An Eighty Percent Solution

Implement—Phase Three



The remains of asphalt streets, obsolete with the advent of lift vehicles, now only served as potholed walkways. The usual overcrowded throngs that populated them during the day had retreated long ago to the relative safety of their homes or hovels. A myriad of colorful characters took their place. An undocumented body mechanic glanced hopefully in Tony’s direction, but just as quickly looked back to his portable lab, working on something that looked vaguely like a human leg in vermilion. A not-so-proficient pickpocket accosted Tony. “Lay off, weeble,” Tony said, backhanding the young boy who grabbed him in the crotch to distract him. The youth staggered briefly before fleeing the scene, his middle finger extended above his head in a universal gesture.

Half a dozen burns gathered together in a doorway halfway down the street, laughing quietly at nothing much. A ubiquitous ground-level drunk heaved his lunch into the alley, prompting half a dozen rats to scurry out and partake of the unexpected bounty.

“What am I doing here?” Tony asked himself outside an establishment whose ancient neon lights declared it “-rcade Aerobics,” the first “A” conspicuously dark. Further down the street, two junkies pummeled a normal-looking citizen with a meter and a half length of corroded pipe and size fourteen boots.

“Good place to be chewed up and spit out.” Tony took a deep breath and marched across the street. Without hesitation he opened the door that might alter his wrecked life even further.

A low-resolution recording of surf sounds and beach birds matched the dust-covered plastic palm trees which nominally shaded the foyer. Fake coconuts littered a heap of sand against a grainy solido of a stylized Pacific Ocean. Broken scan lines in the bad representation added electronic gibberish horizontally. In a merchant stand ostensibly made of grass and bamboo, a fit young woman bearing a Star of David tattooed on her bald head didn’t quite ignore him.

“May I help you?”

“I’m looking for Sonya.”

“Reeeeally, corpie,” she said, drawing it out almost in an insult.

“Ex-corpie, actually.”

“Suit yourself. You wanna sign up for Advanced Pilates?”

“Uh, sure.”

The young woman laughed without smiling. “You couldn’t even do the elephant,” she added, smirking at him.

“I guess I’ll show my ignorance about the topic, because I have to assume you aren’t talking about having sexual relations with extinct African beasts.”

Once again she offered a mirthless laugh. “No. So I’ve now ruled out that you want Pilates. What do you really want, corpie?”

“I told you, I’m looking for Sonya. Someone said I could find her here.”

“Look, I don’t have time for anyone that doesn’t want to enroll in classes or become a member of the gym. There ain’t no Sonya working here.”

“What if I were to give you a hundred greens.” Mentally he hoped he had the money on him. He didn’t think she’d take a credit chip. His worry dissipated almost instantly.

“Get nilled, Metro.”

“I’m not a cop, pizda.”

“Sure you ain’t. Even if you were, I don’t nark out anyone. Besides, I don’t know no Sonya.” The young woman’s eyes lost focus in the age-old look of someone concentrating on her neural interface rather than the here and now. A square-jawed face strutted in to the reception area clad only in a thong, bristling with more muscle than a prize fighter. The bulky man nodded as he strode behind the shack and through a door that magically buzzed just before he touched it.

Without missing a beat, Tony reached for his wallet. “I’d like to join the gym. Can I have a tour?” Her eyes lost the glazed-over look and got hungry. “I’ll even put down a deposit.”

“Nonrefundable.”

“Of course. Will sixty do it?”

“One hundred.” The five plastic bills Tony found in his pocket evaporated like a teaspoon full of water on the sunny side of Mercury. Tony turned and pushed the door the young woman absently pointed toward, just as it buzzed to let him in.

In marked contrast to the facility’s scummy lobby and ground-level location, a surprising panoply of shining, high-tech bio-mechanical exercise equipment greeted Tony in the basketball-court-sized floor space. After his bold move to get into the gym, Tony looked around, drawing a blank as only four people occupied the exercise area and none of them really fit his mental picture of a Sonya.

The square-jawed face stood in front of a free weight stand, buckling a wide Kevlar belt around his middle. As Tony entered, the square jaw smiled enough to show a mouthful of sharp, pointed teeth that belonged in the maw of a shark rather than a human.

Three dissimilar individuals clustered around a juice-steroid bar chatting among themselves. An exotic young woman, who looked like something out of a combination mercenary/porn rag, would draw anyone’s eyes. Her legs bulged thirty centimeters thick of gem-like green polymer. In place of her arms waved a pair of tentacles of the same material, flexing in multiple directions. Twisted emerald tiles overlapped on her buxom torso, giving her a sensual, reptilian look. Only her head seemed human, sporting short red and orange hair like overlapping waves of fire.

