Marking it in her mind, she returned her attention to seeking out Anansi’s TAP. At last, there came the slightest mental tug. A sense of direction, a pull toward a singular spot on the grid. She could feel inactive GENIE nodes that still somehow seemed like they had his digital signature scrawled on them. The hell? Gyro veered that way, excitement rising. Her mind crackled with potential. Other times she had hardlined the network, the Deep had been crowded with other minds and heavily partitioned, blocked off every which way by firewalls and filters. Now, she spiraled through it freely with no limits, other than those imposed by the old Net’s architecture. It was intoxicating.
Settling on the node that had caught her attention, it took her an instant to confirm the person’s identity. Anansi. She had him! Gyro expanded her virtual sense around the man’s TAP connection, gaining an understanding of where he was and how they could track him down in meatspace. The node flared in response. How is this even possible? The solar flare was disrupting all of the wireless GENIE nodes. Except a few right around Anansi. She traced his back trail. GENIE nodes were flaring to life around him, then dying in bursts of static as he moved away from them. So … yeah. She was 99 percent sure that he was watching her watch him. But actually stepping across and bridging the two types of network so they could talk wasn’t possible.
So on to the next. Keeping that node locked, she turned to seek out the last depository of the Prophet’s code. Bob couldn’t hide from her. She just needed a few moments—
An unseen force gripped Gyro and drew her up out of the feeds. She dangled above an ocean of data like a fish … no … like a worm on a hook, squirming and helpless.
A pale face formed before her, black-and-gold eyes popping into being to fix on her with inhuman malice. A voice the size of the world reverberated through her skull.
YOU. I SEE YOU, INSECT. GIVE ME WHAT IS MINE.
Gyro screamed as the entity tore into her thoughts, trying to flay them, laying bare everything she knew. It reached for the Prophet’s shard within her TAP with fingers of fire, preparing to sear it out of her system.
A data stream the size of a tsunami erupted in response to the entity’s touch. The hook in Gyro’s mind dissolved and the whole network fizzled away. Awareness returned in fits and starts. She lay on the cold floor of Billy’s hideout. When she’d fallen, her jack wire lay limp, curled over her neck and shoulder. The tablet was completely fried. Well, at least it had done exactly what she intended it to. So … good plan, right? She tried to convince herself that was the case.
With a start, she realized Billy and Nova stood above her, the hacker holding hands up to ward off the other woman.
“Damn kid just burned our position! Anyone looking for you or me will be rocketing straight this way. We need to punch out ASAP and cover our tracks.”
“Wait.” Gyro coughed and pushed up on an elbow. She tugged the wire out of her skull socket.
Nova dropped to her knees and cupped Gyro’s face in her hands, worry and fear warring across her features. “Of all the stupid things to do, Gyro!”
Billy, on the other hand, scowled hard enough his face looked like grooved plaster.
“Kid, ever think about asking permission before playing with someone else’s toys? Thanks to you, I have to scuttle this whole joint. This place could’ve kept me secure for another decade.”
Gyro pulled free from Nova’s grasp. “I know where Anansi is.”
“What? Where?” Billy looked surprised.
“That’s what you were doing in there? You risked frying your own brain for that?” Nova sounded a bit miffed, so Gyro dodged her gaze to look at Billy.
“Well … a CHIMERA strike squad took him in yesterday, but he’s still alive and he escaped. He’s like a couple miles over, waiting for us to get out of here. There’s a problem though. CHIMERA already knew and they are all over Coffin City. They have this place surrounded. We have to fight our way through.”
“Oh, sure. Let’s just fight our way past deadly corporate assassins to freedom. Easy as that.” Billy snorted. “Sure way to get yourselves toasted. And if you die, the Prophet dies with you. Charon wins. The corporations win. The world loses.”
Gyro staggered to her feet. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean we stop fighting, does it?”
