Opposition Shift Read online

  “Yeah,” Hayden answered, feeling it was the right thing to say though it was mostly a lie. Talking bugs? Come on, old-timer, just let me go so I can get back to HQ before one of your Akiaten buddies shows up to finish the job E-Bloc started on me.

  The old man looked younger in the soft glow of the streetlights, the lines on his face less pronounced. Hayden looked past him, at the buildings slowly rolling by, feeling as if the car was sitting still and the buildings were on a conveyor belt and he would see the same one go by again.

  Perhaps his head was still foggy after all.

  He was mostly just glad to still be living, however, strange the topic of conversation. The more his thoughts became focused enough to examine his circumstances, the more shocked and grateful he was to be breathing.

  It figured that his luck had led him right into the arms of the Akiaten. Had he been in his right mind when his fate was being discussed just hours earlier, he would have been terrified at the surety of his death. They’d discussed, casually, killing the other invaders, and that was exactly what Hayden was.

  Maybe he wasn’t functioning at full capacity yet, but he still couldn’t think of any possible reason behind him being spared. The woman had even called him a slinger, said someone called Eight was impressed, so they knew, at least somewhat, of his importance to the Union.

  “You see—" the old man began, but something else was worrying Hayden and he spoke before his apparent savior could say the next lines in his sales pitch.

  “What about the kid? There was a boy with me.” There, he'd said it, having almost kept his mouth shut and just hoped he'd get back alive, but he had to know.

  The old man didn’t look pleased at the interruption but didn’t begrudge him the question. If anything, he looked shocked that it was the first question Hayden had thought to voice.

  “The boy is fine, slinger. He emerged from the conflict unscathed, at least physically, and in no small part, thanks to you. Una found a woman who claimed she was his aunt. Had a picture of him on her, so I’m inclined to believe her.” He watched Hayden’s satisfied nod before saying, “He’s fine, which is why you're still breathing,” again, as if to affirm it.

  The cart passed over a pothole so deep that his chest was set ablaze again briefly. The old man’s voice cut through his stuttering breaths as he tried to find his previous rhythm.

  “The Akiaten,” he said waving a hand almost dismissively. “This whole ‘resistance’ thing—it’s just a big, bloody distraction from the real struggle.” He paused to let Hayden absorb the words, the bicycle cab turning onto a wider, more populated street as he did so. There was now actual traffic and the occasional pedestrian to navigate around despite the late, or rather, early hour.

  Most of the buildings they passed held storefronts, equipped with flickering neon signs that washed the cab’s interior in strange colors. Street vendors yelled out the fare of the evening, and people in line yelled their orders back amid the background noise of sizzling grease in pans.

  Hayden hadn’t been to this part of the city yet, the part that was still alive. When the old man lowered his voice, it seemed to be instinctive, as though there was the risk of someone crouching beneath the window or a drone hovering overhead.

  Hayden had no doubts that there were drones above them. This was a modern city after all, even if in a low-grade region. Anyone with the right skills and a solid rig could take control of one device or another. The whole world had become a surveillance state. It wasn't so much about not being seen, as not being understood. It was on the verge of quaint that the old man continued in hushed tones.

  “We’re not…defending the pulse so much as we’re building our own machines to harness the energy. Even we don’t understand it yet, not fully. But what we do know is that there will be no peace until the energy is tapped.

  “We have seen what the likes of you have done to the rest of the world, and we know what happens to the local people who happen to be standing on top of resources that your world demands at any price. If we harness it first, then your plunder is denied, and we remain in control of our country, our future, and ourselves.”

  Hayden already knew that the man was Akiaten in some manner, or at least affiliated with their group. Hayden tried to puzzle out exactly what part the man played.

  He didn’t look like a fighter, though Hayden knew very well that he could have been deceived here, the fact that the man did not look like he knew how to fight may have very well been the point.

  Looking homeless was an excellent strategy for gathering intelligence. Hayden imagined you saw and heard a lot when nearly everyone you passed tried their hardest not to see you. That was the theory that made the most sense to him. That, or maybe the man was just a local who had gotten dragged too far in. E-Bloc certainly had decided that smashing the Akiaten's support network was just as effective in the long term, if not more, than shooting resistance fighters in the street.

  The bicycle cab bullied its way through the crowded streets, finally resorting to cutting through one of the wider alleys to make some sort of headway instead of being stalled every few seconds by pedestrians and other vehicles.

  “We’ve watched what happens to other low-grade regions like this with resources. They get torn to shreds by the big corporations using our streets for battlegrounds. Even without such struggle on our part, your people would still be rampaging across the land.”

  They took the side-street several blocks over. They were filled with even more potholes and bumps than the previous road, but either the medicine was still working its magic or he was past feeling pain.

  The street they came out on was close to the market. Hayden only realized that because it still smelled like a fight, gunmetal, smoke, and the coppery undertone of blood.

