Chapter Three-A

  Pandemonium ensued while the gunshot echoed off tightly-packed bodies and out into the morning air. Most ducked while a dozen others tried to run stone-blind and collided with walls and displays and deactivated patrol bots, while security drew their own weapons, ready to return fire. The victim slumped to the ground and released his hold on Spencer. His breath was heavy with a fresh hole punched just below the ribs. Spencer dropped the revolver, adjusted the bag on his shoulder, and fled up the steps. His feet slapped on concrete while shouts from the crowd blended into cacophony, and he was gone. A few seconds later, Nadia skipped from the rows of tech displays. She balanced three different bags on her tiny body, each more full than the last, an insane little Atlas holding up the future of the orphans. She hummed her usual off-tune nursery rhyme as she fled. An alarm warbled to life at the edge of the affected zone, and Malory had her answer—one of them needed to stay behind or NDPD would bring Containment down on them all. Martin was next, and had trouble working through the people because of his large frame.

  Malory watched them go. She wondered if they’d only ever amount to desperate kids trying to claw back an existence from the rotten maw of the city. The mercenaries that worked from Purgatory said there were consequences for those who dared to live, and Mal believed. She headed for the discarded revolver, one foot in front of the other. Detention Center or forced labor, maybe a bullet and alleyway dumpster if the corpo in charge of the market was in a bad mood. It was easy. On the way, she focused on a pair of black cat earrings on display, and fantasized about a reality where she went to the store and paid with honest-to-god credits, the awkward small talk with a bored cashier, owning something with no real purpose other than to make her feel better. Her ears weren’t pierced. She slipped the cats from the display and into her small dress pocket anyway, stifled a laugh, and continued on. The bleeding guard flinched as she bent and picked up the gun. She was surprised by the weight, the cold metal on her skin, how dangerous it felt, and worried her fingers into the gray steel as she waited for everyone’s optics to reboot.

  She heard the metronome caw of a crow mocking, the wind rattling a loose panel above her head, and the trembling of the crowd. She knew this was the moment she’d save if she had her own neural net, a snapshot in time before everything changed, before the bill came due. Another moment, another, and then electronics flared to life—backup routines and fail-safes restored sight to the blind. Awareness rippled and followed the same pace as the attack. By the time it reached the outskirts, the first glares were on her ruined dress and disheveled hair, the weapon in her small hand. So many eyes, so many examinations of her life. Disgust, fear, curiosity, disdain, anger, doubt, frustration washed over her like an endless cascade, and Malory decided she hated them: for their horror, the scrutiny, their willing participation in a system that created people like her, like Nadia, the rest of the orphans—for the audacity to be unsettled by a person stealing from a corporation—because they were thoroughly brainwashed into celebrating them like sports teams. Good little capitalists, righteous fucking consumers. Condemned, the lot of them. She raised the gun, tasted the anger between her teeth, and then something struck her. Everything went dark.

  There was nothing. Nothing, and then loud ringing in the emptiness, a concierge bell in the waiting room for a dream. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. No pain existed in that other place, only a lifetime boiled down to the persistent thought of this is bad this is bad this is bad this is bad this is bad this is bad this is bad. And then an array of what went wrong exploded in time with the bell—was it a stroke, a brain aneurysm, a seizure? Or was she dead, heart stopped, struck by lightning or the wrath of an uncaring god, the final devouring of a city she despised? And with the thoughts the pain seeped in. With it, an attempt at awareness, and figures moved in quivered Rorschach test, the low bass drum of distorted voices, and the stench of piss. Meaning reinfused the shapes around her, into shoes dragged on industrial tile, the stains of well-used abattoir walls, the ache in her face. She blinked, thought of her mother’s forgotten smile, how they used to hold hands and run when it rained, and then she was in a steel chair, arms and legs bound tight, uncertain if the light of the room flickered or if she was on the verge of losing consciousness again. She was not alone.

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  “You shot my brother,” the other said. He had close-cut hair, an unkempt beard, the disposition of a man that beat his son whenever he had a few too many rum and cokes on the weekends. He cracked the swollen knuckles on his left hand, the calm delivery betrayed by shark-dead eyes.

  Malory tried to answer in a haze, and her world shattered at her jaw. Agony and swollen words strangled in her throat. She wanted to feel the damage, the fractured flesh of her cheek, but rope dug into her wrists and kept her still. Consciousness bloomed back full-force, and she was in the basement of Bagley Market’s exclusive real-meat boutique, the slaughter floor drain between her feet. She yanked against her bindings and screamed.

  “I wouldn’t bother,” the man said. “This place is built to bury the death calls of cattle. Your little lungs don’t stand a chance.” He took a few steps forward until he loomed like euthanasia, his face split wide in a mannequin grin. “Gutter rats always carry rabies and plague when they crawl from the sewer covered in shit, tainting everything they touch like a tribulation from God.” He tilted his head. “And here you are.” He hocked a loogie in her face and laughed, deep and throaty, but it rang hollow.

  “Fuck off, synth-pig!” she screamed. Her heart, still congested with the smoldering wreckage of a desire to shoot the bystanders, ignited in a conflagration of rage. She wanted to sink her teeth into his jugular, tear out the artery, and drink deep.

  “A little fight,” he said. “I like that.” He walked over to a cart filled with assorted instruments, complicated contraptions, and knives designed to slaughter livestock. “Makes it much more fun when you start to squeal.”

  “I won’t tell you a damn thing,” Malory said.

  “You will,” the man said. He gave a half-hearted shrug. “Even if you don’t, I will thoroughly enjoy myself.” He moved the cart next to Malory and sighed. “You will tell me about your friends.” He turned his back and started to unwrap tools. Metal clinked against metal, the silent work of a mortuary.

  “I hope your brother dies,” she said. She resented his broad back, the shoulders unbent by a life of cruelty, the aroma of days-old cologne.

  The man set down a half-unwrapped tool, plastic packaging fresh from the autoclave, and turned toward her. His face was impassive, malice woven into each hazel iris. Concrete eyes, ivory smile.

  “You know,” he said. “We’re lucky, you and I. It’s such a rare thing to be implant-free these days. ZenTech practically gives their older neural net models away.”

  “It’s not by choice,” Mal said.

  “Yes, yes,” he waved. “You don’t have to remind me when you smell that way.” He rolled up his sleeves, and exposed a tattoo of an all-seeing eye in an hourglass, surrounded by a snake eating its tail.

  “You’re part of a gang,” she said.

  “Don’t you dare compare me to those bumbling dipshits from les Fant?mes or the cowards in the Black Hands, girl,” he sneered. “The Sons of the Prophet aren’t a gang. We are a dedicated brotherhood that seeks to free the world from its oppressive shackles.”

  “Right,” Malory said. She rolled her eyes. “Cult with a god complex. Got it.”

  “It is fated,” the man said. He lifted a needle from the tray. “Our founder used to work with the Prophet. Information extraction. He was pretty damn good. Got to the point he could get anything from a subject just by talking to them. Some threats, here and there, the hanging sword of danger.” He brought the needle to her fingernail, set the point just underneath. A little pressure, the slight sting. “His favorite method was a self-immolation program—a few drops of gasoline, ignition to completion to ash a thousand times a minute. Star-bright dying and the total conquest of the soul. I’m not as good as him.”

  “Fuck you!” she screamed. The needle inched deeper. Blood welled from the wound.

  “I’ve always found more pleasure in the slow break, anyway,” he said. Deeper, deeper in. “The expressions, the trembling as a private symphony with me as the conductor. Tell me where your friends are.”