Running Black (Eshu International Book 1) Read online

  “Very good, sir,” the colonel bowed toward the screen, suspicion brushing his thoughts again.

  Obtuse am I? Mr. Hsiang, you are trying to fly under the radar… Why?

  The manager’s face relaxed somewhat, and he took on a more conciliatory tone. “Colonel, before us is a rare window of opportunity, an opportunity for everyone involved. Be assured, in the future I will not neglect those who recognized this for what it was and acted appropriately. I expect you and your men to do your duty.” The older executive suddenly glanced off screen. “Colonel, I have an incoming call. I will contact you later. Hsiang out.”

  The connection cut.

  “Of course Mr. Hsiang,” the colonel answered, but the image had already faded. Colonel Otsu turned, grabbed his black and red uniform jacket and headed straight out the door. His secretary was waiting for him, more data pads stacked in her arms.

  You and your men…

  The face of the young corporal came unbidden to his mind. What was his name? The colonel mentally added another item to his agenda for the already long day.

  -----------

  The hanging ceiling bulbs divided the large cellar room into smaller lit portions, each separated by thin walls of dimness. After breakfast, the Triplets played a loud card game with Gibson and Curro: two-deck Scum. They’d learned it onboard Alejo’s ship. It was also the only one they knew, so they took great delight each round changing seats and teasing the loser. The three large clone soldiers played with a simple, unaffected joy, snapping cards down, roaring with laughter or groaning with each discard. Curro sat smiling, but saying little, one eye always on the stairway, while Gibson picked up on the game’s strategy quickly and had retained his “king” position the last three rounds. At a break, Gibson slipped off his chair and entered into a lit fragment of a corner where Carmen sat next to Poet9’s bed pallet.

  The autodoc was beeping at a calm, steady pace, tiny columns of green alpha-numerics bouncing in time on its small gray screens. Carmen sat on the edge of the bed, one hand on Poet9’s head, murmuring a soft singsong cadence. He shuffled closer, curious, but reluctant to interrupt her. After several minutes, Carmen switched the monitor volume off and smiled at him. “Yes?”

  “Is he… Is he going to get better?”

  “Yes. Yes. He’ll be fine,” she said. Another smile.

  “Really?”

  Carmen sighed and pushed back a stray lock of thick black hair. “Well, pequeño, I hope and pray so. He’s not getting any worse; he just isn’t getting any better. Out doctor friend will know what to do.”

  “That’s good then.” Gibson shifted his feet but didn’t move away.

  “You want something else?” Carmen asked.

  “I want…” the boy faltered. “I want to go back.”

  “Back?”

  “Yes. Back to the labs. I don’t know why I’m here. Please.”

  Carmen hesitated, watched hope, confusion, and fear trace across his little face. That look dredged up a montage of memories: screams, fire, blood, and bodies. She closed her eyes and shook them away. The old life was over, buried with Christ. And thank God because some things were better left buried. She remembered the Scripture: “As far as the East is from the West, so has He removed our transgressions from us.”

  Alejo had warned her. The boy would be gone in a couple of days, he’d said. “Don’t get attached.” He knew her heart. Yet a child was in front of her, in her home, right now. She reached out and drew Gibson close. “Ah, pequeño, I’m sorry, but you’re not going back. These men are taking you back to your family.”

  “My family?”

  “Si, your mother and father? They must miss you very much.”

  “But… but, I don’t have a family.”

  “Of course you do!” She hugged him again. “That’s why you’re on this little adventure. To go see them.”

  “No,” the boy said firmly. “I don’t have a mother or a father. I’m not like other children.” He reached up and touched the back of his neck with slim fingers. “Dr. Evans said that’s what my mark means.”

  Carmen craned her head and brushed his hair aside. There, nestled at the base of his neck was a small, round, neon blue shotcode: a gene series tattoo. Further up, she spied the small, smooth bud of a flesh pink dermal jack behind his left ear. The boy was a clone. One with cyber-system capabilities. She looked over the side of his head, smoothing his hair and feeling his scalp underneath: there was no interface set, not even a small one. She sat back, piecing it all together.

