by Isaac Hooke
“Fair enough,” Will said. “By the way, I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay awake while I work on you. Catch some Zs, if you feel so inclined.”
On that note, she closed her eyes.
The convoy reached the ruins bordering Rust Town shortly before dawn.
Rhea had slept the whole time, surprisingly enough. Or maybe it wasn’t so surprising—all that fighting, not to mention the damage she’d taken, had exhausted her.
She awoke to discover Will had repaired most of her upper body. One leg was also partially working. She was able to sit up as the convoy approached the settlement, and Will continued to work on her damaged legs afterward.
The ruins were bumpier than the plains beyond, which was probably what had wakened her, considering the number of times she was being jolted in her seat. The wheels were only gimbaled, after all, unlike the super-gimbaled versions the tankers had sported.
A robot sentry watching from the ruins nodded as the vehicles passed.
Between the ruined buildings to the right, she could see the rebuilt Texas barriers; there were even a few rotting Hydra heads still impaled on flagpoles outside those concrete walls.
The convoy turned inward, toward the settlement; ahead, the gap in the Texas barriers that formed the southern entrance awaited.
The robots on duty let them pass without issue. The settlement council had assigned a new sheriff, a man sympathetic to the Wardenites, and he’d advised the sentries to watch for these SUVs. The old sheriff, whose name was Astor, had deserted to Aradne: he had been complicit in the bioweapon attack against the settlement, having recalled all robots and other defenses from the perimeter ahead of the Hydra arrival. Astor deserved jail time, but instead probably lived in a luxury penthouse courtesy of the Aradne city council.
As soon as she had a network signal on her HUD, she glanced at Renaldo.
“Prepare a message for Chuck’s parents,” she told the Wardenite. “Send them our deepest condolences. And… and whatever else you want to say.”
She felt ashamed for not having the courage to visit his parents in person, and even more-so for making someone else decide what to tell them, but she truly didn’t know how to handle it. She had no idea what to say, knowing that the wrong words would only compound their grief. She thought it was better to leave it to someone who had known him better. Then again, Renaldo and Chuck had only really met for the first time after joining her Wardenites.
She shook her head, forcing the guilt away. I don’t have time to deal with it.
She actually did, but she wasn’t going to admit it to herself.
The convoy threaded through the city. The people had gathered along the rebuilt streets to welcome them, and they threw confetti into the air in between shouts of “Warden! Warden!”
“They love you,” Will said.
“For now,” she told him. “But give it a week. Let’s see how much they love me when their latest water supply runs dry.”
They stopped outside a compound surrounded by more Texas barriers. These barriers were topped with laser turrets in places, and two well-armed robots watched the main entrance.
“What’s this?” she asked McGraw.
“Welcome to your new headquarters,” McGraw said. “The Wardenites decided you needed somewhere a little more secure. Considering what happened in the Outlands, I agree.”
Will and Horatio helped her debark, as she still couldn’t walk on her own.
The robots at the entrance let them pass without issue. Well, they did make Will and Horatio, and the other Wardenites accompanying them, submit to scans.
“All newcomers are scanned for chips upon arrival,” Renaldo explained while one of the robots ran a hand over his head. “This is the new policy, according to Miles. He says he’s continuing to scan everyone each morning and night as well.”
“Good,” Rhea said. “But that policy should probably extend to me. We don’t want me to fall under the control of someone else, after all.” She nodded at the robot. “Scan me.”
When it was done, Will and Horatio led her inside, where a sprawling series of cargo containers stretched across the compound. Some were stacked high, others descended deep underground—she knew, because the open trenches the latter resided in were being filled as she watched.
“I’ve been talking to the architects,” Renaldo said, following behind. “They’ve prepared a Faraday cage around your quarters. This one is equipped with a deactivation switch, remotely accessible from within your bedroom only, so you don’t have to go in and out of your room to access the Net anymore.”
“Perfect,” Rhea said as she entered the closest cargo container.
“It’s located three floors underground, by the way,” Renaldo said. “More of a bunker. So you’re less exposed to, say, an unexpected plasma attack from the city walls.”
“I don’t think an attack like that is entirely unexpected at this point,” Rhea said. “Aradne city council doesn’t exactly like me.”
“You think they know you were part of the water heist?” Renaldo pressed.
“No,” Rhea said. “Well, I mean I’m sure they suspect. But they don’t know for sure.”
They approached the hole in the floor that led to her quarters. She could see the rungs in the wall leading down to the next level.
“Hm,” she said. “Let’s set up shop here for now. Those rungs don’t look like something I’d want to attempt until my legs are fully up and running. Besides, I can access the Net here. And catch up on the latest.”
Will and Horatio helped her sit down, then Horatio stood guard while Renaldo went to supervise the Wardenites as they completed construction on the new HQ.
She learned from the live stream summaries that the city wasn’t very happy about her water run. The Aradne city council was threatening to launch a class action suit against the residents of the slums, but the threat was empty, because they knew the people of Rust Town had no real money. It would affect the crime lords of the slums, of course, but that was about it.
