Johnny swiped his computer screen away and leaned into the table. “How’d you get out of there?”
“The bastards were kill-crazy,” Giovanna replied. “They weren’t just doing the job, they were enjoying it. Most PMC’s won’t even go for that kind of civilian collateral damage. During the killings, their backs were to me, and I slipped out the front door.”
Johnny stood up with a start. Tapping an earpiece, he walked away from the table. “Yeah, it’s me. We’re secure? I have a situation...”
Cora watched Johnny as he continued his conversation by the front door, falling out of ear shot. She returned her attention to Giovanna and poured herself a third glass. It was finally kicking in, no sense in slowing down now.
“They had an APC out there,” she said.
“Yeah, I had the pleasure,” Cora replied.
“There were only a few posted outside,” Giovanna said, looking down as if she was pulling the horrible story from the ground with her gaze. “I got some distance from them, and I just ran. One of their snipers must have still been on the roof. He fired off a shot, clipped my arm. I was on foot. They rounded up, started pursuing me.”
Cora nodded. “That’d be when I got there. They only left behind a pair. They were down in some hidden basement under the bar.”
“Under the bar?”
“Yeah, there was a trap door that went down there,” Cora replied. “I wanted to go down and check it out, but the APC circled back and started shooting. I guess they thought I was you. I got away on my bike and called a handler.”
“Then why the hell are you here?” Giovanna raised her voice. She shifted in her seat, gesticulating wildly with her hands.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Cora said. “Why didn’t you reach out to NSA?”
“They knew where we were, Cora,” Giovanna replied. “It wasn’t a random act of violence. They knew who to hit, when and where. Do you think for one second I’m going to trust your government after that?”
Cora shrugged. “Well, you had better instincts than I did.”
“What happened?”
“I can’t say,” Cora paused, pondering the recollection. She leaned in, intimating. “I mean, it was really neat, like a frame-up. They were barely concerned with the massacre, and they had all these questions prepared, like they were just waiting for me. They had a fitness report from Richard dated a week ago that said I was unstable, possibly sympathetic to Native factions, and insinuated I was sleeping with Drake.”
“You were,” Giovanna corrected.
Cora guffawed, her hands raised as though she was about to cover her mouth. “One time! Months ago! How did you even know about that?”
Giovanna shook her head. “Thin walls. Anyway, so they cooked up a fake report on you...”
Cora sighed. “Yeah, and then I got another one of those calls. Right there, in the middle of what turned out to be an interrogation, the phone rings. This time, he warns me they’re going to put the whole massacre on me. So, I fought my way out.”
“You killed NSA agents?” Giovanna said, raising her voice again.
“No,” Cora shook her head. She held up her hands, the thought as appalling to her as Giovanna found it. “Not a single one. I got out of there, ditched my bike, and Johnny found me.”
Giovanna motioned to Johnny with her head. “Who just called him?”
“I don’t know, some hacker named Gideon,” Cora replied. “I was going to see if I have anything that might clear myself.”
“Such as?” Giovanna asked.
Cora stood up from her seat and pushed her hand into her pocket. She produced a microcard and set it on the table.
“That’s a wet drive card,” Giovanna bit her bottom lip to stop her chin from quivering. “Drake’s wet drive, no?”
“Yeah,” Cora replied.
Johnny walked back and rejoined the women. He surveyed the situation at the table. Both of them had exhausted themselves recounting the night’s events. Their eyes were puffy and bloodshot.
“Alright,” he said, pointing to opposite ends of the cabin. “Bedroom one and two, both of you. I got Gideon on the way. For now, we rest. Richard kept this place off the books, but I’ll still keep watch.”
Cora knew better than to argue with Johnny. She could handle her liquor without getting sloppy, but the sedation effect made a short nap sound like a good move. She pocketed the microcard and headed down the hall to a furnished bedroom, getting her katana along the way. She felt like she could trust Giovanna, and her story sounded plausible. She could be certain about Johnny. He’d keep her safe until this hacker showed up.
