Bluescreen

by Dan Wells

  “You brought your nulis?” asked Marisa. “Is this really the time?”

  The new drone opened a small door on the side of its housing, revealing the sparking prongs of a stun gun. “This is Campbell, and he’s the best self-defense drone the store had,” said Sahara. “Now, let’s get back outside—there’s no sign of damage in the back, which means these appliances are stopping the bullets.”

  The group moved outside, staying low, Adriana clutching the wailing Chito tightly to her chest. The backyard was more of a loading zone than anything else—a long, narrow driveway came past the restaurant, ending in a small, paved courtyard with a spigot and a drain and just enough room for a delivery van or a garbage truck.

  “Stay down,” said Guadalupe, talking to the girls again. “I know it’s scary, just—Pati, no! Gabi, grab her!”

  Marisa couldn’t hear the conversation, but she could guess what was happening—Pati had spooked, and was running. And the first place she’d think to run was toward the restaurant.

  Straight into the line of fire.

  Before she was even aware of what she was doing, Marisa was up and running as well, charging down the driveway to the street. Her father shouted after her, but Marisa didn’t stop. She didn’t even have a plan, she just had to save her sister.

  “She’s hit!” screamed Guadalupe.

  “Get back!” shouted Sahara. Marisa ignored her, but a moment later Sahara grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back, just a few feet short of the building’s front corner. The space Marisa had been just about to enter was suddenly raked with bullets, and Marisa backed up with a yelp.

  “I tried to warn you,” said Sahara, holding her tightly with both arms. “The cavalry just got here.”

  Marisa looked up to see Campbell and Camilla hovering above the street, giving Sahara a bird’s-eye view. Half a second later a black car roared past the mouth of the driveway: a Dynasty Falcon. Maldonado’s enforcers had arrived.

  “Stay hidden,” Carlo Magno whispered fiercely. He tugged the two girls farther back into the cover of the wall, keeping his gun up and ready.

  “We have to get to Pati,” said Marisa.

  “I know,” he said, “but we’re going to do it smart.” He looked at Sahara. “Tell us what you see.”

  They waited, Sahara’s eyes moving across her video feed. “The enforcers stopped in front of the next shop over. The Tì Xū Dāo shooters are one door further down—ew, one of them just got hit.”

  “Are they leaving?” asked Carlo Magno.

  “No,” said Sahara, “they’re coming toward us.”

  Carlo Magno nodded. “Tell me when they get right in front of the Maldonados—that’s when we move.”

  Marisa turned to him. “When the shooting is worst?”

  He shook his head. “When none of the bullets are coming in our direction.”

  “Now,” said Sahara, already moving toward the street. “Go!”

  The three of them sprinted out, turning sharply to the left, away from the battle and toward the two girls. The noise of the gunfire was deafening, and the street looked like a war zone: every building was riddled with holes, the windows shattered and the palm trees splintered and broken. The cars parked by the curb were devastated, some of them smoking where accelerated rounds had blown up their electric engines. Marisa saw her sisters huddled behind one of the burning wrecks, and dashed forward to reach them. “Is she okay?”

  “No!” screamed Pati. Her eyes were closed, and she jerked back when Marisa tried to touch her.

  “She’s not hit,” said Gabi, so agitated that her words came out in a ferocious jumble, almost too fast to decipher. “She just tripped, I think on the sidewalk, I didn’t see, I didn’t mean to freak out, but they’re shooting at us. Who’s shooting at us?”

  “They’re shooting at each other,” said Marisa. “Just come with us and you’ll be fine. We have to get out of here.” She reached for Pati again, trying to pull her from the heat of the burning car, but the little girl screamed and lashed out with a kick. “It’s okay!” said Marisa. “It’s me, it’s Mari, I’m here to help you.”

