Cyber Witch

by Eddie R. Hicks

  He looked to the apartment building ahead. Somewhere inside was the truth, someplace inside was the botched job the RW from Buenos Aires did. It was waiting for his journalistic presence to find it.

  The smart glasses guided him to a lone EMT worker, standing idle outside the lobby’s entrance, reviewing the information that outputted to the screen of his pad. The data on the tablet wasn’t secured in any safe means, and the illegal hacking apps Ray had on his pad confirmed it. Ray held his pad steady, waiting with anticipation as data was quickly siphoned away from the pad the EMT worker held.

  Normally, breaking into a device required the use of a botnet to crack the passwords and break through any advanced encryption. Ray had lots of experience in his younger days with those. The pad the EMT worker used, according to the app Ray was looking at, was running an older operating system developed by Yoshida. It had its fair share of security flaws if they applied no update patches.

  His screen began to auto-scroll, listing the logs and reports the EMT workers were filing. Ray grinned to himself—easy access. They were asked to remove bodies from a particular room inside the apartment, that part he could guess. The floor and unit number the incident occurred in was part of the in-progress report he read.

  The next screen displayed the apartment’s network key. They gave it to all first responders in case of an emergency, providing them access to the apartment’s lobby, elevators, and directory. Ray downloaded a copy of the key to his tablet and then killed the connection to the EMT’s tablet. He walked away as if nothing had happened, hands in pockets, and making no eye contact with the EMTs and police around.

  Ray neared the glass sliding door. It was locked as expected. A computer console on the wall played the role of gatekeeper. Ray plugged his tablet into it, and it played the role of an access key card as he transmitted the network key into it. The doors glided open and Ray entered, playing it off as if he lived there and was going home.

  He was deep inside when the doors slid shut. He flicked through the new screens populating his tablet. It grabbed a copy of the apartment’s directory list next when it was plugged into the entry console. He located the address he came seeking, the unit where the five bodies were pulled out. A family of three lived in that unit, so that ruled out that the RW’s AI went nuts and allowed her to kill humans, at least the family.

  The five targets were probably IWs that attacked a human low wage-earning family of three. Perhaps the family would want to comment on this story.

  Ray made it to the elevator, and hit the buttons fifteen times in quick succession, peeking back out, hoping nobody noticed the journalist that didn’t live there enter. Cops can’t catch what’s already in a moving elevator.

  The floor where the incident took place had three, perhaps four, he couldn’t tell, cops talking, scanning, and taking photos of the white chalk outlines of five IWs that met the wrath of their cyborg counterpart. He kept his face buried in the contents of his pad. He was just a resident trying to get home. He hoped they’d buy it.

  Ray didn’t like what he was about to do. A true journalist never misrepresents themselves to get to the truth. But nowadays, in the post-world war three world he lived in, with so much corporate and government interference, getting to the truth was damn near impossible. Much easier to say fuck it, and report something fake, and keep your job because you fed your editor something to work with. Ray was okay with breaking the no misrepresentation rule if it meant reporting real news.

  Backs were turned when he approached the opened door. He ducked under the holographic police tape carefully, his hacking apps overwriting the intrusion sensors the tape would have transmitted to the cops. Ray was in, and he had very little time to work, as it was clear the family wasn’t home. His smart glasses went to work, recording everything, and navel-gazing at the blood and gory chunks that dripped from the walls into the floors.

  He made it as far as one bedroom when someone called out. “Hey, you there!”

  Sweat trickled down his forehead. Ray faced the cop. “Uh yeah, what’s up?”

  “Thought you EMTs were done? What the fuck are you still doing here?”

  Ray was caught. They also thought he was an EMT, most likely because he could cross the tape without tripping alarms. He knew he couldn’t stay around any longer, not according to the frown the cop was giving him. It was a pity, as he was hoping to at least see someone from the family of three, who strangely enough weren’t in the room or in the hall outside. He was certain he didn’t see them outside too.

  Who the fuck attacks a family of three that wasn’t home then sticks around long enough for a cop and an RW to show?

  With little else to do, Ray kept his sights forward into the bedroom, hoping the five-second delay of his glasses would be long enough for them to auto perform a deep scan. This was his last chance to find something, anything, to guide him to the truth.

  “You lost or something?” said the cop as he yanked on Ray’s arm from behind. The international sign of get the fuck out.

  “Yeah, thought I left something in here, guess I dropped it downstairs.” Ray shrugged the cop off, making his way to the exit. “I’ll see myself out.”

  A loud sigh left his lips as he left the unit. Misrepresenting yourself and getting caught was only good when you discovered the truth. When you didn’t, that’s when you’d regret not opting to make something up that seemed believable.

  He strode past the neighboring unit on his way back to the elevator. Then halted when he noticed the door was ajar. Someone within had cracked it open, looking out into the hall, no doubt wondering what all the cops were doing. He wouldn’t have thought much of it if it wasn’t for the fact he viewed the tenant list prior on his way up.

  The unit next to the family of three, where the incident took place, was vacant. Nobody should be inside. Yet, someone was. He faced the ajar door, looking at the person who was looking into the hall, he held their gaze for five seconds, it would have been six, but they slammed the door shut.

