Specter Protocol

by Eddie R. Hicks

  He hacked a nearby fire exit in the building, disabling its alarms, and then transmitting its location to his smart glasses. It appeared as a floating navi-point on his lenses, and a set of numbers above it showed its estimated distance away from Ray.

  Ray closed his laptop, placed it inside his backpack, and discreetly left the coffee lounge. Once outside he put his glasses on and dimmed the lenses, so they’d appear as shades. People in the streets didn’t see Ray Partington, the Alliance’s most wanted man, accused of cyber terrorism and supporting the People’s Federation of Pacific Nations. They saw a man, slaving away to please the corporate overloads that were squeezing society for every drop of money they had. Not that Ray really did the things society blamed him for. He was an innocent man who just knew things he shouldn’t have. Yoshida painted him as the bad guy and forced the media and the public to report him.

  The area around Ray changed when his smart glasses activated. Instead of a bustling, neon-lit sidewalk in the middle of Los Angeles district three, Ray saw the invisible digital world of vulnerable computer devices open for hackers to take control. Text chat windows floated above active phones of the pedestrians near him. Regardless if Ray liked it or not, he could see every text message sent or received from the masses. Facial scan data hovered beside anyone he looked at. Ray liked this world better. Data freely floated onto his shades. If someone made a 9-1-1 call, saying they’d seen him, he’d be the first know. And the first to hack and jam that call.

  “Can you hear me?” Ray spoke over the communication channel Piper had set up.

  “Load and clear, Ray.” Piper’s kiwi accent came over the tiny speakers in his glasses.

  “Good, I’m outside now and heading to the Yoshida datacenter.”

  “Keep us posted.”

  “Won’t be able to say much once I’m in.”

  Ray continued his trek across the sidewalk, reflecting the neon splendor and holographic billboards. A woman was texting her husband. She was going to be late. The chat window hovered next to her phone. Most cars driving in the streets had a vulnerable icon floating above, and a list of apps he had on his phone displayed the malicious acts he could take. He didn’t take any, though, except for the hidden surveillance cameras, spying on the rush hour pedestrians’ commute home. The cameras looked the other way when Ray stepped into visual range with the tap of an app.

  A man stood at an ATM withdrawing cash from it, one hundred Alliance dollars according to his lenses. The facial scanning software got a nice look at the man’s face. Ray read the screen that flashed on his lenses.

  Name: Ryan McGregor

  Age: 45

  Species: Human

  Occupation: Yoshida Corporation Human Resources Manager

  Notes: Recently fired three employers for questioning Ray Partington’s accusations

  Ray stopped walking. As the man walked away from the ATM, Ray held his phone, pointed it at the ATM, hacked it and accessed the last bank account it was connected to. Mr. McGregor had way too much money in there, so Ray helped himself to it, electronically transferring it to his, and deleted the records. Ray just gained enough money to survive for another three months while fucking over someone that supported the corporation that put Ray in this position. He counted how many fucks he had to give. There weren’t any.

  The floating navi-point on his lenses guided him to an alley. To his right was the building holding the datacenter, and the fire exit his drone had unlocked and disarmed for him. Ray opened the door and slipped in. No alarms sounded, not even silent ones according to his lenses. He sighed in relief. It worked. He really thought it wouldn’t.

  Ray strode through the halls, keeping his footsteps steady and hushed. Powerful supercomputers in the backrooms hummed as most of the staff voices had grown silent, watching their computer screens, and waiting for tech support calls to roll in. He lowered his head when he approached those rooms, they all had massive windows peering into the hallway. He walked past a camera, and nothing happened. Motion sensors didn’t sound either. His phone confirmed that the security systems were under his command, sending false data to those monitoring them.

  “There a reason Piper can’t do this?” Ray whispered as his infiltration continued. “That mind control power of yours would make this a lot easier.”

  “Mind control doesn’t last forever,” Piper’s audio-only voice explained. “And once my hold fades, the victim will question why they did the things they did during that blackout moment.”