Billy sighed. “Kid, only reason I’ve survived this long is because I know when to cut my losses and run. Trust me when I say it’s time to do just that. I have another way. They don’t have access to all my bolt holes. We’ll just have to fight past a couple of them, hopefully. Secret passages and all that.”
“Well hell. You seriously have secret passages out? That’s … handy.” Nova said flatly.
“I told you it was impossible to be paranoid in this day and age, when everyone is out to get everyone else. There’s just being prepared or being dead.” Billy shrugged. “Just be ready in case they’ve found any of my spots.”
A cough made them turn to where Chicken Fingers leaned against a doorjamb. He flashed a grin. “I might know someone who could help with that.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Bob
Bob watched the streets from the recesses of the sewer tunnel, half sleeping but still alert enough to process threats, letting the gloom cloak his presence—not that anyone outside took the time to look in for him. The evening streets had crowded again, though the riots and senseless killings from earlier had devolved into a shambling mob that lurched here and there, bumping into bodies and buildings, swaying, falling, stumbling forward and back with no real direction or purpose.
When GENIE’s HR filters first failed, Bob guessed much of the second wave of chaos had been people lashing out in shock and fear. Once the people who were initially literally driven crazy by the layers of subversive spam had fallen, riot mentality had taken over. That’s what most folks resorted to when forced to face the unknown. They reverted to their primal selves, the kill-or-be-killed self-defense part of the hindbrain. He knew that survival mode well enough, he supposed, but couldn’t imagine what it’d be like for it to completely take over his entire sense of self.
For now, the rioters had lost much of their coherence. Since the GENIE crash, he had counted six distinctive waves of insanity, each with less energy than the last. As insane as it was, he was pretty sure that people were going home, then coming back out to riot more. A few people still acted in concert, but even they lacked the frenetic energy of before.
Many wandered about muttering and flailing as if the stars of their own private insanity show, interacting with creatures and constructions only they could see. Others hunched in place, arms wrapped around themselves, rocking back and forth as they wept. Some held the panicked look of being hunted, constantly looking over their shoulders or whipping around, guns or blades raised before running off to hide.
This was a world disconnected from reality. Nobody’s perceptions aligned anymore, causing a total breakdown of the system normal life relied on—if anything could be considered normal these days.
Bob pondered how integral the TAP, and the GENIE network, had become over the decades, infiltrating every aspect of society. The Deep underlay the whole of human existence, filling in the gaps where humanity’s intellects failed to connect. At the same time, it became a lifeline many couldn’t survive without. Too few spent a single moment of their lives offline. When the solar flare had hit, they weren’t just disconnected; they were scrambled by a reality every bit as real as what they could touch, at least to them.
To him, this flare and the riots were proving that taking away that connection removed a person’s ability to function on the most basic levels. It was a fundamental alienation that existed between him and society, but he felt that it was society that was broken.
As he pondered this, a wind picked up, scattering dust and debris across the abandoned street. He could hear the fear coming from inside the surrounding tenements, carried loudly across the silence of desertion. The sound of an engine echoed over the lonely stre
et. Bob eased out, closer to the tunnel grating, until he spotted the VTOL transport descending to the ground.
Bob patted his disturbed hair back into place as the transport settled. He recognized the make and model of this transport, and the tri-helix logo on the side. Well, he couldn’t suppose they’d remain safe here forever.
Turning, he darted back into the tunnels, determined to give his oblivious companions enough time to escape. Hopefully they had a few options prepared when their current hideout got discovered.
Taking a corner, Bob hesitated. Chicken Fingers waited in the chamber up ahead. The gunman relaxed against a wall, cleaning one of his bolters. Bob whispered, letting the tunnel acoustics carry his words to the man’s ears.
“You should return to your friends. Get them ready to leave.”
Chicken Fingers straightened casually, as if he’d gotten used to conversing with disembodied voices. His voice echoed louder. “Ain’t they your friends too?”
“I never said you were my friends. You’re my job.”