  Pati opened her eyes, wide and terrified, and latched on to Marisa as if the embrace alone would save her life. Carlo Magno helped her to her feet, and Sahara took Gabi’s hand, and they ran for the corner, away from the battle, only to shriek as two more gangsters came around it, walking toward them. They wore denim jackets covered in glass and colored gems, a ridiculous image in the midst of the carnage. Marisa was too shocked to react, and as the woman in front raised her gun Marisa could only stumble backward, but Carlo Magno’s gun was already up, and he fired two shots before the attacker could aim. The Tì Xū Dāo shooter went down. The second gangster had more time, and fired his thick-barreled pistol with a sound that seemed to shake the earth, the deafening blast of a rail gun, and Carlo Magno fell with a gurgle of pain.

  “Like hell you did,” Sahara snarled, and suddenly the man was surrounded by Campbell and Camilla, darting back and forth, distracting the gangster while Sahara ran toward him. Marisa dropped to her father, rolling on the ground clutching his bloody leg.

  “I’m fine,” he grunted. “Just get the girls out of here.”

  The gangster screamed, and Marisa looked up to see him shaking as Campbell shot him with a stun dart. He staggered to the side, swinging his gun toward the nuli to fire, but Camilla swooped in behind and shocked him with a stunner of her own, cutting off the current just as Sahara reached the gangster and spun her foot in a whirlwind kick, knocking the weapon from his hand. He swung his fist and she ducked out of the way, slapping his side in a counterattack that didn’t seem to hurt him at all; Marisa couldn’t tell if Sahara had missed, or if the gangster had dodged just enough to take all the force out of the blow.

  Marisa was surrounded, helpless in the street. The gangster pulled a blade from his back pocket and flicked it out of its housing with a menacing hum: it was heated, designed not just to wound but to scar. Sahara backed away, and Marisa pulled her sisters back as well, though the gun battle behind them continued to rage, and she knew there was no retreat—worse still, two of the three Maldonados were already dead, and the Tì Xū Dāo gang had only lost one of their four shooters. Marisa clutched Pati tightly with her metal arm, holding Gabi with the other, trying to think of a way out, when suddenly her mind seemed to expand and her vision lit up with icons and vectors, data filling her like a breath of life. Her djinni was back on.

  “I reactivated your account,” said her mother, calling in the instant the djinni booted up. “Get them out of there.”

  “Just leave me,” Carlo Magno growled. “Get the girls to safety.”

  “Cállate,” said Marisa. “We’re not leaving without you.” She glanced up and down the street, desperate to find some way of escaping, and her eyes fell on the front of the restaurant: the glowing San Juanito sign was broken and sparking, and the ad screen by the front door was flipping through a series of glitched ads, framing a shattered bullet hole in the center.

  “We have to go!” said Gabi. “We’re going to get shot!”

  “There’s no safe path off the street,” said Marisa, “so I’m making one. Did you install those security upgrades I sent you a few months ago?”

  Carlo Magno closed his eyes, trying to control his breathing as he put pressure on his bleeding leg wound. Gabi stared at Marisa in shock. “Is this really the time to be asking about that?”

  “Yes or no?” Marisa demanded, blinking on her web interface to access San Juanito’s website. She logged in to the admin area, and moved from there to the restaurant control panel: she had climate controls, lighting, and everything. Including the ad board.

  “Yes,” said Gabi, “I installed your security. Now can we get off the road before somebody murders us?”

  “Yes we can,” said Marisa. “Watch this.” She opened the ad board controls, blinked on the nearest daily special—a free tamarindo soda with any purchase—and raised the instigation v
alue past its limit. The ad board would find every djinni within half a block and bombard them with the digital coupon, sending copy after copy until their processors couldn’t handle the load, bypassing all but the most powerful anti-ad software. If the target had a good security system, it would slow them down for a bit; if they didn’t, it would blind them completely with a flood of pop-ups that would take minutes to get rid of. She applied the settings, and watched as the shooters faltered, hesitated, and then ducked for cover as their own djinnis betrayed them.

  Sahara’s cyber security was flawless; she took the ads in stride, if she even noticed them at all, and pressed her sudden advantage with a devastating flurry of punches to the gangster’s stomach, face, and throat. He dropped his knife and staggered back, and Sahara finished him off with a roundhouse kick to the side of the head. He fell, and she ran toward Marisa, helping the girls raise Carlo Magno back to his feet.

