Head away from the central point of the city, along one of the three main streets leading to the districts and things started to fail. It was a gradual thing, but for the most part, the paint would start to flake; buildings would start to look run down five blocks from the center, be world weary and old at the edges ten blocks from the center - and by the edge of the main districts, Soho, Aldermen and Starfall. Darkness was dissolving and reaching out all at once. The city crawled irrevocably towards the margins - it was almost like a spinning top though. The center was stable - the edges erratic. And that's where Elliot worked, in the erratic margins of Soho 1.
He fished his phone out of his pocket, read the message from Morri and called her.
"Morrigan Roth," she said, sleepily. Elliot smiled softly, looking at his watch.
"Oh, I'm sorry, did I wake you?" he asked, mock sweetly. He knew she was on the back shift - four am to 12pm - so would be in bed by now.
"Yes, but...never mind," she said then Elliot heard her knock something over. "Dammit!" she exclaimed. There was a tinkle of glass, and she sighed before saying, "Elliot, I've got some information you might need."
Elliot could imagine her tilting her head into her shoulder, black hair over silver eyes in a tumble, cleaning up whatever had splashed past. He was guessing a glass of water - the chink tinkle suggesting the loud, obscured bang and her exclamation after was the goblet smashing. Morri had a thing for goblets - she didn't drink from other glasses - just large, wide bowls on stems. Elliot had once joked she was a closet lush; Morri had grinned at him and said that she wasn't a closet anything, but in a past life she suspected she'd been a wine taster. And that she'd drowned in it, because she couldn't stand the stuff. But she loved wine glasses and goblets.
"Ok, hit me with it?"
"You've got Naire there," she said. It was flat and hung between them, in the endless silence that dropped between them like a guillotine. "Elliot?" she said.
"What?" Elliot sucked in a breath, then hissed through his teeth as she continued, "You would have ended up with Captain..." she paused, and then he heard her swallow, "the THING they replaced him with if they'd finished testing, but instead, I've got reliable sources that suggest that it's ..."
"Morri, I know - we got two of the neutralized Naire infected. The ones that we got to fast enough," he said, patiently, watching the floor as another member was escorted to their 'cell' - this time, the floor was green. A member of the survival crew obviously - no shackles or chains were evident from above, and the walls were completely opaque - like whitewashed ice. They went calmly enough.
"No, Elliot - you've got Nate Naire. At least, that's what the commentary is. You've got Naire. As in…the big Kahuna. The scuttlebutt is that they sorted him out and disabled is nanites long enough to kill him, so they took the chance. Didn’t you know?" She said it softly, but there was no inflection in her words. They were flat and boxed off. Clipped.
"No, that can't be," Elliot said. His lips felt numb, the words slightly slurred. "I've seen the lists ..."
Morri snorted - the sound was odd and primal on the phone. "He's not called , not for a while now. No one gets to find out his name, other than it's CORETEX flagged. If it doesn't trip a flag, then what are they supposed to do?" He could hear her doing something with her hair, the silken whisper of it all being pulled back off her face unmistakable and easy to recognize. "It's not as if we can put a super-secret flag in his blood or anything, now is it?" she said tartly.
"None of the tests came back as..."
"Well, that's what I'm phoning about. We think there's been some form of..." there was a crackle, "and that they're covering it that way,"
"Sorry, repeat that please?" Another crackle. "You're breaking up," he said.
"I thought you knew already," came the reply. "Elliot," she continued, voice softening, "You texted me to ask. All I did was verify..."
Elliot stopped. She couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be Naire. "I didn't." He looked at his phone, but sure enough, while he'd been logged out, was a text for Morri. He sighed, and then he thought of the Cerys. "I've got a job for YOU though," he added.
"Yeah? I doubt there's anyone being mistreated where you are," she said with a snort.
"Three mk2s that I've seen. Or at least, that's what the documentation and overlay suggested. Though, the ones on the gate might have been 1's"
"And the third?"