Next to her a dwarf, genetically engineered for subterranean mining operations, squatted on a stool, his copper-colored skin contrasting with the verdant young woman beside him. The bartender, outwardly unmodified, wore an apron stained in purple and crimson. He leaned against the semicircular countertop and absently wiped in an oval pattern.

Tony drifted over to square jaw. “I’m curious, do you know a Sonya?”

“No hablo inglés. ¿Hablas espanol?”

Tony dug into his high-school Spanish to communicate. “¿Conoces a Sonya?”

“No.”

“Gracias.” Having gone well beyond his Spanish language capabilities already, Tony passed on further conversation with the large man and moved over to the juice bar.

“Drinks and drugs are listed above,” offered the man behind the bar as Tony sat on the stool. “We don’t have a medical license, so all drugs are oral.”

“Do you know Sonya?”

“Don’ know no Sonya,” offered the green woman in a high-pitched voice with a smooth lisp. In spite of its sharpness, her voice caressed a deep spot within his loins. She never looked in Tony’s direction, but this didn’t stop him from wondering. When he regained a modicum of control, he went on.

“Thank you, miss. Do either of you other two know her?”

“Nope. Don’t know any Sonya,” offered the short, leathery-skinned man. “What about you, Linc?” he directed to the server. Linc just shook his mostly bald head from side to side.

Tony looked up and read the menu. “I’ll have a raspberry and lemongrass smoothie. Might as well have something to tide me over while I wait.”

“Wha’ you wai’n for?” yelled the green woman over the sound of the blender. Even at this volume, and despite its desperately high pitch, her voice once again brushed a longing within him. He coughed.

“Someone sent me to see Sonya, here at this gym. I’ve been given to believe she’s a regular. I’ll have to hang around until I find her.”

“Good luck, friend,” came the deep voice of the dwarf as he hopped from his stool. “I’m outta here, Linc.” The green woman stood with him.

“Don’t dig up any bones, Carl. Suet, keep those tentacles to yourself,” the bartender said, putting a pink drink down. Tony dropped a bill on the counter. “No charge for members.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tony mumbled as he picked up the drink. “That’s just a tip.”

“Well, thank you, sir!”

Tony’s eyes swayed in time with the hips of the green-skinned woman. Absently, the drink went to his lips. Grimacing, he tore his eyes to look down at the grainy pink drink. “Blech.”

Over the next six hours Tony sipped as many different drinks between asking his question to everyone who entered. Tony found no success as the night wore on, either in finding the woman Sonya or a palatable liquid. In fact, one concoction of orange, shitake and ginkgo with the dubious moniker “Remember Rise” specifically drew his ire.

Hours dragged by. He entertained himself watching some of the fittest of the female members as they came and went. He even went so far as to try some of the equipment, only to discover how ill-suited he was to the surroundings. Apparently he’d experienced plenty of muscle atrophy since his football days. By four in the morning he finally threw in the towel.

“I guess this was a snipe hunt, then,” Tony muttered to himself.

“A what?” the bartender named Linc asked from across the bar.

“A snipe hunt,” he repeated. “A snipe was a mythical bird that people in the twentieth century would send others to find.”

“If they were mythical, how did you find them?”

“That’s the point of the exercise—to make people look foolish.”

“Well, it worked. You look pretty flarking foolish, all right.”

A tiny suspicion rose in Tony’s mind. “I guess it is time for some sleep.” In the mirror on the opposite side of the room, Tony watched carefully as he turned to walk out the door. The bartender’s cosmetically enhanced blue eyes followed his movements, confirming his hunch. This place held his answer. Linc knew Sonya. Tony knew he must return. He needed to think of something to get either Linc’s or Sonya’s attention.

Tony stepped out of the gym into Portland’s perpetual drizzle. He stopped to let his eyes readjust to the night’s darkness. A gang of girls, each bearing multiple militant body enhancements of one form or another, sauntered down the middle of the pockmarked street like they owned it. As things stood on street level, they probably did own this patch of ground.

Tony decided he’d come back tomorrow and formally join the gym. If he didn’t stir anything up that way, he could always trail that Linc fellow. The decision made, he relaxed—a little too much. The largest mistake anyone could make in any world, especially ground level, involved not paying attention. Usually the payment involved a painful death.

“I hope Cin made it through the day,” he mumbled to himself. “I didn’t mean to be gone so—”

The world suddenly painted itself a parody of even Salvador Dali as a solid wall melted into a twisted pretzel, two of the girls melded into one distorted figure with two heads and six limbs, and the earth beneath him rolled like an ocean wave. Even his body joined the insanity as it wavered and slumped upon the wet pavement like a jellyfish taken from the ocean and dropped upon a rock.