  Ray’s eyes might not have made the connection, but his glasses did. The man at the door matched the profile picture of the owner of the unit belonging to the family of three. He was right there, possibly with his family, hiding in a vacant suite, not talking to the police, and seemingly not present during the attack, and showing little interest in returning to their home. The truth slipped away as quickly as Ray laid eyes on it. He went to take it back, banging his fists on the door. Nobody opened it. He doubted knocking longer would make a difference and gave up.

  He selected the basement level for his elevator ride down. Leaving through the lobby might draw some unwanted attention, he was surprised nobody came running up after him, or maybe they were and just using the secondary elevator. He counted his blessings.

  The downtime of the long elevator ride gave ample time to review the scans and the recorded video his glasses captured. His lips curled when the footage of the bedroom appeared, the glasses picked up something he did not notice, likely when the cop came from behind, yanking his arm.

  The wall in the bedroom was perfect, too perfect. Like someone disassembled a rugged wall with nanites, then put it back together, while not taking into account the nanites would rebuild the wall perfectly.

  He reached for his phone, dialing Piper’s number, the only RW he could trust at this point. She picked up after three rings.

  “Hey Piper, it’s Ray.”

  Piper’s kiwi pixie face smiled at him on the phone’s screen. “What can I do for you?”

  “So, I’m here at the address you told me. I think there was a lot more than just unregistered IWs causing trouble.”

  “How did you figure?”

  “Call it a hunch,” he said. “You know anything else about that RW, Estrella Rodriguez?”

  “Not much. She’s new, the first day on the job in fact.”

  “She was inside and left covered in blood with five body bags tailing behind. I’d like to know what happened. Anything y
ou can slip me, let me know, okay? I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “One last thing,” he said, and then uploaded the contents of his glasses to his phone. A screen flashed, asking him if he wanted to share those files with the person he was talking to. He clicked the yes button. “You’re an RW Piper, so tell me, what do you think of this wall I scanned. It looks a little suspect; like someone used nanites to melt it then put it back. Would an RW like the new girl be able to do that?”

  Nine

  Estrella

  Estrella had a feeling she wasn’t in the clear, not by a long shot. She was asked to return to the police headquarters alongside Marcus when the EMTs finished patching up their wounds, Marcus more than her, nanites were a big help there.

  She didn’t think much at first, strolling past the desks and computers of the LAPD’s staff. After all, her original game plan, after leaving LAX, was to check-in and get started with her new forced reassignment, get all the paperwork finished, make the switch official, and maybe learn what it would take to get the cops to send a commendation to Yoshida. The sooner they liked her, the quicker she could return home to Buenos Aires.

  A police captain asked her and Marcus to sit down in his office. He was really firm about the request. She knew right away that her visit to the HQ wasn’t for the paperwork stuff; it was about what had happened earlier that day.

  She ran a facial scan of the police captain.

  Name: Timothy Peters

  Age: 43

  Species: Human

  Occupation: Los Angeles Police Department Officer

  Notes: Drinks a glass of whiskey after work

  He was a man with slicked-back hair whitening with his age and a pair of reading glasses perched on his face above the thin goatee. A gray mug with steam lifting away from it rested on the top of his desk, as he walked past it, giving the wide floor to ceiling window in his office a quick glimpse at the neon splendor waking up for the evening. Translucent beads rolled off the window from the outside world where rain had fallen upon the city. A wave of his hand forced the window to dim black, and a spin on his heel brought him around to peer at Estrella and Marcus now taking a chair each at his desk.

  “Are we going to have problems, Estrella?” Peters asked her, reaching for his mug.

  She shrugged playing it dumb. “With what?”

  “With you disobeying orders?”

  Estrella snorted. “I don’t wear a badge.”

  “You still work for us,” Peters said. “You were told to stay put, and you didn’t.”

  “My job is to eliminate or detain all unregistered IWs,” Estrella said as Peters sipped his drink. “I knew they were IWs the moment I saw that drone footage.”

  “Does that include charging them with a shotgun using your overdrive?”

  “Gotta do what you gotta do, especially when an electrokinetic barrier is in play.”

  “The dead can’t answer questions. And the way they died is going to get the press asking questions, like why was such excessive force used? I know the LAPD’s rep over the last century has been less than ideal, but blasting people’s heads away with a shotgun, on purpose, isn’t what we do, even in extreme situations.”

  “People were going to die unless I acted.” She shrugged him off. “What can I say?”

  Peters lowered his mug from his lips, his face shifting about, searching for the right words to use, she figured. “And where are those people now?”

  Another playing it dumb shrug. “Nobody was home when we got in, they probably were out for the day and the gang didn’t know.”

  Peters grimaced at her. “Or, did you let them go?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because there’s a section of the wall that was in prime condition,” Peters said, “When compared to the rest of the unit.”

  She lifted an eyebrow, twisted her lips, and folded her arms over her bustier top. “Show me.”

  With the mug in one hand and a remote in the other, Peters activated a hologram that floated above his desk like a ghost. It zeroed in exactly on the wall Estrella had melted with her nanites and put back together.