When her head hit the pillow, it was still Richard and Drake filling her thoughts. She couldn’t reconcile the fact that either of them were gone. Nothing about the hit made sense. All of this bloodshed couldn’t be over something as simple as data about possible museum thefts. There had to be more, and she needed to know what. Richard couldn’t just be a casualty of their line of work. Gideon had to tell her the reason.
Map of the Land
A hand pressed to Cora’s forearm, startling her from the space between awake and dreaming. Johnny looked down on her. She could make out his face in the moonlight coming through the window. She hadn’t been asleep long.
“He’s here,” Johnny said.
Cora nodded and got up. Her head still buzzed with dull vibrations left behind by the whiskey. She followed Johnny, chasing the dim light coming from the dining room. She leaned a hand against the hallway wall to steady her pace.
Gideon didn’t read like the stereotypical hacker. He was slight, but tall, and in his early twenties. He kept a clean-shaven face and his brown hair was short and neat. He stood up from the table and greeted Cora with confidence. When she closed distance to shake his hand, the look of his eyes unnerved her. A ring of unnatural light surrounded his irises, and tiny servos adjusted the opening and closing of his pupil. Every time she saw someone with cybernetics, all she could see was the surgery that put it there.
“Nice to meet you, Agent,” Gideon said. He pointed to Johnny at his side. “He told me you were in a bit of trouble with the NSA earlier. I guess Johnny likes picking up strays like us.”
Cora humored him with a snicker. She pulled the thin, black microcard from her pocket and held it out between two fingers.
“Johnny thought you might be able to recover the information from this,” she said.
Giovanna walked out of the back bedroom and joined them. Gideon’s eyes followed her as she took a seat and smiled at him. His attention strayed a little too long for Cora’s liking. Giovanna had that effect on men, even some women.
“Hi,” Cora said, snapping Gideon’s gaze away before ogling became staring.
“Right, yes,” Gideon replied. He laughed to himself. “Sorry. Sure, let’s have a look.”
Gideon leaned down to the side of the dining table and came back with a three-foot black case. Like Drake’s rig, the massive computing power of these machines were designed with human-computer interfaces in mind. Half the unit was geared toward NeuralNet computing, while the other half was medical monitoring equipment. Gideon set the slim box across the table.
“What’s my price?” Gideon asked as he turned on the machine.
Johnny huffed. “Don’t worry about it, kid, I can get you 50k for the favor.”
Gideon sat up straight and chose his words carefully. “Johnny, I love you, man. But I wouldn’t write you a book report for fifty thousand.”
“What?” Johnny replied, his brow furrowing.
“Do you have any idea how expensive it is to be me?” Gideon explained. “If I even open a window for fresh air, I’m triple-checking there aren’t agents outside.”
Cora raised her hand before Johnny could speak. “If this computer of yours would let me check a few things, I can make you a better offer.”
“Oh, right, I almost forgot,” Gideon said, snapping a finger. He opened a compartment on his rig, pulled out tw
o silver bracelets, and laid them on the table. “Johnny told me you two had to go dark, so I set you up with the Arcadia XT-10. Doesn’t even come out until next month. They’re unlocked and open carrier, so you’re not leaving traces behind.”
“I love a man bearing gifts,” Giovanna purred. She caught his gaze and smiled.
Gideon gulped and smiled back meekly. Cora leaned in.
“She’d eat you alive,” she whispered.
“I believe you,” he whispered back.
Cora and Giovanna each picked up the bracelets and clasped it around their wrists. Cora went straight to the task of getting on the net, swiping through holographic screens on the back of her hand.
“Two seconds. I just need to check my bank accounts,” Cora said.
“NSA has almost definitely frozen your accounts by now,” Gideon replied.
Cora, Giovanna, and Johnny shared a laugh. Gideon looked around at them, lost. Johnny patted him on the shoulder.
“These ladies are black ops, kid,” he said, still chuckling. “They aren’t cashing digital checks from the NSA to some bank account in Pennsylvania. They have funds wired to offshore accounting firms, then we have third parties split it up in secure banking countries like Japan and the Florida Keys.”
