Chapter I
We all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all disease.
~Thomas Browne, Religio Medici
The most peculiar sound in the world, if it could be heard, is the sound of a cell dying. The initial, soft pop of a hole being punched in, followed almost immediately by the soft hiss of liberated cytosol spraying out onto the bare, apathetic concrete. The bitter crunch of microtubules giving way textures over the fizz of caustic ooze mixing with the sad, deflated bag that was once a cell, as the spray peters out into a trickle, then a dejected drip drip drip into nothing.
What a mess. At least this time he wouldn't have to clean it up.
This is the third one tonight, and yet, still no information. "I don't know what you're talking about," is quickly becoming the most annoying sentence of the night. And the week. And the month. They're tougher than he expected. But no matter, sooner or later, someone will crack. As he holstered the lytic revolver (a rusted steel memory from his days on the force), he heard a commotion somewhere to his right. He's been noticed. In precisely three seconds he'll hear the second most annoying sentence of the year.
"Drop your weapon and identify yourself!"
Oh, wonderful, the heat.
It is one of the lesser known corollaries of Murphy's Law that the probability of an event occurring on time is inversely proportional to how much one wants it to. The sun rises over the protests of hungover bar patrons, the rain falls over the outdoor wedding reception, and the police arrive precisely when it's time to make a getaway. He mulls this over as he pushes past the stunned crowd of policemen and into the ordered chaos that is the Interstitial Shipping District. Hundreds of trucks bearing the company logo of RBC transport rush past, here unloading and there reloading, shipping everything from food to chemical warfare agents (only occasionally in the same truck).
A leap through the traffic leaves him on the other side of the busy expressway. Fourteen left turns, three false rights, four real rights, eight sets of stairs and a roll through a tunnel leave him exactly where he started, in the alleyway, right by the drying corpse that was once an Interstitial Customs official. The policemen, meanwhile, were somewhere on the other side of town, still puzzling over how to count the number of left turns he'd taken after they'd run out of fingers. Neutros weren't very bright, but then again they weren't meant to be. Their strength was in numbers, and he'd been lucky that there were so few today.
He takes one last look at the corpse, then walks away. Three duds and a police encounter; it was time to call it a night.
Chapter 2
He makes his way back to Outpost 34A, also known as the disused police node at the very end of main street. Outpost 34A is an old building - a very old building - and it shows. The front door, or more appropriately, the remaining front door, hangs loosely from lumps of brown-orange powder that once may have been called hinges. Every window is broken through or boarded up, and the fire escapes that run down the sides are little more than spindly steel ladders hanging from spindly rusted bars. The paint's a distant memory, and a fine web of cracks snakes across the concrete; in some places missing slabs reveal weathered cinderblocks.
Altogether the facade evokes the image of an old, scarred, toothless man with the last wisps of his silver hair dangling loosely over the sides. He thinks it's amusingly ironic.
He steps through decaying doorway and into what was once the lobby. Tables that have seen neither paperwork nor instant coffee in years shudder as he crosses through to the creaking stairs, and up to the second floor conference room that he reluctantly calls home. It's the most serviceable room in the building - having miraculously resisted mildew, roof leaks, and structural collapse. In the time since he'd moved in he'd added electricity (courtesy of the unknowingly generous neighbors whose power line's he'd tapped) and a wall of news clippings, printouts, pictures and furious scribbles (written with what remained of the room's whiteboard markers).
As he walks past the board, he draws a bright red X over one of the pictures. Another trail run cold.
The revolver is dropped to the floor, joined quickly by his coat, and after an unceremonious faceplant, by a weary ex-cop-
-whose name, it might be said, is Daniel Vantas.
Police forces aren't trained; they're made. Every member of the rank and file, competent or otherwise, is put together in the Marrow district from the endless supply of stem cells eager for the position. The outcome's predetermined – one becomes what one's meant to, and after a quick primer, badges are polished, weapons issued, uniforms fitted, and another young-but-no-quite-so-young unfortunate steps proudly into the dubious fluorescent streetlight of duty.
Most recruits become Neutrophils, the beat cops. Not too bright, but never in shortage, they're trained to take their targets down if it means going down with them, which incidentally, they often do. They handle most street-level crimes, and they're more than effective (if not too efficient), but the craftier characters quite easily outsmart them (then again, so do most alley cats).
Some display talent for the application of brute force – that is to say, they show little talent for the application of anything else. They become the Macros – the big ones. Their job is as simple as they are: find the target, chase the target, subdue it by any means necessary, and take it back for identification (at least, whatever's left of it). Macros tend to be permanently stationed in the shipping districts, unless called elsewhere on urgent business.
