by D L Young
“Did you hear anything I just said?” Maddox snapped. “He snuck up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder, and I didn’t even know he was there. He’s a good jacker.”
“Good as you?” the kid asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Maddox said. “All I know is he’s got it in for me, and he’s got the law on his side.” He took a long drag. “And God knows what he’s got looking for me in VS.”
The kid’s face twisted up in frustration. “And what about my turfies? They’re sitting in jail because of this. Because of you.”
Maddox felt Tommy’s anger, his desperation. But the kid didn’t appreciate how screwed Maddox was. He didn’t know Naz like Maddox did.
“Kid, it was a hell of a setup, watertight. He probably spent months planning it. And getting set up by a cop is bad enough. But when that cop’s a jacker who knows all the ins and outs of our business, all our little tricks we can use to disappear, that’s pretty much a nightmare scenario.” He shook his head. “There’s no fighting back here. There’s no counterplay to something like this. With all the cams and drones and tech he has at his fingertips, we’re going to be lucky just to get out of the City. Do you understand? It’s too bad about your friends. They got a rough break, but there’s nothing we can do.”
“A rough break?” the kid repeated, glaring. “They’re looking at life, jacker. That’s not a rough break. That’s permanently FUCKED!”
The kid lunged at Maddox in a mad rush, and the datajacker reflexively jerked backward. Before Tommy could take a second step, Jack grabbed him, his huge hands locked around the kid’s upper arms. The kid squirmed and struggled uselessly.
“It’s all your fault,” the kid cried, his voice breaking with emotion. “You owe them, goddammit. You fucking owe them!”
“Take it easy, little brother,” Jack said. “Take it easy.”
After a few more curses and failed attempts to break free, the kid finally stopped struggling. Jack talked the kid down out of his fit, his voice calm and even, then slowly released his grip. Tommy stood there, breathing heavily. His eyes, welling with tears and boiling with hatred, were locked on Maddox. “You owe them,” the kid whimpered.
Maddox didn’t say anything. The kid shook his head scornfully, then cursed Maddox in Korean before turning and climbing through the window back into the building.
For a long moment, Maddox stared at the empty space the kid had occupied a moment before. He turned to the rail, leaning with his forearms against the cool metal, his cigarette dangling limply from his lips. He gazed out into the quiet darkness. The brothel’s street was deserted, but not entirely. A few businesses operated here and there, oases of light and sound between long stretches of crumbling, gutted husks of lowrises. The nearest such oasis was a Thai food joint a couple blocks down, its molded plastic tables spilling out onto the sidewalk and crowded with patrons.
“Nothing I can do,” Maddox muttered, more to himself than Jack.
“Maybe not,” Jack said. “He’s a young pup, Blackburn. Still got a lot to learn. He’ll see it straight when he cools down some. Don’t you worry.”
“Who said I was worried?”
For a long moment neither man spoke. The din from the Thai joint rose from the street, a murmuring buzz of conversation and laughter.
“So what are you going to do?” Jack asked, finally breaking the silence.
Maddox blew smoke. “I don’t know yet,” he replied honestly.
“Going to leave the City?”
“Probably have to.” Maddox knew a thousand places to hide in the City. But they were the kinds of places a datajacker could hide for a week or two, maybe a month, until the heat died down. But heat like this didn’t die down, ever. The cops didn’t just let corporate terrorists skate away. They tracked them down, aggressively and tirelessly, like the corporations wanted them to. Hell, T-Chen Engineering would probably even hire out a crew of mercenaries to join the hunt. Gideon had played the whole thing to perfection.
“Guess there’s only one thing we can do, then,” Jack said, laying a heavy hand on Maddox’s shoulder.
Maddox glanced at him. “What’s that?”
The fighter cocked his head toward the window. “Have a little going away party…on me.”
Maddox looked over. The modded woman he’d seen earlier stood just inside the window, gazing at him naughtily and holding her vest open wide, her four perfect breasts pressed against the glass.
Same old Jack. Any excuse for a party. Under any conditions.