Another shape grew out of the pavement, a giant green octopus with the head of a woman. Sometimes it waved two tentacles and other times eight. Tony couldn’t seem to care one way or the other. Drool rolled out of the corner of his mouth. “P’eas feed m’cat.”



* * *



Tony struggled to consciousness to the gritty strains of a classic oldie, “Persian Slide” by the Violent Slugs. A conversation took place just outside his understanding. Tony’s scrambled thoughts sorted out three distinct voices but couldn’t yet drag coherence of the words, or even a desire to interpret. No part of his body responded to his commands. His arms, legs, and other pieces he hadn’t yet identified as his own tingled like a thousand ants gnawing on each exposed surface. By forcing dominion over his rebellious body he managed the Herculean task of opening his eyes.

Even though only a single low wattage bulb brightened the room, the ants stabbed daggers into his eyes. Squinting, Tony found himself stacked behind boxes proclaimed Smirnov Vodka, Seagram’s Gin and Jack Daniels, mixed with kegs of miscellaneous beer. One portion of his mind wondered at the immense value if the boxes contained what they advertised. The illegal alcohol in those containers could allow anyone to retire with lifetime full medical in their choice of luxury resorts.

A new sharp pain, announcing itself in his wrists, brought the tenuous thing he called attention back to his predicament. Twisting his head around, he found golden tanglewire wrapped around his arms and legs. A certain trivial part of his brain shouted that amateurs tied his bonds. Everyone knew from solido that you either did two opposite figure eights, or you went around and around with a cinch wire between the limbs.

“Who’s he?” said a familiar high, velvety feminine voice.

“Who gives a rat’s testicle, Suet? He’s a corpie and wants Sonya. Vape him,” offered a male voice.

“Ya hear’ him ask abou’ his ca’? Maybe he’s ’ooking for her ’o fix his purry?”

“Probably a Metro trick. Maybe they figured out that she fixes pets.”

Quietly, Tony commanded his mutinous body to squirm to a point where he could view his captors. The balding juice mixer still wore his stained apron.

“It’s ‘veterinarian,’ Carl,” offered the bartender.

“Veteran or fixer, don’t make no difference to me. This feek needs to be buried,” offered the dark-colored dwarf.

“He don’t seem like a bad Joe, even if he is a corpie. He don’t cause no trouble. He even talk to the Nils.”

“We cou’ crash his f’at n’see if he’s go’ a furry,” said the green woman.

“Not a bad suggestion, Suet. When we’re done here, I want you to check it.”

“We ain’t gonna let him speak to Sonya?”

“You know how she is,” the green woman identified as Suet said without a single lisp for a change.

“Yeah, you don’t screen her and she’ll turn you into a lizard instead,” Carl mentioned, pulling a monofilament blade from his proportionally small pocket. “Linc, I say we screen her and let her give me the order to whack him and shove him into the sewer.”

“Already did. Instead of killing him, she wants to meet him in person.”

“What?!”

“Wacky biach. Why ya no’ make her screen him?”

“Do I look stupid? I mentioned that possibility, but she insisted. I told her she was crazy. You know Sonya.”

“Only thing I know about her hollowed-out head is she slug-thinks sometimes.”

“How soon before the drug wears off?”

“No’ sure. I jus’ gave him everything. No’ know his me’abolism.”

“Ain’t no matter.”

“True. Let’s strip and scan him,” Linc the bartender commanded.

“If’n he go’ even a finger nail file you may jus’ haffa ’ell Sonya he go’ an acci’en’.”

Tony let his body slump back to the floor, a much more natural state considering the tingling across most of his muscles. The rasping of Suet’s monochromic tentacles against his skin a few moments later nearly broke his façade. The mechanical arms made short work of his clothing without the niceties of unfastening them. Despite the rush of air against his bare skin, Tony remained still.

“Scan’s ’one. He’s got an ancien’ min’ jack and a mech han’ with a three go gauss gun with very shor’ range. A self ’efense gun, but ’ook the ammo. He wasn’ aim’n for Sonya with tha’.”

“He coulda if he got her close enough to use it. I still say vape him.”

“We see,” said the female voice as Tony felt the tentacles around his throat. Certainly those green monstrosities could snap his neck as easily as a pretzel. Instead he felt another tentacle around his waist. They lifted him and almost as quickly dropped him a meter or so to collapse in the bottom of some container. Even through his closed eyes he could see the frail light being stolen away. Opening his eyes didn’t change his visual information input—darkness. A cursory touch examination defined his cage well enough—a cylindrical plastisteel shipping container, usually used for carrying liquids. Muffled, the conversation continued on outside. He caught the meaning even if he missed every fifth word or so.

