by Peter Tylee
Dan couldn’t say the deaths had saddened him, but he felt sick from Esteban’s total disregard for the associated emotions that Dan bore so heavily. He’d never intended to kill Michele, and hadn’t known what to do with Jackie. Blackmailing her into allowing Jen, Cookie and Samantha to live in peace would’ve been a utopian if impractical option.
“And after you stormed in and murdered Jackie and Michele, I came to the rescue and killed you.” Esteban turned the gun on Dan. “It’s a pity UniForce lost its top two bounty hunters.”
“Two?”
“The Raven bit the dust about ten minutes ago. Slain by an assassin would you believe?” Esteban choked on a laugh. “Serves the son of a bitch right. How fucked up do you have to be to kill your public CEO?”
“I’m surprised you care.” Dan didn’t think Esteban was the sort of person to lament the death of one, two or a hundred bounty hunters.
“Oh, but I do. You see, now that they’re dead” – he jerked a thumb to where Jackie and Michele had slumped – “it’s open slather for running the company. And you probably also see I’m closest to the top, so I’ll be calling the shots. And losing good bounty hunters is bad for business.” Esteban was in a fantastic mood; he felt better than if he’d just won the sweepstakes. And best of all, he was going to kill Dan. “And you, Sutherland, have the honour of being first to die – Jackie and that bimbo didn’t count.” He levelled the weapon at Dan’s chest and said with relish, “I win.”
The gun fired.
And Dan recoiled, expecting more pain than he actually felt. It felt as if… As if I haven’t been shot at all.His brain was still processing data while he staggered backward. He thought it somewhat strange that Esteban was falling too. It didn’t quite make sense. Instincts and reflexes made him move his feet and, rather than toppling in a puddle of blood, he stepped back.
That’s when he saw the gun in Jen’s hands. She pulled the trigger a second, third and fourth time, continuing until the weapon was empty and thoroughly riddling Esteban’s body with bullets, watching as his clothes turned burgundy in ragged but fast spreading blotches.
Dan encased her in his arms. She was shaking like a brittle leaf and her eyes were wide, absorbing the carnage she’d created.
Simon was the first to speak. “Good shot, girl.”
“Yeah,” Dan cooed, mirroring the sentiment. “You did great.”
Jen made a sound, a cross between a sob and a giddy laugh. In the end, Esteban’s over-inflated male ego had been his undoing. It’d never occurred to him that a woman would carry a weapon – a silly mistake considering he’d only just discovered his best assassin was female.
She was trembling and Dan tried to soothe her. “It’s over, you’re safe.”
“Over?” Jen grunted indelicately. “How do you figure that? Everyone’s dead! How do you expect we’ll get away with this? They’ll read the logs, find our signatures, and hunt us down even more ferociously than before.”
“Hmm… she has a point.” Simon scratched his chin.
“Then we’ll just have to take over ourselves,” Dan proposed resolutely.
“Huh?” Simon didn’t follow. Neither did Jen.
“Well, like Esteban said, it’s open slather for the top job. Why can’t we take over? If we step in, we’ll be holding all the cards. If we step aside, they’ll hunt us down. It doesn’t look like we have much choice.”
Simon’s phone vibrated once and then stopped. He checked the display and saw a number he didn’t recognise. It buzzed again and he answered, “Yes?” Then, after a short pause, he handed it to Jen. “It’s for you.”
“What?” She hesitantly accepted the mobile. “Hello?”
“Jen, it’s me.”
“Samantha? Where are you?”
“Would you believe we’re in San Francisco?”
“No way!”
“Yeah way.”
“How? Why?” Everything was happening too fast. She wanted to put life on pause so she could sort through the mess.
“The Raven was tracking us in Sydney,” Samantha explained briefly. “We didn’t know where to go or what to do, but we knew you guys were here so this is where we came.”
“You don’t have to worry about the Raven anymore,” Jen said quietly. “I think he’s dead.”
Samantha was silent for a time before speaking in a cautious tone. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.” She huffed. “Except that everyone’s dead.”
“Uh, should you be saying that?” Samantha warned. “You know… itmight be listening.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that either.” Jen surveyed the splatter of blood and smear of brains, which were congealing on the walls in Jackie’s office. “Nobody’s here to do anything about it. Echelon can listen all it likes.”
Samantha still guarded her words carefully. “Where are you? Can you direct me?”
“Sure.”
They walked into Jackie’s gore-filled office ten minutes later. Cookie’s jaw went slack and the scene sucked the air from Samantha’s lungs. “Did you do this?”
“We had help.” Jen waved at Esteban’s body. “He did most of it.” Then she turned to Dan and suggested, “Why don’t you share your idea?”
“I think we should take control of the company,” Dan said with casual aplomb. “I guess you could call it a hostile takeover.”
Cookie squinted through his confusion. “And how do you suppose we do that?”
“I don’t know. But what else can we do? What do you think they’ll do if we run?”
“The same thing they’ll do if we stay!” Samantha predicted glumly.
And her uncharacteristic pessimism sparked a violent storm of squabbling and intense debate during which nobody was honestly listening to anybody else.