Gideon nodded. “Oh. I thought I was fancy when I got a Swiss bank account.”
“How does two-hundred-twenty grab you?” Cora asked.
The hacker turned in his seat, smiling as he faced his rig. He pulled up a holographic screen. With a few swipes through the air, his hand flung in the direction of Cora’s wrist.
“Now you’ve got me excited. There’s my account on your screen,” he said. “Hit that transfer button and let’s do some business.”
It took a few seconds to complete the transfer. Meanwhile, Gideon lifted up from the seat and took the microcard from Cora’s free hand. Everyone shifted to look over Gideon’s shoulder as he went to work. He pushed the tiny square card into a slot on the side of his rig. With a grab of his fingers on the screen, he gestured his hands wide, and six separate screens fanned out. He typed frantically and swiped at the screens, but stopped abruptly.
“Well, this couldn’t have been in a person,” Gideon announced.
“It was,” Cora replied. “I ejected it myself.”
Johnny huffed. “What’s wrong with the card?”
Gideon motioned to his screen. “I mean, there’s just one big file here. Nothing else.”
“Why is that a problem?” Cora asked.
Gideon took in a breath and turned in his seat to face her. “The short version? Wet drives are a cybernetic installation that can’t be undone. An entire sector of the microcard’s storage is allocated to permanent use by the human brain, because a lot of functions get routed there in the surgery. The internal memory can be used temporarily, like when cards need replacement, but you have to practically have someone in a coma to reduce their functioning to bare minimum.”
“Functions?” Giovanna asked.
“Brain functions, miss,” he replied. He pointed to his screen. “This file, whatever it is, was too large for the microcard. I mean, the only way you could fit this on here would be to delete the reserved sector. That could kill the person. They’d forget how to breathe.”
Giovanna and Cora exchanged knowing glances, their faces sour. Neither wanted to be the first to say it. Cora put her hands on her hips and paced.
“Could the owner of a wet drive do that on purpose?” she asked.
Gideon audibly blew out as he mulled it over. “I mean, yeah, if you bypassed every single warning from the interface about what you were trying to do.”
The room fell silent, and tension filled the empty spaces. Johnny shook his head and sat down beside Gideon. Cora wasn’t sure if Drake’s last move was heroic or stupid, but the outcome was the same either way. He was gone, and if it hadn’t happened when it did, he might have been tortured by Vulkan, had it stolen off his rig, or both. She turned to Giovanna, who was shaking her head in disbelief.
“He had to know,” Giovanna said.
Cora nodded. “Yeah. They were going to take his rig, but they might not know about the wet drive. Better to hide the file there in the hopes one of us could recover it.”
“And it worked,” Giovanna huffed, disgusted. “Stupid bastard.”
“What’s in the file?” Cora asked, sweeping her black hair off her shoulders.
“I can’t tell you that yet,” Gideon replied. “The file is enormous. I’d have to jack in to my rig to work with it.”
Cora responded with an uneasy nod. The next part made her queasy, she’d never gotten used to seeing NeuralNet interfacing. Gideon pulled out a pulse and blood pressure monitor from the rig and clamped it on his index finger. Two more sensors went up his shirt and clung to his chest. Finally, he pulled out a data cable, with tiny metal jack on the end of it surrounded by clamps. Gideon swept the hair behind his ear out of the way and found the port installed to the side of his head. A few keystrokes later, his body slumped, appearing unconscious in his chair. His eyes flitted beneath closed lids as though dreaming.
“Alright,” a synthetic version of Gideon’s voice projected from a speaker on the rig. Cora almost jumped out of her skin. “I’m opening the file now. Stand by.”
Cora stood beside Johnny and looked down at Gideon’s motionless body. “The Pentagon, huh?”
“Yeah,” Johnny smiled, almost proud. “Kid’s got real talent.”
“Allegedly,” Gideon’s voice projected again. “You know I can hear you guys, right? The microphone on my deck can pick you all up and reach me in here.”
