Emergent: An Aes Sidhe Prequel

by A. Omukai

  “You’re Uehara I suppose.”

  “That’s right. And you are the young lady who sold us the AI.”

  This was not a question, and his smile, directed at Nadya, wasn’t a smile.

  She hadn’t spoken a word since her announcement earlier, and she didn’t look like she was in the mood to do so now.

  “What do you know about me, old man?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid, but I don’t care. I know what you are here for, isn’t that enough?”

  Daniel grinned and bared his teeth.

  “I would like you to do something for me, and in return, I will not only let you get away alive, I will see to it that you can go home with a copy of the AI. How does that sound?”

  Daniel wasn’t interested in a copy, but he wouldn’t tell the old man yet.

  “What is it you want us to do?”

  “There’s that man, a very foolish person, who stole the source code. The compiled program is safe, but if anyone got their hands on what’s inside that man’s system…”

  “A thief, I see. What do you need us for? Don’t you have enough manpower?”

  “There’s an old saying, you don’t shit where you eat. Have you heard of it?”

  “So it was your men who killed my friends,” an ice cold voice said.

  Nadya’s voice from behind them was perfectly controlled anger.

  Uehara turned his gaze back to her and nodded.

  “I must admit, the men killing your partners were there on my orders. I didn’t tell them to kill you though. They were in Frankfurt to obtain the code, then return immediately.”

  Uehara dropped the corners of his mouth and didn’t avert his gaze.

  “You don’t seem to feel guilty.”

  He made a dismissing gesture.

  “Are you interested?” He turned his attention to Daniel once more.

  “Tell us what you know.”

  “How about we walk a bit while we speak? Standing in one spot hurts the joints when you are my age.” He smiled his plastic smile at that point above his shoulder and continued. “We sent a man after the target, but he could escape. We have someone who might be able to help us find out where he is, but since we don’t have that information yet, we’ll have to be patient. I would contact you once we find out. You’ll receive the AI when he is dead.”

  ***

  “We should have killed the guy.” Nadya’s voice still had the same frosty tone, and the line between her eyes had deepened.

  Daniel looked through the front window of the capsule and nodded.

  “You’re right, he needs to die. Killing him now would have been a mistake though. We have to find that traitor and see what we can find out. Maybe we can solve it without violence, and save the bullets for this Uehara.”

  He felt her stare in his neck, but didn’t turn around.

  “Do you still want to destroy that AI?” she asked.

  “I need to destroy all iterations of it. You did make a backup before you sold it, didn’t you?”

  “You asked this question before.”

  “Your lack of an answer is an answer in itself.”

  “What if so?”

  Daniel fell silent.

  28

  Makoto

  In the end, Daisuke and I had agreed to meet in a different bar, Neon Nights, in the centre of the city, very close to a police station.

  When I entered the place, my eyes needed a moment to get used to the twilight. There was no regular lighting. Only the decorative neon lamps generated some dubious light, and the dance floor glowed in a mute purple. The music was too loud, and the bass over-tuned, so every beat vibrated in my bones. Not the best place to talk, but this was so far out of the way, I hoped we would be safe here, especially since nobody would risk killing someone so close to a police station. There was no guarantee though.

  The bar was almost full, despite the relatively early hour. We had agreed to meet before peak hours, so we could talk without getting disturbed. We should have looked up the place more carefully.

  I moved through the crowd and made out Daisuke sitting at a table for two, with a big glass in front of him. He was tall and brawny today, but I could see him for who he really was. He was staring at a girl on the dance floor and didn’t notice me. Under normal circumstances, I’d have tried to surprise him now, but I wasn’t in the mood for silly things like that.

  I pulled the chair in position and sat down, and he still didn’t notice. The girl on the dance floor sure was more interesting than me, but I couldn’t see why he was so engrossed that he lost all touch with reality. Maybe he had taken on the shape of a human for so long that he had forgotten he wasn’t one.

  She had noticed him, too, and seemed to dance for him. I shrugged and called up the menu. The bar’s system was very smooth and instant.

  I went through the list of available drinks. The interface was very responsive, it clearly ran on a powerful system. Nothing hard for me today. Alcohol would be off my list for a while. I’d need a clear head if I wanted to get through all this. I decided on a green tea and leaned back to watch the Ellyll while I was waiting.

  The song ended, he applauded enthusiastically, then jumped when he saw me.

  “Holy shit, man! Couldn’t you have said something? How long have you been here?”

  I shrugged again.

  “Not long. What’s her name?”

  Daisuke looked at the girl. She had walked over to her table and was drinking something.

  “I don’t know yet. I’d love to find out, but that’s not what we’re here for, is it?”

  “Not really. Are you sure no one followed you here?”

  “Reasonably. What’s going on, Makoto?”

