As he wriggled out of the hole and into the hallway leading out to the main underground room he saw Cass standing silent next to the edge of the wall, a pistol in each hand. As he approached she glanced over at him and waved him back. She followed, grabbing his head with one gloved hand and holding his ear close to her face.
"There's two of them. They just finished off a set of Fuk Ching and are deciding what to do with them."
"Tonx said I need to get Chow to follow me" said Fed.
"I heard" she whispered. "I'll cover you."
"How?" he asked.
"Trust me" she said, her lips brushing his ear. "I'm a professional. Now get ready to run."
She stepped back towards the edge of the wall and bent down to something Fede couldn't see. Then she stood and glanced at him over her shoulder. She winked, a wry smile on her lips, the spiked strands of her black hair only lightly covering her eyes.
Then she stepped out into the room, her hands throwing back the edges of her coat in a wide sweep. Even from where he was standing Fede could read the confidence in her stride, the cocky power, the absolute certainty as she raised her pistols level in front of her.
"Hey, boys" she said.
A crack like the sound of a gatling gun going off filled the room, bang after bang as colored smoke suddenly flew up from something on the floor beyond. Cass's guns went off and she dived, out of Fed's vision, into the room. He ran forward.
The edge of Cass's coat flickered out of view and into a cloud of blue, sheets of smoke billowing up in green and red and yellow. The smoke glittered, metal powder flickering through it, jammer for the soldier's sensors. He caught sight of one of the soldiers as he ran towards the stairs, saw the long rifle stop in its slide away from him, reverse its motion.
Then he was up, on the stairs, his heart in his throat. He flew, bounding up the steps two, then four, then six at a time, leaping up and out of the stairway and into the room beyond.
He landed on the warehouse floor and almost fell, stopping dead into a tight crouch. The floor before him was littered with bodies and smoldering chunks of metal, a thick acrid smoke hovering a few feet off the ground. A flash of light caught his eye and he dove, a set of tracer rounds streaking through the air where he had stood. He slid to a stop and looked up, saw Poulpe carrying Chow in his arms almost at the far door.
"Chow" Fede screamed, but it did no good. The robots were firing more intensely now, tracer round cover split between him and a couple other spots in the room. Fede saw two of the soldiers move from the far wall towards him.
He stood up and waved his arms in the air. "It's me! I'm the programmer!" he yelled, running parallel to them towards Chow.
More tracer rounds filled the air and something cut into his arm, his leather coat suddenly smoking.
"It's me" he screamed, running faster now. One of the Fuk Ching, a corpse on the floor, inexplicably leapt up before him and rolled towards the soldiers, one arm trailing twisted and bloody behind him. Fede heard gunfire, but kept loping forward, uncertain, his head low.
"Chow" he screamed again, this time looking up to see Poulpe turned, Chow in his arms like a child, arguing as they looked back towards him. Poulpe let Chow fall as he recognized Fed, bringing one arm up to aim at him before he realized his weapon was gone. Chow landed on his ass in a heap, howling, and Poulpe sprang towards him into a dead run, letting the machine wrapped around his body choose the most efficient motions as it hurled him through space at Fed.
Fede felt blind terror strangle him, saw the spittle curl out in thick drops from Poulpe's wide sneer, felt time slow so there was nothing but the Frenchman's face and his own painful death rising up at him. Then he was twisting, running, his back almost horizontal in a tight curve over his pumping thighs, the bend in his legs getting deeper and deeper, each step pushing him father and faster as the sensors in his legs adjusted their tension, their give, to meet his need. Fede ran, and the faster he ran the further he flew.
Something sparked on the floor in front of him and he leapt, his speed turning his jump into a sudden free fall, his body curving forward as his center of gravity revealed itself. His legs were almost weightless and his torso spun, his head heading towards the ground. Feed saw the floor rise up beneath him, the horizon to his rear lifting until he saw Poulpe, upside down, charging towards him. Then he landed, his shoulder taking the impact as he rolled across the floor in a clattering heap and was up again, his feet finding purchase on the bloodstained floor as he danced past one half of a Fuk Ching, over entrails spilled across the floor.
Fede didn't have time to notice. He ran, his angle of approach changed now, ducking and weaving. Another set of tracer rounds flew past his legs. They were trying to cripple him; they weren't shooting for his body, Fede thought.
