Bluescreen

by Dan Wells

  TWENTY

  Anja went after Sahara first, lashing out with her elbow and smashing her in the side of the head. As Sahara reeled back, both from the blow and the surprise, Anja leaped forward, pulling away from Marisa’s shocked grip to keep the pressure on Sahara, hitting her again in the head, keeping her unbalanced, and then, when the opportunity came, punching Sahara powerfully in the throat. Sahara staggered against a chair, tripping over it backward as she gasped for breath, and smacked her head against the floor. She was unconscious before the others could even react.

  Marisa was next. Anja turned and ran back toward her, and Marisa put her arms up in front of her face just in time to block a flurry of blows. Anja’s fists slammed into Marisa’s forearms, shaking her entire body. Bao leaped in from the side, trying to grab Anja and pull her away, and Anja turned her attention to him, striking back viciously, driving him back against the wall. He was only trying to stop Anja from attacking; he wasn’t prepared to actually hit her back. Marisa tried to gather her thoughts, looking for a good course of action. Should she tackle her? Could the three of them hold her down without hurting her? Sahara was the only one in their group with any combat training, and she was already down.

  “Anja!” Marisa shouted, but shook her head immediately. There was no sense trying to talk to her, as it wasn’t Anja doing it—it was someone controlling her, a Bluescreen puppet master. “Nils!” she said. “Or Lal! Stop this, please! Let her go, and let’s talk!” Anja didn’t even slow her assault, punching Bao until her knuckles bled. Marisa screamed: “Say something!”

  Anja’s attacks were fierce, but raw; even Marisa could tell that whoever was controlling her wasn’t a real fighter, just a berserker trying to cause damage. Someone who could afford to swing too hard, to drop his defense too often, to leave himself open to injury because the body that got damaged could be discarded when he was done.

  Bao dodged the next punch, and Anja’s fist hit the screen behind him, so hard Marisa thought she could hear the hand break. The screen cracked and the image disappeared.

  “Lal!” Marisa screamed. “You’re going to kill her.”

  Whoever was controlling Anja didn’t give any sign that they had heard her . . . but Anja had said it didn’t feel like it had before. She’d felt something trying to take over, and she could tell it was somehow different from a human controller. What else was there? An AI? True AI didn’t exist—nuli control programs, sure, but nothing that could think. Marisa shook her head. This was something simpler, something rudimentary. Something that could carry out a single command: attack.

  Anja had been taken over by an algorithm.

  “What’s happening?” said Saif. His eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open in terror.

  “Help me stop her,” Marisa said, and dove back into the fight, grabbing Anja from behind, wrapping her arms around her to hold her still. Anja responded by slamming her head backward, smashing Marisa’s face. Marisa lost her grip and staggered back, then launched herself forward again, too dazed to see clearly, knowing she had to move fast before Anja had a chance to move away. She caught her again, lower this time, and held on tight while Anja pummeled her mercilessly with her elbows. Marisa felt Anja’s weight shift suddenly, and Bao shouted.

  “I’ve got her legs,” he said. “Drop her!”

  Marisa let go, and Anja fell backward, landing heavily on her back. She groaned, a sound more painful than Marisa had ever heard, and Marisa backed away in horror at what she’d just done to her friend.

  Anja slowly climbed back to her feet.

  “Grab her again,” said Bao, diving forward.

  “We’re going to kill her,” said Marisa. “She’s going to kill herself!”

  “So grab her and stop her!” said Bao. “We need to tie her down so we can figure out how to—”

  Anja landed a kick on his head, snapping his head back and dropping him to the ground. He didn’t move.

  “Please, Lal,” said Marisa. “Please don’t do this.”

  Anja walked toward her, limping, bleeding, so damaged she shouldn’t even be walking, but the algorithm wouldn’t let her stop.

  “We have to trick it,” said Marisa suddenly. “We have to make it think it’s won—”

  Anja punched her again, rocking Marisa’s head to the side, and it was all too easy to slump to the side, falling to the ground, pretending that Anja had defeated her. Anja swayed in the middle of the room, surveying the destruction. Bodies lay in crumpled heaps in a chaos of broken walls and overturned chairs.