Maddox looked at the woman as he pondered the uncertain path he’d been dropped onto. Going forward, his life would be one of endless running and hiding and looking over his shoulder. These next few hours might be the last stretch of relative peace he was going to have for a long while. He flicked his cigarette off the landing and figured what the hell.
Might as well spend those hours doing something interesting.
12 - VIP Exit
“You really a datajacker, honey?” the woman asked. She leaned forward, her pinkish muscled thighs pressed against the vanity, her face close to the mirror as she dabbed a fresh sheen of lipstick onto her mouth. “That’s what Celeste says.” As she spoke, a little circle of fog appeared on the glass in front of her mouth.
“Used to be,” Maddox answered. He lay on the bed, still catching his breath, the sheets warm and wrinkled and vaguely damp beneath his back.
The naked woman—Maddox realized he hadn’t caught her name—turned toward him, her four breasts softly bobbing. When he’d first seen this particular mod, he’d been put off by the oddness of it, but now…
“I’m up here, honey,” the woman droned, pointing to her face. Maddox lifted his gaze to meet her eyes, self-consciously realizing she’d asked him a second question he hadn’t registered.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“My little boy’s gaming deck?” she said, apparently repeating herself. “You think you can fix it? He threw a fit about losing ten levels or some nonsense and tossed the thing across the room. Now he can’t get it to turn on.”
Maddox reached for his shirt, fished around the pockets for a smoke. “Don’t really know much about the hardware side of things,” he lied. “Not sure I could help much.”
The woman strapped herself into a four-cupped bra. “Probably just as well. He’s on that thing too much anyway. Like that kid you came with.”
Maddox gave up the search for a smoke. “Tommy? He’s still here?”
She motioned to the ceiling. “Two floors up with Ginger.”
Maddox lifted his eyebrows. “I guess he wasn’t that upset after all, then.”
“Upset about what?”
“Long story. He read me the riot act earlier. Now he’s up there getting laid. Seems like he bounced back pretty quick.”
“Getting laid nothing,” she said dismissively. “That boy’s up there playing around on Ginger’s deck.”
Maddox froze. Had he heard her right? “Did you say playing on a deck?”
The woman shrugged. “Said he wanted to plug into some game. Asked me which girl had the best gear.”
“I thought you were off-grid here.”
“We are,” she said, stepping into her skirt. “That’s what I told him. I said, ‘Ginger has gaming gear, hon, but you won’t be able to…’”
No longer listening, Maddox dressed in a frenzied rush, jumping into his pants and pulling his shirt over his head. What the hell was the kid trying to do, get them all caught? The scramble shields might keep this building off the grid, but if the kid really wanted to plug in, all he had to do was hop over to the next roof with a deck and a remote link. Or if he found a gap in the coverage, he might only have to go out onto the fire escape.
Maddox bolted from the room and up two flights of stairs. Pounding on a succession of locked doors, he called out for Tommy. “You in there, kid? Let me in.”
At the end of the hallway, the last door on the left opened. A young woman’s face,
pale-skinned with red bangs hanging to her eyes, tentatively peeked out. Ginger, apparently. “What do you want with him?”
Maddox ran over. The redhead yelped in surprise as he shouldered his way into the room. He searched the cramped, dimly lit space. Empty bed and a tiny end table wedged next to the wall.
“The hell, man?” the woman said, annoyed. “Hit me in the face with the fucking door next time.” The room was barely big enough for the two of them.
“Where is he?”
“Out there,” she said, gesturing to the window. Red velvet drapes hung to the floor, billowing in the breeze. Beyond them, Maddox spied Tommy sitting on a plastic chair, hunched over a deck and gesturing with his hands.
Maddox bodily moved the woman out of his way and sidestepped through the tight space between the foot of the bed and the wall. At the window, he pulled open the drapes and leaned out, reaching for the trodes on Tommy’s head. The kid’s eyes were closed and his hands were a few centimeters above the deck strapped to his lap. He was in mid-gesture when Maddox ripped the trodes off.