“Sure. Well then, time to earn your pay.” Chicken Fingers pointed up. “We gotta strike team coming in hot.”
“I know. I was coming to alert you to their arrival.”
The gunman smiled softly. “Of course you were. We already know. The three of them are getting ready to bolt. You know which direction the team is coming from?”
“They’re at the same entrance to these tunnels you all took. They’ll be here within, oh, ten minutes, maximum. It’s time to gather the others and go before they flush you out.”
Chicken Fingers slid his bolter into its holster. “Thing is, we’re worried that they’ll flush out Billy’s secret getaway.”
“I see.”
“And I don’t see you. Which is kind of the point. I figure with you being Mr. Ghost, you could help me cover the escape, and then we all bolt together.”
“I say that sounds like a rather improbable plan.”
“And aren’t you just one big improbable yourself? The one that we have on our side.”
Bob flicked a knife into his hand. “Indeed.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Anansi
Black eyes flecked with gold. They stared down into Anansi’s mind, unblinking, unmerciful. They raked through his thoughts, leaving them quivering and exposed. His blood flowed sluggishly, and each step felt like he churned through ice water up to his waist.
He tried to blink the blurriness of his vision away, but the pounding in his skull kept squeezing his eyeballs, forcing out more tears. He jerked his mind away from the node. It had to be Charon …
Which meant the AI was using dead GENIE nodes just like he was. He knew Gyro had spotted him. He had watched her watching him right before Charon attacked. He shook his head and walked into the shop he had been standing outside of. Charon was crazy scary too, but it was easy to dodge by just hopping off the nodes. Anyway, everything else seemed a lot less scary after his three-hundred-foot high backwards swan dive out of a moving VTOL.
He glanced around the little café. It was abandoned. His eye fell on the display case by the counter and his stomach gurgled painfully. Gyro and the others were on the way, and he needed to stay near here to connect with them, but he should have a couple of minutes.
Screw it.
He walked around behind the café’s register. Pulling a cheese Danish out of the display case, he shoved it in his mouth. As he chewed, he pulled the espresso filter and filled it. As he pulled the shots of coffee, he shoved another Danish in his mouth. God, he thought, soooooo good. I needed this!
Once the deep, dark elixir was finished brewing, he poured the rich fluid into a cup.
“Let’s see …” He looked around. It looked like the cabinet beneath the espresso machine was a refrigerated compartment. He shoved a third Danish in his mouth and opened up the cabinet. Ah-ha! He had found the milk, and it was cold. He poured some into the shots of espresso. There were a lot of unlabeled buttons on the machine, and he wasn’t sure which one worked the milk-steaming wand, so he poured it cold. He finished munching the third Danish and took a sip of the coffee around the pastry crumbs still in his mouth. With a small moan of pleasure, he leaned against the counter.
Grabbing a slice of lemon pound cake, he took the coffee and treat with him as he walked back around the counter. He paused, dropping a couple of credits in the tip jar with a smirk, then walked to the other side of the shop, choosing a seat by the window. He sipped his coffee and ate his snack while watching the streets for Gyro.
Like a siren’s call, GENIE’s dead nodes were tantalizing him. Play with us, Anansi, paint your stories for all to see … play! He knew it was his own mind playing tricks, but … as he finished his espresso, he cautiously opened the closest node.
Charon slammed into his mind.
Chapter Thirty-three
Raider
Raider monitored his team’s progress through the dilapidated tunnels of Coffin City. With two cloaked soldiers guarding the tunnel entrance, he’d taken Chu and two others in with him. They now stalked the tunnels in full stealth mode, suits absorbing and diverting all light and sound. The team couldn’t operate this way for long without returning to the transport to recharge, but it should be long enough to get them through the dangerous tunnels to their prize.
Command had contacted him minutes after Anansi’s suicide plunge and confirmed coordinates for Billy Black Eyes’ hideout. Despite losing one of the targets, the team’s orders remained unchanged. And apparently a momentary breach of the sanctuary’s network had confirmed that the most probable of the locations was the accurate pick.
