Peaches snatched my truncheon, going to town on her brother’s assailant. They spent their days trading insults… but when Dare was in danger, Peaches went berserk.
“Void it, Dare,” I hissed. “You fight.”
A bloodsoaked grin. “Can’t make a man live.”
Gumdrool’s remaining Naked Crazy gurgled as Gumdrool wrapped his hands around her throat. He bore down, choking her.
I tugged his arm. “No.”
“Not your call, Amichai.” He squeezed her throat tighter, casual as a man trying to get the last of the toothpaste out. “Anyone we leave behind will be a threat later.”
I shook my IceBreaker at him. “It’s my call as long as I have this.”
He looked baffled. “Amichai, don’t you understand? NeoChristians aren’t human. Human beings Shrive. Anyone who doesn’t Shrive is a threat to our existence. Did you learn nothing in Little Venice about how badly humans need the Upterlife?”
“You let go, or I walk. This–” I waved at their nakedness “–isn’t their fault. Somebody did this to them.”
“The NeoChristians must have tortured their rebels,” Peaches said. “Tortured them until they forgot how to be human…” She shot Dare a guilty glance; Dare had warned us that branch programmers did things like this.
I, however, was pretty sure our enemy wasn’t NeoChristian branch programmers.
Gumdrool reluctantly loosened his grip. “Your compassion’s commendable. But if this mission fails, I will void you personally.”
I thought Dare might refuse to navigate, letting the NeoChristians surround us – but though he wanted to die, he’d never endanger his sister. He rotated the map, triangulating the best route to the branch server.
More howls. From one direction now: behind us.
“They’re clustering back into a pack,” Gumdrool said. “Converging on us.”
Dare led us through distorted hallways that fed into a single crumpled corridor – a hallway that exited into a shadowed courtyard. The hallway was lined with doors, popped open by the weight of the buildings overhead, leading into crushed apartments.
Gumdrool pulled us back. “No,” he said, pointing. I saw the firefly gleam of two security cameras mounted over the exit.
“On it.” I got out the IceBreaker, which churned as it struggled to map the crumpled hallway interior. I thumbed the script-kiddie “Capture!” button, flooding the cameras with password attempts.
It failed.
“What’s happening?” Gumdrool piston-squeezed the handle of his taser, recharging the flywheel battery.
“Shoulda figured,” I grumbled, bringing up the antisecurity and decryption menus. “These are harder to crack than your standard streetcams.”
I flooded the air with queries, mapping their broadcast keys and security protocols. I grinned; I’d read the documentation on these break-in programs before, but I’d never had a chance to use them. Now it was my hacking skills against a bunch of techheads. Evil techheads.
“You sure that’s not programming?” Dare asked, more terrified of the IceBreaker than the Naked Crazies. I laughed despite myself.
Rumor was, the guys who’d created these programs had Shrived Criminal. Me? I combined their collective efforts in new ways, layering module on top of module in fashions they’d never intended. It was like focusing sunlight through magnifying lens after magnifying lens until those cameras were under a white-hot laser.
The Naked Crazy howls echoed through the corridors, coming closer.
“Hurry, Amichai,” Gumdrool said, cuffing me. “If that’s what the NeoChristians did to their friends, imagine what they’ll do to us.”
I relaxed as the camera icons turned emerald. I recorded intruder-free space to loop-broadcast back at them.
“We’re good.” I looked at the IceBreaker’s display, which was now configured to pick out new cameras as we got within range. “Advance slowly, and stay out of the sunlight.”
We gasped as we saw the branch server.
Now, when Gumdrool had said “a server,” I thought he’d meant the branch servers you saw on the newsfeeds when they busted some poor rural branch: small enough to be towed behind a truck, big enough to house a cluster of optical RAID drives and a family who didn’t mind roughing it.
This, however, was a filigreed skyscraper: a golden obelisk of circuitry thrusting up towards the sky. Python-thick power cables fed into it from all directions; you could hear it sucking up electricity.
