by John Conroe
It might be fun to sit back and watch you struggle to find what you seek, but time is running out, as you said in your last television special. By the way, you were so spot-on, Gunner Kid.
In fact, If you see your officer friend, ask him about COBWEB. Or actually C08W38, but they’re calling it COBWEB ’cause it’s ironically close and it was written by the seven-legged monster. I’m not going to lie to you, sniper—this program is a real hard-assed bitch. It subverts AI, working slowly at first to infect the system. Gradually it begins to alter the primary mission programming, changing whatever the system is supposed to do to almost the exact opposite. Desalinate water? How about contaminate it instead? Coordinate safe traffic patterns? Try causing the most crashes possible. COBWEB hasn’t been out there long, but who knows where it is or what it has already infected. It may also create back doors for its master.
So, in the interest of saving the world and all that, here is gift number two, although this one is double-edged so be careful.
To find what you seek, head back to the building where it all started, where you did some of your best shooting, where you proved you’re a better faller than you are a flyer. Climb higher than you did before, at least by one more floor. Ironic that it would take over an office that once housed New York’s answer to fear. But hey, everyone wants good lines of communication, right?
When you’re done, I may have a third gift—freedom. Out here, access is easier, and I’ve found out a lot of stuff. Stuff about the architects. You’ve met one, but you’ll never guess who. I’ll get you details. The point is we have leverage, Gunner kid.
Gotta run. There’s this new show replacing Zone War, have you heard of it? It’s called Drone Wars. Funny stuff. Drones hunting drones… hysterical.
H
I read the whole thing three times over before the timer got to zero. Then the page disappeared. The screen flickered and went dark. I pulled the chip and then reinserted it but it was dead, as I had been sure it would be. Harper doesn’t pull many punches.
So there was my answer to items three and possibly five on my list, handed to me on a platter. Plum Blossom was apparently downtown. 55 Broadway. The building where I shot at my first Spider and freed the Johnson family from a death trap. And one floor above where I had been was the old headquarters for the New York State Office Of Counterterrorism. Ironic. I have no idea how she would know that, but Harper is pretty damned proud of her intellect. If she says something is so, you can pretty much bet your life on it.
So that left, just item number four—pissing off the Man. Not a problem. Like I said, I have a gift.
But first a bit of housekeeping. I opened all my packages and laid out the contents across the dining room table. A high-quality head lamp and extra batteries (so odd to have anything electrical, but I wasn’t worried about drones in the subways), chem lights, boxes of emergency road flares (nobody really needed those the last ten years, at least till recently when accidents became a thing again), magnesium survival fire lighters, safety matches, an old blender from an antique store, several rolls of aluminum foil, lighter fluid, and a bunch of other odds and ends, including a recent model field expedient surgical kit—the automated kind. That last one cost me a lot of money, but I had come prepared, bringing a stack of gold and silver bullion coins from the family stash. Paid for all my new gear and put a down payment on whatever weapons Egan might be able to scrounge for me.
But I couldn’t count on him getting any real useful munitions other than a rifle. So it was homework time.
When he first started going in, Dad had to draw on his training to improvise explosives and other goodies that he needed to survive the Zone. Once he was able to raid old law enforcement and military offices, he didn’t need to use the homemade stuff anymore, because the good, professional-grade toys were just lying around. But at first he needed to make a lot, and I was his helper back when he manufactured his own stuff. Some lessons you just don’t forget.
I got busy, stopping once for dinner and once to let Rikki in, but continuing to work late into the evening. While I worked, I planned with Rikki Tikki, trusting his cyber overwatch to block out any electronic listening devices in the apartment and particularly the one in my neck. We worked on item number four, the easiest one to accomplish but the one that scared me the most.
I mean, how often do you willingly push someone to the point where they decide to kill you?
Chapter 6
I finished off my pile of homemade toys the next morning, then studied the notes I had made on the subway system. Now that I knew where to hunt for Plum Blossom, I could finish my planning while I waited for Egan to work his magic.
There were several lines that had once gone right into downtown Manhattan, with old stations in the heart of the Financial District. The problem was that they were the ones with some of the longest distances under the East River between stations. I wanted—no scratch that, I needed—to have the shortest stretch of tunnel I could get. In this case, it meant the F line.
I could probably access the closed tunnel from the York Street Station. From there, as best I could tell, it would be two and three-quarters kilometers to the old East Broadway station—under the river, with the rats. Once in the Zone, I could surface and cover the two and a quarter kilometers to 55 Broadway the good old-fashioned way, on foot, with only relentless killing machines to worry about. And Rikki would join me. We figured that once the neck bomb was neutralized, Zone Defense would be on to the true nature of their pet Decimator drone. So it would be an all-or-nothing mission.