  “Run!” said Marisa, “I don’t know how long this will keep them distracted.” Gabi and Sahara supported Carlo Magno, one on each side, and Marisa ran with Pati held tightly to her chest, bolting back to the restaurant for safety. They ran through the front door, weaving through the broken tables and other debris, hoping the attackers on the street hadn’t seen where they’d gone. They reached the kitchen and fled into the back, where Guadalupe pulled them into a sobbing embrace. Adriana and Chito were still huddled by the wall.

  “You’re okay?” asked Guadalupe.

  “Papi got shot,” said Marisa, collapsing against the thick brick foundation. “The rest of us are okay.”

  “They’re leaving,” said Sahara, watching the feeds from her nulis. “They told the car to go, and they’re gone.”

  “Sandro’s still at home, and says he’s fine,” said Guadalupe, and glanced at Adriana. “Chuy, too.”

  Marisa nodded, stroking Pati’s hair. “We’re alive. Now let’s get Chuy and Papi to the hospital.”

  SIXTEEN

  The hospital was a desperate chaos of blood and shouting, as tense as the shooting had been. Doctors and nurses ran through the halls, pushing gurneys and IV stands as they rushed wounded bystanders from room to room, chased through the halls by nulis trying to catalog each patient’s stats and vitals. Marisa had been hit by shrapnel from a shattering window—six pieces of glass had embedded in the skin of her abdomen, but she’d been so full of adrenaline she hadn’t even felt it until an orderly had asked about her shredded shirt. She sat now in the hospital, the glass picked out but the adrenaline worn off, her stomach throbbing with pain, waiting her turn while the doctors dealt with the more serious cases first.

  Like her father.

  “I hated this waitress shirt anyway,” she said to herself, gritting her teeth and trying to think about anything other than the burning pain. “Now maybe I won’t have to work in the restaurant for a while.”

  Not that the restaurant would be in any condition to open for a while anyway. Could her family even afford to repair it? Especially with all the revenue they’d lose from being closed?

  Marisa looked up and down the hall, wondering where Chuy and Adriana were. La Sesenta had told the ambulance medics he’d been hit in one of the dozen drive-by shootings, to cover their tracks from the gang fight the night before. They were somewhere in the building now, but Marisa hadn’t seen them yet, and didn’t dare to leave this hallway until she’d heard back about her father’s condition. He was only hit in the leg, and it had apparently missed the bone, but she was worried. She was the only one from the family who’d come—Guadalupe had insisted on taking Chito and the girls home, dragging Sahara with her for safety. Marisa stayed connected to Olaya, monitoring their safety at a distance, terrified that Tì Xū Dāo would come back.

  And even more terrified, the more she thought about it, of whatever had brought them in the first place. Her djinni was back on now; if they were looking for her, they’d find her. But it had been hours, and no one had come.

  Her first thought was that Tì Xū Dāo had attacked Mirador in direct retaliation for La Sesenta’s attack on them. Adriana’s description of the attack had been incomplete, probably because Chuy hadn’t told her the truth: according to the buzz Marisa could dig up on message boards, Calaca had found the Tì Xū Dāo dealer who’d been selling at Pati’s school, and led more than a dozen gangsters in a midnight raid on his apartment, killing three people and destroying thousands of dollars’ worth of Bluescreen. It was an aggressive move with a single message: stay out of Mirador. Some reports said that Calaca had gone so far as to leave a note, though a competing report said that he’d dictated the message to the sole survivor of the raid, and then shot off his hand. Either way, Marisa couldn’t believe it had escalated so quickly. Was Goyo trying to start a war?

  And then there was the Bluescreen connection. What if this wasn’t a gang retaliation, but a direct order from the people behind Bluescreen? What if the suppliers, the programmers, the shadowy puppet masters behind the drug, were using their street-level pushers to send a message of their own?

  Except that didn’t make sense. Why would those people bother with a poor neighborhood like Mirador at all, let alone go to this insane length to protect their business in it? And why attract this kind of attention, when it seemed like they’d been trying so hard to stay underground? The attack had to come from Tì Xū Dāo, acting on their own—which meant that the Bluescreen cartel was losing control of their dealers. Just like Don Maldonado was losing control of La Sesenta. The dogs were biting the hands that fed them.

