“All right,” QC said, rolling her shoulders, cracking her neck, and stretching her arms officially. This being done, she fell back into her usual stooped, apathetic swagger, once again adopted her persistent, sardonic smile, and said: “Let’s roll.”
“Right-o,” he agreed, and fell in line behind her.
QC blinked and swiveled to face him. Byron smiled at her expectantly. She did not move. Byron raised his eyebrows toward her, as if to prompt motion, and shrugged.
“So…we should go,” she replied, her hands returning his shrug from inside the lofty pockets of the antiquated duster.
“Indeed.”
“This is you, dipshit. Remember? Your connection? Guy that might know how to find Red? So we can sell the bastard to the A-Gents before they burn our skin off? You know: The only fucking thing we’re down here to fucking do?!”
“Oh! Yes. That.” Byron agreed amiably, and edged past her, taking point. QC followed behind him, swearing with metronomic regularity, each step a new obscenity.
Chapter Eighteen
Login: P27N32
Password: ***********
“Jeeee-sus,” James exclaimed, looking over Red’s shoulder, “the bloody hell are you doing that still uses text logins?”
“The Blackboard. Kind of like an oldschool BBS. We don’t need rich media or anything; it’s just a bunch of chemnerds swapping recipes and unsecured feed lines – I mean, you can’t just jack the whole feed, you gotta use a worm to pull such trace amounts that they don’t notice, but there’s a lot out there to pull just a few elements from and-“
“Right. Puppies,” James said, rolling his eyes.
“What?” Red swiveled around to stare up at him.
“You lost me a while back, mate. Now I’m just vid-searching for puppies. Tiny ones, with fluffy paws. Do your nerd business.”
“It’s really not all that hard to unders-“
“Ha! This one peed right into the other’s ear, but they’re still mates. Innnit grand?” James said, already walking away.
Red turned back to the glossy black oval and held his hands out on the desk, palms down, fingers curled slightly. When his pinky contacted the glass, his BioOS confirmed the connection to the desktop and the Blackboard login screen once again wavered in the air, two feet in front of him. He focused his attention on the tight cluster of spinning letters, and the anachronistic keyboard prompt visually overlaid the keys beneath his waiting fingertips. The projection twitched almost imperceptibly when he moved his eyes – the tracking was always shoddy on these retromods – but he managed to struggle through with only a handful of typos. It was awkward and slow going, using the hand gestures instead of a basic Predictive Intent Input, but PII rigs were too bandwidth intensive for the ramshackle little Blackboard - they were discovered so often as to be essentially disposable anyway. Why put the work in to fancy it up, steal enough bandwidth for full BioOS integration and design a functional RUI if it was all just going to be killed and reassembled later that afternoon? Besides, the only real downside to an old keyboard system was the speed, the errors, the frustration, and any onlookers goggling at your ridiculously flailing fingers with a mixture of amusement, disbelief, and pity normally reserved for headcases and mental deficients. Aside from all that, though, it was just dandy.
James paced the room a few times, already bored. He sidled up next to the only other object of distraction in the room: A single mirror-faced sentry, blocking the only exit. The guard stood hunched over nearly double, his arms swinging loose by his knees, his head cocked at an inquisitive angle — just like every other sentry he’d seen on the way to the coms room.
“I’m afraid you’ve got a pussy for a face,” James told the man matter-of-factly.
“Wha…excuse me?” For just a second, the guard appeared to forget himself and straighten his posture.
James smiled.
“Nothin’, mate. Just bored of the freak show,” he said, and jerked his head back toward Red, tapping on the desk like a crazy person. “Wanted to see if there was actually a bloke behind the mirror.”
The reflective metal slab showed no reaction.
“I’m not asking to bugger you on the floor and cuddle after or anything,” James showed his hands by way of placation, “just got the feelin’ that twitchy back there is going to be some time. Looking to pass it is all. I figured if you responded, we could talk. If you didn’t, I could sit here and think up better insults for you. Dicklips. There’s one. Your lips look like dicks. A bit derivative of pussy-face, I know, but one does what one can.”
