Interstate 44, evening.
Mars is red and black around me. Neon lights off to the side, giant billboards burning away the night with offers for luxury condos, cheaper bots, more expensive clones.
Glitter, glitter in the night - always new, always tight.
The groundcar is quiet as we hum between the traffic. Haulers taking late-night stock one way, buses taking human meat the other. We are a fish that darts between them, gold and black in the lights that dare to touch us.
Sarija is smoking something sharp next to me. Haze fills the cabin, disappears down the vents. She runs one hand up and down her bare thigh as she smokes, head nodding along to something from her earpiece. When we left the hotel, she was giddy from the tumble, hair still wild, skin damp from the work-out we had just put each other through.
Now - quiet, distracted, focus elsewhere.
We were going to see the Wizard of Mariner Valley. He tended to have that effect on people.
“I don’t think I want to do this any more.”
She coughed, pulled on her inhaler again. Vapour filled the cabin.
“You sure?” I change lanes, watch metal around us move in a dance on the highway. My thoughts dance too, on a different topic. “Harcken won’t be happy.”
“Fuck Harcken.” Hair tosses, settles against her bare shoulders. Her leotard ripples as she turns to face me. “He doesn’t know my face. We used cover names. We can back out any time.”
“You’ve wanted this for as long as I’ve known you, Sar.” I glance over, see the dark eyes filled with doubt now. They had looked so different at the hotel. “The studies, the prep time out on the Gholani tracks, the cyber implants…”
She cuts me off with a sharp hand gesture, turns back to the window. Black hair hides her face.
“I know, I just…”
Silence.
Why now, goddamnit?
We reach the off-ramp, head down it. No protest from Sarija as we drift closer and closer to the address that Harcken had given us to see the Wizard. It was an older part of the Valley, from the first and second colonisation phases. Back when NorAm still held the most sway up here. Now the old names have all been replaced with hanzi ideograms, and the old influences were busy sinking away into the darkness.
The war of ‘87 had changed everything.
I pull into an empty slot at the address. The neighbourhood was old, dark, quiet. Something churned in the distance at a factory site, cutting the night sky with jagged machine movements. The pavement is wet when we step out. Rainfall from the last precipitation cycle, probably, or bad plumbing - who knows.
“The Wizard is out here?”
The doubt is a vein of black in her voice. Her dusky skin is pale in the thin light from a distant lamp, legs long and sleek under the leotard. Arms crossed under her breasts as she waits for me to get the case out of the trunk.
“According to Harcken, yes. Who knows.” I shrug, heft the case, and motion for her to follow. I’ve never seen the Wizard myself, even though I’ve been here before. “Let’s get inside.”
The address is a street down and two alleys up, billboards sputtering around us. A nano-ware cat skitters past on metal legs, hunting for rodents from the grain haulers that land around the clock at the Jade Fields starport nearby.
Amazing what kind of trash can travel this far, if it was desperate enough.
We stop outside the door with the eye scanner and the graffiti swirl that transforms it into a neon tangle. No-one watches as I flip the case open and take out the two coilguns. Sarija grips her one casually, hand behind her back to hide the illicit little toy. The muzzle hangs down between her legs, a stubby tail on a lanky demonette. Mine goes into the long pocket inside my coat, balancing the stun prod on the other side.
“Last chance.” I watch her eyes. “We go through that door now, we’re committed.”
Doubt.
Some resolve, as she looks up. Her mouth sets, lips thinning.
“Let’s get this done with.” She takes a last hit from her inhaler, tosses it away down the street. Her black tail wavers as the vapour engulfs her.
I press the buzzer, lean in to activate the eye scanner. A blue strobe across my eyeballs, and then we wait.
The door slides open. Harcken is inside, one hand on the pistol tucked into his waist. He sees Sarija - tall, bare legs for days, lips pouting - and grins.
He does not see my stun prod. Blue-white light burns between us as I slam into him, carrying us into the small room beyond. He is limp before we even hit the floor.
We drag him into a corner and kick the street door shut. The place stinks of chems and something sour, something that wants to kick the bile out of my stomach and into my throat. Sarija does not seem to notice. She drags Harcken’s one arm to the inner door, presses his wrist bio-ID against the scanner plate there.
