Extensis Vitae: Empire of Dust

by Gregory Mattix

  “On the contrary, it appears to be the real deal,” Bethany’s voice rang out from the doorway. He could tell she wasn’t the least bit amused. “Why didn’t you acknowledge my message?” She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest and a scowl on her face.

  “I’m feeling a little under the weather this morning—wasn’t even planning on coming in until I saw your message. You should be happy that I’m even here.”

  Bethany looked visibly tired, which was saying something. She had the start of dark circles forming under her eyes, and her hair was slightly mussed.

  “You look like you should’ve gotten a few more hours of sleep yourself.”

  “Really?” She slammed the office door and stalked toward Marcus, a dangerous note in her voice. She resembled a cougar moving in for the kill. “I had just gotten back from spending the past few days working on a special project offsite, only to find a mess that needs dealing with. I was up all night trying to get to the bottom of that”—she gestured angrily toward the image still displayed on his holoscreen. “We’ve got bigger issues than some smart ass doctoring pics. Serrano disappeared last night along with his bodyguards.”

  Marcus almost asked if she was serious, but the angry glint in her eyes silenced him. He waited for her to continue, but she flung herself into the chair across from his desk and rubbed her eyes.

  “They disappeared? I’m not sure what this has to do with me. I would think executive protection and CorpSec would be on it. This must be some kind of blackmail, right? He’s probably embarrassed as hell by this and doesn’t want to show his face around here for a while.”

  Bethany stared at him.

  “Um, well, can’t you trace him?”

  “My fear is that the same issue that happened with Sergeant Watters has returned.”

  “Oh, shit…” The caffeine hadn’t kicked in yet, evidently. Marcus struggled to consider the implications.

  “Exactly. On your feet—we need to pay your data center a visit. Mr. Thorne needs to be briefed ASAP, but first I need to see if my suspicion is correct. If it is, then we have a serious issue on our hands.”

  Marcus got to his feet with a sigh and finished the rest of his coffee. They had never found the cause of the fault that resulted in Sergeant Watters’s missing backup when they had investigated the issue months before. Marcus assumed then it was a glitch. However, their failure to determine the cause of the issue—combined with Bethany’s fears—told him they might be in deep shit.

  She said, ‘We have a serious issue on our hands.’ I knew I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed this morning.

  ***

  “Marcus! Wasn’t that some funny shit this morning?” Ram laughed heartily but hastily choked it off when Bethany rounded the corner of the server racks behind Marcus. “Oh, hey… um, good morning, ma’am.”

  “Yeah, it was fucking hilarious.” Bethany glared at Ram, who shrank back from her gaze.

  “Ram, we’ve got a situation here, and it ties in with that Serrano pic that showed up on the net this morning. Remember Watters, that guy who disappeared and his backup was erased?”

  “Yeah. We just eventually assumed it was a glitch in the system—some corrupted code or something. I’m assuming it wasn’t since you’re here.” He glanced at Bethany nervously.

  “That’s what we’re afraid of. I want you to look up the status of Paul Serrano and his two bodyguards.” Marcus sent him the names and ID numbers of the three individuals over his Datalink.

  “Yes, of course.” Ram whipped out his tablet and began paging through the data. “Serrano should be on aisle fourteen, rack thirty-three, server six,” he rattled off.

  They followed Ram to the location. He fired up a maintenance terminal and, consulting with the tablet, pecked at the keys. Frowning, he double-checked his tablet and re-entered the data. After the third attempt, his face paled.

  “Well?” Bethany demanded. Marcus already knew the answer by Ram’s face.

  “I… I’m sorry, ma’am,” Ram stammered. “It appears his data is lost—like Watters several months back.”

  “Holy shit,” Marcus breathed. “We’ve lost Serrano. We’re gonna be so screwed when Mr. Thorne hears this.”

  Bethany looked pale as well. “Look up the other two also, just to be sure,” she ordered.

  Marcus already knew the answer, but they followed Ram as he looked them up anyway. The two bodyguards had disappeared without a trace like Serrano.

