The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy

by Gary Ballard

  “The hacker? The one that crashed the entire banking system of the Wyoming Holdings LGL? She’s wanted in every state, every LGL and at least thirty countries! The GlobalNet Authority has her at number four on the most wanted hackers list. Bridge was shacked up with the Baron3ss? Impressive.”

  “She always felt that fourth place was a sexist insult,” Aristotle replied sadly. “It was her contention that the hacker community did not want to admit a woman could be as proficient as her male counterparts, which she most certainly was.”

  Gina nodded knowingly, thinking of her own troubles in LAPD and CLED. Even in the 21st century, some men still didn’t want to admit a woman could do the dirty business as well as her male counterparts. It informed her every move, her icy, aggressive exterior a deliberate attempt to force the respect she deserved. “Are you sure they didn’t just decide to leg it, get out of town without being followed by faking their deaths?”

  Aristotle had a good think about that, but eventually shook his head. “Not without telling me. Bridge trusts me. Nothing that he was currently working on would bring the kind of heat he would feel the need to hide that thoroughly from, at least not to my knowledge.”

  “And you want me to what, look into it?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I realize this is not your business, but you have helped out both Bridge and myself in the past. I have nothing to offer you in exchange. This would be a favor I would owe you. Another favor.”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “You’ve been hanging around Bridge too long. You don’t owe me nothing, so long as you stay out of jail.” Consorting with known criminals might be frowned upon by CLED, but this wasn’t the sort of thing that could land her in IA trouble. Checking a few files, talking to the forensics guy, that ought to be all she’d need to do, none of which would raise any red flags with IA. “Yeah, all right, Marcus, I’ll look into it before my shift tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Officer Danton. Thank you. I cannot hope to repay the kindness you’ve shown me.” He took another deep swig of the cooling coffee, then stared out the window with the saddest expression she’d ever seen. Gina couldn’t help feel a pang of sympathy despite her stony exterior.

  The next morning, Gina woke an hour early to allow herself time to read up on the file in the office. Her pay grade didn’t allow her the luxury of a decent telepresence rig in the shabby rental she inhabited. After a few gruff greetings from her colleagues, she settled down into the disaster area of her desk, punching up the case file on the desk’s shiny new holographic display. The upgraded computer systems and bleeding-edge desktop access points were yet one more area CLED’s control had improved her job. She had lightning-fast access to most corporate and civil law enforcement agencies in the world. Every country granted access to the GlobalNet had to tie their law enforcement databases together, though most believed that the really juicy, classified stuff remained hidden from other prying eyes. Retrieving the case file required no special access, thankfully.

  A steaming cup of coffee accompanied her morning read. The case seemed rather open and shut. Male and female living in the apartment registered as Mr. and Mrs. Arneson, ages 35 and 33, respectively. Building was blown up with an unknown type of explosive and burned almost completely by an unknown accelerant. Very little was left at the scene but ash, with the exception of partial skeletons, identified as Artemis Bridge and Angela Powell. Gina found that part strange. The case officer had not noted any sort of surprise that the identities of the bodies at the scene didn’t match the occupants. She thought perhaps forensics had been mistaken but DNA tests and dental records matched. She had begun to reach a casual finger towards her keyboard to make a note in the file about the discrepancy when the display shivered and disappeared. A string of curses like falling dominoes rang through the office around her as every display in the office crashed at once.

  Taking a timid sip at the coffee, Gina leaned back in her chair. She raised her arm to check her wristwatch, but on finding the wrist bare, she rubbed it absentmindedly while checking the clock on her cybernetic HUD. She still had not gotten used to living life with a clock in her field of vision. With forty minutes left before her shift, she decided to speak to the forensics guy on the case.