Also, Aradne was no closer to bowing to the demands that it share its supply with the settlement. If anything, the fresh supply of water had only further hampered negotiations: Aradne city council was pissed off, and meanwhile their Rust Town counterparts were less inclined to compromise, given the lack of desperation. Then again, even if the mission had failed and people had been dying of dehydration in the streets, Rhea highly doubted that both sides would have come to an agreement already. The Aradne council would want to let them suffer a bit, so that when Rust Town finally returned to the bargaining table, its representatives would agree to anything.
While he worked, Will showed Rhea where to find the digital postings for bounties on the Aradne Sheriff’s Office website. There were no listings matching her description.
“If someone wanted to post a bounty for the ‘Warden,’ they’d want to be circumspect about it,” Rhea said. “I doubt they’d post it to a public site. Let alone the Sheriff’s Office. Doing so would only cause outrage among my fans.”
“Well, at least we know it’s an illegal bounty,” Will said. “That means if we can ever track down this Veil, we can press charges and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law.”
“There will be no charges.” Rhea glanced at her X2-59 and raised her wrist so Will could see the retracted weapon. “This is the only law Veil will ever know.”
Rhea spent the next half hour in that spartan room, and when Will completed the repairs to her legs, she climbed down the rungs to the basement level to investigate her new quarters. Will and Horatio joined her.
There was an empty cargo container at the bottom, next to her bedroom, just like the previous design.
“So, this is the bunker they prepared for you,” Will said. “Cozy, if somewhat lacking in the essentials.”
“She is a cyborg,” Horatio told him. “What she considers ‘essential’ is likely vastly different from what you had in mind.”
“Ke
ep reminding me…” Rhea commented, unable to hide the annoyance from her voice.
She entered the bedroom and closed the door behind her; the network icon faded from her HUD, a sign that the Faraday cage was installed and working.
She surveyed her surroundings. Most of the space was taken up by the bed, a sprawling, luxurious thing with a quilted coverlet and silk blankets. Like before, she also had a nightstand, and clothes closet available.
She immediately added some virtual decorations to make it more homey. The first was an augmented reality painting, which a fan had uploaded to one of the image sharing sites shortly after the defeat of the Hydras. She placed it on the wall next to her bed. It depicted her standing victorious atop a pile of dead bioweapons in the ruins of Rust Town. Electricity ran up and down the X2-59 strapped to her wrist, and the blade was pointed at the golden walls of Aradne as if implying that city was next on the ‘to conquer’ list.
Some might think it vain to display such a portrait in one’s bedroom, but it reminded her of the bravery she was capable of when she reached deep inside herself. If ever she should experience some self-doubt, all she need do was look at that painting and belief in herself would be restored. She almost considered programming her HUD to overlay it onto every wall wherever she went, but there was such a phenomenon as too much of a good thing: over saturating the painting would take it from the realm of the inspiring to the distracting, or even worse, she would stop paying attention to it entirely, and its inspirational effect would be lost.
The second virtual augmentation she applied came in the form of a window. This she placed on the opposite wall. It displayed a portal onto a beach locked in eternal sunset. The golden rays of the sun cast the waves and sand in lovely shades of orange, while red and purple clouds streaked the horizon. She didn’t quite know what drew her to this landscape, but when she randomly saw the video while browsing one day, she’d fallen in love with it, and knew she had to make it part of her home.
“You have that look,” Will said.
“What look?” she asked distractedly.
“The look of someone who’s just added a virtual augmentation to her walls,” Will replied. “You seem… at peace.”
She nodded. “It’s the look of someone who’s come home.”
“When can I see them?” Will asked.
“You ask every time,” Horatio complained.
“Not every time,” Will said. “This is like… the second time I’ve asked.” He returned his attention to Rhea. “So? Set them as public?”
“Not today,” Rhea replied. “Maybe I never will. I have to have some privacy, you know. Some things that are for me alone.”
“Okay,” Will told her. “But when you come down to my quarters and start asking about my virtual decorations, don’t expect me to share.”
“That’s fair,” she said.
With her enhanced hearing, she heard a clanging sound from without, slowly growing in volume: the noises overlapped, as if multiple people were descending the rungs. A glance at her overhead map revealed nothing—the Faraday cage was blocking communications with the outside world.
She searched the nearby network interfaces and found the remote interface Renaldo had told her about, which was accessible only from within the Faraday cage. She connected using her default credentials and disabled the cage. The network signal returned on her HUD, and two dots promptly appeared on her overhead map, labelled “Miles” and “Brinks.”
The clangs became deeper in tone as the boots touched the floor outside, and a moment later a knock came at the door. She accessed the closest external security camera and confirmed it was indeed the two Wardenites who stood outside. She reenabled the Faraday cage and the video connection vanished.
She nodded at Horatio and the robot opened the door.
Miles and Brinks entered. “Warden!” The two were opposites in height, with Miles towering over the diminutive Brinks; so much so that the latter almost seemed like a child in comparison. A thickset child.
