Binary Storm Read online

  Binary Storm

  A Paratwa Novel

  Christopher Hinz

  Contents

  The Binaries

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Humanity’s Avenger

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Storm

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Liberation

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Melissa, Jacob, April, Seth, Brandi, Levi and bright futures near.

  For Esme, Avery, Jasper, Oliver, Emery and bright futures far.

  For Etan who always believed.

  For the BNWB gang who keep it real.

  All is lost

  in rage and fear

  The world is doomed

  * * *

  Take flight tomorrow

  today is sorrow

  The end is near

  * * *

  – from The Optimism Tutor Plunders Chaos

  Part One

  The Binaries

  One

  A hundred years ago this month, Nicholas Guerra had been nearly stabbed to death. He was pretty sure the three knife-wielding men ambling toward him weren’t here to toast his centennial.

  Philadelphia was enjoying rare atmospheric conditions this evening. Its normal smog layers had been swept out into Delaware Bay and there was a deep chill in the air, uncharacteristic of late summer. The moon was nearly full. Pristine lunar light glimmered off the knives as the trio closed on Nick in the dead-end alley.

  Six long blades, one in each hand. Seersucker hoodies embellished with human bone fragments. Camo pants stained with the blood of victims.

  If those things weren’t enough to ID their gang affiliation, the flextubes running from belt pouches to nostrils clinched it.

  Mokkers.

  The pouches would contain mok-1, the sweet-smelling addictive vapor they inhaled with alarming regularity. Nick had snorted, swallowed and vaped more than a few illicit pharmaceuticals in his teen years a century ago. But he’d never understood the attraction of a drug that could transform even the most serene yogi master into a psycho with issues.

  The mokkers moved slowly, deliberately, knowing he was trapped. The scenario had been similar a hundred years ago, back in 1995, the last time Nick had been bladed.

  He glanced around. The alley lacked doors and first-floor windows. He could try clambering onto the ancient dumpster that pissed foul liquid from rusted cracks. But even if he found footholds in the brick wall, the upper windows were barred.

  “Howdy,” he drawled, softening the word with a friendly smile as the mokkers closed to within two paces. They halted, eyed Nick like a pack of hungry megalions. The slashing, stabbing and screaming were imminent.

  He’d known this was a cul-de-sac, having checked satellite scans of the area. Still, he hadn’t figured on a total lack of escape routes. It didn’t help that the sat scans had been made decades ago, well before clandestine jammers and AV scramblers thwarted nearly all forms of surveillance here in Philly-unsec. Even passive technologies like sat imaging weren’t immune to such electronic countermeasures.

  The mokker in the middle stepped forward, signifying he was leader of the pack. A hairy giant, he had a diecast face molded from slaps, neglect and a hundred other catastrophes of poverty and abuse.

  “Howdy,” Nick tried again. “Nice night, huh.”

  “Suck twig, ya fuckin’ midget.”

  “Technically, I’m a proportionate dwarf,” he said. “And not to brag, but I’m at the upper end of the range for the definition. If I’d been taller by only a few more centimeters, I would have avoided the label entirely. And consequently, you gentlemen wouldn’t be here sizing me up.”

  He grinned with the pun. The leader glared and unleashed a wad of spit that splatted against Nick’s jacket.

  It was a bit ironic that this South Philadelphia alley was just across the Delaware River from his old stomping grounds, site of his first stabbing. Back then he’d been asking for it, or at least taunting the gods to smack him down. An eighteen year-old punk, he’d been running with some Jersey gangbangers out of Camden, having proved to them that despite his diminutive size and white-boy sheen he could kick ass with the best of them, not to mention reprogram Duke Nukem 3D and other popular videogames of the era to make them faster and cooler – the real source of his street cred. But then a small-time dope deal in an alley not unlike this one had gone to hell and he’d been stabbed nine times by a raging meth freak.

  He wiped the mokker’s dripping commentary from his chest with a sleeve and continued his spiel.

  “I’m not averse to the term ‘midget’. Sure, some folks object to it, insist it’s not PC. But I feel there’s little to be gained by being small about the tiny things in our short lives.”

  The leader’s face remained ironclad but the wingmen laughed. That was Nick’s intent. His humor had gotten him out of scrapes in the past. Putting at least two of the mokkers at ease gave him a shot.

  His chances were slim. His neck implant was an encrypted attaboy, the most advanced com link available. But with this level of jamscram, calling for help was out of the question. He had some fight skills but he was forty-two years old, no spring chicken anymore. His only real weapon was his Swiss army first-aid knife. But the safak’s longest extension was no match for the mokker’s twenty-centimeter serrated blades.

