by Sean Platt
Well, it hadn’t been scooped out, which was where that thought had been going. It hurt like hell and was a mess of blood and flesh, but his chest still seemed to be there. No hole at all.
Nicolai touched his abdomen. Instead of encountering familiar skin, Nicolai’s fingers slid across something smooth and hard. Almost as if someone had installed a new enhancement without his knowledge. Or as if it had grown there.
“What wasn’t done with me?” he managed to ask.
The girl smiled. “The Beam.”
Nicolai’s fingers were still trailing over his chest. He wiped away the scraps of skin and clothing, starting to see the thing there for what it was: a thin, flexible, apparently impenetrable suit of armor. Only instead of wearing this body armor under his shirt, Nicolai had been wearing it under his skin.
“Hurts.”
The girl nodded. But as the seconds ticked by, it seemed to be hurting less. If he wiped away the blood, he could see the armor’s strange gray color replaced by a blushing peach. It must be nanobots at work — far better and faster ones than Nicolai ever remembered having injected.
“I don’t remember much,” the girl said, still kneeling over him. “But I know it plays favorites.”
“What?”
This time she rolled her eyes a little and repeated, “The Beam.”
Nicolai tried to slow his breathing. Tried to slow his pounding heart — which, thanks to the strange new armor, was quite unharmed. He thought of the slowly diminishing pain. He thought of how he should try to help the others, if he could figure out how to move again. He thought for some reason of Europe, of his trip through the Chunnel, of the way his scrubbers had somehow come back to life after they should have been long dead. How his Doodad had never run dry despite its ancient battery. How the Doodad, according to Micah Ryan, had called satellites and left a footprint for others to follow. How that old gyro car had somehow started outside Amsterdam when it had no business doing so. How time after time, despite impossible odds, Nicolai had always miraculously managed to stay alive, as if he’d had a guardian angel. Or maybe a trillion of them.
He came to his elbows. In the doorway, Sam Dial was shouting at the gray-haired man, pointing past Nicolai’s position and toward Craig Braemon’s desk. Sam sounded panicked — but not, interestingly, panicked by the weapon that Nicolai had to assume was leveled at his chest. And it wasn’t usual Sam panic, either. He sounded scared but coherent. Not Beamsick at all.
In the corner, Kai had turned to look at Nicolai. Her eyes were wide. She flicked them away, but Kate had already seen. Kate’s disbelieving expression was less discreet.
As Nicolai sat up farther, his torso ran into the girl’s swinging blonde hair and went right through it. He had to move quickly. Right now, the assailant was focusing on Sam. He was alone; the other people who’d stormed the party must have fled, possibly back through their entry hole. Nicolai was behind the gunman — and based on Kate’s expression, he was probably supposed to be dead.
He could do this. He could do something.
“You have to stop the upload!” Sam was shouting, still pointing. “Shoot me; I don’t give a shit! Just stop it first!”
The man wasn’t listening. He took a step, saying nothing.
“One of you, do something!”
But Kate was still looking directly at Nicolai, who’d made it to his knees then into a hesitant squat. His skin must be knitting; most of the pain had gone, leaving only his concussive shortness of breath. Sam saw Kate’s gaze and looked right at Nicolai. And the gray-braided man —
Oh, shit; the man was turning his head.
There was nothing to use against him. The weapon Kate had snatched from the wall was nowhere to be seen; it must have turned out as useless as Nicolai figured. Craig Braemon had an otherwise weapon-free office. Nicolai couldn’t even hit him with anything. He didn’t trust his muscles much yet and saw nothing heavy. Nothing he could grab in the two seconds it took for the man to turn around.
Sam tried for the man’s back, but the minute he touched the assassin’s skin, he jerked as if electrocuted, then leaped back. The man had come prepared. There simply wasn’t time, without armament, to riddle around his defenses.
He was holding two weapons. Both came up — not to Nicolai’s chest this time, but to his head. Nicolai wondered if he’d grown a second skull, too. Not that it mattered. Once the man fired, he’d no longer have a face.