  Now they’re growing children? She looked upwards. Lord Jesus, what’s happening here? But her thoughts only bounced off the ceiling right back at her.

  She knew all too well what kind of work Tam and his crew did. It had been called “left-hand work” when she and Alejo had started. It was dirty work, crap work that no one wanted. For decades, in the guise of fighting terrorism, Interpol and all the major national security agencies had been closing in on organized crime. Every boss was tired of extradition trials, lawyers, harassment, audits, SWAT teams, watching their money and influence drain away faster than blood from a butchered carcass. They grew frantic to survive, to stay in power, so they looked for the new need and followed the money. They found cover on the shady side of legitimate.

  Decades of declining defense budgets and the rise of the private military industry was a tailor-made opportunity. Back then, the first freelance crews had been hired through organized crime syndicates. The muscle and transportation networks already in place, the Yakuza, the Triads, the Mafia families took contracts no above-board private firm would touch: anything, anywhere, for anybody, so long as it paid. For twenty years, she and Alejo ran blockades all across the Med and Black Sea, every assignment performed old school. Low-tech, sanitized surplus weapons, forged documents, brush pass hand-offs, dead drops. Payment to crews was always untraceable tangible goods: pharmaceuticals, gold, diamonds, narcotics. People made a lot of money, and a lot of people died.

  Nowadays, every major business entity and nation on the planet hired “conflict-resolution specialists” for black contract work. Fancy terms for accounting; it was the same cruel game. The executives, the government ministers, the regional managers could now hide behind operational prudence, the legal terminology of disconnect that guaranteed plausible deniability. It was the commerce of felony and murder.

  She caught Gibson staring at her, and smiled quickly. “Well then… you’re going someplace new. You must have new friends, and you’re going to meet them soon.”

  “What kind of new friends? Dr. Evans never said anything about new friends.” Gibson’s face knit in concentration. “He did tell me some important people would come to the labs, and we’d do new kinds of tests. But he said I needed to rest and be ready for them.” He frowned at Carmen. “Is this a test?”

  “No, no… this is not your doctor’s test.” She folded her hands back onto her lap. “But this is like a test, perhaps the hardest so far. In this one, you’re going to have to be brave no matter what happens. Gibson, can you do that for me?”

  “Dr. Evans said it wasn’t safe for me to leave.” He bit his lip and looked straight at Carmen. “There was shooting and explosions. They stole me. Why?”

  Carmen took him gently by the shoulders, “Listen to me, little one. I’m not sure why you were taken, or where you will end up. But I promise no one is going to hurt you while you’re in my home. You believe me?”

  “Yes. I think so.” Gibson frowned. “OK, I do.”

  “Good!” She hugged him quickly. “Thank you, Gibson. You’re a very brave boy. Now tell me about the other tests you took. Were they hard for you?”

  He drew his eyes away from Poet9. “Well, I’m not supposed to say anything… but no, they weren’t very hard. They were on computers. In them, really.”

  “In them?” Carmen looked intently at his head again.

  “Yes, in the cyber-systems. I’d log into networks the staff set up. Later they opened the base
system for me, most of the departments anyway. And in the last month, I even went out into the Grid for them eight times.”

  “And did what?”

  “I went to secure sites, to data mine, or re-script code. At first, it was hard, trying to understand it all, but after a few tries, I got it, and then it was easy. As easy as thinking. Sometimes security programs stop me though.”

  “ICE programs?” Carmen exclaimed. “What were you doing messing around with them? Security A.I.s are very dangerous. And you’re much too young to be a data rat.”

  Gibson threw his head back and laughed. “The staff called me that a couple times. It got Dr. Evans mad, but they didn’t care. He taught me code to get past security systems. ‘Felix the Cat’s magic bag of tricks’ he called it. I use it all the time now. The staff was very happy the first time I cut my way through a firewall. They said I was the fastest so far.”