  The forensics department of LAPD had been consolidated as a separate corporate entity named Chronosoft R&D, headquartered downtown in the Chronosoft LGL headquarters still being built downtown. Finding that even the phones had been brought down by the crash, she grabbed her squad car and drove down there herself, leaving a note for her partner that she would pick him up a few minutes late at the station. As she drove, her mind worked the case with the scant information she had. There was no way the case officer had missed the mismatched names. That was detective 101. Pieces of a GlobalNet crèche had been found in the rubble. The officer could have made an understandable leap, assuming that the stiffs were hackers trying to hide their identity. The mystery of the explosives used wouldn’t have been that strange. The cops were in a constant losing race with the black market for such things, with new explosives, chemical and biological weapons and new nanotech being built in backroom labs every day. Whatever it was had been brutally effective though, to have caused such thorough destruction. And yet, there had been just enough body parts to run adequate DNn adequaA testing on the corpses. The GlobalNet suicide note was nothing special, though it certainly didn’t sound a thing like Bridge. As much of an antisocial asshole as Bridge had ever been, he was the last guy she considered capable of offing himself.

  Chronosoft LGL headquarters downtown had become a self-replicating monster, engulfing a whole city block with its massive construction cranes, army of laborers and skeletal frameworks. The walkway over the street that connected the two massive facing complexes had been completed about a month ago, and the first six floors of the LGL annex were now covered in glass and fully functioning. Gina thought the building might actually get done on time in 2030, providing they didn’t keep adding things on. The project had started right after the riots as a very modest upgrade and ballooned into the awesome monolith of the current day. The CLED forensics department of R&D was located in one of the newly completed wings of the LGL annex. The sound of hammers and drills rang throughout the halls as she worked her way to the office of Marco Lippi, the head forensics investigator on the case.

  A squirrelly man with a scraggly beard like a line of surgical staples on his chin, Lippi’s intellect overshadowed his poor social skills. A pair of cybernetic goggles attached to his head via interface jacks on either side of his skull sat underneath a greasy mop of seedy brown hair. A stained lab coat slumped on his stooped shoulders, his back almost a hump as he bent over a console strewn with various pieces of evidence. “Detective Lippi?” Gina asked quietly.

  Lippi hopped up as if stung, extending a hand swathed in rubber glove. Gina looked down on the glove with a disapproving glare. Lippi withdrew the hand with a muttered apology. “Sorry, wasn’t thinking. And you are?” His goggles made unusually loud whirring noises as they zoomed in on the security pass dangling from her left breast.

  “Officer Danton. You can stop ogling my tit now.”

  Lippi gave her a nervous grin, but his goggles moved back towards her face. He jumped a little and the goggles whirred again. “Whoa, mondo zoom. I could see your pores. Very nice pores.” The awkward compliment fell on a stony grimace. “What do you need, Officer?”

  “I’m looking into a case,” she replied, giving him the case number. “No, it’s not my case, but…”

  He cut her off. “No, it’s not your case, Officer. But I see you accessed it this morning anyway. Oh, that’s… damnit.” The lenses of the goggles went dark. “Fucking things,” Lippi cursed, pulling the goggles from his head with disgust. The skin beneath the goggles was a milky white even in comparison to his pallid complexion, a prominent anti-tan line around his eyes that made the rest of his skin appear grimy. He blinked his eyes like a mole being shown the first rays of the sun.

&n
bsp; “I’m looking into the case for a friend of mine. He thinks the stiffs were friends of his and I promised I’d check it out.”

  Lippi sat down in his chair and rubbed his eyes, dropping the goggles loudly on the desk. “The case is shut, pretty simple thing. Some kind of domestic that turned dehat turnadly. Guy kills his girl, his wife, whatever, blows himself and the two of them up after posting a suicide note.”

  “He definitely killed her?”

  “Hmmm? Well, it’s hard to tell that he definitely killed her. There wasn’t much left after that explosion. She could have killed him just as easily. Evidence suggests she was in the crèche at the time of her death, so she could have triggered an explosive from there. But since the note said he killed her first, well, I guess the case officer took his word for it.”

  “And the case officer didn’t mention that the DNA ID of the bodies didn’t match the name on the lease?”

