New Title 2, page 3
“You take care, sister.”
Mara glanced up timidly, her cold eyes now streaming tears like melting ice cubes, to see her brother John standing there with blood speckled across his chest, a massive gun cradled in his arms, and an entirely alien gleam in his eyes. And then, he was gone—out of the room and off down the hallway.
“Be careful, you stupid piece of dung,” she muttered.
Trotting down the corridor, Johnny tried to remember from coming here two years ago which floor in this business structure the Phoenix Clinic was on. He pictured the view of his beloved, ugly city as seen from the recovery room’s window. Tenth, maybe? A floor or two less than that? The corridor turned to the right ahead. He came to a stop at its edge, then swung around and came face-to-face with Alvarez and a fourth security man in a shimmering black suit. There couldn’t be many more of these grunts. This one had a semiautomatic in one fist, and he hadn’t even got it half raised before Johnny put a bright beam through him like a spear made of blue crystal. It left a scorched and smoking hole in his forehead, and there would be a corresponding hole in the rear of his skull. He fell back against the wall, eyes still open in an expression half quizzical and half lobotomized, and slumped sideways to the floor. As Alvarez began to whirl away with a yelp, Johnny called, “Hold it, Frankenstein.”
Alvarez turned back to face him as Johnny walked quickly down the hall. “Please, please, Mr. Pharaoh,” he began.
“Oh, now I’m Mr. Pharaoh, huh? No more Mr. Phillips?”
“You can take my car; it’s in the garage below the building.”
“Good idea, and you’re coming with me.” Johnny took one hand off the assault engine to grab a fistful of lab smock.
“No, please…look, I’ll give you the password…”
“I said you’re coming with me. Which way out of this place?”
“Um, that way—to the elevators.”
“Great. Let’s go.” Johnny tugged the man along. His force of will gave his lean body more strength than it possessed and he almost jerked the man right off his feet. As they walked down the corridor side-by-side, Johnny said, “I see you eyeballing the guns in my pockets. You make a grab for one of those and they’ll be cloning you next, doc. I’m sure you’ve got a file here, yourself, so maybe you’re not worried about that.”
“I won’t, I won’t…I don’t want to die.”
“Now you know how it feels, dung-breath. So—did you already call the forcers?”
“Wh-what?”
“That means you did. Good move. Well, I’ve fought my way through forcers before.”
An office door cracked open and a tech peeked out, but when Johnny wheeled with the assault engine the door closed promptly. Similarly, when they turned another corner and came to a pair of elevators, two techs in lab coats fled before boarding the open lift on the right. Johnny pushed Alvarez inside it, keeping a hold on his coat lest he try to close the door between them. He punched the key for the basement/garage level. He hated boxing himself inside an elevator—could be a death trap—but with the mock doc in tow he felt more secure.
“Once you have my vehicle you’ll let me go, right?”
“Sure, doc—no hard feelings. Just don’t try anything tricky and I won’t take your head off at the shoulders.”
The elevator descended swiftly, and the coppery door slid open with a little ding. Johnny held Alvarez ahead of him, again making use of a human shield. He heard sirens from somewhere, but that wasn’t unusual in Punktown and he hoped they weren’t headed to this business structure, specifically.
The basement garage had subdued lighting and a low ceiling supported by thick pillars of faux marble, the marble different colors for different parking zones; red pillars with silver veins close by, blue pillars with gold veins further ahead. “I’m in the Yellow Section,” Alvarez informed him. Johnny could see the black-veined yellow pillars, as big around as huge oaks, on beyond the Blue Section. He drove his hostage on between rows of parked hovercars, wheeled vehicles, helicars, hoverbikes. Several people entering or emerging from their street craft looked over, saw that complex cannon in Johnny’s grip, and ducked behind them out of sight or locked themselves inside and scrunched down in their seats.
“See how smart all these other people are? So why did you have to screw with me?”
“I’m not screwing with you! I’m cooperating, Mr. Pharaoh, aren’t I?”
“You’re a slow learner.”
