The Breaker

by Nick Petrie

  He begged. He cried. He shouted.

  After that, she stopped answering the phone.

  At least he hadn’t called the police.

  But now she was truly alone.

  She turned on a single light, parked herself on the couch, pulled her laptop from her bag, and dove into the strange files she’d harvested from Holloway’s servers.

  When she’d first glanced at the CAD drawings back at the MakerSpace, before those two pendejos from the Public Market showed up, she hadn’t really understood what she was looking at. The unit wasn’t very big. She couldn’t quite figure out what someone would use it for.

  Now, as she sifted through all the overlays and spec sheets that detailed the sensor array and adaptive systems, she became both increasingly impressed and profoundly uncomfortable.

  She was impressed because it was a truly elegant piece of design, a giant leap forward in every area from engineering to software to servos. Also impressive was the fact that Holloway had used much of the same technology to automate his manufacturing. After the expense of R&D, prototyping, and testing, each finished unit was relatively inexpensive to produce, and he could produce them in volume. This wasn’t about a single unit, but many of them, networked together. All of this gave her a pretty good guess about his intended end use, which was more than a little scary. Not to mention the name Holloway had given the project: HYENA.

  That wasn’t the uncomfortable part, though. The uncomfortable part was the unit’s power source. Spark’s beautiful, super-efficient carbon-ion battery.

  Looking at the combined electrical consumption tables, she knew that even the best lithium batteries would drive the unit for a few hours at best. Her battery’s high power-to-weight ratio, on the other hand, would let the unit run for days.

  Which made Spark more than a little responsible for the damn thing.

  For the last three years, she’d kept wondering when she’d see her design in the commercial market, but her battery had never appeared. Holloway had been sitting on it. Now here it was, along with a half-dozen other breakthroughs she’d never even seen suggested in the scientific journals.

  Where had all this new technology come from?

  When the next questions occurred to her, she sat up straight on the couch and swallowed hard.

  Who else had he stolen from? And what were they doing about it?

  It made her think about the two men from the MakerSpace in a whole new way.

  They hadn’t known it was her at the market. They couldn’t have been working for Holloway.

  So who did they work for?

  * * *

  —

  When she heard the door open and close on the far side of the garage, she was still deep into Holloway’s project files. Then the silver tarp crinkled aside and Kiko’s chair squeaked as he wheeled it through the gap.

  He smelled like cigarettes and coffee and burnt metal, just like he always had. He sat in silence while she stared at her screen, pretending she could see past the tears welling into her eyes. Finally he said, “I thought you might be hungry.” He had a plastic takeout container in his lap.

  She shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Plus, Kiko lived mostly on microwave burritos, and Spark had too much respect for real burritos to eat one of those things.

  He held out the container. “Leftover enchiladas verdes from Las Botanas,” he said. “Freshly warmed up.”

  One of her favorites. She nodded and took the food and let the tears fall. He pulled a fork from his shirt pocket. She snuffled and began to eat.

  “Two guys came to my studio looking for you,” he said. “They raided my files and found your address. I tried to stop ’em, but I couldn’t.”

  She could tell by his face how much it galled him. But that wasn’t what he was telling her. He was saying that he was still in her corner.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get you involved.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I’m involved now. We’ll figure it out. At least you didn’t kill the guy.”

  She looked at him. The fresh red rage still burned. It needed more fuel.

  “Oh, no. Spark, no.”

  “I’m not done,” she said. “I didn’t hurt him enough.”

  “You mean you don’t feel better.”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “But there’s something else.”

  She showed him Holloway’s CAD overlays and walked him through the specs. When she told him what she thought HYENA was designed to do and what she wanted to do next, he looked at the ceiling as if hoping for help from above.

  “Take the money and run, Spark. It’s not your problem.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said. “This thing runs on my battery. I practically helped him build it.”

  “Those are his files, right? There’s got to be a whistleblower hotline that wants this stuff.”

  “Not yet,” she said. “If I make everything public, I lose all my leverage. Besides, I don’t know if he’s actually breaking the law. Even if he is, and somebody catches him, it will take years. None of these white-collar guys ever go to jail anyway. Worst case, he’ll pay a fine.” She swallowed her tears. Her face felt hot. “He killed my parents, Kiko. He didn’t drive the truck that chased them into the canal, but he might as well have. And nobody will ever do anything about it. Nobody but me.”

  His voice was gentle. “That’s a one-way road, Spark. With nothing good at the dead end of it. My advice? Go back to your shop and make something new.” He nodded at the cardboard shoebox she’d plugged her laptop into. “Make more of those. Start a business. That’s your future.”

  Even that project had started as a fuck-you to Holloway, a way to supplant the battery design he’d stolen. She stared into a dark corner of the garage. “I want to see his face,” she said. “I want to look him in the eye when I wreck his life. That’s the only way I’ll get past this. The only way I’ll manage not to blow his fucking head off.”

