27 – Cold Mary

Tony pounded on the door. He wasn’t one to go charging into a home because of some yelling, but the scream had been blood-curdling, if faint. It had sounded like someone facing the cold, hard realization of impending doom.

“I didn’t hear it,” Addie whispered.

“I barely did. Nora picked it up, though, so it wasn’t my imagination.” Tony thumped the door again with his mechanical hand.

“Should we break—” Just as Addie started to ask the question, the door opened, but just an inch. A man’s wrinkled face peered through the gap, his eye bloodshot and rheumy.

“What?” he growled, his voice thick with phlegm.

“Open up,” Tony barked, shouldering the door so it rattled against the sturdy security latch.

Addie, a little more diplomatic, said, “Sir, we heard a scream.”

“My daughter,” he said, then broke into a coughing fit, falling back from the door as his face reddened and he had to lean over.

Tony looked at Addie, tapping his shotgun impatiently. “We should force it.”

“Wait, Tony. Give him a chance.”

Tony frowned. Why was he so damn fired up to get in there? Was he some kind of social worker? Sure, it might have to do with the job, but that wasn’t what was getting his blood pumping; he felt like he needed to help whoever had screamed. “C’mon, open up, old timer. We need to check things out. We’re investigating the murders.”

The guy was still coughing, so his response was garbled. Tony glanced up and down the hallway, noting they were already drawing an audience. “Too many damn people around. Don’t they have shifts to work?”

“Is everything okay, Tony?” Addie asked, resting a hand on his mechanical elbow.

He shook his head. “No, I’m feeling stressed.” Why though? He’d been calm earlier. He’d been fine when those wannabe thugs had crowded up on him and Addie. “Something’s making me feel trapped,” he managed to say through clenched teeth. Addie’s eyes widened, and she spun, looking around, up and down the hallway. “I think… I think there’s Dust in the air. Just a sec…”

Tony turned away from the door, his grip tightening on his shotgun as he glared toward the encroaching crowd. They looked on the verge of violence—all of them! There were women, men, and even teenagers coming toward them from both directions. Many clutched things that could be construed as weapons, from kitchen knives to handheld tools. Everyone had a mad, angry look in their eyes.

Tony lifted his shotgun, his mechanical hand tightening on the grip. He tried to get between Addie and the crowd, but they were coming toward him from both directions. He felt hot and sweaty; his breaths were coming fast, and his heart was pounding in his ears. He wanted to loosen the collar on his coat, but he didn’t want to take his hands off his gun. He took aim at the knees of the two men closest to him. He depressed the trigger halfway, the whine of his gun’s batts adding to the general sense of hysteria as he shouted, “Get back!”

He was about to fire, about to let these fucking stack rats know who should and shouldn’t be trifled with, when he felt Addie’s hand on his wrist, cool and steady. He looked down to see that she wasn’t looking at him. Her other hand was outstretched, and her eyes were bright—shining. They had that signature Dust glow some people got when they were operating Dust tech. He’d seen it in her eyes plenty of times, but never this bright. Her gaze was fixed on a point down the left-hand corridor, but Tony couldn’t see what she was staring at.

He watched her face, some of the heat and agitation fading from his mind as he focused on her eyes, losing himself in the pools of swirling amber mixed with the bright blue of her irises. Gradually, he became aware of murmuring, confused voices. He looked away from Addie’s eyes and realized he could think clearly again. When he lifted the gun, ready to respond to the incoming, threatening crowd, he found that things seemed very different.

There weren’t dozens of armed agitators—just a handful of confused-looking men, women, and kids. He didn’t see any knives, but a few of the men held wrenches or hammers. Still, they weren’t even coming toward him; they were leaning into each other, shaking their heads, blinking their eyes. They were just as confused as Tony was feeling. Stranger than any of that, none of the people were even close. The nearest pair was a good ten strides away—a man holding the arm of a frail, stick-thin woman in a mauve bathrobe.

