by John Helfers
Koorong was on the floor, looking at me with wide eyes and a worried face as bullets tore viciously into the shielding. Skittles was barking and running around in a circle. She nipped at Koorong’s arm until I found the presence of mind to call her away.
The guns ceased firing, bringing a relative silence, but the change in volume felt deadly because it made me think that the only reason they had stopped was that something more powerful was on its way. Koorong must have sensed this as well, because instead of tending to my wound he moved behind me and picked me up under the armpits and dragged me toward the front door.
We made it halfway before an explosion tore through the shielding. The armor did not completely give way, but it was close. Fire rolled across the apartment, the force of the blast threw us backward.
Koorong was up again in a moment, dragging me, though not nearly as quickly as he had moments ago. Still, we made it out into the corridor as the second blast came in. Skittles followed us, flames and smoke licking at her heels. The door slammed shut with an almighty boom and bowed outward, but it held. It’d better hold, I thought in a moment of insensate humor, or I’d be asking for my money back.
The heat of the wound in my side had ebbed, replaced by a cold, tingling sensation in my fingers and cheeks and nose. When we made it to the lift, Koorong pressed the button marked 150 instead of the one that would take us to the lobby.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Ignoring my question, he pulled up his pant leg. Underneath was a simsilk leg sheath with a myriad of small pockets. From one of these he took a yellow wad of sticks and mud, which he squeezed tightly in one hand. The thing cracked and popped like miniature fireworks. He pulled my shirt up and placed the balled up wad onto the wound, and like a spider unfolding its legs, the thing expanded until it covered the wound completely.
Skittles, surprisingly, only watched.
The wound began to burn white, blazing hot. I stifled a scream as he repeated the process on the other side, where the bullet had exited—or was that where it had entered?
I passed out momentarily.
When I woke, he was dragging me up the stairs that led to the roof’s access door. Normally it would be secured, but for some reason it opened for him.
Skittles launched herself past him.
“Come back, girl.” My voice was weak, and Skittles paid me no mind.
Outside, it was dusk. The sun seemed to have broken into a galaxy of lights that lay golden against the landscape of the sprawl.
“Where are we going?” I asked again, unable to form a more coherent thought.
Koorong pulled me to the edge of the building, mumbling words under his breath as the immensity of the sprawl came into full display beneath us. I grew dizzy.
The whine of the jets intensified. They knew we’d escaped to the top and were coming after us. Skittles was barking so fiercely I thought she might damage her voice box. Koorong pulled me up to the lip of the building as the jet’s roar increased sharply.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw, cresting the edge of the building, a four-engine tilt-wing with a cluster of serious looking weapons fixed to the belly. Within the partially mirrored surface of the cockpit’s windshield were two pilots, one sitting higher than the other.
Then they were lost from view, for Koorong had taken a step forward, pulling me with him. We fell, slowly it seemed to me. I looked up and saw Skittles, looking down, barking madly, the transparent blue concrete at the edge of the building ablating from a hail of bullets.
“Skittles!”
No sooner had I said her name than she was whisked off the building and into the air. She followed us down as the wind began to roar. In my terror I thought the sound was due to the speed of our descent, but it soon became clear that the airstream was rushing upward so quickly that it was slowing us down. Then it was carrying us.
We began slipping sideways, at a slightly downward angle, through the byways of the sprawl, passing building after building as the people inside them stopped and stared. We went two klicks in less than a minute, Skittles floating close behind us, silent for once.
We came down near a small park. The pain in my abdomen returned as we fell to the ground. Koorong lay next to me, panting heavily in between hard coughs. Despite the wind, he was sweating profusely. Skittles hobbled over—she’d picked up a severe limp, though whether it was from a stray bullet or the landing I didn’t know—and began licking his forehead until he defended himself.
And then I passed out for good.
• • •
I awoke in a Spartan room with strips of lights running along the ceiling. I was lying on a gurney. Every part of me ached—the bullet wounds especially, but they were less painful than I would have guessed. I tried to access the net, but failed. Already my skin was beginning to crawl at the realization that I could not feel the Resonance. I tried to reassure myself, reasoning that we were in an insulated bunker of some kind, but this did nothing to calm my growing sense of anxiety.
I turned my head and saw a cage in the corner of the room. Skittles was inside, but for some reason I couldn’t sense her through my normal connections.
“Skittles?” I said, hoping she would wake.
She didn’t move, and my heart sank.
“Skittles, dear?”
Then she did move, though it was slowly, as if she’d been sorely wounded. As she stared through the wires of the cage, a great sense of relief washed over me.
“There, there, girl—”
I stopped as the sound of an opening door echoed dimly into the room. The click of footsteps came softly at first, growing louder. I turned my head, that simple motion painful. Against the far wall was a hallway that took a shallow angle up and into the darkness. Koorong stepped into the light with an unreadable expression on his face. I wished Skittles’ sensors were working. I felt naked without them.
“How long has it been?” I asked.
“Nearly a day, but the sedatives I gave you should have kept you under for at least another twelve hours.”
