VI: A RIVER OF BLOOD
A deluge of shimmering, viscous liquid beats down onto the Gleam's darkened streets. The alleyways run thick with it, and when the stricken city's emergency lights flare red, it shines like a river of blood.
It's just fluid from the heat exchangers, Min tells herself. Water, oil, and a whole slew of industrial chemicals. It won't hurt you unless you drink it. This so-called "gleaming rain" has been falling for decades: an endless iridescent drizzle against the city's neon-and-chrome skyline. But now, in the dark of the Blackout, it pours down in a torrent, lashing at her head and churning around her ankles.
Something must have broken up there. She shifts uneasily in her father's oversized raincoat. Which means no more temperature regulation. Some parts of the city are about to get very hot, and others will get very, very cold.
Min urges her feet to move, but they won't obey. She's never walked these streets before, not even with bodyguards. Her parents always forbade it.
Remember what Willow told you, she repeats to herself. Three stops across the city, that's all you have to do. Get the key, open the gate, then reach the sanctuary. Just take it one step at a time.
With a grimace, Min slaps her legs, beating the life back into them. No more standing around, waiting for some miracle to save her. If she wants to survive, she's going to have to save herself. Lowering her head, she sloshes forward, leaving a churn of crimson fluid in her wake.
***
Min presses her back against the side of an abandoned tenement, huddling behind a pile of refuse. It's taken her five hours to get here, avoiding the main streets, winding through cramped passageways. She's made it this far by avoiding detection, but now her path forward is blocked. A bulky figure slumps against the mouth of the alleyway, clutching a broken stun prod. His graftware arms, swollen with synthetic muscle and sheathed in armored plastic, shimmer wetly in the emergency lights. There's no way past him without being seen.
A City Enforcer. He could help me, maybe. Get me where I need to go. She feels a bright, irrational burst of hope, and leans forward to catch the Enforcer's attention. But as her head pokes out into the alleyway, she catches sight of a dark shape floating at the enormous man's knees. A drowned body, bobbing in the floodwater.
Looks like a teenager, Min thinks. Her jaw tightens, and her heart pounds in her chest. Not much older than me.
As quietly as she's able, she shrinks back into her hiding place.
"You, in the alley. Out."
Every muscle in Min's body seizes up. She doesn't move.
"Out. NOW." The voice is cold, and ugly, and streaked with pain. "If I see a weapon, I'm gonna feed it to you."
"Please don't hurt me," Min pleads as she slinks out into the open. She shows the Enforcer her raised hands first, then her face. "My parents are Sool and Aubryn Cresta. They work as advisors to the Board."
"The Crestas," the Enforcer grunts. "The city's own security czars. I'm among royalty, it seems." His face twists into a derisive sneer. "And their daughter's out here, by herself, without so much as a bodyguard?"
In two strides, he closes the distance between them and grabs Min by the collar. He looks her dead in the eye as he tightens his grip. "I don't fuckin' think so."
A shudder runs through Min's body as her graftware violently represses the impulse to fight. Resisting an Enforcer is rarely a winning strategy, even for a daughter of wealthy executives. "I'm telling the truth," she manages to stammer. She tilts her neck to reveal her NeuroSim port. "Run my ID and see."
"Network connections are down across the city. Nobody's running shit." The Enforcer examines Min, squinting through the pulsing red of the emergency lights. "You're no street rat," he grumbles, "I'll give you that much. Unarmed, expensive clothes…" He twists his grip, forcing Min to pivot in place and examining her while she moves. "…And I can't see any gang grafts on you."
"There aren't any," Min gasps. "I swear."
The Enforcer tightens his grip again, grinding the plasticized heel of his palm into her collarbone. This time, she stands her ground without squirming. It hurts, but her security grafts dull the worst of it.
"You're not fighting," the Enforcer says. He sounds surprised.
Digging deep into her Academy training, Min summons up every ounce of authority she can muster. "People like me don't fight Enforcers. We comply, then litigate. And then we own you." She forces herself to stare him in the eye. "My mother taught me that."
The Enforcer blinks, then looks away. Gradually, his grip begins to relax. "Maybe you're a Cresta after all," he mutters.
Min's body goes slack with relief. In response, the Enforcer releases her shoulder and shoves her away, sending her stumbling into a pool of waist-deep floodwater. "If you're just a rich kid, you're not my problem," the Enforcer growls. "I've got bigger things to worry about than babysitting."
Min pauses, chewing her lip. "Could you—"
"No. Now scurry off. Find some hole to hide in. Bad people out tonight." He nods grimly in the direction of the body floating behind him.
Slogging her way out of the roiling slurry, Min retreats back down the alleyway. As she reaches her old hiding place, the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. There's a distant splashing sound, drawing closer. Strangers. Lots of them. She slips back behind the refuse and makes herself small.
As Min stares, a group of masked figures descends on the Enforcer. Not masked—grafted. Her eyes narrow as she picks out the contours of their identical facial grafts and the shimmer of the emergency lighting against medical-grade chrome. Her guts turn to water. Graftjackers. The Faceless cartel.
The Enforcer lurches toward them, shouting unintelligibly and swinging his stun prod like a torch. The broken shaft of the weapon sparks and crackles, punctuating his motions with searing flashes of light.
Without warning, the floating cadaver explodes into motion, lunging out of the floodwater to grapple the officer's legs. They both go down hard, toppling face-first into the murky fluid.
The reanimated teenager scrambles up the Enforcer's prostrate body, dodging thrashing elbows to force the bigger man's head back under the viscous churn. In the crimson glow of the emergency lights, Min can just make out the kid's chrome-plated, Faceless visage, and the lobe-like protrusions fluttering beneath his ribs. Grafted rebreathers. He didn't drown, he was just pretending. Signaling the others to his location.
As the Faceless swarm the flailing Enforcer, a peculiar tranquility takes hold of Min. The panic that fills her chest dissipates, replaced with a bewildering sense of calm. My security grafts, she thinks. Finally taking the wheel. Min's dimly aware that her animal self wants to scream, to cry, to vomit… but the impulses are fuzzy, and distant, and easily ignored. Fight or flight will get me caught, she muses. But calm is quiet, and quiet keeps me alive.
A horrible scream drags Min back to reality. Two of the Faceless have seized the fallen Enforcer's right arm. As she watches, they twist it until the elbow locks. Then, with a practiced motion, they dip a pair of long, flexible tools into his armpit. He screeches as they jiggle their implements, feeling around the edges of the graft.
With a gentle rocking motion, they scoop the limb out of its socket.
The Enforcer's cries are cut short as they force his head down into the bloody, roiling effluent. He struggles up for breath, then locks eyes with Min as the Faceless take hold of his legs. His previous swagger is gone, bled out into the gleaming rain. All that she sees in his expression now are pain, and denial, and an irrational plea for help.
Min returns the Enforcer's gaze but shakes her head no. With her graft-given clarity, she knows that she can't help him, and as desperate as he may be, he must know it, too. But I can stay and bear witness, she thinks.
Maybe if she does, it'll comfort him. Maybe he won't give her away.
So she sits, and waits, and looks into the Enforcer's eyes while the Faceless disassemble him, piece by bloody piece.
