Outlier

by Kyle Harris

  Across the wide tract of desk, Okocha considered her request. She saw two ways to interpret the silence: either he was displeased that a lightweight in his service had made such an outrageous demand and was deciding on how to punish her—the pliers came to mind—or he was thinking on it seriously. She thought it to be the latter, because he was gently rocking in his chair—a likely omen that he wasn’t angry.

  If he had been perfectly still, on the other hand…

  After a length of quiet that stretched near a minute, Okocha snapped his fingers twice. One of his lieutenants—Not Baldy—boogied across the room and returned, depositing a mug of coffee in front of her.

  “Cream or sugar?” asked Okocha. Then, before she answered: “It is a very fine bean. Grown in the tropics of Colombia. Better than all of these native brews, which I find to be without flavor.”

  Chaz shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m good.” She took a sip to not be disrespectful. It wasn’t bad—not good, but not bad.

  She didn’t know where the fuck Colombia was.

  “The Begotten Sons.” The chair beneath Okocha creaked as he sat back. “I believe in the honor of honest business and respect,” he said. “But when they come and they usher trouble, then I must take action. First they stab Rodrigo, then make more trouble for Damiano and Peter, and now they have done this cruelty to you.” He rubbed his fingers along a deep groove above his brow. “Chaz, you coming to me with this news was the right thing. Of course it must be done. And in a moment, I will ask something from you in return.”

  Chaz breathed out. Okocha gave the order to Baldy, who then took Not Baldy with him to dispose of the bodies in her apartment. They stamped out of the office and shut the door, leaving her alone in the room with the boss.

  She repositioned the coldpack closer to her eye. Something in return. She wondered what he meant by that. A debt exchange? Quid pro quo? The two goons were doing her a major favor, she knew that, but she was sorely lacking alternatives. The police were off the fucking table—she did murder two people after all, the relationship between law enforcement and the Begotten Sons notwithstanding—and she couldn’t get those dead fucks out of her apartment without drawing a lot of eyes. Even if they were wrapped up and totally concealed, weight was a problem.

  There was a joke there: she had to rely on a couple of meatbags of testosterone to solve a problem. Wasn’t funny, though.

  “Religion is an expected phenomenon of intelligence,” said Okocha. His voice was different now that they were alone. Less bass. “What I mean when I say ‘intelligence’ is that a person looking up at the sky and thinking what is beyond it must first know the sky itself. That the sky is not a thing, but a misrepresentation. And then they must know stars. They must know the galaxies. They must know the universe. Because the idea of God is beyond what we know.” He waved his hand to symbolize these billions of light-years. “I do not pity a person who looks up at a sky for meaning. It is hope, yes? We all must feel hope, or we wither. What faith does is incarnate this hope. And if a person requires this fostered hope to be happy, I have no problem.” He lifted a finger. “But when God is a reason for death, that is where the problem arises.”

  Chaz nodded—not just to prove she was listening. He’d made a fair point. Between the womb and the furnace, God was just an interpretation. But if that interpretation included the butchering of innocent people based on their sexuality? Fuck those guys. God had nothing to do with human garbage. He was just a…

  Holy fuck, I’m defending God. Someone check my fucking temperature. Maybe it was just from being around Libby, a religious person who wasn’t a psychopath. God was probably a lot like her—minus the vagina.

  Or, maybe totally rocking a vagina? Who the fuck could argue differently? Maybe He had tentacles.

  Smiling a little, she looked at Okocha. “What do you think’s up there?” she asked, nodding toward the ceiling. “What do you believe?”

  “I believe there is much mystery,” he said, showing off his golden grill. “And that is the spell that is placed upon us, that it is not known. Anyway. These dogs who displayed this violence against you—Did they bring any other suffering?”

  Yeah, thought Chaz, but Okocha wouldn’t give a fuck about a hedgehog, so she shook her head.

