The Credulity Nexus by Graham Storrs Read Free Book Online Page A

silencing the racket that had engulfed them. She
looked down at him with what he took to be a kind of horror at what
she had risked and survived. Her pockmarked torso was grey with
dead, pulverised nanites, gobs of hot lead still embedded in her.
She raised her hand again to strike him across the head, and the
sounds of gunfire erupted again in the narrow corridor.
    The upload
turned to face Shah and two others as they took up firing
positions.
    “Aim for the
stomach,” Rik yelled.
    The woman
turned quickly to him and snarled. Black teeth in black gums. She
fired a short volley at the agents, killing another one, and before
they could return fire, she tore her way through the wall of the
corridor and was gone.

Chapter 8
     
    To Rik's
surprise, Heathrow had its own police station, a big, busy place
with armoured vehicles parked in the yard. Shah took Rik in through
a side entrance and up two flights of stairs to a small interview
room.
    The MI5 agent
fetched Rik and himself a mug of coffee. He had barely spoken since
they left the bloody wreckage of the departure lounge. Now he sat
opposite Rik and held his mug close to him, shaken and angry. Rik
kept quiet, letting the younger man calm himself and collect his
thoughts. When Shah finally spoke, it was in a subdued voice.
    “The Berlin
police told us there had been a lot of deaths at GeneWerken, and
reports of a superhuman killer. Was it the same woman?”
    “As far as I
can tell.”
    “Some kind of
transhuman, right? I've never seen one in the...” He stopped and
swallowed.
    “I'm pretty
sure it was the same one. Look, I'm sorry... about your
colleagues.” Two officers dead and two more critically injured. Rik
had been there, done that. He knew how it felt.
    Shah nodded
absently. He clearly didn't want to deal with that now. “Tell me
what happened in Berlin. From the beginning.”
    Rik obliged.
He told the whole story, leaving out only the package he'd
collected. Shah made no notes, but Rik was pretty sure the man's
cogplus would be recording sight and sound.
    “So everybody
fled the crime scene,” Shah said. “And you came to London for a new
identity.”
    Rik winced at
the construction Shah had put on it. It made him look guilty as
hell, but he let the agent go on thinking it.
    “The upload
was already there when we arrived,” he said in his defence. “Most
of the killing had already happened. I was practically a
bystander.”
    “Tell me what
you picked up for Mrs. Cordell at the lab.”
    “I was
supposed to pick up a package and courier it to her husband, as I
said. But the upload was there. It didn't go as planned.”
    Shah chose to
ignore the evasion. “What was in the package?”
    “I was never
told. Perhaps the Berlin police could tell you. They must have
interviewed everybody who worked at the lab by now. Someone there
must know.”
    Shah shook his
head minutely. “No-one who might have known is still alive. The
upload either shot them or tortured them to death. The lab itself
has been destroyed.”
    “ She went back?”
    “ What do you mean?”
    “ There were plenty of people still alive
and well when I left. She'd ransacked the lab. We disturbed her
while she was ripping the place up and she ran.” He pretended to
think about it for a moment. “She didn't get the package when she
went back, that's pretty certain, otherwise she wouldn't be chasing
me.”
    Shah got to
his feet and paced the room. It looked like an attempt at keeping
himself under control. “You are so full of shit,” he told Rik. He
sounded more weary than angry, but the anger was there, below the
surface. “You brought that damned thing here. You knew it would be
hunting you because you know exactly where the package is.”
    “ Have you got any aspirin? My head's
killing me. I got this cut-price deal on a cogplus upgrade
and–”
    “ Just tell me where the package
is.”
    “ Look, a lot of people don't like me. This
upload chick might just be an enforcer for the Turgu