"I'm not sure. I thought she was a 2...but..."
"But what Ell?" Morri asked.
"I don't know – you've seen what they can do with the Mk2's now? Well, I've encountered one that could – probably is – just a massive head game by one of the techs." That wasn't what he wanted to say, but it popped out of his mouth, as naturally as if it had been his only thought, “She claims she’s cyberdroid rather than clone, and she's certainly not one of them," he said.
There was an ache at the back of his head, which subsided as he stopped trying to verbalize anything more. Something stopped him from saying it right out – as if he was saying it in his head but it wasn't quite coming out yet. He could feel that weakening, but something was stopping him. Perhaps the agreement he'd made, but that made no sense. He should be able to just tell her.
"Elliot, you're making no sense," She said. "I know you've been inoculated and that messes with people but..." Everything slowed as if he'd been drugged, and it was a fever dream. His mind suddenly settled on, 'hallucination' and went with that, without more conscious thought. It felt wrong, but something was pulling him along now and he couldn't resist. He shook his head and he came back with a blank.
"Sorry, I'm just tired, I guess."
Morri sighed. "I'll look into the papers. But if you didn't think it was important, why text me? I know there are more convicts there, but the fact that they took six, not two from CentralAI isn’t anything unusual."
“Central AI was supermax incarceration,” Elliot groused, “If you were banded A, forget ever seeing the outside world… but now they’re cannon fodder.”
“Yup,” she said. “Why did you text me?” she repeated.
"That's a long story.”
"No kidding. Harper said you left him a ‘long story, need to chat’ message too. What’s going on there, El?”
Elliot sighed. "I'm really beginning to feel like the UCPS is taking the piss. I'm beginning to feel like there's two sets of paperwork," he said.
Morri snorted, "There probably is..."
"I need to stop this Morri. There's a five here, there's two MK 2's on the door that aren't quite right either – there's at least one null room, and a frame. They've got tech they didn't license – that's enough, isn't it?"
"I don't know Elliot," she said doubtfully. "Just because they didn't clear the license with us, doesn't mean it wasn't sanctioned." He stopped and considered this.
"Why not? They're not the CORE," he said, echoing her doubt.
"Yeah, well - they do fund close to 40 percent of our income right now," she said, quietly.
"Pardon?"
"40 percent" she said, with a sigh. "The only departments they don't fund are sex crimes - mine - and homicide...and even then, they're getting their mitts into yours by doing this sort of thing. But if they've got a frame, then there's a bigger issue. Because frames aren't singular. And I do know that the last bust on a Naire cell found a frame that reactivated all of the latent stuff. And there's enough paperwork to suggest you're at one of the jail sites that were closed due to nanite infection. Add a frame and null to that mix..." she said, softly exhaling. "Aren't you glad we're rarely right," she added with a slightly self-mocking laugh.
"You're sure it's six," Elliot finally asked, backtracking, one of the pennies dropping.
"I'm sure it's at least six," she replied. "At least, that's what the records I was handed suggested," she added.
"Where did you get them?" he asked.
"Back channel," she said tersely and he didn't press further. Morri had her hands in various things and
got stuff that even Elliot had never seen. Something occurred to him.
"Did you leave me that CD?"
"What CD?" she said, after a pause. There was no artifice in that pause - no covering herself.
"Never mind," he said. A tingle ran down his spine and he shivered slightly. "Naire was never cured was he?"
He could hear the rustle as Morri shook her head, "I don't think so. Even if he had, they could never guarantee the whole population wasn't free of the two part contaminant," Elliot sighed. Two part contaminant...more like retweeting itself, he thought to himself, as she continued, "I know you think of it as more like a viral thing on social networking, as archaic as that idea is, but it always was a two part thing. Two elements to the infection and both had to match exactly. It's why we're vaccinated so often, and the bots we carry updated daily as we enter or leave the building. Those frames...well...if that's what they're using it for...it'd have to be hooked into something to get its updates. CORETEX has its uses. If they’ve killed half, he could be disposed of as part of this. Imagine the ratings."
