Instead a small legion of alphanumeric strings shot through her, some seventy or eighty batches of number, which on reflex she had the computer capture.
Well, that made sense – sort of. If there was something hinky that Cagliostro wanted her to see, something in the computer system, an architecture document would do it.
Bobbi felt a strange mix of fascination and anxiety now, like someone who sees a car accident up ahead and debates pulling over just to see the carnage.
There was a millisecond’s pause.
Bobbi pursed her lips way out, the sensation rather like a duck sticking its bill into a bag of concrete.
And then, though she did not sense its departure, Bobbi knew that Cagliostro had gone. She was alone; alone with her thoughts and the slow turtle of her digital presence floating in Kelley’s ancient box. She unplugged immediately, and found herself shivering in the cold confines of the bathroom stall, once more without any idea of what the hell she had gotten herself into.
She was getting used to the feeling, at least. But not so much that she wasn’t freaked right the hell out.
When she got back later that night, there was no hiding her upset from Scalli. He quit the bar the moment he saw her face, followed her back into the elevator, and said nothing until they were both up in her office. He settled his enormous bulk into one of the chairs facing Bobbi’s desk, folded his corded arms over the armrests, and waited.
Bobbi sat down behind the desk, unsure of what to say first. When she did speak, finally, it was in a soft voice that sounded as though it came from another time. From a younger version of herself.
“I think I’m in trouble, Scalli.”
His reply was gentle, but stern. “Tell me.”
“I don’t know … ” She closed her eyes, leaned back in the chair and sighed. “I don’t know how, Scalli. Everything’s just so fucked up … and it’s because I couldn’t leave things alone, and now I have … ” Bobbi shook her head. How could she drag him into this, too? He’d already been involved in things more than she had wanted. To tell him everything, to draw him into the same mess that she herself now stewed in, what kind of friend would she be? It was different with Freida, of course; she had already involved herself, was already digging. Bobbi thought about what Cagliostro had said about Freida not being what she appeared to be. What the Hell did that mean? Was she working for the Bureau still? Was she some kind of an agent? The possibility that Bobbi’s hasty trust would explode in her face gave her pause, and yet it would not surprise her.
“Scalli,” she said, then drew a deep breath. “Marcus. If I tell you what all is going on, honey, it’s going to fuck up your life. It’s certainly fucking up mine. Isn’t it better that you just … I dunno, move on? Or at least just stay as ignorant as possible while knowing that, if you stay here, it’s eventually going to be dangerous enough for you just hanging around?”
She expected him to explode on her, or maybe lecture her on the nature of their friendship or some other thing. He’d done it plenty of times before. Instead, however, the mountain that he was merely settled, hunched over to stare at her. Meeting her eyes, Bobbi saw that his own were filled with a resolve that she very well knew she wouldn’t have the power to break.
“Tell me,” he said to her. “Tell me everything.”
And so she did. She could do nothing else.
They had talked into the night. They finished Bobbi’s bottle of Suntory and had started in on another from storage when Sandy had announced that the place was closed and she was leaving; Bobbi told her she was on paid leave and that she’d find her next three weeks’ pay on hand as a bonus. She didn’t argue, though it was clear she was extremely confused. Delighted, perhaps, but confused. Bobbi didn’t mind; poor Sandy was just some wannabe datanaut, wanting to play matrix-kitten while in the company of the movers and shakers. If Genefex set those horrible pale things on the club one night, Bobbi didn’t want the girl to get torn up in the process.
Once Sandy left, Bobbi showed him the archive, along with the video of the events that took place down in Orleans Hospital. He didn’t have a skullcomp, of course, so he ended up watching it on her giant holographic display. Bobbi went to the bathroom and showered while he watched it. She couldn’t really handle watching it again after all that had happened lately. When she came back out, damp and bundled into fatigue pants and a t-shirt, she found Scalli sitting in his chair. It had been turned around to face the far wall, so that he could see the display. He had the strangest look on his face. He didn’t look horrified, like Freida had been. Rather, he looked as if … as if something had been confirmed for him, a sort of grave knowing.
“I understand now,” he said as Bobbi stepped into the office again. His voice was a grim rumble.
“Oh?” She sounded timid as she came to stand by her desk. She wasn’t sure what else to say.
Scalli nodded. “He was very brave. Both of you were.” The big man sighed, and he shook his head. “I can’t imagine what anyone else would have done in your place. Probably failed and gotten themselves killed.” He leaned back in the chair, which groaned against his mass, and he stared at the wall as if the screen still hovered there. “You have my support in this, baby girl. I’m going where you’re going.”
Bobbi felt every nerve in her body sing at once: in anger, in fear, and – perhaps most treacherously of all – in relief that someone close to her wished to help her carry the load. “I feel terrible,” she said, looking down at her feet. “But I feel good that you’re with me. I should just tell you to leave, so that you don’t … ”
“So that I don’t go like your man did?” Scalli shook his head. “Oh, baby girl. I know what you’re thinking. I do. But the truth of the matter is, you’re my friend, and probably one of the best I’ve had in a long time – we’ve been through a lot.”