  The bodies, from what he could see, had all been removed during the hours or days he had lost, but there was still blood lingering that had yet to be scrubbed away. Had they healed him just to bring him back here and kill him? Why else lay out so many secrets? Cryptic as it might be, it was still valuable intel about the resistance. Hayden could see no reason the old man would tell him all of this while bringing him back here and leave him alive.

  “We may have guns and a few loyal souls who fight like devils, but we don’t have the numbers. The corporations will keep sending more and more until there is open war, and it is then that the tanks will come, and the bombs.

  “We don’t have much of chance without all the right tech and all the right talent.” He gave Hayden a pointed look at that. “We need what Union Americana, what all the big corporations have, people who know tech on the bleeding edge of sophistication, slingers like you and engineers of the same caliber.”

  Hayden found himself examining the marketplace for familiar faces; it gave him something to focus on besides the bloodstains. He could not imagine that there wasn’t someone out looking for him. The tracker in his system should have told them his location, but the fact that no operatives had barged into the safe-house while he was recuperating meant it must have been out of commission. Damaged by fire or else disabled somehow, the place could have very well had some sort of tech running to dampen the signal. If that was the case, then someone might start looking soon, and in the right places. Still, he scanned the dark corners of the market, the shadowed faces of its current wanderers, on the off chance that he might glimpse someone familiar. That someone might be out combing the streets for his remains. He wondered if they had considered the possibility of his defection as an alternative to death or capture.

  That’s what he would be thinking, in the absence of a signal or a body, either that, or he was being held against his will, having trade secrets tortured out of him. That was the same thing as betrayal from a functional perspective and would have the same end result of ruination for the Union’s plans.

  He was grateful when they left the ravaged marketplace behind, with him still alive, and his thoughts were more easily occupied by other things, such
as the things the old man was saying, matter-of-factly, as though he wasn’t deconstructing Hayden’s world as he did so.

  “You have some of our dead, and I imagine you’ve sliced them up by now. You know, of course, that the Akiaten aren’t…” the old man he let his voice trail off.

  “Human,” Hayden filled in. “Yeah, we got that much.”

  “I’m not sure if I would go quite that far,” the old man said with a smile. “I like ‘enhanced’ better, like your alpha augments and your operatives. Hell,” he said, reaching out to tap Hayden lightly on the back of the neck, his hand neatly touching down as Hayden fought the urge to jerk away. He was still something of a prisoner, and they both knew it. The point was made though.

  “Even you slingers have a few modifications that aren’t exactly natural. Ours are, more or less.”

  They drove along a street, leaving the market behind, that looked down on the water and the docks. In the distance, Hayden could see the green of the jungle rising out of the evening fog. The damp, dark night made its usual bright colors look muted, the same darker green hue that most leaves had back in the provinces of Americana.

  Hayden put one hand over his jack, running his finger along the space where the cable was not. He half expected to feel it, to realize that this whole day or span of days was nothing but a hallucination brought on by too much time in MassNet. He looked through the open window and up and the sky, searching for the glimmer of code between the thin, grey clouds.

  “More or less?” he questioned, and the old man laughed, the sound ringing off a low concrete wall on their right, perhaps there to prevent storm surges from washing away market stalls.

  The cab kept moving, the water on their left and the jungle ahead, settling in at the edge of his vision.

  “It’s the pulse, as you call it,” he said. “The energy here makes us what we are. It’s inside of us already, connects us to the jungle and to this land. It belongs to us and, in a way, we belong to it. This is the old power, as we sometimes say.”

  As the old man talked, Hayden mulled the words over where he could, paying special attention to certain phrases and words, knowing that, if or when he made it back to HQ, he would likely be questioned about what he had learned. He did this automatically, the procedure burned into his brain as protocol for such a situation. Even if he was brought back damaged, the things he learned could still help.

  There was no malice behind his thoughts. People could be programmed as thoroughly as machines. Hayden would admit, despite his tendency to ignore orders on the right occasions, that his years with the Union had altered his thinking. Bascilica had paid much to ensure that even the lowliest of his field staffers were trained on how to be useful prisoners in the event that they escaped or were recovered.

  Away from the abandoned fish market, they began to pass by cars and people on the street again. The smell of food being cooked in several stalls set his stomach to growling. Not being sure how long he had lain on the dilapidated couch, Hayden had no idea how long it had been since he’d last eaten. He recalled lunch with Nibiru and Laine after he’d finished his tracking in CodeSource, but that might have been more than a day ago for all he knew. It could be that this wasn't even the same night he thought it was, an entire day could have passed while he recovered.

  The sudden need to know how much time had passed seized him, and it was the first time since his brain began functioning that he thought of his HUD. Trying to pull it up yielded no results and he was left with the conclusion that whatever had fried his tracker had done something similar to all his other tech.

  He groaned inwardly at the thought of how much replacement surgery he would have to endure if he made it back alive. He would consider himself lucky if his jacks were still functional. Not that it would be much of an issue if he didn’t make it back. Hayden was still half expecting to be shot by a sniper on the roof of each building they passed, someone having decided that his freedom wasn’t worth the risk to their security.

