The room rang with applause and cheering. Alice heard it, but as if it were somewhere far away.
No deaths, he’d said.
The two bodies going limp replayed over and over and over in Alice’s head. Her hands tightened into fists.
Chapter 7
ZALA WOKE TO the shrill sound of her terminal’s message alert. Shaking herself awake, she half fell out of the fold-out sofa bed in Polina’s apartment and blindly reached around on the floor for her terminal, weakly opening her sleep-knotted eyelids to gaze at the small holographic screen. It was a message from Matsuda, his first since the funeral three days before.
>I put together a collection of the memory dumps we’ve managed to salvage off shut-down bio-augs. We’re analysing a bunch of it, but the more hands at work the better. Plus, we only have access to legal methods of analysis, hint hint. Let us know if you get anything.
What followed was a link to a download containing several thousand memory dumps – emergency records of their working memory prior to crashing, made up of communication logs and process logs for the most part – almost all of which were corrupted.
Zala pulled herself up onto the bed, sat back and opened up the virtual operating system she used to carry out her illicit activities, and ran the logs through a scanning program. Piece by piece, it scanned for similarly sequenced segments, formulating possible lines of code from the matches it found. Of course, chance similarities in the strings of useless characters thrown up by the corruption caused a lot of false results, but occasionally strands of code that actually made contextual sense came up.
In particular, as Zala scrolled through the results, she kept noticing a connection log that appeared over and over again. The readout from the program told her that, of the 2,379 memory banks, 594 had uncorrupted logs of a file ‘gssmr.auge’ being transferred to it at some point. Another 1,006 had fragments of code that the program decided could well be other gssmr logs. The time between the file arriving and the termination of the bio-augmentations varied wildly but its presence was a common factor.
The program spat out a list of all the bio-augs with the gssmr file and the Extended Internet Protocol addresses which detailed the rough location of the device from which it had been downloaded. Zala then fed these results into one of those less-than-legal programs Matsuda had hinted at. It was adapted from a network analysis program her dad had been working on. Ostensibly that was to help companies track where malicious software on their networks had come from, but Zala figured it was actually a mechanism he’d designed so that he could steal even more from his former employers at GeniSec. So she’d taken something created by her father for stealing more, and turned it inside out. She fitted it with automated hacking scripts and upped its ambition from local networks to international ones. The program looked at the EIP addresses and sent probes to check them out. These would then map every connection in every log, millions an hour, using automated hacking scripts to get access to the addresses. Eventually, most of them would find their way to a central address, which with any luck would be the virus’s origin point. This process, however, would take an hour or so, even on the standard of terminal set-up Zala used. She checked the time, set the program running, and messaged Matsuda.
>Found a link. A file a load of them had in their memories. gssmr.auge. I don’t know the file type off the top of my head. I’m running an EIP trace on the confirmed ones at the moment. I’m going to find out where this is coming from. Still keeping an eye out for other leads though.
A percentage point on the tracing program’s progress bar later, and she got a response.
>Damn, you work fast. Great find. How many EIPs are you tracing?
Zala checked her notes.
>About 600, with 1,006 possible EIPs I can also run.
Matsuda’s response came much faster this time.
>Wow. 600 simultaneously? That’s … okay, I can’t ask you any more because I am out of that scene and I don’t know who can read this but … that is eyebrow-raising. I’ll let you get back to that. Keep me abreast.
Behind the pop-up with the progress bar, the terminal’s monitor showed a network of connections threading together like a great big cobweb. The program passed to and from EIP addresses belonging to bio-augs. The thicker a thread was, the more common the connection. As the bar ticked along, the web grew in complexity, as though a spider was weaving it in real time, filling in the gaps, out of strands of gssmr. The mesh of gold against the black background reminded Zala very much of the view of the city from above when she was in the elevator coming down a few days ago.
Slowly but surely, as Zala showered, got dressed and made herself some toast, the probing software found its way to fifty or so people who didn’t appear to have received the gssmr.auge file from any other infectee – the patient zeroes. Zala noted down their bio-augmentations’ EIP addresses. However, the path didn’t stop there. It continued forward, showing Zala that the virus had transferred to the bio-augs of those patient zeroes after they had interfaced with infected medical scanners. Without a directory there was no way to tell if the medical scanners were located in a doctor’s office or with one of the groups that had appropriated the technology for information smuggling or the like. But the trail kept going, past those, into the computers the scanners fed into, and, through a complex network, eventually joining the one big stream of the internet.
The trace travelled on through a number of seemingly random servers, computers and other networked devices, until to Zala’s surprise it reached a sticking point, being redirected over and over between eight servers which formed an endless loop it couldn’t get past.
Zala tried to find some client-side vulnerability through which she could feed the probe, but from where she was it seemed airtight. From the look of the set-up, the servers worked on a one-way system; there were a large number of servers, of which almost all could only be accessed via one remaining ‘gateway’ server. Coming in from the other side, any attempt at interaction would result in being batted from one server to the next, like being caught in a revolving door with one entrance locked from the outside. The data the servers contained was only accessible via the gateway server.
