Latency

by Blaze Ward

  And the more she learned, the more Rachel understood that Greyson Leigh had just been the blunt instrument that the Metropolitan had been wanting to use to clean up the Boston office of the Bureau, without all the secondary scandals that might have come out and destroyed lives.

  Too much blackmail on the table. Or under it.

  Had Captain Zielinski understood that he had a chance to walk away clean? There had always been the presumption that nobody would bother the man if he retired down to Florida or wherever ex-cops and Hunters went when they stopped doing the job.

  Or had he needed this long to set all this scam up in a way that probably would have worked, had that first event ended with Greyson and maybe her both dead in that square?

  The night was cold as they walked, and she wasn’t warming up keeping up with Greyson’s long legs. Probably should have grabbed the heavier jacket from the hook after her shower, but she’d been distracted by getting her new body armor to sit comfortably.

  She’d taken Greyson’s advice and upgraded. He still didn’t have anything but cotton between him and death, but he didn’t give two shits if he lived or died and Rachel wasn’t sure what it would take to break the man out of his depression.

  Did Greyson even know he was exhibiting clinical symptoms? Probably not. The man had never done higher education beyond public high school. And the army wouldn’t have given him the tools to self-diagnose.

  Too much risk that he’d realize he was likely to be dead before he was twenty-eight, and either stop being an effective operative, or turn into a suicidal maniac in the field.

  Somehow, he’d lived this long, nearly fifty, and was still going like hell. Was it luck or just stubbornness on his part? Maybe some combination.

  She’d researched Phrenic. And had access to all sorts of information about the species that was never made public.

  They killed their target and then used those face tentacles to slip into their eye sockets and pretty much suck out the interesting bits of their brain chemistry, overlaying it onto their own so that they could impersonate someone physically as well as socially. They could only have one set of characteristics at a time, but frequently killed several bodies and drained them into husks, where they could go back and get enough taste to rotate between people.

  Or so the aliens explained it.

  That one book had described Phrenic as using a mental projection of their victim, like a standing hologram between them and the outside world, letting that projection handle everything.

  Sometimes, something went wrong.

  Deathwalker was the term used to describe a Phrenic that had lost control of the projection of their victim. Supposedly, they reverted to base form Phrenic: scales, chitin, and tentacles; but with the victim’s personality in control, so just exactly the opposite of the normal routine. Didn’t last long, because a human or some other species had no idea how to handle the situation and ended up jumping off a ledge or otherwise offing themselves.

  Rachel Asher had no way to prove it short of going there, but Greyson had given her all the clues she needed, to assume that he had been killed by a second Phrenic and impersonated. It made a twisted bit of perfect sense, after they had failed to get Dominguez’s brain when Rachel herself stopped the creature over Carlos’s dead body.

  Who would be the next person the Hunter Bureau would call?

  The very best killer of all time, except that he was retired. Forced out of the Bureau and living as a civilian.

  Who might not even realize that he was a target. At least not until someone came in the window, late at night, and killed him.

  Stupid bastard had gotten more than he bargained for, though.

  Greyson Leigh. Toughest son of a bitch in New England, to hear the old salts talk.

  Somehow, the Phrenic had lost control, and Greyson had taken over their body, without losing everything. Had the Phrenic just given up? According to the books she’d snuck in—home alone without Greyson anywhere nearby to read—the combined body was supposed to just die.

  She could see Leigh forcing it to survive.

  How long did he have?

  Phrenic were a long-lived species, so maybe longer than Greyson’s normal lifespan?

  He caught her staring and was about to ask when his comm chirped in a pocket. They were almost to the car, so he grabbed the keys with one hand and the comm with the other.

  Greyson tossed the keyring to her as he answered, so she grabbed the duffle bag from him as well and walked the last twenty meters to the Skycruiser and popped the back door open.

  Greyson was having a cop conversation with someone. All monosyllables at this end. She stood close at hand and started to keep watch, but he hung up quickly and turned to her.

  “Quick stop before we return to the hospital,” he said cryptically. “You drive.”

  And just like that, he turned and walked to the car, except that he went around to the passenger side and looked at her expectantly.

  Rachel shrugged and got in.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as she moved the damned seat up to where normal people, the ones that weren’t all leg, could drive. And adjusted all the mirrors. And the steering wheel.

  With grumbles that only got worse as she caught his grin out of the corner of her eye.

  “Downtown,” he said. “To talk to Quinton Laux. He says he has something for us.”

  “Am I going to like it?” she asked.

  “Probably not,” he grinned some more. “But if you’d wanted a boring job, you could have stayed a cop.”

  Rachel grumbled some more.

  Damn it, she hated when he was right.

  17

  Latency

  Greyson had needed her to drive so he could look some things up. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the car to drive itself. He didn’t trust all the other idiots out there that wouldn’t let the car controls handle themselves.

  Laux had used a specific term and Greyson didn’t understand all the implications. So Rachel was dealing with people out late or up early as the sun was getting ready to come up soon.

