Virch code, p.9
Virch Code, page 9
In the straight, even streets of the inner core, Sean’s guys might have caught her quickly. But this was the edge, and here were the first signs of the world that lay beyond the manicured comforts of the booville.
Raven’s recommended right turn took Daelia down an alley and into a different world.
Here, pitched tents and makeshift cardboard shelters fought for space with dumpsters. Here, people were stringing up laundry or hunkering around cardboard fires or crackling electrical heaters. A pair of dirty-faced children peered around their mother’s legs, waving at her, but nobody else gave her any notice.
Even here, everyone had visors on.
Daelia still could hear Sean behind her, yelling now. There was no way of knowing whether or not he had seen her, if her suit’s programming would still obscure her from his sight. But then, he did have that one goon without a NULI.
“He’s gaining, Raven!”
An arrow. Left.
Daelia followed it, past the camp, deeper in. The alley twisted, kinked around the back of what appeared to be some kind of shopping area. Ahead, alarmingly close, was another wide street.
“Raven, we’re going to hit the open here!”
Raven sent another emoji set. A stop sign. An open door. A backwards arrow. Red.
Daelia looked back down the alley, the way she’d already come, body heaving for air. One building back there was indeed a red-painted door, but it was flush with its wall, no handle. “I can’t open that,” she panted.
The same emoji set came again.
Daelia looked ahead, to the bustle of the main street that was just there.
The emojis.
“Okay, okay, fine,” she said, and ran back.
But before she could close the ten paces to the door, it was opening. A pair of people, local residents with glassy eyes, stepped out, reeling a little as if drunk. They had visor marks pressed in their faces. She had no idea what was through that door and didn’t much care. Daelia slipped between them and slipped inside.
She yanked the door closed again, once she was through, and only just in time.
She could hear Sean’s men, yelling outside. But they passed by, words incomprehensible, on their way back out to the main street.
They had gone past her.
Daelia leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the door, trying to catch her breath.
Her whole body felt rubbery.
Raven sent another arrow, trying to move her away from the door.
“I know,” she panted. “Just give me a minute.”
13
“Lee? When did you get back into town?”
“Story for another time, Marathon. Where’s Rover?”
Argo hung back, letting Lee take point on this particular conversation. Marathon seemed to like him well enough, but Lee had known Marathon for far longer and thought he’d have a better chance of success explaining the situation.
Lee had already been waiting for Argo and Garcia when they got back to the Scrap House. Chalk was already out of Garcia’s back seat, but there was still the problem of Bri Quercitron to deal with.
“Get him in the quiet room,” Lee had said, and tossed Garcia a ring of keys. “We’re going to go talk to Emily.”
But Emily had been in a foul mood, deep in her private virch dismantling some creature that looked like a stop-motion monster from an old sword-and-sandals movie. Unlike the movies, this one had a tremendous amount of very realistic blood on the inside.
“What’s her problem?” Argo had asked one of the maintainers, all of them holding back at an appropriate distance. “That’s nasty.”
The senior maintainer, Koval, shrugged. “She does this when she’s really pissed off. Hunted the thing down and everything. We’re placing bets on which part of the skeleton she’s going to hang up in her cave. She’s… Ah, dammit.”
Holding the head with her right jaw, Emily bit through the thing’s skull with her left. Something huge and gray puddled out, like jello from a mold.
Argo swallowed. It was detailed. A little too detailed.
“Shit,” the maintainer grumbled. “I had money on the skull.”
“So I take this to mean we shouldn’t talk to her right now?” Argo asked.
“Better to not,” Lee agreed. “Come on, we’ll go find Rover while she finishes venting. I’ve got a few things I want to talk to him about anyway.”
Argo watched her for another moment. She was really savaging that thing. “You know that’s not a real skeleton, right, Sergeant Koval?”
Koval snorted. “It’s real to her.”
Argo wasn’t sure that was true. Emily was a lot of things, but delusional wasn’t one of them. She knew nothing in her virch was real. It was a game of some kind with her, he was sure of it. “Does she do this to piss us off?”
“There’s a reason we call ’em ‘orcinus,’ sir, and it ain’t just because they’re smart,” the maintainer had told him, and then Lee said they were wasting time.
So now they were back at the Group. Rover was nowhere to be found, although several people did say he was in, and so, Lee had come for the next-best person.
Marathon.
Letting the two of them talk, Argo leaned against one of the cubicle walls, resisting the urge to pull out his phone and look at the protests that ChatBot had been talking about.
Highlander poked his head around the side of the low furniture wall, wheeling around in his desk chair. “Jesus, Argo. What happened to your face?”
Argo had considered how he was going to deal with this. There was no hiding the problem. So he just went for it.
“Daelia shot me,” he replied, deadpan.
The other pilot started laughing. “So your luck with her ran out too, huh?”
“Something like that,” Argo said, and looked back over at where Lee was talking to Marathon. Both men had dropped their voices now. “I’m surprised to see you in today.”
“I’m the only guy in the flight, other than you, who doesn’t have a family. So lucky me, I get called in to handle our girl today.”
“Please tell me you’re not talking about Daelia,” Argo grumbled.
