Data Runner

by Sam A. Patel

  For the first time I feel a sense of relief. “At least I don’t have to worry about waking up in a ditch minus an arm.”

  But Snake shakes his head. “That just means they’ll have to drag you back to the lab and strap you to a table to get at it.”

  Wonderful. That’s just great. Leave it to these guys to make getting my arm cut off the better of two options.

  “Now, there are three things you have to know,” begins Cyril. “First, you must protect the circuit from a targeted impact. It can take a minor bruising, but if the blow is concentrated enough to burst the chip while you’re loaded up, the release of live data cells into your bloodstream will be toxic.”

  Toxic! Was he kidding? “If the chip is part of my biology then how can it be toxic?”

  “It’s like your appendix,” says Cyril. “That’s part of your biology too, but if it bursts open it’ll poison you from the inside. Don’t worry—the chip is resilient. You can see we injected it through a pinhole. In most cases you won’t even have to worry about it, but it is something you need to be aware of.

  “Second, you must keep your body’s core temperature between 95 and 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Outside of this range, you risk permanent damage to the chip and/or complete loss of cargo. Avoid heatstroke. Avoid hypothermia. Drink lots of water when you’re hot and bundle up when you’re cold.

  “Third and most important, since it’s the one you can’t avoid. This cortex chip draws its energy directly from your body. As of now, it will draw a very small and constant amount to remain active, but your body will adjust to that in no time. The energy required to maintain cargo, however, will be much larger. It will impact your metabolism. The bigger or more complex the cargo, the more energy it will take to maintain, which means your hypoglycemic curve will be very steep. What that means is, you will have to keep your blood sugar up. Right now you can probably go a day without eating before you start to feel faint. When you’re carrying cargo, that window will shrink to about four hours if you’re lucky, even less if you’re under strenuous pursuit. Once you start to feel faint, you’ll have twenty minutes to get some fuel into your system before you pass out. Thirty minutes tops.”

  That doesn’t sound good at all. “What happens then?” I ask.

  “What happens if you pass out in the middle of a run? Oh, I don’t think you want to find out, Jack.”

  Cyril’s remark is followed by an ominous pause during which I definitely wonder what I have gotten myself into. I wait for Cyril to continue, but he has nothing more to add. It is Snake who finally breaks the silence.

  “It’s time for you to get branded,” he says and swings another machine over my arm.

  I inch back in the chair. “What is that?”

  “It’s just a plain old laser-guided tattoo iron,” he says as he slaps it into place. He seems surprised that I even have to ask. “Standard equipment found in any tattoo parlor around the world.”

  Tattoo? Okay. I’m not bothered by the idea of getting one; it’s just one more thing I wasn’t expecting.

  “From here on out, you will not be just another runner,” says Cyril. “This the moment when you become one of our Aves. Runners are a dime a dozen. Our Aves have been handpicked for the job. That is why Arcadian Transports is the best at what we do, Jack. You can take pride in that. You are about to become part of an elite group of data runners.”

  Snake hands me a thin screen loaded with an index of birds. “No one beyond this room is to know your name,” he says, “not even other Aves. It’s a security issue. From this point forward you will be known only by your tag, which is why you should pick something that represents you.” He takes a moment to eye me up. “You’re in good shape, but you’re very lean, so don’t go with a massive bird. In fact, you don’t look like the kind of person who would attack trouble head-on, so I would stay away from the birds of prey altogether. Think about your traits. Every human characteristic can be found in the avian world, so find the bird that best represents your strengths. This is the tag that will define you as a runner. Don’t just pick it at random, let it be an extension of who you are.”

  It seems pretty clear to me why he chose the Snake Eagle. It takes a certain kind of understated bravado to be able to swoop in undetected and pluck a snake off the ground—the perfect mix of stealth and strength. I can see that in him. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help me any as I scroll through the taxonomy. I haven’t got the slightest clue what bird best represents me. But then I remember something I once saw about crows. Crows are incredible problem solvers, capable not only of using tools but of fashioning those tools from scratch. The amount of wit and reasoning skill this requires apparently makes them one of the most intelligent creatures on the planet. So there’s that. But then I start thinking about ravens, which may not be as intelligent as crows but have other traits that I admire. Like their vocal ability to imitate certain sounds. That’s a form of ghosting, right? Which is very similar to what I do whenever I ghost the aggrenet. Ravens also have a much longer lifespan: something like thirty years to a crow’s eight. So there’s that as well.

  Crow or raven. Raven or crow.

  I wonder. “Is there a cross between a raven and a crow?”

  Snake takes the thin screen back in a way that tells me he knows exactly what I’m looking for. Working with new Aves like this, he probably has every species of bird memorized.

  “Corvus corone,” he says. “Literally raven crow.” He goes through the index until he finds exactly what he’s looking for and shows it to me. “Commonly known as the Carrion Crow.”

  The Carrion Crow.

  I’m not even done considering it when Snake renders an image into the tattoo iron and adjusts it over my arm. “Wait, I’m not sure that’s the one I want.”