  ‘Reasonably’ might not have been enough, but it was too late now. At least there was still the relative safety of a public place, although I wouldn’t have wanted to bet on that.

  “Remember when we met last time, at the usual place?”

  “Yeah. We should move here anyway.” He took a glance at the girl, who was still dancing alone. “It’s much nicer here.”

  He was beginning to get on my nerves. Did he think I was joking around? I had gotten used to his quirkiness over the course of the last months, and we worked well together, but he always managed to exasperate me.

  “I’m not here for the girls or anything like that. Someone tried to kill me.”

  He stared at me, waiting, obviously unsure if I was serious. I was dead serious.

  “Ishida disappeared a while ago, I think I told you.”

  Daisuke picked up his glass and took a sip.

  “Keep going.”

  “Someone made a mistake with my access rights at work, and I could read some things in his personnel file they probably didn’t want me to see. He got killed. They killed him.”

  Daisuke didn’t say a word. His facial expression was a rigid mask I couldn’t read.

  A small robot rolled up to our table and served my tea. I picked it up, drank a little, sat it down in front of me and looked at my friend.

  “So, what happened?”

  “When I came home, a killer was waiting for me. I got away, but only barely. I was extremely lucky.”

  “So that’s what your message was about. I was worried, but had I known it was that serious…” Daisuke gulped down the rest of his glass and let his eyes wander over the dance floor. The second song was slowly ramping up its speed, and the girl had found a partner to dance with.

  “What now?” he asked me. I wondered that, too. Finding out what I could even do was part of why we were here.

  “I told Inoue I’d meet her at a park near her apartment tomorrow, before work. Was thinking about talking through my options.”

  “Inoue, that girl from your lab?”

  “She always has an idea. I thought it might be worth a try.”

  “You risk your life stealing something like that from that place, then meet up with someone from said company? Doesn’t that sound a bit… ri
sky?”

  “Yeah, I know, but I think I can trust her.”

  Daisuke shook his head.

  “You’re a piece of work. Do you know that?”

  “You have to forward that. I can’t be on the run with something like this AI in my head and the Winter Court and the Yakuza on my heels.”

  Daisuke’s eyes widened.

  “Yakuza?”

  “They seem pretty well-organised for a normal corporation, and killing someone isn’t usually in the scope of normal security personnel.”

  He said nothing for a while, staring at his glass.

  A ‘breaking news’ notification flashed in my field of view. I deleted it. My life was overflowing with breaking news, I didn’t need anything on top of it right now.

  “The version I have is the unrestricted one. If you compile and run it like that, anything can happen.”

  Daisuke didn’t seem to be paying attention, his eyes were staring into the distance. Was he ordering another drink?

  I developed an insistent urge for the toilet and stood up.

  “Be right back.”

  Daisuke nodded absent-mindedly.

  ***

  When I came back, he had a new glass, this one looking suspiciously like his beloved brand of extra smelly booze.

  “Did you watch it?” he asked.

  “Watched what?”

  “The announcement.”

  I thought for a moment, then remembered the ‘breaking news’.

  “No. What’s up?”

  “Man… watch it, explaining this is gonna take too long.”

  He looked more annoyed than angry, and something else was in his face, an emotion I couldn’t identify.

  “Can’t, I deleted the announcement. Just tell me, looking it up will take just as long.”

  He groaned.

  “Seems like those idiots in China and Gilead are really ending up waging war.”

  That was breaking news indeed, if it was true. Not all news were.

  “What’s going on?”

  “China hacked into some of their nuclear power plants and halted them. Most could avoid a catastrophe, but three really old ones had a meltdown. At least that’s what the cultists say, and in the end, it won’t matter if it’s true or not.”

  I didn’t know what to answer.

  I grabbed my glass and raised it to my lips, when someone ran into me. Some of the tea landed on the table, some of my hand. A young guy mumbled an apology and was gone before I could answer. I put the glass down, wiped my hand with a paper towel and sighed.

  “How bad is the damage?”

  “The power plants were located at the east coast. No major cities there anymore since the quakes, but some people were apparently living there. There’s no details. It’s all second hand news. Damn cultists. They’re still nuclear, the whole area must be radioactive now.”

  What the hell was going on? The whole world was rapidly going down the drain. But still, I had very real, existential problems, too.

  “Daisuke, I need your help.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t think Uehara will send me my bonus this year.”

  A sudden topic change, but Daisuke didn’t usually have problems switching. If anything, he was the better multitasker.

  “I’ll get in touch with intelligence immediately,” he said.

  “About both problems. Me having the thing in my head, and them being an… organisation.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  The girl he had watched was already gone. There were others dancing in her place now, the bar had filled up gradually. Daisuke said something I couldn’t make out through the noise. I bowed over the table, towards him.

  “Don’t worry, I got your back,” he repeated.