  He’d been forced to leave his handgun at the transit station where he’d exited the secure section of Philadelphia to venture into the “zoo”, the street name for Philly-unsec’s urban wilderness. Like all of the world’s gated cities, Philly-sec sought to keep projectile and energy weapons out of the hands of the zoo’s impoverished millions, who outnumbered them twenty to one. No guns across the border policies maintained an uneasy coexistence between sec and unsec realms, preventing those at the bottom of the economic pyramid from gaining access to technologies that might flip the status quo.

  “What the fuck you doin’ here?” the leader growled, ejecting fresh spittle with every word. “You some kind of sec spy?”

  Nick had dre
ssed down for tonight’s excursion. But his tattered pants and jacket weren’t enough to fool the zoo’s more hardcore residents, who had a knack for spotting outsiders.

  “Actually, I’m here on official business. I’m with ODOR, the Office of Dumpster Operations and Retrieval.” Nick gestured to the leaking receptacle behind him. “This one doesn’t meet code.”

  One of the wingmen laughed hysterically. The other leaned forward and barfed a stream of bloody puke. Mokkers tended to throw up a lot, an unavoidable side effect of the constant vaping. The ones who survived gang life on the streets tended to die young of respiratory problems.

  “Ya think you’re funny?” the leader challenged.

  “Well, not comedy club, Jim Carrey kind of funny.”

  “What the fuck’s a gym carry?”

  The mokkers would take whatever cash Nick had on him and, either postmortem or premortem, cut off his fingers and slice out his eyes. His body parts would be put on ice until they could be sold to a poacher who would mule them across the border into the secured area of the city. There, some associate with a clean record would try using Nick’s digits and orbs at a terminal in the hopes that he had financial accounts worth emptying. He saw no upside to informing the mokkers that such efforts would be a waste of time, that his accounts were protected by far more advanced technologies.

  The leader’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. Time was running out. Nick had to make his move.

  “Prior to you gentlemen displaying your prowess with edged weaponry,” he began, “there is something of great value I’d like to willingly hand over. Consider it a token of peace and friendship.” He gestured toward his inside coat pocket. “May I?”

  “Real fuckin’ careful.”

  Nick undid his overcoat’s flap, eased his hand inside and withdrew the small jewelry box. It was covered with bioluminescent weep fabric, an ever-changing array of dripping hues that resembled tears. Weep fabric looked exotic and expensive but was neither, at least not for someone with ready access to high-tech products.

  But the way the mokkers’ eyes widened indicated they’d never seen such an item before, having probably lived their entire lives in the zoo. Enough clarity remained in their drug-addled minds to conclude that the box contained something of great value.

  Nick took a step closer and extended the offering. “If you could just see it in your hearts to allow me to leave here in peace, I’m sure that this gift will more than compensate you for any troubles. Remember, it takes a big man to spare a little one.”

  The wingmen laughed again. This time the leader joined in, although with a caustic brutality that made it clear what he really thought of Nick’s proposal.

  Had he ventured into the zoo to meet any of his other confidential informants, he could have hired some off-duty Earth Patrol Forces soldiers to serve as bodyguards. But no one could know about tonight’s rendezvous with his most secretive and extraordinary CI, Ektor Fang, who’d set the time and location. If Nick had brought EPF into the zoo as muscle, Ektor Fang would have found out and wouldn’t have come within ten klicks of this alley.

  Then again, he’s not here anyway. That was disappointing on a number of levels.

  The leader eyed Nick suspiciously for a long moment. Finally he took the bait. Holstering his knives, he snatched the box. As he did, Nick eased sideways, slowly enough not to alarm the mokkers. He was now positioned in front of the shorter of the wingmen, the one with the maniacal laugh. The man didn’t appear to be wearing body armor and it was doubtful he had access to a crescent web or other energy shielding. Better yet for Nick’s purposes, his tight camo pants revealed only a natural male bulge and no hint of a groin protector.

  The leader opened the box. The mokkers were instantly entranced. The one standing farthest from Nick was so taken by what he was seeing that he vaped a triple snort of mok-1 up his nostrils and shuddered with delight.

  The box contained a large silver ring with a massive diamond setting. Its perimeter was studded with what appeared to be emeralds, rubies and sapphires.

  Nick tensed, ready to spring into action as the leader reached a hand toward the box. But the mokker hesitated at the last instant, suspecting a trick of some sort.

  He has to touch it.

  “Here, let me show you some of its beautiful features,” Nick said, lunging forward and making a grab for the ring.

  The leader reacted as expected. He yanked the box away with a possessive growl that would have done an angry mutt proud.

  Good boy. Now pick up the damn thing.