  Latency.

  According to the cybernauts who thought important things and posted them for the world to see, the word had two main meanings.

  First: the delay before a transfer of data begins following the instructions for the transfer.

  Second: the state of existing but not yet being developed or manifest. Aka Concealment.

  Greyson was familiar with the second from criminal investigations. Latent prints were invisible until you dusted and extracted them from a door handle or refrigerator. Great way to prove a perp had been at the scene of a crime, but not generally sufficient to convict, in and of themselves.

  And Greyson also remembered being a kid playing computer games, where lag equaled death in the first person shooters that had been popular in those days. Your avatar could not react fast enough to shoot someone else, especially if he had a lower latency and could shoot you first.

  Why had Laux said he had a question about latency? Odd term for a civilian to use. But this was an odd case.

  He let Rachel drive and grumble quietly while he ruminated like a cow with particularly good cud.

  The parking garage was open. There was a twenty-four-hour grocery up on the ground floor. The kind that would validate his parking if he cared enough to go up and buy something. Three bucks wasn’t going to break the bank, or probably even be enough to justify turning in an expense report for reimbursement.

  They circled all the way down and parked, like before. Walked back up a level and got into that elevator.

  Greyson was surprised that there were no indigents or drunks back here, but he supposed that Laux had ways of chivying them on their way.

  Hopefully, it was just annoying and not particularly dangerous.

  Into the elevator and down. Out into that big room.

  Laux had the side door already open by the time they got there.

  The man was in a nicer
suit this time. Not quite what Greyson would have worn for a night out with Emmy, but close. Single-breasted in the Western style. Three buttons all undone to sit. Nice silk tie. He led Greyson and Rachel down to the same office as before.

  “Thanks for coming,” Laux said simply as they sat. “Worried about the time, but figured that you might still be awake now, and that calling in six hours would be the rude choice.”

  “Close enough,” Greyson replied. “We were working and just about to call it a morning. We’re here. How can I help?”

  “Maybe I can help you,” Laux said.

  “Latency,” Greyson offered.

  “I think I know how to make your Synth Chip work,” Laux said simply. “How to get someone to believe they are in a visual fantasy land that is so much more realistic than anything they’ve ever imagined possible in such a chip.”

  “Aren’t they realistic already?” Rachel spoke up.

  Greyson would have asked the same question, but he hadn’t moved as fast.

  “No,” Laux said simply. “Yes, the visuals are stunning. And you get sound and smells as well on the good ones. Touch is easy to simulate, because you’re supposed to just cut out all that circuitry and route it through the chip. But anyone plugged to a Synth Chip never loses the fact that they are in a simulation. The amount of processing power necessary to handle every one of those little details is still more than anything you could get except from being inside one of the alien’s astrogation computers.”

  “Why?” Greyson asked bluntly. “Most of that sensory information is never processed by the mind.”

  “Correct,” Laux nodded, looking and sounding more and more like a professor.

  Greyson had wondered about the man’s background, but wasn’t about to pry.

  “However, while the active mind doesn’t do anything with all that data, the brain still has to process it,” Laux continued. “In the real world, everything just gets shunted off and dropped. People like Detectives usually have a secondary mental thread sniffing through it all, and that lets them pick up those subtle hints and clues.”

  “But the Synth Chip doesn’t bother with all that,” Rachel extended the thought. “So you have an unconscious understanding that none of that is real.”

  “Yes,” Laux said. “I’m willing to bet that someone built filters into that chip of yours to make sure that your shooter didn’t get as much sensory data as they should, specifically to trick them into thinking that they were in a sim.”

  “Latency,” Greyson said. “Artificial in this case. What other things could you do?”

  “That’s what frightens me, Leigh,” the man continued. “He was inside a high-end Synth that convinced him he was just seated on his couch at home, doing things to imaginary people that he would probably never do in the real world. I was having dinner with some friends, talking in very vague and general terms about the technology itself, rather than the specifics of this case, when I had a very interesting idea. Without access to the chip itself, I can’t prove it, but I have a theory I would like to run past you. It goes beyond latency.”

  “Beyond?” Rachel asked, still a little confused, but unwilling to start looking things up, like Greyson had done on the way over there.

  Or: why Rachel got to drive tonight instead of him.

  “Beyond,” Laux agreed, adding extra emphasis on the word.

  “Talk to me,” Greyson said. “Can’t promise anything, but I have connections I could ask, if I thought it was worth it.”

  “Reality is perception,” Laux said. “A number of important philosophers have argued the topic for centuries.”

  “Sure,” Rachel said. “The brain in the vat theory.”

  Greyson had no idea what she was talking about, but she was the one getting a college degree. He was just a killer in a nice shirt that Emmy had bought him.

  “So what happens when you can be just a brain in a vat, Detectives?” Laux asked. “When perhaps the technological advances are sufficient that I can substitute my reality for yours?”

