The Animus Gate (Book One of The Animus Trilogy) Page 3

  “Then we call the police.”

  “D, I think your mind is still mushy. You must have forgotten the part where you mowed those goons down with the gift shop’s delivery van. You know, the one with the store logo painted on it like five meters across? If anything, they’re looking to slap cuffs on you. I hope for both our sakes that those assholes you went ballistic on are still alive.”

  “Well, I can’t just gonna wait around in this dump ‘til I bleed out, Ral.”

  “Well luckily for you, the bullet wasn’t a large caliber. I was able to bandage you up with my shirt and stop the bleeding. That’s the good news.”

  “What’s the bad news, Ral?”

  “The bad news is that it’s no ordinary bullet. I recognize that entry wound. It looks like they hit you with a nanowad.”

  “You mean those things are real? I thought that was just vid stuff.”

  “Well, they embellish. For one thing, the tracker that the nanites build inside you isn’t strong enough for the signal to punch through this ceiling. And once it’s built, the nanites are spent.”

  “And how long does the tracker last?”

  “Oh, it’s powered with kinetic energy. As in, you moving your body.”

  “Great,” said Darius. “Just great. So as long as I stop moving, and I never climb out of the sewers, I’ll be fine. “

  “Look, I know it’s not great. We’re not gonna find a hospital or a medibot down in these tunnels. There’s really only one card left to play.”

  “I’m betting I’m not gonna like this.”

  “You won’t,” said Rali, “but it’s our only real option now. I’m talking about the first aid kit you keep in the back of the gift shop. According to the clock on your wristpad, the sun hasn’t come up yet, so we still have the cover of darkness on our side. The gangs have cyber tech, but they rarely walk around with low-light vision enhancements. That shit’s expensive and highly regulated. So you should be able to pop in and out of the place in a matter of minutes.”

  Darius grimaced and tried not to ponder why Rali knew so much about this kind of stuff. “You're talking about the kit we take out on relic hunts? You really think you can take care of this with that thing? Have you ever done that before? Actually, don’t answer that. A better question: How do we know the place won’t be crawling with gangers or cops by the time we get there?”

  “We don’t. But the longer we sit talking about, the more likely that’ll be.”

  “Fine,” said Darius. “But let the record show that I think you’re an asshole for dragging me into this.”

  “Duly noted.”

  ✽✽✽

  Darius peeked out from under the manhole cover that was nearest to the gift shop. He had to cover a distance of about three blocks, but he’d walked these streets since he was a child and could have made it blindfolded. He didn't see any police or goons. But he didn't exactly have the best vantage point, either.

  He looked down the ladder at Rali. “I don’t suppose you have anything for the pain?”

  “I get it,” said Rali. “I’m a druggie, so I should have a stash. Well, okay, I did. But the goons took it all."

  “Including your mindspike?”

  “Yes...”

  “Ral—how long can you go before...before you need more?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rali. “Half a day, maybe.”

  “What happens if you don’t get it?”

  Rali looked away.

  “Hey,” Darius said, “I know you don’t like to talk about it. I’m not trying to embarrass you. But I need to know. We have to factor this in.”

  Rali cleared his throat. “...Chills. Cold sweats. Agitation. The shakes. Eventually, it’s all I can think about.”

  “Could there be anything in the medkit that would help you?”

  Rali thought about it. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. Those things have sedatives and painkillers, while mindspike is a stimudelic—a hybrid of a stimulant and a psychedelic.”

  “Yeah, not the kind of thing we’d pack.” Darius took another peek out of the manhole. “All right, the coast looks pretty clear. Either way, I have to get up there before the sun comes up. Take advantage of what lingering night we have. Gods know I can’t wait until sunrise. This thing is killing me.”

  “I’m sorry, D.”

  “I know. Let’s deal with the guilt later. I’m in too much pain to care about who owes what right now.”

  “All right. Just remember, D—you still need a charged glove to get that manhole cover open again, so you’ll need to dig one up in the storage room if you want to actually get back down here.”

