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Ebook has 104 lines and 7980 words, and 3 pages

Less Than Human

A short story by Zo? Blade

From the roof of the legal bookstore, I have a clear shot at my target, Jon Russell. He's sitting down at a table outside a caf? where Chancery Lane meets Fleet Street, sipping a cardboard cup of coffee. I briefly ponder how ironic it seems that he's actually bought a drink; it must be for show, although there's no way that he can tell that right now he has a very specific audience.

Even in the sunshine, the guiding beam of my tripod mounted rifle is brightly illuminating a thick circle of skin on his neck, just below his white beard, but even if any of the passersby can see infrared as well as I can, they won't have time to do anything even if they notice it. My eyes are already over two years old now, but they were expensive enough at the time to still be considered detailed even by today's standards. With their magnification, I can see the circle of light on his neck clearly, growing steadier with every passing second as a familiar cocktail of drugs calms my metabolism.

I try not to let the laser's fan distract me. The guidance beam's one thing, but the main laser, the one that generates the lethal pulse, gives off heat like you wouldn't believe. With the midday sun shining straight down on me, the laser needs all the cooling it can get, and the fan sounds like someone's standing next to me, drying her hair.

Once I can hold the laser still enough, I brace myself. For just a few precious seconds, I let myself ponder the consequences of what I'm about to do. I'm about to execute this guy, but although he's broken the law, I'm no sheriff. I think about the effect that what I'm about to do will have on people who look up to Jon Russell, and that makes me nervous. I have nothing against them; if anything, I actually sympathise with their cause.

I put the thought out of my mind. It's unprofessional, a pause at best and a hindrance at worst. It's far too late to start developing emotions at this stage of my career, after months of training and almost three years of missions.

I pull the trigger, just for half a second, my eyes momentarily shielding themselves from the visible end of the beam on his neck. There's no recoil on my weapon, giving it the eerie feel of a simulation. The only sign that it's firing is a loud popping noise like someone squashing a bag of crisps. It's over in an instant. I can almost convince myself that I haven't done anything wrong, but not quite.

The bright circle is instantly replaced with a gushing stream of blood, pumping out in rhythmical bursts. His cardboard cup drops to the floor, and I unscrew the rifle from the tripod, duck below the top of the brick wall of the bookstore, fold up the tripod and put everything in my holdall, hidden beneath a pair of jogging bottoms.

In a fleece, t-shirt and designer jeans, I hopefully pass for someone on her way to one of the gyms scattered around the legal district, where people who help corporations sue their customers for a living would feel far too inconvenienced by taking a detour on their way home just to stay in shape. I put on a pair of designer sunglasses to cover up my designer eyes, as if anyone could spot their telltale trademark without being close enough to kiss me, then I pull the scrunchy out of my hair and tie it in again, keeping my dark brown ponytail as taut and professional as it is glossy.

"Remind me why I had to kill Russell." I drop my bag onto the desk of my boss, Mike Vegas, and it lands with a satisfying thud. Frankly, I'm glad to be rid of the evidence, if only until tomorrow.

"Because it's your job." Mike slides the bag under his desk without even glancing at its contents, then finally looks up to meet my gaze. His facial expression looks as blank as usual to me, but a piece of software I installed on my eyes starts flashing up a translucent yellow warning sign, pointing out that he's making tiny involuntary movements--a momentary flicker of the cheek here, a curl of the lip there. Nothing a human could consciously spot, but my eyes have a sufficient refresh rate and resolution to pick up that sort of thing. The bottom line is that he's uncharacteristically uncomfortable, for whatever reason.

"You know what I mean," I continue. "He was hardly violent. Don't you think that actually having him taken out was kind of overkill on Godin's part?"

"It's not our job to question our clients' motives, only their ability to pay. Besides, he was a liability. Copyright violation is one of the most serious crimes there is these days, given the structure of our fragile economy." He gets up and makes his way to a shelf filled with various photos and figurines, where he pours himself a shot of whiskey from an expensive looking decanter.

As he glances back at me, I decline his offer of the same with a subtle shake of my head. Call me paranoid, but in my line of work, I never could feel comfortable if I was anything less than a hundred percent sober.

"They couldn't just have him running around pirating their intellectual property," Mike continues.

"It still doesn't feel right."

"Which brings me to my next point. Have you given any more thought to my offer? Most people would kill for another free synaptic implant."

"That all depends on the implant. The uplink to the Mesh and the map are all well and good, but I'm still not sure about suppressing my emotions. It just seems so... inhuman."

