The Body Scout: A Novel Read online

  “Okay. Let me think a second.”

  I didn’t believe Coppelius had seen me run away with Lila, but I couldn’t afford taking her anywhere near the Mets. Okafor might be willing to hide us, but they were still a company soldier and if anyone else at the police station got wind there was a good chance one of them would be on the Monsanto payroll. The only choice was Dolores.

  “I’ve got a friend who will help us,” I said. “I think. If we can get out of here.”

  Lila was distracted. She grabbed my hand.

  “Why is your palm blinking?”

  “What?” I held up my right hand. There was a faint red light glowing out of the cracks. “It doesn’t normally do that.”

  She held her ear to my metal palm. “It sounds like it’s looking for a signal.” She dropped my hand. Picked it back up. Groaned. “Do you have a tracker in your palm?”

  “No,” I started to say, but stopped myself.

  The snake doctor. Setek. I cursed under my breath.

  Monsanto had lured me with free upgrades and stuck a tracker in my palm. If so, I’d led them right to Governors Island and then to the Edenist warehouse. Right to Lila. No wonder Natasha had dropped by to push me along this trail.

  “I’m sorry,” I started to say, but Lila pulled a hot knife from her tunic. The glowing ring around the steel illuminated Lila’s face. She pressed the tip to my palm. It started to sizzle.

  “Turn your sensors off. This is going to hurt.”

  I pulled away. I stared at my brand-new palm. There wasn’t even a scratch on it yet. “I just got this hand fixed,” I said pathetically.

  Lila’s look could have slapped the bionic eye out of my head.

  “Okay. Give it to me,” I said. “It’s my hand.”

  I powered down my arm. It fell limply against my side. I asked Lila to lift the hand.

  Even with my sensors off, my brain thought it could feel the pain as the knife burned open a hole in my palm. My eyes knew it was supposed to hurt.

  A trickle of electricity crackled up my arm, singeing the flesh at the joint. I let the feeling pass, then peeled open my palm, re-creating the hole the Sassafras sisters had made.

  Lila’s eyes were wide as golf balls. “I’ve never seen inside one of these. These abominations, I mean.”

  Beneath the ribbed metal skin, throbbing plasma sheets glowed in shades of blue. Silicon wires branched off like veins. No blood came out, only a translucent blue gunk that began to coagulate to close the hole. Lila reached in with her tiny fingers and plucked out the transmitter.

  It was a writhing, segmented thing. About the size of a multivitamin. White, with a round protrusion on its black head that shone a faint crimson. Little yellow specks for eyes.

  “What the crap is this?” she said.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “A grub beacon,” I said. “I’ve used them before on prospects. Normally you hide them in their food, then track them before they shit it out.”

  “Do me a favor,” Lila said, holding the grub as far away from her face as she could. “Never ever talk to me about your horrible, horrible job again. Like any part of it. At all.”

  It was a fair request.

  “They’re zootech. Organic and hard to detect. Dissolve after a few days and get defecated or absorbed by the body.”

  She swung her extended arm around so the writhing thing was in front of my face. It squirmed an inch from my eye. “You think Edenists are weird? How can this not disgust you? This creature shouldn’t exist, much less live inside your hand.”

  Lila tossed the grub onto the tracks. It plinked into the muddy waters. Sank.

  I looked at my newly injured hand. My arm had gone through so many cycles of death and rebirth that it was hard to keep track. For most of my life, I’d been trying to improve. Now I just wished I could stay whole for a little while.

  “I know a way out of here. Then we’ll see this so-called friend of yours.”

  “Give me a minute.” I pulled out an eraser, lit it, and sucked it down as quick as I could. Then I powered my arm back up, pain receptors and all.

  I shouted for quite some time.

  31

  THE SUNKEN ZEALOTS

  You’re going to have to shut up,” Lila said. We crept through the flooded subway tunnel like two Jonahs crawling through the belly of a forgotten leviathan. Its guts stretched on and on.

