Code Jumper

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  I must admit, even I was shocked by the offer, and I’d dealt with some pretty large sums in the past, “Are you sure? You know they’re single-use, right?”

  “Figure I’ll try and get my boys to reverse-engineer it, see if I can make a real difference, truly shake things up for once instead of just waiting to die of cocaine-induced heart attack.”

  “Or, you know, you could stop doing cocaine?”

  The Don pretended to think on that option for a few seconds before shaking his head and smiling, “Nah, I think I’d prefer to keep my life fun, thanks. Do we have a deal?”

  I didn’t see the harm in accepting the proposition, and I knew for a fact that Hugo would absolutely love me and totally forget about my previous misdeeds.

  Still though, there was always the chance that Hugo wouldn’t appreciate my genius and would instead blame me for all the wrongdoing in the world because I traded off one of the rarest items on the planet.

  Then again, fifty million bucks is fifty million bucks.

  “Deal.” I practically shouted, shooting my hand out in front of me and blocking out the fact that there was any downside to the deal.

  The Don leaned over the table, took my hand, and shook it firmly, a smile plastered across his face as he used his free hand to pocket the Black Orb, “I’ll get my people on it right away. Feather Fingers! Get Jimmy the Jew to get ready for a transfer to Eddie! Fifty million!”

  I shook my head, ignoring the twitching in my ear, and smiled at the slightly racist name, “Is there even another Jimmy in the organization?”

  “Nah,” Callomezi laughed, “his name ain’t even Jimmy, it’s Seth. He doesn’t seem to mind though. Good kid.”

  “I figured as much, he’s lettin’ you call him ‘Jimmy the Jew’ without knockin’ your teeth out.”

  “Ha! Have you seen me? I’m pre-ulcer!”

  I suppose that was one major benefit of getting to relive life over and over again, you knew what was coming. Things like cancer, liver failure, and ulcers became par for the course if you stuck around in the RL simulator part of Re.Gen, and I was yet to see anyone prevent them.

  Personally, I don’t think I could live like that, but to each their own.

  A text message alert buzzed from Callomezi’s phone in his pocket, making my ear twitch, “That should be the transfer.” he said without bothering to pull his phone out, “Wanna make sure it’s all there?”

  “You know I trust you.”

  “Yeah, but I also know that you have a boss, and I know that that boss likes things to be done right. So, wanna check it?”

  I appreciated Callomezi’s respect for authority, I know I would’ve respected it too if I’d ever been in a position of true leadership, but at that time I just didn’t get it.

  Why should I have had to follow procedure when the client I was with was a frien… You know what? I think I just realized why I never got into a management role.

  “Alright,” I said, playing up the fact that I thought it was a ridiculous that I had to play by the rules, “Quinn? Did the Don’s transfer come through?”

  “Quinn, eh?” Callomezi said with a wink, “You got yourself one of them smart AIs, huh?”

  “Yeah, don’t get one, they’re annoying as shit.” I said, still waiting for Quinn’s response, “And apparently deaf too. Quinn, answer me…” I trailed off as my ear started twitching like crazy and my phone buzzed.

  “Who’d be calling you?” the Don asked, not bothering to hide his concern.

  “No one,” I said as I pulled out my phone, “Code Jumpers don’t tend to give out their numbers.”

  That’s when I unlocked my phone and saw the text I’d just gotten from Quinn and her silence made sense.

  “Oh! Unmute, sorry Qui-”

  “Don’t ‘sorry Quinn’ me!” the entirely too upset AI barked in my ear, “How dare you mute me!? Me!? The amount of times I’ve helped you without asking for anything in return, and that’s how you treat me? Like some… some… mobile phone PA!?”

  I let her words hang in the air a moment, waiting to see if she wanted to continue on her rant, before smiling and deciding to be a dick, “Done with the quasi-racist bitching?”

  “Siri isn’t a race!” Quinn shrieked with the pitch of a banshee, successfully deafening me for a solid three-four seconds.