“Suet and I will take this one with us. You check his apartment and then call us. I’ll drive us around for two hours. That should give you enough time. If there’s no cat then this one will fall out of the air truck. Sonya can punish me if she wants, but we’re going to keep her safe.”

“Agreed.”

After a rough loading onto a vehicle, Tony searched with his bound hands, rubbing over the entirety of the interior. He felt nothing but smooth surface with no purchase, no weak point, no opening, and nothing to use as a tool or weapon. He leaned back and sensed the truck’s motion, but the ride flowed so smoothly he often couldn’t tell if they moved or not, much less the direction.

With his options exactly zero, he followed the advice his grandfather once gave him. “Tony, if you ever find yourself in a position that you can’t do anything…sleep.”



* * *



“Wake up in there. There’s no way the drug we slipped you lasted five hours.” Tony recognized the juice-tender’s voice—Linc.

“I’m awake,” Tony muttered groggily. “Why do you want me awake if you aren’t going to let me out?”

“There’s someone here that…”

A low and pleasantly feminine voice interrupted. “Let him out.”

“But you’re too important—”

“Let him out,” she said in a calm but firm voice. Quickly the barrel upended, dumping him none too gently onto a carpeted floor that smelled of urine. “But that other one. He’s a bounty hunter. We are well shut of him.”

“Hey, I’m not a bounty hunter,” Tony heard muffled from another barrel identical to his own. “You can trust me. I can prove—”

The bark of some high-tech weapon sounded, followed by silence. Tony tried not to think what that meant, but his mind fantasized a suitably terrifying outcome in spite of itself. At that moment Tony decided his nakedness would be fine until they decided he should have something to wear.

“Thank you, I think,” Tony said finally. He put his feet beneath him, but decided that sitting on the floor he posed a lesser threat. While others stood closely behind him, Tony only had eyes for an extremely tall, gaunt woman who decided on only half a hairstyle, the other side of her head bare of anything but undecipherable glyphs. She wore a simple, white linen dress that didn’t disguise the tattoos covering the majority of her body. He wouldn’t have given her a second look if he’d bumped into her on the TriMet, but here she unconsciously demanded attention. Tony found his body and mind reacting in unexpected ways.

“Welcome, Tony. I’ll be blunt and hope you will be as well. I so dislike wasting time.” Each Hispanic-accented word rolled off her tongue as if precisely cut by a laser. Tony managed to close his mouth and nod. “Good. I’d offer you some clothes, but no matter the outcome, you won’t be here long enough to offend anyone’s dignity.”

“Why am I here?”

The woman with skin the color of well-polished oak looked at him with the contempt one reserved for someone who’d passed gas in the confines of the TriMet. “Why don’t you tell me that?”

“I was told I could find Sonya at the Arcade Aerobics. As they talked about you while I was trussed up and nominally asleep, I’ll assume that you’re Sonya.”

“One must guess and guess correctly in life to survive,” she said cryptically. “You have exactly one minute to tell me why you wanted to speak to Sonya. If I’m not convinced, you’ll not only not be allowed to speak to her, you can join that bad rubbish over there—or worse, we might just bury you alive.”

“I have to say that normally I’d be afraid of such talk. I probably would’ve even been offended by such outright threats, but this hasn’t been an ordinary few days. To be honest, that seems like the sweetest thing anyone’s said to me. OK. You said be blunt, so I will. In brief, I want to join the Green Action Militia.”

He ignored the chuckles. Every instinct screamed that he must convince the woman in front of him, not the clowns behind him.

“Why should we trust you? What reason do we have to trust you?”

Honesty before deceit, Tony thought. “You shouldn’t, and you have none. I could give you a song and dance about the crap thrown at me over the last two days, but it could just be another corpie setup to try and trap—”

“We have to move,” said a voice behind him. “If he’s bugged, your time is up. They’ll be onto the Faraday cage gimmick if they’re quick.”

“I must say you haven’t given me much, corpie. I won’t lie. My inclination is to have you disappear.”

“Don’ be quick,” came the dangerously silky voice of the green-gemmed girl. “He has a furry.” Sitting on her left tentacle rode Cin bearing all the dignity of the Egyptian cat goddess, Bast.

“Cin!” Tony exclaimed. The brightly colored cat jumped down and marched properly over to her person. She brushed up against Tony with an air of ownership before examining the rest of the room’s occupants.

The tattooed woman bent down to offered her finger to Cin. The calico sniffed it daintily and gave it a gentle lick before returning to grooming her reddish coat. “A very handsome creature.”