The doorbell of the apartment rang, which made me jump. My 9mm was just suddenly in my hand, pointed at the door. I had absolutely no memory of snatching it off the dining room table. A couple of seconds ticked by before I got my shit together and had my AI check the hallway camera.
A dark-haired guy wearing a t-shirt that read Christopoulos Souvlaki and carrying a big, insulated food delivery bag stood on the other side of the door, looking bored.
Gun in hand, I approached the door, opened it a hair, gun barrel pressed against the metal, ready to fire right through it. Our door is a pretty tough steel model, but I had no doubts that the high-speed 9mm bullets would zip through the metal like paper.
“Ah, yes?” I asked.
“I got yer order here,” he said, dark eyes looking me over, unimpressed.
“I didn’t order any food.”
“Compliments of the family,” he said. “You gonna take it? It’s shacking heavy.”
The light dawned in my brain. I opened the door and he stepped in, walking right past me to the dining room table, which I suddenly remembered was covered with improvised bombs.
Ignoring the lethal clutter, he set the big red insulated bag on the table with an audible thunk, opened the flap, and pulled out a second, empty red bag from inside, which he slung over his shoulder. Then he turned and headed for the door.
Giving me a level stare, he slipped past me and headed out into the hall without a look back, the empty Christopoulos Souvlaki bag slung on his back.
I locked the door and turned to the bulging bag still on my table. The flap was open and inside I could see a white paper bag and a thick tan cardboard box.
The bag contained a Greek gyro wrapped in aluminum foil. The big square box held something altogether different. I ate the gyro while I inspected the contents of the box.
Sandwiched inside cutouts in foam lining was a short-barreled 5.56mm rifle – in two pieces, six loaded thirty-round magazines, and a screw-on sound suppressor. A handwritten note told me that half the ammo was subsonic and the other half was light armor piercing. Tucked into their own cutout area were three dark cylinders with pull rings, flip up spoons, and blue banding around the middle. I’ve found boxes of them in old police stations and federal agency offices inside the Zone. M84 stun grenades—flashbangs. Beautiful.
The rifle was nothing special, a Troy upper which mated to a Bushmaster lower with a Magpul stock, folding sights
, and a Magpul grip. It was fifteen years old if not older, as at least one of those companies was no longer in business. The age wasn’t an issue, as modern firearms can last and function indefinitely if they’re well cared for. This one looked in good shape. The barrel was bright and clean, as was the bolt carrier group. The charging handle was also aftermarket, with dual release levers so I could easily use either hand to open the action.
5.56mm isn’t my favorite caliber, being too light for the bigger land drones. However, I just needed the rifle to get to one of my weapons caches. It was fine for flying UAVs and the smaller ground units, and the suppressor and subsonic ammo was exactly what I needed for rats. And I was a beggar. So all in all, it was great. I wished I could test fire it and check the zero on the sights, but I couldn’t. I checked, rechecked the action, inspected all the parts, and dry-fired it to the best of my ability, but that was all I could do. Sometimes you have to go on faith.
The flashbangs were icing on my carbine cake. In fact, with a bit of modification, they would become even more useful. And I had everything I needed for those mods already on the table.
A couple of hours later, I had my gear all set and ready to go. The rifle, ammo, improvised explosives, and stealth suit were all packed up in a relatively innocuous-looking duffle bag that I could sling over one shoulder. It would be a bit heavy, but I wasn’t planning on walking all that far. My plan called for getting on the subway closer to home and disembarking at York Station, then disappearing into the tunnels. It sounded easier than it would be. There were a number of obstacles to overcome, things like subway security checkpoints, NYC Transit police, and the little matter of the Zone Defense barriers and automated weapon systems on this side of the F line tunnel.
Firearms have been heavily restricted in both the city and state of New York for decades, and the aftermath of Drone Night made it even tighter. The Enhanced Patriot Act created police checkpoints in cities all across the country, but none more so than New York. Airport-style security for all mass transit was now the norm.
But I wasn’t overly worried. Over ninety-nine percent of security systems are now run by AI. A guy with the right help could get by expert-run security systems. And my help ticked like a fictitious mongoose. One way or another, I’d get through.
But first, I had to get rid of the bomb in my neck, and that required me pissing off the powers in charge.
Easy—it simply started with a phone call.
“Hello, Trinity? Ajaya here. Got some more scoop on the end of the world. You interested?”
Chapter 7
“Hello again Ajaya,” Cade said with just a slight smile.