“Ha!” The sentry shrugged and shook off the primate stance completely, “you can’t even see them.”
“I know, I know; I’d be ashamed too if I had a mouth like a bell-end.”
Red flinched at the raucous laughter behind him, but ignored what he assumed was a string of insults directed at his silly tapping, and finished typing the post. The prompt blinked twice in confirmation, then booted him back out to the main board. Nothing to do now but wait. Red unfocused his eyes and let the projected board fade away. His gaze rolled up and to the left, expanding his own home screen across his visual field, and opened up the contacts. He highlighted the looped animation of a stick figure stabbing another in the back, over and over again, and focused on the composition box:
problems hunted gas reward—
He thought, and the gelatinous, black placeholder blocks of Predictive Intent Input appeared before his eyes; they shifted into words a few milliseconds later:
Situation. Corporate bounty hunters/prototype gas? Reward.
Red kept his focus tight on the blocks, letting the system know he still wanted to edit, and mentally revised the wording. The letters fuzzed out of focus, jumbled together, and resolved. The edited message snapped into clarity half an instant before he’d finished thinking.
Life or death situation. Bounty hunters on my tail, corporate by the sound of them. Might be something to do with beta-testing gas? Any info appreciated. Will make it worth your time.
Red expanded the concept of a circle in his mind, indicating the ‘send to all’ function for this contact list. Three yellow dots lit up consecutively, and repeated. Awaiting final confirmation. He thought of the circle turning opaque, and it did. The dots disappeared, and the BioOS rippled; the message had been sent. The stabbing icon stopped briefly, swiveled over to face Red, and gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up; then, back to stabbing. Red tabbed back over to the Blackboard, and scrolled through the replies.
“So the little geek’s behind me right, covered head to toe in plastiboard splinters, face going white with shock, this weird smile on his face and – I tell you true, mate – he starts juggling.”
“Fuck you!” The guard swore incredulously.
“I swear to the one and only true Lord, mate: I’m up there blowing holes through an entire fiefdom, just trying to stay ahead of the murderous locals. Zippy – that’s the one-legged girl, yeah? She’s running ahead putting rotters on the floor, both of us wondering when somebody’s going to get it together enough to blow a hole in the back of our heads, and we turn to look ‘round and find this little bastard right here juggling the god damn firearms! In the air, mate. Like a bloody mime.”
“But why?!” The sentry exclaimed, laughing.
He gestured as if to wipe tears from his face, but his hand bumped instead against the mirrored faceplate. The man fumbled at the back, hit something that made the whole thing go limp, then pulled it down over the front of his face. Smartcloth.
“Because he’s high as a kite, isn’t he?! As soon as we run up against that big steel door of yours, he starts rambling about sex giants and metal children, all with an armful of the most deadly weapons I’ve managed to assemble over two decades in the ‘Wells.”
“Holy shit,” the guard chuckled appreciatively.
“It was actually bloody impressive, truth,” James pushed his back up against the wall and slid down into a squat. “The fan alone weig
hs more than he does.”
Just an ordinary type, James thought: A bit portly ‘round the jaw, receding hairline. Looks big in the armor, but you can tell he’s got the start of a belly going under there. That inhuman crouched dance-walk — the monkey posture – it’s off-putting, yeah. But take the mask off, stand him up, and it’s all gone. He could be in a catwalk stall, trying to sell you old chipboard at low, low discount prices.
“Smoke?” The guard cracked open a cylinder with a vacuum pop.
“Cheers,” James took one from the proffered pack, twisted the filter to light it, and screwed it up between his lips.
Red gazed blankly at his BioOS. He tried to read the words displayed there, but once again failed to accept their meaning.
>heard about you down there in the wells red
The first reply read. It was part of a long chain, all posted with minutes of his initial plea.
>>Bullshit. Is this really the guy? You’re screwing with us.
>>>Yeah this is fake im pretty sure
>>>>Obviously fake. You’re probably not even in the ‘wells.
>>>>>coordinate trace says this came through an anonymizer down in the reservoir
>>>>>>holy shit is Really him? Dud,e you’re fucked!
