by Blou Bryant
Wyatt reached his place as she continued to speak but rather than stopping, he pushed past Hannah and Sandra. Perhaps they mistook his anger and shame for grief, and they let him go without a word. Others touched him as he walked past… what the hell is with all the touching? Leave me alone.
As he reached the back of the group, he saw three black clad Watchers on the other side of the street. With a sigh that might have been relief, he threw his shoulders back and stalked past mute graves to confront them. It won’t be a confrontation, it’ll be a bloodbath, he thought with joy.
Recognizing that he was looking for an outlet for his anger, he realized he didn’t care.
Chapter 12
Happy to be moving away from the funeral and the obligation to stand up in front of everybody, Wyatt stalked towards the Watchers, his fists clenched.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” said a voice behind him. Wyatt didn’t need to turn to figure out who it was. Vincent’s gravel was easily recognizable.
“Why are you here?”
Vincent caught up and kept pace. “Nice to see you too,” he said through the cigarette tucked between his lips.
“Ugh.”
“Communicative as always.”
“What’s amazing?” asked Wyatt, continuing towards his targets.
“This was all rubble a couple months ago. An overgrown shooting yard, and now it’s trimmed, cleaned-up and neat. It’s amazing what you’ve done in a short time.”
“You know it wasn’t me.”
“Meh, it’s everybody. So, where are you going?”
“It’s best if you leave well enough alone.”
“I would,” said Vincent, lighting another cigarette from the first. “But this is sorta my thing.” He tapped his ear twice. “Pick them up, get them out of here.”
Several men got out of cars on the far side of the street and approached the Watchers. The front two flashed something—badges, likely—and, with no resistance, the three were escorted back to the cars.
Wyatt sped up briefly. Realizing the pointlessness of it, stopped and confronted Vincent. “What gives you the right?” he sputtered.
“It’s sorta my thing. I think I mentioned that.”
“Right, cops are helpful, do their job.”
“Yup, we do that a lot, all day long. We spend our day helping people who hate us, and we mostly do it without whining.” Gently, the officer put a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder. “Come on, back to the party.”
“Party? This is a funeral, show some damn respect for the dead,” said Wyatt, slapping off the other man. “And people need to stop touching me.”
“Show respect? Was that what you were about to do?”
“I was going to do something you wouldn’t.”
Vincent chuckled at this. “You haven’t read my file, have you?”
“Cops are useless.”
“Oh, you have read my file. Stop, just for a minute.”
Turning back, but not returning, Wyatt didn’t reply.
“You’re not a funeral guy, I take it.”
“How about I punch you in the face?”
Vincent softened at that. “Look, it’s obvious that you’re hurting, but lashing out won’t help.”
Wyatt stopped, turned, and shoved the older cop, making him stumble back. Rather than fight back, Vincent’s leathery face softened further.
Screw you and everyone else and shove your concern for me. If you cared, you’d leave me alone, Wyatt thought and walked off, looking for Rocky or Seymour. Through the crowd, he saw the large bruiser standing next to Sandra.
Not wanting to get back in the middle, he looked for the second man, who took longer to find. After a minute of searching and ignoring Vincent, Wyatt spotted him on the edge of the crowd and made a beeline for him.
“What have you found?” he asked when he reached the hacker.
Seymour had been paying close attention to the sermon being delivered by Father Sam and was startled when Wyatt grabbed him by the arm. “Can’t it wait?”
With a brief glance at the front, Wyatt shook his head. “For what? This waste of time?” Several people turned to him, favoring him with disapproving glances. He stared them down, and his visible anger or his reputation made them ignore his intrusion.
Let them try to stop me. Something is wrong with me? Something is wrong with the world. We all stand around mourning, instead of taking the revenge we deserve.
He pulled Seymour towards the trees.
“Hey,” whined the programmer. “That hurts,” he said, but followed as Wyatt pulled him away from the group.
“What have you found out?”
Emm had been close by and intervened. She pulled Wyatt’s hand off Seymour. “Boss, what are you doing,” she whispered. “It’s a funeral.”
“I noticed.”
“So how about you let people grieve?”
“Learn your place,” Wyatt replied. He’d taken enough shit today.
He balled up his hands, and advanced on her, the world around him disappearing in a haze of red.
Emm cocked one eyebrow, and instead of getting angry at his reply, she grinned. “You’re going to punch me?”
Wyatt didn’t reply. Now there was a group gathered around, watching. He raised one fist, not caring—not considering—the ramifications.
“Where?” she asked, still smiling.
“What?” he asked.
“Where are you going to punch me? Face? Belly? Or are you going to mix it up… how about a leg? You never see that in martial arts movies. How about you be different and start with the leg? Or the foot? That’d be cool, lunge at my foot. I’ll never see it coming.”
He didn’t know how to reply.
“Now, if it were me, I’d go for the buff cop first.”
“Buff?” said Vincent. He’d put his hands up to stop Wyatt, but dropped them to stare at Emm. “You think I’m buff?”
She ignored him. “Buff cop first, then me, then Seymour. Don’t hit Seymour in the face though, he’s too pretty for that. And I’ve got studs everywhere, you might cut yourself, so be careful.”
