Synners

31

Reaction was chipping at the edges of her nerves, but she refused to give in. Take a little walk now, react later. The images kept flashing in her head, mixing with the sight of L.A. in its lopsided meltdown. The guy wearing buckskin chaps over nothing, dancing on top of one of the many rentals abandoned on La Cienega while overhead a National Guard heli buzzed like a monster insect and an amplified mechanical voice demanded that he get down-yah, that was real time. Flavia swinging the sticks at her face, that wasn't real time. The kid with the heelprint on his forehead doing a stage dive off the top of somebody's stretch limo into the crowd swirling around the abandoned vehicles in a human river, that was a mixture of both real time and… what? Nonrealtime? Unrealtime?

Un-fucking-real. The real real and the real unreal and the unreal real-just how high up in the stupidsphere are we, and how much higher are we going to go?

No use asking Ludovic. He looked grim and blasted and anxious. A couple of LotusLands would get that fucking pinched look off his face, but LotusLand wasn't on the menu today. No use asking the kid, either, but only because he just might know. And the Beater? Forget about it. He was so far from home, he didn't even know what drugs to take anymore. Yah, closing up that synthesizer and going into biz maybe hadn't been such a bad idea. Too bad she couldn't explain that to Mark now. Or maybe she could.

Don't do it. The thought cut sharply through the gathering fog in her mind, and hysteria was pushed back again. As they stood in the dubious shelter of the doorway of a disaster-porn bar, she watched the people milling around in the street or struggling to move south. Somehow they'd crossed through that without getting trampled and without the kid, Keely, losing his precious bundle. For all the good it would do them.

"We're going the wrong way," Keely insisted. "We want to go south, to the Mimosa. We don't want to go toward Hollywood." He pointed unnecessarily at the sky, where smoke from burning buildings dirtied the air and tainted it with the smell of poison. "If there's one place the virus won't be, it's on the Mimosa."

"Whatever we do," Ludovic said, "we aren't going to do it too well till the streets clear."

"Yah. The little virus," said the kid. "Found its way out and got real active."

Gina gave a short, humorless laugh. "Mark always did hate L.A. Liked the clubs, liked the music, but hated L.A. as a whole." She caught Ludovic looking at her and frowned. Sometimes he was a lot harder to figure than he should have been. "What," she said.

"I was wondering," he said slowly, "how many of those people are infected." Pause. "Like us."

He said the last two words so low that at first she wasn't sure she'd heard them. "Who's infected?" she said, exasperated.

"I am. You are. You know that."

She glanced at the kid, who was squinting at Ludovic in an edgy way. "You feel like your head's gonna blow up? I feel fine. Pretty fucking tired at the moment and not in any fucking mood for anybody's fucking bullshit because I lost a major portion of my goddamn fucking life today, but all that aside, I feel just stone-fucking-home swell. So why don't you jam a ham in it and hang till somebody squeals for it?"

Angrily she turned away from him and folded her arms, clamping her hands on her shoulders to make them stop shaking. Ludovic tried to turn her around. She twisted away, but his hands kept at her, like fucking birds that thought she was a feeder. And Jesus, but wasn't that just like it all, though, old Feeder Gina, feeding them this and feeding them that, feeding them videos and feeding them more videos and feeding them the fucking paint off the walls of her mind and then shaving off a layer of wall and feeding them that, feeding Ludovic and feeding the Beater and feeding Mark, always feeding Mark, even after he was dead, she was feeding Mark, and the feeding would just go on until she had to cut off pieces of herself.

Ludovic was trying to pull her close, and she could feel that fucking need again. The fucking need to feed. But there was something else with it, too, and she could feel that well enough, just as she'd felt it that night, a need to give as much as a need to take, but she didn't want to have to deal with that now or with anything else, and besides, what the fuck did he think he had to give her, anyway.

She gave him a hard shove, and suddenly she was caught in a flowing rapid of moving bodies. There was a brief flash of Ludovic's startled face before she was carried away.

Carried away. Now there was something she knew all about. She fought for her footing as people bumped and jostled her from every direction. No worse than a hot night in one of those clubs, with the bangers working it out on some tiny dance floor, uh-huh; listen close, you could practically hear the music, something hard and nasty even if it was synth. A little traveling music, please, we got forty-seven miles to go here, and it's barbed wire all the fucking way.

Her hand landed on a shoulder, and the guy who turned around to look at her was pale with panic. He tried to pull away, his lips moving unheard in the roar.

Say again, doll, I didn't hear you that time.

He tore her hand from his shoulder and dived away. Sorry, wrong number. A pounding came from somewhere off to her left, and she struggled toward it. A kid banging his fists on the hood of some showy old stretch limo. Christ, who would abandon a limo here, now?

