Chapter Fourteen - Curiosity

“The biggest problem with the Antithesis.... No, okay, not the biggest, the biggest is that they won’t bloody well leave us alone. The biggest problem with fighting them is that the damned things can’t stick to one form. One day you’re fighting a horde of quick-moving but weak Model Threes. The next day you’re getting swamped by Model Six’s that shrug off small arm’s fire as if your bullets are little more than flies.

I hate being deployed against aliens. Let me mow down a crowd of crying protestors any day.”

-- Paul ‘Rod’ Roberick. First Lieutenant, The Rubbernecks, a North American PMC, late 2051

***

I edged closer to the doorway, then pulled it open with the tip of my foot. My hand was still firmly wrapped around my gun, barrel pointing down, but ready to snap up at a moment’s notice.

The body wasn’t fresh. At least, I didn’t think it was from the one glance I gave it before focusing elsewhere. The man might have been with the other group of students and kids, or he might have been some poor schmuck that was minding his own business with something decided to eat his face.

I wasn’t gonna poke around and try to find out.

The short passage just beyond the door led into a concourse, shops lined up one next to each other on the side I was on, and huge glass panes overlooking the city on the other. At least, they might have overlooked the city once, now they just gave a nice view of the dull off-grey building across the street.

“Gonna get lost around here,” I said.

I can guide you, though only with middling accuracy. I’d suggest a neural augmentation to assist you with pathfinding, but you are far too poor for that.

“Story of my life,” I muttered as I carefully stepped over the body.

Turn right ahead, then right again into the next junction like the one you are in now. That should lead you to the next stairwell down.

I should probably have been disgusted by it, but really, I had bigger shit to worry about than some poor dead guy.

A glance around showed the concourse empty, shitty asian-style pick-up-and-go restaurants were empty next to sub stores and a few little boutiques and tech shops. Not a person in sight. “Creepy,” I said as I started ahead.

I eyed some nice, nearly-glowing white sneakers on a rotating display in one store. I was tempted to get myself a fresh new pair. Anything was better than what I had on my feet just then, but I was on a mission. Shopping could come later.

I can supply clothing of a quality incomparable to those you’ll find in most human stores.

“Are you jealous?” I asked. “Afraid I might buy things with someone else?”

Nonsense. The equipment I can provide are orders of magnitude better than what you can obtain through traditional means. It’s just logical that you’ll prefer dealing with me over lesser suppliers.

I grinned. “You are jealous,” I said.

Teasing the crazy AI in my head might not have been clever, but it was a distraction when I needed it.

I was passing before the sub shop when, out of nowhere, something huge rushed at me. I froze, gun nowhere near ready to aim at the.... At the giant hologram of a sub sandwich. I slapped my hand over my heart. “God damn.”

I stomped ahead, happy that no one had been around to see me nearly shit myself because of some intrusive advertising. I held my Trench Maker a little higher, scanning it left and right as I moved towards a little side passage ahead, right where Myalis said I would find it.

Movement from outside had me turning to stare out into the city. A hovercar was racing by, three large, bat-like critters speeding after it. I moved closer to the window, following the chase until the hover car sped around a corner.

The streets below were teeming with life, hundreds of model threes rushing along the sidewalks with bigger, nastier looking aliens ramming spikes into walls and doors to make room for them to enter. Fifty foot long worms were slithering along the middle of the road, some at a speed that was frankly worrisome, while others lumbered along, their forms bloated and bulging as if they’d eaten a car.

Strangely enough, the Antithesis were moving in the right directions for traffic, groups flowing together in bunches, but bunchest that didn’t get in each other's way. “So many of them,” I said.

The rattle of machine guns sounded out in the distance, a counterpoint to the eerie silence of so many monsters that didn’t so much as growl. The AA guns had gone silent. A look up showed one of them sticking out of a cache in the ceiling of a smaller building. It was half melted, a large flying model perched atop it.

Those are lesser models. They will scour the region for biological materials to bring back to any forming hive, scouting through buildings and marking them with pheromones to warn other models of the threat within.

“These all came in those ships?”

Calling them ships is perhaps something of a misnomer. But essentially yes. Soon these relatively harmless models will range out towards the unconquered parts of the city. Your time is running out.

A rumble from further down the corridor had me pausing. The concourse turned as it reached the corner of the building, the last shop in the line some Aug-gear store with more floor space than items for sale.

I eyed the passage to the stairwell, then the end of the corridor.

If we were going to pass here with the kids, it was best to find out sooner than later.

Your curiosity is, pardon the pun, rather curious.

“Why’s that?” I whispered.

You initially seemed dead-set on accomplishing your goal, but now you’re going off track because you heard an interesting sound. I’m curious, is my Vanguard easily distracted?

“Don’t you have a profile on me?” I asked. I was pretty sure half the companies out there had one. It was pretty common to walk into a store and only have the kind of stuff you’d want shoved into your face. Or at least, what some algorithm suspected you wanted.

Profiles do not tell the full picture.

I wasn’t going to argue with that. Especially now when, after crouching down to make myself harder to spot, I looked around the corner and saw a pair of model threes standing next to a black and green snake-thing the size of a bus.