  “We have to assume there are enemy agents inside our borders,” Bethany said grimly. “I don’t know how or why yet, but I aim to find out. I need to brief Thorne, and then I imagine there will be an emergency meeting. I’ll expect to see you there, Marcus.” Without waiting for an answer, she left them.

  “Boss?” Ram looked as shocked as Marcus felt.

  “We need to contain this. I’ll see what they want to do at the meeting, but I’d expect they’ll want to discontinue all remote backups. Enemy agents must have taken the pic and disabled or killed Serrano, but we need to root this out of our system. Do you think this is some narrowly targeted malware or a full-on cyberattack?”

  “Hard to say. The e-mail itself had a fairly amateur virus attached to it. I think that was just a smokescreen to throw everyone off the trail. Whatever is causing this data loss could have been on the servers for months now, and we haven’t found any trace of it. Whoever is behind this is pretty damn good.”

  “Yeah, they are. Do whatever it takes, Ram. This is a critical priority now.” Marcus just wondered what the fallout would be. It’s my ass on the line too… I just don’t want to end up like Barbosa, dragged off by CorpSec, never to return.

  Chapter 10

  Raymond sneezed from the dust, sending a miniature haboob swirling into the air. With the windows wide open, the persistent dust and oppressive heat from the Skin City Sprawl encroached on his workshop, but the occasional breeze was an improvement over the kaput air conditioning unit.

  Industrial metal music blared from a set of speakers on his workbench on the other side of the cluttered storeroom, which doubled as his shop.

  “I hate going through all this old, worthless shit,” Raymond griped. He wiped the snot off on his sleeve and stood.

  Just a handful of old cranial black boxes remained to be wiped and resold. Raymond didn’t know why they bothered with the old junk, but the boss lady would have his ass if he didn’t do what she said.

  Every little bit helps, I guess. As long as Carin keeps giving me a paycheck, I can’t complain too much.

  Business had slowed down considerably since the Overseer had been tossed out his window from the sixtieth floor of the Gomorrah Club, causing him to make a very public—and very messy—splatter in the square below. The battle that followed shortly after had trashed a good bit of the inner city. Once everything had settled down and the pieces had been picked up, the city was running surprisingly smoothly under the new government, albeit with a few growing pains. Plenty of illicit activity still went on in the Sprawl, which kept Carin’s crew busy cleaning up bodies—but the competition was much fiercer with the other organ repo crews and aug resellers. Raymond scratched at the scar on his forearm—a reminder of a skirmish a couple months past with another crew of scavengers who had arrived on the scene at the same time as Carin’s crew.

  Where the fuck is Antonio with the blow? I could use a good fix right about now. And some tacos—that would be perfect. That little fucker better pick some up on the way back—he owes me.

  Raymond dug through his bin of cables to find something to fit one of the black boxes. He squinted at the label etched on the box but didn’t recognize the make. “This is some old-ass tech. Nobody’s going to want this garbage.” He finally found a cable that fit and hooked up the box to the jack on his workbench.

  He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. Raymond doubted the encryption on such an old box would pose much problem for him to break and access the data. If he found anything inter
esting, he’d copy the data and wipe the box so they could try to resell it, as Carin wanted.

  The best part of his job was being a voyeur—people’s lives were recorded on there in digital format. Good money could be made on the side if he found any kinky shit he could sell to his contact in the porn business. Just as he was about to take a peek at the data, he was interrupted.

  “What up, puto?” Antonio strolled into Raymond’s shop with a bag in hand. He whistled. “The boss still got you going through all this bullshit?”

  “Yeah, but I’m almost done. Down to the last few pieces of shit. Did you bring the blow?”

  “Yeah, bro. I brought your broke ass some tacos, too.”

  “Now you’re talkin’, motherfucker.” Raymond grinned and snatched the bag from Antonio. “Give me a minute to finish this. First we’re gonna chow down, then we do the blow.”

  “C’mon, bro. This shit’s been sittin’ here forever anyway. It can wait a little while longer.”