She made the sidewalk, stumbled half a block with the flow, and then dodged between two buildings and down a narrow alleyway. She wanted to stop, think, breathe, but the nasty bridge was running from the top all the way down, hammering every step of the way, and she had to keep moving. Looking for Mark. Even when you're not looking for Mark, you're looking for Mark. And finding him.

Out of the alley, onto another street, where someone brushed by her hard, turning her around to face an enormous sign. BRENDA SAYS: MADNESS RULES. Good thinking, Brenda. People were bumping against her, beating against her. She turned away and plunged toward the street. The crowd here was a little thinner, easier to get through, and her unnecessary effort sent her into the side of an abandoned rental.

"Are you crazy or just toxed?" somebody yelled.

Ask again, doll, you didn't hear what I seen.

A distraught face loomed close to hers as she leaned against the rental, trying to catch her breath. If it had been him, it wasn't now, and she couldn't save him even for a little while. She pushed away from the rental and made her way through the milling crowd. Overhead the smoke was getting thicker along with the burning smell. She blinked up at the sky; the shapes were writhing, swimming, but not pulsing. Not pulsing. Fucking Ludovic was fucking wrong, or maybe he was fucking infected but not her-

Looking for Mark, that's yours, isn't it.

But she wasn't looking for Mark, not now. Then she heard a familiar voice call her name, and she was gone again, that nasty bridge chasing her through the maze/obstacle course of buildings and people and vehicles, vehicles, vehicles, shit, where were the piers, the fucking sand, that all came next, so where the fuck was it?

Oh, doll, wouldn't you like to know?

She passed another limo, this one with three-four people sitting on the roof like a bunch of refugees on a capsized boat, frightened faces watching another large portion of L.A. swarm and flow around them. Fucker of a way to spend the afternoon, ain't it, folks? She passed a cop perched on the hood of a large, four-seater rental, looking resigned. That was it, then, civilization was officially collapsed if the cops had stopped ticketing abandoned cars and roosted on them instead.

The day was darkening around her, the smoke lower and the smell stronger. Faces swept past her, parting around her going the other way. She kept fighting her way through them. They'd all come out from under the piers, but where the fuck could they all have been going? But that wasn't him, and that wasn't him, and that wasn't him-

Hands caught her from behind and tried to drag her back. She strained to pull away. Don't hold me back now, ain't been anywhere near forty-seven miles, and all that barbed wire-

Two arms wrapped around her, lifted and carried her struggling through the crowd into the shelter of a doorway. The Beater was in front of her, then, trying to say something to her. She kicked out at him. The arms let go, and she collapsed on the pavement. Ludovic pulled her up again.

"What the fuck did you think you were doing?" he yelled into her face, shaking her a little.

Doll, why do you keep on askin me that? You must be seeing something I didn't say.

"She was looking for Mark," the Beater said.

"Fuck you!" She turned to swing on him, and Ludovic caught her again.

"We're still going the wrong way," the kid said insistently, apropos of nothing. Maybe that was his function in life, Gina thought, a one-man Greek chorus that gave directions.

"It's all right," Ludovic said. "We'll hide out in that cellar." He looked at Gina. "Your friends. Loophead,"

"Bad idea. They've got sockets," she said.

He shook his head. "I've seen their equipment. They're not on-line, they should be okay."

He practically dragged her the whole way to Fairfax Avenue with the Beater and the kid pushing her along, and Flavia Something was there to let them in. She gave Gina a hard whack with the sticks, but she let them in.

– -

The Beater gave her an abbreviated account of Valjean on the terrace. Gina was curled up on a mattress in a far corner, passed out, asleep, in shock, or perhaps wide awake for all Gabe knew. He felt as if he'd passed the point where he could fold up, that he would keep going until something forcibly struck him down.

"No Visual Mark," Flavia said when The Beater had finished. She looked over at Gina and then back at him expectantly, running a hand over her sticks.

The Beater shook his head. "No. No Visual Mark."

Like hell, Gabe thought.

"Where is everybody?"

"Caught out in the shit. Don't let's talk about it." She drifted over to a pudgy chair and dropped down on the cushion, watching Keely examine the interface equipment. There wasn't much to the stand-alone units, Gabe saw. They had maybe half the bulk of the console back in his pit-the fake console, he reminded himself-not quite square, nothing showing except the connections and a small panel above them, exterior controls for connect and disconnect.

"Want it, it's yours," Flavia told the kid, beating the sticks on the arm of the chair. "We're off the stuff now, I'd say. But you haul."

"Forget about it," Gabe said.