“York,” he said.
“My name is Nicolai Costa.” He raised his hands, palms forward, at his shoulders.
But the man wasn’t interested in talking, or in giving anyone time for improv or debate. Both index fingers depressed triggers.
But this time, nothing happened.
The assassin looked at the weapons. He shook them then tried again. Again, both failed to fire. Finally, he tossed them aside and came forward with his hands up, fingers curled, some sort of enhancement whirring beneath his skin.
From Nicolai’s side, Kai gasped. At almost the same time, he heard a sharp metallic sound, like that of a sword being rapidly drawn from a scabbard.
Nicolai pulled his attention from the advancing man for long enough to turn his head. The old man did the same. And they both found themselves staring as a floating metal ball — one that had just now grown spikes — moved closer.
“What the fuck is that thing, Nicolai?” Kate said, her voice shaky.
Nicolai knew. It was a piece of his father’s technology that he’d last seen during the Fall, when he’d loosed his old home’s security system against the Rake Squad. An oldie but a goodie — antiquated, but plenty effective. And this time, he hadn’t even needed to summon it.
Although based on what the girl had said, Nicolai sort of suspected he had.
The old man, however, didn’t seem to know what the spiky ball was.
Then he found out.
“Leo.”
Leo blinked. He could feel his heart becoming sluggish. He could feel the blood leaking from his wound. There had just been the one hard strike, and to Leo it had felt like running into a countertop, back home, that he hadn’t noticed until it was too late. He remembered seeing the thing that had killed him, but he didn’t know why it had come at him, or how he was here.
He’d been with Leah and Dominic. He’d headed off with the Organas. Then he’d felt an overwhelmingly powerful notion about how to circumvent the police roadblocks. At the time, it had seemed like an excellent idea. There may have been fighting. And now he was about to die because he’d made a mistake, or someone had made one for him.
Leo rolled his head. It was all he could do. His skull felt like it must have a knife inside it. But seeing the girl above with her blonde hair hanging between her face and his, like a tunnel of light connecting them, made Leo feel a little better. The girl was familiar even though he’d never seen her before. And then he seemed to remember, even though the answer that came to his lips wasn’t quite right for a dozen reasons — the wrongness of her appearance being only the most obvious among them.
“SerenityBlue?” he said.
She shook her head, but the small smile didn’t leave her face. “My name is Violet James.”
Leo tried raising a hand to touch her. There was no question in his mind; she was SerenityBlue. She didn’t look like Serenity (which, to Leo’s eyes, meant like Leah, too), but this was her, all right.
But Leo couldn’t touch the girl. His hand went right through her face.
“You’re not here.”
“Maybe you’re not here,” she said.
“Am I dying?”
“I think so, yes.”
Leo didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t expected such a blunt reply. He was 121 years old. That was enough life, wasn’t it?
“Why are you here? How are you here?”
“I thought I wasn’t here?” Again, there was that tiny smile.
Leo sighed. He could feel his thoughts fogging. There seemed to be someone standing abo
ve him, beyond the girl, vigilant, watching but not speaking. Someone elsewhere in this place was shouting. Several sets of feet were rushing around whichever room he was about to die in. It was all so unimportant right now.
“I did something. Something bad.” Leo closed his eyes and sighed, feeling an enormous weight on his chest. He wondered if this was it. But his eyes opened again, and Serenity/Violet was still above him, her hair still around him in a halo.
“How you begin is unimportant,” she said. “It’s how you end that matters.”
Leo groaned. The weight on his chest felt heavier. Was it death? Or guilt?
“It was worthwhile,” the girl said, as if seeing his thoughts.
“What was?”
“The time you spent. You made a difference. After it all, you made a difference.”
Leo tried to nod. His neck no longer seemed to work. Something was wrong in the corner of his eyes. He could feel wetness, like reluctant tears.
“Look out for her,” Leo said.
“We all take care of each other.”
Leo wanted to say more, but the room was growing gray. He felt himself sliding away. Away from this world, and into another.
