A manifestation of the file transfer, Sho extracted an ivory-scabbard tanto from his sleeve and set it on the table before he stood and walked into the garden, as if he had just given the order to kill his own child.
Joey picked the dagger up, and tucked it into his belt.
File copy complete.
At the edge of the raked sand, Joey bowed. “Sensei, arigatō.”
“Shinigami must be contained.” Sho did not turn. “That does not mean I cannot grieve.”
arm water lapped at Nina’s neck; an inch of her hair spread into an ebon blur in the water around her shoulders. The giant moth swimming around her gut was as likely a product of the precarious diplomatic situation as it was of Warner leering at her. The scent of heated chlorine distracted her from the tension with the mundane thought that she wanted to shower before meeting Joey for dinner. Regardless of what Warner planned, the longer she stayed here, the worse things would be. The trick was finding a chance to exit gracefully.
Five minutes passed in an awkward staring contest; neither of them spoke or moved. The only sounds were the muted whirr of pumps and the lapping of water at the walls. Nina expected the next thing he said would be either a threat or an invitation to his bedroom; after all, she had chased off his other entertainment.
“If you’ve no other plans, perhaps we can make something pleasant of the rest of the evening?” He gestured at the house.
Option two.
“Actually, I did have plans.” She edged toward the wall nearest her dress. “This property was not registered as a diplomatic asset; I came looking for Itai.”
Warner smiled. “Indeed. It was supposed to be private. So tell me then. How do you plan to get rid of them?”
Nina felt naked in more ways than one. She had no strategy, and her reconnaissance trip had gone about as wrong as possible. “I need to understand what Itai and Nemsky want with you.”
Warner made a dismissive face. “I haven’t spoken with them other than to tell them to stop bothering me. Nemsky said something about a covert operation. He claimed I was supposed to be his point of contact.” He sipped his drink. “At first it caught me off guard, wondering if I had missed a briefing. I heard he had been terminated, so I dismissed it as a test or a hacker trying to get to me. As for the Israeli, he works for the highest bidder and wanted me to put him in touch with a representative from Ostrovska.”
“Ostrovska Corporation? They manufacture military grade explosives.” Nina thought back to the cargo ship. Was Korin’s plan to pack it with bombs before it went to that base in Alaska?
Warner tipped his glass at her. “Very good.”
“I’m supposed to believe you didn’t arrange the contact?” Her somatic system struggled to compensate for the steam; sensing perspiration levels in a hot tub was about as futile as chasing phantoms.
“I do not want to reenact Mars on Earth.”
An incoming vid call chimed in her head.
Nina shifted out of the path of a water jet. “Duchenne.”
“Hey there.” Joey grinned at her. “Are you still busy?”
She made a face at Warner as though she were thinking. “I’m up to my neck in hot water at the moment, but I should be free soon.”
“Anything I can help with?” He lifted an eyebrow.
Her avatar smiled on his phone. “That depends; do you know how to find Itai?”
“Funny thing you should ask.” He winked, and filled her in on everything he learned from Sho.
“Hold that thought.” Nina looked at Warner. “Do you know anything about an AI called Shinigami?”
A grin crept across his face, and he held up his arm inviting her to his side. “I might.”
“Not going to happen. You still have the two working girls waiting for you in the house.” She smirked. “Assuming one of them hasn’t overdosed by now.”
Nina put her hands on the wall behind her and lifted herself out of the water. Warm scratchy concrete slid beneath her as she weathered the icy air. The water that continued to flow around her legs felt hotter due to the chill. She shifted, obscuring Warner’s view of her vitals with a carefully placed foot.
“But they’re in there and you’re right here.” He tried his best to be charming.
“I have reason to believe that Shinigami is responsible for what’s going on. If you want Nemsky and Korin off your back, tell me what you know.”
Warner sighed. “This seems like a poor negotiation, what benefit do I gain?”
“If what you say is true and you are not working with them, you get rid of them both as well as have us stop sniffing around.”
