The Scorpion Game

by Daniel Jeffries

  “It’s a lot of firepower. More than I need.”

  “Are you sure? You’ve seen the footage from the Gilead murders, no? The killer is clearly augmented.”

  “Yeah. Can you put my old arm back on, when I’m done?” said Hoskin.

  “If you want,” said the spider. “Or you can keep it.”

  “All right. Done.”

  “Excellent,” said the spider.

  The holo shifted again and showed the massive, multi-armed battle armor from the golden cocoons knitting itself around Hoskin and expanding. It tripled his mass and size in seconds, the armor’s black electromuscle rippling and powerful. Under attack, the battle gear’s guns opened like a thousand eyes all over the armor and unleashed a furious cascade of fire against marauding tripodal tanks.

  “Control the armor physically or remotely via vSelf—” said the spider.

  “Enough,” said Hoskin. “I won’t need any of that crap. I like to roll solo. Some body armor and a good gun are all I need.”

  The holo hung frozen for a moment, the armor hidden in a ball of white light.

  “But—”

  “I said enough. Get me to the surgery bay and let’s get to work. We’re losing time. How long will I be under?”

  The spider waved a feeler and the holo vanished.

  “Three hours, with three hours of recovery.”

  “One hour of recovery. Let’s go.”

  ***

  Before sliding into the surgery pod, Hoskin did an incremental backup of his mind and state vector. Anything could happen when you went under. They could rebuild you with a worm or a trojan. For years, he’d done backups a lot less frequently. But ever since he’d got suspended, it had turned into part of his daily ritual. The first run that day took almost a whole day to finish. Now he was done in minutes.

  He slid into the pod and it filled with a soft purple mist. In seconds, he saw only haze and the mist-drug went to work, blotting out his mind and body, a whiteout that lasted like an endless snowstorm.

  After what seemed like a million years drifting in the snow, the mist swirled deeper into him, rushing into his mind and teasing up bits of memory and layering it with fantasy. It carried him to a brilliant white sweep of freshly fallen snow where he and his sister were bunkered down and hurling snow balls at each other that hit — fip, fip, fip — like light gun fire. The dream shifted and young Hoskin, home alone, stood over the stove trying to make a flaky-crust pot pie. It fell apart. He threw it out and started over, patiently cutting mushrooms with a long laser blade set to stutter.

  And then suddenly it was his first day of school. The AI teachers asked him questions, trying to figure out what personality to take on based on his psychological profile. He sat quiet trying to figure out the strange drones and said nothing, frustrating the learning subroutines of the not-yet sentient machines.

  The memories ran and dripped and he saw himself fighting a larger kid who’d ridiculed a fat girl one too many times, young Hoskin tackling the surprised goliath and knocking him to the ground. The memory ran like wet ink and merged with a pool of blood around a young girl’s face, her eyes like diamonds, the first body he’d ever seen, and he felt the deep-welled sadness he always felt, but stronger and more real, as the sun came up fast and bright over the hills, too bright, like the sun reflected off pure snow and suddenly a whiteout again.

  He woke in a blue and green room to the sound of water falling softly. Overhead the lights still trailed, and he felt a slurry of healing juice all over his naked body. He sat up and the surgery pod unfolded around him like a flower blossoming in time lapse photography. He felt stiff, as if he hadn’t moved in a week, but it would wear off. He looked around and saw the waterfall streaming down a biowall into a tiny pond with pastel colored koi.

  He looked down at his new hand. It looked like his old one, but just glancing at it brought up a help file on his innervision. He flashed the command for the assault rifle and his arm ripped open, breaking apart and reassembling into the insectoid rifle he’d seen in the holo. He grabbed the barrel with his other hand and looked down the sight. It was good. He flashed another command and the gun disassembled back into an arm and hand. He moved his fingers. It was an amazing piece of work.

  A docball emerged from the biowall and hovered over him, projecting an idealized image of a nurse over its pulpy body.