  Raymond decided Antonio had a good point. Antonio pushed open the door, and Raymond stepped past him outside… right into the muzzle of a gun. Half a dozen armed men in security uniforms surrounded the two of them and threw them up against a wall.

  “Whoa, what the fuck is going on?” Raymond demanded, incensed as his bag of tacos was snatched from his hand. He hoped they didn’t search Antonio’s pockets and find the blow.

  “This illegal-augmentation-reselling and organ-repo operation is being shut down on the mayor’s orders, based on city code section 68-115.” An attractive young woman with blond-streaked hair and golden eyes stepped past two of the gun-wielding grunts and looked between Raymond and Antonio. “Now, where’s the manager?”

  “Uh, Carin’s inside—up in her office. Look, babe, it’s her operation—the rest of us don’t know nothing about city codes and permits and shit like that. Why don’t you let us go, and you can have a conversation with her?” Raymond gave the woman his best smile, which he used at nightclubs to impress the ladies.

  The golden-eyed woman gave him a very unimpressed look. “You better familiarize yourself with the unemployment laws then since you’re so innocent.” She turned to her men. “You know the drill—gather up any augs. We want cranial boxes in particular. I’m going to have a chat with this Carin to enlighten her about the new legislation. Keep these two here until we finish up.” She walked inside the shop with four of the grunts at her heels.

  One of the grunts gestured to Raymond and Antonio to have a seat at the battered picnic table. Raymond sighed loudly at the sound of his workshop getting turned upside down.

  “Damn, what a ball-busting bitch.” Antonio shook his head. “She looked at you like you were a fresh turd she stepped in, bro.” He laughed.

  “Yeah, go fuck yourself. This day is starting to really suck. What else can go wrong?” Raymond put his head in his hands. He was about to be looking for a new job—if he was lucky enough to avoid being thrown in the tank, that was.

  “Hey, Dalton.” One of the grunts grinned at his partner after rummaging through Raymond’s lunch bag. “These ass clowns have a bag of tacos. Still warm too.”

  “Break them out. I’m starving, and it doesn’t look like we’re getting lunch anytime soon,” the other grunt replied.

  Raymond groaned. This day managed to get worse—one last kick in the nuts. Great.

  Chapter 11

  Marcus made his way to the conference room, mind racing as an idea that had been kindling in the back of his mind threatened to erupt into a full blaze. He stood at the proverbial fork in the road that Captain Mills had talked about. Now he had to make a choice.

  Inside the boardroom, fear and anxiety were palpable. The executive council chattered nervously in hushed tones among themselves. When Marcus walked in, the conversation died out.

  “Do you know where Alicia and Bethany are?” one of the execs blurted.

  Marcus thought his name was George Rivera, but he couldn’t be sure. He still hadn’t learned who all the managers were at all the levels of the huge TI bureaucracy.

  “I’m sure they’re on their way,” Marcus said. “If this is as important as they say, they won’t miss it.” He took his usual seat near the far end of the long conference table.

  “Goddamn right it’s important.” Rivera looked around nervously. “Will someone tell us what the hell is going on?”

  “Yeah, where’s Serrano and Carbajal?” another exec asked. “First that virus on the network with Serrano, then he disappears. And Carbajal is nowhere to be found either.”

  “Everyone shut your damn mouths. You’re giving me a headache,” Bogdanovich snapped from the holoscreen where he was joining them by videoconference from Thorne Industries’ Eurasia branch. “Carbajal is obviously out doing his job since this is a CorpSec matter. Bethany and Alicia are about to brief us on what the hell is going on, which I assume relates to Serrano.”

  Marcus suppressed a smile. The more he had thought the matter over, the more he realized that it presented an opportunity. Yes, his ass was on the line, but he thought that Bethany and Carbajal would be on the hot seat more than him.

  If I can just get their blessing for my request…

  “Thank you for meeting on such short notice,” Alicia Salinger said loudly as she swept into the room, obviously harried by the events playing out.

  Bethany followed her and shut the door.

  “We have a crisis on our hands,” Salinger continued. “Mr. Thorne has been briefed, and he has directed us to take any means necessary to straighten this out. Chief Carbajal is out on urgent business right now. I’ll turn it over to Bethany to brief all of you.”