“Very well.” He leaned back with a disappointed sigh. He leaned around to the rear and told his least wounded security man to fetch the women.
“A couple of years ago, it entered our sovereign territory and made a request for asylum from the Japanese. We granted it in exchange for some work.”
Nina stood and walked around the pool, stopping by a table where a stack of towels sat in the glow of a small orb lamp. Since she felt in control of the situation again, Warner’s licentious stare did not bother her. “What kind of work?”
She felt his eyes tracking the long creeping shadows the small lamp painted on her. Even with her back turned, she remained wary, staring at his reflection in the chrome of the spherical light.
“After it explained what its primary function was, we used it to create virtual operatives. It constructed identities for us, spies if you will, that never existed. It could take tidbits of one agent and merge them with a half dozen others to construct a composite. Shinigami could produce the perfect operative for any given assignment. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a man that doesn’t exist?”
Nina ran the white towel around her body, standing sideways to him as she put her foot up to dry her leg. “I think I have an idea what that might be like.”
Relief came, as she understood at last why she had been unable to find them. She was not a failure. A member of the security detail dragged the teal haired woman over. As soon as she saw Nina, she tried to get away. The guard overpowered her and flung her into the water with a shove that also tore away the towel she had been wearing. The woman shrank into Warner, staring at Nina like a mouse eyeing a hungry cat.
“Other one’s passed out, sir.”
Warner nodded at him. “See to it that she doesn’t die.”
Nina muttered. “How noble of you.”
“Yes sir.” He trotted back to the house.
Warner shifted his ogling to the trembling woman at his side. “Nemsky was the prototype. They had him made as a test. I do not have a full list of the identities it created, but there were quite a few.”
Nina dried her other leg. “I’m pretty sure Itai Korin is one of them.” That would explain Mossad’s denial. For once, they were open and honest with Division 9. “What kind of activities were these virtual operatives capable of?”
Warner shrugged. “Mostly surveillance and data collection. Virtual operatives are by nature somewhat limited. Unless installed in a physical body. I was not directly involved, I only know what rumor has brought downwind.”
His claim of distance seemed plausible. The pair of D cups to his right appealed to his interest far more than whatever his government did.
Nina shared what she had learned with Joey. He rambled about the connection to StarPoint.
“Why breadcrumb me out to that StarPoint facility?”
Nina maneuvered the towel over her body as her silent conversation continued. “The installation had no network security, did it?”
Joey’s hand obscured his face as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No, the whole thing was totally borked, everything wide open.”
“StarPoint’s network security is top of the line. It’s doubtful that even an AI could get into it, at least not without being noticed.”
His eyes widened. “Unless it was nonexistent… A network that severe uses constant pulse security algorithms. If an entity
lacks the matching encryption key, they’ll be detected in microseconds. Son of a bitch!”
“What?” Nina blinked. She tossed the towel back onto the table and wriggled into her dress.
“The neural memory from the deck I took with me leaked.”
Nina slipped her shoes back on. “Something overloaded it?”
“Like a god damned AI sneaking onto my deck!” He pounded his fist into something outside the image and made a pained face as he waved his hand. The slowdowns he experienced out there and upon his return made perfect sense. “It used me to get to the facility so it could scavenge StarPoint’s security routines. Mayberry was just collateral, a big fat cherry I went for like a trained rat.”
She looked back at Karl, who was enamored with the call girl. “As much as I hate to admit it, I owe you a favor.”
He looked up at her and winked. “Call it even for me ordering you dead. I thought you were one of Itai’s people. That bastard doesn’t understand the meaning of no.”
Nina looked at the woman with him and pondered the irony of what Warner just said. “You okay?”
The girl glanced back and forth between her and Warner for a moment before her gaze went down. “Yeah. Just didn’t wanna get dead.”
Nina could not tell if the woman was more fearful of finding herself in the middle of a fight or shot for displeasing Warner. “If you want out of here, now is the time to ask.”