Keely nodded. "No shit. It must weigh about a hundred pounds. But Jesus, I'd love to take it apart. Better yet, I'd love to have Sam take it apart. Sam and machines, it's like magic."

Gabe nodded, squirming inwardly. He hadn't given Sam a thought. He hoped she hadn't been caught out somewhere. Out in the shit. Don't let's talk about it.

"You got a dataline down here?" Keely asked Flavia.

"Stone-home junk now." She pointed across the room with a stick, at a spot opposite Gina. "Motherfucker on tilt."

Keely picked up his laptop. "Let's see just how much on tilt the motherfucker really is."

"Give 'em hell, Jack Hack," Flavia called after him, looking up at Gabe skeptically.

Gabe shrugged. "I wouldn't totally rule it out."

Her skeptical look deepened as the sticks beat rapidly on the arm of the chair, raising a little dust.

"Hey," Keely said, beckoning to him. "You're on. You and the ladies."

He went over to where Keely was unfolding the laptop on a stool in front of the large, silent screen in the wall.

– -

Jack Hack. Keely grinned to himself a little. He hadn't heard that one in a while. He pulled the connections out of the bottom of the laptop and unwound them, thrusting one at Ludovic "Plug this in for me. Keep your hand on it, and if I tell you to yank it, pull real hard."

He called up the stealth program while Ludovic hunted for the right outlet. The sight of the launch screen filled him with a sudden and intense feeling of well-being. More than that- whatever the exact opposite was of the feeling he'd had looking at the virus on the screen in the penthouse, that was how he felt. Big. Strong. Pumped up. His mind seemed to set itself as he set each launch figure, priming itself along with the program.

Ludovic was craning his neck, trying to get a look at the screen without letting go of the wire. "Stealth program?" he asked.

"Yah." Keely grinned at the screen. "Just got to treat this fucker like any other hack, any other hard-ass institution." He set the program in motion. It was faster this time; the program had learned plenty from the experience at Diversifications. He watched the numbers shift on the settings as the program reminded itself of what it needed to do to get around the infection. What was it Sam always said? Something about walking on the ceiling, walking on the walls, walking through the walls…

"Almost ready," he said. "Just getting up to speed here."

The program and him together. His heart rate had picked up. Damn, but it felt good to be doing something real. "Sure wish we had some music right now."

A moment later something hard and driving blasted out from every corner of the room. He saw Ludovic clap his hands over his ears and then grab the wire guiltily.

"Sorry!" Flavia yelled. The volume came down a bit, but he could still feel it strongly, vibrating the floor under him. That felt good, too. Almost like the old days, when he'd put on the 'phones so as not to disturb Jones in his death coma and then shifted into high gear.

"Keep your hand on that feed," Keely said to Ludovic, nodding his head to the music. "What I'm gonna do…" One of the settings stuttered and went blank. He reconfirmed it quickly and was glad to see it bounce back. Couldn't wait much longer, or the program would revert to inactive. "What I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna make it believe it's all coming outa that terminal." He jerked his head at the dataline screen. "It'll run around in there chasing its shadow and me, and Stealthy here'll just tiptoe on by and see what the virus missed."

"What makes you think it missed anything?" Ludovic asked him. He was sure enough Sam's father-he had all of her smarts but none of her information.

"Nothing's perfect. Except maybe the music. That's a stone-home throwdown mover. Who is that?" he called over his shoulder to the little one with the sticks.

"Loophead," she called back. "What'ud you think?"

Keely nodded his head to the beat, watching the shifting numbers settle into familiar synchronization. He could read numbers the way other people could read road signs; a gift. "I feel it." He glanced up at Ludovic, who had a wary look on his face. Fasten your seat belt, homeboy, it's gonna get weirder. "Turn it on."

Ludovic obeyed. The screen lit to blank white. Keely waited until he saw the dark spot start to gather in the center. "Okay, don't look at that till I tell you it's safe. There's some kind of funny subliminal shit there, bigger than old-style subliminal shit. Finds your trigger and pulls it. Got your hand on that plug? If it dives for me, I don't want to be there."

He could practically feel Ludovic getting hinky about it, but he didn't bother trying to reassure him. The laptop screen had split into three columns, and the numbers were moving hard, the fooler loop and the mirror twisting around and around somewhere in the system in a choreography that could outdance just about anything, at least for a little while.

"Glad someone's having a good time," he heard the Beater mutter.

Keely grinned, letting himself move to the beat. Jesus, but it felt good to do something real. "Yah," he said, "Yah, the wind can't blow everywhere at once, even a hurricane's got an eye to it."

"What if it isn't wind? What if it's fire?"