“You’re pierced everywhere?” asked Vincent.
She winked. “Everywhere.”
“Damn, girl. You could foot punch me any day.”
Emm pantomimed a lunge for the cop’s foot. “Hi-ya!”
As he watched the two of them banter, Wyatt felt the red rage subside. He chuckled.
“And do it fast, ‘cause I’ve got implants and I can shock your brain.”
“You do?” asked Vincent, fully engrossed.
“You can?” asked Wyatt, surprised, and at the same time not surprised at all.
“One touch,” she said, and put a hand out towards his head.
Wyatt stepped back, and she laughed.
“No, I can’t shock you. Although it’s a cool idea.” Emm took a long look at him. “Better?”
Blushing, he nodded. Had I really been about to get in a fight with my friends at a funeral?
“Hey,” she said to Vincent, who had pulled a small flask out of his pocket. “How about you and I take that for a walk?”
Vincent grumbled amicably. “Are you trying to get me away from him,” he indicated Wyatt, “or get me alone with you?”
“Can’t it be both?”
Taking a long swig from the large flask, he shrugged. “I suppose. You’ll be good, now?” he asked Wyatt. At a returned nod, he handed the container to Emm and walked off with her, leaving the other two men alone.
“You’re not being you,” Seymour said.
Wyatt responded, “We gotta wrap this up. Tell me you’ve got something.”
“I’ve got draft code, or we do. Emm helped. She’s quite a hacker.”
“She’s an impressive woman, I’m learning that more and more every day. What’s the code… or, rather, what do I need to do with it?”
“The code’s a small thing. It frees them to go beyond their normal programming and subtly influences them to see Jessi
ca as a threat. It’s a bit like my dating software.”
“How so?”
“It predicts behavior based on past activities and then alters their parameters enough to increase the probability of positive outcomes.”
“Uh-huh,” said Wyatt, not understanding in the slightest.
Seymour’s eyes went north as he searched for a way to describe it that Wyatt could understand. “It unlocks the AIs… say’s to them, ‘Jessica’s bad’ and ‘hey, you can do whatever you want about it.’”
“And from there?”
“I don’t quite know how it’ll work… Emm has a more intuitive understanding of them than I do. She’s so wired in, she sees the world differently than I do.”
A red light went off in the back of his mind as he remembered Emm’s conversation with the childlike AI only two days earlier. She’d implanted computer parts in her hands and in her head and communed with them in a way he didn’t—couldn’t—understand.
Seymour laughed at his twenty-two-year-old friend who was half his age. “Don’t I know it.”
“What do we need to do with it?”
“I’d like to upload it to a data center rather than a specific AI. If it works, it’ll distribute from there. Given that it’s not a traditional virus, I think it won’t be flagged or caught.”
“You think?”
Seymour made a face, “If I had months and a team of grad students, we could test it out and refine it, but that’s not an option, is it?”
“Nope. You’ve got a target?” asked Wyatt.
“We’ve got three big ones. One’s in New York, another is in Seattle. The third is outside Detroit.”
“That’s it then. Is it ready for distribution?”
“It’ll be ready in a week or two, once you’ve done your reconnaissance.”
“We’ll go in tomorrow. Have the drives set up.”
“There’s no way…”
“Make it happen.”
“Yes, captain,” replied Seymour. “Can I listen to the end of the sermon?”
Wyatt blushed and nodded. Turning, he scanned the crowd for Rocky, but didn’t need to, finding the big man standing behind him. “Hey,” he said, thinking over how to phrase his request.
“Hey. Good speech.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah, I know. I hate speeches too. So, I hear there was something?” asked Rocky, staring hard at him, his face revealing more questions than he had expressed. He looked worried, and on guard.
Wyatt looked to the ground, unsure of how to reply. “Sure, something, but it’s nothing now.”
“Sounded like something. Glad it’s not.”
Happy to move on from discussing his almost-altercation with Emm, Wyatt said, “So… do you still keep in touch with all those altered types… you know, the ones trying to change themselves?”
“Sometimes. What’d ya need?”
Hesitating, Wyatt remembered the visions he’d had when Hannah had tried to heal him. Visions, delusions or perhaps something more, given to him by Teri. “Are you able to keep a secret from Sandra, you know, if you needed to?”
Rocky paused at this. He was an honest man, and not one to make a promise lightly. “What’s up?”
“She’ll worry, and I don’t want her to. We have other things to focus on, she has other responsibilities. Can you keep a secret?”
“Perhaps, but I can’t give my word without the why.”
That wasn’t good enough. Shaking his head, Wyatt turned away. “Na, it’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”
A big hand on his arm pulled him back to Rocky. “If there’s any danger to you or anyone else, you’ll tell me?”
Wyatt thought about it… there was nobody else to go to. “Deal.”
“Deal then. Anything goes wrong, you tell her or I will. What do you need?”
“Can you find me someone who’s good at the DNA stuff?”
“Like Esaf was?”
“I’ve already been asking around. There might be someone. Seymour knows about a place for rich people… secret, under the radar, that sort of thing.”