  “You can’t win this, Spark. Don’t you remember how much money this guy has? This won’t ever be over. He’ll hire lawyers. He’ll hire private cops. He’ll hire someone to give you a beat-down even while he bleeds you to death with lawsuits. He’ll chase you forever.”

  She gave Kiko a brittle smile. “Then maybe I’ll blow his head off after all.”

  He looked impossibly sad. “Killing him won’t bring your parents back. And revenge doesn’t make the pain go away. Only time does that. Only letting go. Setting down the burden.” He raised his heavy shoulders and let them drop. “That’s what works for me. One day at a time.”

  “I’m not an addict, Kiko.”

  He gave her a sad smile. “Spark, you got it bad as I ever did. And the worst part is you don’t even know it.”

  She patted his arm. “Tell you what. When this is over, I’ll start going to meetings with you. Okay?”

  “If you live that long. If you don’t go to jail.” He grabbed her hand. “Listen, if I can’t talk you out if it, at least let me help, okay?”

  “Bad idea, Kiko. You have a life. Your work, your art, your recovery. This is all I’ve got.”

  “That’s not true.” Tears trailed down his creased face. “You’ve got me, too.”

  She jumped off the couch and knelt to hug him.

  His big arms were gentle, but his voice was ragged and rough as he murmured into her hair. “You’ll always have me, kiddo. That’s a promise.”

  But Spark was afraid it wouldn’t be enough.

  When he rolled out to get some sleep, she picked up her computer and typed in the commands to wake the new code she’d buried in Holloway’s main system. Two tiny little programs.

  One to hijack his system completely.

  The other to protect herself. A fail-safe. A dead man’s switch. Just in case.

  Whatever happened, i
t would be worth it.

  40

  HOLLOWAY

  In a large, dark apartment, high in a modern residential tower, Vincent Holloway stood against the wall of glass, staring out at the black night.

  Behind him, his laptop screen strobed from hot pink to orange to red.

  Holloway felt the cracked halves of his sternum, cut apart for the quadruple bypass and only loosely wired back together for recovery, flex and grate against each other with each breath. The surgery had been seven years ago, and his sternum had long since healed, but at moments like this, he felt the old damage more keenly than ever.

  He told himself that he wasn’t the same man anymore. He had changed everything. He’d taught himself to love the gym, to need it, losing a hundred and forty pounds of fat and adding forty pounds of muscle. He’d committed himself to a strenuous regimen of hormone implants and herbal supplements and synthetic protein smoothies that tasted like dirt. He’d even become a damn vegan.

  And it had made a difference. He’d always been aggressive with his ideas, able to work long, hard hours and take big risks, but now his energy levels were through the roof. His erections were unflagging. Like he was nineteen again and could take on the world. Like he was a new man.

  He tried not to think about the old days. But at moments when everything was at risk, he couldn’t push away those memories. From his earliest years, he had been marooned in his body, cut off from real life by the ever-thickening layer of flesh. He’d never been good at making friends. He was fairly certain that his own parents had never actually liked him. The feeling was like a hole inside him that would never be filled, no matter how much he ate.

  Eventually, he’d realized that he was very smart in ways that had a high monetary value. He found a world he could excel in. He set himself the task of making something new, and getting rich in the process. Maybe then, he reasoned, he’d be free of that yawning hole. Arrival into the world of wealth would bring him joy, would give him the feeling of ease and acceptance that his life had always lacked.

  But it didn’t. Selling Sense Logic had netted him almost five hundred million dollars. He knew, intellectually, that it was a lot of money. But it left him way down on the list of the world’s wealthiest people. Almost half a billion wasn’t enough, not by a long shot.

  Getting rich didn’t make Holloway whole. It just made the hole bigger.

  It had taken him five years and a failed relationship and open-heart surgery to realize that half a billion dollars did make other things possible, if you were willing to take the risk and do what was necessary.

  To change. To become someone new. To remove yourself from the world almost entirely, take what you needed, and do what had to be done.

  Holloway decided to transform himself, to double down on his investment. He set himself the task of becoming the richest man in the world.

  The only real requirement was to go hard, to move fast and break things. Long before Zuckerberg said it, Holloway had done it. He was a true pioneer. He’d taken steps that he’d thought would be horrifying, or at the very least distasteful. The big surprise was that they weren’t either of those things. They were necessary, and also fun. It was exhilarating to understand deep in his bones that right and wrong were just social constructs, and rules did not apply to him. Holloway kept pushing forward, eye on the prize.

  The burn rate was high and the risk was higher, but he was right on schedule.

  Or at least that was how he felt when he woke from a short, restless sleep and opened his laptop.

  The screen’s flashing colors bounced off the walls and window glass. Pink to orange to red.

  The message read, We have sequestered your information. We require one hundred million dollars for its release. Liquidate your assets, prepare for electronic transfer, and await further instructions. We begin deleting files in six hours. A little bomb graphic showed a timer, counting down. Followed by a smiley face. With a wink. And devil’s horns.