“Where are we?”
He paused. “We’re safe.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He pursed his lips, and the chocolate skin over his eyebrows furrowed. “For now that’s the best I can offer.”
“Then tell me this, or I’m getting up and hobbling out of here. How did Cylestra know I was investigating them? I hadn’t so much as touched the tunnel or the packet you sent me. I was only searching for information about them, about you, passively.”
He glanced toward Skittles. I followed suit, my eyes thinning, an uncomfortable feeling forming in my gut. “What did you do to my dog?”
“She’ll be fine.”
“Tell me!”
“It’s a virus, low level, innocuous. It gathers information and transmits it to my wife, in the Matrix.”
I thought back to the kafé, when Skittles had bit him. He had done that on purpose, and I’d completely missed it. “Why?” I asked. “Why monitor me?”
“It’s well known what you can do.”
I shook my head. “I gather data, for the right people, for the right price. How’s that going to get your daughter back?”
His face screwed up in anger. “I’m not trying to get her back, I’m trying to make them pay!”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Allora needs to know how you do the things you do.”
“There are dozens of technomancers around Sydney.”
“You’re more than a simple technomancer, and you know it.”
“You think she can learn what I know in a few hours?”
“No.” Koorong began pacing across the cold concrete floor. “We’ve been studying you for months. We learned much by simply watching, and even more during the hours Skittles was feeding her data. She only needs the last few pieces of the puzzle.”
“What can she possibly hope to do with it? I read data.”
“It is by know
ing how data is read that data can be planted.” His face grew angrier as he talked. “Allora will take Cylestra down, bit by bit, brick by brick, until there’s nothing left.”
“And the Tamanous list?” I asked, thinking of Liam. “Does it even exist?”
“It might.” He seemed to deflate as he spoke. “I don’t know.”
I tried to sit up, but the bullet wound flared like a red-hot iron. It was only pain, though. I sat up, grunting through gritted teeth as stars danced before my eyes. I nearly fell back, but managed to prop myself up, breathing heavily, sweat tickling my brow and armpits.
“Please, lie down. It’s not safe to move yet.”
“I’m leaving, and I’m taking Skittles with me.” Despite those words, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I knew I would simply fall if I made it to the concrete floor; I certainly wouldn’t make it to Skittles’ cage. Maybe in a few minutes, I told myself.
“Even if you could leave—which you can’t, not like this—I need you. This isn’t over.”
“I’m not helping you anymore.”
His expression hardened. “My wife is in danger because of you, and you’re going to help get her out of it.”
“I placed her in danger? Who fed that poor excuse for a Trojan to my dog? Who thought transmitting from my apartment directly to Cylestra’s intranet was a good idea?”
“You had me followed. Two of Cylestra’s sister corps have people inside SkySec. They must have run a search after sensing the incoming trace.”
“How does that place Allora in danger?”
“Because I went to see her! I’m fortunate I masked myself halfway there, but they’ll find her soon. We have to go to her. You have to show Allora what you do, so she understands completely.”
I took shallow breaths to stave off the dizziness as rage boiled within me. I was angry not because Koorong had fooled me—I’d been fooled before and I’d be fooled again—it was because I’d fallen for such simple bait. I had jumped at the chance to avenge Liam’s death too quickly. You never get what you pay for when the price is too cheap.”
As I gripped the edge of the gurney, my knuckles aching, I found myself thinking less about Liam and more about Allora. She was a woman who had lost her child. Liam and I had never had children, but I was sure that if I had, and I’d lost her to a corp, I’d bloody well be trying to do something about it. And it wasn’t just about Sindara. It was bigger than that. Cylestra was multinational. How many others had found a similar fate to Sindala? Dozens? Hundreds?
Koorong had an expectant look on his face. He knew—or had a good idea—that I would agree to help, even after his duplicity. Was I really that transparent?
I supposed I was. “Where is Allora?” I asked.
“Not far.”
• • •
I watched as Koorong melded into the surface of the graffiti-covered wall behind him. He was still there, just camouflaged, but the effect was so successful that standing only a meter away I could hardly detect his outline. He claimed it would work for both of us, and as long as he was able to concentrate, it would be enough to get us inside Blaxland Heights, a massive tenement project on Sydney’s southwest side, without being seen by cameras. Indeed, when I looked down I couldn’t see my own hands, even when while wiggling them.
Ready? he asked subvocally.
I checked the Blax’s meager security system again. Allora had created several back doors, and Koorong had given me the keys. The path we’d be taking was populated, but by nothing that would cause any alarm.
Ready, I said.
We padded across the street toward a courtyard that sat below the fifty-story complex. I could still feel the bullet wounds, but barely. The yellow wads had taken a while to kick into full gear, but they had healed my injuries to the point that the skin had closed over with bright pink scar tissue.
Skittles—also covered by Koorong’s spell—followed close behind us. I’d disabled her barking except for the direst of emergencies. I had nearly left her in Koorong’s underground safe house, but had found that I couldn’t. She’d been my most steadfast friend for the last twelve years, and it felt too strange going without her. I would actually think about her more if she wasn’t with me, which would only lead to mistakes.
