by Sean Platt
“What the fuck is that thing, Nicolai?” Kate said, her voice shaky.
Nicolai knew. It was a piece of his father’s technology that he’d last seen during the Fall, when he’d loosed his old home’s security system against the Rake Squad. An oldie but a goodie — antiquated, but plenty effective. And this time, he hadn’t even needed to summon it.
Although based on what the girl had said, Nicolai sort of suspected he had.
The old man, however, didn’t seem to know what the spiky ball was.
Then he found out.
Chapter Thirteen
“Leo.”
Leo blinked. He could feel his heart becoming sluggish. He could feel the blood leaking from his wound. There had just been the one hard strike, and to Leo it had felt like running into a countertop, back home, that he hadn’t noticed until it was too late. He remembered seeing the thing that had killed him, but he didn’t know why it had come at him, or how he was here.
He’d been with Leah and Dominic. He’d headed off with the Organas. Then he’d felt an overwhelmingly powerful notion about how to circumvent the police roadblocks. At the time, it had seemed like an excellent idea. There may have been fighting. And now he was about to die because he’d made a mistake, or someone had made one for him.
Leo rolled his head. It was all he could do. His skull felt like it must have a knife inside it. But seeing the girl above with her blonde hair hanging between her face and his, like a tunnel of light connecting them, made Leo feel a little better. The girl was familiar even though he’d never seen her before. And then he seemed to remember, even though the answer that came to his lips wasn’t quite right for a dozen reasons — the wrongness of her appearance being only the most obvious among them.
“SerenityBlue?” he said.
She shook her head, but the small smile didn’t leave her face. “My name is Violet James.”
Leo tried raising a hand to touch her. There was no question in his mind; she was SerenityBlue. She didn’t look like Serenity (which, to Leo’s eyes, meant like Leah, too), but this was her, all right.
But Leo couldn’t touch the girl. His hand went right through her face.
“You’re not here.”
“Maybe you’re not here,” she said.
“Am I dying?”
“I think so, yes.”
Leo didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t expected such a blunt reply. He was 121 years old. That was enough life, wasn’t it?
“Why are you here? How are you here?”
“I thought I wasn’t here?” Again, there was that tiny smile.
Leo sighed. He could feel his thoughts fogging. There seemed to be someone standing above him, beyond the girl, vigilant, watching but not speaking. Someone elsewhere in this place was shouting. Several sets of feet were rushing around whichever room he was about to die in. It was all so unimportant right now.
“I did something. Something bad.” Leo closed his eyes and sighed, feeling an enormous weight on his chest. He wondered if this was it. But his eyes opened again, and Serenity/Violet was still above him, her hair still around him in a halo.
“How you begin is unimportant,” she said. “It’s how you end that matters.”
Leo groaned. The weight on his chest felt heavier. Was it death? Or guilt?
“It was worthwhile,” the girl said, as if seeing his thoughts.
“What was?”
“The time you spent. You made a difference. After it all, you made a difference.”
Leo tried to nod. His neck no longer seemed to work. Something was wrong in the corner of his eyes. He could feel wetness, like reluctant tears.
“Look out for her,” Leo said.
“We all take care of each other.”
Leo wanted to say more, but the room was growing gray. He felt himself sliding away. Away from this world, and into another.
“Goodbye, Leo,” the girl said. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”
Leo tried to reply. But he was sliding faster, falling deeper. And then he was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
Kai’s attention snapped away from the dead man and holographic girl and toward Nicolai’s mysterious reporter, Sam. Nicolai had described Sam Dial as scattered, distracted, almost comical. But despite his clear panic, Sam struck Kai as together and clear-headed. Since he’d come in, his focus had been on one thing: the hotspot Nicolai had set up to move the York shell from himself to Braemon’s canvas. He’d seemed almost relieved when Nicolai had been shot — as if it was regrettable but would at least halt the file transfer in progress. Now that Nicolai had somehow survived, Sam seemed more focused than ever.