  “Thank you, I really appreciate it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay it back.”

  “No way I let you down. Don’t worry about it.”

  A wave of relief washed over me, but I had to remember that my problems weren’t solved yet.

  “There’s something else I want to talk about.”

  He looked at me while drinking, raising his brows.

  “The AI I got, I need to transfer it somewhere. It’s taking up all my capacity. And maybe… maybe we can use it to do something about the war.”

  He put the glass down with a thump.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Chinese developed it as a tool for control. It works like a virus, infiltrating everything, unless something stops it - and we removed all stops from the code. Maybe it can put an end to the war before it even starts.”

  “You’re quite the gambler, aren’t you. What if it’s harmful? You just told me it works like a virus.”

  “If we have it running on a main server and we can shut that down, it doesn’t matter where it has its tentacles.”

  He didn’t look convinced just yet.

  “What if it copies itself somewhere else, in case something happens to its host machine?”

  “It can copy itself anywhere, but it can’t run all those instances simultaneously. It would have to shut itself down to start on another machine. There can be only one process of its kind at a time.”

  Daisuke seemed to think for a moment, then nodded.

  “I think I can set something up. Remember the new bunker on the surface? It’s still unused. Preparing it will take a bit though, let me see what I can do.”

  Things were progressing. Step by step.

  “I’m in your debt, Daisuke.”

  “You’re thinking too much, my friend. By the way, where are you right now? Need a couch to sleep on?”

  “I can’t stay at your place. They’ll find out, and then you’re in trouble, too. Uehara has a complete profile of every employee. Where we go, what we do, our hobbies, friends. Way too dangerous. That’s why I said we can’t be seen together. No, I rented a room at a love hotel close to the station.”

  “There must be four or five of them around there. I know a good one, the Love Nest.”

  “Mine’s called Hotel Tsubaki. I can’t stay there for long, but I got the room for a week. I don’t know yet how to pull my neck out of that mess.”

  “It’s alright. We’ll find a way. Just remember to stay out of sight, and don’t trust anyone.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know what I’d do without him. For the first time since my escape, I felt hope, if even a little.

  29

  Daniel

  Daniel wasn’t intent on working with the devil, but he didn’t mind him thinking he would. He also didn’t mind getting any hint he could get from the old man, but they hadn’t heard from him since their ‘visit’. They had returned to the hotel room they had rented earlier, not doubting that the gangster had found out where they were now.

  “We should have killed him while we still had the chance.”

  Again this topic, as if there was nothing else to talk about. Why keep repeating the same thing over and over?

  “We’ll never meet him again,” she continued in a nagging voice.

  He didn’t really care. Uehara was not his main concern, although he also wouldn’t mind putting him to justice. He just wasn’t willing to go out of his way to do so. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Sooner or later, someone would take care of the old criminal. Or of Daniel, for that matter, but today was not that day. At least if he could help it.

  “He’s the reason I came here, it was his men who killed my friends.”

  She wasn’t wrong, if not for Uehara, her gang would still be alive, but it had been a bad idea to sell to the yakuza from the beginning. Not that other parties would have been less dangerous.

  “I should have kept your gun, then I could have used it on him.”

  Daniel wasn’t so sure about that. Nadya was an intelligent person. While she had a temper, she wasn’t stupid. Killing her ticket out of that residence would have been a sure way to get them killed, too. She also wasn’t the type to kill. Sure, anger was a stron
g motivator, but she seemed too peaceful a person to actually do it, no matter what she said.

  “Maybe I should get a gun, too. I can’t depend on you to get it done. You have your own agenda.”

  He couldn’t deny that either. His job was to destroy the AI, and that meant getting all existing copies and deleting them. As long as Uehara stayed out of his way, he had a good chance to survive. Daniel didn’t think that would be the case though, the old gangster was sure to cause them problems. He was fairly certain Nadya would get her revenge.

  “I don’t doubt you’d turn on me if you had the slightest chance to get your hands on another AI copy.”

  He sighed. She might have been right. He wasn’t sure himself anymore. On one hand, he couldn’t let her have another copy and possibly sell it again, to another party with the skills needed to use it for its own gains. On the other hand, he had no way to reliably get her to even tell him if she still had a copy, short of torture. He was an agent, not an inquisitor, and he didn’t want her to get hurt for no reason. Wasn’t that a reason, though?

  “Are you ignoring me?”

  How could he? There was absolutely no way he could not hear her, and he had nowhere to go right now. Quite the opposite, they must be ready to go whenever. Finding and questioning that employee was important. They’d get his copy, destroy it, then turn on Uehara, even if that was the most likely thing they would do, and he’d expect them to come.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you! Don’t you dare ignore me, I swear by god!”

  He wanted to tell her that taking an oath should be done after careful contemplation, but just when he was about to open his mouth, an incoming call announced itself.