The Debt Collector (Season Two)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  A low thump of music drifts out, and the interior is dimly lit with plasma lighting that comes from the floors and walls. The rafters are lost in shadows. I can’t get a good look at the rest because a man the size of a bear blocks our way. His black leather trenchcoat looks like debt collector attire, but it’s the massive forearms that I suspect are used to keep out undesirables. Seth throws back his hood and pulls a small plastic card that glows blue from his pocket. The giant guard holds up his palm screen, and Seth passes his electronic key across it. It must be our digital invite because the mammoth man steps aside.

  The cavernous room is mostly empty—all the activity is at the far end. There must be fifty people, some already slashing at a long bank of screens, others hanging around in clusters of twos and threes. There are more groupies than slashers, and my white-leather-and-blue-metal outfit is far from the most outrageous.

  We stride across the spongy black flooring, and the tech becomes more impressive the closer we get. Three transparent cubes stand in the middle, ten feet on a side with snakes of black tubing supplying them. A blue gas churns inside. The boxes are empty of slashers at the moment, but I’m guessing they’re holo-cages—and those don’t come cheap. Neither does the large screen covering a good portion of the far wall. It’s displaying a blue network that’s constantly shifting, but I can’t parse its meaning. Below it, the slashers seated at the bank of screens are dressed in the same subdued uniform as Seth: hooded leather cloaks that drape low to the floor and shadow their faces.

  Drifting around the floor are the groupies—boys and girls in skin-fitted or skin-baring outfits. They’re young and waifish and look like they could be sex workers, but I’m sure they’re giving it away for free. Or perhaps in exchange for the drugs: an enormous skeet lamp sits off to the side, glowing blue inside its stacked globes. Black tubes sprout from it and end in face masks. The skeet adds a certain haze to the room that competes with the plasma lighting to give an eerie blue cast to everything.

  I gesture with my chin to the groupies getting high. “I hope we’re not paying out to them,” I say to Zachariel in a hushed voice. It barely carries over the low-thumping music that isn’t really music, more like a heartbeat turned into an electronic sound.

  Somehow Seth still hears me. He throws back a dark look. “No paying out unless I authorize it.”

  I scowl at him but don’t say anything. It’s not like I want to pay out, but I also don’t want some kid getting high on skeet and then dead on life hits. The drug’s sickly sweet scent is thick in the air—someone is getting high enough for a life hit to be dangerous.

  As we move closer, we draw some attention from the groupies, but the slashers are too intent on their screens and their discussions to notice us.

  Just before we reach the transparent holo-cages, Seth holds up a hand. “Wait here until I’ve got everything set up.” Then he strides over to a trio of slashers with their hoods up. Two are tall like Seth, and one is shorter—I think it’s a woman, but it’s hard to tell with all the cloaks and dim light.

  Zachariel has his sights trained on them. “I suspect we’re here to pay for services rendered, Wraith. Which means you won’t be paying out to wannabes or groupies.” There’s no humor in his voice for a change. His dead-serious gaze scans the bank of screens. He looks frustrated that Seth told us to stay behind.

  “What’s going on here?” I ask.

  “That’s what I’d like to know.” He peers at the consoles, but we can’t see anything from this distance. Two groupies wander away from the skeet lamp, toward the cages, so Zachariel flashes a grin and flags them. Like moths to a flame, they swerve and head our way. One is covered in a skin-tight black suit with her electric blue hair pulled off the side, while the other is barely wearing anything at all: mostly silver paint.

  “Hello, ladies,” Zachariel says as they reach us. He tips his head to the slashers at the bank of screens. “Who’s playing today?”

  The silver girl giggles, but the other one looks aghast. “Man, if you don’t know… how’d you get in?” she asks.

  Zachariel gestures to Seth, who’s having a serious conversation with the group of three slashers. “I came with ugly over there. He said there would be some blazing hot tricks today, but I think he was shitting me. What do you know?”

  The silver girl looks sideways at the slashers with Seth. “Well, InTense is here.” Then she bites her lip, like being in the room with this InTense person is possibly the best thing that’s ever happened to her.