We are both ready when the inner door opens.
The two lifers on the other side are not.
The coilguns take them apart with barely a whisper. Blood flies as they crumple to the clinic floor. A tech gapes at the end of the corridor, turns to run. Sarija sprays him with coil needles, stitching him to the wall like a splayed human glove. He manages a single scream before my own shots saw through his neck.
Corridors flit past us as we run. Bulkheads go from green to grey to white. I run partly on memory, partly on the instructions Harcken gave me a week ago.
The cryo-lab is empty when we burst in. The organ vaults gleam cold and clean in the light, rows and rows of orange lights blinking on the DNA cards.
Fourteen hundred samples.
Genetic fingerprints that could unlock any bio-coded bank vault or authenticator this side of Jupiter and the neo-banking legislation. The Wizard had been collecting for years.
The cards are wafer thin, barely any weight as we pluck them out and dump them in a carrier. Sarija is flushed as we work, cheeks red, breathing fast. I blink and see her below me again, hours before in the hotel, and the pang hits hard.
“What’s wrong?” Concerned eyes on mine, her hands stilled. We are working on the last line of cards. “Is something…?”
“Nothing.” I think of the nano-cat, force a smile. “Something here smells like shit.”
The last cards clatter into the carrier and we rise, Sarija slinging it over her shoulder as she turns. I look at her one last time, in that harsh lab light, and see her - see her, finally, the way she had always been in my mind since the first night I found her.
Strong, athletic build. Good genes and good exercise from Earth.
Healthy, despite the inhaler and the occasional chem hit. Liver and bloodwork still green-maxed on the last test I had done on her blood sample.
No old injuries, no broken bones, no joint tears from the gravity meds.
Young.
The stun prod crackles once against the small of her back, and she reverses her earlier rise. I catch the carrier before it cracks against the floor. Her head makes up for it.
She is still conscious, barely, when I crouch next to her and take her coilgun. I empty the magazine into the doorway and surrounding wall, until it whines and stops cycling after the last spike. I place it back on the ground, just outside of her grasp.
“You’ve always wanted to make a difference, Sar.” Her eyes follow me as I gently sweep the hair off her face. Her arms twitch, barely - her legs do not. The stun prod was good like that.
“Now you’ll get to make a difference to so many people.” I look at the wall behind us, opposite the now-empty DNA vault. Limbs and organs, of every shape and size and condition, hang there in suspension tubes and under IV lines. Cold blue light on cold white flesh. They said the Wizard could rebuild anyone into anything, with enough time and credits.
And with enough parts, of course.
I heft the carrier case and walk back out. Harcken is waiting outside, inhaler puffing something that smells of fruit and that cheap skin joint he always hangs out in. He grins when I walk out with the case under my arm.
“Let’s get the frig outta this hole, man.”
We head back to the highway, Harcken driving this time. Just before the on-ramp, I motion for him to pull over.
“What now?”
“My stomach, I’m going to be sick…” I’m still mumbling when Harcken slews the car to a halt by the side of the road. Rough hands push me out.
“Don’t puke in my ride, man! Do that shit outside!”
Door open, night air cold again as I stumble out. I recover, turn around, the coilgun up and ready. Harcken freezes, his own hand already on the extra gun that he always kept under the dash.
“Sorry.”
A last look. Harcken nods, and I pin him to the car seat with a half-dozen spikes. Blood spray mists the inside of the car, turns his face red.
The carrier on the back seat is heavy when I haul it out. Still sealed, still cold.
I check my watch. The next shuttle lift was in an hour, max. The Wizard would find Sarija in his lab, and Harcken missing from his post, and put two and two together. Then Harcken and the empty car would show up on the police network, and the Wizard would hear that too. Sarija would talk, eventually, but the Wizard would have to figure out what was real and what was not. An hour could go by pretty damn fast like that.
But not even a wizard could turn back time, or bring that shuttle back once I was on it.
Glitter, glitter in the night - stars bright, future light.
It's rare that sci-fi holds my attention, but this one did. I didn't see any of the twists coming, and the nasty smell and taste in the story followed me too.
This is awesome! What a twist - I was NOT expecting that!