The catch, of course, was that Zala couldn’t get the probe past those eight servers to locate the correct entry point. The only individuals who could access that were those who knew about it in the first place, and who could successfully connect to it without having to go via the loop servers that the criminal traffic was directed through. Cursing, Zala realized she would need to go to the server itself.
The servers were, from what she could tell, all in the same geographical location: a New Delhi Lifestyle Technologies server farm located on their campus downtown. This was a huge complex full of computer servers, which operated everything from internal databases to NDLT web pages. And of course, from time to time, there were stories of IT techs ordering in more servers than they needed and renting them out to cybercrime syndicates and other such enterprising individuals.
There were ways to get around this impasse, but Zala knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
Polina came in behind her, still in her pyjamas and squinting, red-eyed, at the morning light. ‘What’re you up to then?’ she said blearily.
Zala turned her head towards her. ‘I’ve got to find a way to get access to a bunch of computer servers in the heavily fortified NDLT server farm, that are, in all probability, being used by a cybercriminal far more talented and way meaner than me, in order to figure out where a horrific, deadly virus came from.’
Polina screwed up her face and rested her head in her hand as though she had a headache. ‘Okay, I get the whole misplaced guilt thing over this virus, and while what you’re doing is merely ill-advised and criminal you know I’ll be there cheering from the sidelines. But Zala, those things are more fortified than your average military base. Is it even possible for you to get in?’
Zala shrugged. ‘If it is, I’ll manage it.’ She grinned.
The server farm itself was located in the basement of the city’s main New Delhi Lifestyle Technologies complex, a stylishly designed campus located at the point where New Cairo’s Alexandria district and the Downtown area where Polina lived met. NDLT had always separated itself from its main competitor, GeniSec, by appearing more modern and upmarket – the fact that New Delhi, their eponymous base, was the greatest cultural and artistic hub within 3,000 miles of New Cairo certainly helped with this image – and their corporate territory went out of its way to reflect this. At the heart of the campus were the NDLT Five Prongs: five broad, interconnected glass spires, branching off a flat plaza to create a gigantic, meticulously engineered hand, fingers reaching up as if to grasp at the sky. The complex contained most of the city’s NDLT workshops and office space, a number of floors of high-end apartments, several hotels, a large multi-screen cinema, nightclubs, a three-floor mall packed with NDLT’s various brands’ flagship stores. Then there were underground levels with still more facilities: several small-scale factories and a number of laboratories as well as the very large server farm. The main entrances to the lower levels were locked at all times. Entry required a handprint and voice scan as well as a passcode that changed each week. Even most of the corporation’s employees didn’t have access; to those who worked in the tower offices, the lower levels were as much a mystery as they were to anyone outside the company. The only people who were allowed in were those directly employed down there, plus the security and maintenance crews; the latter were the only ones with access to more than one floor.
Zala had never seen the Five Prongs plaza this empty. Normally, it was somewhere between bustling and so full one had to fight through the crowds to get anywhere. It was essentially the only place with anything to do in Alexandria, and most of New Cairo’s rich and privileged young people met there every day. At the very least it was usually a fool’s mission to attempt to count the people in sight on the floor below, from her current vantage point on the second floor. But today when she tried, they numbered only around thirty. They seemed aloof, giving one another a wide berth and glaring suspiciously. No one knew over what distance the Soucouyant could be transmitted. Two people, looking elsewhere, almost walked into one another and upon realizing they scrambled backwards in panic. It would have been a funny sight, Zala thought, if the fear were not so thick in the air.
Supposedly, the plaza had changed a great deal since the Soucouyant virus had taken hold. On one hand, during the day it was this sparsely inhabited – limiting one’s exposure to the outside world reduced the chances of catching the Soucouyant. During the night, however, escape took a different form, and throngs of people packed the nightclubs and bars. Alcohol sales had shot through the roof, victims of drug overdoses were clogging emergency wards, and more than one social commentator had speculated that nine months down the line a significant baby boom would be in full swing.
Zala’s portable terminal told her that she only had a little while before the young, rich and self-destructive packed the plaza and her plan would begin.
The good thing about the Five Prongs being this empty was that it was very easy to keep tabs on the black-uniformed maintenance workers.
NDLT maintenance teams, especially the ones from the Five Prongs, were famous. A crew of almost two hundred, most were fully qualified engineers, and supposedly did everything from changing light-bulbs and cleaning toilets to fixing and calibrating machinery so advanced that the scientists using it barely understood it. They were an enigma; they rarely spoke to anyone other than their colleagues and they moved around by concealed passages and walkways that no one else could access. Zala had heard they were compensated handsomely for their expertise and their silence. Engineering was a difficult business; the industry had evolved to the point where people tended to be hyper-specialized freelancers who would be hired for a project on their own individual reputation. Most young people who qualified to be engineers but had no buzz behind them came out of university fighting for the few internships that were available, and if one of them missed an opportunity or simply made a few mistakes, they had no way into project teams or any other kind of regular employment as engineers. Many became mechanics, as Tarou had done up in Waystation Seven, but others were employed to maintain the premises of NDLT or its corporate competitors.