He made it to the desk, skipping past the felled assassin who’d seemed to think Nicolai was York. He picked up the hotspot brick. Sam even made it as far as inspecting the thing for a manual switch or cords to pull, but whatever he was trying to stop, he didn’t seem to have made it in time.
“Shit! It’s finished.” He looked at Nicolai. “Can you recall it?”
“Recall it?” Nicolai already looked bizarre with his clothed back and blood-smeared bare chest. His new expression made it worse. “What do you mean, recall it?”
“I don’t know! It’s your fucking file, and it’s a goddamned person! How am I supposed to have any idea how this works?”
“Just delete it if there’s a problem. Hell, Sam.”
Sam wasn’t assuaged; Kai watched as he slapped at the screen. He seemed inspired for all of three seconds then swore.
“I can’t talk to the canvas.”
“Sure you can.” Nicolai projected his voice. “Canvas!”
The canvas chirped in response.
“Not like that. I have a Fi implant. A really good one — or at least, it was top of the line six years ago. But there’s security here like — ”
Kai came to Sam’s side. “It’s a Beau Monde system. Of course there’s security. What’s the problem?”
“The shell. It was something pretending to be your Stephen York guy, wasn’t it? That’s why that old man wanted to kill you — because he thought you were York?”
“Maybe, but what does that have to do with — ”
Sam slapped the screen as if it were the canvas itself rather than simply a monitor. “Fuck!”
“What?” Kai asked.
“This is seriously malicious code. With some seriously high-access permissions, too.” He scrolled. “Holy shit. The canvas is unlocking. All of it.”
Kate stepped forward. “That’s good! That’s what we want!”
Sam looked up at her, his lips pressed together, his expression mature and serious. “It’s not good. It’s open season. You don’t understand. I know a lot of people in the hacker community. They set AI monitors on secure junctions and wait for things like this to happen. Whatever you just uploaded, it’s more than just some person’s spoofed identity.”
Kai thought of York as they’d seen him in the simulation, in Ryu’s parlor. He’d said, the boson I carry. The lost piece of Project Mindbender.
“We knew that,” Kai said. “It’s a Trojan horse.”
Sam exhaled through his mouth, shaking his head. “It’s a key in a lock. Based on some things I’ve been told, I seriously doubt it’s even the person, York, that you were told it is. Someone used you to get this in here — and they didn’t do it to help you out.” He shook his head again. “West. It’s calling out.”
“Out where?” Kate came around the desk. “To the hackers?” Her lips pursed. “Can this get us into the Beau Monde? You see anything on there about Beau Monde?”
“It’s calling out to Xenia,” Kai said, pointing. “Look. Incoming from something at Xenia Labs.” Below the stream were two tags that under normal circumstances Kai felt quite sure were for Braemon’s eyes only: Mindbender and Respero.
“That was a while ago, by the timestamp,” said Sam. “And the Xenia stream was incoming, not outgoing. Here’s the call out. In fact…wait, what’s this?”
N
icolai: “I don’t know. Can you trace the call?”
“This isn’t my system.”
Kate looked at Sam. “Thought you were a hacker, Skippy?”
Sam sat, his urgency turned to something like resigned fascination. Spellbound by an unfolding tragedy’s hideous details.
“I was wrong. The canvas isn’t actually unlocking at all. Not to the outside, anyway. What your uploaded software is doing is very selective. See this? And this?”
Kai squinted. She saw nothing.
“See the identifier on the call out?” Sam blinked. “Quark. It’s calling Quark PD.”
“The canvas is calling the cops? Is this part of the security system?” Nicolai’s eyes went toward the dead man, beside whom the strange, apparently holographic girl was still sitting. Probably looking for the floating morning star from earlier, wherever it had gone before breaking the old man’s skull.