“Thank you.”

“You can leave us now,” she off-handedly commanded the other three, not taking her eyes off the tiny bather.

“But Sonya, if he or the cat is bugged…”

“We’ll move shortly. The cage should buy us at least a few minutes. Leave us!”

“Yes, Sonya,” Linc offered meekly, gathering Carl and Suet by eye before drifting out through a door. Tony caught tiny noises just outside the door, placing her three compatriots with the accuracy of a life detector. Sonya flowed as if boneless down into a lotus position on the floor next to the tiny kitten. Her fingers played over the cat’s spine, eliciting closed eyes and deep rumblings.

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. My name is Sonya.”

“Uh, Tony. Tony Sammis.”

“What can I do for you?” Sonya asked with a voice that combined the innocence of a child and the world weariness of a veteran of several wars. She gently stroked Cinnamon.

“Funny, now that I’m here, I’m not sure.” Tony looked at Sonya for some sign. She never took her eyes off his cat. “I guess I’d say my life is over and I’m looking for a new one. An acquaintance gave me this.” Tony held up his hand to show the writing across his hand by a dying woman. This drew Sonya’s eyes.

“Jasmine’s handwriting. She has the sight of people. I’ve never known her to be hasty or wrong in her judgment.”

“I can’t speak to that. You knew she was dying?”

“Dead, now. She died six hours ago. And yes, I knew. Her liver burned under the weight of a corporate poison. As an employee, they used her as an experimental animal without her consent. Once she learned of this, she used the fire and death in her belly against the corporate machine.”

“Sounds like what happened to me. I’m not exactly waiting to die, but they’ve taken everything from me. My chance of fighting what they’ve done is effectively zero. I have no job prospects above garbage sorter. I haven’t the skills nor enough cash to out-migrate. I might have to live on welfare and live in a commune or worse, a relocation camp, or even worse on ground level. No health care and recycled food to eat.” Tony shuddered.

Sonya gently shook her head. “Superficial reasons to join us terrorists, or as we style ourselves, freedom fighters. You should out-migrate or get another job.”

Tony sighed. “It’s not just that. I’ll be honest. I used to be everything you despised. I followed all the lines. ‘Get it while the getting is good.’ ‘Do unto others before they do unto you.’ ‘He did what everyone else did, he just got caught.’ ‘If I’m quiet, maybe they won’t notice what I’m doing.’ All the signs of the times. They were my watchwords. They aren’t what I believe in anymore.”

Sitting up, Tony pressed home his point. “I don’t like any of my choices if for no other reason than I don’t want my old life back. For quite a long time now I’ve believed that something was wrong with my life, or maybe the lives of everyone everywhere. Someone once said, ‘Might for right!’ For some reason it lit a fire in my heart that’s only just now starting to burn with a fury.”

“King Arthur, I believe, Mr. Sammis.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Any start is a good start, but tell me, how would you use the fire in your heart? Don’t answer, just think.

“Come back now, Linc,” she said with no increase in volume. The threesome appeared quickly enough to assure Tony they’d been listening. “We must process him quickly. Also, send an emergency communiqué through the cells that the health club is compromised.

“Until I see you again, Mr. Sammis,” she concluded, taking his hand in hers. Despite her warmth of personality, her hands felt like unpowered prosthetics. She shook his hand firmly and turned to leave at an unhurried speed.

Linc directed Tony through another door that led to a loading dock, shrouded to the outside by curtains of stained plastic sheets. The back of a closed truck stood open and as one they hustled inside. Tony almost backed out, as the rear section held a hanging cage of metal straps in the shape of a human body, plus a rack full of cattle-prods and other less savory devices with sharp edges. The trio closed off his one escape route by pulling the door down. Without a beat the truck pulled away from the loading dock.

“In here,” Linc said, motioning him toward the cage.

“Uh, why?” Tony balked.

“Noobs. Did you ever think your implants might just do more than they tell you? We have to neutralize them before you give all of us away.”

“Uhhh…” Tony continued to hesitate.

“Freaking corpie, either get in or we boot your ass out the back of the truck, and you can find out what happens when you fall two hundred meters to ground level. I don’t know what’ll get you first, the Nils or the bugs.”

Tony eyed a cage that curved just where a person curves and wore a wig of wires dangling from strategic points. The wire-hair twisted down into a single braid that disappeared into the back of a moderate computer array.

“Will it hurt?”

“Depends on what they got inside you,” Linc said, “but don’t worry, we’ll patch you up better than new. Now get in the bleeding cage!” He motioned with a gun for emphasis.

By wedging his arms down to his side, Tony could just squeeze into the contraption. Linc brought the cage door around, closing him in tight. The latch didn’t have a lock, but was situated well away from Tony’s hands.