Johnny thought he glimpsed a peripheral movement, whirled toward a fat pillar, finger curled on the lead-spraying trigger. No doubt another spooked business-suited man or woman, but there might still be some Phoenix security grunts on his tail. Those guys were slow learners, too.
They were almost out of the Blue Section now, a forest of petrified trees, the Yellow Section just ahead. Again, from the tail of his eye Johnny saw someone dash behind one of those gold-glittering blue columns. This time, he had caught a better look of the person, as quick as the glimpse had been.
Alvarez was pointing. “That’s it right there—my car. The gray Warper.”
“Mm-hm,” Johnny said, sounding a bit distracted.
They came up on the vehicle, smallish and sporty, parked just inside the Yellow Section, nuzzled up near one of the black-veined saffron-bright columns. Alvarez produced a remote device, pointing it at the car as he thumbed a password on its keys. A beep announced that the alarm was deactivated and the Warper was unlocked. Alvarez then turned to hand the device over to his captor. “Here, take it. The password to get her started is…”
Ignoring him, Johnny spun just as the figure lunged at him from behind that yellow column. He pressed the trigger for fully automatic fire, but the other man was fast despite his bulk and pushed the assault engine to point away from him, the chain of bullets strafing across the pillar with thwarted whines. A ricochet pinged off the gray ceramic hide of the expensive Warper.
Johnny ducked under the blow that swung toward his head, faster even than this muscled giant. He let go of one handle of the assault engine to free his right hand, and popped up after the missed punch to shoot a blow at his attacker’s head, knowing that was the only part of him that was really vulnerable. He knew this man wore a light but tough padded vest of body armor, and inside the lining of that heavy leather coat would be a layer of mesh that could resist most ray beams and solid rounds. Though his fist did not have spikes implanted in its knuckles, as did the one that had been thrown at him, he scored a nice sharp blow to the man’s left temple.
Still gripping the side of the assault engine, the bigger man wrenched at it now, jerked it out of Johnny’s grasp. Johnny let it go, but that freed him entirely. He dropped down close to the ground, and threw himself at the man’s legs, almost as big around as columns themselves. He grabbed at the side of one of the tall, steel-toed boots. The other boot rose in a kick to the ribs that dislodged Johnny, knocked all the air out of his lungs. He flew backward onto his side with a grunt.
“You pathetic little scumbag,” rumbled the giant, reversing the assault engine in his hands so that now it was his turn to point its multiple barrels. “So you were gonna ventilate me, huh? And take my place? I don’t think so.”
Johnny had curled in a tight fetus position, his ribs feeling shattered, moaning. He mumbled something incoherently.
“Say what, freak?” demanded the real Johnny Pharaoh. He stepped closer, looming over his defeated clone. This pitiful imposter, this inadequate pretender, who must weigh less even than his shadow.
On the ground, Johnny mumbled again. “Not my fault,” and some other slurred babbling.
The real Johnny cocked the slide of the shotgun feature. “Quick and merciful, dung-hole. Just to show you I’m not all bad. But you should know that, huh?”
Since when had he become so stupid, Johnny wondered about himself, that he would let down his guard and chit-chat with a wounded enemy? Had the last two years made the real Johnny Pharaoh senile?
He came out of his coiled-up posture like a cobra, in his right fist the combat knife he had stolen from the sheath in the real Johnny’s boot. He had known it would be there, as always. He returned it to the real Johnny, but instead of sticking the blade in its scabbard he buried it in Johnny’s thigh, and then gave its handle a sharp twist. The real Johnny let out a roar of pain, so high above him that it sounded like an angry god.
The real Johnny fired a shotgun blast at the spot where the clone had been, but he was no longer there, having scrambled forward on hands and knees like a crab. Johnny switched his finger to another trigger, the automatic fire feature, as he spun in the direction the clone had scrambled. But the clone had already sprung to his feet, ignoring the agony in his side, and let loose a flurry of blows directed at the authentic Johnny’s head. The clone knew enough not to split his knuckles, though, on those spiky studs implanted in one of the giant’s bony eyebrows.
