Jeff Somers - Digital Plague

Shockley looked at me as the knife fell soundlessly to the carpet. “Mr. Cates,” he said, laughing a little, as I found myself rising an inch or two off the floor. Our eyes met, and his were filled with mean humor, like a boy who delighted in pulling wings off flies. “I am afraid we insist.”

Ears pounding with the muted howl of displacement, I sat across from the three of them and forced myself to look them in the eye. They were all psionics, I guessed, Shockley the Tele-K and at least one-the girl, I guessed-a Pusher, just like my old friend Kev Gatz had been. Back at the restaurant I’d had the sudden urge to do whatever they wanted me to do, and I’d climbed into a small government hover like it was stuffed with pre-Uni cigarettes and first-class gin. I kept myself still, legs crossed, a bland expression on my face: I was Avery Cates, and this shit did not impress me. I’d expected cops, but it looked like the tension between the Undersecretaries and the SSF had evolved a notch or two-if the government’s first batch of psionic kids had graduated, I suspected the working truce between the civil service and the System Pigs was about to end. Fucking psionics. The System Pigs had been collecting psionics for years; whenever someone displayed any kind of uncanny ability, the next day the cops were there, filling out bullshit forms and taking the kid away. Leaving receipts. They were usually kids. If they made it to adulthood without getting nailed, like Kev had, they usually knew how to hide it.

I didn’t like thinking about Kev. It always brought back the image of him stretched out, buried inside the old Electric Church complex.

Shockley had given the destination-a place on Fifty-second Street, not far from SSF Headquarters in the grim stone and steel tower everyone just called The Rock-and we’d ascended into silence. The hover had a disconcerting amount of glass; I could see New York passing by far beneath us, other hovers slipping between us and the ground. We were moving slowly, almost floating, with a deep vibration settling into the core of my body. It was dizzying and made my stomach lurch every time I glanced down. So I kept my eyes on Shockley’s mean and tight ones. I imagined I could hear them drying out with a light sizzle, dust particles hitting like meteors and leaving microscopic scars behind.

I was free, though; no Push on my thoughts that I could detect, no invisible hand reaching out. I resisted the urge to test this every few seconds, forcing myself to remain still. They’d grabbed my guns, of course, but missed the blade in my boot. Definitely not cops. A System Pig would have shaken me upside down until everything had fallen out of my pockets.

“We will be at Dr. Terries’ location in seven minutes,” Shockley said suddenly, his eyes locked on me. “He has just a few questions for you. We appreciate your help.”

I smiled blandly. If Shockley the Civil Servant wanted to play a game, that was fine. The civil government and the cops had been at each other’s necks ever since the Monk Riots-which I’d caused when I’d killed Dennis Squalor and brought down the Electric Church-as they struggled for supremacy. Even so I had no doubt that this little shit would consider it his duty to deliver me up to the System Police once I’d given my interview or whatever to Dr. Terries. Whoever the fuck Dr. Terries was. I didn’t have any doubt that if I didn’t get off this hover, and soon, I was a dead man, one way or another.

I looked past them into the cockpit. I could see the pilot, just a pair of shoulders in a blue jacket. Looking back at them, I recrossed my legs, laying one hand on my cracked, worn boot with my thumb and forefinger just above the hidden blade. I concentrated on slowing my breathing and heart rate.

“You could tell me what this Dr. Terries wants with me, and we’d all be able to bond over the intimacy,” I suggested.

Shockley cocked his head. “You’re a suspicious man, Mr. Cates.”

“Last time I was scooped up into a hover, buddy, things didn’t end too well for me.”

He smiled, a tightening of the corners of his mouth that implied the exact opposite of humor. “Mr. Cates, do you know a woman named,” he shut his eyes, “Candida Murrow?”

I squinted at him. I knew Candy. I saw her all the time down at Pick’s, but I said nothing. The golden rule with cops-or fucking bureaucrats-was that you asked questions, you never answered them. The only question I had, really, was the identity of the piece of shit selling me out. There was no way the fucking triplets here had found me through their superior investigative work and street contacts. Someone had fucked me.

I resisted the urge to reach up and touch the healing wound on my neck. Shockley opened his eyes. “Ms. Murrow-a fine, upstanding citizen, no doubt-was found dead late yesterday.”

I blinked but didn’t react. I hadn’t heard. Big, happy Kenyan, enjoyed her work, her English theoretical at best, but useful. Or had been.

“She died in a very… unusual way. Looks viral-quite gruesome. Dr. Terries is director of Public Health, and he is concerned. She is a known associate of yours, Mr. Cates. You have an… organization.” He said this as if the word tasted funny in his mouth. “Dr. Terries is concerned that others in your organization may be similarly… infected.”

I gave him the bland smile again. “Never heard of Dr. Terries. I don’t have a fucking health chip, Mr. Shockley.”

He nodded. “Yes. When was the last time you had contact with Ms. Murrow, Mr. Cates? Dr. Terries is mainly concerned with her movements over the last few days.”

I fidgeted; let them believe I was disconcerted, nervous. The tips of my fingers touched the top of the blade’s handle, and I paused, taking my time. I still had a few minutes before we made it to our destination, and I would have only one chance at this, because the second after I moved they would leap on me: the Pusher would grab my mind and Shockley would be ready to toss me around just in case that failed. “I’m afraid I don’t know Ms. Murrow.”

Shockley smirked and glanced at the girl, and I knew my moment had come; they were going to start Pushing some cooperation into me. I sucked in the crank air and pinched the blade’s handle between my thumb and forefinger.

As I leaped up, unfolding my legs and pushing off the seat, the blade slid from my boot, slicing my calf up a little as it did. I locked my eyes on the pilot’s shoulder twenty feet or so away, cocked my arm back, and just as I felt the icy invisible fingers of Shockley’s mind on me, I launched the blade across the cabin. It sank into the back of the pilot’s neck, and he fell out of his seat as if he’d suddenly noticed gravity. With an explosive whine the hover flipped over, sending us crashing into the ceiling, which was now the floor.

The icy invisible hand disappeared.

I managed to duck my head under my arms and took the impact on my shoulders. There was a familiar wet cracking sound nearby, and as I launched myself at the tangle of well-dressed bodies I spotted the girl’s head, bent at a bad angle, her eyes wide in shock. I wasn’t going to have to worry about being Pushed anymore, at least.

The hover flipped again, an instant transformation. I managed to slap an arm under one of the seats and held on for just a moment, releasing myself to plummet the last few feet right onto Shockley’s upturned face and neck. At the last moment he whipped both arms across his face and I stopped with a jerk, hung for a breathless second, and then rocketed back up to crash into the floor again, grunting as the rivets dug into my back and my skull bounced. I was pinned for a moment, but the hover obliged me again by suddenly yawing and losing altitude, rolling Shockley and his friend violently toward the cockpit.