"As opposed to all the drugs you take to calm you down as you make the hit?"

"At least they wear off after a few minutes." I walk past the shelf and look out the window at the scenic view of the city, taking a moment to watch the clouds drift along in the summer breeze. The trees are such a vibrant green this time of year, they look somehow unreal, set against the pale grey concrete blocks that people waste their lives in. I quickly inspect all the nearby rooftops, making sure nobody's on any of them. Old habits. "You know, I've been thinking a lot lately, and between the implants and the drugs, I'm beginning to feel less and less like a real woman and more and more like some kind of machine, just efficiently fulfilling her job role and nothing else."

"Efficiently?" I hear Mike practically choking on his drink.

I turn back around to face him. "Is there something wrong with my performance?"

"I've been running over the encrypted video feed of the hit that your eyes sent me."

It wasn't exactly a secret he kept from me that when I was on the job, my eyes sent an encrypted live broadcast straight to the office, hidden in the Mesh's entropy. Talk about your body betraying you. I had to take Vegas's word for it that he couldn't spy on me when I was off duty. It was something I tried hard not to think about every time I had a shower. Just the thought gave me the shivers.

"You stalled. Your heartrate had slowed down just fine, you were as calm as a cow, and yet you didn't fire until almost five seconds later. Why the pause?"

"He was drinking a cup of coffee at a table. I could tell he was going to be there for at least another two minutes. It made no difference."

"I didn't ask you if you thought it would make a difference. I asked you why you paused. I hire you because you're the sort of woman who knows better than to take unnecessary risks. Why did you wait so long?"

"Which is exactly what I'm talking about. We can't afford to let your personal opinions and morals slow you down when you're at work. Those profiles are there to help you to better understand the targets, to better predict them, not to make you feel an emotional attachment towards them. You can do whatever you want at home, donate your wage to charity, I don't care, but when you're out in the field, I need you to be there for me, performing at a hundred percent."

"Yes, sir," I say reluctantly.

He talks into his glass as he swishes around the remaining dribble of whiskey, as if he has trouble meeting my eyes for once. "Someone will meet with you on your way out."

This takes me by surprise. I don't need the red warning label that's suddenly superimposed over my vision to tell me that something's wrong. "Who?"

"A doctor. I'd like to run a few checks on you, just to be on the safe side." If he's not outright lying, then my software's convinced that he's at least hiding something from me.

"Checks?"

"Yeah. Checks." He takes another sip of his drink.

My paranoia starts to kick in as I realise how easy it would be for him to kill me, just as long as he took me unaware. For all my jacked up reflexes and painstakingly learned skills, in light of the new wholly artificial employees our rivals have been raving about, I'm starting to look a lot like an old Decca television set in a room full of Sony projectors. In all likelihood, Mike would have had me killed months ago already if I wasn't still so damned good.

"And Suzi?"

"Yes?" Our eyes meet again, at last.

"Do yourself a favour. Don't get emotionally involved. It's just business."

"I know." I walk out the door, not looking back.

"Well, all your tests show you're operating within specs," says the man that Mike claims to be some sort of medical doctor.

"That's a relief," I say sarcastically.

"Nevertheless, I'm still concerned about these certain imperfections in your performance. I just can't seem to find a neurological or physiological source for them."

"Did it ever occur to you that I'm only human?"

I let myself flash a brief smile. Professional pride.

"A dying breed, you might say," he adds with a chuckle. I feel my whole body tense up.

"There's one more test I'd like to carry out on you. It will take several hours, but thankfully I don't actually need you to be present for it so you can go and do whatever you like. I just need to take a relatively quick backup of your brain's neural pathways first, then you can go home and get some rest."

"A neural backup?"

"It won't hurt, I promise." Another warning sign pops up next to his face, and I finally decide it's time to kick into defence mode. There's no discernible change from an outsider's perspective, but inside my brain and its hardware, a dozen little defence applications are springing to life, waiting for my signal that they should start wreaking havoc. I usually slip into this mode several times a week, but in my line of work it's safer to err on the side of paranoia. "What's this really for? Insurance in case I mess up?"

"I can't slip anything past you." The doctor grins, revealing two rows of surprisingly well worn teeth. "Let's just say your employer doesn't like to take chances, and you're the best person in the business."

"Exactly. Now, please, lie down here while I perform a quick scan of your neural pathways. It'll only take a few minutes."

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