“Well, then you can tell us what we’re working with,” Cora replied.
“No!” Gideon’s voice raised. “No, no, no!”
Gideon’s yelling alarmed Cora. He sounded panicked. His eyes fluttered open and Gideon yanked the data jack out of his head. He stood up with a start, reeling back from the table. He knocked his chair over. Unfazed by it, he kept backing up.
“What the fuck?” he shouted. “What the fuck did you just get me into, Johnny?”
Johnny opened his hands. “What? What is it, kid?”
Gideon back-pedaled out of the dining room, coming to a stop when he hit a wall. “It’s not bad enough I’m the most wanted man in the UNS? You bring me in on something to do with Tetriarch? I live here, man! How many times do you think I can shit where I eat?”
He was frantic, perhaps even terrified. Cora could smell it on him. She waved her hands towards the floor repeatedly, trying to calm him down.
“What is it? Tell me what you saw,” she said, her voice soothing.
“Enough to know you pulled this off a Tetriarch server,” Gideon replied. “The encryption lock is turned off, so you must have used a Tetriarch VIP to open it for you.”
“Both true,” Cora replied. She sighed. “Look, I’ll level with you. Right now, I probably just took your spot on the UNS Most Wanted list. If you can just look at the data, and tell me if there’s anything I can do to clear myself with NSA, I’ll just turn myself in and give the card to them. No one needs to know you were ever in this room.”
Gideon stared at her, his expression twisted in a confused mass of emotions. Johnny and Giovanna watched on without a word. He crept back to his seat at the table and put his chair upright.
“I was never here?”
Cora nodded, tapping softly on the table, beckoning him back. “It was already unlocked.”
“There’s going to be some hazard pay for this,” Gideon warned.
“We can work something out,” Cora replied with a smile.
Gideon set himself back up and reconnected to NeuralNet. His body sagged and the medical monitors came to life on the far end of his rig. The six screens from his deck began moving and flickering wildly. Cora had no idea what he was doing, but he was quick at it. The trio watched on in silence for several moments.
“There are databases here,” his voice came through the speak
er. “I’m counting over a dozen different AI nested inside here, all using sorting algorithms to process the information. It would take an entire floor of analysts a week to sift through this just to understand what we’re looking at. You have anything to go on?”
Cora walked back to the table and rested her rear on it beside Johnny. “Try my name. Cora Blake.”
“No hits,” Gideon replied.
“The alias I’ve been using here is Karen Schmidt,” Cora said.
After a pause, Gideon said, “Still nothing.”
Cora shook her head. If Tetriarch had no information on her team, they might not have been involved in what happened at the restaurant at all. That would mean there was a third player in the game.
“What can you tell us about the sorting system for Project Ashes?” Giovanna asked.
Another pause. “Oh, gee, is that all you wanted to know? The AI controlling this is more than happy to sit down with me and discuss its programming for the next few days, if you’d like to take a nap.”
Cora turned to Giovanna and shook her head. “We don’t have the time we need to sort out this information.”
“It’s like a needle in a haystack, Miss Blake,” Gideon said. “I can pull specific information from this data, I can work with the AI in here, but unless I actually knew what I was looking for, I’m a tourist without a map of the world.”
“So, can you tell us anything?” Cora asked.
“I need time to study this,” Gideon said. “I’m already writing my own AI to make sense of the data streams in here, and I’m monitoring the NSA’s comm traffic here in Berlin.”
“How are you doing all that at once and talking to us?” Cora said.
“Well, this is why NeuralNet was created,” Gideon replied. “The human brain can multitask complex...wait a second.”
“What is it?”
“The UnderNet is going crazy with conspiracy theories right now. There is a flurry of activity going on in Berlin. Bauer Securities locked down a perimeter on a crime scene at a restaurant in Marzahn. The NSA is fighting to get access, but the Chancellor of Germany himself is blocking them. There’s a lot of back and forth going on. This is top-level stuff, the local Polizei isn’t allowing reporters within a mile of the place.”
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