As he got closer his goggles adjusted for the shadow, the tracer rounds blanking everything out in half-second flashes. There was nothing there. The two corrugated metal walls met over the solid cement floor, metal studs in a line six inches from their junction on both sides. Fede tried to stutter to a stop and failed, tipping over and rolling again, his head battering against the concrete before his feet fell into place in front of him just before the wall, leveraging him up and sideways. He saw Poulpe reaching for him as his head rose and twisted, the force of his motion pulling him standing and then over himself, backwards into the wall.
And through it. He felt the metal give way like sheets of plastic and he fell, a foot or more, onto his elbows on the tarmac in a dark place. His goggles cranked up the light enhancement as he scrambled to his feet, a sudden pounding as he heard Poulpe hit the wall in front of him. A tiny light on his leg blinked in time with a similar LED, lonely in the darkness on the corner of the wall. Some sort of ID recognition Cass must have installed. Fede hugged his knees for a moment, gasping desperately for breath, and then stood and turned.
In the dim monochrome of his goggles the motorcycle in front of him looked like some sort of animal, a sleek solid carbon-fiber monstrosity of overdeveloped torque-producing machinery. Most of the fairing had been removed except for a tiny wind guard, the shiny metal and black carbon-fiber pieces glimmering like scales in Fed's vision. A helmet sat on the seat, a nearly vertical affair meant more for mounting than sitting on. The wall behind him clanged again, and several loud bangs were followed by giant dents appearing in its surface.
Fede reached for the helmet, pulling his goggles down around his neck and plunging himself into darkness as he did so.
"Tonx?"
"Yeah, Cessus?"
"Why you smell so bad?"
"Shut up Cessus."
It was quiet, a stillness broken only by Cessus shuffling around in their tiny space, struggling to get comfortable next to where Tonx lay in the darkness.
"It's only your legs, Tonx."
"I know. That's why I need you to shut up."
"They got surgeries for this, you know. I heard about these Icelanders, they done some
crazy
shit."
"I know, Cessus. I know. That's why I need you to shut up. I need to figure a way to get out of here."
There was a long silence then, the only sound an occasional vibration as the soldiers above jogged nearby their location. What they were doing they couldn't tell.
"Tonx?"
"Yeah, Cessus?"
"You mind if I smoke?"
Somewhere in Beijing a traffic controller, seated in front of thirty monitors flickering different views of each traffic intersection in the city, was in the process of losing job. He was crouched over the control board, both hands tracing quick circles in the air, his mouth flapping wetly and silently. He had just called his boss and told him that the AI in control of the traffic system wasn't responding anymore. His boss, who had been trying to enjoy a very expensive exotic massage with a disappointingly overweight Korean call girl, had run into his office and opened a terminal to discover that things were working fine. He even called his administrative assistant to verify against recent satellite imagery.
"There's hardly any traffic at all, you idiot!" he said.
"I know sir! That's the problem, sir!" said the traffic controller. "It's early Saturday morning, sir! There should be a LOT of traffic!"
"You're fired!" his boss said, terminating the connection.
It was a bad decision.
The Beijing West Railway Station was an enormous complex, thousands of trains running like clockwork. At one time it had been renowned for its efficiency and security, police saluting smartly in every hallway.
Not now. A man, large for China, wearing a pink shirt and baby-blue pants sporting cleverly interwoven Domino Pizza icons strode quickly toward track #12. The conductors' lounge was near there and despite meager attendance on the long-range lines in recent years the maglev trains still ran regularly, even early in the morning. The man held a stack of six pizzas in one hand, his other hand lingering near his face, massaging the thick black moustache there.
He came to the conductor's lounge door and knocked three times sharply, doing his best to straighten his back and remember his lines.
The door opened and Mr. Bei Ke opened the door.
The man recited eighteen words in Chinese as one long word, sung slightly out of tune and decidedly not the way any Chinese person would.
Mr. Bei Ke blinked. He had been a conductor for nearly two years now, mostly taking night shifts because he could get away with smoking in the cab of the train. He peered out at the strange foreigner holding the pizzas and didn't like what he saw.