“I think I did it, Tony!” Addie announced, her voice thick with pride.

“What the hell

?” Tony asked, still fixated on how strange things were. He could have sworn the lights had been red-tinted before, but now they were just dim, white-yellow LEDs.

“Tony! I moved the Dust around down there, and I could feel someone else pulling against me.”

Finally, things connected in Tony’s fuzzy brain. Addie had just saved them from a nightmare. He’d been about to open fire on all these people, and maybe they’d been about to attack him, too. “The spark,” he croaked, throat dry, mouth full of cotton.

“Yes!”

“He was making me feel…” Tony trailed off, unable to vocalize how he’d felt. He realized he was still thinking of the spark as a “he,” despite what the men at the intersection had said. Why was that? This was new to him. He’d seen sparks do some things, but he’d never had one mess with his mind.

“Tony, we should go. Maybe I can see a trace of where that Dust was coming from.”

“But the scream…” Tony turned back to the door, only to see that the old man had pushed it closed.

“He said his daughter, the first victim’s sister, was having a nightmare! Didn’t you hear any of that?”

Tony licked his lips, frustrated by how out of it he was feeling. It was like he’d been drugged… He pulled a health report from his nanites—his blood toxicity levels were normal. The nanites in his lungs were reporting typical contaminants, nothing out of the norm. “Could the spark have caused it? The girl’s nightmare?”

Addie looked up at him, concern in her eyes. “Maybe? I don’t know, T. I just know I messed up a pattern down there. Let’s go!”

Tony shook his head, furiously trying to banish the last of the cobwebs in his brain. He gripped his gun and nodded. “Show me where.”

Addie darted forward, holding one hand out, almost like she was feeling the air as she went. He wanted to ask her about it, to ask her what she’d felt, what she’d done. He wanted to ask why she hadn’t experienced the same…madness that he had. Was it the spark, or was he just losing it? He’d never been one to panic, but it sure as hell had felt—

“Here, Tony,” Addie said, standing at a T junction where the corridor they’d been traversing met another. Tony looked left and right, noting the dozens of closed doors and a handful of open ones. The rust-colored paint on the plasteel doorframes was universally chipped and scratched; the walls were marked with all manner of graffiti, from gang symbols to phrases like “corpo hell,” scrawled in jagged marker or paint. Litter lined the walls, and stains of all sorts marked the hard plasteel floor.

“Can you see anything?” he asked, staring at a man wrapped in a rough gray blanket propped up against one wall. He looked to be sleeping, but Tony didn’t like not being able to see his hands.

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“I think so. Traces.” Addie tugged his sleeve, pulling him the other way.

“Good. Keep following them.”

At first, Addie walked, but she gradually increased her pace until they were jogging. She ran past a cluster of workers, clearly just back from a shift. They stood at a junction, beer pouches in hand, laughing and talking loudly. They scowled and stared, but didn’t say anything as Addie passed; of course, their restraint might have had something to do with Tony hot on her heels, carrying his shotgun before him.

“It’s getting thicker!” Addie cried.

“Just be careful!” Tony said, surprised by how quickly she was moving. A sudden thought struck him, and he looked over his shoulder for her drone, and, sure enough, there it was, humming along behind him, up near the ceiling. He turned back to find that Addie had stopped before a door a few meters ahead.

“This is it!” she hissed, pulling her shiny flechette pistol from its holster. “There’s still Dust drifting around the base of the door!”

Tony didn’t need to be told twice. He stomped up to the door and pounded three times with his mechanical fist. Then, he moved to the side of the door frame, putting himself between Addie and the apartment. He wished he had audio implants; he’d tell Nora to increase the gain and see if he could pick anything up in the apartment. He also wished he had some kind of high-frequency imaging he could use on the walls or door to detect movement on the other side. As it was, all he had were his thermals, and they weren’t picking anything up through the plasteel.

