Empire Games Series, Book 1

by Charles Stross

  Gomez took over after a brief delay: “This is where it gets sticky. Please hand over your phone.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I say so!” Gomez snapped. For a moment Rita saw something unnerving and hateful in the other woman’s eyes, something that gave her unpleasant schoolyard flashbacks. She fumbled to comply.

  “We’re going to reflash the firmware,” Jack explained. “You won’t notice anything different, but if you dial 911, we’ll hear you. If you’re calling for fire or ambulance there won’t be any delay. But if you need, uh, help, we’ll be in the loop along with the local police. Again, if it’s routine, we’ll stand back. But if you need us, our department, we’ll be there.”

  Rita released her phone with nerveless fingers. They’re going to root it, she realized. No federal override icon: they were turning her phone into a full-time informer. Was there anything incriminating in there? Questionable photos? Sexts? Oddly phrased e-mails or text messages? It probably didn’t matter: they could already grab anything they wanted off the net without her permission. The old-time secret police relied on informers; the modern ones just conscripted your phone. She felt sick to her stomach. “Why are you doing this?” she asked again.

  Gomez gave her a tight-lipped stare. “You’re not cleared. So we can’t tell you,” she explained. “It might be a false alarm. So, there might be no reason at all why we’re having this meeting. Or it might be the most important meeting in your life, the one that saves you.”

  “What?” Rita’s head spun. “You think—your bosses think—my genetic relatives might suddenly take an interest in me after a quarter of a century of neglect? Why is that?”

  “They’re world-walkers,” Jack said as dismissively as he might have written off any other group of terrorists. “Who knows why world-walkers do what they do?”

  “But I’m not a world-walker!” Rita quavered. She watched as Gomez pulled the back off her phone, plugged some kind of chip into it, and Vulcan nerve-pinched it into a reboot chime. The half-eaten burrito lay on the table in front of her, cooling. She didn’t feel hungry anymore. She felt nauseous, bloated by a decades-long festering sense of emptiness and injustice. “I’m not a world-walker.”

  Jack shrugged again, an I-feel-as-uncomfortable-as-you-do gesture that fell flat. “We’re not saying you are.”

  “But your relatives might disagree,” cautioned Gomez. “So remember: 911 is your friend.”

  * * *

  The not-exactly-cops invited Rita to stay the night. They positively insisted—with a formal politeness that said don’t even think about refusing. They thoroughly creeped her out with their solemn last-meal formality, the inadvertent intimidation of power. She was getting a no-caffeine headache by the time Gomez finished with her phone. They made her bag up her burrito and escorted her back to her room, or cell, or whatever the hell you called it: the motel-grade accommodation with the handle on the outside and no window.

  I’m not a world-walker, she repeated to herself as she lay sleeplessly on the narrow bed. I don’t come from another world, I can’t wish myself between universes, and they’re not my family. But sleep came reluctantly, and she was troubled by incoherent dreams tainted by a nameless sense of urgency.

  She woke early the next morning. Gomez knocked on the door at six thirty. Her black suit was spotless, as severe as a uniform. Her only sign of individuality was a brooch in the shape of an infinity symbol worn on the lapel. Rita was already showered and dressed. “Your ticket is on your phone,” said the cop. “Jack will run you out to the airport. You’re booked via Minneapolis on Delta.” She looked as if she hadn’t slept—didn’t need sleep, like she was some kind of government terminator robot running on bile, paranoia, and electricity.

  “Uh, right. Let me just zip up my bag.”

  “Take your time.” Gomez’s tone inverted the meaning of her words.

  The agent stood at parade rest, waiting patiently by the door while Rita slung the last of her things into the suitcase. As Rita straightened up, she asked, “Who are you people? Really?”

  “If you call the DHS and ask, they’ll tell you we work for them.”

  “But—” Rita caught Gomez’s quelling look. “If you say so.”

  Gomez relented slightly. “There are lots of operational directorates within DHS. We’re part of a unit that not many people have heard of. You don’t need to know more than that.”