As the cage faced the wrong way, he couldn’t see anything except a wall with dubious stains and markings.

“Everyone clear. Fire one!” Linc cried out. A very mild electric shock wandered across Tony’s body, feeling more like a tickle than anything painful. “I have three implants. Start with the scalp.” Some metal device poked into his hair, scratching his scalp above his right ear. “Seven centimeters back and two down.” The probe moved accordingly. “Right there. Clear! Fire two!”

Expecting the tickle once again, Tony remained calm. Instead, his brain revolted at a sensation like acid filling his skull. His body convulsed uncontrollably within the constraining chamber. He must’ve blacked out because next thing he knew he only felt something wet and viscous slowly dripping down both of his cheeks. One of the wet trails fell into his mouth and he tasted the salt of his own tears. He felt nothing else at all. No sensation of limb or self.

“Help,” he barely managed to croak out.

“Shut up,” Linc snapped.

“Next. Right shoulder, front.” This time he saw the probe as Suet positioned a 2 meter-long pike with a blunted metal tip against his flesh, bracing it on the floor. “Six centimeters down. Perfect. Clear! Fire three!” The shoulder he couldn’t feel now flew into a rage of hot, stabbing pains. With force he didn’t know he had, his arm tried to break free of the cage. Tony experienced, not quite heard, the sound of his humerus breaking beneath his bicep. The agony muted the other pains spread through his body. The cry he let out wasn’t conscious.

“Left wrist.” Tears rolled freely as he watched the sharp pole move down to the other side. Tony could barely feel it press against the flesh. “Good enough. Clear! Fire four!” Unlike the pain from the previous two attempts, his hand went completely numb from mid-forearm down. “No reaction. Increasing charge. Fire five!” Again, Tony thankfully felt nothing.

“OK, it’s gotta come off. All of it.”

Tony took one look at the saws-all in Carl’s thick hands and fainted.



* * *



With only one door and no windows in the cell, Tony paced around the eight-by-eight cell in boredom. He once again touched his new hand just to reassure himself it still existed. He never missed the old one, and the new one seemed identical in every way. He’d lost consciousness before its removal and awoke after its replacement. No discomfort from either shoulder or head lingered. Linc had been as good as his word.

“Hey! I didn’t agree to go through all this just to be locked up,” he shouted at the door. When no one offered him even a word he plopped onto the only piece of furniture in the room, a fabric-covered metal bunk bolted to the floor. “How long are you going to keep me in here?” he questioned the silent walls for the eightieth time. He would’ve done more than yell, but he found banging on the plastisteel brought only a bruised palm. “I want my cat back!”

He’d awakened in this room some unknown amount of time after his trucking ordeal. Since then, eight institutional-style meals had appeared through a slot in the door. At least they’d given him some clothes, even if he did look like a deliveryman in a utilitarian green jumpsuit. “I guess we didn’t have a meeting of the minds after all,” Tony muttered. For about the four hundredth time he went over it again. “OK. Reasons they might keep me: security, my intentions, a show of faith.”

“Not a bad deduction,” said a muffled voice from the other side of the door. Old fashioned keys rattled in the lock. “Actually, we waited only to include you in the mission we have planned.” Linc’s bald head popped through the door. From the look of the stains on his orange smock, he looked like he’d just left work, but obviously not at the same health club if the embroidery “Sunrise Athletics” were any indication.

“OK. What are we going to do?”

“Not we, Mr. Sammis, you.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Look, if I had my way, corpie, you’d already be ground up and sluicing your way down a recycle chute.” Tony decided not to react, visibly anyway. “But Sonya has her own mind about these things. She wants to see how dedicated you are. If you succeed, then she may trust you further. If not, well let’s just say the police don’t take kindly to Greenies.”

“I’ll ignore the implied threat. With that in mind, what’s my mission?”

“You’ll find that out shortly. Follow me close, but don’t say nothing.” Linc’s massive paw, fingers stubby but thick, handed him a small penlight.

Linc lead Tony from his dry cell down two flights of stairs and into a twisting maze of mold-covered, masonry passages that oozed moisture. Linc’s broad shoulders marked his way through halls covered ankle deep in putrid liquid the consistency of custard. The Greenies clothing proved competent, as the work boots held the fluid at bay. The smells, on the other hand, ranged from bad to worse including at the base of them all the bitter tang of excrement, urine, and eau de rotting garbage.

Conduits, steam pipes, and random corroded and broken wiring wove in and about their path. Even had he stooged for the police, he couldn’t have found his way back through the spider webs and rusted equipment without an inertial locator. Only his light on Linc’s broad back kept him from losing the rest of his way.