Sam shook his head. “This isn’t security. It’s being done by the virus. Here. It’s formed a tunnel. Looks like a connection Braemon is authorized to have. It’s baked in, keyed to…I’d guess this is his ID?” He pointed. “Look. That’s the tag. The tag that…” His hand went to his pocket, and he pulled out a handheld. Almost absently, he said, “I need to call someone.”
Kate reached over and began tapping the screen, probably looking for a way to finish their mission and give herself Beau Monde status. “If it’s calling the cops, we should hit the road.”
“It’s more than that,” Sam said, setting the handheld on the desk. “What’s it doing over here? West, this is deep, deep shit. This looks highly encrypted. Superencrypted with a rotating cleartext cypher. Seems like your Mr. York can unlock anything, including all of Craig Braemon’s private goodies. And talk to Quark as if it were Braemon. Where did you get that shell, anyway?”
Kai stammered and looked at Nicolai, unsure if she wanted to let this new young man in on the details about what Nicolai had just loosed on the system, including whether they should have trusted the old woman who’d led them to it.
But Kai didn’t need to respond because Sam was again pointing at the screen. “Look. Braemon has a backdoor connection to something at Quark PD that…” He squinted. “Hell, I doubt Quark PD even knows it’s there. Says ‘Sector 7.’”
Beside Kai, Kate stiffened. Kai glanced up at the blonde but said nothing, filing the information for later.
The screen continued to scroll and flash.
“We shouldn’t be seeing this. Any of it. Does anyone know where Braemon went?”
“Probably ran off?”
“Someone watch the door. Craig Braemon doesn’t…well, he doesn’t take well to prying.”
Kate moved to the doorway and peeked out, saying nothing.
Sam tapped the screen then zoomed in on a tree cluster that made little sense to Kai. But then again, she’d never trespassed inside Quark’s inner circle.
“I can’t even stop it,” Sam said. “This is all hardcoded, and I’m locked out.”
“York can’t let you in?” Nicolai asked. “That same shell got party invites for Kate and her buddies, and got us into that canvas — ”
“York is what’s locked us out. It’s pulling data from all over and has put its hand inside Braemon’s credentials to use him like a puppet. And now it’s after something.” He shook his head. “Seriously, Nicolai. Who gave you this software?”
Kai looked at Nicolai with a question in her eyes: Tell him or not? So Nicolai did.
“It came from Rachel Ryan.”
“Micah and Isaac Ryan’s mother? Where is she now?”
“Dead,” Kai said.
“I don’t understand,” said Nicolai, watching Sam’s profile. “You came in here as if you knew exactly what was going on. So what’s this thing doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were screaming to stop the upload. You were shouting it!”
“I don’t know what it’s doing.”
“Then why did you want to stop it?”
“I don’t know!” Sam blurted. “I don’t know, okay? I spent the day thinking I’d die in a hallucination, and the only thing I knew through it all was that this was wrong, that this was something I had to stop! But nobody fucking bothered to inform me or give me all the details! All I know is that someone is playing us all, and we just keep doing…exactly…what…they…want!”
Sam was staring at Nicolai, whose eyes were hard behind his false lenses. Kai saw someone at the end of his wits, barely controlled, as if he’d been through too much in too short a time. Kai, who’d seen plenty now and in the past, could relate.
Kai tried to focus on the screen. She could see the tags Sam had mentioned, and where it said Sector 7. Then she saw something else the York virus seemed to be working hard to open, possibly deep inside Quark PD’s servers across the pirate connection York’s shell had established: a file labeled Creeper 051563.
Obeying a strange sense of intuition, Kai raised her head to look at the holographic girl. She was placidly watching the cluster of people around Braemon’s monitor. A holographic girl, Kai thought, who must have come from the canvas — resurrected from Respero, if this was indeed the famous Violet James. A girl who might have actually been the data transfer Sam had noted, hacked, and then streamed over from Xenia labs.
A girl, Kai thought, who might be part of this.
“What’s the virus doing?” Kai asked.