She sighed. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I guess I never told Tom how you’d helped me in the past. I feel terrible about it, because we … we really didn’t talk much about ourselves. I know he didn’t ask about me, he was too busy trying not to get killed. And then … ”
“And then he got eaten up with what you had discovered.”
“Yeah.” Bobbi looked at him then. What was in her face? She could not know. She felt nothing in that moment, seeing him there – her friend, who had pledged to follow her down this horrible path that she continued to follow. She felt a great deal differently than the sassy girl that she had once been. She didn’t feel young anymore, merely … present. “I don’t want that to happen to you, Marcus. I don’t want to be responsible for getting you killed.”
Scalli snorted at that. He rose, his hands behind his back, and shook his head. “The good thing is that you won’t have to be,” he replied. “I’m quite capable of being responsible for myself – I’m doing this because I want to, of course, not out of any crazy feeling of … well, whatever, really. You’re my friend, and you definitely need help. And I don’t trust that gene-shifter that you’ve been working with, either – I think this Cagliostro is right. I don’t think she’s vectoring.”
“‘Vectoring’.” Bobbi shook her head; the absurdity of this one piece of Scalli’s anachronistic slang broke her from her empty reverie. She smiled. “Seriously, you sound like you were born in the Forties. All right, Retro Man, what do you think that we should do?”
“Yeah, yeah, I sound like an old man, I know.” Scalli snorted again, but he was smiling too. “You tell me that enough. All right, I think we should go see this place that Cagliostro told you about, this data ce
nter. Do you think you’ll be able to hack into its systems when we get there?”
Bobbi shrugged. “I don’t see why not,” she said. “Unless it’s some bizarre proprietary format. It’s possible, but I very much doubt it.”
Scalli nodded. “All right,” he said. “Where’s this place located?”
“Well … ” Bobbi clucked her tongue, thinking about it a moment. “Data Nexus 231 is the only one on the list which is not in the Old City.”
“Mmm?” Scalli wrinkled his nose at her. “But the map said that it’s in Renton, right?”
“The map’s outdated,” she replied. “I don’t know why. Civil Protection extended its security cordon out that way, so now it’s technically inside the Verge.”
Scalli’s looked like he’d just eaten a lemon. “That makes things difficult for us.”
“Maybe. But it also means that they probably won’t have the same kind of crazy security there that they did at Orleans.”
“Right.” Scalli frowned. “No … whatever the fuck those were. Zombies? Robots? Christ.”
“Well, whatever they are, we won’t have to deal with them.” She stabbed a finger at him. “I know what you’re thinking, Marcus Scalli, but we don’t have to go breaking into the place.”
His brows arched. “We don’t?”
“No,” replied Bobbi. “Not at all. In fact, if their security was anything like Orleans’ was, we should be able to hack the place’s data network without entering the location itself.”
“But what if it’s a hardened location?” Scalli crossed his legs. “I don’t think that you should discount that idea.”
“Oh, I won’t.” She shook her head, sitting on the edge of her desk now. “I won’t. But I think I need to buy a few things off Pierre when I see him tomorrow night.”
“When we see him,” Scalli corrected her. “I don’t intend on letting you go anywhere right now without me shadowing you.”
Bobbi wanted to protest, but she remembered the look in his eyes from before. “I know that I can’t stop you,” she said. “But that body of yours casts a long shadow – I’d appreciate it if you gave me a little room when I need it.”
He nodded. “Done. But I’m going to do some preparations myself. If that place we’re going to is anything other than a milk run, I want to be ready.”
‘Milk run.’ She had never heard the term come out of Scalli’s mouth before. Since when did Scalli talk like that? He’d never been in the military, as far as she knew – but then again, he’d been a bodyguard and you couldn’t throw a rock in that community without hitting somebody who’d served. Federal military, corporate security, whatever; even private military companies, although PMCs had fallen out of fashion since their little war on the other side of the Atlantic. The European War had made sure that most people realized the extremely bad judgment in giving anyone military weapons that weren’t fighting in the interests of their own damned country. And even then you probably shouldn’t let those crazies have them either. But then again, Bobbi was biased. Wherever he’d gotten it, Scalli was right – and Bobbi didn’t think that it was going to be a milk run for anyone, least of all herself.
It was the next evening, and Scalli drove her across the city into the far northern end of the Verge where Pierre’s warehouse awaited. She sat in the passenger’s seat of Scalli’s car, feeling as if she were sitting in a mobile cathedral. They crossed through the New City from the edge of the Verge where the Temple sat, drove through streets where the pulse of light and commerce kept the wicked place alive. Bobbi stared out the window the entire time. At one point they got stopped in the Waters, where a traffic accident had delayed progress for a bit – she watched the crowds thronging the sidewalks, laughing from the lower tiers of the mall towers, all lit by the great holographic billboards that clad the buildings and hovered from fan-ducted commercial drones.