  Ransomware aside, one of the primary pleasures of wealth was the ability to pull people from their beds and convert your nightmares into theirs. So he got Coyle, his systems contractor, on the horn. Not the compromised phone, but the spare he always carried because he cycled through a new device every month. As a security measure, he thought sourly.

  “It looks like your whole network is affected,” Coyle finally said. “Local servers, remote backup, international. Every corner, locked down tight. It’s an efficient little virus.” Coyle, who was ex-NSA, sounded impressed despite himself. Then promised he’d get it unfucked ASAP.

  He was diplomatic enough not to point out the obvious, which was that Holloway had made it easy for the hacker. First, he’d unlocked his phone and handed it over. Then once he’d gotten it back, he’d checked his crucial information, which had only spread the virus more quickly. It had never occurred to him that his assailant might not pull the trigger. Not once he’d realized who she was.

  He didn’t need his money guy to tell him that he didn’t have the hundred million, at least not liquid. But Holloway woke him anyway and told him to scrape up what he could. Keep his options open. If Holloway wasn’t sleeping, nobody else would, either.

  His last call was to an attorney named Krueger in Corpus Christi.

  It was surprisingly easy to hire a professional killer, when you knew the right people. More expensive than Holloway had expected, especially considered on an hourly basis, although surely much of the fee went to Krueger. But if there was one area not to pinch pennies, it was when hiring an assassin. He never even asked if there was a discount for repeat customers.

  “Fuck is this?” Krueger’s voice was thick with unprocessed alcohol. Clearly he wasn’t happy about the four a.m. call. Holloway had only met him once, although they’d done business for years.

  “I need a direct contact for our man.”

  Krueger cleared his throat elaborately, then spat. “That’s not how it works. For everyone’s protection. I’m sure you understand. Tell me what you need and I’ll convey it. But not here. Use the secure message app.”

  “Things are fluid. I need direct contact.”

  “Not a good idea,” Krueger said. “Trust me on that.”

  “I’ll double your fee up front, and double it again on completion. I’ll use the secure app. But I need you to connect me to him directly.”

  Krueger hawked and spat again, then breathed noisily into the receiver for a moment. “Better give me the quadruple fee up front. When I see it in my account, I’ll message you. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Holloway had seen pictures of the assassin’s work.

  The man wouldn’t flinch at what needed to be done.

  Nor would Holloway. Those days were gone. Eyes on the prize.

  He called his money guy again and told him to make the payment to Krueger, then turned back to the window and stared out at the vivid moonless darkness, waiting. In the unlit apartment behind him, there was a soft metallic whine and the whisper of synthetic footpads on the hardwood floor.

  “Harry, stand down,” he called. “Rest and recharge for tomorrow.”

  * * *

  —

  Holloway had traveled to Milwaukee three days before, when the only significant obstacle to world domination was two greedy cheeseheads trying to hold him up for a higher price. Holloway had messaged the lawyer in Corpus Christi. Two names and two addresses. It was simple enough. The freelancer did the rest.

  Holloway’s lunch appointment was with a Mexican girl he’d done business with several years before. She had reached out to the Chicago attorney who’d closed that earlier deal with a proposal that laid out tantalizing new intellectual property. Holloway was surprised that she wanted to talk, given how their previous business had ended. But her scientific career had failed to progress, so perhaps she saw Holloway as her only option. Or maybe she’d simply run out
of money. Either way, he didn’t mind. Desperation had a way of lowering the price.

  Given their history, he’d proposed lunch in a public place to mitigate any potential fallout.

  Obviously, he had underestimated her.

  He hadn’t even known it was her until she’d spoken into his ear at the market. She’d taken his phone, cleaned out his petty cash account, dealt very effectively with a pair of boy scout bystanders, and vanished. After getting over the shock of it, Holloway had almost admired her buccaneering spirit. He’d done the same kind of thing himself.

  This was before he realized the true scope of her actions, the amount of data she’d copied from his system, and what she’d inserted into it.

  At the time, his biggest concern was media attention. He’d gone to a lot of effort to fade quietly from view and make himself difficult to find. The last thing he needed was to show up in a news story. Thankfully, the local paper made no mention of him, but the next day, a reporter somehow found his phone number. From Operator Twelve’s recording of her questions, it was clear she’d identified him.

  She was not some dumb young thing taking notes at city council meetings. She was a national reporter with a history of breaking big stories.

  So Holloway had messaged Corpus Christi again.

  Make this problem go away, and do it quietly.

  How he’d ever done business without Krueger and the freelancer, he had no idea.

  He always felt a certain thrill when making this decision, the purest exercise of power. He felt no guilt or remorse. He had evolved beyond such small thinking. Lesser kings and princes had used this power since before the dawn of time. Tribes, villages, entire ethnic groups and nation-states had been wiped out for a fraction of the gains that Holloway would bring to humanity.

  In comparison, the freelancer’s work was the merest flick of a scalpel.

  Albeit a scalpel with a rather blunt edge.