If Zala was going to find a way into the server farm, it would be through one of these uniformed workers.
From her position on the second floor of the plaza, she watched as one of the maintenance crew walked up to a panel of the wall, placed his gloved fingertips to the surface, and pushed it in to reveal a passageway into which he disappeared. She typed a few quick notes onto a document on her portable terminal and looked around for another crew member.
She’d been meticulously taking notes and testing theories about the maintenance crews all day. They were a strange group to study – one of them might be leaning against a wall, eating her lunch, then would turn round, place her hand over the same spot of wall she’d been leaning on, and disappear in. Another might suddenly rise up through a trapdoor in the floor. The Five Prongs had made such good use of well-hidden space in the layout of the building that more than once Zala had seen one of the crew emerge from a passageway that seemed geometrically impossible.
Zala closed down her terminal. She had enough notes for now.
Across the plaza, on the lower floor, was a bar called Ohm. Late afternoon not being a prime period for bars, it looked mostly empty, but in a few hours there would be lines around the plaza for its main attraction, a superclub called Amp. There would be thousands of people around, all drunk or high or otherwise indisposed, causing chaos. It was exactly the cover she needed.
Zala ducked into a nearby café, ordered a drink and sat down in a booth, ready to kill some time.
‘Half an hour until closing time,’ yelled the barista. Zala checked the clock on her terminal – not far off eleven – picked up her backpack, and walked across the room into the bathroom. Once she was safely inside a locked cubicle, she hung up her rucksack and opened it. Inside was make-up and a small, revealing dress belonging to Polina, which she had borrowed without asking. Zala took off her own clothes and put on the dress. She clipped a golden necklace around her neck and hooked a pair of earrings into her earlobes, all of which had cost her less than a sandwich and were nothing but gaudily decorated tin. She kept her walking shoes on, having been unable to convince Polina to part with a pair of her heels, and stuffed her own clothes into the rucksack along with the rest of the gear she had brought with her.
The sight of herself in the mirror made her pause for a moment. Zala never dressed this way, never had reason. She wished she’d found more excuses to do so. She’d not realized before that she could look like this.
She double-checked and triple-checked every piece of information she’d gathered, then she opened the cubicle door and walked out. She spent a few minutes applying light make-up in the bathroom mirror, and then she left.
The queue for Amp exceeded her expectations. It seemed like everyone in the city south of fifty years old was lined up and ready to release whatever tension the Soucouyant virus had inspired. Zala walked past all of them, up to the bouncer, and said, ‘Selina Mullur, I’m on the guest list.’
The bouncer looked her up and down, then consulted his list to make sure the name was there. Zala had spent the hours in the coffee shop breaking into their network to ensure that it was, and so the bouncer nodded and waved her inside. She checked her backpack in at the cloakroom and headed upstairs.
Amp was full to capacity. The music was deafening. A band Zala had heard on the radio before was playing on the stage, light streaming from behind the five musicians into the otherwise dark room until they seemed like silhouettes. While four used analogue-style instruments, the fifth member manipulated the signals in real time on a terminal, crushing, modulating and distorting the music into one great ever-shifting sea of complex sonic flourishes on top of a t
hick, heavy rhythmic throb from the drums and bass guitar. The crowd danced as one great mass, already drunk and sweaty. Zala threw herself into the mob and within minutes smelt suitably of sweat and alcohol. Satisfied that she now looked and smelt just like anyone else in the nightclub, she went back downstairs.
She retrieved her rucksack, made her way into one of Amp’s bathrooms and, once two women talking loudly about a man they had evidently each been dating without the other realizing had left to go and hunt him down, she walked into a cubicle. She took from her bag a can of expanding watertight foam that was normally used to seal leaking cracks in ceilings. Zala pulled a large handful of toilet paper from the dispenser, sprayed some of the foam onto the centre sheet and wrapped the rest around it, then quickly flushed the whole bundle. Almost immediately the toilet bowl started to overflow. Zala then moved into another cubicle and waited.
Barely a minute had passed before a section of the wall slid away and one of the black-clad maintenance workers emerged, cursing lightly under his breath.
Zala listened carefully as he walked over to the cubicle and groaned at the sight of her handiwork. She took a deep breath, then opened the door and stumbled out, laughing, until she steadied herself on a sink. The man looked round, and his eyes met hers.
‘Oh!’ she slurred, ‘I caught you! You’re not allowed to laugh or something, right?’
The maintenance man rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to unblocking the toilet.
‘Hey!’ said Zala, making a show of staggering over behind him. This caught his attention.
He twisted round, and patiently said, ‘Ma’am, if you could leave me in peace, I’m just trying to do my—’
Zala grabbed the sides of the cubicle doorway and brought a foot up, before pulling forward and kicking. The maintenance man’s head flew back and smacked into the tiled wall, cracking it. He slumped with a splash to the side of the toilet.
The Hive Construct Page 8