He glanced over at Gina, kneeling on the mattress watching him. She looked bad, worked over, and hung out to drip off. Yah. This one was for all of them.

"Fire burns everywhere at once," she said.

"Wrong," he said, grinning at the screen. Stealthy had found the gaps, and it was worming its way in now. Any minute they were going to look at the big screen and get a surprise. "Right in the center of the flame, it doesn't burn at all. Check it out sometime. The problem-" He glanced up at the wall monitor and laughed a little. Almost ready. "-the problem is getting to the center without getting singed on the way in, and that's only impossible in the real world. Keep your hand on that plug, my man."

But it was an unnecessary reminder. Old Ludovic had a stranglehold on that cable; he might have to remind the guy not to yank it too soon. And Stealthy was in now, really in. On the wall screen pinpoints of light winked in and out between the rapidly changing shadows, escaping the dark areas and anticipating the light ones.

"Check that," he said, pointing at the screen. "Fooling it into another frequency now. Just for long enough to get a message through. You still got those chips?"

There was no answer. Ludovic was gaping at the screen. Never mind, homeboy, it only looks simple.

"Gabe? The chips? The ladies. Marly and Caritha."

"What about them?"

"I told you, you're on, you and the ladies. I need them now like I never needed nothing in my life before." He sat back a little and unbuttoned his shirt. The sweat was starting to pour off him the way it always did when he was cranking hard. There was no fucking feeling in the world like this, he thought.

"Now?" Ludovic said uncertainly.

He held out his hand, wiggling his fingers.

"All of them?"

Keely felt a flash of irritation. "This is no time to get candy-assed, my man. I told you anything could be useful. Your ladies know how to get through shit. Now give 'em to me one at a time till I say stop or till they're gone, whichever comes first, and I hope we got enough."

Ludovic dropped the first chip into his palm. He flipped open a drive-slot and pushed the chip into it. Stealthy's numbers doubled as it accepted the data, adjusted its range, and told it what the situation was and what it had to do now. In his mind's eye he could practically see the simulated ladies taking it all in, pumping themselves up.

A new line appeared at the bottom of the screen suddenly. The numbers were going too fast for even Keely's practiced eye to follow, racing left to right, but he recognized them the way he recognized his own face in the mirror.

"Stone the fucking crows at home!" he shouted. "This stuff s infectedl"

From the corner of his eye, he saw Ludovic go pale and look at Gina.

"Whoa, not that way," he added quickly. "You got a dose of the Fish here. Didn't you know that? Guess not. God, no wonder your program was so goddamn beautiful. How come I couldn't see that when I hacked you, why didn't it show then?" He laughed. "Because it didn't want me to, that's why. Shit, I got to stop taking stupid pills. Oughta be real easy to break that habit now."

It felt as if the music was boiling in him. The little one with the sticks, Flavia, had come up behind him to look at the laptop screen. "You read that?" she said incredulously.

"The only thing you really have to know is the difference between on and off," he said. "Night and day. Right and left. In and out. Down and up. Beat and rest." The numbers began to slow, and he ejected the chip, holding out his hand for another. "However you want to think of it, that's the way it is, but you got to know the difference." He took the next chip Ludovic had dropped into his palm and slipped it into the drive. "I figure it's eighty percent sure the Fish is aware at least part of the time."

"Aware?" Ludovic said.

"Alive. Intelligent. Conscious. Knows where-to."

"A conscious virus," Gina said flatly. She got up and went over to sit near Ludovic, who was watching the screen again. Stealthy was shifting along with the virus now; some of the points were coming up in the shadowed areas, and instead of winking out, they seemed to melt away.

"The virus is taking over what it thinks is input from that terminal." Keely ejected the chip and held out his hand for another. He put it in, and the numbers gave a jerk, backtracked, and then waited. He ejected the chip and reached for another.

"Don't anybody ask me," Ludovic said a little weakly. "I'm just the supplier. I don't know what he does with it."

Keely laughed. "I smoke it. I mainline it. Do it again."

"Yah, I've seen 'em get this way," Gina said. "If we actually get to the Mimosa, you'll see real fucking maniacs."

Maniacs? She wanted to see a maniac? He stripped his shirt off, whipped it around over his head, and let it go. It sailed across the room and landed on the Beater, who was keeping his distance.

"Is it really that good?" Ludovic said, putting another chip in his hand.

Sweat was dripping into his eyes. He scoured it away with his fist. "You got a short memory. If we could run your head-mount and your hotsuit here, you'd fight me to do this."

Ludovic was silent for a moment. "Maybe."

"A what?" Sam said. She looked from the bottom left corner monitor where Art had parked his image to the cam next to it.

