by Ted Weber
Triumphant, she ignited the joint, thrust it between the lips of her mask, and inhaled. Friendship Farm’s finest—smooth as a glissando and 100% organic. Jagged edges melted off her nerves as she exhaled a thick cloud of acrid, piney smoke. And to think, this used to be illegal here.
Too bad she wasn’t really Storm from the X-Men, the African sorceress with white hair. Or anyone with superpowers, able to right the wrongs of the world merely by existing outside the confines of science.
Shut up. I can do anything. Especially after six months of planning. With Dr. Doom, a.k.a. Charles Marvin Lee, the only person to ever hack a MediaCorp broadcast, on her side, she could reach enough people to make a difference. To loosen, maybe destroy, the grip of the plutocracy. All she had to do was break him out of jail.
“M-pat said this would be easy,” she said.
Pel sputtered through the lips of his lifelike mask. “Compared to kidnapping the president, maybe.” He turned away.
Waylee hit the joint again, hoping to calm her hyperactive neurons. She wouldn’t smoke enough to dilate time and fog her memory, only enough to keep her hands from shaking.
Storm wouldn’t shake. She would call down lightning or tornadoes to smite her foes, the plutocrats and their yes men who couldn’t bear to share with others, for whom the world was a personal grab bag. Her weaselly bosses at the newspaper—zap! The utility companies and their collection thugs – zap! MediaCorp, the great crushing beast—ZAP!
Waylee emptied her lungs toward the windshield. The cone of smoke broke against the invisible barrier and recoiled into a confusion of eddies. When it dissipated, she scanned the dilapidated section of Eager Street ahead of them. No police cars. Baltimore’s finest rarely patrolled anymore, relying on the cheaper option of streetlight cameras and remote-controlled quadcopters. And this stretch of boarded-up businesses, vacant lots, and dead trees contained nothing worth watching.
Beneath the mask, her skin oozed clammy sweat. She looked over at Pel. He was lost in his data glasses, monitoring his microcameras and probably the traffic. A wire-thin microphone boom snaked down from the dorkishly wide frame arms and terminated just short of his lips.
“What do you see?” she asked.
“Nothing yet.”
Behind the glasses appeared a stranger. Kiyoko had artist friends who owned a large-format, high-precision 3-D printer, and created photo-realistic masks—right down to the hair and skin pores—for a living. Pel could have been anyone, but asked for a thirty-something ginger with day-old stubble.
“You should have been a Greek god,” Waylee said. You couldn’t get more Greek in Baltimore than the Demopoulos family. “Apollo, maybe. You look like Prince Harry with a five o’clock shadow.”
Pel faced her and sighed. His brown eyes glared at her through translucent overlays of buildings and maps. Beneath his right eye, a tiny clock, mirror-imaged, approached the point of no return. “The idea behind disguise, Waylee, is to blend in with your surroundings. Someone’s gonna see you and say, ‘Hey, isn’t that Storm from the X-Men?’ ‘Yeah,’ their companion will say, ‘only the X-Men are an invention of Marvel Comics and don’t actually exist in present-day Baltimore. Therefore, that must be someone hiding behind a mask.’”
“Well played, Dr. Snark. But you’re assuming anyone will notice or care. Besides, I don’t look anything like Storm in real life.”
“That’s not the point,” he said.
“Whatever. Just give me the satisfaction of burning your mask when we’re done.”
“After I’ve taken it off, I hope.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want it to melt to your skin and have to lock your frightful ass in the attic.”
He smirked. Their masks were thin, flexible, and internally contoured to their real faces, and weren’t bad at showing expressions. “The attic doesn’t have any locks.”
She didn’t bother responding. The trouble with Pel’s type was that they took everything literally.
His smirk evaporated. “You know, it’s not too late to back out. If anything goes wrong, if we get caught…”
Anxiety surged through her veins. Pel had never been enthusiastic about her plan. “Even without money, we’ve got a decent life here,” he said when she’d first proposed it six months ago. “Why risk prison just ‘cause the president’s an ass and MediaCorp ruined journalism?” A strange comment from someone who broke computer laws every day.
