Fatal Proximity

By Ryan Viergutz

In a spherical city populated with giant cyborgs, a renegade surgeon lives beneath the cracks in its foundation. Helcion Brixton has embarked on a life few others choose, and she rarely receives visitors in her self-imposed exile. When a friend arrives with a sick robot, and soon falls victim to the same disease, she's surprised and concerned, for more reasons than the obvious.

Brixton, because she's lived hidden among the cyborg Controllers for more than a decade, has a deep understanding of their culture. When riots and revolts spread, triggered by the disease, she learns that the root of the phenomenon reaches above them to their AI parents. Controllers have an absolute obedience to their parents, considering them unto gods, and Brixton herself knows little about them. To fight the threat, Brixton will reach out to a clever criminal, a feral programmer and a traitorous Controller.

Most humans would stand by, hole up in rat holes and let an AI god go mad. Brixton knows that, if Controller society changes for the worse, the human race will suffer with them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan Viergutz
• Release date: Nov 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370476213

Ryan Viergutz

I'm a freelancer, writer, roleplayer and gamer. I don't want to live in the same place any longer than a year for a very long time and I am always yearning for adventure. The first two overlap often enough that they're almost the same thing, though they aren't by anyone's measure. Regardless of the state I'm in, I am always roleplaying and I allow myself to indulge in gaming, usually of a video game variety, sometimes. At any given time I will have a scifi or fantasy book in my hands or in my travel bag.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Ryan Viergutz

Cranial implants, lattice arteries and scalpels fell out of the canvas bags in Brixton's arms. Kiers dragged a bleeding and sparking robot twice his size, its limbs mangled and pieces of its digital brain exposed to the air, over the deactivated tripwires to her latest apartment. Kiers grunted and groaned with the effort. Although he had a cybernetic arm, compared to the sheer heft and weight of the Controller his strength meant practically nothing.

Brixton ignored the supplies she'd brought back from her daily raid, kicked them into the corner and tugged out a pair of heavy leather gloves from her toolbelt. Kiers, intent on his transport of the Controller, had still not noticed her. She shouted a quick Hi to him, grinned sharply at his surprise and dismay, and tucked her arms beneath the robot's ankles. Kiers lowered his shaded glasses, peered at her with his blue eyes and asked an unspoken question.

For her response she hoisted the robot's legs beneath her armpits and shoved it toward him. Kiers nodded, his composure regained, and dragged on it again. Dozens of questions crawled around in Brixton's mind while they pulled the robot through her living room and onto the surgical table in the adjacent room. The robot slammed onto it with enough force to leave her ears ringing. Kiers stepped back and crossed his arms. In his view he had played his part.

Brixton shook her head although she headed to the nearby sink and prepared herself for the surgery. She stripped down to her skivvies, put on skintight latex gloves and a white rubber coat. She threw another coat at Kiers and raced into a smaller room the size of a half shower. Kiers knocked over a half dozen machines in the living room, clambered around the table and squeezed in beside her.

Brixton took two sets of goggles from a peg on the wall and handed one to Kiers. She took one last look at herself, to make sure she'd covered most of her body, and pressed smudged, worn buttons on the wall. Lights flickered and a hiss spread out from above their heads. Radiation passed over and decontaminated them. Thanks to advanced technologies taken from their enemies and refined in their own research it hadn't killed them yet. It probably would someday.

Brixton slammed aside the door and gestured at the robot. Okay, what the hell happened to him?

I don't know, Kiers said. I've never seen it before. Look at him and you'll see what I mean.

Brixton sighed at Kiers. Are you sure you aren't messing with me? You've seen most of the ailments we've spotted on Controllers. There might be a handful you haven't but still...

Kiers sighed and closed his eyes. Helcion. Be serious for once. I am.

Brixton narrowed her eyes at him. If he didn't feel in the mood for banter or distraction, it must have scared him. So, that strange, huh?

Kiers nodded and gestured widely at the robot laid out on the table. Brixton squinted at him suspiciously, worried for his sanity as much as the Controller's health. He had worked with her on hundreds of surgeries. He had seen their guts ripped inside out, their bodies twisted and morphed by the weapons held by both their allies and their enemies. Through helping her and living in the Controllers's section of space he had accepted ostracism, hazarded distrust and risked everything else up to and including his life.