"It's a commercial," Art said again. "For body armor."

"That's got to be an encryption," Gator said, coming over from her work island. "Is it out of Phoenix or Alameda?"

"L.A."

Gator shook her head. "Dump it before it bites you."

"But it's clean," Art said.

"Nothing out of L.A. is clean now," Gator told him.

"It got here the same way I did," Art said, sounding insistent.

Gator frowned and turned to Fez, still sitting in her work island. Fez looked past her. "Sam? What do you think?"

Sam rolled her eyes. "God, ask me an easy one. I don't want that responsibility."

"Tough," Fez said mildly, getting up slowly and coming over to her.

Sam rubbed her forehead. "Art, can you tell anything else about it? Anything at all?"

Art's image froze for a moment. "It's something I used to know," he said finally.

"That's a major help," Sam muttered. She looked at the cam apologetically. "Sorry, Art. Gator's right, dump it. It might be harmless, but nobody ever got infected from not receiving something."

"Don't be so sure about that," Art said. "And you didn't let me finish. It's from Keely."

Sam felt her mouth drop open. "Are you sure?"

"I told you, I know you, I know you all." Abruptly Art's image was replaced by a street scene, the pov panning from a row of vandalized storefronts to a grotesque thug with a spiked ring piercing his cheek and a serrated knife in one hand. He lunged, and it cut to the knife bouncing off another man's chest. Sam stared, feeling goose bumps sweep over her in multiple-assault waves.

"Sam?" Fez put a hand on her shoulder, bending to look at her.

"That's Gabe," she said, pointing at the second man. "That's my father."

The pov tracked him as he entered an office building. There was a sudden jump and flicker, and then he was sitting behind a desk, looking at a monitor. The pov cut to a shot of the screen over his shoulder.

YOU HAVE BEEN HACKED! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHAHAAH!

"There are some things Gilding BodyShields won't protect you from," said a male voice faintly.

The image froze. "This is what it really says," Art said. The words on the man's screen melted, writhed, and suddenly reformed.

live n frfx 2 do SSW

Z-U + – xRs

dare

Leaky

GGF

"Leaky's the clincher," said Rosa. She was standing on Sam's right with Percy. "That's what his family used to call him. He was a bed wetter."

"Whack that family," Percy said darkly.

"What about the rest of it?" said Gator.

"Christ," Sam said, laughing. "Say it out loud. 'Live in Fairfax to do south-southwest.' We're due south-southwest of Fairfax. 'Zee-you over dare plus minus xRs.' Give or take however many hours. I have no idea what GGF is. Maybe 'gotta go, folks.' " She laughed some more, feeling her eyes starting to fill. "I guess he figured the one thing the virus wouldn't be able to read was his accent."

"I wonder if that son of a bitch has been hiding out there all along," Rosa said. "If he's just been camped under some rubble all this time, I'm going to bash his brains in."

"The boys's always had far more talent than brains," Fez said. "Isn't that right, Sam?"

She nodded, wiping her eyes before they could overflow. She couldn't say why Gabe's image had appeared in the commercial Keely had sent, but knowing Keely, it had to mean he at least knew something about him. The ambiguity of the body armor bothered her, though; she couldn't decide whether it meant Gabe had been hurt in some way, and if he had, whether he would be all right. There are some things Gilding BodyShields won't protect you from. Her eyes began to fill again.

– -

Gabe was watching when the fluctuating points of light suddenly began winking in and out much more slowly. He tightened his grip on the wire.

"Yank it!" Keely yelled. Gabe held up the plug, letting out a relieved sigh. The kid looked impressed. "That's what I call reflexes."

"I yanked it as soon as I saw the lights changing," Gabe confessed. "Just a hunch." He shrugged; actually, it had been more of an accident. The feed had come out as soon as his hand had tightened on it.

"Good for you. Sometimes all you got is one good guess." Keely stretched one arm and then the other over his head. "God, that felt great. It was…" He paused, looking puzzled. "Great." Then his eyelids fluttered, and he fell backwards, Flavia catching him just before his head could hit the floor.

"Jesus!" Gabe leaped over the laptop to kneel down next to him. He felt for a heartbeat, trying to not to panic. The virus couldn't kill anyone without sockets, it couldn't be that bad-

"Just guessing myself," Gina said tonelessly, "I'd say he fainted from hunger. When's the last time you ate?"

Gabe looked at her, startled, taking notice for the first time of the ache that had been growing in his stomach over a period of hours. "Christ, you had to bring it up." He turned to Flavia.

"No food here," she said. "But I got a car. Wait till dark. We'll go shopping."