  You have to be most afraid of secret police when they take you into their confidence and tell you things, she remembered Grandpa Kurt explaining: it means they want you to believe. But why would they even need that? They had the guns, the dogs, and the secret jails. If they wanted you to do something, they could force you to do it. So they only try to make you believe something if they want you to convince someone else whom they can’t touch. Your future self, or some future acquaintance. They do it and they make a liar of you.

  Rita smiled vaguely and nodded. Her forehead throbbed. “Great. I’m ready to go now. Wherever you want me to go?”

  Jack drove her out to the airport: “We dropped your rental car off last night. And I processed your ticket myself: you’re good for a checked bag, and you’ve got an hour until boarding.”

  “But I—” Rita stared at the e-ticket on her phone. “Hey, this is first class!” A stab of gratitude gave way instantly to suspicion. They’re trying to make me grateful. Why?

  “Least we could do,” Jack said. “Have a good flight now.” He seemed less inhuman and unbending, less inclined to hate her on sight, than Gomez. She found herself instinctively mistrusting him, resenting him for stimulating her pathetic sense of gratitude. Good cop / bad cop, she reminded herself. At least Gomez was honest.

  Jack dropped Rita beside the baggage drop-off outside the terminal building. Dazed, she handed her suitcase over, then shifted her handbag up her shoulder and walked into the check-in area. Her head was spinning. I need to talk to someone, she realized. She instinctively reached for her phone, then stopped. Wait. More of Gramps’s stories came back to her. Not here, not on my phone.

  Security was the usual heaving human zoo, with people being called out for random DNA checks on either side of her and explosive sniffers buzzing around overhead. Miraculously, Rita didn’t attract any unusual attention, despite the itching implants that had triggered the body scanners on the way out. She paid no attention to the cameras that tracked her across the concourse, the Segway-riding robocops, the whole panoply of national security displayed around her. With increasing confidence she walked toward her departure gate, knees weakening with relief at the realization that in another ten hours she’d be home.

  The day passed in a blur of airplane seats and security checkpoints. There was incoming e-mail on her traitor phone: she didn’t dare reply to any of it. There was a Call me when you get in from Clive-the-bastard, the boss who’d sell her out as soon as look at her. An Are you okay? from her roomie Alice, to her surprise. A note about furnace repairs from her landlord. Nothing from her most recent ex. Irrelevant yatter and babble on the social side, pleas for support from her theatrical group’s manager, marketing junk from bands she’d followed years ago. Normally the knowledge that the feds could snoop on all network traffic didn’t bother her: but having seen her phone rooted right in front of her, she felt frozen, gagged by the knowledge of an intrusive presence. And all because they thought she might be carrying the virus of the paranormal around in her genes.

  They think I’ve got world-walker connections? A hysterical laugh tried to bubble up. She took hasty shallow breaths to drive it back down again before someone noticed. World-walkers were shadowy nightmare figures, twenty-first-century reds under the bed. Terrorists who could flicker in and out of reality from other worlds where history had taken a different path, bearing stolen nukes or suitcases full of heroin. The ultimate enemy, the last president but two had declared them. She just about remembered her parents and grandparents gathered around the TV, red-eyed, trying to follow the ne
ws on their PCs as well. They killed the president in 2003, back before the government had built working para-time machines to go after them. Not to mention strip-mining fossil fuels from the neighboring uninhabited parallels. Back before they canceled the War on Drugs and replaced it with the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

  Before the gig with HaptoTech, Rita had been too busy working to notice how her social life was shrinking and her days were sharpening to a bright workplace focus surrounded by a penumbra of exhaustion. But now, sitting on a plane with nothing else to do, all she could think about was how much of a mess her life was. She didn’t have a job anymore, let alone a career. The outside world had decided to take an unfriendly interest in her, and she felt isolated and fragile, her existence liminal. So—the DHS having bought her a first-class ticket—she drank all the wine the cabin crew would bring her, and did her best to lose herself in the stack of tired romcoms that passed for in-flight entertainment.