  Out of everything from last night, that had pissed her off the most. She had scraped his carcass off the floor and dumped it into the garbage chute, because she didn’t know what else to do. Supposedly it was typical for rich assholes to have their pets cremated, and back on Earth people buried dogs and cats next to Grandpa and Grandma. Seemed decadent to keep dead bodies around, though.

  She set the coldpack down. It wasn’t so cold anymore.

  Then the holy grail of unexpected shit happened: Okocha removed his sunglasses and the prop cigar and placed them on the desk in front of him. The alignment of his eyes was off, she saw—his left one was lower and farther out from the center.

  He said, “Now I must ask you for a favor.”

  No lisp. Huh. He’s just got a walleye. She wondered if anyone else in his crew had seen him without shades.

  “Okay,” she said, trying not to stare.

  He noticed. “Not what you were expecting? It is important to know that one little disfiguration can change the whole perception of a person.” He opened his arms. “Is this not how we judge the people we meet, by what is wrong with them? By what is abnormal? Unfortunately, one cannot alter human nature by himself, so I must alter myself. I must not let them see what is underneath. This is the world in which we live.”

  “You still look badass to me,” said Chaz. “If anyone has beef, whip out the pliers.”

  He let out a boisterous laugh. “This is very true. I could do that. But a perceived abnormality is the source for all prejudice. Those who still treat me with respect might be disguising their true feelings. By showing them my disfiguration, I have made them dishonest.”

  Chaz nodded. “Yeah.” Then, after a moment: “You’re cool, you know?”

  “It has been many years since anyone has said that about me,” said Okocha, laughing again. “Anyway. I must move on to the assistance that I require. This cult has continued to disrupt our operation. Which is why I have instructed one of my best men to follow them to the shadow into which they recede. Before the news of your assault, I was provided a location: The Drowning Casket. It was once a tavern. This is where they hide.”

  Chaz scooted forward, showing him she was eager. She even took a swig of the coffee. “Count me in. But I need a gun or something. Or grenades, if you got ’em.”

  “This is not the favor I request. Your body has received enough damage already. Your computer expertise will be more beneficial for what I have planned.” His right eye had veered away, and now the left one was studying her. “A gun is a very serious thing. Have you used one?”

  She shook her head. “But I can learn. I just need some target practice.”

  “There is much more than just the mechanics. You must also have the intent. It is a challenge of the will.” He must’ve guessed she would try to insert a comeback to that—he was right—and he quickly went on: “What I require from you is disabling all security cameras around the location of this Drowning Casket. There are no cameras overlooking the main entrance, but enough around”—he moved his palm in a circle over the desk—“to produce complications. Would you say so?”

  Chaz pulled the location up on her tasker and took a cursory look at the swath. She agreed, and she gave Okocha the rundown: even if there were no lenses to capture the crime itself, all it took was one Joe Schmoe reporting the gunshots to the authorities. They track down the dead bodies, use Schmoe’s report to pinpoint a time, and scour through the archived footage from cameras around the tavern for anybody leaving the scene. A lot of Okocha’s boys weren’t clean either; good chance the triggerman would get prioritized by his criminal record and be pulled in for questioning.

  After that? It was up to forensics and how good his poker
face was. But if all the cameras in a kilometer-wide ring around the tavern were conveniently disabled, identifying the shooter from surveillance just became not worth the effort.

  “That is where your talent suits you,” said Okocha. “Not an assassin, but a silent intruder.” His tasker buzzed, and he returned the sunglasses and cigar to their places. Like pieces of a costume. A stripper came in and whispered something into his ear. When she was gone, he asked, “How long would it take you to prepare?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  “Then I will return in fifteen, and you will tell me when all is clear.” He stood up and left the office, leaving Chaz alone.

  First things first, she opened a connection to the channel of CWS feeds and surfed around where The Drowning Casket was supposed to be, hopping from camera to camera to scope out the locale. It looked like a pretty shitty area—there were barred windows, streetside beggars, and ratty attire in abundant supply. The address was within the district lines of Bisterow on the map. Seemed about right. She swore the smell of shit was wafting through the screen.