“Hey,” the kid cried, his tone like he’d been caught jerking off. His hands rose quickly to his temples, and his eyes jumped around unfocused. It took him a second or two to shake off the disorientation, and when he did, his expression went from recognition to annoyed in a millisecond.
“What are you doing, pulling me out like that?” the kid said.
“What am I doing?” Maddox shot back. “We’re here to stay off the radar. What the hell are you doing is the question. That didn’t look like a gaming gesture to me.”
The kid glared at Maddox. He’d been caught red-handed, but he clearly didn’t care. A standby icon floated above the deck. The kid tossed the device onto the bed.
“Thanks for the loan, Ginger,” he called.
Maddox stepped out onto the fire escape. He scowled down at the kid. “What were you doing?”
“Trying to help my friends,” Tommy snapped. “Since nobody else around here will.”
“Trying to help them how?” Maddox pressed.
The kid broke eye contact, shifted in his seat.
“Help them how?” Maddox repeated.
“Figured if I, you know,” he said, fidgeting, “get some dirt on that cop, might be able to cut a deal with him, get him to call the dogs off.”
Maddox swallowed hard. “Tell me you didn’t just try to jack the police department.”
“Never got that far,” Tommy admitted. “You pulled me out while I was still shopping apps.”
“Kid, listen to me. You can’t plug in. At all. Not even for a game. They’re looking for us. You understand that?”
“But if I’m cloaked, can’t I—”
“No, you can’t,” Maddox interrupted. “And I’ll tell you why. Because we’re at the top of the wanted list. And when you’re that famous, they throw military-grade tech at you. Then all the normal rules go right out the window. Between the local cops and the feds, they’ve probably got three or four AIs hunting us. A cloaking app’s useless against that kind of search. It’s like a raincoat, kid. You might have a good one that keeps you dry in the worst storm, but it won’t do jack to protect you from a nuclear bomb. And that’s where we are right now. Different game, different rules.”
The kid met Maddox’s gaze. “But you one-upped an AI before. I was there when you did it.”
“That was a once-in-a-lifetime trick, and we had a good amount of luck on our side.” Not to mention another AI, he added internally. “You don’t pull that kind of thing off a second time.”
Tommy’s face hardened. “I’m not going to run and hide. And I’m not going to sit on my hands. Those are my turfies, jacker.”
Maddox threw his hands up. He’d had enough of the kid and his tribal drama. “You want to get yourself arrested, go right ahead. Throw yourself right into the meat grinder for all I care. Just do it someplace far from me, got it?”
He turned to the window and started to duck back into the building when something caught his eye down on the street. He stood back up, peering into the darkness beyond the Thai joint. Aside from the abandoned husk of an old hover, there was nothing there. Maybe his newly paranoid state was messing with him, but he thought he’d seen movement a few blocks—
The customers at the restaurant shrieked, then scattered in all directions, toppling chairs and tables in a frantic rush. Maddox crouched and quickly donned his specs. He scanned the area, seeing nothing at first. Then after a moment, he managed to pick out the faint silhouettes of figures with guns, nearly invisible, moving slowly toward the building. Cops in chameleon armor. Maddox swung his vision in the opposite direction. Five blocks down, a second group approached, wearing the same adaptive gear that rendered its wearers nearly invisible. Maddox swallowed. Feds, he thought grimly. Only Feds wore adaptive armor.
The faint whine of a hover motor grew quickly louder. The overlay on Maddox’s specs lit up as its audio filters recognized the vehicle’s engine signature. POLICE HOVER INBOUND flashed wildly in the lower portion of his lens. An instant later, the modifier MULTIPLE appeared.
A hand grabbed him by the upper arm. He whirled around to find Jack.
“Time to go,” he said. “Roof cams picked up cop hovers coming our way.”
Maddox scrambled back inside. “I saw two Fed SWAT teams on the street,” he told the fighter.
“Just gets better and better,” Jack said, waving Tommy inside. “Come on, little brother.”
Pausing in the doorway, Maddox called to Jack. “Screw the kid. He’s the one who plugged in and brought them down on us.”