The more accomplished become part of the NK divisions. NK cells work like detectives – with licenses to lyse. They identify potential threats, assess them, and, if need be, hunt them down and, unassumingly, grant them the division's parting courtesy of a .255 Perforin round to the face, delivered by means of a standard-issue lytic revolver. Small wonder that the division's better known as the Natural Killers.
Those that show something greater than that ability to kill effortlessly, to hunt tirelessly, to count beyond the reach of their ten fingers – they go through another grueling hell of training to become the Third Line: the most elite defense force in the system. The assassins, the chessmasters, the real thinkers get sent north to Thymus. They emerge as sharp witted intelligence officers and killers of such precision that a cell may stand arm in arm with one of their targets and find that not a drop of cytosol has so much as spattered upon his coat from the corpse that now lies at his side. Those that continue their training in Marrow district are turned into masters of the abused word. Every letter laid by press and every keystroke by hand falls only by their accession. They spin words as weapons sharper that the end of a Perforin bullet, a twist of tone here or there turning the protein mob against their marks. One might say they're everywhere, all the time, only waiting for their signal to turn their unwitting arsenal on whatever unfortunate may have been found wanted.
It hadn't been difficult to see what Vantas would turn into. Physicality alone paints the picture of a tall, lanky cell with quick arms and quicker legs. It had been to the surprise of many when he'd cleared off every target on the range with a revolver he'd only ever used once, the surprise of some that he somehow had the perfect sense for a chase, and the surprise of absolutely no one at all that he would be joining the NK divisions post-haste. He would have made Third Line, they'd said, if he'd only learned to hunt his own targets. This was then, of course, when things were much simpler than they are now.
They might have stayed that way had he not punched three bullet-shaped holes into a Macro's nucleus.
Chapter 3
Drip drip drip.
Well, it couldn't last forever.
Vantas pulled himself off the floor and into the vague direction of the last balanced table in his room. He could fix the roof leak later. Right now, what mattered was cleaning up, pulling together, and getting back on the hunt. The hunt seemed to be all that mattered these days.
Last night left him with another cold trail. He'd known from the beginning that there had to be more than one of them; these kinds of things never came alone, yet so far he'd come up with nothing. Weeks of searching pulled up nothing more than a big wall disappointments and a pile of dry markers. The first rays of morning light peek through the slats of the wonderful nailed-wooden-plank louvers the previous owners had so kindly added after vacating. He's still tired; the ache in his microtubules not quite gone and the sandpaper texture of his eyelids grating whenever he blinked. It really is much too early to even be considering taking up the next (probably cold) trail. It's much too early to be considering anything at all. He reaches into his pocket for something that always makes him feel a little bit better.
A pack of cigarettes, half empty, or as he'd put it, half full.
With a cig held comfortingly between his lips, he scrambles for a match under the mess on what might be called his dressing table. It's never easy to find these things. As he leans over, he feels the slightest gasp of heat under his chin, followed by the metallic snap of a well-made lighter closing. Oh.
"You're welcome."
With a quick turn he knows he would see him right there like a magician, coat pristine in the dusty air, with a wry smile on his arrogant face and a loaded gun in his steady hand. A quick turn he decides not to make. Best to play along for now; he knows this game only works if both of them are in on it.
"A disused lymph node. You and your theatrics, Daniel."
The voice drips with all the grease that seems to have been saved from his suit.
"As if you could talk to me about theatrics. I don't even need to turn around to know you're holding your other arm behind your back like some kind of gentleman. I would turn around just to prove myself right, but it seems your other hand and its revolver stand in my way."
The sound of a gun being holstered.
"It was more for your sake than mine. I assumed you'd have wanted it quick and painless."
"Is that what they're calling it now?"
He turns around to face his guest, pocketing a matchbox his scrambling had uncovered, and yes, there's the magician himself, smiling like the joke that only he ever got is still funny. Daniel inhales deeply, savoring the nicotine. He might as well be cordial.
"Care for a drink? Normally I'd offer rat piss, but just this morning we've come into some fine roofwater. Surely you'd accept a drink with an old friend."
"Afraid I'll have to pass. What I am interested in," he pauses, turning to the great board of disappointment, "is this."
"Oh, pictures. Of course, you always did have trouble with letters."
"And you seem to have trouble with finding your mark." His fingers trace over the lines of a big red X.
"It's a bit harder when the targets aren't marked out for you."
"And yet here I am, in front of you. Where," he pauses, with another grin, "are they?"
"Wouldn't we both want to know?"
"Well, you would. I'm fairly certain I know who sent me."
