Neon District: ALPHA (The Neon District Trilogy, Book 1)

by Chad Campbell

  Raker:Clones?

  Red Ice:No way! I don’t believe that for a second.

  Queenalona:Clones on the Psi-Corp force is a rather preposterous presumption. And a dangerous one at that. You ought to check your facts on that one. Now, Zonos bringing back the use of COGLIMS is a much more real and dangerous issue.

  VseR:I put nothing past the government. Zonos would take any measure possible to assert their control over the population. Clones and COGLIMS included.

  Red Ice:Wait a sec. I heard there was a small group of people in West Andromeda that suddenly went psychotic and went on a killing spree. It was fuckin’ nuts! I heard Psi-Corp had to gun them down. I also remember the coverage being a bit fishy too, like the news and Psi-Corp purposely left out details, yet again. I had one of my guys look into it out of curiosity and they told me ten people were wearing Datashades when it all happened.

  Queenalona:You don’t really think they’re trying to expand the COGLIMS project into the general public, do you?

  Raker:It would be a shit storm all over again if they did.

  Red Ice:Again. Is anybody really surprised by any of this shit? This is the same ole Neon District we’ve all come to know. The big dogs get the biggest dish, the little guys gotta dig our hands in the fuckin’ dirt to make our way. What else is new? It’s not like we can assemble some super army to combat these guys.

  VseR:For once, I gotta agree with Ice on this. The only way anything is ever gonna change is if we’re willing to die for it.

  Che Le Che:Zonos is weakening. Slowly, but surely, it’s weakening. If there is any time we should strike, it should be now.

  Moonshot:Oh, Mr. Silence finally speaks. So, Che le Che, how do you know that Zonos is weakening? You gotta inside man or some credible source in that mess of a government?

  Che le Che:You could say something like that, yes.

  Red Ice:Now that it's come up, how did you get invited to this anyway? Nobody here has ever heard of you. What work have you put in to get here? Are you a Psi-Corp special agent or something?

  Queenalona:Ice, relax, he’s a good friend of mine. I invited him here because he has reliable contacts on the inside.

  Vser suddenly received a secret request by ‘Che le Che’ for a private chat between the two of them in the middle of the meeting. Intrigued, Vser accepted.

  Che le Che:Thanks for accepting my request.

  VseR:It’s really interesting that you reached out to me during all this. You have some sort of job for me? Or is there something more you’re after?

  Che le Che:I’m impressed. You’re as shrewd as they say. I do have a job request. Something big.

  VseR:‘Big’ is gonna cost you. Give me the details and I’ll decide if I want to accept or not.

  Che le Che:Very well. I’m offering ten million Creds for this particular job, but it would require you to meet me in real life. Three days from now, there will be a rendezvous point at the docks in East Blue Emerald. My driver will be there waiting for you at noon to go over the job and help you execute it.

  VseR:No. Sounds like a setup. You’ve given me a price, but no actual description of the job. No details, no job. Period.

  Che le Che:As cautious as ever, I see. This job is definitely worth your time, I can promise you that.

  VseR:Naw, I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I’m ending this useless conversation.

  Che le Che:Wait! I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The Chimera hacking incident! I know you were behind it! And that methodical infiltration of their Enzen Bank accounts too; flawless! The skillful way in which your DDoS attack distributed the money from the crooked Prime-1 Bank back into the hands of the people! What you did was a work of art, and I need someone of your skill to help me.

  VseR:Who are you, really?

  Che le Che:I am merely someone who seeks change. This system has been killing us for too long.

  VseR:Give half of the ten million Creds upfront, and I will think about your request. If you really need my help, I may consider it. But you need to show that you’re serious.

  Che le Che:Okay. Five million Creds will be forwarded to your CWR funds account in an hour.

  VseR:I’ll be waiting.

  Vser cut the transmission. He turned back his full attention to the meeting of the kings.

  Raker:Now ZOBE is hijacking aircrafts too? What is this world coming to? These guys were nothing more than tree hugging fanatics at first! Now they’re slowly becoming militarized. I wonder where they’re getting funding from?

  Red Ice:Products of the system of hatred.

  VseR:Lady and gentlemen, I appreciate your time, but I must now take my leave.

  Queenalona:But don’t you want to stay and help us?

  VseR:I apologize. I have things to do.

  Queenalona:Wait!

  Caiden logged out of the chatroom and CWR. The harbinger of danger loomed more than ever before. Should I face it? Become one with it? Could I, if I tried? Or should I run from it? These questions lingered in his mind, tormenting, and pulling at him more and more. Before the panic and doubt set in, he decided to take action. There’s more to Che le Che than he’s letting on. And I would be an idiot to meet him as he suggested on his terms, he thought to himself. He took to the internet searching for anything he could find using words, phrases, and meanings behind the words ‘Che le Che’.

  CHAPTER 11

  ---usr/systems/server-x/ANGLES---

  Caiden set up an automatic query, using optical character recognition to populate a variety of results. In the search, there were thousands of links to the material he required. He cross referenced the name findings he found by using the Net Code address he snagged via complex search and retracing methods that required a bit of unorthodox thinking and system processing. Caiden’s mind was running like a well-oiled super machine. Che le Che was concerned about covering his tracks when he created that profile. He did well enough to remain hidden from the authorities and high-level hackers; but not from Caiden. After another hour of intense analysis and research, he got a hit.