  “I don’t have the energy for a fight anyway.” Darius looked down at his brother. “Hey, wait, are you saying that you’re not coming with me?

  “D, I still have that tracker I swallowed. It hasn’t, you know, come out the other end yet. If I go topside with that thing still in me, the goons will have a trace on my position pretty quick. So this is gonna be a solo thing for you. The nanites haven’t had enough time to build their tracker yet.”

  “Is this another one of those things where I shouldn’t ask you how you know?”

  “I’m sorry, D. You get the short straw this time.” He slapped Darius lightly on his foot, the only part of him that was within reach. “You’re the resourceful one, remember? If anyone can get out a jam, it’s you.”

  “And if anyone can get me into one, it’s you.”

  Rali grinned. “Yeah, we make a helluva team, right?”

  “If our goal is to cancel each other out, sure. Look, Ral, if I’m not back in about a half-hour...”

  “Don’t say it,” Rali snapped.

  “Listen,” Darius said, “If I’m not back down here in about thirty minutes...don’t come after me. Just...just run.”

  “You know I can’t do that, D.”

  “Rali. Don’t be a hero. If something happens to me, you have to carry on. For Mom. Even if it means you going to prison, you know she’d rather have you behind bars than going down in a hail of gunfire or something.”

  Rali looked away.

  “Promise me, Ral. You’re no Jembo, and you haven’t eaten in like two days—”

  Rali sighed. “Fine. You have my word. I’ll stay in the tunnels until the tracker passes, then I’ll just...I don’t know, I’ll make a run for the hills until things quiet down. Just get out and get back, and I won’t need to think about what-if.”

  Darius nodded grimly. With a grunt, he used the last of the glove’s battery power to shove the manhole cover aside. He managed to move it a couple feet—just far enough to squeeze past and onto the side street.

  The coast looked clear.

  His side flared up with pain again as he clambered out onto the street, but he managed to stifle a yelp. Wouldn’t be a good look. He pulled the hood of his jacket down once again. He tried not to walk like someone who’d recently been shot.

  He looked down at his wristpad, which he’d disconnected from the network. There was probably a string of messages on it from his mother that he wouldn’t be able to answer. He couldn’t even turn the thing on without risking a trace, either by the cops or the gang.

  He wanted very much to tell her he was still in one piece. The silence was painful. She’d lost a husband, her oldest son was a drug addict, and now her youngest son was leaking bodily fluids everywhere. And there was nothing to fix it but a medkit meant for weekend trips into a forest. What an interesting night this had turned out to be.

  As a pedestrian in the early dawn hours, there wasn’t a crowd to blend into. This played on Darius’s nerves. Every squeal of a tire, every dog bark, every door slamming shut⁠—it all set him on edge.

  But the coast remained eerily clear, so he pressed on down the nearly deserted block. He tried not to flinch at passersby or the sound of a honking horn. The pain from the wound had begun as something he wanted to keep away, but now he fixed his mind on it to dull the brittle and crashing world around him.


  There was still a light rain. The western horizon was glowing brighter as the sun made its way up to the horizon. It looked like the storm would pass soon. On any other day, he might have stopped at a cafe and sat with a hot drink. Maybe that and a pastry. Just watch the neighborhood slowly wake up.

  But now, he wanted nothing more than to pop a few ansoline pills and sleep for a month. The rest of the world could just shove off until further notice.

  He turned onto a side street. He was now just a half a block away from the shop. No one lurked about it that Darius could see. That was one question answered. The delivery van was also out back. It must have made the automated return trip after plowing through those goons. Darius was pretty sure that its video recorders didn’t automatically come on until it entered a main thoroughfare. Maybe that meant there was no incriminating footage. If there was, it appeared that no one had gotten to it. Yet.

  Or maybe they were all hiding inside the shop and waiting to ambush him. There was only one way to find out.