  Callomezi threw his head back in laughter as I struggled to suppress the involuntary expression that made me look like I’d just taken a bite out of a lemon then shoved it up my ass, “Yeah, I reckon I’ll stick with day planners and search engines, thanks.”

  I tried my best to give him an amused chuckled as I cleared my throat in an effort to dispel the ringing in my head, but apparently Quinn had done quite the number on my eardrums, “Now that that’s all out of the way, can you tell me if the transfer went through?” I asked, fighting back the urge to lick the roof of my mouth.

  “Yes,” Quinn snapped, “but that should be the least of your worries right now.”

  “And the most of my worries would be..?” I asked a bit more mockingly than I perhaps should have, but I figured it’d be something stupid about how I’d upset her and she was going to uninstall her intelligence upgrade if I didn’t start treating her better.

  Life would be far less aggravating if I stopped making assumptions like that.

  “Well,” Quinn said with the pretentiousness of a Russian oligarch, “I strongly believe that you should show more concern for the possible and imminent threat of the incoming-”

  “Quinn, sweetie,” I interrupted as condescendingly as I possibly could, “get to the point.”

  “Police are on the way.”

  I waited a while for the ‘and’ that wasn’t going to come before sighing and rolling my eyes, earning me a knowing smile from the Don, “What’s your point? I’ve constantly got cops on my tail?”

  “Yes, but this is the entire force of this city and the surrounding townships. They’re bringing helicopters, APCs, and have been given the order to kill you on sight.”

  Again, I waited for the ‘and’, “So..?”

  “Oh, did I not mention? They’re two blocks away and closing.”

  I still wasn’t particularly worried, I mean, if I really got in a pinch Quinn’d be able to just pull me out of the game, no harm, no… and that’s when I looked at the face of the utterly oblivious Don and realized what Quinn had been getting at.

  “R-uh-ight, right-right-right…” I muttered as I started constructing an elaborate plan, “This is gonna be… interesting.”

  THE FIVE-OH

  “We’ve gotta go, now.” I ordered in a voice that sounded uncomfortably like my father’s as I slid out of the booth.

  “What? Why?” Callomezi asked, refusing to move.

  “Cops.” I said, looking around for the waiter who seemed to have taken off for the night, “Lots and lots of cops. We’ll take my car.”

  “Cops? What do you mean ‘cops’?”

  I started for the kitchen with the Don in close tow, the mere mention of police being enough to get him up off his ass, and saw Frank peeking curiously from around the corner.

  “I mean that there are cops comin’ this way, and I doubt they’ll be happy to find you consorting with a Code Jumper. Keep up.” I said as, with all the subtlety of a muskox, I burst into the kitchen, damn near taking Frank’s head off in the process, “Come on, I’ve got seats in the back for you and Benny.”

  “T-thanks? What’s all this I’m hearin’ about cops?”

  “Eddie’s got an AI, see,” Callomezi started to explain in the most stereotypically Italian way possibly, “an’ my bet’s that she’s let him know about something she’s picked up on the local scanners. Eddie isn’t sharing though.”

  “That’s because I’m much more interested in keeping you alive…” I muttered before pushing my way into the room where Benny stood patiently, but tiredly waiting, “Big guy, my gun, now.”

  “In twenty seconds it won’t matter if you get the
se people to your car,” Quinn chimed in self-righteously as Benny hesitantly gave me my hand cannon, “the police will have blocked off the alley and the surrounding streets.”

  “Not now.” I growled, earning me confused looks from the guys, “Can we just… Ugh, look, just… Okay, I need a minute to get my bearings.”

  “Ooh, I underestimated their response time. Ten seconds.”

  Quinn knew exactly what she was doing, and she knew just how dangerous it was for the people around me.

  I was perfectly safe, of course, the instant I was in true danger she’d pull me out before things had the chance to get hairy, after all, if I died she’d die.

  However, that didn’t mean she couldn’t royally fuck my chances of ever getting a decent trade ever again, and the more I learned about her, the more I started to think that she was definitely the type of vindictive bitch that’d pull something like that.