It stood in a shadowed space that had once been a courtyard shared between the four buildings. The apartment complexes had crumbled into each other in a precarious square, hiding the server from street view.
But the courtyard was freshly paved. And the gleaming tower was surrounded by razorwire prison fences and palmprint gatelocks.
“That’s bigger than I’d thought,” Peaches said.
“That’s what she said.”
Peaches whirled upon me, disappointed. “Really, Amichai? Centuries of jokes to choose from, and that’s the dusty nugget you unearth?”
“Sorry.”
“Seriously, though,” Dare murmured, impressed. “That’s big enough for government work.”
Peaches whistled. “How do they miss that on the satellite photos?”
“The better question is, how do they mask the spirocopter traffic?” Dare raised a bloodied arm to point at a helicopter pad on top of the building. On it sat a military spirocopter, a fat green spider bristling with narrow vortex-tubes to help it negotiate the trickiest of winds.
Then he gestured out over the courtyard. “See how they’ve bulldozed the ground there? They had to replace all this wreckage with a stable, flood-resistant foundation. That’s a lot of materiel, manpower, electricity.”
“What are those in the back?” Peaches asked, pointing towards a series of small buildings nested in a tangle of barbed wire. Bored prisoners in orange outfits shuffled about. Each of them had a cross tattooed at the hollow of their throat.
“Prisoners’ quarters,” Dare said. “I think. Mama Alex used to have me analyze server schematics–”
I looked at Dare, astonished. “You worked for Mama Alex?”
“You think I bought you a Sleipnir with handouts from my family? Anyway, it looks like a pretty stock Upterlife server configuration. There’s room inside for a security staff of twenty LifeGuards, plus a host of fulltime scientists to maintain it. Though you wouldn’t want to lock prisoners inside – not with multiple hardwired terminals in every room…”
“Imagine all that power,” Gumdrool said, awed.
“So the outdoor prison complex to hold the NeoChristians there must be an afterthought. And shoddy work at that.” Dare sniffed as though he would have done better. “But I don’t recognize the tripod-guns around the perimeter. They’re not bullet-guns…”
“Dazers,” I said. “Anyone in there steps a millimeter beyond the painted borders, and their eyes get targeted with high-powered lasers oscillating at frequencies designed to stun the human brain. They developed those after Boston.”
“Doesn’t seem like a deterrent,” Gumdrool said. “Just close your eyes.”
“You’ll get sunburned eyelids on top of a seizure,” I shot back. “And if you hold your hands over your eyes, they’ll fry your hands.”
My IceBreaker beeped. Good news: it was powerful enough to find all cameras within a city block. Bad news: the courtyard held hundreds of cameras, covering every square foot. The wireframe map was festooned with Christmas lights.
“Uh, they’re serious about security here,” I said, bringing up my heavy-duty secpass routines. “Much more paranoid than the Khan-Tiens.”
“So hack it.”
“Breaking security isn’t magic – I have to crack each camera’s security code individually. That’s gonna take time.” More ragged howls, growing louder. “Is there a room to hide in?”
“Not well enough to be concealed,” Gumdrool said, looking back at the crushed apartments linin
g the corridor. “Shove open a door, and there we’ll be.”
“Just cover us from casual observers.”
We crouched in a smashed kitchen. The Naked Crazies thundered closer.
I commandeered the cameras one by one – but there were too many. And I had to wait for the right footage, or I’d capture a loop with a moonwalking NeoChristian.
This setup was too paranoid. Who could watch that many cameras? You wouldn’t have the dead monitoring it, like they did back home…
Before Boston, all the cameras were monitored by AIs, Peaches had said.
My arms goosebumped as I realized my standard solutions wouldn’t work. The hallway, a mostly-static area, was one thing – but the tents, with the wandering prisoners? Any computerized security scan would instantly notice a switch from a live feed to a recorded one.
“Amichai.” Peaches fought to keep the trembling from her voice. “They’re getting closer.”
“I know, I know,” I said, furiously trying to think up a solution. I pulled up menus on some compromised cameras and started sorting through the options. These cameras had everything, from infrared to facial recognition software to brainwave-encoded security tunneling, though precious few of those features had been enabled.