Between the pain and damage in his gored leg, and the stunning barrage of blows to his heavy skull, Johnny Pharaoh collapsed. His fall was as ponderous as that of a felled tree. The clone stayed with him, both his hands now clawing to get that assault engine back. Though only partly conscious now, the real Johnny wouldn’t let go. Half straddling him, the clone reached back and tugged free the combat knife. He heard the giant groan beneath him. If he wouldn’t let go of the gun, maybe he’d just hack at his hands until he did.
But why not just end it first, and then take the gun? The clone raised the knife high above the neck of the dazed man beneath him. The former Johnny Pharaoh.
His arm froze there in the air, at the height of its arc. A drop of blood gathered and dripped from the tip of the blade as if from a leaky faucet, plopping on the groaning giant’s cheek. The new Johnny felt his weak arms trembling from the pain in his side. He felt his fragile knuckles ache from the blows he had delivered to that massive skull. Peripherally, he saw Alvarez sprinting off between the rows of vehicles, leaving his unlocked Warper behind him. Despite these sensations and movements, however, it was as though time had stood still. This moment preserved in a jar of formaldehyde, frozen in a cryogenic state. Like the limbo his tissues and his mind had waited in separately for two years, to be reactivated, called out of the past. Summoned to life like a genie from its bottle.
He could not do it. He could not bring the knife down into the giant’s neck.
“You’re getting slow,” panted Johnny Pharaoh. “You stupid son of a bitch.”
And that was when the emerald green beam from a forcer’s weapon struck Johnny Pharaoh in the back of his head. It emerged through his forehead. With a look on his too-thin, overly-tanned face that was half quizzical and half lobotomized, he collapsed upon the body of the giant like a lover.
Beneath him, the original Johnny Pharaoh smelled something burning. It smelled like burnt fat or singed hair. He heard the faintest of sizzling sounds. Giving another long groan, he managed to get his pummeled eyes open enough to see two law enforcers standing over him, black-garbed and helmeted and both carrying a small, compact type of assault engine. The two men were arguing.
“You might have called a warning before you fired, y’know.”
“I didn’t have time! He was gonna stab this guy.”
“Yeah? Looked like he was hesitating, to me.”
“Why take the chance?”
“And how do you know this guy didn’t deserve to get himself stabbed?” This forcer gave Johnny a light tick in the side with the toe of his boot. “Anyway, we need a med unit here. The little guy messed this one up pretty good.”
Johnny let his bruising eyelids drift closed again.
When he opened them next, he was staring up at the bright white ceiling of a little recovery room, presumably in one of Punktown’s hospitals. He’d been a patient in all of them at one time or another. Johnny Pharaoh had been shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, even poisoned a number of times over his long career. But here he was, opening his eyes to a new day, as always. Johnny Pharaoh was a survivor.
“Oh…mama,” he moaned, sitting up in bed. A supernova of pain exploded inside his skull, and his leg that had been stabbed was bandaged and numb. Still, he swung his legs off the side of the bed and gingerly attempted putting his weight on it. It bravely upheld his body. He started stiffly toward a closet where he expected his clothing and belongings to have been stored.
But his movements had alerted hospital staff. A nurse burst into the room, followed by two men in black uniforms. It was the pair of forcers who had responded to the scene in the parking garage, minus their helmets and assault engines.
“Whoa, whoa, back into bed, big fella,” said the nurse, putting a restraining hand on his chest. She was extremely cute, the white of her uniform contrasting nicely with the rich brown hue of her skin and clinging to some impressive curves. He might have asked her to go out to dinner with him tonight if he weren’t in such a hurry to get out of this place.
“I’m okay, sister. Time to check out.”
“Not so fast, Mr. Pharaoh,” said the older of the two forcers. “I’m Officer Nguyen, and this is my partner Medina—the one who shot your assailant. We have a lot of questions.”
“I’ll swing by the station and fill you in, after I’m feeling a little better,” grumbled Johnny, eyes on the closet.
“Ah, you aren’t going anywhere, sir,” cut in Medina. “See, we called in a team to investigate this mess and it seems that you and your dance partner, there, are both clients of an unlicensed cloning facility in that building. I’m sure you know that cloning is restricted to the manufacture of labor drones.”
“I don’t know anything about any cloning facility.”