  “Shit,” Rachel whispered in a tiny voice, like a six-year-old that has had a nightmare and wasn’t getting the reassurances she wanted. The ones that said the monsters under the bed aren’t real.

  “Yeah,” Laux agreed. “So suppose now that I can drop enough of that sensory input to make you think you are in a Synth, but then I don’t? Maybe I just alter how you hear and smell and see things to make the world around you almost the same, but not quite? You become a brain in my vat, but that’s expensive to maintain for very long.”

  “How would you get around it?” Greyson asked.

  “I’d upload something that might be otherwise classified as a computer virus, except that I’m doing it directly to your brain,” the man pronounced. “Burn out a few places. Add a couple of cross-wires that nature never intended. Insert some false memories in places nobody would ever expect. Mind you, in my line of work we specifically avoid doing that.”

  “Why’s that?” Greyson asked.

  “Bad for business, man,” the professor smiled with perfect teeth showing bright against his dark skin. “I live on repeat customers. Can’t get that if I’m killing people or burning out their minds. That’s why Synth Chips are so tightly regulated. We don’t push those edges. Instead, we provide certain fantasies that more vanilla folks in authority might not be willing to allow for the citizenry. Content, rather than medium.”

  “But you think that the chip had to burn out pieces of the shooter’s mind in order to work?” Greyson pressed.

  “Can’t see any other way to do it,” Laux replied, sobering. “And I’m as good as anybody you’re likely to find in this field. Better than most, too.”

  Greyson considered the man. Liz thought highly enough of him, and his ethics, to recommend that they meet. That went a long ways with Greyson.

  “Can you get me a map of the damage you think they’d have to do?” Greyson asked. “The places and the outcomes?”

  “Why?” Laux leaned back now, more wary.

  “Because I can ask the coroner for a briefing and compare your notes to hers,” Greyson smiled grimly. “If you’re on to something, then I can go to my Captain and the Metropolitan herself, and ask for them to let me share some of the more intimate details with you. Rachel and I are pursuing a different aspect of the case, but I’m just trying to take down the mastermind behind it all. Your help might be necessary to unravel how they did it and stop them from doing it again?”

  “Truly?” the man asked, shocked now. “But I’m a criminal, Detective Leigh.”

  “No,” Greyson countered with a smile. “You are an expert civilian that I have engaged as a consultant on technical aspects of this case that I could not have understood otherwise. If they have a bitch with that, they can take it up with me, not you.”

  Laux studied him for a long moment.

  “There are pieces of this that you aren’t telling me,” he said.

  “Oh, that I can promise you,” Greyson smiled. “But none of it is likely to circle back and bite you on the ass. Get me the bits I need to convince them that you’re on the level and maybe I can tell you more.”

  He rose now and shook the man’s hand. Quinton Laux had given him the piece he needed.

  No law-abiding fab had done the work. Could do the work. And whoever had built that chip had to have probably known that they would have to destroy the victim’s mind to make it work.

  That made it murder in the first degree.

  After he got back from Florida, he’d be setting off after them next.

  18

  Bullet

  Greyson navigated early morning traffic and let Rachel ride in quiet. He was up to no good, but she was taking it all in stride.

  The first thing the aliens had done when they made themselves known to Earthlings had been to upgrade the transportation networks.

  Greyson had approved then and really appreciated them now.

  Superfast trains had already worked in
other countries because the governments had been able to get right of way. In the old United States, NIMBY had delayed everything for so long that it was never economical to actually build.

  Not In My Back Yard.

  Then the middle-class bastards had the audacity to complain about bad roads and crowded airports after preventing every other possible fix in the name of sticking it to someone else instead. Not that he had any strong opinions on the topic or anything.

  The Illymus Merchant Guild had brought in bullet trains of a different sort. And cheated in North America.

  Greyson liked sticking it back hard to those NIMBY people.

  The power lines already ran everywhere. Alien tech had been able to string an extra line on top of those poles and harden it into a beam. Run a pulsating current through it to keep the birds from settling, and you had a rail corridor one to two hundred feet in the air, silent except for the wind of a train shooting by at five hundred kilometers per hour.

  They only stopped at major cities to keep the throughput high. From Boston, you could go directly north to several Canadian cities, like Montréal, Québec City, and Halifax. Southwards you hit New York, Philly, and then DC, skipping places like New Haven or Baltimore, but being able to catch a local train that was slower, but still faster than anything they’d had in this country when he was a kid.

  The key was not stopping at every little podunk to take on passengers. Or hostages, depending on how you wanted to see things.

  “Where are we going?” Rachel finally asked in a voice that didn’t really expect any sort of answer she would like, but felt resigned to actually asking anyway.

  But hey, she was still his partner. She should have known better by now.

  Greyson grinned over at the woman.

  “You’ve had a shower and got on clean clothes,” he replied in that false brightness guaranteed to instigate an extra heavy eyeroll as the sun was considering coming up soon.

  “You’re not even going to tell them, are you?” she fired back, having already done the math and drawn the right conclusion.