  Stop now, Marisa thought. It’s over. Stop, and let go of Anja. Let her go to sleep. Let her turn off her djinni.

  Anja turned, and shuffled toward the door. Marisa’s voice caught in her throat, terrified to let her go, even more terrified to call her back. Anja walked outside, and was gone.

  “She’ll get herself killed,” Marisa sobbed. “We have to stop her.”

  “You can’t stop them all,” said Saif. He was shaking his head, staring at the floor. “They’re everywhere. All over the city. Every Bluescreen user in Los Angeles—they’re under control now.” His eyes focused on Marisa. “The city is burning. They’re an army, and they’re destroying everything.”

  Marisa struggled to sit up, her head still reeling from the head-butt. It felt like Anja had broken her nose. “What are they doing?”

  “I don’t know!” said Saif. “I don’t even know how they’re doing it! There’s nothing in the code that should allow for this.”

  “How do you know?”

  Saif turned on her, and Marisa looked at him, her head slowly clearing, and the question grew more terrifying with every second. How did he know? She could hear screams outside, screams and cries and shattering glass. Anja, and others; every Bluescreen user in the city.

  Except one.

  “I told you I needed to talk to you,” said Saif. “Now I need you more than ever. I don’t know code—you do. You can help us figure this out, and stop it.”

  Marisa’s heart sank, and then seemed to stop altogether. She looked at Saif and forced out the question she could barely stand to think:

  “You’re connected to the net. You’re reading the news—that’s how you know all of this. But if every Bluescreen user in the city is affected, if they’ve all turned into puppets at once in one giant attack . . . why not you?”

  “I thought you were just some kid,” said Saif, “some party girl with more guts than sense, but you’re brilliant, Mari. Do you realize what we could do if we worked together?”

  “You lied to me,” she said. “You’re not infected with Bluescreen at all—you never were. You faked it to make me trust you, and then you gave me all this information and asked all these questions, and . . .” She shook her head. She could barely believe it. “You’ve been lying the whole time. Everything we’ve done together, everything we ever tried, they’ve adapted so quickly we couldn’t keep up. We followed them with a drone, and they figured it out. We found their headquarters, and made a plan to get inside, and you listened to all of it, using us to find the holes in your security.”

  “Think about it, Mari!” His terrified desperation was giving way to anger, as if volume and force could convince her as effectively as reason. “The world is upside down—it’s not even upside down anymore, it’s shattered, it’s unrecognizable. I was just as poor as you, a dead-end street rat with nothing to eat, and nowhere to go, and a hundred years ago we might have been part of a communist revolution, taking back the power from the oligarchs on top to the workingman who makes it all possible. But there isn’t a workingman anymore. Machines make it possible, nulis and autocars and automated factories, and nobody has anything but the people on the top. Bluescreen was our ticket to change that. To take back the power and—”

  “And what?” asked Marisa. “To become the new oligarchs? To rob from the rich and give to yourself and kill anyone who gets in your way?”

  “Revolutions are bloody,” said Saif. “As bad as this has been
, it’s still one of the cleanest in history.”

  “If you think—”

  “If you want to add more compassion, bring more compassion!” He stepped toward her, eyes wide and pleading. “That’s what I’m telling you—what I’ve been trying to tell you all day. You can help us, Marisa, you’ve more than proved it. Help me build a better world.”

  “What happened to Anja?” Marisa demanded.

  “I have no idea—that’s the first thing we can do together, solve that puzzle. But we have to do it now, they’re all over the city and it’s going to be ruined—”

  “Anja didn’t attack you,” said Marisa. “Somehow she knew not to. It’s part of the algorithm.”

  “There is no algorithm.” Saif stood up. “You don’t understand—”

  “I understand everything,” said Marisa, her voice quivering with despair. “You have a glitch in your ID. I saw it the very first night, and I didn’t think anything about it, but you’re . . .” Her voice was a heartbroken whisper. “You’re Lal.”