“Nothing will go wrong,” Waylee told Unshaven Prince Harry/Pel. “We planned every detail. Besides, Charles expects us. No way am I breaking my word.” Or going back to pointless complaining on a blog with no readers. “We’re committed.”
Pel stared at her through a still image of a red brick facade with reinforced glass doors and windows shadowed by an overhang. It took her a second to decipher the mirror-imaged lettering on the front of the overhang: Baltimore City Juvenile Correctional Facility. Two blocks to the east and half a block to the south, less than a quarter mile away. “We’re not committed,” he said, “until M-pat flips that switch.”
“We’ve already been through this, Pel. What happened to your love of challenges? Fortune favors the bold—”
“So does a pair of cuffs.”
She nudged the joint toward him. “Want some?” He never did, but it might help.
He frowned. “You’re our getaway driver. Focus, would you?”
She withdrew her offer.
“Besides,” he said, “I thought you didn’t like that stuff.”
“Well, depends. If I’m charged, pot dilutes the energy. And the bad times, I don’t need the added introspection. But Shakti thought I’d need it today.”
Pel said nothing, his artificial face blank. Beyond, the sun peeked over the tired skyline and breathed fire into the dust on the dashboard.
“And in case you’re wondering, I’m not being crazy, and I’m not gonna fuck things up. I’m more alert now than I’ve ever been in my life.” Even faint wisps of engine grime and stale plastic stood out.
His shoulders drooped. “Waylee…”
“We’re doing this, that’s all there is to it.” Drums pounded in her head, only slightly muffled by the pot. “We all agreed, there’s only so much we can do in the neighborhood. We’re constrained by the system, by global economics and culture, and more and more that’s controlled by a self-serving elite.”
“Duh.”
“The political system’s rigged,” she continued. “MediaCorp decides what people see and hear. The whole game needs changing if we want to control our destinies. And that’s not gonna happen without direct action.” Dingo, of course, was all for it. The others had taken longer to convince.
“Okay, let’s just focus.” He turned away and peered into the side mirror.
She patted his arm, then took a third drag. This would be her last, so she let the smoke chill in her lungs, get comfortable, hang out with the alveoli a while.
A city bus, sides plastered with lottery and fast food ads, passed their parked van and stopped at the institutional-looking public tenements a couple of blocks up the street. Pel tapped the arm of his data glasses. “Anything?” he said into his microphone.
He paused, presumably listening to his bone conduction transducers. Dingo and M-pat—who had the tough job—waited in the other white cargo van they had rescued and refurbished.
“Just say when,” Pel said in the mike.
He turned back to her. “It’s almost time.”
Waylee coughed out her last cloud and gripped the steering wheel. She peered ahead, then in the side view mirrors. Almost no cars now, their drivers shackled for the day in some human warehouse. She pressed the power button.
A ragged man clutching a brown paper bag shuffled toward them along the cracked sidewalk. On the other side of the street, rats foraged through trash in front of a shuttered bail bond office, whiskers twitching as they fought for scraps.
“I see them,” Pel said, gazing through his remote eyes. “They’re coming ou
t.” His voice was tense as a ready-to-snap guitar string.
Waylee pulled the van onto Eager Street and sped toward the jailed hacker who would help her change the world.
2
M’patanishi
“Go now,” Dick Clark said from the cargo van’s passenger seat, his eyes half-hidden by a mirror image of the Baltimore Juvenile Correctional Facility. It wasn’t really Dick Clark, of course, but Dingo’s mask pretty much passed for real. That is, if Dick Clark wore thick-framed glasses with a voice tube.
“You sure? They ain’t crossed yet.” M’patanishi, masked as a fiftyish Little Italy type and wearing a brown suit from Goodwill, couldn’t see anyone at the crosswalk almost half a block up Greenmount Avenue. They’d be a lot closer if someone hadn’t taken their damn traffic cones. Despite the morning chill, his hands sweated inside the double layer of surgical gloves.
“Yeah, kicks!” Dingo said, moving the lips of his mask. “Step it up!”
