Repo Virtual

by Corey J. White

“I hope you crash and burn,” Enda said with a fake smile. She got out of the car and slammed the door.

  The light above a nearby elevator flickered to life and caught her eye—as it was designed to do. The elevator doors opened as Enda approached, and she grew impatient with the way her autonomy was systematically being stripped from her. First by the Zero lackey, then by the car, then by a fucking light bulb.

  Inside the elevator, the walls were bare—no buttons, no screens, just reflective metal on all sides. Her short blond-white hair was matted to her head with sweat, her skin blotchy, free of makeup.

  “Well?” she said to the empty elevator car. As if in response, the doors closed, and with a quiet whir she began her ascent.

  A minute later, the elevator opened silently, revealing a wide room floored in marble. Enda approached the raised desk where a trendy, androgynous personal assistant sat, busily at work. They looked up at the sound of Enda’s running shoes squeaking against the tiles, and considered her with dark eyes almost black beneath thick eyebrows. Their hair was buzzcut, nose pierced with a fine ring of white gold, white shirt buttoned to the throat with a squared collar ornately embroidered in white thread. Enda couldn’t make out the design, could just see that something was marked there.

  “Enda Hyldahl.”

  The assistant nodded toward a set of doors on the right. “Mr. Yeun is expecting you.” If they were surprised at Mohamed’s absence, they didn’t betray it.

  Enda proceeded through the doors, the twin slabs of darkly stained hardwood swinging open before she had a chance to touch the handles. Light spilled through the opening, glare temporarily blinding Enda. A dark island rose from the sea of glare to become a man sitting straight-backed at a wide wooden desk. He stood and crossed the length of the office, his leather shoes clacking sharply. He was Korean, late thirties, clean-shaven, hair neatly cut but rumpled by frequent use of a VR eyemask. He wore a suit, expensive but not flashy, and a fine white shirt, open at the collar. He reached his hand out to Enda and bowed slightly. She shook it.

  “Annyeong haseyo,” he said.

  “You’re American.”

  He bowed again, lips pressed in a neat grin. “You have a good ear, Ms. Hyldahl. Due to my heritage the board entrusted me with the affairs of the city. In truth I had never stepped foot inside Korea before the promotion.”

  “Who better to subjugate the culture,” Enda said.

  “If you really disapproved, we would be speaking Korean.” He turned aside and motioned toward his desk. “Please, take a seat.”

  He crossed the overly large office and stood behind his desk. Enda followed, but when she reached the chair opposite, she leaned against its back and stared past Yeun. Her face hovered over the sprawling city in the glass of the window. The light-filled office faced the sea, offering a view over countless office and apartment blocks to the shorefront, where the sprawl of warehouses dropped off at the edge of the man-made landmass. Beyond that, bruise-colored water stretched as far as she could see, waves choppy beneath a heavy bank of clouds. More rain coming.

  Yeun looked from Enda to the seat, and tipped his head to one side. “Are you sure you don’t wish to sit?”

  “I don’t plan to be here long.”

  Yeun clasped his hands neatly across his front. “I humbly apologize for the manner in which I approached you,” he said, smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth. Despite his formal words and steady tone, he wasn’t sorry. He was a shark in a suit. “In the past, Kim Yong-seok has spoken highly of your expertise and discretion.”

  “I assume Kim told you how to contact me. An email address, a phone number. End-to-end encryption. If you valued my discretion you wouldn’t have compromised it.”

  “I apologize, but in this matter, time is of the essence. It is for this reason that I approached you on the street.”

  “Like I told your lackey, I’m not taking new clients,” Enda said. “He’ll be fine, by the way.”

  “Mohamed is a most loyal employee. I assure you, he has been through worse for the company. I take it you’re sensitive about your old life?”

  “There is no old life; I buried it.”

  “I’ll admit I had to dig deeply to find it, but nothing ever stays truly buried.”

  “Tell that to the last person I killed.” Enda said the words cold, her blue eyes set on David’s.

  Yeun didn’t blink. Enda was nearly impressed.

  “Some data was stolen from the home of one of Zero’s cofounders,” David said.