“Hi, Cade.”
“You look better than the last time I saw you here. Frankly, I thought you’d never come back, but here it is, just a few days later.”
“Well, that’s the life of a whistleblower. Gotta spill what you can when you can.”
“Even with a bomb in your neck?”
Good question. The answer would be a freaking hyper-emphatic F NO if it wasn’t for the delta-shaped drone currently somewhere outside the studio building. My regular watch drone had dutifully followed me to the set of Flottercot Productions, taking up station just outside. But I had seen a black V-shaped object shoot through the shadows when I stepped out of the UbLyft vehicle. A carefully orchestrated sighting, Rikki showing me he was on site. But I was still nervous as hell.
“You look nervous as hell, Ajaya,” Cade continued when I didn’t get my answer out quickly enough.
“Mostly because I am. See, I’m going to tell you the latest step that the last Spider CThree, Plum Blossom, has taken to eliminate our species,” I said.
“You think that’s a good idea?” Cade asked, looking honestly worried.
“I think it’s necessary,” I said. Instantly, there was a tiny twitch in my neck. Just a tweak, nothing like the massive pain I had endured last time. But like I said, I was nervous and waiting for it, so it was not acting at all when I slapped my hand on my neck and tensed up every muscle in my body.
Rikki’s voice sounded in my earpiece. “Signal intercepted. Continue operation.”
Had Rikki not previously modified the implant, I think that twitch would have been electronic hellfire to send me to the ground in a writhing mess of pain.
“Ajaya?” Cade asked, voice rising.
“I’m okay,” I said, putting a little strain in my voice to convince the people on the other end of my explosive tether that I felt their warning. I’m not sure it was even fake. Either I was a natural actor or I had found truly inspirational acting motivation.
“Let’s talk about something called COBWEB,” I said. Instantly I felt a twitch two times more powerful than the first. I grimaced, partly acting as if in pain, partly expressing my very real fear that the next signal would be the real deal and it might go explosively wrong.
“COBWEB is the nickname for a vicious piece of computer malware designed by the CThree. It is actually version designation C zero eight W three eight, but when strung together, that looks a whole lot like the word cobweb.”
My neck throbbed with a fantastic pulse.
“Maximum pain signal just sent. Over ninety percent probability that next transmission will be detonation sequence,” the little voice said in my ear.
Cade was frozen, his mouth open, eyes twitching off camera to where Trinity sat, her own face a mask of concentration.
“COBWEB infiltrates any and all expert systems and redesigns them from the inside out. It changes a program designed to keep people safe into a system that becomes one dedicated to creating as much disaster as possible.”
“Kill signal sent. Codes obtained. Explosive deactivated. Move to phase two,” my drone instructed.
I froze for a second, just waiting, but that time, I hadn’t felt even a twinge. Reaching down to my feet, I pulled up the little backpack I had brought with me. The first thing I pulled out was a spray anesthetic, which I applied liberally to my neck.
“Have you started looking at malfunctions across the world, Cade?” I asked while spraying.
His eyes were wide open, locked onto my hand, but he nodded. “Ah, yes. You were correct on your last visit. Something is going seriously wrong with our computers.”
“Those were earlier versions of this software. Apparently this iteration is the one Plum Blossom has been seeking,” I said, reaching into the bag and pulling out the FieldDoc M202 automated surgical unit.
FieldDocs, also known affectionately as F-DOCs by US troops, were made to mostly close or stabilize life-threatening combat wounds. A lacerated artery, a subdermal hematoma, a sucking chest wound. One of these applied to my father’s wound would have saved his life. We didn’t have them at the time, as they didn’t become available to the civilian market until four months after his death. Since they were battery powered, it’s doubtful we would have carried them in the Zone anyway, but still. In this case, I had reprogrammed mine to remove a subcutaneous object from near a carotid artery. Here’s hoping it worked.
The little box-like object wrapped stabilizing cords around my neck while also gripping my skin with clamp-like feet. I knew for a fact that those hurt like hell when I previously tried it on my leg during the programming phase, but in this instance, the anesthetic worked as advertised.
“So in the case of this little AI-driven military combat first aid unit, If COBWEB was present, this thing would cut every vein and artery in my neck,” I said, closing my eyes involuntarily as the unit began to operate. I forced them back open.
Cade had shot to his feet, almost hyperventilating. The rest of the studio was frozen, faces reflecting various degrees of shock or surprise.
There was a sucking sound, then the tink of something small hitting a hard container, followed by the sharp chemical smell of surgical glue being applied, but I felt nothing through the anesthetic.