  Ray was once mind controlled. Part of him knew it, but he couldn’t resist the telepathic voices making him do things he didn’t want to do. “They’ll call for help.”

  “Exactly,” Piper said. “This operation needs to be accomplished with no one suspecting a thing.”

  A group of patrolling armed guards appeared around the corner. Ray backtracked and dove into the washroom. Once inside he reached for his pistol stuffed somewhere in his backpack. The patrols would shoot him if they saw him unless he shot first.

  Piper’s voice chimed in. “If you’re thinking about popping the guards, think again. Remember, this needs to look like nothing happened at all.”

  He left the pistol in his backpack and sighed. “You reading my mind, Piper?”

  “You’ll be surprised how hard it is for a telepath to do that and get a clear image.” Kiwi laughter followed. “But yes, I sensed your thoughts there for half a second.”

  Slipping back into the halls had him nervous. Ray was packing heat and couldn’t use it. Shooting the guards if his life was on the line was his backup plan. Now, Ray had to be extra careful not to be seen.

  The echoes of patrolling footsteps ceased. He was free to leave the washroom and continue. He was getting closer, but first he had to retrieve the drone. People would start asking questions about why it was inside the building.

  A left, a right, then another left brought Ray to the room where his drone remained idle. A lone guard hung around, standing near the water cooler, and the phone in his hands was the object of his attention. The plan that forged in Ray’s head seemed easy enough; race in and grab the drone while the guard stood holding a water cup and phone. It was too risky. Ray needed him to keep his eyes on his phone.

  His glasses revealed the man had been searching for deals on adult psytrip sessions. Ray grinned and reached for his backpack. He’d need his tablet pad for this one. Using the tablet, Ray wrote a bogus email, prettied it up with pictures of half-naked telepathic witches, then delivered it to the distracted guard. The guard opened the email, his face turned red as beads of sweat formed on it. A perverse grin came next as he scrolled through the fake email. By the time he had finished, Ray had already grabbed the drone, stuffed it in his backpack, and left.

  “Yo, so who is this contact?” Estrella’s voice asked.

  Ray would have chimed in and asked too, but he was too far inside the datacenter. He couldn’t risk his voice giving him away.

  “Nobody you need to worry about,” Piper’s voice said.

  “Bald Skulls are in the fucking Federation. So yeah, I’m worried. First, the Skulls were a small gang in Buenos Aires, then they show up in LA after I fucking killed them, and now they moved to… wherever the fuck this city is.”

  “Kyoto. And if Ray hurries up, I might be able to say.”

  “That contact related to this fucking rabbit’s hole you wanna take us down?”

  “The Bald Skulls, missing telepaths, Yoshida, and the avatar project are all connected. That’s all I can say.”

  “Don’t forget the data in Ray’s head.”

  Ray didn’t forget about that. Now and then he still saw ghostly images of his missing girlfriend, Arianna standing with him. Like now. The Arianna in his head waved at him, Ray waved back. He continued through the datacenter as Piper and Estrella spoke. He was almost there.

  “Oh, I didn’t forget that,” Estrella said. “And I didn’t forget Yoshida wants it as bad as the IWs that attacked. Well, not Yoshida, a splin
ter group within the corp.”

  “Really?” Piper sounded intrigued. Ray was as well. “How do you figure?”

  “Eh. I got a new source in Yoshida.”

  “Who?”

  “Can’t say yet. But they were the ones that gave me this care package.”

  Ray had an idea after watching Estrella arrive home in a luxury limo, the other day. Someone high up in Yoshida gave her a lift home. He hoped he could trust Estrella. Yoshida was spearheading the capture of him and Piper, telling the media lies that the two were Federation loyalists and terrorists.

  He made it to a wide sliding door, and beyond that was the datacenter’s server farm. No patrols were in sight.

  “Yo, Ray, you still alive, man?” Estrella’s voice asked.

  Ray looked behind and to the sides. He was safe to whisper back. “Yes, about to go loud though—”

  “What? No fuck that, this has to be clean, man!”