This sudden exposure didn’t reassure Raider. Instead, he suspected they were being lured into a trap of some sort. Always assuming he was walking into a trap was part of why Raider’s teams had the lowest casualty rates across CHIMERA’s black ops department. They would sweep the tunnels, then, with the way clear, Raider and his unit would purge the remaining targets and consider the mission complete.
Maven remained back at the transport, reinforcing the team’s filters from her end, desperately trying to fill in the growing cracks in their system. Even Raider had started getting glimpses of false images out of the corner of his eyes. Whatever Anansi had done in the VTOL to break through all their filters, there were trace effects still destabilizing them.
Even as he scowled at this, a flare of light made him pause. Raider went to one knee, pulse rifle raised as figures writhed into being out of nowhere. A reptilian humanoid stood before him, fanged mouth gaping in a silent roar. All around the beast, men and women that appeared to be formed of living flame flew through the air, blasting the monster with fiery orbs.
Holding himself in check, Raider tried to blink away the images, but they stubbornly refused to fade. The animation continued for several seconds more before, finally, everything exploded into a cloud of butterflies that winged off into the distance.
“Sir?” Chu’s voice came over the com.
Raider rose. His team remained by his side, their invisible forms outlined in blue by his faceplate. “Sub Commander, did you …”
“We all saw it, sir. Just an advertisement, sir. Some sort of anime kaiju ga—” The sub commander’s voice cut out midsentence.
Raider’s focus snapped back to where Chu had been just ahead of them. The tunnel stood empty. “Squad! We have enemy contact!” They fanned out, covering the tunnels, distracted from the hideout and getaway route by a ghost they would never find.
Chapter Thirty-four
Gyro
“What’re we waiting for?” Billy asked for the tenth time in two minutes. “We’ve got to go! Now. Bow. Bow wow, go-go grow … ungh …” He shook his head.
Gyro watched the monitors, searching Billy’s tunnel camera feeds. They were generic old analog, and you had to really look because they were the lowest rez video she had ever seen. “Chicken Fingers isn’t back yet.”
“Sorry, stress makes it worse. Look, it’s bad lu
ck for him. I told him he only had five minutes before we bolted.” Billy motioned at the wall panel that had swung open to reveal a barely lit passage.
“It’s only been …” Gyro checked her interface’s timer. “Three minutes. Just chill for a second, Billy. It’ll be okay.”
Billy huffed and slumped in his chair. His hand kept edging toward a big black button—an actual, physical button, rather than a holo tab—but he didn’t hit it. Yet. Nova stood by his side, a hand on his shoulder.
Gyro gnawed a knuckle as she bounced in place. Chicken Fingers had promised. He couldn’t explain exactly what his plan was, but he’d promised he’d be back in time, with or without his special friend. Whoever that was. Gyro had her suspicions.
At four minutes and thirty seconds, Billy shifted in his seat. “All right. That’s enough. Sorry, kid, but—”
“Wait!” Gyro jumped in and pointed at one of the screens. Chicken Fingers had just run into view, a bolter in either fist and a look of concentration etched on his features.
A second man appeared.
“What?” Gyro gaped at the screen. “Where the hell did he come from?”
Billy frowned. “Who is that?”
“That’s him! That’s Bob!” Gyro jumped in place as she watched the two dash toward the hideout. “Gotta be him. He matches Prophet’s profile perfectly, too. Neat.”
“I don’t understand.” Billy checked over readouts and his lenses flashed. “I can’t pull up his signal anywhere. Even if he’s firewalled, I should be able to detect that. How’s he ghosting so clean? Aw, shit! They’ve got company.”
He enlarged a screen that showed a tunnel segment and pointed at what, to Gyro, looked like an empty patch. “I’ve got a couple pressure plates planted around these tunnels. A few of them there just got triggered without any correlating heat or motion signatures.”
Solar Singularity Page 20