Brixton bent down over the devastated body of the Controller, curious about what had attracted Kiers's attention to it. On the surface it looked like most of their casualties. Its limbs had crumpled steel and splotches of dried blood lay scattered on its organic parts. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, not the robot's injuries nor the degree of harm it had taken. In a battle between Controllers brutality always ruled. At times, if angered enough, they could disintegrate their opponents.

Kiers rubbed at his right arm. Brixton looked up at him over the body and studied him for a second. Although he hid it beneath artificial skin his right arm had more machine and steel than muscle and flesh. Brixton grunted, took a scalpel and a pliers and tugged at the hole opened in the Controller's chest. She eyed its lungs and heart, its pneumatic pumps and its compound engine, and found a small, tumorous patch between all four of them that took her breath away.

She trusted Kiers to tell her the truth about the Controllers he brought in to her for repair, surgery and implantation. He gave her the timeframe, the situations where he'd found them and his suggestions for possible repair methods. This one still shocked her. The tumor, a decaying grey and nauseating brown mass, morphed and mashed in the cavity of its chest. It had attached to half of the robot's organs and machines.

Brixton gulped, her throat dry. What is this?

Kiers took a step back, shivered and looked at the front door. You can't tell?

While it looked like a tumor to her that did not explain how it had bound to the engine or the valves. Brixton crossed her arms, lifted a fluorescent lamp above the cavity and whispered. She had a creeping feeling Kiers had discovered a phenomenon neither of them had been meant to see, nor possibly anybody for a long time, until it would have become too late.

I can honestly tell you I have never seen a cancer that linked to both organic and mechanical parts, Brixton said. Where did you discover it? When? How long ago?

Kiers smiled at her, his chapped lips tight and stretched. His eyes zoned out and he tried to recollect all of his experiences. Brixton breathed softly to let him concentrate. The robot's interior parts ground and chugged. Their suits squeaked. The light hovered directly over the cavity. Brixton studied it, the ragged edges and the smears of blood, while he thought and spoke. As soon as he talked he paced about on the other side of the surgical table.

I found him two hours ago, Kiers said. He'd collapsed in a second level transport tube not too far from here, less than a mile, and I could show you the exact location. He slipped a knife from a pocket and threw it toward the ceiling on its three-foot chain. He flung it hard enough to bury it into the ceiling pipes and jerked on it to remove it. I thought you might want to see that hole in him. He waved his empty hand toward it. It doesn't look natural. Do you think so?

Brixton planted her hands on the edge of the table, careful to keep them away from the robot. You're suggesting someone caused this to happen.

Kiers leveled his gaze with her. You know me. I'm paranoid. I think everybody's coming to hunt me down for remaining in Controller space. He opened his hand and lifted it in a facsimile of a shrug. Tell me what you think. That's why I brought him here.

Brixton felt a wry grin creep onto her lips. I don't want to implant him with a tracker, I'll tell you that. I think it'd best if we forgot he ever happened, put him back where you found him and leave him for them to handle. She stared at the mass in its chest and felt her muscles tense. She pictured a mass like it sitting in her own muscles, attached to her own bones, and resisted the urge to vomit. It strikes me as very wrong. It's like the Controllers are conspiring against each other.

Kiers shrugged. That isn't new.

Brixton chuckled softly. No. It isn't. She nodded at his arm and saw him absent-mindedly rub at his right bicep. We both know we can't let this go. It could affect you. I'm lucky that it can't harm me. She tapped her gloved hands on the steel table. What would happen if it spreads beyond Controller space? Maybe that's the intention. Maybe they want it to reach our cities, our stations and our asteroids and infect our augmented... She continued on with a whisper. Like you.

Kiers grimaced. Why did you have to say it?

I say a lot of things, Brixton said. It makes them feel more real. She shook her head, thumped on the table and exhaled harshly. We have to return him. Show me where you found him.

Are you going to take a sample? Kiers said warily.