She hugged Warner. “I’m fine. You just ruined the mood.”
“I will fix it.” Warner stood and held a hand out to the woman. “Come; let us go inside before it gets too cold.”
Nina shook her head; the girl was a paid professional and had a chance to leave, so there was only so much pity available for leaving her behind. One of the security men who could still move without a limp walked Nina to the gate. She kept a cautious watch on him as she went back down the driveway to her car, ready for a sniper or an ambush, but none came.
“So what would an AI want with StarPoint’s network?” Joey’s voice in her head distracted her from the estate.
Nina pulled into the air, aiming for home and gunning the accelerator. “StarPoint manufactures military hardware, tanks, dropships, starships, combat cyborgs, you name it.”
“Uhm. Nina?” Joey’s voice lost all humor.
“Yeah?”
“I have a math problem for you.”
“Not now.”
Joey blinked. “No, seriously. What does one AI that can create an unlimited number of loyal subservient AIs plus StarPoint network access plus a facility that manufactures Class 4 and 5 combat cyborgs equal?”
“Fuck…” Nina rammed the throttle all the way forward.
“Gladly, but I don’t think we have time for that.”
Nina growled. “It equals a giant fuckin’ mess.”
“Ops!” She opened a second channel.
“Proceed Lieutenant.” A blond man appeared next to Joey.
“I need the team to run a network scan on all StarPoint facilities. Look for anything unrecognized or any of the following names.” Nina rattled off a list. Nemsky, Korin, herself, Joey, Joey’s friends, Hayley, Proscion, Hugo, and anyone even remotely involved, including Shabundo.
“On it.” The ops man nodded.
“I think dinner is going to have to wait.”
Nina wrenched the controls, sending the hovercar skidding around in a flat slide as she bled off speed along the wall of her apartment complex. Airbrake flaps opened, the car shook near to the point of departing from flight. Windows rattled in her wake and she saw at least one middle finger.
He chuckled. “Yeah I figured.”
After landing, she sprinted through the parking deck to the stairs. The elevator would take too long, so she jumped down the channel at the center, bending the railing thirty stories down when she caught herself on it. The sudden stop stripped the shoes off her feet. They clattered over railings down the remaining fifty stories, each hit quieter than the last. Nina cursed under her breath as she vaulted the bent handrails and ran to her apartment. Her dress and purse flew in random directions as she scrambled to get her ballistic suit on. Chlorine or no, showering would wait.
“Nina…” Joey looked off to the right. “This new deck is amazing. I found out who changed your patrol route.”
“Lieutenant, we got a hit.”
“Who!” Nina froze with one leg in the pliable armor, screaming.
“Jacob Roth.” Both men spoke the name at the same moment.
Rage and worry coursed through her. The real Detective Roth died before her patrol route changed, that left only the god damned AI to set up her blind date with The Russian. How long had it been masquerading as the detective? It had access to his work, as well as the Division 1 personnel files, and Cole said that the transmission to her NetMini came from the Division 2 network.
It must have chosen her based on the other officers’ complaints about how she would get someone killed. Her wanting to marry her partner only made the prize sweeter. From how Joey described the thing, she figured it wanted one of them to die so it could play games with the survivor, if there was one. All of the sorrow she felt when Vincent called her from beyond the grave mutated into raw fury.
“Ops, get every tactical team you can mobilize at that StarPoint facility. Send word over to CENTCOM as well. We are going to need the military in on this.”
“Roger Lieutenant.”
“Joey? Can AIs feel pain?” Nina pulled her boots on and grabbed her coat and gun.
“Not in the truest sense, no. They may act like it but it is just simulated.”
“Damn. Where are you now?”
“Oh, not far.”