  “Really?” Zachariel says, and I can’t tell if he’s humoring her or he’s actually impressed.

  “What are you doing?” her friend chastises her under her breath. “C’mon, these guys are hacks…” She tries to drag her friend away.

  Zachariel holds up his hand, looking eager and trying to forestall them. “Oh, c’mon. Anyone else I would know?”

  The silver girl gushes, “And ChinaDoll, too, but you won’t believe—”

  Her friend interrupts her with a grip on her silver-painted arm. “Will you shut it?”

  “What?” Her eyes go wide, obviously no clue that she’s done anything wrong.

  “God, you are so high.” She drags her friend away.

  I wait until they’re out of earshot. “Okay, what was that all about?”

  Zachariel’s expression is serious again. “This isn’t just a party or some casual trophy slashing.”

  My eyebrows lift. “You into the underground scene, then?”

  His lips press together, and he seems barely able to restrain himself from following after the girls, who are now flitting among the seated slashers at the bank of screens. “Yeah… I know something about it.” He’s not looking at me.

  “You know,” I say casually, “you never really told me how you got into Gehenna.”

  He snaps a look to me. “You should take care throwing that name around.”

  I frown, a little unsettled by this newly serious side of Zachariel. “Okay.”

  His face softens. “I’m just saying… everyone knows life energy hits are part of the underground, but we’re undercover as groupies for a reason. It’s not the brightest idea to announce you’re a collector in a room full of addicts.”

  That makes sense, but completely dodges my question. “So you’re Gehenna’s expert on slasher culture?” I prod.

  He glances back to Seth, but he’s still talking to the slashers. Zachariel sighs his frustration. “Moloch recruited me out of another Bay Area mob. My boss did a lot of tech protection and cybercrime. I wasn’t just his enforcer—I was one of his top slashers.”

  “A slasher for the mob.” I nod my head, impressed. “And now for… that other group of which we are both current and possibly future members?”

  A half-smile lifts one side of his mouth. “Yes, that one. Moloch wanted a debt collector who knew his way around the data mines, so he arranged for my former boss to have a tragically-shortened lifespan. I do… a lot of things for Moloch. Some occasional back door work, mining of government records, that sort of thing.” He looks back to Seth, who is now striding toward us. “I had assumed we were here to simply pay out to some friendlies to the cause. But either Seth has a sudden new interest in slash work, or Moloch’s outsourcing now, and he forgot to mention it to me.”

  I don’t say anything in reply as Seth arrives at our side.

  “All right, they’re about to start.” He looks to me. “You’ll pay out after they’re done with the trick, but wait until I clear it, understood?”

  He’s about as tightly strung as a junkie, which just amps up my own nerves. “How much am I paying out?”

  “A year for each of the three players.”

  I grimace, but don’t say anything.

  Seth frowns at me, then looks to Zachariel. “Is this going to be a problem? I don’t want her messing this up.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Zachariel says.

  Seth’s look for me just gets darker. “You’re only here because M
oloch thinks you’re ready. I’d be delighted to tell him otherwise.”

  “I can do it.” I try to put more confidence in my voice.

  “Make sure that you do.” Seth checks over his shoulder. The three slashers are lining up at the cubes. “Wait here until I come for you.” Then he takes off toward the bank of screens.

  Zachariel watches him go with a look so severe, it could burn holes in Seth’s back.

  This intensity is new. It seems out-of-character for Zachariel, and that alone makes me uneasy. Not to mention the all-too-natural way he slipped in and out of banter with the groupie girls. He’s accomplished at putting on whatever persona fits the moment. I remind myself that I don’t actually know much of anything about Zachariel, except that his kisses are hot, and he seems bent on keeping me alive.

  For now.

  I don’t interrupt his heated stare, but before he decides to turn that on me, I need to learn more about Moloch’s chief slasher.