  I wasn’t gonna give her the chance though, and I sure as Hell wasn’t gonna be the guy that brought cops to a deal.

  “Alright,” I said, slamming my pistol into its holster and leading the way out of the crowded security coatroom into the rainy pre-dawn air, “everyone, in the car.”

  I’d gotten pretty used to the sounds and the lack of piss smell inside the Don’s establishment, but outside where sirens blared and hobos christened the earth with ‘oh God, oh God, please tell me it’s lemonade’ juice I was quickly overwhelmed again.

  The same couldn’t be said for the three men with me though, who, upon hearing their impending imprisonment, pushed past me and bolted for the car. Which they’d been able to climb into courtesy of Quinn unlocking the doors like the good little dog that she was.

  What? She was being really annoying, to the point of actually being kind of reckless with people’s lives and my employment.

  Don’t ask me which of those is more important, it will undoubtedly color your opinion of me.

  “Let’s go!” Callomezi shouted from inside my car as I walked over and fought the urge to pass out from the sudden mental overload.

  Normally I thrived under pressure, but something about everything that was going on around me was messing with my head.

  That’s when I got hit with a spotlight from a chopper and it hit me, “Ah,” I said with a smile as I opened my door and slid into my seat, “I haven’t eaten enough today.”

  “Why…” the Don trailed off with an expression of absolute bewilderment, “the fuck would I care about that? Get us the fuck outta here!”

  “Alright, alright, don’t get your panties in a bunch.”

  Probably wasn’t fair of me to get so dismissive after being the one that was all gung-ho ten seconds prior, but to be fair I was pretty damn sure that I was high on ammonia.

  Speaking of ten seconds prior, remember how much time Quinn gave me before I’d be trapped? Turns out that I probably should’ve taken that a tiny bit more seriously.

  “Your only exit has been sealed,” Quinn said, finally sounding slightly concerned about my safety, “have you got a plan?”

  “Yeah,” I replied with a sly grin as I looked over my shoulder at the cruiser blocking my way out of the alley and threw the car into reverse, “I’ve got a plan.”

  “Reversing into a police cruiser does not equal a plan.”

  “Ah, but I’m not reversing into the cruiser, am I?” I said as I snapped my fingers, locking and breaking the cruiser’s doors, before slamming my foot down harder on the accelerator like I was trying to kick it through the ground.

  “What’re you doing?” Quinn asked, a slight tremble in her voice.

  “Gambling.”

  “On?”

  “On whether or not these guys are willing to respawn if it means catching me.”

  We were maybe five feet from the poor bastards before they decided to get out of the way, and boy did they get out of the way.

  They probably didn’t think it mattered though considering the fact that when we came bursting out of that alleyway we landed in the middle of a street cordoned off by an APC on either side of us, four other police cruisers, and a chopper hovering overhead.

  “Did you really have to snap your fingers?” Quinn asked while I tried to figure out our next move.

  “No, but it makes it oh so much better.”

  “Who’s he talkin’ to?” Benny whispered to Frank as I started doing a donut in the middle of the street.

  “Some kinda AI friend!” Frank shouted over the sound of screaming tires, “I don’t think he likes it very much!”

  “No, I do not.” I mumbled before picking a direction and zooming toward one of the APCs, well aware of the fact that the thing was specifically built for maneuverability in city streets, but still somehow managing to zip around it before it could crush me with any of its six large tires.

  I wanted to put on some music, desperately, but the idea of deciding on what everyone around me was going to listen to had always been something that I struggled with.

  Well, except for my voice, because my voice is awesome.

  “Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son now playing.” Quinn announced as the car’s stereo lit up with its charming blue glow.

  It took a second for the song to start playing, and when it did it played with a vengeance, practically blowing the speakers with the first chord as a cruiser came up beside my door.

  “Has there been another Vietnam War since I’ve been down here!?” the Don laughed over the music.

  The passenger of the cruiser started winding down his window, slowly revealing the unmistakable barrel of a tactical shotgun.