"Mei you" he said, pushing at the man's arm. He pointed towards the center of the station, towards the administrative offices. The man's arm didn't move, and neither did the man.
"Uh, ah, um… it's free!" said the man, breaking into a big smile. Mr. Bei Kei's coworker, also named Bei Kei, got up from the lounge where they had been watching a cooking show and approached the door. Mr. Bei Kei 2 was much larger than Mr. Bei Kei 1, and fancied himself to be a bit of a roughabout. He puffed out his chest and stepped in-between the two.
"Mei you!" he said, authoritatively. As he did he noticed that the pizza boxes seemed to all be full, which was unusual. Normally when the bigwigs in the main offices ordered food they got drugs included, which made the pizza boxes sag.
"Hanyu zenme yang? How do you say?" said the man, pointing at the pizzas.
"Hanyu zenme yang" chuckled Mr. Bei Kei 2. He said something rude about foreigners, still eyeing the pizza. A moment of decision came and he leaned forward and snatched the pizza boxes. Mr. Bei Kei #1 immediately made a fuss, tossing his hands about and rushing to the doorway to peer out and down the hallway.
"Hanyu zenme yang?" the man said again. Mr. Bei Kei #1 turned towards him, now seriously wondering if foreigners all had mental deficiencies that made them deliver pizzas to the wrong address in the middle of the night while trying to improve their bad Chinese.
The man grabbed the back of Mr. Bei Kei's head and shoved the muzzle of a gun so deep down his throat his Adam's apple bulged like some sort of bizarre scrotum. Mr. Bei Kei 2 dropped the piece of pizza he had been hastily shoving down his own throat, his eyes beading in sudden tears.
"Hanyu zenme yang, motherfuckers" said the man.
As soon as Fede had put on the helmet he discovered the same sort of map layout superimposed over his view as the one that Cessus had forwarded to his goggles. Stats on the bike ran along the left hand side of the helmet's faceplate, the right hand side framed in one long thin pale column. He'd found thick motorcycle gloves inside the helmet, felt them auto adjust to a snug fit as soon as he pulled them on. As he crawled up onto the bike it started itself, a tiny red bar flaring to life along the column, darting upwards in time to the throaty growl. Feed found himself laying across the bike's tank, and as he sat he felt the seat slowly reach up and wrap itself against his ass. He couldn't touch the floor, and didn't know how he was going to kick off the kickstand. Fede sat in the dark, the monster bike underneath him growling and shaking, unable to see or hear. He looked around, trying to make out the features of the room as he sat in the dark, trying to shuffle the bike forward or find some lever or switch that would release him.
Fede saw a tiny white countdown in the corner of his vision, noticed it as it went from 3 to 2. He scrabbled for the handlebars.
The doors blew off the front of the tiny shack built into the fake rear wall of the warehouse accompanied by carefully aimed smoke bombs and a magnetic charge designed to throw off any electrical sensors. The bike tore out of the hole and past the spinning smoke bombs so fast Fede felt his tongue mash down against his Adam's apple, felt his individual vertebrae compress. Tiny glyphs in the left of his field of vision showed the bike auto shift from second to third to fourth gear faster than he could read. The map flashed, a sharp bend in the white dotted line indicating that he was supposed to turn.
Fede gently leaned on the left handlebar and the bike dove for the ground, the tires licking up pavement like it was candy. Fed's field of view flashed red and then clear again in a rapid staccato and he bounced against the auto control, pulling out of the curve just before his kneecap was spread like liver pate across eighteen meters of cement. The bike, sensing a straightaway, pushed forward again, flicking through gears in quick, heady surges. Fed realized he was roaring between warehouses, saw the map showing a vast empty space ahead of him. As he drew closer the map expanded, showing a label on the wide blank spot: Lake Beihai.
He realized he had the throttle pulled wide open, knuckles clenched, and gently eased off the accelerator, peering ahead for the turn he was supposed to take in the dim light ahead. Sparks flew up from the ground ahead of him. Someone was shooting at him.
