

Except for the one that holds the suit.

The Operative walks in. The door slides shut. He goes to the suit. It’s civilian, bereft of armaments and markings. It’s open in the back. He takes the hint: climbs in, activates it. It closes in around him.

“About fucking time,” says the voice of Stefan Lynx.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“What’s going on is jailbreak. You drive, I’ll navigate.” The door slides open. “Make your first two lefts and make it snappy.”

The Operative gets moving. He goes out the door, turns left.

“Lynx.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve had it with this. What are you up to?”

“Telling you to shut up.”

The Operative makes the next left. As he does so, Lynx gives him more directions: a right, another left, a stairway up. More passages. More stairs. He gets stopped on more than one occasion, downloads ID from out of nowhere. He arrives in a garage. He moves to the vehicle Lynx indicates, gets in, drives away into what turns out to be Congreve. A map appears on the dashboard next to him. A route traces through grids.

“Dump it in the parking lot on Sixth Avenue,” says Lynx. “Leave the suit there too. Get on the blue line underhaul. Get off at Little Kensington.”

“That’s where Sarmax’s house is.”

“Exactly. That’s where you’re going.”

“That doesn’t sound very safe.”

“Said the guy who’s running around in a suit which may as well have STOLEN FROM MAXIMUM SECURITY spray-painted on the side. But cheer up, Carson: I’ve got you covered. They got you on the sting. I got them on the hack. They knew you were up to something. But they couldn’t figure out what. So they just hit you with the worst possible charges. And we just beat the rap. I’ve switched your identity about five times in the last five minutes. And there’s a lot more to talk about but it’s going to have to wait till we can do it on Sarmax’s private lines. I managed to cover our traces there too. Now how about you go back to shutting the fuck up.”

The Operative tells Lynx to fuck himself. And says nothing more. He just lets Congreve’s skyline stream past his visor. Fifteen minutes later, he’s walking through the residences of Little Kensington. Five minutes after that he reaches Sarmax’s door. He goes on through, takes the elevator up to the study.

To find Sarmax sitting in front of at least fifty different screens. He has his feet up. He doesn’t turn around.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he asks.

“We need to talk.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” says Leo Sarmax.

* * *

But they’re starting to get the idea. They’re standing in another tunnel mouth, looking out upon the plateau where the Flats begin. That plateau’s so high up it’s drenched in cloud. Mist is everywhere. Searchlights pierce the mist, flicker this way and that.

“Looks like a perimeter,” says Marlowe.

“Sealed up pretty tight,” Haskell replies. “This way’s hopeless.”

“Not necessarily.”

“It’s not those defenses I’m worried about,” she says. “It’s what’s up there .” She points upward, at the unseen sky. “We’ll be too exposed out on that plateau. Even with the camo on our armor.”

“You’ve got a point,” he says.

“Let’s double back to the last intersection.”

Five minutes later they’re walking down a narrow tunnel. It’s only wide enough for a single rail. Five minutes farther, and they find a hole in the ceiling, along with a ladder leading up.

“Maintenance shafts,” she says. “Should put us straight into Seleucus’s center.”

“Any sign of what’s up on Seleucus’s zone?” asks Marlowe.

“Looks like it’s as fucked as the rest of the city.”

But they’re heading in toward it all the same. They climb up the ladder, head out into a warren of crawl spaces. Haskell starts to pick up more of Seleucus’s zone. But what she’s detecting is strange. It’s as though it’s been chipped away piecemeal.

“Meaning what?” asks Marlowe.

“Meaning it’s been shut down altogether in some areas. Not sure why. Civil war. Bombs. Who the hell knows?”

“Only one way to find out,” he replies.

He’s got a laser cutter out now, is slicing through a wall. They stare at the space thus revealed.

“Looks like somebody’s basement,” she says.

“Let’s find out if they’re still home,” he replies—and leads the way through discarded furniture and dust, heads up a set of stairs. They enter a living room.

A young woman sits on a couch within. Her head flicks around toward them as they enter. But she doesn’t move. Doesn’t really react. Just stares at them with hollow eyes, starts talking in a language they don’t understand.

“Easy,” says Haskell gently.

“Heat signature,” says Marlowe. “Behind that couch.”

“She’s got children,” mutters Haskell. “Talk to her, for fuck’s sake.”

And Marlowe does: starts looking for some common ground. Finds it fairly quickly in a dialect of Mandarin. The woman answers his questions in a voice that’s nearly monotone. He translates for Haskell.

“She killed her husband. He’s upstairs.”

“Did you ask her why she killed him?”

“He tried to kill her.”

“Ask her how come she’s shut down this apartment’s zone access.”

“Already did. She says it was letting in demons from hell. The same demons who possessed her husband.”

“I’m going to check him out.” Haskell leaves Marlowe to cover the room and goes upstairs, where she finds a man sprawled in a bathroom with a carving knife stuck through his skull. Blood’s everywhere. But there’s enough of his head left for her to figure out what’s happened. Then she reaches out into the zone: very covertly, very carefully. She finds exactly what she thought she would. She goes downstairs again.

“What’s up?” asks Marlowe.

“What’s up is that all the software in Seleucus got hacked. Including cranial implants.”

“I’ve got those. So do you.”

“So did her husband. He was a cop.”

“So?

“So police are almost as wired as we are. And unlike us, he wasn’t shielded by a razor like me. The Manilishi took him over.”

“Bullshit,” says Marlowe. “Implants don’t allow control.”

“Looks like they do if the target’s got enough of them and they’re getting hacked by a next-generation AI. This thing fucked the whole sector. ”

“You mean—”

“I mean everything . Household robots gutting their owners, cars running over people, toasters exploding, the fucking works. This thing we’re after has gone completely batshit.”

“Or maybe this is merely phase one of some master plan it’s cooked up?”

“Those two aren’t incompatible.”