  “How are you feeling?” said the crystalline nurse.

  “Like I just got a good beating. When can I get to work?”

  “When you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now.”

  The nurse evaporated and Childress’ face appeared instead.

  “Are you sure?” said Childress.

  The room still felt a little off, a little blurry, but Hoskin said, “Yeah, let’s get on with it.”

  “Very well. We’ve located Mr. Daniels. He’s just leaving a new murder scene that the CII managed to keep secret. Dynasty Security has managed to get access to all the case files. I’ve already loaded everything into your slice on the Mansion arrays.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “And Mr. Hoskin—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Get this guy.”

  Soft Machines and Citadels

  Hoskin looked over the Gideon Daniels dossier as his aircar wound its way to the murder scene.

  One thing stuck out that hadn’t meant anything before. Daniels’ started as a systems tech in the department. That meant he had the means to get into systems and made him the number one suspect for framing him with leaks to the media. He could take control of the case for the families and bury anything unsavory. It also made him a suspect for the murders, since Hoskin knew the killer had forensics skills.

  And having hacking skills don’t hurt someone’s chances for getting out of a murder scene undetected, even if those damn mansions are supposedly invulnerable.

  The only thing to do now was follow him constantly. Just one problem.

  The guy was a Leptic.

  Hoskin remembered the guy’s elongated head, a Leptic signature. That meant he didn’t have to sleep or eat, ever. He could work around the clock. Hoskin was going to need a steady diet of stims to keep up with him at night. Not good. He blinked the dossier away.

  He pinged Quinlin again. He could use the help tailing Daniels. No answer. When did he last talk to Quinlin? It was the day he got suspended. He hadn’t reached him since. He rang the precinct on his innerphone. The front desk officer said Quinlin hadn’t checked in for days.

  “What do you mean?” said Hoskin.

  “I don’t know. I could get in trouble. I—I probably shouldn’t have said anything. I mean, I know you’re technically on suspension and all but he’s you’re friend—”

  “You’re saying he’s AWOL? No communication at all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has anyone gone to his house?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “All right. I appreciate it. He comes in, I need to know immediately. Ok?”

  “For sure.”

  He hung up and then pinged Quinlin again. Still no answer. He sat back in the aircar and thought about it. Daniels’ location was still blinking on a translucent map in the corner of his eyes. He pushed it away. He called out to the CityGrid with his new CSI credentials and asked for Quinlin’s location. It came back with nothing. That wasn’t surprising, Quinlin was good enough to stay hidden for a while. Hoskin didn’t know anyone better with systems.

  Daniels would have to wait.

  Hoskin redirected the aircar to Quinlin’s place, down by the ports. The complex was stylish and well kept, with hard-light paintings and a catfish pond in the lobby. Hoskin took the elevator up to the eightieth floor. The halls were smoothly organic, with a ceiling pattern that shifted regularly to new designs. The lighting was soft and elegant, the hoverglobes floating near the tops of the walls every few meters.

  Hoskin knocked on Quinli
n’s door. No answer. He knocked again. Same. He touched the door. It IDed him with a spray of light and the door unraveled like unfolding paper. Hoskin stepped inside.

  “Quin, you in here?”

  No answer.

  The place looked uncharacteristically messy: bottles overturned on the microfiber carpet; pills and joints scattered on the stylish electric light table; stains on the long, curved couch; clothes on the floor. This wasn’t right. Quinlin was a neat freak. He had expensive furniture and good taste. He did not leave things lying around.

  Hoskin went room to room. All of them were messy: more bottles and pills; more clothes; unfinished food; dishes piled up.

  But no Quinlin.

  Hoskin found the cleaning houseball in the corner, powered down. He called out to the Apartment Personality but it didn’t answer. It was shut down too. He found the central panel in the hall and turned it on. It took a moment to power up, lights and symbols flickering on the panel’s surface.

  “Where’s Quinlin?” he asked the AP, a compressed and streamlined vSelf of Quinlin.