If they’d configured all the advanced security options, I’d never have gotten in. Who’d buy this many expensive cameras and leave them configured out of the box?
Footsteps, thumping down nearby hallways. Once they swarmed down here, we’d be trapped in this kitchen.
“Shut them down,” Gumdrool said. “Do it now!”
“Shut it down and everyone in that branch will be alerted that we’re here,” I said. “You want to wind up naked and barking?”
“No.”
“Then shut up and let me think!”
“Maybe if you’d thought in the first place,” Dare hissed, “we wouldn’t voiding be here!”
Could I shut down the automated scanners? No. A quick scan showed the alarms weren’t triggered at the camera level. Somewhere within that server, there was an AI scanning all incoming feeds…
The incoming feeds. I could alter them.
“Amichai…” Peaches said, wrapping her arms around me.
I shrugged her off. If the cameras could find patterns like I’d used to search for Therapy, then it could exclude them. I uploaded an image of myself from my earputer, assigned it to an autofilter, set the filter to not send anything matching that pattern to the central alarm processor. Replace it with cloned background noise. Now repeat for Gumdrool, then Dare, then Peaches…
“Amichai.” Peaches was more insistent.
I wrote a macro to replicate that change across hundreds of cameras.
Thump. Shrieks of triumph. The Naked Crazies’ footsteps echoed down the corridor.
“Amichai!” Peaches yelled.
I lowered the IceBreaker, realizing I couldn’t install the filters in time. We either ran out into the courtyard to be captured, or got eaten alive.
Peaches cut off my apology with a kiss. She cupped my face in her hands.
“Make your life worthwhile,” she said.
She dashed into the hallway, slamming the door behind her.
“Look here, you crazies!” She pounded the walls, drawing their attention. The pitch of the howls rose triumphantly.
Dare and I bolted for her. Gumdrool dragged us back.
“She’s saving us, you idiots,” he whispered. “Quiet, or you’ll undo everything.”
He was right. But I’d never hated him more.
I tuned in the camera feeds to watch Peaches; she fled into the courtyard. The Naked Crazies boiled down the corridor, elbowing each other aside.
“Help!” She flailed her arms in an exaggeratedly girlish manner. “Heeeeeellllllllp!”
I watched as the camera alarms sounded. But would the people inside even care about a teenaged girl?
Then I thought of the prisons outside, and recognized Peaches’ gamble. They’d want to know how she’d found them, and she had proof the owners of this complex took prisoners. And now that I looked down, I felt her earputer pressed into my palm.
Most of the Naked Crazies charged across the pavement towards her. A handful broke off towards the prisoners’ camp, teeth bared.
The prisoners lined up at the moat to watch, grim, mournful. The dazers strobed. Those Naked Crazies fell twitching.
A murderous handful still headed for Peaches, though. The gate remained closed.
“Come on, come on,” I whispered. Dare and Gumdrool squeezed my shoulders. Which was stupid; them tearing Peaches’ throat open, I realized, was the good scenario. The Upterlife scenario.
Yet there we were, white-knuckled, Dare begging the server techs to let his sister in…
…which they did. The gate clacked open. Peaches rushed inside, fell to her knees in gratitude. Three soldiers in nondescript uniforms charged out the front door, firing over the heads of the Naked Crazies. The Naked Crazies scattered, racing across the concrete to dive through the warrens’ crooked doors.
The soldiers didn’t seem happy to see Peaches, though. They dragged her to her feet, barking questions as to how she got here. She did the perfect lost little girl act, blubbering how her friends had dared her to go into Little Venice and then those things had started chasing her…
The guards were skeptical. “You telling me it’s coincidence you show up on the day Big Kahuna arrives?” one asked.
“Scans don’t lie,” another told him. “Let’s copy her brain and sift through her memories.”
They dragged her inside. I tried to track Peaches on the internal cameras, but the IceBreaker couldn’t penetrate the walls from this distance.