>>>>>>>Hahahah you gon die, redd
They knew his name.
Red’s ID was masked. Hidden by the hundreds - thousands - of gates he’d collected over the years. Backdoor redirects, partial information shunts and false data generators installed across dozens of servers and thoroughly entangled with the digital personas of two thousand completely random, unrelated users. He was as impossible to trace as a human being could possibly be, and there wasn’t the slightest indication as to his identity or location in his board post. Even if, by some inebriated excess, he’d wanted to post his name or coordinates, the Blackboard ran its own anonymizers – the software would auto-delete any personal information before approving the post. It wouldn’t even let you log on if your connection was unencrypted, and yet here were a half dozen users who not only knew his approximate location, but his real name. All within minutes. His post should never have merited this kind of interest. There was no other possibility: They must have recognized the story from elsewhere. From the waveform.
From the news.
Red’s hands shook, and the twitches spewed gibberish across the projected screen.
“You got some mad rumors running down here,” the guard said, sliding to a squat beside James.
“Well, it’s like me mum said: You can’t nuke a neighborhood without getting a few stares,” James conceded happily.
“Before that even. Word from upstairs has been coming down all day.”
“What’s that?” James drew on his cigarette; the steel-gray ash of the lighting element shook, and fell away on his thigh.
“Some big spenders on their way down right now, is what I heard. From up top.”
“The top what? It’s all top from here, innit?”
“No. The top. Heard they came in from the terminus. Wells-end.”
“I’ll be fucked,” James whispered, awestruck.
“I’d say somebody’s about to do it for you,” the guard offered.
Red’s hands were an indistinct blur of motion. He frantically plugged at the keyboard, shifted his focus back to the BioOS, thought hasty replies to his contact radial, and tabbed back to the Blackboard. Every medium was exploding with activity.
not on any of the official channels yet, but the other boards are all over it
A thread from the Blackboard informed him.
Luka, an Industry engineer and occasional client of Red’s, was offering up information, but only if Red had access to libido inhibitors - the illegal ones that killed it permanently, not the ordinary ‘use it if you want it’ variety. Red replied in the affirmative, tabbed to the Blackboard, and offered up passcodes to a thick vein of undiluted amphetamines that he’d culled from some coding farm’s private feed, in exchange for the inhibitors. He went to pull up his thread again, and found it moved. An entire subforum had just been started for him; there were dozens of new posts.
I can’t believe you’re all fucking around like this, this is a human being’s life here. If this is really you, Red, you ought to know there’s some serious heat coming your way. Corporate bounty hunters were spotted entering the ‘wells this morning. From the terminus, man. All the way up. Get the hell out of there.
—BrX
They not bounty hunters, shit tard. They private security. Bodyguards or soming. They don’t have passes or nothing. My brother do some part time bouncer work for one of the hi fiefdoms, sed they paid him more than he makes in a year to let them by without hasslin.
–fuk bitchz make $$
Red’s field of vision flickered: Somebody had accepted the amphetamine barter. He slung a string of PII blocks up in reply to the engineer, letting him know the deal was on. He hoped his subconscious finished resolving the words coherently, but he didn’t stick around to check. Red tabbed back to the Blackboard, and took a breath.
He had so little to offer, and simple drug barters were buying him no more than cursory information. He willed his hands to stillness, and carefully typed:
Have access to new prototype Gas. In body, but full metabolization not for 36 hours. Serious offers only. Must have liquid untraceable assets, be able to transfer advance to ‘Wells ASAP.
He signed it with a single block of Red color, and shifted back to watch the BioOS inbox. He waited two minutes for the reply, but finally, his contact circle rippled and expanded.
Not bountry hunters. A-gents. Know who hired. Inhibitors first.
—Luka
Red pulled over the inhibitor codes and frantically began picturing a circle. He was picturing it as opaque as god damn possible. The ripple confirmed a sent message.
“All right, I’ll bite: Who’s the big bad wolf coming to blow our block down?” James leaned forward, put a hand flat on the floor and pushed himself up into a standing position. The guard had already risen, and was stretching and popping his various joints.