Horatio went to them and scanned each of their heads with his palm. “Excuse me, but I hope you don’t mind if I double check…”
“Not at all,” Miles said. The albino turned his head toward Horatio to make the scanning easier for the robot.
After a moment Horatio stepped back, apparently satisfied.
“Shut the door, please,” Rhea told the Wardenites.
Miles closed it behind him.
Rhea looked the pair up and down. “How was the return drive? Any issues?”
“None,” Miles replied. “We triggered zero motion sensors while traveling beneath the pipeline. Or if we did trigger them, the city employees we bribed looked the other way. When we reached Aradne and began skirting the city wall, hackers from Rust Town were able to shut down the video cameras. It was the smoothest operation you could expect. None of the Aradne security forces intercepted us anywhere along the route.”
“I just wish ours had been so smooth,” Will said.
“Renaldo told us about Chuck,” Brinks said, lowering his gaze. “Such terrible news. That could have been any one of us.”
“It hurt,” Rhea agreed.
“Two assassins came after you?” Miles asked.
“That’s right,” she told him.
Miles frowned. “Veil has been busy, it seems.”
“Tell me you have news from DragonHunter,” Rhea said.
Miles nodded. “Actually, we do. He visited us in person this morning. Apparently, yesterday Veil contacted him to perform a Denial of Service attack against a competitor. DragonHunter ran a trace during the call.”
“So he knows where Veil is?” she asked.
“Yes,” Miles answered.
She bit her lower lip impatiently. “So, tell me.”
“He says he’ll only reveal it to the Warden in person,” the albino explained.
“All right, well, can we summon him then?” she said. “Oh wait, let me guess; you’ve held him again. He’s already here.”
“Good guess,” Miles said. “We’ll bring him down.”
The pair vanished.
“This should be interesting,” Will said.
Miles and Brinks returned a few minutes later with DragonHunter. Rhea deactivated her sense of smell when the smallest whiff of him reached her.
With his cloak full of holes, and his long beard covered in dirt, the lanky hacker looked as disheveled as ever. And extremely paranoid: his eyes darted to the left and right, as if DragonHunter was expecting some assailant to jump out at him at any time.
Horatio scanned him outside the room, then they let him in. As in their last meeting, to allay his fears she closed the door to activate the Faraday cage, shut down the internal security camera, and instructed everyone to disable recording on their local AR devices.
When that was done, she gazed into the AR goggles that covered his eyes, and said, pointedly: “You know where Veil is?”
DragonHunter smiled proudly. “I do, Warden. Or at least, where he was, when he contacted me yesterday.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“You must understand, Veil’s cybersecurity staff obfuscated the data well,” DragonHunter said. “But it didn’t matter, because you see, I had poisoned the DNS servers of most of the local service providers in Aradne via a zero-day exploit, so that all hostnames resolved to IP addresses of my choice. I mostly routed traffic to the expected IP addresses, except known obfuscation servers, which I sent directly to me. Before I forwarded these latter packets on to the real obfuscation servers, I logged the data, along with the originating IPs. Now, a lot of people use obfuscation servers, so you won’t believe how many packets that actually is… I’m not looking forward to my bandwidth bill next month. In any case, there was so much of it that I had to write a custom AI-driven filtering routine, comparing the final data I received to the data logged by my server, to sort out the packets I wanted.”
“Great,” Rhea said. “I can appreciate that it was a lot of
work. But please, where did Veil connect from?”
“The IP matches up to a wireless access point in the parliament area,” DragonHunter said. “Specifically, the lower floors of city hall.”
“Can you send me the location on the map?” she said.
“Well, I suppose,” DragonHunter said. “But only because you’re the Warden.”
She received a share request and bounced it off Horatio.
Check this for viruses, please, she sent the robot over a private mental channel. Last thing she needed was some hacker messing with her remote interface.
Happy to be the guinea pig, Horatio replied. A moment later: Seems safe. Transmitting the coordinates your way.
She received them, and forwarded the data on to Will, Miles and Brinks.
She applied the coordinates to her overhead map, which recentered on the Aradne parliament compound. Most of the map regions in that area contained only outlines of the building exteriors, since the blueprints weren’t available to the public. And while the interior of the city hall was partially mapped, the area where the flashing icon appeared was completely blank. Because of the position, she knew it was in some sort of basement.
“What’s the range of this access point?” she asked.
“To use it, Veil, or his agent, would have to have been within two hundred meters,” DragonHunter said.
Rhea tapped her chin. “If I get close enough to whoever contacted you, will you be able to identify them?”
“I’d have to hack the access point first,” DragonHunter said. “And find out the unique ID of whoever was using it at the time Veil called me. But yes.”
She tapped her lips. “Wouldn’t you also be able to run a reverse lookup on that ID against the public profile database?”
“Yes,” DragonHunter replied. “Assuming Veil, or his agent, actually has a public profile.”
“Probably not, huh?” she said. “But we have to try. How long would it take to hack the access point, so we could get that unique ID?”
“I’ll need physical access, unfortunately,” DragonHunter explained.
Rhea nodded. “Could you prepare a dongle of some kind, so someone else could deliver your hacking payload?”