  Che le Che was revealed to be Prime Minister Shino Honda of Neon District!

  “What the fuck? This can’t be right. I need to double check my query,” Caiden said to himself.

  After running three more checks on his findings, it was confirmed that CWR user ‘Che le Che’ was Prime Minister Honda. How the fuck did he even find out about my work on Chimera and the Prime-1 job? he asked himself. Shit! Caiden began filtering all the traffic hits of anything related to Shino Honda from the infiltration nodes he implanted in Zonos’s network.

  Became prime minister at the young age of twenty-six. Current age; thirty-six. Father of two; a boy and a girl. Names; Eris, seven years old, and Camilla, eleven years old. Wife of seven years; Rinn Honda, thirty-five years old. She was a government transit coordinator and left her career to be a full-time mom. Shino graduated summa cum laude from Orb University. He was the president of the student council. He initiated a major reform for student rights on the campus with the help of the government. He was instrumental in creating a joint Hybrid and Purebred student union. This union was the groundwork allegedly used by Zonos to facilitate relations between the two groups on a city-state scale. One could definitely say that those relationship attempts had largely failed citywide. His influential style could be traced back to his collegiate days for sure. He had the magnetic charisma of a natural born leader. He was groomed and tailored to be the next prime minister after he went to work for Zonos right out of college as a political advisor. He was prodigious.

  A notification came up via a holo-popup. Caiden clicked on it and the information read that Honda had a half-sister from the same mother and different father. His sister’s name was Asuka Kohana. Caiden searched for call records or any form of communication between the two. His attempts were unsuccessful. Extracting that information would require a different hack altogether and he hadn't the time. He was, however, able to access what looke
d like a recent email chain that might have belonged to Honda, or at least had his name mentioned in it. He clicked on the file.

  From: Queenalona@CWR.neo

  To: RevoCheOriginal@CWR.neo

  Shino, I’ve reached out to Vser as you asked, though I doubt he will show this time, as he never does. That’s his MO. I have bcc’d you on the email just in case. Love you. Talk to you at the meeting.

  -Asuka

  Bingo! They were too careless! Now it makes sense why Che le Che was at such a discreet meeting among the major hackers of the city. Asuka Kohana must have been Queenalona. That is also how he got the information on the Prime-1 bank job that I did, he thought. He was relieved and angry. Queenalona was a fellow hacker; someone he admired for the work she had put in, fighting in her own way against the establishment. But she violated the ‘hackers code’, if there was one. It couldn’t be helped. Even with this revelation, there was still information yet to be found.

  Fine tuning the results from the massive query algorithm, he initiated an even deeper, more detailed search and came across more interesting; top secret material on Prime Minister Honda. There were employee documents, policies he tried to introduce, and policies that called for the amelioration of the Psi-Corp military police. Reports at the time showed that violent incidents with the Psi-Corp military police and the public had reached an all-time high. The highest in twenty years according to the reports. Documents also showed that Honda desperately tried to establish an oversight agency to regulate Psi-Corp policing activity. He was denied every single time. The string of attempts spanned across three and a half years before they stopped completely. What halted his attempts were repeated sanctions against the limits of his position. There were also documents that divulged information on the freezing of huge financial assets of the Honda family name. But from who? The sign off on all the sanction documents merely say ‘Zonos Government’ and that’s it. Very odd.

  Caiden came across a few multimedia files that looked like surveillance footage. There was no supporting metadata on the video files. No dates, times or locations. Someone had tampered with these before they were stored away. Caiden pulled up one of the videos and played it. There were three men dressed in all black cornering a man. The man who was cornered was clearly shaken and bloody, but conscious. Caiden paused the video and magnified it one hundred and twenty-five percent. He transferred the video file to the holo-display from the base of his computer. Rotating the paused video a couple degrees, he took a closer look at the victim. It was Shino Honda.

  What the hell did this guy get himself into? Caiden rotated the holo-video to see if he could identify the attackers. No luck. Their faces were conveniently blurred out. What about weapons? They were all were armed, but only one had their weapon drawn. The assailants were huge, at least six feet, six inches and looked like they weighed a ton each. They appeared to be enhanced. No cybernetic implants were visible from the feed, but the muscle they packed wasn’t natural. Caiden zoomed in on the one weapon that was drawn. The gun looked familiar. He enhanced the image even more and located a pixelated and barely readable serial number. Using a bot camouflaged as a Zonos security patch, he gained access and scoured the Psi-Corp database for any weapons with a similar serial code.

  The weapon used was a custom forty-five pulse pistol that could only be issued and obtained by a Psi-Corp police officer. These guns were fingerprinted and DNA matched to its user, meaning that only one person could use that pistol. If anyone else tried to use it, it wouldn’t work. Looks like Honda shook the hornet's nest of Zonos and Psi-Corp more than he should have. In addition to these sanctions, Zonos must’ve sent the police officers disguised as contracted hitmen to send a clear-cut warning to Honda. He was too outspoken and they silenced him for it. He’s lucky he’s still alive.