  He approached the back door and passed the biometric check. The entrance didn’t look like anyone had tried to force it open. Not recently, anyway. Every entry and exit through here was logged, of course. But he couldn’t open his wristpad to check without risking a trace.

  His mother and uncle would know immediately when he or someone pretending to be him went through that entrance. But the notification was unavoidable at this point. Unless you lived in a log cabin in the middle of a forest, you were going to leave a trail of digital crumbs everywhere you went.

  So the plan was simple: Get in and out as quickly as possible.

  As he opened the door, a vehicle turned onto the side street. There wasn’t enough light in the sky to make it out clearly. Could have been the gang circling back to the shop, or no one of importance. Maybe they’d spotted him on a street cam. No time to ponder. His only play was to duck inside and keep moving.

  Darius shuffled as quickly as he could to the shop terminal at the front counter. He used it to interface with the delivery van in the alley. He got the van to back up to the door, which would completely block anyone from entering on foot. If the goons wanted in, they’d have to arrive through the front, which had a reinforced gateThat would put them in public view. They could bash their way in, but the gate would slow them down, and someone might call the police in the meantime.

  That gave him an idea. Maybe throwing cops into the mix could work. It was hard to judge, with the pain in his side clouding his mind. But multiple armed assailants were attempting to break in, or they soon would be. That would definitely get a few squad cars coming this way. Maybe if the gang heard the sirens, they would bolt.

  A blinking unread message on the shop terminal also caught his eye. It was flagged “Urgent.” And it was not from his mother or uncle. He decided he had a few seconds to check it out.

  It read: Dear Saeed: I hope this letter finds you well. I am in town and looking for a guide to take me to the ruins of Baloneth. Will pay generously, half up front. You may find me at the Galdor Motel on the corner of Cirda and Sambar, room 204. Sincerely, Nadira Markosian.

  Curious. She was staying at a low-grade motel that was pretty far off the beaten path, but she claimed to have cash to burn. She also preferred face-to-face contact versus simply messaging her back. Still...a potentially sizable wad of cash. Maybe enough to get off-world altogether. Baloneth was a good distance further than he’d ever ventured into the jungle, but if the pay matched the challenge, it was worth looking into. And it wasn’t like he had a buffet of options right now.

  Next, he headed into the storage room to gather some travel gear. There were rucksacks, portable meals, folding tents, and self-defense armaments. It was all there—including the medkit. He rummaged through that first. He couldn’t tell if it had what was needed to handle a gunshot wound. But he did locate a stash of ansoline in a side pocket. He dry-swallowed two pills, grabbed a rucksack, and began to fill it with as much food and supplies as he thought he could carry in his condition. Once the painkiller kicked in, he figured he could move almost as much as he could if he were healthy. There was even a fully charged magnoglove and another baton.

  He grabbed both and crammed them into the bag. Then a thought struck him: If the goons had pulled up in that car he’d just seen, then they were waiting outside to jump him. There was no magic escape hatch this time. He couldn’t get clear of this place until the gang was removed as a variable.

  He took the opportunity to hunker down with a pen and paper. If he wasn't going to live to see the sunrise, he wanted to at least have some final words for his mother.

  Pen and paper were now a rarity in modern society, but they were still common among relic hunters, to draw maps and schematics. Out in the jungle, there were no charging stations, nor even much direct sunlight. So the old tools remained handy for when electricity was unreliable.

  Hey Mom, he wrote, sorry about missing work and not checking in. Turns out that Rali got into a bit of a scrap, and I had to bail him out. I know, I know. But we’re both gonna be fine. It might be a while before I can come back to the store. I just came through to grab some supplies. Love, D.

  “A while” might have meant “forever,” for all he knew right then. It was a jagged pill to swallow. Telamat was the only world he’d ever set foot on. New Caledonia was the only city he’d ever called home.

  He pushed that aside and tucked the note inside the shop safe. His mother or uncle was sure to check there after seeing his name pop up in the entry log, and they would be the only ones who could get the safe open.