“What? No. Emily. She’s been tasked to provide IAA on the protest downtown.” Highlander shrugged. “Which means we all get tasked. Thank you, mobilization orders. Rover pulled the whole SyROC team in.”
“Downtown, huh?” Argo looked back over at Marathon’s office. The door was shut now. “For how long?”
“All day. From what I understand, shit’s already getting pretty wild down there.” Highlander pushed his chair out into the office’s open central floor. “Was that Lee you came in with?”
“How wild?” Argo asked.
“Not girlfriend-shooting-you-in-the-face wild, but, you know. Normal civilian protest crazy.” And Highlander leaned forward. “How big of a chunk did she take out?”
Argo rolled his eyes. He’d expected this and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I’ve got some photos, if you want to see it.”
“Oh, hell yes.”
It was another five minutes before Lee came back out of Marathon’s office. He didn’t break stride, heading right for the flight office’s door.
“Got what we need. Argo, you coming?”
“Yeah, sure thing, Lee,” Argo replied and went to get his phone back.
Highlander was showing it off to a small group of other Operations Group personnel. A couple of sensors, Brandel, one of the junior intel officers. He pulled it away, though, as Argo reached for it, his thumbs typing away. “Now hold off. I’m not done sending these to myself.”
“Highlander, give him back his damn phone!” Lee called over his shoulder. “Argo. We’re leaving. Now.”
“What are you and Lee up to today?” Sergeant Brandel asked.
“We’re going to go pick up Daelia,” Argo told her. Which was true. Sort of.
Highlander whistled, but finally held out the phone. “After what she did to your face?”
“Argo!” Marathon called to him, before he could leave. “Don’t do anything stupid today.”
Argo paused, hand on the door. “I’ll try.”
“Tell Lee that Twohy will meet you two at the armory in half an hour or so. She’s busy today, but she said she’d spare you the time.”
Armory? Lee hadn’t said anything about that. “Uh, sure. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. To anyone. Please.” Marathon flashed him a big smile, then turned on Highlander. “What are you still doing in here? Go fucking fly.”
“Don’t step to the cockpit for another fifteen minutes,” Highlander said flippantly, and tapped his monocle. “You wanna see what Argo’s face looks like under those bandages?”
“Ooh,” his flight commander said.
“Have confirmation,” Chalk said without preamble when Argo and Lee got back to the Scrap House. She had commandeered one of the guest kugus. It was her voice, but a blank fce. She never seemed to use an AR form. “Daelia in Austin.”
The Scrap House had a chill to it that morning, the metal walls holding on to the nighttime temperatures, preserving it in the shadows. Lee had closed the main doors too, shutting off any view of the airfield. It prevented—or at least, impeded—the First MAB’s ability to eavesdrop, but it also meant they were cut off from the scant October sun, and with it, any chance of warming up.
“How do we know that?” Argo asked. “We haven’t even gotten Emily out there.”
“And aren’t likely to,” Lee sighed. “Emily’s been tasked to perform oversight for the protest march. But Rover might be able to get 2Shy swapped in. We’ll need to talk to him.”
“Austin,” Argo repeated. “How do we know she’s there?”
“Reports,” Chalk said, evasive.
“What kind of reports?”
She dipped her head toward Lee. “Your canid-class car, it in central parking. Daelia find, then run.”
“Why didn’t she take Ginger out?” Lee asked.
“Tank empty,” Chalk replied. “Battery charge not sufficient.”
“Daelia wouldn’t risk Ginger like that,” Lee said.
Argo rubbed a hand over his face. “So where is she?”
“Run,” Chalk said.
“How do you know this?” he pressed.
Chalk just sniffed. “Domain Array say, they no lie to Lee.”
“I’ll ask for confirmation on our way out,” Lee said slowly. “We’ll need to stop by City Hall to talk to Rover. See if we can’t get Emily.”
“What’s Colonel Marsden even doing downtown?” Garcia asked.
“Guard liaison for the event response,” Lee told him.
“What event response?” Argo asked, but he got the sense this wasn’t a conversation he was fully part of.
Garcia stared up at the rafters. “Cops I can understand, maybe the National Guard, if the 290th wasn’t deployed, but the fucking First MAB? How is that even legal?”
“I don’t know,” Lee said with a shrug. “Seems like everything’s breaking down right now. Marathon said it was some request through the mayor’s office straight up to DC instead of through normal channels.”
“Shit. They’re taking Idisi to a protest?” Garcia asked.
Lee nodded. “Like throwing gasoline on a fire, I agree.”
Argo looked between them. “What am I missing?” he asked.
“We’ve had protests turn violent,” Lee said. “A few weeks after the Five Days War, when FEMA announced they were saving assistance for harder-hit areas of the East Coast. It got a little out of hand.”
“Out of hand?” Garcia asked. “People died, Lee. What, nine or ten?”
“Thirteen,” Chalk volunteered. “I remember. Garcia, you pull one of those trigger?”
“What? No. I was on duty that night, but I didn’t kill anybody,” he grumbled.
“Why are we talking about killing protestors?” Argo demanded.