Thinking about it, he knew little of the GAM that he could possibly use against them, even if he wanted to. He didn’t know whether to feel heartened by this or depressed. Instead, he decided he should just do the job they asked.

He dearly wanted to ask questions, but the first time he heard voices above his head through the ceramcrete ceiling, it muted his desire. He shut off that train of thought and quietly picked his way through the muck, avoiding the worst of the sewage and smells.

For over an hour Linc never slowed. Tony began to wonder if they were lost together when Linc pointed to a nearly rusted-out metal door. “Go in there and you find your instructions,” Linc whispered.

“How do I get back?” he softly murmured into Linc’s ear.

“All your information is in there. Don’t mess up. We’ll be watching.” Linc turned and sloshed off back through the drains.

Tony watched until he disappeared from sight and then even longer until the light of Linc’s torch faded around a distant corner. With a shrug Tony went up to the door and pushed it. Instead of opening, the door fell inward to land with a combined cacophony of metal on stone and a loud splash. Tony froze.

A brief flurry of sound above him startled him, but settled down as quickly as it began.

His torch lit up a small room with a white plastic table high and dry atop a rust-stained ceramic landing. Perched on the table sat the incongruous sight of dozen brightly-colored, floating balloons bearing the proclamation “Get Well Soon” tied to a gaily wrapped package and a vase full of flowers. Next to this absurd group sat a solido tablet and an archaic ring comm, still used as a disposable method for making nearly untraceable calls.

The solido tablet read, “Take the package, flowers and balloons to Mercy Hospital. They are a delivery for Janice Gordon. There is a map through the underground to Mercy in the memory [press here].

“The chemical components of the bomb are inert and thus undetectable until activated by water. You have until the flowers are watered to get away. From a safe place call 555-1215 after it is reported on the net.”

“A hospital?” Tony said aloud. Without hesitating he picked up the ring comm. “Five, five, five, one, two, one, five.”

In the background of the standard bone conduction he heard a very faint countdown. “One minute to detection. Fifty-seven. Fifty-six…”

“You can’t have even gotten there yet.”

“It’s a hospital with sick people—”

“Don’t be a pizda! It’s an executive hospital for those with full medical,” came a harsh male voice. The line went dead to the sound of “Forty-two. Forty-three.”

“Can I really do this?” His own words mocked him as they echoed in the underground. “It’s a big stretch from thinking things are wrong to killing people.” Three times he reached out to collect the deadly delivery and three times he pulled back. He walked deliberately around the table. “At least now the clothes make sense.” Tony wiped the sweat from his hands on his pants before picking up the flowers in one hand and the balloon-adorned package in the other.



* * *



“Listen, candy-striper, I’ve been delivering here for two years and nobody’s ever scanned my packages before,” Tony barked with as much vinegar as he could muster. The young redhead’s pale skin blanched even whiter. Tony wondered if she could possibly be more nervous than the TriMet air-show racing through his stomach.

“I’m sorry, but that’s what they told me I was supposed to do.”

Tony could only wonder if the GAM used this to get rid of him. He imagined Linc over his shoulder with a remote detonator going for a twofer, getting rid of an interloper and another strike against the megacorps. “Whatever,” he replied after a moment, rolling his eyes. “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. I just don’t wanna be late for my next delivery.”

“Thanks. I’m really sorry,” she said putting the packages into a huge door in the wall and pushing a large red button.

“So does that hair come with a fire extinguisher?” Tony flirted to cover the shakes in his hands.

“Blarney.”

“No, really, you don’t see many true redheads these days. Want to get some dinner?”

“No. Sorry, my husband wouldn’t approve. I’ve already got one boyfriend. He wouldn’t stand for two.”

Tony sighed in relief when the indicator behind her showed green. “Well, can’t blame a guy for trying,” he covered up. “Maybe next time.”

Leaving his package for delivery within the hospital, Tony turned and tried hard not to sprint for the front door. He breathed rapidly, sweat trickling down and soaking into his shirt, but not yet showing through. He got in line for the TriMet. He kept himself from fidgeting only by making false notations on his solido pad. He pushed his way on the first TriMet that showed up to the platform, not caring where it went. The TriMet bus clock above his head counted off the seconds between success and failure. He knew if the bomb went off before he got off the bus, he would be caught. The bus would instantly home to a police holding space.

“Those Spiders sure are coming back,” said a man in the seat next to him, gazing off into space where his paper was displayed on his retinas for him alone.

“Huh?”

“The Aussie Spiders?”

“Sorry, I don’t follow sports.”

“If you say so.”