  Besides the sloshing of our legs, the only sounds were the distant squeaks. Rats. Possibly fish. For all I knew, aquatic rats with gills below their large round ears. There could be an entirely new ecosystem down here, new life-forms mutating in the brackish muck.

  “I wasn’t talking.”

  “I mean when we get there. Let me do the talking. They’re not going to be happy about me bringing an oiler.”

  My mind was shouting at me to get out of this dark tunnel and somewhere with a breeze. But my body was more concerned with my ruined hand. I’d have to wrench out the sensor when I got home.

  “I’m not going to be much use if I have to fight.”

  “If it comes to that, I’ll lend a hand.” Lila patted me on my injured arm. Her bright laughter was out of place in the underground gloom. The laughter grew thicker and she doubled over. Hacked up something dark and wet that fell into the water with a sad splash.

  “Do you want me to carry you?” I said, although I was unsure if I even could.

  “Like I said, I want you to be quiet.”

  My clothes were soaked with cold, murky water. I was starting to shiver. I’d recently read about marrow heaters, microbatteries you could implant along your skeleton to combat the cold. Plethora had an entire line of them. They cost a fortune, more money than I’d earned in years. I wanted them desperately.

  “How much farther to these friends of yours?” I asked.

  “They’re not my friends, they’re my comrades. Well, my future comrades. I can’t join till I’m fifteen.”

  She’d explained to me how the Diseased Eden were a splinter group, disowned by the mainstream Edenists for their views. Although really it was the Diseased Eden that disowned the others. Lila had met them at a protest outside of the Monsanto compound. She was bubbling with anger and they were a group that knew how to channel it.

  “And how many times do I have to tell you?”

  We were nearing another subway platform. I moved quicker, ready to climb out and begin to dry.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll shut up,” I said, right as my foot clicked on something between the tracks. Something that wasn’t rotting and mushy, but metal and new. I froze.

  I saw a red light appear in the waters near my feet. Then another. And another. They were all around us.

  “Shit,” Lila said. “Shit.”

  The water gurgled. The clicking sounds beneath me were matched by ones above.

  Lila started to move forward. Something grabbed her.

  A black metal tendril shot out of the water. It wrapped around my right wrist three times. Another did so on the other hand, while a third slid up my torso and pulled my neck down.

  The water was up to my chest. I looked over at Lila. The mechanical tendrils looked gigantic on her body. Her head was barely above the water.

  “I forgot about these guys,” Lila said angrily.

  I tried to tug, but the tendrils held me in place.

  The clicks in the ceiling got louder, then three security spiders dropped down. They hovered around our faces. Black metal bots with a large yellow eye in the middle, scanning us. They swung back and forth from their cords.

  The putrid water splashed against us. I could hear Lila gag.

  Up on the platform, a fat man in a motorized shopping cart rolled toward us. He wasn’t dressed like the Edenists I’d seen before. He was wearing layers of dirt-caked rags and hauling a gigantic bag of plastic bottles behind him.

  He rolled to the ledge. Looked down at us and shook his bearded face. It was the man I’d seen in the streams on Zunz�
�s house on Governors Island. The one who’d been giving a nice speech about the nastiness of the world while they sliced open a headless chicken.

  He lifted a broom handle from the side of his cart and pointed it at Lila. Bellowed, “What hand guides the flaming sword?”

  Lila groaned. Looked at me with embarrassed eyes. “The hand of the Untainted Lord. Okay, Noblood Gerald?”

  The dirty water was splashing into her mouth. She spat some out as she talked.

  The man frowned and lowered his stick. “No real names, Nails. Now, what does the Mud—”

  “The Mud Adam holds the flaming axe.”

  “And what—”

  “The Mud Adam’s axe will splinter the tree of life into a thousand twigs. Forever and ever. Amen. Let us go, Gerald. I’m going to drown!”