Their main microcamera, hidden in a shrub just past the front doors, gave a perfect view. So as much as it pained him, M’patanishi—M-pat to most—decided to trust Dingo. They were crew, after all.
He waited for a dented red Toyota to pass, then pulled out behind it.
This is crazy. This wasn’t like slinging product or beating some thief’s ass, neither of which worried the po-boys these days. This, he’d do hard time if they got caught. And he had a family now.
It was his fault they were here. He told the others it would be easy. That PrisonCorp, who managed the state’s correctional facilities, was a joke. Waylee had it right, PrisonCorp and all the big corporations thought only about their bottom line and neither knew nor cared much about the real world. About people like him, who could be pretty damn lethal if they put their minds to it.
Dingo swiped a gloved finger along one chrome-colored arm of the data glasses Pel bought him for the mission. “They’re counting them all up now. I see the target.”
The timing had to be perfect. M-pat eased off the gas a little. He passed the red brick pre-release unit on the right, fenced parking lots on the left. Empty cars lined the street on both sides. No one on the sidewalks, only the Toyota ahead, no one behind.
He reached the fortress-like Juvie compound on the left side of the street. Up on the right, he saw the Occupational Skills and Training Center—institutional red brick like everything else. That’s where guards escorted Charles and a couple dozen others every morning to make furniture and fix cars for the state. Still no sign of them.
He slowed even more. The Toyota disappeared ahead.
“My grandma drives faster than you,” Dingo said. “And she’s dead.”
M-pat ignored him. In the mirror, a pickup closed from behind. A big metal top covered the bed. So much for no traffic.
There they were. Teenagers caught in the system, wearing bright orange coveralls, filed out of the juvie entrance overhang and past the white columns holding it up. No chains, no handcuffs—this was a minimum security facility. One of the guards walked in front, a skinny white boy wearing a PrisonCorp uniform. And a holster with a .38. Where’s the other guard?
M-pat glanced down at his metallic Faraday bag. Still strapped on, still closed to protect the stun gun and handheld comlink inside. I’d feel better with a Glock. The stun gun only had two charges, and only put them down a few minutes.
“Gonna stash my glasses,” Dingo said. He opened his Faraday bag, threw his data glasses inside, and refastened it.
The van drew close enough to make out faces. There! Charles Marvin Lee, a.k.a. Dr. Doom, the now seventeen-year-old hacker who’d added a zombie invasion to MediaCorp’s news ticker and got a two year sentence for his trouble. No mistaking that puffy cocoa face. “Ready?”
“You know it, chief.”
Breathing deliberately, M-pat pulled up just past the thick glass doors of the Juvie entrance, and blocked the vehicle tunnel they used to transfer prisoners.
A few paces up the sidewalk, the second guard, a middle-aged black man, hurried stragglers toward the crosswalk. More guards would be inside. One at the reception desk, one at the monitors, the others probably sipping their morning coffee.
Dingo flipped a switch Pel had installed on the dashboard.
The capacitors in the windowless back of the van made no noise whatsoever as they discharged their energy into a modified power transformer and released a massive electromagnetic pulse. M-pat felt nothing. Pel said it’d be safe. But the van died. So did the truck behind them. And so, hopefully, did every security camera, comlink, radio, and other unprotected bit of electronics within sixty feet. The guards would have to pry the entrance doors open, and wouldn’t be able to call for help.
The prisoners and their guards kept walking, oblivious.
M-pat pulled his blocky-looking stun gun out of its Faraday bag. The standby light glowed green. Still working. “I got the black guard. You get the cracker. Don’t miss.”
Dingo checked his gun and nodded. He slipped out the passenger door.
M-pat opened his door at the same time. Gun in hand but down at his side, he strode toward the black guard. The man turned, fear in his eyes.
Just a little closer. He broke into a sprint and raised his weapon. The guard fumbled at his holster, hand shaking. Some of the prisoners turned to stare.
M-pat pulled the trigger. The stun gun clicked, barely audible, and the guard crumpled to the ground. Temporarily paralyzed. He shot him again for good measure, then ran over and took his pistol.