  The leader gripped the prize between his thumb and forefinger and held it aloft. The diamond’s polished facets gleamed under the lunar light, suggesting the ring was extraordinarily valuable. In reality, it was a clever fake. Nick had bought it for nineteen dollars from one of the licensed beggars who plied their trade in Philly-sec’s Rittenhouse Square bazaar.

  Body heat from the leader’s fingertips activated the thermal switch. The tiny flashbang hidden inside the ring triggered.

  Blinding white light.

  Earsplitting noise.

  A flashbang this small couldn’t produce the severe disorienting effects common to its larger brethren. But the sudden eruption of light and sound was enough to startle the mokkers and buy Nick a few precious seconds.

  He stepped forward and swept his right leg upward. The toe of his reinforced boot caught the short mokker in the crotch. The man grunted, grabbed his junk and crumbled to his knees. Nick dashed past him and ran for all he was worth toward the alley’s exit. His ride, an ’89 Chevy Destello, was right around the corner, optically camouflaged in the recessed doorway of an abandoned factory building.

  The leader and the other wingman recovered from the flashbang’s effects quicker than anticipated. Nick could hear their loud footsteps. There was no need to glance back to realize they were closing fast.

  I’m not going to make it.

  The physics of human locomotion were against him. Short legs couldn’t compete with long ones. The two mokkers were seconds away from tackling him. At that point, extremely bad things would happen.

  He was five meters from where the alley funneled into the street when two more men stepped around the corner. Their faces were silhouetted by a dim streetlamp at their backs. His first thought was that they were more mokkers.

  His only chance was to crash through the pair. He lowered his head and mentally steeled himself to be an unstoppable battering ram.

  The newcomers whipped up their arms in tandem. From the left hand of one and the right hand of the other, beams of twisting black light erupted. The luminous streaks flashed past Nick’s head on opposite sides, passing so close that the heat of the burning energy warmed his earlobes.

  Startled gasps emanated from behind him. Nick stopped, whirled around. The two mokkers had been hit. Smoldering fabric and flesh over their hearts marked the beams’ entry points.

  The mokkers collapsed face down in the alley. Their backs revealed the exit wounds of the hot particle streams. They writhed for a few moments as the thermal energy spread through their chest cavities, baking internal organs. In seconds they segued to a motionless limbo from which there would be no return.

  Back at the cul-de-sac, the surviving mokker had recovered from Nick’s crotch kick. Having seen the fate of his companions, he was huddled at the side of the dumpster, frantically vaping. But inhaling all the mok-1 in the known universe wouldn’t make him fearless enough to confront a Paratwa assassin.

  Two

  Nick hunched over to catch his breath before turning to his savior.

  “You’re late,” he grumbled.

  Ektor Fang answered in stereo, seamlessly alternating the words between his two mouths.

  “My”

  “tardiness”

  “could”

  “not”

  “be”

  “helped.”

  The ricocheting speech from the pair sounded as if it was coming from a single person, as well
it should. Ektor Fang was not two people, he was one: a Paratwa, a solitary consciousness simultaneously occupying two bodies. The ability to alternate words or syllables back and forth between the tways was a well-known characteristic of the binary interlink phenomenon, although not nearly as disturbing as the fierce combat skills of binaries like Ektor Fang, who’d been trained as assassins.

  “Not exactly the safest place for a meet,” Nick said.

  “Perhaps. Then again”

  “you’re”

  “alive.”

  “Yeah, barely.”

  Ektor Fang broke into a pair of identical smiles. “Had I not a-”

  “rrived in time”

  “I’m sure”

  “your ex-”

  “ceptional skills”

  “would have”

  “ensured”

  “victory.”

  Paratwa were usually composed of dissimilar tways. Other than the necessity of being roughly the same age, the halves of a binary could be wholly unlike. Short and tall, skinny and plump, sable-skinned and pale as mountain snow. In rare cases the tways could even be mélanges – male and female.

  Ektor Fang was an exception to the dissimilarity rule. His tways were twenty-five year-old identical twins, genetically engineered products of a Korean breeding lab owned by the Seoul-based Bhang Che conglomerate. The breed’s street name was Du Pal, which to Nick’s ears always sounded like “toupee.”

  This Du Pal had no need of hairpieces. The tways were buzzcut blonds with intense blue eyes. They were garbed the same too, in knee-length gray jackets and loose trousers. Nick had never been able to tell them apart, not that it mattered.

  They were, after all, the same person.

  Ektor Fang put away his Cohe wands, inserting each into a slip-wrist holster hidden beneath the loose sleeves of his jackets. Unless you had the pleasure or pain of seeing a Cohe in action, it was hard to imagine that such an innocuous device, the size and shape of an egg with a tiny sliver of metal projecting from one end, was the deadliest hand weapon ever devised.