  Hold up. There was a turd-licker posted next to a Japanese hole-in-the-wall who was way too fashionably dressed to be a native. Big guy, wedge-shaped body, elbows bent like he was flexing his muscles a little. As she watched through the surveillance feed, he shoved off a few hobos who came seeking donations, but the jills he allowed to hang around. A redhead even let him cup her tits.

  Chaz smiled. Having fun, Todd? Right around the corner from where he was standing was a narrow alley leading to the defunct tavern. It was delineated on the map, but none of the cameras had line of sight. And there was zero traffic coming out or going in. So, if Mr. Muscles went in to gas the roaches, it would be a fucking walkover for the pigs to ID the exterminator. Her mind was already crafting the scene down at the precinct station.

  —Hey, Frank. Dammit, put your pants back on—Those donuts are for eating, remember? When you’re done, come get a load of this.

  —Tony, aren’t you supposed to be suspended for gunning down a buncha kids a few weeks ago?

  —Eh, they were black, Frank, come on. You know what they call shooting a black kid around here?

  —Uh, excessive force?

  —No. A tax cut.

  INSERT LAUGH TRACK.

  —Frank, you remember those good white Christian boys who were pumped full of lead yesterday? I got the surveillance footage right here.

  —Anything on it?

  —Two minutes before our witness reports a gunshot, this beefcake arrives and goes into this alley. See? Two minutes after the murders allegedly took place, he comes back out.

  —Gee, Tony, I don’t know.

  —I know what you’re thinking. He’s as white as a tortilla. Doesn’t make sense. But I say we bring him in for questioning. Maybe he saw the black sonuvabitch who did it.

  Okay, so she’d taken some creative liberties—real cops would be more racist. But either way, Todd was screwed. The only way this would work was if surveillance went dark.

  She cracked her knuckles.

  Any zombie could establish a fake business name and live out his voyeuristic fantasies through the CWS network, but operation of individual cameras was justifiably blocked. Chaz had crawled around in the interface’s source code once, but she hadn’t found anything referencing a control scheme or a master shutoff. But it wasn’t all just bones in there—since the CWS network consisted of hundreds of thousands of cameras, all the data was processed through a small server farm. She had found the network address buried in the comments, probably some leftover note from a tech during coding. It was all she needed, though.

  She hadn’t been completely truthful to Okocha; without access to individual cameras, blacking out a geometric swath of surveillance wasn’t possible. To give Todd the cover he needed for the job, she would have to bring down the whole system. It wasn’t as hard as it sounded.

  The bad news? The Crystal City Security Administration would notice. Once the alarms were sounding, Todd had maybe a few minutes before the good citizens at the CCSA pinpointed the problem and rebooted the system. But as long as he didn’t show the Begotten Sons a few flexes before he capped them, it should be plenty of time.

  First, Chaz needed a layer of anonymity. Several layers. She opened her trusty virtual-address program called GANGBANG and set the value as high as it would go. How does six hundred sound? She gave a mental apology to the poor geeky intern whose job it was going to be to track down the source of the takedown.

  Once that was set, the easiest step in the preparation was readying her army for the assault. Thanks to the goodwill of the hacktivist community and Crystal City’s boner for interconnectivity, a fucking fetus could write a competent botnet script. She had downloaded one a few years back to crash a software developer’s website and redirect their splash page to a collage of dicks and balls. It worked just fine—the client, though, had skedaddled after paying only the deposit. Fucking cheapskate.

  While she waited for Okocha to return, Libby messaged her:

  |: IS EVERYTHING OKAY? I HAVEN’T HEARD FROM YOU IN A WHILE.

  Chaz typed back:

  |: YEP. I’M TAKING CARE OF IT JUST LIKE I SAID.

  |: AND WE WON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THOSE FUCKS ANYMORE.

  Libby:

  |: WHAT’S GOING ON? ARE THE POLICE GOING TO DO SOMETHING?