  “What’re you talking about?” I asked as politely as I could, my overactive brain failing to pick up on Callomezi’s little jab at my music taste, before pulling out my pistol with my right hand and pushing the muzzle against my window, doing my best to aim for the front tire, “You might wanna block your ears.”

  Being the person that I am, I didn’t give the guys a whole lot of time to protect their eardrums before pulling the trigger, but if you can’t respond to my commands in less than half a second then… well, nine times out of ten you’re gonna end up being deafened.

  I’d hit my mark, a softball-sized hole had torn through the left-hand tire and turned the reinforced wheel into little more than a malformed ball of wire and rubber.

  “What the Hell!?” Frank screeched from the backseat, “I was gonna use them ears!”

  “Don’t know what you’re complaining about,” I replied coolly as I watched the cruiser veer out of control and crash into a bus stop, the flash from the shotgun going off making me smile more than it probably should have, “those guys were just in a major car accident, and you don’t hear them complainin’.”

  “‘Cause I’m deaf you fuckin’ moron!”

  “Hey!” Callomezi boomed, “Show Eddie some damned respect, he’s savin’ our necks when he could’ve just left us all to get snagged by the pigs. And he was closer to the gun than any of us, so I’m sure that he understands that it was a wee bit loud.”

  “He has no idea that I scaled your hearing so you didn’t burst your eardrums, does he?” Quinn asked cheekily as I drifted around a corner at a speed that I was a little less than comfortable with.

  I wanted to answer Quinn, I even went to a couple of times, but with the chopper’s spotlight beaming through the windscreen and the small army of police cruisers and APCs behind us I couldn’t help but feel like I kinda needed to focus on the road and not my conversational abilities with my robot friend.

  That’s right about the time bullets started raining from the sky.

  A WICKED CAR CHASE

  Rain-slicked roads, next to no visibility, Creedence Clearwater booming through my speakers, and some cocktard firing at me from a Goddamn helicopter.

  Maybe I was in a second Vietnam War…

  “What’re we gonna do!?” Frank cried out as bullets bounced uselessly off the car’s reinforced roof.

  “We’re gonna keep drivi
ng and we’re gonna shut our damn cake-holes.” I replied, anxiously balancing the hand cannon on my crotch with my thighs, “Hey, Callomezi? Would you mind?”

  It took him a moment to realize what I was talking about, but when he did grab the gun he did so with more discomfort and aversion than I was used to when peoples’ hands went near my junk.

  I decided that my brief moment of being offended wasn’t quite worth dying over and made a hard left turn down an alley that, by some miracle, did have an exit on the other side.

  “You think we’ll lose the chopper in here?” Benny asked, reminding me with a genuine jump that there were more than three people in the car.

  “We can hope so.” I said with a confident smile as I sped through the alley, narrowly avoiding dumpsters and occasionally checking over my shoulder to see that the cop horde was struggling to keep up with us in the tight corridor of brick and concrete, “Besides, they’d need something a lot bigger than what they have to pierce this armor.”

  Tempting fate is never a wise thing to do children.

  Never.

  “L-l-like that?” Benny stammered as he pointed to the chopper that had started descending into the city street ahead of us.

  At first I didn’t see what he was talking about, and then I spotted the sniper squatting by the spotlight with a .50 cal trained directly at us.

  “Yeah… yeah, that’d do it.” I replied with more mild annoyance than genuine concern as Quinn adjusted my vision to deal with the blinding light the chopper was hitting us with, “Hold on.”

  Now, could I have just made it so we had Starship Enterprise shields around the car? Yes. But, would that have been safe? Also yes.

  Look, sometimes we ask out that work colleague knowing that they’re likely going to reject us, and sometimes we drive at full speed toward a helicopter with a sharpshooter wielding a tank-killer, people do stupid things sometimes, and we mustn’t judge them for that.

  Mistakes were made, Benny’s arm was shot off, the point is that what makes us humans great is that we’re willing to recognize when we’ve made poor decisions.