  “You mean Zero Lee,” Enda guessed. There were two founders, and only Lee was renowned for his coding ability.

  David nodded. “It’s a piece of software that never should have left our secure labs, but as one of the founders, Mr. Lee had certain privileges.”

  “Had?”

  Yeun frowned, so slightly that anyone else might have missed it. “We received word overnight. Mr. Lee has passed. I must ask you to keep this to yourself until we’ve had a chance to make an official statement and reassure our stakeholders.”

  “Glad I don’t have shares,” Enda said, deadpan.

  Yeun ignored the comment. “I—we—need someone to retrieve the data before it can be sold to one of our competitors.”

  “Why not wait for the police to finish their investigation?”

  “They earn too little to be trustworthy. If they managed to retrieve the data, we have no guarantee they wouldn’t sell it to the competition.”

  “Who has it?”

  “Police are blaming yesterday’s shooting on an anarchist fringe group with ties to a spiritual teacher. After analyzing the evidence, Mohamed believes they were involved in the robbery.”

  “More than a smug face, is he?”

  “He might not have your experience, but Mohamed has proven himself a capable investigator.”

  “Media called the shooting a terrorist incident.”

  “If everything is political then all violence is terrorism,” Yeun said, smile tugging at his lips again.

  Enda rolled her eyes.

  “I need you to retrieve the data, by any means necessary,” Yeun said. “For this you will be paid one million euro, plus expenses.”

  Enda nodded. She crossed her arms over her chest and dragged out the silence until the massive office filled with tension. Finally, she said, “I won’t do it.”

  David’s facade cracked, and his brow furrowed in confusion. “You won’t?”

  Enda smiled. “I’ve heard your pitch, and my answer is no.”

  “I thought Mohamed made my position clear.”

  “If you’re trying to blackmail me, you should just say so.”

  David’s mouth opened and closed, and he blinked rapidly. Enda smiled.

  David sighed. “I didn’t want to do this.” He flicked a hand through the air over his desk, its surface buffed to a molten sheen. The floor-to-ceiling windows turned black, the city tinted dark, then was entirely obscured.

  An image appeared across this new, massive screen. Enda took a step back to see it clearly, but she didn’t need to: she recognized it instantly. The old, grainy photo, lengths of redacted black like the snake in that old cellphone game devouring classified intel.

  Enda had been expecting this since Mohamed uttered her name on the street, but she still seethed, fists clenched tight.

  “I have evidence showing that Ira Lindholme was stationed in North Korea in the months leading up to the country’s collapse. I have detailed after-action reports for seven of Lindholme’s missions, including sabotage operations and the assassination of key military personnel. Today, Ira Lindholme is wanted by the People’s Republic of China for war crimes. And I am sorry to say that I have evidence proving that you, Enda Hyldahl, are indeed Ira Lindholme.”

  “Is that all?” Enda said with a shrug. “Redacted files?”

  Yeun nodded toward the screen and it changed again. The black redactions faded to the off-white of paper, revealing neat letters and numbers spelling out End
a’s every dirty secret.

  “Your former United States of America kept much confidential data on Zero servers. It was, after all, cheaper than storing it themselves,” Yeun said. “The data was encrypted, of course, using our proprietary software.”

  Enda leaned on the back of the empty chair and stared at Yeun. “You have access to my full file and you want to blackmail me? You should know better than anyone how bad an idea that is.”

  “I understand that you must be angry. Unfortunately, there is no recourse for you but to accept this job. Zero provides facial recognition software to eighty percent of airports worldwide, and seventy percent of all other border crossings. Our software is used by Interpol, and half the world’s police, military, private security, and intelligence services. All I need to do is press one button, and every profile in our database under the name of ‘Enda Hyldahl,’ every recent photo captured on CCTV, will be linked to your true name.

  “How do you think the military tribunal in Hong Kong will react to news that one of the people responsible for toppling North Korea is living in Songdo?”

  Enda sneered. “North Korea toppled itself.”

  Yeun bowed his head. “I’m sure you won’t mind explaining that to Chinese authorities.”