“No idea,” the man answered, “but last I heard they were hitting Duke Sarah’s Pretty Empire. Bitch wouldn’t open her fiefdom – rode that damn horse of hers out to challenge ‘em and got herself burned. That’s about twenty floors up. The rate they’re going, you should be able to ask them yourself in a couple of hours.”
The sentry pulled the reflective cloth back over his head. It hung there limply, outlining his thick, soft features, until he reached back and hit the clasp. The fabric snapped up into a perfectly rigid, mirrored block. He shook his shoulders out one last time, then dropped back into an ape-like slump.
“Thanks for the smoke,” James said, but the guard did not reply; he loped to the far side of the room with long, sinewy hops and crouched there, immobile.
Its Hockner Industries. I’m so sorry, Red. Thanks for the inhibitors I really gotta stop with the kiddies already. Costing too mcuh these days
—Luka
Hockner Industries: Chief opiate distributor for all of the Four Posts.
Red closed the reply before panic could seize him completely. Hockner was after him? He knew they had some tenuous connection to the lab where Red beta-tested, but there was a whole network of subsidiaries, franchises and dummy corporations between it and the official Hockner Industries corporation. If Hockner themselves were coming after him, then that was it, then; it was all over. Hockner owned everything – everybody. The opiate feeds, the Gas channels, the implant markets — Red was pretty sure they even technically owned his apartment. You can’t run from a beast when you’re already inside of it. Red shifted back to the Blackboard one last time, and checked the new replies to his barter thread. There were six mocking him, two still calling him a fraud and decrying the intelligence of everybody that wasn’t, and one at the very end that read simply:
Barter accepted. Send transaction details immediately.
—A Friend.
/>
Chapter Nineteen
QC’s fear was effervescent. She’d sloughed off the brunt of the panic as soon as they got inside, but it kept welling back up like a shaken champagne bottle. Her apprehension formed tiny bubbles on the insides of her eyelids; pinpricks, itches in the brain. Waves of euphoric giddiness crested and receded under her skin, leaving only a shivering, wet sickness. She wanted to laugh, but knew it would only manifest as screaming, or sobbing, or mental shutdown. Instead, she did her best to manage the fear as a physical thing: She pictured it as a black sludge coating the insides of her bones. She pulled it out, pushed it upward, all the way to the skin, and let it slide down her extremities to congeal inside her toes and fingertips. When it all conglomerated there — throbbing and pulsing, swelling her limbs with thick, tired anxiety — she touched the bare metal of the corridor, and let all the oozing black terror dissipate into the walls. It was a simple psychological meme, one of the few her parents taught her that she still remembered. A little white lie you tell to yourself, they said, only believing makes it real.
Slowly, after the fear puddle poured away into the floors and bled into the walls, she settled back into her body again. She tested the flexibility of her fingers, rocked on her heels, felt the tensile movement of muscles beneath her calves. She rolled the strain from her neck, shook her posture loose, and finally managed to uproot her gaze from the backs of Byron’s heels as he flounced along in front of her. His gait was clumsy: A hesitant, flopping walk that alternated between huge, loping strides and a mincing, scuffing shuffle. He had no cadence; he worked his own body like a character in a game that he didn’t know the controls to. He had been enthusiastically babbling for some time now, QC was dimly aware, but she had been too lost to hear it. The words were spoken underwater; almost familiar, but ultimately too muffled to resolve.
She was worried, but could not place the source. Byron, for all of his awkward uncertainty, seemed to know where he was going and what to do when he got there. She’d heard the Reservoir was a rough place, but it couldn’t be worse than the shantytowns and Pirated Gas clubs that festered around the Fights, could it? Still, ceding control to a thing as wholly fucking inept as Byron sat ill at ease with her. She tried to congeal the worry as well — spilled it through her veins, rigged the sluices to channel it down into her fingertips — but she still felt the lingering fear there, at the periphery, and knew that her mental buffer would take no more load. So she let the worry alone, and tried distraction instead.
Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity Page 13