Jerking his head around he saw a humvee bearing down on him, Poulpe leaning out of its roof still wrapped in the mechanical carapace, a tiny pistol held with both of his thickly gloved hands. Fede had let the bike almost idle out as he tried to figure where he was going and now he cranked it, tossing the front tire up before the bike's frame bent itself and realigned to the torque, shooting him forward. He saw the turn now and leaned into it, setting the angle and sliding along it like he was on a rail. The adrenaline overload in his brain finally pierced the fog of panic and everything clicked into sudden, painfully bright crystal clarity and he
drove
, hauling back on the throttle as he wove through another two turns, tight alleys in the maze of warehouses. The bright lights of the humvee behind him winked out as he left them behind, the bike flying ahead like a rocket.
Fede entered a straightaway, a long run the map said should take him past four or five separate warehouses before he came to a broad road. He pulled back on the throttle again just as he noticed a bright light descending from the sky. Two hundred meters ahead and above him a matte black military helicopter bristling with weaponry and antenna was falling slow-mo through the sky. It was bright because it was on fire, big gouts of flame pouring from the armored panels on its flank. Fede slowed to a stop, blinking stupidly as he saw it sink and crumple against the ground.
There was a boom. Fed's helmet covered his face but he felt the heat against his chest, through his open jacket. His kneecaps felt suddenly burnt.
A giant insect flew in then and tried to convince him to get moving. Fede realized he was in shock, that he was hallucinating. The insect was nearly three feet long and looked like a giant pink penis. It had a propeller, too, a couple of them. The thing spun lengthwise a few times before stopping in a horizontal line level with the ground, gaudy red lights along its length running in series to Fed's left. Fede shook his head and reached for his helmet, trying to ignore the thing's frantic spinning around as he did so.
Then it stopped spinning and turned towards him and a little green rocket flew out of its tip, leaving behind a tiny trail of propellant, and Fede realized he wasn't hallucinating. The rocket went right over his left shoulder and as he jerked his head to see where it was going he accidentally pulled on the throttle and jerked forward again, almost falling over as he wove left. The explosion behind him pushed him up and he was moving again, parallel to the water between two warehouses.
The big bug appeared floating ahead of him, spinning counter-clockwise and then clockwise twice in quick succession before he picked up speed. It aligned itself with him and the red lights flashed along its length, pointing forward. Fede rode, and it popped out of sight heading upwards.
The warehouses gave way to a broad field and a tiny service road. Fede slowed slightly as he came onto it, curving right. As he rounded the side of it he saw the bug ahead of him, further down the road and parallel to the warehouse he was passing. He picked up speed, noticing as he did so that they were heading further away from the main road and the route marked on the map.
As he approached the bug it spun a couple times towards his left, stopping briefly as it bobbed gently in the air to flash its lights to go left.
"I hope you know where we're going" muttered Fed to himself, easing off the road and into the dirt. The tall weeds there made it impossible to see, and as he bounced and rattled across the ruts he began to wonder about the miracles of irrigation, about how far they'd taken the use of ditches here in China.
Then the bug was in front of him again, its strip of red lights flashing in unison, hovering steadily in place. He slowed, then stopped.
Far away down to his right he saw the familiar yellow lights that marked the top of a freightliner. It was good to see, although the driver was apparently having some sort of trouble. The top of the cab was shuddering and shaking every few seconds, waving even. As it came closer Fede heard a crunching sound, followed by a tremendous roar and the squeal of tires. The bug blinked again and floated off ahead of him.
Fede edged forward and up a sharp rise, the bike hunching over to move his center of gravity as it climbed. Then he was up and onto a four-lane highway littered with dark, motionless cars.
Fede stopped and looked to his right, noticing as he did so the lights of the city rising up against the clouds, giant towers glittering in a rising spike. He looked to his left, nodded dumbly at the giant freighter laid neatly across the entire length of the road. People were slowly coming out of their cars, punching comm buttons as they called their security system providers to threaten lawsuits for their cars suddenly turning off "as a deterrent against theft."
"You crazy-ass motherfuckers" breathed Fed against the inside of his helmet. A little motor whirred to life, whisking his hot breath away. In front of him the bug spun and bobbed, point towards the city.
Fede turned, noticing that as he did so the cars nearby and for a few hundred meters ahead had started flashing their lights, their internal speakers blaring some sort of emergency warning. The people who had been swarming onto the road vanished, darting for their cars, and Fede slowly leaned on the throttle, eating up the empty road.