This puts the slightest angle to the edge of Daniel's upper lip. He's lost.
"Enlighten me."
"Let's say there are certain concerned parties that would feel much better if you'd actually started trying. It's becoming insulting."
Daniel pulls the matchbox out, slowly, judging the weight. With one hand he pulls a single match from the box. He leaves the box just a little bit open.
"So they sent you here to offer me a hint. Good to see you're moving up in the world."
"And how much smaller you look from up here. No, a hint would make this all too easy. It's more of an incentive, really."
He puts the box in the crook of his palm. The single stick is pressed against his finger, waiting to be struck.
"I suppose the bitter hatred was running a little cold."
"And nothing quite like the threat of death to heat it up again."
In a single motion he flings the matchbox, striking the match and stuffing it inside the box as it flies out of his palm. The match heads ignite in a phosphorus flash, and for a brief moment the whole of the old, musty room is bathed in light. Motes of dust and cracks in the walls show in high relief for a fraction of a second.
Daniel stands alone in his room, but not entirely.
There's a slightly singed photograph on the floor, with some almost aggressively neat handwriting on the corner. Next to it, there is what is clearly a bomb, with a timer at twelve. It does not mean minutes. Daniel sighs.
"Same old Usher."
Daniel, the picture, his coat and gun fall out the window. The second floor falls down to the first.
Looking back on the smoldering wreck, Daniel notices something. The bomb blast was powerful enough to slope the roof of the uppermost floor outwards from the center and to blow both the last front door and the remaining excuses for fire escapes right off of their rusted hinges. Overall, the façade looks more like an earnest, open-mouthed smile.
"A marked improvement, actually."
Chapter 4
Usher heads back to his house. He saunters through the front door, and he would have hung up his hat, had he a hat to hang, but he settles for hanging his coat on the rack by the door. He is, inevitably, drawn to the only piece of furniture in his house that doesn't have a patina of dust over it. The couch's fine gallery of coffee stains is about to get a new addition.
Usher's house is a study in appearances. Any self-respecting man must, of course, have a well-furnished bedroom, with a rack for his collection of suits, for every occasion and altercation, a ledge for his shoes, and nightstand for his personals. As it stands, Usher's bed is impeccably maintained, with a thin coating of dust keeping the expensive silk safe from the slightest touch of daylight streaming through the ornate yet nigh-unusable window in the corner. The rack holds a rather lonely (yet immaculately maintained) black suit and the ledge supports a single pair of leather shoes that may yet be used to wedge that window open with their stiffness. The nightstand holds a stash of scotch which may now be vinegar, and nothing else. There is a bookshelf, of course, with no shortage of books. Naturally, they have never been read.
Signs of life crop up the closer one gets to the couch, which for its use may as well be a bed, desk, vault, and on many occasions, coffee canvas. Here there's a pair of well-worn (yet still perfectly shined) shoes, there lays a pile stained paper, and on the couch itself, is Usher himself, sleeping.
One might expect a man such as Usher to sleep with a gun under his pillow. This is ridiculous.
It's in his hand. What use is a gun under your own head?
By this time next week he'll have his answers. Daniel will make sure of that. Daniel never did give up a chase.
Smoke curls off the barrel of the freshly-emptied lytic revolver. The target field is barren, what few dummies left standing are all shot once, cleanly, through the head. Usher, like everyone else, is staring. Consider that the range is color coded, as are all the targets. There are colored sections that run from shooters' area to the outer wall demarcating individual ranges. Consider that all these fixtures had been set down with the rather blatant intent of assigning individual targets, and that have at this point all proven to be woefully ineffective. Finally, someone speaks,
"You were supposed to hit your target. Not everyone else's. Your marksmanship is wasted."
Daniel Vantas stares down at the officer, looking at him from across the ledge where rest his revolver and the last of his bullets. There isn't the slightest suggestion of a tone in his answer, but Usher, from where he stands, can almost feel the condescension.
"I wasn't aware that the others had targets, sir. They refused to hit them."
If a cell might wear two faces at once, Vantas was surely the master of it. His grim countenance only just concealed the wry smile with an aside look that Usher could swear was sent right to his face.
"Someone needed to hit the targets sir."
Daniel says this with finality, as if he is the disapproving officer reprimanding his errant recruit. As Daniel walks away from the quavering shell of indignant rage still standing by the ledge, Usher feels that he needs to say something.
"You missed one of them," Usher says as Daniel walks past him.
"I knew you had him," is all he gets in reply.