  Chaz:

  |: YEAH. ABOUT TIME THEY GOT OFF THEIR LAZY ASSES, RIGHT?

  Libby:

  |: I THANK GOD FOR IT. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU’RE DONE. I WANT TO SEE YOU ASAP.

  Shortly after, Okocha came into the office. “Safety inspectors do not know anything but how to waste my time,” he said, and then he laughed. “Even the ones I pay to find nothing wrong.” He eased himself down into the chair, exhaling once the task was complete. “Is the job ready?”

  Chaz nodded. “Just waiting for you to give the word.”

  “You have it. And once the cameras are no longer operating, I will give the order for this conflict to end.”

  The botnet script called up a prompt for the network address. She copied the address of the CCSA server farm from her personal files and pasted it into the blank space, and then she ran the script.

  Onward, my little army of robot minions! Fuck that shit up!

  What was beautiful about the botnet was that she didn’t even need direct access to the server farm itself: only the address. Bombarding it with enough request packets—the always-updating botnet consisted of more than a million compromised devices from all over the city, last she checked—was enough to bog the system down until it crashed. Pretty much like a digital salvo.

  Chaz laid her tasker on the desk so she and Okocha could both watch. All there was to do now was wait until the web application shit itself.

  It took about ten seconds for the people in the feeds to stop moving. Then the screen went black, and a message flashed up: NETWORK ERROR.

  “And they are all down?” asked Okocha.

  Chaz nodded. She showed him the array of offline surveillance feeds. “All dark, but only for a few minutes.”

  He typed something on his tasker, presumably to Todd.

  I wish I could see it, she thought. Not just that; she wished she could take part in it, add more to the pile. CJ and his pimple-faced friend were the first people she had ever killed. And it dawned on her that she hadn’t thought about that before, that she had just killed two people. She gave herself a moment, picturing their dead bodies again, to see if she felt anything. Any regret.

  Nah.

  So, she wasn’t sorry they were dead. Not really proud either. In fact, it wasn’t a strong feeling either way. It made her think of the brief sense of accomplishment after doing a chore she’d been putting off. The clothes needed to be washed, so she washed them; her bathroom needed to be cleaned, so she cleaned it; those two assholes needed to be dead, so she made them dead. That’s what it felt like. Housekeeping.

  “It is finished.”

/>   Chaz shifted her attention to the tasker Okocha was holding up. It was a picture. The indoor lighting was miserable, but she tallied up five or six bodies strewn around. If it weren’t for the visible gunshot wounds and the clothes, they would’ve looked like a bunch of drunk teenagers having a weird orgy. It was kind of funny.

  So, that was it. The Begotten Sons, all blown away. The purported blood of God couldn’t stop a few bullets.

  “They will be no more problem,” said Okocha, his golden grin the assurance.

  “And may they not rest in peace,” said Chaz.

  The sun’s warm rays felt like sweet, sweet karma.

  The CCSA servers had been down for just shy of eleven minutes. Some clever analyst might link the outage with the massacre over at The Drowning Casket, but getting a lead on the murderer was pretty fucking farfetched. In those eleven minutes, he could’ve walked a kilometer in any direction. In that circle were thousands of suspects. Eliminating all the people without a criminal background would tighten the spread, but the police couldn’t nab anyone without evidence tying them to the scene. At the very worst, Todd might get interviewed, but Okocha had a network of people in his pocket who could create alibis. A little video editing, forged time codes, witness testimonies—that was Mickey Mouse shit.

  North Camden Park was packed with people enjoying the above-freezing weather, the pathways crammed with joggers, dog-walkers, and VanCom sluts trying to peddle discounted resort packages.

  “Jezebel has abstained from her sexuality all her life,” said one, who had begun hounding Chaz. “This has only fed her appetite for intimacy. And what excites her most is an intelligent young woman to share her first time with.”

  “Bet it does.”

  “And Tamara is happily married with two beautiful kids that bring her all the joy in the world. Except now she has her eye out for a younger woman. She wants to know if a woman is better than a man.”