by D. B. Goodin
Nico motioned Nas to follow. Moments later they were seated in Nico’s study, which contained thousands of books and ancient-looking artifacts.
“I’m impressed with your library,” the Sultan said. “There are many first editions I’m familiar with, and others I’m not.”
“Yeah, Dad was obsessed with reading, and he made sure I had the best education. I learned so much from him. I’m going to get the person responsible for his death if it is the last thing I do!” Nico said.
“I have the camera footage you were interested in. It was taken just outside where my yacht was docked in Morocco,” the Sultan said.
Nico looked at him expectedly. The Sultan waved a hand, and a Middle-Eastern looking man with a suit produced a small tablet and handed it to Nico.
“The image is dark,” Nico said. “I can hardly see anything.”
“Give it a minute. The video gets better, as we cleaned up the noise,” the Sultan assured him.
Nico watched his father fiddle with the chair at some kind of gate. After several moments, his father turned. A tall, teenage-looking girl approached him from behind. For a long moment they appeared to be having a discussion. Suddenly the girl performed a full roundhouse kick to Nico’s father’s head. He fell to his knees. He held up his hands, perhaps pleading with the girl to let him go—but Nico wasn’t sure. A moment later she kicked him again, and he went down and never got back up. Nico frowned as a rush as blood flushed through his face.
I’m going to hunt that little bitch down and kill her for what she’s taken away from our family, he thought with rage, then demanded aloud, “Who is she?”
The Sultan gave Nico a sympathetic look and put a hand on his shoulder. “Her name is Josephine Smith, and she is close.”
“How close? I want her dead.”
“She lives in the tri-state area. I can help you find her, but I need to attend to something first. I hate to discuss business while you are mourning your father, but would you be willing to accompany me to a meeting with some of my associates in two days’ time? It’s concerning the opportunity we discussed before your father passed,” the Sultan said.
Nico nodded. “We will take care of business first,” he said, “and then this girl is all mine.”
Freeman had just finished packing a duffel bag filled with clothes. For his plan to work, he needed to carry as little as possible. His plan was to come home early Thursday night, then stash his duffel bag and laptop at a friend’s house before heading to the airport. He just had to excuse himself from dinner a little early before climbing out his window. Before his parents knew it, he would be back in Newport.
His red phone chirped.
What does she want now? he thought as he picked up.
“Freeman,” Dahlia said, “I need you to do something for me before you head to Newport.”
“What do you need?” he asked.
“An associate of mine needs a dark web contract put out on a young woman.”
“A contract for what?”
“Death. What else?”
Freeman’s mouth watered as a wave of nausea rolled over him.
This is crazy. I don’t want to be responsible for killing someone.
“Freeman, are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m listening.”
“Well, can you do this or not?”
“Hiring assassins online is simply not possible. They are usually hoaxes run by law enforcement. I can do some research, but there are no guarantees.”
“I know these sites can be elusive and hard to find, but I expect you to deliver,” Dahlia said.
“Can you give me some information on the target? I need as much information as possible,” Freeman urged.
“I’ll send it to our usual encrypted channel,” Dahlia said before disconnecting.
Moments later, Freeman checked his dark web mailbox. He had one new message from D.
He opened the message but couldn’t believe his eyes.
Message Classification: Eyes Only
Subject: Eliminate target Josephine Smith.
Known aliases: Jet and JetaGirl
Known accomplices: Nigel Watson
Bounty Amount: 500 DigiBit
Wow, that is a crap-ton of Digibit. That’s more than enough to get off this stinking island and my own place on the mainland.
A picture accompanied the dossier. The woman looked to be about his age.
Wait? Is this the same ‘JetaGirl’ I fought in the Colossal Machine? While I want her dead in the game, I’m not sure if I want to be responsible to killing a human being. Hmmm, perhaps I’ll just check a few places. Once I’ve proven that dark web hit men don’t exist, then I’ll send a bill to D for a few Digibit for wasting my time.
After half a day of looking for a way to break the encrypted tunnel leaving Jeremiah Mason’s former facility, Nigel found an unencrypted connection to a ProgHub server.
Someone uploaded an enormous amount of data to one of the ProgHub repositories.
Nigel examined one of the next generation firewall logs at the network perimeter of the Edinburgh facility. He adjusted his filters to capture all unencrypted web communications.
Time to crack a code repo.
Nigel did not know which code repo had the data from the facility, but according to the network logs, the attacker uploaded the stolen code to ProgHub. He consulted his library of exploits, a database of malicious code known to the hacking world, and found one that allowed access to the names of recent uploads. He wrote a script that helped narrow down the IP range used by the Edinburgh facility.
I should be able to find it a lot easier with the script.
Nigel loaded the exploit into the Datasploit program that hackers often used to break into systems. The exploit code worked as expected, and it provided a list of files and directories being uploaded. It also included the target repo.
Finally, something I can use.
When he tried to preview what was in the repository, he received a warning. He found and loaded another exploit that allowed him to download any private files. When he tried to access the files, he was asked for a cryptographic key. He scanned the files to learn more about the cipher and to his dismay discovered that something encrypted them with the highest elliptical curve encryption available.