“Goodbye, Leo,” the girl said. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”
Leo tried to reply. But he was sliding faster, falling deeper. And then he was gone.
Kai’s attention snapped away from the dead man and holographic girl and toward Nicolai’s mysterious reporter, Sam. Nicolai had described Sam Dial as scattered, distracted, almost comical. But despite his clear panic, Sam struck Kai as together and clear-headed. Since he’d come in, his focus had been on one thing: the hotspot Nicolai had set up to move the York shell from himself to Braemon’s canvas. He’d seemed almost relieved when Nicolai had been shot — as if it was regrettable but would at least halt the file transfer in progress. Now that Nicolai had somehow survived, Sam seemed more focused than ever.
He made it to the desk, skipping past the felled assassin who’d seemed to think Nicolai was York. He picked up the hotspot brick. Sam even made it as far as inspecting the thing for a manual switch or cords to pull, but whatever he was trying to stop, he didn’t seem to have made it in time.
“Shit! It’s finished.” He looked at Nicolai. “Can you recall it?”
“Recall it?” Nicolai already looked bizarre with his clothed back and blood-smeared bare chest. His new expression made it worse. “What do you mean, recall it?”
“I don’t know! It’s your fucking file, and it’s a goddamned person! How am I supposed to have any idea how this works?”
“Just delete it if there’s a problem. Hell, Sam.”
Sam wasn’t assuaged; Kai watched as he slapped at the screen. He seemed inspired for all of three seconds then swore.
“I can’t talk to the canvas.”
“Sure you can.” Nicolai projected his voice. “Canvas!”
The canvas chirped in response.
“Not like that. I have a Fi implant. A really good one — or at least, it was top of the line six years ago. But there’s security here like — ”
Kai came to Sam’s side. “It’s a Beau Monde system. Of course there’s security. What’s the problem?”
“The shell. It was something pretending to be your Stephen York guy, wasn’t it? That’s why that old man wanted to kill you — because he thought you were York?”
“Maybe, but what does that have to do with — ”
Sam slapped the screen as if it were the canvas itself rather than simply a monitor. “Fuck!”
“What?” Kai asked.
“This is seriously malicious code. With some seriously high-access permissions, too.” He scrolled. “Holy shit. The canvas is unlocking. All of it.”
Kate stepped forward. “That’s good! That’s what we want!”
Sam looked up at her, his lips pressed together, his expression mature and serious. “It’s not good. It’s open season. You don’t understand. I know a lot of people in the hacker community. They set AI monitors on secure junctions and wait for things like this to happen. Whatever you just uploaded, it’s more than just some person’s spoofed identity.”
Kai thought of York as they’d seen him in the simulation, in Ryu’s parlor. He’d said, the boson I carry. The lost piece of Project Mindbender.
“We knew that,” Kai said. “It’s a Trojan horse.”
Sam exhaled through his mouth, shaking his head. “It’s a key in a lock. Based on some things I’ve been told, I seriously doubt it’s even the person, York, that you were told it is. Someone used you to get this in here — and they didn’t do it to help you out.” He shook his head again. “West. It’s calling out.”
“Out where?” Kate came around the desk. “To the hackers?” Her lips pursed. “Can this get us into the Beau Monde? You see anything on there about Beau Monde?”
“It’s calling out to Xenia,” Kai said, pointing. “Look. Incoming from something at Xenia Labs.” Below the stream were two tags that under normal circumstances Kai felt quite sure were for Braemon’s eyes only: Mindbender and Respero.
“That was a while ago, by the timestamp,” said Sam. “And the Xenia stream was incoming, not outgoing. Here’s the call out. In fact…wait, what’s this?”
Nicolai: “I don’t know. Can you trace the call?”
“This isn’t my system.”
Kate looked at Sam. “Thought you were a hacker, Skippy?”
Sam sat, his urgency turned to something like resigned fascination. Spellbound by an unfolding tragedy’s hideous details.
“I was wrong. The canvas isn’t actually unlocking at all. Not to the outside, anyway. What your uploaded software is doing is very selective. See this? And this?”