Chapter 5
Daniel holds the picture up to the dim light of his current lodging, borrowed, with express lack of consent, from its current owners. An abandoned warehouse in the shipping district seemed at once a terrible and brilliant idea. Terrible, because of the ridiculous amount of traffic that passed through the area on a daily and nightly basis, but brilliant because the only way that many cells can through the same place at the same time is if none of them are paying attention to anything more than the cells right in front of was the epitome of hiding in plain sight.
The grimed old bulb reveals a young leukocyte. He's fresh from the Marrow district, and it shows in his obnoxiously dazzling officer's badge and the near-immaculate state of his uniform. His shoulders are right angles, and his back is almost painfully straight, but his face is by far the worst of it. Wide, naive eyes sit atop a grin that goes on for miles in either direction, hedged on either side by the day-old stubble.
This cell obviously isn't hiding something - he does too poor a job of it to be called "hiding".
Witness the subtle eye bags sulking just beneath those innocent eyes. Witness, also, the clench of his fists and the set of his legs, the tension holding him together at just a few errant twitches short of breaking point. His wide grin is the lip of a dam, barely holding back the torrent of secrets this cell has no business keeping. Daniel grins.
The picture was taken in passing on the street; most of the background is a blur of movement, with only an odd trash can or bench visible in the flow of the crowd. On the dog-eared corner of the photo, pretentious script delivers neither message nor address, but only a single word.
Mack's.
Checking the back of the photo reveals another message. It says, almost teasingly,
"Make this one talk first."
Mack's is one of those places that spells "cop bar" better than its own name. It's down by an old infection site near Colonial. The infection brought so many units to the area with nothing to do for weeks of precautionary stationing other than read through the neatly folded stacks of The Antibody, B division's mass-produced drivel.
It was inevitable that someone would bring in the booze, and thus, Mack's was born. Initially only catering to the units stationed in the area, it quickly expanded to seem at least vaguely inviting to cells outside its core demographic, fatigued policemen too drained to tell the difference between stale bar chips and cyanide molecules (in fairness, the proprietor can't either). Mack's is still very much a cop bar, and frequent reinfections in the area keep it in business.
It's interiors are a product of evolution, in a sense. Bad ideas were thrown out the window (literally, on occasion) and good ideas stayed on. Thus the tables are big enough for a pile of poker chips and up to ten glasses of beer, but are also glued to the floor; the bar is wide and inviting, but an alcove beneath hides a loaded shotgun. Daniel notes all of this when he walks in, takes a seat by the bar (ingeniously set to be just out of stabbing reach of the next stool, and also glued to the floor), and orders a drink, which comes in a plastic cup.
Daniel nurses his third drink at the bar, while the bartender eyes him nervously. Perhaps he shouldn't have used the shoulder holster this time. In the dim light of old incandescents, the bar tables, haphazardly scattered across the bar floor, stand out like scratched, wooden islands in a sea of stained tile and atolls of stale, crusted bar snacks. Every island is alive with the sounds of beer cups clacking pathetically against each other, cards shuffling, all layered over with each group's own brand of chatter. Daniel noticed all of this, of course - every hand of poker, every concealed shiv in every sore loser's pocket - but his attention was fixated at the far end of the bar, where stood, or perhaps sulked, the smallest, loneliest table.
Sitting at that table was a young leukocyte, nursing his twelfth drink, and counting. Every few sips he would look up to see that, yes, the cell with the shoulder holster and the itchy trigger finger was still watching him, his gaze never wavering for a fraction of a second.
This was a game, one of many that being a hunter teaches you how to play. This one was a waiting game, a matter of seeing who would break first, who would twitch. In the NK division it was often called "The Longest Second". Among those they hunted, it went by "Your Last Second". The busy crowd of police playing poker at the left table, the waitress struggling with the mountain of glassware wobbling worryingly on her single tray, all of this meant nothing. The bar, the lights, and the noise all seemed to fade away between Daniel and the leukocyte, now staring pointedly at the bottom of his thirteenth cup, which was decidedly lacking in beer. It wouldn't be long now.
The leukocyte bolts. Pushing past the struggling waitress, he throws his payment in vaguely in the direction of the bartender, crashes through the front doors and heads out into the street. Daniel grins, calmly putting his pay on the bar, and stands up to smooth out his trench coat. This would be a classic one.
The leukocyte races his way down the narrow sidewalk of the wide street - all streets in Colonial are wide - and turns the first corner he sees. The streets are dark at best and pitch black at worst, lit only by the odd streetlight that isn't broken and the rhythmic flashing from the tops of the relay towers far above. He looks into every alley he passes, at every trash can and doorway. In the dim light, every dark shape and shadow assumes the form of a predator.