  One question remains; where did this footage take place? And why was the footage kept to begin with? Caiden inspected the video file once more, making note of objects, tiling, lighting, and camera angles. He was looking for anything out of the ordinary, and eventually he found it. A silhouette of a lion statue was positioned behind the hitmen. It came from the large but open double doors that looked like an entrance to an illustrious home. Caiden closed the holo-video and pulled up a search map, typing in the image of a lion statue and kept the search range within a fifty-mile radius. There were thirteen different locations that had golden lion statues; thrift shops, warehouses, a junkyard, and a home in Plush Grove, Cosmica District. Caiden clicked on the result. It was a match. The address was one-two-two-five Orion Way, Plush Grove, Cosmica, Neon District, City-State.

  Caiden received a notification routed to his holo-watch from his CWR account. Five million Creds had been transferred securely from user Che le Che at eleven minutes past twelve in the afternoon. He was serious. Looks like we’re gonna meet a little earlier than expected though, Mr. Honda. We’ve got a lot to discuss.

  CHAPTER 12

  ---usr/systems/server-x/HACK STEIN---

  As soon as Nami and Hitomi had gotten off the phone with Caiden, they lounged around the apartment in Darkside.

  “I wish Caiden was back here right now. It’s fun messin’ around with him,” Nami said.

  “Keep your panties on, you horny bitch,” Hitomi replied jokingly.

  Hitomi was currently hugging the pillow Caiden slept on, inhaling the scent. They looked at each other and laughed as they lay in the bed together looking up at the ceiling. A soft glowing light from the hallway crept into bedroom. It was around ten thirty a.m. and they finally decided to get up for the day.

  “I’m so bored,” Nami complained.

  “I know, it’s killing me. I wish we could go to club Cosmica with Caiden,” Hitomi said.

  “Oh my god, that would be so fun! But we wouldn’t be able to really enjoy ourselves. Goddamn Chimera,” Nami said.

  A sadness swept over them like a wave crashing to the shore. Memories of drug fueled nights and sleazy men having their way with them, forcing them to engage in sexual acts that would sear the eyes of a saint began to plague their minds. It all came back to them, not that those thoughts ever left them to begin with.

  As if they were of one mind Nami blurted out, “We’re here now, it’s okay. Caiden said we don’t have to be afraid anymore. No more drugs, no more rape, no more Slavo, no more captivity. Even though we’re stuck here for a while, we’re finally free, right?”

  “Yeah,” Hitomi agreed hesitantly.

  “Hey, don’t we have work to do? We got some investigating to get done,” Nami said.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” her sister replied.

  The twins washed up, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and went down to the computer hub. Before he left, Caiden had a makeshift set up ready, there were some extra videogame chairs in case the twins wanted to log on to CWR. With the game chairs, he included a couple of spare CPU units. Each was equipped with their own NeuraVisor. The twins logged into CWR after a successful Neuro-connection. Using the undetectable intercepting access nodes that Caiden planted in the Zonos network, the twins began their hacking campaign to look for anything related to Dr. Stein Volda.

  “Jesus, these infiltration nodes are seamless. It’s like our presence in the Zonos network is completely hidden. Caiden never ceases to amaze me” Nami stated.

  “It looks like we only have a few minutes to pull the data back to the system here to research before this node resets. Let’s get moving” Hitomi added.

  The twins set up an automatic query, as Caiden requested be done. ‘Dr. Stein’ and ‘Volda’ were the keywords. In an instant, thousands of results popped up.

  “You think this is enough?” Nami asked.

  “Maybe we should find some more things. Let’s check what we have now,” Hitomi replied.

  “Video logs, scientific journals, published essays, old emails, and signed contracts. I found an unnamed folder with its own separate encryption. That definitely looks interesting,” Nami said.

  “Okay, I think
we have enough for now. We should probably bail before this node resets, that’s the only time we will be vulnerable to detection,” Hitomi said.

  Taking those online summer courses from the Advanced College for Technological Studies proved invaluable. Their own budding knowledge of system networking came in handy for situations like that one. They successfully extracted copies of the files on everything related to Dr. Stein Volda. They successfully exited the infiltration node undetected, and logged out of CWR to upload what they found to Caiden’s servers.

  “So, where do we start?” Nami asked.

  “I dunno. Let’s start with that unnamed folder we snagged. If this guy is as weird as Caiden said he is, Stein or whoever helped him did a poor job hiding it by simply not naming a folder. I bet there’s a bunch of crazy shit in there,” Hitomi deduced. She was spot on. After a couple of tries, the twins decrypted the unnamed folder. In it, were hundreds of police reports, copies of Cred transactions, and legal documents.

  “Oh my god!” Hitomi gasped.

  “What is it?” Nami replied.

  “Look at this! Ten charges of sexually motivated murder completely swept under the rug by the courts. If the judges weren’t paid off, the victim’s families were, if they had any. Look at these victims! All of the murder victims were usually either homeless or delinquent in some way,” Hitomi said.