The diner itself was a burnt-out shell, long since abandoned in the general exodus to the corporate compound-blocks and of no use whatsoever to whatever No-Go denizens might remain. There was certainly no food here; it had just been a place to hole up.
Eddie Kalish had gone out through the access-hatch of the Factory expecting to find himself on some floor or other of a compound-block. He’d expected to have to deal with more security systems and corporate uniforms and people demanding to know who he was, what his job was, why he wasn’t doing it and then calling for the guards.
They’d have shouted things like “imposter!” and “seize him!”, too, in the imagination of one Eddie Kalish.
In fact, he had emerged to find himself in a run-down complex of warehouse-spaces in the wreckage-strewn wasteland of the No-Go itself. Whatever it was that GenTech was doing, here in what they called the Factory, they obviously wanted to keep it at arm’s length.
Off to the north-and Eddie had found that something inside him now knew, precisely, which direction Magnetic North actually was-the lights of the multicorporate hives shone.
In the No-Go, lights of a more sporadic and fitful kind burned as those who still lived there went about their nocturnal business.
Eddie’s plan, such as it was, had been to simply get out. There was no way he’d ever have worked for GenTech in the first place, and definitely no way for an asshole like Masterton.
Catching sight of the old guy getting sliced to hell and back had just moved his schedule up.
Out here in the No-Go at night, he was entirely out of his element. He hadn’t been up for anything more than avoiding the light guard presence in and around the warehouses-GenTech trying to keep attention to a minimum-and look for somewhere to hole up and hide.
Now, in daylight, Eddie Kalish was feeling better. Time to make some actual plans. Find food, boost some transport and just get the hell away.
Spanky reconditioned body and a brain with stuff in it that it didn’t have before. Plus you could spot the bad things coming a mile off in daylight-nothing really bad could happen in daylight, right?
Eddie Kalish loped from the shelter of the burnt-out diner, completely unaware of how the flesh on his bones, quite suddenly, slid and pulsed into a new configuration.
He just felt hungry. He needed to eat.
10.
“It’s gone overt,” said Trix Desoto, matter-of-factly, her eyes unfocussed, most of her attention still on operating the tracker.
“This soon?” Masterton was surprised. But not too surprised, or he would never have attempted to set up a trace this early in the first place.
“It’s a virulent strain,” said Trix. “Or maybe it’s just general panic-reflex, you know?”
An entire wall of the Factory’s intel-and-communications suite was taken up with Tracksat monitors and readouts. The room was packed with tactical-command consoles and general logistically interpolative technology of a sparse and functional, quasi-military design.
Trix Desoto, however, was plugging into a unit of a different kind: a bulbous pod of fleshy matter, its skin of a similar colour and texture as that of a human, which pulsed as though in some self-contained way alive.
Literally plugged. A length of what appeared disquietingly like intestine ran from the pod to her forehead, there to disappear into a socket that looked disgustingly like a sphincter.
Personally, Masterton thought she was showing off; she could just as easily, after all, have interfaced with the tracking pod by laying her hands on it.
“Estimated flip-out into Conversion in three minutes,” Trix Desoto said.
“Do you have a vector on him?” Masterton asked. “Where’s he going to hit when he flips?”
Trix Desoto rattled off a string of coordinates. Masterton punched them into a console and examined the result.
“Typical,” he said wearily. “Just the job. Fun for all the family. Do we have anybody on the ground who can run a stage-one intercept?”
“So what you reckon, Lenny? We made our quota?”
Lenny made a pointed little pantomime of totting up the inventory on his data-pad, and sighed. “No, we haven’t made our quota, Karl. We haven’t made our quota at all. Would you like to know why we haven’t made our quota, Karl?”
“Why haven’t we made our quota, Lenny?” asked Karl, a little meekly.
“We haven’t made our quota, Karl, because some trigger-happy asshole keeps blowing off people’s heads or burning them to shit with incendiary rounds.”
“Sorry, Lenny,” sad Karl.
For all that the majority of the San Angeles Sprawl lived in the corporate compound-blocks, where such things as food and sanitation and medical services were supplied as a part of that particular deal with the devil of commerce, there were a number of small satellite communities out in the No-Go itself. Pockets of independent and what might, with charity, be called semi-criminal activity, of which the multicorps themselves made use.
Communities of data-hackers, chemical-crackers, an entire and busy sex-industry-people who would never be let inside the compound-blocks in a million years, but to whom were extended an elaborate system of protection and supply. The multicorps needed those people who lived and worked out on the edges-as a source of innovation, recreation and even in some cases experimentation-so they made at least some effort to keep them alive.
The San Angeles Paramedical Service was, ostensibly, funded by a multicorporate consortium to bring-as the name suggests-paramedical services to those remaining in the No-Go zone. Medical treatment was free… provided you agreed to donate such biological material as might be appropriate, to the organ-banks or for biomedical research, should you be unfortunate enough to die despite the very best of paramedical efforts.
The end result of this was obvious. You didn’t call the SAPS in if you were attached to your bodily parts and wanted to stay that way. And if you caught sight of one of their Meat Wagon hovercraft, you rabbited and hid before they could draw a bead on you.
In the violent and casually lethal world of the No-Go, the SAPS, at best, performed the general function of vultures.
“So, you know what I’m thinking, Karl?” said Lenny.
“What are you thinking, Lenny?” said Karl.
“I’m thinking, Karl,” said Lenny, “that it’s time we had ourselves another little hunting party. Seems that I happen to recall some folks with a small lab not far from here.”
“Chemical lab, Lenny?” asked Karl. “Not, uh, a chemical lab doing stuff that might be, you know, important to the Big Guys?” He pronounced the name as though it were significantly capitalized, as indeed it was.
“Nothing of the sort, Karl,” Lenny reassured him. “Jerkoffs are strictly retro. They’re just brewing up a little line in crystal-meth.”
“Just the sort of cowboy operation, Lenny, that could explode from under them at any time…” Karl said thoughtfully. “Total loss of life in a deplorable and sickening if not entirely tragic manner.”
“And a nice little windfall for us, Karl,” said Lenny. “Always provided that certain people remember to go easy on the incendiaries.”
Lenny fired up the fans, and the big SAPS Meat Wagon hovercraft was in the process of hefting itself up on its skirt when the comms unit broke in.
“ Code twenty-three alert from GenTech… ” the SAPS dispatcher said, then rattled off a string of coordinates that would be utterly meaningless to anyone who did not know what a Code Twenty-three meant. Then:
“ All available units required. Do not-repeat, do not -engage the primary directly. Standard clean-up and contain, and await suitably qualified assistance… ”
Lenny turned the Meat Wagon in the air, and punched the crash-course coordinates they had received into the autopilot.