Tony visibly cringed when the TriMet pulled up in front of Portland Metro Police department, only three blocks from the hospital. “Can my luck get any worse,” he muttered. Swearing under his breath, he climbed out of the car, one of two people brave enough to do so.

“Audit?” asked the other courageous traveler.

“Naw. I’m here to pick up a delivery,” he dissembled uncomfortably. His eyes darted over the imposing black monolith and the one place he didn’t want to be any closer to.

“Oh. Metros say I made a seven figure bonus last year. It wasn’t even high six and I have the receipts to prove it.”

“Good luck to you. Those police auditors can be vicious.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve been losing sleep for the last two weeks.”

Tony shortened his stride. The lie he offered provided him with the best option. If he turned around and caught another bus, he’d be advertising his guilt. No one changed TriMets at Metro—no one. Whipping out his solido pad, he programmed frantically, finishing just as the audit victim passed through the door, waving in irritation. Tony didn’t understand, but had to act as if he’d been everywhere as a courier, as though being here meant nothing in particular. He fearlessly pushed through the whispery nano-curtain, barely feeling the full body scan it performed.

Inside the foyer stood a smiling twenty-meter propaganda solido of a Metro in familiar blue body armor without his helmet. Gentle music, spiked with subliminal messages of respect, floated down. “We keep you and yours safe!” The imposing solido bent down and gave a young girl back her purple teddy bear. The adrenaline running through Tony’s system shed the subliminals like rain off a Burberry.

Turning to the right he found a brutally ugly Metro sergeant sitting atop a five-meter-high obsidian desk obviously designed to intimidate anyone who hadn’t already been cowed by the display in the immense foyer.

“I’m here for an a-a-audit,” the man stammered.

“Show me your chit,” the sergeant barked.

“Chit? The m-mail said to show up today or be forfeit.”

“You have to have a chit to get back to the auditors.”

“You didn’t send me a chit!”

“Read the law, civ. It clearly reads that you’re required to show up one week before your audit to get a chit. Without it we can’t do a background check on you.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Not much, civ. Pay the tax and the fine.”

“But it’s wrong!” he said turning purple with rage.

“Civ, I’m going to give you just one chance to turn around and walk out. If you don’t you’ll be doing five months harvesting yeast in the Antarctic Sea, and that’s after I break all your teeth.”

The man blanched and backed away slowly. Tony caught a foul whiff as the man turned and ran out the front door.

“Stupid ghit,” Tony said in fake derision, handing his solido pad to the desk sergeant. “I’m here for a pickup from Officer Nguyen.”

“Pickups are in the service entrance on the level ten pad.”

“Yes, Officer, I understand that’s normal, but I was told to report here to pick up something personal, as you can see on the pad.” He put as much respect in his tone as he would for the CEO of a major corporation.

“Yeah, I can see. Lee Nguyen is on vacation right now and he didn’t leave anything here. You have your databases crossed.”

This didn’t surprise Tony, as he’d accessed the publicly available Metro files for just such an absentee. “Well, I don’t want to anger you, Officer. If you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing. I get paid either way. I better check with my office, though.” He stepped away from the desk and spoke into his ring. “Triple Five, Eight Thousand.”

“Stanford Courier Dispatch.”

“Hey, I’m here at Metro…” Tony’s luck finally played out. The air in the foyer compressed, stealing his breath. He didn’t even hear the explosion.

“What was that?” Sergeant demanded. Tony’s heart stuttered in his chest. Three full seconds silently passed before sirens within Metro began to wail.

“This is Dispatch. What do you want?” Tony’s ring comm demanded.

“Oh, they say they have no pickup from Nguyen.”

“One second…I show no pick-up at Metro or from Nguyen. You must have a damaged pad or downloaded the wrong DB. Please return to base.” This also didn’t surprise Tony.

“Affirmative.” He cut the connection. “I’m sorry, Officer. I seem to have a damaged pad. Can I get that back so I can get it fixed?”

“Here.” Frantically coordinating some other action from his net link, the sergeant barely offered him a glance. Tony scooted out the door with a heavy sigh. The audit victim stood quivering at the landing platform.

“Did you hear that?” Tony asked as the TriMet number 6784 pulled up. His fellow traveler didn’t say anything, but he had a blank stare and his skin bore a mottled paleness, not to mention the foul whiff coming from his pants. Tony felt he’d be just as happy to get away from this place.

Tony dared a look in the general direction of the Mercy Hospital to see a malignant gray cloud slowly billowing around the skyscrapers of downtown. The thick smoke didn’t lose opacity as it expanded out and down. A silence that never existed in any city now cloaked Portland like the sheet pulled over the recently deceased.