Gabe turned to Gina. The emptiness in her face was more terrifying than LeBlanc's body. Or Mark's. "What it's like out there…" He took a breath. "Probably still like what you saw on the dataline. Except for some things that didn't make the dataline. I was in a newsbar and saw a woman have a stroke, and I'm pretty sure she had sockets, like LeBlanc, down in the Common Room. LeBlanc's dead. Her pit's on this floor, she keeled over and died and-" He cut off, looking at Mark.
Gina's gaze went from him to the kid. "It's out."
"Sure as fuck is," the kid said. "The Big One."
"What's out?" Gabe looked at each of them. "What big one?"
The kid started talking again, and he understood what the kid was saying well enough, it just didn't seem real, more like some scenario out of the Headhunters program. If Marly and Caritha had been with him, maybe he'd have been able to buy the idea of that poor, sad, dead mess on the floor being able to send a stroke out of his brain into a net-
"What we've gotta do now," the kid was saying as he packed the laptop connections into a small compartment in the base, "we gotta get all the uncontaminated hardware and software we can carry and get out of here. Out of the main part of the city."
"Maybe there isn't any," Gabe said slowly. "Uncontaminated stuff."
The kid closed the laptop with a snap. "This is."
"How? You had it plugged in." Gabe gestured at the console.
"Ever hear of a stealth program?" The kid's smile was flat. "It's a fooler loop crossed with a mirror. You can crack in anywhere disguised as any input a system is already receiving. I used it on the subroutine for the connection commands-I was trying to disconnect him before he blew, but there was too much noise. The most I could get was a look at the program itself, but he'd disabled it, and I couldn't get it to respond. But there was no contact with the virus. The fooler loop covered the source of the additional input-my input-and the mirror made it think my input was its own redundancy." The kid looked to Gina. "It wouldn't have worked for much longer. Eventually the virus would have started comparing the figures-"
The lights flickered again and kept flickering.
"If it cuts the power-" Gabe started.
The kid shook his head emphatically. "It won't. It's just playing. Flexing. It knows that if it cuts the power here, it's dead." His eyes narrowed. "Were you on-line today?"
Gabe glanced at Gina. "No."
"Good. You're uncontaminated, too. Let's pull whatever you've got, hardware, software, everything."
"I've got a console, like this one," Gabe said. "Even if we could get it out of the desk, we couldn't carry it."
"Don't be so sure," the kid said, heading for the ladder. "You might have a laptop in there you don't know about. Come on. We have to move now."
The kid pried his console housing apart and bent it back, revealing a laptop sitting like a spider amid a collection of rather unsightly peripherals. He disconnected the laptop and pulled it out.
"See, the console's all facade," he said conversationally, as if this were all more normal than normal. "Makes it look like you got a stone-home Rolls. Only thing it really covers up is the scam-jam somebody put over when you got these units in here, and the fact that there ain't nothing the big models can do that a high-capacity laptop with the right connections can't." The kid examined the peripherals quickly. "We could use all this. And the hotsuit and your headmount." His gaze fell on the cape that Gabe had left bunched up next to the desk, and he spread it out on the floor.
"Wait a minute," Gabe said as the kid started piling stuff in the middle of the cape. "The rest of the pits. I want them opened."
The kid paused and looked up at him. "I don't think you really want that, but I said I would, didn't I? Now, what about software? You got anything downloaded to chip from that program with those women? Marly and Caritha, the Headhunters stuff, anything?"
Gabe 's mouth fell open.
"I knew you as soon as you walked in," the kid told him, flashing a tight little grin. "Recognized your voice. You gotta have a stash. Anything could turn out to be useful."
Reluctantly Gabe pulled the lockbox out from under the desk and stuffed chips into his pockets as fast as he could. The kid gathered up the ends of the cape and twisted them together to make a crude sack, slung it over his shoulder and began struggling up the ladder to the catwalk where Gina was waiting by the open door. Gabe followed.
"What the fuck are you doing with that?" She backed into the hall, eying the cape with revulsion.
"We 'll raid your stuff, and then we'll-" The kid stopped and turned to Gabe. "Hey, did you walk up here? The elevators quit while I was on my way down."
Gabe shook his head. "I took the freight elevator. It isn't on-line."
"Prima." The kid looked almost sunny for a moment. "That's our way out. Where's your pit?" he asked Gina.
She jerked her chin at the door. "Loot all you want, but move your ass."
"Entry code?" He pointed at the panel next to the door. Gina tapped the numbered squares in a quick sequence; nothing happened. "Another program bites the dust. Never mind." He put down the sack, produced a butter knife, and pried the panel frame off. Reaching in, he wrapped the exposed wires around his fingers and ripped them out. The locks released, letting the door fall open a crack.
"That's what we call a Luddite hack." He grabbed the cape and went in.
Gabe stared at the panel. " 'Luddite hack.' " He turned away and went to the next door. Dinshaw's pit. He dug in his pockets hurriedly but only came up with a handful of coins. Change for the machines.
"Try this." There was a click, and a knife blade slid out under his nose. Gina flipped it over and offered him the hilt.
"Thanks," he said faintly. She didn't answer; her eyes were two dark holes. But her pupils, thank God, were the same size, and the thought made him almost giddy for a moment. He had the sudden urge to put his arms around her, but the look on her face said that if he made a move toward her, she would move away, and maybe she would keep moving away from him until the distance between them was too great to cross again in one lifetime.
How poetic, Gabe jeered at himself as he took the knife from her, how poetic and tragic and all that rot. If she only knew how poetic and tragic and all-that-rot you are, she'd forget someone she loves just blew up and died with blood running out of his nose.
He pried the panel off, ripped out the wires, and pushed through the door.
Dinshaw was hanging just above the console. One of the legstraps on the flying harness was wrapped around her neck in a clumsy noose. The connections streamed down from her head; the other end had pulled free of the console and was still swaying slightly.
The hardware had let go before her skull had; the thought lumbered through Gabe's mind in heavy slow motion, weighing him down so that he couldn't move. Someone was trying to pull him out into the hall again. He caught himself against the doorjamb and slammed his hand against the emergency communications panel. "Security! Someone's been killed up here!" Not even static from the speaker this time.
Gina was forcing him out into the hall, trying to say something to him. He pulled away from her and went to the door directly opposite. Shuet's.
Shuet had apparently been trying to break the connection by trashing the console. One leg of the chair he'd used on it had smashed through the monitor, making Gabe wonder with some faraway, detached area of his mind if Shuet hadn't accidentally electrocuted himself. His vision blurred, and he backed out, unable to bring himself to go down and see if the man lying several feet from the console might still be alive in spite of the stink of singed flesh and hair.