  The fastest so far… Carmen filed the comment away for later. For now, she smiled at him, crow’s feet catching the corners of her eyes. “Then you are not only brave, but smart, eh?” She stroked his cheek. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Ma’am, can I ask you a question?” the boy asked hesitantly.

  “Of course!”

  “You’re a fundy, aren’t you?”

  “A what?”

  “A fundy, a fundamentalist. One of those religious people. They pray all the time and blow things up. I’ve seen newsnet clips. At the lab, they talk about religion, but only as a joke. You don’t seem like one of those.”

  “Well,” Carmen laughed. “I pray and believe in God, but I stopped blowing things up when I became a Christian.”

  “So what were you praying for just then?” he asked.

  “I was asking for help,” Carmen said.

  “For him?” Gibson pointed at Poet9.

  “Yes, for him. For all of them, and you too.”

  Gibson stopped at that thought, nodded and pressed on. “Dr. Evans says religion is an irrational superstition, a product of people’s wish fulfillment. There’s no proof God exists.”

  “Little one, there’s plenty of proof,” Carmen said. “It’s all around you if you know how to look. God exists, just not on a specimen slide.”

  “But you can’t see God. You can’t be sure He’s there, listening to you.”

  “Let me ask you something… could you imagine the Grid before they let you into it? What it would be like? How vast and intricate it was? You couldn’t see it, but it was there, right?”

  “Well no, but they told me about it, and after the first time I logged in I knew it was real.”

  “Well, God is real the same way, and I experience Him when I log in. In prayer.”

  “Where, in your brain?”

  “Yes, but mostly in my heart.”

  “Ummm… that’s weird,” the boy said.

  Carmen laughed again. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  A shadow fell over the two of them. Carmen looked up to see her son, Curro, standing beside the bed. “Dr. Kalahani made it in past the district patrols. He’s at the door, mama.”

  “Well, show him in.” She turned and winked at Gibson. “The doctor made it. See? God heard me.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: DARK EYES, UNBLINKING

  Barcelona Metro Zone. Eastern Sprawl, Dock District: La Sentina neighborhood. 1:45 p.m. Day Two.

  The knob trembled, and three heads turned simultaneously to watch the door open. The shinigami remained seated as Lieutenant Kaneda stepped through, struggling with a large knapsack. When the young officer kicked the door shut, he glared at the clones, and the three of them stared back, heads cocked, faces unreadable, dark eyes unblinking. The lieutenant dropped his gaze and suppressed a shudder.

  Colonel Otsu had told him these clones would be different, some new kind deployed specially for this mission. He hadn’t realized just how different they would be, and Lieutenant Kaneda wondered if they all felt like this. They looked normal, human, but something about them made his skin crawl, something vaguely reptilian. He couldn’t put his finger on it.

  He was astonished at how perfect they appeared: olive complexions, dark hair and Spanish features. No hint of makeup or surgery, the three of them looked genuinely native. One man was tall and broad, thick, like a heavy laborer, the other small and race dog thin, almost malnourished. Those two passed for characteristic sprawl dwellers.

  The woman was another story. Perhaps there had been some kind of error, a comfort girl series spill over into the gene-coding. She was medium height, but full-bodied, with fine features and sensuous lips. Lt. Kaneda thought that even dirty and dressed in cheap worker’s clothes, she was far too striking for the slums. And of the three, she was the most unnatural. Like a cobra; beautiful, hypnotic, and lethal. Maybe the executive who ordered their deployment did that for a reason…

  The lieutenant forced the thought away. He had to stay on task. The colonel had ordered him to oversee the activities of this clone cell. It was imperative everything went smoothly, and it wasn’t like these three were really human.

  He cleared his throat, and tried to project command tone in his voice. “You going to sit there and watch? Or do mission parameters allow you to help me?”

  The larger male slipped out of his chair and took the heavy backpack with one hand. He set it in the corner without a word.