Imagine the religious war. Elliot thought. All around the Maypole, all fall DOWN.
Elliot whistled low, and exasperated. "They've got one of them here," he said suddenly, thinking back to the door he'd passed through when distracted, "or at least were trying to activate one," he added.
"And they're never singular," she said again.
"Well, I know there's one here. At the bottom of the stairs, before you get into the control room. And you've got to cross through it to get in or out."
"That's not good," she said, and Elliot could imagine her chewing her lip. "But, unless they're trying to roll back your coding, you're protected." she added. He could hear the doubt in her voice.
"Naire can't be here – they'd never risk..."
"Elliot, listen to me." She said, interrupting him, "This is one big, staged game. The survival experts are going to do some fighting, and that's it," she said. "So even if he is there, the worst that will happen is he indoctrinates a couple of other prisoners. We can't stop that, even when he's in solitary. And he has enough sticky fingers in rotten pies to be able to have had someone sanction this. I’m not happy that it wasn’t obvious, but you have a…history with him, so it’s not surprising. What worries me is that you’re jumping at ghosts. You’ve talked about the tech they’ve got there before – you said we signed off on it. Spent a few days chasing paperwork…"
Elliot's brain was fuzzy, mushy for a minute. He was struggling to say something, on the tip of his tongue - something that contradicted everything she'd just said. He growled, low and annoyed, before he broke in with, "They're allowed to kill one another here Morri..."
"Elliot..." she began. “I know," she said. But Elliot didn't appear to hear her.
"They're allowed to kill in here. We got the change of orders very late last night - I wasn't handed them until after I arrived. There's something not quite right going on here, but I can't get through to anyone to get the show stopped..."
"I'll see if I can't rush the paperwork through to stop it," she said, and she heard him getting up, before his phone cut off and went dead.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"Ok, so explain this again," Elliot said, flipping closed his phone and re-entering the room. Three more well placed calls had resulted in nothing, and then, inexplicably, though the network was still online, he lost all contact with the outside world. For whatever reason, for now, his phone didn't work.
"Which part didn't you understand Consultant Peters?" the woman said, saccharine sweet attitude pouring over her words. Claudia De Morne, major executive at one of the channels, and high overseer of this. She was toying with a glass spiral as she spoke, allowing it to flash and spin under the lights.
"All of it. Start from the beginning. Isn't this close to the incident with the teens that locked themselves into a warehouse in downtown Darkness?" He decided to play entirely dumb. "Sorry, the lectures were a snore-fest. I know some of this was probably covered, but I need to understand exactly why I'm here. I was never allowed to tour or see the set, so I need to ask," he continued. What he was really doing was looking for a reason to revoke the orders here. It was rare people were stupid enough to give away what they were hiding – but he was sure now that something was going on.
"Trust the ex-policeman to remember that," said another tech from the other side of the room.
"I'm not an ex-policeman," Elliot said, leaning against the door. He ducked his head, looking at his scuffed shoes, shoulders coming up slightly in a defensive, yet casual pose that he adopted when he was trying to convince people he was harmless, and just to talk to him, and continued, "I'm consulting because for some strange reason, your random program drew every lunatic and serial killer from my precinct. Word is it was lobbied, not random, but…” he watched that barb land and thought he saw a miniscule tick of annoyance, "I’m sure that’s not true.” He swallowed around the 'and Naire, and three of his generals' - he just couldn't verify it.
"And this is a problem? The convicts I mean?" she said, one perfectly groomed eyebrow rising into her fringe.
"It could be," Elliot said, and then looked at the monitors. Fifty individual rooms, ten of them highlighted in green.
"These," Claudia said, pointing to the screens that had attracted Elliot's attention, "are survival experts, three of which are ex policemen. We won't allow these people to be voted on by the audience, or we'll 'stage' their deaths, depending on what we can allow."
Elliot said with a low sigh, "So this IS staged?"