“Did not,” the kid protested. “Nobody saw me, I swear.”
Outside, the motor whine was now an ear-piercing shriek as several hovers made hurried landings on the surrounding roofs and streets. The trio scrambled into the hallway and Jack led them to the stairwell. The din from the engines died down, enough for Maddox to hear breaking glass and shouts and screams coming up from the ground floor. The raid had begun.
“Tenth floor,” Jack hollered, holding the door and waving them into the stairwell. Maddox noticed a gun in the fighter’s hand as he and Tommy ran past.
Up, turn, up, turn. They ran up the flights, bounding two and three stairs at a time. “What’s on ten?” Maddox shouted to Jack.
“There’s a bridge to the next building for VIPs,” Jack called as they reached the eighth-floor landing. “Then down to the basement. Connects to a subway service tunnel.”
A VIP exit. Brothels often had them for anyone who needed a more discreet way in and out of the place than simply walking in off the street. People in the public eye, mostly. Actors, politicians, Wall Street wizards. The types who didn’t want to risk even the slightest tarnish to their public image.
“POLICE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!”
The amplified voice blared from somewhere above them. Maddox risked an upward glance as he reached the ninth floor. Four flights above, half a dozen cops raced down toward them.
The first shots rang out as they reached the tenth floor, pinging off the metal handhold, sending sparks flying. The crack of automatic gunfire reverberated off the stairwell’s concrete walls, magnifying the sound and assaulting their ears. Maddox flinched but kept running. He threw open the door and burst into the tenth-floor hallway, followed by Tommy and Jack.
“Where?” Maddox asked, panting, his heart thudding in his chest.
“She said room ten-two-two,” Jack answered, pointing the way.
Tommy reached the room first, shouldering through the door. Maddox followed close behind, then stopped short at what he saw. Jack brought up the rear, thudding into Maddox as he entered the small, empty room.
“How are we supposed to go across that?” the kid asked.
The VIP corridor—less a corridor than the barest idea of one—was a partially constructed nanocrete structure, two meters in diameter, connecting the room’s window and its neighbor in the next building, some seven meters away. Its construction
had never been completed, or it had been recently damaged. Either way, to Maddox it looked like a disintegrating tunnel sagging precariously in the air ten stories above the street. The metal framework, thin and rusted and spindly-looking, was visible in several areas where there should have been at least a couple inches of solid nanocrete. The thing looked like a death trap.
Outside the room, the stairwell door opened with a telltale bang against the wall. A metallic amplified voice barked an order to search the floor room by room.
“We got to go one at a time,” Jack said. “Go on, little brother. Carefully, now.”
The kid didn’t need to be told twice. He tiptoed through the tunnel, his hands pressed gingerly against the walls. He moved quickly but carefully, like a person trying to find the least searing path through a bed of burning coals. The structure sagged and quivered. Chunks of nanocrete broke away and fell to the alley floor far below. From the hallway, the sound of doors being kicked open grew louder as the kid reached the other side and hopped safely into the opposite room.
“Your turn,” Jack said. “Go on.”
“You go,” Maddox said. “Give me the gun. I’ll hold them off.”
Jack shook his head. “My big ass won’t get halfway across that rickety thing.”
“It’ll hold,” Maddox insisted. He heard the sound of another doorway getting kicked in behind them.
“Fine, fine,” Jack said. The fighter held out the gun for Maddox, but as the other reached for it, Jack snatched it away and grabbed Maddox by the wrist and twisted his arm behind his back. Before Maddox could protest, Jack was shoving him toward the window.
“No time to argue,” Jack grunted as he thrust Maddox headlong into the tunnel. “Get out of here, VIP.”
Maddox tumbled, coming to a sprawling stop in the middle of the flimsy structure. The framework sagged under his weight and felt as if it would break apart. He scrambled forward on all fours, expecting the tunnel to open up under him at any moment and send him plunging to the hard ground. Then, somehow, he was through. Tommy’s hands were on him, pulling him out of the death trap and into the room.