I’m not breaking that anytime soon!
Nigel rubbed his eyes. He had been at this all day, and what did he have to show for it? His phone chirped; it was Jet.
We are going to send George out for some food. Melissa wants to meet up in the break room for a quick meeting.
I guess I can use a break.
He was about to depart from the stacks of boxes when an idea occurred to him.
Wait. I forgot to check the code signer. Maybe there’s an exploit?
Nigel examined the security certificate on the ProgHub site. It was created by a third-party certificate authority called Digi-Northstar.
Didn’t they get in trouble for certificate exploitation?
Nigel checked for exploits related to the certificate authority. There were plenty. Nigel downloaded the latest certificate blacklist and checked the ProgHub digital signatures, and it was flagged as being exploited by one malware variant of the Kracken_Hijacker.013 code. This meant anyone who browsed the site could get infected if they didn’t have protections in place. Nigel loaded his special image that contained his hacking tools, then loaded the site. It was time to hack!
This might take a while, so let’s see what the others are doing. Nigel made his way to the break room.
It took Nigel ten minutes to get to the room that served as an impromptu operations center. Brody, Melissa, and Jet were waiting. George, Melissa’s head of security, passed around sandwiches and bottles of water. Nigel tore into his sandwich like he had not eaten in days.
“I wanted to bring us together for an update on Treeka’s condition,” Brody said. “The longer her body is in the shielded room, the more guarded she has become. It’s almost
as if she is becoming a different person. When I first met her, she wanted to exact revenge on the people responsible for her sister’s condition. But now she’s becoming unresponsive.”
“Do you think she was being controlled somehow?” Nigel asked.
“All I know for certain is her body is acting erratically the longer she’s in the shielded room.”
“I may have found something very interesting.” Nigel opened his computer. Everyone tried to look at the small screen at once. “Someone from the Edinburgh facility sent an encrypted payload to a vulnerable ProgHub site. The attacker replaced the original certificate with a changed one. The minute we try to connect to it, we will become infected.”
“Then we use a sandbox, simple as that,” Jet said.
“In theory that would work fine, but we still need to decrypt the payload once we download it. I’m running a Dataspolit exploit on the site’s certificate. If it works like I expect, we will have full access to that code repository.”
“Wait, I’m confused. Who did you say uploaded the code from the Edinburgh facility?” Melissa asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it was Delta,” Nigel said.
“Why would Ms. Mason’s cyborg daughter do such a thing?” Brody asked.
“If it’s Delta, then she is trying to fulfill her mission—”
“April is inside the cyborg body with Delta,” Melissa said, cutting Nigel off.
“If that is true, then April may try to warn us.”
Everyone seemed to be considering Nigel’s words as they finished their meals. No one spoke for a long time.
Chapter 13
Working in a cramped corner of the shielded room was exhausting. Nigel and Jet shared a space meant for one.
“I have found a place for Brody to perform his examination,” Melissa said.
It’s about time.
Nigel looked up. He had been working for days with minimal breaks. The hotel suite Melissa had provided was more than adequate, but Nigel found it more productive working with everyone in proximity. Melissa had supplied Nigel with a new laptop more powerful than his old one; he could compile code, decompile, and reverse engineer other code at the same time: something he could ever have done with his old laptop.
“I was going through the scans Brody provided. Both Treeka and Meeka have embedded control code fragments,” Nigel said.
“What does that mean?” Melissa asked.
“That someone could control them like strings on a puppet. We have to assume they can be tracked as well,” Jet said.
“That’s why I insisted the room be shielded,” Brody said as he strode into the room.
How does a geneticist know about that? Nigel wondered. There’s something about this guy I don’t trust.
“There is no way we can access the information directly on the chip without a proper neural interface. There is one on the back of Treeka’s head, near the base of the spine. But the problem is we don’t have a suitable connector to interface with her. Plus, I have no idea what her bootstrapper would look like,” Nigel said.
“Boot what?” Melissa asked, confused.
“Sorry, I’ll explain, “Nigel said. “A bootstrapper is an interface that allows the computer to load an operating system. When you turn on any computer, you usually see some text, and then you are presented with a login prompt.”
“Nigel, if you could construct a connector, I can help with the neural interface,” Brody said.
“Yes, I think that would work. I need access to a maker lab. I should be able to build one. I’ll draw up my specifications, then find the nearest maker lab.”
“What’s a maker lab?” Melissa asked.
“It’s a special workshop that will allow me to build the connector. Have you heard of 3D printing? It’s like that, but with additional equipment,” Nigel replied.
Melissa nodded; she was out of her depth, but she was interested. Nigel wanted to help her understand this entire process. Some of it he didn’t understand, but that was what Dogs in a Pile was for. It was an advanced search engine designed for technical people. It was surface web available, but Nigel preferred the dark web version because it offered more options.
“Assuming we build an interface, there’s still the matter of figuring out her operating system. Assuming she had one at all,” Nigel said.