“No? The investigating officers have already got a confession out of a guy named Alvarez, who’s cooperating in return for leniency. He told our boys about the mix-up…you and that clone with your memories in it.”
Johnny Pharaoh sighed and shifted his body to glower at the two smaller men. “Okay—so I used an illegal cloning facility. Fine me.”
“It isn’t that easy,” Medina went on. “See, that clone with your memories killed four security guards while trying to escape the building.”
“You’re lucky it was only four.” Johnny felt a touch of odd pride. Even in that runty little body, his double had made a pretty good effort. Hell, he could have even killed him if he’d really wanted to. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t been able to do it. It made Johnny feel something in addition to the weird pride. Something almost like fondness for the poor bastard.
“That guy had your mind, your memories, right? He was you. So…”
“Medina,” warned the other officer.
Medina ignored him. “So, you’re the one responsible for those dead security guards, right?”
“Pardon?”
“You’re responsible. A—you’re the one who utilized that illegal clinic’s services; that clone mix-up would never have happened if not for you filing your mind there. And B—it was your mind that ordered that body to kill those men. An exact double of your mind. Essentially, the same guy, all appearances aside. So if he would kill those men, that means you would kill them, too. After all, it looks like you have quite the criminal record, Mr. Pharaoh.”
“Medina, this is too complicated for us to charge him like that,” Nguyen said. “He needs to be sedated –” a meaningful glance at the nurse “– and recover, and then after that, yeah, we’ll take him in…but we’ll leave it to a judge to decide how accountable this guy really is for what happened.”
“But that was him, not me!” Johnny protested. “I did nothing!”
“Tell it to the judge, then,” said Officer Medina, sneering and resting one hand on the pistol holstered at his belt, “but you aren’t going anywhere, freak.”
Freak? thought Johnny Pharaoh.
Peripherally, Johnny took in everything in the room around him, mapping it in one instant sweep. Over the years, through training and improvisation, he had found that almost anything loose could be used as a weapon. A rolled up magazine stabbed into the Adam’s apple. A coffee mug smashed into the bridge of a nose. He had once killed two guys on hoverbikes, ripping the helmet off the head of one guy and swinging it into the unhelmeted head of the second guy, crushing his sorry skull. Then he had dragged the first guy off his bike, and stomped his head against the edge of the curb. They didn’t like him cutting them off in traffic? Sorry. But they shouldn’t have followed him into a parking lot, afterward, to confront him. Who was the tough-guy now?
“Sir?” said the nurse. “Won’t you please get back in bed?”
Not only was Johnny keenly aware of his surroundings in terms of potential weapons and fighting environment, but he was conscious of the lovely nurse’s position in the room. He mustn’t let her get hit by any stray bullets or rays. Beautiful or not, he had never liked innocent bystanders getting caught in the crossfire. Unprofessional, and just plain not nice.
Do You Know This Girl?
…asked the caption of the image on the large vidscreen facing Toskins when he debarked from the subway tube. A bottom corner of the screen had been covered in spray paint (SEXY! read the streaky graffiti), and every few seconds it crackled with a burst of static. Toskins stopped to stare at it, allowing himself to be bumped and buffeted by the other disgorged passengers, most of whom didn’t give the screen a look despite the fact that it showed a naked murdered woman.
Was it a still photo or a film loop shot by a motionless camera? An idle question that passed through Toskins’ mind. Of more concern to him was that such an image should loom before the faces of children, though a moment later he wondered if his concern was wasted, when one child near him on the platform imitated the facial expression of the dead woman to frighten his sister, and both gurgled with gleefully sadistic laughter as if their throats bubbled blood.
Toskins lived in the nearby city of Miniosis, and tried not to venture into the smaller city of Punktown except when business dictated, as it did this week. Punktown was smaller the way Mars was smaller than Jupiter. It was still big enough. There was certainly too much of Punktown for his tastes. He had once done some business at a Martian colony, and he’d have rather been there today than here. This vidscreen missing person type of posting—the first thing to greet him as he set foot in Punktown—firmly reinforced his attitude. He was instantly flushed full of anxiety and bitterness.