“Scan her?” Dare said, furious. “They can’t do that. Our brain patterns are our own – we can’t testify against ourselves!”
“These are NeoChristians,” Gumdrool said. “They can do whatever they voiding well please. Once they know everything she knows, they’ll come for us.”
“Not if we rescue her first.”
Gumdrool spluttered. “Rescue her? She’s guarded by a military force inside a branch server. This mission’s FUBAR. We’ve got photos, camera locations, security scans. If we get back in time, we can get the LifeGuard here before the NeoChristians pull up stakes.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Someone needs to get this information back home. We’d just slow you down.”
“No, Amichai,” Dare said. “We don’t have a chance without him.” He pronounced the word “him” as though his mouth were filled with cockroaches.
“We’re not leaving Peaches behind,” I assured him. “But someone has to alert the LifeGuard. So get moving, Gumdrool! When we get Peaches out–”
“– if –” Dare contradicted me.
“– we’ll catch up.”
Gumdrool appraised me, looking for the angle. I kept my face neutral, ignoring Dare’s withering scowl.
“All right,” Gumdrool said, hoisting his backpack. “I’ll go.”
“You know they’ll destroy her,” Dare said.
Gumdrool hesitated.
“They’ll turn her into… into one of those,” Dare continued. “You beat the shit out of me because I was going to sneak into the Upterlife without your say-so – and now that someone’s in danger of getting voided, you just walk?”
“Dare!” I yelled. “We can’t risk this. Someone has to get the word out…”
“Shut up, Amichai!” He was so furious, I cringed. “You got us into this! If you’d Shrived Venal, Peaches wouldn’t have had to come along! And now my sister’s in danger, and you’re talking our best hope of saving her into leaving?”
“It’s not like that…” I protested. But yeah, it looked bad. I’d been Dare’s best friend ever since he’d come to the orphanage, but I could see the doubt in his eyes: I left my family. Maybe it’s time to leave my friends.
“We can do it, Dare…”
“All you ever do is get in trouble,�
� Dare spat. “We need someone who can get us both in and out.
“Ian,” he pled. “We don’t have a hope in void of saving Peaches without you. If all your stupid blather about the lowliest of criminals meant anything, then nothing would stop you from helping her.”
Gumdrool stood in the doorway, his back to us. His shoulders shook.
“Remember the mission, Ian,” I pled.
“No. He’s right.” Gumdrool squeezed Dare’s shoulder. “We have to get Peaches out.”
Dare shot me a triumphant look. But I couldn’t tell him what I had learned while I was hip-deep in camera protocols:
This technology was pure LifeGuard.
We were breaking into a branch server created by the highest levels of the United States Government.
That was why I’d been trying to ditch Gumdrool. Alone, Dare and I might have had a chance to sneak in undetected. Now, it was a matter of time until Gumdrool discovered who was behind this.
And what would he do when he realized this was bought and paid for by the people he practically worshipped?
II
Rescue
19: CONVERSATIONS WITH CRIMINALS II
* * *
“Gimme your earputers,” I said.
Dare handed his over without hesitation. Gumdrool balked. “Why?”
“Because we may get separated in there, and communicating over an open network is suicide. We gotta encrypt.”
He gave me a curt nod, then tossed his towards me. I tweaked settings as fast as I could. I wished I could send a secret message to Dare, but Gumdrool watched my every move.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked, glancing towards the server’s golden tower. Fortunately, all the conscious Naked Crazies had fled. The prisoners, dressed in orange jumpsuits, stood at the border of the tripod-dazers, calling out names.
The names of the unconscious Naked Crazies.
Their hope broke my heart.
I’d thought of the Naked Crazies as, well, naked crazies. But they’d been beloved back before someone had driven them mad; you could see the devotion on the prisoners’ resigned faces as they tried to get their sons and mothers to remember them. The NeoChristians pressed their hands against their tattoos as they called out for Elijah or Abishai or Japtheth, their voices wavering but never breaking. They lifted their voices high, like a lifeline thrown out to an empty sea.
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