  At least the old and shabby planes had seatback video: she didn’t know what she’d have done on a modern airliner, with nothing but a power outlet for her phone. She couldn’t have forced herself to watch movies on it knowing its front-facing camera might be watching her right back, analyzing her face for micro-expressions indicative of terrorist sympathies.

  Rita passed through the Minneapolis–Saint Paul airport like a ghost and made it to her connecting flight with time to spare. It was late evening by the time she spotted her suitcase on the baggage belt at Logan, dragged it off the line with a grunt of effort, and trundled it out to the exit and thence to the Silver Line, then the Red Line all the way south.

  By the time she arrived at the parking lot where she’d warehoused her auto for the past week, she was exhausted. Cumulative sleep deprivation was catching up with her as she fumbled for the key fob. Her car was a ’14 Acura hybrid her father had given her after running it for years, its battery pack halfway dead of old age and beyond her means to replace with a refurb. Hybrids were a dead-end technology anyway, killed when gas dropped below a dollar a gallon: but she loved it for its quiet start and creature comforts. Dragging her suitcase behind her, she hit the unlock button, saw the flash of her headlights reflecting off a concrete pillar, and hit the tailgate latch button.

  As she did so she saw a bright blue flash—and felt a sudden breathtaking pain in her belly that doubled her over, retching. She collapsed to the parking lot floor. The pain was savage, as if she’d been clubbed, with additional cramps in her right knee and shoulder. A moment of panic. Footsteps coming toward her, then another stunning burst of pain in her stomach.

  “Is she down?” someone asked.

  Another voice, from a shadow bending over her: “Yup.” Hands grabbed her and lifted: two strong men frog-marched her to her car as she retched. They pushed her headfirst into the open, emptied-out trunk and she began to struggle, terrified. Kidnappers! There were two of them, both bigger and stronger than she was, and the pain from the taser was dizzying. Resistance was difficult: it was all she could do to get breath into her lungs.

  A click. Darkness and pressure. She gasped for air, tried to stretch, and found herself up against the ends of the trunk. It was cold and none too clean, and still smelled faintly of dog. Something dug into her midriff. She brought up her left hand, felt a wire and something sharp sticking into her. She pulled it free, shuddering and hyperventilating in fear.

  The car bounced on its suspension twice, then the doors thudded shut. Rita felt the pressure change in her ears. Her abductors seemed to be having a muffled, distant conversation, but she couldn’t make out any distinct words. She tried to roll on her back, banged her sore knee against the trunk lid with a flash of pain, and tried to remember which side the emergency tailgate release toggle was on. It was pitch black inside the trunk. Where was her handbag? They’d taken it: it contained her phone, her purse, and her ID card. Whimpering with fear, she twisted around, trying to untangle herself. The car shuddered and rocked, then began to move backward.

  This is what Gomez and Jack were talking about, she realized, dizzy with pain. The implants in her left arm stung at the unaccustomed pressure of lying on metal. Shit. The car jolted, then stopped backing up and began to move forward, turning toward the parking lot exit. How did the DHS know? Words came back to her: They don’t tell us everything: we might unintentionally give something away when we talk.

  She fumbled around the interior of the trunk. She could feel the hole in the side of the trunk lid where the emergency release handle normally hung down: they’d cut it away while she was on the ground. Her eyes watered with frustration as the car angled down the exit ramp, then slowed, bounced over a speed bump, and came to a halt. Noises from outside were muffled, but she heard the whine of a barrier rising. The car began to move again, then turned into the street and accelerated, rolling her toward the rear of the trunk.

  “Don’t panic,” she muttered aloud, scared out of her wits. Whoever her kidnappers were, they wanted her alive. If I had my phone I could call the cops, she thought. Then, No, wait. The DHS or whoever they are want me to call them. But they’re not my friends. This is a setup. I’m bait. They’re probably tracking my phone. If her kidnappers were world-walkers, then the feds would be much more interested in catching them than in rescuing her. But if her kidnappers were world-walkers, they’d probably ditched her phone before they left the parking lot.