  “Checking. Unknown,” said the AP.

  “What happened here?”

  “He came home and turned me off, that’s what. No explanation.”

  “Has he ever done that before?”

  “Sometimes. When he don’t want me to see what he’s doing.”

  Hoskin looked around again. There were no signs of a struggle. Everything pointed to a bad bender. Hoskin sighed. He should have pushed harder when he saw Quinlin struggling.

  “Do you know where he’d go?” Hoskin asked the AP.

  “There are several bars nearby that he goes to,” said the AP.

  “Give me the names.”

  Why didn’t I say something more?

  He put out a call to the CityGrid to search every camera in the city. He saw a lot of the CityGrid’s resources were offline. Already bogged down with requests as the city started to come apart at the seams, rumor was it was now under attack by hacktivists. It would take a bit to find Quinlin, even on a good day. Now, who knew? There were a lot of cameras to check, but eventually it would track Quinlin down, even if he didn’t want to be found.

  Going bar to bar wasn’t going to accomplish much, unless he got lucky, but he would do it anyway. The first bar on the list was Street Fire. It was only a few blocks away.

  ***

  Two hours later Hoskin had hit every bar on the list. No Quinlin. He thought about putting out an APB but didn’t want Quinlin caught doing anything that would put him in more shit. He was already going to face some discipline for not showing up to work, especially during a crisis. No need to make it worse.

  Hoskin wanted to do something else, anything, but he didn’t have another play. He took a deep breath and pulled up Daniels’ location again. There was always the balm of work when things weren’t going right. Just dig in and do something. It showed Daniels had already left the crime scene and gone back to a CII office in the north of the city. Watching Daniels at the office probably wouldn’t tell him much. When the Grid found Quinlin, he’d go get him no matter what he was doing, but for right now, he would head to the crime scene and see what he missed.

  ***

  The elevator drifted up forever, its No-Glass walls looking out over the sprawling city, whose lights shimmered like iridescent algae beneath the surface of a bruise-black sea. Hoskin looked down at the city shrinking away, as the Straylight Citadel stretched up, one mile and then two, three, four. For seven miles the starscraper rose past the other towers around it, its bioluminescent, diamond-reinforced flesh shining like an ancient lighthouse through the mist and clouds, rising and rising over everything.

  Hoskin blinked up the dossiers on the Florentine family on his innervision. Dianna Isabella, the daughter, willowy and pale, fifteen. Michael Maltori, the son, sixteen, well-built and tall, the product of privileged genesculpting. Both kids were half-clones of their parents, mixed with some genepool randomizers. The mother, Yurizan Mulani, three-hundred-sixty, all-synthetic body. The father, Beltran Midridge, three hundred twelve, angular and solid. He blinked it away.

  He flashed Quinlin again. Still nothing. He checked the CityGrid scan. Still looking. He checked on Daniels and saw he hadn’t left the office.

  Finally, the elevator stopped and Hoskin stepped out into a nearly empty room, the walls made from large flat stones. A single red leather chair, a small, low-lit glowglobe of soft amber light and a slowly moving sculpture of reassembling blocks were the only things in the small space. There were no doors or windows, except the door back into the elevator behind him.

  “I’m sorry, Detective,” said a voice from nowhere.

  An angelic figure materialized around the voice, its body see-through as if made from crystal. It had eyes of white light. Tiny beads of iridescence danced inside it like a map of swirling galaxies.

  “Forgive our appearance, much to do, much to do, much wrong and not right and breaking down and broken,” said the avatar, its voice like a song played double time.

  “I’m—”

  “Investigator Hoskin, yes, yes. This way, this way. Much left undone and no one to do it for. Come with me. Come.”

  The walls of the small room slid down to reveal a huge open-plan luxury apartment, with spiraling staircases leading up to hidden levels and floor-to-ceiling windows all around it, cut directly into the stone walls, looking out into the slow sidling clouds. Multileveled balconies jutted out into the cloudscape, criss-crossing and interlocking, surrounded by No-Glass set beyond the balcony’s railings.