  “Not uncommon, especially with crèche-bound hackers. They spend days in those things marinating. What skeletal remains we found from her were severely atrophied. She didn’t walk around much.” He snickered. “Maybe he got tired of her sitting on her ass in the crèche, not giving him any. Who knows?”

  Gina frowned. “What about the explosive?”

  “Unknown. Couldn’t find any chemical residue for explosive or accelerant. I’d love to get a sample of whatever it is, though. To burn that hot, that quickly, then burn itself out without spreading to other buildings… that’s some serious designer stuff. It was contained perfectly within the confines of the apartment, it turned most of the bones to ash, removed most evidence and then disappeared without a trace. Never seen anything like it.”

  “Isn’t it strange that there was just enough left to identify the bodies and not much else?”

  Lippi nodded vigorously, a gleeful grin on his face. “Yeppers. I wish I had more time to study this case, but with it closed, I can’t justify billing time to it.”

  “Can I get the case file with your notes?”

  “You could if the system hadn’t crashed. Tell you what, put in a request, I’ll get you the files once I can access them again. Anything else?”

  “You said there was a crèche, or pieces of a crèche, and the female was in it at the time of her death.” Lippi nodded. “Have you been able to retrieve anything off of it, or link it to any GlobalNet ID?”

  “Nope, it’s well and truly fried. Couldn’t even pull a serial number or an IP. Whoever this chick was, she knew what she was doing. Other than her choice of men, that is.” His smile revealed a set of teeth so shiny white they stood out even against his ghostly complexion. CLED’s dental plans were top-notch.

  “Ok. Get me that case file when you can.”

  Lippi’s body shook with his affirming nod. “Gotcha. Anytime you need anything, let me know. Anything at all.”

  “Down, boy. You’re not my type. And if you stare at my ass when I walk out of here, I’ll pull your toenails out through your esophagus. Got it?”

  He nodded again, an expression like a whipped dog.

  When she returned to her squad car, an email from Graves awaited her. His car had failed to start, so he would be hours late. Gina decided to grab some breakfast at a diner that marked the edge of her patrol route. Sitting down to a hearty plate of eggs with turkey bacon and another cup of coffee, she mulled over the case. The evidence formed a complete circle. Other than the mystery about the explosives used, and her own ruminations on Bridge’s capability for murder, everything else tied itself in a neat little bow. She could spot no hole in the case logic, but it felt wrong. She couldn’t help feeling she was missing some key element to the whole thing.

  “Officer Danton, you’re looking lovely as ever today,” said a voice from the booth behind her. She raised her head from her plate, finally noticing the silence in the diner. At this time of morning, it should be crawling with patrons, but there were none. The sounds from the kitchen had stopped completely. The waitresses, cashier and cooks were nowhere to be seen. The only person in her forward field of vision was a short young Asian with spiky hair and a cloak like black hoodie. In mid-turn, she recognized the voice.

  Sitting in the booth behind her with the casual confidence of a smooth criminal was Artemis Bridge. He raised a hand and gave her a nonchalant two-finger salute and smiled. “Bet you didn’t expect to see me here.”

  Chapter 10

  March 10, 2029

  11:51 a.m.

  Bridge had to admire Danton’s unflappability. Most people, when faced with a dead man walking, would have lost their shit, but the attractive blonde cop kept her cool. With a casual “Hmmm,” she turned back around in her seat and lazily scooped another bite of egg into her mouth. “Come sit over here where I can see you.”

  Bridge shuffled over to her booth and sat down, motioning to Mu for a cup of coffee. The kid poured the cup and walked it over to the table diligently, then returned to his perch by the door. He began snapping his fingers, little arcs of lightning leaping from one hand to the other with each snap. Bridge turned his attention back to the cop. Danton’s attention was fixated on Mu’s hands.

  “That’s one of them, whatchamacallits, technomancers?”

  Bridge nodded. “Yes, he is. You can call him Mu.”

  “You do realize I’m supposed to arrest anyone even claiming to be a technomancer on sight, right?”