  He produced a smile. “Oh, it will.”

  He was inside the server farm now, and lights from the rows of computer servers gave it a deep blue hue, so much so that it made Ray’s body look blue too. Massive cooling fans keeping row upon row of supercomputers cool hummed. These were servers that housed the data collected on the people of Los Angeles and kept every network device in the city operating.

  Ray pulled out his phone and flipped through various photos on it. He stopped at a particular image Piper sent him, it was the one server of interest he came for. Before moving for it he grabbed two portable sensors, placing them on the floor. They were small and looked like miniature bottle caps and relayed alerts to his phone should someone walk past. That was assuming he didn’t catch them nearing the sensors via the tiny spy cameras on them, also relaying their footage to his phone.

  “I’m in,” Ray whispered. “Thanks for nano printing these sensors by the way, girls.”

  He took a seat on the floor beside the server, holding his phone in one hand, opening his backpack, and resting it next to him with the other. He made a swift exchange, trading his phone for his laptop. It wasn’t necessary to leave the phone in the bag, but Ray was in a hurry. He’d grab it later.

  Using a network cable, Ray plugged the laptop into the server tower he sat behind. Numerous hacking programs he developed went to work, giving him unrestricted and unlogged access to the server. Ray began the upload of two files, facial scan profiles, one for Theo and the other for Bashiir.

  “Part one complete,” Ray said and typed away. “Bashiir Jaajuumow Waasuge is now known as Mr. Daou, a corporate agent from the African Dominion on vacation. And Theo Callas is now his personal translator.”

  There was laughter over the communication channel.

  “You know what Theo’s gonna say about that?” Piper said.

  Ray grinned. “Malaka?”

  “Probably.”

  “Thought about naming him that,” he said. “But that’ll raise a few flags.”

  Ray found his profile on the server. A quick stroke of keys on his laptop deleted it. Piper’s profile loaded next, and he deleted that one too.

  “Piper and I officially don’t exist,” he declared, then processed computer code on the server. He typed quickly. Ray made several modifications to the code, deleting lines, and adding new ones. “I’ve made a few tweaks to the code here. Now, whenever someone runs a facial scan of Piper or me, our faces will become blurred and the software will crash.”

  “Eh,” Estrella sounded worried. “Won’t that make them suspicious?”

  “Maybe, but it’ll make it harder for anybody to get confirmation of our identities.” He typed some more. “Plus.”

  He pushed the enter key. An upload of malware began, its progress bar moving quickly from left to right on his screen.

  “I’ve infected the server with a virus,” Ray continued. “Anyone on the server who runs facial scans on the individuals on Piper’s list will suffer the same crash at random.”

  “I see,” Estrella said. “The system crashing when someone scans you two is one thing, but when it crashes scanning people who aren’t suspects in anything…”

  “Knowing Yoshida,” he said. “They’ll think the crash is a result of a programming error and will waste time searching through the code for months. Not realizing there’s been a virus planted inside the system.”

  “You done in there?” Piper’s voice asked.

  “Almost,” Ray said and finished the final upload to the server. The list Piper gave him with new facial scan profiles for various people in the city. There were hundreds of names on the list, all receiving new identities once the upload completed.

  He didn’t hear his phone beep any warnings. Nobody entered the server farm. Ray was safe to slip out. He was also able to stay awhile. He chose to stay, using his laptop to browse the thousands of files, programs, and code on the server. A wide smile appeared on his face as the download began.

  “Okay, I’m done here,” he announced. “But… being plugged directly into these servers is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

  Estrella sounded displeased. “Ray…”

  “I’m grabbing a few files, mostly source codes.”

  “Why?”

  “I should be able to develop better apps and viruses,” he said, cracking his knuckles then resuming typing. “Might come in handy with all the problems we’ve picked up lately. Say, Piper, who were the people on that list?”

  “Unregistered IWs,” Piper’s voice said. “And thanks to you, Ray, and that virus you uploaded, it will be harder to track them.”

