X

Day Five: A Cloud of Death Around me

Needled by my instincts, which screamed out against exposing a vein to Dr. Terries, I sat with my naked arm outstretched. “If you cut me,” I said conversationally, “I will hurt you. Just so we’re clear.”

From across the small table he’d unfolded in the middle of the lab, Terries nodded. “I understand, Mr. Cates. Believe me, I understand perfectly what someone like you is capable of.”

With one hand already holding me by the wrist, he reached forward with the autohypo. I intercepted his arm with my free hand, clamping tightly around his forearm, probably causing him pain. He looked up at me with alarm.

“Are you implying I’m an animal again, Dr. Terries?”

His face registered several emotions, one after the other. I could have labeled them finely-the specific intensity of terror, the flavor of impotent rage, the flowchart of quick scheming-but I didn’t bother. I’d made my point, and he put a rotten smile on his face and shook his head.

“Not at all, Mr. Cates!” he said quickly, making no move to free himself. He was sweating lightly. “I meant that with all respect. I am not a…” He paused to search for the perfect way to compliment me without seeming to kiss my ass. His face brightened pathetically. “I am not a man of action, yes? That is all I meant.”

I gave him a grin, slight and humorless, and let go of his arm. I turned to Jabali. “Get that? We’re men of action.”

Jabali looked like he didn’t have any fucking clue what was going on, but he smiled anyway. “Shit, boss.”

I was playing the role to the hilt because it was what Dr. Terries expected. From the moment I’d appeared behind him on the street, he’d pegged me as the typical downtown hooligan the Vids always portrayed: ignorant, violent, and greedy. And maybe I was, depending on the day, but for now it was just a way to keep Dr. Terries terrified, because if he suspected even for a moment that we didn’t mean to kill him, he’d be impossible to deal with.

He swallowed and took a deep breath, putting his eyes on my inflated vein. Expertly, he jabbed the autohypo forward and I felt it pinch my skin, the pain melting away a second later as an automatic painkiller was administered. The clear chamber began to slowly fill with my blood, deep red.

“I’ve seen parts of your file,” Terries said suddenly, glancing up at me and licking his lips. “Some of it is in the clear-not censored by Marin’s office, I mean-and it makes for interesting reading.”

I weighed whether or not to find this offensive and decided to let it pass without comment. It was good to be unpredictable. Kept the rubes terrified; people liked to learn the rules, because once you knew the rules you could manipulate the outcome. If there were no rules, it was best to keep your fucking arms and legs inside the safety cage.

“Did you really, uh, did you really interact with Dennis Squalor?” he went on, watching the autohypo do its work.

I nodded, keeping my face blank. I didn’t like to think of the hours I’d spent under Westminster Abbey, hunting Squalor, killing Monks, and watching Kev Gatz die.

He waited another moment. “It’s very exciting,” he finally said, removing the autohypo cleanly and holding a small piece of gauze in place over the wound. “Squalor was a genius in his way. Did amazing work in cybernetics and Biological Systems Replacement. Would have won awards, had professorships, if… well,” he smiled nervously, keeping his eyes down on the autohypo, “if he hadn’t gone mad.”

“You mean, if he hadn’t tried to murder everyone and turn them into fucking Monks?”

He carried the autohypo over to a bank of equipment across the room, shadowed by a jumpy Jabali. “Well, of course… still, his accomplishments…”

“Would you like a lock of his hair, Doc? Get on with it.”

“Very well, very well,” he muttered, inserting the autohypo into a slot and ramming it home. A soft tone rang out and a small screen lit up, text streaming from top to bottom. Terries crouched down and stared at it. “You don’t have a very healthy diet, Mr. Cates,” he muttered absently. “And I would be concerned about your liver function if I were your physician. There-I can see the signatures of the nanobots. Yours are different, however; it’s not entirely clear where the deviation is…”

His muttering died down to a whisper, and then he was gesturing at his equipment, his thin lips moving but making no sound. I lifted the gauze off my arm and peered under it experimentally, then tossed it onto the floor and began rolling my sleeve down.

“I’ve spent quite a bit of time working with this material remotely,” Terries said suddenly. “Amazing tech. Far beyond anything I’ve seen anywhere else. Whoever developed this was a genius. So I’m familiar, you see, with the basic design. I can see where the examples in your blood deviate from the structures we’ve already cataloged, but it isn’t clear why. Wait, there’s a signal being emitted.” He spun around on his stool to face me. “Your nanobots are broadcasting.” He spun around again. “Two signals, actually. One is broad low power, one is narrow-beamed low power.”

I took a deep breath. Techies. I hated working with them.

“I could do much better and faster work if I had more resources, Mr. Cates,” he said suddenly, squinting at the screen. “I realize you do not trust me, thus your goon with the menacing air, but if I were in the Department’s lab, we would-”

“You’re doing fine, Doc,” I said. I had no desire to get any closer to Cop Central.

“Very well. Perhaps I could at least call in some colleagues, trustworthy sorts-”

“Afraid not.”

He worked in silence for a few moments. “Wait a second,” he murmured, leaning forward. “Some of this is in cleartext…”

I stood up and walked over to him, squinting down at the equipment. “What is?”

“The narrow-beam signal,” he said absently. “Looks like this is freelance work, and the technician signed his name in a signal that is beamed back to an originating point. Unbelievable arro-”

He went very still. It was the sort of stillness that brought all my instincts up, sniffing the air for a threat. “Well, I’ll be fucked,” he said in a conversational tone.

“Doc?”

He glanced up at me as if remembering I was there. He stared at me and then started to laugh, shaking his head and waving at the equipment. “Mr. Cates, I didn’t realize you were Patient Fucking Zero. Is there anything left in that bottle?”

I looked back at the table and the bottle of gin I’d left there. “Sure,” I said. “What’s going on?”

He stood up and grinned around at me and Jabali, who glanced at his gun. I shook my head slightly, watching the good doctor walk unsteadily toward the table and pick up the bottle. He tipped it back and drank steadily for a few swallows, then put the bottle unsteadily back onto the table.

“Your nanobots are different, Mr. Cates. They are the originators. The builders. They do not attack your body, they simply build drones that are excreted through your pores to seek out hosts to infect. They are broadcasting a weak suppression field which keeps the drones dormant until they have exited your body, otherwise you would already be dead. If you died too soon, you might not infect enough people to achieve the tipping point, so the suppression field guaranteed that you would wander around for days, infecting as you went. Since the field actually has a range of a few feet-perhaps ten, at most-it also means that anyone near you for any length of time sees their own infection go dormant.”

He started walking past the table, turning to look at me over his shoulder, smiling, grandfatherly. He was probably only five or ten years older than me. “You’re the only reason I haven’t started dying yet, Mr. Cates.” He turned away and kept walking, gesturing blindly back toward Jabali. “Him, too! But if you move out of range, the nanobots inside me stop receiving the field and wake up-and start work.”