  Had Laine been dealing with a similar situation, he was sure the man in question would have been disposed of, despite any protestations to the contrary.

  The rising question about his HUD died on his tongue as the bicycle cab stalled on the side of the road.

  “One second,” the old man said. Hayden watched as he stepped out long enough to buy two plates of street food from the nearest vendor, which also happened to be the one that smelled, to Hayden at least, the best. They were both piled high, and Hayden struggled to balance it on his knees without letting the edges spill over into the floor.

  He took note of the fact that when the old man attempted to pay the vendor waved the money away. Support for resistance movements came in many forms, so Hayden had learned in his years on the job. Often, something as simple as a hot meal was enough to keep them fighting. This old man was most certainly Akiaten or at least a figure of some clout within the movement. His homeless demeanor had to be a costume.

  The food was nearly too hot to eat, but he was starved enough that he let it scorch his tongue as he chewed quickly. He thanked the old man around the first mouthful and received the same benevolent smile in return.

  In some ways, the complete lack of hostility was almost troubling. Hayden was himself an invader, surely a few small acts of basic human decency hadn’t absolved him of that. More appropriately, it should have only earned him a swift death at best. Yet both the old man and Una had kept him alive.

  That still floored him. He watched the old man suspiciously as they ate, for the most part, in silence, the old man watching the people they passed on the streets.

  It was not late enough for them to be empty. Most of the people out were dressed for the evening, wearing bright, flashy colors, and even a few women in dresses with their lashes dark against their skin.

  If he had to guess, he would say it was the next evening, a bit later than the time that the fight at the market had first broken out, which meant that he’d lost just over a day. Of course, he could be off. It may have been three for all he knew or longer.

  “You said more or less,” Hayden said. “What did you mean?”

  “I’m not sure I understand the question.”

  “The pulse. You called it the old power, and what it does to you, to the Akiaten, as being natural, more or less. Why the less?”

  The old man finished his bite of food, chewing with exaggerated slowness before he answered.

  “I call it natural because it happens as a result of the pulse. It’s not a modification that we chose to give ourselves. It enhances everything that we can do. The spark that we carry within us allows us to tap into the energy, makes us faster, stronger, heightens our senses.

  “You saw how quickly Una healed. A wound like that would have put anyone else out for a good while, no matter how quality the medical care. But there are things we must do to keep ourselves strong, things that you would condemn, if you knew of them, despite our lack of choice in the matter.

  “There are few who are willing to side with us, even if most of the people here believe in our cause. For them, the cost is too great. Old superstitions and prejudices yet persist.”

  The old man’s voice had grown heavier toward the end, and Hayden wanted to ask more. He had a feeling though, that any further questions along the same line would be shut down or ignored.

  He nodded once, accepting that, for now, he had learned all that he was allowed, and turned his attention to the cooling plate of food.

  The cab’s wheels made odd noises on the old, seldom paved streets, but Hayden was relieved to find that the pain in his chest was fading. It only caused the barest hint of discomfort when the cab rode over bumps or he took a breath that was too deep or too quick.

  The old man stopped the cab in a part of the city that was wholly unfamiliar, and this time, beckoned for Hayden to climb out with him.

  As he did so, he waited again for the bullet to the brain from the rooftops. Then, the old man could climb easily back int
o the cab and melt back into same secluded series of alleyways and narrow streets they had emerged from.

  While less busy than the district they’d just passed through, Hayden was relieved to see that it looked, as Nibiru would have said, not quite shitty. The storefronts were mostly intact and there was a distinct lack of the graffiti and garbage that dominated much of the less savory parts of the city. The old man led him a few yards down the street to the door of a relatively nondescript café.

  “Black-site,” the old man said, nodding at the door. “Unfiltered online access, no questions asked.”

  “How much?"

  The man shrugged. “There’s a fee, but with your connections, it should be easy enough to arrange payment.”

  Hayden’s mouth was half open, ready to keep plowing forward with his questions, though he hadn’t quite thought of them yet. Overwhelmed as he was, there was more he should ask, but the old man had started backing up in the midst of his explanation and was back in the cab before Hayden could think of words to articulate what needed to be said.

  The cab didn’t move until Hayden’s fingers wrapped around the cool metal of the door and pulled it open. Once he’d stepped inside, into the blessedly cold air that was easier to breathe, he saw the bicycle cab lurch back into the traffic and disappear down the street.

  Not quite believing that the old man had just dropped so much intel on him and let him go, Hayden eyed the supposed black site with suspicion. He wasn't in the mood for games, though it was clear he was right in the middle of the biggest one he'd ever played.

  It was an old-school internet café, something he hadn’t seen in person since he was still a kid, and even then, they always seemed confined to rural neighborhoods that were far behind in their level of available tech. His current location seemed like the sort of the place where paying for access to the net on a regular basis might not be a priority for all, so he supposed it’s presence made sense.