Kai squinted. She saw nothing.
“See the identifier on the call out?” Sam blinked. “Quark. It’s calling Quark PD.”
“The canvas is calling the cops? Is this part of the security system?” Nicolai’s eyes went toward the dead man, beside whom the strange, apparently holographic girl was still sitting. Probably looking for the floating morning star from earlier, wherever it had gone before breaking the old man’s skull.
Sam shook his head. “This isn’t security. It’s being done by the virus. Here. It’s formed a tunnel. Looks like a connection Braemon is authorized to have. It’s baked in, keyed to…I’d guess this is his ID?” He pointed. “Look. That’s the tag. The tag that…” His hand went to his pocket, and he pulled out a handheld. Almost absently, he said, “I need to call someone.”
Kate reached over and began tapping the screen, probably looking for a way to finish their mission and give herself Beau Monde status. “If it’s calling the cops, we should hit the road.”
“It’s more than that,” Sam said, setting the handheld on the desk. “What’s it doing over here? West, this is deep, deep shit. This looks highly encrypted. Superencrypted with a rotating cleartext cypher. Seems like your Mr. York can unlock anything, including all of Craig Braemon’s private goodies. And talk to Quark as if it were Braemon. Where did you get that shell, anyway?”
Kai stammered and looked at Nicolai, unsure if she wanted to let this new young man in on the details about what Nicolai had just loosed on the system, including whether they should have trusted the old woman who’d led them to it.
But Kai didn’t need to respond because Sam was again pointing at the screen. “Look. Braemon has a backdoor connection to something at Quark PD that…” He squinted. “Hell, I doubt Quark PD even knows it’s there. Says ‘Sector 7.’”
Beside Kai, Kate stiffened. Kai glanced up at the blonde but said nothing, filing the information for later.
The screen continued to scroll and flash.
“We shouldn’t be seeing this. Any of it. Does anyone know where Braemon went?”
“Probably ran off?”
“Someone watch the door. Craig Braemon doesn’t…well, he doesn’t take well to prying.”
Kate moved to the doorway and pee
ked out, saying nothing.
Sam tapped the screen then zoomed in on a tree cluster that made little sense to Kai. But then again, she’d never trespassed inside Quark’s inner circle.
“I can’t even stop it,” Sam said. “This is all hardcoded, and I’m locked out.”
“York can’t let you in?” Nicolai asked. “That same shell got party invites for Kate and her buddies, and got us into that canvas — ”
“York is what’s locked us out. It’s pulling data from all over and has put its hand inside Braemon’s credentials to use him like a puppet. And now it’s after something.” He shook his head. “Seriously, Nicolai. Who gave you this software?”
Kai looked at Nicolai with a question in her eyes: Tell him or not? So Nicolai did.
“It came from Rachel Ryan.”
“Micah and Isaac Ryan’s mother? Where is she now?”
“Dead,” Kai said.
“I don’t understand,” said Nicolai, watching Sam’s profile. “You came in here as if you knew exactly what was going on. So what’s this thing doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were screaming to stop the upload. You were shouting it!”
“I don’t know what it’s doing.”
“Then why did you want to stop it?”
“I don’t know!” Sam blurted. “I don’t know, okay? I spent the day thinking I’d die in a hallucination, and the only thing I knew through it all was that this was wrong, that this was something I had to stop! But nobody fucking bothered to inform me or give me all the details! All I know is that someone is playing us all, and we just keep doing…exactly…what…they…want!”
Sam was staring at Nicolai, whose eyes were hard behind his false lenses. Kai saw someone at the end of his wits, barely controlled, as if he’d been through too much in too short a time. Kai, who’d seen plenty now and in the past, could relate.
Kai tried to focus on the screen. She could see the tags Sam had mentioned, and where it said Sector 7. Then she saw something else the York virus seemed to be working hard to open, possibly deep inside Quark PD’s servers across the pirate connection York’s shell had established: a file labeled Creeper 051563.