He looked over at Dingo. The white guard was also down. Rent-a-cops. One day a year of training.
Charles ambled toward them. He waved the boy closer. “Hurry up.”
Dingo addressed the rest of the prisoners, who all looked confused. “You’re free! Go forth and—ah, just get the fuck out of here!”
* * *
Waylee
Waylee turned the getaway van onto Greenmount Avenue, the heart of the city’s correctional industry. Teenage boys in orange coveralls ran down the street. None looked like Charles.
“We should be up there already,” Pel said from the passenger seat, swiping the left temple arm of his data glasses to magnify the image.
“Seconds away.” Waylee gunned the engine. She swerved to avoid a bike messenger, bounced over a pothole, and passed ugly brick buildings with blue plastic covering the windows.
She saw their first van parked ahead to the left, blocking the Corrections Center driveway. Orange-clad teens fought with a pickup driver stopped in the road. Two guards lay motionless on the ground.
There! Two fiftyish men in cheap suits stood on the sidewalk and looked her way, feet tapping the concrete. One was brawny with Italian features, the other, Dick Clark.
A short, pudgy kid with coffee-hued skin paced back and forth behind them. Charles! A dozen other prisoners waited nearby, apparently too cowed to run. “What the hell is their problem?”
Pel glanced at her.
“Ignore that.” Waylee screeched her van to a halt, but kept it in drive. M-pat and Dingo ran for the back, Charles following. A pair of oranges sprinted toward the passenger door. Pel locked it just as they got there. They banged on the door and window. “Lemme in, yo!”
Pel squinted at Waylee. “Should have brought more stun guns.”
More banging. “Yo, bitch, lemme in!”
“Sorry,” she shouted at them. “Get your own ride.”
M-pat’s muscular frame appeared behind the two juvies. He reached out big hands and smacked their heads together. They dropped.
Dingo stuck his Dick Clark face in a rear door window. He opened the doors and jumped in, followed by Charles, then M-pat. “Let’s go,” M-pat said. “Don’t run over those bitches I put down.”
Dingo sniffed the air. “Someone’s been tokin’ in here.”
“I’ll pass it soon as I get a chance.” Waylee took her foot off the brake and accelerated, trying not to hit any prone or running figures.
“Woo ki
ddies!” Dingo shouted from the back. “That was too easy! B’more’s first mass jailbreak.”
“Welcome to freedom, Charles,” Waylee said, keeping her eyes on the road. “Or do you prefer Dr. Doom?”
“Charles is a’ight,” came the faint response behind her.
She passed the crosswalk. Staring out the passenger window, Pel shouted, “Guards coming out of the Training Center door! Two.”
“Step on it, they goin’ for their guns!” M-pat said, probably looking out the back.
Damn it. She pushed the gas pedal down, but the van responded reluctantly. Come on. They passed a parking garage and approached the ten-story New Inmates Center.
“Down!” M-pat shouted.
They wouldn’t shoot, would they? Ahead, the light at Madison, the first intersection, was red. Run it or turn right? The plan was to go straight, then head northeast. Madison went one-way west.
A gun blasted behind them and echoed off the buildings, a lot louder than the pops she heard at home now and then. Waylee gripped the steering wheel, not in terror, but knowing that she should feel terror.
A guard ran out of the New Inmates Center as they passed, eyes wide.
Another gun blast. Something tore through the rear of the van and smacked through the windshield between her and Pel. He yelped. The bullet left a circular hole amid a web of cracks.
Another shot. The passenger side mirror shattered. Pel hunched down, trapped by the seatbelt from moving any further.
Waylee slowed at the intersection, and spun the wheel to the right. The tires squealed as the van hopped over the curb, smacked a garbage can, and sent it barreling it off toward the building. She scraped a lightpost and skidded onto Madison.
“Yeah!”
Brakes screeched somewhere behind her. Someone honked and kept honking. Asshole. Up the street a bus stopped, blocking half the road.
She didn’t want to be on Madison. They’d pass more prison complexes and more guards. And like half the streets downtown, it was under perpetual construction. The expressway, where all the cars were probably headed, was only a few blocks ahead.