  He turned and walked to the door, pausing before he opened it. “I have to stop this, with or without you.” His shoulders straightened and he pushed open the door and walked away.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The world had gone mad.

  Marisa could hear screaming outside—some from pain, some from terror, all of it helpless and desperate and confused. How many people had been taken over? Saif—no, Lal—said—

  Marisa’s breath caught again. She had trusted him.

  He had only been using her.

  If they wanted power, why kill Anja? It had never made sense. Now she knew it was just another way of using her. Running her through the streets hadn’t been a murder attempt, but a . . . distraction, maybe? What had he been doing while they chased her? Marisa rubbed her eyes and blinked into Sahara’s video archive. Camilla had stayed behind at the club, passively observing. She found the footage, opened it up, and watched.

  Lal Muralithar, the man she had known as Saif, watched them go, gave a Bluescreen drive to La Princesa, and then plugged another one into the Synestheme. Dozens of people were connected throughout the club, and a few seconds later they all passed out, one at a time, slumping to the side in their chairs. He had risked Anja’s life, and Sahara’s and Marisa’s, not to keep a secret or save his own life, but to gain a few extra puppets. She closed her eyes, feeling too broken to move.

  Bao stirred.

  “Oh my gosh,” said Marisa. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, and crawled toward him through the rubble. “Bao, are you okay? I thought she broke your neck.”

  Bao groaned. “I kind of wish she had.” He tried to sit up, winced, and lay back down. “My brain feels like a milk shake.”

  “He betrayed us,” said Marisa, practically choking on the words.

  “Saif?”

  “Saif is Lal Muralithar,” said Marisa. “The mastermind behind the whole thing.”

  “Good,” said Bao, wincing. “Now I don’t have to feel guilty about hating him.”

  “He killed eLiza,” said Marisa, “but not until after he used her. He was using us the same way. I’m such an idiot, Bao, I’ve ruined everything.”

  “Don’t,” said Bao, suddenly serious. “Don’t blame yourself for this.”

  “The whole time it was him, and I didn’t—”

  “There was no way you could have known,” said Bao. “This is not your fault.”

  Marisa shook her head, wiping her eyes with the hem of her tattered San Juanito T-shirt. Bao looked at her a moment longer, then groaned and rolled over, surveying the room more closely.

  “What about Sahara?” He crawled toward her on his hands and knees, and Marisa followed numbly. He checked her pulse, and sighed in relief as he probed the back of her head. “She’s got a big bump back here, but I think she’s okay.”

  “We have to help Anja,” said Marisa. “But I don’t know how. Is she out there attacking more people? Is she dead?”

  Bao shot her a worried glance. “What happened after I got knocked out?”

  “I faked unconsciousness, and she left,” said Marisa, sniffing and wiping her eyes again. “The thing that took her over was an algorithm, and I don’t know what it’s trying to do. Neither did Lal. Attack us, or everyone? Did she leave to find more victims, or is she going somewhere? I don’t know what to—”

  She froze, suddenly, hearing a noise by the door—not the screams that seemed to fill the air, but a scrape or a slide, closer than the voices. A footstep, maybe. It came again, and Bao’s head shot up. They glanced at each other, then back at the door.

  A step, and a long, dragging limp. Someone was coming.

  “Get behind me,” Marisa whispered.

  Bao shook his head. “I’m not going to let you—”

  “You’re hurt,” Marisa insisted, moving past him as quietly as she could. Was Anja back, or was this someone else? Lal? Tì Xū Dāo? A looter? Her father was still sitting by the door, slumped and unconscious from the drugs. Was he in danger? Maybe the intruder wasn’t dangerous at all—maybe it was Sandro, or Gabi, coming from the house. But wouldn’t they have called first, or at least sent a ping? What if they were—

  A handgun barrel came through the door first, millimeter by millimeter, long and silver and lined with blinking lights, humming just loud enough to hear in the silent room. A rail gun, like the gangsters had used. Behind it came a hand, and then an arm, bronze and tattooed, and before the head and body even appeared the arm swiveled directly toward Marisa, the gun pointed at her chest. She planted herself in front of Bao, and stifled a gasp as Calaca, bleeding and haggard, limped the rest of the way through the door.