Brixton smiled wearily. No. I think there will be many more like him in... hell, days, weeks, months? I have no way to know. She stared at the tumor in his chest. Mark my words, though, Kiers, there will be more of them. This will not be the last instance of this, not by a long way.

Kiers kept a ways back from the table and spread his hands. You tell me it could affect me, scare me with ideas of more to come, and tell me you don't know a damn thing about what it means? The knife made a whack in the pipes. I'm calling bullshit, Brixton. You do have suspicions. But you're keeping them to yourself. Why are you doing that this time?

Brixton lifted a hand to him for silence and bent over the wound again. She tugged two panels of steel apart with pliers, fastened its flesh with medical tape and tried to pretend that she didn't have sweat pouring down her neck. Regardless of the cool temperature in her tiny safe house she had sweat rolling down her skin in rivulets. She poked and nudged at the tumor with her scalpels. It felt as hard as a rock and as soft as nasal tissue.

She thought for a second that she should take a sample of it, retain it for later. Whoever had built it, or however it had happened, no one would miss a few millimeters of the disgusting mass. When she looked at Kiers, though, she decided she had better not. Suddenly, as though it hadn't been there at all, the tumor split to pieces beneath her and trickled down into the Controller's body. Brixton jumped back, scalpels in her hands like Japanese sais, and bared her teeth at it.

Are you okay over there? Kiers said. What's happening?

Brixton stared at the segment where the tumor had laid and lowered the scalpels with shaking hands. She sighed. I know beyond a doubt there's more to come now. She looked at the bits of it on her scalpel and chuckled darkly. I guess I have a sample anyway. She lifted it up into the fluorescent light and turned it around to study it. When it reaches its later stages? It won't fall apart like it did now. It will grow. It will spread. She got a plastic bag and stuck the scalpel inside it. We have to take him back. Then we'll follow up, the best way we can.

Kiers lifted his eyebrows. You want to hit the laboratory?

Brixton smiled. Yeah. The huge one. Who else might give us a lead to chase?

Fatal Proximity

Chapter 2

Ryan Viergutz

Brixton had traversed the transport tubes and underground tunnels of the twelve cities for more than a decade. If anyone could have adjusted to the polluted vapors the Controllers extruded as waste from their lives she would have. Depending on how deep she went she had to wear any of a series of plastic or steel masks. To walk a mile from this particular safehouse she had to wear a surgical mask that filtered out most of the particulates in the air.

She knew the city like the back of her hand. Because of the movements she had to do to stay alive and her constant scrabbling for survival Brixton probably knew it better than most of the Controllers that dwelled in it. The moods of its people, its tenor and temperament, the buzz of life and adventure spoke to her like a second nature. Even in the sewers where she and Kiers transported the unconscious body of the Controller, it felt different, strange and unsettling.

Kiers didn't appear to feel it but he'd never had her ability to sense the city. He spent more time in the human sectors of the spheres than she did. Although little more than two dozen, possibly as many as a hundred people, lived in the Controlled sections of the galaxy, nobody had her stomach for infiltration and exploration. She'd chosen her path a long time ago, after she'd faced a crossroads, and nobody had followed her to their branch of the universe.

Brixton slid the cart over a crack in the walkway. It bounced and smacked on her upper teeth. She winced and paused in her movement. Kiers stared at her, his blue cybernetic eyes reflected in the pale light from the ceiling.

It's changing, Brixton said. I can feel it. She looked at the ceiling and pictured the street above their heads. I don't know what it means yet.

We can figure it out after we put him back in place, Kiers said. I hate dragging them back upstairs.

Brixton shrugged and got the cart rolling again. Well, it's not like you'd have to help me. She looked sidelong at him and smiled. You just help me out of the goodness of your heart.

Kiers snorted and pulled on the cart. Yeah, sure, that corrupted, twisted thing.

Brixton chuckled and watched the lights in the ceiling. She'd been lucky in so many ways. The Controllers might have pinned every single surface in their city with trackers, sensors and automated turrets attached to it. They might have taken her away years ago if they'd done half the things they told the masses of humanity. While they hadn't used most of them yet, she did know they had installed enigmatic technologies all across the human cities and likely in their own.

