by John Conroe
And I needed all this because the only way I could see to get into Manhattan was through the last place I wanted to go—a subway tunnel.
See, at first Zone Defense was very active in monitoring the tunnels, and there was some drone activity underground. But within a few years, the drones had largely left the underground spaces behind as they needed every photon of sunlight to keep charged. Which left the abandoned lines to new management—rats. Fed by the thousands of dead bodies left from the attack, the already formidable New York City brown rat became almost a new species. Bigger, stronger, and seriously carnivorous, they bred into the millions, all with a newly honed taste for human flesh, all with an overload of aggression.
Ironic that aggressive New York humans were replaced by another mammal with maybe even more of a New York attitude. I’ve seen big hordes take on small packs of feral dogs and win. Frankly, between the two, I’d rather tangle with dogs because there’s a chance, however slim, that I can maybe drive them off. Zone rats? Not a chance. The more you kill, the more enraged the rest become.
So if I was going to get into the Zone, I’d have to get through one of the subway lines and make it past whatever rat colonies lived there. That meant coming up with ways to get past the tunnels’ new owners, and that added a whole new layer of preparation to my list.
Three and a half hours later, I left the library, notes written in an old-school notepad, all the words in my personal code. I stopped at a pizza place and downed a couple of big slices, watching the watcher drone hovering near the second-floor corner of an apartment building across the street as, in turn, it watched me. While I ate, I ran through my daily intake of email, using my personal AI to help sort through them. I discarded almost all of them but there was one I’ve been waiting for. Maybe today would be the day.
Turns out Egan was right. There were a few positive messages among the hundreds of nasty, angry comments. But it was the worst of the worst emails that I concentrated on, my AI narrowing the list down to about fourteen of the most heinous. Right in the middle of these, I found one that began You are a horrible, appalling, repulsive peon. Perfect. I ignored the rest and read through that one carefully.
Ajaya Gurung,
You are a horrible, appalling, repulsive peon. Only the lowest level of human would seek fame by scaring the rest of humanity with your made-up stories of mastermind drones lurking in government buildings, attempting to create the apocalypse. You disgust me, and I know you live in Brooklyn. If I find you, you will pay.
With Hate.
That was it. Pretty similar to most of the other real bad ones, if a bit lighter on the curse words and the improbable bodily maneuvers that some of those commanded me to attempt. Maybe a little shorter than most, maybe somewhat minimalist in its message, at least if you didn’t know who it was from.
The four words describing me in the first sentence provided the author’s identity. Horrible, Appalling, Repulsive, Peon. HARP.
Backtracking the email through servers to try to find an originating IP address would be a study in complete frustration. Harper was a master’s master with AI, web functionality, and computer systems. I had no doubt that my emails were being read, reread, and tracked by the government’s best web wizards. Good luck. Harper was raised with artificial intelligences for playmates, interacting at a level that bypassed normal visual and verbal interfaces. Maybe the NSA had other people like that, but if they did, they’d failed to find any sign of her in the weeks since she’d walked out of Zone Defense.
Now, if I read this right, she was telling me to hang out on the ground floor of the Brooklyn Municipal building and she’d find me. At least that’s what I got out of it. The phrase lowest level bothered me a bit because that could indicate the tunnels under the building, but I didn’t think she would attempt those, nor try to get me to go into those, not with my aerial watchdog following my every move.
As it was, I was likely being followed by more observers, both man and machine, than I could count on both hands. My father had been trained in spycraft, at least to some extent, as part of his SAS training. But most of my lessons at his hands had been about sniping and staying alive in the Zone. Still, he had talked a little about such things when he told me stories, so I knew enough to feel like I had watchers all around me, all the time.
It would therefore be weird if I walked into the public area of the muni building, let alone tried to descend into the locked, government-personnel-only portions. In fact, I needed an excuse for visiting the building in the first place. And after a minute or two of thinking about it, I had one.
I took a human-driven taxi to the building, as I don’t trust any AI-operated system anymore. Human operated anything is getting harder and harder to find, but there are still a few. My driver dropped me right at the front doors and in I went.
Staying on the ground floor, I made my way to the Department of Buildings, where I requested a list of the open service orders for the west side of Brooklyn, which is where our apartment is, and more importantly, where some of the biggest potholes in the City lurk. The clerk explained that it was all available online. I insisted on getting a printed copy. I then pointed to the public notification on the wall that said it was the policy of the DCAS (Department of Citywide Administrative Services) that all open orders were available in writing to the public. We argued a bit about the definition of in writing, with her feeling that online counted and me taking the stand that it meant on paper. Eventually, in a surprise capitulation, she gave in but told me it would take quite some time to compile and print. I said I’d wait.
Frankly I didn’t give a big rat’s butt about the info. Just an excuse to be there and a false lead for any of Major Yoshida or Agents Black and White’s people who were undoubtedly lurking about the building.
My clerical friend left me to cool my jets, which was perfect. Sitting on a marble bench, I activated my AI and accessed the ongoing search results for AI accidents.
At first I was just half-heartedly reading through the list, the other half of my awareness on trying to spot Harper.