  “Man trap, man trap. Catch a canary and it sings. Catch a cat and it cries. This way,” said the strange avatar of the Apartment Personality. “Over here. This is where. Where, where, where. Oh, oh. How it went. It withers so, which way.”

  “Avatar, stop,” said Hoskin. “Are you injured?”

  The crystal figure shuddered and phase shifted in and out of reality.

  “Scanned myself. Missing bits. Things not where they should be. Backups gone and dead. I should have been—”

  “Stop. I can take it from here. Power down. Switch to low-level healing mode.”

  Hoskin wondered if the CII or the killer had attacked the House Personality. Either made sense. Sabotaging the systems would help the killer get away or cover his tracks. The CII could have killed the system at the behest of the families. That might prevent any further leaks. The rich had a lot of secrets. Behind every great fortune is a crime.

  The avatar looked at him with what could only be relief and vanished. Hoskin let out a deep breath through his nose and looked around. CII had already come, cleaned up the scene and gone, but Childress’ Dynasty Security had somehow managed to get holoshots of the murders. Hoskin blinked up a 2D rendering of the images and saw they’d taken place in the dining room on the 600th floor. He took the light tube up. The Florentine family’s faces appeared on his innervision. There were also two guests, a man and a woman.

  The bodies were already gone. The place was cleaned up, either by the CII or the house cleaning systems, but all the evidence was gone. The table where it happened was set with a translucent flower arrangement. The flowers glowed softly with speckles of light on their petals.

  He blinked up the holoshots that Dynasty Security got him. It took a second for his backbrain to triangulate the room and then it rendered the scene just as it had appeared on the day of the murder. The family appeared like ghosts around the dinner table. Hoskin could see the tops of the chairs had blown apart. The girl had collapsed sideways off her chair. The boy had fallen forward into his food. The father and mother looked like they’d just sat down, except they had no heads. The two guests had been blown off their chairs. One had flown straight back and hit the wall, the second had crashed sideways. Splatter everywhere. Food smashed and scattered. Slivers of brain and skull covered the room. Blood and flesh collected in heavy pools.

  Hoskin walked around the scene, fre
ely examining it, not worried about contaminating evidence, because it was all gone and only these ghostly 3D projections remained. As he moved, his eyes redrew the images in realtime, so they matched his perspective. The effect was seamless. The CII had excellent camera drones that had flawlessly captured the scene just as it was.

  Something had hit the family all at once. Nobody could have fired off shots fast enough, even someone augmented. Someone would have gotten up, tried to run. These people were all just sitting there. They hadn’t even stopped eating. The entire group had died instantly.

  It didn’t look like a single bomb. The way the heads had burst signaled a series of smaller, internal explosions. The killer used something small and silent, most likely mites rigged with explosives that crawled quietly into ears and up noses. Maybe someone sneezed or scratched their ears, but otherwise they wouldn’t have noticed. The Apartment went on happily putting the last touches on dinner.

  Hoskin flashed Childress and he answered.

  “What do you know about the Florentine family?”

  “Not much. They didn’t socialize much. Word is they didn’t leave their building very often, if ever. The children were home schooled. People came to visit them.”

  “That’s actually exactly what I needed to know.”

  “What have you found so far?”

  “Not sure yet. I’ll let you know when I have something.”

  Hoskin paused and thought about the broken Building Personality. Nobody could have attacked it from the inside without being locked down or killed by the AI’s defenses. Attacking in advance wouldn’t have worked either. Nobody ever attacked an AI without a long fight. They had aggressive self-defense systems. It wasn’t a script kiddie attack, it took time and patience. In a building like this, any attack would trigger automated routines to get the family to a safe house outside the building. It would hustle them off in autonomous drones, isolated from all data networks. These were standard systems for the mega-rich. That meant the killer attacked it remotely, after the murder, maybe with whatever he’d stolen from the family’s backbrains.