  He tapped his stick on the ground, still frowning. “Rituals matter, Nails. You’re going to need to learn that if you’re going to become a member.” He rolled his cart over to the wall. Flipped up a tile to reveal a security panel and hit a button with his large fist. The spider bots crawled back up to the ceiling, and the tendrils slithered back into the subway gunk.

  Lila stood up and shook off the water. Spat.

  “You’re a jerk, Gerald.”

  “I didn’t tell you to come sneaking through the subway. Who’s this defiler?”

  “He helped me escape some cops. They raided the Untainted Gardens. I vouch for him.”

  “Yeah, we heard about the raid.” The man had a flashlight pointed down at us. He flashed it right in my eye. “He looks like an oiler. And a broken one at that.”

  I was cold and dizzy. The water was getting inside the new hole in my palm. My human parts were shivering and the bionic ones glitching. I wanted to lie down in the waters and be carried away.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m on the run from both cops and Monsanto agents. Yes, I’ve got cybernetic parts, and I’m two million in debt to a medical-loan company that wants to chop me into pieces. I don’t know what your Diseased Eden is, but we probably have overlapping enemies.”

  Gerald scratched his chin. Coughed. “This is an untainted oasis. I can’t just let a cyborg inside.”

  “Jesus, Gerald. Let us up or I’ll tell everyone about your bionic heart. Okay?”

  Gerald had been moving away, but now spun around angrily. He moved back to the ledge. “It’s not bionic.”

  “Oh no?”

  “It’s a pacemaker. Keep your voice down.”

  “Are pacemakers listed in the First Commandment of the Eden Angels?”

  “I’ve had it since I was a kid. I’d rip the sin out if I could.”

  “Aww, you were just a little baby. I’m sure everyone will be very understanding.”

  “Fine, okay, he can come in. We can talk. I want to hear about what happened at the Oldblood compound. Then the oiler has to leave.” He pointed his stick at me. Shook his head. “And you have to take her with you.”

  32

  THE DISEASED EDEN

  The inside of the old Greenpoint station was bright and busy. Men and women dressed in rags stood around the waiting area, assembling and breaking down devices. I noticed some were taller than any Edenists I’d seen before, but they were on crutches or in wheelchairs. They had missing limbs and cauterized holes where an eye had been dug out or an ear cut away.

  I leaned down to Lila. “What’s the deal with those ones?”

  “They’re the Purified.”

  “Purified from what?”

  She stared at my cybernetic arm and shrugged. “Upgrades.”

  I looked back at the workers, tried to visualize their limbs returning. Made them whole in my mind with cybernetics. I felt sad for them. Angry too. When I looked at my own body, I couldn’t imagine yanking out my parts for any creed.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Weekend workshop. Demolition tools.”

  “For what?”

  “The Diseased Eden think the regular Edenists are too polite. They want to fuck shit the fuck up.”

  “Don’t curse, Nails,” Gerald said.

  Although they were deep down in the old subway, the Diseased Edenists had transformed it. There were bright tapestries of birds and beasts on the walls. Everywhere I looked there was a plant growing under solar lamps. Just because the space was cheerful didn’t mean the people were though. We walked through the dining area, the Diseased Edenists looking up from their bowls with eyes as narrow as paper cuts.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Lila said. “They give every outsider that look.”

  Gerald directed us into the remains of an MTA booth. It had been stripped of everything but a couple chairs. He passed us some dirty towels and we tried to dry off.

  “We don’t think it’s enough to only avoid upgrades. To us, the problem is the corporate control. That’s proprietary software running your arm. Brand-name chemicals in your system.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “I’ve got a mean pair of sisters threatening to rip out my branded parts.”

  Gerald was too caught up in his speech to care. He gestured with his hands like a crazed orchestra conductor. “That’s only the start. They create whole life-forms without care or thought. They’re gods who care nothing about their creations. They’re impure. We want to bring the impurity to the world.”

  “As far as I can tell, it’s pretty impure already.”

  Gerald slapped his hands on his massive belly. “It is! But it’s not free. The biopharms and government deform life and then sell new creatures as easily as they sell shirts or cans of soda. We show them there are repercussions to messing with nature.”