Nigel didn’t really understand how a cyborg was put together. He understood the mechanical parts of fusing machine with human tissue but was lost when thinking about interfacing a human-created boot loader with a human brain. Nigel hoped Brody knew something about neurology.
“Let me figure out the neural interface,” Brody said.
Treeka walked into the room. Except for her black boots, she was completely naked. Nigel couldn’t help but stare.
She’s not whole. What happened to her skin? Half of it around her waist is . . . missing. The rest of her is perfect.
“If you need to examine me, I will submit to anything required,” Treeka said.
Everyone in the room gaped at her lack of modesty and willingness to help her sister. Brody appeared to be looking at Treeka with a little too much interest.
“Here—wear this, you must be cold,” Melissa said as she handed Treeka a robe.
Treeka put it on, but much of her body was still visible.
“Half of her torso is . . . metal,” Jet said.
“As soon as we relocate into a proper medical facility, then I’ll perform a full physical examination,” Brody said, smiling.
Dirty old man. “When can we move into the new facility?”
“I expect to get the keys as early as tonight,” Melissa said.
“Excellent, I need to get started as quickly as possible. Treeka’s sister is in a walk-in refrigerator at a trusted location—I cannot keep her there much longer,” Brody said.
“Does the new medical office have an area to keep Meeka’s body? What about proper shielding from electronic signals?” Nigel asked.
“It’s in an abandoned funereal parlor in Brooklyn, so it is suitable for our purposes. I’ve had my people set up a triage center for the medical examination, and there’s a small office that is shielded from electronic interference, built to your specifications,” Melissa said.
“Good, I’ll work with Brody. I need to know more about Treeka’s neural interface.”
Later that evening Nigel, Jet, Brody and Treeka entered the rear entrance of the abandoned funeral facility. A short hallway led to a gigantic examination room with many tables. Dozens of instruments were arranged on various tables. It looked more like an operating room than a mortuary. Nigel took over the office near the makeshift operating room. His first priority was to get online and track down anything she could find about Tomiju Kiyomizu, the cyborg’s birth name, gathered from Treeka’s long-term memory.
“I need to scan Treeka’s short-term memory for any anomalies or clues to where this Dr. Ash is located,” Nigel said.
“That will be part of the examination. I’ll examine her physically first—”
“Don’t you think it’s important to scan her memory first? I get that it is important to check on her physically, but I need to get started looking for clues.”
Treeka gave Nigel a calculating look.
“I’ll let Dr. Brody decide. He is the only doctor present, and I trust him,” Treeka said.
“As soon as I’m finished with my examination, I will let you know. For now, you should try to get some rest,” Dr. Brody said.
“I think we all can use some rest. Do you want me to take you back to the hotel?” Melissa said to Nigel.
Jet didn’t wait for a response; she grabbed her backpack.
“Come on, Nige, you can prepare from the hotel. I’m exhausted,” Jet said.
“Okay, fine,” Nigel relented. “But I want to come back here first thing in the morning.”
“Why don’t we meet back around ten a.m.? I still need to rest, and we can compare notes in the morning,” Brody
said.
Melissa yawned. “Agreed, it’s getting late and we all can use the rest.”
Nigel, Jet, and Melissa left without another word to Brody.
Brody checked the door and double locked it.
“Are we ready to begin the examination?” Treeka asked.
“Yes, my dear. I need to check you inside and out,” Brody told her. “Lay down on the examination table.”
Treeka removed the robe Melissa had provided earlier, then laid bare for Dr. Brody.
Dr. Brody came close and separated her legs.
“I need to be thorough,” he said. “I don’t want to leave a single detail to chance.”
“Is it necessary to look down there?” Treeka asked.
Dr. Brody smiled.
“Try to relax. You may feel a pinch, but nothing should hurt. It might even feel good,” Dr. Brody said as he caressed her face.
He’s using you for his own needs, sister, a voice echoed in Treeka’s head.
“Meeka—she’s awake.”
Brody’s expression changed to a look of confusion—then horror—as Meeka appeared in front of him and slashed at his throat with a knife.
“Hey, easy with that. No one is going to hurt you,” Brody said as Meeka appraised him like a predator sizing up its next victim.
“Stand down, sister,” Treeka said.
“How are you awake? I checked on you just hours ago,” Brody said.
Meeka smiled. “It seems I awoke at just the right moment. Greedy old men have taken advantage of my sister enough.”
Don’t harm him, he helped you sister, Treeka replied telepathically.
He has the look most men have when they approach a naked woman. His animal lust will take over, and he will ravage you, Meeka replied.
You’ve changed, sister. The old Meeka didn’t want to kill innocents, Treeka said.
Dr. Brody snatched Meeka’s forearm, trying to wrestle the blade from her. She moved with the precision of a cat. Meeka wasn’t at full capacity, but she continued to strike Brody with increasing power. It was like she was feeding off of his pain and suffering; Dr. Brody confirmed this when he screamed in pain. She slashed at his face. Blood oozed from the gaping wound.