  The three slashers stand just outside the transparent cubes, attracting a crowd. The groupies cluster at a distance, watching as the slashers shed their cloaks, kick off their boots, and finally strip off their slouch-pants. They’re left in blue skin-tight suits that have races of light zipping along the surface: full-body interfaces for the holo-cages.

  Zachariel is missing the strip-show with his laser focus on Seth. The slashers at the consoles are already working, manipulating the grid with their dancing fingers and holo-visors. Seth hovers over one of them, watching the screen.

  “So, if this isn’t just a bunch of slashers showing off their tricks,” I say to draw Zachariel’s attention back, “what exactly are they doing?”

  He slowly drags his gaze from Seth, glances at me, then checks out the slashers at the cubes. Three assistants run up to them, each handing off a thin, metallic headband. The slashers install the trackers on their foreheads, then wave their hands to open the holo-cages and step into the blue mist inside. Once the door closes behind them, their suits race streaks of light into the mist and connect to the six inner surfaces of the cube. The slashers adjust their positions mid-cube, and one-by-one, the panels light up with data. I’ve never been in a holo-cube personally, but I’ve seen them demo’d at the trade shows. The experience inside is supposed to be a complete immersion in the grid, but even from the outside, it looks surreal.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Zachariel says, studying them. “My guess is they’re doing more than breaking a failsafe.”

  I know, vaguely, that a failsafe is some kind of protection against slashing. My knowledge of cybernetic interfaces is extensive, but beyond that, my understanding of grid-tech is surface-deep.

  “Okay, Mr. Slasher For The Mob.”

  That draws a small smile from him.

  “Care to explain?” I want to know why he’s so intensely interested in the tech, but I’m also hoping to learn more about him.

  He sweeps a hand to encompass the holo-cages. “I suspect the three of them are working together, building some kind of simulation.” He points to the petite figure in the first cube. It’s easy to see she’s female now that she’s down to her interface suit. “ChinaDoll is probably building a replica of the system they want to slash. She pulls what she can off the grid then breaks it into parts: hardware sim, code, all the tech bits.”

  As he’s explaining, the thumping music picks up the pace, and the slashers in the holo-cubes start to dance—not with the beat, but swaying in the elaborate motions that go with interfacing with the grid.

  “She’s trying to reverse engineer it?” I ask.

  He smiles. “Exactly. Then she passes it off to the next cube.” Now that he says it, I can see some of the light streaks are arcing between the cubes and not just inside of them. “I’m not sure which of the two men is InTense, but he’s supposedly a high-level Tech Officer at one of the big data-mining companies. He keeps his slashing down low, but he’s first-rate. If I had to guess, he’s probably not in the second cube.”

  “Why’s that?” I ask.

  Zachariel cocks his head, watching the slashers with their elaborate swaying and flicking of hands and fingers. “The slasher in the second cube is throwing every kind of attack he can at the sim, including a lot of simple brute-force methods. It’s not very sophisticated work, but you have to know what to look for. He takes the responses and passes them on to the third cube, where the art really comes into play.”

  “So you think that’s InTense?”

  Zachariel nods. The guy in the third cube is the slowest of the dancers. His movements are almost serpentine, deliberate and winding, with an occasional flick of the hand, as if he’s casting something off. “His job is to create the new model—including the bits that will be just different enough to alter the original function, but not so different that it’s easy to detect. He feeds that back to ChinaDoll, who integrates it into the original sim and tests it. Then they start the loop all over again.”

  “So they’re doing everything simultaneously?” That boggles my mind slightly. It seems like it should be a step-by-step process.

  “They’re racing the clock. That’s part of the challenge.” His gaze has drifted away from the cubes back to the bank of screens. Seth is still intent on that one slasher’s screen.

  “What about those guys?” I ask.

  Zachariel’s eyes narrow, and he has that impatient look again. “They’re running interference. Routing the cube-slashers’ work while keeping the autocheck systems at bay and trying not to trip off the Feds.”

  “Sounds like you’ve done this before.” I smile, but Zachariel doesn’t rise to the bait, too intent on watching Seth watch the slasher.

  “Not at this level,” he says without looking at me.

