Chapter One
A tale of two cities. How did the story go?
Ah, yes.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Which, all things considered, summed matters up about as well as anything else these days.
Aika Lareto walked the crowded midnight streets, passing windows of flashing, shrill advertisements that tried to latch onto her as they tried to identify her by a nonexistent birth chip, flattered and hooked onto the next passersby. A hologram stepped out onto the pavement to waylay her. She walked through it. It glitched, fizzled out, and disappeared. As she turned alongside the river, her gaze slid upward to the biosphere encasing the city since the Seven-Year War rendered the outside environs uninhabitable.
Only the most mega of the conglomerates could afford time and space on the sphere, in the very sky itself, exposing citizens to the latest in shiny new products. The new online hologame from the Microsoft-Starbucks merger of 2015, for instance, was hailed as a door-busting hit a mere year before release. The biospheres architects had no doubt laughed themselves breathless over that one, had Dreamtech’s board of directors any sense of humor to speak of.
So what really lay beyond the biosphere? Her final action had been here in the city, and here she stayed, awaiting orders. Like the rest of its denizens, she only knew what the governing board released to them, properly sugared and spiced. Global warming accelerated by the effects of the war? Flattened suburbs that had been evacuated during the fifth year, crowding the city to bursting? No one knew. Not many wanted to know. Those that did tended to be the dregs of society—the fringe dwellers and underground lurkers, assorted conspiracy theorists and general crazies.
Aika skirted a Technicolor block party pulsating beneath a violent fuchsia tarp anchored to street lamps with jellyfish tendrils, then slipped into a side street packed end to end with small clubs, all night takeaways and street vendors offering food and stimulants to keep the crowds going—and spending. The throngs migrated in one direction, taking as much notice of her as a river parting around a rock. It was a knack, this not being noticed. Almost as effective as going between. She needn’t have bothered, except for the practice.
She passed an alley on her left. The muted chink of a broken bottle skittered across its dark, damp well of concrete and brick. She didn’t think twice; she pulled folds of shadow around her like a midnight blanket and stepped into the time and space between this world and the other.
It was like being deep underwater, close and oppressive, but she was inured to its womb-like dark. Time slowed. Space expanded. She braced herself. Pushed as she exhaled from the abdomen, and squeezed herself back through the end of the block on the opposite side of the party goer currents. She stepped beneath the awning of a trendy sushi bar, the wide front windows pulled open so the overflow could perch on its sill. Paper lanterns exuded improbable colors—summer-sun yellow, peacock blue, hot-pant pink.
Two figures in overcoats hurtled out of the alley, arguing strenuously. One sported the sort of Nordic bulk associated with his Thor, his companion dark and wiry. Violent arm gestures ensued.
Smiling, she cut through a few more side streets and made her way to the nearest tube station, in the opposite direction of the stragglers.
Declan Pryce had not gotten a full day’s sleep since a bomb exploded his parents out of existence in the Seven-Year War. So it came as no surprise when nightmares plagued his sleep once again, entangling him in scratchy army blankets and discarded him, spent, onto the shabby rug. He stared into the lowering dark of early evening, sweat plastering hair into his eyes.
When his breathing slowed sufficiently for feeling to return to his limbs, he disentangled himself from the twisted bedding and heaved himself onto the edge of the narrow bed. His shaking hand knocked a water bottle from the bedside table as he reached for it, issuing a muted thud on the area rug. He retrieved it with a murmured curse, experiencing instant relief when the lukewarm liquid settled his stomach.
Knowing sleep would not return, he slouched across his small illegal loft to the bank of computers humming like a beehive in the mellow quiet. A folding table against the wall offered a makeshift kitchenette in the form of an expensive coffee maker and cheap microwave.
“Hello, darlings.” He slid into his worn chair that shrieked like a banshee if he leaned too far back and flipped on the coffee maker. Despite the audible protests of the seat’s bearings, it fit him like a comfortable pair of jeans.
His three monitors wakened at the sound of his voice, the machines activating their program sequences. He decided to run through CCTV clips captured by his patch into its outmoded system first. A few he saved for later examination—most he discarded. His coffee maker dispensed fresh, strong brew into a plain black ceramic cup as a new string of grainy images began its run. Halfway through he stopped the video stream and restarted it, not certain of what he’d seen. It took three repeated viewings, at slower speeds and narrowly focused pixilation, to confirm with his eyes what his brain did not believe. He replayed it again, coffee cooling with fragrant accusation.
A figure in dark clothes strode down a street in what was not quite the vice district, flickering in the vivid dancing lights of enticements. His or her gait was one of purpose, belied by a hint of absent-mindedness only the truly unconcerned could manage. She, he could see now—walked against the crowd, skirting revelers and the human race as a whole. He leaned closer.
She passed an alley and was obviously spooked by what she sensed there, because she inexplicably disappeared.
Quickly, without conscious volition, he re-engaged the link to this particular feed and searched nearby cameras for video from different angles. He was annoyed to find facial-recognition programs could not gather sufficient info to identify the walker.
Finally he found her again, beneath the overhang on a far corner. For a fleeting instant she looked nearly full on into the camera, a sardonic smile twitching the corners of her mouth. He took a snapshot and followed her progress, camera to camera, until she disappeared into the Burnout Zone, where no satellite feed would ever reach again. He exhaled, printed the shot and stuffed his coffee into the microwave. While he waited for it to reheat, he cleared a space on his cork board and hung the photo among the wild detritus of false hopes and starts. When the microwave dinged he retrieved his coffee and sat back to consider the odd light in her eyes while his mind raced with possibilities.
Had the actually found one? One of the angels or demons who had begun walking the earth during the war? Or was she one of the others, still human, yet more? Demi-human, he called them, for lack of a better term. Part human, part…something else, biding their time until the Horsemen rode. Signs of the approaching apocalypse had been lining up for years, but hardly anyone was paying attention.
He was inclined to believe the latter. There was something ancient in her eyes, a weary but determined set to her closed-off face. He wore the same expression whenever he looked in a mirror.
The Burnout Zone. No one ever went there that didn’t have to. The old bridge was little more than a heap of rubble, its tunnels shelter for a black market of shady business dealings and their dealers, a fringe society of the hopeless and not-entirely-there. He’d gone there once or twice, but it was not an experience he cared to repeat. He frequented his own brand of underground establishments with their unique collection of conspiracy theorists, where the food was better and hygiene more of a priority. Nor had the contents of his pockets ever wandered off in pursuit of their own adventures.
One of this other monitors flashed a black-and-red warning at him, buzzing a computer version of a genteel cough to attract his attention. He spun his chair and tapped a few keys to access the new information.
This one wasn’t from one of his regular channels, rather a back channel he’d rarely seen triggered. It was, in fact, a new bounty activated by someone handled as The Agent.
One guess who the target was.
Once again his coffee was left to cool, abandoned, as his chair spun gently in place.