This whole thing had sort of gone sideways on him. He’d expected to have to do some sleuthing. He hadn’t expected some kind of mysterious mental attack, and then a run through the corridors while Addie chased some damn invisible clues. Maybe this was why Eric never signed him up for Dust-related jobs. Nobody answered the door. “Nora, ask the stack AI to open this door.”

“One minute,” his PAI replied.

Tony glanced at Addie. “Feel anything?”

She shook her head. “Not like before. Are you okay?”

He nodded. “I’m feeling fine. That was some weird shit, though. Um…” He tried to smile, but his lips were dry, so he paused to lick them. “Thanks.” Addie looked like she’d just won first place at a corporate talent competition.

“We’re a team.”

Before Tony could reply to her very typical, corny response, Nora interjected, “Takumi corpo-sec has cleared your request. Door opening.”

Tony readied his shotgun, and then the door panel beeped, and the bolts slid open. While the latch was disengaged, he gave the panel a kick, and it swung inward, revealing a truly desperate living situation. Food wrappers and empty drink pouches littered the floor of a five-meter by five-meter cube. A bathroom alcove occupied one corner, featuring a sink, toilet, and shower stall. A sleeping shelf was cut out of the opposite wall.

The overhead LED blinked intermittently, shedding sporadic light onto the scene, and Tony caught a whiff of fecal matter in the thick, steamy air. He didn’t have to do anything special to clear the room; he could see every corner from the doorway. “You’re sure it came from here?”

“Yes, why?” Addie was behind him, trying to see through the narrow opening.

Tony stepped forward, running his visual input through various spectrums, wondering if his normal vision was missing something. He’d just switched to infrared and was studying a weird smear of color near the shower when he heard something to his right, in the corner near the door. It sounded, to his hyper-alert sensibilities, like someone had stepped on one of the discarded food containers. He whirled, aiming the shotgun, priming the batts.

Addie stumbled to the side as he elbowed her in his haste to turn, but his sights lined up on nothing—an empty corner. “What the—” That was when he felt an icy cold stab in his chest, like someone had plunged an icicle into him.

He gasped, fell onto his ass, and then the world flashed with cobalt light as Addie screamed, “Get off him!”

The ice slid out, a woman’s disfigured face appeared for just a fraction of a second, inches from Tony’s, and then she was gone, and Tony could hear her retreating feet. “What the fuck?” Tony wheezed, slapping his chest where the ice had been.

“She was faded! She put her hand into you!”

“Goddammit! I hate this shit!” Tony growled, clambering to his feet. “How’d you see her?”

Addie grabbed his arm, helping him to stand. “I had a hunch—you know, those men said she was a fade, right? So I thought, maybe she’s in here, hiding. I thought maybe I could see her if I faded, too, so I did.”

Tony nodded, still rubbing his chest. “Was that bitch trying to pull my heart out?”

Addie’s eyes widened, and she yanked on his zipper, opening his coat so she could slide her hand inside, pressing her palm against his chest. It felt impossibly warm. “Maybe! Oh, Tony! I’m sorry I didn’t try to spot her sooner!”

“Hell, Ads, you just saved my ass, and I let her go. Dammit!”

Addie grinned fiercely. “No, I’ve got her. Humpty’s on her tail.”

Tony laughed. “You’re a damn genius! Let’s go!”

Addie nodded and ran through the door, cutting to the left. “Follow me!”

Tony raced after her, feeling incongruously like he was dead weight on this job. Wasn’t he supposed to be showing Addie the ropes? “Damn sparks…” he grumbled, watching as she turned down a corridor marked Park Access. “Is she running to the park?” he called.

“Yes! She’s almost there.”

How the hell could she be chasing that woman with her drone while sprinting through the building? Could she just tell the drone to chase? That had to be it. Imagine how damn useful that little drone would be if they could get its AI operational! He focused on the situation at hand as they raced through a big intersection, and he had to leap over a cluster of boys playing with tiny robotic rodents. The park would be busy, which meant a change in tactics.