  “Yes you are. If that’s what your gut is telling you, don’t second-guess it.”

  Snake opens a lacquer box, revealing a series of ink jars inside. He pulls out the large one of black and holds it up for me to see. The color inside is thick and rich and leaves curtains on the glass as he turns it in his hand. “This is irradiated scorpion ink. It will help block your chip’s signal from being tracked.”

  Okay, the irradiated part I get. I assume it’s similar to what they use in hospitals, and equally safe. What piques my curiosity is the other part. “What do you mean scorpion ink?” I ask, thinking it has something to do with their venom.

  “The pigment that is used to make these inks comes from the pulverized exoskeletons of scorpions.”

  Snake fills one vial with black and another with a very dark purple that looks almost metallic. He attaches both vials to the tattoo iron and starts the machine. The laser guides the needle array over my forearm. On any other day this might actually sting, but today it’s just a prickle compared to what I have already endured. In the meantime, Cyril presents me with a large aluminum case. He opens it. Inside is a full set of upper torso body armor, gunmetal gray with gold trim, so new it still has the plastic film on it. Cyril peels it off and removes the armor from the case.

  “Titanium meta-aramid ultramesh,” he says with a rap of his knuckles. “The best you can get. It’s a bit heavier than a strict titanium microweave, but you get that back tenfold in tensile strength.”

  I’m not worried about the quality of the armor. What concerns me is why he’s giving it to me in the first place. Everything has happened so fast that I can hardly wrap my head around it, but this pushes everything else to the side. This is different. Seeing the body armor brings it close to the chest. Maybe a little too close to the chest.

  Cyril seems to know exactly what I’m thinking as he returns the gear to the case. “I won’t lie to you,” he says. “Arcadian cargos are always high value, and we’ve had some unexpected challenges as of late. It’s getting pretty rough out there. Hopefully, you’ll never need it, but you won’t be doing yourself any harm by wearing it. Just think of it as a safety net.”

  “Has a
nyone ever been shot?” I ask.

  It’s a simple question, but it seems like Cyril has to consider how to answer it. “They’ve been shot at,” he replies. Then he taps the case. “The body armor works.”

  The tattoo iron zips to a halt as the carriage returns to the base. I have to wait for Snake to finish blotting the blood and ink off my arm before I can see it, but when I do, I am amazed by the result.

  The image is of a Carrion Crow in flight. Drawn in black with just enough purple mixed in to give the plumage an iridescent sheen. Wings spread. Feathers splayed at the tips almost as if it’s swooping. Beak slightly open, ready to caw. But the most captivating thing of all is the eye, the one visible eye that looks outward. Not at me but at the outside observer looking back at my arm. It stalks. Like the eyes in those paintings that appear to follow you wherever you go, the eye of the bird on my arm draws you in. Mesmerizes.

  The eye does have a functional purpose too. It happens to be exactly where the chip is. “What do you think?” Snake asks.

  “It’s perfect.”

  “It gets better,” he says, picking up the UV light. “Scorpions produce a fluorescent compound called beta-Carboline in their cuticles, which intensifies with each molting until the hardening of their final exoskeletons.”

  Snake shines the UV light across my arm, and I am immediately awestruck by how the dark bird lights up. It glows indigo like some sort of mythical creature. All except for the vigilant eye that shines pale purple from the chip beneath.

  “The Carrion,” says Cyril. “From here on out, that will be your tag.”

  It isn’t until Snake removes the UV light and the bird on my arm stops glowing that I recover my senses. “Okay, so what now?”

  “Now you wait.” Cyril opens another package to show me one more item nested in foam. This one needs no explanation. It’s a standard Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, or SQUID, interface. The same kind doctors use to communicate with surgically implanted components like pacemakers. “I assume you know how to use this.”

  “There’s not much to know,” I reply. It’s totally noninvasive. All you have to do is stick the sensor over the implant. The link will form magnetically through the skin. Truth be told, I don’t even need it because Martin and I already have every interface known to man down in his workshop. But ours are piecemeal, and those SQUIDs are expensive, and this one is brand new and surgical grade, so I’m not about to turn it down.

  “When the chip in your arm vibrates, use the interface to link it to your thin screen. That will give you the pickup location. Go there. They’ll load you up and give you the destination. Deliver the cargo. Once delivery is made, the job is done. We’re going to keep you local for a while, so your runs will always be point to point within the Free City. Payment gets wired into your account upon completion of each job. It’s that simple. If all goes well, you won’t see us again for a while.”

  “What if I need to get in touch with you?”

  “Just like the business card, run your chip over any scanner ported into the aggrenet. The scanner will return a local error, but there’s a trigger code in there that will get back to us.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we’ll find you.”

  7

  “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” says Dexter without a hint of exaggeration.

  To be fair, it is the stupidest thing I’ve ever suggested in my entire life. “But you did bring it?” I ask anyway.

  “It’s in my bag,” he says. “But let me just say again for the record how completely moronic this is.”