Jen stood apart from the fracas. She was staring out the window, mesmerised by the San Francisco skyline. It was pretty from above and she enjoyed looking down over the city as it slept on a lazy Sunday. She was warming to Dan’s absurd idea. It could just work…It would certainly be the ultimate win for freedom of speech. “Hey listen!” Jen said, slicing through their bickering with two words. “There are two points we should consider. First, we have no choice. Dan’s right. If we leave now, they’ll hunt us to the end of our days. Echelon will always be listening for our voices and we’ll always be top priority terrorist targets.”
Samantha was about to say something caustic but clamped her jaw shut to hear what else Jen had to say.
“If we stay, we can control Echelon. We can tame it, make it work the way I’d like to believe it was always intended.” Jen’s motivations were askew from Dan’s but the result was the same. They both saw the sense in controlling UniForce. None of the upper management team was alive, and that produced the perfect opportunity to steal the kitty.
“Okay,” Samantha yielded. “That sounds nice, but you still haven’t answered how.”
“Who knew Jackie was running things? Nobody! As far as the shareholders were concerned, she was searching for a replacement for Paul Savage.”
“So?” Cookie asked, not seeing her point.
“All we need to do is order a shareholder meeting, propose a new CEO – ourCEO – and get them to vote for it. Then it’s as good as done,” Jen said in a tumble of words, getting excited by the idea.
“What about UniForce employees?” Samantha asked. “Surely they won’t let us tell them what to do.”
“They will if the shareholders vote for it; they won’t have a choice. Besides, nobody questions those things… shareholders vote, a company gets a new CEO – no big change for the employees.”
“What about the system administrators?” Cookie asked, thinking about his nemesis.
“No different.” Jen was convinced. “They’ll follow orders the same as everyone else.”
“Okay, so who wants the job?” Cookie asked abruptly. “You?”
Jen vehemently shook her head. “Not a chance. Besides, the shareholders
wouldn’t vote for a 26-year-old girl. They want someone with experience.”
“Then who?” Dan couldn’t think of anyone.
Oh dear…Jen’s eyes frosted over. “I know someone.”
They waited, but it was in vain. Jen remained silent, lost in a private world of thought.
Eventually Samantha cracked. “Who?”
“You’ll see.” She stabbed Cookie with an urgent look. “You need to program our chips into the security database. Can you do it?”
Cookie looked offended. “Of course I can. I just need to find the IT department.” He was secretly itching to get his hands on Echelon; even a small peek would be enough. He needed to see what grade of machine powered the world’s most influential system.
“I’ll come,” Dan suggested. “You don’t want to walk around here alone.”
“When you’re finished, find security and tell them Esteban went berserk because Jackie told him he wasn’t getting a promotion.”
“I see what you’re doing,” Dan said appreciatively. He liked the way Jen’s mind worked. “Then we locate someone who knows how to call an urgent shareholder meeting.”
“Right.” Jen was already heading for the door. “And I’ll find us a CEO.” Then she added with a roguish smile, “I’ll try not to take too long.”
*
Monday, September 20, 2066
04:03Coffs Harbour, Australia
Jen felt guilty for waking him in the middle of the night. She felt even worse for scaring him half to death.
“Do you want to give me a heart attack or something?” John Cameron held a hand over his chest to calm his thumping heart.
“I said I was sorry.” Jen didn’t know how else to say it. “Do you want me to say it again?”
“Yeah.” He mocked anger. “It might help.”
“Dad, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to nearly give you a heart attack.” But Jen couldn’t contain her smile. It was good to see him again. While trapped in the guild, she’d feared she’d seen the last of him. She was hiding the piano-wire scars on her wrists by keeping the cuffs of her long sleeved shirt buttoned.
“Something’s wrong,” John Cameron’s instincts warned him. “What is it?”
“I’m in a spot of trouble,” Jen started, understating the truth to ease him into the bad news.
“It’s your activism, isn’t it?” he whispered as if there were unwelcome ears in his house – electronic ears attached to a world of surveillance that waited patiently for people to incriminate themselves. Many people falling under ‘reasonable’ suspicion had bugs in their houses.
Jen shook her head; though she was obviously hiding something. “No, it’s not that.” Uh… stretching the truth a little aren’t we?“Not exactly anyway.”
John, although frustrated and boiling with anger that she hadn’t listened to him earlier, couldn’t turn his back on his daughter. He hadto help her. “What can I do?”
“Have you ever considered a career change?” Jen smiled sweetly.
“What are you getting at?” He didn’t like it when Jen was deliberately being obscure. He preferred to hear precisely what she was thinking.
“There’s a job opening at UniForce and I was hoping you’d apply.”
“UniForce?” John blurted in surprise. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Is this my daughter? Or an impostor?“Are you serious? Don’t they defile everything you stand for?”
She nodded. “But I was hoping you’d change that.”
“Me?” John’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “What could I possibly do?”
“The opening is for CEO.”
*
Sunday, September 19, 2066
UniForce Headquarters
10:07San Francisco, USA
“Oh my God.” Cookie stopped at the door. “Is he… dead?”