  “We’re the guys who blow up the zootech depots, let all the weird creatures loose,” Lila explained.

  I’d seen plenty about these groups in the news. Every few months a zootech warehouse would be broken into and a horde of nerve termites would cause citywide panic. President Newman called them terrorist cells, but then he called everyone that. I wasn’t sure the corporations cared. All it meant was they got to sell another round of upgrades. Dermal ointment to ward off gas mosquitos, ankle shields to prevent acid viper bites. Maybe a fat new contract with the city for a biocleanse. If Gerald had told me the biopharms paid them to free their zootech, I’d believe it.

  “We don’t approve of the abominations the biopharms have made, but they’re here. They have as much right to live as you or I. And if they kill some of the impure of their own free will, well, so be it. The new Eden will come, illness and all.”

  “A diseased Eden.”

  “Exactly.”

  I tried to picture what New York might look like overrun with zootech insects and genetically modified rats. People had been predicting the death of the city for years. Would that finally drive all the people out of this sinking island? I imagined office buildings filled with screeches instead of conference calls and streets clogged with weeds instead of cars. I could see the appeal. It wasn’t like a scorpion was going to charge me 10 percent interest on a medical loan for an upgrade I needed to live. Venom was quick, capitalism killed you nice and slow. Then sent you a bill.

  “Don’t zootech die quickly? I was told their shelf life was only a few weeks. Engineered apoptosis to make sure they didn’t infect the wild populations. Well, and to keep the customer coming back to the store.”

  Gerald smiled angrily beneath the beard. “‘Shelf life’ you call it. Can you believe that? The shelf life of a life-form. Do you see how their language has infected everything? Yes, most die after a few days. Some don’t. Some survive. Some thrive. They may have been created in laboratories, but evolution still operates. Nothing alive can be fully controlled.”

  One of the Purified knocked on the door. Her left leg ended in cinched-off denim and she had a patch over one eye. She whispered something in Gerald’s ear. He nodded.

  The woman looked at me looking at her leg. Her lips, what was left of them at least, twisted into a thin smile. Her hair was thick and bla
ck, but I could see an inflamed circle on the side where a neural implant had been dug out. “We accept anyone who will help crumble the system, if they purify themselves at least. Are you interested?”

  “Our surgeons could rip out that eye and arm in a jiffy,” Gerald said.

  “I imagine the pain would last a lot longer.”

  The woman looked at me, her incomplete mouth pulling up on the left side. Mocking. “I was like you. Thinking I was gaining something by adding more and more parts. I was addicted to it. Getting surgery was better than any drug. I chased that until I lost everything. My family. My job. My dignity. It took me a long time to realize I’d only be freed by taking things away.”

  “Maybe you can give me some literature to read and I’ll get back to you,” I said.

  Gerald chuckled as the woman left. “Now that the pleasantries are over. What are you are doing here and what do you want?”

  Lila explained the situation. How the cops had raided the Untainted Gardens Edenist Center, and how a goon from the Monsanto Mets had been tailing her for days. How it all had something to do with her father.

  “We need a passage to the surface. Somewhere where the cops won’t be.”

  “And why should I help you and your unrepentant cyborg pal?”

  “Kobo here is about to blow open the whole case on how Monsanto killed my father,” Lila said. I wasn’t sure if she had faith in me or was just lying. “It will be great for the Diseased Eden. Monsanto poisons their own star player. You couldn’t ask for better propaganda.”

  Gerald cocked his head and looked at me. “Is that true?”

  “It could be. I think it is. Yeah.”

  “Well, anything that damages a biopharm’s image is okay with me. We can get you a centipod to the surface. You’ll be on the wrong side of the storm wall. Not a lot of cops around those parts.” Gerald clapped his hands, began rolling toward the door. “Well, let’s go and then pretend you were never here.”

  “I need some pets too.”

  “Pets? What are you talking about?” I said.

  “Zootech. Just in case.”