  There was some commotion out back. It seemed the goons were wrestling with not being able to bust through the back door like they’d probably planned.

  P.S., I got a line on a tour guide job for a client who wants to head to some old ruins, so Rali and I may be out of town for a few days. I think the fresh air will do him some good.

  His train of thought was interrupted by someone banging on the front gate. “We know you’re hidin’ in there, Bakari!” one of the goons growled. “You canna hide forevah!” Another mumbled something about forcing their way through the gate. Admittedly, with a large enough set of bolt cutters, it wouldn’t take much time.

  The first goon barked, “Howsabout you come out before we decide to just shoot up the place, yeah?”

  So far, Darius counted three goons. There were probably a couple more in the offing. Against his better judgment, he activated his wristpad. He had to check the cameras at the front of the store. He had to see what he was dealing with. He couldn’t use the shop terminal on the front counter for that. Not without exposing his hiding spot.

  And things didn’t look good. One of the goons was armed with a power sledge. This was a two-handed hammer intended for demolition. It would make easy work of the store’s front gate. The good news, if you could call it that, was that the police probably had a tap on this feed as well. So they knew that the message he’d sent was legit. Thank the gods that goons prized brawn over brains.

  They also rarely wasted time when a debt needed payment. They would probably be through the gate in less than a minute.

  His heart was banging like a drum in his chest again. But this time, the ansoline was also kicking in. It gave him just enough detachment to analyze the situation.

  So a thought occurred to him: while the law prevented the Bakaris from having deadly weapons at the shop to ward off robbers, he still had the shop’s mapper bots. These semi-autonomous rolling spheres were favored by spelunkers to scout ahead for possible routes. Each unit had a camera function with a flash on it.

  As relic hunters, the Bakaris always had a few of these stashed away somewhere. If he could get a few of those out into the front of the store and set off a long series of flash photography, he would have a crude flashbang. Well, the flash part, anyway. Maybe it could create an opening to make an escape.

  He spotted a row of bots on a bottom shelf on the other side of the room. He used his wr
istpad to set them up for remote control.

  The front gate rattled and banged as the gang lifted it out of the way. The crash of glass came moments later. It sounded like one of the goons had broken the front door to get inside.

  It didn’t feel like there was enough time to tap out what he needed the bots to do. He switched to voice commands to speed things up. “Jeeves,” he said, “activate silent mode.” A red light blinked twice on his wristpad, indicating confirmation. Thank the gods that he had pre-programmed some behavioral routines.

  He added, “Activate mapper bots...one through six. Single file formation, Unit One in lead, manual guidance.” The little bots buzzed to life, rolled off the shelf, and came over to him. He’d controlled them like this dozens of times before, in the ruins. He hoped it wouldn’t be too different here.

  One of the goons said, “Nice shop ya got here!” Darius could hear more things being broken and stomped on. “Ohhh, this one looks expensive, I think I’ll keep it!”

  “Maybe we should just burn this place down,” muttered another. “Y’know, smoke ‘im out.”

  “Saaay,” hissed the first one, “that doesn’t sound like a bad idea. What you think, Bakari? Should we light this shite up, or you gonna come out nice and quiet-like?”

  The distinctive charge-up whine of the power sledge preceded another crash, and this impact sounded electrical—likely the terminal on the counter. Well, they couldn’t read his messages now. “Or we kin keep doin’ target practice on these bits and bobs until ya show yer ugly mug...”

  Darius set the viewport of his wristpad to the camera on the front-most bot. Any moment now, the goons would start heading towards the back. He sent his little army into the restroom. The door was right across from the storage room. He closed and locked the storage room door as soon as the bots were out. Maybe that would buy a little more time for the police to arrive.

  “I’ll give ya ten more seconds to come out,” the goon from a minute ago hooted, “then we come lookin’ for ya!” They began a loud, slow count. Each number was punctuated with the sound of more broken merchandise.