Yeah,Dan thought. He could see the man was dead from across the room. He dutifully – though without any hope – checked for a pulse. Unsurprisingly, he found none. “Yeah. Dead as a doornail.”
James had landed facedown on his desk. It looked as if he’d broken his nose and a trickle of mucous and blood had dripped waxlike onto the white plastic surface. He’d gravely miscalculated the amount of regenerative sleep his body needed. The label on his bottle of stimulants identified it as a hazard, but in his rush to solve the network’s problems and get home to his wife, he’d chosen to ignore the warning. The actual cause of death was a clot lodged in his brain. It was impossible to say with any degree of certainty what had caused the clot. Many systems in his body had degraded to the point where arterial clotting was inevitable. It could’ve been deep vein thrombosis from prolonged periods sitting still or the shock he’d given his implants several days earlier. It didn’t matter; the result was the same. He’d lost consciousness and died from a massive stroke.
Dan gripped James’s stiff body by the shoulders, pushed it back into the chair, and rolled it away from the desk.
“I guess that explains why he vanished from the network,” Cookie said with a sour expression.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
Dan waved at James’s terminal. “Is this okay?”
Cookie nodded emphatically. “It’s perfect. I should have access to everything from here.”
“Security included?”
“Yeah, that too.” He wasted no time inputting their identities into valid slots in the security database. It would grant them a certain level of credibility when they approached the poorly trained security guards about the devastation in Jackie’s office. Security’s first impulse would be to validate their identities and the data Cookie was entering would ensure they’d pass the test.
“All done.” Cookie relished cracking his knuckles, free from Samantha’s critical gaze. “They’ll treat us like dignitaries.”
“That’ll make for a pleasant change,” Dan scoffed.
Cookie peaked at everything James had downloaded from the Raven. It was too intriguing not to look; peering inside his mind was like staring into his soul. “Holy shit.” He started panting uncontrollably. “Holy fucking shit.”
“What?” Dan demanded, concerned something had gone horribly wrong.
“Ah, James hacked into the Raven’s head before he died,” Cookie explained. “You’ll never guess what he found.”
Dan had no idea such things were possible. He blinked at James with a mixture of surprise and irritation. Imagine how easy that information would’ve made it to avoid him! I would’ve known where and when he was going to strike. I guess it doesn’t matter much now though.“What?”
“Bank account details.” Cookie’s mouth sprouted a massive grin.
“And?”
“Well, that’s it.” Cookie could see Dan didn’t grasp the enormity of the news. “He’s dead so he’s not going to want it anymore.” But still Dan didn’t get it. “Well… don’t you see? With this information we can access his accounts.”
“How much?” Dan asked, finally twigging to Cookie’s line of thought.
“Seventy million North American Credits,” James read the balance from the screen three times to make sure he’d put the decimal point in the correct place.
Dan whistled softly.
“Yeah, you can say that again.” Cookie’s grin was only getting bigger. “Wait till we tell Jen, she can finally afford that yacht she wants.”
“Five ways that’s…” Dan performed the calculation in his head. “What, about fourteen million each?”
Cookie nodded. Neither man had any scruples about helping himself to the money. As far as they were concerned, they’d earned it. Besides, the twisted creature they were stealing it from was dead. Thank goodness!
At that point, Dan’s conscience reminded him about Hans. He’d promised to help the struggling scientist in any way he could. “Make that six ways.”
“Six?”
“Hans van de Berg,” Dan replied. “He’s the Dutch guy who helped us get into the Guild, wi
thout a key so to speak.”
“Six ways is still bloody good.”
But money was only the second best way Dan could think of helping the man. Taking over UniForce would afford him a certain degree of protection. Then deal with PortaNet.Dan wasn’t ready to relax yet; he still had gritty work to do. But one thing at a time.They had a number of hurdles to pass before he could claim victory over UniForce.
“Let’s go find security.”
“Yeah, before they find Samantha.” She’d stayed behind with Simon to guard Jackie’s office while Cookie tampered with the security database.
“And then we wait for Jen.”
*
Monday, September 20, 2066
UniForce Headquarters
16:25San Francisco, USA
Jen was exhausted. She’d never known how difficult it was to organise an urgent shareholder meeting. Now she’d been awake throughout the San Francisco day and her circadian rhythm was screaming at her for the abuse. She was so disoriented she didn’t know what time it was or whether she should be waking up, sleeping, or just heading to bed. All she knew was that the shareholder meeting would start in five minutes and if it were successful, they’d be in the clear.
They were all waiting nervously. Nobody was confident enough to place bets on the outcome.
They’d spent much of the previous day with the authorities, answering a swarm of questions about the incident in Jackie’s office. They’d carefully worked out their answers in advance and their stories held coherently together, giving the security forces a bleak image of Esteban’s loyalty and a glowing portrait of Jen’s courage.
John adjusted his collar and tie for what seemed like the thousandth time. “Do I-”
“You look fine,” Jen said, interrupting him before he could ask the same question he’d been asking every five minutes for the past hour. “Trust me would you? Just stop fidgeting or they’ll see right through you.”