Lee sighed. “State was paranoid. All they had around what was left of the state leadership at the time were some temporary chain-link fences, and when the protest turned into a riot, those fences came down pretty quick. The security detail did what they had to.”
“Why’d it get that violent?” Argo asked, trying to remember if he’d heard about it. Maybe. He couldn’t remember. Alaska had had its own problems, immediate and deadly; half the power grid had gone down, and the state suffered rolling brownouts for months, well out into the summer. His main focus back in ’26 had been keeping his brother and himself alive. Anchorage had been too cold for riots.
“Organized provocation,” Chalk said. “People say, now is time to leave country.”
“That’s right,” Lee said, nodding. “Tensions were exacerbated. One of the secession groups saw an opportunity and egged it on. But the idea of splitting the country fell out of favor after the riot. There were too many people dead already. We didn’t need more of it over that.”
Argo nodded, absorbing that. For all the talk he had heard back in his cadet years about how the Guard and active duty were one force, one fight, it was a vastly different world. He’d never had to worry about things like that on active duty. Never had to worry about the Americans outside the base. The mission had always been far away.
“So if Rover’s at City Hall, isn’t this whole trip a waste of time?”
“Not at all,” he said, and clapped Argo on the shoulder. “Chalk’s on it, aren’t you girl?” The abiota nodded. “We’ll see what she can find out for us about what’s going on with my daughter.”
“The longer it takes for us to get there—”
“We need to pick up a few things too,” Lee said. “Fucking First MAB didn’t coordinate this thing right, left a bunch of shit they needed here. I promised Marathon we’d take it up. And besides, we do not want to walk into Austin unarmed.”
14
Heart still pounding hard in her chest, Daelia tried to get her bearings. She was in a hallway, a plain simple hallway, brightly lit and swept clean. Wire shelving units stood against one wall, loaded down with what looked like nonperishable food. Crackers, cereal, milk, and baby formula in sealed packs. There were other things too. Camping gear. Coats.
A clear plastic tote full of what looked like Bibles.
“What the hell?” she muttered to herself. “Raven, where are we?”
Raven replied with a check mark. She’d turned her projection off.
“Great,” Daelia said, and opened the box. In her time in academia, and especially at Ware, she’d come across people with all kinds of attitudes about abiota. Ulrich’s full-throated embrace of them wasn’t uncommon in the mechatronics field. Go a little further, and you ended up in religious territory, quasi-philosophical movements that attempted to smash theology and technology together.
Daelia’s first roommate in undergrad had been an adherent of one of those techno-cults. Irritating as hell, those constant attempts at dragging her into agreeing with half-baked Biblical revisionism. How the Ark of the Covenant was an ancient machine, the first fusion reactor, proof that God had created the abiota. Things like that. On and on.
There were weirder cults out there—Singularists came to mind—but that Church of the Unified Circuit shit had driven Daelia crazy. After her roomie had started trying to convince her that her mom, Bellona, was some kind of divine being on par with an angel, Daelia had requested a room transfer.
But the Bibles in that box were normal ones, as far as Daelia could tell. There was no gear icon embossed over the cross on the worn synthetic leather covers, nothing on the inside declaring it as the true and eternal word of the Motive Force, or whatever it was they called God.
Instead, the thing fell open in her hands, one line catching her eye.
he will make your paths straight
Suddenly irritated, she shut the thing again. “I wonder if he’s got a path up to Aaru for me?” she grumbled to herself.
“Hey, hey, hey! You’re not supposed to be back here!”
“Huh?”
It was a man, probably not much older than she was, face half-hidden by a threadbare sweatshirt hood. “We’re not supposed to be back here,” he said, coming down the hall. He pointed at the wall. “You see the sign?”
NO GUESTS BEYOND THIS POINT.
“I, um, I must have missed it,” Daelia said.
“You religious?” the guy asked.
Daelia looked down. She had almost forgotten about the Bible in her hands. “Not really,” she said, and set the thing back down. “Never found it all that easy to believe in something I can’t see.”
“We all believe in something,” the guy said, giving Daelia a very obvious once-over. “You sure you’re not a tech-head?”
Surprisingly for this place, he didn’t have so much as a monocle on, Daelia realized. So to him, she would be just a girl in a dirty panoply. But at least that cemented it for her; no tech, no cult. So what was this place?
“No, I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere,” Daelia said.
“Ha, true of us all,” the guy said with a shrug, and then gestured to her with wild hands. “Come on, I’ll show you where the front is.”
Daelia followed the guy through the outreach center. The place was simple but cheerful, a contrast to the homeless encampment she’d run through only a few minutes ago.
“They do community outreach here,” he was explaining, beckoning Daelia along. “Nice place. Food and showers and heat for anybody who asks, even if your biometrics aren’t registered with one of the corpo-communities here. Gettin’ cold here at night these days.”
“And kids?” Daelia asked, thinking about the baby formula.
“Oh yes, lots of kids. It’s harder than they say to get a job here, and if you don’t got no job, you don’t got access to anything. Not even the schools. They’re still supposed to be public, run by the state, but…” He shook his head. “Glad I don’t got to worry about family.”
“Are you waiting on booville placement?” Daelia asked.