The Controllers did not trust anyone including their own people. Their rulers had the arrogance to ignore the dissension and pretend that their subordinates might not betray them someday, however, and that had provided her with her lone saving grace. If the Controllers woke up, learned how many factions they fought against and how much hostility they had engendered, they might tighten all the screws and force her out of hiding.

The air felt tight beneath the city streets and she loosened her collar. She had grown accustomed long ago to the heat and humidity in Rokalka. Some of the Controlled cities had modified their climate to match their temperaments and pursuits of their citizens. After years of living beneath the Controllers' thumbs she learned that her chosen city acted, to her complete surprise, as a tropical resort. Of the several hundred city spheres she'd visited not a single one felt so hot.

Kiers smiled at her across the robot body on the cart and released his grip on its handles. Brixton reached beneath it, twisted a pair of dials and pulled on a lever. The cart straightened and aimed the Controller at the ceiling. She climbed onto a manlift beside it, put a hand on it to steady herself and stopped its movement at the manhole cover above her head. She slid the cover a few inches to the side, dug into her pocket and pulled out a small periscope.

She scanned around the street above her. Although it looked in some ways like a human city the buildings, textures and construction materials looked much different. Plastic blobs merged with steel whorls that resembled helixes, spirals and patterns that spelled the words of a language the Controllers, their creators and other aliens had built into the city's architecture.

Brixton had spent days attempting to describe the sights and sounds to people who had never seen their rulers's cities. Hundreds of thousands of Controllers, possibly a million, dwelled in the universe, cast rules down for humans to follow and banished those who acted against them. Nobody had challenged the status quo or at least made any impact for hundreds of years. As she looked at the Controllers's height and listened to the languages they spoke to each other she could begin to understand humanity's reluctance to make war with them.

Few Controllers walked along the street at the moment. Brixton turned a switch and moved her platform five feet to the left so near to the slimy wall she could touch it. She turned a crank and flipped the cart onto its back, almost a hundred feet over the floor. Then she used one of the city's quirks. Since the city-sphere was technically a space station, the sewer walls could lower, create an airlock and throw all of the waste outside.

Brixton knew how. She ran her hands over the wall, thankful as always that the sensors acted on motion without an exact source, and the wall dissolved before her eyes. She tilted the cart, made a corresponding gesture when the cart pushed it out into the airlock, and slowly returned to the ground. That was when she heard the manhole cover scrape and creak. Someone pushed it out of place. She bent her head backward, curious about her pursuer and confident in her skills to elude him.

When she saw who it was she breathed a deep sigh of relief. She did not have many Controller friends and could count them on one hand. One of them, far from the most mysterious, looked down through the manhole, winked at her and left as soon as he had appeared. Although she called Talliand a friend both of them knew that was not the nature of their relationship. She felt a cool chill dance down the bones of her spine at his presence in this place right now.

As soon as she reached the ground Brixton crooked a finger at Kiers. We have to get moving. Come on. Hurry.

What is it? You got rid of the Controller, Kiers said.

In ten minutes, an hour at most, the Controller would reappear on the street when the airlock rejected its still functional body. He would arrive near enough to his original location that, like many of his kind, he would react to it as a strange and occult phenomenon. Brixton had several methods by which to return Controllers to the streets and had caused many of those phenomena. Every time they caught one she thought up another.

I did, Brixton said lightly. But someone saw us.

Kiers froze and stared at her. He ducked down and reached for his pistol. Brixton patted the air and shook her head. Kiers uncoiled a fraction, enough that Brixton sighed in relief.

What's the score? Kiers said.

Brixton put her hands on her hips and looked between Kiers and the ceiling. I know who saw us. It was Talliand. If he means us harm we're in trouble.

Kiers grimaced and kept his hand near his pistol. That gesture alone didn't worry her. He often lingered close to his weapons, aware that he might need them at a moment's notice. This time it's different. I don't want anybody to know about that Controller or his disease. He pointed at her. You said you haven't seen it. I haven't heard you admit to that in a long fucking time.

Brixton averted her gaze and turned her face away from him. The pipes and valves in the sewer reminded her of transport tunnels. Shit traveled through the both of the routes, too. You know better, she said quietly.