We wove through a steady stream of traffic until finally passing through the entrance. What met us was a gallery that was probably meant to be impressive, but its grandeur was dimmed by the half-filled stores that lined each side and the smells of disinfectant that could not quite mask the scent of decay. As we walked, avoiding the traffic of Blax’s mishmash crowds, the sights and sounds of in-your-face AR marketing clashed with what was once a stark and understated interior.
We headed in nearly two klicks—taking turn after turn and escalator after escalator up through the alternating clusters of strip malls and domicile-hives—until finally reaching a massive atrium whose dirt-caked windows ten stories above served only to make things gloomier. We had gone halfway through the atrium, skirting a group of chipheads sitting in a circle on the synthsteel floor, when an alarm from Blax’s northern end flared within my AR display. I had tweaked Blax’s system to trigger a low-level alarm for anything or anyone that seemed out of the ordinary, and further filtered it to trip a higher-level alarm for corporate-type squads, and finally a third if Cylestra or any of her sister corps were sensed. This alarm was the highest priority.
They’re here. No sooner had I subvocalized the words than my feed to Blax’s security system was cut off.
My heartbeat quickened. Of the seven hired samurai we had spaced around the complex, I triggered four to go after the pair of trolls and half-dozen men that had entered Blax’s northern end. The others I kept in reserve in case Cylestra had sent in more than one team.
We continued to the edge of the atrium and took the lift to the thirty-seventh floor, our camouflage finally fading away on the ride up. When we exited, Skittles began barking fiercely. Before I could shush her, the rattle of gunfire broke out somewhere far below. We turned a corner and rushed down a dimly lit hall to an apartment as screams and a small explosion shook the air.
Skittles, sticking her head out between two of the nicked bars of the atrium railing, picked up three of our samurai beating a quick retreat into the open space below.
Things had gotten worse much faster than I’d anticipated. I summoned the remaining samurai to assist, hoping they could catch Cylestra’s men off guard—though with the amount of preparation the enemy had already shown, I knew that hope to be slim.
We ducked inside the apartment, and Koorong immediately tapped a sequence on a holopad inside the door. The space was very cramped, but it otherwise looked like it belonged somewhere far, far away from the sprawl. The walls were a rich, earthy gold, and the room had been decorated with Aboriginal masks and pottery and ornate, dried flower wreaths. And it smelled … like nature. It was jarringly attractive after the stark, gray labyrinth of Blaxland Heights.
We rushed down a hallway to a bedroom, and there, lying on a gurney not unlike the one I had found myself on only hours before, was Allora. I knew that she was two years younger than Koorong, but she looked at least a decade older. Her cheeks were sunken, and her skin was a sickly shade of brown. Her eyes rested deep in their sockets, and though the pictures I had found of her on the net had shown a healthy young woman, this Allora was grossly thin.
Hurry, Koorong said as he pulled a heavy, rolling tripod from the closet. Mounted upon the tripod was a heavy machine gun. He locked the wheels and lowered the gun until it was horizontal, and then he nodded toward Allora meaningfully, almost angrily.
I searched for her PAN, but found nothing. I scanned her form and found a wired connection leading to an old, reliable Renraku hub.
She’s hardwired?
Koorong looked at me, confused for a moment, but then a look of horror and understanding came over him.
I’ll have to go through Blax’s WAN.
His eyes widened, and his gaze dart
ed between me and Allora several times. You said it yourself, they have control over it now.
I sat down in a synth-leather chair with permanent depressions in the cushions. Can’t be helped.
Another explosion sounded, much closer than I would have thought.
“Go!” Koorong said out loud as he trained the barrel of the machine gun on the door.
I leaned back and connected to the WAN.
I was immediately assaulted by a prehensile arm emanating from a massive, floating piece of IC. The thing was like a god of the seas from eons ago, black with hundreds of tendrils wavering in an unseen wind, all of them ready to strike. It lashed out again and again, but I had learned more than a few tricks in my time and wouldn’t be caught so easily.
I sent out several paladin sprites in the next few milliseconds, and while the IC was deciding which of those to attack, I tethered several of its arms to the one of the paladins, forcing it into a regressive loop that would take precious seconds to unravel.
At the same time, I activated the encrypted tunnel to Allora. Immediately, and for the first time, I could feel her. She was indeed hidden deep within the maze of Cylestra’s net, and she was fighting to remain hidden, for it was clear that Cylestra was now digging recklessly in order to find her.
I probed, hoping to create a stronger connection with Allora, but every time I did Cylestra’s IC whipped its arms toward me. Only by feinting and launching more paladins was I able to keep them from striking home.
But then something changed. An alarm had been raised, and all proximal firewalls flared red, limiting traffic to secure channels only. I’d anticipated that, but the IC had activated an enhanced sniffer subroutine. The IC—even with the sniffer—wasn’t good enough to catch me if I was careful, but it was more than adequate to make sure I remained separated from Allora.