Tony adjusted his shotgun sling, tightening it to his side, then pulled his pistol out of his shoulder holster. Gun in hand, he stretched his legs, outpacing Addie. He eyed his comm window, activating his channel with Addie. “Use comms, Ads. Tell me where she goes.” He hated leaving her in the dust in potentially hostile territory, but he didn’t want to lose the spark, and Addie wouldn’t be far behind.

“She just reached the park. Oh my gosh! She jumped over the railing! Okay, okay, she’s limping, but it wasn’t as far as I thought. She’s crossing the park—it’s like sand-filled play boxes and little planters filled with synthetic ferns.”

Tony could see the archway ahead, backlit by the artificial daylight. He saw the railing in question and picked up speed. If the spark could jump over it, so could he. “How far down?”

“The drop to the ground? Six or seven meters. If you’re going to jump, angle to your right! There’s a sand-filled play area below.” Addie’s voice was breathless; she was really trying to keep up.

Tony burst through the arch, took one more big step, then leaped, angling to his right as Addie had suggested. As soon as he cleared the railing, he scanned the enormous park space, spotted the sandpit, and smiled as he realized he was right on course. The “park” was probably fifty meters square, and stretching up to the next stack level, giving the ceiling, painted blue and lit with full-spectrum LEDs, the convincing illusion of being the sky.

When he crashed into the sand, he let his forward momentum carry him into a somersault. Springing to his feet, he continued sprinting toward the far corner of the park. “Am I going the right way?”

“You’re almost on her! On the other side of that big planter. She’s—oh, Tony! She’s running toward a bunch of little kids!”

Tony didn’t bother trying to go around the big planter. It was about waist high, made of wood-printed plastic, and filled with various types of genetically modified fern plants, likely engineered to be hardy, require less light and water, and provide enhanced air filtration benefits. He jumped up and crashed through them. When he broke through, he saw what Addie had indicated: the woman, the spark, was just a few meters away from a plastiglass-lined playpen where a handful of toddlers played.

She wore a green- and white-striped gown—something you might expect to see a hospital patient wear—and nothing else. Her feet were bloodstained, her outstretched hands grasping like she was reaching for an invisible handhold, and her hair was wild. More than anything, the thing that condemned her in Tony’s mind was the ululating howl of agony, anger, and despair that she emitted. It was constant, only broken by occasional choking gasps as she ran.

Tony had to make a snap decision, and he did it. He set his sights on her head, led her just a tiny bit, slowly exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. His .40 caliber pistol, loaded with high-pressure, polymer-coated ammunition, barked harshly, and a crimson rose blossomed at the base of the spark’s head as she stumbled, mid-step, and collapsed, sliding over the plasteel pathway to crash into the waist-high plastiglass barrier protecting the children.

“Oh, Tony!” Addie gasped, obviously still watching through Humpty’s eyes.

He looked up, scanning for the drone, and saw it there, hovering above the children’s play area. People were screaming by then, and parents were jumping into the play area, grabbing their kids. Tony jumped down from the planter and started forward, walking toward the crumpled body.

“Yo, asshole, what the fuck?”

Tony ignored the voice, continuing toward the spark. She wasn’t moving, and he wasn’t surprised; it had been a very good shot.

“I’m talking to you, asshole.”

“Tony,” Addie said through comms, “I’m running for the stairs, but you’ve got a lot of people converging on you—like ten guys.”

“All right, I’ll be okay.” Tony squatted to grab the dead woman’s shoulder, turning her so he could see her face. Deep, jagged scars ran from her forehead down in an X-pattern across her nose, all the way to her jawline. “Sorry that shit happened to you,” he whispered. Squatting there, he was aware of the footfalls, the muttered curses, and the whispered accusations as people gathered on the path behind him.

When he stood, he held his pistol by his side and made eye contact with as many of the people in the angry mob as he could, passing his gaze from left to right. “This is Cold Mary, and she had to be put down. She was going to kill those kids. Now, I don’t want to kill more people today, but if you all want to be stupid, I can be stupid too.”