  The young officer gathered himself and wiped his brow. “Now, these are your accommodations. To maintain operational security, no one is to leave without my express permission.”

  The clones surveyed the apartment. It was little more than a concrete box, twice as large as a prison cell. Half the illum-tiles in the ceiling were burnt out, and the walls were thick with slathered coats of white paint. Bed pallets lay off to one side, and a pitted stainless steel sink, cooking, and fridge unit were bolted along the opposite wall. The closet at the far end of the room held a chemical toilet and cheap one-piece plasti-form shower stall, and the only window was a dingy square of acid rain frosted plastic that looked out onto the gray slab of the next tenement two meters away.

  A bizarre, psychedelic cyclone of caricatured icons, astrological symbols and anarchist graffiti was drawn on one wall in black magic marker. It twisted up out of the corner by the floor and ended at the ceiling. The musk of stale sweat and ammonia was soaked into everything. The squalor meant nothing to the clones, and the three looked back at the lieutenant without comment.

  The young officer cleared his throat again, “You shouldn’t have any problems with your identities either. They’ve been inserted into the Barcelona database along with job covers. The area around here houses dockhands and migrant workers. Thousands of transients come and go from this district every week, so your arrival and disappearance shouldn’t be noticed. As long as you don’t do anything to attract attention, you should be fine.”

  The woman finally spoke, an odd, husky rhythm in her voice. “We’ll be sure to maintain operational security.” She glanced at the other two clones. They acknowledged her statement with the briefest of nods.

  Lieutenant Kaneda let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Yes, that’s good. It won’t be for long anyhow. You’re meeting with the contractors tomorrow night to discuss delivery and extraction. This operation should be over soon.” He paused. “In fact, I’m not sure why you’re here at all. My men and I can manage the situation.”

  “We’re here to insure the mercenaries deliver the device they were contracted to acquire,” the woman spoke again.

  “My unit has coordinated covert missions before,” the lieutenant said. “We can handle freelance contractors.”

  “Apparently not.” The big man was staring at him. “The executive himself informed us that your unit failed. We will not fail.”

  Lieutenant Kaneda bristled. “The only reason your cell was deployed is your capability to blend in to the local population. It’s unwarranted, but if the executive believes you can make the delivery go smoothly, then who am I to argue? In the
meantime, you will follow my orders.”

  “We will not fail,” the big man repeated.

  The lieutenant ignored him and pointed at the heavy bag in the corner. “That’s the first load of equipment. I want a hand getting the rest from the van downstairs. You,” he motioned to the larger man, “will come help me bring the other bags up.”

  The large clone stood without a word and the two of them left. Once the dingy steel door had shut, the other two started going through the knapsack. Executive Hsiang himself had briefed them during their flight. For the next ninety-six hours, they were under his direct authority and could employ whatever means necessary to acquire the device.

  Given the deadline, a direct solution was required, and once all the equipment was present, the three of them would outfit themselves accordingly. Simple, direct action, that’s what the executive demanded. They would seize one of the mercenaries and force him to divulge the location of the device. Once they’d acquired it, they would sanitize any evidence leading back to the executive. That was their directive.

  Footsteps scuffed in the hall outside, then someone began banging on the door with a fist. “Cleto! Cleto, open up! I know you’re in there, you little pussy. Open the fucking door before I break it down.” A muffled voice came through the metal.

  The two clones slid silently to stand on either side of the door.

  “Cleto, you monkey shit. I want my money! Open this fucking door and give me my fucking money right now!”

  The door shook under more pounding. The two looked at each other and on a signal, the female clone flattened herself against the wall while the small man thumbed the lock and turned the knob. The steel door flapped open on a kick, and a broad, shaven-headed gorilla of a man sauntered in.

  “Cleto, you’re dead this time. I mean it.” He stopped when he saw the small man. “Who the fuck are you? Where’s Cleto?”

  “Cleto?” the small clone asked.