  He stopped typing. “Uh, what the fuck?”

  “Did we seriously just help unregistereds vanish?” Estrella chimed in.

  Piper chuckled. “You two wanted to go down the rabbit hole, right? Well, this is how you get that ticket.”

  Nobuo and his team of black op Federation IWs were all unregistered. They were trying to catch Ray and Arianna, hoping to extract the strange data she put in his head. And Estrella’s job as an RW was to detain unregistered IWs. Last time Ray checked, most if not all unregistered IWs were bad news. And he just helped them vanish from the system without realizing it—

  An IRC chat window appeared on his laptop’s screen.

  Sweat moistened his forehead. Ray didn’t activate it and he was certain he didn’t forget it was running in the background. There was a message waiting for him.

  Unknown User: DigiSamurai69?

  He typed his reply.

  DigiSamurai69: That’s the name.

  Unknown User: Or should I say, Ray Partington?

  “What the fuck…” he whispered to himself.

  The Unknown User not only knew who he was but how to contact him… and forced his IRC window to become active. He’d say he was being hacked but knew that was impossible, at least from average hackers. Ray was talking to someone that was not an average hacker, possessing skill high enough to break his custom security.

  Unknown User: It’s okay not to reply. But you really need to check your sensors. Security is coming.

  DigiSamurai69: Bullshit, I didn’t get an alert.

  DigiSamurai69: And how did you know?

  Unknown User: Check them now.

  He grabbed his phone out from his backpack, flipping through its apps until he found the one relaying live video feed from the sensors. Three armed guards strode past, tripping the alerts on the sensors. His phone didn’t beep the warnings. As it turned out the app was set to vibrate, not beep, and with it stuffed inside his backpack he didn’t feel it.

  Ray quickly unplugged from the network, canceling his remaining downloads, stuffing his pad and laptop into his bag, and went searching for the exit. Unknown User saved his life. His phone vibrated. A new text message had arrived.

  Unknown User: You’re welcome.

  He panicked again. Now they knew how to reach him via text and knew he had his phone in his hand. He thumbed a quick reply.

  Me: Who are you?

  Unknown User: Someone that ju
st saved your ass.

  Me: Yeah, why’d you do it? And how did you know?

  Unknown User: Get moving. I’ll be in touch later.

  Me: Got a name, mysterious contact person?

  Unknown User: Just call me, Obsidian.

  Ray embraced the neon shortly after escaping, walking through the alley with his backpack slung over one shoulder, and face looking away from the buzzing pedestrians. His glasses once again revealed the hidden digital world no one else could see. Paranoia encouraged him to peek behind now and then as he walked with the crowd, crossing the streets. Nobody had been following Ray.

  “Did you guys catch any of that?” Ray whispered over the channel.

  “Any of what?” Estrella asked.

  “Someone sent me a message and saved my ass from guards closing in on me. Thought maybe they contacted you two?”

  “You and Piper are the only people I’ve been in contact with for this.”

  Theo and Bashiir he wondered? Perhaps, but tech wasn’t their expertise, and they would have admitted it was them.

  Obsidian was a new player who had entered the game.

  Three

  Miyuki

  A vision of lost memories swept through Miyuki Matsuoka’s thoughts. They seemed real, too real, like she was experiencing the visions, the places seen in them, and meeting people for the first time. It was the part of being a telepath Miyuki hated. You can have some vivid dreams.

  Miyuki experienced childhood again, learning how to walk and talk. She sat with her older brother, Nobuo reading old Japanese bedtime stories to each other, after hours, under a blanket with a flashlight. It was a story about the yūrei, spirits of the departed who died via violence from someone else or their own hands, and who had a strong desire for vengeance, or other strong emotions. If you died under those conditions, as the legends told, you’d come back to the world as a yūrei, endlessly haunting the living until you finished your last action or desire. Then and only then, the yūrei could return to the afterlife. The strongest yūrei were always of low birth and mistreated in life. Miyuki and Nobuo had seven different books about them, one for each day of the week.