  “I do. However, I don’t suggest it. He wouldn’t take very kindly to it, and I’ve promised the owner we won’t make a mess in here.”

  “You’re pretty full of yourself, aren’t you? I could haul you in for faking your own death, or murder, or whatever the fuck it is you were trying to make it look like at your place.”

  The image of Angela’s arm dangling lifelessly from the edge of the crèche flashed across Bridge’s mind unbidden. He clamped his teeth down hard, pushing the thought away before continuing. “That was a quick and dirty improvisation, completely necessary. I needed certain people to think they’d succeeded, for a few days at least.”

  “So that’s not your girlfriend’s skull we got sitting in the morgue? Whose body is it?”

  Again the images came uncalled for, a macabre slideshow that tore through Bridge’s gut at the speed of thought. He covered his mouth and stared out the window, feeling the tears come. He managed to control them, but only just. “No, that’s Angela. I didn’t kill her. She was already dead when I got there.”

  “I’m… I’m sorry?” Danton seemed unsure what to say. “I mean, I didn’t know your girlfriend, didn’t even know you had one. I always thought you were a hit it and quit it kind of guy.”

  Bridge smirked. “Some days I was. Not lately, though. Not with her. It ain’t like I didn’t try to quit it, know what I mean? She had a way of getting under my skin like nobody else. I probably should have known better.”

  “Was she really the Baron3ss?”

  Taken aback, Bridge raised his eyebrows. “How did you know that?”

  “The same reason I was looking into the case in the first place.”

  In unison they said the name. “Marcus.”

  Bridge cursed. “Goddamnit, Marcus, you sad sack son of a bitch.” He smiled in spite of the anger in his words. “Try to keep the heat off of him, try to keep him safe, and he keeps following me to the grave. That fucking loyalty’s going to get him killed.”

  “Yeah, it will, if this is any indication.” Bridge felt a sting of regret. “But you know Marcus, that’s who he is. For whatever reason, he will go to the wall for you and beyond. He didn’t believe you were dead by the way.”

  “Well, he fucking better and I need you to convince him. At least for the next few days, that is.” Bridge sipped his coffee in silence, forcing Danton into asking questions. He needed her to direct the conversation, to keep him reacting so that he could control where tntrol whhis went.

  “So if that was your… if that was the Baron3ss, who was the male stiff?”

  “The kind of guy you’re ne
ver going to find in your database, eh? He was a ghost, the kind of guy people with money get to clean up messes and solve inconvenient mysteries. He doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re telling me someone hired an assassin to kill you? That’s something I can use.”

  Bridge slammed the coffee cup down on the table a little more forcibly than he wanted. “No, it isn’t. Let me paint you a scenario, Officer Danton. You put his name into a database search, and it turns up fuckall. But within days, maybe hours, you get a visit as well. Maybe you’ll be lucky and it’s only IA turning up with a lecture about not sticking your nose in places it don’t belong. Or maybe it’s another guy like our dearly departed mystery skeleton and nobody hears from you ever again. He doesn’t exist to people in your position.”

  It was Danton’s turn to sip in silence, thoughts passing across her face like leaves in a strong wind. “How’d you get the better of a hitter like that then? You aren’t exactly what I would call a fighter. I’ve seen you take more beatdowns than a rented mule.”

  “No, I’m no fighter. But what I am is clever. See my boy Mu over there? That little trick he does with the lightning? He can do lots of things like that. He can do crazy ass shit like embed these little balls of energy all around my apartment. And these balls of energy don’t do nothing at all, until I give the word, right? At which point…” Bridge made a silent pantomime of an explosion.

  “How did you survive that?”

  “Force bubble. One of those balls of energy finds me and protects me. You’d need a tank to break through that thing and it’d be a tough go even then. The bubble gets thrown clear and Mu over there is alerted that his little trap has been tripped and he gets my ass out of the area. I didn’t realize how loud that fucking explosion would be. I was tripping balls and half-blind when he found me.”