“You already started looking?”
“Months ago, on Sandra’s orders. When you failed to heal Ari.”
Wyatt gave his friend a sideways glance. “Thanks. You know I can’t just go to a hospital and check in, and there isn’t anyone we know who knows about what I’m dealing with.”
“This because of that exploding thing?”
“The girls told you?”
“They did, they worry about you. Should tell ‘em you’re doing something about it, it’ll make them happy.”
“Ugh.”
“It’ll make ‘em relax.”
“It’ll make them worry.”
“Should they?”
Wyatt didn’t respond.
Chapter 13
Later that night, the remembrance party was well underway, and the HUC and neighboring houses were full. Sadness at the loss of friends intermingled with a joy that came from a sense of shared challenge, and of community. They might be under attack, their backs against the wall, but at least they had a wall.
The houses, the streets, the trees, everything within blocks was theirs, abandoned by the government, forgotten by society. To the people who lived there, any day where they knew where their meals were coming from and where their heads would lie at the end of the day—any day they survived—was a good day.
Wyatt hadn’t lived in their shoes. His parents hadn’t been rich, but they’d had jobs often enough that the mortgage was paid and food was always on the table. Even on the run, hiding from Jessica and the police, the Dogs had protected him and he’d always had a place to sleep. Not the nicest of places, but better than many in the dining room of the HUC had known.
It wasn’t his background that set him apart, however. Even if he’d had similar memories, fears, he’d not be partying with them, not be drinking and sharing remembrances of the fallen. His walls were internal, his friends were his own thoughts.
Alone in his corner, surrounded by people laughing and crying as they discussed the day and shared memories of their friends, Wyatt flipped through a tablet computer he’d borrowed. The data center was outside of town, its boundaries mapped with video and posted online. As he virtually toured the outside of the facility, he was struck by the apparent lack of security. There was no barbed wire, no tall walls and no sign of outside guards. Despite being four stories tall, the parking lot was only large enough to hold a few cars.
On three sides of the facility, fields stretched for miles. When the video was taken, they were filled with row upon row of tall corn, but at this point in the year, that would be gone, turned into soil that would be as exposed as he would be approaching the building. The last side—the back—edged onto a forested area. Scrolling out to an aerial view, the green of the forest filled the top portion of the screen. It would be easy enough to park on a deserted road and access from the back.
“Cat videos again?”
Wyatt looked up and scowled as Emm sat next to him on the windowsill. He edged away from her. She took this as gentlemanly, and moved closer, taking up more space, closer to him. Wyatt grimaced. “We’ll go in tomorrow night.”
“You get right into it, you can’t even give a girl a courtesy LOL?”
“Let’s go outside,” he said, not trusting enough to have the conversation around the mingled residents.
She raised an eyebrow and waved a hand over the tablet. “Ah,” she said, understanding, and followed him out of the old house.
The air was chill, but the rain had stopped and the wind had died down. It was quiet outside, and likely safe. Former bangers stood sentry on the block corners and Vincent had promised that local cops would watch the edges of the Zone. Trix trusted him as did Sandra. Wyatt didn’t, but he wasn’t part of the group making decisions about security anymore. He suspected the discussions now revolved around what to do with him.
“I want to discuss…”
&nb
sp; “The data center? You were scouting it online.”
Of course, the implants in her fingers would send signals to her brain, tell her what he’d been browsing. “Yes,” he said, discomforted by her connection to the wired world. After all, she wasn’t the only one connected—Jessica had a direct link through Joe. Their opponent was also wired in.
Rich and Andy weren’t on their deck for once, so Wyatt beckoned Emm over and they sat down. He paused before continuing, not wanting to talk about what had happened—almost happened—at the funeral, but he wondered if she was thinking about it. Damn, but he’d almost punched her.
She didn’t raise the subject and instead stared at the stars and waited for him to start the conversation.
“The data center, yes. We go tomorrow night.”
“No reconnaissance?”
It was hasty. The previous break-ins were preceded by weeks of surveillance and research. There wasn’t time now, Wyatt felt that, even if he didn’t understand what was going on with him. “We’ve got this,” he said. “The place looks like it’s got next to no security, it’ll be a quick in and out. You and Seymour can hack some blueprints, and Patterson can give us some toys.”
“What’s the plan?”
“You shut the place down, the same as you always do. We go in through the rooftop, that’s usually the easiest. There are a lot of windows if that doesn’t work.”
“We don’t have a virus ready. I can’t shut it down this fast.” Emm took the tablet and manipulated the map, scrolling around the outside of the facility, zooming in and out as she went.
“Why not use your implants?” he had to ask.
She favored him with an inquisitive glance. He’d never shown interest before. “My implants aren’t as good as eyes. It’s much easier to use what evolution gave me than to use the implants.”
“You’ve got a lot of them?”
“I’ve got a small hub implanted…” she pointed at her wrist, “here. And it’s got different interfaces in each of my fingers.” She raised her middle finger. “This one has a specialized chip that scans other devices.” Raising her pinkie, she said, “And this one has a receiver. All of these feed another implant at the base of my skull, which sends information to my brain.”
