Five
Following the fear came a rush of anger. I felt I could kill Szychter if that would hurt Werth in some way.
I saw that Nisr was badly wounded. Whatever speck-sized munition the fingergun carried, it had blown a big chunk out of his hand which had been raised in front of his face at the time. Droplets of blood mingled with the dirt around him as he thrashed in agony. But he was falling and slowly spinning towards a silicate cloud which loomed behind like a pile of shaving foam with the dimensions of a zeppelin.
Szychter, meanwhile, was falling towards another cloud, even with the flea-strength recoil of her shot. Her weapon must have been limited in range, for she held her fire. The recoil had set her tumbling faster, too. I think the real Helena was struggling with the Trojan-delivered program that had hijacked her decision-making processes. Her left hand fought her right, and her face was a shock of twisting and snarling. I know that each of us faces a daily contest with inner enemies, but this was not natural. I'd like this courtroom to be assured that Ms Szychter had a malware issue.
Me, I got busy setting up the branehook for my escape. But when I interfaced through my BAN, it told me to wait. I didn't know if it was still recharging or if its system had crashed.
Szychter's feet hit cloud and she rocketed herself on an intercept course with Sabri, who had landed badly and was drifting near his gleaming zeppelin. Its gleaming perfection had been splattered in a scarlet spray. It seemed Helena was losing out to Werth, or whatever possessed the woman's mind.
Then I knew I couldn't leave him to be butchered. Werth inspired more hate in me than anyone I've ever met, especially since what I saw in the warehouse and then in the den. But the hatred was wrecking my thinking and turning me into a puppet. It was like another piece of malware that I had to fight. So I fought it with this thought: Sabri had turned out to be another blood-brother to me. All the others were gone. I needed to help him.
I was still hanging somewhere near our entry point. Another few moments and the Szychter-thing would be close enough to shoot Sabri dead. What could I say?
I yelled out, "It's me you want! I'm the real Ali Hamdani. He's nothing! Leave him alone!"
She turned her head as she floated by. "Really? And you expect me to believe that? Convince me." Even the intonation was like Werth's. So I had to explain, while Sabri got himself together and pulled himself along the cloud, out of danger.
So I told her. I said that I knew I couldn't get away from Werth unless I hid in a branefold. And I couldn't have taken Nisr's identity - they had too many safeguards against that. So I entered by a ruse. Setting up my freelance P.I. identity had been the hardest part. I already knew to keep an ear open for Jaar's job posting. Downloading a face-meld kit had been simple. I don't normally look this chubby.
She - or, as I tried to think, Werth - was engaging me in conversation, playing for time. She fell softly to the zeppelin-cloud and rebounded towards me. I had so little momentum. The cloud I was beginning to fall towards was too far away. Her aim was good enough that she would get in one or two good shots as she passed. I felt naked, staked out, almost jabbering in panic. The pea-brained Hook was still not responding.
Tell me about what you saw, the Werth-thing asked. "You didn't really witness a murder, did you?"
This was the point at which I'd convince her. Perhaps she planned on shooting us both anyway. But I hadn't spoken with anyone about this up to that point. It was like a confession, and as I spoke, the killing tension in my chest eased off. I began to describe the warehouse scene: the broken-down forklift I was working on, the five clan members bringing Junot out of his freight-container cell. I waved, but they didn't notice me. All five were my close friends and blood brothers, as was young, blond and scar-faced Adrian Sculio, who appeared from Werth's office swinging the usual Micro-Uzi with one finger through the trigger guard. The night before that, we'd argued again, and I didn't want to talk to him, so I kept my head down. Sculio and I had entered Werth's service together, as a way of getting some status and earning our way out of a dark hole of debt. He and I had drunk together, sweated out some long, nervous nights in the rain, sat laughing on the roof with a bottle of cheap wine, fought and made up countless times.
He walked up to Junot and shot him through the head, twice. He didn’t see me and my dropped jaw. The other five almost jumped Adrian, but he spoke with sudden power in a voice not his own. They knew Werth's voice, though it was distorted, and cringed back.
So it was plainly Werth who ordered the execution, and I got busy making sure that Mr Dawson Jaar knew it. I'd been sickened by Werth over and over, and I'd come to the point where I'd rather die than go on with it. But it wasn't until Werth was arrested a week later on suspicion of the kidnapping that the rest of us attracted his murderous attention.
We were in the suite of hotel rooms we called our den one night, doing a little bit of this and that, nervous because of what we saw on the web news. Suddenly, Adrian jumped up and grabbed his Uzi. His eyes were strangely hooded, mere slits. He was muttering to himself, arguing, but we couldn't make out what it was about. His muttering turned to yelling, and he flung himself around the den. I know now that he must have been fighting Werth's Trojan. He lost. He'd given it a home for too long, and it had put down roots.
He suddenly snapped alert, looked us over with a sneer, and walked up to each one of us in turn. He patted Nojo on the cheek, he shook lovely Eliana by the hand, he touched each of them.
BANs are amazing things. The standard setup assigns each small area of skin on the hands and face a different port code, and allows simultaneous addressing of them all. It started with communication aids to combat various disabilities, then after the games geeks caught on, everyone found a new use: smart clothes, remote medical check-ups, office-less data transfers, the lot.
I was getting a beer at that moment - that's maybe what saved me. We started laughing, thinking he'd cracked, until Nojo suddenly screamed and collapsed. Maybe his heart had stopped. Then Eliana said, "Something's in my head!" She clutched her temples and keeled over. She was fighting it, but losing. She had the best mindware of us all, I think.
Our muscle-man Rhino didn't have any. When Adrian reached him, he just whipped up his Uzi and gave him a burst in the chest. I don't remember the rest, but I dodged Adrian's hand as he tried to grab me and I crashed straight through the big window, fell two floors, and staggered away. It seems I was the only survivor because Adrian followed me with the Uzi. But his bursts were wide, and I think even then that the real Adrian, my blood brother, was fighting back. He tried to throw away his gun with one hand, then the other hand would grab it back. He yelled, "You won't kill me, Werth!"
Then a deeper voice came out: "Really? Watch this."
I couldn't turn away. There was a shot. Then it was all over. I lay in an alley weeping so long, the street sweepers almost found me in the morning. I crawled away and fled into the dawn, shivering, wondering if there was a Recaller that could edit that scene for me.
I didn't have time to tell Szychter all that, of course. But I'll always miss Adrian's cocky grin. He wasn't a good man, but he was like a brother, and I was never very saintly either.
There was a feral glint in the woman's eyes that told me I'd convinced her. So, I thought, now I die. She drifted closer and closer, fingergun outstretched towards my head. Behind her I glimpsed Sabri launching himself off his cloud into the faraway. He might live.
"By the way," the Werth-thing said, "you've wasted your efforts. My script is almost identical to Sculio's."
I digested that, hating Werth all the more because the coward wasn't really there himself. So Helena wouldn't survive this either.