  Seth whispers something to the slasher he’s watching over, then strides over to the cubes. He stands next to the one with ChinaDoll.

  “Look, do me a favor, okay?” Zachariel asks, his gaze locked on Seth.

  I frown. “Like what?” Not that I don’t owe Zachariel about a dozen favors.

  “Distract Seth for a minute. I want to check something out.”

  I’m not sure what he’s got planned, but if Zachariel’s out of the loop, and I help, he’ll be more inclined to share.

  “Not a problem.” I start across the black-sponge flooring toward Seth, who is standing, arms crossed, watching the walls inside ChinaDoll’s cage. He doesn’t see me until I’m almost there, but then his face lights up with fury. He flits a look around for Zachariel, and his jaw starts to work when he can’t find him. I’m not sure where he slipped off to, but that’s part of the point.

  “I told you stay out of the way,” Seth says through gritted teeth.

  “I got bored.”

  “Where’s Zachariel?” His anger is darkening his face.

  “Went to find a bathroom,” I say coolly, then lift my chin toward ChinaDoll. “What’s she doing in there, anyway?”

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  He’s still looking for Zachariel, but then the screens inside the cubes wink out. All three slashers raise their arms in triumph. The cluster of groupies erupts in whistles and cheers. The slashers synchronize their exit, take a bow, and the crowd rushes up to greet them. I surreptitiously glance around the room, looking for Zachariel. He’s talking to the slasher Seth was hovering over before. Seth hasn’t noticed yet, and I aim to keep it that way. I stride toward the slashers and their fans—Seth is forced to follow or lose me.

  I wade into the crowd, but Seth is right at my back.

  “What are you doing?” he hisses.

  Several of the groupies are getting temporary signatures on their bodies with electric-blue tattoo pens. “Getting an autograph,” I say, as I work my way toward ChinaDoll.

  Seth pulls back on my elbow, halting me just before I reach her. He burns me with a glare, then catches ChinaDoll’s eye and tilts his head to the side. She nods, finishes off a signature across a man’s chest, and follows Seth as he leads us
both out through the back of the crowd. On the far side of the room sits a temporary tent, the kind you throw up at an outdoor party. Only this one has thick black cables running under the canvas walls. Seth takes us inside, and it’s stacked full of servers like we have at Sterling Cybernetics—only these are so state-of-the art, I suspect they’ve been bootlegged out of the development labs of the nearby data-mining companies.

  ChinaDoll is checking me out. She’s short, Asian, just as her slasher name would suggest, and has sharp, dark eyes that are scanning my trashy outfit with mild disgust.

  “Where’s your collector?” she asks Seth. “I didn’t come here for the fan love.”

  Seth gives up peeking out the door of the tent, apparently looking for Zachariel. “I understand. And we’ve transferred your credits already. Wraith is one of our new collectors and will take care of the rest of your payment.”

  He gives me a nod. I debate asking if she’s been using drugs, but decide that’s unlikely—slashers hype up on adrenaline and caffeine, but they know better than to cloud their faculties with the rest. In fact, I’m sure she wants the life energy hit to gain more of that sharp-edged clarity she uses in her work.

  I glance at the tent door flap and wish Zachariel were here. The last time I paid out wasn’t pretty. “You ready?” I ask ChinaDoll.

  “Yes,” she says, like that was excruciatingly obvious.

  I place my palm on her forehead and start dosing her. It’s the same gut-wrenching feeling of dying as before, when I paid out to the political donors, only I’ve learned to manage it better. My fingers still curl, clutching at the hair just above her forehead, but I keep the moaning inside, and I don’t shriek when the abyss seems to open at my feet. My eyes squeeze shut, but I can still see it. You’re not falling, you’re not falling, you’re going to live… I work hard to keep the mantra in my head and not let it spill out of my mouth. I suck air in through my teeth and open the flood of life energy a little more. The faster I get through the year of payout, the sooner this will be over. The abyss yawns deeper, but that doesn’t make it substantially worse. After an interminable stretch of minutes, I’m done.