  Icy sweat drenched her, gumming her shirt to the small of her back. What am I supposed to do in this kind of situation? She’d once earned a Girl Scout merit badge for a course that covered surviving kidnapping attempts and hostage taking, among other unusual topics. Observe, orient, act. Her thoughts spun. What if it’s a different kind of setup? World-walkers could just grab me, couldn’t they? I’d wake up in another world. But why would they take my car? What if they’re ordinary carjackers? (But who? And why me?) Got to get out and run away.

  She had to change the parameters on them. Just like they taught in the (How Not to) Die Hard adventure course she’d taken all those years ago.

  They’d moved all her normal crap out of the trunk to make room for an unwilling passenger, but did they know about her emergency kit? Gramps had insisted she stash it in the spare wheel well, under the carpet. Inchworming her way back into the trunk, she freed up enough space to grab the plastic handle in the floor. Predictably, she was lying across the hinge. By raising herself on her shoulder and bracing her feet against the opposite side of the trunk, she managed to lift herself off the panel. It rose, and she fumbled inside. Her fingers barked painfully on metal: the case of a socket set. Seconds passed as she frantically felt around it for the catch, popped it, and groped inside for the milled metal handle of the wheel nut wrench.

  Fumbling around in the dark, knife-edged recesses of the swaying car, Rita wedged the end of the wrench between the trunk lid’s catch and the back of the trunk itself, then yanked at the handle as hard as she could, bracing her feet. Metal gave, very slightly: but the lock was made of stern stuff, built to withstand casual thieves. Swearing quietly, she closed her eyes and thought for a moment. What else?

  There were other items in the emergency kit, and she thanked Gramps silently for making her add it. Fumbling seconds passed as she navigated the contents of the small padded bag by touch. Finally her fingers closed around her target: the dumb emergency phone. It didn’t do Internet or record video, but it had a standby life measured in months, a built-in flashlight, and GPS. She fired it up and waited for it to get a location fix through the aluminum trunk lid, and saw that open countryside was still a few miles away.

  She flipped on the flashlight and shone it around the interior of the trunk. There was a compartment in the carpet-covered side, near her head, and big flat-headed screws held it closed. She vaguely remembered it holding electrical stuff: fuses, maybe. A minute’s fumbling and she retrieved a flat-head screwdriver from the emergency kit. Behind the panel, the light from her phone shone on fuses and a couple of switches. The labels were ha
rd to read in the dim light, but she puzzled them out eventually. BATTERY ISOLATION BREAKER.

  The plan came together in a moment. Here goes nothing, she thought, and pulled up the phone’s GPS again. It finally had a fix. The car was heading out of town, making almost thirty miles per hour. But she could see the blue line of a freeway up ahead on the screen, maybe a mile or two down the road. I can’t let them get there, she thought, and shook the phone to call up the keypad. Thumbs on a fat screen dialed 911.

  “Help,” she said as soon as she heard a human voice pick up: “I’m being kidnapped. Two perps tased me and shoved me in the trunk of my own car. It’s a silver ’14 Acura hybrid, plates read, uh,” and she rattled off her number. “They’re driving me south through Dorchester toward Route 1.”

  “Please hold,” the dispatcher crackled in her ear.

  “Can’t,” she said quietly. “I’m bailing.” She hung up, shoved the phone into her jeans pocket—it would have to take its chances—and reached for the battery isolation breaker by touch.

  The car, her car, coughed and died. She brought her legs up as the car began to slow, then took the knurled grip of the socket wrench in both hands and waited.

  BALTIMORE, DECEMBER 2019

  FEDERAL EMPLOYEE 004910023 CLASSIFIED VOICE TRANSCRIPT

  COL. SMITH: I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, but what if she doesn’t respond the way you expect?

  AGENT GOMEZ: What? What do you mean?

  COL. SMITH: You’re playing her like she’s a nice polite young Indian-American woman, deferential to authority, painfully clean and law-abiding. But what if—

  AGENT GOMEZ: I’m not wrong—

  COL. SMITH:—she takes after her mother?

  AGENT O’NEILL: What?