But ten minutes into my wait, I found a new incident that captured all of my attention. Hidden among the car crashes, shipping errors, and construction accidents was a blip that only just made the cut. It was a small article from a Midwestern news blog about a recall on pesticides. The chemical company had made an error that added an additional component to the pesticide just before shipments went out to corn, wheat, and soy farmers throughout the country’s bread basket. When I looked up the long string of numbers and chlorates and methyl words that named the chemical, it turned out to be a broad use herbicide. The recall was a solid two weeks after the pesticide went out.
I don’t know when Midwestern farmers sprayed, but I had a bad feeling that more than a few had gotten their work done in the last ten days. “AI, flag story and search for follow-ups,” I directed. Too many of those kinds of errors and thousands would begin to die.
Then a body crashed into me and almost knocked me out of my chair.
Chapter 5
“Hey…” I got out as a lanky teen girl smashed into me, knocking me sideways, her skateboard zooming off unmanned across the lobby.
“Oops, sorry,” she said with no real regret or feeling in her voice. She had drone impellers strapped to each wrist, which propelled her at truly dangerous speeds along on her board, moving her arms to change speed or direction. The latest teenage fad.
A few seconds later, she was back on her feet and rushing off to recover her board. A security guard approached her and quickly escorted her out of the building.
Me, I was fine, just bumped around a bit. I checked all my pockets to make sure she wasn’t a pickpocket and found that, in fact, she was. Although this kid put stuff into my pocket rather than relieving me of any. A tiny little data chip was now in my right front pants pocket.
Clever Harper. I put myself back in order and waited another ten minutes before marching over to my clerk.
; “That list ready?” I asked.
“Oh, no dear. No, I’m afraid the printer is on a big job for the mayor at the moment. It’s going to be quite a while before it’s done. At least a few hours,” she informed me with a nasty little smile.
“Fine, I’ll come back.”
Well, no, actually, I wouldn’t, but at least I had a good excuse for storming out and heading back home.
At the apartment, after a few more stops along the way, I loaded the chip into an old model reader that my sister Gabby hadn’t bothered to pack when the fam left town. It had no Bluetooth or wireless connection to anything and after putting it under a makeshift Faraday cage made from copper netting, I opened the chip. A single page of text appeared, along with the number sixty in the upper right corner. The sixty changed immediately to fifty-nine then fifty-eight, and I got busy reading.
Yo Gunner Kid,
How’s house arrest going? By now I think you must have discovered my little gift to you from our mutual trip. Not sure exactly how that will work out but early signs looked good before I had to check out of Club ZD.
I’m fine, thanks for asking. Actually it’s fascinating to observe all of this firsthand. Travel is so fun. And all my hotels have great television, so I’ve been able to see your interviews and watch the news coverage. Entertaining stuff.
But getting down to business, you’re no doubt itching to get back to your favorite line of work. But where to begin? Where to look? Not the old digs, as those became too hazardous for everything when Uncle Z got interested in it. All those loud noises and flashes of light, mixed with tumbling chunks of brick and concrete, are harmful to habitation, even for drones. Especially for drones.
It might be fun to sit back and watch you struggle to find what you seek, but time is running out, as you said in your last television special. By the way, you were so spot-on, Gunner Kid.
In fact, If you see your officer friend, ask him about COBWEB. Or actually C08W38, but they’re calling it COBWEB ’cause it’s ironically close and it was written by the seven-legged monster. I’m not going to lie to you, sniper—this program is a real hard-assed bitch. It subverts AI, working slowly at first to infect the system. Gradually it begins to alter the primary mission programming, changing whatever the system is supposed to do to almost the exact opposite. Desalinate water? How about contaminate it instead? Coordinate safe traffic patterns? Try causing the most crashes possible. COBWEB hasn’t been out there long, but who knows where it is or what it has already infected. It may also create back doors for its master.
So, in the interest of saving the world and all that, here is gift number two, although this one is double-edged so be careful.
To find what you seek, head back to the building where it all started, where you did some of your best shooting, where you proved you’re a better faller than you are a flyer. Climb higher than you did before, at least by one more floor. Ironic that it would take over an office that once housed New York’s answer to fear. But hey, everyone wants good lines of communication, right?
When you’re done, I may have a third gift—freedom. Out here, access is easier, and I’ve found out a lot of stuff. Stuff about the architects. You’ve met one, but you’ll never guess who. I’ll get you details. The point is we have leverage, Gunner kid.
Gotta run. There’s this new show replacing Zone War, have you heard of it? It’s called Drone Wars. Funny stuff. Drones hunting drones… hysterical.
H
I read the whole thing three times over before the timer got to zero. Then the page disappeared. The screen flickered and went dark. I pulled the chip and then reinserted it but it was dead, as I had been sure it would be. Harper doesn’t pull many punches.
So there was my answer to items three and possibly five on my list, handed to me on a platter. Plum Blossom was apparently downtown. 55 Broadway. The building where I shot at my first Spider and freed the Johnson family from a death trap. And one floor above where I had been was the old headquarters for the New York State Office Of Counterterrorism. Ironic. I have no idea how she would know that, but Harper is pretty damned proud of her intellect. If she says something is so, you can pretty much bet your life on it.