  “Buenas noches, Marisita,” said Calaca. His eerie demeanor was cracked and splintered, the menacing calmness barely concealing a fierce anger. “I apologize for any inconvenience I’m about to cause you, but you have information I need, and I don’t have time to ask nicely.”

  “I don’t know anything—”

  Calaca fired his gun, the noise deafening in the enclosed room, the magnetically accelerated bullet tearing through the air so close to her head she could feel the heat of it. She fell to the side, clutching her ear, eyes wide with fear. Bao grabbed her shoulders, holding her tightly, but neither of them dared to speak again.

  “You did not let me finish,” said Calaca. His voice had the familiar cadence he always used—bizarrely calm and erudite—but with a raw, angry undercurrent breaking through. “I just had to beat up my own sister, and tie her to a chair to keep her from killing her own kids, so you’ll excuse me if I am impatient. Before we begin I consider it prudent to establish some ground rules, so listen carefully. I’m going to ask a question, and you’re going to answer it, and that’s the only thing allowed in the room: you and me, questions and answers. Anything that comes out of your mouth that does not answer my question will get shot at. Here’s the first question, as a trial run of this process: Is that clear?”

  Marisa nodded.

  “It’s okay to say it out loud,” said Calaca, “as that is the purpose of this exercise. Let’s try again: Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” said Bao, “but we—”

  Calaca fired again, and Marisa dropped to the floor, covering her head. As soon as she realized she wasn’t hit she spun around, terrified to see Bao with a bullet in his forehead, but he was fine—cowering, like she was, but unhurt. Behind them, the last of the wall screens had gone black, the hole in the center of the fractured screen gently smoking. She turned slowly back to Calaca.

  “You said two words that weren’t part of an answer,” said Calaca. “Count yourself lucky that I was able to shoot the screens without hitting you—despite my extensive training with firearms, I can’t guarantee that I’ll be so lucky in the future.” He glanced at the broken windows, then back at Marisa. “Now. As mentioned previously I’m in something of a hurry. This is the second time today that our barrio’s been attacked, and you know something about it. You’re the
one who tipped us off about Bluescreen, and we’ve been doing our due diligence with that information, and now every single person I know who’s taken the drug—including my sister—is attacking people. Something’s going on. Answer carefully: Do you know what it is?”

  Marisa stared back, trying to think of how to answer. He wanted to know where the Bluescreen headquarters was, but if she told him he’d go there in force, with all of La Sesenta’s gun’s blazing, and they’d shut it down through violence. With thousands of puppets connected to the server, a sudden shock like that would put them all into the same, brain-dead coma as La Princesa—thousands and thousands of people. She couldn’t let that happen. They’d start a fight with Tì Xū Dāo, and it would only get worse from there.

  Is that what the algorithm was doing—protecting the programmers?

  She realized with a start that some of the screens in the room were still showing the Bluescreen warehouse. She glanced at Bao. The wall screens were all broken, but if Calaca looked at one of the smaller ones . . .

  “It appears you’ve found a loophole in my instructions,” said Calaca. “Allow me to close it. If I ask a question and you say nothing, I’ll shoot your father.” He moved his handgun, pointing it at the sleeping Carlo Magno, and Marisa started talking desperately.

  “I know some of it,” she said quickly. While she talked, she blinked into the San Juanito network controls, trying to replace all the screen images before he saw them. There were four left, and she went to work while she talked. “Bluescreen is a drug that installs a control program in your djinni, allowing someone else to take control of your body, like a puppet. I don’t know why all the puppets are attacking, or who’s controlling them.”

  One screen down.

  “But you see,” said Calaca, gesturing with the rail gun, “I don’t believe that you don’t know who’s behind it. You seem to know everything these days, and your brother Chuy can’t stop talking about how brilliant his little sister is. So let me ask you specifically: who’s controlling the puppets?”