Synners by Pat Cadigan

your way back up again?"
    He groaned. "Nah, I'll just fly up. Be just as easy."
    He heard a slithering sound, and then Marly s hands touched his shoulders. "How about if you hold onto me and do it?" she said with an effort.
    "You can't pull us both up."
    "Well, no, but I thought it'd be easier if you were holding onto me."
    "Easier for who?"
    "Don't waste breath arguing, it's the one thing they're not expecting."
    He grunted, pushing himself up against the sides of the chute. "Because it can't be done."
    "Dammit, hotwire—" she groaned, and rose a few inches. "Why'd you even come?"
    "What was I s'posed to do? Give you the cam and wish you luck?" His elbow slipped. He struggled to regain his purchase on the chute, but the effort was too much, and he was sliding down again with a shout.
    "Dammit!" yelled Marly. He heard her coming down after him.
    He landed on a pile of musty mattresses and scooted out of the way just before Marly hit.
    "See what happens when you don't introduce yourselves properly?"
    The woman in the black dress was standing several feet away in front of a white cement-block wall. Gabe got up slowly, brushing himself off, and offered a hand to Marly. She ignored it, keeping her eyes on the woman. "Isn't a trapdoor kind of crude?" she said.
    "But effective. Appropriate technology." The woman smiled. "You got what you deserved."
    "Hotwire, I don't think this one's any more real than her twin sister," Marly said, and took a step forward.
    The woman suddenly compressed to a sharp red point of light.
    "Down!" Marly yelled.
    They flattened just as the point became a red spear that shot out at the spot where Marly had been standing a moment before. It hit the chute with a loud sizzle, and the smell of hot metal filled the air. Marly raised her head slightly to look at him over the mattresses. "They know a few neat tricks with light."
    Dumbfounded, Gabe blinked at the spot where the woman's image had been, then at the chute. "I thought the government said the holo-to-laser thing was impossible."
    "Impossible for the government," Marly said, looking around warily. "These people hacked the team that worked on it, removed the real specs, and substituted their own." She got up slowly. "Shit, what are we in, a boxcar?"
    The room was shaped like a boxcar and not much bigger, all walls and no entrance or exit that Gabe could see except for the end of the chute protruding from the wall. Marly ripped into one of the mattresses, pulling a chunk of ratty yellow foam rubber out of it. She tossed it at the cementblock wall; instead of bouncing off, it vanished.
    "That answers that question," she said, and got up.
    "Wait! What are you doing?" Gabe said as she headed for the wall.
    "Ah, it's not like we're not already in sight, hotwire," she said. "If they can see us, I want to see them." She walked through the wall. Gabe hurried after her.
    Beyond the white wall was a long room lined with beds, all of them occupied. Gabe braced himself, but no one rushed them. No one in the beds moved or even spoke.
    "The ward," Marly said darkly.
    "Why aren't there any attendants?" Gabe whispered.
    "Don't need them, they're built in." Marly went to the nearest bed and yanked up the man lying there by his shirt-front. He hung bonelessly in her grasp, his eyes wide open but seeing nothing. A thick black cable was driven into the top of his shaven head, held in place by small clamps.
    "Jesus," Gabe said.
    "The viral program's just a sideline," Marly said grimly, laying the man down again. "You ever wonder where Solomon Labs gets all that fresh, natural-no-synthetics neurotransmitter?"
    He stared, unable to speak.
    "And if you think this is a deep, dark secret, you're wrong about that, too," Marly added. "They all know. Even that outfit you work for, the Dive. You crank out the commercials, and high-level management gets their regular doses of n/t to keep them running at peak brain power. If you could get promoted high enough, you'd get some, too."