  It would appear someone figured it out, Geoffrey commented.

  That was fucking quick. She glanced at the hologram longer, hoping her leaning in closer made them suspect she knew nothing of it. “Don’t know anything about that,” she finally answered.

  “RWs are the only people that can command nanites,” Peters said. “And unlike IWs, RWs are registered because they’re created by Yoshida themselves. It’s pretty easy to narrow down who could have done that, you being the only RW in the building.”

  “Where did those scans come from?” she asked.

  A woman leaning in the corner cleared her throat, drawing Marcus and Estrella’s attention to her figure in the darkness. The corner she was in was dark, making it hard for Estrella to make out the brief, black, lacy, and gothic outfit she wore, with small rectangular shaped diamonds dangling from her navel. The woman’s hair was jet black, cut short into a pixie style. Red highlights added an elegant contrast to her hair and the long bangs that covered her eyebrows.

  Her eyes were like emeralds glowing in the dark, locking into the synthetic emerald eyes of Estrella. She held the gaze. Neither of the two could face away. The expression on the woman’s face and the cute smile she gave Estrella sent a hidden message. I know what you are, you’re just like me.

  The woman bought her hand up. It was wrapped in the glistening silver of an NC gauntlet. “I provided them.” She also spoke with a kiwi accent.

  She’d return the smile the pixie kiwi gave her if Estrella wasn’t so enraged that someone figured out her secret. “Thought I was the only RW there?”

  The woman nodded. “You were.”

  “Then how the fuck did you get those scans?”

  A tilt of her head made the smile fade. “Not important.”

  Estrella ground her teeth. If they knew she hid an IW family of three from them, then this wasn’t a meeting to grill her, this was a meeting to tell her she’d be getting pushed into the RW recycling facility. “It is, important.”

  “The scans are legit, Rodriguez,” Peters cut in. “Whoever it was that took and sent them to her, to verify if RW nanites were in use, did their job. They brought to our attention something you and Marcus failed to do. Someone made a hole in that wall, then sealed it up without taking into account the years of wear and tear the wall originally had when the nanites rebuilt it.”

  A smug grin stretched across the woman’s face. Estrella kept her gaze on it and waited for the results of her facial scan.

  Name: Piper Taylor

  Age: 35

  Species: Real witch/warlock

  Occupation: RW unit on lease to the Los Angeles Police Department

  Notes: Serial number … Error

  Facial scans weren’t able to identify her serial number. Without that, you couldn’t search for the product numbers for her synthetic parts and gauntlet.

  Is she a newer model? Estrella asked her AI.

  Unknown, I am unable to determine further data about this RW.

  “I didn’t do it,” Estrella blurted to fill the silence everyone in the room expected her to do.

  Is it wise to lie about this, Estrella? It is our job to bring unregistered IWs to justice.

  Bringing a family, struggling to make a living, to justice? Listen to yourself, man.

  All my communications with you are logged, there is no reason to for me listen to them should I need to refer—

  That was a figure of speech.

  Oh, okay, noted.

  Look, I didn’t sign up to fuck with families, man. Cops would have thrown the book at the parents and then put the kid in a home. I'm not putting that kid through what I went through, even though the circumstances aren’t the same.

  Anyone could be an unregistered IW.

  That’s fucked. I’m just here to shoot some IW
gangbangers, you know? Was under the impression all unregistered IWs did stupid shit, not live legitimately. I’m not exposing that family for what they really are, period.

  Well, Estrella, now you know. IWs can pose as law-abiding humans. It may not be common in Buenos Aires, but in Los Angeles it is quite frequent.

  Besides, I want to know why the Bald Skulls gang was after them.

  With the aid of the LAPD, we could have gotten that, no?

  This is the LAPD bro. I don’t fuckin’ trust ‘em, and it’s clear they don’t trust us. We’re a tool, a product line Yoshida leases out to their clients. We do what we’re told and get pushed to the next job. I still wanna know why the gang was there, without the crime scene tainted by dirty cops.

  Is learning the truth worth losing your life when Yoshida repurposes you?

  I lost my life when I sold my humanity to them, so that I could destroy that fucking gang. Now they’re back. Sorry, Geoffrey, I’m not backing away from this, and I’m not putting that family through more stress.

  “Marcus?” Peters asked him, snapping Estrella’s mind back to the meeting.

  “I was out cold when she went in,” Marcus shrugged.

  Peters winced, placing his mug back into his desk. “So …”

  “She saved my life, sir,” Marcus said. “If she was swinging for the other team, I think she would have left me for dead, not sacrifice her limited supply of nanites to heal me.”

  Peters pushed one of the buttons on the remote, making the hologram above his desk shift into images taken of the unit, the bodies of the five IWs, and the overturned furniture. The gang members were searching for something.

  “Why would they attack a small family like that?” Peters asked, staring at the hologram, stroking his graying goatee.

  “They weren’t wealthy or influential,” the kiwi woman, Piper, added. “Better question, Estrella, how did you know they were IWs before you scanned them?”

  She shut her eyes, recalling the details. “They took out the drone with accuracy.”