“Fetching what Mrs. Ryan wanted,” the girl answered.
Chapter Fifteen
Dominic had slumped to the Quark PD hallway floor, his back to the wall, when he finally heard Noah’s voice again after their long mutual silence.
The disembodied voice simply said, “Thank you.”
Dominic looked up. After as long as he’d been trapped in the hallway, he was equally resigned and annoyed at every other cop in the city. Why had nobody realized he was in here? The hallway was in use all day long. Had foot traffic between Quark PD and DZPD been rerouted through manual detectors? Had Quark closed shop, letting DZPD spread out to handle the city? Who was running the damned Braemon fundraiser? Didn’t it seem odd to anyone that the commissioner né captain had simply vanished? Grabel should be calling him every five minutes. Without Dominic’s oversight, how were those fancy-pants diners getting their drinks refilled and their shrimp kept safely on ice?
It was beginning to feel like he might need to live here forever. Noah could have food sent in. He’d even entertained the idea that this wasn’t just a mistake — the product of a Beam glitch on the eve of Shift. Maybe this was the hallway’s plan to force Dominic to lose weight. It had been bugging him for ages, so maybe it had finally decided on tough love.
“Thanks for what?” Dominic asked.
“Sector 7 authentication required.”
“Okay,” Dominic said. “Granted.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Why the fuck not? Sure.”
But the hallway wasn’t talking to Dominic. It acted like it was obeying someone else’s commands but didn’t realize it was having a digital embolism. Stupid fucking glitchy thing. Dominic, thinking anti-technological thoughts, felt like Grandy. But right now the idea didn’t make him feel old and crotchety; it felt justified. Grandy used to bitch about over-automation, and Dominic had been bitching about idiot AI for years. He didn’t like Quark PD, Quark policies, or this stupid fucking Quark hallway that Quark hadn’t even asked the real cops if they could build. Quark had just sauntered in, swinging its big electronic dick, and added a wing to the station.
Well, this time Dominic would be the one laughing. Everyone went on and on about how The Beam had a zillion failsafes and redundancies; The Beam could be trusted; The Beam’s shit didn’t stink. Why not tie everything into the damned network? Why not let it watch everything everywhere, and hold all the cards? Why not abdicate every shred of human responsibility? Why not just have The Beam wipe everyone’s asses?
This is what you got when
you let machines control everything. One glitch, and the whole goddamned thing fell to gibbering rubbish.
“Hello, Dominic,” Noah’s voice said.
Outstanding. Now it was talking like it had just rebooted. Acting like Dominic hadn’t been trapped in here for hours.
“Hello, shitbox.”
“Your environment is being conditioned. Is there anything I can do to make you comfortable?”
“Bring me a pizza.”
“Dinner has concluded. Would you like any particular music or any special projections?”
Dinner has concluded? That didn’t make sense, especially considering his pizza request had been ignored. Dominic wanted to kick the walls like Grandy used to slap his television.
“How about you let me out?”
“The process will take a few minutes. Some people like to watch projections as it proceeds.”
“What process?”
“Please. Either sit down, or lie on the cot.”
“Cot? What the shit is wrong with you?”
“Please try to be calm during your transition. This is a pleasant time of graduation.”
Dominic had been about to yell at Noah, but that last one stopped him. His mouth, which had opened, slowly closed.
“Wait,” he said.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to hear music?”
“What kind of ‘graduation’ are you talking about, Noah?”
“Your family and friends are proud of you. You are loved.”
“Noah, let me out of here.” This time, Dominic pounded the wall. Then he pounded the door. “Open up.”
“Please relax,” the soft voice said.
“This is Capt. Dominic Long of the District Zero Police Department. Override…” He stumbled. He knew this process, but he’d never had to use it — and as it turned out, keeping a clear mind and steady voice while his heart slammed in his throat wasn’t easy. “Override code…override authentication 417 dash beta.” He took a breath. “Open both ends of the transdepartmental corridor.”