She wondered what Tom thought about when he saw these things, if he found something good in it. She had always thought it to be rather beautiful … but what about him? All he ever said, especially toward the end, was always denigrating the society around him. But she did not see it that way, and if there really was a conspiracy behind the way the world was, didn’t that mean that there was actually good in people? Even the worst places had islands of civility. She knew that very well. There was Scalli with her, protecting her even as she was taking him straight to what might be a swift and painful death. And she herself decided to help Tom in his time of need, even when others might have just abandoned him. Stadil’s money didn’t drive her then, nor did she find any comfort in it now. The very fact that she had those feelings in the first place seemed to prove her point. Bobbi sighed as she saw the wrecked car up ahead pulled out onto the sidewalk, where the river of consumers merely bent around its bulk.
“You’re very quiet,” Scalli said then. “Something the matter?”
Bobbi sighed again. “I’m just thinking,” she said. Her fingers had begun to tap at the glass without her thinking about it, she realized, and she took her hand back with a faint smile. “Sorry if I distracted you.”
“Thinking about the whole thing, or … ?”
She shrugged. “About Tom, actually. I dunno, it’s just … he never seemed to like anyone.”
Scalli wrinkled his nose and turned his face back to the road as traffic began to move again. “Anyone anyone, or what?”
Bobbi laughed a bit at that. “Anyone who lived in the New City, anyway. He used to have a place in the Verge, you know.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah.” She leaned back in her seat, feeling tiny, and turned her eyes forward as well. “Some old apartment building. It burned not long after he disappeared, actually.”
Scalli made a soft sound of disapproval. “Nobody died, did they?”
“Died? No.” She shook her head. “Well, that’s not right – I mean there was this old couple, but that was just because they refused to leave even after it caught fire. Shame, really … he used to take care of that whole place when he was off duty, you know? Ever since he came to the city he’d lived there, and he just took care of things.”
Silence for a bit, punctuated only by the sounds of traffic around them. “I didn’t know that about him,” Scalli said finally. His voice was soft. “I guess all this time, I’ve been thinking he was some crazy guy, you know, to get you involved in all of this.”
“Yeah,” Bobbi said, and she shrugged. “But I put myself in all of this, Scalli. I mean, I was the one who was working for Anton, right? And I’m the one who took on the job leading him down Anton’s trail. So it’s not like I was ever led astray by anyone.” She smiled a bit, and she tucked her knees up against her chest. “I’m perfectly capable of going astray myself.”
Now that got a laugh out of him. Scalli’s laughter was pretty rare, but when it came, it was long and loud, like a wave crashing over her. It always made her feel better when he laughed. “Sure you’re right about that one, baby girl,” he said with a shake of his head, his eyes twinkling in the light of passing signs. “You ain’t never had a problem getting into trouble on your own. I’m sorry, I’m treating you like a kid again. I know you aren’t one. Just … ”
“I know, I know.” She did get it, after all. Men always seemed to do that with little women like her, especially when they were quirky or otherwise classifiable as young. Tom did it, or at least he did it before she blew up at him. Even Stadil did it, albeit in his own entirely weird and inscrutable way. They tended to treat you like a child, or at least a kid sister, even if they desired you. She’d gotten used to it a long time ago. “And it’s okay. But let’s drop it, huh? Got biz to deal with soon.”
Scalli gave a grunt of assent, and the two of them trundled on in silence. Bobbi pushed aside her thoughts of Tom and the city, and she set her mind toward the business soon to be, namely Data Nexus 231. What kind of place was it going to be? Whatever physical security might be around it, Bobbi wasn’t looking forward to the idea of lockin
g horns with a corporate data storage system. Information was the most valuable asset available to corporations, after all, and she knew well from experience that they tended to use dangerous means to defend against intrusions. She could handle a normal corporation’s systems, after all, but what about this one? She couldn’t imagine what kind of crazy shit she was going to find in what amounted to an illegal shadow house of information for the corporation that was responsible for Wonderland – all the horrible tech that came out of there was paid for by their dollar, so of course they’d have access to whatever they wanted, right? A shiver played through her just thinking about it.
There was of course the possibility that Cagliostro was walking them into a trap. She didn’t know who the hell he was, or how he was synthesizing a voice in her head over the network. That technology! It was both primitive and genius to her – it demonstrated that whoever was behind the keyboard on that end was a master of the network that she could never hope to be compared to, never hope to rival. She was good, oh yes, she was good … but this fellow was warping the system in ways that she didn’t even think was physically possible. Why would he need her help? He had said that he was not an AI, but if he wasn’t, why would he be sending her along to this place to find “the truth?” What was going on that was so terrible that he could not simply tell her what he knew? It wasn’t as if she had not already discovered evidence of a conspiracy vast enough to warp modern human history around to its design, at least in part. But then again, if someone had told her that rather than let her get her hands on the files, Bobbi had to concede that she’d probably laugh in their face.
So there she was, still not having heard from Freida – who Cagliostro said was not what she appeared – and planning seriously to lay siege to a corporate property owned by people who apparently employed the ramped-up dead in their clandestine security plans. Or rather, she didn’t hope for a siege; she’d prefer it if Scalli could keep his ogre ass out of the picture. The puzzle was there, and she wanted to solve it, but she didn’t want to set the box on fire before she could do so.
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