  And the city would be eaten alive.

  Marisa looked up as another gurney went by, surrounded by doctors shouting orders back and forth. She pulled her legs up to make more room for the hurried crowd, only to wince again as the movement sent a new surge of pain through her abdomen. She leaned back, gripping the armrests and sucking air through her clenched teeth.

  “Marisa Carneseca?”

  She opened her eyes and looked up. Francisca Maldonado was standing over her. La Princesa. Marisa closed her eyes again, trying to remain as still as possible. “I don’t need this right now, Franca, okay?”

  “I’m not Franca.”

  Marisa cracked her eyelids again, peering up at the girl. She looked disheveled, and her left shoulder showed a nasty scrape, still untreated and bloody. But it was definitely Franca—Marisa had known La Princesa her whole life, she wasn’t going to mistake her now, no matter how much pain she was in.

  “I told you I’m not in the mood for any crap, Franca, okay? My dad and and my brother got shot today, and I’m sorry you messed up your hair or whatever, but—”

  “I’m not Franca,” said Franca. “And I think you know what’s going on here.”

  Marisa felt as if the heat had fled out of her body, rising up from her toes to her legs to her chest, until nothing was left but fear. Franca had used Bluescreen that night at the club, and that meant . . .

  “Great Holy Hand Grenades,” Marisa whispered. “You’re one of the programmers. You made Bluescreen.”

  “I didn’t want this,” said Franca’s voice. Now that Marisa knew what was happening, she could see the signs of it—a slackness in Franca’s face, a stiffness in her posture. La Princesa wasn’t standing the way she typically stood, elegant and haughty, like she was posing for a photo spread only she could see. Now she was standing like . . . Marisa couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She’d taken off her heels, and her legs were braced widely, going for solidity instead of a look. She was standing like a man.

  “All I wanted was the money,” said Franca. “I knew that once people saw what it could do, the code would be worth millions. It was Lal who wanted us to use it ourselves.”

  Marisa had heard the name Lal before—through the drone last night, when she’d followed Kindred’s car to a meeting in the park. “Who is Lal?” she asked.

  “Quiet!” Franca hissed. Even her accent, that faint hint of Mexico, was gone when she talked. “Do you know what he’ll do if he finds out I
came to you?”

  Marisa looked around at the madness in the hospital. “I’ve got a pretty good idea. So why risk it?”

  “Because none of this was my idea,” Franca’s voice insisted. “Distributing it like a drug was fine when it was just us, but hiring gangs to sell it for us? Especially these psychopaths from Tee Shoo Whatever the hell they call themselves? I can’t control this, and neither can Lal, no matter how tough he thinks he is.” Franca’s body leaned in. “I know you’ve been looking into him, and I don’t know what you’ve found, but I need your help. I don’t know who else to go to—he’s got the cops in his pocket now, and half the city for all I can tell. I can feed you information, but even that much is risking my life—I can’t do anything else. I don’t want to go down like eLiza—”

  “So she was working with you,” said Marisa. “I knew it! And that makes you . . .” What was the name? She’d seen it on the screen at San Juanito right before the shooting started. Something German? “Nils,” she said. “Nils Eckert.”

  In that moment, Franca’s eyes rolled back, and she collapsed on the floor like a limp sack of beans.

  “Help!” Marisa screamed. She got down from the bench, kneeling over La Princesa’s unconscious body. “Somebody help! My friend just passed out, I think she’s . . . in shock or something. Help!”

  Nurses and orderlies rushed toward them, probing Franca’s neck carefully before rolling her onto her back and laying her flat. A medical nuli swooped in from above, reading Franca’s vital signs, and another nurse took Marisa by the shoulders, pulling her away.

  “Give her room,” said a nurse.

  “That’s my friend,” said Marisa desperately, “you have to help her.”

  “We are,” said the nurse, “just give them room.”

  “Stretcher!” shouted an EMT, and the nurses cleared room on the floor beside Franca’s body; they laid it next to her, counted to sync their movements, and lifted her onto the stretcher.