  The old public library is a three-story building that’s been boarded over. This particular section of Main Street got hit pretty hard by the downturn, so the library is just one in a string of abandoned buildings that’s been fenced off at street level. The only way in is from the top.

  Three buildings over, Dex and I use the fire escape to get to the rooftop of the old gym. I guess it’s kind of ironic. Back when the town had money, people would use machines with hologram projectors to simulate climbing up a wall when all they had to do was go outside and do it for real. Although looking at it now, I guess it could only be people like us who see the forest through the trees. All those open-faced buildings. All those heaps of rubble and half-crumbled walls. All those towers of vacant Blackburn Corps of Engineers scaffolding that are just enough to make it seem like a reconstruction effort is underway when really there is none. All those exposed pipes and jittery old fire escapes. All the steel cables running down empty elevator shafts. It all makes the perfect training ground for the Brentwood Dragons. That’s what makes us different. While everyone else compares Brentwood to its former glory, we embrace it for what it is now. We see the beautiful playground beyond the blight. Because for us, there are no obstacles that are not challenges. Obstacles are like plateaus, and there are plenty of plateaus, but those plateaus are never limits. There are no limits.

  From the rooftop of the old gym, Dexter and I gap jump the buildings to get to the old library.

  All week long I’ve been tracing in dressy clothes with my body armor underneath to get used to both of them. I figure if I’m going to make it on the sneakernet then I’m going to have to blend in, and there is no way I’m going to do that in the Free City looking like a kid from Brentwood. The shoes were harder, but Dexter helped me find a pair of black lace-up boots that are both stylish and functional, protective but light. The new clothes I got used to quickly, since that was how I used to dress anyway. The armor is a different story. It’s a big change, that’s for sure. Particularly when rolling out of a landing. I’ve grown accustom to feeling the ground across my back as my frame absorbs the energy. But now I have this shell between me and the ground that doesn’t absorb but transfers the energy, so each time I come out of the roll there is all this extra momentum popping me off the ground like a spring. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I might even use it to my advantage once I get used to it.

  Dexter and I make our way down the stairwell to the third floor. The entire floor is empty. All that remains are the concrete pillars and load-bearing walls holding up the ceiling. Everything else is gone. Even the pipes in the walls have been gutted.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asks.

  “Cyril said that other runners have been shot at.”

  “Shot at doesn’t mean shot,” says Dex.

  “Yes, but getting shot at means that sooner or later one of those bullets is going to hit the target. Think of this as a dry run.”

  “Dry run in stupidity.”

  “It’s a controlled experiment.”

  Dex shakes his head. “This is so stupid, Jack.”

  “No, it’s not. I have no idea what it feels like. The first time is going to be a shock no matter what, and I don’t want that to happen out in the field. By doing it like this, I’ll at least know what to expect. It’s building the muscle memory, that’s all. I’m just desensitizing my body to it.”

  “Are you even listening to yourself? You’re talking about desensitizing your body to a bullet, Jack. A bullet.”

  “Not the bullet itself, Dex, but the impact.” Actually, now that I do listen to myself, the whole thing does start to sound a little crazy. But then aren’t half the things we do crazy? “It’s not like the bullet will pass through the armor.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because this gear is certified to stop a 9mm slug at point-blank range.”

  “Says who?”

  “I read the instructions.”

  “Oh, that’s different,” mocks Dexter. “If that’s what the instructions say then this isn’t stupid at all.”

  “Give me a few feet just to be on the safe side.”

  “I don’t think there is a safe side here, but I’ll give you five.”

  Dexter opens his bag and removes an old pillowcase rolled into a tight bundle. He puts it on the gr
ound and carefully unrolls it to reveal his uncle’s gun. I just stare at it. All my life, this is the closest I’ve ever been to one.

  “What kind is it?” I ask.

  “It’s a Beretta. I don’t know the model.”

  “But you’re sure it’s a 9mm?”

  “If it isn’t then we’ve been using the wrong bullets all these years.”

  Because of the new gun-control laws, it is impossible to get a carrying license for modern weapons. However, because of the way the laws were written, any handgun manufactured prior to the formation of the North American Alliance is automatically grandfathered in. That’s why the market for “loophole guns” is so big. The carrying permits for those are as easy to get as a driver’s license. That’s what makes them so valuable. The newer the loophole gun, the more valuable it is.

  “I wouldn’t do this for anyone,” says Dexter. The way he handles the gun, working the slide and hammer with confidence, you can tell he’s an expert. There’s a certain authority in the way he holds it, even in the way he always points it at the ground. He knows exactly what it is, what it’s capable of, and how to use it. You can tell he respects it as much as he commands it. “No one else but you. You know I hate guns.”

  “I know.”

  Out in the squatter settlements, guns are a fact of life. Not only did Dexter have to learn how to use one at a very early age, he had to be ready to use it. Not because he was a thug, but just so he could protect his mother when his father and uncle weren’t around. The things that can happen to a woman left alone in the settlements are unspeakable. Unspeakable. For that reason alone, Dexter didn’t have the luxury of being her child. He had to be another man in the house.