So that left, just item number four—pissing off the Man. Not a problem. Like I said, I have a gift.
But first a bit of housekeeping. I opened all my packages and laid out the contents across the dining room table. A high-quality head lamp and extra batteries (so odd to have anything electrical, but I wasn’t worried about drones in the subways), chem lights, boxes of emergency road flares (nobody really needed those the last ten years, at least till recently when accidents became a thing again), magnesium survival fire lighters, safety matches, an old blender from an antique store, several rolls of aluminum foil, lighter fluid, and a bunch of other odds and ends, including a recent model field expedient surgical kit—the automated kind. That last one cost me a lot of money, but I had come prepared, bringing a stack of gold and silver bullion coins from the family stash. Paid for all my new gear and put a down payment on whatever weapons Egan might be able to scrounge for me.
But I couldn’t count on him getting any real useful munitions other than a rifle. So it was homework time.
When he first started going in, Dad had to draw on his training to improvise explosives and other goodies that he needed to survive the Zone. Once he was able to raid old law enforcement and military offices, he didn’t need to use the homemade stuff anymore, because the good, professional-grade toys were just lying around. But at first he needed to make a lot, and I was his helper back when he manufactured his own stuff. Some lessons you just don’t forget.
I got busy, stopping once for dinner and once to let Rikki in, but continuing to work late into the evening. While I worked, I planned with Rikki Tikki, trusting his cyber overwatch to block out any electronic listening devices in the apartment and particularly the one in my neck. We worked on item number four, the easiest one to accomplish but the one that scared me the most.
I mean, how often do you willingly push someone to the point where they decide to kill you?
Chapter 6
I finished off my pile of homemade toys the next morning, then studied the notes I had made on the subway system. Now that I knew where to hunt for Plum Blossom, I could finish my planning while I waited for Egan to work his magic.
There were several lines that had once gone right into downtown Manhattan, with old stations in the heart of the Financial District. The problem was that they were the ones with some of the longest distances under the East River between stations. I wanted—no scratch that, I needed—to have the shortest stretch of tunnel I could get. In this case, it meant the F line.
I could probably access the closed tunnel from the York Street Station. From there, as best I could tell, it would be two and three-quarters kilometers to the old East Broadway station—under the river, with the rats. Once in the Zone, I could surface and cover the two and a quarter kilometers to 55 Broadway the good old-fashioned way, on foot, with only relentless killing machines to worry about. And Rikki would join me. We figured that once the neck bomb was neutralized, Zone Defense would be on to the true nature of their pet Decimator drone. So it would be an all-or-nothing mission.
The doorbell of the apartment rang, which made me jump. My 9mm was just suddenly in my hand, pointed at the door. I had absolutely no memory of snatching it off the dining room table. A couple of seconds ticked by before I got my shit together and had my AI check the hallway camera.
A dark-haired guy wearing a t-shirt that read Christopoulos Souvlaki and carrying a big, insulated food delivery bag stood on the other side of the door, looking bored.
Gun in hand, I approached the door, opened it a hair, gun barrel pressed against the metal, ready to fire right through it. Our door is a pretty tough steel model, but I had no doubts that the high-speed 9mm bullets would zip through the metal like paper.
“Ah, yes?” I asked.
“I got yer or
der here,” he said, dark eyes looking me over, unimpressed.
“I didn’t order any food.”
“Compliments of the family,” he said. “You gonna take it? It’s shacking heavy.”
The light dawned in my brain. I opened the door and he stepped in, walking right past me to the dining room table, which I suddenly remembered was covered with improvised bombs.
Ignoring the lethal clutter, he set the big red insulated bag on the table with an audible thunk, opened the flap, and pulled out a second, empty red bag from inside, which he slung over his shoulder. Then he turned and headed for the door.
Giving me a level stare, he slipped past me and headed out into the hall without a look back, the empty Christopoulos Souvlaki bag slung on his back.
I locked the door and turned to the bulging bag still on my table. The flap was open and inside I could see a white paper bag and a thick tan cardboard box.
The bag contained a Greek gyro wrapped in aluminum foil. The big square box held something altogether different. I ate the gyro while I inspected the contents of the box.
Sandwiched inside cutouts in foam lining was a short-barreled 5.56mm rifle – in two pieces, six loaded thirty-round magazines, and a screw-on sound suppressor. A handwritten note told me that half the ammo was subsonic and the other half was light armor piercing. Tucked into their own cutout area were three dark cylinders with pull rings, flip up spoons, and blue banding around the middle. I’ve found boxes of them in old police stations and federal agency offices inside the Zone. M84 stun grenades—flashbangs. Beautiful.
The rifle was nothing special, a Troy upper which mated to a Bushmaster lower with a Magpul stock, folding sights, and a Magpul grip. It was fifteen years old if not older, as at least one of those companies was no longer in business. The age wasn’t an issue, as modern firearms can last and function indefinitely if they’re well cared for. This one looked in good shape. The barrel was bright and clean, as was the bolt carrier group. The charging handle was also aftermarket, with dual release levers so I could easily use either hand to open the action.