The door to Nina’s apartment slid open. Joey came in with a silly grin and Chinese take-out.
ina glared at the smug grin that had taken up residence upon Joey’s face. He relaxed in the passenger seat of her car as blurs of light and color from the passing city glowed around his profile. Despite him having something that Division 9’s network agents did not, some kind of shutdown code for the AI, she could not believe she let him talk her into taking him along. It helped that he was also crazy enough to go into a hostile environment in order to obtain a local connection. Getting the tenured Division 9 techs into the shit was almost impossible. The thought of DeWinter trying to squeeze his paunch into an operative suit made the left side of her mouth curl into a grin. Her humor lasted only seconds. Nina stared at him, her thoughts returning to Vincent and Dale.
Please, not again.
Division 9’s net Ops team was good, but only a handful could have slipped in and out of Russia unnoticed, even with their special hardware. She could not use the excuse he was out of his league, and there had not been enough time to get into a protracted debate.
Far above the civilian hover lane, the patrol craft shot through the afternoon sky at over three hundred and fifty miles per hour towards a manufacturing plant that StarPoint referred to as Site Four. Joey slurped up noodles as casually as if they were out on date, while fiddling with his deck. The car careened around the side of a building and blasted through a twenty-meter wall of holographic advertising. Her thoughts swirled into a storm of guilt. She wondered if this was how Officer Alvin felt with her riding shotgun. Trying to keep Joey alive would be a powerful distraction. Frowning, Nina disregarded the comparison; in order to freeze or panic one had to have a survival instinct.
“Duchenne, what’s going on? Did you request CENTCOM involvement?” Hardin’s voice barked over the comm, starting even before a cloud of green holographic pixels swirled into a mass resembling his head. “Why do we have DS2’s over the city?”
“I have reason to believe that a rogue AI has gained full access to StarPoint’s Site Four, sir.” Nina continued filling him in on all the details of what she had learned about Shinigami. “The military is here at my request in a containment capacity.”
“The ACC sent a god damned AI after us?” Hardin fumed. “Sons of bitches, th
ey can’t even give us the courtesy of a tangible opponent.”
Nina shook her head. “This was not a sanctioned operation. It has gone rogue, working for itself.”
“Oh, that’s just peachy.” He looked annoyed at being stuck in the office for this. “What’s your plan?”
“That depends on what things look like on the ground. We think that the AI is inside the network at Site Four. It must have gotten spooked when we found out about Detective Roth and stepped up its plan. Site Four is one of the few places with enough power and space to hold an AI that big entirely within one network.” Nina kept checking the map, watching the white triangle of her location creep towards the red square of her destination.
“It may be a category eight by now if what Sho said was true.” Joey injected himself into the conversation. “Maybe even nine; it’s had a lot of practice.”
Hardin stammered. “Who the hell… Dillon? Nina, what the hell is he doing there?”
Nina closed her eyes for a moment. “He acquired some kind of override soft from the AI’s creator, plus he’s crazy enough to go inside the facility. If you can get some guys from N-Ops on site to go in with me I’ll handcuff him to the car.”
Joey pouted. “The only way to stand a chance against that thing is a direct connection. GlobeNet latency makes it impossible to do from the outside.”
Hardin’s face fell flat. “You know how they are about leaving the ‘vault.’ Fine, but don’t come bitching to me if he becomes number three.”
Joey jumped at a sudden snap; the plastic control handle cracked in her hand. Seeing a single tear slide down her cheek, he stayed quiet.
She averted her eyes from Hardin, not wanting to get into it right now.
“That won’t happen.”
Harold looked off screen. “We’re getting eyes on site now; Whisper 7 established Overwatch eighteen seconds ago. It looks like the party started without you.”
Hardin patched the video feed through, causing a large holo pane to flood the interior of the car with flickering light and an aerial view of the complex. The main structure of Site Four resembled a donut a mile across, with clusters of scaffolding and automated assembly machines jutting out from various points. A faint violet glow shimmered through the white hexagonal panels of a massive spherical building at the center of the ring. The shimmery silver texture of the ground in the courtyard turned out to be an army of half-built cyborgs swarming like ants.
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