  Enda glared, but Yeun only smiled in response, the two facing off beneath a screen decorated with atrocities. Every page another mission she would rather forget, though the memories simmered constantly beneath the surface of her conscious mind. The only thing keeping them in check was her loathing—for Yeun, but mostly for herself.

  “You retrieve the data quickly and quietly, and I will delete all copies of your dossier from Zero’s servers.”

  “Why should I trust you to do that?”

  Yeun’s face was placid. “I don’t know that you have any other choice.”

  Enda paused. She wanted to consider her options, but the truth was, she didn’t have any. One job for this smug prick, or a lifetime on the run.

  “Two million,” she said, voice low.

  “Agreed,” Yeun said, fast enough that Enda knew she could have asked for more.

  He opened one of the drawers set into his expansive desk and retrieved a shiny black datacube. With a slight bow of the head, he handed it to Enda.

  “I have opened a line of credit for your expenses. It has already been linked to your phone.” An expense account took time and paperwork to arrange. Even before Mohamed had approached her on the street, Yeun already knew he had her. The meeting was just a formality.

  “The account should cover any expenses incurred during your investigation. The cube contains all the data we have on the robbery, indexed and cross-referenced. If you need to know anything else, you will also find contact details for Mohamed. He is a professional and will assist you even after this morning’s misunderstanding.”

  The tiny pixels that made up the window screen turned transparent in a ripple from the center.

  “It’s been a pleasure, Ms. Lind—” Yeun stopped, smiled briefly, and continued: “Ms. Hyldahl, but I have other matters which require my attention. If you’ll please excuse me.” He raised an arm toward the doors, which swung open silently. “Annyeonghi gasipsio.”

  Enda stayed put, eyes locked with Yeun for just a moment too long—a look that said, You will regret this. If Yeun got the message, he didn’t let it touch his smile.

  Enda turned and walked from the opulent office, Yeun’s eyes following her the entire way. She rode the elevator down to the huge foyer, where a collection of star systems made of glass and precious metals hung suspended in the air. Crossing the open plaza, executives and corporate ladder climbers dressed in thousand-euro suits watched her in confusion, trying to guess at who this woman in workout clothes was, and who she could possibly have been meeting.

  Enda left them to their questions and stepped outside. The rain had started to fall again, sidewalks slick and shiny. She began to run, knowing it would take kilometers of cement under her feet to quell the rage that burned in her core.

  * * *

  DEBRIEFING OF AGENT IRA LINDHOLME, CONDUCTED BY CHIEF OF STATION ALAN MORTON

  PAGE 23

  MORTON:

  THEY WERE ALL DEAD WHEN YOU LEFT?

  LINDHOLME:

  MOST WERE. A FEW WERE STILL EXPIRING.

  MORTON:

  HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT?

  LINDHOLME:

  HOW DO YOU WANT ME TO FEEL?

  MORTON:

  IRA, I’M ONLY TRYING TO HELP.

  LINDHOLME:

  IF YOU WANT ME TO FEEL SAD, I’LL FEEL SAD. IF YOU WANT ME TO FEEL A DEEP SATISFACTION AT A JOB WELL DONE, I’LL FEEL THAT INSTEAD. YOU SENT ME IN BECAUSE YOU NEEDED THE N.K.S.O.F. NEUTRALISED. I DID THAT.

  MORTON:

  YOU WERE SENT TO COUNTER THEIR ACTIONS.

  LINDHOLME:

  AND HOW ELSE WAS ONE PERSON MEANT TO COUNTER THE ENTIRE FORCE? YOU WON’T ADMIT IT ON RECORD BECAUSE YOU HAVE A SENATE SEAT WAITING FOR YOU BACK HOME. BUT I KNOW WHAT I WAS SENT TO DO.

  MORTON:

  WHAT IS AMERICA TO YOU?

  LINDHOLME:

  I DO THE WORK, AL, DON’T MAKE ME PARROT THE FUCKING PROPAGANDA.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Enda’s leg muscles spasmed, and the soles of her feet burned like she’d been running on hot coals. A notification from her fitness monitor pulsed in the corner of her vision: New Record—15.21 kilometers. And it wasn’t even midday.