  Any means necessary. This just might work.

  “Paul Serrano has been compromised, as you all saw on the network this morning, and he is most likely dead now. Along with his two bodyguards,” Bethany said bluntly. There were murmurs of shock in the room. Marcus noticed she had recovered her composure since that morning.

  “You mean that porno pic was real?” Rivera asked, dumbfounded.

  “Yes. The backup servers in Section 7 have been sabotaged. Since Serrano hasn’t been heard from by now, we have to assume he’s dead. Permanently. We’ve shut down geo-tracking, as we believe that’s how they tracked Serrano in the first place. People, there are enemies within our borders—here in the District—perhaps even within the TI campus.”

  Marcus felt a knot in the pit of his stomach at Bethany’s words, which hit a little close to home. I need to tread extremely carefully with this new heightened-security posture.

  “We need to tighten our security dramatically,” Bethany continued. “CorpSec is working overtime to track down the perpetrators and ensure nothing like this happens again.”

  “You mean we can actually die?” someone gasped.

  “What are we supposed to do?” The middle-aged woman that ran HR looked shocked and frightened.

  “Let the professionals do their jobs,” Salinger snapped.

  “Marcus, how are things progressing on your side?” Bethany asked.

  All eyes turned to him.

  Time to go all in. He took a deep breath and organized his thoughts for a few seconds before responding. “Internal controls are hampering me from accessing the systems I need in order to determine the source of the system failure. I’ve got my best techs working on it, but we don’t yet know the extent of the server corruption. The restrictions on our IT systems are our own worst enemy right now. And in the case of an emergency, like the crisis facing us, we need the process streamlined as much as possible. I need InfoSec to give me access… full access to everything.”

  Bethany studied him a moment, and Marcus felt a flush creeping up his neck. He prayed she wouldn’t sniff out any deception.

  She finally nodded. “Make it happen,” she snapped at Bill Thompson, an older man that ran InfoSec. In Marcus’s opinion, the man’s job title should have been “professional obstacle.”

  Thompson’s face registered sho
ck. “But… there are regulations to follow. We can’t just break all the rules—we have to have the paperwork submitted through the proper channels—”

  “Shove your fucking paperwork, Thompson. I want him to have everything he needs by the end of the day.” Bethany’s glare silenced Thompson immediately, causing him to choke down his protests. “The fact that this virus e-mail showed up on the network at all doesn’t speak very well of your department.”

  Marcus fought to contain his smile—both at Thompson getting put in his place and at his being cleared for full system access. This opens some doors now. He had to caution himself that if he made the slightest misstep, he would be done. I might find myself a lot closer to Ayane, just not the way I envisioned. A nearby prison cell wouldn’t exactly work out.

  ***

  Marcus nervously looked out the window of the armored executive limo as it cruised past the District checkpoint into the Sprawl, unchallenged. Nobody cared if anyone went into the Sprawl—those coming out were the concern.

  True to Bethany’s wishes, Marcus had received administrator-level access to all the TI systems by late afternoon. Surprising what can be accomplished when someone with greater authority leans on the director of InfoSec. Marcus hadn’t gotten the chance to explore his new access yet, as another matter had come up which demanded his attention.

  Splashes of neon illuminated Marcus’s face as he worried about his upcoming meeting. It was approaching midnight but might as well have been the lunch hour—crowds choked the streets, going about their business, legal or not. Club-goers in their flashy clothing and skimpy dresses mingled with filthy panhandlers and drug dealers on the sidewalks. A loud thump outside the car made Marcus start as a jaywalker angrily slammed the palm of his hand against the window after nearly getting run over by the limo barreling down the street.

  Earlier in the afternoon, Marcus had received a cryptic Datalink message marked with Paul Serrano’s ID: “Marcus—I have information about the events of the night you were taken away from your family that you need to know. Meet at the Ibizu Lounge near Leesburg Corner at midnight. Tell no one and come alone. Fear not, you are in no danger, but if CorpSec shows up, you will never know the truth.”