"To a certain degree, yes," she said, and then looked at the head tech. He flicked a switch and the floor lit up, grids flickering to life and tracing out an outline. Like water flowing into pipes, the lights raced along, coalesced, met and grew brighter, almost as if in joining they became solid. Then with a slight hum, the lights projected up, into real walls, slightly transparent, to ankle height. Claudia smiled, a smug, indelicate expression twisting her face, and walked into the hologram. 50 dots scattered around a map - 40 ambers, ten green, in a big 'holding cell' area. They moved, some pacing like caged animals, some sitting still. Glancing at the monitors Elliot saw some of them eating, some sleeping. In the communal area with the 10 green lights, everything was calm. A few might have been talking strategy, though most were just relaxing and checking their kit. He noticed that the 10 survival experts had slightly different jumpsuits.
Claudia's eyebrow raised as she saw him comparing them and said, "Our high rez cameras are designed to pick them up for insurance purposes. We don't' broadcast on that spectrum though," she added and shook her head daintily. "You won't' be able to tell the difference between them," she added, "if you're not looking through overlay filters."
Justin snorted, "I'm just glad they abandoned giving away who the lifetimers and kill switchers are," he said with a soft smile. "We had all sorts of lurid ideas for jumpsuits from the execs," he added.
Elliot's eyes flicked up to one of the almost overhead monitors, and saw they were eating, drinking, chattering. All of them looking like they were just at home.
"There are no nano contaminants allowed through the four fleximatter entrances to this room," she said pointing to the wall. "No way to paralyze or rewrite someone's nanites," she added. "There is one survival expert who hesitates crossing the thresholds," she added, pulling up his file, "his bounty hunter Nanites aren't compatible and they hurt, just slightly, crossing the threshold,"
And if Naire is in there, he'll never get in either, Elliot thought to himself. That thought was buried with, Why did I just think that? A hazy conversation with Morri ticked into his mind and sweat broke out on his forehead. Slipping old man. Don’t slip.
The minute a prisoner collapsed crossing that threshold, the whole building would go into lockdown anyway. Nanites were something no one messed with, and if it was enough to cause pain when crossing a threshold, the nanite was a serious piece of crap.
"THIS," she said, g
esturing to the floor, is a life-sized map. "This is the fleximatter representation of what you see down there. It allows us to ensure that the survival 10, plus some of the more....valuable members of the 50 are kept safe until critical points in the proceedings. Make no mistake, we're going to let a couple of those prisoners kill one another. More than a couple." She paused, looking at Elliot, before continuing, "We expect that when the prisoners get loose, they will hunt for weapons, which until the first ten die, are locked in the central column, here," she said, pacing to the center of the light display, counterpointing it with her flashing glass bard. "From there on in, as the weapons are 'limited exposure' metallic, they will be slaughtering one another for about an hour, then another vote. If we have to recharge the weapons cache, we might, but it's highly unlikely this contest is going to run for more than 12 hours," she said, before smiling and walking to the section where the ten survival specialists were housed. "We anticipate minimal danger for these ten people - they are sealed off from the prisoners, though their 'maze' does cross the prisoners, but only when the sites reform. There should be no access doors between the prisoners and survival specialist. They are just here to spice up the game.”
She lifted the glass stirrer to her mouth, tapping her lips lightly. “In the unlikely event that their run and the prisoners cross-pollute, they have strict instructions to make for the nearest survival cell, which they can then hide in. Once in there, only trained personnel can get them out. In the unlikely event that this drags out past the first six hours, we have a mandatory lockdown period of four hours, where the prisoners can rest and relax, and the survival experts can request extraction. It is easier to 'fake' a death then and then we run it till the end. The first six hours are live. We've got a 24 hour channel, with carefully prepared footage from the last three nights while we were getting set up to allow us four hours of semi-live broadcast, then another six hours running. At six to eight hours, we remove the experts and let the scum slaughter one another. The prize is freedom. We just didn't say where they'd be freed to."
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