  She cleared the message as she entered her apartment’s small living area. It was minimally decorated—one couch upholstered in white fabric, a wooden coffee table made from reclaimed warehouse pallets, a small glass-and-metal desk, and an authentically old record player on a stand in one corner. After relocating to Songdo, she had been forced to start over with her vinyl collection; had spent her first few months tracking down reissues of her fifteen favorite albums. Online, of course. Physical retailers no longer kept anything of value on premises. On rare occasions Enda would remember the collection she left behind in the US. She missed it more than her distant family, more than most of her friends.

  The blinds were open, revealing the rain-soaked city. It stretched east, to where Songdo met Incheon, an invisible border drawn in tenement blocks and lengths of highway. Enda’s was not a penthouse apartment, but it was high enough to feel inhuman—a bird’s view of the city, or a god’s.

  Even after the run, Enda felt unsettled, her nerves jangled. She ran to force a calm she could never otherwise reach, but the intrusion had shattered any hope of inner quiet. She paced the length of her living room; tension dragged across her upper back, and her jaw ached.

  She flicked through her records, stopping at Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. First LP, B side, title track. She placed it gently onto the record player, lifted the needle, and let the mechanism do the rest. Within moments the first notes played, the lonely thrum of a double bass, the cymbal crash, the organ drifting across the right side of the room as the drummer played a roll both gentle and frantic. Enda exhaled, let her mind get lost in the layers of sound.

  She turned the volume up and went through to her bathroom. She turned the shower on, took the datacube from the pocket of her sweat-soaked leggings, and stripped. Her legs spasmed again when she stepped into the shower, calf muscles locked up painfully tight.

  The meeting with Yeun had left a bad taste in her mouth. Not just the unredacted dossier, but the entire job. However distasteful her Three-Letter Agency work had been, the goals were always clear: American superiority over all other factors. Over life, over liberty, over the sovereignty of other nations, even allies. But tracking stolen property for a corporate executive? It was a step above tailing cheating spouses, but also likely to be much messier.

  Enda finished cleaning herself and turned the shower off. She left her running clothes where they were and trailed wet footprints into her bedroom, drying herself. She dressed in comfortable black slacks and an airy, navy-colored blouse, long sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
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  She walked to the kitchen for coffee, pouring the last of her grounds into the machine and making a mental note to buy more. As the coffee dripped into the pot she called Natalya Makhanyok—the Mechanic, her not-quite-personal assistant.

  “Good morning, Enda,” Natalya said.

  Enda checked the time in the corner of her vision—it was still morning; of course the Mechanic was right.

  “Morning, Natalya. I need you to look into David Yeun for me, an executive at Zero. He’s got me backed into a corner, and I don’t like it.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Enda,” Natalya said.

  “Why not?”

  “Zero Corporation provides much of the software I use, as well as the databases I access,” Natalya said. “If I were to try and access information on one of their executives, they would likely shut me down.” Hers was a distinctive voice—warm, firm, with the hint of an eastern European accent. Enda had never asked what country she was from, their discussions always too concise, too professional, for an opening to present itself.

  “Shit,” Enda said. “There’s nothing you can do?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “Fine,” Enda said. “I’ll figure something else out.”

  “Will that be all?” Natalya asked.

  “For now. I should have something more for you soon.”

  “I look forward to it.” Natalya hung up without ceremony. She was never on the line longer than necessary. Initially it had annoyed Enda, but she had no way of knowing how many other clients Natalya serviced. For all she knew, the Mechanic had a bank of phone lines vying for her attention. Still, only once had she failed to answer a call.

  The percolator finished, and Enda poured coffee into the largest mug she owned—no milk, no sugar. The apartment seemed oddly quiet; it took Enda a moment to realize the record had stopped. She carried her coffee to the living room, flipped the record to its A side, and sat down at her desk. The record started with a fast, quiet drumbeat, joined by the organ, then the brass dipped in, the guitar, every instrument introducing itself as the band ran headlong into the twenty-minute track, “Pharaoh’s Dance.”